The Fugitive's Secret Child

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“You’ve been here all along. Capable of finding me.” She spat out the last, her anger building from a boil to vaporizing steam. And he knew whom she’d like to zap off the planet. He reached out to her as a large horn blare from an eighteen-wheeler ripped through the sultry air, startling both of them.

Damn it, he’d forgotten that they were both still targets of ROC. He never allowed anything to keep him off his mission. He’d never cared for anyone as he had Trina, either. He’d have to go over it later, mentally. How, no matter how many women he’d casually dated off and on since Trina, he’d never forgotten her. No one compared.

“Get in the car, Rob.” Her demand cut through his pangs of regret, and she stalked off. No offer to help him as he half ran, half limped back to the tiny car. She waited for him next to the open back door. “Hold the dog.” Once inside he held the squirming pup on his lap but otherwise took Trina’s lead. Save for noisily gulping the bottle of water she handed to him, then sharing it with the clumsy puppy, he remained silent.

Within twenty minutes of leaving the filling station, Trina turned into the parking lot of an auto rental place where she exchanged the economy model for a huge, honkin’ SUV.

She spoke not a single word to him, her only acknowledgment of his presence when she held the front passenger door of the SUV open, motioning for him and the dog to get in. It wasn’t fun, climbing into the large bucket seat with his battered bones, but he did it. To show her or himself he could, he wasn’t sure. He found himself more than willing to take out any punishment she’d give him. Which was downright stupid. No amount of abuse from Trina would ever make up for what his presumed death had obviously done to her. The pup curled up on the back seat, as if the emotionally charged day had worn him out, too.

They continued their silent journey on a less-traveled highway that paralleled the main routes. Rob went along with Trina’s zero communications policy until she turned on the radio and played a country station at full blast. The Garth Brooks tune he could deal with, as well as the Miranda Lambert ode to all the bastards she’d ever dated. But when a melancholy, I’ll-never-love-anyone-else ballad began, he pushed the power button and cut the artist off midtwang.

“Just hitting you, Rob?” Her words cut like a bayonet, eliminating any doubt that she’d been as slain by their forced breakup as he had.

“Baby cakes, it hit me the minute I saw you with your new man and baby.” Shoot. Double crap. Holy counterintelligence. He’d just spilled his guts to her. Maybe it was time to get out of covert ops, after all.

“You spied on me?” Her tan hands, naturally olive by birth and deepened by the sun’s kisses, gripped the wheel of the large vehicle, and he was so damned grateful they were busy. Because he had no doubt she’d wrap them around his throat if she could, and he wasn’t sure he’d stop her. Or if he wanted to stop her.

Because he felt lower than dirt. He didn’t deserve her in the desert, and didn’t deserve her when he’d gone to find her the first time.

“It wasn’t spying. I intended to talk to you.”

* * *

Unexpected tears burned like Mace against Trina’s eyeballs, and she damned them to hell. She’d shed more than her share of tears over a man she’d thought dead and buried.

“Wait—I visited your grave at Arlington. Who’s in there?”

He looked straight ahead for once, a relief since he hadn’t stopped staring at her since they’d driven from the rental place. “No one. It was a cover-up.”

“Cover-up for what?”

“I worked for the Agency right after. It was the perfect time to do so.”

“The CIA? But that’s not such a secret that you couldn’t come find me, tell me that you were using a pseudonym.”

“I did find you. You were otherwise involved.”

His explanation was making no sense.

“Where did you find me?”

“Norfolk. You were still living there—on shore duty.”

“That was almost two years after, after...”

“After I was ‘killed’?” He made air quotes around the word, and she almost laughed. Then remembered how pissed she was at him, how ugly this whole situation was. Not including that they were hiding out, on the run from ROC’s top members.

“Go on.”

“I was detained for a while, and then had some physical rehab to contend with.” What he didn’t say, the obvious mental anguish he must have faced, concerned her more. But he wasn’t volunteering, and she wasn’t admitting she cared.

“And?”

“And I was on your street, across from your town house, waiting for you to get home from work. It was a beautiful day, the sun shining, the wind cold as the North Pole. You pulled in your driveway and got out, and lifted your kid out of the back seat.” He shook his head stiffly, and she thought the little gasps he was letting out through his bruised face were laughter. Until she risked a quick sideways glance and saw the single tear, pointed like a knife, sliding down over his enlarged, purpled cheek. This tear wasn’t from tear gas.

“You didn’t like seeing me with a child?” It could have been anyone’s; how did he know it was hers? He clearly didn’t know the real truth of it. That the baby was his. Theirs.

“The kid wasn’t the problem. It was the man you handed it over to.”

“The man I...” She thought about her time assigned to Commander, Naval Surface Forces Atlantic, a staff in Norfolk, Virginia. It had been a horrendous juggling act to deal with her grief while adjusting to life as a new single mom. There had been only two men who’d been close enough to help her at the time. Craig, another naval officer who worked on the same staff, and her brother Nolan, who’d just completed law school and was working as a lawyer in Virginia Beach. Nolan had also been a SEAL, and had gotten out of the Navy two years ahead of Trina. He had been as certain as she that Justin was dead. Killed in a raid some of her brother’s colleagues had participated in and survived.

“Not so smug now, are you?” His sharp words belied the stricken expression stamped on his face.

“There’s nothing to be smug about, you arrogant jerk.” She turned into the parking lot of a suite hotel and drove around to the back, out of sight of any main roads. As soon as she put the gearshift into Park, she faced him.

“I was with one of two men during that time. One was my brother, Nolan.”

She waited for him to turn, not giving a flying fish how much it hurt him. Because she’d hurt for so long, had finally moved on past her loss, and here he was, telling her he’d seen her and their child but had done nothing to broach the divide? Had not wanted to tell her he’d survived? Had picked his adrenaline-seeking career over her and the child he had to have known was his?

He turned, and she saw the glimmer of fear in his eyes. Fear? It couldn’t be.

“The other man—did you marry him?” His voice was a croak.

“He was, and is, one of my dearest, best friends. As a matter of fact, I was at his wedding this past spring. To his husband. He’s gay. I never married, and even if I’d wanted to, that was what, only eighteen, twenty months since you’d died? Scratch that, I mean wentmissing, right? Because you were alive all along.” She shook her head, followed by a single harsh laugh. “You know, a big part of me never believed it, that you were dead. As if I could feel you still alive on the planet. But my brother, my family, they all told me I had to move on. To get past what had happened.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Move on.”

She didn’t answer him right away. Couldn’t. Because the man next to her, Rob, wasn’t Justin anymore. He was a stranger to her. And she had no idea what a man who hadn’t told her he’d survived would do once he discovered he had a son. “There’s no one in my life right now, if that’s what you’re asking.”

* * *

Trina was single. Available, but not to him. Rob hated the spark of light in his heart when she admitted she was solo at the moment.

He watched Trina as she coordinated their hotel room reservation, checked them in, fed the dog with food from the convenience store and continued to stay in touch with her US Marshals boss the entire time. She was the whirlwind of energy he remembered, and more. And because she was keeping her chain of command informed, he knew that Claudia was receiving the same information. All of the LEA chiefs in an area where a TH op was being conducted were alerted to report anything TH needed to know.

“Have you thought about getting some rest? We don’t know if we’ll have to move again, and it could come with no warning.” Rob stood at the kitchenette counter across from where she was perched on a barstool. The dog was still on his leash but Trina had tied it to her wrist, giving the puppy the security it needed while allowing it to sniff and roll about the strange room. Rob was grateful to be on his feet again. Standing was far less painful than sitting, and to get to and from a seated or reclining position was pure hell. The counter was the right height to lean against for support, too.