Secret Bodyguard. B.J. Daniels
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setting him up. Giving him enough rope to hang himself.
He shook his head, amazed at the spot he found himself in this morning. Right between Amanda and her old man, a very dangerous place to be.
But in the meantime… He tried to still his racing heart. Amanda couldn’t leave the Crowe estate without him. He couldn’t help but grin, thinking how furious that must make her. Would she be angry enough to finally show her hand? He could only hope.
While he knew he could be walking into a trap J.B. had laid for him, Jesse still felt pretty cocky as he headed for the shower. This might prove to be just the break he’d been waiting for. If he was right, and Amanda and Gage had done something with the baby, then she must be running scared now that her father had people spying on her. She’d try to cover her tracks. She’d slip up. And when she did, Jesse would be there to nail her. So to speak.
He drowned that thought in a cold shower, disgusted with himself because of his body’s reaction to the woman. Afterward, he called the main house to let Amanda know he’d be available to drive her and maybe to rub it in a little. He could only assume that she’d tried to get him fired. Or killed. And had failed. At least temporarily. He was feeling pretty pleased about that.
But he couldn’t get his call past the housekeeper. Ms. Crowe, Eunice said, wasn’t up yet.
He polished several of J. B. Crowe’s fleet of expensive cars, watching for any sign of life behind Amanda’s closed curtains. None.
As he worked, he found his thoughts divided between worrying that Amanda might have found a way to sneak out without him noticing, and trying to make sense of the newspaper clipping that had been slipped under his door last night. It had to have been someone inside the estate who’d given it to him. He ticked off the few hired help who lived on the premises.
Not the tiny, gray-haired Eunice Fox who’d been with the Crowe family for years. Nor Consuela Ruiz, the family cook. Nor the gardener, a withered, little old man named Malcolm Hines, who had been one of J.B.’s first bodyguards.
Jesse couldn’t imagine any of them being disloyal to J.B. or any member of his family. And not just for fear of their lives. That left only Death and Destruction, but Jesse doubted either of them even knew how to read.
So who did that leave? J.B. Not likely. And Amanda.
Jesse called the house again after lunch.
“Ms. Crowe isn’t up,” Eunice informed him in a tone that dared him to insinuate that it wasn’t Amanda’s right to sleep all day if she so desired. He knew the housekeeper had been up for hours working and wondered how she could be so protective of such a spoiled, young woman who had never worked a day in her life and no doubt ever would.
“Should she get up—”
“I’ll let her know you’re available,” the elderly woman cut him off icily. “I’m sure she will appreciate knowing that.” She hung up, convincing Jesse that Eunice definitely hadn’t been the one who’d put the copy of the newspaper clipping under his door.
While he polished J.B.’s fancy fleet and waited for Dylan to call with news on the baby, Jesse found himself thinking about Gage Ferraro and wondering what Amanda saw in the man. Obviously, there was no accounting for taste, but it did make Jesse wonder. Why had J.B. taken his daughter’s dishonor so lightly? The J. B. Crowe Jesse had come to know would have had Gage swimming with the fish in cement shoes at the bottom of White Rock Lake.
Jesse wondered what J.B. would do if he found out that Amanda was consorting with the enemy again? If Gage and Amanda had kidnapped Susannah as some sort of scam, Jesse didn’t want to be around when J.B. found out.
Meanwhile, he wondered how Gage’s father, Mickie Ferraro, had taken losing his first grandchild. Especially considering that he and J.B. were rumored to be fighting for control inside the Organization. Mickie and J.B. had reportedly started with the mob as little more than kids.
Gage was a two-bit hoodlum who was trying to work his way up in the mob. If he really could find Susannah and bring down Kincaid, J.B. would owe him. But somehow Jesse didn’t believe that was Gage’s game.
Gage Ferraro was a wild card and one Jesse didn’t like seeing in the deck. And Amanda… It was just a matter of getting her in a compromising position. The thought had too much appeal—and was damn dangerous.
He just wished he could figure out how all the pieces fit together, especially how the newspaper clipping fit into the mix.
Dylan, true to his word, contacted him a little after two. “We should meet,” the cowboy said.
Jesse picked a meeting place nearby and called the main house a third time, only to be told that Ms. Crowe had finally gotten out of bed and planned to spend the day beside the pool. Mr. Crowe would be home soon. The two would be spending the rest of the afternoon and evening together. Jesse wouldn’t be needed.
Anxious to hear what Dylan had discovered, he left, confident Amanda couldn’t leave with her father expected home any minute.
THE SMALL Texas barbecue joint served cold beer and chipped pork sandwiches with hot sauce. Because of the time of day, the place wasn’t busy. He took a table at the back so he could watch the door.
Dylan joined him ten minutes later.
“So is the baby Susannah?” Jesse asked without preamble.
To Jesse’s disappointment, Dylan shook his head.
“The baby found beside the road was a boy, a newborn,” Dylan said.
Jesse frowned. “Then how could the clipping be connected to Susannah Crowe’s disappearance?”
“I don’t think it is,” Dylan said. “The baby boy left beside Woodland Lake Road just outside of Red River, Texas, had dark hair and dark eyes. He was only a few hours old, leading police to believe he was born on June 5.” He paused.
Jesse felt a jolt. The baby had been born on his birthday?
“June 5,” Dylan continued, “thirty years ago, 1971.”
Jesse’s heart took off at a sprint. He stared at the cowboy for a long moment. “June 5 is my birthday.”
Dylan nodded. “I had a feeling it was. That’s why I did some more checking. I couldn’t find out who adopted the baby. Texas adoption laws won’t allow that. So I went from the other direction.” Dylan seemed to hesitate. “I checked your birth certificate.”
Jesse was already shaking his head.
“I don’t know how to say this, Jesse. I checked with the hospital listed as your place of birth. You weren’t born in Dallas, at least not to Pete and Marie McCall.”
Jesse could barely find breath to ask, “What are you saying? That you think I’m that abandoned baby?” He shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “I was the middle son, with two brothers and three younger sisters, the perfect family. I had this great childhood. If anything, I was my parents’ favorite—” He stopped and shook his head again, all the little things now making him doubt who he was and everything he’d once believed. “There is no way I was adopted. There has to be some sort of mistake. Of course I was born in Dallas, just like my brothers and sisters. Why would my parents lie about where I was born?”
The answer was obvious. If he was that abandoned baby, his parents would have lied to protect him from the truth. They wouldn’t want him to know that his birth mother had cared so little that she’d left him beside a dirt road in a cardboard box.
“I’m sorry, Jesse,” Dylan said.
He looked past Dylan to the bartender punching up numbers on the jukebox. A Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys song filled the air, Texas swing. He felt sick. And scared. “Who the hell am I, then?”
“You’re still Jesse McCall, the man you’ve always been,” Dylan said.
Jesse shook his head. He’d