Full Force Fatherhood Page 2

  Again she nodded, but Mark knew it was only a matter of time before she realized her husband wasn’t with them. She seemed to still be processing being conscious at the moment. Kelli caught her balance as Mark released her. He pulled his pocketknife from his pants and handed it to her, turning as soon as she grabbed it.

  An awful sound filled the air, another in a long line of things that would haunt him about that night.

  A fireball erupted from the kitchen and engulfed the rest of the cabin. Glass exploded and the ground shook. The house gave one final wheeze and, together, Mark and Kelli watched as it burned to the ground.

  Chapter Two

  Kelli slipped off her heels and padded quietly across the floor. Footsteps echoed in the hallway behind her, but she didn’t stop. Sidestepping a few boxes left scattered around the room, she hurried into the open closet.

  It wasn’t deep, but it stretched wide. Empty save a few coat hangers, it didn’t allow her much cover. On the other hand she could try to hide behind a stack of boxes in the corner. Though she’d have to really bend to remain hidden. The footsteps came closer, and she had to choose.

  The closet would have to do.

  Kelli pushed herself to the corner and slid down the wall until she was sitting with her knees pressed up to her chest. The light from the opened bedroom window lit even the mostly dark corner. She would be seen easily by anyone who looked inside the doors.

  Silence filled the room.

  For a second, Kelli worried. Had she been seen coming into the room? The shuffle of two feet let her know she had. The footsteps came closer, and Kelli held her breath. Her hunter was quick to search around the boxes and move on to the closet. The shuffling stopped a step from the opening. There was a moment of silence that felt almost tangible.

  Then a tiny face peeked inside, and Kelli couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Boo,” the little girl yelled. Smiling ear to ear, she squealed in delight as Kelli jumped out of her hiding spot.

  “You found me!”

  Grace Victoria Crane let out another round of giggles before running off. Kelli laughed as she followed the toddler through the house, knowing the little girl’s destination.

  Like mother, like daughter, Grace loved the library.

  It was her fair-haired beauty’s turn to hide.

  Behind the wall-length curtains—one of the few things that hadn’t yet been packed in the room—stood a pair of little blue shoes. They were covered in sequins, and Kelli knew for a fact that finding them in stock had been a miracle in itself.

  “Hmm...” Kelli put her finger to her chin and tapped it. Moving slowly around the boxes and plastic tubs pushed to the side of the room, she made a big show of being confused. “I could have sworn I saw a little girl with chocolate on her mouth run in here!” Grace started to giggle. The sound made Kelli’s heart swell. “I wonder who that could be!” She went to the curtains, ready to tickle the culprit, when the little girl jumped out on her own.

  “Got you,” she yelled. When Grace was excited like this, Kelli couldn’t deny the resemblance between them. Although Grace’s hair was a shade or two darker, their ever-changing green eyes were almost identical. Her facial features, however, all belonged to her father.

  “You’re the best hide-and-seeker I think I’ve ever played with,” Kelli said, scooping up the toddler. She was about to unleash another round of tickles when the doorbell chimed. It echoed through the mostly packed up house.

  “Me, me,” Grace yelled, already trying to wiggle out of her arms and race to answer the door.

  “Not without me,” Kelli answered. She moved Grace to her hip and took a moment to marvel at how big she was getting. A year and seven months, almost to the day.

  The past two years had flown by and yet, in some ways, Kelli seemed painfully stuck. As she moved down the hallway to the front of the house, she tried to commit to memory how the wood floor felt beneath her bare feet. She wondered what the next year would bring after all of the changes Grace and she were about to make.

  A familiar face was bobbing in front of the windows in the front door, inciting a new excitement in Grace. Kelli put her down with a laugh and opened the door for the godmother of her child.

  “You’re late,” Kelli teased Lynn Bradley. The short woman with black hair wore a pair of worn overalls with a long-sleeved yellow flannel shirt that contrasted with her dark skin. Kelli raised her eyebrow at the choice of wardrobe but didn’t say anything. Lynn had been a bit eclectic ever since they were children.

  “Listen, it’s not my fault that you already packed up your TV, forcing me to choose between the end of You’ve Got Mail and the care of your child.” The twenty-nine-year-old gave her best friend a smirk before bending down and enveloping Grace in a hug. “My, how you’ve grown! Look at you! Gosh, how old are you now? Three? Five?”

  Grace put her hands on her hips and gave Lynn a critical eye. She held up one finger. “One!”

  “That’s my girl,” Lynn approved. She mussed Grace’s hair, and the three of them went inside.

  “You were here yesterday, you know,” Kelli said as they went into the living room. Lynn laughed.

  “That doesn’t discount the fact that that kid of yours is growing like crazy! She’s going to be taller than me before you know it! She’s not two yet and look at her!”

  Grace, suddenly uninterested in their conversation, went to her makeshift play area in the corner. It looked like a graveyard for plastic dinosaurs, stuffed animals and Legos.

  “I know,” Kelli agreed with a smile. It didn’t last long. Lynn had come over to help pack up the one room Kelli couldn’t get through on her own.

  Attached to the living room by a set of French double doors was Victor’s home office. It was a small room but had managed to collect a lot of things in the six years he had lived in the house. Just looking into the room had sent Kelli into tears for the first six months after the fire. Then, slowly, she had been able to bear the sight of the room Victor had spent the most time in. Kelli supposed Grace had helped her with that. She had to stay strong for their child, who would never know her father.

  Lynn’s expression softened, but she didn’t comment. Aside from Grace, Lynn had been the most constant part of her world during the past two years.

  “Okay, well, let’s get started.” Kelli motioned to the bookcase. “You empty that and I’ll start with the desk.”

  “Got yah, Boss.” Lynn pulled the plastic tub over to the small bookshelf. Although there was a library in the house, the office shelves were filled with research materials collected over Victor’s nine-year career as a journalist. Her husband had covered an array of subjects, freelancing from home, and working for newspapers and magazines around the nation. His next goal had been to work internationally, but then they had found out about the pregnancy. Victor had decided his family was more important than work.

  Kelli sat down in the office chair, sadness in her heart.

  Her thoughts slid back to the night at the cabin.

  Sometimes she could still feel the heat of the fire. Smell the smoke in the air. Feel the cold of the water as they waited for help to arrive. The boy behind the fire had been caught, sure, but that didn’t make the memories of what had happened any more bearable.

  She took a breath. She didn’t need to remember that night now.

  Ten minutes into packing away the office’s contents, Kelli found something she hadn’t known existed.

  “Hey, look at this.”

  The middle side drawer of the desk had stuck when she tried to open it. She pulled too hard, and the entire drawer slid out. Along with it came a small notebook that had been taped to the bottom of the drawer above it.

  “What is it?” Lynn asked, walking over.

  “I don’t know. It was hidden.”

 
; The notebook wasn’t labeled, but it was filled with Victor’s pristine handwriting.

  “It looks like work notes,” Kelli observed. She flipped through it, scanning as she went. “I recognize some of these names...but I thought all of his notes were—” She cut herself off and rephrased. “He took them to the cabin with us. I didn’t know he had kept notes here.”

  Lynn gave her privacy as she thumbed to the last few pages. Possibly the last notes Victor had ever taken. Kelli shook her head. She didn’t need to travel down that road today.

  “Wait.” Her eyes stopped on a passage in neat, tiny writing. “This doesn’t make sense.”

  Or maybe it did.

  * * *

  “WE NEED TO TALK.”

  Kelli’s back was ramrod straight against the office chair. It wasn’t made to be comfortable—those who sat across from Dennis Crawford, retired editor of the national online publication known as the Scale, didn’t usually intend to keep his company long. Especially during house calls like this. She suspected that he had let her in only because of Victor. Dennis and he hadn’t been friends, but they’d worked together on more than one occasion.

  Including the last story of Victor’s life.

  “I suspected, considering I haven’t seen you since—” He cleared his throat, trying to avoid the fact that their last meeting had been when her husband had been lowered into the ground. Kelli shifted in her seat. “How have you been?” he asked instead.

  “Good. Grace is keeping me busy, but I’m sure that won’t change for another seventeen years or so.”

  Dennis, an unmarried man with no children of his own, smiled politely. Victor hadn’t told her the man’s age, but she placed him in his early forties. Kelli couldn’t tell if he was genuinely kind, but she could see he carried a lot of self-pride. Although gray was peppered into his black hair, his goatee was meticulous, along with the collared shirt and slacks he wore. Journalism award plaques, athletic trophies, and pictures of Dennis and other men dressed in suits decorated almost every available inch of the home office.

  “So, what can I do for you?” His eyes slid down to the folder in her lap. There wasn’t any use tiptoeing around what she had come to say.

  “I was packing up Victor’s office last night when I found some of his old notes.” She slid the folder across the desk. “Including these.”

  Dennis raised an eyebrow—also meticulously kept—but didn’t immediately pick up the folder. In that moment she was thankful she’d never had to work under the man. He fixed her with a gaze that clearly said, “So what?”

  “They’re his notes on the Bowman Foundation story—the last story he covered.” That at least made Dennis open the folder, though his eyes stayed on her.

  “Okay?” Dennis said.

  Kelli shifted in her seat again. “I guess I’m wondering why the story you printed doesn’t match up?”

  His eyebrow didn’t waver, but his gaze finally dropped to the photocopies she’d made of Victor’s notes. The actual notebook was tucked safely into her purse. She didn’t want to part with it, not even for a moment. Finding it after the past two years was like finding a small piece of Victor.

  “What do you mean, ‘doesn’t match up?’” Dennis asked, voice defensive. “I used the notes he sent me.”

  “Not according to those notes, which are undoubtedly his.” She leaned forward and pointed to the first section she had highlighted. “The names are different. I’ve already looked them up but can’t find anything.” Dennis pulled out a drawer and grabbed a pair of glasses from it without saying a word. He slipped them on and leaned his head closer to the paper. From where Kelli sat, she could see his concentration deepen.

  But she could also see something else.

  Dennis’s eyes registered no surprise at what he was seeing.

  “Normally I wouldn’t second-guess this, but...well, it was his last story,” she added.

  “The names we published were pulled straight from the email I got from Victor,” he said after a minute more of going through the pages. He set his glasses down and threaded his fingers together over the papers. The gesture also looked oddly defensive. “These were probably notes he wrote quickly, then later changed to be accurate. Perhaps it was even his way of brainstorming how he wanted the story to go with placeholder names.”

  Kelli didn’t need to think about that possibility long. She shook her head.

  “I think these were his backup notes. He always said he didn’t like keeping everything electronically. I just thought his written notes were also with us at the cabin.”

  Dennis seemed to consider what she said but, by the same token, it felt as though he was putting on a show. What had been an off-balanced feeling of doubt started to turn dark in the pit of her stomach.

  “I don’t know what to tell you. I personally verified the information—just to be safe—before the piece was published.” He shut the folder but didn’t slide it back. “The Bowman Foundation publically thanked the Scale—and Victor—for the story. Because of the spotlight, they’ve received a substantial amount of funding since the article debuted. If any of the facts were incorrect, I would have been made aware of it—retired or not.”

  Kelli considered his words. Was she just overreacting? Was she looking for a reason to revisit the memory of Victor? Had finding his handwritten journal been too much of a shock to her system?

  “Listen, Kelli.” Dennis’s expression softened. He took off his glasses and fixed her with a small smile. “I’m due to meet an old friend for lunch, but how about after that, I’ll recheck these.” He put his finger on the folder. “I’ll call if anything weird pops up.”

  Despite herself, she smiled, too.

  “Thanks. I’d really appreciate it.”

  Dennis stood, ending the conversation. He moved around the desk and saw her to the front door.

  As she turned to thank him again, he said, “I’m sorry about Victor. But, word of advice? Maybe you should start looking to the future and not the past.”

  Kelli didn’t have a lot of memories of her mother, but she knew being polite had been high on her priority list. That thought alone pushed a smile to her lips, while the knot in her stomach tightened. Dennis shut the door, leaving her standing on his porch with a great sense of unease.

  You’re reading way too into this, Kel, she thought as she turned on her heel. Calm down and just forget about it all.

  “Hey, Kelli?” Dennis called when she was halfway down his sidewalk. She hadn’t heard him open the door. “Do you have the journal those copies were from?”

  Her purse suddenly felt heavier at her side. Before she could think about it, she was shaking her head.

  “No, I just found the copies.”

  “Oh, okay, thanks.”

  She waved bye and continued on her way.

  “Because if you did have it, I’d really like to see it,” he called after her.

  The feeling of unease expanded within her. Once again she turned to face him.

  “Sorry. The copies I gave you were all I had.”

  Dennis shrugged and retreated behind the door. It wasn’t until she was safely inside her car that she chanced another look at the house.

  It might have been her imagination, but she could almost have sworn the blinds over the living room windows moved.

  Chapter Three

  Mark cracked his knuckles and swigged a gulp of his beer. Sitting behind the bar of a local dive, he kept his eyes glued to the television screen above him. An old football game was running, but he wasn’t paying much attention.

  He’d had one heck of a day, if he said so himself.

  The construction manager had come in early with a mood that matched the unexpected storm that would mean no work for the next two days to a week. Then the concrete pourer�
�who had never driven in rain, it seemed—had backed up into Mark’s Jeep, breaking a taillight and denting his bumper. The cherry on top was that when he decided to de-stress from an unproductive, unprofitable workday with a drink or two, he’d picked the bar from his past.

  “Sorry, I had to take that call.” Nikki Waters, founder of the Orion Security Group and his former boss, sat back on her bar stool and reclaimed her drink.

  Mark smiled but felt no mirth. He didn’t dislike Nikki. In fact, he had once considered her a great friend. However, the past two years had put a weight on the friendship. One that hadn’t affected just their relationship but his entire life.

  “It’s fine,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. He remembered meeting Nikki for the first time when she’d been a secretary at Redstone Solutions and he’d been a low-ranking security agent. She’d been quiet, unobtrusive, yet clever and kind. The latter two traits she had held on to, but the first two? Well, he knew from experience that if she was quiet, it was only because she was finding the right words to tell you exactly what was on her mind. And unobtrusive? If she thought people she cared about were making a mistake, she’d tell them.

  She’d had that talk with Mark several times already in the past year.

  “So, how are you, Nik? It’s been a while.”

  The 33-year-old looked surprised he’d made the first conversational move, but she recovered quickly. She straightened her short, dark red ponytail before answering.

  “Good. Busy, but good.” She motioned to the bar around them. “I would actually still be at the office, but the storm knocked out our power. Jonathan told me it was a sign we needed to ‘capitalize on Friday night.’” Mark mentally winced at the mention of Jonathan. Along with Nikki and Oliver Quinn, Jonathan Carmichael rounded out friends with whom he had all but severed ties since he left Orion. “I’d heard him talk about this place on more than one occasion, so I thought I’d give it a try.”

  “The service isn’t great, but I can’t complain about the price.”