judging from all the yelling and the way she kicked her legs in the potato sack. Not knowing what else to do—since he was pretty certain that babies were supposed to sleep on their backs—he went into her room and rolled her back over.
Big mistake.
For the next two hours—yes, gasp, they strayed from the schedule—they played this game. Zoe would be quiet for ten or fifteen minutes, then she’d flip onto her stomach and scream bloody murder until he went back into her room.
“Listen, you,” he told her after Take Seven. “See here? It’s embroidered right on your potato sack. ‘Back to Sleep.’ You don’t like being on your stomach? Then stop rolling over.”
She chucked one pacifier out of the crib, unimpressed with the lecture.
After that, Ford decided to try a new approach—this “self-soothing” thing he’d heard his sister talking about. The next time Zoe flipped over onto her stomach, he let her cry. But after fifteen minutes he caved, because the crying was god-awful and he felt guilty as shit, and certainly no one in the damn apartment building was going to be soothed by that racket. So they went back to the flipping game. Eventually, it got to be so late that they’d moved into the time when Nicole had said Zoe might wake up for a feeding.
Figuring she might be hungry—hell, he certainly could use a snack after all the drama—he fed her. She fell asleep mid-feeding, so he seized the moment and put her down in the crib, being careful not to wake her up.
That was Big Fucking Mistake Number Two.
Ten minutes later, he heard Zoe coughing on the monitor and realized that he’d forgotten to keep her upright after he’d fed her. He ran into her room and scooped her up just in time for her to throw up all over both of them, a full-out, volcanic-style heaving that spewed out of her mouth and nose. Which was doubly disconcerting because, (A) holy shit, no one had ever warned him that something so tiny and cute could puke like a drunken frat boy who’d just gorged on a double-stuffed burrito, and (B) now Zoe was hollering like a banshee—Who left the dumbass in charge of me? Help!—as he hurried around trying to find clean sheets and pajamas and a new potato sack for her to sleep in. His shirt smelled like baby vomit, so he stripped it off and said screw it to both the schedule and the self-soothing crap; he was getting this baby to sleep come hell or high water. So he gave her the two pacifiers, and rocked her in the chair until finally she dozed off. He even managed to sneak her back into the crib, but as he rinsed his shirt in the kitchen sink, he started thinking about the drunken frat boy heaving, and worried that Zoe might do it again and choke.
And thus, an hour later, when his sister came home around one A.M., she found him passed out on the floor in front of Zoe’s bedroom, one hand wrapped around the baby monitor, shirtless, and smelling like throw-up.
He woke up to see Nicole standing over him, looking as though she was trying really hard not to laugh.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
He raised a thumb in exhaustion.
“Piece of cake.”
* * *
AFTER THAT ADVENTURE, Ford was more determined than ever to find Zoe’s father. Who knew if the guy would end up being much help to Nicole, but it was worth a shot. If he hadn’t before, he now fully appreciated how difficult it must be for his sister, trying to balance work, Zoe, getting some sleep, and having some semblance of a life. Hell, he’d been on baby-duty for seven hours and felt like he needed a vacation.
With that in mind, he grabbed his messenger bag and keys, and headed out the door. He walked to The Wormhole and ordered two large coffees, then took a seat at one of the tables in the back, where he could speak privately with the FBI agent he’d reached out to—a friend of a friend who specialized in undercover cases. He was hoping, at the very least, that the agent could help him eliminate at least one of the eleven Peter Sutter candidates.
A few minutes later, Special Agent Vaughn Roberts walked into the coffee shop and headed over.
“Why did we ever agree on eight thirty on a Sunday morning?” he asked, gripping Ford’s hand in greeting.
Ford grinned. “I told you—I was