72 Hours Page 7

  “Hold up. The clock’s still ticking. Until that biotoxin loses its potency, they’re going to keep coming after it, and that’s our best bet for getting them. I’m leaving soon, but first we need to talk about what’s going to happen when this over and I come looking for you.”

  “You don’t have to come looking for me. I’m leaving with you now.”

  No. Over his dead body. “You are staying here with our son and then, when you get the all clear, you’re taking him home.”

  “I didn’t ask your permission, Alex.”

  He heard that tone in her voice that meant he may as well beat his head against a brick wall as continue this conversation, but he had a very hard head. “After all he’s been through, you’re just going to leave him here alone?”

  Her cheeks reddened and he braced himself for her swing, but she only crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Ricardo Escobar almost took Danny from me while he was still in my body. Now, eight years later, he did take him from me. I am going to hunt that son of a bitch down and I’m going to kill him. And then I’ll take my son home.”

  There was no way in hell he was going to let the mother of his child risk her life taking Escobar down. And the thought of losing another woman he cared about to the bastard behind it all made fear burn like acid in the back of his throat.

  “So what was all that about before, Grace? All that stuff about being a good mother and doing what was best for Danny. Now that you’ve gotten out of the kitchen and had some fun, you don’t care about that anymore?”

  “Fun?” She put both hands on his chest and shoved him hard. “Screw you, Rossi. I tried. I tried to play nice with the PTO and I tried to bake cookies and I tried to like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Spy Kids and I couldn’t do it. But this…this I can do for him, Alex. When I take Danny home and tuck him in to his own bed, I’ll be able to look him in the eye and promise him that bad guy will never, ever hurt him again.”

  He was losing. Again. He’d rarely, if ever, totally lost his cool, but now he turned and beat the living hell out of the vending machine. Plastic cracked and splintered, and packaged snacks flew around inside of it, and it didn’t even help.

  “What if you die?” he yelled, shoving his hands deep in his pockets because he wanted nothing more than to shake her until her eyes rolled back in her head. “What if you don’t come back, Grace? It doesn’t hurt any less when your mother dies taking a bullet for you. She’s still dead.”

  He saw the question in her eyes, but it went unasked. “I could end up just as dead crossing the grocery store parking lot—”

  “Don’t. Don’t even feed me that weak bullshit, Grace. I was the one in that helo with Danny wondering how I could face him if I had to tell him his mommy wasn’t ever coming back. What the hell is he supposed to do without you?”

  “My parents love him like he’s their own child. They’re very close and he’d have a good life with them. And there’s an account set up for them if they should have to do that.”

  He told himself not to ask, but like always he reached right out and put his hand on that hot stove. “That envelope Devlin has…is there a letter in there for me?”

  At least she looked him in the eye when she said, “No.”

  And he knew why, so he pushed the hurt down and went back to the issue at hand. “I am begging you to stay with Danny, Grace. Please.”

  The pleading was useless. He knew it, but did it anyway. If there was even the slightest chance it would keep her safe here with their son he’d throw himself at her feet.

  * * *

  If she wasn’t a mother now, the tone in Alex’s voice would have had Grace giving him anything he asked of her. Everything about Alex Rossi was fierce, but his pride most of all.

  But she had to do this. It was time for her to brandish the sword of maternal vengeance and slay the monsters. Still she couldn’t say the words. He’d never begged anything of her before.

  He knew, though, because he gave a half-shrug and turned away. “You can explain that to your son.”

  When Grace was cleared into the dorm-style room holding her son, he exploded up off the chair he’d occupied and wrapped himself around her like he had on the island. “Mom! Nana and Grampa are here!”

  She kissed his hair and looked to her parents, but they were both busy watching Alex, who had come in behind her. The resemblance between father and son was just too strong. She wasn’t going to have a secret left to herself by the end of the day, dammit.

  Finally her mother turned, and the look—the “Ohmigod are you okay because I’m going to kill you and how dare you worry me so and I love you so much” look—almost undid Grace entirely.

  Here was a woman who did it right. She baked perfect cookies in a perfect apron in a perfectly spotless house behind a white picket fence and had probably never felt an urge to pack the vacuum with C4 and be done with whole damn thing. And even though Grace had put that perfect white bread existence behind her as soon as she was of age, she now wished she could be half the mother Liz Nolan had been.

  “I should have known those stories about doing diplomatic work were a crock,” her mother said now. “You haven’t been diplomatic a day in your life.”

  Even being shot didn’t suck as much as being bagged in a lie by a parent, Grace thought. “Sometimes I worked for diplomats,” she mumbled.

  “Somehow I have a very difficult time imagining Shirley Temple Black jumping out of a helicopter.”

  Grace swallowed the smart-ass retort that almost sprang from her tongue. Her parents had just been more or less abducted from their home and put on a helicopter to rendezvous with their kidnapped grandson before they even knew if they’d get him back or not. A little terseness on her mother’s part was far less than the emotional reaction Grace had expected.

  Her dad’s gaze was bouncing around from Grace to Danny and Alex and back to Danny again. “Hey, Dad.”

  Instantly she was pulled into his arms, wrapped in an Old Spice-scented bear hug she hadn’t realized she’d needed desperately. She sniffed back tears and let him hold her for a good long time.

  Finally he pushed her gently away and looked her over with fatherly concern. “I never should have let you watch those John Wayne marathons with me.”

  They all laughed then, and breaking the tension set Danny off. His words tumbled over each other in his rush to tell all about the plane and the guns and the helicopter and Mom’s Matrix moves. By the time he was done, Grace’s mother had found herself a chair to collapse into.

  “At least it’s over now,” she said.

  Grace took a deep breath. Now came the hard part.

  Alex stepped forward before she could speak. “Mr. and Mrs. Nolan, I’d like a few moments of your time, if you don’t mind.”

  Grace tried to show her gratitude in a brief smile. Telling Danny she wasn’t staying would be hard enough without her mother and father going hysterical. And considering she heard her mother muttering about how he didn’t look like a doctor on their way through the door, she knew Alex would be saving her from further explanations, as well.

  “Are the bad guys gone now, Mom?”

  She looked into his sad, dark eyes and knew it could all end right here. If her little boy cried and begged her to stay, every word she’d said to Alex would cease to matter.

  “Some of them. But the head bad guy is still out there.”

  “Are you going to go get him?”

  She sat on the cot next to him and tucked his head under her chin. “I want to, but only if it’s okay with you to stay here with Nana and Grampa until I get back.”

  Only a few seconds passed before he nodded, his soft hair tickling under her chin. “They said I’m even better guarded than the president. And I missed Grampa and Nana. You won’t get hurt, will you?”

  She squeezed him just a little too hard and he squirmed. “I’ll try not to get hurt, honey. It’s dangerous, but I did this job for a lot of years before you were born, and I know h
ow to take care of myself. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And no matter what, you remember I love you more than anything. Even more than Doritos.”

  He giggled and pulled out of her embrace. He was reaching the age at which he’d only tolerate coddling for so long. “Is Alex going with you?”

  “Yes. We’re kinda partners. Or we used to be.”

  “I’m glad he’s going with you.”

  Something in his voice made her wonder if something besides being impressed with Rossi’s abilities was behind his words. “Why?”

  He shrugged, trying for casual, but not quite getting it. “He looks at me a lot. Like watching me and staring, and it’s kinda creepy.”

  At least he had good instincts, she thought. Clearly the apple hadn’t fallen from either branch of the tree. “I know you’re a little shaken up right now, honey, but do you remember when I told you your father was a doctor?”

  Danny nodded, frowning. “And you couldn’t find him, so he doesn’t know ‘bout me.”

  Grace took a deep breath. Hopefully the emotional bombshells were almost over, because too many more bracing breaths would have her hyperventilating. “Alex is your father, sweetie.”

  He didn’t say anything, so she pressed on. “We used to work together and we…liked each other a lot. But we lost touch right before I found out I had you in my belly. He didn’t know about you until after the bad guys took you and I needed help to get you back.”

  “So you knew where he was if you could ask him to help get me back.”

  Ouch. “I knew how to contact people who knew how to find him. I thought…I thought he had done a bad thing, but now I know I was wrong. I’m so very sorry, baby. I’m sorry about all of this.”

  He shrugged again, and this one translated as he was confused and hurt and needed some time to think things through. And Grace was thankful her parents were just the kind of warm and intelligent people to talk him through what was happening.

  “Can I talk to him before you leave?” Danny asked, and Grace nodded.

  “Everybody’s just down the hall. Let’s go find them, okay?”

  * * *

  Alex was relieved to see Grace and Danny join them in the big rec room, but confused when she veered off toward him and Danny walked alone to a couch at the far end and sat. He’d figured the kid would still be refusing to let go of her. In fact, he’d been counting on it—his last hope for changing her mind.

  “He wants to talk to you,” she said quietly, and he noted the pinched look her face always took on when she was trying not to be emotional.

  “Did you tell him who I am?”

  She nodded. “I thought it was best. You were staring at him a lot and he was beginning to think you were a creepy child molester.”

  “Good instincts,” he said, and then his brain caught up with his mouth. “I mean, not that I’m a pedophile, but it’s good he was aware I couldn’t stop watching him.”

  She laughed at him, some of the color returning to her cheeks. “So stop watching him and go talk to him.”

  Alex had seen and done things in his life that would have been too unbelievable and outrageous even for Hollywood. But nothing had ever scared him the way his son watching his approach did. Every footstep across the rec room seemed to echo in his ears, and he almost turned and bolted before giving himself a mental slap. This was his son.

  He sat next to Danny and assumed the same position—leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands together. “Hi, Danny.”

  “Hi.”

  “So…your mom told you who I am?”

  He nodded, his big eyes so serious Alex thought his heart would break. This was his kid—sad and scared—and he didn’t know what to say to him.

  “Mom said you didn’t know ‘bout me. That she didn’t tell you I’m your kid.”

  Alex felt as if he was in a vice, being slowly squeezed by the pressure. He didn’t know how to be a dad. He hadn’t read any of the books, or watched parenting videos. What if he said the wrong thing and scarred the kid for life?

  The only thing he did know was that this moment was going to set the emotional stage for a lifetime.

  “No, buddy, she didn’t tell me about you. But we lost touch before you were born, and then…part of my job is a big secret, and that makes me hard to find.”

  Danny nodded, and Alex prayed the boy had made some sense of his words. More sense than he’d made of them. He cleared his throat. “The important thing is I didn’t come because I didn’t know about you. Don’t ever think I didn’t want you.”

  The way Danny smiled but looked away told him the little boy had spent his short life thinking exactly that, and the urge to walk across the room and knock Grace on her ass was almost too much for him. But he could imagine too clearly the look on their son’s face if he did.

  “Once the bad guys are gone will you come see me?” Danny asked, picking at his thumbnail.

  “Yes, I will.” He put his hand over Danny’s small ones to still them. “I travel a lot for my work, so I’m not going to be with you all the time, but you’ll see me a lot. I promise.”

  “That’s cool. Some of the guys make fun of me because I play catch with my mom.”

  A whole new kind of anger grabbed Alex’s gut and gave it a squeeze. They were picking on his kid? Nobody messed with a Rossi and got away with it, even if he had to drag their bully asses home and beat the crap out of their dads for it.

  “You look mad,” Danny whispered, drawing his hands away.

  “Sorry. I’m not mad at you. I don’t like bullies. We’ll see if they make fun of you when we head off with our season tickets to the Patriots in my Hummer.” He remembered being in school and that kind of show would buy his son some cool points for sure.

  “Wow! You have Pats season tickets? And a Hummer?”

  “I don’t have the tickets yet, but I will by next week.” He’d buy out the whole stadium if it kept the boy’s eyes lit up like that. “And one of my vehicles is a Hummer.”

  Danny was quiet for minute, then he looked up with his brown puppy dog eyes. “If you can get season tickets for the Pats and you drive a Hummer, you must have a lot of money, huh?”

  “Yes, I do.” It had never occurred to him to ask how Grace was set for money. She probably did okay with the computer work she did for above-board agencies and she’d never said anything during the times he’d spoken to her as Devlin, but she was a proud woman who wouldn’t have asked for help. So help him, if his son had not only been picked on, but living in poverty all these years, he’d be hard pressed not to shoot her again.

  “So can we get Red Sox tickets, too?”

  Relief made Alex laugh out loud. “You bet. I suppose you’ll want a bigger allowance now, right?”

  Danny grimaced and shook his head. “Mom won’t pay me my allowance ‘cause I haven’t cleaned my room.”

  “She’s right not to pay you if you’re not doing the job.”

  “I’d rather go without the five bucks than clean my room,” the boy said with a shrug. “It’s not worth it, but I bet if the allowance was more…”

  He let the sentence trail off and Alex chuckled as he ruffled the boy’s hair. He’d had a dad for fifteen minutes and he was already playing the game. “Your mom and I will talk about that. But I’ll tell you right now when I was a kid I had to keep my room spotless and I didn’t get any allowance.”

  Danny sighed and rolled his eyes, an expression that was totally Grace. “Yeah, yeah. And you had to walk a mile to school and you couldn’t Tivo your digital cable on your high-def TV.”

  “Actually I walked two miles.”

  “Oh, great.”

  Alex saw Gallagher make a subtle gesture toward his watch, but not so subtle Danny missed it. His thin shoulders sagged a little bit, and he shrugged again.

  “I guess it’s time to go,” he said.

  “Yeah. But I’ll be seeing you again real soon.”

  There were those damn puppy dog eyes ag
ain. “Pinky swear?”

  Alex locked pinkies with his son and nodded. “Pinky swear.”

  “It’s kinda okay this bad stuff happened, ‘cause you got to know about me, right?”

  He pulled the boy close and gave him a tight hug. “I’m really sorry this happened to you, but yeah, I’m not sorry I get to know about you.”

  Chapter Seven

  Grace watched a couple playing in the surf from the bedroom window of a new hotel suite, two floors up from the one in which she’d originally found Alex. They’d moved things around a little after their return from Miami, but Alex didn’t want to move hotels.