Born in Death (In Death 23)

“With the ticking bomb of explosive hormones? No, thank you.”

When they stepped back into Eve’s office, Leonardo sat alone at the auxiliary unit, brows knit as he studied the screen.

“Mavis?”

“Oh, peeing. Again.” He smiled. “She has the cutest little bladder these days.”

“Adorable. Tell her I’ve got to follow up this lead on the homicides while it’s hot. I’ll be back as soon as I can. If you hit on anything that seems familiar, even like a maybe, earmark it. We’ll give it a push when I get back. Peabody and McNab get back first, give it to them.”

“We will. Dallas, Roarke, would it be all right if we stayed here tonight? She’ll just want to come back tomorrow, or sit down at Central if you’re working there. I hate to have her going up- and downtown when she’s so worn down.”

“You’re always welcome,” Roarke told him. “Why don’t you ask Summerset to fix her a soother? He’d know what was safe for her and the baby.”

“You ought to take one yourself,” Eve added. Then because she knew he loved her friend, she stepped to Leonardo, gave his wide shoulder a squeeze. “Tell her Tandy’s in my head. I do some of my best work there.”

“She believes in you. That’s getting her through this.”

But no pressure, Eve thought wearily as they headed out.

“You drive,” she told Roarke. “I’m going to do some of that work in my head.”

She tipped back her seat a few inches, closed her eyes, and brought Tandy into focus.

Young, healthy, single, pregnant, no close family ties. Relocated. Why not keep in contact with friends/coworkers back home?

Hiding?

From what? From whom?

Father of the baby? Possible, but unlikely. No bitching to new coworkers or new pregnant pal about the lousy bastard who knocked you up.

Eve thought of Tandy’s apartment. A nest, Peabody had said. Not a hidey-hole. Hid

ing, maybe, but not obsessively. More like the fresh start angle.

The like crime victims had been similar there, too. Relocation—at least initially on the other Brit vic. New job, new place, new life. So maybe it was more getting away than hiding.

Getting away from what? From whom?

One woman dead, two missing. She’d get a doctor—Louise or Mira, or maybe Mavis’s midwife—to look over the autopsy report on the Middlesex vic. If the vic was injured, dead or dying, the killer might have tried to carve the baby out.

And God, that was gross.

No attempt to hide the body. Dump it instead near the vic’s home base. Away from where she’d been held, Eve thought. Away from the killer’s location.

But Belego never surfaced, alive or dead. Take the baby? Dispose of the body? Logical, she mused. Cops are looking for an abductee, pregnant or with infant. Or a runaway. Changed location once, change again.

They’re not looking for a nice healthy baby newly placed with some nice couple. In the country maybe, well away from the location of the abduction.

Healthy baby, priority one. Can’t put a woman that far along on a shuttle or any air transpo. Mavis said she couldn’t travel after her—what had it been—thirtieth week?

“She’s still in New York,” Eve mumbled. “Unless they drove her outside the city. Not far, though. They wouldn’t want to put any more stress on her than necessary. Any stress on her is stress on the fetus. And she’s still alive.”

“Because?”

“Unless she went into labor on her own, she’s still got the package in her. I don’t think they’d push that—give her whatever you give to start the whole process up. All these women were taken in the last weeks of their pregnancy. Maybe that’s coincidence, or maybe the kidnapper waits until they’re near end-of-term.”

She let it run through her head. “Maybe he or she is a frustrated midwife or OB. Likes to deliver babies. Then the mother had to be disposed of, somehow. Can’t keep the babies. Somebody’s going to notice if this guy, this woman keeps adding newborns to the household. Or…”