The Agent’s Secret Child

by B. J Daniels

  She pushed him back onto the bed easily and pulled up a chair beside him, holding his hand in hers. “You’re not going anywhere. Doctor’s orders.” He started to argue. “I’m serious, Jake. You’ve got to get your strength back. They just want to keep you overnight and get some fluids in you.”

  “Elena—”

  “There isn’t anything we can do until we get you well.” She lowered her voice, although only the two of them were in the room. “Or until we hear from the kidnappers.”

  “Yeah.” He frowned as he glanced toward the window. It was afternoon. He’d slept all morning. “You haven’t heard anything yet?”

  She shook her head. Like him, she’d thought they’d have called by now. She’d taken Jake to the safest hospital she could find, a small private one outside of town. Then she’d waited, praying he’d be all right, praying the kidnappers would call.

  She’d just assumed they had Jake’s cell-phone number because of Frank. She couldn’t bear to think the kidnappers had no way of contacting them.

  “I still can’t understand how they found us,” Jake said.

  She recalled his words: If we aren’t safe here, then we’re not safe anywhere. “If you can’t trust the Feds, then who can you trust?” she said.

  Why hadn’t they called? It scared her. Who had her daughter? And what did they want?

  The obvious answer was the stolen drug money. So why did she think there had to be more to it?

  “This morning reminded me of when the two of us used to work together,” Jake said.

  She nodded, wishing she could remember. “My memory is starting to come back,” she told him, disturbed by the bits and pieces she kept seeing in her mind’s eye. Some memories made no sense but left her anxious and worried, as if they were important things she desperately needed to remember. Jake was hurt and someone had their little girl. That was all she knew for sure.

  “The harder I try to remember that night, the less clear anything is,” she told him.

  “There’s no reason for you to remember that night,” Jake said quickly, squeezing her hand. “Forget the past, Abby. All that matters now is the future.”

  She wished that were true. But she couldn’t throw off the feeling that the answer to everything that was happening now was hidden in her past.

  “It’s funny, I keep thinking I remember you and me arguing about something the afternoon before,” she said, confused by a glimpse of memory. “I just feel like something happened, something I need to remember.”

  He shook his head slowly and reached up to cup her cheek in his large palm, his thumb moving in slow circles, caressing her skin. “It was a stupid fight. But believe me, it didn’t have anything to do with what’s happening now.”

  She studied him, concerned he was holding something back. But why? “What about?”

  He glanced away for a moment. “Dell Harper.”

  “Dell?”

  He took a breath and let it out slowly. “Like I said, it was a stupid fight. I just felt that you were being too protective of him and that it was affecting your work.” He met her gaze. “I was a little…jealous, too.”

  She wondered about her relationship with Dell. Did Jake have anything to be jealous of? She tried to pull up an image of Dell. A feeling. Nothing came.

  “Is that what you were going to tell me earlier?” she asked. “About our fight?”

  He nodded. “Not that it has anything to do with what happened later.”

  The nurse came in and told Abby she’d have to leave, the patient needed his rest. Before Jake could protest, the nurse gave him a shot.

  “You’ll be here when I wake up?” he asked, already sounding groggy.

  She nodded. “You get better,” she said and slipped a gun under his pillow when the nurse wasn’t watching.

  He smiled up at her, acknowledging the weapon and his possible need for it. “Abby, I— Just watch your back.”

  “Rest. I’ll be fine.” As she let go of his hand, she felt a sense of loss. For a moment, she almost changed her plans. The doctor had told her Jake would sleep through the night and she should get some rest. Rest was the last thing on her mind.

  She’d seen to it that the doctor’s report of the gunshot wound would never reach its destination. Not that she could see any reason why the men who had Elena would be searching for her and Jake. But even if they were, and even if they suspected how badly Jake was hurt and checked local hospitals, they wouldn’t find a patient listed by the name of Jake Cantrell.

  THE MOMENT the hospital-room door closed behind Abby, Jake thought about their argument six years ago. Looking back, it had been foolish. He’d been foolish. Arguing over Dell Harper.

  He wished he’d never said anything to her. But the fact was, he’d been jealous of Dell and her friendship with him. Abby had been overly protective of the young FBI agent and Dell—well, Dell had always seemed too…interested in Abby.

  But Jake still wished he’d kept it to himself. He’d regretted their argument for six years. In the end, a man’s biggest regrets in life would involve a woman, he thought. He already had his share when it came to Abby.

  Dell Harper was dead. Gone. He needed to concentrate on getting Elena back. On getting Abby to trust him again.

  But at the back of his mind something warned him that he’d just made a terrible mistake. One he would live to more than regret.

  Chapter Thirteen

  On the drive to El Paso in the rental car, Abby pooled together everything she could remember and waded through it. Only a few fragmented memories remained from the day of the explosion, just enough to make her feel troubled and tense. She could sense something important buried deep in her memory. Her subconscious teased her with it, holding it just out of reach.

  Was it as the doctors at the hospital had told her six years ago, something she’d repressed because she couldn’t face it? Whatever it was, the harder she tried to remember, the more it evaded her.

  Beside her on the seat was Sweet Ana, the cell phone the FBI had given Jake and the envelope she’d found under Julio’s body. Just the sight of the doll made her cry, but she wiped at her tears, stubbornly determined to find her daughter and put the cherished doll back into the child’s arms, just as she would take her daughter in hers.

  Under her jacket, she wore Jake’s shoulder holster with the gun she’d taken from one of Calderone’s men at the border. When had that been? It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  She wished the phone would ring. That the kidnappers would call and name their price. But she didn’t sit around and wait. She couldn’t.

  She drove into El Paso in the early afternoon. El Paso was a big sprawling city with a combination of cultures that made her very aware that Mexico was just across the border. It reminded her of her own Spanish heritage. At a convenience store, she asked for directions to the El Paso Central bus station.

  She found it easily but drove around the block several times before she parked. She didn’t think she’d been followed—at least not that she’d seen, and she’d been watching closely.

  Her instincts told her that no one would be waiting here for her, either. If they knew where the money was stashed, they wouldn’t have kidnapped her daughter. But still, she felt the hair rise on the back of her neck, her skin prickle with apprehension, as she walked into the large bus terminal.

  According to the schedule, the bus to San Antonio had just left and buses going to Albuquerque and Phoenix wouldn’t be leaving for a few hours.

  Passengers loitered in the lobby, some standing around looking restless, others mesmerized by the large TV mounted on the wall. A few, probably waiting for even later buses, dozed on the uncomfortable chairs or curled up on the floor.

  She walked through the throng toward the back of the building, following the sign that read Rest Rooms to the row of old beat-up green metal lockers. As she walked, she searched the faces of the people she passed.

  She didn’t see anyone she knew. Or at least anyone she
recognized. That was one of the real drawbacks of amnesia, she thought.

  She felt edgy, even with the reassuring feel of the gun against her ribs, as she wandered through the rows of lockers. A few passengers or possibly homeless people slept at the ends of the rows, as unrecognizable as bundles of clothing. Any of them could be staking out locker No. 17, waiting on her to show with the key.

  But one good look at the lockers themselves and she knew no one would sleep in a huddle on a bus-station floor to wait for her to open a door that the most amateur crook could crack with a hairpin in a matter of seconds.

  The thought did settle her down some as she walked to locker No. 17. She stood looking at it for signs that the lock had been tampered with. Even after a half dozen coats of dark green paint, the metal locker front was dented and scratched, banged-up and defaced, but the lock looked fine.

  She dug into her jeans, glancing around. No one seemed the least bit interested and yet she felt as if she was being watched. She waited a few moments, then pulled out the key and tried it in the lock. She turned it, heard a click and felt the door give. One thought struck her: what man in his right mind would put several million dollars in a bus locker? Would that much money even fit in a locker this size?

  But then she still couldn’t imagine Julio stealing that much from Calderone.

  She swung the door open and stared into the shadowy darkness of the locker, instantly surprised by how empty it was. Cautiously, as if she thought there was a diamondback rattler coiled inside, she reached in.

  The money was stacked in the back, each bundle of bills fastened with a rubber band. Without pulling it out, she thumbed through one. All used hundreds in U.S. dollars. The bundle was a good three inches thick or more, so she knew it had to be more than ten thousand dollars.

  Hurriedly she thumbed through several more, then quickly estimated the number of bundles. Just over three hundred thousand dollars. Definitely nowhere near millions.

  So where was the rest of the money? Maybe he’d hidden it in a variety of places, just in case he had any trouble getting to one of his stashes. Or maybe this was all there was.

  From inside her jacket, she took out two brown shopping bags and began to slide the money into the largest of the two, watching out of the corner of her eye for movement.

  But as she filled the bag, no one approached. No one even seemed to pay her any mind. She slid the last wad of money into the bag, then covered the bundles of bills with the second bag, and felt around in the locker to make sure she’d gotten it all.

  Her fingers brushed over a scrap of paper. A note reminding Julio where he’d left the rest of the money? Not likely. She withdrew a folded piece of newsprint, yellowed and ragged. Unfolding it, she saw that it was nothing more than a clipping torn from the Houston Chronicle, and she almost put it back without even looking at, thinking it had been left by a previous renter. But three letters in the headline caught her eye. FBI.

  Bystander Dies in FBI Raid. She glanced at the publication date. Almost twenty years ago. Surely this couldn’t have anything to do with—a name leapt out of the copy. Frank Jordan. Then a name Jake had mentioned to her. Hal “Buster” McNorton. The man who’d died six years ago in the same routine investigation Abby herself had almost died in.

  She stared at the photo. So faded and worn, it was impossible to make out the faces, but it appeared to be of a man beside a body on the ground in front of a restaurant. She could almost make out the neon sign reflected in the plate-glass window out front.

  She heard someone approaching and quickly stuffed the newspaper article into her bag, raked a hand over the rusted bottom of the inside of the locker to make sure she’d gotten everything, then locked it again.

  It was hard to walk slowly out of the bus terminal. Harder still not to look over her shoulder. But somehow, she did it.

  When she reached her car, she tossed the bag onto the floor on the passenger side, got in and locked the doors. She desperately wanted to look more closely at the newspaper clipping, but she started the car and slipped into the traffic, watching behind her.

  After driving for twenty minutes in an ever-widening circle, she pulled into a fast-food drive-through and ordered a large coffee. She realized she hadn’t eaten all day, and amended her order to include a cheeseburger and fries.

  With her coffee and food, she parked in the lot where she could watch the street and dug out the newspaper clipping again and turned on the dome light. She read it as she ate.

  The article was pretty straightforward. The FBI had raided a business believed to be manufacturing cocaine. During the chase that ensued, a young woman bystander was killed. Her name was being withheld until notification of relatives. FBI agent Frank Jordan refused to comment on the raid or the death of the bystander.

  She reached into the bag and finished off the last of the fries, not even aware that she’d eaten all of her burger. Downing the last of the coffee, she studied the photo again, wondering what this article could possibly have to do with Julio and the money she’d found.

  It probably didn’t. But she also didn’t believe that it just happened to be in the bottom of the locker, not the way it had been carefully ripped from the paper and folded. Or the fact that the newspaper clipping was almost twenty years old. Or that the article just happened to mention Frank Jordan. And Buster McNorton.

  Too many coincidences.

  Then she saw something that made her heart pound. The byline. The article had been written by Crystal Winfrey. Had Crystal Jordan been a newspaper woman before she became a TV anchorwoman? Before she married Frank Jordan? It seemed likely.

  Was she still an anchorwoman for a San Antonio television news station? Or had she gone on to something else in the last six years?

  She made a few calls on the cell phone and found Crystal working for a small, obscure public TV station in Houston. The former anchorwoman now worked behind the camera on the night shift. For a few minutes she sat in the parking lot trying to talk herself out of it. When she called Jake, the nurse told her he was sleeping, his condition improved.

  She’d thought about calling Crystal. But she wasn’t sure Crystal would talk to her. She wasn’t even sure what she hoped to accomplish by contacting Crystal in the first place.

  But the newspaper clipping nagged at her. It had to have some significance, and Crystal Winfrey Jordan was her only lead. And Abby wanted to surprise her.

  All the way to the airport she told herself this was nothing more than a wild-goose chase. Worse, she wouldn’t be able to get a call from the kidnappers during the short flight. But thirty minutes later she was on a jet winging its way across Texas, trying desperately not to think about Elena and the man who had her or about Jake. Trying to think like an FBI agent. Not a mother. Not a lover.

  AS ABBY GOT out of her car, locked it and headed toward the TV station, she felt again as if someone was watching her. But she hadn’t seen anyone on the flight who looked familiar and the station parking lot was half-empty, with no one hanging around.

  The television station was quiet in the office area, away from the action of live broadcasting. Her footsteps echoed down the long, windowless hallway.

  “Excuse me,” she said, sticking her head into the open doorway of the broom-closet-sized office marked Jordan.

  The woman behind the desk looked up and Abby remembered her.

  Crystal Jordan had once been a beautiful woman. Tall, lean and blond, with a dynamite face that flirted with the camera and a smile that radiated honesty on the screen.

  But that was not the woman now sitting behind the cluttered desk at the end of the hallway.

  “Yes?” she asked. Her hair was still blond, bleached thin. It hung straight to her shoulders, a style too young for the face it framed. It was a wrinkled, sallow face, the face and voice of a woman who’d spent too much time on a barstool, trying to kill herself with booze and cigarettes. “Can I help you?”

  But there was something familiar about that voice,
a familiarity that struck a chord with her. She’d once considered Crystal a friend. “Crystal,” she said softly. “It’s me, Abby. Abby Diaz.”

  Crystal picked up a pair of glasses from the desk. As she hurriedly settled them on her nose, she jerked back, eyes wide, an expression that held both surprise and fear on her face. And in that instant, Abby wondered how long Crystal Winfrey Jordan had known she was alive.

  Crystal got awkwardly to her feet. “My God, it is you.”

  Abby closed the door behind her and leaned against it. “When did Frank tell you I was alive?”

  The older woman stepped back. “Frank and I are divorced. He doesn’t tell me—”

  “Don’t lie to me, Crystal. I’ve been a prisoner in Mexico for six long years, my daughter’s been kidnapped and someone is trying to kill me. I’m not in the mood for any more lies. You knew I was alive. You knew I’d be coming here. Why is that?”

  Crystal reached for her intercom, but Abby jerked it out of her hand, ripping it from the wall and tossing it into the corner. She did the same with the phone, knocking the piles of papers on the desk to the floor.

  The former anchorwoman wobbled for a moment on her high heels, then dropped into the chair behind the desk again. “What do you want from me?”

  “The truth,” Abby snapped.

  Crystal looked as if she might cry, but she no longer appeared fearful, just resigned. “Frank told me a couple of days ago. He was in shock. He couldn’t believe it.”

  Abby just bet he was in shock.

  She pulled the folded newspaper clipping from her jacket pocket. Unfolding the yellowed paper, she laid it on the desk. “Do you remember this?”

  Crystal drew the clipping closer. “Where did you get it?”

  “I found it in a bus-station locker with three hundred thousand dollars of stolen drug money.”

  The older woman paled under the fluorescent lighting and her fingers trembled as she shrank back from the newspaper clipping.

  “Frank was the one who shot the bystander, wasn’t he?” Abby said, voicing what she’d suspected from the moment she’d read it.