by Regan Black
“Moooom. Uncle Nolan put sunscreen on me, and then the teacher reminded us to do a touch-up before we went outside.”
“Okay, that’s good.” She slid the glasses onto the table and noted her mother was staring at Rob. Hard. Crap! She wasn’t putting two and two together, was she? Trina had told both Nolan and her mother that Jake’s father had been killed in action. She had shown them each photos of Rob, then-Justin, mostly selfies and candids from deployment. The only time they’d spent not in a battle zone had been a quick R & R to Istanbul, Turkey. Those photos she’d kept for her eyes only. It was too painful to remember how happy she’d been.
And now the cause of that joy was sitting at her kitchen table. Alive, not a figment of her grief, which she’d thought she’d closed the door on almost two years ago. It had taken three full years to let him go.
“Trina.” Rob’s low voice shook her out of herself and she looked between him, her mother and Jake.
“I’m sorry, did I miss something?”
“Mom, I’m telling about the bug collecting trip.”
“You’re talking about the trip, or you’re telling a story about it.”
“Yeah, that’s it, I’m telling the bug story. We had to be very quiet and pay close attention to the grass and the leaves.”
“Why was that?” Rob asked the question with hesitation and reverence in his tone, as if Justin held the secret directions to the Holy Grail.
Her mother didn’t miss Rob’s rapt attention on Jake, as if he were afraid Jake would disappear with a blink. As Trina watched, Carmen’s gaze went from Rob to Jake, Jake to Rob.
Damn it. Her mother was the smartest person she knew, and right now Trina didn’t have the wherewithal to deal with an inquisition. Which she saw coming.
“Rob, are you a marshal, too?”
“No—I work for a private security firm. Trina and I were working together on the same case and ended up spending more time on it than either of us planned.” Trina bit back a grin. Undercover agents were adept at providing alibis and fake employment. Rob was no exception.
“It was complicated, but I can tell you we kept a significant number of young girls from being exploited.” Trina spoke quietly and without any drama, so as to not draw Jake’s attention.
“What’s ’splotated?” Jake had missed nothing.
“It’s when someone hurts someone else,” Rob answered, and Trina glared at him. Really? He’d been in the presence of his son for all of fifteen minutes and he was deciding what to tell him?
“Some girls got hurt?” Jake’s little face scrunched up in concern. “That’s wrong.”
“No, they didn’t get hurt. That’s what Mommy’s job is about, remember? To keep everyone safe.”
“Keepin’ it safe for democracy!” Jake yelled the way he did when he was up past his bedtime. She looked at the clock.
“It’s the weekend, and you know what that means, Jake!” Trina never tired of how his face lit up from the mere mention of “weekend” and his favorite breakfast.
“Waffles!” But his face immediately fell as he processed where Trina was going with her reasoning. “I don’t want to go to bed, Mom. I want to talk to this guy.”
“It’s Rob.” Rob had told him his name but Trina wanted to correct him, to tell him to call his father ‘dad.’ That was plain silly—it was too soon to tell Jake who Rob really was, and certainly not in front of Carmen, who was now staring at Rob with wide eyes.
“Mother, I’ll explain more tomorrow. Let me get Jake ready for bed.” Trina couldn’t blame her mother for looking so shocked. She’d shown her as well as Nolan the several photos she had of Rob, and he hadn’t changed, except for his blond hair sprouting some silver strands here and there.
“If you’re sure—” Carmen’s hair, the same dark chocolate color as Trina’s but sprinkled with long silver threads, framed her face, which was wrinkled in concern at her only daughter.
“I’m certain, Mother.” Trina gave her mother her best listen-to-me-I’ll-tell-you-later look. Fortunately, being slow on the draw wasn’t one of Carmen’s traits.
“Okay, well, I’ll be going. I’ve got my Saturday knitting group in the morning, down at Silver Threads.” Carmen referred to Silver Valley’s local yarn shop, located in a converted Victorian home.
“You’re going to knit in this heat?”
“Unlike your new house, the yarn shop is air-conditioned.”
“I have air-conditioning. Weren’t you able to fiddle with it?”
“Fiddle? I asked Nolan to bring your daddy’s biggest plumbing wrench over to slam that puppy into functioning.” Carmen reached down and patted Renegade’s head. “No offense, doggy. The air’s blowing but there’s not a lot of ‘cool’ to it.”
“At least it’s cooler outside than it’s been over the past few days.” Trina felt fine in the house but knew the upstairs could become stifling with each heat wave. The central air was inefficient, and it would be one of her first investment repairs.
“Okay. See you on Sunday?” Carmen picked up her purse and car keys and kissed Trina’s cheek.
“Yes. We’ll be there.”
“Nice to meet you, Rob.” Her mother leaned in and stage-whispered, “Bring him with you on Sunday if you want.”
“Bye, Mom.” Trina did all she could to not make a face.
“Come here and give Grandma a kiss, Jake.”
He shuffled over to his beloved grandmother and hugged her with all his might, the sound of his kiss a loud smack in the small kitchen. Carmen laughed. “That’s my boy. See you Sunday.”
“Bye, Grandma.”
She left out the back kitchen door. The door stuck and she pulled on it extra hard, which made the shade on the door sway.
“That door needs to be fit to the frame.” Rob’s observation set off Trina’s radar-like defenses.
“It’s hot and humid—it’s only swollen. It’ll be fine in the cooler months.”
“More like freezing. It’ll shrink and let a draft in.” He stood up and walked to the door, ran his hands around the edge.
Jake hopped over to Rob, peering at the battered door as if it held the secrets to his five-year-old universe. “Yeah, it’s got cracks, Mom.”
Trina’s breathing hitched somewhere between her gut and her heart.
“It’s time for you to go to bed, mister.”
“Mom. I’m helping Mr. Rob with the door.” He folded his little arms over his puffed-out chest, his glare at its most powerful.
“Don’t even try it, Jake. We can have Rob read you your story if you’d like, but you can’t be pulling any nonsense about bedtime.” She’d worked hard to establish regular routines with Jake. It helped both of their sanities.
“What are we reading?” Rob slipped right into their routine, and again Trina had a mess of emotions swamping her. Her protective urge toward Jake was the strongest, but not as dominant as she’d expected. She trusted Rob, and she trusted him to be here with Jake.
But if he wasn’t going to be here as a permanent fixture in Jake’s life, she didn’t want to put the little boy’s heart at risk.
As Jake ran upstairs to his room to pick out a book, or more likely a stack of books, Trina faced Rob on the stairwell. “You don’t have to do this. You only just found out that you have a child.” She kept her voice low, almost a whisper.
His eyes were intent upon her. For the first time in a long while it was deeper than the sexual energy he normally radiated. It was something more overarching, bigger. “I’m never where I don’t want to be, Trina.”
* * *
Rob’s inner GPS felt as though it was permanently programmed to the little boy. Jake. His son. Before tonight he would have admitted he’d never stopped thinking about Trina, and in fact still cared deeply for her. It had been a tremendous relief to find out she was single and e
ven better, had never found a man to settle down with. He still couldn’t believe she wasn’t married.
But Jake…
The little being who nestled so naturally between him and Trina on the race car bed was a live wire. As Jake sat on his knees and held the book, Rob read the story of some bears figuring out the difference between healthy and junk food. Trina had selected the book from the stack Jake presented, most of which were train-or dinosaur-centric. Rob did his best to act out each voice, booming it out when he did the Papa Bear parts. “The end.” Jake let out a whine of regret next to him and Rob couldn’t help but laugh. “I agree, buddy, it ended too soon.”
Jake threw his arms around Rob’s neck and gave him a hard, quick hug. “I like you, Rob.”
Rob blinked, unable to process the emotions that made his throat feel raw and his chest three sizes bigger. He didn’t even care that Jake had knocked up against his sore ribs. The injury was no match for the love he was getting from his son.
His son.
“I’ll put it back.” Jake took the book and slid off his lap. “Mom, can Renegade sleep with me?” The dog was in the hallway in a crate Trina had found in the house basement. The little pup had collapsed into sleep after playing so hard with Jake.
“No, not until we get him checked by the vet. Then we’ll talk about it.”
Rob looked at Trina. Her eyes were teary and he hoped it was from happiness. “Was that your book?”
She nodded and motioned at a shelf chock-full of kid’s books. “All of those were Nolan’s and mine. The agreement is that Jake gets to have them until Nolan finds someone to have kids with.”
“Yeah, Uncle Nolan needs a woman.” Jake’s tone and expression perfectly mimicked Trina’s mother’s, and Rob laughed. When Jake made him laugh, it wasn’t a simple reaction to humor. It was a sense of well-being and happiness that radiated from the center of his chest. This is pure joy.
And he’d missed the first five years of it due to his own stupidity.
“Okay, lights out.”
“Can I have the stars and planets night-light?”
“Of course. Let’s say our prayers.” Trina didn’t make a move for Rob to join them, though he wouldn’t have dared intrude on something so private. Jake took matters into his own hand, literally, when he reached one hand to hold Rob’s, while he held Tina’s with the other. The nighttime prayers were said and Jake tucked under his sheets—the hot night proving too much for the superhero comforter—in under two minutes.
He silently followed Trina back downstairs to the kitchen.
“Is he always that easy to go to sleep?”
“No way. He can have a good-size fit if he wants to. Some nights he’s turned on his overhead light and read on his own. I find him sprawled out on his bed, the lights still on and books everywhere, when I wake up.” Her dimples appeared in her smooth cheeks. “One night he got up and played with his train set. He has one of those wooden ones and he’d laid tracks down the hall and the stairs. All of the cars were in a pile at the bottom of them, on the braided rug.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t wake you up.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I’m a solid sleeper. I’d like to think that mother’s intuition would wake me up if anything was wrong, and in fact it has.”
Rob’s anxiety peaked. “Like when?”
Trina looked at him sharply and placed a hand on his arm. “Relax. Nothing horrible, just the kind of childhood stuff we all go through. Crying out during a bad dream, waking up sick. Jake gets really high fevers, but I think he’s mostly outgrown them. The doctor said it was genetic, but my mother says I never had fevers like Jake got as a toddler. Neither did Nolan.”
“I did.” Memories of his mother screaming at his father to help her get him into a cold tub assaulted him. “I had them when I was very young.”
“That solves where he gets them from, then.” She spoke quietly, and he saw the tears in her eyes, the way her hands trembled.
He covered them with his, needing to reassure her. Seeing her suffering because of him cut like a steel knife through butter. “Trina, I’m never going to be able to apologize enough for walking away three and a half years ago. But I’d like to think that maybe I can make it up to you. And Jake.”
“You didn’t walk away in the classic sense, Rob. And like you said, you weren’t in a place to be a father or a partner.” She shut her mouth and shook her head, red stains on her cheeks. “I didn’t mean that last part. I don’t expect you to be my partner. I don’t need someone to help me, or even to raise Jake. Jake could use a dad, and I’d never keep him from you. But this isn’t an experiment to see if you and he get along, Rob. This isn’t a temporary deal where you meet Jake, decided to tell him you’re his father, and then disappear again. I won’t have it. Do what you need to do, but don’t for one minute think it’s okay to do one damn thing that will hurt Jake.”
He watched the tears spill down her cheeks, and she swiped at them. His fingers itched to help her, but she had her shoulders hunched in a defensive posture. Protecting herself from further heartbreak.
“I couldn’t agree more.”
His phone buzzed, and he would have ignored it but it was on the table in front of them. As Claudia’s number appeared, he picked up.
“Rob here.”
“I trust you’re back in Silver Valley?”
“Yes. I’m with US Marshal Lopez.”
He heard Claudia pause, not usual for the Trail Hikers’ director. “Glad you’re together, because this applies to both of you.”
He gripped the phone tighter and turned away from Trina. “Yeah?”
“Intelligence reports confirm that Ivanov was the man in the helicopter. We’re getting testimony from Vasin, and he’s not veering from the risk to you and Marshal Lopez.” Claudia’s voice rang clear. “I understand she has a child. He’s at risk, too.”
“What can we do?” Immediately plans of escape with Trina and Jake, stowing them in a safe house, raced around his mind.
“Nothing for now. This is just preliminary, and I’ve got two agents on it. The FBI has dozens. Go about your usual business, but be extra aware of being trailed. Tell Lopez the same. If it at all looks like Ivanov’s team is near Silver Valley, I’ll have you disappear with Lopez and your boy.”
His heartbeat sped up when Claudia said “your boy.” So Claudia had known, somehow. And he had no doubt she’d put Trina in his path. This wasn’t the time for that conversation, however.
“Are you still there, Rob?”
“I’m here.” And ready to punch the walls. Why had he been the last to know about his son?
“Stay focused on the next step. Like I said, if you need to evacuate, we’ll do it. I’ll see you in the morning.” She disconnected, and Rob set his phone back down.
“Bad news?”
He couldn’t say everything; Trina wasn’t a Trail Hiker. “Vasin is making a lot of noise that we’re in danger from Ivanov for splitting up their operation.”
“What kind of danger? Do you mean you and me specifically, or the Marshals, law enforcement in general?”
“More direct than that. Ivanov may seek restitution for losing those girls. He’s done some heinous things in the past.” He watched Trina’s face go from flushed to waxy pale.
“He—he wouldn’t…” She wouldn’t say the words. Rob put his arms around her as they sat in chairs next to each other.
“No, he’s not going to hurt you or Jake. No one is going to. If we get word that he’s sent anyone in, we’ll get you and Jake far away and for as long as it takes to make sure it’s all clear. But it probably won’t come even close to that. ROC is powerful and evil to the core, but they like to keep their life easier. Going after US government agents and their families isn’t part of the deal, not usually.” As he said the words he prayed that what he believed, that Trina and Jak
e would be safe, was true.
* * *
Trina didn’t have a hard time falling asleep after Rob left for his apartment, as the past forty-eight hours finally hit her exhausted body and as soon as her cheek landed on her high threaded pillowcase she was out. But she was up at four thirty, an hour before usual, wide-awake. A full moon spilled light onto her—she’d forgotten to shut the drapes in her bedroom again. Truth was, she liked waking up to the sunrise, or seeing the stars if it was a long winter’s night. With the oppressive heat and practically nonfunctional air-conditioning in the house, she’d left all the upstairs windows cracked, screens installed to keep Jake safe.
All that mattered in her world since the moment the midwife had placed Jake in her arms, still wet from birth and rooting for her breast, was her little boy’s safety. She’d accepted he’d never know his biological father, and as the years sped by she faced the reality that she might never connect closely enough with another man to be willing to risk bringing him into their family. Because it was a risk. As a marshal she knew firsthand how incredibly devastating the wrong man in a home could be to a woman and her children. She’d read enough reports on incest and child abuse, and had arrested pedophiles. Sexual abusers preyed on single mothers as it made their access to victims easier.
Rob’s not a criminal. You know Rob.
She’d known Rob, yes. When his name had been Justin Berger and he’d been entrenched in doing whatever was needed in the pursuit of liberty, justice and peace. Which oftentimes meant going into a war zone and laying his life on the line, time after time. Since he’d left the Navy he’d done similarly risky jobs. If she opened up their home, and Jake, to Rob’s reality, it meant that Jake could end up orphaned. Of course, she was always at risk in her job, too. But two LEA parents was different. It seemed like a double threat—shouldn’t at least one parent be doing something that was without such high risk?
She’d faced the risks and decided that while they were worth it to a point, she’d fast reached the place where she was going to make a decision to go to a desk job. Jake deserved that much from her.