by Carole Buck
If it had, he damned sure would have done more cybersleuthing than he had before departing for Vermont! He’d limited his electronic intelligence-gathering to obtaining the basics—Leigh McKay’s business address and phone number, her home address and unlisted home phone number, her motor-vehicle registration—for several reasons. Chief among them was a concern that hacking into supposedly secure data bases might trip an alarm or two. The woman who’d once been known as Suzanne Whitney was under government protection, after all. It had seemed logical to assume that someone in the Justice Department would have made provisions to detect unauthorized efforts to access information about her.
Someone in the Justice Department…
A wave of anger sluiced through John. He surged to his feet, the impulse to lash out running murderously strong within him. He began to pace around the room.
Damn them, he thought savagely. Damn them straight to hell.
He didn’t doubt for an instant that his controller in the “Saint Nick” case—an eighteen-month-long operation that had flushed a major crime syndicate down the toilet and, coincidentally, had put a psychotic slimeball named Anthony Stone in a cage where he belonged—knew about Andy McKay’s existence. Hell. Odds were, Drake Nordling had been aware that Suzanne Whitney was pregnant the day he’d enlisted him in the conspiracy to keep her ignorant of the truth about Nicholas Marchand.
Nordling had never said a word, John reflected bitterly. Never dropped a hint. He’d pretended to offer a choice, but it actually had been a fait accompli.
He remembered the scene with awful clarity. It had taken place six weeks after Nicholas Marchand supposedly had died. For nearly four of those six weeks, he’d been in a coma. For much of the rest of the time, he’d drifted in and out of consciousness—zonked on painkillers and suffering from what doctors told him was short-term, trauma-induced memory loss.
Concern for Suzanne had dominated his thoughts during those intermittent periods when he’d been lucid. He’d finally managed to croak out the first syllable of her name one evening while Nordling was visiting in his hospital room.
“She’s okay, Gulliver,” his superior had told him. “Don’t worry. We’re talking care of her.”
This assurance had been sufficient to calm him—for a while. Eventually, however, John had felt an overwhelming need to push the issue again. He’d understood the reasons that might mitigate against Suzanne coming to the hospital to see him. What he hadn’t understood was why she’d apparently made no attempt to get in touch. And so…
“Suzanne Whitney’s gone,” Nordling had responded after he’d finally marshaled the energy to ask where she was and what she was doing.
“Go-ne?” His voice had been weak, its shredded timbre unfamiliar to his ears.
“We’ve had her in a neutral site since we started to roll up the Saint Nick operation, and we’re in the process of relocating her.” Nordling’s reply had been matter-of-fact. His eyes had had the cold, steely glint of a pair of ball bearings. “She’s been very cooperative. Of course, the information she’s given us is basically small potatoes. She was only a secretary at the front corporation that was helping to launder the syndicate’s money, after all. She had no idea what was going on. Still, she’s smart. She saw things. Heard things. Maybe she didn’t understand their significance, but she remembered them. As a result, she’s been able to clear up a couple of questions about how the company did business. Even though we’re probably not going to use her on the stand at trial, I feel we owe her some accommodation and protection…all things considered.”
A terrible wave of dizziness had broken over John at that point. For a few galling moments, he’d thought he might lose consciousness again. But he’d battled back the darkness.
“Can’t…” he’d finally managed to force out. Yet, even as he’d spoken, he’d known he was wrong. His boss—and his boss’s bosses within the United States Attorney’s Organized Crime Strike Force Unit—could do just about anything they damn well pleased in a case like this, and he was in no condition to stop them.
Then Nordling had delivered the hammer blow.
“We decided it was wiser not to tell her about John Gulliver,” he’d said. “As far as Suzanne Whitney’s concerned, you’re still Nicholas Marchand. And Nicholas Marchand was killed in a car crash six weeks ago, on the evening of May eleventh.”
John had uttered an inarticulate sound of protest. There’d been a warning beep-beep-beep from one of the machines to which he was hooked up. Almost simultaneously, the door to his room had swung open. A handsome African-American woman—a nurse—had entered at a quick-march pace.
“Problem?” she’d asked.
“Not at all, nurse,” Nordling had immediately declared, his manner dismissive. “Everything’s just fine.”
“You got a medical degree since I saw you last?” the woman had countered as she crossed swiftly to John’s bedside. The tone of the question had suggested that unless he had—and probably not even then—his opinion carried zero weight with her.
Nordling, uncharacteristically, had not attempted to exert his authority. The nurse had briskly checked John’s monitors, then leaned over so she could look into his eyes and he into hers. The bandages on his face and neck had severely restricted his peripheral vision and made it difficult for him to turn his head. He’d been grateful for her consideration.
“You shouldn’t get yourself excited, Mr, Gulliver,” she’d said quietly, then flicked a disdainful glance across the bed at Nordling. “You want me to pull the plug on this visitor of yours?”
“No,” he’d refused following a brief, energy-gathering pause. “I’m…okay.”
After letting a few seconds tick by, the nurse had nodded. Straightening, she’d cast another dark look at Nordling. “Five minutes more and you’re out of here,” she’d declared, then had pivoted and stalked out.
As soon as the door had shut behind her, Nordling had moved closer to John’s-bed and placed a hand on his plasterencased left forearm. If the contact had been intended to be comforting, it had failed miserably.
“Think the situation through,” he’d said. “You’ll see it’s for the best. You and I both know you broke a lot of rules by getting involved with Suzanne Whitney. Issues of morality aside, it was dangerous. You turned her into a potential target. Saint Nick made more than a few enemies. There’s a chance his fatal accident wasn’t so accidental, although I don’t know that we’ll ever have the evidence to prove it. The local police did a poor job of preserving the crash site. In any case, now that Saint Nick’s gone, there may be some people inclined toward taking out their residual hostilities on his lady friend. And if word should get around that Nicholas Marchand is alive and actually a federal agent named John Gulliver…”
Nordling had paused, not bothering to spell out the potential consequences of the turn of events he’d just suggested. He hadn’t needed to. John had been more than capable of conjuring up ugly scenarios on his own.
“She’s obviously got feelings for you,” Nordling had resumed in an even tone after a short, sharp silence. “Or maybe I should say, for Marchand. That comment I made about her being very cooperative doesn’t apply to the subject of Saint Nick. About him, she’s given us nothing. Nada. According to her, he was a perfect gentleman. A Boy Scout. If she found out the truth…Well, let’s assume she could get over the fact that you lied to her. She’d probably want to help nurse you back to health. And that could put both of you in the cross fire.”
John had muttered a curse.
“Exactly,” the other man had concurred without missing a beat. “There’s also the matter of what kind of recovery you’re going to make. Now, I have a lot of confidence in you, Gulliver. And in your doctors. But let’s be straight, here. You’ve got some tough times ahead. Multiple surgeries. Months of physical therapy. With no guarantees at the end. Would you really want to suck Suzanne into that kind of mess? I don’t know. Maybe you think she could handle it. I realize she’s mat
ure for her age. Considering that she’s been making her own way in the world since her folks died—when she was what? Eighteen?-she’d have to be. Even so. She’s barely twenty-three….”
There had been another pause. John had found himself focusing on the pattern of his respiration. It had suddenly seemed vitally important to keep it slow and steady. To prove to himself that there was something over which he could still exert at least a modicum of control.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
“The government’s going to give her a new identity,” Nordling had finally said. “Settle her into a nice, clean life. Get her free of all the crap she’s fallen into. And if you truly care about her…”
John had shut his eyes. For a single, brutal second, he’d actually regretted that he’d survived the crash in which Nicholas Marchand supposedly had died.
“I…know,” he’d eventually replied, his chest feeling as though it had been strapped with slowly tightening bands of steel. “If I truly care…I’ll let her go.”
And so he had. Although it had felt as though he was slicing out his heart by doing so, he’d relinquished his dreams of making a future with Suzanne Whitney. He’d told himself that he wished her nothing but happiness in her new, governmentengineered existence.
As for what he’d wished for himself…
John Gulliver came to a halt in the middle of his elegantly comfortable hotel room. His temples were pounding. Headaches—infrequent but blindingly fierce—were another legacy of Nick Marchand’s “fatal” accident. Like the scarring. And the faint limp that sometimes manifested itself when he was extremely tired or under great stress.
He had medication, but he didn’t want to resort to it. He believed that it was better to try to manage pain than to mask it with some drug. He’d come out of the hospital after his initial postcrash stay feeling uncomfortably dependent on pills. Although he’d kicked the habit before it had become deeply rooted, an awareness of how easy it would be to slip into addiction had remained.
Inhaling through his nostrils, John filled his lungs to capacity, then expelled the air slowly through his mouth. He repeated the routine several times. The throbbing in his head eased a little, but not all that much.
He headed toward the bathroom, telling himself a hot shower might help. He was also vaguely aware that after all he’d been through since his usual morning ablutions, he was starting to smell a bit ripe.
He began to strip, pausing when he noticed several dried splotches on the dark turtleneck he’d just peeled off. It took him a moment to figure out that the stains must be Andy’s blood. His stomach roiled at the realization, the threat of nausea uncoiling in the pit of his belly like a snake. A brackish taste invaded his mouth.
His mind’s eye filled with the image of a little boy in a bright blue jacket lying motionless in the snow, bleeding. He remembered vividly how it had felt to scoop that little boy up and carry him in his arms. He remembered, too, how it had felt to hear him crying out with pain and sobbing that he wanted his mommy.
The image in John’s brain changed to the pale, panicked face of a desperately frightened woman. The shock of recognition he’d experienced when he’d seen that face still resonated within him. Five and a half years’ worth of emotional defenses—defenses already weakened by the impact of a single photograph—had shattered.
He’d almost lost it. For a few lunatic instants in the examining room, he’d forgotten that Suza—Leigh, dammit, Leigh!—believed he—or rather, Nicholas Marchand—was dead. He’d forgotten that he had a face she’d never seen. He’d expected her to fling herself at him, weeping, in an act of recognition and reunion.
Instead, she’d been so intent on reclaiming and comforting her child that she’d barely glanced his way. And when her maternal frenzy had abated to the point where she was able to focus on him, her first reaction had seemed to be one of…well, not fear, precisely, but something disturbingly close to it.
He’d recollected his radically altered appearance—his scars-a heartbeat after Leigh had looked up at him. He’d recollected a lot of other things when her eyes had met his.
John shook his head, trying to exorcise the memory of the straight-to-the-gut jolt of electricity he’d experienced when his gaze had connected with Suzanne Whitney’s for the first time in five and a half years. Given the pain in his temples, the movement wasn’t wise. But it seemed to work. At least for the moment.
After rapidly shedding the rest of his clothes, he turned toward the shower. As he did so, he caught sight of his back in the full-length mirror hung on the bathroom door. The scarring on his well-muscled shoulders he was indifferent to. But the crescent-shaped birthmark located to the right of the base of his spine seemed to pop out at him.
The mark had been listed in his confidential personnel file at the Justice Department and on the rap sheet that had been created for Nicholas Marchand. John dimly recalled Nordling telling him that police had used it to establish his identity in the immediate aftermath of the crash that had put an end to Saint Nick’s existence.
Nordling, he thought, his temper spiking anew. That bastard. He’d known about Andy. He must have!
“If you truly care about her…”
Nordling had also known precisely which psychological buttons to push with him and how hard to push them.
“If you truly care…”
Care?
Suzanne Whitney was the only woman he’d ever loved.
She was also the mother of his only child.
John Gulliver expelled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
Leigh and Andy McKay. The partner he thought he’d lost forever. The son he’d never had a chance to know.
They were his.
Come hell, high water or Drake Nordling, he would never let them go.
Leigh McKay kept watch over Andy throughout that night. Although the doctor at the clinic had assured her that he was going to be all right, she needed to be by his side…just in case. She’d failed her son once. She had no intention of failing him again.
“Oh, Andy,” she whispered, feathering her fingertips against his warm, tender-skinned cheek. “Oh, sweetie.”
Her little boy was fast asleep, his slumber apparently peaceful. Although he’d pretty much given up the habit in recent months, his left thumb was plugged between his lips like a pacifier. Leigh understood the impetus behind this retreat to what Andy sometimes described as “baby” behavior. She also understood why he’d been so insistent that she check—and recheck, then re-recheck—inside his closet and toy chest and beneath his bed for monsters after she’d tucked him in.
Her son wanted to feel safe again. Really, truly safe.
She prayed to heaven that he would. She prayed with all her heart that the trauma of this day would fade, leaving no emotional scars.
As for lasting physical injuries…
Leigh stared at the stitched-up wound on the side of Andy’s head, a how-much-worse-it-might-have-been chill slithering up her spine like a poisonous serpent. Her son had talked a bit about having a “forever owwie” before he’d drifted off to sleep. Although the idea had been upsetting to her, he’d acted rather gratified by the prospect. He’d also made a drowsy comment about being scalped, which she assumed was a reference to having had some of his hair shaved off.
A yawn snuck up on her. She smothered it with the back of her right hand, willing herself to stay awake.
He hadn’t seemed self-conscious about being scarred, she thought suddenly, her stomach fluttering. The disconcerting stranger who’d been so kind to her son had made no effort to hide the marks on his face and neck. He hadn’t flaunted his disfigurement, exactly—if disfigurement was the right word. But he’d seemed almost…unaware of it.
She still couldn’t remember the name he’d told her during their brief conversation. Where he’d come from was a complete question mark. Why he’d felt compelled to help a child he didn’t know endure an ordeal some parents would flinc
h from was a mystery, as well.
As for the issue of whether she would ever have an opportunity to see him again—
“Umph-muh…hunn,” Andy muttered, wriggling around beneath the bedclothes as though trying to get comfortable.
Leigh’s heart skipped a beat. Her entire body tightened.
“Andy?” she asked anxiously, leaning closer. She’d been maintaining her vigil perched on the side of his bed. Now she wondered whether it might not be better to lie down and cradle him as she’d done when he was little.
“Hunna…kumfz.” This unintelligible response was followed by several seconds of noisy sucking. Finally Andy gave a long sigh and settled down. Although his thumb remained firmly planted in his mouth, the corners of his lips curled up slightly as though he were smiling. A silvery thread of drool glistened on the curve of his chin.
“Andy?” Leigh tried a third time, seeking and finding the pulse point on the side of his neck. The slow but steady thudthud-thud she felt reassured her. Likewise, the unruffled sound of his breathing.
She slipped to the floor and leaned against the edge of the bed, resting her cheek on the mattress. The scent of clean sheets and Andy’s skin tantalized her nostrils. Her mind drifted back to the days when she’d felt almost addicted to the way her little boy smelled. She would hold him close, nuzzle her nose against his neck and breathe in the sweet fragrance of his innocent baby flesh until she was dizzy with it.
That she could love her son without reservation still seemed miraculous to Leigh. If truth be told, she’d been horrified when she’d learned that she was pregnant. She’d been nearly three months along at the time. Although hardly ignorant of the facts of life, her emotional state had been such that she’d utterly refused to face up to what was happening inside her body until forced to do so by a physician.
The possibility of abortion had been seriously discussed. But in the end, she’d elected to carry the baby to term.
She’d planned to give up the child—the child, not hers—for adoption. Had Andy not been placed in her arms only minutes after his delivery, she almost certainly would have.
