Carly Bishop - No Baby But Mine

by No Baby But Mine(Lit)

  "Tell me again everything we know about that Truth- Sayers splinter group in the Tri-Cities."

  Ann Calder came back in as Guiliani rattled off the names of the key players, the politics, the power struggle, the nature of the dispute with Loehman that had sparked the existence of the splinter group in the first place. On the same page with Garrett, he asked, "So we stir the hornet's nest a little on this? Take Loehman to the wall?"

  Garrett nodded and turned to Vorees.

  "You got some other clothes here I could borrow?"

  He shrugged.

  "Just sweats."

  "Would you mind?"

  "Be my guest."

  "You're going jogging," Ann said, not a question. Barely touching the wisps of auburn hair at her neck, she blinked slowly, gave a small come-hither smile, the barest suggestion of feminine wiles.

  "You'll need a distraction."

  Thorne all but melted. Gratified by the hint of vulnerability after Thorne had seen through Garrett's own attraction to Kirsten McCourt, feeling almost sorry for the mark in the white van, Garrett nodded.

  "I

  like your style, Ann. "

  Clearly not unaware of the male dynamics going on around her, she tossed her hair, then snapped out a professional, "Thank you."

  "You're welcome."

  Guiliani rolled his eyes.

  "Hey Weisz-acre. Heads up." He tossed Garrett the keys to his on- the-job junker.

  "The dog is along for the ride today. He might come in handy with the little kid."

  kirsten drove straight to the Scratch Bakery and picked up a couple of loaves of day-old bread for the ducks. She had no idea what she was going to do when the loaves were gone, but she didn't expect Garrett Weisz would be far behind her, either.

  Garrett. Her baby's father had a name she now knew.

  When he caught up with her she would tell him. Then he would understand that it was his own son's life at stake. And understanding that, he would have to abandon whatever other schemes he had concocted.

  She told herself she would never go home again. Not ever. That she wouldn't hand over Christo to any kidnapping scenario. That she wouldn't have any part of a plan that separated them.

  Even as she told herself those things, she knew she had no options.

  Ten thousand miles away would not stop Loehman. Not if he believed her to be a threat to him after he'd spared her life almost five years ago. He wouldn't rest this time, until she was dead.

  It took every scrap of her energy to maintain the illusion of an ordinary day passing by. Going through rote motions, she paid for and then put the two loaves of bread into a white mesh bag she always brought along to carry out her shopping.

  She walked back out into sunlight filtered through the nearly constant overcast of gray skies. A part of her wanted to scream. To take on the creep in the white van parked one car behind hers on the street in the friendly old neighborhood where she would have believed herself and Christo safe if she'd ever considered a threat to their safety at all.

  She hadn't.

  And without Burton Rawlings involving her so unwittingly, she wouldn't still. But she'd done the right thing and only made her own situation desperate in the doing. She tossed the bread through the window, into Christo's car seat, then drove the seven blocks to Gingerbread.

  Christo sat pining away at the play table, waiting for her. The anxiety of the extra hours of waiting wreaked havoc with his lower lip. She sank to her knees and gathered him close to her.

  Murmuring her love, her throat closed tight. His little arms circled her neck in a fierce hug.

  "You're late, Mom. Really late."

  She hugged him back as tightly, as if she would never let go.

  "Oh... I'm sorry." Her voice wavered oddly. Tears threatened her like rain threatened every single day in Seattle.

  "I'll bet the ducks are still hungry. What do you think?"

  He pulled away and darted out the door, hollering behind him to come on, before the ducks got tired of waiting and flew off to the 'quator for winter. He talked a mile a minute on the way.

  She watched in her rearview mirror as the white van following her pulled off to the side of the road and parked, several hundred feet behind where she always left her car whenever she and Christo drove to the park. If Weisz had someone following her as well, she couldn't spot the car.

  Christo unlatched the belt of his child seat and, dragging the mesh bag with the bread in it out the door with him, rolled his eyes at her for warning again to watch what he was doing.

  She felt skittish and anxious. She couldn't keep from casting a glance at the white van. Or wanting Christo to come back and take her hand.

  But he was only doing what he'd been doing for weeks by himself, running full bore over the grass toward the duck pond.

  Weeks when she hadn't the sense to be afraid for him.

  Weeks when she'd been proud of him growing so bold.

  She followed after him. Her heart was stuck at her throat. She'd never known this kind of jitteriness. Approaching the pond, Christo took one of the loaves and started calling out to the ducks in his sweet, high- pitched, little-boy voice.

  Christo wasn't afraid when the ducks began waddling at top speed out of the pond, up the muddy bank, coming right up to him. He didn't care if his fingers got pinched and bitten with careless, greedy duckbills.

  She sat on a stone bench, soaking up every "Look, Mom!" every time he pointed out distinguishing marks on this drake or that hen. Every joyous shriek. But her pleasure was blunted by keeping watch against every imaginable threat in the vicinity. The one behind her in the white van, the couple holding hands, walking along a path from the north end.

  An old man strolling by, watching Christo.

  A jogger throwing a Frisbee for a hound that lacked any canine finesse.

  When the bread was all gone, Christo ran along the shoreline, back and forth, clapping his hands, shouting at the ducks. She didn't recognize Christo's father till the Frisbee landed more or less at her son's feet and a basset barreled into Christo.

  It all happened in the space of a few heartbeats-- Christo falling hard for the dog, Garrett falling hard for fearless Christo. In about two seconds, Garrett had collapsed to the ground as if he couldn't run another stride. He told Christo the pup's name, and showed the boy how he could toss and play tug-of- war with Wag.

  Inside, Kirsten reeled from her inability to recognize Garrett Weisz as the jogger until he was upon them. In the navy-blue sweats, in attitude, in his stature and carriage and posture and personality, he had seemed utterly ordinary. Unrecognizable as the man she had met one night and taken to her bed, or the undercover detective who'd sat across from her, apologetic about his construction garb.

  Watching Christo, smiling at the kid-and-dog antics, he asked quietly if she minded if he joined her on the bench.

  She shook her head. He would in any case. She wanted to know which of the three versions of him she had seen was the real Garrett Weisz.

  "You look different."

  Sitting beside her, he shrugged.

  "Stock-in-trade, Kirsten. Comes with the territory." He gave a lopsided grin.

  "I intended to confess to Christo right up front that it was my fault you were late, but" -- "He's already forgotten about it." Shivering, she clutched the elbows of her coat.

  He looked at her with his unmistakable gray eyes, rimmed in deep-sea green.

  "Be nice, wouldn't it, if that's the way the rest of the world worked."

  She wanted to know what he was doing, planning.

  She wanted desperately to get the words out, That's your son. Not because he needed or deserved or had to know for all the reasons Sam had thrust at her, but to make Garrett Weisz change his mind. She couldn't be part of his undercover plot. She had a child to grow.

  Their child to raise.

  There is no baby but mine.

  How fiercely, how recently she'd uttered those words. Now she truly knew bet
ter how fearsomely empty they had been. She couldn't get them out of her mouth for Garrett Weisz to hear. What did she think? That he would snatch up their son, strip him from her, cart him off? That he would keep Christo from her forever after?

  No.

  But she couldn't imagine what the consequence of telling him would be, only that there must be consequences she wasn't prepared to deal with.

  Not now. Her only option was to buy time, which meant sending Christo away from her and out of danger. If she and Christo were ever to be truly safe again, she had to deal with that now. First. Taking Christo out of the danger zone was the best option for them all.

  Garrett hadn't attempted a word of persuasion;

  this she was doing to herself.

  "What have you done so far?" she asked him.

  "Vorees is hitting up a judge for a phone tap. Guiliani took the key to your back door. Ann Calder picked up your trail and followed you here, which is how I knew where to come."

  She nodded.

  "There aren't a lot of duck ponds around, are there?" Not with all the water surrounding Seattle. Christo knew ducks fly south for the winter, like many, many birds, but there was never any threat of these waddlers abandoning their cushy pond.

  "Won't your meeting me here make the guy in the van nervous?"

  "Calder flattened one of her tires." He smiled.

  "Pulled off quite a damsel-in-distress act. The guy's tongue is hanging out of his mouth. It'll be half an hour before he comes up for air."

  He looked at her again. She saw the same kind of question in his eyes now that she'd seen the first time she laid eyes on him that night in the Mercury. Are you doing okay?

  She looked away. What else could she do?

  "Kirsten?"

  "Yes?" A bad taste, fear of what might happen, of Loehman, of Weisz and his kindness, pooled unremittingly in her mouth.

  "Did you settle on a kidnapping?"

  "Should I take it you've changed your mind?"

  She nodded. With Wag in hot pursuit, Christo was somersaulting over the grass. His hair was getting wet. She had to get him home soon, dried off and warm.

  "I can probably handle whatever camera work you need. Photo surveillance. Digital, whatever."

  Weisz clasped his hands and let out a breath. She realized he'd been worried that he'd have to find some new avenue to convince her she had to stay.

  "That'd be great. What I need to know now is if you have someone to send Christo to."

  There was never a question in her mind it must be Ginny and Sam. Her dad was too old and too far away. She had a sister in Phoenix, but they weren't close. Christo was only vaguely aware that he had a real aunt at all.

  "My friends" -- "The Wilders?"

  "Yes." Her throat tightened.

  He pulled out a small dedicated cell phone for which all that was required was that he turn it on. A few seconds later, he had his connection.

  "We're a go for Jackson Hole." He listened for only a moment, then closed up the phone and returned it to the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt.

  "You know where the Wilders are?" She felt overwhelmed, somehow outdistanced, outmaneuvered.

  Out of control, emotionally, and in every other sense, if she were honest. Garrett Weisz already knew that Ginny and Sam were the people she trusted most, as well as where they were and how he was going to get Christo to safety.

  If he knew all that, who else knew?

  "Are Ginny and Sam too obvious?"

  Shaking his head, he reached out to brush a strand of hair from her face. His barest touch lit fires, fired emotions that skittered wildly. Why didn't he know, why couldn't he see, how could he fail to recognize himself in Christo?

  "They would be--if we tried to pull off a random kidnapping. But it looks like a ruse to get cops inside your house. I don't think there's any possibility of that with what we've got in mind."

  "Which is what?"

  "Still a kidnapping," he admitted, "but a different angle." The only time he took his eyes off her was to watch Christo with Wag, or to scan the park for any signs of trouble.

  "This is what I believe is going on, Kirsten. If we're right about all this, then Loehman has to believe you have something, or you're working with Burton Rawlings on getting something, developing something that will destroy him, one way or another.

  "Not just something nebulous, either," he went on.

  "Loehman is worried, but that's how the paranoid survive. He must have it reliably that you--or Burton--have solid evidence. We don't know what that is yet, which is the point of all of this."

  "I don't understand... About Ginny and Sam" -- "You will. Here's the kicker. We all know you aren't Loehman's only problem. There's unrest in the troops, a lot of jockeying going on" -- "Burton said that. Too many wannabe leaders, not enough followers."

  "Exactly." Wag had begun to lose interest. Garrett called to Christo and held out a handful of doggie treats, which did the trick for restoring Wag's willingness to roll over and play dead, over and over again. Christo was sneaking looks at Garrett that made him smile, and wrenched Kirsten's heart.

  She tried to stay focused, summing up.

  "So, whatever it is Loehman thinks I've got, or that I'm going to get, is equally dangerous to him if it falls into the hands of these splinter groups?"

  Garrett nodded.

  "You got it. Whatever hurts Loehman, whatever loosens his grip on the reins works for any of them. Maybe more for them than for us. But it wouldn't hurt my feelings to identify and nail Loehman's competition at the same time."

  She swallowed. Christo fell into a giggling fit again while Wag gnawed on his fingers. She tried to think what Loehman would do, backed into a corner, not only his control threatened, but his freedom, and possibly his life.

  "So the kidnapping is made to look like the work of one of the factions against Loehman?"

  "Yeah."

  "How will it work?"

  "We'll take Christo out right after ten o'clock tonight. I have a Learjet standing by. We'll fly to Missoula and drive to the Wilders'.

  Christo will be snug in bed by around 2:00 a. m. I'll be back by dawn. "

  She had to grit her teeth to keep from falling apart at the reality of it all happening, of Christo being taken from her, of Garrett taking Christo himself.

  "Do Sam and Ginny already know" -- "They're probably hearing about it right now. Are you concerned that there'll be a problem?"

  "No. None."

  He nodded. His look told her how fortunate she was to have someone to whom she could entrust Christo. Friends who could do that for her without question.

  Christo came running to get help with tying a shoelace. Garrett made some appreciative noise about the outstanding sneakers. The two of them exchanged a high-five and he watched Christo take off again.

  "Any doubt that Christo will be okay?"

  "To wake up at Ginny and Sam's?" Christo would be over the moon with excitement. There was no other way she could have considered any of this if she hadn't known absolutely that much was true.

  "He'll be fine. I have some baby Benadryl. He's allergic to strawberries, so..."

  Why was it so hard?

  Why, if she could share these small details with

  Garrett Weisz, was it so impossible to simply say what she knew would finally have to be said?

  Every moment that slipped away added to the weight of her guilt, to the seriousness of her offense.

  "He sleeps well anyway. The Benadryl will ensure he doesn't wake up during the trip." She forced a smile against the glaze of tears.

  "If he knew he'd missed his first ride on a jet plane, hell wouldn't have him."

  "I'd be the same way." Another variation on the Weisz smile, one so like Christo's grin she had to look away to breathe.

  "He has a temper, huh?"

  If he knew he was Christo's father, could his question have sounded more chip-offtheold-block prideful? She didn't think so. How much deeper a hole could sh
e dig for herself?

  When she didn't answer, he went back to filling her in on the rest of what would happen after Christo was gone. "We know they either have bugs planted inside your house, or some fairly sophisticated parabolic mikes. We're the enemy, so far as you're concerned. You shouldn't even think of it as an act, Kirsten."