Four slices of pizza later, Maggie came up for air. “Okay, let’s get to it. We need to copy every single sheet of paper. Then we have to fax each and every sheet to the mountain. By the way, the girls will be leaving as soon as it gets light. That’s about three hours from now, so chop-chop, boys.”

Exactly one hour later Maggie sat back on her heels and looked at the others. “This is a gold mine. I have to give Adel Newsom credit: She kept impeccable records. She was smart, too. She outsourced some of her clients and got kickbacks from other lawyers. The main thing is that there is a complete list of the babies put out for adoption after being reclaimed from the parents who arranged for a surrogate through Baron Bell. This has to go to Charles right away so he can put his people on it. The only thing that matters is getting those babies back to their original adoptive parents.”

“Kidnapping babies is a federal offense,” Jack said.

“Possession is also nine points of the law,” Maggie said. “Charles told me if we were successful in finding the babies and snatching them, Nikki’s old law firm has agreed to take all the cases on a pro bono basis. Lizzie will be in charge behind the scenes. If it looks like it isn’t going to go our way legally, he is prepared to, ah…relocate the babies and their adoptive parents to a more friendly environment. That’s not our problem right now. Freeing up the information and getting it into the proper hands is our end of the job. And the headlines and story, of course. ’Tis the season of miracles, and the public will be on our side. Trust me.”

“Like we have a choice,” Ted muttered.

“Look!” Espinosa said. “There are pictures of the babies, along with foot- and handprints on each adoption. This should make the lawyers’ work a little easier.”

The time was 3:10.

At 3:45 the fax machine shut down, forcing the foursome to head out to the main office to finish up. At 4:05 they had three copies of each file, and one set was safely on the mountain. The second set was packed into three packing boxes to be sent out to Nikki’s old law firm by private messenger as soon as they could arrange a pickup.

“I’m feeling pretty good about this,” Maggie said. “Anyone want to go out to breakfast? Our job here is done.”

Harry looked pointedly at the two empty pizza boxes and shook his head. “I’m going home.”

“Me too,” Jack said as he pulled on his boots. “Did they say anything about the closings? This town shuts down when it flurries out, especially government.”