Whirlwind

25

Chicago, Illinois

Lake Michigan stretched north against a crystal sky, but Hedda Knight was blind to the view from her seventy-fifth-floor law office in the Aon Center.

All she saw was a sea of problems.

One of her mothers had disappeared weeks before she was due to deliver, jeopardizing Hedda’s biggest deal.

Tapping her pen to her desk she pressed her phone to her ear as Ed Bascom, the senior agent with the private investigative agency she’d hired, gave her an update.

“We’ve confirmed that an ambulance was dispatched to Remy Toxton’s residence in Texas and that she was taken to hospital.”

“Where is she?”

“We obtained a new lead that she was transported out of state.”

“Where?”

“Arkansas.”

“Arkansas? What’d you find out in Arkansas?”

“Nothing, our investigation there dead-ended. We don’t know what hospital or which city. We suspect we were fed bad information by the church people supporting her boyfriend, Mason Varno. They’re protective.”

“I don’t care. Did Remy have the baby or not?”

“We haven’t confirmed it.”

“Why not? What’re we paying you for?”

“Did you ever consider that they could’ve been victims of the tornadoes?”

“Yes, but they live in Lufkin and from my read of the news Lufkin was not touched by the storms.”

“What if they happened to take a trip to Dallas the day the storm hit?’

“That’s your job to find out.”

“Can your nurse who was assigned to their case recall anything more?” Bascom asked.

“No! She’s told you everything. She went to the apartment and they were gone. Remy didn’t answer her phone, her emails. They left no forwarding address, no contact information, nothing. We’ve been over this.”

“They’ve covered their tracks,” Bascom said. “We still have no credit card or banking trail on Toxton or Varno.”

“Damn it, Ed, you’re no closer to finding them than when you started looking. Is there anything you can do, or should I hire someone else?”

“We’re working on another lead. Varno’s an ex-con.”

“An ex-con. Oh, that’s great.”

“He’s got a meeting with his parole officer coming up. We’ll surveil the office for him and he’ll lead us to Toxton.”

“Do that. I want that baby. But find Remy quietly. We don’t want anyone going public on this, or to the police. You got that?”

Hedda heard muttering.

“Ed? You got that?”

“Yeah, I got that.”

Hedda hung up, tossed her pen on her desk, turned to her computer screen and studied the file showing the photographs of Remy Toxton and Fyodor Gromov, the biological parents of a Caucasian baby.

Where’s Remy?

Hedda knew the likely scenarios. Remy could’ve lost the baby, grown fearful and fled to pocket the remainder of her fifteen-thousand-dollar signing payment. She could have changed her mind and decided to keep the child. Or she might be working with another agency for more money.

Hedda didn’t care. If that baby was alive, she wanted it. Needed it.

Calm down. Be careful, she told herself.

She had to remember her own rules. Never pressure the girls. Each case was delicate. Each case had its own complications. No two were ever the same. Most ended well but when it was time to deliver, you could not predict how some mothers would react. A few became emotional. But Hedda always worked things out. She kept the mothers happy so that they wouldn’t even consider going to the authorities. Hedda could never let that happen, especially now when she was on the brink of taking her surrogacy and baby adoption enterprise to a mind-blowingly lucrative level.

Thinking back, Hedda remembered a different time when her life was guided by a different dream.

She’d grown up in Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. Her parents were both federal lawyers. Hedda, a high achiever, studied law at Yale, where she met her future husband. As young, rising stars they joined firms in New York. When Hedda began talking about starting a family, her husband confessed that he’d fallen in love with another woman.

Hedda’s dream died.

Her marriage over, she quit the firm, left New York and drifted to Los Angeles, where she found work specializing in adoptions. She became an expert in the adoption and surrogacy laws of every U.S. state, and most countries around the world. She knew the nuances, the gaps, the loopholes and the murky zones.

Moreover, Hedda knew that there were more parents seeking healthy babies than babies to meet the demand. Recognizing an opportunity, she set up her own firm in a low-rent strip mall in Long Beach, where she worked tirelessly to build a network of contacts across the country and around the world.

Hedda’s agency advertised a range of adoption and surrogacy services to people desperate for a baby. At the same time, she advertised online for surrogates. Candidates were university grads, supermarket cashiers, hairdressers and stay-at-home moms.

Hedda explained to them how her agency did things a bit differently because of its international connections. After recruits signed a surrogacy agreement, they would undergo an embryo transfer or insemination in Europe because her agency had arrangements with leading specialists there.

Hedda assured the candidates that everything was in accordance with all laws, that all costs were covered and that she would provide a medical team to monitor the pregnancy. The surrogates would never have to meet the parents. Hedda’s policy was unconditional on that front.

Each surrogate would receive a total $60,000-$15,000 on signing then $45,000 upon delivery. The payments were conditional to certain terms, chief among them being delivery of a healthy baby. However, payments would not be made if the pregnancy was unsuccessful, and Hedda always hinted that under certain conditions, the surrogate might be required to return a portion of any advance payment-although Hedda would never dare enforce that aspect out of fear a surrogate would go to authorities. She only hinted at it as psychological leverage for the women who might change their minds.

Again, Hedda would stress that the entire enterprise was all legal.

But it wasn’t.

In order to circumvent various state surrogacy and adoption laws, Hedda would mislead the surrogates and the expectant parents about the circumstances of the parties involved. She would seek out hopeful parents and guarantee them the baby of their dreams, a newborn girl or boy of nearly any race. Then she would create fraudulent documentation that made the arrangements appear to be in accordance with adoption or surrogacy laws. But what Hedda had really done was create an illegal process of making and selling babies. She was hiring women to get pregnant for the sole purpose of selling the baby to those who could afford her price.

She was now getting $200,000 for each baby.

As Hedda’s business grew, she moved to Chicago, to be more central. And she was careful to manage any risk or exposure to scrutiny. At the same time, she was driven by a desire to find wealthier clients, to become the number one, albeit black market, baby broker in the world. Hedda knew that there were people who would give any amount of money for a healthy baby.

And Remy’s baby was the ticket to a client list that would pay more.

So much hinged on this deal.

Normally, Hedda would have another baby available but with this case she’d encountered one problem after another.

So what the hell happened?

It was going well until Remy disappeared. I can’t go to another mother for a baby to fulfill this critical order. It’s already overdue and I have no other suitable babies available. Two of my other surrogates just lost theirs. Two. I’ve got no Caucasian boys coming for over two months. Everything depends on Remy’s baby.

Hedda clicked her mouse and reread the email from her client.

Chelsea Drew-Flynn, forty-nine-year-old heiress to a gold-mining empire who lived in Denver. She wrote:

What’s the status on delivery, Hedda? Did she have the baby? We’ve surpassed the delivery date range.

Now, after consulting Ed Bascom, after absorbing the circumstances and the stakes, Hedda crafted a response.

Some routine medical issues are delaying delivery a little bit. I assure that everything is fine.

Hedda pressed Send then gazed at the lake, weighing all the stakes. Everything was riding on this one. Chelsea Drew-Flynn was going to exceed Hedda’s rate by paying $250,000 for a baby boy. But this deal held an even greater value. Chelsea had indicated to Hedda that she knew women, wealthy women, in her social circles around the world, who would be interested in using a surrogacy agency. Hedda interpreted that to mean that if all went well with Chelsea’s baby boy, she would introduce Hedda to a whole new level of potential clientele.

Hedda’s computer chimed with a response.

Just so we understand each other, Hedda. I trusted you to deliver my baby to me as promised. Heaven knows how I might react if you break that promise.

Hedda cursed to herself and looked out at the vast lake.

I’ve got to find that baby.