Page 34

May

“I ’m huge,” Rebecca said to her mother.

“You are glowing,” Victoria said as she hugged her daughter.

“I’m tired of being pregnant. I was due yesterday,” she said.

“I know, honey,” her mother said.

“I’ve mentioned it a few times.”

“Once, twice, twelve times. It is okay,” Victoria said. “You are allowed.”

Her father stuck his head in the doorway to the bedroom they had fixed up for the baby, which was opposite Rebecca’s bedroom on the first floor of the beach house, and said, “The flowers are planted, the lawn is mowed, and the car is washed. What next?”

“The gutters?” Victoria asked.

“Done,” Garrison said.

“Could you help us assemble the damn crib?” Rebecca asked.

“We almost have it, I think,” Victoria complained.

“Right,” Rebecca said. “Sure. And those extra parts?”

She sat on the little couch they had purchased for the baby’s room and watched as her parents assembled the crib that would soon be where her and Mitch’s baby would sleep.

There was also a new rocking chair and changing-station-dresser combo.

Victoria and Garrison had hung seashell pink wallpaper.

Rebecca was thankful for the help and knew her parents needed a project.

Mitch should have been here to assemble the crib. He should be here to love her, to love their baby.

She must have sighed because her mother stopped helping her dad and said, “Are you okay, Becca?”

“I’m fine. I think I’ll go the kitchen for water or something,” she said. “Maybe I’ll just pace.”

“I can get you something,” her father offered.

“She wants to move around to start the labor,” her mother said.

Ten minutes later, she was leaning against the counter and trying to breathe. The movement had worked. The contractions had started, and they were coming faster than she’d like.

Her parents were on each side of her, and they both looked worried.

“Okay,” her father said. “We have to get to the hospital. They are three minutes apart.”

“But they are supposed to be two to four minutes apart, and that pattern is supposed to last for two hours before the hospital,” Rebecca said. “It has only been about ten…oh…shit… minutes.”

“Let’s go now,” her mother said.

This was a fight she wasn’t going to win.

Five hours later, she sat up in her hospital bed and looked down at the little bundle in her arms. Her daughter was perfect. If she did say so herself, she and Mitch had made a beautiful baby.

Their little girl had her father’s dimples, and Rebecca was pretty sure she had his smile, too. And her eyes were blue, but she bet in a few months that they would go green. She just had a feeling. This baby was stunning.

Her mother had been in the delivery room with her, holding her hand and offering encouragement. If it couldn’t be Mitch, she was happy it could be her mother.

There was a knock on the door, and then her mother appeared with her father.

“Hey, Dad, would you like to meet your granddaughter?”

Her father looked like he might dissolve into tears as he nodded. There was a lot of that going around. She wished she had stock in Kleenex’s parent company, because the Stark and Wilder families had gone through a lot of tissues that day.

“Have you decided on a name?” her mother asked.

Rebecca nodded. “Please meet Emily Stark Wilder.”

***Mitch***

He heard the guards change outside his door, and he quickly stopped his exercise routine, which was a mix of basic calisthenics and taekwondo.

The less they knew, the better. He tried to appear weak at all times, but he knew he was getting stronger.

He was the only one who could get himself free, which had become more evident these last weeks.

He knew time was running out. At any moment, they could come for him, take him into the desert, and that would be all she wrote.

The paper and photograph routine had been repeated two times since the winter solstice.

But the last time, which was three days ago, there was a little something more.

They had brought him a phone connected to none other than Lucien Donovan.

Even though the last time they had talked hadn’t gone well, Mitch had never been happier.

Surely, Donovan would call in the troops in the form of the State Department, the Army, the Marines, Homeland Security… anyone who could get him out.

“Mitch, holy shit. Everyone, including the American State Department, thinks that you are dead,” Lucien said, sounding almost like it was a joke.

Mitch didn’t like the tone of the conversation.

Something about Lucien and the way he had responded.

Well, he knew the man could be cold, but this… this was so much worse.

“I cannot tell you how honored I am because this means I get to bargain for your life myself. There is no need to bring in the government with all their negotiators and red tape. You look terrible. Your hair…you’ve got quite a beard.”

“Pay them. I’ll pay you back,” Mitch ordered, dismissing the pleasantries.

Lucien was silent, then he said, “Did you know my little Lily cried over you? It broke my heart to see her like that and to know you were to blame. I think that is an offense you could be sentenced to death for, but I’ll think about it.”

Then he hung up. He hung up on Mitch’s kidnappers.

A trickle of fear traveled through Mitch’s body.