SEALed Forever

by Mary Margret Daughtridge

  If anyone was keeping him under surveillance, he had found no trace, either at Bronwyn’s house or here. It was possible that Julia’s origins would forever be a loose end.

  It might be time to assume that he and Bronwyn would have Julia forever. If they were going to raise her as their own, then she needed papers. A birth certificate, adoption papers. At the very least, and soon, she needed to added to his medical insurance policy.

  There was one lead left that he hadn’t pursued, figuring his buddy in San Diego would call if the fingerprints Garth had sent could be identified. Garth reached for his cell phone but hesitated. Warned by some instinct, he went to his cache of prepaid cell phones. He chose the one he’d bought in San Diego and entered his friend’s number.

  “What the hell are you into?” his friend demanded as soon as Garth identified himself.

  “Why? You mean you have an ID on the prints?” It had been a hell of a long shot, given that the flight didn’t originate in the States. You couldn’t find all people using prints—only those who had ever been fingerprinted, and that number was miniscule, compared to the population of the world or even the western hemisphere. “That’s great!” Garth told him. “Why didn’t you call?”

  “Can this call be traced?”

  So his impulse not to use a number identified with him had been correct. “Not easily. It’s a prepaid.”

  “All right. The prints belong to one Christine Freytag. I didn’t call, because you should not have those fingerprints, and I should not have searched them. Someone has blocked access to her file, and even by looking for it, I attracted attention.”

  “You’ve gotten flack?”

  “Nothing overt. I found keystroke tracker software on my terminal inside six hours. Somebody knows I traced fingerprints I should have no interest in. See, there’s a little problem. She’s dead.”

  The news hit like a blow to the solar plexus. Garth had known there was a possibility, even a likelihood, that whoever had put Julia on the plane was in deep, deep peril, but still… Even though he wanted her to call him daddy—once she learned to talk—Garth didn’t want Julia to be an orphan, to never know the people she had come from. Still, a name gave him a place to start. Maybe he could find Julia’s relatives. “Christine Freytag. She was American?”

  “Without a doubt. Born in Leland, Texas. Died in Islamabad.”

  Islamabad? That didn’t compute. The plane carrying Julia had come from South America. “Died when?”

  “Two years ago.” Garth’s contact spoke with grim emphasis.

  But Julia was only eight months old. “That’s impossi—”

  “No. What’s impossible is that you ever called me in the first place. I’ve got a wife and kids to support. If I lose my security clearance, I lose my job. Don’t call back.”

  Chapter 35

  “What are you listening to?” At the sound of Garth’s voice, Bronwyn looked up to see him standing over her in the living room where she was scrubbing baseboards. Julia, in a yellow romper accessorized with an already-soaked bib that said “Top Baby,” sat on a quilt strewn with toys. It was the most natural thing in the world: Bronwyn smiled and lifted her face to him, and he dropped a kiss on her lips, equal parts casual and possessive—just like—just like the relationship was real.

  “Puccini arias,” she told him, as he straightened and went over to pet Mildred and pick up Julia.

  “I thought Puccini was a mushroom.” He lifted Julia high over his head, making her kick her legs and squeal with high-pitched baby glee.

  Bronwyn loved how the slight gleam of his smooth brown skin highlighted every hill and dip in the muscles of his arms. She loved how his play with Julia was far more vigorous than hers and yet Julia was always secure in his long-fingered brown hands. She loved that he was a strong man who absolutely knew his own strength.

  Bronwyn bit back a smile. “Porcini are mushrooms; Puccini is a composer—as you very well know.”

  “I’m just afraid you’re messing up her mind. She’s too little for all this yelling and screeching. You’ll turn her off music for the rest of her life.” He brought Julia down and blew a raspberry against her round, little tummy.

  “I’ll play The Magic Flute then. Mozart is good for you. Studies have shown thirty minutes of Mozart to be as effective as Valium.”

  Garth snorted. “And doesn’t that say it all?”

  “It also raises children’s IQs.”

  “Yeah, but all this opera? The stories are all tragic, and she hasn’t even learned English yet. She needs to be listening to Barbara Mandrell and Wynonna Judd—somebody who sings in American.”

  They continued their mock argument while Garth played with Julia and Bronwyn finished washing the section of wall. No way was Bronwyn going to admit she had as many Country and Western albums as she did classic rock, reggae, and Irish ballads.

  In truth, Bronwyn was so eclectic in her musical taste that she wasn’t sure she had any taste at all. She just liked a piece of music if she did. Her classical collection ran more to Bach’s Greatest Hits than violin concertos. Even the album playing now was a collection of arias, not a complete opera.

  The track ended. After a tiny silence, the piercing, blinding simplicity of “O Mio Babbino Caro” filled the room. As always, the aria made Bronwyn’s breath catch in her chest, as if she didn’t know whether to inhale or exhale.

  Garth stopped blowing raspberries on Julia’s neck to listen, and Julia ceased giggling and trying to catch his nose. Instead, the baby froze with her little hands in the air, her dark blue-gray eyes wide and fixed, her pink little lips open in a confused smile.

  Wordlessly, Bronwyn pointed to her, but Garth had already sensed the change in the baby.

  As the short song played, Julia’s eyes searched the room ever more frantically, stretching to look over Garth’s shoulders, first on one side and then the other, and then twisting in an attempt to see behind herself. She held out her arms, babbling pleas in baby-speak.

  The aria ended. Another started. Still Julia searched. At first, her cries were angry and imperious, and then by slow degrees, the little mouth turned down. She lowered her arms. Gulping sobs shook her chest. Garth patted her and murmured to her, but she would not be comforted.

  Bronwyn wasn’t sure whose distress was harder to take, the baby’s or Garth’s. She dried her hands and stood. “Give her to me.”

  She took the sweating, trembling little body. She cupped her hand around Julia’s head and pressed it into her neck, holding her tight. “Cry it out, baby. Just cry it out. I know I’m not your mother, and that’s who you want. But somebody’s got you. I’ve got you. You have to cry, but you don’t have to cry alone.”

  Later, while Julia sat white and dazed-looking in Bronwyn’s lap, Garth wet a washcloth with warm water and gently washed her face. They had moved to the family room so the baby could be rocked.

  He tossed the washcloth in the kitchen sink and returned to the family room. “She recognized that song, didn’t she?” he said, more thinking aloud than questioning.

  “Yes, I think so. It must be someone’s favorite. I think she thought…” Bronwyn had to pause to swallow the lump in her throat. “Um… whoever… had at last returned to get her. I knew she must be missing everything familiar, but I hadn’t really realized how brave, how stoic she’s been trying to be. Garth, we have to find her mother.”

  Garth leaned forward with his forearms resting on his thighs, his hands clasped loosely between his knees. His laser-blue eyes rounded with sorrow. “That might not be possible, Bronny. I finally heard from my contact in San Diego who was running the fingerprints on Julia’s bottle. The woman who made those prints was an American but she’s been dead for two years.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means whoever left those prints had changed her identity. And since, even though sh
e’s been ‘dead’ two years, her file is still inaccessible, I’m guessing she was an agent employed in highly sensitive operations that are still going on. The kind of setup…” He paused like he wanted to make sure Bronwyn got the point. “The kind it would be smarter to jump out of a plane with a ripped parachute than get involved with.”

  “Two years…” Bronwyn mused, following her own line of thought. “Are you sure it was two full years?”

  Garth’s lips twitched in wry humor. “I’m not sure of anything at this point. Why?”

  “I was thinking, what if she faked her death because she realized she was pregnant? That would have been seventeen, eighteen months ago.”

  “She might have also faked her death, with the help of her handlers, so that she could go somewhere else and make being pregnant, a woman with a family, part of her cover.”

  Bronwyn’s heart squeezed. She felt a little sick to her stomach. “Someone would do that?”

  “Don’t you remember the sleeper cell of Russian spies that were arrested not long ago? They were married, had jobs, had children born here.”

  “But they weren’t doing things…” She broke off and laughed without humor. “I started to say they weren’t doing dangerous things, but I guess I don’t know what they were doing.”

  “No.” His tone was cold and final, his face a grim mask of darkness crafted to hide the darkness he had looked upon. Except, of course, that the very presence of the dark mask revealed how much damage the dark deeds he had seen, and done, had done to him. To this good man.

  Bronwyn fought the constriction in her chest and in a second or two was able to breathe around it. She stood with Julia in her arms. “I’m going to fix her a bottle.”

  In the kitchen, Julia on her hip, Bronwyn retrieved a bottle from the refrigerator door, ran a bowl full of hot water, and set the bottle in it to warm. Julia had proved to be not at all fussy about the temperature of her formula, but today Bronwyn thought the infant’s little system had had all it needed to cope with. Chilling her stomach with ice-cold formula wouldn’t help.

  “All right. Back to Julia,” she said when she had returned to the platform rocker. She tucked a burp cloth over her chest and nestled Julia to her. Julia took the bottle eagerly as if thirsty.

  Garth had risen to pace while Bronwyn was out of the room. “What about her?”

  “Julia could be taken away from us at any moment, and right now she doesn’t even have an identity. If the fingerprint-woman was her mother, then Julia is an American citizen. She has rights and protection under the law. Possibly there are even some Social Security benefits coming to her. Sooner or later, we will have to go to the authorities to make her legal and secure her future.”

  Bronwyn took the bottle away so that Julia could get a breath without swallowing air in the process. Julia sighed deeply, and Bronwyn felt the tiny, soft body relax.

  When Julia was suckling again, not so frantically but more contentedly, Bronwyn looked up at Garth who was roaming the room with his nearly silent tread. “You have theorized that whoever was responsible for her being on the plane wanted her to disappear. They wanted her to be untraceable. Do you realize that at this point we are helping them, rather than Julia?”

  “We don’t have to expose Julia to any official scrutiny. It would be possible to get her every kind of paper she needs.”

  “Fake? No. I want real for her. She’s entitled to real. I want her right to be in this country to be unquestionable. And if she has no legal next of kin, or if they don’t want her, I want to adopt her. Legally.”

  “I’ve explained—”

  “I know. And I’ve been thinking about that. The way to deal with shadowy, powerful people is to get equally powerful people who aren’t shadowy on your side.”

  Garth smiled cynically. “Do you know any of those?”

  “I know people who do. Did you know that Miss Lilly Hale numbers among her acquaintance two former presidents—one of them living? And she’s some kind of kin to Senator Teague Calhoun of North Carolina. JJ knows him, too. And I can ask my parents. My father is one of the top cardiologists in the country. He has treated some very important people.”

  “You haven’t been willing to ask your parents for one single thing. You would go to them for Julia?”

  “She’s so vulnerable. We’ve got to get her to people who won’t just hide her. They can really protect her.”

  “Can you wait? I’m still hoping for a lead on… the other passenger—the one who missed the plane.”

  Bronwyn heard his hesitation. He’d almost said a name and stopped himself. She fought down the pain of knowing that she still wasn’t in his confidence. She no longer cared what state secrets he was responsible for keeping. Every time she really started to believe they were in this together, she learned that he believed he was in it by himself. “I’ll give you until the wedding. But after that, I’m going to act.”

  Chapter 36

  “You need a new car.” JJ squeezed herself into the passenger seat of Bronwyn’s ten-year-old Mazda. Bronwyn was driving because the baby’s carrier was such a pain to transfer to another car.

  Bronwyn waited for her to buckle in. “Pray this one holds out another year, at least.”

  “Why? I was hoping you’d have more cash if you lived in a place that was rent free.”

  “Theoretically, I do. In practice, there are always so many little things to buy when you move. I start my new job in a couple of weeks, so I’ll have money coming in until the office is ready to open. Even then, realistically, it might be several years before it will support me. If ever.”

  JJ squeezed Bronwyn’s shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re here—I don’t want you to worry about money. We’re going to make it work somehow. And you know I can find you a car you can afford.”

  “No, JJ—” Bronwyn broke off her protest when JJ’s phone chimed.

  JJ held up a finger to signal Bronwyn to wait and answered it.

  “Of course, Senator,” Bronwyn heard JJ say, after greeting the caller. “We’ll be happy to welcome Admiral Stephenson. If you like, I’ll send him an invitation… Fine… And can we expect to see your daughter, too? She was included in the original invitation, and there will be other young people her age… Splendid. I’ll look forward to seeing you all.” JJ closed the phone and turned to Bronwyn. “You’ll never guess who that was.”

  “Okay, who?”

  “Senator Calhoun.”

  “Himself? Not an aide?” Calhoun sat on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee.

  “Himself. Back when I saw him at Christmas, he told me he wanted to be invited to a wedding celebration if I had one, so I sent him and his wife an invitation. I didn’t believe he intended to come. I thought he was just being—you know, political. I expected to get polite regrets and a present. But no. His plans have changed. He and his wife will be at their summer home on the Intracoastal Waterway. They’d like to come, but they have a house guest they’d like included.”

  “The senator called you himself—to take care of that kind of detail?”

  “Yep.” JJ dismissed the senator’s oddity with a shrug. She quickly accessed her guest file and added a note. “That adds four to the official guest count and brings the total to 514. It’s a good thing I decided early on not to try to have the party at Granddaddy’s house. I swear, it looks like everybody I invited is coming, and a lot of them, like the senator, are bringing others.”

  “I imagine everyone is curious about who you married.”

  JJ’s full lips quirked in a cynical smile. “And after the gossip earlier, they want to be seen on the winning side.”

  JJ directed Bronwyn to make a right turn onto a blacktop that angled off through a dense pine forest. Abruptly, the forest left off and Bronwyn could see a large stone-and-stucco house painted Tuscan ocher and built to impress. It sat on a high bluff
overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway. Bronwyn stopped the car to peer at the mansion through the windshield.

  “What do you think?” JJ asked.

  What could Bronwyn say? “It’s… staggering? Stunning? It looks like an Italian villa—the kind that’s owned by an Italian prince.”

  “It was built by a railroad magnate before World War II, was owned by Abigail Anderson—”

  Bronwyn unbuckled her seat belt and faced JJ. “The movie star? Movie stars had summer homes here?”

  “Still do.” JJ pointed. “Kevin Costner’s place is that way.” JJ made a small face. “Most of the homes along this section of the Intracoastal are owned by people who are rarely here. It has become an enclave of the super-rich.” JJ put her hand on the door handle. “Are you ready to see the inside? We’re meeting the wedding planner for final approval of everything.”

  Bronwyn got out and opened the rear door to extract Julia from her infant seat. “You mean everything isn’t already set?”

  “We-ell, it is. I didn’t have to meet with them today,” JJ admitted, “but you and I didn’t get to do anything together for my first wedding. Not even go dress shopping. Now you’re here, and I’m determined to share things with you.”

  “In that case, share this bundle of joy.” Bronwyn released the straps and handed her the baby.

  “Gladly. You know, I never thought about babies much, but I’m starting to really want one of my own.” She rubbed noses with Julia, making her chortle, and then sobered. “Bronwyn, what are you going to do?”

  “About what?” Bronwyn slung the diaper bag over her shoulder.

  “Julia. Haven’t you gotten attached to her?”

  “Yes! I can’t believe how much I love her. I would keep her forever, but I remind myself every day, she’s not mine. I knew from the outset I would only have her for a season. She is someone else’s by rights.”