Carly Bishop - No Baby But Mine

by No Baby But Mine(Lit)

  "If Christo was threatened by Loehman through Rawlings--or in any other way-there isn't one of us who would blame you for going along with whatever Loehman dictated." She started to interrupt, but he held up a warning hand.

  "If that's what happened, Kirsten, now is the time to spit it out."

  "Garrett, I swear to you that's not" -He gave a warning shake of his head.

  "Too easy, Kirsten."

  "Too easy? My God, do you think this is easy? Can you possibly believe" -"What I know is that there isn't any reasonable explanation for a photo of me to have been printed out on your computer hours ahead of our ever meeting. Not unless you were given the photo and told I was the man you were supposed to get to. Do you have any idea of the odds against your story being true?"

  She fell back a bit into her chair, stunned by the perfect logic of it, by the sheer improbability not only of a baby monitor spoiling a stakeout, but of her having in her possession, from her computer, so perfect a photo of Garrett Weisz--unless what he surmised was the truth instead.

  For if it was true, then she was even more the sacrificial lamb staked out on the hillside, baiting String's enemies into an ambush that would solve all Loehman's problems, both from within the Truth Sayers and without.

  Loehman might well have engineered the whole thing.

  "I can't speak for Burton Rawlings, but" -She broke off, trying to assimilate such twisted, protracted revenge.

  "It's possible that Loehman was using Burton to get to me. But no one gave me your photo, and what happened with Christo's baby monitor is true. I haven't lied to you, Garrett. Not once."

  But she could see that his doubts were not going away on the strength of her word. She even understood. If Loehman had gotten to her, if he had set up an ambush, if Christo's life had been threatened, she'd have lied to them with the last breath she would ever draw.

  "Do you know anything about computers?"

  He nodded.

  "Then if you want, check out the jpeg files. If anyone had sent me a photo of you, that's where you'd find it."

  Still leaning against the doorjamb, he crossed his arms over his chest. His face, so handsome, so expressive, so revealed in his own small son, remained impassive.

  Shadowed.

  Mistrustful.

  "Suppose you tell me instead what kind of files I'll find it in."

  "Identicomp--an ICP extension." She watched as deepening suspicion flitted across his eyes. The program was used by law enforcement everywhere to generate suspect photos, and it wasn't found on the open market.

  Her chin went up.

  "It's an old version of the software. I have it because I was involved in ironing out the bugs years ago."

  His broad handsome forehead creased.

  "You're telling me you created that photo from stock features?"

  "Yes."

  "From descriptions of me?"

  She shook her head.

  "From memory."

  "What memory, Kirsten?"

  The one of the place and time that I knew what it was to be loved. She bit her lip. What she knew was an illusion, a pretense and a poor bargain, to boot, a sacrifice of her self for a few hours of something transcendent. For the first time, regret stung her.

  "It isn't important."

  "I don't think you want to be deciding for me what's important, Kirsten. Not now. Not with Christo's well-being at stake."

  For a split second she imagined he did know, that he was toying with her, but then she saw that he meant it in the most literal sense.

  "It has nothing to do with anything that's happening now."

  "Kirsten" -He stopped himself. There was already too much at stake, too many lives, too many threats, too powerful an enemy, and she knew he was aware that she had reason to understand all that with brutal clarity.

  "What memory?"

  She had no choice but to tell him. Not if he was to believe she wasn't in league with Loehman. But she could barely get the words out, hardly look at him face-to-face.

  "I... we met at a... a bar one... one night. A long time ago."

  "How long ago? A year? Two?"

  He wasn't going to get it. Wasn't going to look at what was staring him in the face, that it was his own son he was taking from her.

  "It was the Mercury. The night" -She broke off. An unease invaded his posture, darkening his already shadowed eyes.

  "The night" -- "I've only been to the Mere once in my life."

  "Then you know what... memory." But he gave no indication of remembering her.

  "Or not." She mocked it herself to prevent him breaking her heart one more time.

  "We had a one-night stand."

  He recoiled from the blistering of one-night stand.

  "Kirsten... I'm not" -- "That kind of man?" She shrugged, battling back from some abyss even colder yet.

  "I'm not that kind of woman, either. But once. You were, once, Garrett And I was.

  Once. " Her throat closed, making that hideous little clicking sound a throat makes when you're trying hard not to cry.

  She waited.

  And waited. He was staring at his shoes now, his head bowed, his fingers jammed into the pockets of his Levi's. The sea of silence deepened. Could he draw a line between the only two dots that mattered? The wait made what was fluid and vulnerable and honest in her go hard, like seawater drying up, leaving only salt behind in the wounds on her spirit.

  He looked up at her again.

  "That's all there is to it, then?"

  The print, he meant. She meant more.

  "Yeah. That's all there is to it."

  He released a pent-up breath.

  "It's time, Kirsten."

  A cry flew out of her. She clapped a hand over her mouth, bolted out of her chair and turned away from him.

  hh wished with all his heart that he knew what to do, how to make this easier, but he had never felt so sucker-punched in his life. The shape of her slender back defined despair. He supposed he'd have had to be a completely heartless bastard not to feel as if he ought to be drawing her into his arms for a moment's respite, but he couldn't.

  He was scared spit less

  It all made sense now, or came close. He knew why he'd stood there like a fool, staring at Kirsten McCourt through a two-way with Ross Vorees standing there wondering what was going on. He knew why the scent of her evoked nebulous, half- erotic memories. He knew.

  And now he knew they were erotic. Intimate.

  From her closed-off posture it was clear to him that she wanted no part of any reassurances he could impart to her, any comfort he could offer. She wanted what he couldn't give her. To have remembered her, remembered them. And now she had to hand over to him the most precious piece of her life. In extremis was no exaggeration of her state of mind. Nor was it unwarranted.

  He didn't even want to examine his own. He didn't have the time. When he did, it wouldn't be a pretty picture.

  It didn't matter now. What was important was that Christo had to be gotten out of harm's way.

  She sniffed and gulped for a little air. Cries locked in her throat.

  The biggest favor he could do her was to get it over and done. To take Christo and leave. He sucked in a deep breath, turned and left the study, and took a couple of steps toward her son's room.

  She reached out and clutched at his arm. He turned back. He could tell she had to tell him something, that it wasn't an option. He couldn't brush her off, couldn't misread the pleading in her posture.

  He stepped back toward her and bent his head low. On tiptoe, she touched his shoulder. Her lips drew near to his ear.

  "If he wakes up," she breathed, "if he's afraid, tell him I told you our secret password."

  On one level he absorbed what she was saying to him, but her breasts brushed his arm, her breath touched his cheek and he reacted sharply, gripping her arm, staring at her mouth, coping with his swift, fierce arousal. On another level, a dark, heated awareness unlike anything he could remember flar
ed between them.

  Of desire long forgotten on his part. It was alive now.

  Of dim memory sharpened, but not enough, not nearly enough to grasp.

  He saw in her eyes, in the dim glow of a night- light plugged into Christo's bedroom wall, that for her, this moment of giving over her son, this exchange of guardianship of Christo's small, precious life, was an act more intimate than any other.

  A small, mewling sound escaped her.

  "Kirsten, for the love of God..." His voice, his words, were little more than a harsh breath.

  She looked away, anywhere but at him.

  He didn't understand.

  He knew sexual desire. He knew its tricks, its effect, its fulfillment, pleasure, pain, resolution. He knew its every nuance. Not in recent times but over the course of a marriage he could only vaguely recall now. But this tension, the power of this thing between Kirsten and him, he didn't understand. The thought glanced through the corridors of his mind that he hadn't understood it that night, either.

  He let go a silent breath. No matter that an aeon or more had passed between them, no more than a minute could have gone by in real time.

  "What is it?" he breathed.

  "The secret password."

  She swallowed.

  "Snow Dancer." Shivering, she took another step back.

  "She's one of the carousel horses at the park in Spokane." A small gulp.

  "Christo's favorite."

  Garrett nodded and turned away, forcing aside emotions he couldn't define or even recognize. Sinking to one knee, he bent low and saw as he flashed a small penlight inside the dark confines of a teepee that her small son lay curled inside a sleeping bag.

  He pocketed the penlight, came up and sank again to his haunches.

  Pulling the uppermost edge of the downy thickness, he slid the sleeping bag and sleeping child onto his lap. Cradling the little boy in his arms, Garrett pivoted in his crouch and stood.

  She stepped forward, toward Garrett, and looked at her tiny son sleeping peacefully, undisturbed. Cupping the crown of his head, she bent over him, bringing her cheek to Christo's.

  He found himself holding Christo's dead weight, at least thirty-five pounds, in one arm, and brought the other hand up to touch her, to close a circle that somehow needed closing. But the silky feel of her hair, the way she smelled, the depth of emotion and power of her will beneath it, the child between them--all of it closed a gap inside himself as well. A gap where tenderness might once have been found to reside.

  As if she feared what he might read into allowing his touch, she backed off. The gap split open inside him again.

  Their eyes met briefly. He transferred the bulk of Christo's weight to his other arm. Behind him, from somewhere inside the teepee, she brought out a leather drawstring pouch and tucked it deep down inside Christo's sleeping bag.

  Dry-eyed, she turned on her heel and started down the stairs with the duffel bag. At the back door, she unzipped the bag and put in a pair of overshoes, then handed the bag over to Garrett and opened the door.

  So far as he knew, she watched their progress until she couldn't see them anymore.

  at midnight, Guiliani, Thorne, Vorees and a couple of men she hadn't met stormed her house, staging the kidnapping.

  Kirsten worried that her performance was flat, that she wasn't delivering anything like the agony and hysteria she should be experiencing if at that moment Christo was stripped from her arms.

  If she'd felt out of control all those hours ago, she had no words to describe what she felt now, with Christo gone, carried off into the night.

  Emotionless, maybe. Colorless. Hopeless. She wasn't an actor, and she couldn't summon the fury she should be feeling. Her fury was submerged. She couldn't reach it, couldn't tap into it, couldn't dredge up one fiery emotion. Her baby was long since gone, taken with her complete cooperation.

  Encouraging her, egging her on, J. D. jerked a chair from the dining set across the hardwood floor, making a terrible, careless racket.

  "Sit down" -- "You will never get away with this," she whispered, coming a little alive.

  "Who are you?"

  "Sit down," he snarled, his expression softening the impact for her.

  "And shut up. I'm doing the talking here. Is that clear to you?"

  "Perfectly."

  From behind Vorees now, J. D. nodded again. Matt Guiliani, the one who had seemed so completely sympathetic to her at the police station, wasn't even looking at her. He and Vorees both wore headphones, listening to the effect their assault on her house and theft of her child were having on the watchers across the street. Grim satisfaction on his face, Vorees lifted his thumb like a rocket going straight up, and mouthed, "Ballistic."

  "Good." J. D. barked in answer to that, though seeming to acknowledge her understanding that he was the one in charge.

  "You understand, I understand, we all understand. Isn't that swell? So this, sweet darling', is what's going down from here on out."

  J. D. went through the charade just as Garrett had explained it hours ago, this time for the benefit of Loehman's watchers across the street.

  "So you see. You get the kid back when we get what we want.

  Fair enough? "

  She shut her eyes. It took no special effort to cause the waver in her voice.

  "I don't know what you want from me" -- J. D. "s fist came down so hard on her dining-room table that her grandmother's antique silver candlesticks skittered.

  "Is that really the line you want to take with me, lady?" He shrugged, sitting there at the table like an actor on first read-through of a script, miming gestures, no intensity in his features, only the voice.

  "I don't know, guys, what do you think? Maybe she don't want her kid back?" Vorees added.

  "Don't be such an ass," Guiliani snapped, playing out the scenario, but to Kirsten he looked really very dangerous.

  "Look, you've got her scared out of her gourd already. We didn't drive three hundred miles thinking to be back tomorrow," he said, dropping the hint that they'd come from the Tri-Cities area.

  "Lay off a while, huh? The dame knows what's what here."

  "What's your problem?" J. D. demanded, looking truly puzzled at Matt.

  For a couple of minutes the two of them clashed heatedly, role-playing, calling each other by names she assumed were known members of the Tri-Cities splinter group. They created a powerful illusion of men who, if they were tired and on edge, were nevertheless single-mindedly focused on their plan to hold her child hostage until they got what they wanted.

  But watching them she sensed a subtext she didn't understand, an impression that where J. D. was satisfied with the way things were going. Matt Guiliani was not.

  He finally broke it off. Both of the additional men brought in to support the ruse added their two cents' periodically, had a beer and announced now that they were going off for some shut-eye. Kirsten knew from the soft sounds of the door closing off the back porch that they'd gone.

  Vorees made himself at home on the sofa, guzzling bottled water, flipping through the newspaper, which left her with J. D. and Matt Guiliani at the dining-room table. J. D. pulled a legal pad out of a backpack and they traded notes for a while.

  What time, she wrote, will my friends have Christo?

  2:00 to 3:00 a. m. They'll call you. You're doing fine.

  She shrugged. Should we be talking? Won't silence make them suspicious?

  Try not to worry about them or what they think. Best thing is to be yourself in crisis.

  I'd be trying to get them to talk to me.

  Go for it.

  "Where did you come from?" she asked aloud.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" He wrote, Kansas. You?

  She smiled.

  "The other guy said you drove three hundred miles." She paused, scribbling Boston was her hometown.

  "That's a long way to come to kidnap a child." College?

  "Well, not just any child would do, now, would it?" he a
sked nastily.

  She let a beat or two pass, as if shocked to silence by the cruelty, while J. D. scribbled. Same. KU. Typical studly athlete. Jayhawks wide receiver.

  She smiled, then asked a question for which, more than anything, she wanted the answer.