Chapter Two
Lauren saw exactly what she’d expected to see in Cameron’s eyes.
Anger.
There was plenty of it, too, along with the shock of having her pull a gun on him. This certainly wasn’t the way Lauren had wanted all of this to play out, but she hadn’t exactly had a lot of options. The seconds were ticking away.
“Move,” she ordered Cameron in the strongest voice she could manage. Which wasn’t much. She didn’t feel strong at all. Just terrified.
This couldn’t be happening.
Over the past decade, she’d accepted that she could be in danger from the lunatic who kept sending those threatening letters, but she couldn’t accept that two innocent babies could now be in harm’s way.
“Put down the gun,” Cameron warned her. And it was indeed a warning. Unlike her, he had managed the strong tone, and it had a dark edge to it. An edge that reminded her that she was holding a cop—an experienced one—at gunpoint.
“I can’t.” She tried to make that sound like an apology and failed at it, too. “I need to see Isaac.”
Of course, Cameron would want to know why, and Lauren would tell him. First, though, she had to see the baby.
“Can’t?” he repeated, that edge in his voice going up a notch. It went up in his smoke-gray eyes, too.
When she’d been a teenager, the girls had called them bedroom eyes because he was so hot. Still was. With that dark blond hair and natural tan, he’d always had rock-star looks. Those looks were still there in spades, but there wasn’t a trace of his bedroom smile.
“Please,” Lauren tried. “Just let me see him, and I might be able to clear all of this up.”
“You’ll clear it up now.” Again, it was a warning. “And if you don’t, you won’t get anywhere near my nephew. However, you will get to see the inside of a jail cell.”
She had no idea if that was a threat or not. He certainly had grounds to arrest her, and the fact that they’d once been lovers might not be enough leverage to stop this situation from snowballing.
Cameron still had hold of his gun, but he used his left hand to reach for his pocket. For his phone, she realized. He was going to call one or both of her brothers, and she didn’t want them involved in this yet. Not until she could at least try to make things safe.
“No!” she said.
It was the only thing she managed to get out of her mouth, though, because Cameron didn’t take out his phone. He lunged at her. Fast. Before Lauren could even react and get out of his way, he rammed into her and sent them both to the ground. While they were still falling, he knocked her gun from her hand.
“Start talking right now,” Cameron growled, and he pinned her hands to the ground so she couldn’t reach for her gun. He pinned her, too, with his body since he was on top of her.
Lauren’s heart was racing. Along with that, she got a new hit of adrenaline. Something she definitely didn’t need since her nerves were already firing in every inch of her.
She looked at Cameron, their gazes colliding, and for a moment she remembered what had once been between them. The intimacy.
The love.
Yes, once she’d loved him, and she thought maybe he’d felt the same way about her, but it was obvious those emotions were long gone. Well, maybe not the heat that had first drawn them together, but he definitely wasn’t having any warm and fuzzy feelings about her now.
Lauren struggled, trying to force him off her, but when it was obvious this was a losing battle, she knew she had to say something.
And that something was going to shatter the life Cameron had built here.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, the question surprising her.
Only then did she remember the wound on her shoulder. That part of her hadn’t hit the ground, thank goodness, and since it was a constant throbbing pain, it had become a sort of white noise. Something she was trying to push aside so it wouldn’t cause her to lose focus.
“No. I’m not hurt.” But in hindsight, she probably should have lied. Maybe then, Cameron would have let her go.
“Talk to me,” he snapped. Obviously, he was over his concern for her injury. Of course, she couldn’t blame him when there were so many other things for them to discuss.
“We’re in danger,” she started. Lauren had to clear her throat and repeat it so it’d have some sound. “Those men who tried to kill me got away, and I believe they’ll be looking for me. Maybe for you, too.”
Because he was right in her face, it wasn’t hard to see the doubt go through his eyes. Despite the doubts, though, he still had a look around them. A cop’s look. Good. Lauren didn’t want anyone sneaking up on them. Or worse—trying to sneak into the house.
“What do those men have to do with me?” he snarled.
“Maybe everything.”
She tried to gather her breath. Couldn’t. Cameron wasn’t overly muscled, but he wasn’t a lightweight, either, and with his chest pressing against her, she couldn’t get enough air. He must have realized that, but he didn’t move. Probably because he thought she would go for her gun again.
Which she would.
Since there was no easy way to say this, Lauren just blurted it out. “I believe someone swapped my baby with Gilly’s.”
She gave him a moment to let that sink in, but she couldn’t give him the time he needed. She also continued to keep watch as best she could. Hard to do that, though, while on the ground.
He shook his head. “Why would anyone do that?”
“I’m not sure. Please, let’s just check on Isaac, and then we can go over all of this.”
Cameron didn’t answer. Not with words anyway. But his cold, hard stare told her that wasn’t going to happen.
“Someone started following me days ago. Two men in a dark car,” she added. “I believe those were the same men who broke into my house.”
“The men who tried to kill you.” Cameron said it as if he didn’t believe her. She couldn’t blame him. She’d had hours to try to come to grips with it, and part of her still wasn’t ready to accept it.
She nodded. “Before they found me, I heard them talking to someone on a communicator, and that’s when they said they were cops.”
“They could have lied,” he reminded her again.
“True. But they still broke in for a reason. And that reason was my son, Patrick. They wanted to kill me and take him.” She huffed in frustration because his skeptical look was only getting worse, and she wasn’t explaining this well at all. “Just please move off me so we can both keep watch.”
She saw him debate that for several moments. Lauren had lost track of how long she’d been out here with him, but Dara, the nanny, would be getting even more worried than she already was.
“If you try anything else stupid, I will put you right back on the ground,” Cameron growled.
He finally shifted his body to the side, rolling off her. He also snatched up her gun as he stood. Lauren didn’t like not being armed, but at least when she got up, she was able to better keep an eye on the trail behind them.
“Does your nephew look like your sister?” she came out and asked.
He stopped glancing around long enough to shoot her a glare. “That proves nothing. He could have inherited genes from generations ago.”
Lauren hesitated a moment. “Does he look like me?”
His quick glare intensified, but what he didn’t do was deny it. “First, you have to convince me that a swap even took place before I’ll start speculating about who my nephew does or doesn’t resemble.”
Fair enough. Or at least it would have been fair if time was on their side. She instinctively knew it wasn’t.
“I was telling the truth when I said I can’t be sure a swap took place, but the men said once they had Patrick, they could do a DNA test and go from there. Go from there,” she emphasized. “I believe that means they’ll come here next.”
Cameron cursed, and it wasn’t tame. “That’s a big leap to assume the men were talking about Isaac.”
“A leap except that I’d already started to get suspicious. Patrick doesn’t look like me or my late husband.” She swallowed hard. “He looks like you.”
She could tell from his slight flinch that Cameron reacted to that. Maybe because he saw something of her face in Isaac’s?
“Gilly could have arranged the swap,” Lauren went on. “She was afraid of Trace, and if she knew she was dying, this might have been her way of preventing Trace from getting his hands on their child.”
Though it sickened her to think that Gilly, a woman she considered her friend, would have intentionally done something like this since it could have put Lauren’s own precious son in danger.
“Gilly wouldn’t do that,” Cameron insisted. “If she was worried about her baby’s safety, she would have gotten word to me.”
“Maybe. But Gilly was dying. Scared. And they’d had trouble getting in touch with you.”
He flinched again, and she knew why. Cameron had gotten caught up in a lockdown at the prison, where he’d gone to interview a potential witness. He’d been trapped there for hours with no way to leave and get to his sister even though she’d gone into labor.
“But Gilly might not have done this,” Lauren added a moment later.
Mercy, she wished she’d rehearsed this or something because it was hard for her to put her line of thinking into words. Equally hard for her to imagine it had happened. “My late husband was Alden Lange, and his business partner or his sister could be the one responsible. They both hate me. Or at least they hate that I have control over Alden’s estate.”
The flat look Cameron gave her told her he wasn’t buying that. And she hoped she was wrong. Because both Alden’s sister, Julia, and his partner, Duane Tulley, could be very dangerous. They might have seen this as some sick mind game to watch her suffer. Of course, her suffering could also be profitable for them if it led to one or both of them getting their hands on Alden’s money.
“How would Trace or any of these other people have gotten into the hospital nursery to switch babies?” he asked.
Lauren didn’t have the answer to that, either. “It must have been an inside job since the babies wear bracelets with security chips that would trigger an alarm if they were carried out of the hospital. I’d just started checking out the medical staff when I was attacked.”
He made a sound, a rumble deep in his throat. “And why did you do that? What made you suspicious?”
“I kept thinking it was strange that I would look at my son and see you.” She waved that off before he could say anything about it. She didn’t want to talk about why the image of Cameron’s face was still so clear in her head after all these years and after all the bad stuff that’d gone on between them.
“I had a DNA test done,” she went on. “So I could compare Patrick’s DNA to mine. I’m supposed to get the results back any day now, but I made the mistake of asking the housekeeper if there was anything still around with Alden’s DNA on it.” She’d cursed herself for doing that. “I wanted to have the complete DNA results, but I think the housekeeper told Alden’s sister what I’d asked for.”
At least Cameron hadn’t simply dismissed her. He tipped his head to the trail. “We’ll get your son and sort this out.” Lauren was about to blow out a breath of relief, but then Cameron added, “For the record, I don’t believe there was a swap. Isaac is my nephew. But if Duane and Julia are bad news like you think they are, then they could have been the ones behind your attack.”
He took her by the arm again to get her moving, but Lauren dug in her heels. “I can’t risk bringing my brothers into this yet. Those thugs who attacked me could have connections to Duane and Julia, and they could find out I’m here.”
This huff was even louder than his last one. “Look, Gabriel is the sheriff, and my boss. As well as your brother. No way would he risk putting you in danger. I’ll just go inside, call him on his personal line and have him come out here.”
“No.” She couldn’t say that fast enough. “I heard those men say if my family got in the way, they would have to kill them.”
She hated when his skeptical look returned. Because she had the same skepticism. “I know those thugs could have wanted me to hear what they were saying, that they could have been feeding me information. But why would they have done that, then shoot me and try to take Patrick?”
“That’s what we’ll find out—as soon as I call Gabriel.” He tightened his grip on her arm and managed to drag her a few steps.
“They could be watching the front of your house from the road. They could be watching Gabriel’s and Jameson’s places, too. That’s why I used the trail. Only the locals know it’s there, and it’s not easy to spot unless you’re looking for it.”
Cameron couldn’t argue with that, not the last part anyway, even though it looked as if he wanted to dispute something. Anything. “We’ll go in through the back of my house. Even hired guns won’t be suspicious if they see the sheriff dropping by to visit with one of his deputies.”
Lauren wasn’t so sure of that at all. Anything out of the ordinary might trigger those men to shoot again. And this time, Isaac and anyone else who happened to be around could get hurt. If the gunmen were truly out there, they could be looking for any sign she was there, and Gabriel’s visit might give her away.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” Lauren said under her breath. She lifted her head, making direct eye contact with Cameron. “But I just had to know if Isaac’s really my son. Don’t get me wrong. I love Patrick with all my heart, but I had to find out the truth.”
Cameron hesitated, volleying glances at the house, the woods and her. Just when she thought he was about to give in and let her go inside, she heard something. Footsteps. Cameron heard them, too, because he pushed her behind him and aimed his gun in the direction of the sound.
Someone was running toward them.
Oh, God. Had something happened to Patrick?
Nothing could have kept Lauren behind Cameron. She snatched her gun from his left hand and would have taken off toward her car, but she finally saw something.
Something that stopped her cold.
Dara. The nanny had Patrick clutched to her chest, and she was running—fast. Probably as fast as she could go.
“They found us,” Dara shouted. “Run!”