The Great Escape

The voice he’d been yearning to hear came buzzing through, very clear, very loud, and very angry. “I’m pregnant, you son of a bitch.”

And then the connection went dead.

He staggered to the side of the road, dropped the phone, snatched it up, and hit redial. His hands were shaking so badly, it took two tries.

“What do you want?” she screeched.

Oh, God. He had to be the grown-up. He opened his mouth to say-who the hell knew what?-but she was still yelling, and he never got a chance.

“I’m too furious to talk to you right now! You and your vasectomy.” She spit out the word.

“Where are you?”

“What do you care?” she retorted. “I’m done with you, remember?” She hung up on him again.

Jesus… Lucy pregnant. With his baby. He felt as if he’d been plunged into a pool of warm, rippling water.

When he tried to call back, he got her voice mail. He already knew where she’d moved, and not much later, he was at the ferry dock. Six hours after that, he was in Boston.

It was evening and already dark when he pulled his rental car up to the apartment where she was supposed to be staying. There was no answer when he hit the buzzer in the lobby.

He tried a few other buttons and eventually hit gold, an old guy with nothing better to do than spy on his neighbors. “She left this morning with a suitcase. You know who she is, right? President Jorik’s daughter? Real nice to everybody.”

He called her again from the sidewalk, and this time she picked up. He didn’t give her a chance to speak. “I’m in Boston,” he said. “The security in your building is shit.”

“So are you.”

“Where have you gone?”

“I ran home to Mommy and Daddy. Where do you think I went? And I am so not ready to talk to you.”

“Tough.” This time he hung up on her.

PHYSICAL COURAGE CAME EASILY TO him, but this was something else entirely. He’d known he had to clear the air with Bree before he could take the next step toward getting Lucy back, but he’d planned to give himself another week to talk to Jerry Evers and make sure Jerry was as convinced as Panda that the darkness wasn’t coming back. Then he’d intended to write up a script and memorize it so he didn’t screw up again. Now here he was, on a late flight to Washington, completely unprepared and with his entire future at stake.

He arrived at Dulles long after dark. Even though he was too juiced to sleep, he couldn’t show up at the Jorik home in his current condition, so he checked into a hotel and lay awake for what was left of the night. When dawn arrived, he showered and shaved. With nothing more than a cup of coffee in his stomach, he set out for Middleburg, a wealthy community in the heart of Virginia’s hunt country.

As he drove along winding roads, past wineries and prosperous horse farms, he grew increasingly miserable. What if it was too late? What if she’d come to her senses and realized she could do so much better than him? By the time he reached the Jorik estate, he was sweating.

The house was invisible from the road. Only the tall iron fence and elaborate electronic gates announced that he’d reached his destination. He parked in front of them and took in the video surveillance cameras. As he reached for his cell he knew one thing for certain. If he buckled now, it was all over. No matter what he had to do, he couldn’t let her see what a wreck he was.

She picked up on the fifth ring. “It’s six-thirty in the morning,” she croaked. “I’m still in bed.”

“No problem.”

“I said I wasn’t ready to talk to you.”

“Now that is a problem. You have one minute to get these gates open before I ram them.”

“Send me a postcard from Gitmo!”

Another hang-up.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to follow through on his threat because, thirty seconds later, the gates swung open. After a brief conversation with a Secret Service agent, he drove along the curving lane that cut through the heavily wooded property to the house, a large brick Georgian. He parked in front and got out. The chilly air carried the smell of fall leaves, and the clear morning sky promised sunshine, which he tried to convince himself was a good omen. Not an easy task when he felt sick to his stomach.

The front door opened, and there she was. His stomach jumped to his throat. Everything that had been murky to him was now crystal clear, but obviously not to her… Instead of inviting him in, she came outside, a black windbreaker tossed on over bright red pajamas printed with green bullfrogs.

The last people he wanted to face right now were her parents, so having this showdown outside was an unexpected gift. She’d shoved her bare feet into a pair of sneakers, and her hair was a beautiful, shiny light-brown rumpus. She wore no makeup, and a sleep-crease marked her cheek. She looked pretty, ordinary. Extraordinary.

She stopped between a pair of pillars at the top of three wide steps. He walked toward her along the brick sidewalk. “Who died?” she said, taking in his suit.

She had to know he wouldn’t show up at the home of the president of the United States in jeans and a T-shirt. “No time to change.”

She came down off the steps and into the crimson and yellow leaves scattered along the walk. Despite her small features and the frog pajamas, she didn’t look anything like a teenager. She was a fully grown woman- alluring, complicated, and angry, all of which scared the hell out of him.

She jutted her jaw at him as belligerently as a prizefighter. “There’s a big difference between having a vasectomy and planning to have a vasectomy.”

“What do you mean? I never said I’d already had one.”

She blew that off. “I’m not arguing with you about it.” She tromped onto the damp, leaf-covered grass, moving in the direction of a tree that looked like it could have sheltered Thomas Jefferson while he proofread the Declaration of Independence. “The fact is,” she said, “somewhere along the line one of your little buggers hit a home run, and now you’re going to be a father. What do you think about that?”

“I-I haven’t had time to think.”

“Well, I have, and I’ll tell you what’s not going to happen. I’m not pretending I went to a sperm bank, and I’m not getting rid of this baby.”

He was horrified. “You sure as hell aren’t.”

She went on, still highly pissed. “So what are you going to do about it? Crack up again?”

The way she belittled his past mental problems, as if they weren’t all that important, made him love her even more, if such a thing were possible.

“Well?” She tapped her foot in the wet grass, just as if she were his third-grade teacher. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

He swallowed. “Good job?”

He expected her to take a swing at him for that. Instead, she pursed her lips. “My parents are not going to be happy.”

Surely an understatement. He spoke carefully, fully aware that he was treading on dangerous territory. “What do you want me to do about this?”

She went supersonic. “That’s it! I’m done with you!”

She stomped back toward the house, and since he couldn’t manhandle a pregnant woman like he’d manhandle an unpregnant one, he cut around her. “I love you.”

The brat stopped in her tracks and sneered at him. “You care about me. Big difference.”

“That, too. But most of all, I love you.” His throat grew tight. “I’ve loved you from the moment I found you in that Texas alley.”

Those green-flecked eyes flew wide open. “That’s a lie.”

“It isn’t. I’m not saying I knew I loved you, but I felt something important right from the beginning.” He wanted to touch her-God, did he ever want to touch her-but he was afraid that would only make things worse. “Every