He cleared his throat. ‘‘After that, I went looking for Kevin Starr. He was pretty easy to find. He’d moved to Chicago not long after Carrie left town. He went to college and then on to med school. He was real surprised to hear from me. All these years he’d assumed I met up with Carrie and the baby and we had a life.’’
‘‘So they didn’t have an affair?’’
‘‘No. That was all a story she made up for my father. Kevin helped her because . . . well . . . he did have a thing for her. He worked in the hospital and was on shift when Carrie arrived in labor a month before the baby was due. She was scared. Alone—her mother was out of town. He stayed with her, and they talked. She told him that Vicki said Branch wanted to steal her baby from her. When Branch showed up demanding to see his grandchild, Kevin came up with the bright idea to substitute another baby in the nursery for Chris. A little girl. A little girl who couldn’t be mine. He got permission from the baby’s mother, and they posed a scene in Carrie’s room that completely convinced Branch that Carrie was a cheap slut who’d cheated on her soldier husband off risking his life for the red, white, and blue.’’
‘‘Vicki wasn’t in on it?’’
‘‘Nope. Carrie wasn’t any happier with her mother than she was with my father. Kevin said Branch had told her about Vicki’s lies and extortion. She took off, left her mom a letter confessing her sin—along with the little girl’s picture. Kevin said she planned to write to me with the whole story as soon as she settled someplace safe.’’
‘‘Something happened to prevent it,’’ Annabelle concluded.
‘‘Yes. Took me a while to find out what. I’m lucky that she told him she was heading for Florida. That made picking up her trail a lot easier. Still, there were lots of records to chase down. I traced her to Orlando. One morning she left the baby at a drop-in day-care center and went looking for work. A car hit her while she was crossing the street. Annabelle, the driver was drunk.’’
‘‘You’re kidding.’’
‘‘Life takes some strange twists.’’
‘‘So . . .’’ She tucked a strand of auburn hair behind her ear. ‘‘Your wife didn’t cheat on you and your father wasn’t responsible for her death.’’
‘‘That’s right. He did meddle, but for all his faults, he was trying to help Carrie. My father does that. He’s the original Fixer. I think I’ve finally made my peace with that.’’
She reached over and took his hand, and Mark grinned at the familiar gesture of comfort.
Yep, coming home.
It was time to finish this tale of the past so he could move on to the future. Their future. ‘‘She was using the fake ID she’d gotten in high school to get into clubs. She’d signed the baby into the day-care center as Mark Watkins to match the ID. Authorities never found a family for the baby, so he went into the system and was adopted right away. He’s had a good life, Belle. I really like his parents. Paul and Cindy Christopher.’’
‘‘Ah . . . now I get the ‘Chris.’ ’’
‘‘Two Marks is too weird.’’ He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. ‘‘I feel so grateful that they adopted him. Hell, he was better off with them than he would have been with me all these years. They’re normal. His father’s an accountant. His mother teaches kindergarten. They are even okay with the fact that I found him. They were happy for him. They’re fine with him spending some time with me.’’
‘‘Hmm . . . wonder if they’d change their minds if they knew you let him speed in a Porsche.’’
‘‘Hey, just on the road to the farm,’’ he defended. ‘‘Chris is a neat kid. He’s smart—an honor student. He graduates from high school in a couple of weeks. He’s going to college on a baseball scholarship.’’
‘‘Really? Where?’’
Mark released her hand and reached up to touch her hair. ‘‘Hawaii. He doesn’t think he’s good enough to make it to the Show, so the idea of beaches and bikinis trumped any other considerations.’’
‘‘He’s a real Callahan, isn’t he?’’
‘‘He makes a father proud. And speaking of Callahans . . .’’ He rolled off the hay bale and onto his knees, facing her. He took her hands in his. ‘‘Belle, what would you think of the hyphen thing this time?’’
‘‘Hyphen thing?’’
‘‘I know you are an independent woman and all, and I know how you felt about it last time, but lately I’ve discovered that I have a real old-fashioned streak. This time around . . .’’ Fishing in his pocket, he pulled out . . . a peppermint. He frowned, tossed it away, and dug into his pocket again.
Mark pulled out a ring. Square-cut diamond, platinum setting. Got a thumbs-up from Torie and Maddie when he sent a photo from the jewelry store to their phones. Nevertheless, his mouth was dry and his pulse pounded as he shot for nonchalance and repeated, ‘‘This time around, I’m hoping you’ll add the ‘Callahan. ’ Annabelle Monroe-Callahan. What do you think?’’
Her eyes glimmered with tears. ‘‘I dunno, Callahan. I’m not all that excited about the hyphen thing.’’
His heart lurched. ‘‘You’re not?’’
‘‘Nah.’’ She shrugged. ‘‘ ‘Annabelle Callahan’ works for me.’’
His heart swelled. ‘‘That’s cool.’’
She held out her left hand and wiggled her fingers. ‘‘Put it on me, Callahan, so we can get to the good stuff.’’
He slid the ring onto her finger. ‘‘Good stuff?’’
‘‘You think hotels are good?’’ She grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet, then dragged him to the corner of the loft where hay lay loose and piled high. Her smile was wide and wicked. ‘‘Just wait until you take me on a hayride, Callahan.’’
Chapter Eighteen
Lanai, Hawaii
‘‘The things we do for family.’’ Mark Callahan’s perspiration-damp hands retied his bow tie for the fifth time.
‘‘Tell me about it,’’ Luke Callahan muttered, running his finger around the snug collar of his tuxedo shirt.
Matt gave his reflection a once-over in the full-length mirror and scowled. ‘‘I swear, if Torie refers to me as James Bond one time today, I’m going to kick your ass, Mark.’’
‘‘Oh, y’all lay off Dad.’’ Chris smiled at his image in the mirror and fussed briefly with his sun-streaked hair. ‘‘He can’t help it that he’s lost the ability to say no. I haven’t seen any of you standing up to Nana of late, either.’’
The Callahan men couldn’t argue with that.
The wedding that started out as a small, informal affair had turned into a Wedding, capital
W
, once Lynn Monroe got involved. Over the course of the past few months, Mark had seen where Annabelle got her courage, her tenacity, and, though he’d never say it aloud, her stubbornness. Her mother had been ‘‘cheated’’ out of a big wedding for Annabelle the first time around. She wasn’t allowing that to happen again.
Chris’s schedule with school had put a crimp in the plans for a church wedding in Kansas, but once Lynn got a gander at the spot Mark had in mind for the ceremony, she had enthusiastically jumped into planning mode. When he discovered that Harvey P. Selcer had put Hau’oli up for sale, Mark decided to add it to his collection of vacation homes. Despite the fact that Annabelle had sold her business, he and his bride would spend lots of time in the Islands over the next four years in order to be near Chris. Besides, he had lots of fantasies involving his bride and his house with a view.
Fantasies he intended to begin indulging this very night.
He heard a knock on the door. Tag Harrington stuck his head into the room. ‘‘This is your fifteen-minute heads-up from General Monroe. Just so you know . . . she threatened that if you’re late, she’ll never bake me kolaches again. I have my gun and I’m prepared to use it.’’
‘‘I’ve been waiting for this moment for six months,’’ Mark shot back. ‘‘No way will I be late.’’
Six months. Six long, lonely, empty-bed months. If he’d known the cost of a certain Kansas hayride, he might have held off that evening—or at least waited until dark. Annabelle had turned beet red when, after they’d exited the barn to announce their engagement, Chris sauntered over to her, calmly plucked a piece of straw out of her hair, winked at her, then said, ‘‘Dad, I wanna grow up just like you.’’
In that moment, Annabelle reverted to her no-sex-outside-of-marriage viewpoint. She didn’t want to be a bad influence on her soon-to-be stepson, she claimed. No matter how much arguing, cajoling, and down-on-his-knees begging Mark had attempted, he couldn’t convince her to change her stance.
‘‘The sacrifices parents make,’’ he muttered glumly.
But, hey, that all comes to an end tonight.
At exactly seven o’clock, the vans would start ferrying wedding guests back to the boats for the short trip over to Maui. By eight o’clock, he and Annabelle would find themselves completely, totally, blissfully alone and the honeymoon would commence. He’d wear this tux for her today, but after that, no clothes for a month.
‘‘This ceremony can’t get here soon enough,’’ he muttered beneath his breath. He’d been on board with a formal wedding at first—clueless as to what it involved—thinking they’d get it done in a month.
Right.
In the beginning, even despite the no-sex declaration, he had thought Annabelle could use a distraction while they ferreted out the Fixers’ unknown stalker. Planning a wedding had been a distraction all right. Hell, if a villain had attempted to hold Annabelle at gunpoint while she and her mother debated bouquet flowers, he wondered whether she would have noticed.
Luckily, they hadn’t faced that situation. Three months into their engagement, Mark had identified the killer.
He glanced out at the lawn where the person in question sat with what remained of his team on the right side of the aisle, second seat, in the fifth row of chairs. ‘‘I wish we could have left one name off the guest list,’’ he muttered.
Chris followed the path of his gaze. ‘‘They are here?’’
‘‘Yep.’’ Mark had shared the entire story with the boy early on—only fair, since hanging with Mark could have proved dangerous. Chris got a real charge out of the knowledge that his father had tracked down the identity of a spy selling secrets to America’s enemies.
‘‘Which one is it?’’
‘‘See the man in the uniform? That’s Colonel Warren. Our villainess is seated next to him. His wife, Lala Warren.’’
‘‘Hmm . . . ,’’ Chris said. ‘‘Yeah, she has that Natasha look to her.’’
Luke glanced toward his nephew. ‘‘Natasha?’’
Chris flashed his uncle a grin. ‘‘Yeah. You know. Boris and Natasha? Bullwinkle?’’ Chris returned his gaze to the lawn. ‘‘Is she Russian?’’
‘‘Armenian,’’ Mark replied. ‘‘She was married to a scientist, a brilliant chemist who worked in Iraq for Saddam Hussein but didn’t want to be there. Getting the two of them out was one of the first missions the Fixers ever completed.’’
‘‘So she ditched the scientist for the colonel?’’
‘‘The scientist died and she married Colonel Warren after that.’’
‘‘Hmm.’’ Chris shook his head and whistled soundlessly. ‘‘Man, this is cold. Putting a hit on you, then coming to your wedding.’’
‘‘Maintaining the cover is the first rule of being a spy, Grasshopper,’’ Matt offered.
‘‘Still . . . how does Colonel Warren stand being around her? Talk about ice.’’
Mark grimaced at the memory of the meeting where he and Annabelle had told the colonel the bad news about his wife. ‘‘Colonel Warren is one of the strongest men I’ve ever known.’’
The break in the case had come when he and Annabelle decided to take another, more in-depth look at the Fixers’ missions throughout the years. The government had kept a close watch on the scientist and his wife following their arrival in the States, and eagle-eyed Annabelle had picked out Gallery Gal in one of those surveillance photos. After that, it was just a matter of tugging threads.
Wanting to break the news to their former boss privately, they’d invited him for a drink in their hotel suite at the Ritz—if Mark wasn’t going to get sex, at least he’d have a good bed—not far from the colonel’s home in Georgetown.
The three of them had sat at the dining table. Mark opened the file and showed the first picture of the woman taken by the surveillance camera in the Telluride, Colorado, gallery. ‘‘We identified her as one Nada Marić, an operative with ties to the bad guys in the Balkans and, through them, terrorist cells in Europe and the Middle East.’’
He took out the second photo of Marić during the meet with Lala Warren, glanced at Annabelle, and set it on the table. The colonel’s complexion drained of color. ‘‘She and your wife grew up together, sir. It appears that since she’s come to Washington, Lala has been engaged in espionage.’’
Following a long moment of silence, the colonel spoke in a deadly cold voice. ‘‘And you know this how?’’
Annabelle spoke. ‘‘Once we had Marić’s name, we were able to backtrack her movements. That led us to a computer in an apartment in Manhattan that provided answers to most of our questions.’’
‘‘E-mail? That’s stupid.’’
‘‘This wasn’t a sophisticated espionage ring, sir,’’ Mark said. ‘‘This was two childhood friends brokering information for cash. As so often happens, success made them greedy and that caused trouble for everyone.’’
‘‘Explain what happened.’’
Mark handed over a stack of printed e-mails. ‘‘Using these e-mails as a starting place, we pieced together the story of how the Fixers became targets. It appears that Nada made an enemy of a Slovenian gangster after she took his money and failed to deliver on something unrelated to your wife. The gangster wanted her taken down, but he didn’t want it traced back to him. He went to Dennis Nelson and offered to sell him the name of a traitor connected to the Fixers. But the Slovenian died before giving up the name.’’
‘‘Who killed the Slovenian?’’
‘‘We haven’t turned up definitive proof, but we suspect Marić did him. After the gangster’s death, Nelson decided to investigate on his own. His fatal mistake was to say too much when your wife answered the phone.’’
Colonel Warren didn’t speak, but wearily closed his eyes.