Anna Adams - The Secret Father

“Exactly where was he training? The address.”

“He couldn’t tell me.” Maybe he just wouldn’t.

“What do you know about his family?”

“I saw pictures at his apartment and I asked about everyone in them.” His grandparents, hugging each other in photos on his mantel and his cousins, Sophie and Molly, who’d been his surrogate sisters. His mom, Beth, he’d seemed anxious about. She’d also never remarried after his father’s death, and he thought she was lonely.

If his mother’s loneliness mattered to him, wouldn’t his lover’s?

“You believe he had the training assignment?”

She nodded. Except for the moments when he’d made love to her, his mission had occupied him as if he was already gone. She took a deep breath and applied some logic. “Maybe he took leave and went to Tennessee. He was homesick.”

“That’s where he’s from? I’d give you time off to go see him if you’d get over this guy and concentrate on work.”

“He didn’t invite me.” He’d made her want to know his “people.” He’d made her love the place. He’d needed the blue-and-green misty mountains that backed every photo on his wall and each memory in his love of home. The air and the soil and the Smoky Mountains that formed Bardill’s Ridge, Tennessee, ran in his blood like the blood of his family.

It wasn’t her way or her father’s. They cared for their North Shore entry in the National Historic Register, but it was entrusted to them. It owned no part of her soul. Zach was rooted in those Tennesseean hills.

She turned back to the monitor on her desk. A headline, something about a pilot caught her eye. She clicked to read it.

A photo took shape. Even though she was thinking of Zach, she never expected to see his face.

But there he was. The full headline burned itself in her mind. “Pilot Lost On Mission—U.S. Navy Refuses Comment.”

Loss slammed into her. Her muscles clenched. Olivia splayed her fingers across the picture. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to breathe, praying she’d imagined his face. She made herself look again.

Zach. Dear God, Zach. “No.” Shaking her head, she sucked a breath out of dwindling oxygen.

“Hey.” Her dad caught her just in time to keep her head from slamming into the monitor.

In that second life changed. Forever.

She straightened, though her body felt ten times its normal weight. Tugging free of her father’s helping hands, she crossed both arms across her flat stomach. Her baby took precedence over a freefall into grief.

Zach was gone. She’d be their baby’s only parent, and she’d never know whether Zach had loved her even a little bit—enough to want their child.

“Dad.” His name broke in pieces in her mouth as she stared at her dead lover’s face. “I’m pregnant.”

A BLUNT FINGERNAIL PRODDED Sheriff Zach Calvert’s shoulder from behind. “You’re the law,” said a woman’s voice. “Can’t you order those tellers to speed up?”

Zach turned, and Tammy Henderson, who co-owned Henderson Seed and Feed with her husband, tucked a brown deposit envelope beneath her elbow.

“How many times have I asked you and Mike to call me before you bring that?”

She elbowed the zippered bag closer to her body. “We took your advice and started making three deposits a week.”

That was about the best he could hope for in a town where the citizens believed crime happened everywhere except here. He checked the clock above the gray granite counter. “Is that right?” It was two minutes slower than his watch. “This is my weekend to have Lily.”

Tammy twisted her own watch and then nodded at the clock. “Tennessee Standard Bank and I match. What time do you have to be at Helene’s?”

“Six o’clock.” Or his ex-wife would make a stink in front of their four-year-old daughter. Helene liked to punish him for imagined transgressions and she had an advantage. He’d do anything to keep from hurting his child.

“I’ve heard how Helene tries to keep Lil…”

Zach lifted his brows. Tammy stopped, her mouth open, her weathered face reddening. When she looked away, Zach felt like a bully, but gossip bred like kudzu in Bardill’s Ridge. Being the number-one topic over the Formica tables at the Train Depot Café didn’t sit well with him.

And how would Lily feel if she heard the talk?

Zach tapped his holstered gun as the long black arm on the clock swept each second away, and the guy in front of him, a hunter in camouflage, twitched from foot to foot.

Time to give up and eat the late fee on his car loan payment. But as he turned, the town librarian marched to the counter, her back ramrod straight with annoyance. The hunter took her place at the front of the line, yanking his jacket as if he couldn’t make it fit right over his shoulders. Three and a half minutes ran by before he crossed to the next teller.

Another time check. Helene would explode in exactly twenty-two minutes. Unless he made it. Which he just might do if another patron walked away right now.

The camo guy turned. Zach almost breathed a thanks heavenward, but the other man opened his field jacket and revealed the reason he was uncomfortable. A silver cannon—or a gun the size of one—rested on his hip.

“Nobody move, or I’ll kill you all.” Something—fear?—sent his voice into an unnaturally high pitch as he pulled the gun out.

Not good. If he was scared, he might shoot anyway.

“Damn.” The word slipped out of Zach’s mouth as he eased in front of Tammy Henderson and her deposit bag. Any chance of reaching Lily in less than twenty minutes had just gone down the barrel of that gun. At least he’d caught the armed thief’s wild gaze.

“I said no talking, and especially not you, Sheriff.” He used the back of his hand to wipe spit off the top of his lip. “I’m in charge here.” He swung the weapon, his finger tightening on the trigger. The gesture told Zach that pulling the trigger took pressure. A good thing or else half the customers would be dead now.

The guy turned to the nearest teller, his gun veering in a silver arc that made Zach clench his hands in two fists. What kind of a coward did this to innocent people?

“Don’t even breathe near the alarm. I can see all four sides of this building from the windows.”

He nudged the nearest young woman with the gun barrel, shaking so hard the metal bumped her chin. Her eyes sparkled with tears, and Zach actually pictured himself snapping the other guy’s spine.

“If a police car comes, you die. Anyone makes a move, you die.” The thief swept the other patrons with a scornful gaze and stamped his booted foot. “Put your damn faces on the floor!”

Zach took his time, sparing a glance for Tammy, who was obviously trying to hide a third of a week’s profits. Zach grabbed the bag and slid it over to the thief’s feet.

“Hey,” Tammy protested.

“You want him to think you’re stingy?”

“You got more, lady?” Camo guy scooped up the bag and then came over to kick the purse wrapped around Tammy’s arm. “Dump it.”

Zach focused on the weapon while the robber looked to see whether Tammy was hiding any more money. As if he were reviewing a schematic, Zach saw exactly how to part the man from his gun and put him on the floor unconscious and on his stomach—bonus points for ease of cuffing.

Noting that the citizens in his care had all reached the marble, Zach sank the rest of the way, calming his rage to prevent impairing his response. He angled his gaze to keep an eye on the gunman.

“What are you looking at?” the guy asked. “I’m happy to start killing now. With you.”

People cried out around him, but Zach waited, forcing a few more seconds to go by. Keep it low, non-confrontational. No need to get anyone killed.