“It’s been months since I spent any time at this old cabin.”
“Your mother told me you love it here, and I understand why. I love it too. Hey, we’ve already found something we agree about.”
“Speaking of my mother”—Kyle set aside his fishing pole and sat down next to her—“do you care to explain that statement about chicken recipes?”
Carrie laughed and pressed her forehead against her knees. “It’s simple. She gave me an insider tip about dealing with you, and now I know how to keep you content, you can bet I’m going to use it, and often.”
“I hope this has something to do with loving me.”
“I do love you,” she said firmly, “with all my heart.”
He leaned forward and nibbled on her earlobe. “Have you ever made love on a dock?” he whispered.
Carrie jerked her head back with surprise. She would have sworn Kyle Harris had never made love outside a bed. The man was full of surprises. “Kyle?”
“Hmm.”
“Aren’t you afraid we’ll get splinters?”
“I’m not worried about it.”
“What about the fish? We might scare them away.”
He paused as if he hadn’t thought about that possibility. “To my way of thinking, the taste of trout is greatly overrated.”
Kyle had never spent a time like this. Or loved like this. It had been against his better judgment when he agreed to put off returning to Kansas City. But Carrie was right; they needed this time together. No day had ever been more perfect.
It wasn’t the lovemaking that was special, although God knew it had been incredible with them from the first: the closeness they shared, the way they laughed together, played together. They spoke of the future as if nothing could hold back their happiness. They talked about their child.
“Did you ever think about our baby as a person?” she asked him at one point. Kyle was lying on his back in a meadow, his head nestled in Carrie’s lap.
“Not really. But I’ve thought a good deal about what your father said about loving a child so much it feels like your guts are being ripped out.”
Carrie smiled as she chewed on the end of a dandelion. “My father certainly has a delicate way of saying things, doesn’t he?”
“I already love our child,” Kyle said. His heart went tender every time he thought about the baby nestled in Carrie’s womb.
“I do too.”
He thought back to the years while he was growing up and realized he’d never fully appreciated his mother.
The sound of a car engine broke their tranquility. Kyle stiffened and sat upright. “Stay here,” he instructed.
Naturally Carrie didn’t. Luckily they had a clear view of the dirt road that led to the cabin. His relief was great when he recognized his mother’s car. For one of the few times in his life, he was actually glad to see her. He would have Carrie ride back to Kansas City with her while he dealt with the Secret Service people.
Lillian climbed out of the car. Shading her eyes, she waved when she saw them coming down the hill.
Carrie hurried ahead of Kyle and embraced his mother. “We’re married!” she cried, her joy echoing around them like church bells.
Kyle tucked an arm around his wife’s shoulders.
“I see you’re back safe and sound,” Lillian announced and gave him a motherly peck on the cheek. “And now I understand congratulations are in order.”
“You’re going to be a grandmother,” he announced.
Lillian beamed. “So I hear. I imagine I’ll make a better grandmother than I ever did a mother. It’s like God’s decided to give me a second chance to do something right.”
“Come inside out of the sun,” Carrie invited.
They were chattering away like a pair of magpies, Kyle thought, amused, when they stepped into the house. But their chatter died abruptly.
Max Sanders was sitting in the rocker in the middle of the cabin as if he’d been impatiently waiting for their return.
18
Kyle immediately placed himself between Sanders and the two women. But before he could speak, Lillian stepped around him and whispered, in a shocked, strangled voice, “Moonrunner?”
“Summerlove?”
Carrie and Kyle stared at each other in openmouthed disbelief as Kyle’s mother and Sanders hurried toward each other. Both were talking at the same time. Then they were in each other’s arms.
All at once Kyle felt the need to sit down. He’d just found his father, the man he’d criticized and loathed all these years.
It was one thing to know Max had deserted his mother when she was pregnant; it was another to realize he was a felon wanted by more agencies than he could name.
“Kyle,” Lillian said, wiping the moisture from her cheek as she turned to face her son, “this is your father.”
“So I gathered,” he said, with a decided lack of enthusiasm.
Max looked at Kyle as if seeing him for the first time. “I have a son?”
Lillian nodded. “I tried desperately to find you,” she explained, emotion rocking her voice. “I did everything I could, but when I didn’t hear from you after three months, I had no choice but to go home.”
“I was in jail.”
“Jail? But—”
“Mother,” Kyle said, placing his hand on Lillian’s shoulders and gently easing her away. “You should know this man is wanted by the Secret Service.” He hated to disrupt their happy reunion, but Sanders could well be armed and dangerous.
“Moonrunner?”
“His name is Max,” Kyle said. “Max Sanders.”
“Max,” she echoed. “My name is Lillian.”
“Lillian,” Max whispered. His gaze went from her to Kyle, and he seemed at a loss for words, which was just as well. Kyle welcomed the opportunity to figure a way to get his wife and mother away unscathed.
“Maybe it would be best if we all sat down and talked this out,” Kyle suggested, but he didn’t trust Sanders, no matter what his mother claimed.
They sat at the square wooden table. Max and Lillian stretched their arms across the top and held hands as if they couldn’t bear to be apart ever again. They had eyes only for each other.
“You might want to explain why you abandoned my mother,” Kyle said stiffly.
“I didn’t know her by any name other than Summerlove,” Max explained, without looking at Kyle, “and by the time I could get back to her, she was gone.”
“I can’t tell you how it warms my heart to know my father’s a jailbird.”
“Kyle,” Carrie said softly, pressing her hand over his. Her eyes pleaded with him not to be sarcastic.
It was hard to refuse her anything, but Kyle had no warm feelings in his heart for this man who was said to have sired him.
“Has everyone gone daft?” he asked, unwilling to let Carrie’s romantic soul taint his judgment. “We’re dealing with a real live bad guy here. No one seems to realize we could be in grave danger. Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea to throw open our arms and welcome him into the family just yet.”
Max grinned ear to ear. “He’s my son, all right. Damn, he sounds just like me thirty years ago.”
“Tell me everything,” Lillian urged, ignoring Kyle’s outburst. “You were arrested for the bombings, weren’t you? Why wasn’t there anything in the news? I read the papers for weeks, searching for any bit of information I could find about you. It was as if you disappeared from the face of the earth.”
“First,” Max said, looking at Kyle, “you’re in no danger, at least not from me. I’m working undercover for the Secret Service.”
“You don’t honestly expect us to believe that?”
“But you said the locker was full of papers and other stuff that looked like evidence,” Carrie was quick to remind him.
“You found the locker?” Any fatherly affection Max displayed was short-lived as he glared suspiciously at Kyle. “I hope to God you didn’t take anything.”
“Y
ou needn’t worry, I put everything back, just the way I found it. I may have a fool for a father, but I’m not one myself.”
“Kyle,” Carrie said under her breath.
Sanders ignored the insult. “I’m curious how you knew where to find it. There must be a thousand lockers between here and Kansas City.”
“Not quite a thousand.” Kyle knew he sounded smug, but he didn’t care. His mother and Carrie might be taken in by Sanders’s smooth talk, but he wasn’t nearly as gullible as the two women. Sanders had a long way to go to prove himself, as far as Kyle was concerned.
“Kyle told me he tried to reason it out, thinking what he’d do if he were in your shoes,” Carrie volunteered.
Kyle silenced her with a heated look, wishing he’d never told her anything.
“You even think alike,” Lillian said. She sounded just the way she had when he was a boy and had done something clever.
“I figured you’d want whoever found the key to think the locker was one of countless hundreds lost in the big city. It made more sense to me that you’d choose an out-of-the-way location you could reach on short notice.”
Max seemed impressed with his reasoning. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
“Like father, like son,” Lillian put in cheerfully, a second time.
Max beamed toward Lillian and returned his attention to Kyle. “Then you know what’s there?”
“I know.”
Max’s eyes firmly held his. “I’ve been working undercover on this case close to eighteen months,” he said. “I had everything I needed when someone blew my cover. I barely managed to get away alive, and staying that way has been something of a chore since.”
“You’re running from Nelson,” Carrie said with a touch of arrogance, as if she had everything figured out. Unfortunately, Kyle was in the dark.
“How much do you know about Nelson?” Sanders asked, his eyes narrowed.
“Enough,” Kyle answered.
“He’s the really, really bad guy,” Carrie supplied. “He was the one who stole the counterfeiting plates from you.”
“Stole the plates?” Sanders shook his head. “I don’t know who told you that, but I wasn’t interested in the counterfeit plates. The agency needs to link those plates to Nelson, not me. The plates are a large part of our case. If they’re missing, I can guarantee you I didn’t take them.”
“But who blew your cover?” Lillian asked.
It irked Kyle how easily his mother and Carrie were taken in by all this.
“I’m not sure,” Sanders said, “but I have my suspicions.”
“Did you know Richards was killed?” Carrie made it sound as if the agent’s demise was part of a soap opera plot she was currently following. “Personally, I figure Nelson was involved in that.”
Sanders grinned. Kyle had the feeling it didn’t happen often. “I don’t doubt Nelson was responsible.”
“But why would he kill Richards?”
Sanders hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure he should explain.
“Go on,” Carrie urged. “You can trust us, we’re family. Besides, Kyle and I are already involved. We were supposed to have been in the theater but we—”
“Now just a minute,” Kyle interrupted. He was as keen as Carrie to satisfy his curiosity, but he didn’t want to hear anything that would place them in more danger than they already were. “There are some matters we’re better off not knowing.”
“Kyle’s right,” Sanders said. “It’s best I don’t tell you a lot of this.”
Carrie tapped her finger against her lips. “Kyle and I think Richards might have been setting us up. We can’t be certain of that, of course. All we know was that he asked Kyle to meet him in a movie theater and the next thing Richards ends up in the morgue.”
“He was the one who told us you were a counterfeiter, but it wasn’t plates I found in that locker,” Kyle added, following Carrie’s train of thought.
“Right,” she said quickly. “And you were working undercover, and someone ratted on you.” She propped her elbows on the table and slouched forward. “This is almost too easy. Richards was a bad apple.”
“What about Bates?” Kyle wasn’t sure he could trust Richards’s partner either.
“I don’t know for certain,” Sanders admitted reluctantly.
“I don’t either,” Kyle said thoughtfully. “Who was that with him at the Mexican restaurant?”
“So you were there?”
“Yeah, I was killing time in the men’s store across the street. When I saw you, I wasn’t sure what to do, so I left. Who was with Bates?”
“That’s Bowie. He’s clean. At least I’d be real surprised if he wasn’t.”
“If you all know one another and you work for the same agency, why are you running from the Secret Service?” These were questions Kyle couldn’t ignore.
“They don’t know me personally,” Sanders clarified. “They only know about me. For the last thirty years, most of my assignments have been undercover. The feds and I made a deal when I was arrested for the bombings,” Sanders said, directing his words to Lillian. “I got off doing no time, if I helped identify other militants. I wasn’t keen on turning traitor, but as I got deeper into the underground, I learned that several groups had their own agenda, and it had nothing to do with protesting the war in Vietnam.”
“Are…are you married?” Lillian asked in a still, small voice, almost as if she were afraid to know.
“No,” Sanders said, squeezing her hands. “I never could bring myself to put a wife and family through this kind of life.” He hesitated and then asked, “What about you?”
“No…never,” she whispered.
Kyle had never seen his mother blush, but she did so then.
“I couldn’t forget you. Somehow I always believed we’d find each other again.”
“There was this natural yogurt salesman several years back,” Carrie supplied, “but nothing ever came of that.”
Kyle couldn’t have been more surprised. “You know about Harold?”
Carrie grinned. “I told you your mother and I got to know each other, didn’t I?”
Kyle scratched the side of his head. He’d never understand women. He wondered what else his mother had told her; no doubt she’d learned about the time he ran away from home. His mother had probably relayed every other embarrassing detail of his youth as well. All because Lillian thought they were cute.
“Let’s get back to the matters at hand, shall we?” Kyle said impatiently. He hated to interrupt the reunion scene, but there were more pressing details to clarify. “First off, why were Richards and Bates after you if you’re all on the same side?”
“That’s a long story,” Sanders said.
“I’ve got time.”
“Actually, you don’t. The sooner the three of you get out of here, the better. Nelson might have a tail on me.”
“If you think I’m leaving you after all these years, you don’t know me, Miles Sanders,” Lillian said firmly.
“Max.” Kyle corrected her. “My father’s name is Max.” It was then he realized he was acknowledging Sanders as his father. He would have liked to deny it, but he couldn’t, not when the evidence sat across from him.
Carrie seemed to realize the same thing as well. “Remember when I said Sanders looked familiar?” she whispered.
“All I can remember is you claiming you’d seen him on Unsolved Mysteries,” Kyle muttered.
“Okay, I admit he wasn’t on any episode of my favorite crime show, but he did seem familiar. That’s because there’s a strong resemblance between you two.”
“You know,” Lillian said, her eyes sparkling with delight, “you’re right. It’s in the nose and the mouth. Why, now I see the two of you together, it’s amazing how much you’re alike.”
Frankly Kyle thought he was a hell of a lot better-looking than Sanders and didn’t take kindly to the idea of what his mother seemed to think was a striking resemblance.
“I??
?m serious about the possibility of my having been followed,” Sanders said, breaking into the conversation.
Kyle was grateful. Having his mother and Carrie compare his facial features to Sanders’s had become downright embarrassing.
“I did my best to cover my tracks, but I can’t guarantee that Nelson and his men aren’t right behind me.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Lillian insisted.
Sanders ignored that and focused his attention on Kyle. “Give me the key, please.”
Kyle had been waiting for this moment. Everything had been leading up to it. It was the reason Sanders was there; he wanted that key. Carrie and his mother were studying him, wondering what he was going to do. Kyle wished he knew himself.
“I’m not sure I can give it to you,” he said, meeting Sanders’s gaze straight on.
Despite his initial mistrust, Kyle wanted to believe the explanations Sanders had given. It helped that the little information he’d supplied was supported by what Kyle knew to be true.
“You still haven’t answered all my questions,” he added, stalling.
“I can’t, and I won’t until this is over.” Sanders held out his palm. “I know this is difficult, you don’t have a reason in the world to trust me, but I’m asking you to do so.”
It impressed Kyle that Sanders didn’t try to use the fact they were father and son to persuade him.
“Let’s compromise,” Kyle said after a moment.
“Compromise?”
Kyle could tell Sanders had little fondness for compromises. “Yeah,” Kyle said, holding the older man’s eyes. “I go with you. We’ll see this thing through together.”
“No.” Carrie’s reaction was immediate. “Kyle, are you nuts? You don’t know anything about undercover work. You might do something stupid and get both of you killed.”
“I’ll risk it,” he said, his gaze connected to Sanders, “if he’s willing.”
“This is the way you want it?”
“Yes,” Kyle said without qualms.
“You know Nelson is after me,” Sanders said starkly. “That man plays for keeps.”