Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

“Go on,” he said.

“There’s nowhere to go but where I did. Was I supposed to turn my back on three generations of sacrifice because I’d met an outlaw who gave me the best sex of my life?”

“That’s what really confused me,” he said.

“What?”

“You shouldn’t have been in my bed, but there you were. If you were working for the opposition, it made sense.”

“Only to you,” she shot back. “It made no sense at all to me. When they were dragging you off, you looked right into the lens of a television camera with such rage that the cameraman nearly fell down running away. Even with your hands cuffed behind your back, you scared him. And me. I ran and never looked back. Except…”

“Except?”

“You say I haunted you.”

“You did.”

“It went both ways. At night I’d dream and I’d wake up abandoned, crying. If Ted was there, I’d just say it was old nightmares left over from the day I walked in and found my family murdered. It was halfway true.”

“Only half?”

“Maybe less,” she whispered. “But you hated me. I could no more have you than I could bring my family back to life. Love was a bait-and-switch game, and I wasn’t going to play it anymore. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t survive.”

Faroe caught the second tear before it reached her cheekbone.

“I went back to Ted, told him I didn’t need any more space. A week later he hustled me to a JP. The week after that, I missed my period.”

Faroe tried to breathe, tried to speak, but there was a fist in his throat he couldn’t get around.

“Since birth control pills made me hurl,” Grace said evenly, “and Ted was careless with condoms, I figured there was a much better chance that he was the father than you. And once I held Lane, it didn’t matter. I took one look at his wrinkled face and tiny fists, and I fell hopelessly in love.”

Breathing was all Faroe could manage.

And listening.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you speechless,” she said.

He could feel his heart beating in his chest. The blood roared in his ears. He began to breathe again. “Finish it.”

“You do the math.”

He just watched her with green eyes that looked dark, feral.

Grace drew the sheet across her breasts, suddenly aware of her own nakedness and vulnerability. “The age-old male problem-how do I know the bitch is telling the truth?”

Though he didn’t move or speak, the pulse at his throat beat hard and fast. His expression was closed, blank, bleak.

“A year later I wanted more children,” Grace said. “Ted didn’t, but he sure did like sex better without a condom. Lane turned five, and no siblings in sight. By then I’d nagged enough that Ted went to a doctor to shut me up. He discovered he was a few sperm short of meaningful fertility. We were very, very lucky to have conceived once. It must have eaten at Ted, because after a few more months he quietly took a swab of his mouth, and of Lane’s, and sent both to a DNA lab.”

She stared at Faroe through eyes blind with tears.

“Say it.” Faroe’s voice was as grim, his whole body vibrating with suppressed emotions.

“Lane, a sweet, beautiful boy who called Ted Daddy and followed him every chance he got; Lane, the innocent who idolized his daddy even though Ted barely bothered to notice him…” Her voice frayed.

She drew a deep breath and slid off the bed, pulling the sheet with her, wrapping it tight around her. She walked to the bathroom door, opened it, and snapped on the lights. In the white glare, her face was streaked with tears. She turned and looked at the man who seemed to cast shadows even in darkness.

“Say it.”

“Lane is your son.”

MANHATTAN

SUNDAY NIGHT

“WELL?” STEELE DEMANDED.

Dwayne typed on the computer keyboard quickly, then touched the screen with his finger. Documents flew by in a kaleidoscope of information. Narrow-eyed, he watched them, then touched the screen again.

“No calls from any number registered to Ted Franklin.”

Steele made a frustrated sound. “Apparently he’s smarter than his previous actions would suggest.”

“That wouldn’t be hard.”

“This is an inconvenient time for Mr. Franklin to improve his criminal IQ.”

Dwayne bent over the computer again. More documents flew by. He tapped on several, read, shook his head.

“What?” Steele asked.

“A lot of nothing. The team watching the La Jolla house is suffering terminal boredom. No one coming or going. The hostiles watching the house are equally bored and equally determined. Gotta give it to those feds. They’re real bulldogs. Some wild-card Mexicans cruised the place. No point in following them, because if they’re sniffing around the judge’s house, they’re as lost as we are.”

“Telephone? E-mail?”

“One of our people took the judge’s computer and hacked it. So far, nothing helpful and no e-mail but the business kind. No physical mail but bills. No phone calls to the house except from people looking for Ted. No point in following up on them, because they know exactly what we do about his whereabouts. Zip. Zap. Zero. Did I mention zilch?”

“Keep everyone in place. Ted might run for familiar ground.”

Dwayne nodded and continued his update. “The team watching the lawyer’s house hasn’t learned anything except how the rich and ridiculous shop. The team that black-bagged the lawyer’s office has an eye-popping list of clients, but none of them connect in any obvious way to our Teddy-boy.”

“Try for a subtle way.”

“I’ll need hundreds of people to backtrack the clients and stake them out.”

“Pick the top five prospects. Follow them.”

“Pick them how?”

“That’s why I hired you. For some things, your instincts are better than mine. Pick five. And get Faroe on the phone. We need to make some plans for the rendezvous.”

“I tried. He’s not answering his phone.”

“Try again.”

TIJUANA

SUNDAY EVENING

GRACE WATCHED FAROE WITH the kind of intensity he often used on her. In the three minutes since he’d backed her into a corner and dragged the truth about Lane out of her, Faroe had calmly pulled on his clothes, gathered up his cell phone, adjusted something on the unit, and put it in his pocket. Then he’d turned his back on her and stared out the window.

He hadn’t said a word.

Not one.

His cell phone rang. He ignored it.

“Say something,” she said finally.

“You don’t want to hear what I’m thinking.”

“Try me.”

“How would you feel if I’d shown up with a teenager, introduced you, and said, ‘Oh, by the way, this is yours. Little souvenir of three days of jungle sex and a bad rubber.’”

“You look at Lane and see a bad rubber?”

Faroe spun toward her. The raw fury on his face was the same as she’d seen sixteen years ago. His voice was deadly calm. It made the hair on her neck lift.

“I look at Lane and see a son I never had the chance to know,” Faroe said in a voice that was as quiet as his eyes were wild. “I look at Lane and see a son who never knew his biological father. I look at Lane and see fifteen years gone, fifteen years I’ll never get back. Neither will he. Then I look at you.”

Instinctively Grace backed away from Faroe.

He matched her step for step, inch for inch.

She’d known he would be angry. She hadn’t known how it would feel to be the focus of that rage.

“I look at you,” he said softly, “and see an ambitious female who used a stud for sex and a billionaire to raise her bastard.”

“I didn’t know you were Lane’s biological father!”

A wall hit Grace’s back. This time she didn’t welcome it. She ignored the tears blurring her vision and lifted her chin as Faroe closed the last inches between them.

“You didn’t care,” he said. “You had a baby and a billionaire and a fast-track career and you just didn’t give a damn about the dumb sperm donor.”

“The dumb sperm donor threw me out of his life, remember? I didn’t know, Joe. I swear it!”

“The dumb sperm donor remembers that you could have found out at any time and you damn sure have known for, what, ten years now? And you still didn’t tell me.”

“By the time I tracked you down ten years ago, you were in Belize, well out of cell range.”

Faroe looked at Grace’s bitter black eyes and trembling lips. Part of him admired her for standing up to him when most men would have cut and run.

But most of him was too furious to care.

“How did you know where I was?” he asked calmly.

Too calmly.

“I used my connections to track you to St. Kilda Consulting. I even got your cell phone number, the really private one only Steele has.”

“I told Steele he should change those numbers more often.”

“I didn’t call you,” she said roughly. “You were undercover in hostile territory, your life at risk every second. Just imagine how you’d have felt if a woman you hated told you that she’d had your biological son, who by the way was legally the son of a man you’d never met.”

Faroe didn’t say anything.

“Speechless again?” she said. “A rare double.”

“Don’t push me, Grace.”

“I’m the one with my back to the wall,” she said through her teeth.

There was a tight silence.

Then he stepped away, giving her room to breathe.

“Besides,” Faroe said neutrally, “Ted was much better father material, right? Rich, successful, socially acceptable, and best of all-not an ex-con.”