Chapter 2 - The Woman in the Second SUV
The silver-haired woman did not move toward Lily.
That mattered.
She stopped beside the SUV and held both hands where everyone could see them.
“Jack, I’m not here to take her.”
David laughed.
“That’s what you said nine years ago.”
Marianne looked at him.
“You should leave.”
“You don’t order me anymore.”
“No. But the people you work for don’t know where you are.”
That erased his smile.
Jack noticed.
“So you went independent.”
David said nothing.
Marianne looked at Lily again.
“My name is Marianne Cole.”
“Do you know my mom?”
“Yes.”
“What’s her name?”
“Rachel Warren.”
Lily relaxed slightly.
At least she knew that.
Then Marianne added:
“But that wasn’t always her name.”
Jack closed his eyes.
Lily looked at him.
“You know my mom too?”
“I knew someone named Rachel.”
“Was she your daughter?”
Jack’s voice broke.
“I thought she was.”
That made no sense.
Lily’s mother was thirty-four.
Jack was fifty-two.
Possible.
But Lily had never heard her mother mention a father.
Then sirens sounded in the distance.
Someone had finally called emergency services.
David looked toward the road.
“We’re done here.”
Jack grabbed his wrist.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
David pulled free.
“If you want the truth, ask Rachel why Elizabeth Warren had a birth certificate six months before Lily Warren was born.”
Lily stared.
“What?”
Marianne stepped between them.
“Enough.”
David backed toward his SUV.
Then looked at Jack.
“You still think the motorcycle crash was an accident?”
Jack’s face hardened.
“Wasn’t it?”
David smiled.
“Ask Marianne.”
Then he drove away.
The ambulance arrived two minutes later.
Jack refused transport until Lily’s mother could be reached.
Lily insisted she was fine.
She wasn’t.
Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
When Rachel Warren finally pulled up in an old blue sedan, she ran toward Lily and pulled her into a crushing hug.
Then she saw Jack.
Everything stopped.
Jack stared at her as if he were seeing a ghost.
“Rachel?”
Her expression collapsed.
“No.”
He took one step.
“You’re alive.”
She moved Lily behind her.
“Stay away from us.”
Jack looked at the little girl.
“Is she mine?”
Rachel slapped him.
Hard.
“You don’t get to ask that.”
Marianne whispered:
“Rachel.”
Rachel turned.
Whatever anger she had for Jack became terror.
“You brought her here?”
“I followed David.”
Rachel grabbed Lily.
“We’re leaving.”
Jack called after her.
“Who is Lily’s father?”
Rachel stopped.
Her shoulders rose and fell once.
Then she looked back.
“You are.”
Jack’s eyes filled.
Lily stopped breathing.
May you like
But Rachel wasn’t finished.
“And that is exactly why we had to disappear.”
