The Baby Clause: A Christmas Romance

by Tara Wylde

  Tre must see it on my face because he takes my hand in his.

  “Sara, we need to find Chance,” he says. “Can you tell us where he is?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  He nods. “Okay. But I still think you’re the person he’ll contact first, if and when he decides to surface. Will you come with us?”

  My mind is racing. What choice do I have? This craziness has to stop. I tap a few keys on my phone and send my contact info to Tre’s number.

  “You can get in touch with me here,” I say. “I promise to answer. But I’m not going to go with you. Not right now. I have things to figure out.”

  “Of course,” he says. “But if you need anything, I’m just a text away.”

  “Actually, I need money. Chance told me to toss my credit and debit cards so they couldn’t track us, and the banks are closed on Sundays so I can’t get new ones.”

  Tre reaches into his wallet and hands me five hundreds.

  “At the risk of pissing you off again,” Pearce mutters. “There’s a cashier’s check for $150,000 at your office that will clear in a day.”

  “Thanks,” I say, standing up. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Tre’s eyebrows go up. “Promise?”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “I’m really sorry, Sara,” he says. “You should never have been caught up in all this. I’m sorry it took this kind of crazy shit for us to all find each other again. This should have been the happiest time of our lives.”

  Yeah, it should have been. And now I wish I’d never answered Pearce’s call that morning. But like the old saying goes, wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first.

  I’ve got myself a big old handful of shit right now.

  118

  70. CHANCE

  If most people knew just how easy it is to hack into their smartphones and use them as listening devices, they probably wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. The FBI, for example, has the capability and authority to turn on your phone right in your pocket and hear every word you say.

  Luckily, they don’t unless you’re under investigation. But that’s exactly the reason I bought the burner phones for myself and Sara. Unfortunately, that also means I can’t track her with my tech.

  Grace’s phone, on the other hand, was wide-open fair game. That’s how I knew Sara was in this mall, and it’s the reason I’m now watching her walk toward me.

  The look in her eyes makes my heart crack. I text her a message that I hope she sees; I don’t want to have to chase her through the city.

  Stop at the statue.

  She pulls her phone from her pocket and reads as she walks. Then she looks around, startled. I step out from the shadow of a modern art sculpture that looks like an abstract aardvark just as she arrives.

  “What do you want?” she says nervously. “Aren’t you scared of being seen by all the boogeymen that are after you?”

  I steeled myself for what I know this conversation has to be, but it still hurts.

  “Sara, I’m sorry,” I say. “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. I didn’t kill Dacosta.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know what to believe anymore after talking to Tre.”

  I have to make sure I word this the right way.

  “Tre doesn’t have all the information,” I say. “He doesn’t know the whole situation.”

  “Well, maybe he would if you’d stop slinking around and come clean!” she snaps. “Why can’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

  “Because the less you know at this point, the safer everyone is.”

  I know that’s cryptic, and I know exactly what she’s going to say.

  “How convenient,” she says with a rueful chuckle. “You have to keep me in the dark to make sure something happens. And of course, you can’t tell me what that something is, so I just get to keep on wondering what the fuck is going on!”

  Passersby look at us, startled. I reach out to take her hand but she pulls away from me.

  “I want this to stay nice and public,” she says.

  I can’t blame her for that, but I also can’t have unnecessary attention on me.

  “All I can ask is for you to trust me,” I plead. “Can you do that?”

  She looks at the ground, obviously battling tears. God, how did this all go off the rails so fast? Everything is spinning out of control.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I can’t tell what to believe anymore.”

  “Believe this: I’m doing all of this for you.”

  “Then why did you lie to me about where you were yesterday?” she asks, eyes pleading. “You said you went for a run but you were gone for over two hours and came back smelling like rose oil.”

  Jesus. Mama’s perfume – she hugged me…

  “Sara –”

  She throws up a halting hand. “I only want to hear one more thing from you and then I’m going to leave.”

  “Anything,” I say.

  The stricken look in her eyes almost makes me knees give out.

  “Is our marriage real?” she asks bleakly. “Or was it all just part of your big plan?”

  I take her by her arms and pull her to me before she can get away.

  “It’s the realest thing I’ve ever had in my life,” I say.

  She looks into my eyes, but it’s not enough to keep her here. She pulls free and walks away from me.

  “Good luck, Chance,” she says softly without turning around. “I hope we can find each other again someday.”

  I barely have a moment for that to sink in before I feel the hard steel of a gun barrel jabbing the spot in my back directly behind my heart.

  “You’re not an easy man to find, Mr. Talbot.”

  119

  71. CHANCE

  I freeze, knowing whoever this is doesn’t want any attention drawn to himself, either.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “There’s a copse of trees to your right that leads onto a side street next to the park. Let’s just walk that way. I’ll be a few paces behind you, but my friends have eyes on you. Understood?”

  I nod and start to stroll away, thinking furiously. Department of Defense wouldn’t take this approach. Unless they’re worried about making a scene with the CEO of Atlas. They need the company to perform a lot of the work that they can’t do themselves.

  Unfortunately for me, they need Atlas Security, not Chance Talbot. I don’t have a free pass here by any means. I need more time.

  I see three more men in dark pants and jackets step out from behind the elms as I approach. We’re well hidden from the concourse here, and the exit gate to the street is right nearby, blocking the view from where they’re no doubt parked. That’s confirmed when I see the black van a few spots up.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, I guarantee you’re wrong,” I say as the three new guys step in my way to halt me.

  The one who was behind me, an older bald man with horn-rimmed glasses, steps into my line of sight. He’s put the gun away, at least. Two of the others fill his spot behind me, trapping me in a square.

  “We just want to talk, Mr. Talbot,” the bald man says. “We hope you’ll be reasonable.”

  “Does it involve getting in that black van over there?” I ask, nodding toward the street.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “And you’d rather I didn’t draw any attention to us.”

  He smiles. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  I raise my hands, palms up. “I’m a reasonable man. I’m glad you’re not willing to shoot me so close to innocent people.”

  “Excellent.”

  The guy on my left flank reaches out to push me forward and I snatch his wrist with my left hand, drawing him forward as my elbow drives into his side. It combines to throw him off-balance, allowing me to shift my weight and pitch him into the guy on my right.

  Those two stumble as the third locks his arms around me from behind. The bal
d man is standing in front of me looking frustrated, so I stomp my foot into his chest so that he doesn’t feel left out.

  The guy behind me tries to lift me in a bear hug, but I drop all my weight into my hips and root myself to the ground. Meanwhile, the man on my left has recovered enough to join the fray and takes a swing at me. A powerful twist of my hips pulls the one behind me forward into the path of the punch.

  Now it’s those two who are disoriented, leaving me to spar with the guy on the right as the bald one struggles to his feet. We trade a few blows before the other two rush me. I know it’s a foregone conclusion – these guys are trained and I can’t take out all four – but by Christ, they’ll know they were in a fight.

  “Enough,” the bald one snaps. “End it.”

  I feel a hard lump sheathed in softness against the back of my head. Then blackness.

  Consciousness swims back to me like a toddler fighting the tide, but eventually my thoughts manage to coalesce and I open my eyes. I’m sitting in a metal frame chair. The tingling in my hands tells me they’re restrained behind me.

  Across from me is a distinguished-looking man with flowing silver hair and a dark suit. His legs are crossed at the knee and he’s looking down his nose through a pair of glasses at what I assume is a newspaper crossword, judging by the pen poised in his hand.

  He glances at me over his glasses and smiles.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living,” he says. “I was starting to worry you’d been permanently damaged.”

  The knot on the back of my head is still throbbing, but I don’t feel any real symptoms of a major concussion.

  “I’ve survived harder knocks to the head,” I say. My voice sounds drunk to my own ears.

  “I don’t doubt it. You’re not an easy man to reason with, Mr. Talbot. We’ve been trying to talk to you for days now.”

  “Yeah, you even camped outside my door. Sorry for running out on you like that, but I was worried you might be trying to sell me Amway or something.”

  The guy surprises me by chuckling. “Sully told me you were a smartass,” he says, shaking his head.

  I try to keep the surprise from my face as that registers and take a moment to scan the room: featureless, no windows, just a big one-way mirror on the wall.

  “You’re not DoD,” I say.

  He grins and touches the tip of his nose with a carefully manicured finger.

  “Can I assume you’re in a more receptive mood for conversation now, Mr. Talbot?”

  I tug at the restraints on my wrists. “Do I have a choice?”

  “Well, you could continue to struggle, or you can play nice and we’ll take those off.”

  “I’ll play nice.”

  “Good,” he says, producing a key from his pocket and unlocking the cuffs. “Wouldn’t want to risk that brain of yours with another thump. We have too much invested in it.”

  What the hell does that mean?

  “No doubt you have a lot of questions,” he says. “I’ll do my best to answer them if you’ll return the favor and answer some of mine.”

  “Ask away,” I say as I rub my wrists to get the blood circulating again.

  “Excellent.” He leans forward, elbows on knees. “First order of business: Sebastian Dacosta.”

  120

  72. SARA

  One more sleepless night like the last two and I think I might just go insane.

  I spent the $500 Tre gave me on food and a hotel room that was a step up from the Rest-All Motel, but still several steps below the Presidential Suite at the Sapphire. I was tired of extremes – I just wanted something normal for a night.

  Grace offered to vacate my apartment so I could stay there, but I declined. I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts for one single night. In hindsight, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea, since it just gave me an endless amount of time to feed my own worries.

  “Ms. Bishop,” Pearce’s secretary says, drawing me out of my thoughts. “Mr. Pearce will see you now.”

  I almost ask her how the diarrhea is going as I pass her desk, before realizing that’s just my exhausted brain rambling.

  “Sara!” Quentin says with more warmth than I’ve ever seen. “Good to see you. Please, sit down.”

  I all but collapse onto the elegant sofa. His office is very well-appointed. It lets people know that he’s got a lot of money, which in turn means he can make them a lot of money. Everyone around me seems to have money on their minds these days.

  “I trust the cashier’s check cleared and your company’s accounts are fatter this morning?” he asks.

  Case in point.

  “Yes,” I say wearily. “Is that all you wanted me here for?”

  His grin makes my skin crawl.

  “You could say thank you,” he says in a “just kidding” tone.

  “Why? Because you fulfilled your end of our contract? Fine, I’ll say thanks.” I put on a Pollyanna grin. “Thanks for paying my fee, Quentin! You’re awesome!”

  He frowns. So much for his attempt to act like a normal human being.

  “I could give two shits about money right now,” I say. “If you don’t have anything else to discuss, I’ll be going. Thanks for wasting my time.”

  “That’s interesting,” he says evenly, despite my taunts. “I would have thought money would be foremost on your mind right now.”

  “And why is that?”

  “You’re married to Chance Talbot,” he shrugs. “When you divorce him, you’re legally entitled to half his shares in Atlas. I doubt he had time to arrange a prenuptial agreement before your hasty wedding.”

  That thought never entered my head, but now that it’s there, it’s hard to ignore. I really don’t care about money, but we’re talking potentially hundreds of millions of dollars here. That could do a lot of good.

  But it would also hand over even more control to Pearce.

  “You asked me here to talk me into selling,” I say. “Because you think I’m going to divorce Chance. That’s a mighty big assumption, Quentin, even for you.”

  Another cold smile. “I never would have taken you for a prison bride, Sara. But I guess to each their own.”

  What the hell is he talking about?

  “Prison bride?” I say. “How do you figure?”

  “I know Chance broke into my home office and found out about my connection to Nova Chemicals,” he says. “Once he found that, he would have realized that Sebastian Dacosta was the one who supplied the incriminating intelligence my partners and I have been trying to confirm.

  “I’ll tell you what I told the rest of the board, just in case you haven’t figured it out yet: Patrick Sullivan embezzled money from a CIA operation while in Iraq and used it to fund the expansion of Atlas. Chance found out about it and blackmailed him into raising him up in the company. Sullivan knew that if the information came to light, the company – and his family – would be ruined.”

  I shake my head. Chance told me they stole that money form a terrorist financier. This story isn’t true – is it? I don’t have any evidence either way. It comes down to which one I believe.

  “You’re wrong,” I say. “Chance would never do that.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t think he was capable of murder, either. Try to convince Sebastian Dacosta of that.”

  My head is spinning with all this. And underneath it all is an itch at the back of my head that won’t fully solidify. Something Pearce said doesn’t add up, but I can’t think of it consciously. The harder I try, the further it slips away.

  “Let’s say I do divorce him and sell my shares,” I say. “That would leave you with all of the stock, except for what Chance has left.”

  “And the courts would likely force him to divest himself of them after a conviction. It’ll just take a little time.”

  “But then aren’t you left holding the bag? It will eventually come out that Atlas was started with stolen CIA money. Why would you and your partners, whoever the hell they are, want to own a ta
inted company?”

  He grins again. “The US government needs Atlas,” he says. “So do many other governments around the world. They’re not going to want to see it go down in flames. And when the new owners generously offer to compensate the CIA for their losses, they’ll be seen as heroes as well as good corporate citizens, making up for the previous owners’ sins. Politicians will be lining up to be invited to the Atlas golf tournament.”

  I hate to admit it, but he’s not wrong. The stain will be on the Sullivans, not the new owners. Sully and Chance were the ones behind everything. With Sully gone, that leaves his family and Chance to take the fall.

  Do I want to be a part of any of this? Selling to Quentin feels so slimy, like a betrayal of Chance. But do I want to get dragged through the mud along with him?

  God, I wish I’d never met Sebastian Dacosta!

  Pearce’s phone starts to ring. He glances at the screen and smiles.

  “My contact in the Department of Defense,” he says, tapping the answer button. “Maybe he has some good news.”

  As he talks, the itch in my brain gets stronger. Something doesn’t add up here, but what is it? And what just made it itchier? Something he said. Come on, Sara, you’re an investigator – think like one! What was the trigger?

  I wish I’d never met Sebastian Dacosta.

  Wait a minute…

  I know Chance broke into my home office … he would have realized that Sebastian Dacosta was the one behind the incriminating intelligence…

  Suddenly it’s right there in front of me: Chance didn’t know Dacosta had anything to do with Nova Chemicals until I told him. Up to that point, it was just a company, not a person.

  He recognized the name but not the connection. It existed, but he needed someone to point it out to him. And what are the odds that the one person who had incriminating information on Atlas just happened to be a recent client of mine?

  About as high as the odds of Quentin Pearce randomly choosing my name because it was first in the phone book. How stupid could I be?