Free Running Scared by Lisa Jackson Page B

in. Daegan frowned as the doors closed behind her. He was left with the hint of her perfume, a packet of fifteen-year-old information, the knowledge that he could be a father, and the feeling that he was being set up. Big time.
    Again he looked at the photos. Who are you, Kate Summers, and how’re you connected to the Sullivans? She was pretty in that fresh-scrubbed all-American girl way that usually didn’t do anything for him. A good cover for a woman so cold she would be willing to adopt a child without the proper paperwork. Had she been desperate for a baby? For money? Or just an opportunist?
    He read the information, such as it was. She grew up in the Midwest until she was eighteen when she eloped. She and her husband landed in Boston, where she’d found a secretarial job with Clark. She and Jim Summers had a baby daughter and shortly afterward both daughter and husband were killed in a hit-and-run accident. The culprit was never apprehended and it was speculated that she took up with Clark—either before or after her husband’s demise. A few months after the accident, she moved away, presumably with Beatrice Sullivan’s son.
    “Unbelievable,” he muttered, gazing at the picture and wondering again why she did it—if she did. Probably not for love. So it had to be money. “Damned unbelievable.”
    Studying her features, he wondered how she’d matured in the past fifteen years and found himself already regretting what he was about to do. Too bad, lady, he thought cynically. No matter what you did, whether you’re guilty as sin or lily white, life as you know it is gonna change. You have no idea what you’re up against. If the boy’s my son, then you’re gonna lose him. You’ve had your turn. Now it’s mine.
    He finished his beer, scooped up the photo, Tyrell Clark’s old address, and the packet of information about Kate Summers, then left enough bills on the table to cover the tab.
    The action in the bar was picking up, more people clustered at the tables and the counter, seven or eight couples dancing, and the noise and smoke level elevating. A pretty woman in tight jeans and plum-colored lipstick sidled up to him. “Buy you a drink, cowboy?” she offered, showing off a dimple.
    “Not tonight.”
    “Got a hot date?”
    Daegan snorted a laugh that held no mirth and stuffed the envelope into the inner pocket of his jacket. “Just business,” he said and ignored the sultry but practiced pout that formed on her lips. “Another time.”
    “Promise?” Her voice chased him out the door to the outside, where a blast of northern wind ripped through his jacket. He walked briskly to his truck, unlocked the door, and climbed inside as tiny flakes of snow began to fall from the dark sky. The sound of a jet’s engine blasted eerily through the quiet night, and a lingering hint of Bibi’s fragrance followed after him. He watched as the great silver bird took flight and he tried to block out the images of Bibi from his mind. For years he’d struggled to erase the pain of his childhood and adolescence, and now, as he rammed the truck into first and eased out of the half-filled parking lot, his childhood came back to haunt him with a vengeance. Once again he felt the fear. The humiliation. The rage. The thirst for revenge against a family who treated him worse than a stray dog.
    He forced all the old feelings back into the dark, locked part of his mind he tried to ignore. What he knew about the Sullivan family could probably destroy them socially, but over the years, he’d tempered his bitterness and he wasn’t interested in revenge—the sharp, kick-you-in-the-gut kind that he’d fantasized about as a kid going to a poor man’s parochial school.
    But that was a long time ago. Another lifetime. A kid he didn’t want to recognize or remember.
    The silver dollar tucked deep in his jeans pocket rubbed against his thigh as he drove through the night. There was a chance he was a father, that he had a son. A