Her Baby, His Secret

by Gayle Wilson

  But when it rang again, she realized that this was the extra line the police had set up, and not her regular number, where any call from the kidnappers could be expected to come in. Her hand still shaking from that first mistaken impression, she finally picked up the receiver.

  “Claire Heywood,” she said.

  “I have a message for you, Ms. Heywood.”

  “A message?” she questioned, trying to think if she had ever heard this disembodied voice before, trying to place the caller. No one had this number, unless her grandfather had given it to whomever he had talked to today. She certainly hadn’t. Except to her father, whose voice she would have known immediately.

  “From a friend,” he said.

  A message from a friend? None of whom had this number? From a man whose voice she didn’t recognize?

  Her pulse began to race, as her mind discarded those possibilities. And as it did, the thought that this might finally be word from whoever had taken Gardner began to grow in her heart.

  Please God, let this be what we’ve waited for, she prayed, motioning to her grandfather that she needed something to write on. “All right,” Claire said into the receiver when she was sure he understood her gestures.

  Then she brought her entire consciousness to bear on listening and remembering—tone, accent, word patterns. It was almost an intellectual exercise, deliberately undertaken because the rest of it was too important—waiting for those words she so desperately needed to hear in order to set her world back on its axis.

  “He wants you to meet him in the rose garden,” the voice on the other end of the line stated.

  Her grandfather had placed a notebook and pen beside the phone. Claire had picked up the pen, automatically turning the pad to face her. It reminded her of Minger’s meticulous note-taking this morning, of how careful he had been. And she must be just that careful, too.

  But when her caller said those words, her hand hesitated over the paper. For a moment all she could think of was the one at the White House, but of course that couldn’t be right.

  “The Rose Garden?” she repeated, her inflection questioning. If this was someone’s idea of a prank...

  A hint of laughter whispered across the distance. “He said to tell you not that one.”

  As if the caller had read her mind. Not that one.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she said carefully, aware of the slow deflation of the hope that had blossomed with the ringing of the phone.

  The rose garden? she repeated mentally, bewildered by the instructions. Her mind ran through every connotation that phrase might have. Every reference. And came up with nothing that made sense. This seemed too bizarre to be the real thing. Someone’s idea of a cruel joke? Someone who had seen her on TV?

  “He said you’d know. If you really think about it.”

  “Is this about my daughter?” she asked bluntly.

  Cut to the chase, she had decided. Ignore the taunting suggestion that if she were only brighter she would be able to figure out what he meant.

  “Indirectly,” the man said softly. “But it is important, Ms. Heywood. I can tell you that.”

  “Then don’t play games,” Claire said sharply, all the anger she had hidden during the long day boiling up within her, surprising her by its intensity. “I don’t have time for tricks. I want my daughter back. And I want her back now, damn it.”

  Her voice climbed as she made the demand. Her grandfather put his hand on her arm. Her eyes lifted to his again, reading in them a warning.

  “Please,” she added, struggling to modify her tone. “Please, just tell me what you want me to do.”

  “Go to the rose garden,” the man repeated. “As soon as you can. He’ll meet you there.”

  She thought she could read a hint of regret, even apology in his tone.

  “He said surely you remember the rose,” he added.

  Then, unbelievably, the connection was broken. Claire gripped the dead phone, willing it back to life. He couldn’t have hung up, she thought. If they had gone to the trouble to call, they would want to tell her something that made sense, and this didn’t. The only roses...

  Her racing thoughts slowed, hesitating over the word rose. “He said surely you remember the rose.” Singular.

  And she did, of course. Someone had sent her a rose after she had helped Jordan Cross. There had been a message then as well. Something to the effect of thank you for your help.

  She had thought the flower must have come from Jordan. Or Hawk, although the gesture had seemed somehow out of character for him. Too romantic. Too soft for such a cold, hard man. Too...sentimental.

  Of course, Griff had often sent her a single rose, and there was not a sentimental bone in his body. He’d been hard, pragmatic, brilliant, but hardly what most people would consider romantic.

  Suddenly, the memory of the vast gardens at Griffs a Maryland estate was in her head. The lovely hybrid tea roses there were his hobby. Their care, and his love for them, were something he’d learned from his grandmother, who had started that rose garden. At least the flowers were something he could control, Griff used to say, smiling.

  Eventually, she had understood what he’d meant by that. So much of what he had to deal with was beyond his control. World situations. Politics. The inner workings of the agency itself.

  Griff Cabot had had a rose garden. One that she had visited. One she remembered.

  “Was that...?” Her grandfather hesitated.

  The soft question faltered as she looked up at him, her attention once more brought back to the present Her fingers released the pen, laying it carefully on the pad, blocking the painful and unwanted memories of Griff.

  “I think that was one of the team,” she said.

  “Cabot’s team?” he asked, obviously surprised.

  He sounded as if he had thought they were mythical. Maybe the product of her imagination. Her desperation. What they did was a little unbelievable, but they themselves were very real. She had met them. At least two of them.

  She nodded. “I think that was a message from Jordan Cross. Maybe...maybe he saw the interview. Or maybe the director did forward your request, despite your doubts.”

  “And this Cross is willing to meet you?”

  She nodded again, thinking about the instructions she’d been given. Nothing else made sense. Griff’s rose garden. That was someplace she certainly knew, and a clue that was a dead giveaway for anyone who really knew Griff. A connection. Even more of a connection if, as she suspected, Jordan had been the one who’d sent the rose after she had helped him. It all made sense because it fit.

  “I have to go,” she said, standing. “Will you stay here and take any calls?”

  “I’ll go with you,” her grandfather said, starting to rise. “Maddy can answer the phone. Or Charles.”

  Her sister and her husband were in the kitchen trying to put together something for supper. Maddy had suggested that, glancing pointedly at their grandfather when Claire had said she wasn’t hungry.

  She hadn’t been, of course, and no matter what Maddy said, the thought of sitting down to eat while Gardner was missing was unthinkable. Nauseating.

  It would be much better to be doing something that might help find her. This was the only thing all day that had made sense to Claire. Secure the help of someone like Jordan Cross. Take advantage of the offer she thought had just been made.

  “No,” she said, putting her hand on her grandfather’s shoulder to urge him not to get up.

  They hadn’t told her to come alone, but if this were Jordan, she thought he might object to her bringing someone like her grandfather, who still had ties to the agency he had once worked for. Especially if the director hadn’t been the method by which Cross had learned she needed his help.

  “I don’t trust anyone else to answer the phone,” she said, smiling at him. “Not Maddy. You know she’ll be too nervous to get it right. And Charles...Charles isn’t really family.”

  She s
aid the last only for her grandfather’s benefit, to convince him that he had to stay here. He had never approved of Maddy’s choice of a husband, who held a minor position in the diplomatic corp. She knew Monty Gardner wouldn’t want Charles in a position to make any decisions.

  “I don’t like the idea of you going by yourself,” the old man argued. “You ought to at least notify Minger or the bureau. You can’t be sure that this is—”

  “I’m sure,” she said, bending down to place a kiss on the top of his head, lightly touching the gleaming sweep of white hair with her fingers as well, a small caress.

  She was sure. The more she thought about what the man on the phone had said, the more certain she was that this had to be one of Griff’s agents. Certainly someone who knew Griff Cabot well enough to know about his hobby, an avocation that seemed so out of character for a man like him.

  And apparently this was someone who was willing to help. Offering her assistance would be “indirectly” connected to her daughter’s kidnapping. The wording of that had been very careful. They didn’t want to mislead her into believing they were the kidnappers, so they had chosen that telling phrase with which to answer her question. Maybe they had even thought out the wording before they’d placed the call.

  But the voice hadn’t been Jordan’s. She would have recognized the soft Southern accent he had never quite lost. It had always reminded her of Griff s.

  The voice on the phone hadn’t. But it hadn’t been Hawk either, she decided, replaying the conversation in her mind. A friend who had been asked to convey a message. Just exactly as he had said.

  “You stay here,” she urged her grandfather. “I’ll call you as soon as I’ve talked to whoever this is. I promise I will.”

  “I don’t like this, Claire,” the old man argued. “You can’t be sure this is one of Cabot’s men. It could be anyone. Someone trying to lure you out of the house. Maybe even the people who took the baby.”

  “All the more reason then for me to go,” she reminded him gently. “But it’s not them, Grandfather. I know who this is. It has to be. Too many things fit. Things that only someone who knew Griff very well would know. And besides, I don’t know anything else to do. Neither do you. This is a chance we can’t afford to pass up. You know these people. Or at least you knew agents who were like them. If they can’t find Gardner...”

  She let the sentence trail, knowing that was the reality. Her grandfather would know it, too. But putting into words the possibility that they might not be able to find Gardner was unthinkable. Therefore, so was a rejection of this offer.

  “Be careful,” Monty Gardner said softly. He reached out and took her hand, squeezing it gently with his long aristocratic fingers. “Be very careful. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you, my dear.”

  “I know,” she said. “But nothing will happen to me, I promise you. These people are friends.”

  Who owe me something, she thought again, and are apparently willing to acknowledge that debt. Quid pro quo.

  She freed her hand. Lifting the tips of her fingers to her lips, she touched them to his cheek in farewell. She wasn’t afraid of what she might find at Griff’s estate. She knew in her heart that whoever met her there would be someone who wanted to help her get Gardner back and put an end to this nightmare.

  GRIFF HADN’T BEEN CERTAIN she would come, not until he saw the lights of the car approaching down the long curving drive that led up to the house. And when he did, the once familiar anticipation began to stir in the pit of his stomach.

  Just the thought of seeing Claire again, even in these circumstances, had the power to rouse all the old feelings. Emotions he had spent the last year and a half denying. And so he denied them again, concentrating on why they were both here tonight. Together again...and yet farther apart than ever.

  He had tried to picture Claire with a baby since he’d seen the news report of the kidnapping, but somehow the images wouldn’t form. That was not the way he was accustomed to envisioning her. In his memories, she still moved, as he once had, in a world peopled by the powerful, the influential, the political. Somehow he couldn’t quite reconcile the woman he had known so well with motherhood.

  He had never even thought that she might want a child. They had never talked about having children. He had never considered the possibility. He supposed that if their relationship had gone further—

  The distant slamming of a car door broke the stillness, and he knew that it would only be a moment or two before she made her way around the house and into the winter-devastated rose garden. Asking her to meet him here had been a ridiculous idea. He had known that since he’d lowered himself more than an hour ago onto the cold, damp concrete slab of the garden bench.

  It was a frigid January night, and like a fool he had suggested an outdoor meeting. Somehow, his memories of Claire had interfered with all the realities of the present. This garden was somewhere he knew she would remember. A place she would associate with him. That had been a warning of sorts. An attempt to prepare her for what she would find here.

  When he arrived, however, he had realized at once that this garden was as cold and dead as the one he had looked out on only a couple of hours ago in Pennsylvania. He had known that if Claire did come in response to the message Jake Holt had delivered for him, she would drive. And the chopper he’d hired would, of course, get him here long before she arrived.

  It had. Long enough that the chill had crept into his bones as he waited. Along with the dread. Dread of the meeting he had been eager to set up when he’d first called Jake.

  Griff could hear her steps on the loose gravel of the path, and he felt his heart rate accelerate. He couldn’t be sure how she would react to seeing him again. Not given the things she had said to him the last time they’d argued. And not given the fact that as far as she knew, he was dead.

  He had tried to tell her that he was not. The message he’d sent with the rose, thanking Claire for helping his men, had been a pretext for reestablishing contact. He had even understood his motives at the time.

  But of course, there had been no response. Either she had not understood the gesture, not understood the single bloodred rose was from him, or...she had chosen to ignore it. And now he knew that even if she had suspected the flower was from him, she had already become involved in a relationship with someone else. A man by whom she had had a child.

  “Jordan?” she called softly, her voice hesitant, a little breathless, full of anxiety or fear.

  He had known Claire Heywood in many moods. Fear had never been one of them. But then never before had someone kidnapped her baby. He was still having a hard time coming to grips with the senseless cruelty of that.

  It was not that he wasn’t intimately acquainted with the depravity human beings were capable of inflicting on one another. With his background, he was well aware of their endless brutalities. But things like this happened to other people. Not to those he loved.

  The word reverberated inside his head, echoing through all the memories. He didn’t bother to deny it. He had loved Claire Heywood almost from the beginning. Almost from the first time he had seen her.

  And, he acknowledged, he still did. What other reason would there be for his being here tonight? Alone in a cold, dark garden, waiting with incredible anticipation for a woman who might believe he was dead. A woman who was, in any event, involved with another man.

  “Jordan?” she called again.

  Griff hadn’t realized how near she was. He had been lost in the past, something that was always dangerous when there was a job to be done. In this case their shared past was incredibly painful, as well.

  No matter what she had said to him before, no matter if she had chosen to ignore the rose he had sent, he knew that having to confront him tonight would be another blow on top of the kidnapping. Especially if she hadn’t realized from that gesture that he was alive. This meeting would be something else for her to deal with on a terrifying and terrible day.

  T
his was a mistake, he realized belatedly. A stupid and cruel error of judgment, although neither of those had been his intent. He should have contacted Jordan and asked him to help Claire find the baby. It was obvious that was who she had come here expecting to meet.

  Instead, he had rushed in to play rescuer as soon as he had seen her on TV. And he had not once considered that he was not in any position to undertake that role.

  He could no longer call on the resources of the agency, at least not officially. Only on his people, the few who were still working there. Who were still loyal to him. People like Jake, he acknowledged, remembering the shock in Holt’s voice when he’d identified himself and asked for his help.

  “Jordan?” Claire said again, more softly this time. She sounded more focused. No longer searching.

  He realized she was standing at the top of the steps that led up to the gazebo where he was sitting. There was enough moonlight, in spite of the drifting pattern of broken clouds, to outline her figure against the lesser blackness of the night. He knew that she had seen him, but he also knew he would be no more than a shadowed hulk across the wide floor of the gazebo.

  “If you’re not Jordan,” she said finally, “then...who are you? Why did you bring me here?”

  “I want to help you,” Griff said softly.

  He wondered if she would recognize his voice. She had heard it a thousand times whispering from the darkness. Despite his determination to reveal nothing of what he was feeling, he had been aware of a telltale breathlessness in his response, which had changed the normal timbre of his tone. The strength of her effect on his emotions had always been incredible. His physical responses to Claire Heywood had been stronger than to any other woman he had ever known.

  She took another step, moving nearer. He knew that she still wouldn’t be able to distinguish his features. Not in this light. He even thought about asking her not to come any closer.

  Then he could stay hidden in the darkness. He could offer to help and never reveal that the man she had been told was dead was really alive. And not reveal that he was still as caught in the spell of love and desire she had woven about him as he had always been.