by M. S. Parker
I raised an eyebrow. “You do realize that both Clay and Jenna are my friends, which means they have a personal stake in this too?”
I caught Jenna’s smirk out of the corner of my eye, but Clay didn’t look amused. In fact, he’d barely made an expression since I’d gotten there. And he wouldn’t look at me either. Everywhere but at me.
“You can call either me or Clay if you find something,” Agent Matthews said to Jenna. “Make sure you’re being safe. That comes first. I don’t want to get in trouble for my CIs being in danger.”
He sounded gruff, but I knew he was only looking out for us. Jenna had told me how hard he’d taken it when he’d found out I was missing. Not as hard as he would’ve if it’d been her, but he’d still felt like it was his fault somehow. I didn’t tell him that I’d been walking away by myself in the snow because my boyfriend had just found out that his wife was pregnant with his child. The story didn’t get any less awkward with repetition.
“I’m going to stay for a little bit,” Clay said. “Just in case they have any questions about what they’re supposed to be doing.”
The look Agent Matthews gave him said he didn’t believe it any more than I did, but he nodded and left. Clay remained awkwardly leaning against the counter, his gaze landing everywhere but on me.
“I’ll spend the day coming up with the avenues we want to track,” Jenna said, drawing my attention back to her. “Once I know what I need you to track down, I’ll send you an email with a list of everything I want you to do. Don’t push yourself, and don’t put yourself in any danger.” Her expression was serious. “I’m not kidding, Rona. If I think you’re doing something stupid, I won’t let you help me anymore.”
I sighed and rubbed my temples. “I didn’t realize you wanted a third child, Jenna.”
She laughed. “Don’t do anything that I’d need to mother you about and I won’t do it. Besides, I think of myself as more like a big sister than a mother.”
I sighed. “I really need to start reminding people that I trained at Quantico.”
“But you didn’t graduate,” Jenna pointed out.
“Thank you for the reminder,” I said dryly. “Yes, I wasn’t thinking clearly, and I wasn’t as careful as I should have been, but it’s not like I walked into a cartel meeting or something like that. We don’t know that me being taken had anything to do with any case we’ve worked on. All we know for sure is that it had nothing to do with my father.”
“True,” she agreed.
“It doesn’t mean you need to be reckless,” Clay finally spoke up.
I shot him a glance over my shoulder and couldn’t quite curb my sarcasm. “Oh, are you talking to me now?”
A phone rang, and I looked back at Jenna. The expression on her face told me it wasn’t someone she was expecting. She quickly excused herself, leaving Clay and me alone for the first time since the hospital. Hell, the first time I’d even talked to him since then.
“I haven’t…not been talking to you.”
“You didn’t bother to call me to see if I’d made it home safe.”
Clay jerked his chin in the direction Jenna had gone. “I knew she’d take care of you. Her and Jalen.”
“It seems like they’re the only ones taking care of me.”
He winced. “I deserve that.”
“Yeah, you do.” I kept my voice even. “What were you thinking, ignoring them like that? You had to know that they’d do something drastic.”
“I was thinking that they’d leave me a message before doing something stupid. All they said was that they thought they might have found you and that they needed to show me something. They didn’t tell me that Jalen was going to put himself into danger.” He might’ve sounded like he was being defensive, but I could see the guilt on his face.
At one point in time, I might’ve thought he’d been punished enough, but he hadn’t just put me in danger. He put the man I loved into danger because he’d been too arrogant to think that they might be able to do something better than he could. He said he wanted me safe, but he’d let his pride get in the way. I was angry at him, but more than that, I was hurt. Our sexual relationship had ended, and I’d thought we’d moved past it. We were friends – family really – but when it had come down to it, he’d ignored a lead because he’d thought he knew better.
“I want us to be a part of each other’s lives,” I said quietly. “I value your friendship and everything you’ve meant to me over the years, but it’s going to take some time for me to not be pissed at you.”
“I really thought I was doing the right thing,” he said.
He finally looked at me, and I let our eyes meet.
“I know,” I said with a sad smile. “And that’s what I need to work through before things can ever be right between us.”
Fifteen
I would’ve preferred to stay at the Archer house for a couple hours, get a list of things to do from Jenna, then go out and do them, but that wasn’t really my call to make. Jenna had come back to the kitchen shortly after Clay left, but she hadn’t asked where and why he’d gone. I knew some of her reasoning had to do with the fact that she’d just gotten off the phone with her sister, but I was also pretty sure that she knew I didn’t want to talk about what was going on with Clay and me. I returned the favor and didn’t press her about the phone call.
I’d gone back to the office then. Jenna had needed time to process her conversation with Stacey. Even if it’d been about something simple, the sheer strangeness of talking to a sibling she’d only ever imagined meeting had to have been jarring at the very least. Knowing her personality, she probably processed best by working, but she didn’t need me hovering over her, impatiently waiting for her to find something for me to do. I told her that I’d be there if she needed to talk, and then I’d gone home.
I might not have had an FBI case to work on, but I did have a case. Yes, I wanted to save those people who’d been left behind at the auction, but there wasn’t anything I could do yet. I had my own part to play, and I’d play it when I had the information I needed. Until then, I’d do the job I’d been hired to do and find Jenna’s siblings.
A little over eight years ago, Jenna’s mother had been pregnant with her last child. According to all the reports, that child had been stillborn. However, my conversation with Harry Franklin, a former US Marshal who’d been working on Helen Kingston’s case, made me believe that might not have been the case.
Unlike Stacey and the other kids who’d been removed from Helen’s custody, I wasn’t going to be dealing with sealed adoption records and things like that. If Helen had indeed given birth to that last child while she was missing from Marshal custody, she wouldn’t have handed it over to Child and Family Services in whatever state she’d ended up in back then. If she’d just wanted to give the baby up, she would’ve just stayed where she was. She’d left for a specific reason, and I was certain it had been to sell her child.
I just really hoped she hadn’t sold the baby to the sort of people she’d been involved with before. Not only would that make it nearly impossible to find the child, but the thought of the life that kid would’ve led...it made me sick. It was sad that the best option to hope for was that she’d sold the baby on the black market to a couple who’d desperately wanted a child, but to whom traditional methods hadn’t been an option.
Whoever she sold the baby to wouldn’t have been able to just magically have a child appear without certain information. Birth certificate, social security number, all that sort of thing. They would’ve needed to find that information somewhere, and it wouldn’t have been legal.
Finding places where the parents could’ve bought those documents would’ve been a lot easier if I’d had Jenna’s help, but I hadn’t been hired to only do the easy things. I would do everything I could on my own and only involve her as a last resort.
It was time to get to work.
I hadn’t made a whole lot of positive progress by the time I was ready to ca
ll it a day, but I’d been able to eliminate some of the non-possibilities. If I didn’t catch a lucky break, who knew how long it would take me to find a missing eight-year-old in a country of billions. Still, I was feeling pretty good about the way things had gone, especially considering it had felt like a normal day for the first time in a long time.
And then I saw Jalen waiting in front of my door and, for a moment, I thought things were going to end on a positive note. Then I saw the tight expression on his face, and I sighed.
“Come on in,” I said as I unlocked the door. “You’ve got to be freezing your ass off out here.”
“I haven’t been waiting long,” he said quietly as he followed me inside. “I didn’t want to interrupt your first official day back at work. But it doesn’t look like I interrupted anything since you weren’t at your office.”
“I was there earlier.” I kicked the snow from my boots, then tugged them off. “While I’m waiting for Jenna to delegate, I’m working on her case, and I needed to do some things outside of the office.”
“Where?”
I tossed a look over my shoulder. “What?”
“Where did you have to go?”
I frowned at him, caught off-guard by how flat the question had come out. “A few different places. Are you okay?”
He stared at me. “No, Rona, I’m not okay. I came here to see you because I wanted to make sure that you weren’t wearing yourself out.” He ran his hand over his jaw, scrubbing his palm against his stubble. “But you weren’t here, taking it easy. Of course not. You were out there. By yourself. Maggie said you didn’t even tell her where you were going.”
I’d been grateful when I found out that Maggie Carlyle, the woman I hired to be my receptionist, had come into the office even while I was gone. She’d been on time, had kept everything organized and neat. And there was no reason at all that I should be annoyed that she told Jalen she didn’t know where I was.
Except I was, and that just made me more pissed at Jalen for making me feel that way.
“It’s my job, Jalen,” I snapped.
“A dangerous job. You never should’ve been out there alone.”
I sighed and shook my head. “I trained with the FBI, then with Adare. I’ve been alone since my uncle died. I can take care of myself.”
“Clearly, you can’t.”
I glared at him. “Dammit, Jalen! I wasn’t working when those guys grabbed me.”
“Don’t remind me.” The pain in his eyes was only matched by the guilt. “You made me promise to stay safe and not do anything stupid, but you apparently don’t need to give me the same courtesy.”
“That’s different.”
“How?” His voice rose.
“I’m not a parent. You have to think about your baby.”
He cursed, his eyes flashing. “We don’t know that it’s my baby. And it doesn’t matter. Serge is still out there.”
My skin crawled just hearing the bastard’s name, which turned my anger up another level. “I know that! I know he’s out there, but I’m not going to let him keep me from doing my job.” I took a step toward Jalen, needing him to see. Needing him to understand. “When things get tough, I run. I leave before people can leave me. Not this time. This is my life, J.”
“And you’re my life.” He put his hands on either side of my face. “Don’t you understand that? You’re everything to me, and I can’t lose you.”
All my anger fell away when I saw the truth on his face. He wasn’t trying to be petty, or even pulling some man versus woman thing. He wanted to take care of me because I was important to him. It was one thing to hear him say that he loved me, and it was something else entirely to see it play out.
“All right,” I said, forcing my muscles to relax. “I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.”
He crushed me to his chest and kissed the top of my head. “Please do. Otherwise, I might be forced to put myself in danger again, and we both know you’ll be pissed if I do that.”
I chuckled, and when he joined me, the knot in my chest vanished with my anger. Things were going to be okay. We were going to be okay.
Sixteen
With Christmas coming up and so much work to do, I was a little surprised when Jalen said he wanted us to go out on Saturday evening, but I was also eager to do something fun. With all the seriousness behind the work I was doing, having a date like a regular couple sounded like exactly what I needed. We’d gone to dinner, but he hadn’t told me what we’d be doing after. I’d assumed a movie or maybe a club to listen to some live music.
What I hadn’t expected was for him to take us outside the city limits and up a winding driveway, past a sign that said Hampton Acres Christmas Tree Farm.
“A Christmas tree farm?” I shot him a surprised look.
He didn’t say anything until he parked in front of a large, rustic-looking barn, the expression on his face telling me that he wasn’t ignoring me, but rather figuring out how to tell me whatever was in his head.
“I didn’t have a bad childhood,” he said. “When my parents were together, we celebrated Christmas as a family. When my dad left, it was just my mom and me, but it was good then too. The presents weren’t overly expensive, but I never had anything to be ashamed of either.”
I understood exactly what he meant. My family had been the same, even when I lived with Anton. Comfortable, but not excessive. We’d lived such different lives, but some things had still been the same.
“The one thing we never had, though, was a real Christmas tree. My mom’s allergic to them, and even though I understood why we hadn’t been able to get one, I still always wanted one.” He gave me a sideways smile, the kind that let me see what sort of child he’d been. “I guess that’s something all kids feel at one time or another. Sometimes we make up for lost time when we’re adults, but Elise never wanted the mess, and I didn’t see the point of putting one up just for myself.”
My heart squeezed in my chest. “So, we’re here to get you a Christmas tree?”
He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “We’re here to get both of us Christmas trees.” Suddenly, he frowned. “You’re not allergic to pine, are you?”
I placed my palm on his beautiful face. “We used to get real trees when I was little. Before my father’s…accident. The first Christmas it was just Anton and me, we tried a real tree, but it brought up too many painful memories. Every time I smelled it, all I could think about was the last Christmas we’d all been together.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know. We can go do something else.”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant.” I hurried to reassure him. “It doesn’t have the same effect on me as it used to. I haven’t gotten one for myself for the same reason you haven’t. It seemed like a lot of work for only me.” I reached over and took his hand. “But now there’s two of us, so we won’t be enjoying them alone.”
Ten minutes later, the two of us were trekking through the snow, our way lit by strings of soft, white Christmas lights. Others were walking their own rows. Families, mostly, but a few couples were here as well. I wondered about them as we walked. How many of them were here for their first tree together? Were any looking for two trees because they weren’t living together? Did they have children at home? Were they newlyweds or had they been together for a long time?
“Did you ever watch A Charlie Brown Christmas growing up?” Jalen’s question pulled me out of my thoughts.
I smiled at the memories. “Every time it was on TV.”
“Me too. When I was eight, right before my dad left, I had a dream that we’d gotten a tiny tree and I’d wrapped it in my blanket. It grew to hundreds of feet, covered in all sorts of decorations.” He paused next to one that was almost as tall as he was. “When I woke up and realized it was all a dream, I cried. My parents got me the exact race car I’d asked for, but I was still disappointed because I didn’t have the tree.”
I laced my fingers between his and squeezed his hand. I
had a feeling he hadn’t told that story to many people, if any at all. The fact that he’d told me warmed me in a way that nothing else could.
As we moved on to the next tree, our talk turned to lighter parts of the past. We shared family traditions that ranged from decorations to favorite holiday foods. Whenever we spotted an interesting tree, we’d stop and look it over, touching the needles, examining branches. There were spruces and white pines and all sorts of other kinds to choose from, each with their own appeal.
Occasionally, we bumped into another shopper, and we’d exchange holiday greetings, a few comments here and there. It was nice, being able to have the pleasantries of sharing a holiday experience without the chaos that came with being out in stores.
We’d made it about halfway through when I noticed that something felt…off. It was a familiar sensation, but that didn’t make it any less creepy. I made a show of walking around one of the trees, so I could see who all was around me without looking like that’s what I was doing. No one appeared to be out of place or suspicious, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think that a good spy couldn’t hide in plain sight.
But maybe I was paranoid enough to be imagining things. People could be looking over at Jalen and me with the same sort of absent curiosity that we’d had. Someone looking at me didn’t need to be malicious. Considering everything I’d been through over the last two weeks, it would make perfect sense that I was imagining things. More sense, in fact, than someone stalking me.
I wasn’t about to let my imagination ruin the night, so I pushed it to the back of my mind. Even if, by some fluke, something or someone was a danger to me here, I was safe with Jalen.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to pick up your tree in the morning?” Jalen asked as we pulled up to his house. “Or we could go back and get it after I put this one in the house. I don’t want you to feel like you have to stay tonight if you’d rather go home and decorate.”
