The Newlyweds (17 page)

“We wait for Baker to call,” he answered immediately.

His response pretty much told her all she needed to know. He was thinking only about the case right now.
Which, she told herself, was all she should be thinking about, too.

“So why do you think he approached us?” she asked, still puzzling over the new—and totally unexpected—development in the investigation. “Why would he try to sell a baby to us, when my mother knows how Children's Connection works better than anyone? He's got to realize I'll say something to her. And that she'll know the offer is bogus and we'll go to the authorities. It's like he
wants
to get caught or something.”

Sam shrugged, his expression indicating he understood no better than she what Baker's thinking was in the matter. “I don't know,” he said. “The criminal mind is a strange thing. Maybe it's arrogance. Maybe it's stupidity. Maybe it's something else entirely.”

Bridget nodded, but something about the arrogance still bothered her.

“He promised us he'd call by the end of next week to set up the exchange,” Sam continued. He sipped his champagne again, his expression thoughtful. “Boy, he's a real piece of work, isn't he? He was so slick, so glib, when he proposed the whole plan. He actually made a black-market baby sale sound like a legitimate private adoption. No wonder this thing's been going on as long as it has.”

Bridget nodded. Everett Baker had indeed been convincing. She wondered who had written his script for him. Because she just couldn't buy an accountant setting up an operation like that all by himself.

“He's working with someone else,” she said. “You realize that, don't you?”

Sam looked affronted. “Of course I realize that. There's no way he could be doing all this by himself. If nothing else, he has an associate lining up the babies
somewhere. Someone in Russia, for sure, since the Bureau has made that connection.”

“But there's someone else, too,” Bridget said with certainty. “Someone here in Portland. I don't think Baker's the mastermind behind this. I think it's all being orchestrated by someone else, and Baker's just the face they wear to approach potential clients.”

“I agree,” Sam said. “But who? That's the question.”

“It shouldn't be difficult to find out,” she said, “now that we've fingered Baker. Whoever's working the case shouldn't have any trouble now, putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. Knowing Baker's identity is going to make all the difference.”

As soon as Bridget and Sam had told the Special Agent in Charge about their meeting with Everett Baker, Pennington had immediately called in the other agents working the case, then had pulled a few from others to give the investigation an added push. With all the technology and knowledge the Bureau had at its disposal, it would take no time to figure out who Baker was working with, at least here in Portland.

“So now that we know what to do about the case,” Sam said, “what happens with us?”

His question surprised her. She really hadn't thought he would address the matter head-on that way. She'd figured he would just focus everything on the case and pretend last night had never happened. Or worse, forget it had ever happened.

“I don't know,” she replied honestly. “What does happen with us?”

His gaze met hers levelly, but he made no move to touch her. “Well, obviously, we can't call off the undercover operation now.”

“No, of course not,” she agreed. Again. She always agreed with Sam, she realized. Except where it most counted—in the way they felt about each other.

“We'll have to keep playing Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Jones,” he said, “at least for a little while longer.”

“I don't have a problem with that,” she said. Because she didn't have a problem playing Mrs. Samuel Jones. What she had a problem with was falling in love with Sam Jones. Though, really, her love for Sam wasn't the problem. The problem was in his not reciprocating it.

He nodded, looking thoughtful again. Then, once again surprising her, he asked, “How do you want to handle the sleeping arrangements?”

She swallowed with some difficulty. They were actually going to talk about this? “I—I don't know,” she said, replying truthfully again. “How do
you
want to handle them?”

He dropped his gaze now, staring into the champagne sparkling in the crystal wineglass. “I know what I said earlier,” he began softly. Still not looking at her, he continued, “But now I realize I…” He glanced up then, finally meeting her gaze levelly. “I want to keep sleeping with you, Bridget,” he told her frankly.

“Just sleeping?” she asked, even though she knew exactly what he was talking about.

“I want to keep making love to you,” he clarified evenly.

She started to point out that there was no love involved in what they'd done last night, at least not on his side of things, but she was too chicken. So all she said was, “This morning you said it shouldn't happen again.”

He sighed heavily and dropped his gaze back down to his glass. But all he said was, “Well, now I take that back.”

She wanted to ask him why. Wanted to know what
had happened to change his mind about it. But she couldn't. Probably because she wasn't sure she wanted to hear his answer. She didn't think she could handle it if Sam told her he wanted to keep having sex with her because, hey, if they were going to be sleeping under the same roof, they might as well be sleeping together. She would have rather heard him say it was because he loved her. And she knew he wouldn't say that.

So what it all came down to now, she supposed, was what
she
wanted to do.

And she realized she wanted to keep sleeping with Sam, too. She only had a few nights left with him. Once they put the cuffs on Everett Baker and his accomplices, there would be nothing to keep the two of them together. And then Sam would go back to his Portland cases, and Bridget would go back to whatever assignment they had waiting for her in Washington. The fact of the matter was that in a couple of weeks, maybe less, she could be thousands of miles away and never see Sam again. So she would greedily take advantage of what little time she had left with him. She loved him. What else could she do? And, hey, maybe if the two of them spent more time together, he might finally fall in—

No. She wouldn't think that way. That wasn't why she wanted to be with Sam. She wanted to be with him because she loved him. That was all.

“I want to keep sleeping with you, too,” she said softly.

His head snapped up at that, and his gaze met hers again. His eyes were full of…something. But for the life of her, Bridget couldn't guess what.

“Just sleeping?” he asked, the ghost of a smile playing about his lips.

She smiled back. “I want to keep making love with you,” she said.

“You're sure?” he asked.

She nodded. “I'm sure.”

He reached for her then, curling his fingers gently around her nape. Tenderly, he pulled her toward him and pressed his forehead to hers. For a moment he said nothing. Then, tentatively, he tilted his head to the side and covered her mouth with his. Bridget threaded the fingers of her free hand through his hair and kissed him back.

And she wondered where the two of them would be in two weeks.

 

Once they identified Everett Baker as their baby seller, everything in the investigation fell quickly into place. The FBI assigned agents already working the case to run a background check on Baker, and added another agent to shadow him wherever he went. Sam and Bridget, however, remained in place undercover as Mr. and Mrs. Jones. Baker had told them he would contact them again to set up a time where they could meet—i.e. buy—the baby, and once that arrangement was set up, they could arrest the man on the spot. Until then, however, Sam and Bridget had to sit tight. The FBI was playing it very cautiously. They wanted to make sure there were no loose ends, no loopholes, when they brought the hammer down on Everett Baker. They wanted to arrest him in the act.

Sam did stay on top of things, though, and watched the investigation very closely. The background check on Baker revealed him to be not a native of Portland, but a transplant from St. Louis, Missouri. His accounting degree appeared to be legitimate, though he had never
been what one might call an exemplary student. Nor did he appear to have been an especially successful accountant, as he had lived as modestly in St. Louis as he did in Portland.

But there was no evidence to suggest he had been involved in any criminal activity before moving west. On the contrary, judging by the information the agents gathered, the man had led a fairly quiet life. His mother was deceased, his father had taken off for parts unknown and he had no siblings. He'd never been married and had no children. He had moved around quite a bit growing up, though, enough to raise a red flag. Still, it appeared that Everett Baker had been a law-abiding citizen before coming to Portland and hanging out his Babies For Sale sign.

He wasn't, however, working alone.

A review of his phone records indicated he spoke frequently with a man named Charlie Prescott, who had once worked for Children's Connection as a custodian. At first glance, the two might have simply been friends who had met at work and who enjoyed each other's company. But the agent shadowing Everett had decided otherwise when he'd seen the two men meet at a local bar. They had appeared anything but friendly and had even gotten into a shouting match at one point. The agent in question had overheard enough of the argument to conclude that the two men were arguing over a “deal” of some kind, and that Everett “wanted out” of some “arrangement” and that there was a “package from Russia” waiting to be picked up.

When Sam added up everything they'd learned over the week that followed his and Bridget's first meeting with Baker, he arrived at an answer that told him Everett
Baker was working with Charlie Prescott and another individual to pipeline babies into the U.S. from Russia. And if Sam and Bridget could just be patient, they'd catch at least one of them red-handed. Though they wanted the whole ring. That was why the FBI decided not to go after Charlie Prescott until they had ironclad proof to tie him to Baker, not to mention more leads that might implicate others in the crimes. The Bureau didn't want to make any mistakes here, so they decided to err on the side of caution for now.

At any rate, Sam figured all he and Bridget had to do now was wait for that call from Everett Baker, the one where he would set up a meeting for them to claim their new baby. Oh, and to pass the man a briefcase in exchange that was filled with thousands of dollars to take care of all the proper “fees.” Wink wink. Nudge nudge.
I won't say anything if you don't, since if you don't take this child, it could be years before you find another one.

Sam just wished he knew when that call would come.

In the meantime, he and Bridget did their best to enjoy the time they had left together. And he wished he knew what to do to make everything turn out all right. But he had no idea how to make that happen. As much as they liked each other and enjoyed being together—and as much as they exploded every night when they made love—Sam just couldn't see any way the two of them could work things out. Not only had Bridget never once said a word about any future the two of them might have together, but Sam, if he were honest with himself, just wasn't sure how he wanted that future to play out. He cared for Bridget a lot. More than he'd cared for any woman. But the last time he'd loved a
woman enough to want to build a life with her, that life had crumbled into dust. He just wasn't sure he was a good judge of what to look for in a happily-ever-after. And he couldn't quite convince himself that Bridget wanted one of those, anyway.

It was a pretty difficult week. On a lot of different levels.

Finally, on Thursday evening, nearly a week to the day after they'd first encountered Everett Baker, the call he and Bridget had been waiting for came. Sam scrawled copious notes as he talked to Baker, even though he knew the Bureau was taping the conversation. By the time he hung up the phone, his heart was racing, his adrenaline was pumping and he knew they were very, very close to ending this thing once and for all. But he knew Bridget wasn't going to like the particulars of what Baker had insisted on the phone.

“What?” she asked before he even had the receiver back in the cradle. “I don't like the look on your face.”

“You're going to like what I have to say even less,” he told her.

She sat on the sofa in the house they would be leaving soon, in her usual relaxing-in-the-evening attire of blue jeans and sweatshirt and socks. Same as Sam, he couldn't help thinking.

But now her eyes widened in shock. “We've been made?”

He shook his head. “Not that bad.”

She expelled a sound of profound relief.

“But he wants to meet me alone. Without you there.”

She'd started shaking her head before he even finished talking. “No,” she said. “I'm in this, too. I want to be there for the takedown.”

“I understand,” Sam assured her, knowing it wasn't fair to exclude her from the grand finale, but knowing it was essential they play this by Baker's rules. “But he was insistent, Bridget. And he sounded kind of spooked as it was. Between the argument he had with Prescott at the bar the other night, and this, I think our guy's starting to unravel. We can't afford to do anything that might spook him even more. We have to do this his way. If he wants me to meet him alone, then I have to meet him alone.”

She set her jaw firmly, her mouth flattening into a thin line.

“Look, I don't like it any more than you do,” he told her. “I'd rather have you there, too.” And he would. And not just because she was his partner in this thing, either. But because he'd feel safer with Bridget at his side. There wasn't another agent he could think of that he'd rather have at his back.