Found (6 page)

Katy stopped when she saw him, her expression willing him to keep his distance, to not make this any harder than it already was. “I need to go, Dayne.”

He slowed his steps. She looked breathtaking in the moonlight, even in his baggy sweatshirt. He came closer so they were only inches apart. “I have to tell you something.”

She pressed her back against her car and searched his face.

“It was a mistake, Katy.” He reached for her hands. When she didn’t pull away, he silently rejoiced. They couldn’t go their separate ways without this moment.

“I never should’ve been with Kelly.”

“Why?” Katy angled her head. The shine in tier eyes became tears, and her chin quivered. “She’s part of your world. She was always better for you than I was.”

“No.” He tightened his grip on her fingers and did the thing he’d been dying to do since she walked through his gate. He pulled her into his arms and held her.

It wasn’t the embrace of

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two lovers, but it was a hug that he hoped told her how much he cared, how much he would always care.

When he spoke, he breathed the words into her hair. “There’s something you have to know … before you leave.”

She pulled back just enough to see his face. Her cheeks were wet, and the hurt on her face was once again transparent. “Tell me.”

He brushed his cheek against hers, drying her tears. He allowed himself to get lost in her eyes. Even if this were the last time. “Katy Hart, I’ve loved you since the first day I saw you.” The tears were there for him too. He breathed in hard through his nose and stared up at the sky. When he had more control he looked at her again. “If there was a way out, I would’ve left my world in a minute to be with you.” He wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t dare. “Don’t forget that, okay?”

His admission only made her look sadder. Her tears came faster. She crooked her finger and pressed it to her lips. “Goodbye, Dayne.”

He heard the sound just as she was leaning close to hug him once more. The pounding of feet against the pavement, the click of the camera. “Katy, quick . .

. go.” He shielded her with his body, tried to block the photographer’s view, but it was too late. There were two of them now, and they were only twenty yards or so from Katy’s car. He could only hope they didn’t figure out who she was. He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I meant what I said.”

As fast as she could move, she opened her door and slid inside. It took her only seconds to start the car and back out of the spot. As she did, her eyes met his, and again he was absolutely sure about her feelings. Because the look she gave him said everything her words never had. Not that she had feelings for him or that she’d wondered about what they might’ve had. More than that.

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Even if their connection was ending before it ever really began, she loved him.

She loved him as much as he loved her.

He savored her look as long as he could. Then he blinked back tears, turned to the paparazzi, and flashed his famous smile. “Hey, guys, let up.” He held out his hands, his expression frozen for the cameras. “I’m all yours.”

“Who was she, Dayne?” It was a big, bearded guy. One of the regulars. He was out of breath from running up the beach, but even so he kept snapping pictures.

“We’ll find out eventually. Come on, tell us.”

“Yeah, Dayne.” The other guy was a wiry twentysomething-new to the shady business of lurking around the back doors of celebrities. “Make it easy on us.

Give us her name.”

“All right.” He shrugged and gave them a practiced grin. In the distance he heard Katy pull her car onto the highway and speed off. “You caught me. Another day, another actress. What can I say?”

“Was it Kelly Parker? It looked like Kelly.” The bearded guy had a line of sweat dripping down the side of his face. “Tell us it was Kelly and we’ll leave.”

Dayne walked to his Escalade, watching them the whole time, smile still frozen in place. No one would’ve known that his heart was breaking in half. “Now, now …” He kept his voice upbeat, loud enough for them to hear. “Actresses get feisty when you give away their secrets.”

“Then it is Kelly.” The young one jabbed his fist in the air. “I knew it!”

“You guys are too smart for me.” Before Dayne climbed into his SUV he waved big.

“See ya.”Ś

His smile died the moment he slipped behind his tinted glass. She was gone. Katy was gone, and there might never be another moment like that between them again.

Not ever.

He turned the key in the ignition and backed up, leaving the photographers standing there wondering. Let them think it was 37

Kelly. She would be with him soon enough. What mattered was that they didn’t know about Katy. That and they hadn’t seen his tears, hadn’t seen his heartache.

As he sped off, he realized that he too was breathless. Not from running up the beach, like the paparazzi. But for pulling off the acting job of his life, smiling for the cameras, playing along.

When all he wanted to do was collapse there on the pavement and cry.

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John Baxter settled back in the driver’s seat and tightened his grip on the wheel. The drive to Indianapolis couldn’t happen fast enough. It felt like a lifetime since his phone conversation with Tim Brown, the investigator, but it had only happened the day before. John had wanted to drop everything and head to the man’s office. But his appointment wasn’t until this morning at eleven.

With no idea what was coming, John had called into his office and asked his secretary to reschedule his appointments. Now it was only a matter of willing the minutes to pass so he could look the investigator in the eye and hear the truth. Whatever the truth was.

He flipped on the radio and hit the button for a country-music station. A commercial was wrapping up, and then the beautiful refrains of a song filled the car. A song he was familiar with. John recognized it before the first words. It was the group Lonestar singing their hit song “I’m Already There.” John leaned back against his headrest and turned up the volume.

This was Elizabeth’s song, the one she’d listened to so often 40

when she was sick. He remembered her once on the way home from chemotherapy, sitting beside him, thinner than before, her hair almost gone. “I love this song,” she told him. She’d reached for his hand. “If things don’t go the way we want, if things … don’t work out-” she smiled at him-“think of me when they play it, okay?”

He listened to the words, words about that special person being there-even when it didn’t seem like they were. How that person would be there in the sunshine and the shadows, in the beat of a person’s heart or the whisper of their prayers.

Tears stung at John’s eyes, and he realized something.

It had been at least a week since he’d cried over losing Elizabeth. Not that he missed her any less. But the idea of missing her was getting more normal all the time, the rhythm of his routine without her more natural. He could still see her, of course. Still see her pale blue eyes, the way they jumped out framed by her thick dark hair. The way it had been before the cancer. The trouble was sometimes the memories weren’t in color anymore. More like shades of gray.

He listened to the song some more, hummed along-the way she had done whenever it came on. It was a rainy day, and snow hovered in the forecast, but John didn’t care. Elizabeth’s dying wish was enough to keep him warm even if he were to open all four windows.

Her dying wish that somehow they find their firstborn.

John clenched his teeth. God… why couldn’t we be taking this drive together, she and I? How come we didn’t find this investigator sooner? He waited for a response, but all that came to mind were the words on the plaque on his desk.

Words from the nineteenth chapter of Matthew: With God all things are possible.

All things.

Then how come Elizabeth hadn’t found their son before she died? The questions rolled around like jagged stones in his mind. Or maybe God really did give people a window from

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heaven. Maybe Elizabeth was clasping her hands in excitement, as anxious as he was about the news that lay just ahead.

And it would be news; it had to be. He’d spent a sleepless night replaying the investigator’s phone call. The man must have a find or detail, something important enough to have him come to Indianapolis in person to get the news.

That could mean only one thing: Tim Brown, ace investigator, had found his son, his firstborn. It had to be that.

John rejoiced over the possibility, but he had an equal amount of regret. Why hadn’t he tried this hard when Elizabeth was alive? She’d wanted the chance to meet their son so badly; the idea of it completely consumed her. But back then it hadn’t been a priority for him. All that mattered was keeping her alive, working with her team of doctors, and begging God for another year, one more month. One more day.

At some point near the end of her battle, Elizabeth had peacefully let go of the fight to stay alive. Instead, she focused all her energy on finding their son, whoever he was, wherever he was. The child they’d been forced to give up. She was so adamant about making contact with him that the day before she died she’d convinced herself she had actually met him, that their firstborn had walked into her hospital room and shared an hourlong conversation with her.

At first the drug-induced delusion had made him beyond sad. He had failed her, been unable to bring about her final desire. But now he felt differently about it. Perhaps the dream or hallucination was a gift from God, a way of easing Elizabeth’s pain in her dying days.

John drew a long breath. A commercial came on the station, and he turned the channel to classical music. No more sad songs. Not when every song about love or loss seemed written for Elizabeth and him. He squinted and tried to read a road sign up ahead. Indianapolis-10 Miles. The roads were empty; he’d be at the investigator’s office in less than fifteen minutes.

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His thoughts rolled around some more. The issue with their firstborn son wasn’t as secret as it had been when Elizabeth was alive. Ashley knew now, and every few weeks she asked for an update. What was he doing about the search? Whom had he talked to? What investigator was working the case?

She had an uncanny sense about the situation. Last night, hours after the call from Tim Brown, Ashley had phoned him. “Dad, I can’t stop thinking about him.”

Her voice was soft, filled with emotion.

John took a hopeful guess that maybe she was talking about her husband.

“Landon?”

She made an exaggerated sigh. “Dad, you know who.” She paused, and in the background he could hear Cole chattering away, something about having macaroni and cheese for dinner. Ashley lowered her voice. “My oldest brother.”

Of course he knew. Ashley had started a dozen conversations this way since last fall when she found the letter Elizabeth had placed in an envelope marked Firstborn. Last night, though, he hadn’t wanted to talk about his oldest son. He didn’t want anyone to know he was going to the investigator’s office until he had had time to sort through the information.

“Honey,” he’d finally told her, “there’s nothing to say, no news. When 1 know something, I’ll call you.”

He took the First Street exit and wound his way into the newer part of downtown.

Tim Brown’s office was on the fourth floor of a white cement-block building.

Snow began falling just as John found an empty meter on the street out front and parked his car.

Five minutes later he stepped off the elevator and into the investigator’s sparse quarters.

A woman at the front desk smiled at him. “Mr. Baxter?”

“Yes.” John reminded himself to breathe. This was it; whatever had become of their son, he was pretty sure he was about to 43

find out. He stepped forward and brushed a fine layer of snow off his coat. “I have an appointment with Mr. Brown.”

“Have a seat.” She pointed to a pair of hard-back wood chairs. “Mr. Brown’s expecting you.”

John did as she asked. The office didn’t have much of a view; the building across the street was newer and twice as tall. Without walking over to the window, that was all a person could see.

He had expected the investigator to conform to the stereotypical image: slightly distracted and disheveled, lost in a mass of paperwork and flashing telephone lights. But Tim Brown was different. He was a fast-talking, intense professional, organized in his approach and with a keen eye for details. Details John had never even thought about. What sort of mission work had the adoptive parents done and where might they have done it? What church had they worked with? What was the name of the home where Elizabeth had lived during the last half of her pregnancy?

They were obvious questions. But they couldn’t be answered in the court records-all of which were sealed.

Tim Brown had told him there was nothing he could do to open court records.

“We’re going deeper than that, Mr. Baxter. We’ll have to.”

John had done his best to cooperate. When his answers were not quite clear or a little hesitant, Tim Brown had pushed him, asking three more questions for every answer John gave. “I’d rather have too much to check than too little,” he told John.

That had been a week ago, and now here he was.

The sound of footsteps echoed in the hall, and John drew a Jong breath. God, if it’s okay, can You let Elizabeth watch? Can You tell her how much I wish she were beside me right now … please?

“Mr. Baxter?” Tim was a compact man with a runner’s build.

John stood, and the two shook hands. “Thanks for seeing me.”

“Sorry you had to come in. Like I said … the information is 44

very sensitive.” A seriousness filled the man’s eyes. “Why don’t you follow me?”

Something occurred to John as he followed him down a boxy hallway. Maybe the investigator wanted to give him this information in person because he’d found something terrible. Maybe their oldest son had enlisted in the service and been killed in action a decade ago. Or maybe he’d died in a car accident or from some sort of illness.

Maybe he was behind bars for some heinous crime.