Every Precious Thing (27 page)

“It was several days before I got the call,” Sara said. “I was a wreck by then, worried that the baby was having problems I could do nothing about. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t mine. I cared about her. So much. The caller wasn’t Dr. Paskota, but a woman who said she was one of her nurses. She told me the doctor wanted her to call as soon as they got the results back. She said that everything was fine. I’ve never felt so relieved in my life. But then she told me something else. ‘I didn’t realize you were also the egg donor.’ I thought I misheard her so I asked her to repeat what she said. That’s when I found out that I wasn’t just a surrogate. I was the actual mother. When it became clear to her that I had no idea, she said, ‘That’s what I thought. We need to talk.’ I was confused and scared, but I agreed to meet a few hours later, and took Diana with me.”

“The woman told us to call her Brenda. When I said I didn’t remember seeing her at the doctor’s office, she said that was because she didn’t really work there. We almost left right then, thinking she was just some crazy person trying to scare us. But Brenda said enough for us to hear her out.” Sara paused. “She said she worked in the lab that handled the tests, and took it on herself to run a DNA match between the baby and myself. I was definitely the mother.”

“She didn’t just happen to work at that lab, though,” Diana clarified. “She said she’d purposefully gotten herself hired there.”

“Right.”

“Why would she do that?” Logan asked.

“Because they handled all of Dr. Paskota’s tests,” Diana said.

Sara nodded. “Brenda told us she had a cousin who’d been recruited by Dr. Paskota. After a while, Ruby—that’s what Brenda called her—began to get suspicious that something wasn’t right. She talked to Brenda, who
was
actually a lab tech at a hospital across town, and said she was going to start asking some questions she should have asked a long time ago. Two days later, her car was broadsided by a truck that had lost its brakes. Brenda didn’t like it, not at all, so she started digging.”

A baby mill
, Logan thought. There were no barren families, at least not those who were looking for surrogates. The doctor was creating the product, and undoubtedly selling them to the highest bidder. Though he was sure that had to be it, he said, “So what did she find?”

Sara looked too distressed to continue, so Diana took up the story. “Dr. Paskota had set up a program that has one purpose—to insure the health of its clients.”

“Insure? Like insurance?” he asked.

Diana shook her head. “Not in the way you’re thinking of. Something a bit more tangible.”

How does selling babies insure health?
“I’m not following.”

“It’s a long-term plan,” she said. “People. Genetically matched people.”

He stared at her, still not getting it.

“If you’re rich enough and still relatively young,” she said, “why not hedge your bets against the future? Thanks to Dr. Paskota, somewhere there’s a person, your offspring, just waiting in case you need…anything.”

Logan’s lips parted in horror. “I hope I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying.”

“I doubt it,” Sara said. “Heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, whatever—perfectly matched to you, just hanging around in case you ever needed them.”

He hadn’t misunderstood. It was…inhuman.

“Do you have proof?” he asked.

“The fact that they have your father isn’t proof enough?” Richard said.

Again, Sara put a hand on her brother to calm him down, then said, “That’s what Brenda had been collecting. We made plans to take what she had to the FBI. I was going to be the final piece of evidence, an actual person still in the process. Only she didn’t show up when she was supposed to, and on the news that night, there was a report about a woman who had been murdered while getting money from an ATM, a lab technician named Monique Pond. The picture they showed was Brenda’s. I immediately called Diana.”

“If Dr. Paskota knew about Brenda, she probably also knew that Sara had been talking to her,” Diana said. “Hell, I was concerned someone was waiting outside Sara’s apartment to mug her, too. I told her to pack only what she really needed, then sent Richard to pick her up. I was right. Someone was waiting. The doctor and one of her men.”

“They tried to grab me when I came down,” Sara said. “Dr. Paskota said I was going with them someplace where they could keep an eye on me until the baby was born. Whatever kindness I’d seen in her was gone.”

Her brother grinned. “They weren’t expecting me, though. Dislocated the guy’s shoulder and broke his leg. The doctor I only knocked to the ground so she’d get out of our way.”

Quite a family
, Logan thought.

“We’ve been hiding Sara ever since,” Diana said.

“Hold on,” he said. “What if you’d never found out and had Emily there? Then what?”

“They would have paid me and I would have gone on my way,” Sara answered.

“And Emily? What would Dr. Paskota have done about her? She can’t just stick all these babies in a room until they’re needed.”

“She doesn’t have to. This isn’t the only thing Dr. Paskota does, though there’s no doubt it makes her a ton more money than anything else. See, the other thing she does is help match newborns with families wanting to adopt. It’s the perfect cover. When one of her special cases comes up, she can just add the baby to the mix, and carefully track them as they grow up. Once a special child reaches sixteen, he or she becomes viable. If the client associated with that child ever needs a kidney or, say, a heart, the child is simply snatched and…harvested. The doctor makes money on both ends—the clients who are buying the insurance in case they have a need someday, and the parents who think they’ve just adopted their dream child.”

“Has that happened?”

Sara shook her head. “From what Brenda could learn, Dr. Paskota had only been doing this special service for about twelve years, which means about fifteen now. Those first kids will soon become viable, and then it becomes a waiting game.”

“They may never be used, though. Not everyone’s going to need a transplant.”

“True, but remember, to the ones who’ve paid for these kids’ existence, the cost is minimal so it’s worth the risk. Most of the children will probably live full lives, but not all. No way was I going to risk Emily’s life like that.”

So horrifying, yet so simple. Logan wondered if there were others doing something similar.

“Why didn’t you go to the FBI on your own?”

“We didn’t have Brenda’s proof,” Diana said. “Why would they believe us? The three of us with our less-than-stellar family history versus the good Dr. Paskota? A woman who’s helped hundreds of deserving families get matched with ‘needy’ children? Not only would all the adoptive parents come to her defense, but her wealthy special clients wouldn’t want their involvement in her program exposed. They would do anything to help her keep things quiet. The FBI would never listen to us.”

“There’s another reason,” Sara said. “One of those clients is Emily’s father. What if he got custody of her? What would I do then?”

Though unsure what he would have done in similar circumstances, he understood their reasoning.

“Why did you marry Alan? Wasn’t that taking a chance?” he asked, wanting to fill in the holes so he could have the full picture.

“I didn’t set out to meet him, and I certainly didn’t mean to fall in love,” Sara said defensively. “After we started seeing each other, I can’t tell you how many times I almost disappeared. And when he asked me to marry him? Oh, God. I wanted to so bad, but how could I?”

“I’m the one who encouraged her to say yes,” Diana said. “I’m the one who came up with the plan that if something happened, she could leave Emily with him. That way she would be safe.”

“So what triggered you to run again?”

“I have people I talk to,” Diana said. “Friends who think I’m on the run from a bad relationship. They keep their eyes open and let me know if anyone’s asking around about me or Richard or Sara. About three months ago I started getting calls, and knew it wasn’t going to be long before they figured out my new last name and tracked me down. Once they did that, they’d try to use me to get to Sara. So I knew it was time for her to disappear.”

“But
you
didn’t,” Logan said. “You stayed in Braden.”

“I wanted to be sure. If they didn’t show up, then perhaps we were in the clear, and if they did, I’d just sneak away. I thought your friend the other night was one of them. Hell, I thought you were, too.” She paused. “Sorry about your friend. That was…a mistake.”

Logan looked at Richard for a second, then back at Diana. He’d already figured Richard was the one who’d attacked Pep.

“Don’t blame him,” she said. “I was the one in charge. It was my mistake.”

Logan glanced out the window. They were in the desert again, the vast brown landscape seeming to go on forever.

There was so much to think about, to process. He’d seen enough of the bad in the world to know that people like Dr. Paskota existed. He just didn’t want to believe it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a choice.

“Now you know why we had to run,” Diana said, breaking the silence. “And why we’ll need to continue running once we have Emily. What other choice do we have?”

Logan couldn’t think of one.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY
-S
IX

“H
ERE COMES ANOTHER
one,” Pep said, checking the rearview mirror of Dev’s Cherokee.

Barney watched the car go by on their left. “No, not them.”

The two men had left Braden forty-five minutes earlier. Barney had made it clear he was less than keen on the idea of Pep driving. In his opinion, Pep should have stayed at the motel. Barney had said he could do this on his own, but Pep wasn’t about to let that happen.

“Maybe we left too late,” Barney said, worried.

“We didn’t,” Pep said. He’d been the one who talked to Logan right before they hit the road, and knew that Logan was somehow able to track the other car.

When he was given the go signal, the other car apparently had been fifteen minutes behind them. Keeping their speed just below the sixty-five-miles-per-hour limit, Pep figured that the others would probably pass him and Barney somewhere in the next fifteen to twenty minutes.

He’d made sure Barney started checking early in case his calculation was wrong, and so that Barney could get some practice at not being obvious when he looked at the other cars. The old doc was getting better at it, but he still needed to refine his method.

“Act like you’re talking to me,” Pep suggested.

“That’s what I’m doing,” Barney said.

“Then actually do it. Say something.” Pep glanced at the mirror again. A blue minivan was pulling out to go around them. “Try it on this one.”

Barney shifted once more in his seat. “So, um, it’s…pretty…hot outside.” As soon as the van passed, he added, “Not them.” He turned back to the front.

“You know what?” Pep said. “Just keep looking at me even if there aren’t any cars. It’ll seem more natural that way. We can talk about whatever you want.”

“I don’t want to talk about anything. I want to find Harp.”

“Let’s talk about that, then.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Barney said. He looked at Pep, exasperated. “He’s gone. If I hadn’t fallen asleep, maybe none of this would have happened.”

“And how, exactly, would your staying awake have kept him from being taken?”

“I…I…I would have known sooner. Maybe we could have done something.”

“Like what?” Pep checked the mirror. Two more cars were coming.

“I don’t know!”

“Exactly. We’re doing everything we can to—”

“Harp!” Barney shouted.

He started to raise his hand to point, but Pep quickly grabbed it and pushed it back down.

“Which car?” Pep asked.

“The second one. The gray one. See? That’s him in the back on the left. I’d recognize his hair anywhere.”

Pep let the other car pull ahead, then he started to gradually increase the Cherokee’s speed. It was okay if the sedan pulled away a little. He knew which one it was now and would catch up.

“I counted four people inside,” Pep said. “How about you?”

“Yes, four. Two in front, two in back.” Barney leaned forward anxiously. “Hurry up, we’re going to lose them.”

“No, we’re not.” Pep grabbed his phone, put it on speaker, and conferenced in both Logan and Dev. “They just went by us.”

“Did you see my dad?” Logan asked.

“Yeah, he’s in the backseat.”

“Did he look okay?”

“He was sitting up, but staring out the other window. I couldn’t see his face very well,” Barney said.

“Were his eyes at least open?”

“I think so.”

“Okay, where are you guys?”

“About fifty miles west of Braden,” Pep said.

“How about you, Dev?” Logan asked.

“I should hit Braden in about fifteen minutes,” Dev announced. “Making pretty good time so far.”

“We’re about ten minutes behind you,” Logan said. “Stay on them, Pep. Don’t let them out of your sight.”

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY
-S
EVEN

“I
S THAT IT?”
Erica asked.

The old man looked out the window at the house they were driving slowly past.

“Mr. Harper, is that it?” she repeated.

“I…I don’t know. I think so. I wasn’t driving so I wasn’t paying attention.”

She scowled, and turned back around.

It didn’t really matter if the man didn’t recognize it. According to the address her researcher had found, this was the house where Sara’s husband was supposed to live.

A tricycle was parked along the driveway so a young child did live there, one who would be around the same age as the baby girl Sara had.

“Doesn’t look like anyone is home,” Clausen said.

“He’s probably still at work,” she said.