Front Page Affair

by Jennifer Morey

  “Have you ever tried to get a six-year-old to eat fish?”

  “My parents made me eat what they were having.”

  “And I bet you enjoyed that.”

  No, she hadn’t. “I have a versatile palate as a result.” She liked almost any kind of food.

  “Aiden likes a variety of food, too, as long as it’s not too spicy.”

  She put the buttery bread onto a cookie sheet while he stirred the ravioli and turned it on low.

  With more roaring, Aiden bounded down the stairs and into the kitchen, bumping into Arizona as he flew his helicopter. She moved out of the way and he flew the helicopter by Braden, who leaned down and tickled his son.

  Aiden laughed and twisted away, dropping the truck he held in his other hand. Plopping down onto the floor, he rolled the truck in circles, squirming in circles himself while he flew the helicopter.

  Arizona felt a tension headache tighten in her head.

  “What is it about kids that bothers you?” Braden asked.

  She could never answer that question with any certainty. “They’re annoying.”

  “Because you don’t relate to them?”

  From the floor, Aiden burped and then laughed when they both looked down.

  “What’s there to relate to?”

  He chuckled. “That’s not what it’s about.” He went about getting their dishes ready while she tried to decipher what he meant. If she couldn’t relate to kids, how would she ever not find them annoying?

  Choosing the chair opposite Aiden, Arizona stirred her bowl of cheese ravioli and the bread soaked with butter on the small plate beside it. Kids could handle these calories. She couldn’t.

  Across the table, Aiden spooned a saucy noodle into his mouth. The sauce dripped down his chin and splashed onto the table, missing the bowl by a mile. Oblivious, his next spoonful held one too many noodles. Some fell onto his lap. Still, the boy was oblivious to all of it. He delved into more, ignoring the bread.

  She ate what she could of the kid meal, losing her appetite as Aiden’s fingers grew more and more gooey and sauce began to dry around his mouth.

  The boy saw her watching him and grinned, chewing a mouthful. Then he scooped some more noodles and teased her clumsily, shaking the spoon and then using his finger to create a slingshot. He let go but his tiny fingers didn’t make the ravioli fly across the table at her as he’d intended.

  He giggled.

  So funny. Arizona made a face at him.

  “Aiden,” Braden chastised.

  The boy did his best to appear sheepish, a poor effort.

  Arizona suffered through her bowl of ravioli, guarding herself against the playful challenge in Aiden’s eyes. Finally the boy finished, and she escaped Aiden by helping Braden clean up.

  “Time for a shower,” he said to Aiden, who was in the living room now, engrossed in a cartoon.

  “Aiden.”

  Still no response.

  “Aiden!”

  The boy’s head snapped to attention.

  “Shower. Now.”

  “I don’t want to take a shower,” Aiden whined in protest.

  Leaving the kitchen, Braden fought with him until the boy began screaming and crying. Arizona sat on a living room chair, all too happy to leave the horrible task of bathing to Braden, flipping the channel to a program about hot-air balloons.

  A while later she realized the shower was off and she could hear voices upstairs. Standing, she climbed the stairs, not sure what drew her. Maybe it was the tone of Braden’s voice. Deep, but full of affection. She heard that without hearing what he’d said.

  At an open doorway, she peered into the room. Braden was reading a book to Aiden. They had eaten late. And Aiden’s eyelids were drooping. Neither noticed her.

  “Daddy?” Aiden asked drowsily.

  “Yes?”

  “Who is that lady?” His voice as soft and vulnerable, no resemblance to the troublemaker at dinner.

  “She’s a friend.”

  “Like Mommy?”

  Braden hesitated. “A little different than Mommy.”

  “She doesn’t like helicopters.”

  “She likes real helicopters.”

  “My helicopter is real.”

  Braden chuckled. “Okay, it’s real then.” He looked up and saw her then. “She’s a girl. Girls don’t like boys’ toys.”

  Arizona smiled. That depended on what kind of boy toy he was referring to.

  He grinned back at her, not missing her thoughts.

  “Why don’t you live with us anymore?” Aiden’s sweet face tipped up as he looked up at Braden. He still hadn’t noticed Arizona.

  All humor fled Braden. He didn’t know how to answer. “It’s an adult thing, nothing you need to worry about. All you need to know is that I love you and I’ll always be there for you.”

  The boy reached out his little arms and Braden took him in for a hug.

  “I love you, too, Daddy.”

  Intruding on this private moment, Arizona went back downstairs. But something had taken root in her. Was there anything more pure than a child’s love? And to see Braden’s reaction to it, to his son saying those words during a hug. His eyes had closed and he’d turned his head to kiss the side of Aiden’s head. Love had permeated the room. And her. It pierced her. Unexpectedly.

  * * *

  A sound woke Braden.

  He sat straight up on the bed. The room was dark except for the light from his alarm clock. Another noise. Someone was moving around on the lower level.

  Had Arizona gotten up?

  Throwing the covers off him, he rose from the bed. With his son in the house, he wouldn’t take any chances. Not with how strange everything was right now. Putting on a pair of jeans, he left the room. The first door on the left was Aiden’s room.

  He looked inside. His son slept peacefully.

  Across the hall was where he’d put Arizona. The door was closed. He walked down the hall to the stairs. The sounds were coming from his office. Shuffling, as though someone were going through his things. Was he being robbed?

  He searched for a weapon. Getting a knife from the kitchen might make too much noise. So would going to his car for his flashlight.

  Moving quietly down the stairs, he paused in the living room. The door to his office was open. Whoever was in there was rooting through his desk.

  Anger roiled inside him. How dare anyone break into his home? His son was upstairs sleeping. Recalling how Julian had taken Charlene, he clenched his fists.

  At his office door he peeked around the corner.

  A tall, big man dressed in black worked at unhooking his computer. The man who’d driven the BMW. He paused and looked toward the door.

  Braden entered his office just as the man pulled out a gun. What the hell was he after? What was Julian after? Had he gone after Tatum for the same thing? And when she hadn’t produced it...?

  Diving alongside his desk, he heard two silenced bullets embedding into the drywall. He kept his desk in the middle of the room to break up the space. It was also to allow more room for his son to use the surface, frequently putting his laptop on the opposite side of him. Braden loved those times, when he could look up from his work computer and see Aiden playing a computer game.

  Watching black boots stride slowly across the open space under his desk, he crawled along the wood floor toward a sofa in front of a gas fireplace. Taking cover there, he grabbed a decorative poker from a holder. Then he waited for just the right time to spring up.

  Swinging the poker with a practiced move, he struck the man’s gun hand. The weapon sailed through the air and hit the wall near the door, clattering to the floor.

  The man punched him, striking his jaw and sending him off balance
. The next contact came from a well-placed kick. Doubling over, he rammed his elbow back into the man’s sternum, then turned to attack. This man could fight, but so could Braden.

  He froze as the man reached his gun.

  “Daddy?”

  Braden’s heart sank with dread.

  The man turned his weapon toward the door just as Arizona appeared in the opening of the doorway and snatched Aiden. Plucking him out of harm’s way.

  Braden lunged for the man, ramming into him. The man grunted, and then the gun went off as they both fell to the floor, sending the gun clattering to the wood floor. Braden wrestled with the man, who managed to get the upper hand. Underneath him, Braden was about to roll out of the trap when Arizona appeared above them both, a bulky lamp in her hands. She brought it down hard and the base shattered on the man’s head.

  The man groaned, staggering off Braden on his hands and knees. He was near the gun. As he took hold of it, Braden jumped to his feet. The man aimed behind him as he ran for the French doors that opened to a small patio on the side of his house, one of them open a fraction. That was where he’d broken in.

  Braden wrapped Arizona in his arms and tackled her just as the man fired. His first thought after that was his son. When the man vanished through the door, Braden sprang upward and rushed into the living room. Aiden stood ramrod-stiff, eyes big and round.

  Kneeling before him, Braden put his hands on the small shoulders that would someday expand into those of a man. He watched the boy’s face crumble into a sob. His tiny hands reached for him, which sent both affection and rage through him.

  * * *

  While detectives worked to gather evidence in Braden’s office, Arizona sat on one of his white sofas with Aiden, the detective on the other. The boy had sought her out when a detective began to question him. He snuggled next to her, his hands hooked around her arm and his cheek resting on her shoulder. Arizona ordinarily would have moved away from this close contact with a creature she didn’t understand. But his fear erased that defense mechanism.

  Looking down at him, she saw his eyes drooping. Sweet. Innocent. At peace now that the danger had gone. She rubbed his arm, with him in the crook of hers and feeling strangely at ease.

  When she looked up and saw Braden watching her from where he stood next to the detective, she realized he’d witnessed the tiny smile his son had given her. Something more meaningful than the first time she saw him warmed the exchange.

  “Mr. McCrae?”

  Arizona turned with Braden to the detective who was trying to regain his attention.

  “After Ms. Ivy hit him with the lamp, what happened?”

  “He picked up his gun, fired at us and ran out the patio door.”

  “And you’re certain it was the same man who attacked Ms. Ivy?”

  “Yes. I’m very certain. It was the same man. He tried to take her.”

  With a sigh, the detective tapped his notepad with his mechanical pencil. “And he was at your computer, you said.”

  “Yes,” Braden answered.

  “What do you think he was after?”

  Braden hesitated before shaking his head in defeat.

  “Your sister was all the way in Tortola when she went missing. What could that possibly have to do with this?”

  Finding the answer to that wasn’t something they’d accomplish any time soon. It wasn’t anything anyone would accomplish any time soon. That was what frightened Arizona. They needed time, and they didn’t have any. They’d delayed their flight back to Tortola. The longer they stayed here, the longer Tatum was in danger. But they couldn’t ignore what was happening here, either.

  “What could he want from your home computer?” Arizona voiced her question aloud.

  Braden hesitated again. “It was my work computer.”

  His work computer? That changed the dynamics. More and more, Arizona was convinced his job was somehow the connecting factor.

  “He was after information,” Arizona said.

  “No,” Braden said, looking over at her sharply.

  He was in denial. She sure wished he’d snap out of it.

  “Then why try to abduct you?” the detective asked Arizona.

  “To force something out of Braden.” She looked at him. “You said yourself that he was probably trying to use me against you.”

  “But you said Tatum was an executive at a freight forwarding company and that their exports didn’t include Hamilton components,” the detective interjected.

  “They didn’t. They don’t,” Braden said with conviction.

  Arizona didn’t miss it. “Maybe Tatum’s kidnappers would like to include them now.”

  The detective tapped his notepad again, and Braden glowered at her.

  The tapping stopped and he looked at Braden. “Your sister planned to go to Tortola and was seen getting into a cab.”

  “Yes. That’s what the hotel manager said.”

  They were going to have to talk to that man when they returned to Tortola.

  “If she intended to be there, then she may have been working with him.”

  To steal technology? Arizona watched Braden reject that notion. She’d like to do the same. Why would his sister steal from her own brother?

  Braden moved around the coffee table, now standing opposite both her and the detective. “My sister wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t sell technology to a criminal.”

  “Wasn’t she accused of doing just that?”

  “Yes, but she’s innocent.”

  “Is Julian behind the front company her freight forwarding company shipped arms for?”

  Arizona shot a look from the detective to Braden. If Julian had been behind it, he would have said something, wouldn’t he?

  “The government didn’t know. The man behind the front company used a false identity. At least, they hadn’t been able to trace the man at the time Tatum was questioned, and she couldn’t tell them anything.”

  “Why would she?”

  Anger stormed over Braden’s eyes. “Stealing from Hamilton wouldn’t be easy. Even if someone managed to steal my laptop, they wouldn’t be able to access my files. Nothing is stored on the hard drive. It’s all done with access codes to a remote server.”

  “Your sister may have gotten them.”

  Braden grunted a laugh, a cynical one that was anything but humor. “You don’t know my sister. She didn’t do it.”

  The detective didn’t respond. He didn’t have to. His doubt was clear.

  “It’s the only explanation, Braden,” Arizona said. “It’s the only thing linking all this craziness to your sister’s disappearance.”

  “There has to be something else at play,” he said. “Whatever that is, it’s against her will.”

  Not willingly. If only they could figure out what made her unwilling. What had drawn her into a government export violation investigation? What had led to people trying to steal from Braden? And what had led to his sister’s disappearance?

  “It’s nothing we’re going to solve tonight.” The detective stood, tucking his notepad away. “Why don’t you all try to get some sleep. I’ll have a teleconference with the Tortola police in the morning. I’ll also talk to Homeland Security to see what kind of help we can get from them. Do you mind if we search Tatum’s house?”

  Braden shook his head. “She has an apartment in Denver and is selling the one in Atlanta. She was living in Denver when she left for Tortola.”

  The detective nodded once. “We’ll need to search both premises.”

  “I’ll arrange for my parents to let you in. The Realtor in Atlanta will help you there.”

  “I’ll let you know if we find anything. In the meantime, please don’t go back to Tortola. Leave the investigation to us.”

  Arizona looke
d at Braden. Together they shared the secret that they already had airline tickets.

  Chapter 6

  Braden could tell Arizona wasn’t looking forward to seeing her brother. Since Lincoln had been released from the hospital, he was recovering at home, grumpily, according to her. No doubt, he felt the way Braden did. He wished Arizona could stay here instead of going back to Tortola. Braden wished he could take his son, too. Serena had agreed to stay at her parents’, but he’d still worry. He needed to hurry. Go get his sister and get home as fast as possible.

  Arizona bounced up the steps to Lincoln’s front porch. Her spaghetti-strapped stonewashed denim top had the privilege of holding her breasts, and the peacock-chiffon bodice flowed around her slender shape. Matching peacock earrings dangled from her lobes, her blond hair tucked behind her ears. Another pair of faded jean shorts left her legs bare and she’d decided to torture him again in those red shoes.

  “Your son will be fine with his grandparents,” she said.

  The unexpectedness of it threw him for a second. How had she known he was worried about that?

  She stopped at the front door. “They’ll go after us. The more distance we put between Aiden and us, the safer he’ll be.”

  Because she believed Julian was behind the arms dealing, and that he was after technology through Braden.

  “American Freight shipped arms for the front company, not technology,” he pointed out.

  “In the end, it’s all the same. Weapons technology builds arms.” She eyed him funny, as though she read his thoughts. “But I get that she may not have been willing.”

  He didn’t feel like talking about that anymore. “Let’s get this done so we can get back to looking for my sister.”

  “This is a necessary diversion.” Facing the door, she gave it a distasteful frown. “But do I have to go in with you?”

  “Lincoln has some intel for us. And a place to hide when we get there. We have to go in.” And he wasn’t leaving her out here. He glanced around the neighborhood. All was quiet, but that could change in a blink. Just like the last time they were here.

  She sighed. “I know.”

  Her friction with her brother was both amusing and telling. Lincoln thought what Braden did; Arizona strived for exactly what she sought so hard to escape. Working in news, she’d still be in the public eye. She’d never remove herself from her Ivy name that way. Better if she did what Lincoln suggested and start up a nonprofit.