Edge of Danger (San Antonio Security #2)

Chapter Fourteen

“Weston? I think you should know you’re on speaker.” Brax looked to Tessa for some sign. Some surprise or shock. Something.

She sat still, staring straight ahead. The only thing to give away the strain she was under was the way she clenched her fists in her lap.

“Do you want me to call back later? When you’re alone?”

“Don’t bother.” Tessa’s voice was heavy with...defeat? Fatigue? “Go ahead.”

“What’s going on?” Brax demanded. It didn’t matter which of them thought the question was directed their way.

Weston sighed heavily. “I found Walker’s birth certificate. According to this, his mother’s name is Theresa Mahoney.”

It was a good thing Brax was pulling down the road, just in front of the house. He might’ve gotten them in an accident otherwise. As it was, he felt like he’d just been run over by an eighteen-wheeler.

Walker’s mother wasn’t dead. Tessa was his mother.

He pulled to a stop and put the Jeep into Park but didn’t bother opening the door. Neither did she. Walker slept in the back, blissfully unaware.

“Tessa’s parental rights were stripped,” Weston continued. “Due to drug use. And, of course, she’s never worked for a nanny service. She tricked us.”

It got worse with every passing second.

Brax looked to her for something, anything. Explanation. Anger. Instead, there she was, slumped against the door like she wanted to melt into it. If that wasn’t an admission of guilt, he didn’t know what was.

“I’m sorry to break it to you like this. But I thought you needed to know.”

It took a second for Brax to find his voice. “Thanks. I’ll call you later.”

The silence was unbearable. Heavy, thick, making it hard to breathe. For someone who’d been able to come up with quick responses and charming phrases all his life, being left with nothing to say was a new experience.

“Is there a reason I didn’t hear about this from you?” he finally asked.

“I didn’t know if you’d want to listen.” She ran a hand under both eyes.

“You’d better believe I want to hear your side of this after you’ve lied all these weeks.”

“What was I supposed to do?” She whirled on him. Instead of screaming, her voice fell into a hissing whisper, which was somehow more effective than the shrillest shriek.

“Yes, I’m Walker’s mother. And the reason I came to you was because I had nowhere else to go. The day you called about Walker, that first day, I got home from work and found my apartment ransacked. They stole my money and threatened to beat me up. All because they were looking for Robert and figured I knew where to find him.”

“Did you?”

“He took our son away from me because he’s a spiteful, hateful monster. Why would he tell me anything about his plans?” She snorted. “He dropped me the minute he got what he wanted.”

So far that sounded like Robert.

She looked into the back seat, and her gaze softened a little. “I had nowhere else to go. I didn’t even know you had Walker until you called. Robert took him away.”

“You had nothing to do with that?”

Her head snapped around again, and he wished he hadn’t said it. “You know your brother. Do you think he’s beyond setting me up?”

“Did he?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I’ve lived with you for more than two weeks. Have I ever given you even the slightest indication I had a drug problem?”

“You could’ve gotten yourself clean by now.”

He had never seen so much disdain packed into a single eye roll. “Fine. But it isn’t true. What Robert said isn’t true at all. He set me up, lied about me and he took Walker away. Why he would do that when he was only going to hand him over to you, I have no idea. I’ve never been able to understand him.”

That made two of them.

“How did you get involved with him in the first place?”

She shrugged with a sigh. “I was a cocktail waitress at a casino in Eagle Pass. He was in there a lot. Charming. Handsome. I had just lost my parents not long before that and was on my own. Lonely.” Another quick hand under her eyes.

Brax bit back his sympathy in favor of letting her talk. Hadn’t he wanted to know the truth about her all this time?

“Maybe a week after we slept together, Robert stopped calling. Looking back, I realize I shouldn’t have been surprised. He didn’t care about me. But I was hurt and angry. Then I found out I was pregnant. I managed to get hold of him. He told me the baby couldn’t be his because he’d used protection. So I was on my own again.”

“I have to ask.” Damn it. This was a hard question. “Are you sure Walker is his—”

“He was the only one,” she snapped.

“Okay.”

“If he wasn’t going to help me I decided I would make it on my own. I worked hard. Took extra shifts. Started cleaning houses on the side to make extra money.”

“While pregnant?”

“I had to support the baby somehow, didn’t I? But it was okay. I guess it felt like I had a purpose again. A direction. Without my parents, I’d lost my way. Nothing bad, but I was drifting. I stopped taking my college classes, stopped seeing friends. With the baby to work for, there was a reason to get out of bed every morning.”

She looked down at her hands. “Robert showed up at the hospital when Walker was born. Said he was sorry and that he wanted to be part of our lives. I was stupid enough to believe him. He even stuck around my apartment for the first two weeks. I told myself he wasn’t as helpful as he could’ve been because he didn’t know anything about babies. But there were other things that weren’t so easy to explain away. Like the way he kept peeking out the window from behind the curtains.”

“I have a feeling I know where this is going.”

“He got a call after two weeks. I don’t know who it was from, but it was enough to get him to pack up his things and tell me he was only using me and Walker as a way to hide out. He didn’t really want to be a father. I shouldn’t expect to see him again.”

Brax winced. He could almost see it playing out in his head.

“It was okay, though. There was another single mom in my building who worked during the day shift. I watched her little girl along with Walker while she was working, and she watched Walker for me at night so I could work.”

“You must’ve been exhausted.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “But we were making it. I could pay the rent, keep him in diapers and get formula and clothes, feed myself. It was hard, but it was good. He was worth it.”

Another heavy sigh. “Robert came back when Walker was almost two months old, and said he wanted to be part of our lives again. This time I told him to get lost.”

“Good for you.”

“It wasn’t good enough for him, though. I know that now. A couple of days later, I was leaving the casino when a man bumped into me. That’s all I remember. He bumped into me, and everything got blurry. Somehow I made it home, but I was fuzzy and my coordination was all off. When CPS showed up, I was completely unable to pull it together.”

Her breathing picked up speed. “They took Walker away. Pulled him out of my arms. He was screaming. I knew in my head that I had to do something, but I couldn’t understand anything coming out of my mouth no matter how hard I tried to make sense. All I remember is them saying somebody reported me for neglect and drug use. It was a nightmare. The sort of thing you see in a movie. It kept getting worse. Robert made it look like the whole ‘being on drugs’ thing was the norm. I know now that whoever bumped into me must’ve injected something, but I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t prove I was a good mother. He got a judge to permanently revoke my parental rights.”

She snorted. “I didn’t have any money or any way to prove I was innocent. I didn’t know what to do.”

Walker stirred and fussed. It gave Brax an excuse to get out of the car. Sitting there wondering what to believe—whether it was right or wrong to take what he knew about Robert and allow himself to believe his brother would go that far—would drive him crazy before long.

He unstrapped Walker and held him against his shoulder. Tessa got out on her side. “Do you believe me or not?”

“I don’t know.”

She shook her head, color bleeding from her face. “You think I’d make up something like this?”

Brax faced her in front of the Jeep. “Do I think Robert would stoop to anything? Yes. Do I believe he’d completely make up something like this? It’s hard. Why would he even want a baby?”

Tessa’s eyes filled with tears. And he realized how unbelievably stupid it was not to believe her. Playing it smart and exercising caution were one thing. But this was a woman with nothing to lose because she’d already lost everything.

And she loved Walker. That Brax could have zero doubt about.

“I don’t think you’d make this up,” he had to admit. “I believe Robert would sink to any level to get what he wanted. I couldn’t have guessed he would ever stoop this low, though. I’m sorry he did that to you.”

“Thank you.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not furious with you for lying the way you did. For weeks. Every time I asked you about yourself. Every time I commented on how good you were with him. You pretended to be a nanny. You—”

“I didn’t know how you would react.” Her tears spilled over. She didn’t brush them away this time. “I figured you would take Walker away just like CPS did. Like Robert did. I couldn’t lose him again.”

She wrung her hands together as her eyes met her son’s, and the tears fell faster than ever. “I... I can’t lose him. When you told me I couldn’t work for you anymore, it felt like my heart was literally breaking. There was pain in my chest, I swear. I don’t think I could take it if I couldn’t be with him.”

Walker whimpered.

“Mama loves you,” she said to the baby, but didn’t reach for him.

He felt like a monster. “Here. Take him.” Brax handed Walker over rather than torture Tessa any longer.

“Thank you, thank you.” She closed her eyes, kissing the baby’s cheeks and forehead.

Anyone with eyes could see she adored her son. Brax’s heart softened. If he had been in her position, what would he have done? How many people would he have lied to if he felt powerless to do anything else?

She opened her eyes. “The people looking for Robert are the ones who took my purse at the mall. They were using my phone to track me. They don’t know about you and Robert being brothers, and they don’t know the baby is here. I made sure of that.”

That was enough for him. She could’ve told those thugs about him to get them to leave her alone. Instead, she’d chosen to protect him.

He folded his arms. “No more secrets.”

She shook her head. “No more secrets.”

“Okay.” When he draped an arm over her shoulders and led her to the house, she didn’t shrug away from his touch. “We’ll work this out together.”