Secret Bodyguard

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 been Jesse Brock since he’d become Crowe’s chauffeur two weeks ago. And now he had a bad feeling he wasn’t even Jesse McCall, the person he thought he’d been for thirty years. “I have to know.”

Dylan nodded almost sadly but didn’t seem surprised. “You realize you’re probably not going to like what you uncover, if you’re even able to dig up anything after all these years.”

He nodded, trying to think of a good reason a mother would abandon her baby.

“Do you want me to keep digging?” Dylan asked. “I have another case that’s going to tie me up for a while but after that—”

Jesse nodded. He couldn’t leave the Crowe case, not now. And after thirty years, what was a few more days?

“Then you’re going to stay on the Crowe estate?” Dylan asked.

He nodded, his thoughts torn between this shocking news and Amanda Crowe. “The old man called me this morning and told me he wants me to drive her wherever Amanda wants to go. He thanked me for keeping an eye on her. And obviously someone on the Crowe estate thinks they know who I am or they wouldn’t have put the newspaper clipping under my door.”

Dylan looked uneasy and Jesse nodded in agreement.

“I know I’m walking a tightrope here,” Jesse acknowledged and told him about Gage Ferraro.

“Now everyone is looking for Susannah, including Gage, if he isn’t just stringing J.B. along. But I overheard him prodding her to make her move. I intend to be there when she does.”

Dylan studied him for a long moment and Jesse wondered if the cowboy realized just how involved Jesse had gotten in this case.

“She’s a beautiful woman,” Dylan said quietly.

Jesse laughed. “She’s also a Crowe and she’d cut your throat in a heartbeat.”

“Just don’t forget that. Jesse, I know this news about the newspaper clipping comes as a shock to you,” Dylan said.

“Yeah.” He loved his parents, his family and he’d always felt a part of them. This was more than a shock. He felt as if the earth under him was no longer solid. As if nothing was as it seemed.

“Take it slow, okay?” Dylan advised. “Give it a little time.”

Time. Right. Too bad that wasn’t his nature.

Jesse called the Crowe compound at a little after three. Mr. Crowe was with his daughter. Both had asked not to be disturbed. Nor had they changed their minds about needing Jesse’s services, Eunice assured him. They would be dining in tonight together.

After he left the compound, he called his boss at the Dallas P.D. and told him what he’d overheard J.B. Crowe say the night before about the governor’s daughter Diana. His boss said he’d handle it and hung up.

He had time. Enough time he could drive up to his parents’ house in Pilot Point and back. It wasn’t but a couple of hours. Amanda wouldn’t dare try to sneak out with her father home and dinner planned for the two of them. Would she?

MARIE MCCALL MET HIM at the door, excitedly kissed him on the cheek then noticed something was wrong. “What is it, honey?”

His mother. She knew him as no one else did. Her hand went to his forehead, just as it had when he was a child.

“Are you feeling ill?” she enquired, regarding him with concern as she ushered him in.

“Stop fussing over him,” Pete McCall called jovially from the kitchen. “You’re just in time,” he said to Jesse. “How about a beer before dinner? We were getting ready to throw some steaks on the grill.”