A Baby Between Them

by Alice Sharpe

  “If they’re in custody, who knows what Carl is telling them? Probably blaming me for killing those two men.”

  He put an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s take things one disaster at a time, okay?”

  “I hope they didn’t hurt Jack,” she said.

  “He seemed like the kind of man who can take care of himself,” Simon said.

  She could see the gray of his eyes now. His beard had started to grow again, defining the strong curve of his jaw. He added, “You’re shaking. Are you nervous? Today’s the big day.”

  “Hell yes, I’m nervous. It’s not every day a person gets to meet her estranged father. But I’m shaking because I’m cold.”

  “I have a spare sweatshirt stuffed into my pack. Want it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  While she took off her jacket, he dug in the pack, finally pulling out a university sweatshirt she hadn’t seen him wear. At the same time, a sock came flying out of the pack and landed by her foot with a thud.

  She instinctively reached for it, aware that Simon had, too. Her fingers closed on the soft cotton first, but it was obvious something roundish and heavy was stuffed into the toe of the sock. She lifted it and handed it to him, eyebrows raised.

  He shrugged.

  She pulled the sweatshirt over her head. What was he hiding?

  By the time she popped her head out of the shirt and pushed her arms into the sleeves, he’d peeled away the sock. He held a small globe in his hand. Encased within the globe was an otter swimming on its back, a clamshell on its tummy. Silver glitter fell through the trapped glycerin like sparkling raindrops.

  Zipping her jacket over the sweatshirt, she said, “What’s that?”

  “A memento,” he said, and handed it to her.

  She took it, her gaze fastened to his gray eyes. Looking down at the globe, she said, “It’s cute.”

  “Would you like it?” he asked.

  A smile tugged at her lips. “Yes.”

  “It’s yours,” he said, closing her fingers around the plastic dome.

  A noise in the trees sent both of them to their feet. A moment later, Reed emerged from the underbrush. Ella slipped the globe into her pocket. She liked the way she could feel it resting against her leg.

  “Where have you been?” Simon asked as his gun went back in the holster.

  Reed held up a creel. In his other hand, he held a compact fishing rod. “Been catching breakfast. Anyone like trout?”

  This time they found a rocky overhang under which to start a small fire. Reed produced a frying pan and with little fanfare fried three rainbow trout to perfection. They took turns eating the fish right from the pan. It took almost an hour to be ready to go again, but Ella had to admit the warm food sat better in her stomach than anything had in several days. Maybe she was getting over the incessant nausea. Happy thought.

  But about the only one.

  The nightly dreams featuring her father were growing increasingly bizarre and unfulfilling, and meeting Reed hadn’t helped foster any warm, fuzzy scenarios. She fingered the globe in her pocket as she thought about the man she was soon to meet.

  He’d taken huge amounts of money and apparently still wielded enough power to engage men like Reed and the others to do what he told them to do despite the danger. He had to be a cold, heartless man and Ella couldn’t help wondering if she’d kept in close contact with him over the years or if she hadn’t seen him since he ran away. She must have been twelve at the time. And he’d left her with an abusive mother, she was pretty sure about that.

  This time, she got to the pack first and had it adjusted on her back before Simon could protest. They adopted the same formation as the day before, Reed in front, Simon bringing up the rear. This far up the mountain, the trail was more of a suggestion than an actual path. The waterfall was on their right as they ascended, though they lost sight of it on occasion. They climbed in silence, each caught up in the chore of just getting a little farther along.

  An hour went by, then two. It wasn’t until Ella stopped to take a deep breath and turned her face up to the sky in order to stretch her aching back that she realized the rain had stopped. The spring sunlight felt like a heat lamp.

  Simon caught up with her. As he brushed a curl from her forehead he gazed at her with troubled gray eyes. “I want you to stay near me,” he said as they resumed walking, this time more or less together. “Behind me, if you can. We don’t know what to expect, so expect anything and everything.”

  He was talking about possible danger. He was talking about flying bullets and abductions and knives. The enormity of what she was possibly subjecting someone else to really hit home.

  Her hand fluttered against her abdomen as she took a half-dozen steps and then she stopped and turned to look at him. “There’s something you have to know.”

  “Okay. Go ahead. What?”

  “I think I’m pregnant.”

  His gaze remained steady. The man was truly unflappable. She added, “I wanted you to know because it means there might be two of me to protect.”

  “How long have you suspected?” he asked.

  “Since after the abduction, after the first time we went to the library. That’s why I haven’t had time or opportunity to buy a test.”

  She was sure she saw the gears spinning and turning in back of his eyes, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Okay,” she finished lamely. “Well, now you know.”

  “Now I know. It explains a lot.”

  “I wish it explained who the father was.” Please, not Carl…

  “You’ll know soon,” Simon said. “We’d better catch up with Reed. We’re almost at the top.”

  She nodded and turned, but he caught her arm and she looked back over her shoulder at him.

  “You’re going to make a great mother, Ella.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I really do. And I’ll be there for you if you’ll let me.”

  “Why wouldn’t I let you?”

  “Oh, you know, things happen and—” A sound up ahead cut off his words. “Falling rock,” he murmured as he drew his weapon and stepped in front of her. “Reed?” he yelled.

  The path twisted and turned as it climbed and though Ella peered ahead, she could see no sign of the older man. At last they heard his voice. “I’m okay, I’m okay. Just a little stumble.”

  Over his shoulder, Simon said, “Let me go ahead.”

  She nodded, falling into step a second behind him. Around the second bend, they came across Reed sitting on the ground, holding his ankle, swearing. From the look of things, he’d lost his footing on a patch of small rocks.

  Simon reholstered his revolver as Ella knelt beside Reed. “Is anything broken?”

  “No, just twisted or sprained. I’m okay,” Reed said. He grabbed hold of a bigger rock and used it to push himself to his feet, glaring at Ella when she reached out to steady him.

  “I’m fine,” he insisted.

  “Maybe we should take off your boot.”

  “No,” Simon said. “Better keep it on in case his foot starts to swell. We can’t have much farther to go.”

  “Not far,” Reed agreed. He shrugged his arm away from Ella and started walking again. Ella and Simon exchanged glances when they saw his limp, but they fell dutifully in line behind him.

  Eventually, Ella spied a red dot off to the west and pointed it out to the men. Shading her eyes and peering into the distant sky, she could barely discern the dragonfly shape of an approaching helicopter.

  “My father?” Ella whispered, trembling inside. It was almost over. Her memory would come back—she would know who she was, she could go back to her life, she could nourish a new life—heck, she could know who to inform he was going to be a father. Her fingers danced over the globe in her pocket.

  “He’s early,” Reed grumbled.

  “Maybe he’s just anxious to see his daughter,” Simon said.

  “Of course he is,” Reed agreed, and once again
continued walking, the limp growing more pronounced with each step. “There’s a gullylike thing we have to navigate up ahead, and then we’re there,” he added.

  The gully turned out to be a narrow, rocky chute, deeply channeled and uneven. Reed stopped to lean against an exposed root of a towering pine. His foot obviously hurt him. The waterfall was very close at this point on the trail and it was too noisy to converse.

  Simon tapped his chest and stepped ahead of Reed. He negotiated the tricky footing by climbing onto a boulder-size rock, then more or less sliding down the other side. Ella followed. As Simon gained ground, he reached out for Ella to help her. She, in turn, reached back for Reed, but he hadn’t followed and gestured for her to go on.

  At last Simon hauled her up the last precarious few feet, where they erupted onto the wide riverbed. The river itself was dark and swift, cascading over the lip, fed by the spring runoff from the Canadian Rockies. Huge flat rocks jutted up at random intervals. The forest crowded the edges of the bed. The ground beside the river was muddy, slippery.

  Ella spared a quick look down the waterfall as Simon paused, she supposed to wait for Reed. It had to be a four-hundred-foot drop, a cascade of torrential water intent on fulfilling its destiny.

  Simon tugged on her arm, pointed at himself and then back down the chute. She nodded her understanding and watched as he disappeared back the way they’d come. She shook her head—she knew Reed would hate taking help from Simon almost as much as he hated taking help from her. He wasn’t the kind of guy who asked for or accepted a lending hand with grace.

  She took a deep breath and perched atop a rock, searching the sky for the helicopter, which she’d lost sight of during the past several minutes. It cleared the trees about a half mile away and began a descent toward her.

  Though Ella was sweaty from the climb, she broke into chills as the pilot chose a solid-looking spot of smaller rocks set back from the water about a quarter of a mile away. The blades sent sand and grit into a swirling cloud as it hovered.

  Merging worlds spun in her head. Her past and her future raced toward each other. Too late now to stop even if she wanted to. She got to her feet and began walking over the uneven rocks, breaking into a trot, her heart lodged in her throat as the copter touched down.

  As the propellers spun to a halt, she shrugged the pack off her back and let it fall to the rocky ground. Bracing her hands on her knees, she took deep breaths.

  This was it. The moment she’d been waiting for was upon her.

  The pilot’s door opened as she straightened up. An older man climbed out. He stood tall and straight, a leather bomber jacket worn with panache. The smile of greeting she’d felt flowering on her lips wilted and died as he pinned her in place with bright blue eyes.

  She squinted against the glare off the helicopter, trying to see the man’s features, trying to record them, recall them. He looked exactly as Ella had imagined he would, from the high forehead to the straight silver hair. Tyler Starling, her father, looked enough like her that she knew it would set every Starling bone in her body humming with recognition.

  This was it.

  SIMON PULLED REED up the last few feet of the chute. The old man glowered at him. Well, what had he expected? They hadn’t exactly been buddy-buddy during this trek; no reason for that to change now.

  Once at the top, they both looked around at the impressive scenery, but Simon suspected Reed was also looking for Ella, just as he was.

  They both spotted the bright red helicopter at the same time. It looked like a Bell JetRanger to Simon. Ella stood near it, facing a man wearing a brown jacket. The two of them reminded him of the acrylic snow globe Ella now carried in her pocket. Two figures facing each other, frozen in time instead of plastic.

  “Damn,” Simon muttered. “I shouldn’t have left her up here alone.”

  “No one asked you to come back for me,” Reed said as he dropped the pack from his back and leaned it against a rock. “I would have made it okay.”

  Simon ignored him and started walking. The old man limped but kept pace, navigating the uneven ground pretty well, all things considered. “Did her father come alone?” Simon asked.

  “That was the plan.”

  “I can’t see past the glare on the windshield. There could be someone else in the chopper. Let’s go faster.” Simon could think of nothing to do but get to Ella’s side as soon as possible. There was no covert way to approach and rushing in like a storm trooper would be counterproductive at best. “If I’m right, that machine has about a three-hundred-mile range,” he said as they walked. “Did her dad come from three hundred miles away or is he going to travel that far when he leaves here?”

  “The airport isn’t far. We’re not as remote as it may seem. Things have become…uncomfortable…in Canada. He’s leaving.”

  “Why a copter?”

  Reed shrugged again. “Why not? The man is rich, he’s on the run, not a bad way to get around, right?”

  “I guess.” He kept his opinion to himself, but a wanted murderer living the high life rubbed him the wrong way. He was surprised it didn’t rub Reed the wrong way, too. His suspicions were right, Reed had once been a cop like the first two contacts. He’d known her father, or at least it sure sounded as though he had and maybe still did. According to the brief newspaper report he’d seen, Tyler Starling’s actions had shamed the whole Chicago police department.

  They were close enough now for Simon to see the face of the man by the helicopter. While he’d not really stopped to think about what Tyler Starling would look like, this guy was perfect. But no one seemed to be talking. As Simon crossed the last few feet to Ella’s side, he tried to get a clear view inside, but the reflection on the bubble still obliterated everything.

  Halting behind her, he touched her elbow. “Ella?” He met her father’s impersonal gaze and tried a nod. “Ella, let’s all walk away from the helicopter, okay?” With a glance, he included Ella’s dad in the invitation.

  Ella shook her head as she turned to look up at him. “I have a million images in my head,” she said. “They’re all disjointed. You, my house, thousands of trees for some dumb reason, my mother’s face, my father disappearing into thin air—they’re all inside my head but it doesn’t make sense. Seeing my father has done nothing to jog my memory.”

  “Give it a bit.”

  Ella’s dad remained statue still. Ella took a few steps toward him. “Dad?” she said.

  Starling’s expression didn’t change. It was as though his emotions had been spent years before. Why didn’t he speak? Why arrange such a meeting if—

  No, wait a second. Starling didn’t look indifferent, he looked terrified.

  At the same moment Starling reached out to Ella as if to warn her away, Simon sensed movement in the helicopter interior. His hand went for his gun, but before he could draw, the crack of a bullet exploded and Tyler Starling sagged to the ground.

  Ella ran to her father, catching his falling form in her arms as Carl Baxter jumped from the copter to the rocks. Simon had his gun out and he was pretty sure Reed had unshouldered the rifle, but Baxter already had his gun pointed at Ella.

  Chopper rounded the front of the machine, his big curved knife held at his side, an assault rifle looped over his shoulder. He took one look at the fallen man and screamed. “You shot him, you bastard. He was mine to kill, not yours.”

  Baxter spared the big man an impatient sneer. “Will you please try to keep your eye on the big picture?”

  Chopper sheathed the knife and slung the rifle around in front of him.

  Reed whispered, “William Smith and Sanjay Chopra working together? God help us.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Under her father’s sagging weight, Ella folded to the ground, cradling him in her lap. His blood seeped into her clothes, his breathing was irregular and rattled, blood bubbled on his lips. The pressure of a cold circle of steel against the back of her neck was the only sensation her brain registered.


  “Once again, I seem to hold all the cards,” Carl said, talking over her head. “You two put down your weapons or the little lady gets shot right where she sits.”

  Vaguely aware of the sound of weapons hitting the rocks, Ella leaned in close to her dad’s face. “Can you hear me?” she whispered. “Please, answer me.”

  His eyes seemed to focus on hers and then he took a shuddering breath. In the next instant, his mouth went slack. With a growing sense of shock, Ella realized her father was dead.

  Carl grabbed her arm, pulling so hard she had no choice but to stumble to her feet as her dad’s body slipped to the riverbank. Tears of loss and fury burned behind her nose.

  She turned on Carl and, heedless of the gun in his hand, beat on his chest with her fists. “You killed him,” she screamed. “You bastard, you killed my father before he could say anything to me. How could you? How could you?” The tears rolled freely now, but she didn’t care, she was too devastated to care.

  Carl used his gun-free hand to slap her. Even as her neck jerked back, she saw Simon try to help her. For his efforts, Chopper swung the butt of his gun into Simon’s mouth. Enraged even more, she went berserk, lashing out at Carl in any way she could until he caught both her shoulders and shook her.

  “You silly bitch,” he hissed. “You don’t know, do you?”

  Something in his voice and the smile twisting his lips froze the sobs in her throat.

  He spun her around. Simon stood a few feet away, gray eyes blazing, blood dripping down his chin from the gash across his bottom lip. Reed stood next to him, pale to the point of bleached laundry.

  “That’s your father,” Carl said, pointing, but not at the dead pilot.

  Her gaze met Simon’s for one heartbeat. In the next, they both looked at Reed.

  “IS IT TRUE?” she finally whispered.

  Reed stared at her, his lips drawn into a tight, straight line.

  “Ah, come on, Tyler,” Carl said. “Tell her all about it.”