Two hours later, Sean knocked on Madison's hotel room. She opened the door.

Madison looked like a wreck. She threw her arms around Jesse and began to cry. "Oh my God, oh my God, Jesse, are you okay?" She held him at arm's length, brushed the hair away from his face, then hugged him again.

"I'm okay, Mom. Mom, I can't breathe."

"You can't breathe? Do you need a doctor?"

"You're squeezing me."

She let go. But she couldn't stop touching him. His face. His hair.

"You're okay." She took a deep breath. Then she turned to Sean and slapped him. "I told you not to go!"

Sean stared at her and controlled his anger. "Don't."

"I told you they were okay. You put my son's life in danger!"

Sean stepped into the hotel room. Kane was outside the door. He gave Sean a look of confidence before Sean closed the door.

"Jesse was in a house owned by a crime family."

"There's no proof of that. You're making it up to make me look bad."

"You? No. Carson? Yes. The FBI has plenty on him. He's not getting out of this."

"No. You did this, somehow. When I came to you, you found a way to discredit me..." As she spoke she realized how idiotic she sounded, so Sean didn't say a word.

"How could this have happened?" she said, wiping tears from her face.

"Carson wanted to give you everything you wanted," Jesse said.

Madison stared at her son as if he were a stranger. "What? You mean your father."

"He's not my father," Jesse said.

Madison turned to Sean. "You promised you wouldn't tell him!"

"No, I didn't."

"Carson raised you, Jesse. He loves you. He loves us. He wanted us."

"Mom, he's a criminal. He launders money for the drug cartels."

"You can't believe what Sean tells you. He'll say anything to hurt me. I'm sorry, Jesse, but Sean and I were very young when we met. He was wild, he'd been expelled from Stanford and was almost put in prison for computer hacking! I didn't want you around that. I wanted to protect you."

Sean wanted to hit her. How dare she bring that up-here, now. Like this.

"There are two sides to every story," Sean said, his voice low. He caught Madison's eye. She was in full panic. She was afraid of losing everything, of losing her son.

Jesse said, "Mom, stop. Sean didn't tell me anything I didn't already know."

Madison looked like she was going to faint. Or puke. Or both. Sean still had no sympathy for her.

"Honey, this is just mixed up in your head. I'm sure there's a logical explanation for everything, and when Carson gets here, he'll explain."

"They arrested him at the airport."

"What? No!" She grabbed her purse. "I have to go see him. Come on, Jesse."

"I don't want to go. I don't want to see him right now."

"I'll stay with him," Sean said. He didn't want to stay. He wanted to go home and see Lucy. But he could bring Jesse with him. "He can come home with me."

"No way. Absolutely not."

"Why not, Mom?"

"Because! He's not your father!"

Jesse looked from Sean to his mom. "But-what?"

"Madison!" Sean snapped. "Tell him the truth. Now, or dammit, I will get a paternity test and prove it."

"I mean to say, he's your biological father, but he didn't raise you."

"Because you didn't tell him about me. Right, Mom? You kept it a secret."

"I-" She was going to lie again, Sean could see it in her eyes. "We were young. He wasn't ready to be a father."

"That might have been the case then," Sean said, "but I'm not a teenager anymore. And you didn't give me a chance to prove myself to you, or to Jesse."

"We'll talk about this later. I need to see my husband."

Jesse sat down on the bed. "I'm not going."

Sean didn't want to see Jesse start taking this whole thing out on his mother-no matter how much she deserved it. He said to Madison, "It's been a long couple of days. And the FBI isn't going to let you see Carson, not yet. My advice? Find him a good lawyer."

"He already has one."

"Maybe find him a lawyer who doesn't also work for the drug cartels. They're known to eat their own when threatened."

She paled, and Sean felt guilty for being so blunt. But the truth was, Madison had to grow up and face the music. Her husband was a money launderer for some very nasty people. He was going to prison. There was no way around it.

"I'll find him a lawyer," she said.

Sean turned to Jesse. "I'll see you later."

Jesse ran over and hugged him. He whispered, "I was really scared the whole time."

Sean's heart tightened. "You know what?" he whispered back. "So was I."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.

It was Thursday afternoon before Sean made it home. He walked into his house and Lucy was there, in the living room, curled up on the couch. His heart quickened.

He was home. He was truly home.

She sat up when he closed the door. She looked so exhausted. For the first time, Sean didn't know anything about what had happened on a case of hers. He had known it was a bad one, and he knew now that they'd solved it and stopped a black-market baby ring, but it was clear from the way Lucy looked that she'd gone through hell and back.

And he hadn't been here.

He practically ran over to her, kissed her, hugged her. She felt so good, so right here in his arms.

"I missed you so much," he said. He buried his face in her hair. Her neck. He kissed her over and over.

She kissed him back lightly, then sat down again. He sat next to her, grabbing her hands. He never wanted to let her go.

"Our cases intersected," Lucy said.

"Yes. But Carson Spade is in custody and Jesse is back with his mother. And you found the missing sisters. It's over." He kissed her. "Can we talk about it tomorrow? I just want to think of nothing but us. You. Me. A hot shower." He kissed her again.

She wasn't kissing him back.

"Lucy, what's wrong?"

"I saw Jesse's photo."

He blinked.

She continued. "I wish you had told me, Sean."

"That Jesse is my son."

She nodded.

That was when Sean saw what was underneath Lucy's exhaustion. She was blank. Cool. She was assessing him. How he responded mattered.

"I didn't know about him."

"I know. Not until Madison told you."

"Right. And I couldn't just tell you over the phone. I wanted to, but I needed to be here with you. She never told me she was pregnant. She never told Jesse that I was his father. It was ... a shock. But that doesn't change anything, not for us. We'll work through it."

She extracted her hands from his and stood up.

"It's not Jesse. It's not that you have a son. You lied to me, Sean."

"What?"

"Just now. You lied to me. I wanted-needed-to hear you tell me why you didn't explain everything on Monday before you left. You knew Monday, when Madison came here and told you everything. And yet ... You didn't tell me. So I've been thinking and trying to figure out why you kept that from me, why you went to Mexico to rescue your son without even explaining to me the real reason you took the job. Nothing I thought of made sense. But I love you, and I knew you would have a good reason that I would understand.

"And then you lied to me."

"I didn't. That's not what I meant!"

"You did. Why didn't you tell me when you had the chance?"

He stared at her. This could not be happening. Lucy was emotionless. It was like she already had walked out on him. His chest tightened. "I-there wasn't a good time. You had a tough case, an abandoned infant, missing girls, and I didn't want you to worry about me. I had Kane-"

"Kane and everyone else knew. Everyone." Now there was a flash of anger. Anger was good, right? That meant she still loved him. That she cared. "Kane knew. Jack knew. JT Caruso knew. Rick Stockton knew. They knew because they needed to know, because they were all part of this extraction in one way or the other. But not me. I didn't need to know, did I?"

"Lucy-"

"I love you, Sean, and this has been the hardest three days of my life. Your attempt to once again protect me by keeping information from me hurts more than anything. It comes down to trust. I trust you explicitly. But you don't trust me."

"That's nonsense! Lucy-"

"Is it nonsense? Because if you trusted me-my emotions, my ability to compartmentalize, my sanity-then you would have told me the truth and we would have worked through it. But you kept it from me because somewhere deep inside you think that I'm fragile. That I need protecting from, what, life? That lying to me, keeping secrets from me, is your way of loving me. That's not love, Sean. It's pity."

"God no, Lucy, you're wrong." This was not happening. Lucy couldn't be thinking like this. Sean began to panic.

"I was once broken. I know what it's like to be in a million pieces. But I'm not broken anymore. I'm no longer fragile. You gave me hope. You gave me back the piece of me I was missing before I met you. You told me once that we were stronger together."

"We are."

"You don't believe it. Because you don't trust me to not break again under the weight of life. Life is cruel, Sean. It's dark. It's violent. Innocent people die and we can't save them all. You were my light, my hope, my sanctuary."

"I still am. Lucy, please don't-we need to talk, we need to sleep, we need-" He couldn't talk. The room was spinning. It was whirling away and Lucy was going with it.

"I need time, Sean. I have to think. I don't know who I am without you. I have to find out. One thing I know, I'm not the broken girl I once was. I'm not going to be lied to or treated with kid gloves. I'm tired of telling people that I'm fine, I'm okay, I'm not falling apart because life becomes messy or the case I'm working is brutal."

Sean couldn't stop the tears. He did not cry, he never cried, but the tears flowed. "Don't leave me."

He saw the tears in Lucy's eyes, and there was hope.

"Forgive me, Lucy. I love you so much."

"I love you, Sean." Her voice cracked. "I need time. I need-just-I'm going to pack a bag. I need to go away."

"No. No! You can't!" He grabbed her by the arms. "Don't walk out, we have to fix this!"

"It can't be fixed overnight." She pulled away from him and walked up the stairs.