The Fugitive's Secret Child

by Geri Krotow

  It was empty. He was gone. Again.

  A cramp the size and pain of ten charley horses stabbed through her middle and she doubled over, dry heaving on the pavement in front of the convenience store. She’d indeed lost her freaking mind.

  * * *

  Rob made his way out of the men’s room toward where he’d spied Trina ordering food on the fancy terminal. She was gone, and he looked out the store window to see her bent over just outside the doors, plastic bags clutched in the hands that grasped her knees.

  Drat.

  He walked as fast as his aching, pounding body allowed, out into the afternoon sunlight. He winced as heard her strangled heaves, the blanket of humidity wrapping around him again.

  “Trina.”

  She was throwing up, the puppy on some kind of makeshift tether she held, but nothing was coming out of her mouth. Dry heaves.

  “Trina.” He tried again, placed his hand on her shoulder. “I think you’re dehydrated. You need water.” The puppy jumped and tried to get to their faces, as if this were a game.

  “I thought you were gone.” Her tortured whisper reached him, even though she was bent over. Hell. He’d already put her through it once, and she thought he’d done it again after only an hour or two together. Guilt dug its long claws into his conscience, and he had to bite the inside of his mouth to keep from spilling his guts.

  “I’m right here, Trina.”

  Her body stopped convulsing within seconds of him touching her. She slowly straightened, her face as white as the ice freezer behind them. Her eyes blazed with an intensity of emotion he’d thought was reserved for wartime.

  “You mother—” To her credit she stopped herself, straightened her spine fully and gulped in large breaths. She reached down for the puppy and hugged him to her chest.

  “Just hitting you, huh?” Obviously the trauma of seeing him again had cost her more than she’d let on. He was still trying to process the fact that she’d barely blinked as they outran Vasin. And she had to have recognized him almost immediately. A pain deep in his chest lit a flame of compassion. Now that was an emotion he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in a long time. Trina was shaking with her suffering. And he hated himself, knowing he’d caused it.

  “You’ve been here all along. Capable of finding me.” She spat out the last, her anger building from a boil to vaporizing steam. And he knew whom she’d like to zap off the planet. He reached out to her as a large horn blare from an eighteen-wheeler ripped through the sultry air, startling both of them.

  Damn it, he’d forgotten that they were both still targets of ROC. He never allowed anything to keep him off his mission. He’d never cared for anyone as he had Trina, either. He’d have to go over it later, mentally. How, no matter how many women he’d casually dated off and on since Trina, he’d never forgotten her. No one compared.

  “Get in the car, Rob.” Her demand cut through his pangs of regret, and she stalked off. No offer to help him as he half ran, half limped back to the tiny car. She waited for him next to the open back door. “Hold the dog.” Once inside he held the squirming pup on his lap but otherwise took Trina’s lead. Save for noisily gulping the bottle of water she handed to him, then sharing it with the clumsy puppy, he remained silent.

  Within twenty minutes of leaving the filling station, Trina turned into the parking lot of an auto rental place where she exchanged the economy model for a huge, honkin’ SUV.

  She spoke not a single word to him, her only acknowledgment of his presence when she held the front passenger door of the SUV open, motioning for him and the dog to get in. It wasn’t fun, climbing into the large bucket seat with his battered bones, but he did it. To show her or himself he could, he wasn’t sure. He found himself more than willing to take out any punishment she’d give him. Which was downright stupid. No amount of abuse from Trina would ever make up for what his presumed death had obviously done to her. The pup curled up on the back seat, as if the emotionally charged day had worn him out, too.

  They continued their silent journey on a less-traveled highway that paralleled the main routes. Rob went along with Trina’s zero communications policy until she turned on the radio and played a country station at full blast. The Garth Brooks tune he could deal with, as well as the Miranda Lambert ode to all the bastards she’d ever dated. But when a melancholy, I’ll-never-love-anyone-else ballad began, he pushed the power button and cut the artist off midtwang.

  “Just hitting you, Rob?” Her words cut like a bayonet, eliminating any doubt that she’d been as slain by their forced breakup as he had.

  “Baby cakes, it hit me the minute I saw you with your new man and baby.” Shoot. Double crap. Holy counterintelligence. He’d just spilled his guts to her. Maybe it was time to get out of covert ops, after all.

  “You spied on me?” Her tan hands, naturally olive by birth and deepened by the sun’s kisses, gripped the wheel of the large vehicle, and he was so damned grateful they were busy. Because he had no doubt she’d wrap them around his throat if she could, and he wasn’t sure he’d stop her. Or if he wanted to stop her.

  Because he felt lower than dirt. He didn’t deserve her in the desert, and didn’t deserve her when he’d gone to find her the first time.

  “It wasn’t spying. I intended to talk to you.”

  * * *

  Unexpected tears burned like Mace against Trina’s eyeballs, and she damned them to hell. She’d shed more than her share of tears over a man she’d thought dead and buried.

  “Wait—I visited your grave at Arlington. Who’s in there?”

  He looked straight ahead for once, a relief since he hadn’t stopped staring at her since they’d driven from the rental place. “No one. It was a cover-up.”

  “Cover-up for what?”

  “I worked for the Agency right after. It was the perfect time to do so.”

  “The CIA? But that’s not such a secret that you couldn’t come find me, tell me that you were using a pseudonym.”

  “I did find you. You were otherwise involved.”

  His explanation was making no sense.

  “Where did you find me?”

  “Norfolk. You were still living there—on shore duty.”

  “That was almost two years after, after...”

  “After I was ‘killed’?” He made air quotes around the word, and she almost laughed. Then remembered how pissed she was at him, how ugly this whole situation was. Not including that they were hiding out, on the run from ROC’s top members.

  “Go on.”

  “I was detained for a while, and then had some physical rehab to contend with.” What he didn’t say, the obvious mental anguish he must have faced, concerned her more. But he wasn’t volunteering, and she wasn’t admitting she cared.

  “And?”

  “And I was on your street, across from your town house, waiting for you to get home from work. It was a beautiful day, the sun shining, the wind cold as the North Pole. You pulled in your driveway and got out, and lifted your kid out of the back seat.” He shook his head stiffly, and she thought the little gasps he was letting out through his bruised face were laughter. Until she risked a quick sideways glance and saw the single tear, pointed like a knife, sliding down over his enlarged, purpled cheek. This tear wasn’t from tear gas.

  “You didn’t like seeing me with a child?” It could have been anyone’s; how did he know it was hers? He clearly didn’t know the real truth of it. That the baby was his. Theirs.

  “The kid wasn’t the problem. It was the man you handed it over to.”

  “The man I...” She thought about her time assigned to Commander, Naval Surface Forces Atlantic, a staff in Norfolk, Virginia. It had been a horrendous juggling act to deal with her grief while adjusting to life as a new single mom. There had been only two men who’d been close enough to help her at the time. Craig, another naval officer
who worked on the same staff, and her brother Nolan, who’d just completed law school and was working as a lawyer in Virginia Beach. Nolan had also been a SEAL, and had gotten out of the Navy two years ahead of Trina. He had been as certain as she that Justin was dead. Killed in a raid some of her brother’s colleagues had participated in and survived.

  “Not so smug now, are you?” His sharp words belied the stricken expression stamped on his face.

  “There’s nothing to be smug about, you arrogant jerk.” She turned into the parking lot of a suite hotel and drove around to the back, out of sight of any main roads. As soon as she put the gearshift into Park, she faced him.

  “I was with one of two men during that time. One was my brother, Nolan.”

  She waited for him to turn, not giving a flying fish how much it hurt him. Because she’d hurt for so long, had finally moved on past her loss, and here he was, telling her he’d seen her and their child but had done nothing to broach the divide? Had not wanted to tell her he’d survived? Had picked his adrenaline-seeking career over her and the child he had to have known was his?

  He turned, and she saw the glimmer of fear in his eyes. Fear? It couldn’t be.

  “The other man—did you marry him?” His voice was a croak.

  “He was, and is, one of my dearest, best friends. As a matter of fact, I was at his wedding this past spring. To his husband. He’s gay. I never married, and even if I’d wanted to, that was what, only eighteen, twenty months since you’d died? Scratch that, I mean went missing, right? Because you were alive all along.” She shook her head, followed by a single harsh laugh. “You know, a big part of me never believed it, that you were dead. As if I could feel you still alive on the planet. But my brother, my family, they all told me I had to move on. To get past what had happened.”

  “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Move on.”

  She didn’t answer him right away. Couldn’t. Because the man next to her, Rob, wasn’t Justin anymore. He was a stranger to her. And she had no idea what a man who hadn’t told her he’d survived would do once he discovered he had a son. “There’s no one in my life right now, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  * * *

  Trina was single. Available, but not to him. Rob hated the spark of light in his heart when she admitted she was solo at the moment.

  He watched Trina as she coordinated their hotel room reservation, checked them in, fed the dog with food from the convenience store and continued to stay in touch with her US Marshals boss the entire time. She was the whirlwind of energy he remembered, and more. And because she was keeping her chain of command informed, he knew that Claudia was receiving the same information. All of the LEA chiefs in an area where a TH op was being conducted were alerted to report anything TH needed to know.

  “Have you thought about getting some rest? We don’t know if we’ll have to move again, and it could come with no warning.” Rob stood at the kitchenette counter across from where she was perched on a barstool. The dog was still on his leash but Trina had tied it to her wrist, giving the puppy the security it needed while allowing it to sniff and roll about the strange room. Rob was grateful to be on his feet again. Standing was far less painful than sitting, and to get to and from a seated or reclining position was pure hell. The counter was the right height to lean against for support, too.

  Trina didn’t respond right away as her fingers flew over her phone’s touch screen.

  “Corey texted me that a medical professional will be here shortly to take care of your wounds.” She looked up from her phone. “I don’t understand why we can’t go to a regular hospital. I get that we’re hiding from the East Coast ROC and that you’ve pissed off the top dudes there, but what aren’t you telling me? Who do you really work for?”

  “I can’t talk about it.” Let her assume it was CIA, as she had before.

  “Hmph.” Her grunt dismissed him, as if he were playing a game with her. As grim ferociousness bloomed on her face, anger rose in his gut until he couldn’t cork his ire.

  “What are you so upset about, Trina? Because I’m not seeing your view here. What difference does it make who I work for, what I do? You’ve made it clear you don’t want anything to do with me either way.”

  “What do you expect me to say, Rob? If we hadn’t run into each other on this failed apprehension, I’d be taking flowers out to your grave at Arlington the next time I was in DC.”

  Pow. Right to the solar plexus of his emotions.

  Trina glared at him for several heartbeats. With a roll of her eyes, she shoved away from the counter and walked to the sofa, where she sat down, deliberately ignoring him.

  “I took the job with TH, my current employer, so that I would be closer to you. Believe it or not, I finally realized after five years of dreaming of you that I needed to have closure. Face-to-face.”

  “Uh-huh. How long have you been with them?” Her stubborn countenance hadn’t changed, for which he was simultaneously grateful and perturbed. He left the comfort of the counter and slowly walked to the easy chair opposite her position on the sofa. It was a pullout and where he’d sleep the next night or two while they waited for ROC to stop searching for them.

  “A few months. Well, six, but I decided to move to Silver Valley three months ago. Until then I commuted from DC for each mission. A lot of my work is overseas, as well. But the only reason I rented a place in Silver Valley was so that I could see you.” To find her, face her and allow himself to move on with his life.

  “I’ll give you the grace of your commuting time. So that leaves three months where you never approached me. Wait, make that five years and three months.” Her bitterness tore at him, but he couldn’t dwell on it. He had to make her see he’d come here for the right reasons.

  “You don’t have the edge on everything, Trina. Put yourself in my shoes. It’s not so easy going to the woman you once cared deeply about and revealing that not only are you still alive, you need her help to put your demons to rest.” He loved being able to say her name aloud. To her, with her, in her presence. As angry as she was, he still felt the soothing waves of Trina’s essence pulsing off her, wrapping him in a cocoon of peace.

  It was one true thing that hadn’t changed in five years.

  “So fill me in, Rob. Tell me what you’re thinking.” At least she wasn’t sneering anymore.

  He couldn’t help the grunts and groan as he lowered himself into the too-soft chair.

  Trina was on her feet and at his side in a flash. “Wait—maybe you’d be more comfortable in one of the dining table chairs?” Her hand was on his forearm, and he’d do anything to keep it there. The point of contact was preferable as a focus point to the damned pain radiating from his ribs and arm.

  He gritted his teeth and kept sinking until his ass hit the chair. “I’m. Okay. Help. Me. Situate.” She stayed with him as he folded himself into ninety-degree angles, bent at the waist and knees. Trina placed throw pillows between his back and the chair to keep him as upright as possible, with the least amount of pressure on his frame.

  “Thank you.” His gratitude came out on a relieved exhale.

  “I’ve been there.” She was squatting next to him, her hand on his thigh near his knee. As her face turned up to meet his gaze, he was stunned by the ferocity of emotion revealed in her eyes. Anger, yes, but also compassion and maybe even trust. After all of their history, much of it a blank page to Trina, she trusted him. Physically at least, or she wouldn’t risk being alone with him. She’d have told her boss to have the other marshal take him in, the one who’d been called off the case. Rob would take her trust in any amount available. As a trained killer, it meant more to him than if she’d miraculously healed his battered body with a wave of her feminine hands.

  She leaned over to readjust a pillow and her T-shirt sagged open, revealing the tops of her beautiful breasts and
the lacy fringe of her pink bra. So the US marshal still had her penchant for sexy lingerie. He involuntarily smiled, the reflex stretching his skin over the bruises Vasin had dealt. A flash of gold just above her cleavage caught his eye. A charm suspended on a thin gold chain hovered between them. It was a camel. He’d bought her a twenty-four-karat camel charm when they’d taken a quick break and gone into the souk that was just off base. And she was still wearing it, five years later.

  “How’s that?” She asked about the pillows, his comfort level. He responded to the tiny flicker of hope that had been lit deep inside him.

  “As good as could be expected. Maybe even a bit better.”

  Chapter 5

  Trina looked into Rob’s eyes and knew he wanted distraction from his pain. She reacted instinctively, making sure he was as comfortable as possible on the motel furniture.

  “After you...disappeared, I wasn’t myself. The grief, it was unbearable, and I was unable to focus on my job. I didn’t tell anyone about us, not then, because it seemed too self-serving. As if I was looking for attention when all the focus needed to be on you and the other SEALs who were lost, and the ones who’d survived.”

  She knew he understood; it was something only a veteran would. They’d kept their relationship quiet to be able to keep their professional bearings intact. There was nothing preventing them from dating, as they’d been from different units and both officers. They didn’t share the same chain of command. What they had shared was still sacred to her, she realized. He deserved to know her experience. All of it. Including Jake.

  At Rob’s silence, she stood up and sat on the coffee table directly across from him. Their knees were almost touching. The dog crawled under the table and curled up as she stroked him. “I insisted on staying in the seat, flying the next mission. The P-8 isn’t like a fighter jet, as you know. We have lots of options when it comes to crew and pilots within a mission’s time frame.” She referred to the dozen or so crew members to include at least two pilots on every flight. “We got shot at while I was in the seat. Shoulder-launched antiaircraft missile. Normally we fly too high for it to be a concern, but we were low, conducting surveillance on what we thought was land in the middle of nowhere, with no civilian occupation. We were wrong, and more importantly, I was wrong. Intel had mentioned there could be a resistance unit in the mountains but I dismissed it. It nearly cost me my crew. And the plane.” Trina could smell the inside of the plane’s cabin as if she were back there and not in the hotel room with Rob. She looked at him and saw he was listening intently. Like he used to do when they’d talk for hours on end after a hot lovemaking session in her quarters. Communication had always been their strength, physical and verbal. And that unseen yet tangible spiritual connection.