“If the FBI agent didn’t perform the surgery immediately, even in the horrific conditions, that baby would have died,” Davidson said. “Even so, it’s a miracle that the baby survived.”
The nurses at the hospital are calling the miracle baby Lucia.
Villines said that this is the end of a black-market baby criminal organization that has resulted in the sale of more than six dozen infants over the last two years. The FBI and Webb County Sheriff’s Department have been working together…
Noah brought Sean to where Jesse was sitting in one of the FBI conference rooms. It was late, so no one was in the office except for them and the small team Dean Hooper was working with in the White Collar Crimes Division. “Hooper is talking to Madison. You have about ten minutes.”
Sean looked Noah in the eye and said, “Thank you.”
Noah squeezed his shoulder. “Sean, it’s going to be okay. Things will work out the way they are supposed to.”
Sean closed the door and sat down next to Jesse. He looked tired, scared, and determined.
“Hey.”
Jesse looked at him. “I’m not going.”
“They can’t make you.”
He seemed surprised by Sean’s comment. “Exactly.”
Sean wanted to tell him about Carson Spade’s selfish ultimatum. He wanted to tell Jesse that he could live with him. He wanted it… but in the back of his mind, he knew that wasn’t the right call. There were too many things going on, too many people involved, too many dangers.
“You have to want into the program, follow it, or it doesn’t work.”
“I hate Carson.”
“You don’t.”
“Don’t tell me what I think. You know what he said? He said he talked to my mom all week. But he didn’t. And then he said the phones weren’t working so I couldn’t call her. He just didn’t want me to talk to her at all. To ask about you or tell her what was going on. And now I know he’s a criminal, that he was working with those people. And that they do really bad things.”
“He’s going to risk his life to testify against them.”
“Only because he was caught. Why should he go free?”
Good question.
“Jesse, I’m not going to defend what your stepfather did.”
“Carson. He’s not my stepfather. I refuse to call him anything. It’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, Jess. It’s not. It sucks sometimes.” He didn’t know how to get through to him. “Look, Carson did some shitty things. But there are worse people out there, and what Carson knows will help catch them. Put them in prison.”
“But why do I have to go? Why can’t my mom and I just leave him?”
Because Carson is an asshole.
“You and your mom will always be in danger.” Sean paused, assessed his son. When he was growing up, he hated when people talked around the real issues. Like the overdose of his older sister, Molly. Or why Kane left the Marines to become a mercenary. Things Sean may have been too young to know, but that he should have been told. “Did anyone tell you the danger you are in?”
“Because of Carson.”
“Because of what you know. You, Jesse. You witnessed things… saw people you probably should not have seen. Heard things. We don’t know the fallout from what happened at the Flores compound, but we do know from past experience that there is always someone to fill the void. Carson put you in a dangerous situation, but you’re a smart kid, and you know too much. Things that could put you and your mother in danger. I don’t know that I can protect you.”
Jesse’s lip quivered. “I… I don’t want to never see you again.”
“It won’t be like that.”
He slammed his fist on the table. “Yes it will!”
“We’ll work something out. I have friends in high places.” Sean couldn’t bear the thought of losing Jesse. He’d just found him.
“My mom said I can’t see anyone I know, that we’ll be moving someplace, a different city, different names, different everything-and I would never see you again.”
Sean wanted to throttle Madison, and not for the first time.
“Jesse, I won’t let that happen.”
“You won’t have a choice. Only I have a choice. I… I… I want to see you again. I mean, I guess it sounds weird, but I feel like, I don’t know, I don’t really know myself because I never knew my real dad.”
Sean’s heart was breaking. He had to be strong. “It doesn’t sound weird.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
Sean put his hand on Jesse’s arm, and then he said, “Can I hug you?”
Jesse put his arms around Sean’s neck and Sean squeezed him tight. Tears burned, and he didn’t know how he was going to fix anything. He didn’t even know if he could promise Jesse anything. But dammit, something had to go right for once. Something had to work.
Sean took a deep breath and settled Jesse back in his chair. “I can’t promise anything, but if this is important to you, as important to you as it is to me, I’ll move heaven and earth for visitation. The US Marshals must have dealt with something like this before.”
Jesse sniffed and wiped his eyes.
“You’d do that for me?”
“Yes-I’m doing it for me and you. I just found you, Jess, and I don’t want to lose you.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll go. I’ll do the stupid program-on one condition. I get to talk to you. I get to visit.”
“I think that sounds reasonable. And fair.”
“You said life wasn’t fair.”
“It’s not. That’s why you always have to work to make things right.”
It was nearly midnight before Sean got home. He hadn’t heard from Lucy, hadn’t talked to her or seen her; he didn’t know where she was going or who she was staying with.
Her car was in the garage. For a split second he had hope… but what if she had a taxi pick her up? Or a friend? Who would do that?
Anyone in her office. Or Brad Donnelly, the DEA agent she worked closely with.
That twinge of jealousy hit him again-the same kind of jealousy he had with Noah. Two federal agents who had more in common with Lucy, who liked her, who would move right in if Sean walked out.
But Sean wasn’t walking out. Lucy was.
But her car was there.
Please, God-I haven’t talked to you since I was a kid, but please, I need her.
The lights were off downstairs. He walked to his bedroom-their bedroom-and Lucy wasn’t there.
But a dim light came from the small room off their bedroom, the sitting room that Lucy liked to use as her office.
He opened the door.
She sat in her comfy chair looking out the dark window. The comfy chair she read in, she worked in, and sometimes she fell asleep in. She was fully dressed, but her shoes were kicked off into the corner.
Maybe she was a mirage. Maybe he just wanted to see her, so he did. Tonight he’d been hollowed out, torn apart, and he feasted on her with his eyes.
He had so many things to say to her.
I thought you were leaving me.
I’m sorry.
I failed you.
Instead, he said, “I love you so much.” His voice cracked and tears that had been burning inside poured out.
She got up and walked to him. She kissed him. He grabbed her, held on tight, and cried. “I can’t lose you,” he said. “I hate myself for hurting you.”
“Shh,” she murmured and led him to her chair. She sat him down and climbed into his lap.
“Don’t leave me.” He didn’t want to beg… but yes, he would beg. He was wrong. He had to convince her he regretted everything.
“I love you, Sean. We’ll work through this.”
She held him close, like he’d often held her, and he ached. How could he explain anything he felt? Lucy was the most important thing in his life. More important than his life. Without her, he was an empty shell without meaning. He’d been searching for something intangible for so long, and when he found Lucy he knew she was it. She was his beginning and his ending; she gave him hope and purpose and a deep joy he couldn’t explain. And he’d fucked it up.
But she had forgiven him. Or she was forgiving him. Maybe it would take him time, but he would spend every moment of the rest of his life showing her that her forgiveness was warranted.
It was several minutes before Sean could speak. “They’re going into witness protection.” His voice was a squeak.
“The Spades.”
“I want to be in Jesse’s life.” He took a deep breath, trying again to control the intensity of his feelings. “I may never see him again.”
“You will.”
He could hope, but if Madison didn’t agree to it, it would never happen. He wasn’t even on Jesse’s damn birth certificate. As far as the world was concerned, he had no rights to Jesse. No rights as a father. Anything he got now would be because of Madison, and that pained him. Sean had promised Jesse he would do everything he could to ensure that he had visitation rights, that the marshals could make it happen… but Noah and Dean weren’t certain they could make it work.
They would try, though. They wanted to make it work, almost as much as Sean did.
Lucy shifted and he grabbed her and pulled her closer. “Don’t leave.”
“I’m not leaving,” she said. “I think we should make dinner or something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Sean, why are you so terrified that I’m going to leave you?”
“Because you said you were.”
“I was hurt and angry,” she said. “I was ready to walk away to clear my head. But you know I love you. You’ve always known, from that first moment when I came to your house in DC in the blizzard almost two years ago.”
“Nothing sticks to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
He was already an emotional wreck. But saying it out loud… it was still hard. “You know my parents died in a plane crash. What I’ve never told you was that I was also in the plane.”
“In the plane crash?”
“My mom died on impact. My dad was… broken. I had bumps and bruises but that was it. The plane was a goner, but I salvaged what I could. I worked day and night on the radio and fixed it. I purified water, I killed rabbits to eat, and I made a fire. I fixed everything, except my dad. He died three days later. I didn’t know how to fix him. We were in the middle of nowhere, and I couldn’t fix anything. If only I was smarter, if I could have fixed the radio faster, if I knew what to do to help my dad…” He took a deep breath, trying to stop the waves of guilt and regret and pain that rushed over him. “I buried them together.”
“You never told me.”
“No one knows, except Duke and Kane. And… I never told them my father survived for three days. I couldn’t accept that I couldn’t help him.
“I think that’s why Duke has always been hard on me. Not just because I was a fuckup as a teenager and in and out of trouble, but because he blamed me somehow for what happened.”
“He does not,” Lucy said emphatically.
“I don’t know,” he said, suddenly exhausted. He pulled Lucy back down to him. “Just stay with me, Lucy. Please forgive me. I will never let you down again.”
She pulled back and for a minute he thought he’d lost her. She stared at him, her dark eyes full of something unreadable. He’d always been able to read her… but she’d changed. Something fundamental inside her had changed. For better? For worse? He didn’t know.
“Sean, we can’t make promises we can’t keep. Neither of us. If you put that weight on your shoulders, you will suffer for it. I will disappoint you. You will disappoint me. We will both say and do things in anger or sadness or pain that will hurt. But I know that you love me. That you take me for who I am. That you aren’t going to try and change me or fix me, but you’ll always pick me up and make me stronger. You will carry me when I can’t walk. And I’m just as much to blame for you lying to me about Jesse.”
“No, Lucy, that’s all on me.”
She smiled, just a bit. “Okay, most of it. But part of it is my responsibility. For the last two years, I have leaned on you for everything. I have depended on you for my sanity when things overwhelmed me. You have always been here for me. Always.”
“I wasn’t-not this week. When you needed me the most.”
“And that’s it-because you weren’t here, you thought you were protecting me by keeping this information to yourself, but I learned that even though this case was the hardest case I hope I ever have, and even though I wanted you here to lean on, I made it through. There were a few moments I didn’t think I could… but I did. That’s because of you. I am stronger because of you, but you don’t have to coddle me and nurse me back to emotional health every night. You enabled me to stand on my own feet, to take the good with the bad. To survive.”
He touched her cheek. This woman was incredible in every way. “You have always been a survivor.”
“Physically, yes. But emotionally, everything is locked up tight. And it needs to be, most of the time, so I can do my job. But I survived this week emotionally because of you.”
“I will try never to disappoint you.”
She smiled. There was a glimmer of light in her eyes. Just a small beacon of hope, but suddenly the weight of Lucy leaving disappeared. She wasn’t leaving him. She was here.
She’d stayed.
“That’s better,” she said. “We’re going to need to talk.”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?”
She climbed off his lap and pulled him out of the chair. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. “We’re going to talk about how you gain parental rights.”
His heart skipped a beat. “Lucy-you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to be part of this if you don’t want to. I-”
She put her finger to his lips. “Of course I want to be part of this because it is your life. The good and the bad. We’re getting married in six weeks. For better or worse.” She kissed him. “Jesse is your son. He deserves to know you, to know Kane, to know the Rogans. More important, you deserve to be part of his life. We’re going to find a way to ensure you can see him.”
Sean pulled Lucy to him so tight he was afraid he’d break her. Except she wasn’t breakable. Not anymore. “I love you, Lucy.”
She took his hand and pulled him away from her office. Then she stopped and smiled. “I don’t have to be at headquarters until noon tomorrow.”
“Eat. Sleep.”
She lay back on the bed, pulling him down to her. “Make love. Then maybe food and sleep. And then repeat.”
She put her hands on his face and held him above her. He saw the truth in her eyes. She had changed. Something fundamental, deep inside. But she was here, she hadn’t left him even though he had screwed up. She hadn’t left him, and he would never give her another reason to even consider it.
“That sounds like the perfect plan.” His voice was rough around the edges.
“I’ve missed you, Sean. In every way.”
Sean kissed Lucy as if it were the last time.