The Secret Son. Tara Taylor Quinn

he reminded her. “To be the one you came home to each night. To hear about your day, share in your triumphs. Be there to support you through the tough times. Hear you laugh. See the world through your eyes. So having the opportunity to be the father of your child—” he had to think of it as hers, only hers “—to share that rewarding experience with you is a bonus.”

      Tears sprang to her eyes again. “Only you could put a positive spin on this,” she said, her lips breaking into a tremulous smile.

      “The solution works,” he said, making sure his point hit home. “I get what I want—you. The baby gets what it deserves—a set of parents who will love and provide for it. You get the security and love you’ve always had here. Help with your baby. Friendship…”

      With one hand, the nails perfectly manicured, Erica traced his lips. “You don’t have to sell me on what I get,” she said softly. “I’ve always known what a treasure I have in you. You’re the one who deserves so much more….”

      Maybe. Sometimes he thought so. But he loved her.

      “So, we’re having a baby?” he asked, making sure they’d sealed their bargain.

      Erica, with marked hesitation, nodded. “On the condition that if you change your mind, you promise to let me know. I won’t have you tied down to this unless it’s what you truly want.”

      He had no doubt about what he wanted.

      And suddenly, no choice but to take it. Reaching up, sliding one hand around her neck, he pulled her lips to his, taking them in a kiss that was far more demanding than any he’d taken before. He filled her with his own taste, as though he could somehow wipe away the other man. Not only from her senses, but from her memory.

      That night, Jefferson set out to seduce his wife. To have her even if she didn’t love him.

      That night, the man who always put her welfare first was tired. He was a man who needed her, and Erica let him find his comfort in her body.

      There are many kinds of love. That was his last coherent thought before he drifted off to sleep.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      May 1997

      JACK SHAW belonged to his job.

      For better or worse.

      Patience was his virtue. Staying cool under pressure his MO.

      A woman—the mother—was crying. Getting hysterical. Jack refused to let himself hear her. She wanted him to do something.

      She didn’t understand that timing was the key to survival. To her daughter’s survival.

      He understood her, though. He knew exactly how she was feeling as she waited there in the balmy May sunshine. Helpless while her daughter’s life was held in the precarious hands of a maniac.

      Marissa was only four, he’d been told. She was on campus as part of a child-care program.

      Rubber-suited men in bullet-proof vests and gas masks surrounded the building. A team was working on the classroom ceiling; tubes with tiny lenses were being fed down through the air-conditioning vents so they could see inside the classroom on the television monitor set up in the van.

      “Do you like dogs, James?” Jack asked. He’d been sitting on the cement outside a first-floor classroom window for half an hour. This was one tough talk-down.

      “What’s it matter?” came the surly reply through the barely open window.

      “I had a dog when I was kid. Damnedest thing, though. He was my best friend, and the biggest pain in my ass, too. Barking and getting me in trouble when I would’ve been able to sneak in past curfew undetected. Waking me up early to be put out on Saturday mornings, the only time I could sleep late.”

      There was no sound from the classroom. Jack wanted to hear something—anything—from Marissa. Even crying.

      He listened. But heard nothing. And so he sat, pretending he had all the time in the world.

      Another high school. Arizona this time. Jack had been in Los Angeles visiting an old buddy from his time with the agency—and attending a movie premiere as the guest of a director he’d once rescued. Arizona authorities had been relieved he was so close.

      Sometime over the years Jack’s specialty had become child negotiation.

      “So,” he said again, dropping a couple of small stones from one hand to the other. “You like dogs?” The list on the ground beside him—the one he’d memorized but kept referring to, anyway—said that James had always wanted a dog.

      There was no answer from inside.

      The compilation of facts about the teenager had been written by James’s teachers, but his mother had been one of the main contributors. She knew her son well. Too bad she hadn’t done anything with that knowledge. Like to understand what drove him, what made him so unhappy—so desperate. Try to help him.

      These were the cases that sickened Jack the most. The parents who were so shocked to find their son or daughter capable of terrorism. Parents who only knew their kids in superficial ways, who didn’t recognize the misery or the rage.

      “James? You like dogs?”

      “Maybe.” The tone was belligerent, but Jack smiled, anyway. James had just come down a step.

      “So, you know why the poor dog chased its tail?”

      Nothing.

      “He was trying to make ends meet.”

      The ground was hard beneath his butt, but Jack pretended not to notice. He was just there for a chat. For as long as it took.

      “You ready to tell me what you want?” he asked in a casual voice.

      “A dog. Can you get me a dog?”

      “I’ll work on it.” Jack waited. “That’s all you want?” he asked, leaning back against the stucco wall of the building.

      The fifteen-year-old didn’t answer.

      “You ready to come out, then?” he called easily. “Or to send Marissa out, at least?”

      “We got a picture!” The exclamation was a whisper—from the bearded, longhaired police officer working closest to Jack. He rolled a television monitor into Jack’s line of vision.

      The boy with the deep sullen voice wasn’t even five feet tall. He was skinnier than a girl. He wore clean, stylishly baggy slacks and a pullover. His blond hair was cut short. James Talmadge looked like every mother’s dream.

      Sweat dripped down the back of Jack’s neck.

      The dream ended where James’s right hand held a gun to a four-year-old girl’s throat. Marissa was lying on the floor, shaking, her eyes wide, unfocused.

      Goddammit!

      What was it with high schools and guns, anyway? High-school terrorism had happened enough times you’d think someone would do something about teenage anger before it got to this point.

      Jack suddenly heard a painful wail. The little girl’s mother had just seen the television. On the monitor the child jerked, probably recognizing her mother’s voice.

      “Get her out of here,” Jack said, pointing to the mother as, on the screen, James pushed the end of his handgun against the child’s throat.

      Marissa’s mother wasn’t leaving without a fight. A female officer spoke to her, telling her that for Marissa’s sake she had to at least move back and be quiet. Hearing her mother’s voice, knowing that her mother was right outside the window, could make the child do something rash that would get her killed.

      Jack saw the young mother nod, her shoulders racked with sobs as she allowed herself to be led several feet away.

      The mother’s anguish singed his nerve endings. It