by Diana Palmer
Charlene just nodded. She wasn’t eager to prod Rourke’s temper again. He was frightening like that.
* * *
HE SAT IN the kitchen sipping black coffee, his mind racing as he recalled Tat’s poor shocked face when he’d raged at her in his bedroom. Charlene had brought it all back with her comment. Tat had been miserable. It hurt him to recall the things he’d said, the way he’d ordered her out of the house.
She’d been carrying Joshua at the time, although he hadn’t known. The little boy was precious. What if he’d caused her to miscarry? The thought haunted him.
He still didn’t understand why he hated her so much. What had she ever done to him to provoke such a response? She was a kind, gentle woman. She never went out of her way to hurt people. So why did he torment her?
He finished the coffee, got up and walked out into the compound. His lion was in the fenced enclosure, where he’d been since Rourke had gone to Texas.
“Sorry, old man,” he told the big cat. “When company leaves, I’ll let you back in the house, okay?”
The lion just yawned.
“Boring you, am I?” he teased.
K.C. joined him at the fence. “Does he answer you?” he asked.
“Not yet,” the younger man chuckled. “But if he ever does, I’m having a CAT scan.” He paused and grinned. “I made a funny!”
“I hear you’ve broken the engagement.”
“Ya. I told her to keep the ring,” Rourke said easily. “If I ever get married, and don’t hold your breath, I’ll give her my mom’s ring.” His mother’s ring. His mother’s ring. He would only have given it to a woman he loved. Loved desperately, at that. A woman he wanted to have his kids, to live with him, to love him.
K.C. didn’t take him up on it. “How did the job go?”
“I thought we’d wrapped it up,” he replied. “But one of the key men got away. I may have to go back.” He didn’t add that the thought appealed. He could see Tat again.
“Tough luck.”
“Well, I’m going to have an early night. It was a damned long flight. Thanks for sending the jet.”
“No problem.”
He walked back to his own house in the compound and stripped off for bed. He started to put his wallet and his keys and spare change into the drawer by his bed when something caught his eye. A letter. Opened.
He pulled it out and read it. His heart ran wild. It was an invitation to an awards ceremony in Barrera. Ten months ago. Beside it was a stub from a trip to Manaus, dated a day after the awards ceremony. Tat’s name was on the list of recipients of the awards.
* * *
HE SAT DOWN, HARD. He’d been in Manaus, with Tat. It had to have been with her, because she lived there most of the time. He would have had no other reason to go there, unless it was to see her. His heart began to race. He’d been in Manaus ten and a half months ago. Tat’s baby was six weeks old. She’d been pregnant when she came to see Rourke after he was shot. The baby had AB Negative blood. Like he did. Like his father did.
* * *
HE THREW ON a pair of slacks and ran barefoot to his father’s house. K.C. was sitting on the sofa drinking straight whiskey.
Rourke didn’t say anything. He picked up a tumbler and filled it halfway. He took several sips before he sat down on the sofa across from his father’s armchair.
“You’ve remembered something,” K.C. ventured.
“I was in Manaus ten and a half months ago,” Rourke said. “I found a ticket stub. Tat lived there. Her baby is six weeks old. She was pregnant when she came here to see about me. Her baby has type AB Negative blood…” His face was white. Stark white.
K.C. drew in a long breath. He pulled out his cell phone. He turned to the photographs app and handed the phone to Rourke.
* * *
IT WAS ALL THERE. Tat and Rourke, beaming, with the news that they were engaged. Then there was the nursery. There was Joshua, being shown through a glass window, wrapped in a blue blanket. There was Tat, white as a sheet and thin and worn, trying to smile as she held the baby. There was a beaming K.C. holding the baby. Several of that one.
Rourke closed his eyes and shuddered. Now, when he least wanted to remember, he remembered. He and Tat had been lovers. They’d been inseparable. He took his mother’s engagement ring out of the safe to take with him to Barrera because he was going to propose to Tat. He’d only just found out that they weren’t related, that he could have a life with her. She’d been reluctant to trust him, because he’d hurt her so badly in the past. But she’d loved him enough to trust him. His eye closed. If he thought about that, he’d go mad.
He’d bought her a wedding gown. They’d gone together to see the priest. Then he’d accepted a job out of the country, two days before the wedding. He’d left her to finalize one last mission.
All of it, her marriage, her husband’s death, her close call with death, all of it had the same, terrible foundation. He’d made her pregnant and he’d left her. His injury had taken his memory away and he’d thrown her out of his life all over again.
“Damn me,” Rourke choked. He handed the phone back to his father. “Damn me!”
K.C. sat beside him and pulled him roughly into his arms.
“Dear God, she’ll hate me for the rest of her life, and she should,” Rourke bit off, shivering. “I threw her out of the house. She was pregnant, with my child…!”
K.C. patted his back awkwardly. “Yes.”
“Joshua is my son. I have a little boy. I have a child!” He pulled back. The look in his good eye was wild. “I have to go back…!”
“No,” K.C. said firmly.
“No?” Rourke was puzzled.
“If you tell her that you know about Joshua, she’ll run,” K.C. said quietly. “She didn’t even want to tell me. She’s afraid of you. She thinks you’re marrying Charlene, that you’ll try to take Joshua away from her if you know the truth.”
“But, I wouldn’t…!”
“She won’t know that.” K.C.’s face was hard. “We can’t afford for her to run. Not now.”
The way K.C. said it chilled him to the bone. “Why?” he asked, and he was certain he wasn’t going to like the answer.
K.C. took another sip of his drink. “Do you remember me telling you that Barrera’s former dictator, Arturo Sapara, was liberated by a few of his minions from a prison in Barrera? That he swore bloody vengeance against everyone who helped him lose power?”
Rourke was very quick. “Tat’s husband didn’t die a natural death, did he?”
K.C. shook his head. “We don’t think so. Ruy was meticulous about malaria prevention. A few days before he contracted the malaria, Tat heard someone on the porch outside his bedroom and a sound like someone opening a jar. Grange had sent a man to watch them, once we knew Sapara was loose. We knew he might try to kill her. She thought it was Grange’s man outside the house, so she didn’t say anything.”
Rourke felt sick to his stomach. “You think the anopheles mosquitoes were in a jar, and they were deliberately placed in Ruy’s room.”
“Exactly. Tat was bitten, too. She didn’t suspect a mosquito bite because she knew they didn’t have mosquitoes. Certainly she wouldn’t have expected to find them in the house. Even so, nobody had sprayed inside for some time.”
“She could have died.” Rourke felt the words to the soles of his feet. He closed his eye on a wave of pain. “He meant her to, didn’t he? He meant to kill them both!”
“That’s what we think,” K.C. replied. “When you were wounded, I was afraid he’d gotten to you first. But I did some checking. It was an accident. Terrible, but not deliberate.”
“I never considered that he’d come after me. But I should have known he’d blame Tat. She wrote a dozen stories about the experience, none of them flat
tering to Sapara.”
“Besides that, she was instrumental in helping you to assault the governmental complex,” K.C. added. “Brave woman.”
“Very brave.” Rourke took another long swallow of whiskey. “She’s had so much in the past year. Most of it my own damned fault!”
“She didn’t blame you,” K.C. said sadly. “She knew that you didn’t remember. She was only grateful that you lived, even if you married someone else.”
A stinging hot mist worried his eye. He averted it to hide the wetness. He sipped more whiskey. “Sapara won’t stop,” he said. “He’s got a professional assassin on staff. I know the man. He trained with me years ago…”
“Yes, and you’re the only person I know who could identify him on sight,” K.C. said.
“That’s why Eb Scott has men shadowing Tat,” Rourke said with sudden realization. “They think Sapara is still after her! That’s why she went to Texas in the first place!”
K.C. nodded. “Yes. It’s been a concern. I talked it over with the Granges and Cash Grier. We all agreed that she’d be safer in Jacobsville, where Sapara would have a harder time getting to her. I flew her over to Jacobsville with the baby. I was going to spend a few days with Cash, too, but the call about Mary Luke came and I had to leave.”
“I’m going back,” Rourke said, rising. “I won’t tell her that I remember anything,” he said to reassure his father. “But I have a team on-site already, and a mission still ongoing, which gives me a good excuse to return. I’ll know the man if he shows up in Jacobsville. I’ll get a flight out in the morning…”
“Flight, nothing. I’ll get my pilot up here.”
Rourke stared at the face that was so much like his. “Thanks.”
“Take care of them,” K.C. said. “But don’t let Clarisse catch on that you know. Not yet.”
“I understand.” Rourke drew in a breath. “At least I can protect her and the baby, even if she doesn’t know I’m doing it.” He winced. “I could kick myself for leaving the day before our wedding!”
“You’ve spent your life trying to save other people, keep them safe. It’s hard to break old habits.”
“I thought it would be just one last job. I’d been working on it for months. Children were involved.” Rourke groaned. “But I had to make a snap decision, and it was the wrong one. I should have delegated, that time of all times!” He took a long breath. “I helped her pick out a wedding gown. We both talked to the priest.” His face hardened. “The priest knew what her damned mother did to us.”
“Maria loved her daughter.”
“She cost us years!”
“That wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t taken you at face value, son,” K.C. said. “Even you have to admit that you were a textbook Romeo. She was protecting her daughter.”
“I suppose so.” He looked worn. He finished the whiskey. “I guess I can give up fieldwork, if I have to. I’m getting too old for it anyway,” he added heavily, and he smiled. “Too many gunshot wounds and broken bones over the years. My reaction time is down.”
“That’s why I had to give it up,” K.C. confessed ruefully.
“Well, the baby will make up for that,” Rourke chuckled. “He’ll provide more than enough excitement on a daily basis.”
“You might come home and raise lion cubs for zoos,” K.C. mused.
Rourke smiled. “That might not be a bad idea.” His face hardened. “But first I have to take care of Sapara and his assassin.” His eye narrowed. “I’m going to call in a few favors.” He glanced at his father. “Do you still have any of that special ammunition I used to keep handy?”
K.C. nodded solemnly. “And your sniper kit that goes with it.” He shook a finger at his son. “You make sure you’re sanctioned before you do anything.”
“I always do.” Rourke grinned. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding from the authorities, in any case. Especially not now, when I’ve got a family to take care of!”
* * *
HE WAS IN Jacobsville two days later, back at Jake’s house. The memories had come back with a vengeance. Tat, in his arms in Barrera, afraid of him, loving him. Saving him from arrest in the bar, when he’d got drunk because she’d told him she was engaged to Ruy. Then when he’d followed her to Manaus, Tat in his arms in bed, loving him, yielding up her innocence to his ardor, wanting him, wanting his child.
Tat loved him. And he’d hurt her, again, just as he’d hurt her in years past. But that had been to protect her, in the old days, because he thought he could never have her. He’d made her hate him, to protect them both from a loss of control that could have had tragic consequences if her mother hadn’t lied, if there had actually been a blood relationship between them.
More recently, though, he’d hurt her because he lost all memory of the tenderness, the passion, the commitment they’d made to each other. She’d had his child, thinking he’d never remember any of it. She’d married Ruy. Now he knew why. She was carrying Rourke’s child and she was alone. In Manaus, people still remembered her saintly mother. Tat would never have had a child out of wedlock, would never have shamed her family in such a way. She was conventional, just as he was.
So now he had a child, and it carried another man’s name.
He groaned inwardly as he realized what he’d given up. Nothing had ever hurt so much. Tat had almost died. She still could, if he didn’t find the assassin in time.
He’d called in markers from every federal and international agency he had ties to. He’d already spoken to Eb Scott as well, to make sure he had enough men watching Clarisse. In Jake’s guest bedroom, in a second suitcase, was a sniper kit complete with the ammunition he favored. He hadn’t told Jake about it. Even though his host had once dealt in covert assassination, he no longer did. He was a minister. He wasn’t going to be happy if he knew what his guest was planning.
On the other hand, Jake had loved a woman enough to kill to protect her. He might understand. But Rourke wasn’t going to tell him, just the same. Jake had enough on his conscience.
“You said you could recognize Sapara’s assassin,” Jake said over supper in the kitchen.
“Yes,” Rourke replied. “Unless he’s wearing a disguise. And he might be. He learned the trade with me, over a decade ago.”
“You think he’s already here.”
“I do,” Rourke replied. His eye narrowed as he finished his pizza and washed it down with strong black coffee. “In fact, I have a good idea who he is. Although I didn’t connect it until a day ago.”
“Who?”
“That cowboy who’s always hanging around Tat,” he said quietly. “The man I knew wore a beard and mustache, and his hair was longer. But the build and the voice seem the same. I can’t be sure, but I’m having him watched.”
“By Eb’s men?”
Rourke shook his head. Suddenly he frowned, and pulled out an electronic device. He turned it on. Then he relaxed. “Stupid of me not to check for bugs. Just a sec.”
He went over the house with it. Sure enough, in Jake’s study, under his desk, there was a listening device. He dealt with it efficiently, and then went to sweep the rest of the house.
“Only one,” Rourke said. “But one is more than enough when you’re dealing in life and death.”
“Carlie was here last week and the telephone company sent a man to check a connection in my study,” Jake muttered. “I didn’t even connect it! And I know enough to check for bugs myself.”
“No worries, it’s taken care of. But tell Carlie not to let anyone in if you’re not here.”
“He could get in and plant a bug just the same,” Jake replied. “You know how that works.”
“All too well. I’ll do regular sweeps. Meantime, I won’t mention any of the surveillance underway unless we’re in a car together. And even the
n, I’ll do a sweep,” Rourke chuckled.
“Good idea. I have another one. It wouldn’t hurt to do background checks on anyone close to Clarisse,” Jake added.
Rourke just smiled. “I’m two steps ahead of you there, mate.”
* * *
HE WENT TO see Clarisse the next day. He couldn’t let her know that his memory had come back. If he did, and she mentioned it, he might accidentally push the assassin into acting before Rourke was ready.
It was difficult. Worse than he’d imagined. She was in the kitchen, nursing the baby. Mariel let him in and led him, smiling, into the bright yellow room.
Clarisse looked up, shocked, and fumbled with a light blanket, trying to cover her bare breast. She flushed with embarrassment. It was new, and disturbing, to have Rourke see her nursing Joshua. She hadn’t even known he was back in town.
“Don’t do that,” Rourke asked softly as he sat down at the table with her, indicating the blanket. “It’s quite beautiful, watching you nurse him.”
Clarisse flushed. She glanced at Mariel and smiled, nodding. The woman went back to her chores.
“You said you wouldn’t be back,” Clarisse faltered.
He shrugged. “My trafficker that I’m watching with my group decided to take a partner,” he lied. “So now we’re watching two men and hoping for evidence that will convict. I had to come back to oversee the assignment.”
“I see.”
His eye was intent on the child, suckling at her soft breast, clenching one tiny fist against the creamy skin. He winced. It hurt him, to know that she had his son in her arms and he couldn’t even acknowledge that it was his child.
She saw that expression and misunderstood. “You and Charlene should have some of these,” she said without looking directly at him. “Babies are nice.”
“Are they? Charlene says she’s not ready yet.”
She was irritated at herself because that gave her hope. Not that it would make a difference. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He leaned back in the chair and crossed one ankle over his thigh, smoothing at a wrinkle in the khaki trousers. “She’s in love with her father’s business partner,” he said when he hadn’t meant to say anything. “I told her to keep the ring. But we broke up.”