by Simply BWWM
“If she went to your lawyer’s office or accountant’s office, we should also find out who,” Elizabeth pointed out.
“Yeah, I’m working on that,” Luke said. “We have to do that carefully too.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth agreed. “We don’t want anyone tipped off.” She smiled wryly. “So, for now, we’re in a holding pattern again, right?”
“Might as well just enjoy the rest of this meal and see what Kelly does next,” Luke suggested, and Elizabeth nodded her agreement before leaning in and kissing him lightly on the lips.
“Then we can get me a hot dog to go, and I can eat it in the car on the way back to my apartment and go take a nap,” Elizabeth said. “Good lord, if it weren’t for this espionage thing, my life would be so very boring right now.”
“I can make it more exciting,” Luke suggested with the lift of an eyebrow. Elizabeth grinned.
“Okay, we’ll see how that goes, then,” she said. “But first, food.”
*
Luke settled into the spot where he had agreed to hide, waiting as patiently as he could. It had taken two weeks, but he and Elizabeth were finally in the endgame of their planned counter-attack on Kelly. The first steps were all done; Elizabeth had met with Kelly separately from him at her apartment, and she’d gotten a few strands of hair from the little almost-one-year-old child that Kelly had produced. She’d also gotten the birth certificate--fake--that Kelly had provided.
He had met with his lawyer, and he’d told the private detective he hired occasionally to do odd jobs about what he’d found out. Altogether, between the professionals, himself, and Elizabeth, they had come up with a plan to remove Kelly from his life for the foreseeable future. There was just one other thing they had to do, and Luke had his own part to play in that--and his part mostly required him to remain hidden until the right moment.
He’d been in the room with Elizabeth when she’d called Kelly to arrange a meeting earlier that day. Elizabeth had told Luke’s ex that there was an emergency, that Luke was asking her questions because she was hesitating about fertility treatments. Luke had had to resist the urge to laugh at Kelly’s excited reaction to the news and the way that Liz and his ex-girlfriend talked about meeting up to talk about taking him down before he could do anything to force Elizabeth to go through with more intensive surrogacy options.
Luke watched from his hidden vantage point as Elizabeth reached the spot in Millennium Park where she and Kelly were going to meet up: the Cloud Gate was as good a place as any, and Elizabeth--who had only been in the city for a few months--could find it as easily as anyone else could. It also gave Luke a good place to watch from.
He smiled to himself, feeling a kind of spiteful anticipation. Kelly had tried to make his life hell, ever since he’d broken up with her a year before; he was more than happy to both get a little revenge on her and also make sure she would be out of his life, as well as Elizabeth’s, for at least a few years to come. With any luck, she would take the hint and stay out of it.
Luke waited impatiently for the meeting to happen, looking around to make sure that he wasn’t spotted. He was pretty well-concealed near the Park Grill, but there was no telling whether Kelly would suspect that she was being had. Luke watched, feeling his skin crawl. If everything went according to plan, he would be revealing himself soon enough.
He finally saw Kelly approaching the statue where Elizabeth waited, a little girl in her arms. Two weeks before, Luke would have thought that it was possible--not likely, but marginally possible--that it was his daughter. But after sending the hair sample to a lab that specialized in genetic testing, along with a strand that he had from one of the brushes that Kelly had left behind when he broke up with her, he knew that not only was the little girl not his child, but she also wasn’t Kelly’s child.
They’d unraveled the woman’s duplicity gradually, and now--on a sunny day, in the middle of August--they were going to spring the final trap. Not only against Kelly but against the people who had helped her along the way: the clerk in his attorney’s office who’d helped her with the information about the surrogate he sought, the private investigator who’d helped her--competition to the man that Luke hired--and more. There were going to be several people whose lives were going to be very shaken up.
Elizabeth hugged the little girl, and Luke smiled to himself; they had found out, earlier in the week, that she was, in fact, pregnant with twins: likely identical twins, according to Dr. Marchman, based on the closeness of the placental sacs and the thin membrane between them. But twins it was, and assuming that she remained healthy, she would give birth in another five and a half months to two babies. He would have a family for sure--Luke just didn’t know if he would have a woman with whom to raise the two children.
He gave Kelly and Elizabeth a few moments to talk amongst themselves, to get into the groove of their conspiracy; fake on Elizabeth’s side though it was, he wanted to give her a chance to sell it, to put Kelly as completely at ease as possible. Luke checked his phone to make sure that he had the recording app ready to go and watched for the signal from Elizabeth.
After what felt like thirty minutes, she did it; Elizabeth touched her hair and then her hips and then her hair again, signaling that she was ready for Luke to spring the trap. He started the recording app on his phone and walked out from his hiding space, heading away from the restaurant and towards the Cloud Gate statue. Kelly spotted him about the time that he thought she would, and he moved quickly to keep her from being able to truly run away.
“Kelly! So good to see you again,” Luke said as he approached. He hoped that the wind wasn’t too much to allow the phone in his pocket to record the conversation. He and Elizabeth had tested it after discussing the best possible way to make the final step happen; it had worked but barely, and he would need to get as close to Kelly as possible to be sure.
“What are you doing here, Luke?” Luke smiled at his ex-girlfriend and looked at the little girl. If he hadn’t known better, thinking that the almost-toddler was his daughter would have made the next things he had to do difficult; as it was, he hoped that Kelly wouldn’t take out her frustration on the girl in any way. He wasn’t even sure how Kelly had gotten the little child.
“See, I had heard this thing: that supposedly I had a child that I didn’t know about,” Luke said. “I wondered why, if you had my child, you wouldn’t have come to me for child support--but then I asked Elizabeth about it, and she seemed to be under the impression that I’d made some kind of settlement with you. Which is strange.”
“You made me promise not to say anything about it to anyone,” Kelly said. “You knew about this baby, Luke.” Luke had to hand it to the woman: she was definitely willing to tell a bald-faced lie, even right in front of the person who would know for a fact that it was a lie.
“Elizabeth showed me the contracts you sent to her, Kelly,” Luke said. “And imagine my surprise! Because I sure as hell never wrote anything like that up, and my lawyer doesn’t have any copies of such a document...and I sure as hell don’t have a trust fund set up for this girl.” He looked at Elizabeth.
“I was curious too,” Elizabeth said. “So, when I found out that I had a few strands of your daughter’s hair, I asked Luke to send them off to a lab.” Kelly’s eyes widened, and Luke could tell she was about to make a run for it.
“I wouldn’t try and dash like that if I were you,” he said just loud enough for his phone’s microphone to record it. “The police are on their way here to come and get you.”
“What the hell are the police going to do to me, anyway?” Kelly rolled her eyes. “It’s not a crime to troll someone.”
“It is a crime to make a fake birth certificate and to forge a contract promising cash payments,” Luke said.
“I think the lawyer said you’d be liable for a few different counts of fraud, as well as charges of harassment,” Elizabeth said. “All together, you’re probably going to see at least five years in jail.”
“Actually, I think they will,” Luke told her. “I mean, I’m not a lawyer, but the lengths that you’ve gone to, to try and get back at me...bringing in a stranger...it’s not going to look good for you.”
“So, you know this isn’t our daughter, and you can prove it. So what?” Kelly lifted the little girl into her arms and looked at Luke. “You don’t know that we don’t have a daughter together. You don’t know whether I was ever pregnant. You can’t prove it.”
“I can prove that there was never a Mary Johns, daughter of Luke Johns,” Luke said. “Public records search--kind of an easy safeguard and a way to prove that that birth certificate you just gave to Elizabeth is fake. And Elizabeth recorded your conversation here--Liz, did she admit to wanting to get money out of me?”
“She did, indeed,” Elizabeth said. “She and I talked about the possibility of using what she’d told me about you as blackmail to get you to pay me twice as much if you abandoned me the way you had her, and she and I would split the second hundred thousand between us.”
“God, Kelly,” Luke shook his head. “I knew you were bent on trying to do everything you can to screw my life up, but this pretty much takes the cake.”
“Oh please,” Kelly said. “You know you earned every bit of anything I ever did to you.”
“What did I ever do to you that you’re willing to break a good four or five laws to get back at me?” Luke threw his hands up in the air in confusion. “Seriously.”
“You made me believe that we were going to have a family, that we were going to be together forever,” Kelly said, glaring at him. “You let me think that everything was great and then you just…” she started crying, and as if on cue, two Chicago police officers appeared, converging on their group.
“Kelly Lathem? We need to take you into custody,” the men said, approaching the blonde woman. Luke smiled slightly at her as she realized that he hadn’t been bluffing.
“What’s going to happen to the little girl?” Kelly looked panicked.
“You never did say who she belonged to, since she isn’t yours either,” Elizabeth pointed out. “Oh yeah, we discovered that too, Kelly.”
“She’s my friend’s,” Kelly said.
“We have child protective services agents coming as well,” one of the police officers said. “Please put the little girl down.” Kelly looked as though she might struggle, but Chicago PD had a reputation; fighting with them wasn’t a great idea. Kelly put the almost-toddler down and began crying in earnest.
“Can we trust the two of you to watch this little girl until CPS comes?” Elizabeth nodded, and the two men started to escort Kelly away in handcuffs. The little blonde girl, barely more than a baby, started to cry, and Luke watched as Elizabeth immediately picked her up and held her close, murmuring wordlessly in a soothing tone.
“You seem to have a pretty good handle on that,” Luke said drily. There was something in him that almost ached at the sight; there was Elizabeth, with his babies inside of her growing and developing, and he wasn’t even sure if she would be around to do exactly the same thing she was doing with Kelly’s fake baby with her own real ones. The little girl began to calm down almost immediately, responding to Elizabeth’s holding and soothing voice.
“I used to babysit some really young kids,” Elizabeth said. “Back towards the end of college. I got really good at getting them to quiet down.” She grinned at him. “It was either that or they gave me a migraine.” Luke laughed, and the blonde almost-toddler looked at him curiously.
“You know, at least she found a pretty baby to pretend to be mine,” Luke said. “She’s a little cutie.”
“Seems to be pretty smart and sweet too,” Elizabeth agreed.
They stood there for a few minutes, but the police officers were true to their word; it didn’t take longer than ten minutes for CPS agents to arrive.
“If you don’t mind, I just want to make sure I’m doing the right thing,” Elizabeth said, holding the girl still. “Could you show us your badges?”
“Absolutely, and you’re right to ask us for them,” one of the two officers said. They both produced badges showing their authority as agents of Illinois Children and Family Services, and Elizabeth handed the little girl over to the second officer, a woman.
“I don’t actually know who her parents are, but Kelly Lathem--the woman trying to claim her as my daughter--said it was a friend of hers,” Luke told them.
“We’ll get in contact with the police and see if we can get a name,” the first officer said. Luke checked to make sure he’d ended the recording on his phone before the officers had arrived.
“Is there anything else you need from us? A statement or anything?”
“I think the police will probably want to talk to you, get any evidence the two of you have,” the first officer said. “But you can probably take your time getting to them.”
“How far along are you?” The woman officer asked Elizabeth. Luke laughed at Elizabeth’s shocked reaction.
“I don’t even show yet,” Elizabeth protested.
“You do--not your belly, but your face,” the woman said. “I’ve seen lots of pregnant women. I can tell.”
“I’m only about three months along, almost four,” Elizabeth said, answering the question finally.
“You’ll start really showing soon, then,” the woman said.
“She will,” Luke agreed. “We just found out she’s carrying twins.”
“Congratulations to you both!” The first officer, a man, nodded to them. “We need to get this girl back to the office; I’m sure you understand.” They both agreed that they did, and Luke took Elizabeth’s hand in his, leading her away from the Cloud Gate sculpture the same time that the two child protection agents started off in another direction, to take the baby away as well.
“So, with any luck, she’ll have bail high enough that she can’t come out until the trial, and then she’ll get at least five years,” Elizabeth said as they walked towards the waiting car. Luke nodded.
“Apparently, there are charges coming against the clerk in my lawyer’s office too, and a conspiracy charge,” Luke said. “I don’t know all the details, but it sounds like that whole group is going to go down.”
“Can’t say that I feel bad about that,” Elizabeth said with a little wry smile. Luke pulled her to him, kissed her lightly on the lips, and then they continued on their way out of the park. At least, Luke thought, the only thing they had left to worry about was the pregnancy and the birth of the children that actually were his.
*
“You know, I think they need to institute a law that pregnant women are not required to testify in court,” Elizabeth said, stepping out of the bathroom and into Luke’s bedroom with her robe loosely draped around her. At five months, she was definitely showing; she wasn’t unwieldy yet, but she was starting to feel uncomfortable in her body, feeling the expansion of the two fetuses inside of her.
“If you start to get tired of it, you can just pretend to faint,” Luke suggested from the bed. They had to be at the courthouse in two hours, and he was already dressed; Elizabeth had wanted to take a quick shower to make sure she was fresh before going into the court.
“Right, because pratfalls are great when you’re five months pregnant,” she told Luke tartly, even as she moved closer to the bed. Luke reached out and carefully tugged her onto the bed with him, pulling her right up against him. He kissed her lightly on the lips, letting his hands stray over the curves of her body.
“If you do it right, you won’t be in any danger,” he pointed out playfully. “You’ll just be able to say you need to be looked over by a doctor, and they’ll save your testimony for another day.” Elizabeth sighed; as Luke’s hands moved over her sensitive breasts, lightly caressing her, she felt her breath catch in her throat. One thing that had come of being pregnant was that she seemed to be almost-constantly horny
or on the verge of being horny. Fortunately, Luke seemed more than willing to satisfy whatever needs and wants she had, including the desire for sex.
“I would rather just get it over with,” Elizabeth said. The lawyers had told them that it was more or less an open-and-shut case, since they had the recordings to prove motive, as well as the actual documentation of the crimes that had been committed. It was just a matter of getting the point across to a jury.
Then, Elizabeth thought, they wouldn’t have to worry about Kelly possibly ever again; she rather suspected that the blonde woman would learn something from being in prison for no fewer than five years. The prosecutor was seeking fifteen years for Kelly, and no less than five years for her co-conspirators, which Elizabeth thought was fair for all of them.
Luke kissed her more firmly, and Elizabeth felt herself beginning to respond, her body heating up all over, some of the heat coming to rest deep down between her hips. Within a month or two, she knew, it was going to become much more difficult for them to have sex; and of course, when she delivered, she would have to wait possibly as much as twelve weeks to be fully recovered, to be able to have sex again.
“We do have two hours,” she told Luke.
“But if we have sex right now, you’re going to want another shower before we go to court,” Luke pointed out, even as his hands began to tease her, his hand drifting down along the slight curve of her abdomen, towards the mound of her pussy.
“I’ll only need to rinse off,” Elizabeth countered. “And you could join me in there…”
“That would only make it definite that we’d be late,” Luke said with a grin. But he was no more interested in avoiding sex than she was. He pulled her closer and covered her body with his own, kissing her deeply and peeling the robe away from her skin. Elizabeth moaned, reaching up to find the buttons on Luke’s dress shirt, fumbling with them slightly in her eagerness to get him naked. She finally managed to figure out how to get them undone and worked her way down from his throat to the waistband of his pants, tugging the hem free and finishing off the last few.
