Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

Anna had seen this sort of thing before from Mitch. In fact, regardless of 'should' or 'would rather,' it wasn't even uncommon. He acted like this whenever he couldn't lose. As if he were bragging.

He's got something up his sleeve, something that neither her, nor Josh, is going to like. There's more than just a little bit to worry about, at this point. It's not totally clear where things are going to go from here, except that they're going to both end up regretting the hell out of it.

Anna takes a breath and sits back. Whatever's coming, she's got nothing that can stop him from playing his trump card. She never had anything like that before. Why would she have it now?

The waitress comes and brings food. Mitch continues to play the affable playboy. Josh continues to glower. He should have realized it by now. That there was nothing either of them could do. They might as well just let him have his show.

A big stack of pancakes for each of them. It was high enough that Anna couldn't have eaten it on her best day. As it stood, only a couple hours after breakfast, she was relegated to picking away at her food.

That must have been planned from the start, too. Nobody would serve ten pancakes in a big old smokestack if you just ordered 'three orders of pancakes.'

So this was all part of it.

Anna's jaw felt tight, almost as if it were rusted shut. She kept eating in spite of that, because she had to. It was important to Mitchell's plan that they all look perfectly ordinary. Either she was going to wreck it, or she wasn't.

What she wasn't ready to do was throw away any remaining chance of seeing Ava again, which meant, when it came right down to it, that she would play along with almost any plan. It was, after all, her own fault. If she'd known better, if she'd thought clearer, if she'd planned more…

If she'd had a security system, if she'd kept Ava safer then none of this would happen.

If she hadn't gotten Mitch involved in all of this, then she would have been left alone, in peace, with time to spend playing with her daughter.

Instead, they'd invaded her home, twice now, and they'd torn open wounds that she'd thought had healed completely by now. Torn open her entire life, and for what? A few measly dollars?

Mitchell pours the last of the syrup onto his stack and takes another bite. He sees Anna looking and gives her a thin-lipped smile. How terribly like him, in the end. Everything he does is just that way.

"How's your food," he asks to the table in general. "Mine's fantastic."

"It's fine," growls the detective. Anna can see—anyone could see—that he's more than had it with Mitchell's act, and there's plenty of good reasons not to like it. But there's nothing to be done, can't he see that?

You might as well just play along with it. He's smart, and he's had all the time in the world to plan this out. Anna—and, presumably, Josh as well—didn't have much time to think any of this through.

They were too busy getting roughed up by kidnappers, they were too busy worrying about Ava, they were too busy with everything other than making a big plan to screw Mitch over. That was the one thing that he couldn't say. The one thing that Mitch could never say.

He never just let himself walk into a situation like that. Not like they had, just now.

Anna takes a deep breath and takes another bite of pancakes. Her stomach is already full, but she doesn't want to get the lecture about finishing her food.

"Good, thank you," she says after she swallows the bite. Softly enough that the next table probably wouldn't hear, but not so quiet that it would be a problem for Mitchell and Josh.

Mitch gives that tight-lipped smile of his again. He takes the last bite and pushes the plate back, washing it all down with the last mouthful of water from his glass. He'll want it refilled soon. Mitch can't stand to be without something to drink.

A minute later, as if by magic or by clockwork, a woman comes by with a pitcher of water and refills it silently, before walking away with Josh's plate in her hands.

Anna looks down at her own food. She'd never be able to finish it, not in a hundred years. It's too much. She pushes her own plate away and braces for the lecture that's sure to come, the lecture that she absolutely doesn't want to hear and absolutely cannot avoid.

Deep breaths, now. Her stomach hurts. Too much food will do that. She wants to smile back at Mitch. He'd want that. It's her own little act of rebellion that she doesn't. She's here because she has to be here, because Ava is more important than Anna's own petty desire to be away from the man who'd helped make her.

Josh, on the other hand, has barely touched the food. He pushes the plate away and leans in hard on his elbows. That's bad manners; Mitch won't like it.

"Get to the God damned point," he growls.

Mitch smiles at him. He's showing teeth this time. An aggressive smile, the sort of thing that a person does from time to time, when they're not worried about what you're going to do.

Or, for other people, it might come naturally. Nothing has ever come naturally to Mitch Queen, though. He's an unnatural sort of man.

The only things that come naturally are his unfailing and unflinching ability to find where there are mistakes being made, and his ability to correct them. In both himself, and in others.

He wouldn't let something like elbows on the table, such an obvious slip of good manners, go unnoticed. Nor, under normal circumstances, would he let it go uncorrected. At least, that was Anna's experience.

Of course, it's entirely possible, even likely, that with other men he doesn't act in that exact way. It's likely that he only acts that way with Anna.

Does that mean that he's being more appreciative, though, or less? She doesn't want to wonder about it.

"You're right. I'm keeping you both in suspense, aren't I?"

"Suppose that you are," Mitch growls. He's not happy.

Anna understand why he's not. But he's keeping himself in check better than he could have. With how things have been going, it wouldn't be hard to imagine the big detective leaping over the table to throttle Mitch right there in the middle of everyone.

It's actually almost impressive that he manages not to, in the end. He keeps his hands to himself, and keeps himself away from Mitch's throat. Almost in spite of himself.

"You're absolutely right. How rude of me." He turns to Anna. "I am concerned, you see. I worry. Not only for myself."

He pauses for dramatic effect. He's always been concerned about that sort of thing. Some might say over-concerned, but Anna knows better than to make any judgments about that sort of thing.

After a moment, he continues. "No, I worry, you see, for our daughter. For Ava. Can she be raised without her father? Do you know the statistics, Anna, on what happens to the children of households where the parents are separated?"

Anna shakes her head. She can guess, though. She can guess that they're not very good. Otherwise, he wouldn't have brought it up. It's about as simple as that, the same as it has always been.

"Take a guess."

"Get to the point," Josh growls.

Anna gives him a look for a moment. He should have realized, by now, that there's nothing that can be done but to play the game. That's the only way you get out of this without too much trouble, and the one thing Anna doesn't want right now is trouble.

All she wants is to get away from all of the trouble she's been having. She wants her daughter back. She wants to have her life back.

"They're bad?"

Mitch turns to Josh, smiling that toothy smile. "You see? She's smarter than she looks." He turns back to Anna now. "That's exactly right. They're bad. I wouldn't want that to happen to Ava."

"What's your point?" Josh cuts in. He's not seeing it, and to be honest neither is Anna, but she wasn't going to say anything.

There's no way around it. She's not going to let Ava just go into the foster care system, or anything like that. There's just no way.

And of course, there's no chance of abortion. It wasn't an option then, and it's much, much too late now. So what exactly is he trying to get at?

Anna gulps as Mitch reaches into his pocket. When he pulls out a little box and gets down on one knee beside her, the eyes of the entire room seem to turn and look at them, all at once.

Just in time to hear Mitchell Queen, son of the congressman whose kidnapping has been getting wall-to-wall coverage on every news station in the country, propose to her.