Fugitive Mom

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He sounded so positive. She tried to make herself believe in his assurance, but she didn’t know him. He was a stranger, really, and she couldn’t comprehend why Bob thought so much of him. But she had to trust her father. She had to.

“Do you want to eat?” Luke was asking. “I can order, if you’d like.”

Dinner with this man? “Ah, no, really. I have to get back to Charley. Thanks anyway.”

“I guess that’s it, then. Bob said he gave you a cell phone.”

“Yes.”

“Let me have the number. I don’t want to be calling Bob’s house.”

She pulled the phone out of her shoulder bag and read the number off to him. He didn’t write it down.

“Um, will you remember…?” she ventured.

“Yeah, sure. I’m good with recall.”

“Can I have your number?”

“Bob’s got my phone numbers.”

“Okay. Should I call you in the morning, you know, to see what you might need?”

“I’ll call you.” He regarded her for a moment. “Where are you staying?”

“Not at home,” she said. “My dad told me I shouldn’t be seen there.”

“Right. Where will you go, then?”

“Oh, I haven’t thought. Another safe house, maybe. I’m not sure.”

“Don’t use a credit card anywhere.”

“Yes.” She looked down at her cup of tea, cold now. “I’m aware of that.”

“Okay, then.” He stood, gazing down at her, and she rose too quickly, her shoulder bag sliding onto the floor. She leaned over to retrieve it, but Luke had already come around the table and picked it up.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Here,” he said at the same time, handing the bag to her, and their fingers touched for a heartbeat.

He followed her down the steep stairs to the noisy room below. He said something to the waiter who had sent her upstairs, and he smiled as he spoke. The change in his face was shocking; he looked young and carefree and so handsome for a split second that she felt her breath catch.

He turned back to her, his face once again frozen in its implacable lines, and pulled open the door for her. She hadn’t noticed when she’d entered, but on the door was a tiny, colorful Chinese birdcage with a wooden carved bird inside, and when the door was opened, the motion set the bird to warbling cheerfully. So incongruous, she had time to think, and then the door shut behind her and the sound was cut off.

“Where’s your car?” he asked.

She pointed. “Right down the block.”

He told her he’d walk her there, and then he pulled out a pair of sunglasses and put them on. The evening sun clicked off the mirrored surfaces. She looked away.

“I’ll stay in touch,” he was saying as they descended the steep hill, and she felt his hand rest lightly on the small of her back. Her skin shivered.

He took her keys from her when they reached her dad’s station wagon, then unlocked the door and held it for her. She couldn’t fail to notice from the movement of his head how his gaze behind those mirrored glasses traveled up and down the block. He seemed unaware of his action, as if it were instinctive in him. Yes. A cop. She slid in behind the wheel and when he handed her the keys their fingers brushed again. She could smell him—beery breath cut with a smoky overlay, as if he’d been sitting around a campfire. “Later,” he said.

“Okay. Um, thank you for doing this.”

He waved a hand, dismissing her, watched as she turned on the ignition and merged into the heavy traffic. She could feel his eyes on the back of her head, pale-blue icy eyes, until she reached the corner and made a left turn.

Then, taking her totally by surprise, a sob welled up from her chest, shaking her so badly she had to pull over into a gas station and stop. For the first time, she let the tears come, the moan building in her, until her face was wet and her throat hurt and her heart was empty.

CHAPTER FIVE

SPECIAL AGENT RENEE PAYNTER’S career was on the fast track. As the only female African American agent in the Denver FBI office, she got more than her share of attention, and she knew how to use it to advance her career. She didn’t feel the least bit guilty about using that advantage, either, because she knew she was extremely good at her job.

She was strikingly beautiful, tall and reed thin, her profile pure Nefertiti, her hair pulled back severely into a bun, which enhanced her exquisite bone structure. She wore Armani suits and Italian pumps and no jewelry but her wedding band.

She was a very ambitious lady, and when Special Agent in Charge Mead Towey handed her the potentially high-profile Grace Bennett kidnapping case, she practically crowed out loud with delight.

She’d read the headlines that morning at breakfast. Her husband, Jay, had been chewing his usual Grape Nuts cereal and reading the sports section of the local paper when she’d called his attention to the article.

CU PSYCH PROFESSOR KIDNAPS FOSTER CHILD the headline screamed. Some stringer in Boulder had picked the story up from the court records and run with the lead. The child’s biological mother had been quoted as saying: “She was supposed to give me back my little boy yesterday, but no one can find her. My heart is breaking.”

The Pope woman’s lawyer had stated: “I am turning this case over to the federal authorities today. Grace Bennett’s actions are reprehensible.”

“Jay,” Renee had said, “look at this. Kidnapping.” She’d pushed the paper under his nose.

He’d read carefully and methodically. Jay was a slow-moving, heavyset man, giving some people the idea that he was also mentally slow. But Renee knew better. Her husband was a brilliant, calculating statistician for the FBI. The tortoise to her hare.

She loved her husband. He was her opposite, fitting into her mental and emotional hollows with perfection. He was her rock, and she knew she’d flounder without him. She was aware that people thought them an incongruous couple and that Jay must bore her. But those people didn’t know Jay. Nor did they know her.

What seemed to be slowness was careful consideration. He was brilliant, yet still down to earth, and he saw the world perfectly and objectively for what it was. Jay had proposed the move from Washington, D.C., to Denver, insisting that they’d each have more opportunity for promotion, and he’d been right, as usual.

“So this Grace Bennett took the kid and disappeared,” he had said, watching Renee. “You have any idea why?”

“Selfishness,” Renee had replied instantly.

“It says right here she had the boy for four years. Presumably, the biological mother couldn’t—or, more likely, wouldn’t—take care of her son.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Tell me why a college professor, a woman with an excellent career, would give it all up and run away,” Jay had said mildly.

“I don’t know. But I bet our office gets this case. God, I hope they let me have it.” She’d grinned, her teeth white against her café-au-lait skin. “It’s got promotion written all over it.”

Driving with Jay from their home in Englewood to work that morning, Renee talked of inconsequential matters—when Jay’s widowed mother was coming to visit, who would do the grocery shopping, a movie Renee wanted to see. But her mind was listing the steps an agent would have to take to find the runaway professor.

Interview the grieving mother; do a computer check on Bennett; talk to friends and neighbors of the woman, relatives. Out-of-state relatives? Boyfriend? Co-workers, yes. Did little Charles Pope attend day care?

All right, so the case wasn’t hers, but she still couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Jay parked in the usual place near the downtown Denver Federal Building, and they walked to the entrance together. He kissed her on the cheek, as he did every morning, and they parted ways, going to separate offices.

They both loved Denver now, a sprawling western city that was growing by leaps and bounds. True, it was hot in summer, but not with the cloying and oppressive heat of Washington. And always, when she looked to the west, the tall, cool, snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains stood sentinel.