Baby Daddy (17 page)

Reno’s office was across the hall from Liberty’s
, then we skipped a couple that were already assigned to agents.  Tulsa’s was next, and she was already focused on the computer screen.  We skipped a couple more before we reached Dallas’.

We continued on, just Christopher and I
, until we were nearly at the end of the hall.  “This one’s yours,” he said and led the way into the office.  I walked in and was looking around with amazement when I heard the door shut.  I felt Christopher’s hands on my shoulders and he turned me around.  Without any conversation, his lips covered mine and he pulled me against him.  His large hands spread across my back and urged me closer.  I gladly melted against him, loving the way my body felt against his, my softness against his hard chest and even harder erection.

Abruptly, he released me and I almost fell backward.  Luckily, the desk hit me at the back of my thighs, and I leaned against it weakly as Christopher paced around the room.

“God you really get to me, Killeen.”

“I do?” I echoed, as I tried to catch my breath.  One little kiss and I was acting like a
high school girl with her first crush.

He returned to me and reached out, almost touching me before pulling back his hand.  “You know you do.  It was hell being in the same room with you all day and not being ab
le to touch you.”

I swallowed back a smile.  So he had felt it, too.  That fact made me unreasonably happy. 
Of course, he was probably just horny.  At the moment, that was enough.  “It wouldn’t have killed you to smile at me once or twice.”

He dragged his fingers through his
chestnut-brown hair, tousling the medium-length strands.  “I couldn’t.  If I did, someone might misinterpret it.”

“Misinterpret it how
?  That you don’t hate me?”

His nostrils flared as he looked at me.  “Of course I
don’t hate you.  I like all of Roger’s kids.  I just don’t have the hots for the rest of them.”

It suddenly became ver
y important to me that he not think that night in his office made me feel uncomfortable around him.  Boldly, I walked forward until I was close enough to smell the spicy scent of his aftershave.  “You’re making too big of a deal of all this.  It was just one night.”  My voice, still husky from the smoke damage, dropped even lower.  “It was just sex.  I’m sure I’m not your only friend with benefits.”

I watched the muscle in his jaw tighten and flex as he considered my words.  For just a second, the spark in his dark blue eyes smoldered, then he dropped a shutter over it, masking his emotions.

“I knew it was a mistake,” he muttered and stalked to the door.  He paused briefly and sucked in a deep, steadying breath before he calmly turned the knob and walked outside.

I walked around my desk and collapsed on my big, cushy leather chair.  I couldn’t shake the hurt from Brandon’s desertion.  Even though I didn’t love him, his complete disregard for me and my feelings at such an emotional time was painful.  This thing, whatever it was that I was feeling for Christopher
, had to be a result of bad timing, combined with rejection and mixed liberally with my surging hormones.  Sure, he was gorgeous and hunky and the sexiest guy I’d ever met.  And the sex…well, that was indescribable.  But my experience was so limited that maybe that’s how sex should always be and Brandon had just been below average.

I had to admit, though, if I was honest with myself, I wouldn’t mind
getting naked with Christopher on a regular basis, but not if he was going to blow it all out of proportion.  He wasn’t my boyfriend…or the baby daddy of the tiny fetus inside me.  It had to be on my terms, which was gratification without emotion, or not at all.  If I was stupid enough to fall in love with him, working here, seeing him every day, watching him with other women would be unbearable.  And I couldn’t let myself start acting like a goofy schoolgirl, mooning over something I couldn’t have.

This baby was a game changer.  If I kept it or even carried it to term, Christopher would not just walk away, like Brandon had…he would run.  Christopher had a lot going for him, and the last thing he would want was someone else’s kid.

I leaned back in my chair and sighed.  I was all alone in this mess.  It shouldn’t matter how Christopher felt.

But it did.

I picked up the red envelope and took out all the papers.  There were plenty of pens and other office supplies in the desk drawers.  Someone, I suspect Pam, had done a good job of stocking everything I would need. I picked up a pen and started filling out the forms. I didn’t know how long I would be staying.  The only thing I knew for sure was that I needed good health insurance.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The air by the pool was really still at night. 
It usually was breezy until right at sundown when the wind died down and all the night sounds started.  Just at dusk, a large colony of bats flew over, starting their nightly search for insects.  Gerald had told us that the bats stayed in the area until mid-October when they migrated south to Mexico.  But during the summer months, they were a big tourist draw in downtown Austin with people gathering every evening on the Congress Street bridge to watch them pour out in an almost solid stream before heading off in all directions.  One bat could eat 2,000 to 6,000 insects each night, so they were welcomed residents, greatly reducing the number of insects in the area while providing the bats with much needed calories for their flights.

We were brain-dead after a day of going over files, so we welcomed the opportunity to just hang out around the pool.  As usual, Gerald knew of our arrival well in advance, so he had dinner laid out for us
.  Fresh fruit and vegetable trays, potato salad, several different types of chips, baked beans, coleslaw and platters of sandwiches that looked amazing.

By now, our shyness had worn off, and without preliminary, w
e each grabbed plates and piled them so high with the delicious food that it took two hands to support them.  One thing my generation seemed to do better than any generation before us was to have the ability to separate appetite from emotions.  Apparently, the only things that kept us from eating were having no food in the refrigerator or having a broken heart.  Right this moment, none of those applied to any of us.  We made our way to the large round picnic table and set our plates down, then went back for drinks.  Tonight Gerald had taken on the role of bartender and he quickly filled our orders.

“This
job is a lot tougher than I expected,” Tulsa said after we had started to eat.  “On the one hand, there’s so much information out there about everyone and everything.  On the other hand, people are able to create their own personas, almost like a split personality…their on-line character and their face-to-face reality.  It’s not going to be easy to separate the two without quite a bit of digging.”

“
I like the challenge,” Reno spoke up.  “I like magic, but it’s a small world that’s already crowded by superstars.  The motorcycles are a great creative outlet, but it’s not what I want to do day after day.  Finding clues and dealing with all sorts of people could be interesting.  I like the idea of righting a wrong.  You know, making a difference.”

He took a big swallow from his beer and stared off into the darkness.  “There’s been nothing
permanent in my life.  I’ve never made plans for a future because I wasn’t sure I’d have one.  Last year I had a friend pass, and it’s like she really never left.  Maybe it’s a Vegas thing, I don’t know.  Her Facebook profile is still up…like some kind of digital memorial.  Someone is still friending and unfriending people as if she’s got a smart phone in her urn.  Friends and family posted things like ‘
missing you
’ and ‘
happy birthday
’.  I wanted to go on there and write ‘
she’s fucking gone, get over it
’, but then I realized I was still looking up and expecting to see her walk into the bar where I worked.”

“That’s creepy,” Liberty said
and rubbed her arms as if a ghost had just passed by.

Tulsa
nodded.  “I think people are searching for immortality.  There’s a company that will maintain a website for you after you’re gone.  And they have a QR code on your tombstone so people can take their smart phones to the cemetery and see what’s new with their dead friend or find everything out about a stranger.  Now that’s creepy.”

“That’s probably why there’s such an interest in vampires and
werewolves right now,” I commented.  “Death doesn’t seem so scary if it’s not forever.”

“I think that’s why Roger wanted us to take over the agency,” Dallas said.  “It was his way
of being immortal.”

“He spread his sperm around without a second thought, but in his old age, he realized he needed us to carry on his legacy,” Tulsa added thoughtfully.  “Too bad he didn’t realize how much we needed him
while he was alive.”

“
I can’t say I’m sorry he was so promiscuous,” I told them.  “I always wanted a brother or sister.  Now I have four.”

Everyone nodded and lifted their glasses or cans and clicked them together.

“Maybe more,” Tulsa commented, which earned a groan.

“F
unny how this has all come together like it has,” Dallas concluded.

The next morning started with
a lesson on how to use the LexisNexis system.  The phone guy had come by and dropped off our new phones right at 8 a.m. Christopher made the mistake of handing them out before he began his demonstration.  So, all of us had to put aside our almost irresistible desire to play with our new phones to pay attention as Christopher showed us all the options of the information system.

I had chosen an iPhone 5c in yellow so I could transfer all my music from my old iPhone that was about to be disconnected because I hadn’t paid the bill. 
It was burning a hole in my pocket while I tried to focus.  Considering our mercurial relationship, I didn’t want to give Christopher an opportunity to call me out for not catching on fast enough.

“Okay…so this system isn’t too hard
.  Any questions?” he asked.

None of us had any because it seemed simple enough.  The hard part would come later when we actually were using it for real.  Christopher must have sensed that because he smiled and added.

“Don’t hesitate to ask if there’s something you need and don’t know how to find.  Remember, teamwork is what makes this place successful.  No one should ever feel like they’re not part of the same team.  Never keep secrets!  When we say ‘
I got your back
’ that
really
means that we’ll be there, helping out as soon as humanly possible.  This can be a dangerous business.  Okay?”  Christopher scanned the room and sought a visual affirmation to the policy.  “Good…now I think we should split into teams, take a file or two and start checking out these suspects before one of them tries again.”

Tulsa said, “We kind of talked about this last night, and I decided to stay in the office and work on the security system.  Then, if anyone in the field needs some info, I’ll be at the computer and can help them out.”

“And since I can’t get around very well, I thought maybe I could go through Roger’s mementos,” Liberty suggested, pointing toward the boxes in the corner.

“Great idea,” Christopher told her.  “There’s no telling what you’ll find in there. 
Roger was a pack rat.  He could have been on that show
Hoarders
.  I think he kept every single item during his band years and now it’s all in those boxes.  Harlan said he doubted there was anything important in there, so they were pretty low priority.”

“Oh, I saw an episode of
Hoarders
while I was in the hospital,” Liberty declared with excitement, then frowned.  “You don’t think it’s just boxes of trash like on that show, do you?”

Christopher shrugged.  “I
guess you’ll find out.  You’ll probably be more comfortable in here so you can spread things out on the table and keep your leg propped up.”

“
I’ve got a line on a state-of-the-art document-management system so she can input whatever she finds and cross reference it so we can find it again,” Tulsa suggested.

“Great…how much?”

“Software to connect to the scanner, under $500, tops.  It would also give us a central place to create, share and discuss content and projects without any bottlenecks.  And we could build files on clients and bad guys.  I can’t believe all of this information isn’t already computerized.”

“Roger wasn’t much into computers.  He liked paper,” Christopher told her.  “But now that he’s not calling the shots, it’s time we moved into the twenty-first century.  Go ahead and set it up.  Oh, and w
e got the copies of the security cameras that were actually working the day of the bombing.   Maybe you and Liberty can check them out, too.”

“Reno and I want to work on the Simpson brothers’ file,” Dallas spoke up.  “Since they’re lawyers, maybe I’ll be able to gain their trust.”

“And we want to pay Lars a visit and see what he’s been up to,” Reno added.

Christopher clearly hadn’t seen that partnership coming.  They had left him with no option
except to accept their arrangement.  But, as he looked at me, I saw that he was not happy that he was going to be forced to partner up with me.

The boys helped Liberty get settled
with Eight on her lap and put all twelve boxes within her reach which pretty much walled her in.  Tulsa brought her laptop into the conference room and got started with the document system installation.

Dallas and Reno took their files and their new phones and left in the Range Rover that Dallas had chosen as his personal car.

With everyone else gone or busy, I glanced over at Christopher and caught him looking at me.

“I guess it’s you and me,” I said lightly.  Actually, I was kind of excited about going out with him for more than just the obvious sexual attraction thing.  I
would be learning the business from an expert, instead of blundering around like Dallas and Reno were probably going to do.

“I think
we should go after Dan Ward first,” I suggested.  “He fell far and hard because of Scandals and Roger.”

Christopher nodded.  “Let’s pull what we can off
Lexis before we start.”

I followed him to his office and stood behind him as he
logged on to the LexisNexis system.  A few clicks of the keys and information began to fill the screen.

“His ex-wife moved to L.A. right after the trail,”
Christopher commented as he continued to click on the keyboard.  The printer kicked on and several pages slid out.

“No address
for him?”

“Nope…
”

“How about the daughter
s?” I asked.

Christopher smiled.  “I know
how to find them.”

I gave him a sharp look, but he didn’t elaborate.

“Let’s look Lars up, too,” he said instead. “In case we hit a dead end with Dan, we’ll know where to go next.”

I opened the folder. 
“Here’s his social and last known address.” I gave him the information, and he entered it into the system as a new search.

“Bingo,”
Christopher said as the screen refreshed quickly.  He printed those pages out, then gathered all of them off the printer tray.    “Let’s go.” Christopher headed down the hall to the lobby.  “Pam, I’m on the road.”

“10-4,
” she answered.

I waved at her and hurried to catch up to Christopher.  I had long legs, but he was putting some distance between us.

Christopher popped the locks on his Mustang and I jumped into the passenger seat and buckled up.

We exited the parking lot onto the surface street at a higher rate of speed than I was accustomed to a
nd my hands gripped the bucket seat tightly.

A
lmost immediately, a police car pulled up next to us at the traffic light and I heard the chirp of its siren.  Christopher smiled and shook his head as he rolled his window down.

The cop in the car
was large and Hispanic and not someone I would ever want to be on the wrong side of.  He yelled, “Pull over, Amigo.”

“Not right now,
Antonio…I’ve got an appointment.”

“
You can’t tell a cop that!” I whispered urgently.  “He’s going to arrest you.”

“You haven’t sent me your reservation for the
ACC tournament yet…what gives?” the officer demanded.

“Just got too busy with Roger’s death…still $4,000?”

“Si…count you in?”

“
Hola to Maria.  Gotta go.”  Christopher rolled the window up and sped away as the cop tuned his lights off and followed more slowly.