Her Sister's Secret (Mills & Boon Vintage Superromance) by Linda Style Page B

she answered, wishing she could say it with more conviction.
    “You don’t sound so good.”
    “I’m fine. Just a little tired.” And emotionally drained. “Listen, Al.” She pulled the barrette from her hair. “I’ve got to take care of a few business things before I do anything. If I can’t do that by phone, I may fly to La Jolla for a day or two. You can get me there. The instant you get anything, okay? And I’ll be in touch.”
    “You’re on. Catch ya later, babe.”
    “Albert,” Whitney said quickly before he hung up.
    “Yeah?”
    “Thanks. Thanks for everything.”
    Whitney hung up, squelching her frustration. She knew getting the birth certificate wouldn’t be easy, and her impatience was unreasonable.
    Morgan had used several names after she’d left home, and had been virtually untraceable, even with a couple top investigators working on it. The one time they’d actually found Morgan she’d been living nomadically, moving from one street friend’s home to another in Cincinnati…and she’d made it clear she wanted nothing to do with her family. When Albert volunteered to help find SaraJane, it was a blessing. It was so much easier to work with someone who actually cared what happened.
    A huge lump formed in her throat. She’d failed Morgan. Failed her in every way she’d ever promised to keep her little sister safe.
    In the three months since Morgan’s death, that failure—that anguish—had lodged sharply and painfully in the deepest part of her soul. She doubted she’d ever get over it.
    Tears welled, but she held them back. She wanted more than anything to cry…to release the darkness. But tears would only be a manifestation of her own grief. A futile act of self-pity. Morgan was dead and all the tears in the world couldn’t bring her back.
    According to Whitney’s attorney, they needed to prove relationship to SaraJane, which could be done with DNA tests if they couldn’t come up with a birth certificate. Since her plan to catch Gannon in a drug deal, get the transaction on film and buy him off, probably wasn’t going to work, she’d have to sue for custody.
    And one of the first things she’d learned was that it wasn’t easy to take a child from a natural parent—even when the parent was as unsavory as Gannon was purported to be. She’d have to prove him unfit.
    But now, after meeting him, she even wondered about that. Whatever his character, though, Gannon was the key to finding her niece.
    It was painful to imagine the kind of life the poor kid had been subjected to—living on the streets with a teenage mother on the run, kidnapped by her junkie father... She shuddered to think how such early trauma might have affected the child.
    Just thinking about it all made her weary. She could only try to make it up to SaraJane—give her niece a secure home where she’d know she was loved and wanted—the kind of home Whitney and Morgan had never had.
    She’d bought the house in La Jolla as soon as she’d known she’d need a real home for SaraJane. She doubted any judge or court would see either her condo in New York or the apartment she worked from in San Diego as an appropriate and stable environment for a child. And she wasn’t leaving it to chance.
    She picked up her phone again and tapped the Favorites key for her editor’s number. Though it didn’t look as if her original plan would pan out, it seemed the hastily hatched book idea just might. It would get her closer to Gannon—and, with luck, her niece.
    Impatient, she tapped a finger on the back of the phone. Tanya’s voice mail kicked in. “You’ve reached Tanya Elliot. Please leave a message.”
    “Tanya, it’s Whitney. Sorry I didn’t call before I left New York, but I promise I’ll fill you in when we talk. I have a terrific idea to run by you.” She paused, thinking. “I’ll be gone early in the morning, so call me before eight, Arizona time, or leave a message to let me know the best time to reach