Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

Breathing was all Faroe could manage.

And listening.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you speechless,” she said.

He could feel his heart beating in his chest. The blood roared in his ears. He began to breathe again. “Finish it.”

“You do the math.”

He just watched her with green eyes that looked dark, feral.

Grace drew the sheet across her breasts, suddenly aware of her own nakedness and vulnerability. “The age-old male problem-how do I know the bitch is telling the truth?”

Though he didn’t move or speak, the pulse at his throat beat hard and fast. His expression was closed, blank, bleak.

“A year later I wanted more children,” Grace said. “Ted didn’t, but he sure did like sex better without a condom. Lane turned five, and no siblings in sight. By then I’d nagged enough that Ted went to a doctor to shut me up. He discovered he was a few sperm short of meaningful fertility. We were very, very lucky to have conceived once. It must have eaten at Ted, because after a few more months he quietly took a swab of his mouth, and of Lane’s, and sent both to a DNA lab.”

She stared at Faroe through eyes blind with tears.

“Say it.” Faroe’s voice was as grim, his whole body vibrating with suppressed emotions.

“Lane, a sweet, beautiful boy who called Ted Daddy and followed him every chance he got; Lane, the innocent who idolized his daddy even though Ted barely bothered to notice him…” Her voice frayed.

She drew a deep breath and slid off the bed, pulling the sheet with her, wrapping it tight around her. She walked to the bathroom door, opened it, and snapped on the lights. In the white glare, her face was streaked with tears. She turned and looked at the man who seemed to cast shadows even in darkness.

“Say it.”

“Lane is your son.”

MANHATTAN

SUNDAY NIGHT

“WELL?” STEELE DEMANDED.

Dwayne typed on the computer keyboard quickly, then touched the screen with his finger. Documents flew by in a kaleidoscope of information. Narrow-eyed, he watched them, then touched the screen again.

“No calls from any number registered to Ted Franklin.”

Steele made a frustrated sound. “Apparently he’s smarter than his previous actions would suggest.”

“That wouldn’t be hard.”

“This is an inconvenient time for Mr. Franklin to improve his criminal IQ.”

Dwayne bent over the computer again. More documents flew by. He tapped on several, read, shook his head.

“What?” Steele asked.

“A lot of nothing. The team watching the La Jolla house is suffering terminal boredom. No one coming or going. The hostiles watching the house are equally bored and equally determined. Gotta give it to those feds. They’re real bulldogs. Some wild-card Mexicans cruised the place. No point in following them, because if they’re sniffing around the judge’s house, they’re as lost as we are.”

“Telephone? E-mail?”

“One of our people took the judge’s computer and hacked it. So far, nothing helpful and no e-mail but the business kind. No physical mail but bills. No phone calls to the house except from people looking for Ted. No point in following up on them, because they know exactly what we do about his whereabouts. Zip. Zap. Zero. Did I mention zilch?”

“Keep everyone in place. Ted might run for familiar ground.”

Dwayne nodded and continued his update. “The team watching the lawyer’s house hasn’t learned anything except how the rich and ridiculous shop. The team that black-bagged the lawyer’s office has an eye-popping list of clients, but none of them connect in any obvious way to our Teddy-boy.”

“Try for a subtle way.”

“I’ll need hundreds of people to backtrack the clients and stake them out.”

“Pick the top five prospects. Follow them.”

“Pick them how?”

“That’s why I hired you. For some things, your instincts are better than mine. Pick five. And get Faroe on the phone. We need to make some plans for the rendezvous.”

“I tried. He’s not answering his phone.”

“Try again.”

TIJUANA

SUNDAY EVENING

GRACE WATCHED FAROE WITH the kind of intensity he often used on her. In the three minutes since he’d backed her into a corner and dragged the truth about Lane out of her, Faroe had calmly pulled on his clothes, gathered up his cell phone, adjusted something on the unit, and put it in his pocket. Then he’d turned his back on her and stared out the window.

He hadn’t said a word.

Not one.

His cell phone rang. He ignored it.

“Say something,” she said finally.

“You don’t want to hear what I’m thinking.”

“Try me.”

“How would you feel if I’d shown up with a teenager, introduced you, and said, ‘Oh, by the way, this is yours. Little souvenir of three days of jungle sex and a bad rubber.’”

“You look at Lane and see a bad rubber?”

Faroe spun toward her. The raw fury on his face was the same as she’d seen sixteen years ago. His voice was deadly calm. It made the hair on her neck lift.

“I look at Lane and see a son I never had the chance to know,” Faroe said in a voice that was as quiet as his eyes were wild. “I look at Lane and see a son who never knew his biological father. I look at Lane and see fifteen years gone, fifteen years I’ll never get back. Neither will he. Then I look at you.”

Instinctively Grace backed away from Faroe.

He matched her step for step, inch for inch.

She’d known he would be angry. She hadn’t known how it would feel to be the focus of that rage.

“I look at you,” he said softly, “and see an ambitious female who used a stud for sex and a billionaire to raise her bastard.”

“I didn’t know you were Lane’s biological father!”

A wall hit Grace’s back. This time she didn’t welcome it. She ignored the tears blurring her vision and lifted her chin as Faroe closed the last inches between them.

“You didn’t care,” he said. “You had a baby and a billionaire and a fast-track career and you just didn’t give a damn about the dumb sperm donor.”

“The dumb sperm donor threw me out of his life, remember? I didn’t know, Joe. I swear it!”

“The dumb sperm donor remembers that you could have found out at any time and you damn sure have known for, what, ten years now? And you still didn’t tell me.”

“By the time I tracked you down ten years ago, you were in Belize, well out of cell range.”

Faroe looked at Grace’s bitter black eyes and trembling lips. Part of him admired her for standing up to him when most men would have cut and run.

But most of him was too furious to care.

“How did you know where I was?” he asked calmly.

Too calmly.

“I used my connections to track you to St. Kilda Consulting. I even got your cell phone number, the really private one only Steele has.”

“I told Steele he should change those numbers more often.”

“I didn’t call you,” she said roughly. “You were undercover in hostile territory, your life at risk every second. Just imagine how you’d have felt if a woman you hated told you that she’d had your biological son, who by the way was legally the son of a man you’d never met.”

Faroe didn’t say anything.

“Speechless again?” she said. “A rare double.”

“Don’t push me, Grace.”

“I’m the one with my back to the wall,” she said through her teeth.

There was a tight silence.

Then he stepped away, giving her room to breathe.

“Besides,” Faroe said neutrally, “Ted was much better father material, right? Rich, successful, socially acceptable, and best of all-not an ex-con.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Which part?”

“The important one. Ted should have been good father material, but he wasn’t. Even before he discovered that there wasn’t a genetic connection between himself and Lane, Ted didn’t care about his son. Ted was too busy with his hedge fund to take time for a baby, a toddler, a young boy, a-”

“Wife?” Faroe cut in.

“The wife was too busy to care about the husband. Balancing a demanding career and a baby took everything I had.”

“You’re breaking my heart.”

“You don’t have one. If you did, you’d be more worried about Lane than any other part of this mess.”

The smile he gave her was as cold as his eyes. He turned and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “You promised that-”

“I need some space,” he cut in. “A whole fucking universe of it.”

The door shut softly behind him.

She wished he’d slammed it.

Her shoulders slumped against the wall.

I’m sorry, Lane.

No matter what I do, it’s wrong.

When her fingers went slack, the sheet slid to the floor, leaving her naked again.

But Lane shouldn’t have to be the one to pay for it.

Grimly Grace kicked aside the sheet and went to the shower. She didn’t have much time to pull herself together before she met Hector Rivas Osuna, the Butcher of Tijuana.

Faroe might have walked out on her, but he’d given her some good advice.

Lie, Your Honor. Hector believes you’re his ticket to your husband.

MANHATTAN

MONDAY, 12:06 A.M.

DWAYNE SHOOK HIS HEAD. “Not answering.”

“Hang up and call again. Do it until he answers.”

Three calls later, Faroe picked it up. “What.”

The word was a snarl rather than an invitation to talk.

Steele answered before Dwayne could. “Where are you?”

“Outside a dog track, feeling sorry for the muzzled greyhounds chasing fake rabbits for the amusement of drunks and drug lords.”

“Feeling like you’re a greyhound?” Steele asked.

“How long have you known?”

“That you’re tired of running in circles?”

At the other end of the line, Faroe watched dogs run in circles and said nothing.

“When Judge Silva insisted on you and only you,” Steele said evenly, “I suspected Lane was yours. You’re very good, Joseph, but so are many of my operatives. St. Kilda Consulting has high standards.”

“But you didn’t say anything to me.”

“You had more facts at your disposal than I did. When you didn’t say anything, I respected your privacy.”

“More like my stupidity.”

“So you really didn’t suspect, even after you spent time with the boy?”

Faroe watched dogs race in circles, chasing something they’d never catch.

Stupid sons of bitches.

“I saw Grace in Lane,” Faroe said. “The shape of the eyes, the quickness, the fierce intelligence underneath the drugs they’d poured into him.”

“Look at a picture of Ted Franklin, then look in a mirror,” Steele suggested. “Lane’s nose is yours, as is the width of his jaw and the ears tight against the skull. If you don’t believe me, I’ll bring photos.”

“I don’t spend a lot of time looking in mirrors.”

Steele sighed and watched the line of light marching across his global clock, time sliding away into the unreachable past.

“What really pisses me off,” Faroe said, “is that if Lane hadn’t been in danger, Grace never would have told me.”

“She would have told you on Lane’s eighteenth birthday, the same day she told him.”

“Says who?”

“Grace. I just talked to her.”

“Suddenly she’s just running off at the mouth,” Faroe said sardonically.

“Her voice was very strained. This isn’t easy for her.”

“Call someone who cares. She kept her mouth shut this long, she should have kept it shut for two more days.”

“Did you give her a choice?”

Silence was Faroe’s only answer.

It was enough.

Steele looked up as Dwayne handed him a shot of scotch, neat. He sipped, sighed, sipped again. When he spoke, his voice took on some of the liquor’s smoky flavor. “I suspect Grace was crying, or had been.”

“She was always able to turn on the tears when she needed to. They teach it in Defense Attorney 101.”

“She must have skipped that class. Everyone but you regards her as passionless, nothing but a legal and intellectual machine.”

Faroe closed his eyes. Passionless was the last word he’d use to describe Grace Silva.

“As much as I’d like to indulge your hissy fit,” Steele continued, “the clock is running very quickly on this matter.”