Secret Agent Father

Shelby didn’t want to discuss it later. She wanted to talk about it now, so she could show Alex he was wrong. Yet in spite of her instinctive defense, she felt uneasy. She wasn’t an idiot. Her father’s shipping company dominated the Great Lakes shipping business. How could drugs be on his ships without his knowledge? She shoved aside the shimmer of doubt. She didn’t know how her father had missed what was going on, but she was relieved to hear Trina believed in their father’s innocence, too.

She was tempted to insist he tell her more, but bit her tongue, in deference to Cody. The poor child had been traumatized enough. He didn’t need to hear his aunt arguing with his other dad.

“Yes. We will talk more later.” Her gaze warned him that she expected answers. He returned her look with a bland one of his own.

Kayla called out to them from the kitchen. “Are you coming?”

They both hurried into the kitchen. Instead of eating in the formal dining room usually reserved for guests, they crowded around the oak picnic table in the kitchen. There should have been plenty of room, especially when Cody insisted on sitting next to Brianna. Yet Alex seemed to take up more than his share of space. His presence was disturbing and not just because she usually avoided being so close to a man. For some strange reason, his woodsy aftershave teased her senses.

“Excuse me,” she muttered when their elbows bumped for the third time. She scooched over a few more inches. Any farther, she’d be sitting on the floor.

“Switch places with me, I’m left-handed.” Alex lifted his plate and stood while she slid into his spot so that he could sit at the end.

He was still too close. His right hand rested on the table and Shelby could see a few of the reddened scars above the denim cuff of his shirt. What had happened to him? Mesmerized by the dark sprinkling of hair on his forearm, she didn’t realize she’d eaten half her stew until Kayla snickered at her from across the table. Flustered, she stared at her bowl. Had the meat tasted different? She couldn’t say one way or the other.

“What do you think?” Kayla asked.

She flashed her a sheepish smile. “You’re absolutely right, Kayla. The venison stew is wonderful.”

“Thanks. Alex is a hunter and he shot the deer himself, last year.” Her voice rang with pride.

“Can I learn how to hunt deer?” Cody piped up from the other side of the table.

“No.”

“Sure.”

Both Shelby and Alex answered simultaneously. She threw him a dark look. Alex had the grace to look away guiltily.

“I don’t think you’ll be old enough to hunt for quite a while yet, Cody,” Shelby amended, noticing the confusion in the boy’s eyes. She mentally cursed Alex for interfering. She’d been making decisions regarding Cody’s upbringing for years, how could he expect to suddenly step in and take over?

Because he’s Cody’s father. Shelby’s appetite vanished and she stared down at her half-eaten food. The thought of losing Cody to Alex twisted her stomach into a hard knot. She loved Cody. She couldn’t love him more if she’d borne him herself. What if Alex took him someplace far away where she’d never see him again?

Her fork clattered to her plate from fingers gone numb.

“Shelby? Are you okay?” Alex sent her a glance so full of concern she nearly blurted out the truth. Only a deep sense of self-preservation made her hold her tongue.

“Sorry. I’m just clumsy I guess.” Shelby tried to smile, but her face felt as if it might split in two with the effort.

Drugs coming in on her father’s ships. Cody’s bad man. Trina’s death. Suddenly it was all too much. Obviously she needed Alex, in order to keep Cody safe, but a tiny part of her just wanted to grab Cody and run away from it all. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? All alone with Cody would she ever be able to stop running? She couldn’t condemn Cody to that kind of life. He was safer here with Alex. For now.

How she made it through the rest of dinner, she’d never know. Afterward she excused herself from helping with the dishes and retreated to her room long enough to use Trina’s phone to place a call to their father and then to Debbi, her assistant manager of the day care center. Shelby didn’t intend to break her promise to Alex, but needed to at least find out about Trina. Maybe her sister had miraculously survived.

Punching the numbers on the phone pad, she dialed her father’s number. A woman’s voice drifted over the line after the third ring.

“Hello?”

Shelby swallowed her annoyance when her father’s wife answered the phone. She didn’t particularly care for the woman who’d become their stepmother. “Hi, Marilyn. Is Dad around?”

“Shelby? Your father’s worried sick. He’s been trying to call you for hours. What is wrong with you? You should be here with him. Don’t you care about him at all? Where are you?”

Shelby winced at her shrill voice. “Please, Marilyn, stop yelling at me. Just put Dad on, would you?”

“Fine. Be that way.”

Marilyn dropped the phone with a clatter making Shelby pull the instrument away from her ear. After a few minutes, her father’s booming voice came over the line.

“Shelby? Where have you been? I’ve been calling your place all day.”

“Sorry, Dad.” Shelby tried not to back down from his accusatory tone, but it wasn’t easy. Her relationship with her father wasn’t great. When her mother was still alive, they’d been a close-knit family. Every Sunday, after church, they’d have family game night. She’d cherished those times. But things had gotten worse after her mother died. Her father had changed. Ever since her mother’s death he’d been trying to toughen her up, trying to make her into something she wasn’t. Someone like Trina. Most of the time she avoided her family, preferring her friends from church to the rowdy crowd who hung around at the marina. Her father never hesitated to vocalize his disapproval.

“I’ve been worried about you. Do you have Cody?”

“Yes, Cody’s with me. We’re safe. Everything is fine,” she hastened to reassure him.

“So you haven’t seen Trina, then?”

She hesitated, not wanting to lie, but not wanting to break her promise to Alex, either. “Not in a while,” she hedged. To the best of her knowledge, no one had known that she was meeting Trina down by the marina. Cody had often stayed with her when her sister was working.

“Then you don’t know.” He let out a heavy sigh. “There’s been a terrible accident, Shel.” For a moment, he sounded like the father she used to know. The one who taught his young daughters how to sail on the waters of Lake Michigan. “Your sister…” He struggled to get the words out. “Someone shot her. She’s dead.”

Shelby closed her eyes against a wave of grief, even though she’d suspected the worst all along. To hear her father state the truth so bluntly was harder than she’d anticipated. “What—what happened?”

“I don’t know.” The helplessness in his tone was so uncharacteristic that Shelby wished she were with him. “I can’t think of anyone who’d want to kill her. Of course I called the mayor, asking him to make Trina’s murder a priority. It pays to have friends in high places. So far, Lieutenant Holden thinks it’s a robbery, since all of the jewelry Trina had been wearing was stolen, including her wedding ring.”

Her father sounded lost and forlorn, reinforcing what Shelby had known all along. He couldn’t possibly be involved in something so heinous as drug smuggling, and he certainly played no part in Trina’s death. A part of her wanted to blurt out the truth, how she’d seen the dark figure shoot Trina, but she held her tongue. For Cody’s sake. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

“Where are you? You said you have Cody with you? Because Stephan has been wondering where he is.”

“I have Cody and we’re staying with a friend.” She frowned. “I know Stephan and Trina were having problems, and that Trina had moved out, but I’m sure this is still very hard on him.”

“Yes. I was hoping they’d work things out.” He sighed heavily. “Why don’t you come home? I need you, Shelby. Trina—the police haven’t released her body yet, so we haven’t scheduled the funeral.”

The funeral? A fresh wave of tears threatened and Shelby blinked them back with an effort and rubbed the scar at her temple.

Of course she and Cody would be expected to attend the funeral. But would that be good for Cody? Was it safe enough for him to attend? She honestly didn’t know. “I’m sorry, but I can’t come home right now, Dad. Please don’t worry, we’re fine. And I promise I’ll stay in touch.”

“See that you do.” Russell Jacobson’s tone hardened. “I know your church views prevented you and your sister from becoming close, but our family needs to stick together in times like this.”

His words were sharp, an arrow piercing her heart. Her father had taken this attitude, acting as if her Christian path was somehow the wrong one, maybe because she’d found so much comfort in her church community, rather than with her family. “We weren’t that close, but I loved Trina. And I love you, too. I’ll call you later, Dad.”