Assumed Identity(68)

Recognition dawned, but brought little comfort. This was the same woman she’d seen watching the shop from across the street that night. Watching her. No. “Oh, God.”

Watching Emma.

Robin scrambled to turn around in her seat. “Get away from my baby.”

The woman stopped beside Emma’s window. She smiled as she braced both hands against the glass and looked inside the vehicle. “Do you like your new toy? Mama made it just for you.” Her eyes widened like saucers in her gaunt face. “Where is it? Where’s your dolly?” Robin was on her knees, facing the woman when she smacked her palm against the glass. “What did you do with it?”

The sharp sound startled Emma, and after a beat of silence, she burst into tears.

With Robin temporarily forgotten, the woman tapped on the window, trying to get Emma’s attention. “No, baby. Stop crying.” She felt all around the window, looking for a way to get in. “Baby? Don’t cry.”

“It’s okay, sweetie.” Robin reached over the back of the seat to take Emma’s hand. But she only got louder and redder and more upset. “Back away from the car, please. You’re frightening my daughter.”

“That’s my baby! You don’t deserve her.” Giving up on the window, the woman grabbed the door handle and rattled it. Thank God it was locked up tight. “I want my baby!”

When she reached for the front door handle, Robin leaned back and hit the horn. “Jake!” Please come back. She honked three more times and Emma’s unhappiness grew louder. “It’s okay, sweetie. We’ll be okay.”

“Hailey!” Emma’s birth mother? The strange woman was a stranger no more. “Stop crying, baby.”

Tania Houseman tried all the doors, rocking the SUV as she fought to get inside. Five minutes had passed. With the celebration in full swing inside, and the rain falling steadily outside, it seemed no one could hear Robin’s pleas for help. “Leave us alone. You’re not supposed to be here.”

She pushed up higher in the seat to follow Tania’s uneven walk as she staggered away from the car. Was she leaving? Was this freak encounter over? Robin lost sight of Tania for several precious seconds as she stooped down.

When she finally stood back up and turned toward the car, she held a fist-sized rock in her hand from the alley. “Hailey!”

Robin didn’t think. She simply acted. She dove over the back of the seat and threw her body over Emma as Tania hurled the rock at the window.

The blow chipped the glass and Tania disappeared from sight again. While the disturbed young woman reloaded, Robin unbuckled Emma from the car seat and pulled her into her arms. She hunkered down as close to the floorboards as she could get, in case the window shattered. “Shh, sweetie.”

Emma’s cries filled the car as Robin flipped open phone and pressed 9.

“You should have died in that alley,” Tania yelled. She pounded at the glass with another rock. “You don’t deserve her.”

The glass splintered into a web of cracks and Robin pressed 1.

“I’m taking my baby.” Tania raised the rock again.

A big black figure swooped up behind her, grabbed her arm and shook the rock loose. Robin whispered a grateful prayer as Jake twisted Tania’s arm behind her back and pushed the woman’s face up against the window of the SUV.

“Is the kid okay?” Jake shouted through the glass.

Robin could only nod.

“Call Montgomery.” Jake pulled Tania Houseman’s coat down her arms, and twisted the sleeves to anchor her arms behind her. “I think we found your stalker.”





Chapter Eleven



“You think her story’s legit?” Detective Fensom asked.

“It’ll be the biggest break we’ve had on our investigation yet if we can prove it’s true.” Spencer Montgomery never took his eyes off the glass. “Even if she IDs him, her testimony will never stand up in court.”

“But we’d have DNA. With DNA and a reliable witness who can describe the attacks, we could put that bastard away.”

Jake scrubbed his hand over his face and jaw and paced a circle around KCPD’s Fourth Precinct observation room. The sun was setting outside. The rain still drummed on the rooftop. There were at least a dozen detectives and uniformed officers on the other side of that door in the building’s third-floor bullpen.

And there was a man somewhere out there in the city who’d managed to track him to that church this afternoon.