What is Mine
~ Six ~

Jack could not believe his luck. He hadn't met a single car along the dark highway. And as horrible as it sounded, perhaps the fates were telling him that the action he had taken would be all right in the end.

After about twenty minutes of driving, he eased into the crowded parking lot of an expensive mall and cut the engine. After a quick glance down beside him, he climbed out of the car and walked quickly to the pay phone several yards away.

The doctor needn't have worried about blending into his surroundings. The mall, inside and out, was overrun with the teenage children of the area's wealthy citizens. No one even gave Jack a second look.

He quickly punched out the three digits that would summon emergency services to the accident scene he had just left. There was just enough light in the phone booth to illuminate the fingers of his right hand, which were sheathed in a rubber glove.

“Yes,” he said urgently, “there's been an accident…”

As he gave the operator the details, Jack was careful to maintain the false voice he had adopted for the call. His words ran over one another and he injected them with a southern accent so slight it might have been nonexistent.

“And your name, sir?”

Jack quietly ended the call after the operator's query. He discreetly wiped the phone receiver against his shirt and placed it back on the hook. Without looking to the right or left, Jack headed directly for his car and climbed in.

“I guess that's it, little fellow,” he murmured to the drowsing child. The tiny amount of sedative Jack had given the toddler had worked almost immediately.

The doctor rested a hand against the little boy's chest. “There's no going back from this.” The ramifications of what he had done were beginning to sink in.   "I couldn't even if I wanted to."

If not for Jack's belief as a surgeon that the man he'd pulled free would not make it, he might have been tempted to undo his deeds.

“I guess that means you're daddy's little boy now.”