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  He went in for yet another kiss, thoughts of beds and brick cottages on his mind.

  “A-hem.” Rowan let out a loud, fake cough. “Hell-ooo.” He waved his hand in the air. “Still here. Orphan looking for his dad.”

  Loren pulled away with a blush, while Adam glared at his brother. Then he shook off his annoyance. “You’re right. Sorry. Let’s go.” He started down the gravel path, still clutching Loren’s hand, Rowan in the rear.

  Rowan teased Loren. “Girl, you got some magic touch. I’ve never seen Adam lose his head over a pretty face. And it wasn’t like the ladies didn’t want him. Man, the phone calls we used to get. All hours, girls calling for him. Used to drive Mom crazy, remember?”

  Adam recalled, but he’d had no interest in the opposite sex until his later teen years. He’d only wanted to hang with the guys, toss a football and get into trouble. No, Rowan was the ladies’ man. Not him. And…he didn’t want Loren getting the wrong impression. He shot her a glance to make sure she wasn’t buying Rowan’s prattle. Nope, a shiny grin stretched her lips.

  “A player, huh? And I didn’t even kiss my first boy until I was seventeen.” She sighed in an exaggerated manner. “I’ll have to rethink my evening plans. Not sure I want to be with such a ladies’ man.” A low chuckle escaped her mouth.

  He froze on the path. “No, keep your plans. I beg you.” He turned to give the evil eye to his annoying, interfering baby brother. “You. Shut it, or you’re going to be short a body part.”

  Rowan shrugged his empty-sleeved shoulder. “Already done, dude.”

  “I meant the other one,” Adam growled.

  Abruptly, Rowan started to chuckle, then gave a full-out laugh. Loren then Adam joined in.

  “That’s the first time you’ve ever joked about my arm,” Rowan said.

  With a jolt, Adam realized Rowan was right. Rowan’s lack of limb had never been a source of humor, just pain and sorrow. He’d gained that attitude from his mom, who was forever lamenting Rowan’s lack of wholeness. He eyed his brother in a new light. Rowan had never seen his missing arm as a handicap, and got along perfectly fine with his left. Respect for his brother filled him as pity and overprotectiveness dimmed.

  He slapped his brother’s right shoulder with a clap. “C’mon. Let’s go meet Dad.”

  Rowan rolled his shoulder in a quick move throwing off Adam’s hand. “Still pissed at you. You lied to me and our dad for fifteen years.”

  He bit his lip and stayed silent. He knew no words, no amount of apologies could ever make up for his lie keeping his brother from their dad.

  As the trio walked along the path, they grew quieter and slowed the pace to something slower than a stroll. Rowan’s complexion grew pale and for once, Adam felt taller than him. When they reached his dad’s office, Adam rapped his knuckles on the door. Loren tried to yank her hand away, but he held on tight. Her hand was an anchor in the maelstrom of the bomb he was about to drop.

  “Come in,” William’s voice rang through the door.

  Adam swung it open and he and Loren entered.

  His father swiveled in his seat and rose to greet them, a rare smile on his face. “Son. Ms. Stanton, I’m happy to see you. Together.” He gave their joined hands a pointed look. William’s smile faltered and he tripped backward as he caught a glimpse of the third member of their party.

  Adam yanked his hand free from Loren’s and caught his father in a free fall down to the couch. When his father was settled, he opened his mouth and searched for the words to confess his sin, a lifetime lie of omission. But before he could speak, his father spoke to a point behind his head.

  “Son?” At Rowan’s terse nod, tears fell down William’s cheeks. “I…she…I…thought you were dead.” A stunned William looked to Adam to explain.

  Adam swallowed and forced words past the rock-hard lump in his own throat. “I lied, Dad. When I got here, you thought…and Mom made me swear…and…” He knew he was cocking up his explanation big-time, but it didn’t matter. William and Rowan still hung on his every word.

  Loren’s hand covered his in a warm, supportive gesture, and Adam took a breath and tried again. “You welcomed me here, no questions asked when I was fifteen. Mom had me promise to keep her and Rowan’s whereabouts a secret. I lied, and then I didn’t know how to crack open the truth. I thought I was protecting Mom.” When he’d told his mom he was setting out to find his father, she’d been resigned, but emphasized that he was never to share Rowan and she were alive.

  He chanced a look at his father to see how his explanation was received. He didn’t dare glance at Loren to see the condemnation and disgust that was surely in her eyes. God knows he’d heaped enough of it on himself for so long. How could she be interested in him now, knowing what a cowardly liar he was?

  “Rowan never knew about you either. I’ve wanted to tell you both every day.” Adam found it hard to talk over the lump in his throat. “Please believe me.” God, he was acting like such a wuss.

  “Rowan? She named you Rowan?” Emotion poured from every syllable in William’s question. He seemed to be staring at Rowan with each fiber of his being as if he could soak in twenty-plus years of missing his son in a few heated seconds.

  Rowan nodded at his question. He couldn’t seem to speak and swayed where he stood. Thank God for Loren. She jumped up, took Rowan by the hand and led him down to the couch to sit next to William. Adam grabbed the rolling desk chair for himself, and Loren sat cross-legged on the floor. The four inhabitants of the room stared in turn at one another. No words spoken. Silence.

  Finally, William looked to Adam. “Diane? Is she here? Did you lie about her death too?” The hope in his voice at possibly seeing Mom again turned the lump in his throat from grape size to apple.

  Adam swallowed over the lump and shook his head. “No, Mom did die. When I was eighteen. Cancer.”

  William stared, deep in thought, seemingly unaware that tears rolled down his cheeks, catching on the afternoon’s beard growth. “And that’s why you disappeared for a month with no explanation.” Ghosts from the past swirled in undercurrents around the small, bare-bones office.

  “Yeah.” Adam shrugged, tormented by memories of the past and how he’d lived a lie for half his life.

  “Why didn’t you come after us?” Rowan finally found his voice and addressed Dad. “What happened? Didn’t you love Mom? Your sons? Why didn’t you want us?”

  The million-dollar question. The one Adam never had the guts to ask, totally influenced by his mother’s version of events. He’d lived day by day with his dad, grateful to have a home and not be in a juvenile facility. Though, in some ways, the Program was a harsher existence than any state-run juvenile lockup.

  William cleared his throat then looked both his sons in the eye. “I was an idiot. I was young, foolish, and, oh, I don’t know, just plain stupid.”

  It was revelatory, earth-shattering, really, to hear his always-right, always-in-control father denigrate himself like this. Adam glanced at Rowan to check his reaction, but Rowan had only known the man two minutes and didn’t have fifteen years of experience to contradict William’s words.

  “I want to tell you that I loved your mother. She was the light in my life to coin a bad phrase, and from the moment I met her, it was as if every other woman paled in comparison. For me, she was it,” William continued.

  Adam ignored Loren’s heated, meaningful glance, keeping his eyes on his father. One emotional eruption at a time was all he could handle. It felt as if the whole world was spinning on its axis. Everything he thought he knew about his parents and their match shifted.

  “After you were born, Adam, life was wonderful. I went on missions and came home to Diane and you, and we were a happy family. And then…” Here, William broke off and focused on Rowan. “This is where my brains fell out, and I’ll understand if you never forgive me, but I beg you for a chance.”

  Rowan, the consummate poker player, gave his newly found father nothing but a raised bro
w, indicating he should continue the tale.

  “You were born when Adam was three years old. And, and you were missing your… your…” William waved a hand toward Rowan’s chest area.

  Rowan didn’t make it easy. “My what? My heart? A lung? Come on, have the guts to say it. I am missing an arm.”

  “Your arm,” William echoed in a whisper. “And I didn’t handle it well. You have to understand that around here, perfection is prized. We’re like the ancient Greeks seeking human flawlessness. Your missing limb meant you couldn’t be part of us. I worried about your future, about my own future. What did it say about my genes if my son wasn’t whole?”

  Jesus, he was more like his father than he’d ever suspected. William’s words kicked Adam in the butt, echoing every argument he’d given himself against finding a mate or more recently, being with Loren. But he opened his mouth to defend Rowan anyway. Out of habit, he guessed.

  William held up a hand. “No, let me finish. Please.”

  Adam shut his yap.

  “Not that it’s an excuse, but I was young. Twenty-four, and I saw Rowan’s defect as a reflection on me, rather than a statement about him. Our commander warned me they were considering forcing us to put you up for adoption. I never told Diane that, but I wonder now if she somehow learned it was being considered.” He paused for a long moment to take some deep breaths. “I can only imagine her rage at that. She would have gone full mama grizzly, especially because she was very protective of you.” He let out a mirthless chuckle at the memory.

  Rowan smiled faintly. “I was Mom’s baby. She let me get away with murder.” He turned to Adam for confirmation.

  Adam snorted. “Yeah, I got blamed for everything. In her eyes you were an angel.”

  “That’s me, halo and all.”

  Despite Rowan’s light words, he still wouldn’t meet Adam’s eyes. Not that he’d blame him. Learning your brother had told one hell of a lie for fifteen years had to be a kick in the groin. He’d taken a nosedive off the ivory pedestal Rowan placed him on and was in a free fall.

  “I missed it. I missed out on your childhoods,” William suddenly lamented.

  “Get back to after my birth,” said Rowan, ignoring his father’s regrets.

  A shudder passed through William, seeming to bring him back to the present. “Right. I had to go on a mission two weeks after you were born. I’d planned on sorting everything out when I returned, but when I got back, you were gone. Diane took both of you and ran. Took my heart with her too.”

  Adam took his mind off his own guilt for a minute and digested the tale with a critical eye. That was it? Had his dad done something more than express dissatisfaction over Rowan’s missing arm? Maybe his mom had postpartum depression. Why else would she break the family apart? He searched his extensive memory banks, stretching back to his early toddler days. He knew from experience he only had shadows of memories from his first three years of life on the Beltsville campus. His recollection of early days in downtown DC was even murkier. Perhaps he’d blocked it out, a three-year-old boy would want his dad, and after all, he had a near-photographic memory and could replay history in his mind like a movie. From all accounts his father thought the sun rose every time Adam had smiled. Why did his father have such different memories than his mother of their marriage?

  “Why didn’t you come after us?” he dared to ask for the first time in his life.

  “I did,” William said, shocking Adam and Rowan. “I took leave from missions and looked. But you have to remember, there was no internet back then. We rarely used credit cards. Limited video surveillance. Tracking someone was a more hands-on personal project and it took much longer. I had the whole country, the whole world to search. Diane could’ve taken you anywhere.”

  His father’s tale made more sense, and it gave Adam a sense of completion knowing his father hadn’t abandoned him as a child. Had loved him, still did, in fact. “What made you give up and stop looking?” he asked.

  Regret crossed his dad’s face. “Keel helped me search, and he found you.”

  “He did?” Adam was stunned by that revelation. Then suspicion grew. “Well then, what happened? You never showed up, I’d remember.”

  The remorse and grief on William’s face was a tangible, living organism. Adam fought his desire to give a hug or a comforting touch to his dad. They’d never been touchy-feely, and it somehow felt too late to start now.

  “I never came to get you, because according to Keel, Rowan had died and Diane didn’t want me near her. I believed him because I stupidly thought Rowan was a sickly baby. Why else would he have been born with only one arm? She told him if I ever came looking, she’d run even farther. In exchange for her sending pictures of Adam, I settled for opening a bank account in your name and deposited money there monthly.”

  “Couldn’t have been much. Not the way we lived.” Rowan’s deep voice rolled with emotion.

  “What do you mean?” William asked. “It was nearly all of my monthly paycheck, enough to set you up nicely.” He turned to Adam, surprise etched on his face. “You never said anything about living in poverty.”

  Rowan and Adam shared a look, but Loren voiced her suspicions. “Was your wife the custodian on the account?”

  “No. It was Keel. I knew Diane would never accept money directly from me, so I made him custodian and he promised to make sure she’d accept it. Did you never…?” Both Adam and Rowan gained their feet in fluid, identical moves. William sat frozen on the couch, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have listened. I should’ve gone myself,” he whispered.

  “Is this Keel dude trustworthy?” Rowan asked, his single fist white from clenching his jean’s belt loop.

  “Yes.” Adam frowned. “He’s like a father figure to most of the boys on campus.”

  William and Loren stood too. “He’s one of my close friends,” William said. “Let’s go find him and maybe he can shed some light on what Diane did with the money.”

  A sense of purpose imbued the older man’s demeanor, and for the first time in a while, Adam saw the soldier in him. For too long, the elder Blacker had sat behind his desk, running missions from his Beltsville computer. Now William’s prowess and warrior genetics bled from every pore. Adam was proud to stand with him as they searched for a hard-earned truth.

  Chapter Nine

  Dear Billy,

  Rowan started crawling today. Of course with his missing arm, it isn’t any traditional definition of a crawl. More of a scooch forward on his butt. But he was determined to follow his hero, Adam, everywhere. You should be his hero. He should be crawling to you.

  A bitter Diane

  The unexpected knock at Keel’s front door had him rocking forward in his Eames chair, sloshing his iced tea on its way down to the modern glass coffee table. Had they traced his earlier call? Were Shep and Gavin now standing outside waiting to question him? Arrest him?

  He opened the door with alacrity, hoping it was simply Loren Stanton making good on her earlier promise to visit him to see pictures of the past. His insides bottomed out when he opened the door and saw his visitors. An inquisition all right, but from a totally unexpected source. Three faces he knew, but the fourth, though a stranger, was instantly recognizable with his similar looks to his brother. Plus, the missing arm was a dead giveaway. His game was up, it was clear from the grim expressions on the Blacker men’s faces.

  He shoved his apprehension down his gullet and pasted a large sycophantic smile on his face. The same one he’d used to fool everyone for the last forty years. It seemed to have no effect on the large men as they pushed past him and entered his private domain.

  William’s flawed son took in the interior in a sweeping glance. “Nice digs you got here, Keel.” He nudged the silk Persian rug with a sneakered toe. “The military’s paying a lot more than when I looked into doing a tour.”

  He let out a nervous chuckle as if he had no idea what the boy was getting at. The truth was the Program paid crap wages. He’d ma
naged to find ways to supplement his income. This latest scheme was the most dangerous but would pay off the biggest.

  “William, it’s been a while since you’ve paid me a visit. Come in. Sit, sit.” He swept his arm in a welcoming gesture.

  No one sat.

  He reached for his iced tea, hoping to hide his shaky fingers. Rowan Blacker’s presence could only portend bad news. He had to play it cool. Everything happened nearly thirty years ago, and Diane was dead. She couldn’t counter anything he said.

  But the look in William Blacker’s eyes reminded him how much William had loved his wife and might prefer her word or memory over his. They truly had been a perfect match. Which was why it was stunning when their offspring came out with such a huge flaw. Two Blacker brothers in the Program would’ve been a force to reckon with. But a missing limb was out of the question. He’d done what was necessary.

  Shep’s heart was too soft, especially when it came to his buddy, Blacker. He would’ve allowed the son to enroll in the program. And how was the boy supposed to compete with such a handicap? That’s what he’d wanted to know. And he’d acted.

  Ms. Stanton spoke up first. “Mr. Keel. We’ve been talking about the past and we’d like your take or recollection of a few things. Do you have some time?” Concern radiated from her eyes. Clearly her belief in his status as her deceased father’s friend held weight with her. Good. He’d use that to his advantage.

  “Certainly.” He smiled. “Ask away.”

  “Did our mom really tell you she never wanted to see our dad again?” Rowan fired the first question off like a rocket.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell Dad our location and let him make up his own mind about visiting us?” Adam asked.

  “Boys, boys. Slow down. Jonathan is my friend, stop acting like you’re accusing him of something.” William scratched his chin and appeared upset. Then he shrugged and looked over. “Actually, those are good questions, and I’d like to know the answers.”