Читать книгу Just Eight Months Old... - Tori Carrington, Tori Carrington - Страница 11

Shell-shocked. That was the closest Chad could come to describing how he felt. No. That’s exactly how he would describe it. Having served with the Marines in Kuwait, he knew what it was like to hear sniper fire and not know where it had come from. The strange thing was that in this situation no one else had noticed the shot. Around him life went on as normal.

In the personnel office of PlayCo Industries, the nondescript, white-collar-to-the-bone comptroller Robert Morgan hung up the telephone then began fingering through a filing cabinet to retrieve Persky’s and Furgeson’s employment records. Outside in the hall a couple of second shift workers laughed, presumably on their way back from break. In another room across the way, a telephone rang on, with no one around to pick it up.

Even as he registered every sound, placed every person, he remained apart from them. The shot he’d taken hadn’t come from an unknown sniper’s gun; it had come from Hannah. Hannah and that precious baby girl whose veins carried his blood.

Thrusting his fingers through his hair, he glanced toward the open door, anxious to get out of there. To get back to the car and start seeking some answers that might help him make sense out of all this.

He’d never thought he’d be a father again. He’d sworn another child wouldn’t be born with the stigma of his name attached. It seemed like another lifetime since he’d even been around a baby. So long, he was unprepared for the instinctive surge of parental protection, of unconditional love that overtook him the instant he understood Bonny was his.

Still, it was all so hard to believe….

Just last month marked the fourth anniversary since the last moment he’d held his infant son, Joshua. Right before Joshua had been taken from him.

Scenes twisted through his mind. Images of misshapen metal, of an empty car seat lying in the middle of the road. Of his wife’s purse still sitting on the floor of the front seat.

His family.

A highway patrolman had tried to pry him from the scene when, at some point in the long nightmare, law officials had been contacted. And Chad had hauled off and slugged him, desperately needing to hold on to his family, though they were already gone. Their faces were burned forever into his memory, haunting him in the dark hours of the morning, taunting him whenever he experienced anything close to happiness…serving as a constant, caustic reminder that he didn’t deserve to be happy.

A torrent of emotion ripped through Chad’s gut. He focused on the back of Robert Morgan as he began copying the files he’d taken from the cabinet, but Chad really didn’t see him.

They’d argued that day, him and Linda. He winced from the memory of her packed suitcases, Joshua’s stuffed blue elephant hanging half out of a blue diaper bag, his son’s lashes bearing remnants of tears. Linda had accused him of putting his career above his family, an argument she’d made often. But that night she’d had enough. She was leaving him. Going home to her parents in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And there was nothing he could do to stop her.

Chad eyed the door, needing to escape. It was an accident, a voice in his head shouted. He resolutely refused to listen. It was no accident. He was to blame. He had killed his family as surely as if he’d driven them off that mountain road.

The experience had been more than Chad Hogan, Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigations, had been able to handle. He’d quit the Bureau, and never told anyone about his work there, not even Hannah. Too many bad memories. It was better to let her think that ID he flashed was bought somewhere in Florida. After he quit, he’d taken odd jobs as a skip-tracer to cover the basic necessities, and resolved to serve out a life sentence in which he wasn’t allowed to move past the guilt, the grief.

Then came Hannah.

The instant he met her, the shadows that dogged him began to recede. With all that curly red hair, those lively freckles and infectious laugh, she had loved life and lived to love. He’d been drawn to her like an addict was drawn to drugs. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t deserved her. He’d known that, too. But he’d been helpless to stop himself.

She had my baby and I didn’t even know it.

“I wish there was something I could do to help you.”

Chad blinked away the images crowding his head and stared at Robert Morgan who held out two blue file folders in his direction. He took them and cleared his throat. “I understand. This is fine.”

Morgan smiled and pushed up dark-rimmed glasses. “I have to admit, I still don’t know what all this is about. Your associates told me it didn’t concern PlayCo so I shouldn’t worry, but I can’t help it.”

“They were right. You shouldn’t worry, Mr. Morgan.” He tucked the files under his arm and shook the other man’s hand. “Thank you for your help, sir.”

“My, but you’re the independent one lately, aren’t you? Want to test your boundaries, is that it?” Hannah gave in to Bonny’s earnest attempts to escape her hold. She put her down in the driver’s seat, disappointment niggling at her that Bonny didn’t want to be held in the way Hannah needed to hold her after what had just happened—and didn’t happen—between her and Chad. She glanced around the interior of the underground parking garage. Chad had gotten them this far with a flash of his fake ID and a capable disposition, but her apprehension wouldn’t ease until they were out of the artificially bright parking area and well away from PlayCo Industries. And until he made it clear how he felt about having a daughter.

Bonny curled her stubby fingers around the door handle. Hannah realized her little girl wanted to follow Chad.

She reached into her purse and took out a bag of cheese crackers. Gaining her daughter’s attention, she tried to feed her a cracker only to have Bonny balk and take the fish-shaped snack away so she could feed herself.

Hannah laid her cheek against the leather headrest. It wasn’t too long ago when she had wanted to follow Chad, too. Everywhere. Anywhere. She smoothed back Bonny’s tufts of red hair, reveling in the feel of the baby-soft strands against her skin.

“This whole situation is surreal somehow,” she said quietly. “It’s so outside the norm, isn’t it, Munchkin?” Bonny just smiled and took another cracker. “Right about now Mommy would be feeding you dinner, wouldn’t she? In our cozy little yellow kitchen with the sunflowers on the wallpaper.” Right now their apartment in Little Italy couldn’t have seemed farther away. Hannah vaguely noticed the mess her daughter was making and reached for a wet towel also stashed in her purse.