The Baby's Bodyguard Read Free Page A

The two of them had gone to Kid’s Day in the park. Cops and firefighters put it on so that kids could meet them, see their uniforms and the firefighters in their gear and learn not to be afraid.
    At the event, the cops were fingerprinting and photographing kids, making identification kits. He had one made for Charlie. Amy had teased him about it, an ID kit for a six-month-old.
    He’d put it away in a drawer and said they would never need it.
    Ethan turned down the pier that led to his boat slip. He’d tried renting a house when he first moved back to Sea Breeze, but after everything that had happened, a house was too normal. And he needed the water. He bought his boat three months later.
    Climbing on board, he held out a hand. She passed him the diaper bag and then, taking his hand, made the easy jump onto the stern of the boat. In the cabin, he had stowed a small wooden box that held the only pieces of his old life that he’d kept close.
    He ran his fingers over the smooth wood. So many nights he took his box out of its storage space and held it. He didn’t have to. He didn’t need mementos to remember his son or his wife. They were engraved on his heart.
    It was harder than he’d expected to open it.
    “Do you want me to …” Kelsey’s voice trailed off as she caught his expression.
    “No, I can do it. It’s just—”
    “I get it. You don’t have to explain.” She laid the babyon the berth and pushed a pillow under the mattress so Janie couldn’t roll off.
    He pulled the box closer and lifted the lid. Without allowing himself to think about it, he pulled out a silver baby rattle and the tiny T-shirt that Charlie wore on his first day of life. A pressed flower that his wife had kept from their first date. Other precious bits and pieces of a life gone by. And the fingerprint card and picture he’d made on the last outing he’d had with Charlie.
    Laying the handprint beside the fingerprint card, he compared the two. Neither was very precise, considering they’d been done on a six-month-old. But he could see the swirls and arches. His heart began to pound.
    They looked like a match, the newer one only slightly larger.
    Kelsey pushed him out of the way and pulled the cards where she could see them. “Oh my—
Ethan.
They match.”
    He pushed away from the table and paced the dozen steps to the door of the cabin before turning back. “We need to get it verified.”
    “SBPD can do that. But I think the place for us to start is with her.” She gestured to the little angel sleeping on Ethan’s bunk. Janie’s diaper-clad booty was hitched up in the air, and her chest rose and fell in even breaths. “If we find out who she is and who led her to you, just maybe that information leads to more information about your son.”
    Hope and desperation mixed inside him—the need to believe that it could be true, the desperate wish for something so improbable. He turned to pace the lengthof the boat again, but in the small space he quickly ran into Kelsey as she paced the other way.
    He leaned against the wall, his stomach in knots. “I don’t know what to think. We can try to trace her using the missing persons database, but something tells me she’s not going to be there.”
    “I’ve got to get back to the office.” Kelsey slung the diaper bag over one shoulder and picked the baby up, easily settling her on her shoulder without waking her. With one hand, she dug her cell phone out of the back pocket of her capris. “Put your information in my phone. If I find something I’ll call you. With both of us working on this, something is bound to turn up.”
    After finishing out his workday—which was thankfully spent doing mundane work like stopping boats to check for onboard safety equipment—Ethan spent the entire night searching the internet for information. He’d turned the problem around in his head every way he could possibly think of, and still he came up with nothing. From grief to hope to frustration,