Lock, Stock and Secret Baby

Ray lunged for his own weapon. It trembled in his hand. He’d never be able to shoot this young man whom he had known literally since birth.

“You’re not a killer.” The voice was sheer music. “Put down the gun.”

Ray sank into the chair behind his desk and reached for the telephone. Still holding the gun, he hit the speed dial for the security service that monitored his “rudimentary” alarm system. They were guaranteed to respond within ten minutes.

“Hang up the phone, Dr. Jantzen.”

“Or else?”

“Be reasonable.” He aimed the Beretta. “You know what I’m looking for.”

Turning over his records wouldn’t be enough, and Ray knew it. “I won’t remain silent. I can’t.”

“Then you will die.”

Ray squeezed off several shots, aiming high. He hoped to frighten his opponent, though he knew that hope was futile.

Three bullets burned into his chest. Before his eyelids closed, he imprinted his gaze on the photograph of Blake and his beloved Annie.

EVE WEATHERS HAD ATTENDED many funerals, mostly in the company of her parents, mostly for people she didn’t know. Being raised on army bases meant death visited her community with a sad and terrible frequency. But she’d never before stood at the graveside of someone who’d been murdered.

The bright sun of an early June afternoon dimmed, as if a shadow hung over them, as if they all shared in the guilt. The police said Dr. Ray Jantzen had been killed by a burglar. They had no suspects. The killer might even be among them.

While the preacher read from Psalms, she checked out the other graveside mourners. Her mother would have called this a good turnout—close to a hundred people. An eclectic bunch, they appeared to be from all walks of life. There were serious-looking older men who were probably Ray’s friends and psychiatrist coworkers, several men in uniform because Ray had worked at the VA hospital, a young man in leather with spiky, black hair and mirrored sunglasses, a couple of teenagers and various family members. Their only common denominator was that Eve didn’t know any of them.

Dr. Ray had been in her life for as long as she could remember, literally since she was born. When her parents had applied for an experimental in vitro fertilization program at the army base where her dad had been stationed, Eve had become part of a lifelong study. Every year, she had filled in a questionnaire and had given Dr. Ray an update on her life, both her physical and emotional condition.

They’d only met in person a couple of times before she had moved to Boulder three years ago to take a mathematical engineering position at Sun Wave Labs. For the past two years, she and Dr. Ray had done their updates over dinner. His wife had passed away, and she assumed he was lonely.

The sound of his coffin being lowered startled her. She blinked. Her gaze lit upon a dark-haired man in a black suit who stood beside the preacher. She recognized him from the photo Dr. Ray had carried in his wallet. His son, Blake Jantzen.

She studied Blake with a mathematician’s eye, taking his measure. His physical proportions were remarkable. Her mind calculated the inches and angles of his shoulders, his torso and the length of his legs. Though he wasn’t splayed out, like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, Blake Jantzen was close to ideal.

When his gaze met hers, a tremor rippled through her, and she immediately lowered her eyes. She hadn’t meant to stare, hadn’t intended to intrude on what had to be a terrible day for him. When she looked up again, he was still watching her.

Their eye contact intensified. His dark eyes bored into hers, and that little tremor expanded to a full-blown, pulsating earthquake inside her rib cage. If she didn’t look away, it felt as if her heart would explode. This wasn’t how she usually reacted to men, even if they were practically perfect.

Pretending to pray, she stared down at her feet. Her toes protruded from her hiking sandals which were really too casual for a funeral, even if they were black. Suddenly self-conscious, she decided her black skirt was too short, showing off way too much of her winter white legs. She buttoned her black cotton jacket over her white tank top, stained with a dribble of coffee from this morning.

Whenever she mingled with the general public, her style seemed inadequate. In the lab, she wore comfortable jeans and T-shirts with nerdy slogans. Her chin-length, wheat-blond hair resembled a bird’s nest. None of the guys she worked with cared what she looked like. They were so absorbed in their work that they wouldn’t notice if she showed up naked, except perhaps to comment on the small tattooed symbol for pi above her left breast.

The crowd dispersed, and she lost sight of Blake, which was probably for the best. Her mother would have told her that the proper behavior would be to shake his hand and offer condolences, but she didn’t trust herself to get that close to him without a meltdown. Was she so desperate for male companionship that she’d hit on a guy at his father’s funeral?

She made a beeline for her car. As she clicked the door lock, she heard a voice behind her. “Are you Eve Weathers?”

Without turning around, she knew who that sexy baritone belonged to. “I’m Eve.”

“I’m Blake Jantzen. I need to talk to you.”

Up close, he was even more amazing. Was there a degree beyond perfection? Most people had incongruities in their facial structure: one eye higher than the other, a bump on the nose or a dimple in one cheek and not the other. Blake had none of those anomalies. Even the shadows of exhaustion beneath his eyes were precisely symmetrical.

She stammered, “I’m s-sorry for your loss.”

He acknowledged with a crisp nod. “Come back to the house. My aunt arranged a reception.”

“I don’t know where you live.”

“My father’s house,” he clarified.

Though she’d planned to return to her office in Boulder, she couldn’t refuse without being rude. “I’ve never been to Dr. Ray’s home.”

A flicker of surprise registered in his coffee-brown eyes. “I thought you were close to him. He thought highly of you.”

“We met for dinner a couple of times, and he was very kind to me. But it was always at a restaurant. He kept his private life, well, private.” Her parents never could have afforded her postgrad studies if Dr. Ray hadn’t helped her obtain scholarships. “I thought of him as a benefactor.”

“Stay here,” Blake said. “I’ll tell my aunt that I’m riding with you.”

Though she obediently slid behind the steering wheel of her hybrid and waited, his attitude irked her. Blake had the arrogant tone of someone who gave orders that must be followed. A military guy. An alpha male. The kind of man who demanded too much and gave little in return. If she ever fell in love, she hoped it would be with a guy who at least pretended to treat her as an equal.

Though she doubted that she and Blake would get along, Eve checked her reflection in the visor mirror. She’d shed a couple of tears, but the mascara around her blue eyes wasn’t smudged. She pushed her bangs into a semblance of order.

In a matter of minutes, Mr. Perfect returned to her car and climbed into the passenger side. “At the exit from the cemetery, turn right.”

Having issued his order, he leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.

Eve wished there was something she could do or say to comfort him. Her mother was good in these situations; she knew how to show empathy without being too sentimental. Eve lacked those people skills. She could calculate quadratic equations in the blink of an eye, but the art of conversation baffled her. She pinched her lips and remained silent as she drove.

When Blake opened his eyes and leaned forward, he appeared to be completely in control. “What’s your birthday?”

An odd question. “June twenty-second. I’ll be twenty-six.”

“Mine is June thirtieth. Same year,” he said. “And you were born in New Mexico.”

“At an army base near Roswell.”

“Me, too.”

“I guess we have something in common.”

“More than you know,” he said. “Tell me about your relationship with my dad.”

Apparently, Mr. Perfect wasn’t big on idle chatter. This felt like an interrogation. “I communicated with Dr. Ray once a year, every year. On my birthday, I filled out a status report with forty questions. Some of them were essay questions and took a while to answer.”

“Did you ever wonder why?”

“Of course, I did.” His terse questions provoked an equally abrupt response from her. “I’m not a mindless idiot.”

He gave a short laugh. “I’d bet on the opposite. You’re pretty damn smart.”