She figured that might buy her some time. It didn’t. As if he’d anticipated the question, he calmly reached inside his leather jacket and produced a manila envelope. Elaina also noticed the gun tucked in a leather shoulder holster. It looked as authentic and official as his badge. Luke Buchanan seemed to be the real deal.
“Let me start with how I found out that you had my son. A woman named Collena Drake, a former cop, has been digging through the hundreds of files left by the criminals who orchestrated the adoptions, among other things. She got in touch with me and was able to tell me the names of the couple who’d illegally adopted Christopher.”
“Collena Drake could have been wrong,” Elaina offered. “And the records could have been wrong, too. After all, the people who put them together were criminals. You just said so yourself.”
He ignored her, opened the envelope and extracted a picture. “That’s Taylor, my late wife.”
Elaina took the photo from him, dreading what she might see. It was the picture of a couple on their wedding day. The bride, dressed in white, was a beautiful brunette. The groom, Luke Buchanan, wore a tux.
“That’s still not proof,” Elaina insisted.
Luke Buchanan’s calm demeanor remained in place. From the envelope, he produced a marriage license. He placed it on the seat between them. Elaina was about to repeat her doubt, but the next document kept her quiet.
It was a lab slip indicating a positive pregnancy test.
The date on the slip was eight months prior to Christopher’s birth.
“In addition to the lab results, this is a report that details how I learned about what happened to Taylor and our baby.” He plopped the stapled pages onto the stack. “There’s an eyewitness account of Taylor arriving at the Brighton Birthing Center just outside San Antonio. She was in labor. The eyewitness helped her into the E.R. section of the building and then left. All of this happened August eleventh of last year.”
That information hit her hard. Because August eleventh was Christopher’s birthday. And his place of birth was indeed the Brighton Birthing Center. Still, Elaina wasn’t going to accept this blindly.
“Eyewitness accounts can be falsified,” she countered.
“Not this one. It came from the cab driver who took Taylor from our house to the birthing center. He has absolutely no reason to lie.”
She swallowed hard. “Maybe not, but that still doesn’t prove Christopher is your son. There were probably dozens of babies born that day.”
“Three.” He paused a heartbeat and snagged her gaze. “But only one boy. Seven pounds, four ounces. Twenty-one inches long. Sound familiar?”
Oh, mercy. It did.
Elaina felt the tears burn hot in her eyes, and she didn’t even try to fight them back.
“Take a good look at that photo,” he said, fishing out the wedding picture from the pile. “You’ll see that Taylor and I are Christopher’s birth parents.”
Though it was nearly impossible to see clearly through the thick tears, Elaina did study the photo he handed her. Luke and Taylor Buchanan were both brunettes. As was Christopher. And though she hadn’t made the connection when she first met Agent Buchanan, she could see it now.
Christopher had his eyes.
Except on her son, the color seemed softer. Kinder. Rainy-cloud-gray, she’d whimsically called them. It was ironic to see those same eyes on this man who could destroy her.
And there was no doubt about it—losing Christopher would destroy her.
That’s why Elaina didn’t give up. She couldn’t. He’d made a good case, but other than the similar eyes, he certainly hadn’t proven anything.
“Why did your wife have to take a taxi to the Brighton Birthing Center?” she asked. “Where were you during all of this?”
“I was on a deep-cover assignment trying to stop a terrorist attack.” A muscle flickered in his jaw. “Taylor and I were having problems, and we’d gotten a legal separation right before I left. I didn’t know she was pregnant until after I returned. Then, I learned she’d died of complications from a C-section. I also learned that the baby, our son, had been adopted, but the records had supposedly been destroyed. The records didn’t surface until the police busted the illegal operation and Collena Drake decided to devote all her time to locating the missing kids. That’s why it took me this long to find you.”
Each word added dead weight to her heart. Because this was unfortunately all starting to make sense.
“I found you eight days ago,” he continued. The calm façade seemed to slip a little. There was a touch of hot, raw emotion in his voice. “And I put you under surveillance.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course, you didn’t. I do a lot of surveillance in my job, and I’m very good at it.”
No doubt. It riled her that someone had been able to intrude into her life without her even realizing it. That gave her the resolve she’d been searching for. “So, you watched me and decided to step into my fake life and pretend you’re my husband?”
He nodded. “You made it easy for me to do that. I had a fellow agent ask around town. He pretended to be interested in having some church windows repaired. And he learned there were no photos of your fake spouse. No specific physical accounts or descriptions. No one around here seemed to know what Daniel Allen looks like.”
“I didn’t want anyone comparing the photo to Christopher. Since he doesn’t look like me, I just told people that he took after his father.” Elaina paused and tried to fight off the dark reality she felt closing in around her. “And maybe he does.”
“Maybe? You still have doubts after everything I’ve shown you?”
“I have to have doubts.” She slapped her hand on the documents he’d shown her. “Doubts are the only thing that prevents me from screaming and running inside to hide my son from you. Besides, you have no DNA proof—”
“I do have proof. I got back the results about two hours ago. That’s why I’m here.”
There was no way Elaina could have braced herself for the final paper that he took from the envelope. She shook her head when he tried to hand it to her, but he finally dropped it onto her lap.
She had no choice. Even though she didn’t want to look at it, her eyes refused to cooperate. It was indeed a DNA test, and it identified Luke Buchanan as the father of one Christopher Allen.
That put another fracture in her heart.
“This can’t be accurate,” she challenged. “You don’t have Christopher’s DNA so you had nothing to make the comparison.”
But his expression said differently. “After I found you, I took a pacifier that Christopher had left in his car seat. And before you accuse me of breaking and entering, I didn’t. I had a warrant.”
She hadn’t thought it possible, but her heart pounded even faster. Elaina frantically searched for holes in his case and found one. “If you have this proof,” she said picking up the DNA test, “then, why pretend to be my long-lost husband?”
“Because there’s something I need from you.”
He let that hang between them for several moments before he scooped up all the papers and put them back into the envelope. “Here’s what’s going to happen—we’ll