Page 35 of Secret Baby Daddy

I have perfected the art of leaving a room before anyone can ask a question I am not prepared to answer.

Tonight, for the first time I can remember, I do not particularly want to leave.

9

PIPER

I have built an entire career on the principle that any crisis, given enough leverage and the right choice of words, can be talked down to a manageable size.

I am beginning to suspect the west wing’s thermal loop has never read a press release in its life.

“Explain it to me again,” I say, “slowly, the way you’d explain it to someone who did not spend four years getting an engineering degree.”

Hayes, Calder’s lead technical analyst, has deep patience for a man who has already explained this twice.

“The west wing runs on a separate thermal loop from the main house. The contractor flagged a fault three weeks ago, started the repair, then got pulled off-site before they finished closing the wall. Cold snap last night finished the job. No heat, no hot water, half the electrical panel in that wing tripped and will stay tripped until someone who isn’t currently a wanted felon comes out to fix it properly.”

“So we freeze.”

“So you can’t sleep in the west wing.”

Hayes glances at Calder, who hasn’t said anything yet, which is its own kind of statement.

“Security sweep only cleared one section of the property before the badge incident. The protective suite. Internal door, reinforced walls, independent heat and power. Built forty years ago for exactly this kind of situation.”

“How many rooms,” I ask, already knowing the answer will be worse than I want.

“One bedroom. Sitting room. One bathroom.”

Hayes has the decency to look apologetic.

“It was built to hold one principal and one handler comfortably. Not really designed for two people who…” He stops himself before he finishes that sentence.

“Who what, Hayes?”

“Who bicker,” Calder says smoothly. “Finish the sweep on the east wing. I want it cleared by tonight.”

Hayes leaves fast enough to qualify as fleeing.

For a moment the study is quiet enough that I can hear the old radiators ticking somewhere behind the walls.

I turn to Calder, who is studying the property schematic with the stillness he gets right before he tells me something I’m not going to like.

“There has to be another option. A hotel. A safe house twenty minutes from here that isn’t currently one boiler away from a health hazard.”

“Every hour Sloane spends outside a cleared perimeter is an hour of exposure I can’t account for. If we move her again, we risk the exact detection we spent all of yesterday avoiding.”

He doesn’t look up.

“The suite has a locking door on the inside. Nobody gets to her without going through us first.”

“Us,” I repeat. “As in, the two of us. In one suite. With one bathroom.”

“I’m aware of the math, Piper.”

“Are you? Because you’re saying it like it’s a logistics problem instead of the setup to a disaster.”

He finally looks at me, and there’s something almost like amusement at the corner of his mouth, gone as quickly as it arrived.