Just Eight Months Old...

by Tori Carrington

  Somehow she found her tongue, though lack of air refused to allow her to speak above a whisper. “What did it say, Chad?”

  His gaze caught and held hers. “Marry me.”

  Hannah’s gaze riveted to his face. In her chest, her heart seemed to cease beating. Her lungs refused air. And if she didn’t restart both posthaste she would surely pass out.

  Carefully lowering herself back to the floor before she fell down, she stared at the velvet pouch and the ring it likely held.

  Chad’s chuckle held an undeniable measure of nervousness. “That’s not the response I was looking for, Hannah.”

  She tried to work her mouth, but in order to do so, she had to actually have words to fill it with. “I—I don’t know what to say, Chad. I…didn’t expect this….”

  “If you had, it wouldn’t have been a surprise now, would it?”

  She looked up at him, attempting to wrap her mind around his proposal. Slowly her heart began pumping at a normal rate of speed and her breathing evened out. She bit down hard on her bottom lip. She’d give everything, anything to be able to say yes. To accept his proposal and take the ring she couldn’t even see. But she couldn’t. Not without knowing the motivation behind it.

  “Why?” she whispered, holding his gaze.

  Chad blinked once, then again. “Why?”

  She shrugged, watching as he sat back down next to her.

  “Because you love me,” he said. Warmth coursed through every inch of her veins, bringing to life the fluttering butterflies in her stomach. Yes, she did love him. With every cell of her being. More than that, she had fallen back in love with him. Completely, utterly, irreversibly. That he knew that made her feel an even stronger connection to him. She tugged her gaze away from his face. “That’s not what I meant, Chad. I—” She blindly groped around her spinning head for the right words. “What is it about you that I should agree to spend the rest of my life with you?”

  Please, please, say it, her heart pleaded. Just tell me, I can say yes, then we can have the happily-ever-after I’ve been dreaming about all my life.

  “Marry me because we have a daughter together.” Chad spoke the words clearly and calmly.

  Her hopeful gaze moved from his right eye to his left.

  “Marry me for Bonny’s sake. The rest can come later.”

  The hope that had ballooned in her slowly deflated.

  She tucked her chin into her chest and closed her eyes, wondering if he could hear the quiet breaking of her heart. “No.”

  She couldn’t believe she’d just said that. Couldn’t believe she was turning down the chance to spend the rest of her life with the only man she’d ever loved.

  “I thought—I mean, didn’t you—”

  Tears threatened to choke Hannah, but she managed to ask, “Why did you ask me? Why now?”

  “Are you saying it’s too late?” The confusion on his handsome face was all too adorable, all too heartbreaking. “Why, Chad?”

  He stared at the concealed ring still between them, his cuffs clanking as he shifted. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Then my saying no is the right thing for me to do.”

  “But I—”

  She swallowed hard. “Look, Chad, I appreciate the offer. I do, really. But to get married for Bonny’s sake alone…don’t you see? It’s wrong. It would never work.” Because every moment of every day I’d see you and know you didn’t love me. “If you want to play a role in Bonny’s life…I have no objection to that. Even if I did, you could get a court order—”

  “I don’t want to play a role, Hannah. I want to be her father. Full-time. Not a weekend dad. Not like my father was.”

  “Then we…then we can work something out in that regard. Maybe you can come by for an hour every other day. Every day if you want. I don’t know.”

  And she didn’t know. She didn’t know what the future held for them as parents to Bonny living in separate households. In fact it was very hard to see the future at all right now. All she could focus on was the here and now.

  She looked at him, trying to read his thoughts. The confusion on his face slowly turned to resigned acceptance. Disappointment, perhaps.

  “You have to quit,” he said absently.

  “What?”

  He turned to her as if surprised he’d said the words aloud. “Skip-tracing. You should quit. For Bonny’s sake. I’ll support you both.”

  “And as Bonny’s father you have the right to make that demand?” she quietly clarified.

  He didn’t say anything.

  Hannah tried to grab on to indignation with both hands, but the emotion slipped through her grasp. Instead she felt an odd sort of gratitude that he cared that much for their daughter.

  Hannah leaned against the wall and briefly closed her eyes. “If it helps any, one of the reasons I was so reluctant to take this trace was because I was hanging up my bounty hunter cap for good. Next week I open the door to Seekers.”

  His silence was unbearable. She opened her eyes to find him staring at her. “You’re opening Seekers?”

  Her cuffs clanked as she moved to nervously tuck her hair behind her ear. “Yeah. I rented a place in Manhattan. Bought a sign and everything. From here on in I search for others’ lost loves instead of the state’s missing lawbreakers.” She cleared her throat. “You know, with Bonny to think about and all, I had to start doing something else. Skip-tracing is not exactly a nine-to-five job.”

  She glanced at him and found him grinning at her. His reaction caught her off guard. He wasn’t the least bit upset to hear that she alone was starting a business they had once talked about opening together?

  “I’m happy for you, Hannah,” he said.

  His words brushed her heart. She looked away, suddenly self-conscious. She battled a small part of her that wished he had been upset by her announcement.

  “And you?” she asked. “As Bonny’s mother I think I have the right to ask you not to involve yourself in risky activity.”

  Her question went unanswered, leaving her to consider the possibilities.

  His long sigh broke the silence that had settled between them. “I really screwed this up, didn’t I, Hannah? I just can’t seem to get this marriage thing…this father thing right.”

  Her heart went out to him. She wished she could reach out and touch him. But since she couldn’t, she leaned toward him and gently pressed her lips against his.

  The look in his eyes was one of shock. But slowly it shifted to longing. She began to pull away, but he groaned softly and sought a more solid contact. Testing the limit of the cuffs, Hannah melted against him, wishing for all the world that she could touch him with more than her mouth. Wanting to fit into this one kiss all the things she might never have the chance to tell him again.

  A flurry of activity outside the front door caused them to stare at each other then pull away.

  “FBI,” a commanding voice shouted. “We’re coming in!”

  Chad stared at the ceiling. “Randy always had the worst timing.”

  A dozen men with cold expressions, weapons in hand, and phone cord-type wires disappearing into their ears spread throughout the house, barely giving Hannah and Chad a glance. Hannah shuddered.

  “Are you okay?” Chad asked her.

  She glanced to find him a little too close for comfort. The moment the voice outside yelled “FBI,” and the wooden door splintered as the agents busted their way into the house, she must have snuggled against Chad for protection. She stared at where her legs were twined with his and her breasts pressed flush against his chest. Her breath froze in her lungs. Quickly she wriggled away.

  A lone figure pulled away from the pack. His movements were noticeably slower and more assured than those of his co-workers. He pulled a cellular phone away from his ear and punched a button.

  “Oh, no.” Hannah didn’t know whether to feel anxiety or relief as the dark-haired FBI agent studied them. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the pla
stic sample tube of the stolen microprocessor chips and easily moved her leg, covering the tube with her skirt.

  Stuffing the phone into his jacket pocket, the agent pulled out his billfold, flashing a twin of the identification Chad had stowed somewhere. “Special Agent Randall McKay of The Federal Bureau of Investigations.” He tucked the ID away. “Now that I’ve showed you mine, let’s see yours.”

  Chad splayed his hands where they were bound. “I’d really like to help you out, Randy, but as you can see I’m kind of tied up at the moment.”

  Randy? Hannah stared at Chad. She vaguely remembered him saying the agent’s name in New York when they were running from McKay in PlayCo’s parking garage. She had assumed he knew it from having run into the agent under similar hapless circumstances.

  As if reading her thoughts, Chad looked at her. In his eyes she read a mixture of regret and gravity she couldn’t quite explain but hoped he would.

  “What’s going on here, Chad?” she asked. “I feel like there’s something I’m missing.”

  “That’s because you are.” He grimaced, then glanced at the agent hovering over them. “Hannah, that FBI ID I used? Well, it wasn’t fake. Maybe no longer valid, but it wasn’t fake. I used to be with the FBI.”

  Now she was even more confused. She moved to rub her face, but the cuffs prevented her from it.

  “Can you get these things off us, McKay?” Chad asked.

  The agent waved for another junior officer nearby. The cuffs were immediately removed.

  Hannah absently rubbed her wrists. “I don’t know if I’m getting you here. I mean I know you were in the Marines….”

  Chad’s small smile was somehow sad. “That was the great thing about our relationship before. Or at least what I thought was great then. At any rate, it was what I needed. Someone who never asked questions.” He threaded his fingers through the curls over her right ear, seemingly fascinated with her hair despite the agents filling the room. “You accepted me simply for who I was. To you it didn’t matter what I’d done in the past. You only cared about now and the future.” He sighed and dropped his hand. “I don’t know why I never told you I used to be FBI. Maybe because my resignation came right after Linda and Josh were killed. Maybe because it didn’t matter to me anymore.”

  Chad used to be FBI. Hannah tried to wrap her mind around the information. She supposed it should have some sort of impact on the way she looked at him, but it didn’t. She’d always known he was one of the good guys. That he’d officially been one didn’t surprise her. It confused more than hurt her that he’d kept the detail from her.

  “And no, before you ask, I didn’t think that my past involvement gave me license to use the ID whenever the mood moved me. The first time was at PlayCo and only then because I’d just been hit with the news that I was a father again and I wanted to get this trace over with ASAP.”

  She nodded slowly, understanding what he was saying, but still needing to think about everything else behind it.

  She swallowed, wondering if there would be a time when she’d ever completely understand all that was Chad Hogan.

  Nearby, McKay said something under his breath. “Are you about done, Hogan?”

  Chad grimaced. “Let’s just say McKay and I go back a ways. A long ways. In fact, I think it would be safe for me to say Randy here owes me one for pulling him in here.” He looked up at the agent, then said to Hannah, “I put a call through to him when I was away from the room this afternoon.” He slanted the other agent a look. “Though it took him long enough to get here.”

  “You called him?” Hannah asked, glancing at where McKay stood close enough to listen in. “When?”

  “Right after we…after I left you at the motel, from a mall phone booth. The same place I got Furgeson’s address here.” He shifted onto his feet, obviously uncomfortable. “Look, Hannah, I couldn’t take any chances. Not after what happened to Persky in Atlantic City, and with those two goons at the airport. Things were getting too dangerous.”

  Hannah stood. Surprising even herself, she smiled. “Protecting me again, Hogan?”

  “Yes, I was. And if you want to be ticked off about it, go right ahead. There’s more to consider now than just you and me,” he said quietly, Hannah guessed so that McKay wouldn’t hear. “There’s Bonny to think about. And, well…I’m not going to lose another child because of my mistakes.”

  Hannah’s throat contracted. His mistakes? She couldn’t bear to think that he still held himself responsible for what happened to his son.

  “The only problem is that now McKay’s going to take Furgeson in himself and we’ll lose the bail.”

  Right now she couldn’t care less about the bounty on Lisa’s head. She only wanted this whole thing to be over with, quickly, so she and Bonny could go home, and…

  And she could start repairing her broken heart. McKay stepped forward. “Are you done now? Mind if I ask a few questions of my own? I mean, if it isn’t too inconvenient.”

  Chad’s eyes seemed to question her readiness. She silently nodded.

  “Good,” McKay said, giving the impression that he was used to such banter with Chad. “Where is Furgeson?”

  “As you can see, she’s not here,” Chad said.

  “Obviously.” The agent looked to Hannah. “Tell me where she is.”

  Hannah admitted she felt a little better about their situation, but not much. “A man by the name of Jack Stokes has her.”

  McKay looked at her. “You handle that Alfa of yours well, Miss McGee.”

  Her cheeks burned. “Thanks.” His small grin held no amusement. “I wouldn’t go thanking me just yet. You and Chad here are still in a heap of trouble with the Bureau.”

  Chad sighed. “I’d think you’d be interested in going for the big fish rather than chasing after the guppies.”

  “Don’t underestimate me, Hogan. You and the lady may be small fish, but you are a catch.”

  “I’m not underestimating you. On the contrary, I was giving you credit, thinking you would put fingering the real mastermind of this microchip caper ahead of arresting us.” Chad grinned back at the federal agent.

  “What is it you think you know, Hogan?”

  “Obviously more than you think, my old friend.” He put his arm around McKay’s shoulders.

  “There is one important difference, however.” McKay held his hand palm up. “You broke the law in your efforts. I didn’t.”

  Grimacing, Chad took his federal ID from his front shirt pocket and slapped it into McKay’s hand. “That’s because you are the law. Besides, the ID isn’t entirely fraudulent. It was mine until I left the agency four years ago.”

  “Have you made your point yet?” McKay asked. “If you have, I missed it.”

  “Where do you go from here?” Chad asked in the same tone. “I know where you’ll go. You’ll go back to New York to wait for Stokes to bring back Furgeson. Case closed.”

  “Are you saying someone else is pulling the strings?” McKay asked.

  The room was filled with people rushing in and out, avoiding the three of them standing as still as light poles in the middle. For long moments no one more than blinked. Then finally McKay exhaled gustily and said, “Okay, Hogan, let’s get to it.”

  Chad winked at Hannah, the brief gesture making her fear stagnate. She fought the urge to smile.

  “Agent Jones, get your men out there and block all entrances to the house.”

  Chad smacked his hand against McKay’s shoulders. “You know what I’m up to, don’t you?”

  McKay shrugged him off. “You’re going to use this house as the base for contact.” He paused. “That means you have something somebody wants. Namely the items that were in those toy phones.”

  Hannah thought of the key Lisa had given her, the key to the storage locker that held the two boxes of chips. But Chad obviously wasn’t playing cards with McKay just yet.

  “Does it really matter? As long as you and I get what we want, it doesn’t matter wha
t I do or don’t have. The important thing is that they think I have the items.”

  “And of course you want immunity from prosecution.”

  Chad clucked his tongue in admonishment. The moment the FBI agent had given in to Chad Hogan, he opened himself up to every demand Chad could think of.

  Randy scowled. “I’m telling you right now, I’ll be watching you. Impersonate a fed again, and your hide is mine, Chad.”

  “I’m shocked by your low opinion of me. This isn’t about impersonating anyone anymore. Oh, no.” Chad guided him toward the back of the house. Hannah walked beside them, striving to keep her amusement from showing.

  Chad brushed lint Hannah couldn’t see from the FBI agent’s blue polyester lapel. “And wiping the slate clean is not all I have in mind, either. Not for what this is going to yield you. You see, once you have the brains behind this operation, McKay, you sign that we delivered Furgeson to you so we can get our bounty.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Men roamed everywhere. Hannah watched them impassively, surprisingly unaffected by their presence. In fact, she was enormously reassured. More so since McKay had had one of his agents take her to pick up Bonny at the motel. She couldn’t think of any place safer for her little girl than being in a house guarded by at least fifty FBI agents.

  She finished changing her messy daughter’s tiny pink T-shirt then moved her from the kitchen table to her lap. She pressed her palm to her flushed forehead. Was it her, or did she feel a little warm? Could be a result of the tooth coming in. Or maybe she was coming down with something. She looked into the baby’s eyes, trying to decide.

  Bonny’s features instantly brightened and she reached out her hand. “Dah!”

  Hannah felt her own cheeks warm. She didn’t have to look to see who had just come through the kitchen door. Bonny’s exuberant reaction was enough.

  “Dog, huh?” Chad said as he hauled the baby easily into his arms.

  Hannah gave a small shrug. “That’s what I thought it meant.” She’d never even considered that her daughter would recognize her father on sight. Still didn’t. It was pure coincidence, that was all. That and Chad had been the first man she’d let so close to her daughter.