The Pregnancy Affair. Elizabeth Bevarly

harder. “Um...maybe?”

      Tate was going to tell Grady that she absolutely had been the one to tell him about that, but he was kind of enjoying how her bun patting was causing strands of hair to come loose. Her hair was longer than it looked.

      “You have access to federally protected files, have you?” Grady asked. “Or do you have hacking skills that allowed you to access those files? Because hacking a federal database is a Class B felony, Ms. Twigg. One that carries a sentence of up to twenty years.”

      She looked a little panicked by that. “Of course I don’t have hacking skills,” she said. “Are you kidding? I majored in English specifically so I wouldn’t have to do the math.”

      “Well, which is it, Ms. Twigg?” Grady asked. “How did you discover Mr. Hawthorne’s identity? And why did you go looking for him in the first place?”

      She bit her lip anxiously. Tate tried not to be turned-on.

      Quickly, she told Grady about Joey the Knife’s will and his intentions for his grandson. Grady nodded as she spoke, but offered no commentary.

      When she finished, he asked again, “And just how were you able to locate Mr. Hawthorne?”

      At first, she said nothing. Then, very softly, she asked, “Class B felony, you say? Twenty years?”

      Grady nodded.

      For a moment, Renata looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights, right down to the fawn-colored suit and doe eyes. Then her expression cleared, and she said, “Craigslist.”

      Grady looked confused. Tate wasn’t surprised. He’d been confused since seeing Renata at his front door.

      “Craigslist?” Grady echoed.

      Renata nodded. “I found a computer whiz on Craigslist who said he could find anyone for anybody for the right price. He helped me locate Mr. Hawthorne.”

      “His name?” Grady asked. Dubiously, if Tate wasn’t mistaken.

      Renata briefly did the deer-in-the-headlights thing again. Then she told him, “John something, I think he said. Smith, maybe?”

      Grady didn’t look convinced. “And do you know if Mr., ah, Smith did anything else with this information he found for you? Like, I don’t know...sold it to someone else besides you?”

      “I’m sure he’s totally trustworthy and kept it all completely confidential,” Renata said.

      Now Grady looked even less convinced. “A guy on Craigslist who says he can find anybody for anyone for money and calls himself John Smith is totally trustworthy,” Grady reiterated. Blandly, if Tate wasn’t mistaken.

      Renata nodded with much conviction and repeated, “Totally.”

      Grady looked at her for a long time, as if weighing a number of scenarios. Finally he growled, “We don’t have time for this right now. We need to get Mr. Hawthorne somewhere safe. And until it’s all sorted out, you’re coming, too, Ms. Twigg.”

      That finally stopped the bun patting. But it restarted the button fumbling. So much so that Renata actually undid the button, and then another below it, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of lace beneath. Which was weird, because in light of developments over the last several minutes, the only thing Tate should find tantalizing about Renata Twigg was thoughts of her having never entered his life in the first place.

      “I’m sorry, but I can’t go anywhere with you,” she said to Grady. “I have a red-eye out of O’Hare tonight.”

      “You don’t have a choice, Ms. Twigg,” Grady said emphatically. He turned to Tate. “And neither do you. We’re all leaving. Now. Once the two of you are settled in a safe house, we can get this all straightened out. But until we know there’s no threat to Mr. Hawthorne, and until we get to the bottom of this security breach, both of you—” he pointed first at Tate, then at Renata “—are coming with me.”

Three

      Renny sat in the backseat of the black SUV with Tate, wishing she could wake up in her Tribeca condo and start the day over again. They’d been driving for more than two hours nonstop—pretty much due north, as far as she could tell—and Tate had barely said a dozen words to her during the entire trip.

      He’d spoken to the marshal often enough early on—or, at least, tried to. Grady had responded to every question with a promise to explain once he was sure Tate and Renny were settled at a safe location. He’d replied the same way as he hustled the two of them out of the house earlier. He hadn’t even allowed Tate time to change his clothes, hadn’t allowed Renny to bring her handbag or portfolio and had made them both leave behind their electronics due to their GPS.

      On the upside, the fact that Grady hadn’t allowed them even basic necessities might be an indication he didn’t intend to detain them for long. On the downside, the fact that they were still driving after two hours was a pretty decent indication that Grady planned on detaining her and Tate for some time.

      She just wondered how far from Chicago Grady thought they had to be before they’d be considered safe. They’d crossed the Wisconsin state line less than an hour after leaving Tate’s house and had kept driving past Racine, Milwaukee and Sheboygan. Like any good Northeasterner, Renny had no idea which states actually abutted each other beyond the tristate area, but she was pretty sure Wisconsin was one of the ones way up on the map beneath Canada. So they couldn’t drive much longer if they wanted to stay in Grady’s jurisdiction.

      As if cued by her thoughts, he took the next exit off I-43, one that ended in a two-lane blacktop with a sign indicating they could head either west to a place called Pattypan or east to nowhere, because Pattypan was the only town listed. In spite of that, Grady turned right.

      Okay then. Nowhere it would be.

      The interstate had already taken them into a densely forested area, but the trees grew even thicker the farther they drove away from it. The sky, too, had grown darker the farther north they traveled, and the clouds were slate and ominous, fat with rain.

      This day really wasn’t turning out the way Renny had planned. She braved another look at Tate, who had crowded himself into the passenger-side door as if he wanted to keep as much space between them as possible. He wasn’t turning out the way she’d planned, either. She was supposed to have gone to his house in her usual professional capacity, relayed the terms of his grandfather’s will in her usual professional way and handled his decision, whatever it turned out to be, with professionalism.

      Any personal arrangements Tate wanted to make with the Bacco family would have been up to him. Then Renny would have gone back to her life in New York having completed what would be the most interesting case she would ever handle in her professional career and try not to think about how early she’d peaked.

      Instead, all her professional responses had gone out the window the moment she saw Tate, and every personal response had jumped up to scream, Howdy do! And those responses hadn’t shut up since, not even when the guy was giving her enough cold shoulder to fill a butcher’s freezer.

      The SUV finally turned off the two-lane blacktop, onto a dirt road that sloped sharply upward, into even more trees. The ride grew bouncy enough that Renny had to grab the armrest, but that didn’t keep her from falling toward Tate when they hit a deep rut. Fortunately, she was wearing her seat belt, so she only slammed into him a little bit. Unfortunately, when they came out of the rut, he fell in the other direction and slammed into her, too.

      For one scant moment, their bodies were aligned from elbow to shoulder, and Renny couldn’t help thinking it was their first time. Um, touching, she meant. Arms and shoulders, she meant. Fully clothed, she meant. But the way her heart was racing when the two of them separated, and the way the blood was zipping through her veins, and the way her breathing had gone hot and ragged, they might as well have just engaged in a whole ’nother kind of first time.

      She