The Secret Son

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Sounds to me like there might be more unresolved issues here than you think.”

  “Uh-uh,” Erica got to her feet. “In a perfect world, maybe, but not in ours.”

  “In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be any issues.”

  Pamela’s sardonic remark followed Erica out into the afternoon sunshine.

  “HI.”

  “Hi.”

  “I didn’t expect to find you there.” It was after seven in Washington. Jack had just called out of a need to hear her voice, even if only on an answering machine.

  “Jeff and Pamela have Kevin for the night. I’m using the opportunity to catch up on things here.”

  Erica didn’t often speak of her ex-husband’s girlfriend. “She’s moved in with him, then?”

  “No. She’ll go home. Kevin sleeps in Jeff’s room when he stays over there.”

  “You sound down. And don’t tell me you’re just tired.”

  “Jeff told me last week that he’s going to ask Pamela to marry him.”

  Sitting in a motel room in South Dakota, Jack winced. “You know that has no reflection on you, right?”

  “I know that I’m playing him up as a man who, when given the opportunity to parade around a young wife, chose love and a woman of his own age, instead. And it’s more than the image, it’s the truth. Jeff’s values aren’t shallow, and his constituents deserve to know that.”

  If Jack had been capable of falling in love, he might have done so in that moment. “That’s pretty selfless of you,” he murmured.

  “I don’t think so,” she said softly. “I betrayed him. He’d done nothing but treat me with love and kindness. He cared for me, gave me everything I’d ever asked for, and I thanked him by…well, you know how I thanked him.”

  Yeah. He knew. And much as he hated what they’d done, what that night in New York had done to her, he couldn’t regret the memory. And couldn’t seem to keep himself from thinking about making another one…with her.

  “So what’s up? Are you as tired as you sound?”

  “I am.”

  “Where are you?”

  “South Dakota. There was an attempted imitation of the Oklahoma City bombing. An entire day care in a government building was being held hostage by this guy after his bombing failed. Apparently he’d been trying to get someone to listen to him for more than a year about a problem he’d had with city water out on his farm. This week his wife was diagnosed with cancer and he’s certain the water she’s been drinking is responsible.”

  Sitting on the edge of his bed, Jack leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and rubbed his face. He’d just been through the most impossible fourteen hours of his career. He couldn’t seem to shake them.

  “So what happened?” Erica’s voice was more than just soft. It reached out to him, pulling him toward her as though she was there in the room, not half a country away.

  “I almost lost one.”

  An image flashed before his eyes in slow motion, as it had been doing for most of the past hour. The smoking gun. The little boy lifted off the ground with the force of the shot. Blood. In the air. On the wall behind him.

  “What happened?”

  “I talked for hours, but there was no reaching this man. He wasn’t going to be talked down. We had his wife come. She couldn’t make a difference, either. He was just too consumed by grief and panic at the thought of losing her, and driven by the rage of believing it could have been prevented if the parents of those children had done their jobs properly….”

  “How many kids were there?”

  “Fourteen. Or so I thought. That’s what the report said.”

  “There were more?”

  “One. A little boy. The teacher thought he’d been picked up already. Instead, he’d been hiding behind a trash can. The rest of the kids had all been herded to one end of the room. I found a way to get in, distracted the guy long enough to get between his gun and those kids. I didn’t count on the little guy who ran out because he thought he was safe when he saw me….”

  “Oh, God. I’m so sorry, Jack.”

  That voice. Her voice. It had an uncanny way of soothing him….

  “The lunatic shot him,” he said, his voice a careful monotone. “The bullet went straight through him. I don’t think I’m ever going to forget the shock on that little guy’s face.”

  And wondering if that was how Courtney had looked. As though, in her baby state of complete physical vulnerability and dependence, something so painful was utterly incomprehensible. Did the shocked expression change with age? Or had Melissa looked the same?

  It wasn’t as though he hadn’t seen people shot before. After all, he’d worked in law enforcement for years. Most recently, he’d been there when James Talmadge had taken his own life. But Talmadge had known what was coming. He’d made a choice.

  Yes, Jack had witnessed shootings, but he’d never seen a bullet go clean through the center of a body. Exactly as had happened to his wife and baby girl.

  “Did he die?” Erica’s voice caught.

  Her compassion was a comfort he hadn’t expected—wasn’t used to.

  “No,” he said, although he wasn’t sure that was a good thing. “The bullet missed his heart by a couple of inches. But it shattered his spine. They can’t tell anything this early, and there’ve been a lot of medical advances, but it looks as though he could be a quadriplegic for the rest of his life.”

  Silence. “You did everything you could,” she whispered.

  “I know.” It was insane for him to think he could’ve known about that little boy. Hell, not even the kid’s teacher knew. But to think Jack had been right there and…

  “Is there anything I can do?” Erica’s sweet voice dragged him back from the jaws of hell.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Talk to me for a while.”

  “Of course.”

  “And then give me your home number so I know I can reach you outside business hours…” She complied without hesitation, and he wrote it down on a page torn from the local phone book.

  He fell asleep with the piece of paper clutched in his hand.

  GO, BABY. JOIN IN. You love baseball.

  Sitting with Jefferson behind a bush in the park, Erica willed her son to drop the shroud of responsibility he’d drawn around himself and be a little boy again. Even if only for the duration of the two-hour birthday party he was attending for Bobbie Naylor, the son of a woman on Jefferson’s staff. The little boy who used to be Kevin’s best friend.

  Kevin didn’t really have time for friends anymore. He was too busy saving the world to bother with swing sets, T-ball or make-believe. At least, any time Erica or Jeff tried to cajole him into taking part in children’s activities, he seemed to have more important things to do.

  Like asking the same questions over and over and over again.

  The only game he ever wanted to play was war, and his counselor had advised Erica and Jeff not to play that with him. She thought if they ignored the unwanted behavior, it would disappear.

  Erica wasn’t so sure.

  Kevin was sitting on a picnic bench, his little feet, in the wing-tip shoes he’d insisted on wearing, swinging back and forth several inches above the ground. From her distant vantage point, it appeared that he was watching the baseball game being organized on the grass in front of him.

  “He’s not going to do it.”

  Positioned beside her on the ground, Jeff was watching just as intently. “Yes, he will.”

  Teams were chosen. The parents approached Kevin. Said something. He shook his head. They tried twice more.

  And then, before the first pitch was thrown, they called to him again from the makeshift field.

  Kevin didn’t budge.

  Jeff rose. “I’m going over there.”

  “No,” Erica said, placing a hand on his leg. “He’ll just take the opportunity to ask you about your meeting yesterday. Dr. Miller said to throw him out there with people who can’t pander to his obsession and see what
happens.”

  They watched silently for several heartbreaking minutes.

  “What he needs is a father young enough to get out there on the field—like Tim Naylor,” Jefferson murmured. “Someone who has the energy and bone density to get down on the floor and roughhouse with him after a fourteen-hour day at the office.”

  “What he needs is you back home.” Erica had promised herself she wouldn’t do this.

  She turned her head, met her ex-husband’s gaze and could have bitten her tongue. She was not only hurting herself, she was hurting him.

  “I answered the phone when I was over a couple of nights ago,” Jefferson said. “The night you had dinner with the Terratruce people.”

  She nodded. Terratruce, a nationally powerful group of environmentalists. That dinner had been three days ago. Wednesday.

  “It was Jack.”

  Erica’s nerves stilled. “You didn’t tell me he called.”

  “He said he’d call back.”

  He hadn’t.

  Crushing disappointment surged through her.

  “You need to tell him about Kevin, Erica.”

  No. She’d worn a pair of off-white linen shorts in deference to the August heat and humidity, and the grass was making her thighs itch. She shifted. And then shifted again, her eye on Kevin, her nerves tuned to the man who sat just behind her, his legs pulled up, his forearms resting on his knees.

  Jefferson was wearing shorts, too. Other than his gray hair and the lines fanning out around his eyes, he could have passed for one of the fathers on that ball field with the rambunctious five-year-olds.

  Kevin sat on the bench watching. All alone. His white shirt and tie were so pathetically out of place with the denim shorts, T-shirts and running shoes the ten other boys were wearing.

  “Look at him,” she said, gesturing at their son. “I can’t tell him you’re not his dad. I can’t confuse his life any further.”

  Or hers. Or Jefferson’s, either. He was the one who’d been there for Kevin’s birth. Who’d taken middle-of-the-night feedings, walked endless hours with him when he’d been writhing with the pain of teething. He was the one who supported, spent time with, taught and most important, loved her son. He was Kevin’s father.

  Kevin understood that better than any of them.

  “Kevin doesn’t have to know.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at Jeff. “You can’t expect Jack to find out that he’s a father and then have no relationship with his son.”

  “Isn’t that exactly what you think Jack would want?”

  Shifting again, Erica turned. She couldn’t bear to watch her son sitting there all by himself anymore. “It is what Jack would want,” she said, “but it isn’t what he’d do. In some ways he’s a lot like you are.” In a lot of ways. “He’s responsible above and beyond his own self-interest. Plain and simple, if he knew about Kevin, he’d insist on being an active participant.”

  Frowning, Jefferson said, “Even if it meant harming him?”

  “Of course not. But don’t you see, there’s no point in telling him. It’ll only force him to do something that would be incredibly painful for him. It’ll hurt you. And because Kevin isn’t going to know, it won’t make any difference to him, anyway.”

  Jefferson picked a blade of grass, looking down at the tennis shoes he was wearing without socks. “Are you so sure that knowing about his son would be painful to him?”

  “Positive.” Erica thought about the conversation more than a week ago when he’d told her about the boy in South Dakota. As they’d talked that night, he’d mentioned Courtney and Melissa more times than in all their other conversations combined.

  “I told him about Kevin starting school,” she said, repeating some of what she’d told Pamela. “He hardly knows Kevin, and he was almost beside himself with protectiveness, going way overboard, or saying that I should, to make certain he’s safe.” She smiled sadly up at Jefferson. “And that was only about going to school. Can you imagine what he’d put himself through enduring everything else a child experiences growing up?”

  Maybe she’d been hoping Jefferson would have a different take on the situation or some insight she’d missed. When he remained silent, she was instantly depressed.

  She told him about the incident last week in South Dakota, about Jack’s inability to stop feeling responsible for something that was entirely out of his control.

  “And aside from that, how could he possibly do his job, how could he walk in front of that bullet, if he knew he had a son of his own waiting for him, depending on him, back home?”

  “Maybe he couldn’t,” Jefferson said, his face serious as he watched the ball game in the distance. “Of course, all hostage negotiators aren’t single and childless.”

  “They aren’t all like Jack, either.”

  They sat there for another hour, watching their small son fight a battle he didn’t need to fight, taking comfort from each other and sharing their pain.

  The boys at the birthday party finished playing baseball. While the parents cut the cake and dished up ice cream, the boys played tag. They whooped and hollered and grabbed things the entire time Bobbie was opening his presents. They climbed on every available surface, including each other. They laughed.

  Kevin sat alone at the picnic table.

  THURSDAY NIGHT of the last week of August, Erica was already in bed when the phone rang. Putting down the novel she’d been reading—a comedy about a woman’s attempt to make a movie in a small, closed-minded town—she picked up the receiver. “Hi.”

  She’d been hoping…

  “Hi.” Sliding down in the bed until her head lay against the stack of pillows she’d been using as a backrest, she welcomed the surge of energy Jack brought to her life.

  “How are you?”

  “Good,” she said. The questions always started out the same. She loved being able to count on that.

  Count on him.

  “And you?” Her bare legs moved slowly, sensuously against silk sheets. “Where are you?”

  “Just got home tonight. I’ve been in Quantico, giving a series of lectures at the FBI Academy.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “Yeah. It was great to be reminded of how I felt twenty years ago when I was just starting out, to get back to basics.”

  She wondered about the Washington job. But didn’t ask.

  “So, what have you been up to this week?” he asked. He sounded relaxed, unrushed, as if he had all night to chat.

  Well, so did she. Until six o’clock the next morning, when she had to get in the shower.

  “The usual,” she said. “Things are really getting busy at work with the nuclear vote coming up in a couple of weeks. And I’ve been trying to get Kev ready for school. He’s not interested at all.”

  At least she hadn’t heard from Rudy again since her meeting with Pamela and the lawyer’s ensuing session with the aggressive reporter. Not that that stopped her from worrying. Knowing he had the information was like sitting around waiting for a bomb to go off.

  Then, too, if Rudy could find it, so could someone else.

  “Things still the same with Kevin’s obsessions?”

  “Yep.” She told him about the birthday party, but for some reason didn’t mention the couple of hours she’d spent with Jefferson watching the whole sorry afternoon unfold.

  They talked about his week and hers, some people she’d met, a particularly good meal he’d had, a joke she’d heard. About things in the news. And about a homeless man who’d been hanging around Jack’s apartment building and the money he’d given him. He held the phone up to his CD player and had her listen to a cut from a new CD he’d purchased.

  His voice expressed an entire range of emotions. From lazy to energized, lethargic to passionate.

  Physically restless, in spite of how much she was enjoying the conversation, Erica moved all over her bed. She kicked off the covers. Lay on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, her feet in the air be
hind her. Then she sat up, hugging a pillow to her chest. She dangled her feet over the side of her bed. And pulled the covers up to her shoulders when she got chilled.

  The silk pajama top that was the extent of her attire, other than a pair of very brief panties, rode up to her ribs, then fell to her thighs.

  “You’ve mentioned all your obligations,” Jack told her more than an hour into the conversation while she was playing with the silk-wrapped buttons that ran down the front of her shirt. “What about free time?”

  She thought for a moment. “I guess there isn’t any.”

  “In the months we’ve been talking, you’ve never mentioned a date.”

  Her fingers stopped moving. “There hasn’t been one.”

  Was he dating? Was that what he was trying to tell her? It was fine with her if he saw other women. Really, she expected him to.

  Still…

  “Why not?” His voice was low, husky.

  Sexy.

  “I’m too busy.”

  “That’s weak.”

  “I don’t want to leave Kevin with a sitter.”

  “You have Jefferson to watch him.”

  Lifting her hips, she pulled her shirt down, ignoring the wave of chills that swept over her as the silk slid along her stomach. She wrapped her arms around herself.

  “What’s the point of dating?” she asked as bluntly as she dared.

  “Companionship?” It sounded as though he wasn’t sure about that himself.

  Studying the paintings of French street scenes aligned on one of her bedroom walls, she considered his suggestion. “I have all the companionship I need at the office with my co-workers. With Jefferson.” She tried to leave it at that, but something pushed her to be completely honest. “And with you.”

  He didn’t say anything for so long she started to feel afraid. Had she upset him? Their relationship was so odd there wasn’t a single social rule to govern it. And they’d never established any of their own.

  It was almost as if they didn’t need them.

  Or did they?

  “What about sex?”

  She felt desire, intense and unbanked. “What about it?”

  “I would think you’d want it.”