So, what to do?
She sifted through all the information coming at her when her balance was already seriously compromised from her encounter with Hugh. Guilt swamped her. If she hadn’t indulged herself so selfishly, she would have been with Joshua. None of which she could change right now.
Shoving aside the distracting guilt, she narrowed her focus, calling up her prosecutorial skills to get to the bottom of what was going on with this mystery woman—if she could possibly be Joshua’s real mother. “If you’re his mama, then why did you pretend to be hospital personnel?”
“Because of your paperwork.” She picked at her scrubs nervously.
Instincts shouted that the woman was holding something back—and she had Joshua in her arms, which made confronting her more than a little problematic. Amelia looked around for help in the deserted hallway. Crap.
The case file on Joshua stated his mother had died and his father had taken him to an orphanage. She had no reason to doubt the adoption agency. She had been laboriously thorough in researching them, knowing there were definitely some suspicious operations out there.
But she’d heard horror stories of babies being stolen from their mothers. Or mothers persuaded to give up a child for money or a so-called better life for the baby.
Or the woman could be grief stricken, mistaking Joshua for her own lost baby. In which case, she would be unstable. Volatile.
Joshua whimpered, reaching out a chubby fist. Amelia’s heart twisted with love—and fear. She gauged the distance between them and decided to continue to bluff rather than risk an all-out confrontation.
“Actually, he is not okay. That’s why he had the IV in.” Oh God, the woman must have pulled out the needle. Where were the nurses? Why hadn’t someone stopped her? “You need to give him to me now so I can get him hooked up again.”
She kept her voice low and calm, her body language as loose as possible with every cell within her screaming out in protest.
Amelia held out her arms. “I’ll be careful with him and have him right back to you. In fact, you can stay with us if you would like.”
And, please God, they would find some other hospital staff, maybe even one of those guards carrying around a big machine gun. Or better yet, this would be the perfect time for Hugh to come around the corner—unless he’d already left through another exit to avoid her. He could already be long gone.
The woman hugged Joshua closer with one arm and called over her shoulder. “Oliver?”
Another person? The time had come to act before the odds went against her. She needed to grab Joshua and start screaming bloody murder.
As Amelia lurched forward, a man stepped from behind a stack of pallets and shoved the woman and Joshua behind him. He wore dirty camouflage with patches from some other country, his red hair slicked back, and long, for someone in uniform.
Amelia opened her mouth to shout—
A survival knife gleamed in his fist, jagged blade kissing her neck. “The boy belongs to us now, and if you want to keep your pretty face unscarred, you’ll shut up.”
The other woman peered around his shoulder. “What are you thinking, Oliver? The Guardian gave us our orders. Get the kid and get out. Now kill her, and let’s go.”
Oliver’s grip on her arm tightened while he stroked back her hair with the blade. “The Guardian understands the importance of a profit margin to keep a business going, and this woman’s worth almost as much as the baby. The blonde bitch? She’s coming with us.”
Chapter 7
A distant shriek echoed down the corridor, stopping Hugh in his tracks as he stepped out of the closet. A cry of pain? Certainly not unheard of in a hospital. He moved deeper into the hall, peering around a corner. A solitary nurse in an open office filling out charts merely lifted her eyes for half a second.
The hall was all but deserted, just as it had been when he stepped from the closet after shaking off the shock of Amelia’s rejection and hauling back on his clothes. Most everyone was asleep, and no new patients were coming to this full-to-capacity makeshift school-turned-hospital. He jogged past the gymnasium crammed with beds sectioned off from one another with extra wrestling mats and uneven bars.
Hugh shrugged away a crick in his neck and pushed through the front door into the warm haze of post-earthquake dust. He must just be on edge because of the impulsive, crazy-as-hell hookup with Amelia. What had he been thinking? One thing was clear. They both needed space to get levelheaded again. Then he would contact her and… What? Hell if he kn—
Another shout echoed. Louder, rippling through the quiet night. The scream ended abruptly, as if cut off. And God, his head must really be screwed up, because he could swear that sounded like Amelia.
Crazy or not, he had to check it out.
He scanned the dark lot, a mess like the rest of the area. Cars lay on their sides, some crashed into each other, the asphalt cracked. None on the lights worked. Two poles had fallen on top of a storage shed and corner of the school. Still, there was no activity other than a couple of displaced cats scurrying under cars, no doubt in search of the rats that had already started scuttling through the aftermath.
Which only left the back of the schoolyard to search.
A deep gut sense of premonition drove him forward. He broke into a jog, his boots pounding along the cracked asphalt, onto the soft earth. When he rounded the corner, he would probably find another cat shrieking or someone laughing. The scream had to be his imagination. Everything inside him was a jumbled-up shit pile of the past and present melding together since he’d rescued Amelia and the boy.
The back lot resembled the front, a broken mess. More rats scampered. A kitten screeched beyond the tree line. Could that be what he’d heard?