Secret Agent Father

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Shelby slowly nodded, following him outside down the path she’d taken a few minutes ago.

When a low hanging branch tangled in her hair, she tried to yank free, muttering under her breath.

“Here, let me help.” Alex came up behind her and deftly unhooked the naturally curly lock of hair from the branch. His nearness made her shiver and not necessarily with fear. She stepped away. She shouldn’t be tempted to lean on Alex, not when she’d fought so hard to remain independent.

“Thanks.” Her breath shortened and she hunched her shoulders, careful to duck far below the trees. His calm presence managed to distract her from her fear of the dark.

Alex must be a cop. That would explain why Trina sent them to him for protection. Her preoccupation with her sister caused her to stumble over a fallen branch, half-hidden beneath the snow. Alex caught her by the arm.

“Watch your step.” Alex frowned when she instinctively pulled away from his touch. He glanced down at her sodden feet. “We need to get you a pair of boots. Kayla’s already loaned Cody a pair of Brianna’s.”

“We left Green Bay in a hurry.” Shelby grit her teeth together to stop them from chattering. Alex’s domineering personality put her on the defensive. She wasn’t used to anyone questioning her parenting skills. “Besides, we didn’t have as much snow there as you do here.”

“I’m sure Kayla has a pair that’ll fit.” Alex kept his hand under her elbow as they climbed up the few steps to the house.

Shelby refrained from answering. Safe inside the well-lit house, she breathed a sigh of relief. She’d conquered the darkness, at least for a few minutes. Feeling foolish for her rush of panic, she removed her coat and her sodden tennis shoes. Her jeans and socks were damp, but she ignored the discomfort, simply walking toward the sound of voices coming from the kitchen had died down in their absence.

When they entered, Cody ran up to her. She caught him close in a quick hug, which he tolerated for a half a second before squirming away. She reluctantly released him.

“Aunt Shelby, were you practicing shooting with my other dad outside? When I get older, he said he’s gonna teach me how to shoot a real BB gun.”

“Oh, really?” Calmer now, Shelby sent Alex a narrow look. Just who did he think he was making a promise like that, without even asking her? No matter what biology said, he was not Cody’s only parent, and he had no right to make decisions like that without consulting her. She didn’t approve of guns and she especially didn’t approve of teaching children how to shoot them. Shelby held on to her temper with an effort, turning her attention to Cody. “Who’s your new friend?” she asked, gesturing to the girl standing near the stove with Kayla.

“That’s Brianna. She’s five. Clyde’s her puppy, but he likes me better.”

Shelby rolled her eyes at the rivalry in his tone. “I’m sure Clyde likes you both the same. Are you hungry, or did you eat dinner without me?”

“No, of course not,” Kayla said. “Brianna, you and Cody need to set the table.”

“Okay,” Brianna agreed as she dashed toward the cabinets on the other side of the kitchen, dragging Cody with her.

“I’m sorry,” Kayla murmured, her gaze apologetic. “I didn’t realize you’d heard the gunshots until I saw you running for the door. I wanted to come after you, but I couldn’t go outside like this.” She pointed down to her feet, covered only in thick socks.

Shelby tried to smile. Cody was safe and that was the important thing. “It’s okay. I’m just not keen on guns.”

“Guns are only a problem when they’re misused.” Alex spoke testily. “Don’t worry, I keep trigger locks on all my weapons.”

All his weapons? How many did he have? Shelby wasn’t about to stand around, debating the pros and cons of gun legislation with him. Not on the same day when she’d watched someone shoot her sister. In fact, she was glad Cody was doing all right in here, and hadn’t reacted to the noise of the gunshot with the heart-wrenching fear she’d felt. Maybe he hadn’t seen as much during their frantic dash to the parking lot as she’d thought. Gathering every ounce of patience, she steered the conversation toward a safe topic. “So, what’s for dinner?”

“Venison stew,” Kayla replied.

“Venison?” Shelby tried to hide her dismay.

Kayla chuckled. “That was my reaction too, at first. But trust me, you’ll like it.”

“Don’t tell me it tastes like chicken.”

Kayla laughed. “Why don’t you two go have a seat in the great room?” she suggested. “I’ll call you when everything’s ready.”

Back in the great room, Shelby noticed that the fire had died down. She reached for a log, intent on adding to the dying embers, but a masculine arm snatched it from her grasp.

“Here, let me. You need to change into some dry clothes.”

Annoyed, Shelby wondered if all men liked to pretend they were in charge of the world, or if this was a characteristic unique to Alex McCade. She might be afraid of the shadows, but years of living alone had taught her to fend for herself in her own way. She valued her independence and preferred to keep it that way. Dire circumstances had brought her here. She needed Alex to keep Cody safe. She did not need him to boss her around.

She sat on the edge of the sofa, propping her feet on the stone hearth of the fireplace. “I don’t have anything else with me. Besides, I’m fine.”

“I’m sure Kayla will lend you a few things.”

“I’m fine,” she repeated stubbornly. She didn’t want to put her hostess out any more than she already had.

“I know you’re upset with me,” Alex murmured in a low tone. “I promise I’ll try to answer your questions. But I don’t want to talk in front of the kids.” Alex waved in the general direction of the kitchen, where Cody and Brianna were still helping Kayla by setting the table.

Shelby lifted her gaze to his. He wasn’t looking at her, though, but stared thoughtfully into the fire. When he wasn’t ordering her around, he was very attractive, not that she had any business noticing. He wasn’t at all her type, even if she wasn’t interested in men, which she wasn’t. Considering her past experiences, she didn’t trust men on a personal level and that included Alex. “They won’t hear us if we’re quiet. Be honest with me. Are you in law enforcement?”

“Sort of.” He shrugged and glanced at her. “I work for the government.”

Her eyes widened. “FBI?”

He shook his head. “DEA. Shelby, you’ll need to keep everything I tell you confidential. Your life and Cody’s depends upon it.”

She swallowed hard at the seriousness of his tone. “Okay.”

Alex took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “How much do you know about your father’s shipping business and the marina?”

“Not a lot. Most of my time is spent running my day care center.” Shelby wrinkled her forehead, realizing she’d have to call her assistant soon to let Debbi know she wouldn’t be there on Monday. “Trina and Stephan manage the marina.”

“I know. Trina was helping us, providing inside information.”

Shelby frowned. “Like what?”

“Details that may be pertinent to us finding the drugs being smuggled into the U.S. from Canada through the Great Lakes. Names of ships, routes, etcetera. We’re trying to find the identity of the mastermind behind the drug smuggling operation. We knew there were several insiders, including one in customs, but we needed to find the guy in charge.”

“Drugs? On my father’s ships?” She stared at him in shock. “You can’t be serious.”

“Shelby, I saw the shipments firsthand. I was working undercover as a longshoreman, reporting to Bobby Drake, the warehouse foreman and your father’s right-hand man. During the time I spent on the docks, I discovered drugs coming in on your father’s ships over and over again. That much is fact. What we don’t know is who’s responsible.”

She sucked in a harsh breath. She’d had no idea. “You think my father is involved, don’t you?”

“I saw him on the docks a fair amount. He kept his hand in every aspect of his business. Russ Jacobson was especially interested in the cargo on the ships that traveled from Sault Saint Marie to Green Bay, with the final destination being Chicago. The same ships where we found drugs.”

“No!” Shelby jumped to her feet, her hands fisted at her sides. “I’m telling you, Alex, my father isn’t involved in drug smuggling.”

“Shh.” He frowned at her, and then glanced over his shoulder toward the kitchen where the kids were playing with Clyde. “Calm down. Trina felt the same way you do. Yet we have no choice but to treat everyone as a suspect, until proven otherwise. You wanted to know the source of the danger, well this is it. Whoever hurt Trina must have figured out she was feeding us information.”

“Dinner’s on,” Kayla called.

Alex glanced toward the kitchen. “We’ll discuss this more later.”

Shelby didn’t want to discuss it later. She wanted to talk about it now, so she could show Alex he was wrong. Yet in spite of her instinctive defense, she felt uneasy. She wasn’t an idiot. Her father’s shipping company dominated the Great Lakes shipping business. How could drugs be on his ships without his knowledge? She shoved aside the shimmer of doubt. She didn’t know how her father had missed what was going on, but she was relieved to hear Trina believed in their father’s innocence, too.

She was tempted to insist he tell her more, but bit her tongue, in deference to Cody. The poor child had been traumatized enough. He didn’t need to hear his aunt arguing with his other dad.

“Yes. We will talk more later.” Her gaze warned him that she expected answers. He returned her look with a bland one of his own.

Kayla called out to them from the kitchen. “Are you coming?”

They both hurried into the kitchen. Instead of eating in the formal dining room usually reserved for guests, they crowded around the oak picnic table in the kitchen. There should have been plenty of room, especially when Cody insisted on sitting next to Brianna. Yet Alex seemed to take up more than his share of space. His presence was disturbing and not just because she usually avoided being so close to a man. For some strange reason, his woodsy aftershave teased her senses.

“Excuse me,” she muttered when their elbows bumped for the third time. She scooched over a few more inches. Any farther, she’d be sitting on the floor.

“Switch places with me, I’m left-handed.” Alex lifted his plate and stood while she slid into his spot so that he could sit at the end.

He was still too close. His right hand rested on the table and Shelby could see a few of the reddened scars above the denim cuff of his shirt. What had happened to him? Mesmerized by the dark sprinkling of hair on his forearm, she didn’t realize she’d eaten half her stew until Kayla snickered at her from across the table. Flustered, she stared at her bowl. Had the meat tasted different? She couldn’t say one way or the other.

“What do you think?” Kayla asked.

She flashed her a sheepish smile. “You’re absolutely right, Kayla. The venison stew is wonderful.”

“Thanks. Alex is a hunter and he shot the deer himself, last year.” Her voice rang with pride.

“Can I learn how to hunt deer?” Cody piped up from the other side of the table.

“No.”

“Sure.”

Both Shelby and Alex answered simultaneously. She threw him a dark look. Alex had the grace to look away guiltily.

“I don’t think you’ll be old enough to hunt for quite a while yet, Cody,” Shelby amended, noticing the confusion in the boy’s eyes. She mentally cursed Alex for interfering. She’d been making decisions regarding Cody’s upbringing for years, how could he expect to suddenly step in and take over?

Because he’s Cody’s father. Shelby’s appetite vanished and she stared down at her half-eaten food. The thought of losing Cody to Alex twisted her stomach into a hard knot. She loved Cody. She couldn’t love him more if she’d borne him herself. What if Alex took him someplace far away where she’d never see him again?

Her fork clattered to her plate from fingers gone numb.

“Shelby? Are you okay?” Alex sent her a glance so full of concern she nearly blurted out the truth. Only a deep sense of self-preservation made her hold her tongue.

“Sorry. I’m just clumsy I guess.” Shelby tried to smile, but her face felt as if it might split in two with the effort.

Drugs coming in on her father’s ships. Cody’s bad man. Trina’s death. Suddenly it was all too much. Obviously she needed Alex, in order to keep Cody safe, but a tiny part of her just wanted to grab Cody and run away from it all. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? All alone with Cody would she ever be able to stop running? She couldn’t condemn Cody to that kind of life. He was safer here with Alex. For now.

How she made it through the rest of dinner, she’d never know. Afterward she excused herself from helping with the dishes and retreated to her room long enough to use Trina’s phone to place a call to their father and then to Debbi, her assistant manager of the day care center. Shelby didn’t intend to break her promise to Alex, but needed to at least find out about Trina. Maybe her sister had miraculously survived.

Punching the numbers on the phone pad, she dialed her father’s number. A woman’s voice drifted over the line after the third ring.

“Hello?”

Shelby swallowed her annoyance when her father’s wife answered the phone. She didn’t particularly care for the woman who’d become their stepmother. “Hi, Marilyn. Is Dad around?”

“Shelby? Your father’s worried sick. He’s been trying to call you for hours. What is wrong with you? You should be here with him. Don’t you care about him at all? Where are you?”

Shelby winced at her shrill voice. “Please, Marilyn, stop yelling at me. Just put Dad on, would you?”

“Fine. Be that way.”

Marilyn dropped the phone with a clatter making Shelby pull the instrument away from her ear. After a few minutes, her father’s booming voice came over the line.

“Shelby? Where have you been? I’ve been calling your place all day.”

“Sorry, Dad.” Shelby tried not to back down from his accusatory tone, but it wasn’t easy. Her relationship with her father wasn’t great. When her mother was still alive, they’d been a close-knit family. Every Sunday, after church, they’d have family game night. She’d cherished those times. But things had gotten worse after her mother died. Her father had changed. Ever since her mother’s death he’d been trying to toughen her up, trying to make her into something she wasn’t. Someone like Trina. Most of the time she avoided her family, preferring her friends from church to the rowdy crowd who hung around at the marina. Her father never hesitated to vocalize his disapproval.

“I’ve been worried about you. Do you have Cody?”

“Yes, Cody’s with me. We’re safe. Everything is fine,” she hastened to reassure him.

“So you haven’t seen Trina, then?”

She hesitated, not wanting to lie, but not wanting to break her promise to Alex, either. “Not in a while,” she hedged. To the best of her knowledge, no one had known that she was meeting Trina down by the marina. Cody had often stayed with her when her sister was working.

“Then you don’t know.” He let out a heavy sigh. “There’s been a terrible accident, Shel.” For a moment, he sounded like the father she used to know. The one who taught his young daughters how to sail on the waters of Lake Michigan. “Your sister…” He struggled to get the words out. “Someone shot her. She’s dead.”

Shelby closed her eyes against a wave of grief, even though she’d suspected the worst all along. To hear her father state the truth so bluntly was harder than she’d anticipated. “What—what happened?”

“I don’t know.” The helplessness in his tone was so uncharacteristic that Shelby wished she were with him. “I can’t think of anyone who’d want to kill her. Of course I called the mayor, asking him to make Trina’s murder a priority. It pays to have friends in high places. So far, Lieutenant Holden thinks it’s a robbery, since all of the jewelry Trina had been wearing was stolen, including her wedding ring.”

Her father sounded lost and forlorn, reinforcing what Shelby had known all along. He couldn’t possibly be involved in something so heinous as drug smuggling, and he certainly played no part in Trina’s death. A part of her wanted to blurt out the truth, how she’d seen the dark figure shoot Trina, but she held her tongue. For Cody’s sake. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

“Where are you? You said you have Cody with you? Because Stephan has been wondering where he is.”

“I have Cody and we’re staying with a friend.” She frowned. “I know Stephan and Trina were having problems, and that Trina had moved out, but I’m sure this is still very hard on him.”

“Yes. I was hoping they’d work things out.” He sighed heavily. “Why don’t you come home? I need you, Shelby. Trina—the police haven’t released her body yet, so we haven’t scheduled the funeral.”

The funeral? A fresh wave of tears threatened and Shelby blinked them back with an effort and rubbed the scar at her temple.

Of course she and Cody would be expected to attend the funeral. But would that be good for Cody? Was it safe enough for him to attend? She honestly didn’t know. “I’m sorry, but I can’t come home right now, Dad. Please don’t worry, we’re fine. And I promise I’ll stay in touch.”

“See that you do.” Russell Jacobson’s tone hardened. “I know your church views prevented you and your sister from becoming close, but our family needs to stick together in times like this.”

His words were sharp, an arrow piercing her heart. Her father had taken this attitude, acting as if her Christian path was somehow the wrong one, maybe because she’d found so much comfort in her church community, rather than with her family. “We weren’t that close, but I loved Trina. And I love you, too. I’ll call you later, Dad.”