Hot Zone (Elite Force 2)

Finally, once her gut settled and the world steadied, she straightened, her wrist pressed to her mouth. Aiden silently passed her a water bottle. Her hands shaking, she dug through her duffel and pulled out a cheap plastic toothbrush. Their whole world right now was contained in a bag at their feet. Rinsing and spitting out the door, she wished her mess of a life could be as easily cleaned.

She twisted the cap back on the bottle. “I know that you didn’t want to have children because of your father, but I really thought you’d come to peace with that when we decided to adopt.”

Adoption had seemed like such a perfect answer, as they’d seen so many children who needed homes—as her own longing for a child grew so big she couldn’t contain it anymore without it exploding. And now it appeared to have exploded her marriage.

“Aiden, I’m going to have this baby, even if it means losing you.”

She heard him swallow so hard, she worried he might need to open the door fast too.

“Amelia will help us if there are any legal aspects to my already being pregnant.” If Amelia and Joshua were even alive, and just the thought of that choked her with panic. She forced steady breaths. “We—or I—will reach out to every resource possible in order to be a good mother to both of these children.”

“Children,” his voice cracked.

And something cracked inside her at that simple show of emotion from him. She held his face until he looked at her, really looked, and she was sure he could see the sincerity in her eyes. “I understand you have fears—And shhh! Don’t go all macho guy on me because I dared say you’re afraid of something. I understand you’re a geneticist. I realize you have concerns about the kind of… person your father was. But Aiden, just as you’re not your dad, neither is this baby.”

“But who he is… who he was… It still messed me up inside.” He thumped his chest. “I’m not… right. What I said about bonding, about kids with messed-up pasts, I wasn’t talking about Joshua.” His voice went raspy with emotion. “I was talking about me.”

Shock radiated all the way to her toes. All this time she’d thought he was afraid to have children for fear they would turn out like his dad, and instead, he was worried he wouldn’t be a good enough father? Incomprehensible to her. “Good God, Aiden, you’re the most noble man on the planet. You’re so damn perfect, it’s tough to be married to you sometimes.”

He laughed, a harsh and strangled sound. “Thanks for the compliment, but I’m not buying that and neither would the folks on my staff who call me the cold fish.”

“Because they don’t know you the way I do.”

“Do you? Do you really know me?”

Something in his voice warned her he wasn’t being flippant. “What am I missing here, Aiden?”

He toyed with a lock of her hair, twining the curl around his finger. “We’ve never really talked about my father, you and I. Amelia was the one to tell you.”

“Because you wanted it that way.” She would have welcomed the chance to have him open up to her. She would gladly carry part of the burden for him, although now her throat was closing up from fear of what he would say.

“The night before my father was going to accept the plea bargain, I confronted him. Not because I doubted he was guilty, but because I just needed some kind of… hell… I don’t know what I needed. There wasn’t any way to erase having a pedophile for a father.”

She rested her head on his shoulder and let him talk, taking each word in and listening to his heart. The nurse in her registered all the signs of extreme stress while the wife in her hurt right along with him.

“He told me what he’d done, not out of guilt but as if he could explain himself, justify it… God…” He ground his teeth audibly.

She didn’t dare move or speak for fear any interruption would stop him from saying things he’d bottled up for decades, even holding back from her.

“He said he would rather be dead than go to jail,” Aiden continued, his voice returning to the unemotional tones she knew he used to stay in control during his most heartrending cases. “I told him to do it, then. Save his family more pain. Save the state some money. And I gave him a gun.”

She must have gasped, because he finally looked at her. His magnificent blue eyes glimmered in the dark with unshed tears. And in those tears she could see the image of the boy he was then, only a teenager himself, disillusioned and betrayed by his father in such a horrible way.

“I went to the gun cabinet, loaded the shotgun, and placed it in front of him on the coffee table. Without saying another word to my father, I walked away. As soon as I closed the door behind me, he pulled the trigger.”

She’d known his father killed himself. Amelia had told her about the suicide, about how their father had raped at least four young teenage girls. But no one had said a word about this.

Because no one had known. Until now. And she’d better get talking fast, because if she knew her husband at all, he was about five seconds from shutting down, and she feared if he did, there might not be another window into him again.

Lisabeth slid on top of him and grabbed his face in both hands, urgently this time, firmly. “Listen to me, Aiden Bailey. You were a kid then. And even if you’d been older, you are not responsible for your father’s actions. You may be scarred by the things that happened in your past, but you’re a good man, a tender man.”

“I knew what I was doing. I knew what he would do.”

“What he chose to do. And damn him for being a selfish bastard by sharing his suicide wish with his child. What kind of monster does that? If he was crying out for help, there were dozens of other people that made much better sense.”

Aiden’s brow furrowed and she realized she’d made some traction with that last argument, so she pushed ahead. “I don’t even claim to know all the answers or have perfect insights for what you went through with your father. But I do know that you’re too good a man to walk away from your own children when they need you. Your children need you. And we’ll do whatever it takes to build a strong, healthy family together.”

Aiden stayed silent, as she expected. But she couldn’t deny she’d hoped for something different, something more from him this time. The stakes were so much higher now, more than ever for the baby inside her and for their child she prayed was still alive. She wanted to hold him, to comfort him, but past experience told her that he would shut down, pull away, and block her out.