She really didn’t want to leave them alone while she retrieved the container of Lexi’s pictures and journals. “Alex needs a bath before bedtime,” she said. “He just got back from a playdate. Do you mind waiting?”
His body tensed with urgency. He probably hated waiting. Amy Wilcox had already been missing for days.
But Rebecca doubted that there was anything in Lexi’s personal effects that could lead him to the young woman. If the same man who’d taken Lexi had taken Amy, then Rebecca already knew who he was.
But Jared refused to believe her. He believed an alibi instead. But the alibi could have been faked. Or a killer could have been hired.
“I’ll wait,” he said. And he was already pulling out his cell phone.
Of course he had calls to make. When she’d known him before, he had constantly been on his phone—following up leads, checking in with other agents. The man lived and breathed his job. When he had worked her sister’s case, she had mistakenly believed his intensity had been personal.
But it was just who he was...
Intense.
Driven.
Determined.
But despite all those characteristics, he had been unable to find Lexi’s body. Or Lexi’s killer.
She left Jared to his calls and tugged Alex toward the bathroom. Usually after a playdate with Tommy, he was exhausted. When she hosted a playdate with the hyperactive Tommy, she was always exhausted afterward, too.
But now Alex was too curious to be tired. “Who is Jared Bell?” he asked as he pulled off his clothes and stepped into the bathtub.
Your father. The words popped into her head again but stuck in her throat. She couldn’t tell either of them the truth. Not now.
But guilt settled heavily on her heart. She should tell the truth. She probably would have—had she not been devastated by Jared’s rejection. But he hadn’t just rejected her; he’d rejected what she’d felt for him.
He’d told her that she didn’t really have any feelings for him. She was only fixated on him because he was investigating her sister’s disappearance—that he had become a surrogate of Lexi to her.
For such a brilliant man, he’d been incredibly dense and insensitive.
“Mr. Bell is...” She had no idea what to tell her son. Jared had never really been a friend. And she couldn’t tell Alex that he was an FBI agent. Her little boy would never go to sleep because he would have a million questions for Jared.
Alex was such a bright and inquisitive boy. His teachers had already moved him up a grade because they couldn’t challenge him. With his blond hair and blue eyes, he looked like her, but he had his father’s brilliance.
She’d had to work hard for her grades. That was why she’d been so consumed with studying that she’d lost touch with her sister. Then she’d lost her entirely.
“He has a gun, Mommy,” the little boy said.
How had he noticed the weapon holstered beneath Jared’s jacket?
“Was that why you hid behind my legs?” she asked. “Are you scared of him?”
Alex shook his head and sent droplets of water flying across the sand-colored tile walls and floor and her T-shirt. “No. He has a badge, too.”
Jared had always worn his badge clipped to his belt, but his jacket covered it. Of course her observant little boy would have somehow noticed it. He missed nothing. But a father...
“Mr. Bell is an FBI agent,” she reluctantly admitted.
As she’d expected, Alex sprang out of the bath, dripping water everywhere. “Can I talk to him? Can I?”
Before he could head to the door, she caught him up in a towel and dried him off and stalled.
“Do you think he’ll let me touch his gun?” Alex asked. “Do you think he ever shot somebody with it?”
She was pretty certain that he had, but not the person she’d wanted him to shoot—the person she was certain had killed her sister.
“It’s your bedtime,” she reminded her son.
“Oh, Mom, I can go to bed anytime,” Alex protested. “He’s an FBI agent!”
“And he’s here to talk to me about Aunt Lexi,” she said. “But you’ll be able to talk to him another time.” After she gathered her courage and told them both the truth.
It was time. It was actually past time that Jared and Alex learned they were father and son.
“If I see him again,” Alex muttered.
“You will,” she promised. But would he? Even after she told Jared the truth, would he want anything to do with his son? Would he want to be a father?
Or was he still all about his career?
The little boy dragged his feet getting ready for bed. He took forever to get into his pajamas and brush his teeth. And when she finally settled him into his bed, he sprang right back up.
“Mommy, there’s a man looking in the window!”
A creative child, he always came up with inventive excuses for not going to bed. So she was only humoring him when she turned toward the window. But then she saw the man, too, staring into her son’s bedroom.
And she screamed.
Her earlier soft cry had struck Jared like a blow. This one—loud and full of fear—pierced his soul. He ran down the hall she’d gone through and nearly collided with her as she rushed out of a room, the child clutched in her arms.
“Someone’s creeping around outside,” she said, “looking in the windows.”
He drew his weapon from beneath his jacket and headed toward the door. “Lock it behind me,” he directed her. “And don’t unlock it for anyone but me.”
He stepped outside and lights flashed and voices shouted. “Special Agent Bell! Special Agent Bell!”
He flinched at the lights and the noise and the fact that he hated reporters. He wanted to step back inside and slam the door shut on all of them. But he’d had Becca lock it behind him. If he knocked and had her open it, they would see her and take pictures and bombard her with intrusive, insensitive questions like they had when Lexi had disappeared.
Six years ago Becca had hated the reporters as much as he had. Actually more. He hadn’t begun to hate them until they’d turned on him—highlighting his one failure instead of all his success in apprehending serial killers.
“You’re all trespassing,” he informed them. “If you don’t get off this property, I will have the local authorities arrest you.”
While some of the reporters knew him well enough to know that his threat wasn’t empty and they began to walk away, another stepped forward—probably the one Becca had seen through her son’s bedroom window since the man stepped around the side of the house.
“Your being here confirms that this place belongs to Lexi Drummond’s sister,” the reporter brazenly said.
“My presence confirms nothing,” Jared replied. He holstered his gun, but then pulled out his cell phone. His threat wasn’t idle; he intended to have them all arrested—especially this man.
This reporter was tall and thin with a thick head of mostly artificial-looking blond hair and a big, snide grin. He wasn’t just doing his job; he enjoyed annoying the hell out of people, especially Jared.
The