Just Eight Months Old...

“Chad, meet my daughter, Bonny.”

He stared again at the squirming baby in the back seat. The sparse-haired, drool-covered little imp stared back, chattering as if saying something directly to him, then holding out the toy she chomped on in his direction. He swallowed hard, his heart expanding, surging against the bands he’d wrapped around it so long ago. Her large eyes were open, so very trusting, her cheeks flushed, her entire face animated. She grunted. Chad blinked, then awkwardly moved to accept the offering, only it appeared she hadn’t meant for him to take it, merely to feel it. When he released the slobbery rubber, she gave a peal of laughter, then stuck it back into her mouth.

A grin edged its way across his face and he swore he could feel one of the intangible bands in his chest snap and begin to unravel. A car passed on the street. With every ounce of concentration he still had left, he watched it, trying hard to pull himself together. His grin waned and he looked at Hannah, too wrapped up in his own thoughts to respond to her wary expression.

Things have changed….

The bottomless feeling in Hannah’s stomach refused to budge, no matter how hard she tried to make it. She repeatedly clasped and unclasped her hands in her lap, not quite knowing what to do with them, and unable to do nothing at all.

Chad idled the Alfa Romeo across from PlayCo and she took in a shallow, uneven breath. He’d been conspicuously silent ever since they picked up Bonny, alternately staring at her, and her noisy eight-month-old daughter in the back seat, appearing so thoroughly dumbfounded Hannah felt the incredible urge to reach out and touch him. At one point she thought he’d murmured something like “things have changed,” but she couldn’t be sure, and couldn’t bring herself to ask him what he’d said. In fact, she could focus on little more than the weightless, expectant sensation in her stomach.

She cleared her emotion-clogged throat. Often in the past eight months, usually after Bonny had finally fallen asleep against her chest and her own eyes were heavy, she indulged in images of Chad learning about his daughter. Saw him knocking softly on the door, stepping directly to the eight-month-old and sweeping her up in his arms. The fantasies had been harmless, she’d assured herself, because there was no reason Chad would be showing up on their doorstep any time soon.

Now that he had come back…

She bit down hard on the flesh of her bottom lip. Dreams were one thing. Reality something completely different.

What had she expected him to do? Hold out his hands to lovingly take a child he should have instinctively known was his?

No, she realized. In reality, she had expected him to leap from the car and bid her a final farewell. At least she thought that was what he would do—until she picked Bonny up and hope had blossomed in her stronger than she would have imagined. Who could deny this little girl? Surely her father would take one look at her and…

And what? Push aside the past? Declare his undying love for her and Bonny? Offer her happily-ever-after?

Stupid.

She chanced a glance at Chad, trying to read his thoughts as he watched Bonny. In the light from the street lamp she could see his face. His eyes were wide, as if someone had done a Three Stooges eye-poking number on him. He met her gaze and she quickly turned away.

“Um, you’re going to have to go into PlayCo by yourself, for obvious reasons,” she said quietly.

They sat parked in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. A discreet white sign with blue lettering marked the ten-floor, foursquare building across the street as PlayCo Industries. Hannah eyed the watchman sitting in a lighted air-conditioned, multiwindowed guard shack next to the parking garage entrance.

“How old is she?”

Chad’s question caught her unaware. Hannah forgot about not looking at him. For a brief moment, he appeared so incredibly…victimized in the stiff white shirt and conservative striped tie he had fished from his duffel and put on, she nearly reached out to smooth the confused creases from his forehead. She blamed the instinctive impulse on her new role as mother and locked her fingers together in her lap.

“She’ll be eight months next week,” she said to the windshield.

She waited for his next question, but it never came. Instead he followed her gaze to the watchful guard in the shack and lapsed back into silence.

“So,” she began, injecting a businesslike tone into her wavering voice, “how are you going to get in there?”

He blindly moved his hand to reach into the front pocket of his shirt, missed by an inch, then looked down and took out a black leather bifold wallet. He absently held it in her direction and flipped it open. Hannah stared at an FBI identification that bore an appealing snapshot of Chad, and identified him as a Special Agent. The plastic was cloudy, the leather holder old and cracked.

“What did you learn in Florida?” she whispered. “You never impersonated a fed before. Or if you did, I never knew about it.” He closed the ID then stuffed it back into his pocket. “Do you know you’re committing a crime? This is fraud against the federal government. Do you have any idea what kind of penalty that carries?”

“Two to ten,” he said, clearly distracted by a burst of mimicking sounds from Bonny in the back seat. “But it doesn’t matter because I don’t intend to get caught.” Chad stared at his watch, then shifted to fuss with his tie. Hannah noticed his movements were jerky, anxious, not the usual smooth, easy Chad moves. A couple of cars approached, apparently night-shift workers gaining access to the underground parking area.

“I thought you earned facts and clues the honest way,” she said.

“For what it’s worth, this is the first time I’ve impersonated a fed.”

Why didn’t that make her feel any better? “Trust me. Nothing’s going to happen,” he said in a preoccupied monotone. “I’m going to take a look at Persky’s and Furgeson’s personnel files. The feds…” he trailed off.

“The feds,” Hannah prompted. He glanced at her, apparently trying to recover his train of thought. “The feds will never know.”

Hannah wasn’t sure if her agitation sprang from his lack of work ethics, or from his obvious ignorance of his connection to Bonny, who rhythmically kicked her car seat with the back of her shoes.

“Do you have any better ideas?” Chad asked and rubbed the back of his neck. “Because if you do, I’m all ears.”

“Does it still hurt?” she asked quietly.

He stared at her. “Huh?”

“The bump you took at Persky’s house.”

He dropped his hand back to his lap.

She resisted the urge to check the wound herself. Touching Chad again would not be a smart move, no matter what the reason. “Anyway, I do have another idea. I say we get a move on to Atlantic City and see if that woman in the matchbook we found at Persky’s exists.”

“And what if she doesn’t? What if it’s like I said and she was a one-nighter, a nooner, a quickie whom Persky never saw again?”

Hannah decided she’d liked him better speechless. She grimaced and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I love your vocabulary, Hogan. Do you care to share any more of your colorful language with me and Bonny?”

“Forget my word choices for a minute here, Hannah, and give this some thought. Let’s say we go to Atlantic City and turn up a big, fat zero? What then? Do we turn back to N.Y. and start from scratch?” His gaze lingered on Bonny and he slowly shook his head. “We don’t have the time. I’m going in here, getting what I need, then we’ll go to Atlantic City….”

His words trailed off. Hannah practically heard his unspoken question. Would the baby be going with them?

“I don’t have anywhere to leave her,” she blurted, disappointing herself. The last thing she wanted was to appear desperate. But desperate was exactly what she was, wasn’t it? Her regular baby-sitter couldn’t keep Bonny because she had plans for the weekend that couldn’t be broken. And with no family to speak of, unless you counted Victor Marconi, and a distant aunt in Montana, she was in a jam.

“I didn’t exactly expect to take this case, Chad. Don’t worry, Bonny won’t cause any trouble. And I certainly don’t intend to put her in any danger. This is a routine case with an unusual time constraint, that’s all. We’re tracking white-collar criminals, not violent armed robbers.”

He touched her hand where it lay against her leg. An instant rush of awareness startled her at the feel of his warm fingers on her cold ones.

“Hannah, I didn’t say anything about Bonny causing problems,” he said softly.

She tugged her hand away from his and worried it in her lap with her other. “No, you didn’t. But I could always read your thoughts, Chad.”

His gaze was probing. “Did you ever stop to think you couldn’t read me as well as you thought you could?”

She stared at him wordlessly. Could he be right? Was she misjudging him? Had she misread him in the past?

She watched the guard wave another car into PlayCo’s parking area.

“She’s beautiful,” he said so quietly she nearly didn’t hear him.

The statement took her breath away. She searched for a response, but couldn’t seem to match words to the emotions coursing through her. She almost said “She looks like you,” but caught herself.

She swallowed hard, relieved when he shifted the car into First. He pulled it around, heading straight for the guard still sitting in his shack next to the entrance to PlayCo Industries.

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