Free Running Scared by Lisa Jackson Page A

drunk, slept together, and he was the unwanted result?
    Bibi was suddenly impatient. “Just find him, okay? I’ll make it worth your while to beat Dad to the punch. Here.” She dug in her purse, pulled out her wallet, and found an envelope that had yellowed with age. Looking quickly over her shoulder, she fingered through the packet and retrieved a torn scrap of paper. “Here’s the name and address of the attorney who handled the adoption.”
    “You know him?”
    “I made it my business to know of him, but he won’t be much help. Problem is about three months after I gave my baby up, Tyrell Clark croaked. He had tremendous gambling debts to pay off and back taxes due, and the stress probably was too much for his heart. I’ve got the name and address of the law firm that ended up with most of his clients, if that helps you much, and a list of some of his employees, but that’s about it.”
    “More than I’d expect.”
    “And there’s something else.”
    He hated to ask. “What?”
    “I, um, hired some fly-by-night private investigator to check out Clark. I…I just had to know something about my kid, and so this guy, his name was Fred Marquette, he, um, he thinks that Clark was paid a lot of money to get rid of the baby and that he just pocketed the cash and gave the baby to a secretary of his, a woman by the name of Kate Summers. At least that was her name then. She could have remarried. I’ve got a few pictures of her and some information—well, it’s all fifteen years old but she was single at the time. Her husband and kid were killed less than a year before.”
    He contemplated the woman sitting across from him, baring her soul, talking as if this was the kind of thing that happened every day. “I can’t believe you went to the trouble of hiring a detective.”
    She skewered him with a look that told him he’d underestimated her all these years. “I had a baby, okay? I was young and scared, but I wasn’t stupid enough not to think that I might change my mind and want to see him someday.” Sliding the picture, the scrap of paper with Clark’s ancient address, and the envelope across the table, she said, “I don’t know a lot about the Summers woman, just that she had to realize the adoption was shady. Fred Marquette seemed to think she was Clark’s lover. He had a reputation as a ladies man.
    “Maybe she did it for the money. I snooped around my dad’s office and found a fifteen-year-old canceled check to Tyrell for legal research services or some such crap. The check was for eighty thousand dollars. Expensive research.”
    Daegan let out a long, low whistle.
    “Please, Daegan, say you’ll help me. It’s worth twenty-five thousand to me. And if you can come up with a way to keep Dad from finding our son, then I’ll pay you more.”
    “I suppose you’ll give me that in writing?” he drawled.
    “This is no time for jokes.” She checked her watch and swore softly. “I’ve got to catch a plane.” Standing, she wrapped the fur more tightly around her waist. “I would think, considering your background, you’d only be too anxious to find your boy.”
    “If he’s mine.” He picked up the picture and studied the faded snapshot as if it held the secrets of the universe. And maybe it did. The photographs had yellowed, but caught a profile of a woman, little more than a girl, with even, well-defined features and brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Oval face, high cheeks, large eyes fringed by thick lashes. Dashing across a street in sun-bleached jeans, backpack, and sweatshirt, she could have been a college coed for her look of carefree independence. Instead she was the adoptive mother of his son. A woman who had walked on the wrong side of the law and been paid well to do so. But she was also a woman who’d wanted a baby. His baby.
    “Oh, he’s yours all right. I’ll call.” Swinging the strap of her purse over her shoulder, she swept out of the bar as quickly as she’d breezed