Assumed Identity(69)
No one had been able to track him for two years.
He’d spotted that retro-cool trilby hat, like that morning at the newsstand. Sitting in a car on the street in front of the church. With all the fancy trappings of that overblown soiree, he could bet that the driver with the black hat masking his face wasn’t a guest. He could bet he wasn’t on Jake’s trail because he wanted a friendly family reunion, either. Who was that guy? DEA agent? Gun for hire? Someone with a personal grudge he couldn’t remember?
After securing Robin and Emma in the car, he’d gone back to see what the guy’s interest was in Jake’s business. But the car was gone. Trilby guy was nowhere to be seen. And Robin had needed him.
Saving that woman was getting to be a regular habit.
But it was a job he needed to hand off to someone else.
His location in Kansas City had been compromised. If he wanted to stay alive, he needed to get out of this police station and get as far away from the responsibilities and unexpected notoriety of protecting a stubborn woman and her innocent child as he could get.
But he couldn’t leave. Especially after hearing Tania Houseman’s tragic story. His conscience wouldn’t let him.
His heart wouldn’t, either.
Jake felt trapped, caged like some sort of wild animal. He stood behind the mirrored window with Detectives Montgomery and Fensom and watched as Robin sat at the interview table in the adjoining room, trying to coax anything that made sense out of Tania Houseman.
Judgment day could come, and Jake knew he wouldn’t leave Robin alone with the crazy woman who’d been identified as Emma’s birth mother. If that whacko had gotten through the SUV’s windows to Robin and Emma, Jake might be pacing a hospital corridor or even the morgue right now.
Whacko. Like he had room to talk. He took a deep breath and stopped at the window to watch Robin work some of that patient, stubborn magic that was changing him on the disturbed young woman who’d been calling, mailing and following Robin for weeks now, apparently. It was all part of Tania Houseman’s obsession with the baby she’d given up for adoption.
A doctor from the Oak View Sanitarium sat in the room with her patient, after giving her whatever meds were necessary to calm her down. But it was Robin who’d finally gotten the woman talking after she’d either freaked out or shut down when the task force detectives had tried to interview her.
“When you’re a mother, even when it’s hard...you still have to be a mother.” Robin had left Emma with Officer Wheeler in one of the nearby conference rooms. But she hadn’t shied away from sitting down with the woman who’d butchered Emma’s clothes and threatened to kidnap her. She sat at the table opposite the dazed young woman who scratched at the scars on her wrists. “I think you did a very brave thing by going through with the pregnancy after you’d been raped. You gave your daughter life, and I, for one, will always be grateful to you for that.”
“I thought I could love her. I do love her.” Tania lowered her gaze to the table. “I miss her.”
“I know. I miss her terribly when I’m separated from her, too.” Robin rubbed her hands up and down her arms, as if the temperature in the next room was dropping. She glanced back at the mirrored window and Jake moved toward her. Maybe she didn’t need him right now. Maybe she was looking to the detectives for a bit of guidance on how to elicit the information they were hoping Tania could give. She turned back to the young woman across the table. “Tania, do you know who Emma’s, I mean Hailey’s, father is? Do you know who raped you?”
The younger woman, dressed in orange jail scrubs, nodded. “I never saw his face that night. But he gave me a red rose.”
* * *
ROBIN PAUSED IN the doorway of the interview room as Dr. Freitag and a female police officer escorted Tania down the hallway to the restroom. She rubbed the weary tension in her neck and wondered if Emma was still asleep. She wished she was sleeping, too. Preferably with Jake’s arms around her like they’d been last night so she could feel that sense of security his strength and warmth gave her. How did detectives like Spencer Montgomery and Nick Fensom do this kind of grueling, heart-wrenching work?
“Where’s my sister?” Like everyone else on the floor, Robin turned at the man charging across the room from the sergeant’s check-in desk. “Tania? Where are they taking her?”
Robin stepped forward to stop him and urge him to lower his voice. “To the restroom, Mr. Houseman. She’ll be back.”