Rosalie nodded and disappeared into the room, where she’d hopefully be safe with the children if bullets started flying.

Mattie forced her attention back on the van. The driver was smiling. His demeanor was almost apologetic. He even laughed about something one of the officers said. Bo didn’t share the laugh, but he did lower his weapon, and then he said something to the uniformed officers before turning to walk toward the house.

Mattie opened the door for him but stood to the side so that neither the officers nor the van driver could see her.

“The guy says he’s interested in buying the house across the street,” Bo announced. “That seems to be the lie of the day, huh?”

“You think he’s lying?”

“Maybe. But even if he’s not, those are fake plates on his vehicle. He’ll need to explain that to the officers.” He re-holstered his gun. “And speaking of explaining, let me check on Rosalie, and then I can call someone to stay with her while I take you down to headquarters.”

“No.” She grabbed his arm to stop him from heading to the nursery. “If you take me there, you’ll be signing my death warrant.”

He couldn’t have possibly managed a more skeptical look. “I’m a cop, not a killer.”

“There are others, though, who would love to pull the trigger.” Mattie wished she’d rehearsed this or at least figured out the best way to approach what she had to say. Of course, maybe there was no best way.

He shook off her grip and turned, practically trapping her against the wall. “Did you have something to do with the men who took the hostages at the hospital?”

“No. I told you that I was one of the hostages.”

“Madeline Cooper,” he said as a challenge.

“Mattie,” she offered, though she knew this wasn’t going to turn into a friendly visit.

“Mattie,” he repeated. “Your name wasn’t on the list of patients who were in the ward during the hostage standoff.”

“Because I left before the police arrived.”

“Yeah. I know.” His eyes narrowed. “And why would you do something like that?”

Mattie answered his question with one of her own. “Can I trust you?”

“As much as I can trust you,” he warned, his eyes narrowing even more.

If she’d had a choice, she would have backed off then and there. But she didn’t have a choice. “I was in the Witness Protection Program.”

He hesitated only a heartbeat. “I want your case number so I can verify it.”

“The number doesn’t mean anything anymore. There was some kind of leak, and someone found out my new identity and location. Right before the hostage situation, that someone tried to kill me. I escaped and went to the hospital. The trauma must have triggered my labor. When I checked in, I used a fake name, obviously, and I said I didn’t have my insurance card with me.”

“You think the ski-mask-wearing SOBs were really after you?”

She shook her head. “No. At least I don’t think so.” From what she’d read about the case in the past thirteen months, the gunmen had been there to break into the lab and tamper with some DNA evidence. Nothing related to her.

“I couldn’t just let the cops find me there at the hospital that day,” she explained. “My former boss believes I’m dead, and if they’d learned differently—”

“Who’s your former boss?”

She decided to tell him the truth, because maybe this would help her cause. “Kendall Collier.”

Those cop’s eyes darkened. He obviously recognized the name. “You’re not Madeline Cooper. You’re Mattie Collier. And two years ago you testified against Kendall Collier.”

“Yes.” Her boss, her uncle. And also someone who’d gotten involved with an illegal arms dealer and gotten off scot-free because of a technicality. “I have reason to believe that Kendall, or someone else, will kill me if anyone learns I’m alive. That’s why I left the hospital.”

He made a sound deep within his chest to indicate he was thinking about what she’d said. Processing it. She could see the moment that the question came to him. It didn’t take long.

“On the video, you didn’t have a baby with you. You were alone. What happened to your child? ”

Mattie considered several ways she could go about this, but those ways all led to the same inevitable end. It was an end that Bo Duggan was not going to like.

She pointed to the picture on the wall. “My daughter is here with you. You’ve been raising her. But I’ve waited long enough, and I want her back.”

Bo hadn’t thought there could be too many more surprises today, but he was wrong. He was also obviously dealing with a liar or someone in need of medication.

But Mattie Collier seemed to be lucid.

Well, except for that part about him having her child. There wasn’t a chance that was true. No lucid woman would be saying that.

“Nadine had twins,” he spelled out for her. “A boy and a girl.”

Mattie shook her head. “No. Nadine had a son that I helped deliver. I had a daughter. And when I realized that I had to get out of that hospital or be killed, I knew I couldn’t risk taking my child with me.”

“So you put your newborn baby in the arms of my unconscious wife?” Bo didn’t even try to take the sarcasm and skepticism out of his voice.

“She wasn’t unconscious when I left. Tired and sleepy, yes. But conscious. We talked.” Mattie huffed and pushed her hair away from her face. “Nadine agreed—she was to tell you about what I was doing. But only you. And then I told her when it was safe, I’d come for the baby.”

Bo couldn’t even let himself fathom that this might be true. It wasn’t. Jacob and Holly were his. They were his life. And he’d already ascertained that Mattie Collier was a liar. The trouble was, he couldn’t quite figure out why she’d come up with this particular lie.

Maybe to get his help with her Witness Protection problem?

Perhaps. She was obviously troubled and in trouble. But it seemed an outlandish approach to get his help.

And why did he want to help her?

She’d riled him with her accusation about being Holly’s mom. She’d also riled him with her stream of lies and her connections to an alleged lowlife scumbag like Kendall Collier, someone that Bo would prefer not to have introduced into the lives of his children.

Still, Mattie had that vulnerable look about her, and he hoped like the devil that vulnerability was all there was to it. This wasn’t a man-woman thing.

Was it?

But then he rethought that question. It couldn’t be that. Other than a passing glance, he hadn’t noticed another woman since Nadine.

“Do you have any proof whatsoever about what you’re saying?” he demanded.

“No. But you can get proof by doing a DNA test on my daughter. I brought the kits with me.”

“My daughter,” he corrected. “Holly is mine. Both babies have O positive blood type—that matches mine.”

“O positive is a common blood type.” She stepped closer. “I know this is hard for you to accept—”

“It isn’t hard, because I won’t accept it. But I will ask why you’re doing this. Do you think if you have some kind of emotional hold over me that I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you out of the path of your uncle and his hired guns?”

Mattie stepped back as if he’d slapped her. “Even you can’t keep me out of Kendall’s path. An entire team of federal agents failed. I failed.”

“Ahhh. So, by your own admission a dangerous situation still exists in your life. Yet, according to your delusional plan, you told Nadine that you’d come for the baby when it was safe.”

He expected to see some anger in her eyes, especially since he’d just caught her in another lie. But there was no anger. Only weariness and fatigue.

She leaned back against the wall. “I have a friend who works in the Office of Vital Statistics in Austin, and she told me that someone is searching through birth records for the time period my daughter was due to be born. That someone is looking for her as a way to get to me, and judging from the records they’re searching now, they’re getting close to finding her. If I stay in hiding, I can’t protect her, and protecting her is my first priority. That’s a promise I made to her father just hours before he was murdered.”