Daddy Devastating

“No. First we deal with your identity.”

“I’m an FBI agent,” Russ repeated, “and you’re messing with an investigation that’s taken me a long time to put together.” And it could all be in the toilet, thanks to a prissy San Antonio heiress and her baby charades.

“Does your investigation have to do with black-market infants?” she asked.

He laughed, but not with humor. The woman had nerve … or something. “I’m not discussing one detail of my investigation with you. You’ve already overheard way too much.”

“Or maybe I’ve overheard the dealings of two criminals meeting in an alley to discuss selling a baby.” She swiveled around and faced him. “Do you have a badge?”

It took him a moment to answer, because when she swiveled, her dress slid up a little, and he got a visual reminder of her great thighs.

“Not with me. It’s generally not a good idea to carry a badge while undercover. Bad guys tend to kill you if they find out you’re an FBI agent. Imagine that.” He didn’t bother to tone down the sarcasm.

With a mighty effort, he forced his attention off her thighs.

She tipped her head to the ceiling and groaned softly. Finally she started the car. She turned on the AC, but didn’t put the car into gear. “If you’re lying to me, somehow I will make you pay.”

Russ leaned into the AC vent and let the cold air spill over him. “Ditto, darlin’. Except, there is no if in what you’re saying. It’s a lie. I didn’t sleep with your cousin and I’m not her baby’s father.”

Julia put her face closer to her vent, as well. “The DNA says otherwise.”

Yeah? It did? Well, it did if she was telling the truth about that. Of course, that went back to motive. Why would she lie about something like that? He wasn’t rich, and he had no prospects of getting rich anytime soon.

And then it hit him.

Russ snapped back from the AC vent. “You said something about using my photo for facial recognition software. Where is that picture?”

“In my purse.” She tipped her head toward it.

He couldn’t get to it fast enough. Russ rifled through the gold bag and came up with three photos. One was of the baby, which he’d already seen. The other was a young twenty-something brunette who resembled Julia. Cousin Lissa, no doubt. But it was the final picture that grabbed his attention and sucker-punched him.

Suddenly, all of this became crystal clear.

“Let me guess,” Russ said. Though he wondered how he could speak with his jaw suddenly so tight. “Lissa called her baby’s daddy ‘RJ’?”

She shrugged. “Yes. So?”

Russ started to groan, curse and hit his fist against the console, but he knew none of those things would undo what had apparently happened nine months ago.

“RJ, as in Russell James,” Julia interjected. “As in you.”

“As in Robert Jason Gentry.” Those words had been even harder to speak than the others, and despite all the anger and frustration, he couldn’t help but feel the pain, too. It’d been months, and it was still there. Fresh and raw.

Russ figured it always would be.

“Who’s Robert Jason?” Julia asked, suddenly looking as dumbfounded as Russ felt.

He reached in his pocket and took out his wallet so he could extract the only photo he carried. It wasn’t standard procedure to carry personal photos while in a deep cover situation, but Russ hadn’t had the heart to take it out. He did now, and passed it to Julia.

She studied it, but Russ already knew every little detail. It’d been taken nearly two years ago, on a rare fishing trip they’d managed to schedule.

It was the last time he’d seen RJ.

“You have a twin brother,” Julia mumbled.

“Identical twin.” Which explained the match in the DNA. Identical twins didn’t have the same fingerprints, but the standard DNA test couldn’t distinguish one from the other.

She shook her head. “But your brother didn’t come up during Sentron’s search.”

“He wouldn’t have. RJ is … was black ops for the CIA. It would have taken more than Sentron or a traffic camera to find anything on him. All of his real records were sealed years ago.”

Her gaze slashed to his. “Was?”

“Was,” Russ repeated. And he repeated it again to give himself time to clear the lump in his throat. “He was killed on assignment nine months ago, probably just days after he met your cousin. He’s the reason I was in San Antonio at that bank. I was the beneficiary of his estate, and I had some paperwork to sign.”

“He’s dead,” Julia mumbled. But she continued to volley glances between the photo and him. “And you really are who you said you are—Russell Gentry?”

“Russ,” he said, automatically making the correction. Russell had been his dad’s name, and he wasn’t comfortable calling himself that.

The answer had no sooner left his mouth when her cell rang, and in the dimly lit car, he saw Sentron Securities flash on her caller ID screen.

Russ merely motioned for her to answer it.

“Burke,” she said, placing the call on speaker. “You have something for me?”

“Julia, he’s telling you the truth. Russell Gentry is an FBI agent.”

She pulled in a hard breath. “Thank you, Burke.”

“I’m sorry about this, Julia. We dug as deep as we could go, and we didn’t find his FBI records.”

Russ cut off what sounded like just the beginning of an apologetic explanation. “Silas Duran will clear up loose ends with you,” Russ informed the security specialist, and he reached over, took her phone and clicked it off.

“I’m sorry—” Julia began.

But he cut her off, too. “Sorry won’t help. The only thing that will help is damage control, and that’s about to get started.”

Julia nodded and handed him back the picture.

“What can I do?”

“For now, you can go back to your hotel, take the baby and return to San Antonio. Did you fly or drive here?”

“I drove. Emily’s only two weeks old. She’s too young to fly.”

Well, in some ways that made it easier. No trip to and from the airport, but that meant she had to go about a hundred and fifty miles to get home safely.

“You have some kind of security system, I assume?” he asked.