Childfinders, Inc.: An Uncommon Hero

“Ms. Ferrarella…holds reader interest at fever pitch.”

—Romantic Times Magazine

Any way Ben looked at it, the woman he’d just left behind didn’t strike him as someone who would break the law even in a minor way, much less kidnap a child.

Yet she’d stolen someone else’s name and created a fictitious life around it.

And then there was the boy, the boy who called her Mommy with no hesitation whatsoever, as if he’d always done so.

What was Ben supposed to believe?

Was he letting his feelings for Gina color his judgment or refine it? At this point, he wasn’t sure of anything.

Except that he wanted to make love with her in the worst way….

Dear Reader,

Welcome to my latest installment of ChildFinders, Inc. Since I’m an overprotective mother, it’s always been my recurring nightmare that I’ve “misplaced” my children who, when they were younger, enjoyed hiding in department store clothes racks and the like just long enough to give me a heart attack. Losing your kids is a very real fear that most mothers live with. The newspapers, sadly, are full of kidnapping stories that are not resolved happily. I thought it might be nice to create a safe haven where one could go and have potentially heinous situations brought to a happy ending. The people at ChildFinders, Inc. never met a case they couldn’t solve.

Each time I finish writing a ChildFinders, Inc. book I think to myself, “That’s it. I’ve exhausted all the possibilities for this kind of a case.” And then, after a while, I get this itch to do one more, to find just another twist so that the story is interesting enough to demand its own space, its own book. And so it was with Ben’s story. Ben Underwood appeared in the first ChildFinders, Inc. story as a policeman on the force, newly divorced and feeling his way around. He sparked my interest, and I threaded him through the second and third stories. By the time I was into my fourth story, dealing with Chad Andreini, Ben was part of the agency and comfortable with his single life. But he was a family man at heart, and I just had to find him a family worthy of the kind of caring man Ben actually was. I think I succeeded when I put him on this newest case. I hope you agree. Once again, I thank you for revisiting me, and from the bottom of my heart I wish you love.

Childfinders, Inc.: An Uncommon Hero

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To

S. Cloud Hsueh, Ph.D.

For guidance and warmth

over and above

the call of duty

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Prologue

She wasn’t going to cry, she wasn’t.

There was no time to waste on tears. No time for anything. Only the hasty gathering of the very most important things. The things she couldn’t leave behind along with everything else.

With the rest of her life.

She should have seen this coming, Gloria upbraided herself, tossing essentials into the suitcase that lay open on her bed. It wasn’t as if this had suddenly materialized out of the blue. There had been signs. Signs she’d refused to acknowledge because things like this only happened in the movies. Or to people she read about in the newspaper. They didn’t happen to people she knew. They didn’t happen to her.

Except that now they were.

She glanced over at the small boy lying in the center of her bed, curled up right next to the suitcase. Poor baby, he’d dozed off and on the entire time she’d dressed him, waking just enough to ask her if he was having a dream. She’d told him yes.

It was better this way. She wouldn’t have to field the tearful questions until later.

Maybe later, she could come up with answers that he could accept. Right now, she couldn’t even come up with any that she could accept.

Regardless, she knew she had to hurry. If Stephen came looking for her here before she could get away, it would be too late.

She flipped the suitcase lid closed, pushing down on the locks. She prayed she knew what she was doing.

It was time to go.

Chapter 1

“You can name your own price, just find my son.”

Ben Underwood studied the well-dressed man sitting in front of his desk. There was a time when the words name your own price would have been extremely tempting to him. A time, a little more than a decade ago, when he had stood at the crossroads of his life, wondering whether or not to take the easy road, the road his cousin and best friend, Vinnie, was taking. Or to take the road that, for the most part, followed a straight-and-narrow path.

It had been more of a mental wrestling match than he would have liked to admit now, but finally, Ben, in deference to his conscience and his mother and three sisters, had chosen the latter road. Only to “un-choose” it when he and the Bedford Police Department had come to a parting of the ways because of his untamable, independent methods. He’d gone from the department straight to ChildFinders, Inc. without so much as a breather and without looking back. He’d never regretted it.

It had been a very long time since money had had any sort of allure for him beyond providing for the basic creature comforts. Principles counted for so much more and were, in the end, longer-lasting.

Besides, Ben thought, he had a tendency to let money pass through his hands if he had it. He’d always been an easy touch.

He figured he’d better set this newest client, a man who seemed to fill up the room with his presence and who Megan Andreini, one of the agency’s partners, would have undoubtedly referred to as a silver fox, straight.

“The fee depends on the length of time and expense it takes to locate your son, Mr. McNair.” Ben smiled, comfortingly, he hoped. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel for these people who came into his office, quite the contrary. He just had never managed to master expressing his feelings satisfactorily. It was easier just tucking them away. “It’s not determined by your net worth.”

The last part wasn’t strictly true, but not in any way that Stephen McNair could appreciate, Ben thought. On occasion, the agency took on cases pro bono. Cade Townsend, the original founder of the agency, didn’t believe that lack of funds was any reason not to try to reunite a family with their missing child. Cade had been on the raw end of that situation, and knew the anguish of looking for a child who’d been kidnapped.

But there was no point in mentioning any of that to their newest client. McNair wasn’t here to discuss the agency’s policies, or its history. He had come here for the same reason everyone came to ChildFinders, Inc.—to find his missing child. In McNair’s case, it was a six-year-old blond-haired boy named Andrew.

Stephen McNair looked somewhat displeased at being lumped in with the general populace. Ben had a hunch the man had gotten accustomed to being able to buy anything he wanted, people and time included. If it were that easy, Ben mused, his son would have been back to him in minutes.

McNair’s eyes narrowed a fraction. Ben felt himself being sized up. He couldn’t say he liked it any. Given the circumstances, Ben decided McNair was entitled to some slack.

“Surely I’m permitted to throw a bonus into the agreement?”

“So we’ll work a little faster?” Ben guessed, trying hard not to take offense.

McNair smiled triumphantly. “Exactly.”

Ben shifted his lanky frame in his chair. He wasn’t here to pass judgment. It was a given that the people who came into these offices were usually at their worst. It wasn’t his place to like or dislike any of them. For the most part, he had to admit he felt for them and liked them. He didn’t care for McNair. But that didn’t matter one way or another. It was finding the boy that counted.

He couldn’t help wondering if the boy would grow up to be like his father.

The man sitting before him in the six-hundred-dollar suit was about ten years older than Ben and gave new meaning to the word polished. The card McNair had made a point of presenting to him even before they had shaken hands identified him as Stephen W. McNair, president and CEO of IndieCorp, a fast-rising company that was, if he remembered correctly, on the cusp of a colossal merger with Mercury Electronics. The talk was that between the two giants, the semiconductor market was just about covered.

Ben rocked back in his chair, studying McNair in silence for a moment, questions occurring to him. A man like McNair could easily have a hundred agencies at his beck and call, including the FBI. Considering that kidnapping was every parent’s nightmare and had become a reality for McNair, Ben couldn’t help wondering what the man was doing here. Granted, ChildFinders had a heretofore unbelievable track record for solving kidnapping cases. For every closed case, there had been a happy ending. Not many places could boast a record like that. But the FBI had more manpower.

Ben leaned forward. “If you don’t mind my asking, why haven’t you gone to the police?”

There was a flash of annoyance in Stephen McNair’s piercing blue eyes, but it was gone so quickly, Ben thought he might have imagined it. McNair looked the soul of cooperation as he answered, “Perhaps you’re aware of the merger Indie is about to make with Mercury?”

Ben had found he learned a great deal when he pretended to be ignorant of things. “I don’t keep up with the financial section of the newspaper, Mr. McNair. In my line of work, there’s not much time for things that aren’t directly relevant to the cases I’m working on.”

A slight frown twitched McNair’s lips before he proceeded to enlighten Ben. “Yes, well, my company is at a crucial stage of its development right now. We’re to merge with Mercury Electronics. Any hint of scandal and the entire negotiations could be placed in jeopardy.”

“I don’t know the kind of people you’re dealing with, Mr. McNair, but I don’t think they’d consider the kidnapping of a child as scandalous.”

In response, Stephen McNair merely shook his head. “It’s not the kidnapping they’d consider scandalous, it’s the circumstances surrounding it.”

Now they were getting somewhere, Ben thought. He took out the tape recorder that was part of each office’s furnishings and placed it on the desk beside him.

“Tell me about the circumstances.” He pressed the red button down on the recorder and the tape began to whir softly.

McNair froze. He glared at the small rectangle on the desk as if it were an offending lower life-form. “Turn that off.” The three terse words were not a request. They were an order.

Despite his affable demeanor, Ben didn’t respond well to being ordered around. That had been one of the reasons he and the Bedford Police Department hadn’t remained on intimate terms. He made no move to comply with McNair’s order. “Sorry, company policy.”

“I said turn it off.” Rather than wait, McNair leaned over and switched off the recorder himself. He met Ben’s barely veiled annoyed look with a passionate verbal volley. “I won’t be recorded. I—” He lowered his voice as he searched for the right words. “This is very delicate, Mr. Underwood. Haven’t you ever been in a delicate situation you didn’t want broadcast?”

“This doesn’t get broadcast, Mr. McNair.” He indicated the tape recorder. “The only reason the initial interview is taped is to help us go over the case. Sometimes things are said that are forgotten later. Other times, playing the tape back might inadvertently remind you of a detail or event you forgot to mention.”

McNair remained unmovable. “I have a photographic memory, Mr. Underwood. I assure you I do not forget anything.” He paused, then added a bit more softly, “Except, perhaps, discretion.” His eyes met Ben’s. “But I am paying dearly for my error now.”

Ben made a judgment call. He left the tape recorder off. Curiosity had gotten the better of him. His mother had always warned him it would be his undoing.

“All right, we’ll leave it off for the time being. Now, do you have any idea who might have kidnapped your son?”

“Any idea who kidnapped my son?” McNair parroted the question incredulously. “Of course I have an idea who kidnapped my son. I know exactly who’s responsible. Gloria Prescott kidnapped my son.”

“Gloria Prescott,” Ben repeated, and McNair nodded adamantly. It was a toss-up whether to ask first who the woman was or why she would abduct his son. Ben went with the more important of the two. “And do you have any idea why she would kidnap your son?”

McNair passed his hand slowly over his face, a man struggling with his secrets, buying himself a tiny fragment of time in which to compose himself and frame his answer.

“She kidnapped Andrew to get back at me. She is—was,” McNair said, correcting himself, “Andrew’s nanny.” Just for an instant, his eyes grew soft, as if he were visualizing her. “She’s quite a stunning young woman.” The laugh that followed was self-mocking. “Too young for me, really.”

Mentally, Ben filled in the blanks. He had heard it often enough before. Older man, younger woman. The combination rarely yielded satisfactory results. According to his mother, that was why his own father had left. In pursuit of youth. In this case, youth had a name. Claudia Gershon. Ben had a half brother named Jason who was half his age. For his father, things had worked out. Obviously, for McNair it hadn’t.

“Go on,” he encouraged when McNair continued to remain silent.

The older man shrugged. “You’ve heard it before, I’m sure. Older man trying to hang on to his youth, beautiful young woman bringing it to him in a gift-wrapped box.” There was a faraway look in his eyes as he spoke.

The man had gotten it bad, Ben thought. He thought of his own mother. “And how did Mrs. McNair feel about you hanging on to your youth? Or Gloria’s,” he amended wryly.

McNair’s eyes went flat as he regarded him. “She didn’t feel anything.”

“And why is that?” Ben was playing devil’s advocate, but there was something a little too pat about the man sitting before him. He seemed a little too held together. Ben was used to people coming unraveled under the pressure of the crisis they were enduring. This man looked annoyed, nothing more. Fathers didn’t look annoyed or inconvenienced when their sons were taken—they looked angry. Distraught, capable of mayhem themselves. On occasion, they looked lost. But not annoyed.

He wanted to get to the bottom of Stephen McNair.

“Because there is no Mrs. McNair.” The annoyance deepened as McNair moved to the edge of his seat. “Look, I’m going to be perfectly frank with you. I’m rather new at this father business. Andrew is the result of a liaison I had with a young woman seven years ago. One of those flash-and-fire things. The whole thing lasted perhaps three weeks, perhaps less. I hadn’t heard from her since. She died nine months ago, leaving me a letter and the boy. Both came to me via her lawyer. I had some lab tests done, DNA, that sort of thing, and the results were conclusive. Andrew was mine. Naturally, I saw him as my responsibility.”

“Naturally.”

McNair stopped, narrowing his eyes. “Are you mocking me?”

Ben straightened, all business. His remark had been a slip. “I’m not here to mock, Mr. McNair, or to sit in judgment. My only function is to help. I’m sorry if I gave you any other impression.” He was going to have to work on his poker face, Ben thought.

“Look, I’m sorry if I don’t live up to your expectations of the grieving father. It’s not easy for me to show my emotions. But make no mistake about it, I am worried about my son and I want him back.”

Ben nodded. “You were saying about Gloria…”

Scrubbing a well-manicured hand over his face, McNair sighed and continued. “I was completely besotted with her for several months.”

Besotted. Now, there was a word he didn’t run into every day, Ben thought. But somehow, coming from McNair, it seemed to fit the narrative. “What happened after several months?”

“I came to my senses. Realized that a man in my position—responsible for the livelihood of so many people—couldn’t continue behaving like some smitten adolescent. I tried to let her down as gently as possible, make her see reason.” McNair looked at Ben to see if he understood the awkward position he’d been in. “Unfortunately, Gloria didn’t choose to be reasonable about it. I don’t think she really cared about me as much as she did about the money. I think she thought I was going to marry her.”

“And you weren’t.” Ben waited for him to continue.

He shook his head. “She wasn’t wife material.” His expression became superior. “Gloria became very possessive, flying into jealous rages when she thought that I was seeing someone else.”

Ben was undecided whether the man thought himself to be a much-abused saint, or was only trying to present himself as one. “And were you?”

“No.” The response was indignant. “And whether I was seeing someone or not is not the point.”

“No, but everything is a piece of this puzzle. In the interest of brevity, why don’t you shorten the story for the time being. Why did Gloria suddenly kidnap your son? Why now, rather than last month or next week?”

“Because I officially broke off our relationship in no uncertain terms last Thursday.”

“Thursday,” Ben echoed.

“I see why you might need a recorder,” McNair commented impatiently. “Yes, Thursday. I told her I couldn’t have a woman stalking my every move no matter how beautiful she was.”

Ben toyed with the carved paperweight one of his sisters had made for him when she was twelve as he played with logistics in his head. “What did she do with Andrew while she was stalking you?”

The question took McNair aback for a moment before he responded. “She had him with her.” He continued with his narrative, impatient to be done with it. “Of course, I took total responsibility for the affair even though she was the one who seduced me, and I offered her quite a sizable severance package to tide her over until she found another position. After all, I wasn’t heartless.”

Ben wondered if Stephen McNair actually saw himself as benevolent and blame-free. “But that didn’t fly with her.”

“No, it didn’t ‘fly.’” McNair wrapped his tongue around the word disdainfully. “When I came home two nights ago from a business trip to Washington, D.C., I found that Gloria was gone and she’d taken Andrew with her.”

“Did she leave a note?”

The question caught McNair off guard. “No.”

“Then you just assumed she’d kidnapped Andrew.”

“She was gone, he was gone, her clothes were gone. I came to the logical conclusion.” He paused as if debating something, or hunting through the photographic memory he’d boasted of. “And she’d threatened me earlier.”

“Threatened?” Ben said, instantly alert. “What kind of a threat?”

“She said she’d take Andrew away where I could never find him if I didn’t marry her. That she was going to make me pay for what I ‘did’ to her.”

He supposed if the woman was being completely irrational, she might forget to write a note, although in his experience, writing a note would have added to the drama. Perhaps twisted the knife in a little harder. A woman making a dramatic statement wasn’t apt to overlook writing a note.

But this woman hadn’t. The minor point bothered Ben.

Something else was bothering him, too. Ben looked at the other man. “And you waited almost five days before reporting this to anyone?”

It was an outright challenge and Ben half expected McNair to explode. Instead, the man looked contrite. “I was hoping that she was just angry. That she’d return him. I wanted to spare her being arrested if it was at all possible. I still do. You might have trouble understanding this because you’re still young and not in my position, but I find I still have some residual feelings regarding Gloria.”

For the first time, Stephen McNair seemed human to Ben. “Have you gotten in contact with her friends?”

The gesture was short, indicating a degree of helplessness that McNair looked unaccustomed to acknowledging.

“She’s not from around here. As far as I know, she has no friends in the area. None that she ever went out with or even mentioned. For the most part, she stayed on the estate. She was very devoted to me and to Andrew.”

Ben noted the order McNair had used. To me and to Andrew. But then, as the man said, he was new at being a father and hadn’t had the luxury of experience to fall back on.

Sometimes all the experience and time in the world didn’t help change the overall picture, Ben thought. His father had walked out on not only his mother, but on him, when he was thirteen. Being a father of four children hadn’t made Jake Underwood any less the center of his own universe.

Still, whatever the order used, the word devoted had certain connotations. Ben was counting on them. “So you’re pretty certain that she wouldn’t hurt Andrew?”

There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation. “Yes, I’m reasonably certain that she wouldn’t do anything crazy like that. As I said, she’s just doing this to get back at me.”

“Are you sure there wasn’t some sort of note?” Ben prodded. “Conditions she wanted met before she returned your son?”

Maybe, for his own reasons, McNair was lying about there not being a note. It did seem highly unlikely that, given the circumstances, Gloria Prescott would allow this opportunity to slip by. Kidnappings happened for a variety of reasons, the least of which was revenge. But if this was for revenge, it was running atypical to form.

“No.” Exasperation peppered McNair’s voice. “I suspect she was too angry to write anything. Besides, I already know her conditions. She’d want to take up where we’d left off. She wanted me to marry her.”

In his experience, grasping people tended to want money, Ben thought. Or at least power. Silence was not the order of the day. He wondered again if there was something McNair was holding back. “And she hasn’t attempted to get in contact with you?” Ben asked.

“No,” McNair snapped. He took a deep breath, composing himself. With shaky fingers he dug into his pocket and took out a half-empty pack of cigarettes. “My one vice,” he explained, holding the pack up. “Other than falling for beautiful women. Do you mind?”

Ben was surprised that the man even bothered to ask. McNair struck him as someone who did as he pleased. Ben inclined his head, taking out a small ceramic ashtray from his side drawer and placing it on the desk. He didn’t smoke, but he understood the need.

“Thanks.” McNair lit up and inhaled. His eyes closed for a moment, as if he were having a spiritual experience. When he opened them again, he looked calmer, more capable of continuing. “If Gloria had left a note, I would have been taking care of this myself.” He glanced toward the closed door. “Is Townsend around? Maybe he…?”

It obviously rankled McNair to deal with anyone who wasn’t the top man. “Cade’s out of town on a case. The caseload is pretty heavy. Right now, I appear to be all you have at your disposal.”

McNair wouldn’t have been where he was if he wasn’t good at damage control. A smile nothing short of charming creased his lips. “Sorry, didn’t mean to fly off the handle that way earlier. I can usually keep my temper under wraps, it’s just that this is all completely new to me. Being a father, being a kidnap victim…”