My stomach lurched.Oh, my God.
He'd gotten caught.
Doing what, I didn't know. But it was beyond easy to guess where this was going.
I grabbed my computer and fired it up to the same Web browser I'd been using last night. On the screen was the last Web site I'd visited – the main news page of a Seattle TV station.
In front of me, I saw nothing new.
Was that good or bad?I looked to my sister.
"Hit refresh," she said.
I wasn't sure I wanted to. Stalling, I said, "But this is just a local site. I mean, it might not have anything."
"I don't care," she said. "It'll be there."
With my heart in my throat, I did what she asked. And then I stared as relief coursed through me. It wasn't the kind of news I'd been expecting.Thank God.
He wasn't in jail or dead or any of the other awful scenarios I might've expected.
He was something else entirely.
Or more accurately, he wassomeoneelse entirely.
Right there on the screen in front of me was Jack's picture along with his name, or rather the name I'd always known him by. But according to the latest news, thiswasn'this name at all.
With stunned disbelief, I read the headline out loud. "Jack Ward Revealed to be Only Son of Disgraced Senator Charles McBride."
Holy crap.
I knew who the senator was.Cripes, everyone knew.A few years earlier, he'd been busted in a huge corruption scheme involving a whole bunch of unsavory activities – bribery, extortion, prostitution, illegal gambling, and rumors of much worse.
He was still in prison.
As my heart raced, I skimmed the article in front of me. Jack'srealname was Christopher. I said it out loud, "Christopher McBride?"
I looked to my sister. "Did you know?"
"No," she said. "Did you?"
I shook my head. "I didn't know anything."
Even to my own ears, the statement sounded truly unbelievable.I loved him. And he loved me.Or at least that's what he'd claimed.
Now I didn't know what to think about anything.
Hungry for more details, I devoured news story after news story until I had a better idea of what was going on.
Apparently, Jack had run away from home while still a teenager – even as the senator had told his friends and associates that his son was simply away at boarding school.
After that, the senator had stopped mentioning his son at all.
But I didn't care about the senator.I cared about Jack.
According to the news, the rest of Jack's official bio was surprisingly accurate. He'd worked construction during the day and wrote his novels by night, until they'd taken off like rockets, shattering sales records worldwide.
As the day progressed, I read countless news items from every source I could find. None of the articles contained any quotes from Jack whatsoever. Instead, they all included the same sort of generic statement.Jack Ward was unavailable for comment.
