Lock, Stock and Secret Baby

by Cassie Miles

  “Spoken like a trooper,” she said.

  Though she agreed that the present was the only firm basis for understanding, she couldn’t help speculating. What would happen to her precious new relationship with Blake when they found his father’s murderer? A quick analysis of probability told her that they would part and go their separate ways. She doubted that he’d quit the Special Forces to stay with her, especially since she was pregnant.

  When she was dressed, she followed him into the attached double garage where the Mercedes filled the space left by his dad’s station wagon. Blake caressed the roof as he circled around the car. “I don’t have high hopes for finding useful evidence in this stuff. Dad only spent one afternoon a week at Fitzsimons.”

  “But he knew that people were after information about the study. He might have chosen the most unlikely place to hide it.”

  “I think I put the box back here, under the workbench.”

  “Did your dad do building projects?”

  “He tried. But he wasn’t much good as a handyman.”

  She remembered that Vargas had pointed out Dr. Ray’s reluctance to use new technology. “And he didn’t particularly like computers.”

  “He was an old-fashioned guy.”

  Blake lifted a box onto the workbench and started taking things out: a cactus, a wide assortment of pens, a calculator with extra-large numerals and a misshapen ceramic bowl.

  Eve picked up the vase. “Did you make this?”

  “A second-grade project. Art isn’t one of my talents. Nor is music. Nor making money like Vargas.” He turned toward her. “Are we sure that my genetic parents were outstanding individuals?”

  She nodded. “Your gifts are physical. You excelled in sports. You’re in the Special Forces. And you can throw a knife with pinpoint accuracy.”

  “Ha! I knew you were impressed when I did that.”

  She glided her hand down his back and patted his butt. “Not to mention your skill in making love.”

  “That’s genetic?”

  “You inherited your physical attributes and your stamina,” she said. “But there’s an emotional component. I’m not sure what Dr. Ray would call it.”

  “Empathy.” From the box, he took out a framed photograph that was a duplicate of the one in his office. “Me and Mom. Dad loved this picture. I never knew why he didn’t update it. He always said this photo was the key to his happiness.”

  An interesting phrase. “The key?”

  Blake glanced up sharply. “He said it several times.”

  “Take it out of the frame.”

  Blake unfastened the backing on the frame. Written on the flip side of the photograph were twenty-four names and twenty-four corresponding numbers.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Blake turned the photograph over in his hands, impressed by his dad’s cleverness and irritated at himself for not figuring out the clue sooner. “He gave me the answer. The key.”

  Eve nodded. “Dr. Ray must have known for a long time that the information generated by the study was dangerous.”

  “He should have told me.” Though Blake didn’t claim genius status when it came to intellectual stuff, he was damned good in a fight. “Why the hell didn’t he call on me for help?”

  “Because this was his battle.”

  She was blunt but accurate. Blake nodded. “He thought he could handle it by himself.”

  “Also, he didn’t want to tell you about your genetic parents.”

  “Why? It wouldn’t have changed the way I felt about him.”

  Her clear blue eyes softened. “I’m the wrong person to ask when it comes to motives, but I’d guess that your dad’s rationale for keeping this secret had something to do with his love for you.”

  He wished he could go back in time to when his father was alive and tell him how much he loved him and respected him. Ray Jantzen was the best father any man could have.

  He handed the photo to her. “Now what?”

  “We check my computer to see if Vargas fulfilled his promise and sent the DNA charts and your dad’s statistical abstracts.”

  He followed her into the house. The twenty-four names they had just discovered were a list of suspects—people who would kill to keep the information contained in the Prentice-Jantzen study a secret. But Blake had the feeling they’d already encountered the man who murdered his father. Trevor Latimer. David Vargas. Or Pyro.

  In his bedroom, Eve pounced on the laptop computer. Her slender fingers skipped across the keyboard as she pulled up e-mails. “Oh, good. Here’s the stuff from Vargas.”

  While she opened the file and studied what looked like an incomprehensible array of data, he sprawled on the bed. The linens were disheveled from their lovemaking, and it seemed like a waste of time to straighten the sheets. He fully intended to mess them up again.

  With Eve, once was definitely not enough. She sure as hell didn’t make love with the shyness of a virgin. She was demanding in a good way, curious and sexy and passionate.

  She hunched over the computer. Deciphering the data was her bailiwick. There was nothing he could do right now, except wait.

  “Vargas sent the charts.” She spun around in the swivel chair. “Dr. Ray’s key gives us names for the subjects. That’s the good news.”

  “And the bad?”

  “Number one—there are no names for the genetic parents. Number two—your father’s data can’t be interpreted without knowing what he was testing for.”

  “Behavior.” Seemed obvious to Blake. “Dad used his annual questionnaire to assess behavior.”

  “All those questions.” She rolled her eyes. “Do you prefer a party or a quiet evening alone? Do you work better on your own or when being given clear direction? How many times do you have sex in a week?”

  “I never answered that one,” he said.

  “Awkward for you.” She started the printer. “I really hated the ‘on a scale of one to ten’ section. Are you a happy person? A self-starter? Fearful?”

  When he was a child, filling out the annual questionnaire had been a game. The older he got, the more he had resented the questions. Still, the results interested him. “Are you sure you can’t read the data?”

  “It’s a statistical analysis on a graph. All numbers.”

  “Which you love.”

  “I do, indeed.” Her smile was cute and sexy at the same time. “Unfortunately, words are sometimes necessary. It appears that your father rated thirty-two behaviors for each subject. But he didn’t label the behaviors.”

  “Come again?”

  “We need another key.”

  Each layer of complication piled on top of the one before. If Eve hadn’t been helping him, he’d have gone berserk by now. “I guess that means I need to search. What am I looking for?”

  “A list of behavioral characteristics. You know, like introversion and extroversion. Or depression. Stuff like that. There are thirty-two.”

  He rolled off the bed and stretched his arms over his head. Impatience built inside him. He longed for action. “I’ll start in Dad’s office.”

  First, he went to the kitchen and opened the fridge. All he’d had to eat since breakfast was gelato, but the array of plastic containers filled with funeral casseroles was downright depressing. He threw together a sandwich from cold cuts and devoured it as he walked down the hallway.

  In the doorway, he stopped. Entering the room where his father had been killed shouldn’t have bothered him. He’d been in and out of here dozens of times. This moment was different because he’d been thinking about Dad, feeling the ache of losing him.

  His sandwich tasted like dust in his mouth. He tossed half of it into the trash can. His dad and mom had loved this house, and he had good memories of family time together. A sense of bittersweet nostalgia enveloped him.

  He needed to make this right. No matter how impossible it seemed, he would find the killer. When he did, he’d gut this room and start over. Nope, that wasn’t enough. The he
ll with redecorating; he’d sell the house. With both parents gone, there was no reason to stay in Denver. Except for Eve. He wanted to spend more time with her, and it didn’t seem right to abandon her while she was pregnant.

  Thinking of her grounded him. She’d given him a job to do: find the key.

  He pawed the stuff on his dad’s desk. The obvious hiding place was the photograph of him and his mom—an exact duplicate of the one he’d had at his office.

  Blake detached the backing and found nothing but a photo. He ran his finger around the edge of the frame, feeling for an encoded chip or microdot. As if his dad, who could barely handle e-mail, would use such a sophisticated device.

  To find the answer, he had to think of Ray Jantzen, the man who had raised him. Blake whispered, “Where is it, Dad?”

  He could almost hear a reply. Think, Blake. Don’t rush. Take your time.

  Though the desk was cluttered, his dad’s thinking followed methodical patterns that made it harder than hell to put anything over on him. Blake clearly recalled one of his father’s interrogations after he’d stayed out past curfew. The questions went from how he’d lost track of time to how much he’d been drinking. Their final discussion always seemed to circle back to Blake’s tendency to take risks. Look before you leap. How many times had his dad said that? “Excessive Risk-Taking” was probably one of the personality behaviors on his chart.

  He started opening file folders and thumbing through the contents. His dad’s words jumped out at him. An intellectual tone, sometimes stuffy, was apparent in the typed pages of articles he prepared for publication and speeches for presentation at conferences. More revealing were the doodles and scribbled notes in the margins that ranged from “boring” to a row of exclamation points.

  In one paper, “Correlation of High Intelligence and Anti-Social Personality Disorder,” his father had jotted the initials P.G. in the margin. Peter Gregory? The coauthor was listed as Ryan Puller.

  Might be useful to give that shrink a call.

  AS EVE PORED OVER THE genetic charts, relationships became clear. Her own DNA profile showed that she didn’t have any matches for both mother and father, but she shared a mother with Vargas, the other female and two other people whose names she didn’t recognize from the Condolence Book. Blake’s genetic mother also provided eggs for four other subjects.

  To clarify the interrelationships of the genetic fathers, she laid out graphs and variation equations. Vargas appeared to be the only subject who had a singular genetic father.

  Then she turned to Dr. Ray’s charts of behaviors rated between one and ten. In her psychological profile, most rankings ranged between three and five, which appeared to be in the normal range. One spiked to an eight. Because she was an introvert? Or had ability in math?

  Two names had an unusual number of eights and nines, probably indicating extreme behavior. One was Vargas, who probably considered the high numbers to be a mark of achievement. The other was Pyro. Despite their similar behavior patterns, they didn’t share genetic traits. Interesting. These statistics might be proof of Dr. Ray’s theory that upbringing was more important in personality development than DNA. As she’d told Vargas, it was all about choices.

  Blake’s profile had an eight and a couple of sixes. She traced her finger down the list of his characteristics. For the first time in her life, she wished for words instead of numbers. She wanted to know what he was thinking and feeling. He’d made love to her with such incredible gentleness. How much did he really care about her? As much as she cared about him?

  She frowned at the charts in her hand as she swiveled back and forth in the desk chair. Spending time with Blake had been fun. Making love had been amazing. But relationships had a downside. There would come a moment when they said goodbye. And she’d miss him.

  “Ha!” He charged into the room. Energy sparked around him like lightning bolts. Whatever he’d found in his father’s office must have been significant.

  “I really hope,” she said, “that you’ve got solid information for me.”

  “I just got off the phone with Dr. Puller. He and my dad collaborated on a thesis about high intelligence and antisocial personality disorder. Bottom line—smart people make good sociopaths.”

  “Define sociopath.”

  “Criminal mastermind.”

  “Now you’re getting into my territory.” She grinned. “Criminal masterminds are necessary for epic fantasy battles between the forces of good and evil. But I’m guessing that you’re not talking about alien geniuses who want to rule the universe.”

  “Not really.”

  “Then you’ll have to be more specific.”

  “Think of somebody ruthless and glib. He’d have a lack of empathy and an inability to tell right from wrong.” He pointed at the list of names. “Reminds me of Vargas.”

  “That’s unfair. Vargas hasn’t been ruthless or evil. He’s been cooperative in sharing his data.”

  “Which he stole by hacking into my dad’s computer. Come on, Eve. He’s trying to manipulate you.”

  “How?”

  “Feeding you a fancy lunch and offering those buildings for Sun Wave experiments. He’s leading you on with all that talk about how you’re his sister and you can ask him for anything.”

  “Actually, he is my half brother. According to the DNA records, we have the same mother.”

  “You’re defending him.”

  “I’m focusing on the facts.”

  In her talks with Vargas, he’d been charming, even charismatic. She wondered if that was a behavior measured by Dr. Ray. “Did your father’s paper say anything about sociopaths and charisma?”

  Blake nodded. “Puller said that they were the kind of salesmen who’d promise anything to close a deal.”

  “That fits. Vargas knows how to say all the right words. I’m sensing that he has a hidden agenda, which is odd because I don’t usually pick up on things like that. You know, motives.”

  He spun her around in the swivel chair and pulled her closer to the bed. “I like the way you reason things through.”

  “You’re just pleased because I think Vargas is a jerk.”

  “That, too.”

  He slid his hands along the outside of her thighs and scooted her closer for a kiss. The light pressure of his mouth on hers was a powerful distraction, especially when he was sitting on the bed they’d torn apart.

  She opened her eyes and stared at him. Looking at that perfect face would never grow tiresome.

  “What do you think of my information?” he asked.

  “Finding the key to interpret Dr. Ray’s list of behaviors would have been more useful.”

  “I’ve got Dr. Puller working on it. The number thirty-two was familiar to him. He’s checking into psychological profiling tools used by the military.”

  “When you talked to him about the sociopath study, did Puller say that Dr. Ray mentioned any names?”

  “My dad was too discreet for that. He referred to Subject X and Subject Y. No names.” With the back of his hand, he stroked her cheek. “Why do you ask?”

  “Two subjects show indications of extreme behavior. One is Vargas.”

  “And the other is Peter Gregory,” he said. “My dad wrote his initials in the margin. What else have you figured out?”

  “Mostly, I’ve been checking the DNA evidence and trying to figure out relationships.” With a sigh, she turned away from him and dragged her attention back to the facts. “It’s a patchwork family tree with five mothers and eleven fathers.”

  Blake picked up the pages she’d scribbled on. “Somewhere in this is a motive.”

  “It’d help to know the identities of the sperm and egg donors,” she said.

  “How would that be useful?”

  “More data could flesh out the picture.” And there was another reason, one she hadn’t really acknowledged until she said it out loud. “And I’m curious.”

  She couldn’t help wondering about her biological parents.
Who were they? What had they done with their intelligence?

  She loved the parents who raised her, and she knew they’d accept her no matter what. Mom and Dad weren’t going to be thrilled when she told them she was pregnant and unmarried and didn’t know the father of her child. But they wouldn’t turn their backs on her.

  She thought of the tiny being growing within her. This was her baby. The people she’d always called Mom and Dad were the baby’s grandparents. But she couldn’t help wondering.

  “I’m curious, too,” he said.

  “I thought of checking the military database. But this was twenty-six years ago. There probably wouldn’t be any results.”

  “And a lot of paperwork.”

  “We could try CODIS.”

  “Might as well.” He took out his cell phone and paced across the bedroom to the window. “Let’s give Detective Gable something to do.”

  She left her chair and followed him. Outside, daylight was waning, and she had a pretty good idea about how she wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon and night. She wrapped her arms around him and leaned against his back, listening to his voice as he spoke to the police detective.

  Though it seemed like a contradiction, she felt comfy and excited at the same time. There was so much to learn about the emotional side of life and relationships.

  Blake completed his call with a promise to send the DNA charts via e-mail to be run through CODIS.

  When he turned to face her, she read passion in his smile. His dark eyes warmed her blood and sent a zing of anticipation through her body. Making love this time should be even better; she wasn’t a virgin anymore.

  “I think we have time.” He ducked his head and kissed her quickly. “We’ll make time.”

  She pressed against him. “Are we going somewhere?”

  “We need to check out Peter Gregory.” He kissed her more deeply. “Tonight is Pyro’s concert.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Heading toward downtown Denver in the sleek armored Mercedes, Blake glanced over at Eve in the passenger seat. They’d been in the car for less than eight minutes, and she was already asleep. She’d told him that she was going to nap, tilted the seat back and…zap!