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I automatically went for my weapon when I saw the unassuming man watching us from the next landing down. His eyes shifted from Jude to me and in the blink of an eye he had a gun drawn.
“Don’t!” he shouted at me. His gun was aimed at Jude. As soon as Jude saw the weapon, he began to pull away from me and tried to move in front of Natalia. I shifted my own body enough to keep Jude from moving and then pulled Nattie slowly to my right so she wouldn’t be in the direct line of fire.
“Okay,” I said as I held my palm out. Natalia buried her face against my side. Since the guy didn’t seem too concerned with her movement, I used my hand to urge her behind me as much as I could. The man began moving slowly up the stairs, but his eyes never wavered from us, so I didn’t have the chance to go for my gun.
“Give your gun to Jude,” the man said. “Slowly.”
“You got it,” I said calmly. “You’re in charge,” I added as I painstakingly moved my hand to my back and removed my gun from its holster.
“Empty it first. Clip and chamber,” the man said.
The fact that the man knew about semi-automatic handguns was a bad sign. He was clearly the man gunning for Jude, but he wasn’t making stupid mistakes in his rush to get to his quarry. And knowing weapons meant he’d planned for this moment for a long time.
I released the clip and emptied the bullet from the chamber before handing the gun to Jude.
“Put it on the floor and kick it away,” the guy said. He had enough sense to keep his eyes on me rather than move them to Jude.
Jude did as he was told.
“Do you know who I am?” the man asked Jude once the gun was out of reach.
To my surprise, Jude nodded. “You’re Kevin Cramer. You work in IT at TDS. You’ve fixed my computer before.”
I didn’t have a chance to dwell much on the information because the man suddenly became red-faced and took several of the steps in a rush to get closer to us. “Do you know who I am?” he screamed at the top of his lungs.
Jude jumped next to me and Natalia began softly sobbing.
“Hey, Kevin,” I said, trying desperately to get the man’s attention back on me. If he was enraged, he’d do something stupid like pull the trigger. When he jerked his eyes in my direction I said, “Tell me who you are.”
Kevin seemed confused at first. The guy couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. “I’m him!” he said as he jerked the gun toward Jude. “I’m you!” he repeated. “You took him from me! From us!”
Jude shook his head in confusion. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“He’s my father!” Kevin yelled. “Mine, not yours!”
“Who, Kevin? Clifton Hayes?” I asked, desperate to get his anger back on me instead of Jude. My thoughts were racing as I considered what I knew so far. If Kevin worked in the IT department for TDS, he easily could have hacked Jude’s computer and found the confidential information relating to Jude’s property deal… the one he’d almost lost to a fake counterbid. Hell, he would have had all kinds of access to Jude’s information. And if he was smart enough to get into Jude’s computer and sabotage his deal, he would have been able to find a way to get into Jude’s apartment.
“He left us with nothing!” Kevin shouted. “Do you know the things my mother had to do to put food on the table while he sat in that big fucking house of his? Everybody said it was because he only loved money but that’s not true, is it?” he snapped as he looked at Jude. “My mother died in a cheap motel with a needle in her arm! He did that to her!”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“What?” Kevin asked in confusion, his eyes jumping back to me.
“How do you know Clifton Hayes is your father?”
“Because she told me so,” Kevin responded as if I were the dumbest person on the planet.
“But surely you have proof,” I suggested. “I mean, a guy like Clifton Hayes is going to want some proof before he ponies up any of that money he loves so much.”
“What?” Kevin asked, clearly confused. I used it to my advantage and slowly moved forward enough to make space behind me for Nattie.
“Yeah, DNA or something. Hayes probably has a whole team of lawyers on retainer to deal with all the paternity claims he gets slapped with.”
“My mom told me the truth! She wouldn’t lie to me.” I heard his voice crack with uncertainty. “She wouldn’t!” he declared angrily.
The mere fact that he was more focused on his mother’s character than Cliff’s was proof that his issue wasn’t with his supposed father or even Jude for that matter.
