The Secret Son. Tara Quinn Taylor

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      He took a sip of his beer, studying the suds. “A few years ago I had a successful negotiation involving him. He’s agreed to talk, under the stipulation that I be the one he speaks to.”

      “He’s taken hostages before?”

      “No.” Jack shook his head, frowning. “He was a hostage.”

      “Oh!” Taken aback, Erica studied him.

      And she’d thought she had a tough job.

      “So—” he looked across at her, his weathered face solemn “—tonight’s it, then.”

      “Yeah.”

      His hand was close to hers on the table. Just the smallest movement would bring their fingers together again.

      “Maybe we should go upstairs to the dining room or something as a sort of send-off.”

      “I’d rather stay right here.” Where they’d spent every minute they’d ever had together.

      He sat back, his hand sliding off the table. “I’m glad we had this week,” he said.

      “I am, too.” The words were almost a whisper. Her throat hurt with the effort to get them out at all.

      How was she going to live the rest of her life without ever seeing him again?

      He finished his beer and motioned for another. “Knowing that you’re in the world gives my life a whole new dimension,” he said quietly.

      She couldn’t speak, afraid of what might spill forth, afraid of the regrets she’d have to face when she left their world and returned to her own.

      “It’s something we can take with us,” he added.

      Erica tried to smile. “Thank you for that.”

      “Hey.” He leaned forward, his thumb following a path down her cheek. “We have hours yet.” His face was softly lit with a half smile that almost made her cry. “Let’s not lose them.”

      Her face, her entire body, responding to the light touch of his thumb, Erica nodded.

      “I think pita pizzas are in order.”

      It was their favorite of Maggie’s munchies. They’d tried them all.

      Erica forced a grin and determined that she’d make the next hours the absolute best they could be.

      By the time the pizza arrived, she’d just about managed to pretend that this was like any other night that week—a beginning, instead of the end.

      Except for the underlying desperation. Now when they talked, they didn’t hesitate before they jumped into any topic. If they only had this one night, they didn’t have time for deliberation, for careful phrasing or circumspect questions.

      Erica couldn’t take her gaze off him, even for a second, frightened of losing the chance to store up one more memory. He seemed to be having the same problem, his eyes more intent—though she wouldn’t have believed that possible—than they’d been all those other nights.

      They were drinking faster.

      Eating faster.

      They were doing everything faster, speeding through years of their lives, trying to squeeze in every single memory.

      And then, suddenly, they stopped. The noise in the pub continued around them—the murmur of conversation, intermittent laughter, the clinking of glasses—but Erica and Jack were surrounded by silence.

      Emotions engulfed her. Confused her. There was so much, so many feelings. And yet not nearly enough.

      “Why do you have to be a hostage negotiator?” she blurted out, terrified for his safety, although it wasn’t her business to be.

      Shaking his head, he took a protracted swig of beer. And then he said, “I was married once. A long time ago.”

      Erica’s stomach tensed. “You didn’t tell me that.”

      “I know.” Both hands grasped the cold mug, and he didn’t meet her eyes, gazing someplace over her shoulder, instead.

      “I’d just joined the agency,” he finally began. “Completed my training. She was a flight attendant. We’d met in college.”

      “She went to college to be a flight attendant?”

      “Melissa had a degree in education. Loved kids, hated teaching.” Jack’s tone of voice, the faraway look in his eyes, testified that he’d loved his wife.

      “She liked flying?”

      “She liked traveling, and I was gone a lot.”

      “So what happened?”

      He glanced back at Erica and some of his tension—the stiffness in his shoulders, the whiteness of his knuckles around that mug—dissipated. “She got pregnant. We’d been married a little over three years and were both ready….”

      Pregnant. Jack had a child.

      Erica was finding it difficult to breathe, but she listened anyway, feeling his love for his family—sensing his pain.

      When he reached across and took her hand, holding it with both of his, it was the most natural thing in the world. His palms felt cold from the mug of beer.

      “We had a girl, Courtney Marie….”

      Jack swallowed with apparent difficulty. His eyes had a definite sheen.

      “When she was a couple of months old, Melissa took Courtney to see her mother out in California. My mother-in-law taught at a high school in Malibu, and Melissa went to meet her for lunch one day.”

      He paused again. Erica squeezed his hand, holding on.

      “A couple of kids went crazy, pulled guns out of their backpacks, started yelling.”

      “Oh, my God,” Erica whispered. “Jack, don’t. You don’t have to do this.”

      “According to the reports, it was all pretty chaotic after that. Some random shots were fired, but apparently no one was hurt. Officials started closing in on the kids. They got scared. And around the corner walked Melissa with Courtney in a carrier on her chest….”

      Erica, seeing the story’s end, swallowed back tears.

      “One of the kids grabbed her, held her in front of him while he made his way out of the school. They were holed up in his van for more than three hours before gunshots were heard again. When the authorities got inside the van, Melissa and Courtney had been killed by a single shot. I was working here in New York and they couldn’t reach me.”

      “What happened to the kid?” It didn’t matter. Erica didn’t give a damn about the kid. She СКАЧАТЬ