JOSH by Delores Fossen Read Free Book Online Page A

table about two weeks ago. I can’t be sure it was the same one, but I remember seeing one there.”
    Maybe that meant the laptop had been at the house long enough for it to contain something to blow this case wide open.
    “What about the checkups you had?” he asked. “Did the same person do them each time?”
    “Yes. Caucasian male, about six feet tall, 170 pounds, light brown hair. He always wore a surgical mask, but if he hasn’t altered his hair, I think I could pick him out of a photo lineup.”
    It’d be a bear to sort through all the doctors in the state, but Josh made a mental note to ask the analysts at Quantico to work on it. They might get lucky.
    “You know if the baby’s a boy or girl,” she said.
    The out-of-the-blue comment threw him for a moment. But Josh just nodded. “Why? You want to know?”
    She shook her head. Groaned softly. “This seems crazy, huh? Me pregnant with your baby.”
    Yeah, it did. Of course, when they’d made the baby, it was before the shooting, when they were still on good terms. They weren’t on good terms now, but like the flashbacks he’d been having, Josh was going to have to put that aside, too.
    “I’m scared of you,” Jaycee went on. “Scared you’ll try to fight me for custody or something.”
    Again, the comment threw him, and he wasn’t sure it was a good thing to have that possibility out in the open like this. Especially since he had plenty of other things to work out in his head.
    “I want to be part of the baby’s life,” he settled for saying. It was a safe response. And an honest one. He might want more than just a part, and while he didn’t say that aloud, it seemed as if Jaycee picked up on it.
    She swallowed hard. “And that’s what scares me. You have a normal life. Good roots and a law-abiding family. I don’t have any of that.”
    She didn’t. Both her parents had served hard time for an assortment of crimes, and he’d heard that Jaycee had been brought up in foster care. His parents had divorced when he was a kid, and his mother had left, but it wasn’t the same. So yeah, by her standards he did have a normal life.
    Well, except he was suffering from PTSD and might never recover. That wouldn’t look good on a custody challenge if that was what he decided to do.
    He took the final turn to the ranch, and Jaycee got an immediate glimpse of his “normal” life. There were now six houses on the grounds, assorted barns, outbuildings and miles and miles of pasture for the horses and cattle raised on the ranch.
    “Five of my cousins had houses built after they got married and started families of their own,” he explained. “My other cousin, Mason, lives in the main house with his wife and dad.”
    “The one who’s getting married this weekend.”
    “That’s right. Boone Ryland. He’s marrying a former deputy, Melissa Garza. She retired recently, and that’s how I got the job.”
    Jaycee made an idle uh-huh sound, but her attention wasn’t on anything he’d pointed out, but rather the children in the fenced playground on the side of the main house.
    “There’s so many of them,” she whispered. “It looks like a day care.”
    It did. “They’re all kin. Last count, my cousins have nine offspring, and Mason and his wife have one on the way.”
    And at the moment it seemed that all nine were out playing while a few of their moms watched.
    Josh slowed when he reached the playground. The moms all waved. One of the kids, Kimmie, who was four years old, saw him and blew him a kiss.
    “The little red-haired girl seems to like you,” Jaycee mumbled.
    She did. Though Josh couldn’t understand why. He’d never been comfortable around kids, and they seemed to be uncomfortable around him. All except for Kimmie. That gave him a little hope that his own child might feel the same way.
    He drove past the playground to the back part of the east pasture to a weathered-looking barn and pulled to a stop in front of it.
    “You live here?