Always Watching by LS Sygnet Read Free Book Online

begin to
process her comments on healing some alleged rift.  Did she
really believe that good old Danny and I could bury the
hatchet?  He believed, and rightly so, that I murdered his
cousin, my ex-husband.
    My fist flew to one eye and rubbed
hard.  “Celeste, you need to understand that I will put forth
all of my energy and effort into finding your daughter, but not
because she’s your daughter.  I would do the same for any
missing child.”
    “ I know that,” she said
softly.  “Which is exactly why I want you looking for
her.  Please tell Danny that I want him to cooperate with
you.  If he thinks you’re lying, maybe he could call
me.”
    There was no mistaking the fact that this
woman ached to hear her husband’s voice, maybe even receive some
reassurance that everything would be all right.  It tugged at
my newfound empathy.  “I’ll see what I can do.”
    Out in the hall, Devlin muttered, “That
wasn’t particularly helpful.  In fact, I’d call it on the far
side of creepy.  What the hell was that shit about
healing?”
    “ Don’t go there,
Dev.  We both know that this woman is blinded by the image
he’s painted for her.  He’s not a good person, and I doubt
he’ll cooperate with me, even if it could save his daughter’s
life.  No, our best bet is to look at who inside this hospital
had both access to the baby and the opportunity to remove
her.”
    “ Agreed.”
    “ Where’d that smarmy
little administrator go?”
    Crevan joined us from behind. 
“Conference room at the end of the hall.  He’s got some woman
in there with him, Vanessa somebody.  Fremont maybe.”
    “ Do they have the
personnel files I requested?”
    “ Uh, nothing physical but
the woman showed up with an enormous laptop computer.”
    “ Dev, are you ready to do
this?”
    “ Should we keep
interviewing the staff?” Crevan asked.
    “ Yeah.  I want a head
count.  Everybody scheduled to work this shift needs to be
present and accounted for.”
    “ Slight problem there,
Helen,” Crevan cringed.  “They had a change of shift just
before you got here.  Hospital security assured us that they
detained everybody that was here at the time the baby disappeared,
but some of the nurses are talking.  It seems that at least
one of them managed to slip away.”
    “ Get her name and send a
car out to pick her up,” I said.  “I want her back here before
Dev and I are done talking to the administrator.  What’s her
name?”
    He flipped open a notebook and flipped
through several pages.  “Florence Payette.”
    “ And her job?”
    “ She’s an RN in the
nursery.”
    “ Find out if she had any
contact with the child from her coworkers.  Also, Celeste
Datello has some snapshots of the baby on her phone.  They’ll
be useless to us sooner than you might imagine, Crevan.  It’s
all we’ve got at the moment.  Better than nothing I
suppose.”
    “ They change a lot after
they’re born, don’t they?” he said.
    “ Drastically.  Ask
somebody if Celeste had a cord blood kit.  It’ll be invaluable
if it takes us awhile to find this kid, but regardless will provide
instant DNA for comparison.”
    “ I’m on it.”
    Devlin held his tongue until we were out of
earshot down the hall in the direction of the conference
room.  “I doubt any of us would’ve thought of that cord blood
thing, Helen.  If we find her, it’ll be a good tool to make
sure she’s who we think she is.”
    “ Exactly.  If this
takes more than a day, her features will be significantly different
than they were today.  Birth is a traumatic experience. 
The shape of her head will no doubt be different.  This is a
nightmare.  Toughest thing you can imagine, a baby this
young.”
    “ I take it you’ve done
this kind of investigation before.”
    “ Unfortunately, more than
once.  Let’s see what we can learn about our missing
nurse.”  I shoved the conference room door open and found
Fangman with a woman we had yet to