Played

by Tasha Fawkes

  All I could focus on now was Sarah.

  Ethan, for the moment, was fast asleep in the nursery. It had taken me a while to get him settled down this morning.

  About an hour and a half ago, Kelli had left the house, claiming she had a brief photo shoot in downtown LA. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that she didn't seem at all concerned about Sarah's abrupt departure, that she didn't seem to be concerned about Ethan's fussiness either.

  I had to face it. It appeared that she just didn't care. If I were to be completely honest with myself, I didn't really believe she had a photo shoot, thought that she’d just wanted to get away from Ethan's fussing.

  And fussing he was. All morning, missing Sarah and her sweet way with him. A couple of times, he squalled so hard his face had gone red. He'd never done that before.

  Where the hell was Sarah? How could she possibly just up and leave without any notice?

  It didn't make any sense. She didn’t seem like the kind of person who would do that. Not just to us, to me, but to the child she was looking after. Over the past weeks, it had become obvious that not only did Sarah have affection for Ethan, but Ethan had developed a very deep connection with Sarah. He was the one suffering the most from this separation.

  Or was he? Was I even more dismal than Ethan?

  I scowled as I stared out the office window at the now empty driveway. Leave it to Kelli to bail on me. You didn't find a new nanny in one day. Not just anybody would do, not when it came to caring for Ethan.

  My frown deepened. Too much had happened in a short span of time. Were all these events coincidence? Possibly, but I’d never really believed in coincidences. Come to think of it, the out of the blue attempt by Graphica to take over my company was just the start. I still didn't know who was behind it or their reasoning.

  Was it a coincidence that right when I was dealing with that, I found a baby on my doorstep and a former girlfriend reentered my life claiming that the baby was mine? A son that I never knew I had?

  It was all about the timing. For the first time, it occurred to me that something was odd with that timing.

  My heart thudded then raced as a surge of emotions blew through me. Pride in and fear for my company. Thankfulness for the tentative reestablishment of a relationship that was occurring between me and my dad. My growing love for Ethan, my affection for Sarah, and… and what about Kelli? My feelings for Kelli remained guarded. I guessed I’d been putting on a good face, trying to tell myself that I was pleased to have her back in my life. She'd been on her best behavior, but the cracks were starting to show.

  What bothered me most about Kelli's return was her lack of affection and concern for Ethan. That lack of “motherliness” dimmed my attraction to her. Dimmed my hope that we could be a family. Even accepting postpartum depression, wouldn't a mother be able to show some affection, or at the very least, compassion for an infant who relied on adults to take care of it? She'd never snuggled with Ethan, never tried to bond, didn't even feel comfortable holding him. She didn't want to try.

  It was at that moment I realized I had made a big mistake. One that I’d briefly thought about but neglected to do. That should've been done that day Ethan arrived on my doorstep.

  I picked up the phone and called my attorney.

  "Hey, Jack," I said when the man’s gravelly voice came on the line. "It's Joel Farrell."

  “Joel! How are you, buddy?”

  "I'm fine, thank you, and I'm sorry for calling you on such short notice in the middle of the morning, but I need something, and I need it fast."

  “Everybody needs everything in five minutes, Joel. I do my best, but… What is it you need?”

  "A paternity test."

  “I see. That’s not as fast as a pregnancy test. Most you have to wait to come back from the lab.”

  "I understand, but I can't wait that long. I need to find out today.”

  There was a pause. “Sounds dramatic. Do you need to come in?”

  “No, and I can't explain right now, but it's important, an emergency, and you know I wouldn't ask if I didn't think time was of the essence.”

  “Hang on, I’m looking up a lab we use in emergency situations.” The phone muted for a moment, then Jack came back. “Can you be at Tests Now in thirty minutes?”

  “Yes, I can do that. Where's the place?" I quickly strode to my desk, grabbed a pen, and scribbled an address on a notepad.

  “I called them. They promise same day test results if you go in before noon.”

  "That’s awesome. I can make it.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  “Will do,” I said as I hung up and prepared the diaper bag for a quick trip to Bel Air.

  Within thirty minutes, Ethan and I were at the lab, an impressive, clean anomaly of a place that seemed to have replaced the doctor’s office for tests.

  Two cotton swabs each of my DNA, then Ethan's, securely sealed in plastic baggies, and we were finished.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I addressed the nurse who had efficiently taken our samples.

  She was smiling down at Ethan, who had barely stirred this entire time.

  “He’s just as cute as a button. Looks just like you too.” Her eyes flicked quickly up to my face. “I guess that’s what you’re going to confirm, sorry. You can expect a phone call within a few hours.”

  I paid, then breathed a sigh of relief as I headed back to the car.

  I wasn't sure how I felt. I wanted Ethan to be mine, I really did, but the more I thought about all that had happened in the past few months, and Kelli's behavior, I wondered if I was truly his biological father. Now though, it didn’t matter if she’d foisted some other guy's kid off on me. Ethan was mine, and I’d fight her for him if I had to.

  I was a bundle of nerves by the time I got back home. Ethan woke up and I played with him for a few minutes, gave him a bottle as we sat in the rocking chair in the nursery, and watched as he drifted into the peaceful sleep of an innocent in my arms. I placed him in the crib and tried to get some work done in my home office, wondering when Kelli would be back. I couldn't leave Ethan alone, and I wasn't about to drag him to the office with me.

  I couldn't concentrate, worrying about Sarah, the paternity test, Kelli, and my company. Once again, I scrutinized the paperwork. Tried to find not only a rationale, but some indication that someone from inside my company was playing dirty.

  The house was quiet as I analyzed the documents, graph charts, and financial spreadsheets laid out on the desk in front of me. The low ring of my cell phone startled me from the depths of my research. I glanced at it, saw the number, and realized it was the clinic.

  I looked up at the wall clock. Two and a half hours had passed since I'd gotten home. My heart pounding, I answered the call.

  It was a different female voice on the other end, not the nurse from the lab, her voice cold and efficient. “Joel Farrell, you are not a match to be the father of the infant boy.”

  Her voice faded, drowned out by a buzzing in my ears. "You're certain?"

  “Yes, sir. The results are preliminary, but the testing determined that your DNA doesn't match some of the markers in Ethan's DNA.”

  I grunted as the words kicked me in the gut and twisted. “Thank you.” I disconnected the call and leaned back, closing my eyes.

  I was not Ethan's father.

  I didn't understand about alleles and ladders or peaks, but the basic results were clear. I was not related to Ethan, not even distantly.

  My heart hurt. I felt as if the air had been sucked out of my lungs. I squeezed my eyes together tightly, trying to think, but my emotions swamped me. Ethan was not my son, so my suspicions had been confirmed along with my deepest fear. Kelli had played me. But to what end? What kind of sick game was she playing?

  I sat up as I realized something else. If Ethan belonged to Kelli, why had she for all intents and purposes, placed the care of her son every day in the arms of another woman? Why was Kelli so content to let Sarah raise her
son? It made no sense, postpartum depression or not. Neither did the fact that Kelli’s body didn’t reflect a single sign of having carried a child for nine months.

  Another thought began to burgeon at the back of my brain, one that I didn't even want to consider, but I had gone this far, might as well go the rest of the way. When Kelli got home, I would confront her, but until then, I had one more task.

  I quickly left my office and entered Sarah's room, searching for anything she’d left behind, anything that might provide me with a clue as to what the hell was really going on. I opened drawers in the dresser but found none of her clothes. The closet had been emptied. I stepped into the bathroom, finding nothing until I opened the top drawer. It looked like Sarah had neglected to pack any of her toiletries. The drawer held toothpaste, a toothbrush, makeup wipes, and a hairbrush with several strands of long brown hair curled up in the bristles.

  Without thinking, I took the brush and toothbrush and headed into the kitchen, where I placed them in a gallon-sized plastic bag. Once again, I called Jack, then the clinic, and made a return trip, a sleeping Ethan in tow, to test the toothbrush or the hair in the hairbrush for mitochondrial DNA.

  By midafternoon I had another answer, an answer that I couldn't even fathom.

  The clinic had tested the DNA profile from Sarah's hair to Ethan's cheek swab DNA results. A maternal match.

  Ethan wasn't my son. He wasn't Kelli's son. He was Sarah's son.

  I hadn’t heard from Kelli, and I was unable to get her to answer her phone. I had questions, lots of them. And I had no doubt that Kelli knew where Sarah was.

  I had been played for a fool.

  My mind's eye flashed through the looks Sarah gave Ethan — her son — and the affection, the concern, the worry every time he was out of her arms. I knew at that moment that Sarah would never willingly leave Ethan, which led me to yet another staggering thought. Was Kelli behind Sarah's disappearance?

  Without wasting another moment, I got back on the phone and called Cory Bascom, the head of security for my company. He also worked as a private investigator for the DA's office, but moonlighted for my company on occasion.

  After my cutting off his usual pleasantries, he knew there was something wrong and said, “I’m listening.”

  I gave him a brief rundown of the situation. “I need to find Kelli, and fast.” I recited her car's license plate number and her cell phone number. Sometimes it paid to have a photographic memory.

  “I’ll be able to use a couple of sources to get the location of her phone. I’ll call you back within twenty minutes.”

  As far as I was concerned, twenty minutes seemed like hours, but I busied myself by digging through the receipts and bills on my desk, looking for any kind of a trail left by Kelli. I thumbed through bill after bill, finding nothing more than clothing purchases, spa treatments, and some club spots. Until I came to her phone bill, which naturally, she expected me to pay.

  I'd never paid attention to her phone bill before, but I noticed the envelope was unusually thick. My hands trembling, my heart still pounding, I ripped open the envelope. It was thick because, for some reason, the phone company had sent call sheets, which I couldn’t remember happening when Kelli and I had been together before. I unfolded them and began going down the rows of her calls. One number stood out, over and over again.

  I frowned, picked up my own phone, and scrolled through my contact list. I had everyone on speed dial, so I didn't have anybody's phone numbers memorized. But maybe — there!

  I stared at the number on my phone, then the number that Kelli had dialed dozens of times over the past month, most of the conversations under five minutes, but frequently hours and hours of time spent.

  Eric.

  She'd been calling Eric, my best friend, my COO.

  And then it clicked. Right then, I knew without a doubt that Eric was somehow involved in the attempted takeover. Perhaps with Kelli egging him on.

  Anger surged through me and I quickly logged onto the network email system at the company. I carefully reviewed not only Eric's work history, but his appointments, and his emails over the past six months.

  My suspicions were confirmed. After double-checking and triple-checking, I found emails and video chats that routed back to Graphica. He'd tried to hide them, but as the primary programmer at my company, I knew how to find what I was looking for.

  Stunned, I felt like I had been gut-punched again, the wind knocked out of me. A soft groan escaped my chest as I leaned forward, feeling sick to my stomach, resting my forehead on my desk.

  I had been betrayed. Worse, I had stepped into the shit without any hesitation. Eric was behind the takeover, and apparently, he and Kelli had something going on the side as well.

  It had been a good plan. The takeover bid was the first step. And distracting. Why not add an even bigger distraction? Put a baby on my doorstep, and disrupt my personal life, not only with the baby, but with Kelli trying to make amends and move back in. And I had let her. What had probably surprised them both was that I have fallen in love with Ethan.

  I strode from my office and down the hallway toward Ethan's nursery, an overwhelming sense of sadness now taking the place of my anger, disappointment, the sense of betrayal.

  I stopped short. And Sarah? What role did she play in all this? Had Kelli lied to her about part of this or did she know everything that was going on?

  I wouldn't know until I found Sarah.

  I called Cody back, filled him in, gave him Eric's phone number and license plate, and in less than half an hour, he reported back to me.

  "They're together."

  "Where?"

  "That's the odd part. They're down near the docks just north of Long Beach, below Signal Hill. That area is pretty much abandoned, fenced off but with some old oil derricks still working. Right now, I'm up on Signal Hill with binoculars, and I can plainly see both the cars in front of an old workshop that I suppose used to service the derricks out there."

  "Call the cops," I said, my mouth dry, my heart pounding so hard I could barely breathe. At the very least, I had proof that Eric was behind an aggressive and hostile takeover of my company. I would file charges. As far as Kelli was concerned, and Sarah and her potential role in all of this, I had no idea.

  And then I did something I never thought I would be tempted to do. After I disconnected the call with Cody, I called my dad.

  After that, everything happened in a blur.

  Nineteen

  Sarah

  Tied to the chair still, I stiffened when Kelli stopped in the doorway, looking at me smugly. Her head snapped toward the sound of a door bursting open, followed by shouts. The color drained from her face as a deep male voice announced, “The LAPD has this building surrounded.” She glanced back at me with an expression of total shock and dismay.

  The security guard who had tied me up surrendered immediately, knowing that his career was over.

  I could hear Eric in the front room, trying to claim innocence of the entire deal, but when Joel entered, the voices of the others faded into the background. As quickly as I was taken captive, I was untied, the others placed in handcuffs.

  Joel’s cool gaze went over me, then he turned to confront his former best friend. It was at that point I knew he was aware that I too had betrayed him. I had inadvertently played a much larger role in a game I hadn’t known I’d even taken part in by believing Kelli's lies. I could have told him the truth at any time.

  As Kelli was being led out of the building in handcuffs, she cried, saying, “I only did it because I love you, Joel, and I wanted to get back together with you.”

  Upon hearing those words, Eric let loose with a string of accusations. “You bitch, at least tell the truth now. Or is that the truth after all? Did you play me too at the same time?”

  I stood, rubbing my wrists, every muscle in my body aching from being tied to the chair, my head pounding, the leftovers from whatever Kelli had used to knock me out. Numb, I watched th
e police take Kelli and Eric away, along with the soon to be former security guard.

  While I was a victim as well—to some degree anyway—Joel avoided me. He seemed to have forgotten the memory of what we had shared together that one time. The camaraderie we’d shared and tried to hide from Kelli. That was what hurt worst of all. It wasn't just Eric and Kelli who had betrayed him or hurt him. I too was to blame and I doubted that I would ever forgive myself for the role I played.

  I was taken to the police station, expecting to be arrested along with the others. Eric and Kelli were charged with kidnapping, embezzlement, and a number of other legal issues pertaining to the hostile takeover of Joel’s company. My head was spinning as I was briefly interviewed by the police. I hadn’t been charged with anything yet, and the officer who interviewed me was amenable, which was much more than I deserved.

  When the interview was over, one of the police officers approached the interview room, followed by Joel, carrying Ethan.

  I wailed when I was reunited with my baby, holding him close. Beyond the door, out in the hallway, stood Joel. I froze at the expression on his face. Pain. His eyes, riveted on Ethan, were bloodshot and he blinked rapidly. I felt sick to my stomach as I saw the brief sheen of tears in his eyes.

  Ethan gurgled happily as I wrapped my arms around him, holding him against my chest, and held on for dear life, tears of relief streaming down my face. I hadn’t even thought about what had happened to all my belongings, until Joel placed a suitcase in the hallway and turned and walked away.

  A police officer picked up the suitcase and gestured toward me. “It’s packed with the baby’s things.” Then he escorted me from the room.

  I held Ethan close, relishing his smell, the nuzzling sounds he made, the feel of him nestled against my chest.

  When I exited the hallway into the foyer of the police station, Joel stood at the far end and my heart gave a start. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes riveted to Ethan. A moment later, his father appeared behind him and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. Before he turned, I caught the sheen of tears in Joel's eyes.