UNAWARE: A Suspense Novel Read online

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  UNAWARE

  A SUSPENSE NOVEL

  by

  SUSAN P. BAKER

  www.susanpbaker.com

  Books by Susan P. Baker

  http://www.susanpbaker.com

  Novels:

  Death of a Prince

  Ledbetter Street

  My First Murder

  Suggestion of Death

  The Sweet Scent of Murder

  UNAWARE

  Nonfiction:

  Heart of Divorce

  Murdered Judges of the 20th Century

  DEDICATION

  For my oldest grandson, Andrew

  CHAPTER ONE

  MARTIN

  Lieutenant Martin Richardson pushed his cold, half-eaten shrimp po-boy aside and kicked back in his leather chair, propping his bad leg up on his desk. He glanced at his cell phone for the umpteenth time. Still nothing from his little sister. His stomach burned with anger. If the asshole had harmed her before she could get to that woman lawyer’s office, he was a dead man.

  Joe Morales, Martin’s ex-partner, arrived at the top of the stairs with a stocky man in tow. Joe seated the man next to a desk and glanced toward Martin’s office. Two other officers brushed past him, escorting two women toward the lineup room. A skinny kid of about fifteen, handcuffed to an old wooden desk chair, struggled to pull his hand free and uttered epithets at everyone who scooted by him. A sobbing woman perched in a chair on the other side of Joe’s desk. Earlier, she’d told Martin she wouldn’t talk to anyone but a female officer, so Martin had sent for Sergeant Loyola, who was taking her sweet time in getting there.

  Joe stuck his head in the door. “Lieutenant, this guy’s house is across the street from the store on 39th. I think he saw the boys that killed the owner. You want to be in on the questioning? He’s pretty scared.”

  “Thanks, Joe.” Martin rubbed his calf where a shotgun blast had damaged it when he’d been a rookie many years earlier. He appreciated Joe’s asking, though it wasn’t required for the Lieutenant to be at the interview. “Get him a cup of coffee. I’ve got a couple of calls to make, and then I’ll be in there.” He reached for the phone. He’d like to grab a bite to eat with Joe later and catch up on things. In the last two years, Martin had lost two partners: Joe, when Martin had made lieutenant, and Liz, when she’d dumped him and moved to California with her best friend.

  His insides were hollow with dissatisfaction. He was finally making decent money. He was over his wife’s splitting on him. They should have never gotten married in the first place. The years he’d spent getting a college degree instead of working his way through the ranks had paid off. And now he didn’t like it. He missed the streets. He had no personal life. He was thirty-two. Childless. And didn’t even have prospects.

  He did know a lot of women. The ones at Frank’s Gym often flirted with him. The trouble was—Martin’s sisters had said—he was too picky. He should have remarried within a year of Elizabeth’s taking a hike.

  Martin finished his calls and pulled his leg down. He spun around in his chair. Maybe the summer heat was making him restless. He wanted a relationship. Remembering what his divorce therapist had said before he’d quit seeing him—that it would happen when it was right—he told himself to be patient. He sure was tired of waiting, though.

  He didn’t think he was particularly picky. He wanted an educated woman. Divorced was okay, but no kids. He wanted his own. He wanted a woman who had the guts to stand up for herself without being aggressive. He wanted intelligent conversation. If she also wanted to walk on the beach and go to the theater, not just the movies, that would be okay, too, as long as she didn’t complain when he watched football.

  Pulling himself up to his full six feet, Martin walked into the patrol room, feeling like an intruder. He hadn’t been talking to the murder witness five minutes when his baby sister, Ginny, topped the stairs.

  He jerked his thumb toward his office and followed her with his eyes as she went in and closed the door. She’d been crying. Hell, every time he saw her lately she’d been crying. What was it this time?

  “All right, Mr. Jackson,” Martin said, clapping the witness on the shoulder, “I guarantee you that if you can ID those two boys, we’ll keep them in detention. Okay?” He shook the man’s hand. “Talk to Detective Morales here. He can explain to you how the system works.”

  Martin walked back into his office and closed the door behind him. Ginny sat in one of the chairs opposite his desk. She stared at her lap and thumbed through a stack of papers. Her long, straight blond hair had tangles on the left side, which he recognized was from twirling her hair around her forefinger like she had when she was little. Patting her on the head as if she were a puppy, he rounded his desk and perched on the edge, facing her.

  “Why didn’t you call? I was worried.”

  She looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “I’m sorry. I forgot to charge my phone again.”

  He hated the whiny tone in her voice and swallowed back a harsh comment. “So what’d she say? Will she take your case?”

  Ginny nodded. Mascara smears down her cheeks made her look like a clown in full makeup. “She’s going to file a protective order.”

  “So what’s wrong? Isn’t that what we wanted?”

  “Yes. I’m just afraid of what he’ll do when he gets served the papers. He’ll kill me. I know him.” She wiped her nose with her fingers.

  He handed her his handkerchief. “He isn’t going to do that, Sis. I won’t let him. What do you have there?” He stared at the papers in her lap.

  Ginny wiped her nose and eyes. Black smudges transferred to the handkerchief. “A copy of the contract and interview sheet Mrs. Armstrong had me fill out. She says we’re common law married because we lived together and told people we were married. We did talk about being married.” Tears coursed down her face again. “We have to get a divorce.”

  “I thought these days if you were common law you could just split up and be divorced after awhile.”

  “But I’m going to have a baby, and if I don’t get a divorce, it’ll be illegitimate. I don’t want my baby to be a bastard.” She burst into tears.

  Outrage struck him like a wallop to the stomach. “A baby. Shit.” He jumped off the desk. “Didn’t you use protection?”

  She raised her head, tears streaming. “I know it was stupid. He said it wouldn’t hurt just one time to do it without a condom.”

  “And you’re just gullible enough to do anything that monster says, right? What have I told you from the very beginning?” He poked his finger at her face. “You shouldn’t have gotten involved with someone so much older than you. There was a reason he wasn’t already with somebody else.”

  Ginny pushed his hand away. “All right, Martin. I said I knew it was stupid. What do you want?” She blew her nose again and glared at him.

  “For you to get an abortion.”

  Her eyes grew large and round. “No. Never. I can’t believe you would even suggest such a thing.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Sis. If you have that baby, you won’t get rid of that creep for the rest of our lives. Do you want that?” His heel banged against his desk, making a deep metallic noise. “Do you want him beating you, stalking you, making you miserable forever? You’d better think about it. You can always have another kid when you settle down with someone decent.”

  “No. I won’t murder my baby.” She cupped her stomach as if she were holding an infant. “You can ask me anything, but not that. I won’t kill my baby.”

  How could he make her understand? Having lost their pa
rents when Ginny was still a minor, he and their older sister, Mary, had raised her. He’d spent those years instilling in her all his values, teaching a naïve little girl how to reason things out. Her irrational behavior, her willfulness, her pigheadedness frustrated him. “Jesus H. Christ. Have you gone off the deep end? How much pregnant are you anyway? A week? A month? It’s not a baby, yet. It’s a ... a ... thing ... a mass of cells.”

  “I don’t care what you say.” Ginny crossed her arms. “I will never murder my baby.”

  “Stop saying that. What’s got into you, anyway?”

  She stared at the floor.

  He looked out the window at the patrol room. Everything out there appeared normal. It ought to be a madhouse, to complement what was going on in his office and in his gut. It was hard enough to think about that creep laying a hand on his baby sister, much less having sex with her, but to even think that he would be father to Martin’s niece or nephew. God. The poor kid would never have a chance. Sellers would make all of their lives miserable. There had to be a solution. He focused his attention on Ginny again. “Okay. Here’s what you can do. Give it up for adoption.”

  Ginny shook her head, her hair flying. “How could I do that? Give up my own child to strangers? How could you ask me to do that?”

  “You’re being hardheaded. You can’t just keep the baby. Can’t you see you have to sever all connections to the man?”

  “You don’t understand. Alan’s mother abandoned him when he was a little baby. How could I do that to his son?”

  “Easy. The kid would be better off with two parents who loved him and wanted him and didn’t beat on each other.”

  “I never hit Alan.”

  “I know that. It was just a ‘for instance.’ You know what I mean.”

  She covered her face with her hands. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “What did the lawyer say?”

  “She made me a list of options.” Ginny pulled a sheet of paper from the stack and handed it to him.

  1. Abortion.

  2. Adoption with father’s consent.

  3. Adoption without father’s consent. Perjury.

  4. Don’t tell the father. Keep the baby.

  5. Don’t tell the father. Give the baby to a relative to raise.

  6. Divorce and name him as the father. Ask for child support.

  7. Divorce and don’t mention the baby. Name the father on the birth certificate. Don’t tell the father.

  8. No divorce. File a paternity suit a year after separation and after the baby is born. Ask for child support but no possession time for the father due to his violent history.

  9. No divorce. After the baby is born, ask the father to sign a waiver of interest in the child and keep the child.

  10. Divorce. List the baby as a child of the marriage. File a termination of parental rights suit and ask the father to sign an affidavit of relinquishment. Terminate his rights.

  “There’re enough options here,” he said, handing the paper back.

  “I know. She said she’d let me know if she thought of anything else.”

  “What else could there be?”

  Ginny shrugged. “But she’s going to file a divorce with the protective order. She said there’s a sixty-day waiting period in Texas, and we might as well start it running. If we decide not to go through with it, we can dismiss it later.”

  “Is she putting the baby in?”

  “Not right now. She wants me to think everything over. She said we could add the baby later if we wanted to.”

  “What does she think you should do?”

  Ginny hugged herself. “She wouldn’t say. She said it’s a personal decision between my doctor and me.”

  Martin pulled Ginny into his arms. “And so it is, Sis.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  DENA

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  Dena pulled the well-chewed stem of her thick glasses from between her teeth, feeling like a criminal as she faced her cousin, the senior partner in the firm. She had hoped to get away from the office before he found out.

  Just as she started to reply, he said, “You’ve been retained on a wife-beating case?”

  Dena stroked the indentations her glasses left on the bridge of her nose. Meredith and her big mouth. “Yes, Luke, I have, and the politically correct term is ‘family violence.’” She held her palm up and out to stop his rant. “Before you say anything else, let me explain.”

  “I thought we agreed we wouldn’t practice domestic relations in this firm.”

  She rested her clasped hands on top of the Texas Family Code. She’d been reviewing the updates on the CHAPTER on protective orders to see whether the legislature had made any significant changes. She stared at him, unable to respond as quickly as she wanted.

  He towered over the front of her desk, his jowly face flushed. “It was my father’s agreement with your father, your father’s agreement with me, and I thought it was my agreement with you. It’s a long-standing tradition in this firm that we do not practice family law.”

  Dena glanced inside her roller bag. From where he stood, Lucas couldn’t see the contents. She threw a pen on top of the Petition for Divorce, the Application for Protective Order, and the Ex Parte Protective Order, and zipped up the front pocket. First thing the next morning, she would file the suit at the courthouse. “You don’t understand, Lucas. This young woman’s husband is so violent that someone had to take the case immediately. She didn’t have time to go to anyone else.”

  “What part of ‘We do not practice family law’ don’t you understand?”

  Dena pressed her fingers to her lips to stop harsh words from spewing forth. She’d wanted to tell her cousin for a long time that family law was all she’d ever wanted to practice. Her compulsion didn’t make any sense. She couldn’t explain it. It was just the way she felt. All other areas of law seemed boring by comparison, except maybe criminal defense.

  Okay, so she had gone to him on false pretenses. She had tacitly agreed not to take family law cases. She’d been sure she could get him to change his mind. Now it had been a year, and he hadn’t. She wanted to understand his rationale, look behind this unyielding position that it just ‘had always been that way.’

  “What was I supposed to do, throw her out? I was the third attorney Ginny had gone to. No one else would take her case. She was desperate. It was late in the day ...”

  “Did it occur to you there was a reason they wouldn’t take her case?”

  “You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

  “It seems I have to be a lot more than that with you, Dena Barlow Armstrong. Did you or did you not make an agreement with me when I said I’d take you into the family firm?”

  “Did you have garlic for lunch, Lucas?”

  He gritted his teeth. “Did you or didn’t you?”

  Dena put her glasses on and stared down at her desk. What would it take to change his mind? What was he afraid of? Did he think something terrible would happen if one of the two lawyers in the firm took family law cases? Or was he just afraid their firm would become known as a ‘domestic relations’ firm? Would that sully the Barlow name? She just didn’t get it.

  “Did,” she answered, not looking up.

  “And did you or did you not sign up a family law case today?”

  “Today? Yes, Ginny Sellers gave me a check for five thousand dollars from her brother. A five thousand dollar retainer, Lucas.” Dena sure wasn’t going to mention the other cases she’d taken that apparently their legal secretary hadn’t told him about.

  Lucas’ expression didn’t change. “Did you or didn’t you?”

  “Did.” She had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes when answering him.

  “So did you or did you not commit a breach of our agreement?”

  Dena closed her laptop and slid it into the roller bag inside pocket. She zipped the bag and yanked up the handle in pre
paration for her departure before looking at him again. Why did he have to cross-examine her like she was a defendant on the witness stand? And why did she sit there and let him do it? She despised herself when she showed no more gumption than a larva.

  Determination glinted in his eyes. He wouldn’t stop until he convinced himself she had knuckled under to him one more time. The silence of her office sucked in other noises like a vacuum cleaner. The phone rang. The central air-conditioning unit clicked on. And Meredith-the-Traitor tapped the keys on her computer. If Dena had hired her, she’d have fired her for squealing to Lucas. Why Meredith had chosen to tell on Dena this time, Dena didn’t know. Maybe family violence scared her.

  “Did.”

  “And did we, or did we not, after you first came aboard, after that first disastrous case you took, discuss what would happen if you breached our agreement again?”

  He always went back to that first incident. Okay, so she had been too trusting. She gritted her teeth. “We did.” Ready to head for the door, Dena grabbed the handle of her rollerboard and waited for Lucas to stop blocking her exit. She wanted to avoid a major confrontation. She wasn’t really frightened that their business relationship might end. She just hadn’t put all her plans in motion yet. Though she had always loved Lucas like a big brother, she was sick of him bullying her. She would be leaving, but on her own terms. In the meantime, arguing with him was her least favorite activity, and one she made every effort to avoid.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  Dena bit back the smart retort that was on the tip of her tongue. “I’m leaving. Going home.” She studied Luke’s face, anticipating the reprimand. That was exactly what it was, a reprimand. She was sick to death of this.

  “I don’t mean going home, and you know it.” He peered at her through half-glasses perched atop his wide, up-turned nose. “You can’t leave now. We have to talk about this. The minute I turn my back ...”

  “It wasn’t the minute your back was turned, Lucas. You and I are partners. Partners. It’s not fair for you to dictate what kind of law I can practice.” Dena’s stomach churned. “I really have to go home now. The kids are waiting for me. We can discuss this another time.”