“Or,” Rachel added, “if they’re lucky, they end up with you?”
“Yes. We will give them adequate medical care. We will offer financial restitution. And most importantly, we will make sure that their baby is placed in a loving home with caring, financially stable parents.”
“Financially stable,” Rachel repeated. “As in wealthy?”
“The service is expensive,” she admitted. “But let me ask you something now. Take your friend out there. Katarina you said her name was?”
Rachel kept still.
“What would her life be like right now if we hadn’t brought her here? What would her child’s life be like?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what you did with her child.”
Denise smiled. “Fine, be argumentative. But you know what I mean. Do you think the baby would be better off with a dirt-poor prostitute in a war-torn hellhole—or with a caring family here in the United States?”
“I see,” Rachel said, trying not to squirm. “So you’re sort of like the world’s most wonderful social worker. This is charity work you’re doing?”
Denise chuckled. “Look around you. I have expensive taste. I live in a ritzy neighborhood. I have a kid in college. I like to vacation in Europe. We have a house in the Hamptons. I do this because it’s incredibly profitable. But so what? Who cares about my motives? My motives don’t change the conditions in those orphanages.”
“I still don’t understand,” Rachel said. “The women sell you their babies.”
“They give us their babies,” she corrected. “In return, we offer financial restitution—”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. You get the baby. They get money. But then what? There has to be paperwork on the child, otherwise the government would step in. They wouldn’t just let Bacard keep running adoptions like this.”
“True.”
“So how do you work it?”
She smiled. “You plan on busting me, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
She was still smiling. “You’ll remember I cooperated, right?”
“Yes.”
Denise Vanech pressed her palms together and closed her eyes. It looked as if she might be praying. “We hire American mothers.”
Rachel made a face. “Excuse me?”
“For example, let’s say Tatiana is about to have the baby. We might hire you, Rachel, to pose as the mother. You’d go to vital records at your town hall. You’d tell them you’re pregnant and going to have a home birth, so there won’t be a hospital record. They give you forms to fill out. They never check to see if you’re really pregnant. How would they? It’s not like they can give you a gynecological exam.”
Rachel sat back. “Jesus.”
“It’s pretty simple when you think about it. There is no record that Tatiana is going to have a baby. There is a record that you are. I deliver the baby. I sign as the attending witness to your child being born. You become the mother. Bacard has you fill in the paperwork for adoption. . . .” She shrugged.
“So the adopting parents never learn the truth?”
“No, but they don’t look too hard either. They’re desperate. They don’t want to know.”
Rachel suddenly felt drained.
“And before you turn us in,” Denise went on, “consider something else. We’ve been doing this for almost ten years now. That means there are children who’ve been happily placed with families that long. Dozens. All of those adoptions will be considered null and void. The birth mothers can come over here and demand their children back. Or take a payoff. You’d be ripping apart a lot of lives.”
Rachel shook her head. It was too much to consider right now. Another time. She was getting off track. Had to keep her eye on the prize. She turned and squared her shoulders. She looked Denise deep in the eye.
“So how does Tara Seidman fit into all this?”
“Who?”
“Tara Seidman.”
Now it was Denise’s turn to look confused. “Wait a second. Wasn’t that the little girl kidnapped in Kasselton?”
Rachel’s cell phone rang. She checked the Caller ID and saw it was Marc. She was just about to press the answer button when a man stepped into view. Her breath stopped. Sensing something, Denise turned around. She jumped back at the sight.
It was the man from the park.
His hands were huge, making the gun he now pointed at Rachel look like a child’s toy. He wiggled his fingers in her direction. “Give me the phone.”
Rachel handed it to him, trying her best to avoid his touch. The man put the barrel of the gun against her head. “Now give me your gun.”
Rachel reached into her handbag. He told her to lift it into view with two fingers. She complied. The phone rang for the fourth time.
The man hit the answer button and said, “Dr. Seidman?”
Even Rachel could hear the reply. “Who is this?”
“We’re all at Denise Vanech’s house now. You will come here unarmed and alone. I will tell you all about your daughter then.”
“Where’s Rachel?”
“She’s right here. You have thirty minutes. I will tell you what you need to know. You have a tendency to try to be cute in these situations. But not this time or your friend Ms. Mills dies first. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
The man hung up the phone. He looked down at Rachel. His eyes were brown with a gold center. They looked almost gentle, the eyes of a doe. Then the big man swung his gaze toward Denise Vanech. She flinched. A smile came to the man’s lips.
Rachel saw what he was about to do.
She shouted, “No!” as the big man aimed the gun at Denise Vanech’s chest and fired three shots. All three hit dead center. Denise’s body went slack. She slid off the couch and onto the floor. Rachel started to stand, but now the gun was pointed at her.
“Stay put.”
Rachel obeyed. Denise Vanech was clearly dead. Her eyes were open. Her blood streamed down, the color startlingly red against a sea of white.
Chapter 42
Now what doI do?
I had been calling to tell Rachel about the shooting death of Steven Bacard. Now this man was holding her hostage. Okay, so what’s my next step? I tried to think it through, to analyze the data carefully, but there was not enough time. The man on the phone had been right. I had been “cute” in the past. During the first ransom drop, I had let the police and FBI in on it. During the second, I’d enlisted the aid of an ex–federal agent. For a long time, I blamed the first drop-gone-wrong on my decision. Not anymore. I had played the odds both times, but now I think the game was fixed from the get-go. They had never intended to give me back my daughter. Not eighteen months ago. Not last night.