The SEAL’s Surprise Baby by Leslie North

3

“Where are we going?” Violet asked after sitting silently in the car for ten minutes. Fortunately, Nate had zonked as soon as they started moving. Car rides had that effect on him, even ones that changed roads and doubled back like this one was doing. Standard practice, she told herself. Anderson was taking evasive action. She’d used her own training to do the same thing in the past weeks when she felt she was being watched.

“No idea. Working on it.” He spoke in choppy sentences, eyes flicking between the mirrors.

She sighed. They’d never been good at conversation. Intelligence work and sex were their joint areas of expertise. And they’d only done the second of those things once. But once had been enough. She twisted in her seat so she could catch Nate’s profile. His head was resting against the padded side of the seat, not far from the bullet hole she’d seen earlier. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting against the image that rose in her mind.

“Something behind us?” Anderson asked. “I don’t see that black SUV in my mirror.”

Had he forgotten about his son already?

“Nothing that shouldn’t be there.” She faced forward again, unwilling to engage about Nate and Anderson’s role in his upbringing while they were fleeing for their lives. She had to think, kick her analyst brain into gear. The other incidents she’d described to Anderson had happened more than two weeks ago, and she’d begun to feel safe. What had made her assailant escalate from some creepy behaviors to riddling her car with bullets?

She had to look for the source of the change. Her eyes moved to Anderson’s profile. The high forehead, long nose, surprisingly sensuous lips. She remembered what those felt like on her body and nearly shivered with desire. This was no time to be thinking about that night in Russia when they’d torn each other’s clothes off and had primal sex against a wall.

The aftermath of that experience was more indicative of their relationship. They’d caught their breath and immediately turned away from each other. No postsex cuddling. No soft words. They’d each picked up their clothes and gone in opposite directions in the safe house. From then until they parted in Germany a day later, they’d only communicated when necessary.

One magical moment in Russia had produced the little guy behind her. She pulled the note from the outside pocket of the diaper bag where she’d stashed it and looked at it again. Rereading the Russian writing sent a chill down her spine. She wasn’t scared for her own life, but if anything happened to Nate…

She flipped the paper over, looking for any clues that might identify the sender.

“Find anything?” Anderson asked as he merged onto a highway.

“Nothing that I can see.” The fancy equipment at the lab where she worked might reveal more, but she didn’t have access to that. And they’d both contaminated any evidence by handling the paper. “I’m thinking it can’t be a coincidence that the attack was today. You arrived home from your deployment two days ago, and this was the first time we saw each other. Someone’s been watching me and waiting to send us a message when we’re together.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, “but we’ve never been a couple.”

“We looked like one, though.” That had been their cover story in Moscow. He played the role of a wealthy American who might be interested in making an arrangement with the Russian mob, and she’d been his eye candy. The truth couldn’t have been more different. Her analysis work had made her the primary on their mission, and he'd been support and protection. Since they both viewed themselves as being in charge, they’d disagreed nearly daily. Some of that was just the tension of the mission, some was the latent desire between them. “And… I don’t know. Even if our cover is partly or completely blown, maybe my pregnancy convinced them our relationship was real.”

Anderson remained silent for several minutes. “If you’re right about this, we need to change cars. They probably have intel on me, including what I drive.”

“That would be a start,” she said, “but we need a safe place to go so we can figure this out. We can’t drive forever.” Safe houses existed, both government and private ones, but she didn’t have access to that list. Her supervisor would, but she wondered if that would be a smart move. Protocol told her she should report this incident and wait for directions, but her instincts, which were rarely wrong, told her otherwise.

“Are you still thinking of calling in?” he asked, exiting the highway and taking a road that ran perpendicular to it. She realized they were slowly working their way southwest from his house.

“I don’t think that’s wise. Combined with what happened today, the breach concerns me.” She ticked over the details of the breach, the ones she knew. Were there more?

“Should have been sealed,” he said.

“In a neat and tidy world, it would have been,” she said. Anderson was used to the closed ranks of SEAL teams, where nothing dangerous was allowed to simmer. Her world was much more nebulous. Sometimes threats were permitted to exist, even encouraged, to see where they were going and who they tracked back to. She’d advised taking that course of action herself in the past in certain situations. It all felt different when it was targeted at her.

She’d thought from the beginning that there was a high probability the breach was the work of the Wolf’s organization. Like their leader, they were relentless hunters. Volkhov himself was supposedly being held in a Russian prison, but that didn’t mean his pack was lying around licking their wounds. Or that he was unable to give directions

“This all feels too volatile to me,” she finally said.

“No kidding,” he muttered.

She swung her gaze to him. “What I’m saying is that I need time to analyze and assess. You write stuff in your little notepads.” She reached across and tapped the pad of paper he always carried in his chest pocket. “I have to let intel coalesce in my brain.”

“It helps me to write it down,” he said, looking annoyed.

“I get that. You’d be scribbling away right now if you weren’t driving.” It surprised her how much she knew about him and his methods. They’d been together just six weeks in Russia, but she’d had plenty of opportunity to observe him during that time.

“You’re right,” he admitted with a hint of reluctance. “I’ve seen you think your way out of some tough spots. I learned to trust that about you.”

She was mildly surprised he’d acknowledged her expertise, but before she could reply, Nate whimpered in his seat, making her turn. The baby was rolling his head from side to side. After a minute, he stuck his thumb in his mouth and drifted back to sleep. That was a habit she’d have to help him break later, but for the moment she was grateful it settled him.

“He’s okay,” she said, even though Anderson hadn’t asked. Her relief was short lived when she faced forward again. Anderson had gone rigid next to her. What was that about? She checked her side mirror, looking for signs of trouble, but they were on a country road without another car in sight. “What is it?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “We’ve got things to discuss… about him.”

So that was it. Her hiding Nate’s existence must have seemed like the ultimate betrayal. Still, she’d had her reasons. Good ones, she still believed. None of that helped her current situation, though. She rarely cracked under pressure—professional pressure, anyway. Since having a child, she’d found her personal world had shifted. She felt things more and more deeply.

At the moment she felt a wave of nerves, almost enough to make her squirm. “Okay. If we’re going to get through… whatever is going on”—she gestured, encompassing the car, their situation—“we need to trust each other, which means you have to believe I’m telling you the truth about Nate. So, do you believe he’s yours?” It pained her to have to ask, but it would be a reasonable concern on his part. She could tell him that she hadn’t slept with anyone else for almost a year before Nate was conceived and no one since, but she couldn’t prove it.

“He’s mine,” Anderson said with almost no inflection. “I can see it in his face.”

She almost chuckled at the way he said it. She’d read an article in Scientific American disputing the theory that first-born children resembled their fathers as a kind of evolutionary guarantee the father would accept the child. Supposedly, it wasn’t true, but she wondered about that, because she certainly saw Anderson when she looked at their son.

“Good to hear,” she said. “And I told you why I didn’t contact you before you deployed.”

“Yeah.” He sounded skeptical, which didn’t surprise her. It was probably hard for him to believe that she’d been halfway through her pregnancy before acknowledging it to herself. “What about after you realized you were pregnant—and after Nate’s birth? Did you even attempt to reach me?”

“No, I didn’t,” she admitted. She could have gotten word to him if she’d wanted to. She knew the channels and how to cut through the red tape. That ability had allowed her to pinpoint the day Anderson arrived home from his deployment, but she hadn’t used it to locate him earlier.

“You see my problem, then,” he said. “You withheld information. Never trust a source that does that.” It was a standard in intelligence work where sources sometimes played for both sides. They were compromised and deemed untrustworthy. You might listen to what they had to say, but you didn’t trust it.

“I did a risk analysis. Actually, I did several.” She’d reevaluated her situation every month. Each time she’d concluded that Anderson didn’t need to know about Nate. Her most recent analysis, though, had led to a different outcome. The data hadn’t changed, but her perspective had. If someone had kept a child as beautiful and sweet as Nate from her, she’d have been ready to do murder. She’d had no way of knowing whether Anderson would care even a little bit, but it was his decision to make. She couldn’t do it for him.

The unknown in her prediction had been Anderson’s reaction to being a father. She had no hard data to indicate what his response would be, but her gut had told her he wouldn’t accept fatherhood easily. Considering the circumstances, she felt no joy in being right about that.

“And what were your findings?” he prompted.

“As you know—since I’m here—I recently decided you deserved to know.” She couldn’t elaborate on that. It was an assumption built on emotion, not fact, and she wasn’t sure he’d understand. Sometimes she didn’t understand it herself, but there it was.

Their situation, though… Even the best data wouldn’t have pointed to her being on the run with a baby and the baby’s father, who might not want to have anything to do with her or Nate. She blew out a sigh, frustrated at the lack of a plan that would guide them. She didn’t have enough information and no resources she was willing to tap. They could drive to Hilton Head Island, where her mother now lived, but she wasn’t taking trouble to her mom’s door. She’d dismissed that as a possibility an hour ago.

“We need to find a place to spend the night,” she said after a long silence. Nate would wake up and not like being confined to his car seat. Plus, she needed to feed him.

“I’m on it.” Anderson tapped a button on his steering wheel, seemingly relieved to have something to do. “Call Patrick.” He spoke the command and waited while the automated system dialed.

“Hey, Anderson,” a man’s voice answered on the second ring. “Glad you’re back in the States. Do you want to come over and see—”

“Sorry, man. Not today. I’ve got a problem,” Anderson said, then efficiently explained about the attack on Violet’s car, the note, and the baby in the back seat.

“You’ve got a kid?” whoever this Patrick was interrupted to ask. The bullets in her car and the note in Russian didn’t give him pause, but the idea of Anderson as a father made him react. That was interesting but not comforting.

“Yeah, he’s just a baby,” Anderson said with no warmth in his tone.

“Let me get this straight,” Patrick said. “You’re on the run with a baby. Man, I thought my life was complicated. What do you need from me?”

“A safe place to land for the night and a different car,” Anderson said. His eyes had never left the road or the mirrors. “You got any connections I can use?”

“Maybe. Let me make some phone calls. Kenton might have some ideas, too. Does he know about your kid?”

“Negative. I found out today,” Anderson said. “Call me back when you have something.” He clicked the button to end the call.

Violet had heard frustration in his voice, but she couldn’t be sure of the source. Was it being a father or their situation that was breaking his cool?

She hoped it was the second. Nate wasn’t a problem. He was a child, a beautiful, lovable little boy. Her mother’s heart broke to think Anderson might view their son as nothing more than an inconvenience. Of course Nate made things more complicated and brought her world a degree of fear that bordered on terror given their circumstances, but when she snuggled her child against her, any trouble was worth it.

Would Anderson come to feel that, as she had? Or was he planning to walk away as soon as he could? She’d be okay if he did. Disappointed and sad for Nate, but okay. As she’d told Anderson at his house, she didn’t need anything from him. Her father had been out of the picture by the time she was one, and her mother had been amazing. She made single motherhood look easy. Not once had Violet felt deprived. She’d been curious about her father, but she’d never longed for one because she knew she had everything she needed in her mother.

Violet could follow her mother’s example and be the same kind of parent, giving her baby mountains of love and security in other ways. She was willing to raise Nate that way, but would her child be even better off if he had two loving parents? She thought so.

Violet drummed her fingers against her leg, wishing she had the missing pieces to the puzzle they were in… and access to Anderson’s thoughts. No hope of either seemed imminent. At the moment, she’d settle for getting out of the car.

They kept driving, with Anderson periodically taking calls from Patrick and Kenton. The other men appeared to be close friends as well as SEAL teammates. Between the two of them, they set up an exchange of cars and a hotel they deemed safe for the night. It was a temporary fix to a problem that had no foreseeable end.