Shadow Pawn, page 13
He nodded. “Okay.”
The moment the bathroom door latched she was on her feet and at the window. He’d closed the curtains.
Leaning against the wall, she lifted the fabric with one finger and peered out, before glancing back at the clock.
Kim should arrive at any moment. But men took incredibly short showers. At least Adam did in her brief experience with him.
If Kim didn’t hurry…
She glanced outside again and saw a car pull up. Then Kim got out.
Pulse racing, Angela spared one final glance toward the bathroom before unlocking the door and swinging it open.
Slipping out, she eased the door shut as silently as possible and then ran for her friend’s car. Kim met her by the hood of the car and wrapped her in an embrace. It felt so good, so familiar, so safe, it was hard to disengage. But she had to.
“Get back in the car. We have to go.”
Kim’s eyes widened. “Why? What’s wrong? Who are we running from? I thought you said you got away. Is he in there? Your kidnapper?”
Angela ran around and yanked the handle of the passenger door. It was locked. Panic set in. She had to get Kim moving.
She didn’t know how to convey how desperate the situation was so she just said, “I’ll tell you everything on the drive. I promise. But we have to go right now.”
Kim paused barely a second before she fumbled with the keys in her hand. She clicked the locks open and then slid into the driver’s seat and slammed the door as Angela got in on the other side.
She started the engine and asked. “Where are we going?”
The word home echoed in her head. But what came out of her mouth was, “Anywhere away from here.”
Once they’d accomplished that, ditched Adam, she’d figure it out.
As Kim pulled the car out of the hotel lot and floored it to pull onto the highway, Angela twisted in her seat.
She looked back. That’s when she saw him. A shirtless, barefooted Adam standing in front of the open door of the hotel room. She didn’t miss his dark expression as he watched her speed away.
It was an image she wouldn’t soon forget.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The string of obscenities echoed off the walls of the hotel room as Adam shoved what few possessions he had unpacked back into his bag.
He couldn’t believe it.
She was gone.
Not kidnapped. Oh, no. It was pretty obvious she’d gone of her own free will. Somehow arranged a pick-up while he hadn’t been paying attention.
He’d realized she wasn’t in the room the moment he opened the bathroom door. He’d gotten outside just in time to see the tail end of the embrace between her and the woman who’d gotten into the driver’s seat and peeled out of the parking lot.
He thought she’d been acting strangely. He should have listened to his instincts.
Or maybe not.
His following his gut was what had lost him his career in the teams. And, for more evidence that he still couldn’t rely on his gut feelings, he’d actually begun to trust Angela.
Her sneaking away from him was cold hard proof that had been a mistake.
It was too far to rent a car and drive all the way back to his place to regroup if he was going to find her before the bad guys did.
He’d chosen an airport and a hotel a couple of hours from home on purpose to throw Charley off the scent. That decision was biting him in the butt now.
Charley wasn’t his concern at the moment. Protecting Angela was. He might not have a future with her, but he was going to guarantee that she at least had a future by keeping her safe and alive until he could figure out why she was a target and who the enemy was—all without any help from her.
He needed access to a computer. Not necessarily his computer. Just any one would do.
The cheap airport hotel he’d chosen had free coffee in the lobby. Did they have some semblance of a business center too? He needed to find out.
He’d just have to take a page from Angela’s book and use the phone to call.
Scowling at the memory of her driving away, he picked up the receiver of the hotel’s landline.
Her big secret work project was classified? Humph. He’d see about that.
He didn’t have much to go on. Just her name. And the fact she kept pushing him to fly to Baltimore. Those details would have to be enough.
In luck, he sat in front of the hotel’s computer in the small room that served as a business center and typed her name into the search bar.
The sheer amount of search results that filled the page had him cursing under his breath.
He’d been an idiot. He should have googled her the moment he had her name.
Instead, he hadn’t found out until now that Angela Lewis was a major missing person. She had been for a while. Since well before he’d gotten that first call from Charley.
And he’d had no clue.
What had happened to him? He never would have gone on an op with the team without knowing everything he could about the target.
He’d done his due diligence on everything else—Shanghai, Jeju Island, the base in Busan—and he’d searched for nothing on her.
In his defense, he didn’t have her name until way late in the game. It was almost as if Charley had kept Angela’s name from him on purpose until he was boarding the flight without the time or the means to do proper research. Which made him wonder why?
What was everyone hiding? What was Angela involved in?
She was supposed to be the innocent in all this. The victim. Taken by some evil person or organization.
Her sneaking away from the hotel, and away from him, made him doubt that the situation was as straight forward as he’d assumed. She wasn’t simply the innocent in all this.
He hadn’t done his homework on who and what she was before heading into that hotel to free her. But he sure as hell was going to do it now. Not just on her, but also on the big pharmaceutical company that she’d neglected to mention she was in charge of.
Determined that he was going to find out everything there was to know about her, Adam did a deep dive into the web.
What soon became clear was that whatever she was hiding was good and hidden. Not just from him, but from everyone else too.
He sat back in the chair and considered that.
The time on the computer screen told him over an hour had passed. Where was she now? Where would she go after running?
One word stuck out for him. She’d said it enough times, over and over.
Home.
He leaned forward again and set his fingers on the keyboard.
The one thing he didn’t have was her home address. It seemed as classified as her secret was.
He had her office address. He knew she’d wanted to fly into Baltimore, and had argued with him when he chose Dulles.
That counted as a clue as to where home was for her.
He even knew what gym she went to. That was thanks to the geotag on a post that his search had turned up by someone who had mentioned her by name on social media.
The gym was near the pharmaceutical company’s headquarters in Rockville, Maryland, which didn’t help tell him where her residence might be located.
He’d assume not too far. Although, her daily commute could extend quite a distance in every direction from the corporation’s headquarters.
He was at a dead end—then the amazing happened.
Angela’s smiling face appeared from a photo printed by some little local Rockville publication from earlier this year.
She was standing in front of a big, beautiful old house. So big and so old, the damn thing had a name and people had paid the price of admission just to tour her gardens for some fundraiser.
He punched in the name of the house and bingo, he had her address along with plenty of history about the building that he didn’t have the time or interest right now to read.
Rockville, Maryland was half an hour away. Tack on half an hour to get a rental car. He’d be there in an hour with any luck.
Then what?
He’d figure that out when he got there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Angela stood in the driveway outside the back door of her home between the garbage pails and the garden hose and nearly wept.
After all the times she’d doubted if she’d ever be here again, seeing it now made it seem like the most beautiful sight in the world.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Kim asked, reminding her she wasn’t alone.
She turned to her friend. No. Kim was more than that. She was her savior.
“Positive.” She nodded, her throat tight with emotion.
“I’m so sorry I have to leave. If I didn’t have this night class to teach—”
“No. Don’t be silly. You go. You’ve done more than I can ever thank you for.” She wrapped Kim in a hug.
“Pfft. After you told me what you’ve been through, I can honestly say giving you a ride is the very least I could do for you.”
“But it was exactly what I needed. You saved me.”
Kim’s lips twitched. “So maybe now that you owe me one, the next time I invite you to go out, you might actually come, yeah?”
Angela smiled. “Yeah.” She drew in a shaky breath. “Okay. You go before you’re late.”
“All right. I’m going. Love ya.”
“Love ya too.” Angela blew out a breath and turned toward the back entrance of the house.
Fern’s car was parked by the back door, just like it always was. The familiarity of that sight was a huge relief.
In fact, everything seemed so normal, it was surreal. Like she’d never been gone.
But she had been. For too long.
Time to get inside.
She punched in the code to the back door and the lock opened. She’d almost been afraid the code had been changed. But Fern hadn’t changed it. And that was because this house was safe. Just like she’d told Adam it would be, even though he didn’t believe her.
Shanghai was a completely different situation. The danger lived there, not here.
But she didn’t want to think about Shanghai. Or Jeju Island. Or anything else. She just wanted to absorb the joy of being home.
“Fern?” She walked through the house and called her housekeeper’s name. Although Fern was so much more than just a housekeeper. Especially now.
She’d just started up the stairs when Fern rushed to the top of the staircase.
“Oh my God. You’re home.” The petite dynamo of a sexagenarian rushed down the stairs.
She met Angela where she stood and wrapped her in a firm embrace before she pulled back and her pale blue eyes narrowed. “Where have you been?”
And there it was. That tone that always reminded Angela of her mother. “It’s a long story.”
Gray brows rose. “Luckily, I’ve got nowhere else to be, so you’ve got plenty of time to tell it to me. Don’t you?”
Angela’s lips twitched at the cocky attitude. “Yes, ma’am. But can I see Jayden first?”
Fern’s sternness fell away. “Of course. Come on upstairs. I was just putting her down.”
Angela’s heart clenched as she walked into the room. Tears pooled as she glanced around.
The fresh pink paint—the color she’d chosen on a swatch before she’d left but hadn’t been around to see implemented—was on the walls. The pink and white striped curtains she’d ordered but hadn’t seen delivered hung on the windows.
“You did a lot while I was gone.”
“You were gone a long time,” Fern commented with another good dose of attitude.
Angela turned to meet the older woman’s gaze. “We’ll talk. As soon as I give this baby girl a hug.”
She moved closer to the crib and smiled down at the squirming infant inside. The baby gurgled while kicking her feet.
“Do you think she remembers me?” Angela asked.
“Want me to lie?” Fern asked, shooting her a sideways glance.
Angela let out a teary laugh. “No. It’s okay. We’ll have plenty of time to get reacquainted. Won’t we?”
She leaned low and got a whiff of baby powder and formula as she spoke directly to the infant in the crib.
When Jayden smiled, Angela spun to Fern. “Did you see that? She smiled.”
“Probably gas.”
Angela frowned at Fern’s answer and chose to believe her own theory. Jayden was happy to see her.
“Come on. Don’t get her all wound up or she’ll never get to sleep tonight. Let’s go downstairs, I’ll fix you your favorite—a white wine spritzer—and you can tell me where you’ve been for a month.”
Angela drew in a breath. “All right.”
Wine would help, perhaps straight and without the spritz since retelling the story would bring it all back, just when she was hoping to forget. But she owed Fern at least an explanation.
The woman had stepped in and handled the house and the baby, and probably fielded countless interviews and calls with the authorities and the press too since her disappearance.
Fern headed down the stairs as Angela pulled the door of the nursery shut and turned to follow.
She hadn’t even made it to the top step when she heard Fern say, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Who the devil are you?”
Angela whipped her gaze up and found Adam standing at the bottom of the staircase.
“It’s okay, Fern. I know him.” What she hadn’t known was that he’d break into her home.
“Oh, do you now? Know him well enough to give him the code to the house?” Fern looked more interested in the possibility that Angela might be dating than concerned that a man had let himself into their home.
She hadn’t given him the code. Nor her address. But after the past few days, it didn’t surprise her that he hadn’t needed either to get to her. “Fern. This is Adam. He’s the man who, uh, helped me get home after I was detained in China.”
His brows shot high in reaction.
“Detained? Is that what we’re calling it?” He turned to Fern, his gaze hard. “Angela was kidnapped and held against her will in Shanghai. I got her out, but she refuses to let me keep her safe.”
The tough old lady barely flinched. Fern’s eyes widened slightly before she recovered and turned her stare from Adam to Angela. “Shanghaied in Shanghai, huh?”
Adam let out a snort at that. Of course Adam and Fern would get along fine. They both liked to tell her what to do.
Meanwhile, her traitorous body was tingling in all the wrong places at the sight of him.
He’d taken the time to shave off the scruff that had grown to cover his cheeks and chin while they’d been fleeing South Korea and making their way slowly back to the States.
He looked good. And that was the last thing she needed to be thinking.
She had to deal with him and his refusal to leave her alone, and was just deciding how best to do that, when Jayden began to wail up in her room.
But rather than the baby’s cries, it was Adam’s reaction to them that drew and held Angela’s complete attention.
He might be good at many things, but hiding his feelings at that very moment when he heard the sound of a three-month old baby, wasn’t one of them.
Adam glanced up the staircase. His expression of shock was soon replaced by confusion as he silently turned to her.
“So, that’s why I needed to get home,” she explained and waited.
He shook his head. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Long story.”
“That seems to be your answer for everything tonight.” Fern’s mouth twisted. “I’m going to take care of the baby.”
She stomped up the stairs, leaving Angela alone to deal with Adam and his questions.
“I’m sorry,” she began.
“Nothing to be sorry about. You’ve got a baby. You had to get home.” He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter.
“She’s not mine,” she rushed to add.
Why she felt the need for him to understand that, she didn’t know. Or maybe she did know and just didn’t like the reason.
She didn’t want Adam to think there was another man in her life. Which was ridiculous because it wasn’t like she wanted Adam in her life… Right?
His sandy brows crept up his forehead in reaction to her revelation. “Oh?”
She let out a short laugh. “I not kidding when I say it’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time,” he said, crossing his arms.
That seemed to be the answer of the night.
She sighed. She’d been in the same clothes for more days than she could count. She couldn’t even begin to calculate the number of miles she’d traveled during that time. And Adam wanted to play true confessions?
Maybe she could make the very long story short. Since it pained her just thinking about it, that would be best anyway.
“She’s my sister’s baby. My sister…died.”
She and her younger sister Bella were a decade apart in age, and complete opposites in every way.
Whereas Angela had left home for college, Bella had moved out a week before her own high school graduation ceremony to follow her musician boyfriend.
He and his moderately successful band toured across this country and then Europe, Bella with them. Angela would get postcards from various places. Once in a while a phone call.
They went on for a years like that. Then, just over a month ago, the police called.
“There was an accident,” she continued. “My number was saved as a contact in Bella’s cell phone under Big Sis so the police called me.”
Even more shocking than the news that Bella was killed was that there was a baby.
“Jayden survived the bus crash that killed both Bella and her boyfriend because she was buckled into a car seat,” she explained.
So, she’d taken Jayden. Of course, she had. Bella was her sister. Jayden was her niece. Blood. Family.
And their—her—parents were getting up there in years. They didn’t need to be raising a child in their late seventies.
