The Christmas Clue. Delores Fossen

his training. He turned, maneuvered and adjusted until he had her pinned down, and then he wrenched the small gun from her hand. Because her knee could quickly become a painful weapon, he literally pressed her entire body against the floor so she couldn’t move.

      “Matt, are you there?” Agent Ronald McKenzie said into the answering machine. It was a call that Matt would have liked to answer, but there was no way he would let go of Cass now that he’d subdued her. Well, sort of.

      He might have gotten her physically restrained, but she was hurling eye daggers at him and was mumbling some rather creative profanity through bursts of labored breath. It was obvious she wouldn’t give up and was probably already looking for another way to escape.

      “I checked on our friend for you,” he heard Ronald say. “I found something.”

      Matt couldn’t help it. That comment captured his complete attention. It obviously captured Cass’s, too, because she stilled, her body practically going limp, and her gaze drifted in the direction of the phone.

      “Just asking the question seemed to make a few people uncomfortable,” Ronald explained, his voice noticeably laced with anxiety. “Still, I asked, and here’s the answer I got—it appears that six months ago Dominic Cordova did indeed adopt a baby. He named the girl Molly.”

      Matt felt as if someone had slugged him.

      Oh, man.

      All he could do was lie there while Ronald continued.

      “I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt it, so here goes. The adoption might not have been aboveboard. It’s all tied to that illegal adoption ring that the San Antonio PD recently broke up. And if you’re thinking this kid belongs to Vanessa, you’re right. The timing is dead-on. Vanessa did have a baby, and Dominic’s adopted child was born in the very hospital and at the very minute that Vanessa gave birth. But here’s the clincher, and believe me, it’s not a clincher you’re going to like.”

      Matt looked down at Cass at the exact moment she looked up at him. He tried to brace himself for whatever Ronald was about to say, and judging from the sympathetic look that passed through Cass’s eyes, he was about to get some very shocking news.

      “According to my source, Vanessa didn’t get involved with another man after you.” Ronald paused several snail-crawling moments. “If I were a betting man, I’d say yes, Dominic Cordova has your daughter.”

      Chapter Three

      “Well?” Cass challenged. “Do you finally realize I’m telling the truth?” But she dropped the snarky attitude when Matt groaned, rolled off her and landed on his back on the floor.

      “I can’t believe this,” he said. And he kept repeating it, punctuating it with some profanity.

      Cass tried to sit up, but he put his arm across her stomach to keep her down. “I know it’s going to take some time to sink in—”

      His glare cut her off. “Don’t say anything. Don’t move,” he said, through clenched teeth. “And don’t you dare pull out another weapon.”

      “Because you already have enough to deal with. Yes, I understand that.”

      Besides, she had no intention of holding him at gunpoint. Not now. That phone call was exactly the impetus that could get Matt Christensen to cooperate with her plan.

      Well, maybe.

      Maybe he would go in an entirely different direction and try to turn all of this, including her, over to the authorities.

      She couldn’t let that happen.

      Because with Dominic’s recent pact with the powers-that-be, no one would be looking hard for evidence to exonerate her. Heck, they might even destroy those surveillance tapes to protect the tenuous relationship they had with a man who could help them catch bigger, meaner fish.

      “Truth time,” Matt insisted, groaning and turning his head toward her. Unfortunately, that put their faces only a couple of inches apart. Practically eye-to-eye. “Did you doctor that photo?”

      “No.”

      He studied her a moment. “But you had reason to doctor it.”

      “True, but if I hadn’t thought the child was your daughter, I wouldn’t have come here.” Because all that intimate eye contact was starting to distract her again, she looked away. “I figured…hoped,” she said, rethinking, “that you’d want to find Molly.”

      “How?” he tossed at her like a gauntlet. “Your plan sucks, and it has crater-size holes in it. For instance, if by some miracle you do get inside Dominic’s estate, what then? Have you even thought beyond that point?”

      “You bet I have. The plan is simple—we find the evidence and your daughter, and we take both her and the surveillance disks and get out of there.”

      Because he still had his arm slung over her stomach, she felt his muscles tense. “My daughter.” A moment later he hissed out a breath. “If it’s really true, then why wouldn’t Vanessa have told me?”

      Cass could think of a reason—maybe the snobbish Vanessa hadn’t wanted her middle-class ex-boyfriend to know because she’d had no plans to keep their child—but Cass didn’t voice that aloud. Judging from his silence and the way his jaw muscles had declared war on each other, Matt had already drawn the same conclusions.

      “Look, I know it’ll take you awhile to come to grips with all of this,” she said to him. “But the truth is—we don’t have time to spare. Remember that part about Dominic recycling disks every year. Well, in eight days it’ll be a year since he murdered his business associate and framed me. I have it on good authority that he didn’t bother to erase those disks, probably because he’s too arrogant to believe he could ever get caught. We have eight days at the most to get the evidence, and each and every one of those days means that your little girl is living under the same roof with a man like Dominic.”

      His gaze snapped to hers, and his teeth came together. “I don’t need that reminder.”

      She wasn’t immune to that emotion she heard in his voice. A father’s concern. Even though she wasn’t a parent, Cass had no trouble imagining how she would feel if their positions were reversed.

      “For what it’s worth,” she offered, “Dominic’s sister, Annette, has apparently been taking care of the child since the adoption. In fact, Annette’s the one who wanted a baby, and Dominic adopted Molly for her because she can’t have children of her own.”

      “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

      “It should. Annette’s physically handicapped and overly devoted to Dominic, but from everything I’ve heard about her, she’s also, well, human. And kind. I’ve never met the woman, but I don’t believe she’d hurt your daughter.”

      Cass prayed that was true anyway. Dominic was Annette’s baby brother, and Cass figured if it came down to it, Annette would protect Dominic at all cost. Unfortunately, that now involved an innocent baby girl.

      She pushed off his arm and got to her feet, not easily. Cass winced at the soreness in her backside and legs. She’d have bruises from their wrestling match, but then Matt likely hadn’t escaped injury, either. “You should probably get dressed so we can start making plans to leave.”

      However, the moment the words left her month, a chill went down her spine. Not because of the leaving part—that was a necessity—but because the full impact of that call hit her. She’d let the news distract her, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

      “Just who was that on the phone anyway?” she asked.

      “Ronald McKenzie.” Matt got up from the floor. No wincing for him. He accomplished it quite easily, then put her weapon on the counter next to the tranquilizer gun, picked up his pants and put them on. “He works for the FBI.”

      That spine chill got significantly