“The truth?” he said. “Chances for recovery are zip if they’ve already fenced the toys. Slim if they haven’t. If they’re not recovered, say, by Sunday, I’d say they’re gone for good.”

“I’m sorry I asked.” She sighed. “But that’s the way it goes around here, I guess. These kids are born under a dark cloud. I don’t know why I should expect they’ll get a break this time.”

He gave her hand a little extra squeeze, then released her.

“You never know, Dr. Clayton.” He gave her a crooked smile. “Even the worst losers get lucky once in a while.”

Maybe it was the smile that did it. It dropped his shields. Alicia saw into this Jack for an instant—a nanosecond, really—and suddenly she had hope. If it was at all possible to find and return those gifts, this man believed he could pull it off.

And now Alicia was beginning to believe it too.

8.

Instead of heading for the front after leaving the doctor’s office, Jack ducked to the left and returned to the infant area. He stepped back into the relative shadow of a doorway across from the big plate-glass window and watched.

Gia sat half facing him, but all her attention was on the blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. She rocked, smiled, cooed, and looked down at that bundle as if it were the most precious child in the world. Someone else’s baby, but no one looking at Gia now would know it. Her eyes were aglow with a light Jack had never seen before. And her expression… beatific was the only word for it.

And then Vicky hopped into the picture, an eight-year-old slip of a thing; her dark brown braids bouncing as she hurried a bottle of formula to her mother. Jack smiled. He had to smile every time he saw Vicky. She was a doll and he loved her like a daughter.

He’d never met Vicky’s father and, from what he’d heard about the late, not-so-great Richard Westphalen, he was glad. Jack had it on excellent authority that the Brit bastard was dead—he knew the where, when, and how of his death—but the remains would never be found. So it would be years before Richard Westphalen was declared legally dead. Gia had taken back her maiden name after the divorce, although Vicky remained a Westphalen—the last of the line.

Vicky didn’t seem to miss him. Why should she? She’d hardly known him when he was alive, and now Jack had more than taken his place. Or at least he hoped so.

He watched a few minutes longer, unable to take his eyes off the two most important people in his life. And it worried him no end that they were both in an enclosed room with HIV-positive infants.

Right, right, right. He knew all the facts and figures about how safe they were, and all that. And that was all fine and good for other people. But this was Gia and Vicky. And the threat was a virus, something you couldn’t see, and not just any virus. This was HIV.