The Perfect Lie

by Dinah McCall

  “Help me,” he whispered, and then slid to the floor and rolled onto his side. “Somebody help me.”

  Curling his knees up against his chest, he covered his head with his arms and gave in to the grief.

  Afternoon: The Blaine estate in Bel Air

  The hair crawled on the back of Jonah’s neck as the cab pulled up to the Blaine estate. The massive iron gates were standing ajar, while a couple of blocks away, a phalanx of media crews hovered behind yellow crime scene tape, trying to get a bit of film footage that would be usable on the six o’clock news. He felt Macie shrink a little closer to him, as if trying to stay out of range of the lenses. A part of him wanted to play the hero, but she didn’t seem like the helpless type, and he wasn’t sure how far he wanted to go in making peace with a Blaine.

  The cab moved forward, and Jonah realized they’d gone through the gate and had started up the driveway. The last time he’d been here, he’d been dying inside. It did not please him to realize that the passing of fifteen years had done little to change the knot in his gut. He didn’t want to be here, and but for the fate of a child he hadn’t known existed, he never would have come back. He turned and looked out the back window toward the conglomerate of media and frowned.

  “Why aren’t there any guards at the gates…and why the hell are they still open?”

  “When we get to the house, you’ll see why,” Macie said.

  The cabdriver took the drive slowly, negotiating the winding twists and turns with ease. As the house came into view, it became apparent to Jonah that the feds had pulled out all the stops. A kidnapping was always a high-priority crime, and when it involved the grandson of a billionaire power broker like Declyn Blaine, everyone wanted a piece of the action. There were government-issue vehicles all over the place, along with several marked police cruisers. There was no need to have guards at the gate. The house itself was under virtual lock-down.

  “Damn. Makes you wonder if there’s anyone left to hold down the fort in D.C.”

  Macie handed the driver a handful of bills and then got out of the cab. Jonah took his suitcase from the trunk and followed her up the walk to the door. A pair of uniformed officers stopped Macie on the steps, but before she had time to identify herself, a tall, lanky man in a dark blue suit walked up behind them.

  “That’s Mercedes Blaine,” he said briefly. “Let her pass.”

  Macie acknowledged the agent she’d met briefly yesterday.

  “Agent Ruger, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said shortly. “For future reference, until this is over, when you leave town, let me know.”

  “I had my reasons,” she answered.

  “Is he one of them?” Ruger asked, eyeing Jonah.

  “Ruger. It’s been a while,” Jonah said.

  Macie’s mouth dropped. “You know each other?”

  Jonah shrugged.

  Ruger nodded, then added, “What the hell are you doing here? This is out of your territory.”

  “Jonah is Evan’s father,” Macie said.

  Now it was Ruger’s turn to be surprised. “The hell you say,” he muttered, staring at Jonah as if he’d never seen him before. “I didn’t know you had a kid.”

  “Neither did I,” Jonah said shortly. “What do you know about the abduction? Has there been a ransom demand?”

  Ruger frowned, wanting to pursue Jonah’s cryptic answer, but it was obvious by the look on Slade’s face that he’d gotten all he was going to get.

  “We don’t know much of anything, and no, there’s been no demand…not that we expected one. The note left by Miss Blaine’s body leads us to believe the abduction is some sort of payback, but so far we haven’t been able to link anything in Declyn Blaine’s past to this.”

  “That’s because it’s directed at me,” Jonah said, then took the tape from his answering machine out of his pocket and handed it to Ruger. “This message was left on my machine this morning.”

  Ruger was as stunned as he looked. “You? Why do you think this is about you?”

  “Ever hear of Miguel Calderone?”

  “The Colombian drug lord? Of course.”

  “Four days ago I killed his oldest son.”

  Ruger cursed beneath his breath and then turned sharply, yelling as he went.

  A small Hispanic woman scurried into the foyer, passing Ruger as he stormed away.

  “Miss Blaine! You are back!”

  Macie nodded. It was obvious that Rosa had not welcomed being left on her own with the authorities. Even though she was now a legal citizen and no longer under the gun of the INS, anyone with a uniform and a badge made her nervous.

  “Yes, of course I came back,” she said softly, then impulsively hugged the little woman who’d been in her father’s employment for twenty-two years. “Are you feeling better?”

  Rosa started to cry. “My heart is so sad. Miss Felicity…Mr. Declyn…and the niño…madre de Dios!”

  It was all Macie could do not to cry with her. “I know, I know. I can’t bear to think of what Evan is enduring, but we have to believe he’ll come back to us.”

  Rosa pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose as she stepped back. As she did, she realized the man beside Macie had no intention of leaving as the other agents had.

  “Señor? Is there something I can do for you?”

  Jonah picked up his suitcase. “There’s got to be a spare bedroom in this place. I’ll be needing one for a while.”

  Startled, Rosa glanced at Macie, who nodded. “Put him in the room across the hall from mine,” she said.

  “Señora?”

  “This is Jonah Slade. He’s Evan’s father,” Macie said.

  Rosa gasped and then crossed herself quickly before yanking the suitcase from Jonah’s hands.

  “Praise be to God,” Rosa said softly, casting a curious look Jonah’s way.

  “I can carry that,” Jonah said, but Rosa shook her head. “No, señor…it is my honor. Please, follow me. We use the back stairs until the cleaning crew is gone,” she added, and then crossed herself again as they passed the staircase where Felicity had died.

  Macie wouldn’t look at it again. She’d seen it before. But Jonah hesitated, eyeing the three men in coveralls who were down on their knees on the stairs. The scent of cleaning solution was strong enough to burn his eyes, but it was the faint blood stain embedded in the carpet that brought him to a halt.

  Felicity of the easy smile and laughing eyes—the woman who’d betrayed him in a way he would never have believed—had died there. He stared, imagining the life spilling out of her, knowing that Evan must have seen that—and more. Anger came slowly, filling him with a sense of helplessness.

  If they hadn’t lied to him, none of this would have happened. He would have taken another path in his career. Every undercover agent knew that you took the chance of making deadly enemies, but you never gave them a chance to take it out on anyone but yourself. Now, without knowing it, he’d put an innocent teenager into harm’s way. The kicker was that the boy was his.

  “Jonah.”

  He blinked and then shuddered as he turned away. Macie was waiting for him near the back stairs. Rosa was already out of sight.

  “This way,” she said.

  He looked up the long, winding staircase and felt a knot in the pit of his stomach. He half expected Felicity to be standing at the top with that taunting smile on her face.

  “Yeah…I remember,” he said, then started upward without waiting for her to follow.

  Macie sighed, her heart too sore and heavy to worry about what Jonah must be feeling. She couldn’t let herself care that coming back here must have brought back a lot of bad memories for him. Her entire focus was on doing whatever it took to get Evan back alive.

  Jonah reached the second floor and saw Rosa waiting for him down the hall.

  “This will be your room, señor. If you have need of anything, please let me know.”

  “Thank you,” he said briefly, then gl
anced at her as he passed. “I remember you, don’t I?”

  She nodded. “You fix my car one day when it wouldn’t start.”

  “Yeah…I remember now. It was a sixty-two Ford Falcon, right?”

  She smiled. “Sí, señor. You were most kind.”

  His expression froze. “It was a long time ago,” Jonah said, then took the bag from her hands and closed the door behind him.

  Macie smiled at Rosa as they passed in the hall.

  “You want dinner tonight?” Rosa asked.

  Macie sighed. Food was the farthest thing from her mind, but they had to eat.

  “Yes, please…but nothing fancy. Maybe some soup and cold cuts, okay?”

  “Oh, no, Miss Macie…I will make dinner…just like always. You eat. You will feel better, okay?”

  If letting Rosa cook would make her feel better, then it was the least she could do.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said. “It will be very okay.”

  Glad to have someone from the family back in the house, Rosa went back to her kitchen. At least there, her world had not changed.

  Macie was not so fortunate. She’d grown up in this place and despite the often overdone opulence Declyn favored, it had been home. When Declyn had virtually disowned her for telling Evan about his father, she’d never expected to be here again—and certainly not under these circumstances.

  The knowledge that her sister was lying in a morgue somewhere made her want to scream out with rage. The fact that her father was hovering near death in an ICU would normally have been a matter of great concern, but Evan’s abduction had taken precedence over everything else. She could only imagine how frightened he must be. She wouldn’t let herself think of anything else. Evan of the tender heart and gentle smile had to be all right.

  3

  It took Jonah less than ten minutes to unpack, and in that short span of time, the past had come at him from every angle. It had been fifteen years since he’d laid eyes on Felicity Blaine, and while he knew she was dead, her presence in this place was so strong, he kept expecting her to appear. He’d spent so many years hating her for what he’d thought she’d done, and now he was having to come to terms with a whole new set of betrayals. Even though she hadn’t aborted the baby, what she and her father had done amounted to thievery of the worst kind. They’d stolen his child. Now Miguel Calderone had stolen him again. Jonah got sick to his stomach every time he thought about what Evan might be enduring—and on his behalf. He’d seen firsthand what insidious tortures Calderone was capable of perpetrating and if Calderone gave the word, a fifteen-year-old kid didn’t have a chance in hell of surviving them. He still couldn’t figure out how Calderone had learned of Evan, or how he’d figured out who Jonah really was. All he’d known was a man named Juan Diego Ramirez. Someone had talked. He needed to know who, and he needed to know why. Having settled that in his mind, he got ready to leave the room.

  Just then his cell phone rang. Startled, he looked at the caller ID and then frowned.

  “This is Slade.”

  “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  It was the director. Jonah’s frown deepened. He was guessing that Ruger had already contacted his superiors, who had, in turn, contacted the director of the CIA.

  “I’ve got a problem,” Jonah said.

  “So I understand. How can we help?”

  “Find my son before Calderone butchers him.”

  There was a brief silence and then a sigh. “Unofficially…we’ve offered our help in any capacity Agent Ruger names.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Of course.”

  “Sir…I have a favor to ask.”

  “Yes?”

  “I think the fewer people who know where I am, the better off Evan will be.”

  “Why?”

  “Calderone only knew me as Juan Diego Ramirez. He had no way of knowing my real identity or that I had a son. Hell, sir, and pardon me for saying that, but I didn’t know until earlier today.”

  “I see. Yes, there could be a leak. I’ll look into it personally.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Jonah said.

  The director added, “You know that you can’t participate actively in the investigation. This is FBI business. Besides, as you say, Calderone’s people know you now.”

  “Yes, sir…I’m well aware of that, but I know Calderone. Even if he’s in custody, he’s still running the show. I believe he took my son to make me suffer. I’m guessing we have less than a forty-eight-hour window before he starts sending Evan back in pieces. Obviously they don’t know that I didn’t know Evan existed until today or they would have chosen another method of revenge. But that’s moot now. They have him. Now they have to make sure I know where he is so I suffer as Calderone is suffering. But if they can’t find me, it may buy us some time to find Evan.”

  “Yes, I see your point, and since you know Calderone better than anyone, we’ll do it your way…but only up to a point. Ruger is in charge, Slade. Don’t play hero.”

  “I’m not playing anything, sir, and there is no way in hell this is a game. Just know that I’ll do what it takes to find the boy.”

  “Be realistic, Slade. It may already be too late.”

  “Then God help Calderone, because there won’t be enough bars between him and me to keep him alive.”

  Jonah disconnected before his boss could issue orders he might have to disobey. He’d already said more than he meant to, but this was too close to the bone to mince words. Whatever happened to him was immaterial if it meant saving Evan.

  As he took a deep breath, there was a knock on his door. Still angry, he spun abruptly, the tone of his voice echoing his emotions.

  “Yes?”

  Ruger walked in, ignoring Slade’s behavior. “If you’ve got a few minutes, there are some things I want to run past you.”

  “Here?” Jonah asked.

  “No, downstairs.”

  “Okay, but there’s something we need to get straight. I don’t want my whereabouts leaked to anyone beyond what’s already been done. Also, as far as anyone else knows, I’m here strictly for Miss Blaine’s benefit. Call me a bodyguard. Call me a boyfriend. Call me whatever the hell you choose. Just don’t call me by name or refer to me as Evan’s father in front of anyone else, got it?”

  “There are a couple of agents who already know,” Ruger said. “They’re analyzing the tape you brought as we speak.”

  “Then ask them to keep it quiet.”

  “Sure, but why the secrecy?”

  “Trust me…it might keep the kid alive a little longer. Now, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “We have a video from the security system here in the house. It isn’t pretty, but it caught most of the abduction, and since I understand you’ve been vacationing in Colombia for the past few months, you might see something about the perps that we’re missing. Something that might help us ID them.”

  Jonah grimaced. Vacationing? Right. In hell.

  “Yeah, all right.”

  “Good. Follow me,” Ruger said.

  Jonah had never thought about what a condemned prisoner might feel like while making that last walk to his execution, but he knew it couldn’t be much worse than what he was feeling right now. The guilt level was close to choking the life right out of him. Damn Miguel Calderone to hell and back, and damn Declyn Blaine, too.

  To make matters worse, Ruger took him down the front staircase. The cleaning crew was gone, but the scent of professional strength disinfectant was still strong in the air. He paused at the head of the staircase, staring down at the damp places where they’d cleaned the blood from the carpet.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

  Ruger stopped and turned. “What?”

  Jonah swallowed, then shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “This way, then,” Ruger said, and took the stairs two at a time.

  Jonah followed, trying to ignore the fact that the woman he’d once thought he
’d loved more than life—the woman who’d born his only child—had died here.

  “In here,” Ruger said, waving Jonah into the first room to the right of the main staircase. It had once been Declyn’s home office. Ruger had turned it into a conference room.

  Other than a muscle jumping at the side of Jonah’s jaw, there was no outward sign of what he was feeling. A half dozen agents were sitting in pairs around three different tables. One table was covered with high-tech tracing devices, in hopes that the kidnappers might call. Two other agents were hard at work at a second table, analyzing the tape from his answering machine. The fact that he couldn’t actively pursue part of the investigation made him feel helpless. It was the first time he’d ever been on the victim’s side of a case. One of the agents looked up and saw him, then gave him a nod before returning to his task.

  Jonah knew the men were skilled at their jobs and that any interference from him would not be welcome. Besides these men, there was no way of telling how many were already on the streets, following up leads. The kidnapping, as well as the murder of Declyn Blaine’s eldest daughter, was the lead story on every television channel. Jonah knew that fact alone would be generating all kinds of leads from the public, all of which would demand thousands of man hours from the local authorities, as well as at the federal level. What rankled most was that this was his son and he was relegated to the role of bystander.

  “Have a seat,” Ruger said.

  Jonah sat down in an easy chair in front of a portable TV while Ruger shoved the security tape into the VCR, then glanced at Jonah.

  “Are you going to be okay with this?” Ruger asked.

  “Just play the damned tape,” Jonah growled.

  Ruger aimed the remote, pushed the play button and sat down. He’d seen it dozens of times before, but the brutality of it still grabbed him.

  It started out so ordinary.

  The doorbell ringing.

  Rosa appearing within camera range and then opening the door before being shoved onto the floor.