The Secret Son

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Jack had a core of steel.

  “Erica,” he said one more time, and grabbed her. “Come here.”

  He wrapped her so tightly in his arms she could scarcely breathe. But she didn’t care. If holding her for a moment would help him, he could hold her any time he wanted.

  “Sit with me.” He drew her down to the padded bench she’d chosen for the end of his bed. She was still only in panties and bra. Their bare shoulders were touching. “I’ve got some bad news.” He sounded so calm, the words practically slid right off her. “But I want you to know that things are under control. Everything possible is being done, and I promise you that, given the chance, I will not fail this time.”

  She nodded. “I know you won’t.” She placed her hand on his thigh. “You go do what you have to do, Jack.”

  This was what he’d been talking about all along, she suddenly realized, his need to be free to do his job, risk his life, without having someone at home worrying about him. But before she could withdraw the words or say something to reassure him, he spoke again.

  “Erica.” He laid his hand over hers on his thigh, curling his fingers around it, his palm warming the top of her hand. The way he kept saying her name was starting to bother her. “That was Jefferson on the phone,” he said.

  “Jefferson who?” The warmth of his hand was in stark contrast to how cold the room had suddenly grown. Shivering, she wondered where her shirt was.

  “Your Jefferson. Kevin’s been—”

  “No!” Jumping up, more defensive than she’d ever been, Erica faced him. And then didn’t know what to say. Except “No.” She couldn’t let him talk to her. Couldn’t listen.

  Turning, she started to run from the room, from the apartment, regardless of her state of undress. “Erica!” He grabbed her, held her.

  Fighting with all her strength, Erica pummeled his shoulders, pushed against him. “Let me go!” she screamed. “I’m going to get my son from school.” The schoolday wasn’t over yet, but Kevin would love a free afternoon. Maybe they’d go skating now. They wouldn’t even wait for Jack.

  He had to work. He’d gotten a phone call.

  From Jefferson.

  Gulping in air, Erica froze, stared up at Jack. What she read in his eyes took away every ounce of her strength. Her limbs were shaky, too weak to hold her. “Just…no-o-o,” she cried, and fell against him, a harsh sob ripping through her.

  Jack held her tightly for a couple of seconds, and then sat her away from him, hands on her shoulders. “We’ve got a job to do, Erica,” he said, bending his knees until his gaze was level with hers.

  She forced herself to concentrate. To find some composure.

  Nodding, she stepped away from him. Where were the rest of her clothes? She had to get dressed. Her slacks were over there. Good. Almost falling, she bent to pick them up, sat on the bed to pull them on, then stood to fasten them. Her shirt. Where was her shirt?

  “It’s right here,” Jack said, holding out the silk shirt she’d dropped so casually on the other side of the bed. He’d finished dressing. Even had on his shoes.

  Horrified that she was holding them up, Erica looked down at her pumps, still on the floor with her panty hose.

  “Leave the hose,” he said, picking up her shoes. “Just put these on.”

  Jefferson had a cab waiting for them outside. Leading the way, Erica rushed through the apartment, noticing the remains of lunch on the kitchen table, wondering who’d clean it up.

  Jefferson. She had to get to Jefferson. He’d…

  What? What would he do?

  She waited while Jack locked his door behind them and then slid her hand into his as they hurried to the cab. “Tell me,” she said.

  Whether it was the sunshine on her face, the light of day, she didn’t know, but an unnerving calm had come over her, numbing her.

  Jack told her everything he’d heard from Jefferson. From a safe, emotionally numb distance she listened, questioned. They had a problem to solve. One step at a time. The first step was gathering the facts. She didn’t have to think, just listen.

  Didn’t have to worry. Or plan ahead. She just had to get through this minute. And then the next. The future didn’t exist.

  So all the way to the Hart Senate Office Building, where Jefferson and several agents were waiting for her and Jack in a room already cleared and set up as headquarters for the investigation, she listened. And questioned.

  And didn’t think.

  JACK WAITED with them. While he detested the inactivity, he was used to it. They already knew who had Kevin, and as soon as they found out where the boy was being held, he’d go to work. He had to find out as much as he could about the kidnappers, to prepare himself mentally for the job ahead.

  And to be there for Erica if she needed him.

  She’d walked straight into Jefferson’s arms the moment they arrived. And was now sitting with him. Jack understood. They were still very close. And even if they weren’t, their missing son was enough to bind them—shared grief providing shared strength.

  Still, he desperately wanted to be the one with the right to hold her hand. To hold her up.

  Jack stood there, uneasy, as the realization settled over him. He wanted her to need him, trust him, lean on him, the way she did with Jefferson.

  The way he and Melissa had done with and for each other.

  Turning away from the sight of Jefferson and Erica together, Jack leaned over one end of the conference table and reread the reports that had come in on the alleged kidnappers. They were an extremist right-wing group of college students with some bizarre beliefs—they thought that without a store of nuclear arms as protection, the United States would be wiped out within a year. Jack figured they’d attended an environmental rally to heckle the speakers and generally make trouble. Their leader, Stan Lawson, a senior political-science major, was apparently the man who’d recognized Senator Cooley’s son un-chaperoned at the Terratruce rally and, seeing an opportunity too good to pass up, had snatched him. It must have happened very quietly. At least two members of Jefferson’s staff had been at the rally but they hadn’t seen Kevin at all.

  “Hi.”

  Erica came up beside him and Jack straightened. “Hey, babe, how are you doing?” He wanted to pull her into his arms. But he wasn’t sure he had that right. Not here. Or now. Not in this part of her life.

  “Oh, Jack,” she said, her eyes filled with panic as she gazed up at him. She was still the strong capable woman she’d been since walking in the door—but just her awareness of the situation had increased.

  Motioning to an agent manning the phones, Jack placed a sheltering arm around Erica’s shoulders and led her outside the room to a secluded alcove in the hall.

  And then he did what he’d been needing to do since they’d arrived. He held her.

  Erica’s son—that uncommonly clever, endearing little guy who’d worked so hard to be the perfect host to Jack the night before, to do everything he could to make Jack like him—was now a victim. His daughter had been a victim, too….

  Laying his cheek lightly against Erica’s, he whispered promises he wasn’t sure he’d have the chance to keep. And hardly noticed when her tears mingled with some of his own.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  TORN BETWEEN two lovers. Erica supposed that was how it looked to the various personnel in that makeshift headquarters. It was almost eight hours since Kevin had been kidnapped. Concerned colleagues had come and gone, and friends were staffing the phones just to have something to do, to stay close. Sometime during the intervening hours, Jefferson and Jack had established an unspoken truce. They were all in this together—one team with one goal. Get Kevin safely home.

  And it felt as if there was a very definite corollary to that. Give Erica the love and support she needed to keep her sane and standing.

  In that goal, they’d partially succeeded. She was still standing.

  Jack had left the room a little while ago, gone to a smaller room to meet w
ith the mother of the young man who allegedly had Kevin. Trying not to lose all touch with reality, Erica paced the long office they’d been given, moving from the couch to the table where several people sat with phones that had been brought in. From the phones to the conference table spread with reports, pictures and charts. Then over to another table set up with water, coffee, and finger foods that were getting stale. She didn’t look out the window, couldn’t bear to see the darkness that had settled, to know Kevin was out there somewhere.

  She studied the textured wheat pattern in the beige wallpaper, the squares and triangles in the carpet design. The wrinkles in Jefferson’s shirt. A smudge on the glass of the coffee table. An ink stain on an agent’s shirt pocket. She should know the agent’s names by now. She didn’t.

  There were two women; they’d both tried to speak with her, comfort her. And many men in and out. Members of the Washington police were there. And someone from Georgetown University campus security. And for the past several hours, Pamela. She’d been answering phones, sticking pins in maps when officers and agents called in reporting from different areas. She’d also brought the food that no one, including herself, was touching.

  Everything happened around Erica. She was removed from it all, safe in a fog that protected her from the harshest realities.

  “They’re going to find him.” Jefferson had come up behind her.

  Arms wrapped around herself, she nodded, staring at a generic floral print on the wall beside the window. Anything to avoid that window, which seemed to continually draw Jefferson to it. Kevin was out there in that darkness.

  “Alive,” her ex-husband asserted.

  Erica glanced at him and nodded again. For most of her life Jefferson had been a strength to her. No matter what the future held for them, she was always going to need him.

  “Can we talk for a few minutes?” he asked, gesturing to the couch at the end of the room away from the investigation.

  Too overburdened to say much, Erica led the way to the couch, grateful when he sat down right next to her, rather than a seat away. He leaned forward, a common position for him, forearms resting on his knees. In the past couple of years Jefferson’s back had started to bother him a lot more—the consequence of a forty-year-old football injury—and leaning forward seemed to take pressure off the lower portion of his spine, easing the pain.

  Without thinking, Erica reached over and started to massage his back. She was rewarded with a deeply tired though appreciative smile.

  Several minutes passed, filled with the silent communication of two people who knew each other intimately. Erica tried to comfort him and derived a comfort herself from his solid steady presence.

  “You need to tell Jack that Kevin is his son.”

  Her hand froze on his spine. Kevin. Just hearing her little boy’s name was enough to unhinge her. She’d been trying so hard to concentrate on what was being done—rather than on what hadn’t been done yet. Trying to think about the moment in which she found herself, not the moments Kevin might be experiencing. If those men hurt her son, she’d kill them.

  “He’s going to be negotiating for Kev’s release,” Jeff continued softly. Every muscle in Erica’s exhausted body tensed.

  There would be a negotiation. The FBI would find their son. Jack would bring Kevin home to her.

  Her little boy hadn’t even used his new skates yet.

  “He deserves to know.” Head turned sideways, Jefferson was looking at her, his gaze unbending and deadly serious.

  “No.” Tell Jack about Kevin? Put Jefferson through more pain than they were already experiencing? Cause him to lose his son twice in one day? She couldn’t fathom such a thing.

  She couldn’t do it to Jack, either. How much worse would this be for him if he knew the child in danger was his own?

  “Yes.”

  Rubbing his back vigorously, Erica shook her head, refusing to hold his gaze, to let him convince her. “I’m not doing that to you,” she said. “Especially not now. In all the ways that matter, Kevin is your son.”

  He reached behind him and grabbed her hand, then brought it over to hold between both of his. “I love you for that,” he said, “for your loyalty to me—”

  “Loyalty?”

  Jefferson amazed her. Here he was having to spend the most difficult hours of his life in the same room as Jack Shaw. The man his wife had had an affair with. Had borne a child with. And he was still generous enough to see good in her.

  “You’ve always been loyal, Erica. You just happen to be human, as well. The passion you felt for Jack Shaw six years ago wasn’t something you chose for yourself, or went out looking for. It was there all along, banked inside you, waiting for the right person to come along.” For all the softness of his voice, his words were not gentle, nor did his tone leave room for discussion. “And I knew that.”

  It was odd how Jefferson glanced toward Pamela then. Reminding himself of a conversation he’d had with her? Drawing strength? Checking to see if she’d seen him there alone with Erica, seen how close they were sitting, seen Erica touching him? Trying to find out if she was angry?

  His eyes, when they met Erica’s, were sharp with conviction, yet tired, too. It was the first time he’d ever looked old to her. “I knew when I asked you to marry me that there was passion in you,” he said. “I knew it wasn’t something I was ever going to awaken. I knew it wasn’t fair for me to marry you. But I did so, anyway. I was the one who was disloyal, my dear.” His voice was low but unfaltering. “You trusted me and I betrayed that trust by talking you into something your heart knew wasn’t right.”

  “You spent every day of our lives together trying to make me happy!”

  “And in the meantime, I created a situation that blew up on us. On you most of all.”

  “How can you say that? You’re the one who had to watch your wife grow large with another man’s child. And after he was born, you accepted the responsibility of raising him. No child has had a better father than you’ve been to Kevin.”

  “And every day for the past five years I’ve watched the guilt eat you alive.”

  “I made a wrong choice. I have to be accountable for that.”

  “If there was anything to be accountable for, it’s done,” Jefferson said with unyielding authority. “You’ve proven yourself over time. All these years you’ve been loyal to me, to Kevin. Even now, with Jack in your life and me out of it, you’ve remained loyal.”

  “Because it’s right.”

  “Maybe it was,” he allowed. “But you’ve paid your dues. More than your dues. You’ve given far more than your loyalty, Erica. You’ve given me your love, and that’s something I will cherish until the day I die.”

  “It’s far less than you’ve given me.” The pain just wouldn’t stop. Nor did the pressure of unshed tears. “Even after I was unfaithful to you, you loved me. You didn’t leave me, blast me with anger, hate me—all of which I deserved and more. You kept on loving me.”

  “Because your affair with Jack Shaw was as much my fault as anybody’s.”

  Erica didn’t know what to say. Except, “No, it wasn’t.”

  Glancing over, Erica saw Pamela watching them, but while the older woman’s face was lined with emotion, Erica sensed support.

  “You have to tell him, Erica. He needs to know whose child he’s going after.”

  “Jack rescues every child as if it were his own.”

  “If you don’t tell him, I will.”

  “It’ll make his job much too hard!”

  “Erica—”

  “What about Kevin?” she interrupted. “He’s going to need more stability than ever when we bring him home. It would be cruel to throw this at him right now.”

  Jefferson sat back and pinned her with one of his most demanding stares. It wasn’t a look she’d often been the recipient of. “That young man needs a talking to,” Jeff said. “He broke every rule he’s ever been given by leaving his school and putting us all—and especially himself—
through all this. Forget what Dr. Miller says. There will be no more pandering to his desire to be a grown-up. When he gets home, he’s going to be a five-year-old boy. That’s it. And for starters, I’m throwing his ties away.”

  Erica smiled. Somehow Jefferson’s speech was exactly what she’d needed to give her flagging strength—and hope—a new boost. Kevin would be back. He wouldn’t dare disobey his father.

  “You trust Jack with your heart,” Jefferson said, his tone more beguiling than autocratic now. “You can certainly trust him with your son’s. His son’s. I’ve been watching him today, Erica. He’s a remarkable man. The kind of man you don’t come across very often.

  “Of course, I’ve known that since the beginning. You wouldn’t have fallen in love with him otherwise.”

  “I don’t trust him with my heart….”

  Jefferson glared at her. “Are you going to tell him or am I?”

  “But—”

  “He won’t do anything to hurt Kev, you know that. If it’s best that we keep this secret for a while, then we’ll do so, but there’s something else you need to consider here.”

  His grim expression scared her. “What?”

  “These maniacs want Kevin because he’s my son.”

  Her eyes widened as she sensed where he was heading. “But he isn’t.”

  Oh, God, no. She was going to have to tell Jack. The knowledge might help him save Kevin’s life.

  She thought of what the press would do with this. Of Rudy Wallace. She’d known it was going to come out eventually. She just hadn’t expected her time to run out so soon.

  Sick to her stomach, she looked at Jeff, hoping he’d have something else to say, some solution other than the one he’d been so adamantly pushing.

  The walls were closing in on her. The one thing she’d counted on in her relationship with Jack was retaining the ability to make her own personal choices. She was beginning to understand that you couldn’t retain what you’d never had.

  “I’ll tell him,” she whispered.