Mother by Fate

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Not wanting to upset her further. And knowing he had to.

  “She was there that night, wasn’t she?”

  Her question came out of the blue. “What? Who?”

  “You were studying. Your wife was home. Mari was two years old. Unless she’d been spending the night with grandparents, she’d have been there.”

  Michael sat there, aware of her padded shoulder pressing up against his, and watched the debris floating under the pier. Dead fish, turned sideways, one wide-open eye facing the sky. Trash. Foam. Bits of soggy, uprooted ocean plant.

  He could have argued her reasoning. Mari could have been with one of his sisters or his parents. For all Sara knew she could have been with someone from Shelley’s family. Sara had no way of knowing that Shelley had been a foster kid—that the home she’d made with Michael and Mari had been the first real home she’d ever known.

  “She was there.”

  “And all that time you were studying, you didn’t check on her either, did you?”

  No one had ever asked. How could this woman who hardly knew him know him so well? He had no answer. Because he couldn’t speak the truth.

  And about this he could not lie.

  “It’s not your fault, you know.”

  “I know.” But if he’d been there... If...if...if...

  “She’s adorable.”

  “She’s a precocious brat. But yeah, she’s pretty adorable.” Mari was his purpose for living. For pretty much everything he did. “When the ambulance came for her she was screaming about hearing the bad man with Mommy.”

  “Was she awake when you found her afterward?”

  “No. She was sound asleep in her crib. There were no tear streaks on her face. Her nose hadn’t been running. Consensus was she’d slept through the whole thing.”

  “Didn’t mean she didn’t hear. On some level.”

  “Today’s the first time I’ve had any indication of that.”

  “It’s probably time to tell her what really happened.”

  “I’m not going to tell a six-year-old child her mother was raped.”

  “I didn’t mean you should give her that much detail. Just enough to speak to the fears that are lurking inside her.”

  He’d already come to the same conclusion. And didn’t look forward to the conversation. At all.

  “Would you be there?” The question came from...three days on the road with a woman who was changing him. In spite of his attempts to ward off her spell.

  “I...”

  “As a professional only.”

  “Let’s talk about it when we’re done here.”

  “Okay.”

  She hadn’t said no.

  For that moment, all was good.

  * * *

  SHE COULDN’T SEE Michael’s daughter again. Couldn’t offer her any nurturing of any kind. Not after what she’d felt at the hospital that afternoon. That opening of her heart...in a way different from the professional nurturing she offered every day to the women and children in her care.

  In a way that had reminded her of Bessie.

  She wasn’t going to care for another man’s child again. Not ever. Or his dog. Or his family. Or his house. Because just as he shared them, he could take them all away.

  Other people’s families weren’t her own. And she couldn’t love them as if they were.

  “I have a favor to ask.” Her timing was rotten. But she’d been thinking about an idea all afternoon—in particular, anytime she wanted to get her mind off something else.

  Like how she’d felt when Michael’s family had assumed she was his lover. How much she’d wanted to be just that, there, in their midst.

  “What?”

  “Would you be willing to help someone set up a kennel?” she asked.

  “What someone? And why?”

  “It’s a fact that many at-risk women don’t leave their situation because they, or their kids, can’t stand to leave behind their beloved pets. It might sound crazy, putting a pet before your life or the lives of your children, but to people who don’t have a lot of trust in human beings, pets are often their family. Sometimes their only trusted friend. Or the only emotional sustenance they know.”

  He sat forward, his forearms on raised knees, facing the ocean. Even when the tide came in, the water would be several feet away from them.

  “As the result of a High Risk Team assessment, the founder of the shelter where I work is providing funds for a kennel. No one there knows the first thing about building or running a kennel. Most of our work is donated, and we don’t even know who to ask. I’m sure there will be guidelines and...”

  “You’ll need to make certain all incoming animals are inoculated, for one,” he said, and her stomach gave a little flip of excitement.

  He was going to help her. And she was going to maintain some kind of contact with him once this job was over.

  On a professional level only, of course.

  Before she could monitor her reaction enough to tone down her inappropriate enthusiasm, he added, “We can talk about it. When this is all over.”

  Sara nodded.

  It was the same response she’d given him.

  And she knew he wasn’t going to help her after all.

  Once Nicole was found, they weren’t going to see each other again.

  * * *

  THE SUN WAS almost below the horizon. The air around them had already cooled considerably and Michael was ready to get this done. He had to get her on his side before the homeless started to arrive for the night.

  “Case number CA-14823Z,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Look it up on your phone. You’ll find it under public court records.”

  “I’m conserving my battery. Can’t you just tell me what it is and why you want me to know about it?”

  “Will you believe me?”

  “If I don’t, I can look it up.”

  “The State of California versus Nicole Lynn Kramer. Charges—aiding and abetting a bombing in a populated setting.”

  He felt her stiffen.

  “A female guest at a high-profile interracial wedding, having arrived early, takes violently ill, requiring security at the public venue to tend to her, distracting them, while a second female guest enters the bathroom attached to the bride’s changing suite while the bride, her mother and six attendants are inside, and leaves a bomb, which explodes, injuring five of the eight people present, including the bride.”

  “Nicole was the one who took sick? According to the record?”

  “She told you about it?” He had to admit, he was shocked. And alarmed as hell. If a bombing at a wedding didn’t convince Sara their fugitive was dangerous, what would?

  “No. But she’d have been charged with the bombing, instead of aiding and abetting, if she’d been the one who planted the bomb.”

  “There was a picture in an old article I found, once I knew, from the court case, what to search for. It was of Nicole and Nadine.”

  “How old was Nicole?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Still under her parents’ influence and control.”

  “She’s Ivory Nation born and raised, Sara. Think like the professional you are.” The tension in his voice was nothing compared to that which was tightening every muscle in his body. The ground beneath his butt was already harder than hell. It was going to be one of those long nights that would probably haunt his mind forever. With good and bad memories. “She’s been brainwashed since birth to think like them. Taught to determine the difference between right and wrong by their dictates and example.”

  “And she had a child beaten out of her by them. Her motherly instincts kicked in. Instincts that were deeper, more elementally a part of her
, than any environmental conditioning could ever be. You think like a professional, Michael. Do you really believe that environment trumps self?”

  “She aborted her own child because it was a girl, Sara! Those are the motherly instincts you want me to risk our lives on?”

  A tanned couple, thirtysomethings in expensive-looking suits with designer sunglasses, came down to the pier, saw him and Sara and turned around.

  “She did not have an abortion.” Sara’s voice was lowered; her intensity was not. “Dr. Sophie Anderson. Life Choice Clinic. Look her up and call her. Tell her that Nicole told you to call.”

  “If Nicole told her to call, it means she’s part of the lies...”

  “No, Michael, it doesn’t.” She told him, in very clear terms, about the phone call she’d made after breakfast that morning. She left nothing out. Including the second obstetrician. The reports that were never followed up on. The pictures she still possessed of a young woman’s beaten belly.

  He listened. Added the pieces she was giving him to the runner’s psyche he’d spent the past three days building in his mind. And had a strong urge to puke.

  * * *

  “TREVOR LEFT THE Ivory Nation, Sara.” Michael’s tone was low. There was no fight in it. “You can read about court cases when one or another of the brotherhood was involved. And in the news, too. The Ivory Nation isn’t just a group of thugs. They have political views and care deeply about social issues. They contribute to campaign funds for conservative candidates, work respectable jobs and live full lives. Five years ago, Trevor Kramer was in every article. At every rally. Behind every act of revolution. He hasn’t been mentioned once in the past four years.

  “Not in the news. Or in court documents.”

  “Nicole is the one who left,” Sara said. “She said that Trevor went underground. That the brotherhood took his name off everything, but that he still heads up all of the meetings. He still calls all the shots.”

  “Of course she’d say that.” His rebuttal seemed halfhearted at best.

  “She insisted that Detective Miller is a member of the Ivory Nation, Michael. Or is at least owned and protected by them. In the past four years, every time Trevor did something for the cause, they’d frame Nicole and Miller would show up with another arrest warrant. After the arrest, Trevor would make her wait as long as he deemed appropriate before he paid her bail. And then, miraculously, a day or two later, the charges would be dropped. Evidence would turn up missing. Or a witness would be found to have been lying. Or she’d suddenly have a provable alibi...”

  A body—she couldn’t tell if it was male or female—in tattered shorts, a long-sleeved shirt and dollar-store flip-flops was approaching the fire circle. The person was taller than Nicole. And definitely not wearing height enhancers.

  “They were building a record against her, damaging her credibility, taking her freedom away one bogus charge at a time. As well as bullying her into doing whatever Trevor told her to do. Anytime she disobeyed him, Miller would show up with another arrest warrant.”

  “You want me to believe this was all about him being a brutal ass who’d go to such lengths just to get his wife to obey him?”

  “I can tell you that men like that exist, but no, I’m not saying that was Trevor’s driving motive.”

  “What did he want from her?”

  “He believed that Nicole, being Robert Buchannan’s only child, would bear him a son who would be like a god to the nation. He wanted the son to be his. His genes combined with Robert Buchannan’s.” It all made even more sense to her now that she knew about Robert. “He’s planning for his son to head up the national board of the Ivory Nation.”

  She needed him to hear everything she knew now. Because she was no longer certain where the truth stopped and the lies began. Nicole had specifically told her that she’d never been in trouble with the law apart from the trumped-up charges Trevor and Miller had planted on her.

  But a bombing? At a wedding? That could feasibly have taken at least eight lives?

  That was crossing some serious boundaries. A step most people were incapable of making.

  She’d never have pegged the vulnerable woman she’d been protecting as a woman capable of such an act.

  “The charges weren’t all bogus.”

  “What?”

  “About eighteen months ago there was a demonstration at a private university in LA. It was to protest a decision that had been made to prevent illegals from obtaining scholarship funds. A group of supporters of the decision upset the demonstration, running in with cans of spray paint and covering both their signs and the people carrying them with red paint. Nicole Kramer was caught on tape with a can of spray paint in her hand.”

  “Was she charged?”

  “Yes. She pled guilty and took a deal for six months of community service, to be served at a local free clinic. She satisfied all the demands of her sentence.”

  Spray paint was a lot different from bombing a wedding. But it meant Nicole had lied to her again. And she was obviously still of a somewhat militant mindset.

  The knots in her stomach had Sara almost doubled over in pain.

  “Trevor isn’t anywhere near Venezuela Avenue,” she said. And was scared by the frown that creased Michael’s forehead. She’d been hoping he’d lied to her again. Testing her, maybe, to see what she’d do with the information.

  She’d been hoping, with the truth on the table, they’d both see sense enough to know what battle they were fighting.

  “I won’t ask how you know that,” he finally said, then turned his head to look her straight in the eye. “But how sure are you that your information is accurate?”

  “He’s in a motel by the airport. I’m sure enough that I’d risk my life on the information.”

  “He’s scared. I don’t blame him for being careful.”

  “By the airport, Michael.” She shivered, cold and wishing she was at home. Or better yet, at the Lemonade Stand, where secrets were supposedly safe.

  At the moment, she didn’t think she’d ever feel completely safe again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  DARKNESS HAD FALLEN, though it was still probably only about seven thirty or so. Already a group of about ten people occupied the space under the pier. They seemed to split off in pairs and threes. One group might nod to another, but there wasn’t as much interaction as Michael had expected. His impression from viewing them from above the night before had been that they were all there together.

  A fire had been lit.

  A game of cards started close enough to it for the firelight to make the cards visible. Bottles were being passed around.

  So far there was no sign of Nicole.

  And other than some long looks in their direction, no one bothered Michael and Sara.

  “It’s time to bundle up,” he said when she shivered for the third time. He’d been putting off the inevitable. Had probably already put it off too long—but he knew the hours ahead were going to be difficult ones for him.

  He couldn’t remember wanting to have sex with a woman as badly as he wanted to sink himself into Sara Havens.

  Bold, bald, wild sex. Nothing tender about it. And yet loving at the same time. He wanted to make her his.

  He wasn’t really fond of himself at the moment.

  But what had to be done, had to be done. Shaking out the blanket, he put both of his arms around Sara, pulling her head so that her cheek touched his, and wrapped the blanket around them up to their ears. Her hand reached up to hold her side of the blanket in place.

  She smelled like flowers. And the thrift shop. Musty.

  The padding beneath her dress pushed at his collarbone. Their legs, from their feet up to their butts, touched. But that was all. Her breasts were over there, between her hunched arms. Away from his ches
t. Same thing with her pelvis. Guarded by the thighs that were hugging her stomach.

  And so was his.

  He could do this.

  She’d never know that his penis was the size of a cucumber. Thank God for baggy pants.

  “You might want to get some rest,” he suggested. He had only one train of thought. Get Nicole, turn her in against the warrant he held and get home.

  And do it all without anyone getting hurt.

  * * *

  SHE’D NEVER BEEN one to feel safe in a man’s arms. Or to need a man’s arms to feel safe. Other than Jason, Sara hadn’t spent a whole lot of time in men’s arms. She’d guarded herself too closely. Guarded herself against gold diggers.

  But she liked being in Michael’s arms. Liked knowing that he had a gun within hand’s reach.

  “Why didn’t Nicole go to prison for the bombing?”

  “The charges were dropped.”

  She could feel his jaw move as he spoke. And for a second, she almost turned her head to meet his lips with her own.

  It hadn’t been something she was thinking about. She’d just had the instinct to do so. And thankfully came to her senses in time.

  There were so many lies. They were dealing with very dangerous people. The night was dark. And they were sitting ducks.

  What if one of them got hurt that night?

  What if one of them didn’t live to see the morning?

  Sara told herself to stop. She knew her mind was running away with her, that she was allowing fear to lead her down a path of irrational thinking.

  “Why were the charges dropped?”

  “The court documents didn’t say.”

  Male laughter burst out from the three shapes sitting down by the fire playing cards. “What about the news? You said you found a news article.”

  “More than one, actually. It said that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict. Nicole had been violently ill. And an invited guest. She was friends with the groom’s sister, who was one of the bridesmaids. It had been intimated that she might have had a part in things. She’d mysteriously left the room just before the bomb went off. She hadn’t approved of her friend’s brother’s fiancée.”