Shades of Gray

by Vicki Hinze

  Beautiful and vulnerable, but the woman was holding out on Bear. And he, by God, meant to find out why. It was his responsibility to make sure Timmy’s interests were protected. Having come from an abusive home himself, that was a duty Bear took to heart, which evidenced itself in his ratings. “My name is Barton,” he told her, having no idea why.

  “Excuse me?” She glanced up at him, her eyes not quite focused.

  What was she fishing for in her purse? “Barton,” he explained. “You told Timmy my name was Judge Bear. It’s Barton.”

  “Oh, God.” Her cheeks flamed red. So did her neck.

  He’d lay odds the woman was praying for an earthquake to crack open the floor and suck her down. It was all Bear could do not to laugh in her face. He knew his reputation. Close friends had called him Bear all his life, but Laura Logan couldn’t know that. However, Bad Ass Bear was a moniker he’d earned on the bench. One he liked and worked hard to retain because it reminded him that he was doing his job well, and that what he was doing affected lives. It mattered.

  “I’m so sorry,” she stammered.

  He bet she was. She reminded him of his daughter, Crystal. Other than his wife, Crystal had been the only person to ever call him Bad Ass Bear to his face. He had no idea why, but he felt certain that if he and Laura Logan met outside his court, she’d have the guts to do it, too.

  She held out two documents, and Bear took them. “What are these?”

  “Powers of attorney Jake left with me.” She swept her hair back from her cheek. “I’m afraid I left you with the wrong impression earlier. Jake is extremely responsible, and he loves us very much.”

  She didn’t quite meet the judge’s eyes during that admission, and he couldn’t help but to wonder why.

  “Jake never leaves home without a thought to his family, though we do sacrifice a lot because of his career. He sacrifices, too, and we understand that. Timmy and I consider it our patriotic duty. On that part, I think I was clear, and as truthful as I can be.”

  Had she lied on another part, then?

  “My point is, while I don’t know exactly where Jake is, I do have a number to call in case of an emergency. And those.” She nodded to the documents. “In Jake’s absence, I can transact whatever I must for him. If he didn’t trust me implicitly, he’d hardly grant me his unlimited, indefinite powers of attorney.”

  Bear looked down at the documents. One was unlimited for a year, granting her blanket authority. The other was unlimited and open-ended, with an attachment that gave her full authority to make any and all decisions, specifically citing medical treatment and matters regarding Timmy.

  Bear noted the date. He withheld a frown, but he didn’t like the looks of this. Not at all. Of course, it was common for parents to do all sorts of things right before court that they never had done before then. Yet, while Mrs. Logan looked determined and scared stiff, she also looked as if she was hiding something important from Bear. And he’d be damned if she’d leave his chamber with the boy before Bear figured out what.

  He started digging. “Does your husband go TDY often?”

  “It depends.” She gave him a delicate shrug. “Long-term planning is a challenge. Truthfully, sometimes short-term planning isn’t much easier.”

  “Why then didn’t you have these powers of attorney before yesterday?”

  A puzzled frown wrinkled her brow. “What?”

  “They’re dated yesterday.” Bear lifted the documents, then scanned the file. “You’ve been married to Jake Logan for two years. What if prior to now Jake had been TDY and Timmy had needed medical treatment?”

  “Oh,” she said on a relieved little sigh. “We get new ones every time, er, from time to time. But I have permanent authorization filed with the hospital at Clare Air Force Base. That’s where Timmy is treated.”

  “What if he were away from Clare?”

  “The other hospital would call Clare, and they’d fax a copy over.”

  Bear persisted. “And if it were after hours?”

  She gave him a solid frown he’d have to be dead to miss. “The records department at the base hospital never closes. But if there should be an earthquake, or a flood, or some other disastrous act of God, then I’d just flip out the card I carry with me.” Clearly anticipating another comeback, she added, “And if someone had stolen my purse, then I’d just not mention that god-awful ‘step’ word. We don’t use it, and they’d never know the difference. Bottom line is that Timmy would get treatment.”

  The woman surprised him. Bear had thought her docile. Holding out on him, but docile. And perhaps she was docile, but not when it came to Timmy. “So you’d lie for him,” Bear said softly. “Is that what you’re telling me, Mrs. Logan?”

  Her expression went from tense to taut, but her gaze blazed hot with defiance. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. In an emergency situation, I’d do whatever I had to do to see my son protected. If you want to fault me for that, well, you go right ahead. And before you bother asking, I’ll just tell you that this adoption won’t do a thing to change that fact. Either way, I’ll always do what I have to do for Timmy.”

  “For your husband?” Bear asked, not sure what to make of her impassioned speech.

  “For Timmy,” she countered, glaring at Bear as if he harbored a few loose screws. Then she tilted her head, and added, “And for Jake, too. He’d expect it, and so would I.”

  The shadows had left her eyes. They were friends as well as husband and wife, that much was clear. “Mrs. Logan, you know I’m not intimately familiar with your case. I’m aware your husband is an Air Force Major, but what exactly does he do?”

  She met his eyes easily. “Whatever his superiors order him to do.”

  “Whatever, whenever, eh?”

  “And wherever, your Honor.”

  The guarded expression returned to her face, and again her eyes looked haunted. She feared for her husband’s safety. Bear supposed that natural, considering. “There’s a note on the file that this adoption proceeding was started twice before and stopped prior to completion. Why is that? Did you change your mind?”

  “Of course not!” Laura hissed in a gasp, and nearly died of embarrassment. Had she really just shouted at Bad Ass Bear? Good Lord, she must have lost her mind. She licked at her lips and warned herself not to foolishly lose her temper again. Without Jake being there, Bear needed little reason to kick her out of his office without the adoption papers, and Timmy’s security required them. “Madeline withdrew her consent.”

  “Madeline?”

  “Jake’s ex-wife,” Laura explained. By the look on the judge’s face, she was in deep kimchee. She was going to have to spill out the whole sordid story, or he’d never sign on the dotted line. “Madeline is an alcoholic, your Honor. That’s what caused the divorce, and it’s one of the reasons this adoption is so important.”

  “I see.”

  He didn’t. Not yet. “Madeline actually lost Timmy once. Lost him, for God’s sake. He was only three years old at the time. Jake was positively frantic. We found Timmy in the park, unharmed, thank heaven, though it took a long time to calm him down. He was half-starved and positively filthy. It broke our hearts. Madeline had to have been on a long binge that time, though I’d talked to Timmy on the phone just the day before, and he’d told me he was okay.”

  Laura still beat herself up about that lapse in her judgment. She should have gone over and seen Timmy for herself. “As I’m sure you can imagine, Jake was livid. He told Madeline he’d had it. She had to get help, or he’d get a divorce.” Laura shook her head and stared at the ceiling. “He’d tried repeatedly to get her into a treatment program, of course. And she’d made a litany of promises to go, but she never followed through on them.” Laura looked back at Bear. “After that incident, Jake had no choice. He made the right decision, your Honor,
but it was by no means an easy one for him. It might sound a little old-fashioned, but marriage is sacred to Jake.”

  Bear had heard that before about marriage. Beliefs were one thing. A man living by them too often proved to be another matter entirely. “You helped Jake search for Timmy, then?”

  “Six hours worth.” She nodded. “We were terrified. There’d been a boy kidnapped in the neighborhood not two weeks earlier, and I couldn’t help but to fear he’d taken Timmy, too.”

  Bear dipped his chin, getting a fix on how Laura Logan’s mind worked. “But you didn’t tell Jake about that, did you?”

  Her cheeks reddened, and she wrung her hands in her lap. “Not until after we found Timmy, no. Jake was so worried already. I just . . . couldn’t.”

  Bear hated to ask, but he had to know. “Mrs. Logan, were you and Jake having an affair during his marriage to Madeline?”

  Her eyes widened, and anger flooded them. “Absolutely not.”

  He believed her. “But you were friends.”

  “Yes. We met thirteen years ago at jungle survival school. I was in the military too then.” A hint of a smile curled her lip. “I’d just started working on a fascinating new communication device—” She caught herself, hushed, and the guarded look returned to her eyes. Resigned to having to disclose the confrontation between her and Paul Hawkins, she continued. “During one of the exercises, an officer also there for training flipped out and tried to kill me. Jake saved my life. The officer lied about the attack, pulling the she’s-a-woman bit.”

  “What bit is that?”

  “I had become emotional and overreacted because I’m a woman, and women do that.” A delicate snort conveyed her feelings on that theory and tactic. “It was too absurd. I could have shaken the man. I didn’t overreact, of course, and Jake said so at the hearing.” The hearing, where Hawkins had been dishonorably discharged from the Air Force, and Laura had learned what it felt like to have someone look at you with pure hatred. “If Jake hadn’t stopped him, the man would have killed me.” Remembering it still gave her the shivers. “Anyway, Jake and I have been friends ever since then.”

  “Until two years ago, when you married. Two years ago today, in fact.” Another occasion important to Jake and Laura Logan that he’d miss due to duty. Bear looked up, and his voice went soft. “Happy anniversary, Mrs. Logan.”

  “Thank you.” Laura swallowed hard. Oh, please, please don’t let him start putting dates together. Please!

  “I couldn’t help but notice that you married a few weeks after the former Mrs. Logan filed suit against Major Logan seeking custody of Timmy.”

  Couldn’t Laura get even one small break here? “That’s correct, yes, sir.”

  “I presume the two events are connected.”

  If his gaze got any harder, he’d bore her right through the floor. She could lie, but some instinct warned her not to do it, and she trusted her instincts. As a former Special Operations officer like Jake, she’d often had to rely on those instincts to stay alive. Still, her voice dropped to just above a whisper. “We do all we can to protect Timmy.”

  “From what?”

  She forced herself to meet his gaze. “From anything that might harm him.”

  “Would that include a drunken birth mother?”

  Put like that, it sounded so cold and heartless, when it was anything but. Madeline was an adult who refused treatment. Timmy was a helpless child—and their responsibility. Not a bit less terrified than when Timmy had been missing, or when on a mission a year ago, Jake erroneously had been reported dead, Laura silently nodded.

  Bear tapped his pen against the desk, then leaned forward and braced his face on his hand, his bent elbow propped right in the center of their file. “Do you love Timmy, Mrs. Logan?”

  The fear left her face, and she openly smiled. “With all my heart.”

  “I noticed he calls you ‘Mom.’ Did you or Jake ask him to do that?”

  “No, sir. He asked if he could, and I told him he could call me whatever he wanted to, so long as he called me whenever he needed me.”

  “How’d Madeline react to that?”

  Laura blinked, then shrugged. “I’m not sure she’s noticed.”

  Bear nodded thoughtfully. Between Harrison Neal’s notes and Laura Logan, Bear now had a firm grasp on the situation. Major Jake Logan was a Special Ops officer in the Air Force. His lovely wife, Laura, a former Special Ops officer and captain, was now a civil servant, a publicity officer in the Public Affairs Office at Clare Air Force Base. Jake had saved her life thirteen years ago, and they’d been close friends, but no more, ever since. He’d divorced his wife for neglecting their son while he was away on duty, and because she was an alcoholic who cited stress as her reason for drinking and refused to get help. When she’d sued for custody of Timmy—an attack of conscience. That happened often—then Jake had panicked and had asked his friend, Laura, to marry him in order to better his odds of keeping custody of Timmy. She’d agreed to protect the child.

  Yet now, two years later, Jake and Laura Logan were still together.

  Why?

  Because Jake’s job was dangerous, and the former Mrs. Logan still posed a threat to the boy’s safety? Could be.

  Because Jake could be killed on or off duty, and Timmy would be left vulnerable? Maybe.

  Bear had a hunch that with a quick look at CNN Headline News, he’d have a good fix on where Jake Logan had been sent TDY. Special Ops officers were deployed to hot spots around the world. Of course, even if specifically asked, Mrs. Logan would claim her husband was away on a routine training mission. But Bear knew that these officers acted as forerunners to those hot spots. They rendered search and rescue missions. But they also performed assignments they couldn’t admit to, in places they had officially never been, interacting with individuals who didn’t exist, on topics they could never discuss.

  Such was the nature of many Special Operations.

  And that would explain the fear that crept into Laura Logan’s eyes whenever Bear treaded too closely to the topic of Jake’s work or his whereabouts. Considering the importance of why she was here, she didn’t want to lie to Bear. But she wouldn’t compromise her husband’s safety either. Bear understood her dilemma. Respected it. Hell, he even admired her handling of it and its challenges.

  Yet the Logans could still be together for a number of other, unconnected reasons. Because friendship had grown to love. Familiarity. Trust. A hatred of being alone. Or they could be together solely for the boy. What their true reason was, Bear couldn’t know. Not without talking to Timmy.

  What Bear had learned was important, and now he understood. Laura Logan wasn’t being evasive because she didn’t want to tell Bear about Jake’s job. She couldn’t tell him. She knew little herself—safer for her that way—but what she did know, if revealed, could jeopardize her husband’s life, and that Laura Logan never would do.

  Feeling better now that he had a grasp on this situation, Bear leaned back in his chair. “Is there anything else you want to say to me, Mrs. Logan?”

  Her eyes stretched wide, and she swallowed hard. “Only that my husband is a good father, and I’m a good mother to Timmy. We both love him very much.” She lowered her gaze to her lap. “Jake’s job is . . . sensitive.” She snapped her gaze up to Bear’s. “But that doesn’t mean Timmy isn’t the most important thing in the world to Jake. He is. Truly, your Honor.”

  The woman looked torn between ordering and begging him to sign the papers. Bear figured the ordering would cost her dignity less, but she’d willingly do either. That eased his mind a good deal on the matter. “I’ll talk with Timmy now.”

  She looked stunned. “You’ll decide today then? Without Jake?”

  “Perhaps. We’ll see what Timmy has to say,” Bear told her, unwilling to commit. “Would you ask him to come in on you
r way out?”

  “Yes. Of course.” She gathered her purse, obviously forgetting it was open, and a tube of lipstick tumbled out along with a rabbit’s foot, a four leaf clover laminated in plastic, and a rock. “Sorry.”

  Timmy’s lucky charms, or hers? Bear withheld a smile by the skin of his teeth. Regardless of whom the good luck pieces belonged to, they had Bear breathing easier. He liked the way this case was shaping up.

  Laura ushered Timmy back in, then stopped at the door.

  “Mom?” The boy looked back at her, clearly unhappy she wasn’t coming along.

  Laura smiled brightly and nodded toward the chair, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Just talk to Judge Bear a few minutes,” she said, lifting a white string of lint off his shoulder.

  “But . . .” Panic edged the boy’s voice, and his wiry shoulders went board stiff.

  By Bear’s reckoning, it was an unreasonable fear. What wasn’t right here? What was he missing? The interaction between them was fine; the boy undoubtedly depended on her for guidance and protection, and she certainly loved him. Even now, when she shook like a leaf, she smiled bravely to convince Timmy everything was all right.

  “It’ll be fine.” She halted Timmy’s protest. “Just tell the truth.”

  That stunned Timmy; his jaw had dropped open. And what exactly was Bear to make of that?

  “It’s not a test, Tiger. Just tell the truth.” She eyed Timmy levelly, then pulled the door closed.

  Seeing a crack of light along its edge, Bear frowned at the door. “All the way, Mrs. Logan.”

  When the door snapped shut, Timmy jumped. He looked scared to death but tried to hide it, just as Laura had. That too worried Bear, who recalled too many times during his youth when he’d been left alone with the demon bastard who’d fathered him. Lord, but he’d hated those times. And he’d resented them.