didn’t mean she was good for Maddy in the long run, did it? Kristen had been up front about her issues with children, even more than Norah had. Her reasons might be understandable, but they didn’t change the fact that she didn’t want to be a mother. And Sam couldn’t pretend it didn’t matter. He wasn’t some young stud Marine ready for action with any woman willing. He had Maddy to consider.
Maddy already had a mother who didn’t want to be saddled with children in her life. She needed stability, not more of the same.
He checked his watch. Almost lunchtime. He’d promised Norah he’d bring Maddy by the inn for lunch to try to repair some of the damage done the night before.
“Maddy, remember when I told you we were going to go have lunch with Mommy today?”
Maddy’s little brow furrowed. “Do we hafta?”
He nodded. “We hafta. Remember, we talked about how Mommy didn’t mean to scare you. She’s not taking you anywhere without me, right?”
“Right,” Maddy said, although she didn’t look entirely convinced. “Can Miss Kristen come, too?”
“Miss Kristen has to work.”
“Can’t we go see Miss Kristen work?”
“Not today,” Sam said firmly, though in the center of his chest he felt a flicker of unease. He already saw all the signs of a Maddy-sized fixation. He wondered how much worse it would get over the next few days, with Kristen living with them at the guesthouse.
A soft knock on the door pulled him out of his musings. Had Kristen come back? When he found a clerk standing outside, holding a manila envelope, he felt a twinge of disappointment.
“A courier dropped this off at the front desk a few minutes ago, sir.”
Thanking her, he carried the envelope to his desk, relaxing a little at seeing a return address on the front of the envelope for a law firm he’d crossed swords with before. He opened it to see what it was about.
But inside, he didn’t find a letter, legal brief or anything else he might have expected.
Instead, he found a stack of color photo prints. The top image was a close-up of Maddy and her mother, sitting at a table for two in the small dining room at the Sycamore Inn.
His heart in his throat, Sam fished in his pocket for a handkerchief. He used the cloth to handle the photos, flipping through the small stack of images, alarm swiftly giving way to a fierce and growing rage until he reached the last photo in the stack, a picture of Maddy cradled in Sam’s arms after he’d found her in the storage closet.
Arrogant son of a bitch had been right there in the restaurant the whole time.
He turned the photo over, knowing even as he did so that he’d find nothing. The wily bastard wouldn’t have sent the photos if he’d thought he could be incriminated by them.
But Sam was wrong. There
Chapter Eleven
Kristen’s phone rang as she was belting herself behind the wheel of the Impala. “Tandy.”
“Where are you?” It was Sam. He sounded tense.
“What’s wrong?”
“Are you still in the courthouse complex area?”
“I just got in the car. What’s going on?”
“Did you see anyone as you left the building wearing a tan windbreaker jacket and a blue baseball cap?”
“No, I didn’t see anyone like that. Now tell me what the hell is going on.”
“I got another packet of photos. It was just delivered. The staffer who took it described the person who left the package as a man in his mid-forties, brown hair, wearing a blue baseball cap and a tan windbreaker.” Sam’s voice tightened further. “The son of a bitch made a threat.”
“I’ll be right up.”
“Meet me at the reception area. I’m trying to get a look at whatever surveillance video might be available.”
Kristen retraced her steps back to the District Attorney’s office, where she found Sam in the lobby, holding Maddy tightly on his hip while he conferred with a couple of Jefferson County Sheriff’s Deputies.
“Any luck on the video?” she asked.
Sam introduced her to Griggs and Baker, the two deputies who were apparently part of the office’s security detail. “Baker printed a screen grab.” He handed her the grainy photo of a man in a light-colored jacket and dark cap with a blurry cursive
Kristen stared at the photo, remembering with growing excitement the picture she had helped Maddy color the day before. Maddy had chosen a dark blue crayon and said there was an “ABC” on the front of the cap.
“Could this be Darryl Morris?” Kristen asked Sam.
“Maybe. The photo’s not great so it’s hard to be sure.”
Kristen’s cell phone rang. It was Foley. “Excuse me a second.” She stepped a few feet away and answered. “Tandy.”
“It’s me. I’ve got a bead on Darryl Morris.”
“You mean you’re looking at him right now?”
“Yeah-had to drive all the way to Birmingham to do it, too,” Foley answered.
“Where are you now?”
“Parked outside the shipping company where he works. He just walked in. Did you get a look at the letters he sent Cooper? Do we have probable cause to pick him up?”
“What was he wearing?”
Foley was silent a second. “Why do you ask?”
“Just tell me what he was wearing.”
“Jeans, a tan jacket, blue Braves cap-”
Kristen looked over at Sam and Maddy, anticipation surging into her veins. “Oh, yeah,” she said with a broad grin. “We have probable cause.”
“DETECTIVE TANDY REALLY thinks he’s the one?” Norah asked Sam later when he met her for lunch in town. She glanced at Maddy, who clung to Sam like a little leech.
Sam coaxed Maddy into one of the chairs lining the sandwich shop window. “He fits the description of the man who left the photos at the office earlier today. The police were already looking at him because of the angry letters he sent me after his son’s case was settled. We think he’s the one.”
Norah took the seat across from him, careful not to encroach on Maddy’s space. “Then maybe this is really over.”
“It won’t really be over until Cissy wakes up and is okay,” Sam said soberly, thinking about the way his niece had looked the last time he’d visited her hospital room.
“Of course,” Norah said with a sympathetic nod. “But Maddy is safe, at least.”
He hoped so. After the scares of the past couple of days, he wasn’t quite ready to let her out of his sight.
“I have to go back to D.C. I’d only taken a couple of days off to go to the Hamptons, and I’ve had a case blow up on me that I really need to attend to.” Norah waited for the waitress to bring water to the table before she continued. “I’ve already arranged for the nice people at Limbaugh Motors to take me to the airport this afternoon. You don’t need to worry about it.”
“That wasn’t necessary-”
“I think it was,” Norah said gently. “I made a decision four years ago because I thought it was the right thing for everyone involved. I still think it was.”
He looked down at Maddy, who was playing with the colorful place mat on the table, oblivious to their conversation. At least he hoped she was. “So, back to how things were before?”
“Yes.” She leaned a little closer, her eyes full of regret but also determination. “I’ll never be what she needs. We both know that. It makes no sense for me to disrupt her life every once in a while just because of biology. She
