She paused. “You don’t believe me?”
“No, but that’s not important. The important thing is that after a year of digging, I found you.”
“Lucky me,” she grumbled. She turned in the seat so she was facing him. Her loose, well-worn jeans and dark red cotton shirt whispered against the vinyl seat. Her breath whispered, too. There was more weariness in it, but Luke could see her fighting it off. “Now, it’s your turn to answer some questions. Who are you and what do you want?”
“I’m Luke Buchanan.” Since the truth would no doubt speed this along, he added, “I’m a federal agent with the Department of Justice.”
She put her hand over her heart as if to steady it. “Prove it.”
The crisp demand had him doing a double take. For a weary lying woman, she certainly had a lot of resolve left. “Prove what?”
“Show me a badge or some kind of ID.”
Jeez. Why couldn’t she just confess all?
Irked, Luke reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his badge. She took it, stared it and even scraped her thumbnail over the picture. Not just once. But twice.
“It’s real,” he assured her.
She must have agreed because she thrust it back at him. What he wouldn’t tell her, yet, was that while the badge was real, this wasn’t official Justice Department business.
No.
This was as personal as personal could get.
“I suppose you’re here to arrest me for the illegal adoption?” she asked.
“That all depends.”
“On what?” Finally, there was slip in her resolve. Her voice cracked.
“You.” He came to stop in front of the house, turned off the engine and stared at her.
Probably because she hadn’t taken her eyes off him, she hadn’t realized where he’d taken her. She glanced out the window for a second before she snapped her head back in his direction. “This is my babysitter’s house. What are we doing here?”
He turned toward her so he could see every nuance of her reaction. “Why do you think I’m here?”
“Oh, no.” She began to shake her head. “I can’t let you do this. You can’t arrest me. You don’t understand— he’s my son. I’ve raised him since he was three days old. I’m the only mother he’s ever known.”
“Believe me, I know that.”
And that was the only reason he hadn’t had Laina McLemore arrested.
“I won’t let you take him from me,” she insisted.
“You have no choice.” And he was just as adamant.
“But you do.” Her bottom lip began to tremble, and she gripped the sides of his leather jacket. “You can walk away from this. You can pretend you never found me.”
Luke had thought he would be immune to a reaction like that, but he wasn’t. “I can’t do that.”
The grip she had on his jacket melted away, and she touched her fingers to her mouth. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, God. The birth parents know about Christopher, and they want him back.”
“His birth mother is dead.” Luke had to take a deep breath after saying that. And another deep breath before he could continue. “But his birth father does indeed want him back.”
Twin tears spilled down her cheeks. “Then, I need to talk to him. I need to make him understand how much Christopher means to me.”
“You’re already talking to him, and there’s nothing you can say or do to make me change my mind. Christopher is my son.”
Chapter Three
Elaina’s breath vanished. And her heart. God, her heart. It was pounding so fast and hard that she thought her ribs might crack.
This was her nightmare come true. Well, one of them anyway. The only thing worse than this would be another attack from those men. But this was an attack of a different kind.
Luke Buchanan was Christopher’s birth father.
Or was he?
On the surface it seemed stupid to challenge him, but she was desperate. “Why should I believe you?” she asked. “Show me some proof that he’s your son.”
She figured that might buy her some time. It didn’t. As if he’d anticipated the question, he calmly reached inside his leather jacket and produced a manila envelope. Elaina also noticed the gun tucked in a leather shoulder holster. It looked as authentic and official as his badge. Luke Buchanan seemed to be the real deal.
“Let me start with how I found out that you had my son. A woman named Collena Drake, a former cop, has been digging through the hundreds of files left by the criminals who orchestrated the adoptions, among other things. She got in touch with me and was able to tell me the names of the couple who’d illegally adopted Christopher.”
“Collena Drake could have been wrong,” Elaina offered. “And the records could have been wrong, too. After all, the people who put them together were criminals. You just said so yourself.”
He ignored her, opened the envelope and extracted a picture. “That’s Taylor, my late wife.”
Elaina took the photo from him, dreading what she might see. It was the picture of a couple on their wedding day. The bride, dressed in white, was a beautiful brunette. The groom, Luke Buchanan, wore a tux.
“That’s still not proof,” Elaina insisted.
Luke Buchanan’s calm demeanor remained in place. From the envelope, he produced a marriage license. He placed it on the seat between them. Elaina was about to repeat her doubt, but the next document kept her quiet.
It was a lab slip indicating a positive pregnancy test.
The date on the slip was eight months prior to Christopher’s birth.
“In addition to the lab results, this is a report that details how I learned about what happened to Taylor and our baby.” He plopped the stapled pages onto the stack. “There’s an eyewitness account of Taylor arriving at the Brighton Birthing Center just outside San Antonio. She was in labor. The eyewitness helped her into the E.R. section of the building and then left. All of this happened August eleventh of last year.”
That information hit her hard. Because August eleventh was Christopher’s birthday. And his place of birth was indeed the Brighton Birthing Center. Still, Elaina wasn’t going to accept this blindly.
“Eyewitness accounts can be falsified,” she countered.
“Not
