Lisa Childs - The Agent's Redemption

Because now he uttered the question she’d been waiting for him to ask since she’d overheard his confrontation with the reporters.

“Is he my son, Becca?” he asked. “Is Alex mine?”

Chapter Four

Jared’s heart pounded fast and furiously as he waited for her answer. Or maybe because he’d touched her. He shouldn’t have touched her. Because now he wanted to touch her again.

But if her son was his and she had never told him...

Could he ever forgive her? She had stolen almost six years of her son’s life from him—years he couldn’t get back. But her son couldn’t be almost six years old. He was too small.

Like Jared had been for his age...

No. He shook his head in silent denial of his own thoughts and suspicions.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have no business asking you that. I must’ve let Kyle Smith get inside my head.” And of course the reporter had just been trying to get a reaction out of him—some scandalous footage to run over and over on his broadcast.

She blinked as her blue eyes widened with confusion. “Kyle Smith?”

“The reporter.” Jared chuckled. “That egomaniac would hate that you don’t know his name.”

She glanced toward the black screen of her TV. “I try not to pay much attention to the news.”

But since she’d known about Amy Wilcox’s disappearance, he doubted that she was any more successful at ignoring the media than he was.

“I’ve been working on that myself.” In his job, he had to know how to handle the media or he could tip off a suspect or undermine his own investigation. He lifted a hand toward his throbbing head. “Maybe I only let him get to me because of the concussion.”

He wished he could blame the head injury. But he suspected that maybe it was wishful thinking instead...that Becca’s son was his. He wanted a connection to her—something more than Lexi’s unsolved murder to bind them together.

“How did you get the concussion?” she asked, her voice soft with concern.

After the way he’d treated her, how could she care about him at all? But that was just her nature, the reason she’d wanted to become a doctor, because she cared about people. All people. It was nothing personal. She’d had six years to realize that, although he hadn’t been sensitive about her feelings, he’d been right. She hadn’t really been in love with him.

“How did you get hurt?” she asked again, and now the concern was in her beautiful eyes as she studied his face, maybe trying to medically determine if he’d checked himself out too soon.

He shrugged off her concern and his own stupidity. “I didn’t stick to just profiling.”

“Do you ever?” she asked, and a twinkle flashed briefly in her blue eyes as if she was teasing him. Maybe she’d forgiven him for how he’d treated her.

“As a profiler, I do have to spend a lot of time out in the field,” he said, “analyzing the crime scenes, the evidence, interviewing suspects, hopefully following leads to more suspects...”

“I know what you do,” she reminded him.

Six years ago he’d kept her apprised of his investigation—probably too apprised. He’d told her when he’d interviewed her sister’s fiancé. But she hadn’t agreed with his findings. Even if the guy hadn’t had an alibi, Jared truly hadn’t felt like the man had killed his fiancée. Harris Mowery’s shock and anger over Lexi’s disappearance had seemed very genuine. But maybe Jared had been so cocky and overconfident back then that he hadn’t read Harris as well as he’d thought he had.

“So what were you doing this time?” she asked. “That wasn’t just profiling?”

“Protection duty.”

She laughed. “You were playing bodyguard?”

He should have been offended. After all he wasn’t the too-small-for-his-age child that he had once been. He was tall and muscular now, but he was no bodyguard. He’d learned all the skills of being a field agent, but protecting someone wasn’t something he had done often enough to get good at it. Usually he came on the scene when it was too late for protection—when the victim had already gone missing or been found dead.

He rubbed his head where he’d taken the blow from the butt of a gun. He was lucky he hadn’t been shot instead, but the killer hadn’t wanted to forewarn his victim and have her get away again.

“I’m not a very good bodyguard,” he admitted.

Her eyes widened with alarm. “Did whoever you were protecting get hurt?”

He breathed a sigh of relief. “No, but that was thanks to better agents.”

She tilted her head, and a lock of blond hair fell across her cheek. He wanted to brush it back; he wanted to touch her again. He was close enough. He only had to lift his hand again, like he had touched her lips. His skin tingled yet from that too-brief contact.

Then she mused aloud, “You are different than you used to be.”

A self-deprecating grin tugged at his mouth. “Less cocky than I used to be?”

She smiled, too. “Yes.”

He didn’t have to tell her why; she knew—because he’d failed to find Lexi’s killer. He had failed all the subsequent victims of Lexi’s killer, too. And most of all, he’d failed Becca.

He hadn’t given her the closure she needed. She didn’t seem to think it would help, but he’d seen it help others—when he’d found their loved ones’ killers. He’d had a lot of success in his profiling career with the Bureau. He’d actually had mostly success and just this one failure when it mattered most.

Because Becca mattered most.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. He couldn’t apologize enough to her—for so many reasons.

“I wish you’d stop saying that,” she murmured as she stepped back from him and lowered her gaze, as if she couldn’t look at him.

He stepped closer, not wanting any distance between them. And he touched her, just his fingers on her chin, tipping her face up so that she met his gaze again. So that she would see his sincerity when he told her, “But I am...sorry. I’m sorry for how I treated you. And I’m sorry for not catching your sister’s killer yet. And I’m sorry for letting Kyle Smith get to me so that I accused you of keeping my son from me.”

She pulled away from his touch and lowered her gaze again. Maybe she wasn’t willing to forgive his unfounded suspicion.

He groaned. “Right now I’m the most sorry about asking you if Alex is mine. I know you better than that. You would never do something—”

She lifted her hand and pressed her fingers to his lips, stilling them. “Jared...”

It was still there. The attraction. It had overwhelmed him six years ago, so that he’d acted on that attraction instead of his better judgment. If anything the attraction was even stronger now.

He lifted his hands to cup her shoulders, to pull her into his arms. But then his damn phone rang. He silently cursed the timing. But he couldn’t not take the call. A young woman was missing.

He stepped back from Becca, so that her hand fell from his face. And he pulled out his cell phone. He recognized the number as belonging to another agent—an agent who had recently become a good friend. So it could have been a personal call. He could have ignored it and reached for Becca again.

But dread clenched his stomach into knots. And he knew...

Even before he clicked the talk button, he knew what special agent Dalton Reyes would tell him. A body had been found. He was no longer working a disappearance; he was working a murder.

* * *

“AGENT BELL HERE,” he answered his cell.

But he wasn’t there. Even though he stood only a couple of steps from Rebecca, he was already gone—already off to handle whatever had come up with this call.