Secret Agent Boyfriend (13 page)

In moments, Derek had a familiar-looking visual coming up on screen. He shifted the image to the large viewing station above them and put in the various queries she requested.

“My uncle made a very strange reference to a baby they thought had died.”

Fingers still, Derek shifted his focus from the screen. “A dead baby? Have you ever heard anyone say that before?”

“No, and that’s what’s strange. I’ve lived in my family home my entire life and never once have I heard any mention of a family member who lost a child or who almost lost a child.” Landry hesitated. “He’s also suffering from senility. It’s gotten worse over the last few years, but it was fairly obvious today he’s not all there.”

“They say that more recent memories vanish first. If he’s referring to Noah it would have happened when he was in the prime of his life, making very solid memories.”

“True.”

“What else did he say?”

Landry walked him through all the details of her conversation with Sheldon, curious to see how he used the questions to then shape the search queries he put into the system.

“Is Rosalyn the oldest?”

“Bucannon was actually the oldest. He’s Kate’s first husband. Then Rosalyn and Emmaline, in that order. My father was a bit of a surprise after they thought they were done having children.”

“How many years’ difference between him and his sisters?”

“Four or five, I think. I can nose around and find out.”

“That’s okay. We’ll start there and then expand if we need to.”

Derek worked through several search strings, the depth of information at his fingertips mind-boggling. “That’s a lot of information.”

“No one really lives off the grid anymore. They might think they do—or wish they did—but they don’t.”

“You’d think that would make your job easier. But from all you’ve said, it doesn’t sound like it.”

“It’s a dimension that’s gotten easier. We can learn a lot more about a suspect or a victim. Get a better picture of who they are and how they’ve lived their lives. But even with the technology, if someone doesn’t want to be found, they can often find a way.”

“Like my mother.”

* * *

Mark kicked the dirty pallet at his feet, the bag of bones who lay there snoring like a lumberjack. “Wake up!”

“Wha?” Al grumbled before turning over again.

Mark thought about kicking him again, this time against his ribs instead of against the old mattress he slept on, but held back. The guy was doing a halfway decent job of keeping the kid occupied, and he’d have a hard time doing that with broken ribs.

Rena stared up at him from her spot against the wall. Her dark eyes bored into him with hatred that ran so deep it actually warmed his heart.

He’d done that. Had generated a reaction so hard and so deep she’d never be free of it.

Just like him.

Now all he needed to do was find a way to use it to his advantage.

“You didn’t eat again.”

“I don’t like slop.”

“It’s fast food. What kid doesn’t like fast food?”

“Me, that’s who.” Her little chin quivered, but the steady hate in her tone never wavered. “I want something fresh from the store. Fruit. Vegetables. Not fake meat.”

Mark shrugged and pulled out the burger he’d bought for himself. She could suit herself and pretend she didn’t want to eat. He’d leave behind what he bought for her and wouldn’t be surprised if she worked her way around to it eventually.

“What do you want with me?”

Rena asked the same question every time he showed up to feed and water her and the dirtbag. He had to admire her persistence, even though there was no way he was risking telling her she was a pawn in a much bigger game.

“It’s not about what I want with you. It’s about what you can do for me.”

“I ain’t doing anything for you.”

“Sure you are.” He wadded up the empty wrapper from his burger and tossed it at her. “Just by being here you’re doing something for me.”

She stared at the ball of paper where it landed in her lap but didn’t make a move to toss it back.

“Why don’t you just kill me?”

He had to hand it to her, the kid had ice in her veins. “What fun would that be?”

“You think this is fun?”

“Baseball’s fun. Se—messing around’s fun. This is necessary. There’s a difference.”

“Does that mean you’ll let me go?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Sure he had, but he wasn’t letting her know. The kid could still be useful, and he needed her thinking she still had something to lose. It was basic Victim Psychology 101.

Tired of the chat, he got down to business. “I need you to write something for me.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Then I go over there and kick Big Al a few times until you do.”

Her focus drifted to Al, then back to him. The softness he’d seen in her eyes for the older man faded when she met his gaze head-on. “Give me the paper.”

* * *

“I’ve been looking into your mother. Nothing’s popped yet. We know she used her passport to leave the country, but then the trail goes cold.” Derek grimaced at the screen as he typed a few more commands.

“She vanished? Just like that?” Every time she thought she had a handle on the way Patsy betrayed the family, something rose up to slap at her again.

If her mother had vanished, it was because she’d meant to.

And if she’d meant to then that also meant she’d had an escape plan all along.

“Landry?”

“Hmm?”

“You okay?”

She waved a hand. “Sure. Nothing like realizing the woman who gave birth to you is a soulless monster who plotted for some length of time to leave you, never to speak to you again.”

With a tight leash on her anger and disappointment, Landry continued. “Emmaline asked about her. Made a big show of acting concerned, but the censure underneath suggested my mother had killed my father.”

“Have you prepared yourself for that?” Derek laid a hand against her cheek, tracing the bone with his thumb. “Others are going to think it, too. People with an interest in gossip and innuendo.”

“They’re already doing it. Why do you think I pared back my charity commitments as far as I have?” She leaned into his hand, the show of support so welcome.

And more needed than she ever could have imagined.

On a sigh, she closed her eyes, the pain of the past few months bubbling up in a witches’ brew of frustration, anger and bone-deep weariness. “The thought of being whispered about like that? No, thank you.”

“You aren’t responsible for your parents’ actions. And it would be a shame for those who benefit from the incredibly good work you do to lose out on that gift. Don’t let anyone take that away from you.”

He was right. She knew he was right. Funny how much it helped to hear it.

A pop-up window appeared on the screen, catching her attention. “Looks like the query’s done running.”

Derek called up the data, scrolling through key dates and names until he stopped and toggled backward. “There. Look right there.”

The tip of his finger rested on the screen and she followed the paragraph he pointed to. “Adair invests in airstrip? What’s that about?”

“It’s from the late sixties. Your grandfather apparently decided to put some of his vast wealth into an upgrade for the greater Raleigh regional airstrip.”

“I was small when he died, but I know he had a plane. Several, as a matter of fact. My father, too. At the risk of getting my snob on, it’s sort of table stakes at a certain level. Besides, at the time my grandfather did this, there were few others who could have made such an investment.”

Derek continued to scan the article, picking up on key elements. “It says here he wanted a small regional airport that could accommodate larger jets, capable of sustaining intercontinental flights.”

“Which makes sense for his business.”

“But it also means he had the private means to quickly get to Europe.”

“He never made a secret of how much he loved London, Paris, Rome. He and my grandmother were jet-setters in the truest sense of the word, and they spent a lot of time away from home.”

“His jets provide opportunity.”

“Opportunity for what?”

“Opportunity to kidnap Jackson and whisk him out of the country.”

Chapter 13

“O
h, come on. My grandparents kidnapping their own grandchild?”

Landry stood to pace, the momentary quiet vanished in the wave of what they’d discovered. “I know we put standard dysfunction to shame, but what you’re talking about is just not possible.”

“You’ve already taken the leap that Emmaline raised Reginald’s son as her own. And we know she never left Europe during the time of his birth. How else did she get the baby?”

“I don’t—”

He saw it the moment the truth registered. The pacing stopped as a connection painted her face in thoughtful lines. “That’s why she was never around.”

“Around where?”

“Earlier. I had a thought about when I was a kid. I always remember Noah being around the ranch during the summer, but memories are fuzzier about my aunt.”

“Did she send him here and go off on her own?”

“That’s what’s so odd. She came for every visit, but after thinking about it, I realized that she was always like this ghost in the background. Present, but sort of hazy and faded. She must have wanted to avoid all of us, especially my father, as much as she could, but she didn’t want to let Noah out of her sight.”

“She was probably scared your father might figure it out at some point and wanted to be able to run at a moment’s notice.”

“So why bring him at all? They spent much of Noah’s formative years in Europe. They didn’t need to be here.”

Derek had spent his professional life dealing with the minds of criminals. While their choices often made no sense, there was an underlying sense of logic and order that made perfect sense to them. “Maybe it was guilt? Or a desire to give him some exposure to his father, even if Noah only ever understood his relationship to Reginald as uncle to nephew?”

“That still assumes we’re right about this whole thing.”

“I want to look into flight plans. The Adair family might have bought off the airstrip but there was no way they’d have been able to hide flight plans, especially internationally. If your grandparents did take the baby, there would be a record of them delivering him to Emmaline.”

“Can you pull the plans now?”

“Maybe. The airport’s small and I might have to call directly if I can’t find it here in our files. Either way, we’ll get our hands on the records from the window when Jackson was kidnapped.”

Landry leaned back in her chair and swirled gently on the casters. “It’s real, isn’t it?”

“It appears that way.”

“I’ve hoped. All along I’ve hoped we were somehow wrong about the whole thing. But if we’re not...” She stopped swiveling. “If we’re right we’re going to ruin everything Noah’s ever known. His whole life will not only be a lie, but it will be a lie perpetrated by his mother. Who does that?”

“A desperate woman.”

She dropped her head in her hands, her voice muffled through her fingers. “You must think we’re monsters. Crazy, insane, evil monsters.”

“I don’t think that.”

Her head popped up, her normally cultured voice ragged, like she spoke around shards of glass. “How can’t you think that?
I
think that and it’s my family.”

“You’re not defined by your family, Landry. And neither are your brothers.”

If she noticed that he lumped Noah into that category, she said nothing. She just shook her head, the tears that filled her eyes spilling over onto her cheeks.

“Do you know what I thought about today?”

The need to comfort was a living thing inside him, but when he reached for her, she shifted back, rolling away. He ignored the hurt that speared through his chest and focused on giving her what she needed instead. “What?”

“I’m hanging decorations and putting out food for my brother’s wife’s baby shower and I actually thought about what it would be like if I stole the baby.” She waved a hand and rushed on. “Not because I actually want to steal the baby, but because I simply couldn’t imagine any scenario where I’d consider that even remotely acceptable behavior.”

“Desperate people do desperate things. And you’re not desperate.”

“But don’t you see? This was what I spent my time thinking about at my nephew’s baby shower. Not how much he was going to weigh or how many inches or even what day he might make his arrival. I thought about someone taking him. About Elizabeth and Whit spending their lives trying to find him.”

She tried to hide her face from him, but Derek wouldn’t be stopped this time. With one hand he kept a solid grip on the chair handle and pulled her close. “Landry. Look at me.”

Tears had turned her vivid blue eyes into watery pools. The bright vivacity normally found there was nowhere in evidence, replaced by a horrified awareness she couldn’t undo.

He knew that look. Had lived with it his entire professional career. It was the haunted look in the eyes of the people he worked so hard to save. That look drove him on, even when he had to pull from the very reserves of his soul to continue a case.

Before he’d felt compassion and an overwhelming sense of duty to restore order and justice to a life. But with Landry it was different.

With her, he wanted to share the burden.

She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his cheek, a kiss of thanks. Of understanding. And of something more...

“Stay with me.” Her words whispered, featherlight, where she pressed her lips to his ear.

The secrets that swirled around Adair Acres nearly held him back. He cared for her, and he didn’t want to take advantage of her situation. A situation that
would
have a resolution.

Her lips moved once more against his ear. “Make love with me because it’s what we both want.”

When he hesitated, torn between what he wanted and what he believed was right, she pushed on. “This is what
I
want, Derek. I want you. Forget all the reasons we shouldn’t. Be with me. Just because.”

He’d felt himself capitulating, but it was only when she said the last words that he knew he was lost.

“Yes.”

* * *

Just because.

Landry heard the song lyric years ago, and it had always stuck with her. Do something for no reason other than because you wanted to.

She knew making love with Derek would add further layers to an already complicated situation. And sex always complicated things on the best of days.

But oh, how she wanted him.

And in the moment he pulled her close, his lips firm against hers, she knew the sweetest victory. “Yes.”

The hands on either side of her chair shifted to her legs as he ran long, lazy strokes over her thighs. She kept her hands on his shoulders, reassured by the ready strength she found there. No matter what happened—and she knew there was so much they still had to navigate—this was absolutely right.

“Let’s go upstairs.”

He nodded before pressing his forehead to hers. “Let’s go.”

Their footsteps echoed on the Spanish tiles that made up the broad hallways of the ranch as they navigated the walk from the security center up to her bedroom. She expected that the path would be quiet and solemn, both of them well aware of the step they were about to take, when Derek tickled her ribs on the stairs. She turned into him on a muffled scream. “I’m ticklish!”

“I was hoping so.”

He reached for her again, his hands grabbing at her waist to pull her close while he pressed a heavy line of kisses along her neck. The giggle in her throat faded to a hard moan when his fingers shifted up over her stomach before they feathered over one breast.

The thought abstractly crossed her mind that they might get caught, but the house that had been active all day was blessedly quiet and they made it to her room in a tumble of arms and legs as the door slammed behind them.

“Locking this, too.”

She could only smile at his proprietary tone. “No one comes in without knocking.”

“Let’s just say I’m hedging my bets.”

“Hedge away.” She flicked a hand toward the tie that held her wrap dress together, but he rushed forward, gently removing her hand.

“Let me.”

“Hedging your bets again?” The light tease drifted out on sultry tones, and she marveled that she was the one saying the words.

In the past she’d use that tone to manipulate a situation or to get what she wanted. How humbling and awesome at the same time to realize that teasing tone was only an additive to the giving and receiving of pleasure.

“No. Just reveling in the moment.”

Then his large hands were on her, his dark, enigmatic gaze engaging hers, and Landry let herself fall. Golden light flooded the room, the tail end of a glorious spring day. The naturally bronze tones of Derek’s skin grew darker, a captivating contrast to her own paler skin.

She ran a hand along the thick stretch of muscle that made up his biceps, trailing her finger down over the firm strength of his forearm. “I never did ask about your heritage. Gorgeous tanned skin like this looks natural.”

“Cherokee. Amazingly enough, from both my parents. Quite by accident, they each decided to research their heritage and found each other in the stacks at a library in DC.”

She smiled at that, the randomness of his parents’ meeting juxtaposed with the clear evidence they were meant to be. “Life is funny that way.”

“So it is.”

“But it also explains a lot. The first morning I saw you riding on Diego, I could see you in my mind, galloping across the plains, the wind whipping your hair as you protected what was yours.”

The image had only grown more pronounced as she’d spent time with him. He was a protector. A righter of wrongs. And for tonight, he was hers.

“It’s a far cry from law enforcement.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She ran her fingers over his shoulders, unwilling to break even that simple contact. “Keeping the world safe smacks awfully hard of protecting what’s yours. You’re just painting on a much broader canvas.”

“Thank you.” His fingers slipped over the tie at her waist, tugging on the thin string.

She would have responded—would have found something sexy or flirty to say—but her breath caught once more at the reverent expression that suffused his face and turned his gaze dark with desire.

“I want you, Landry. I know your life’s been a roller coaster, but I won’t hurt you. I
will
protect you. And I promise, I will never hurt you.”

“I know.” She reached for his hands and glided them down to her breasts. “I trust you. With my body.” She pressed a kiss to his lips, the tension in him still as strong as ever.

She sensed his hesitation, knew he struggled with what he perceived as his duty to her and her family. And knew that the only way she could finally convince him tonight was for both of them was to show him.

With a slight wiggle of her arms, she shed the wrap dress and felt the cool material slide down her back. When he shifted his hands to her waist, she reached back and unhooked her bra, slipping from the straps before the material floated on top of the dress.

With one last shift, she ducked from beneath his hands and shed her panties, one last piece of silk following the others.

“With my life, Derek. I trust you.”

Whether it was her words or her actions—likely a combination of both—she saw the moment he acquiesced. When he finally acknowledged that what was between them could no longer be ignored.

His hands came around her, urgent and fiercely demanding. Landry allowed herself to be swept up—in the moment, in the man—and gloried when the dam on his self-control burst wide open. He crushed his lips to hers, their tongues dueling a battle for control.

“You’re wearing too much.” She already had her hands at his waist, material fisted, when he smiled and shifted away.

“I can do it faster.”

“A challenge?”

“A fact. And—” The word hung there as he flipped his shirt off, then followed with his jeans and briefs all in one clean sweep. “I’m done.”

Laughter, deep and rich, welled up in her throat. She’d expected power and strength when they finally made love, but she hadn’t anticipated the laughter. It bubbled in her chest, spilling over in great, glorious bursts.

Derek moved up and pulled her into his arms. The strength of his body wrapped around her, while the proof of his desire pressed to her stomach and indicated how much he wanted her. “Don’t you know it’s bad form to laugh at a naked man?”

“I’ll have to make it up to you.” The laughter faded, but her smile stayed firmly in place. She reached between them and her hand closed over the thick length of him. She was rewarded with a sharp intake of breath as he pressed himself into her palm.

She worked his thick flesh in her hands, thrilled when his eyelids dimmed to half mast, pleasure rapidly taking over his self-control. The line of his jaw hardened as she put him through his paces, unwilling to let up.

Unwilling to give him any further opportunity to think.

Only to feel.

Murmured words floated between them. Echoes of need. Of want. And of a powerful desire neither could deny.

Derek gave her a few moments more before he reached down and stilled her movements, his breath exhaling on a hard rush. “You’re driving me crazy.”

“That’s the whole idea.” She nipped a quick kiss at his collarbone before drifting her lips along the sensitive line of his neck.

“Actually, you’re killing me. Decimating me so I can barely stand.”

She smiled against that sensitive skin. “I’ll consider that the highest compliment.”

Without answering, he twirled her in his arms, then lifted her in one swift move. “There’s no way you get to have all the fun.”

Landry felt the world tilt, the arms beneath her back and buttocks strong and sure as he carried her toward the bed. He laid her down with gentle movements, the sensation that she was precious quickly overpowering the aura of fun that had gripped both of them.

He treated her as though she was cherished, as though she mattered.

How had she never understood how important that was? Or how desperately she missed mattering to someone?

In their own way, her family loved her. Her brothers were fierce protectors who would do anything for her. But during this past week with Derek, he’d given her a gift beyond measure. He’d shown her what it meant to feel loved.