Classified Baby

by Jessica Andersen

  “We’re almost there.” Evangeline paused. “Listen, I’m the last person who should be giving relationship advice, but I know Ethan so I’m going to say it anyway. Don’t give up on him yet.”

  Nic snorted. “There’s nothing to give up.”

  “There could be.” Evangeline’s face was stern in profile as she drove, and faintly haggard with lack of sleep. “Look, when I met him, he was in a really bad place. Something bad happened, and he felt responsible. Heck, he still does, and I think he’s using it as an excuse to be a loner.”

  Nic glanced over. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I want him to be happy, and right now I don’t think he knows what’s going to make him happy.” Before Nic could respond, Evangeline turned into a parking garage, took the first available spot and announced, “We’re here. Come on. They’ll be waiting for us.”

  She was out of the car like a shot, leaving Nic to wonder whether there’d been an ulterior motive to the other woman’s advice.

  Inside the police station, Detective Riske met them just inside the door, her sharp face tensing when she saw Evangeline. “Mr. Moore called me when he couldn’t get through on your cell.”

  Evangeline blanched. “I forgot to turn it back on after two days of landlines. What’s wrong? Is it Robert?”

  “I’m sorry,” the detective said, eyes darkening with regret. “Apparently there was a skirmish south of Madrid.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “They’re not sure. He’s disappeared.”

  Chapter Seven

  Spain

  “Let me out of here, you bastard!” For what seemed like the hundredth time, Robert lifted his bound legs and slammed them against the metal wall beside him. The echo boomed on the dry, hot air, but there was no sound from outside the metal container where he was being held.

  The dimensions of the space, along with a pair of small vents and a locked rolling door at one end suggested he’d been tossed in the back of a box truck. The vehicle hadn’t moved in the hour or so since he’d regained consciousness, indicating that they’d parked him.

  But where?

  “Bugger it,” he muttered, cursing himself as much as them.

  One minute he’d been huddling with a handful of PPS’s most experienced operatives, fine-tuning the plan to grab Clive when he returned to the small house he’d rented south of Madrid. In the next minute, all hell had broken loose. He remembered a blur of knife-wielding locals and the pop of handgun fire, and nothing after that.

  His arm hurt like hell, but as best he could tell in the dim, filtered light, the wound had bled freely and scabbed over, leaving him smelling of blood and sweat. “No tears, though,” he said aloud, dry lips cracking when he smiled at his own joke.

  The thought of tears had him remembering the scene at the airport, tingeing his desperate situation with an added layer of grief.

  He should’ve handled Evangeline better. He should’ve handled a lot of things better since his return from Cuerva, but he’d found his social skills rusty, his skills as a husband even worse. He’d spent two years with her image firmly in his mind, but on some level he’d forgotten how strong-willed she could be, how independent. He’d expected a reunion and gotten resentment instead, and that had triggered his own stubborn streak, leaving them at odds when they should’ve been working together. And now…

  Now she was back in the States, once again receiving word that he was missing, maybe even presumed dead.

  At the thought of it, at the image of her perfect face stained with tears and grief, he did the only thing he could think to do.

  He lifted his bound legs and slammed them into the metal wall again, hoping against hope that someone would hear.

  Colorado, USA

  “DOES THIS look like what you saw?” The sketch artist spun her laptop and showed Nic the image on the screen.

  Nic frowned at the silhouette image of a helicopter, concentrating on the scattershot mental images the hypnotist had managed to retrieve. She’d regained her memory of most of the elevator ride, right up to the actual moment of impact. She also remembered those terrifying minutes after she’d regained consciousness, when Ethan had been climbing down to rescue her, and she’d been sure she would fall to her death at any moment. Oddly enough, those images seemed somehow cushioned, with a misty gray curtain distancing her from immediate terror. She suspected she had the hypnotist—a tall, thin man with a pronounced right hook to his nose—to thank for that.

  Unfortunately, her memories of the helicopter’s inhabitants remained fuzzy. She’d been able to remember only that there had been a pilot and one passenger sitting beside him, along with a tall man with a rocket launcher who might or might not have been the guy who’d been in her hospital room. Luckily, though, she was clearer on the machine itself. In theory, if she could help identify the make and model, the investigators should be able to track down its registration, or at least narrow the search.

  She squinted at the photo, comparing it to the newly-remembered images in her brain. “The helicopter’s nose was longer and more streamlined, and I think the thing on the tail was taller.”

  The sketch artist, an energetic, bespectacled woman in her mid-fifties who’d proved to be more of a computer modeler than a pen-and-paper artist, nodded and spun the laptop back around to face her. Two iterations later, they had their helicopter.

  After a quick database search, the artist said, “It’s probably military surplus, maybe an MI-2 or -8. They have a range of five hundred miles or so, a top speed of about a hundred-fifty. They’re not rare in civilian use, but it’s less of a needle in a haystack than it was.”

  Detective Riske rose to her feet. “I’m on it.” She offered Nicole her hand. “Thank you. We appreciate you coming in, and submitting to hypnosis. I can’t imagine it was pleasant.”

  “Better that than doing nothing while someone else dies,” Nic said quietly. While waiting for the artist, she’d learned that a young girl had been killed by debris that had fallen from the office building after the attack. The child and her mother had been minding their own business on the street when death had fallen from the sky.

  How quickly life could change, Nic thought as she rose and collected her new lightweight jacket and a half-full bottle of soda. The point was brought home moments later when she passed the front desk and saw who was waiting to drive her back to the Vault.

  It was Ethan.

  SHE WAS PALE, he saw, even beneath an added hint of makeup. The new clothes flattered her with a practical, no-nonsense style he couldn’t help admiring.

  He’d managed to stay away from her for almost twenty-four hours, but it had seemed like longer, and when she passed him on her way to the exit and he caught her subtle, flowery scent, it was all he could do to keep himself from closing his eyes and inhaling.

  “How bad was the hypnosis?” he asked as he escorted her to the Jeep and held the passenger’s door for her.

  “I survived,” she said, her expression giving away nothing. “Detective Riske is going to look for a military surplus helicopter, maybe something called an MI-8. Black, with no FAA numbers.”

  “I’ll look into it,” he said as he swung into the driver’s side and fired up the engine. “PPS has access to a few more databases than the cops.”

  She glanced over at him. “Has there been any word on Robert?”

  He hit the gas a little too hard, shooting them out of the parking garage and onto the streets beyond. “It was an ambush. A setup. Somehow Clive knew we were onto him and used himself as bait. When the team moved in, they walked straight into a trap.” He blew out a breath, gut grinding at the frustration of not being there, of not being able to help.

  For the first time in a long, long time, he regretted having kept himself at the edge of things. He was one of the PPS operatives yet not one of them, a member of the team while still being a man apart.

  Nic frowned at a passing street sign. “You’re headed away from the Va
ult. Are you afraid we’re being followed?”

  “I always assume I’m being followed. That’s what makes me a good bodyguard.” Or it usually did. Now, though, he was distracted and not at top form. “But we’re not going straight back to the Vault. There’s someone I’d like you to meet, first.” Ethan’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel until he could feel the imprint of the plastic in his flesh at the thought of Blake Rothschild, a former protectee who owed him a favor.

  Blake was loaded with family money so old it smelled musty, and cheerfully donated time and cash to everything from Save the Spotted Newt to an inventor who was halfway to building an antigravity unit. Blake was also charming, handsome, personable, fiercely loyal…

  And he wanted a family.

  NIC STAYED silent as Ethan drove them south out of Denver to Sedalia, an upscale area very near the legendary Denver Polo Club. She knew the area because Jonah used to drive her through it, boasting that they’d live there once he’d landed a few more big clients. Or had gotten a promotion. Or been made partner. The ambition seemed to expand each time they went on one of their “tours,” with the promises getting wilder, the houses getting bigger and grander.

  Though none so grand as the one Ethan turned toward, winding up a long, tree-lined driveway that led to a mansion.

  The circular drive was paved with cement bricks in interspersed patterns of red, gray and tan that arched around a central planting bed where three old trees shaded a small fountain. The house itself blended the best of modern and classical architecture, with huge, airy windows, wrought-iron balustrades and strategic touches of brick. Wide granite steps led up to the front entrance, which was flanked with upright columns of local stone that had been turned into art by the wearing effects of wind and rain.

  Instead of leading her up to the heavy front door, with its inset stained glass, Ethan gestured her around the side of the house, along a more modest brick walkway flanked with seasonal plantings and colored gravel.

  “Servant’s entrance?” she quipped when they reached a normal-looking door.

  “Nah,” he answered. “Friends, neighbors and people not looking for donations.” He pushed open the door partway and called, “Yo, Blake!”

  Footsteps sounded moments later and the door swung open to reveal a tall, lean man in his late thirties, with shaggy light brown hair, kind mid-blue eyes and a faintly crooked nose. In a crisp white button-down shirt, untucked and with the sleeves rolled up on his tanned forearms, along with comfortably tailored navy pants and a pair of quillwork moccasins, he was probably wearing a thousand dollars worth of clothes on a casual stay-at-home day. Framed in the brick-faced doorway, with glimpses of polished wood and oriental carpets visible behind him, he should have looked unapproachable, like something out of the glossy magazines Nic flipped through in line at the grocery store.

  Instead, when he smiled and held out a hand, she felt as if she’d known him forever.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Nicole. I’m Blake Rothschild.” His handshake was firm but undemanding, and he moved with innate grace when he stepped back and ushered them inside. “Please.”

  This, Nic realized as she stepped inside a home that she immediately saw was a home, despite its size and grandeur, this was what Jonah-the-jerk had always wanted to be and never quite managed to pull off. Blake Rothschild, however, managed it in spades. That very fact—and the parallel between the two men—should have put her on alert. Instead, she felt the tickle of warmth that came from meeting someone she immediately knew she could be friends with.

  “This way.” He led them down a short hallway that was mostly windows on one side, with the opposite wall painted a pale mint-green and hung with a series of watercolors depicting local scenes, both the city and the mountains beyond.

  Ethan nodded to the paintings. “Blake’s work.”

  “They’re lovely,” Nicole said, and she meant it, but that didn’t explain the connection between the two men, or why Ethan had brought her here. When Blake paused at a doorway and gestured for her to precede him through, she paused and looked up at him. “You’re a painter?”

  His lips quirked. “Ethan didn’t tell you why he wanted us to meet, did he?”

  Nicole was reassured by the easy friendship between the men, but nerves danced across her skin and gathered in her belly as she crossed a cozy yet masculine library, and a new suspicion began to take shape. What if Ethan had decided to clear his conscience by finding their baby a substitute father? Her suspicion only intensified when Blake gestured her to a mahogany-legged leather sofa and took the matching chair opposite her, but Ethan remained standing near the door.

  Blake caught her quick look in that direction. “He’s very good. But then, we both know that, don’t we?”

  Nicole frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “Ethan spent a short stint here about a year ago, guarding me.” Blake pantomimed a shooting motion in Ethan’s direction, then answered her question, saying, “The painting is a hobby. In real life, I run a telecommunications R & D boutique, very high-tech, very specialized. I was competing with several other companies for the rights to a nanochip patent, and began receiving some, shall we say, less than complimentary communications from an overseas competitor.”

  In other words, he’d gotten death threats, Nic realized. “Ethan was your bodyguard?”

  “Exactly. I offered him a permanent position, but you know Ethan. He’s not the settling-down type.”

  As if punctuating the point, Ethan’s cell phone rang. He flipped it open and checked the display, and his expression blanked. He looked from Nic to Blake and back. “I need to take this. Will you two be okay?”

  “We’re fine.” Blake waved him off. “I reset the alarm once we were inside, and the perimeter motion detectors are on. Nobody’s getting to her in here.”

  Ethan sent Nic a long, unreadable look before he answered the call on the fourth ring as he headed through the door, his voice and footsteps receding down the hallway.

  “Ethan told me about your situation,” Blake said without preamble. “I know how stressed out you must be. I think I can help.”

  Almost positive Ethan had planned this as a setup, as a way to assuage his guilt over what she’d over-heard the other day, Nic said, “You don’t strike me as the type to date unwed single mothers-to-be.”

  There was a long moment of silence before Blake coughed, and then grinned. “Ethan didn’t tell me about that part. He said you’d witnessed an attack and now you have people gunning for you. I remember how awful it was to not be able to step outside my door without armed protection.”

  “Oh.” Nic’s face flamed and her stomach knotted in enormous embarrassment. She’d just made an assumption based on almost no data. “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry. I thought…” She trailed off and waited for a second, hoping the floor would open up and swallow her, so she wouldn’t have to face a man—a very rich, successful man—she’d all but accused of wanting…what? An instant family? “I don’t know what I was thinking. Can we chalk it up to temporary insanity brought on by hormones?”

  He laughed. “Consider it done, and we’ll get down to business.”

  “What business?”

  “Ethan also told me you’re in need of an investor for biofuel R & D, and he knows that I’m always looking to underwrite small inventors, particularly when they’re connected to education.” While Nic gaped at him, he leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. “Go ahead. Hit me with your best pitch. Tell me why I should fund your project.”

  Chapter Eight

  Spain

  As she spoke into the landline phone, Evangeline kept her back to the wall and her attention on the passing airport travelers. She pitched her voice to carry over the background hum of mixed languages, Spanish predominating. “I’ll call you once I hook up with the others and we’ve pulled together a plan.”

  Ethan’s voice was subdued when he said, “I wish you’d talked to me about this before you left.”

/>   “Why, so you could tell me not to go?” She blew out a frustrated breath as part of her wished she hadn’t called him. Angel knew she’d left the Vault, and the team in Madrid knew she was on her way…but she’d wanted—needed—somebody to worry about her as a person. Under other circumstances, that would’ve been Robert. Given the present situation, Ethan had gotten the call. Now she said, “Think of it this way, I saved you the argument.” When he didn’t reply, she lowered her voice and went with the truth. “Look, I know you don’t approve, and you’ve probably got a point, but I can’t—I won’t—sit around back home and wait while other people look for my husband. Not ever again.”

  “I know. Just be careful, will you? PPS can’t lose you. And just think of how Robert would feel if they get him out and something’s happened to you.”

  Nearby, a heavyset man was wearing dark sunglasses that seemed out of place against the gray day outside the Madrid Barajas International Airport. Evangeline narrowed her eyes and watched him as she said, “I thought you didn’t like Robert.”

  “I’m warming to him.”

  Evangeline snorted, partly from amusement, partly from relief that Señor Sunglasses had walked right past her to cheek-kiss an older woman schlepping two rolling suitcases. “I’ll be careful, I promise. If you don’t believe me, call one of the guys and check up on me.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said, but they both knew he wouldn’t. Though he’d been working at PPS for over a year, he didn’t consider himself one of the team. In his mind, he was still an independent contractor working on the fringes.

  “Take care of things back at the Vault for me, okay?” she said softly, suddenly nervous that she might never see home again.

  “Of course. I’ll e-mail updates to your account as warranted, since Cam said the Internet is more reliable than the international phone connections over there.” He paused, and she heard voices in the background. “Take care of yourself. I mean it.”