chapter Twelve
Jenna’s knees buckled and she dropped to the bed. Had Cade lost his mind? What did Kevin Stark have to do with Nico Zendaris?
“How do you know it’s Kevin? Th-there could’ve been plenty of sixty-year-old men at the bar last night.”
“The alligator boots, Jenna. The murdered man had alligator boots and so did Kevin.”
“Still, there could be lots of older men wearing alligator boots in New Mexico.”
His dark eyes drilled her. “Really?”
“Why would Zendaris kill your...Kevin?”
“I can give you plenty of motives. I should’ve gotten you and Gavin out of here last night. What reason did he give me to trust one word out of his mouth?”
Cade’s naked form, his muscles hard and ready, looked untouchable. His tight jaw and blazing eyes made him look unreachable.
“I don’t understand, Cade.”
“Get Gavin ready. I don’t have time to explain.”
And just like that, the husband she’d reclaimed in body and soul last night had hardened into this stranger, giving orders and keeping her in the dark.
This stranger had kept her and Gavin safe, so she followed those orders.
She pulled the hotel terry-cloth robe over her nakedness and stumbled into the adjoining bedroom. Gavin had had his bath last night, so she could get him ready to go in minutes. But why did she have to?
Cade directed tight smiles at Gavin and perfunctory pats on the head, and Gavin picked up on his tension. Then he reacted by refusing to put on his jacket and kicking his mittens across the floor.
Jenna cracked. “You pick those up right now.”
Cade parked the new suitcase stuffed with their new clothes in the corner of the room and crouched before Gavin. The lines that worry had carved in his face the past hour softened. “Why did you do that, Gavin?”
“I wanna stay.”
“In this place? I’ve got a better place, and we’ll stop at a ghost town on the way. Do you want to go to an Old West ghost town?”
His eyes wide, Gavin nodded. “Are ghosts there?”
“Just a couple of small ones.” Cade pointed to the scattered mittens. “Now pick those up like your mother asked you.”
Gavin galloped across the floor, scooped up the mittens and shoved them in his pockets.
Jenna blew out a breath. One small crisis averted. If only Zendaris could be distracted by ghost towns.
“That’s better. Pancakes or eggs this morning?”
“Both!”
As she slid into the car next to Cade, she touched his arm. “Thanks for defusing that back there. That could’ve wound up in a major tantrum, and you do not want to see a three-year-old boy throw a tantrum.”
“It’s not pretty when someone else’s kid does it, so I can’t imagine it would look any better on my son.”
Jenna glanced over her shoulder. Had Gavin noticed Cade calling him his son? They needed a quiet moment to tell him together, but when exactly would that be?
Cade needed to tell her why Kevin had been murdered and what it had to do with Zendaris and why it prompted them to flee from the most comfortable bed she’d had in three days. The most comfortable bed she’d had in three years, because Cade was beside her.
As Cade pulled out of the hotel parking lot, Jenna closed her eyes and got lost in the sensations of last night. Cade hadn’t forgotten what she liked and how she liked it. She always did purr beneath his skilled touch, and nothing had changed.
Jenna gave her cheek a small slap. She had to get her head out of the clouds and her mind out of the bed. Her gaze ticked down to the speedometer as they hit the highway. They were on the run again, which meant danger had descended. So much for the brief respite at the hotel.
“Are you falling asleep over there?”
“Nope. Wide awake.”
He lifted one eyebrow. “I could’ve sworn I saw you slapping yourself.”
“I need some coffee...and some information.”
“The coffee I can promise you in another half hour or so. The information—” he jerked his thumb at Gavin kicking his feet in the air “—will have to wait.”
If Cade couldn’t talk about Kevin in veiled references in front of Gavin, it must be bad.
They approached a suburb of Albuquerque and pulled into the parking lot of a chain restaurant. They spent the time at breakfast entertaining Gavin.
Jenna studied Cade coloring his fifth cow. It felt good to share the guilt of uprooting Gavin every fifteen minutes with someone else. Her shoulders ached from all the remorse.
“Where are we headed after this, Cade?” She tried to keep the weariness from her voice.
“We’ll go east until I hear from Prospero.”
“Why haven’t you heard from them yet?”
He shrugged. “Maybe they don’t have anything to report, or any help to give.”
“We don’t need them. Between the two of us and our vast experience, I think we can find a safe place to hole up.”
“It would be easier to do with help from Prospero.” He scratched his chin with the red crayon, leaving a mark. “They can provide fake IDs, cash, oversight.”
“From what I saw in your little black bag, you have IDs, I still have lots of cash and we can provide our own oversight.”
“We won’t wait for them, but I’m not going to refuse their help when it’s offered. If it’s offered.” His dark eyes clouded over, turning a shade of gray.
It’s the first time he’d acknowledged all might not be well with Prospero. Had Jim the traitor been right? Did members of Prospero suspect Cade of having the plans in his possession? Not Cade’s team members and not Jack Coburn. Coburn had handpicked Prospero Team Three’s members and shared a tight bond with them. And Jack Coburn was Prospero.
They finished breakfast and made a beeline for the car. Jenna buckled Gavin into his car seat and draped a blanket across his knees. He usually fell asleep in the car, anyway, but she wanted to make sure he was warm and cozy to speed things along.
The tension between her and Cade was as thick as an early summer fog rolling in from Coronado Bay. Amazing to think that less than twelve hours ago, they’d been wrapped in each other’s arms with no boundaries between them.
After about the hundredth time peeking into the backseat, she squeezed the toe of Gavin’s boot. “Are you sleeping?”
His long dark lashes fluttered once on his smooth cheeks, but other than that he didn’t stir at her touch.
Swinging around to face Cade, she said, “Okay, spill. What the hell happened to Kevin and how do you know Zendaris is responsible?”
His gaze darted to the rearview mirror. “You don’t waste any time, do you?”
“I’ve been cooling my jets for about three hours now. I don’t like being kept in the dark.”
“You’d rather I blurt all this stuff out in front of Gavin? Isn’t that how you kept him feeling secure all these years? You never let the turmoil of your life bubble over in front of him?”
“Yes, but now he’s sleeping, so stop stalling.”
Cade set his jaw and drilled the highway with his gaze. “When I met with Kevin last night he had a proposition for me.”
“A proposition?” Her stomach dipped and did backflips.
“Zendaris had tracked him down somehow.” He waited for her gasp to subside. “I guess even Zendaris knew enough that I wouldn’t give in to blackmail over my old man if they snatched him.”
“How did they find him?”
“I have no idea. How did they find you?” He lifted his shoulders. “They have their resources just like we do.”
“What did they want with him?” She held her breath hoping for a different answer than the one she knew in her heart.
“They wanted to use him to get to me. They promised him money if could turn Gavin over to them.”
“B-but he refused.” Jenna hugged herself because she couldn’t hug Cade.
“Did he?” He swerved sharply to avoid roadkill in their lane. “He knew I’d never let him get close to Gavin, so Kevin had another proposition for me.”
He stopped speaking and clenched his jaw so tightly that Jenna could hear his teeth grinding.
She waited, afraid to touch him—afraid not to.
After a few minutes, he continued. “Kevin figured we could make a deal with Zendaris. I’d hand Gavin over to Kevin, Kevin would hand Gavin over to Zendaris and then I’d hand the plans over to Zendaris and get Gavin back.”
Her jaw dropped. “Kevin really believed that would work? He really believed you’d let your son anywhere near that maniac? Either of those maniacs?”
“I don’t know what he believed. The dollar signs had clouded his vision and probably his senses.”
“And that’s when you left?” She shifted her gaze to her hands folded in her lap, her knuckles white, her fingers red.
Cade sucked in a breath. “Do you think I had something to do with Kevin’s murder?”
Did she? When Cade got that dangerous look in his eye, when his muscles coiled into a spring until he looked ready to strike anyone, she didn’t know him anymore. That wasn’t the same man who could color balloons and cows with Gavin. That wasn’t the same man who could tease her to heights of passion.
“No, but I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
He drew his brows over his nose and shot a curious look at her. “I didn’t. I left.”
“What did Kevin tell you about how he left things with Zendaris?”
“He said he’d told them I wouldn’t let him anywhere near my son, and didn’t know where I was, anyway.”
“Either he was lying to you or Zendaris’s men thought he was lying to them.” She shivered and cranked up the heat. “What if they had tracked Kevin to the bar while he met with you?”
“They may have.”
“Kevin called you on your cell phone. What if they have that phone now?” Her gaze darted to the black phone in the cup holder. “What if they call you?”
“I’ve told you. The phone is special, untraceable. Even when someone calls me, the number doesn’t show up on their phone. They’re not interested in calling me. They’d rather do other things.”
“And yet they didn’t make a move on you last night?”
“They may have tried.” He shoved his foot against the accelerator. “I might have been careless last night, but I always make sure there’s nobody following me—always.”
“Nobody followed you back to the hotel last night?”
“I made sure of it, but they must’ve been at the bar. If not when I was at Ted’s, then later to meet with Kevin. Who knows? Maybe Kevin had set up a meeting with them, thinking he could make the deal with me and then let them know he’d be getting his hands on Gavin.”
“Instead, they killed him.”
“I warned him.” Cade pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can see him trying to con a couple of thugs for an international arms dealer. He probably thought he had them up to the second they took his life.”
His armor seemed to have slipped a little, so she rubbed her knuckles on the rough denim covering his thighs. “I’m sorry, Cade.”
“Why?”
“He was your father. You loved him once as a child.”
“He wasn’t worthy of it.”
She turned her head, blowing out a breath and fogging the window. “At that moment he was. At the moment he made you laugh, at the moment he cheered you on at your first swim meet, at the moment he read you a story. He was worthy then.”
She didn’t know if she was getting through to him at all, but her words made her own nose tingle. She’d never even had those moments with her parents. They’d been too busy with their social scene, taking exotic vacations without her and her sister, using them as props for the obligatory family portrait.
“I want to be there for the long haul with Gavin.”
Wiping her cheek, she faced him, or at least his hard profile. “You will be.”
“Haven’t done such a great job of it yet.”
“When are we going to tell him you’re his father?”
“Maybe we should wait.”
“Really? Wait for what?” In her bones, she felt that Cade needed his son now, needed that connection.
“Maybe we should wait for all this to settle down.”
She chewed her lip and clasped her hands between her knees. “Do you want to make sure you can be his father in more than name only?”
“Something like that.”
She laughed, and he jerked his head toward her. “Do you want to take that fatherhood class first? Buy a few dad clothes? Prepare for fireside chats?”
His forehead creased. “Something wrong with that?”
“Ask any parent—there’s not much preparation you can do. You’re his father, Cade, and it’s high time he knows it.”
She folded her arms. “Unless you’re scared.”
He snorted. “I’m not afraid.”
She slid a glance at his hands gripping the steering wheel. “Not even an owner’s manual for children would’ve changed Kevin. He did the best he could, but ultimately he had skewed priorities.”
His eyes darted to the rearview mirror. “Yeah, priorities.”
By late afternoon, they’d put a few hundred miles between themselves and Kevin’s killers. Had Zendaris’s men even known Cade was in Albuquerque? Maybe that’s why they murdered Kevin. Maybe in the end Kevin wouldn’t give them any information about his son and grandson.
Of course, Cade had never thought of that. It wouldn’t occur to him now that he was busy distancing himself from his father and the hope of some sort of reconciliation.
They pulled into a small town somewhere near the Colorado border. How could anyone find them here? Of course, she’d never believed she’d be discovered in Lovett Peak.
“How does that look?” Cade pointed a finger over the steering wheel, at a cozy roadside motel.
“Looks like Mr. Cramer may not even have to use his credit card for this place. They’re probably just as happy to accept cash.”
“Are you implying it’s a dump?”
“If it has a shower, a bed and some food nearby, it’s heaven.”
“Are we home now, Mommy?”
Jenna reached into the backseat and squeezed one of Gavin’s bouncing knees. “We’re on our way to a new home, honey bunny.”
“With him?” He reached out both hands toward Cade and wiggled his fingers.
“We’re going to talk about that.” Jenna winked. Gavin’s comment was the perfect opening.
Cade squealed to a stop next to the motel office. “But now we’re going to check into our motel.”
Jenna shot Cade a look through narrowed eyes. Dodged that one. Cade had been all in her face a few days ago about giving Gavin the big news. Funny how confronting your past could change things.
Cade registered at the front desk and dangled the key from his finger as he led the way outside. “Number fifteen, garden view.”
“Do we need to move the car?”
“There’s no parking on that side. The woman at the front desk said we’re good here.”
Their room faced a small courtyard with shrubbery, potted plants and hanging baskets of flowers.
She sniffed the air for their fragrance. “This isn’t half bad.”
“Not as nice as that suite in Albuquerque.”
“Eh, suites are overrated.”
He reached past her to push open the door and brushed her arm. “I’ll never forget that suite.”
She met his dark gaze and knew he wasn’t talking about the flat-screen TV. She wanted to kiss him right then and there, kiss away his pain, his disappointment and his fear that he’d be the same kind of dad that Kevin was to him.
But Gavin had scampered into the room ahead of them, and she didn’t want to confuse him with any displays of affection toward Cade until they’d had a chance to talk to him.
Gavin had never seen her with a man. Even though she hadn’t been with Cade in three years, she’d taken her marriage vows seriously. Heck, no man could compare to Cade, anyway. It had been love at first sight on her end. She’d never believed in that before, but she’d lived it.
Gavin darted around the room and said, “Where’s the little bar?”
Cade laughed. “The little bar?”
“He means the minibar, don’t you, Gavin?” She dug her fists into her hips. “Looks like someone else will never forget that suite. You’ve corrupted him with a five-dollar chocolate bar.”
“Doesn’t look like there are any minibars in here.” Cade scooped up Gavin and hoisted him in the air. “But I saw a park on the way, and I’ll bet you could use some exercise.”
“Ball?” Gavin’s brown eyes sparkled and he kicked his feet.
“Sure, we can get a ball. Do you know how to swim?”
“Swimming pool!”
Cade looked at Jenna over the top of Gavin’s head. “Does he?”
“He took some lessons at the YMCA in Lovett Peak. I wouldn’t say he can swim, but he does a mean dog paddle and he’s not afraid of the water at all.”
“I wouldn’t expect him to be.”
“You teach me?” Gavin was patting Cade on top of the head.
“Cade’s a great swimmer.” Jenna didn’t want to waste another minute or refer to Gavin’s dad as Cade one more time. She sat on the edge of the bed, and patted the mattress. “Let’s sit down for a talk before we run off looking for balls and parks and swimming pools.”
Cade’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he met her eyes, but he took a seat next to her, pulling Gavin into his lap.
Jenna wedged her finger beneath Gavin’s chin, turning his head so she could look into his eyes. “Do you remember when you asked me about your daddy?”
He nodded. “’Cuz Sam has a daddy.”
“Everyone has a daddy, and so do you. Remember I told you he was away?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, he’s back.” She curled her fingers around Gavin’s. “Cade is your daddy.”
His eyes wide, Gavin tipped his head back to look at Cade, his gaze searching his father’s face. A slow smile curved Gavin’s lips. “I have a daddy, too.”
Jenna blinked back her tears. “Yes, you do, and he loves you very much.”
Cade cleared his throat. “Your mom’s right, Gavin. I love you, and I’m going to be around for a while. I-is that a good thing?”
Jenna didn’t often see Cade unsure of himself. This small boy could make a tough Navy SEAL stutter with uncertainty.
Gavin nodded his head again, this time his smile stretching from ear to ear. “Are you gonna teach me swimming?”
“Yep. As soon as we get settled, we’re going to find a pool and turn you into a fish.”
Gavin giggled and squirmed off Cade’s lap. He then proceeded to run around the room propelling his arms like a swimmer.
Jenna rolled her eyes. “I told you he needs work.”
“He’s been strapped in a car seat for too long. He needs some fresh air and exercise.”
“Ball, ball, ball.”
Jenna held a finger to her lips. “Shh. We might have neighbors.”
She draped her arm around Cade’s hunched shoulders and whispered in his ear. “You can relax now. That went great. No tantrums, no tears.”
“Poor kid’s probably just happy to have any father.”
She pursed her lips. The man just wouldn’t give himself a break. “But he doesn’t have just any father. He has you, and he’s very lucky.”
Cade’s phone buzzed in his front pocket and he snatched it, glancing at the display. “It’s a cleared number, but I don’t recognize it.”
“Prospero?”
“Has to be.”
He punched the talk button and listened, while Jenna’s heart pounded in her chest.
He said, “Yeah.”
The pause that followed went on forever, and Jenna tugged at his sleeve.
Cade held up his hand. “Yeah, I can be there, but give me some time. Eight o’clock will work. Tomorrow night. Everything in order?”
Jenna scrambled for the pad of paper and motel pen near the phone by the bed and held them out to Cade, but he shook his head and tapped his head with his forefinger.
“Got it.” He ended the call, folding the phone between his hands.
“Well? Do they have a place for us?”
“Eventually.”
Jenna licked her lips. “What does that mean?”
“It means we’ll get our hideaway, once I show up at a meeting—a meeting where I could be the bait.”