Anna Adams - The Secret Father

“How do you plan to escape? The second you leave, the law will pour in from all the nearby towns where everyone knows everyone else. You’re going to stand out.”

“Stand out?” This time he jabbed the gun in the direction of Zach’s head. “I didn’t ask for advice, Andy Taylor. Why don’t you keep your mouth shut?” He nodded at the tellers. “Faster with the money—I want it now.”

Zach smiled as he willed his body into the air. A fraction of a second later his foot connected with Camo Guy’s cheekbone. The thief rose off his feet, flew about a yard and landed on his face. Out like a light.

And no one died in Bardill’s Ridge. But damned if he didn’t long to kick the punk lying at his feet for threatening his people.

Instead, he leaned over the gunman, grabbed the weapon and took it apart. He’d flown helicopters in the Navy until he’d been trained to kill with the nearest weapon—or with his bare hands. A crash and a head wound had stolen his memory of that time and the two years preceding it. He sometimes discovered secrets about himself. Skills he shouldn’t have.

Though he shouldn’t know squat about any gun except the one he’d fired to qualify on the range, he scattered the pieces of the cannon across the marble floor. Continuing on unnerving instincts, he picked up the gunman’s wrist to check his pulse.

Still fluttering. “When you get out of the prison hospital, you should consider a different line of work.” He glanced at the closest teller. “Hit the alarm. Then get me Leland Nash on the phone.”

Nash’s family owned Tennessee Standard Bank. He was also married to Zach’s ex-wife, a connection that had never seemed useful until today. With one phone call, Zach could arrange for Nash to inspect his property and also beg Helene to allow him to pick up Lily tomorrow.

He glanced at the unconscious man, his own actions disturbing him almost as much as his town’s close call.

Before now, he’d controlled the bursts of rage he’d felt toward lawbreaking idiots who occasionally came to Bardill’s Ridge. Throwing that guy headfirst onto the marble floor could have killed him, and vigilantism wasn’t part of Zach’s job description.

He didn’t want to be a killer.

AT THE CHICAGO HEADQUARTERS of Relevance magazine, Olivia Kendall’s office door burst open. Her assistant, Brian Minsky, skidded across the sand-colored carpet. “Picture this.” He waved a printout at her as he collapsed in the chair across from her desk.

They’d worked together from day one on Relevance. Since they never stood on boss-employee etiquette, she waited for him to continue, half her mind still on the competitor’s article she’d been reading.

Brian remained silent. At last she noticed and looked up, plucking off her glasses with two fingers.

Brian looked satisfied. “You’re with me now.”

“What’s up?”

“I want you to listen. This story has a twist.”

She’d learned to give Brian the time he required. “Okay.”

“You’ve been in line at the bank for thirty-eight minutes, waiting to pay your car loan.”

“Not that big a twist.”

He offered a sour grin, the equivalent of telling her to shut up. “The guy in front of you gets to the teller and opens his coat to show off his big gun. He orders you and everyone else in the bank to lie on the floor while the tellers collect the money. What do you do?”

“I lie down.” Her first thought went to her five-year-old son, Evan. Face to the floor, she’d be praying like crazy that she got home to him. “And if I survive, I arrange a payroll deduction for that loan.”

Brian cracked a real grin. “Funny. But I’m not finished. The guy sees you’re the local sheriff. You tell him he can’t go far. It’s a small town, and everyone will notice him. Instead of thanking you he asks who you think you are—Andy Taylor?”

She laughed.

Brian didn’t, and she erased her smile. This must be the good part.

“What do you do now?” he asked.

“I point my nose to the floor, and I curse myself for not taking advantage of that payroll deduction option my helpful loan officer suggested.” She paused. “And I propose to change my name to Andy. What do you do?”

“I do what this Andy—his real name is Zach—I do what he did. I kick the gunman’s ass all over that bank, and then I tell him to look for another line of work after he gets out of the jail hospital.”

“You’re kidding.” She sat back, trying to hide her Pavlovian response to the name Zach.

Old memories fluttered at the back of her mind. She pushed them back. This might be a good story. “Didn’t Andy-Zach realize his response put everyone else in danger?”

“He says not. Apparently, he took the guy out by acting purely on instinct. Instinct that told him how to overpower an armed man with one blow.”

“One blow…” She leaned forward, jamming her stomach into the glass desk’s blunt edge. “What are you talking about?”

“Now you’re on board.” Brian slid her a photograph. “You and I want to know what’s behind Andy-Zach’s story. So will our readers. They’re going to see the facts in brief paragraphs about stupid criminals in their Kendall newspapers, but they’ll want to know more, and we can give them a bigger picture in Kendall’s premiere news magazine. Is the sheriff an android or a man? He says he just reacted. A guy doesn’t react like that without training.” Brian leaned back. “Or I would have had a better time in high school.”

She put her glasses back on and turned the picture around. The man’s face made her breath catch.

Not again.

Her heart boomeranged painfully. He was older, his blond hair longer than a military cut, his eyes more cynical and his body leaner.

But once again, the man in the picture, the kick-ass sheriff, was Lieutenant Zach Calvert, looking pretty damn healthy for a man who’d died six years ago.

She scanned the brief column beneath the picture. After she’d told her dad everything, he’d gone to the Navy. He was perfect for the job; he could get to the truth about the Loch Ness monster.

He’d spoken to a Commander Gould, who’d explained that Zach’s crash had been bad luck in a routine training flight. Today’s article didn’t mention the flight or the Navy or the crash that had supposedly killed Zach.

Olivia stared at his face in the grainy photo. She wasn’t wrong. This was Evan’s father. “Your daddy’s in heaven” had become her mantra. She’d hoped a daddy somewhere would make Evan feel like the children he’d envied for having fathers at home.

Numb with shock, she didn’t know whether to be furious or relieved. At least this time she didn’t seem to be falling apart at the sight of a lousy photo. She’d grieved and recovered. For six years, Lieutenant Zach Calvert had been dead.

Did that make being a sheriff in Bardill’s Ridge, Tennessee heaven? Or hell?

TWO DAYS AFTER Brian showed her Zach’s photo, Olivia’s plane drifted out of the clouds on approach to McGhee-Tyson Airport in Knoxville.

Her shock had dissipated and been replaced by pragmatism. Whatever Zach was playing at, he had a son. And her son deserved a chance to know and be loved by his father. She had to believe he could be kinder to his son than he’d been to her.

He’d gone to a lot of trouble to leave her. How had he persuaded his commanding officer to lie to her father? She’d barely stopped her dad from getting to the bottom of that question.

With any luck, looking after Evan would keep him too busy to hunt down Captain Kerwin Gould and pry the truth out of him. She wanted a word with Zach first.

After she’d called his office three times without being able to force a word out of her mouth, she’d asked Brian to set up the interview. She needed to see Zach’s face the first time he heard her voice. She’d believed him to be an honorable and loving man. She had to know who he really was before she invited him into her son’s life.