In the Arms of a Stranger (Entangled Ignite), page 4
“Tell me what happened to Wade,” he said.
“They killed him,” she replied. “A little over a year ago.”
It fit. That was when the last op went to hell, when JP’s life had disintegrated. “Who killed him?”
“I don’t know.” She paused. “Brooks won’t tell me.”
That fit, too. Good old Brooks. Tight-lipped son of a bitch.
“He was just here, you know,” she said, her gaze intent on him.
“Brooks?” JP couldn’t stop himself from looking out the living room window. “He was the one who came to the house earlier?”
“Yes.”
“What did he want?”
“You. Though he didn’t say so.”
He eyed her skeptically. “And you didn’t tell him I’m here?”
She shrugged. “He didn’t ask.”
But JP knew that wasn’t why she hadn’t told Brooks. There was only one possible reason. She wanted something from him. “What did he say?”
She regarded him in the dim light. “He wanted to know if I’ve remembered anything else. About Wade. And he wants me to call him if any of Wade’s ‘Army buddies’ show up.”
He’d expected this, of course. Brooks and the Agency knew he’d head straight for Wade. Hell, Brooks had probably ordered everyone at CIA, field op or not, to make it a priority to find him.
“Don’t worry. I told him what I’ve told him every time he’s asked. What Wade told me to say,” she said.
“Which is?”
“Nothing. I tell him nothing. Ever.”
Interesting. He hiked a brow, curious. “Why not?”
She took a moment to reply. “Wade told me to trust only you.”
The irony of her words hit him hard. He wouldn’t trust Wade farther than he could spit, yet Wade had told her to trust only him. Unless this was another lie Wade had coached her on.
“So you waited for me all this time?” And didn’t say a word to Brooks…
She nodded almost imperceptibly, and then fell silent. He felt an overwhelming urge to explain himself, but he had nothing to explain. None of this was his fault. He was the victim here.
Wade had not contacted him. In fact, he’d laid a trail of clues implicating JP in treason and marking him for assassination. And now the bastard was dead.
Killed, apparently.
By whom? Why? Had his plans backfired on him?
Wade had been a soldier, just like him. He’d never had a political agenda, no agenda whatsoever that JP was aware of. Hell, Wade had been a singularly uncomplicated man. Things were either black or white. To Wade, black was money, white was duty.
But before he died, his best friend had, for some inexplicable reason, traded his white hat for black.
“What took you so long to get here?” Abby asked.
He considered a number of lies, possible scenarios that would soothe her enough to make her cooperate, but he found himself telling her the truth. Part of it anyway. “I never heard from him. I would have come immediately if I had.” It was true. A year ago, he would have done anything, risked anything, for Wade Price.
But now, after running from the Agency and unknown shooters, traveling from Jordan to Lebanon to North Africa and finally back to the States with false documents, he wondered if he should have stayed away. That, of course, would never clear his name and he’d be on the run forever.
He wished he could see her better in the dark, see her reaction, but she’d turned and the candlelight only illuminated the fine outer angle of her face.
Finally, she nodded. “Okay. You’re here now. I want to know everything. Brooks won’t tell me. You’re my last hope of learning what really happened to my husband.”
She wanted the same thing he did.
But if he told her what he did know, it would destroy her.
He shouldn’t care.
But inexplicably, he did.
Hell.
JP had always considered himself a pragmatist. For the first time in a long time, he was about to act on emotion, not logic. But he wouldn’t lie. Not to her. And that surprised him even more.
“I’ve been out of the country. I honestly don’t know what happened to Wade. That’s what I’m here to find out.”
…
For a week after Wade’s phone call, Abby had pictured this moment. JP Blackmon would ride in on his white charger and save the day. Well, it had taken over a year and there was no white charger, only a stranger driving an old car now stuck in the creek bed. And it wasn’t even white.
“Don’t you know what he was doing?” she asked, gritting her teeth against the frustration. “Don’t you get reports or something?”
“No, we don’t,” he answered, his face unreadable. He must have seen that she didn’t believe him and added, “We’re—sort of out of touch.”
Considering they were talking about the CIA, what he said sounded reasonable. So why didn’t she believe him?
Then again, why would he lie to her? Had he actually heard from Wade but ignored him? Deliberately left him to die? But would this man, who’d so readily helped her, abandon a friend when he needed him most?
Suddenly, she wondered… Out on the road, had he known all along who she was? Had he helped her specifically in order to—
To what?
She could think of no reason but the obvious. No reason for him to be here—unless he really had thought Wade was alive.
“Maybe,” he said, interrupting her spiraling thoughts, “if you tell me what you know, I can figure out what happened.”
Was he serious?
She couldn’t decide what to do. Would he be able to help her if she told him? Would a man like him—a man with secrets like Wade’s—bother to answer her questions? But if JP couldn’t help her, no one could. Leap of faith or last resort, she didn’t know which.
So she’d tell him. Not all of it, no. She’d decide along the way how much she’d divulge.
“Wade had been gone for a couple of months, nothing unusual. We planned to take Cole to the beach for a few days when he got back. He called, just saying he had to meet someone and would be home in a few hours.” She tried to assess JP’s reaction. There was none. “He told me to be ready to leave when I finished at work. I’m an elementary school teacher. It was my last day before summer break.”
“He didn’t say who he had to talk to?”
“No, but he would never do that. Tell me who, I mean.”
“Then what happened?”
“An hour or two later, he called me at the school. He wanted Cole and me to go to my brother’s until I heard from him.” She hated that her voice wobbled. “He sounded…worried.” Scared. Wade was never scared. “I asked him”—begged him—“to tell me what was going on, what I could do, how I could help.”
JP nodded, encouraging her. “And?”
She’d replayed the events in her head so often that it seemed like the retelling of an overly dramatic movie. “He said to remember that he’d never told me anything about his work. He said that was what I could do to help. Remain ignorant of his work.”
“And he said that he asked me for help?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding.
“He said my name?”
“Oh, yes. JP Blackmon, he said. JP would come. That if something happened to him—” She had to stop, regroup. She didn’t want this man to see her cry. Not again. She didn’t want to be the weeping widow, falling apart in front of a stranger. “He said I could trust you. No one else. You would know what to do.”
JP’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “How were you supposed to know it was me?”
“He gave me a description. And he told me about your scars.”
JP stiffened in surprise. “He told you about the scars?”
“Like his, on your head and neck,” she said.
His shoulders notched down. “Yeah.”
So he had more scars on his body. Just as Wade did.
“That’s all he said?”
“Pretty much.” She thought for a moment, still deciding exactly how much to say. If she could trust him. God, if she could just trust someone. She took a breath that eased a bit of the pain in her shoulder, and decided. “He told me to tell you ‘the springs.’ He wouldn’t explain what that meant.”
No reaction again. No questions. She’d hoped for something, anything, that would give her an idea of what Wade had meant. She’d expected too much.
“Then what happened?” JP prompted.
“I never heard from him again.”
He kept his gaze on her, silently urging her to continue.
She’d said this much, there was no point in stopping now. “Brooks came to my brother’s.”
“That same day?”
“No, two days later.”
“What did he say?”
“That Wade was missing. He wanted to know when I’d last spoken with him.” She remembered the desperation of not knowing what to do. Wade had said to trust only JP, but Brooks had been so insistent. “I didn’t tell him about Wade’s call, or about you. He wanted to know where Wade kept his work things—papers, computer, stuff like that. I told him there was nothing from work. He just used my father’s old veterinary office next to the barn as a workshop for his fishing items. He tied flies there, and did some woodworking. Brooks and another man came to the house and searched. They turned the place upside down but didn’t find anything, so they drove out and searched the workshop. They even searched the barn.”
And they’d done more, but she wouldn’t reveal that. Wouldn’t tell this man that Brooks and the Agency had investigated her brother, their friends, their finances. Everything. And had asked just enough questions to tell Abby they suspected Wade of something. Something bad.
“And then?” JP asked.
“Two weeks later, Brooks came back and told me they’d found Wade. He was dead.” No, that wasn’t exactly right. “Killed. Brooks said killed.”
“He didn’t say where they found him?”
“No. He brought someone with him, who made sure”—her voice trembled, but a quick breath banished that horrible day, at least for now—“I got the benefits Cole and I were entitled to because of Wade’s job. That man offered to arrange the funeral, since it would be a military one.”
“Do you remember that person’s name?”
“Bill Smith. I remember thinking it should have been John Doe.”
JP regarded her. “You didn’t think that was his real name?”
“I don’t know. It just seemed odd.” She shrugged, suddenly exhausted, hating that she sounded so uninformed, so out of the loop. She’d spent weeks questioning everything about that time, and the whole past year questioning her marriage.
“Did you get Wade’s personal effects?”
“I got his wristwatch and his wallet.”
JP pursed his lips. “What about clothes? His car?”
She shook her head. “Brooks said all of that was part of the investigation.”
“Did he offer any explanation at all of Wade’s death?”
“No.” She would not tell this stranger what Brooks had hinted at. Wade was honorable. She would prove it, given help and information.
“Did you ask how he died?”
“Of course I asked!” She hadn’t meant to sound so vehement. “I even asked to see his body.” She drew another steadying breath. “Brooks said it would be best that I didn’t.”
JP frowned. “Did he explain why?”
“I figured it was because they’d…done things to him.” She’d hoped Brooks would deny it, tell her that nothing like that had happened, but he didn’t. She’d been a coward until the last moment. At the funeral home, without Brooks’s knowledge, she’d asked to see Wade. He hadn’t looked right. He’d looked—repaired. Made-up. She remembered the funeral director’s words—we did the best we could, but… “I think they did do things to him,” she whispered finally. She tried to tell JP what she’d seen, but the words stuck in her throat.
“Where’s he buried, Abby?” JP asked in a low voice, taking her thoughts away from the edges of horror.
“Pensacola, at the national cemetery there,” she said, looking down briefly before adding, “Did you know he was in the Army?”
He hesitated, but finally answered, “Yes.”
His honesty hurt. “I didn’t.”
“Abby, it’s covert operations—”
“I know exactly what it is. Was.” She took a breath, wondering if she could say it. “Now.”
There, she’d admitted her total ignorance. “I never asked about his work. He said he traveled because he was a government contractor. But he could have told me, he could have trusted me with something as simple as the fact that he had been a Ranger before.” God, how she hated the quaver in her voice. “He could have told me about himself, so I could help if…if something happened to him.”
“He wanted to protect you. To keep you away from danger.”
She was sure JP wanted to make her feel better, also sure he was right. Wade had wanted to protect her. That was the type of man he was. But the truth about himself would have protected her and Cole much more than this helpless ignorance.
“Do you still have Buck?”
“You know about Buck?” Wade’s buckskin quarter horse, the reason she’d met him. She shouldn’t have been surprised JP knew about Buck, but she was. She was also disappointed—make that hurt—that this man knew so much about Wade while he’d confided so little in her.
“Wade was a cowboy at heart,” JP said. “He loved that horse.” The explanation smacked of pity to Abby. She hated being pitied.
“Wade bought my dad’s place so Buck would have the run of the pastures over by the barn. That’s why I was on that road tonight. I’d gone to put him and another animal in the barn because of the storms. A downed limb blocked me from the highway, so I had to come home the back way.”
He glanced around, as though looking for the barn.
“It’s about a half mile away, through the woods,” she explained. “Not terribly convenient, but it worked well for us.”
“Ah. Well, I’m glad you held on to the horse. Wade would’ve wanted…” He trailed off, dragging a hand over his face. “Anyway.”
They fell into an awkward silence. She didn’t want to talk about anything else that would point out just how little she’d known her husband. What else did JP know about him that she didn’t?
“Is Mommy’s toe okay now?” Cole asked from the hallway.
Abby jumped. JP looked over at her son, then down at her foot.
“I’ll make sure,” he said, without even a glance at her.
She didn’t know what to think when he knelt before her, cupped the back of her calf, and lifted her leg to examine her foot. Didn’t know what to think when she had to steady herself by grasping his shoulder. Definitely didn’t want to think about the warmth that crept into her hand, up her arm, from the contact. She released him quickly. Their gazes collided in the flickering candlelight, his eyes intense with something she couldn’t quite decipher.
“I’m fine,” she said, acutely aware of JP, of his masculinity, of her desperation to move away from him. “It’s nothing.”
He put her leg down and rose. She noticed a wobble in his movements. He winced as he stood, his eyes becoming a little unfocused. Even in the dim light, he looked too pale.
“Will John eat with us?”
“Mr. John,” Abby corrected. Calling him Mr. Blackmon was out of the question.
She wondered what sort of names Wade had used besides his own—if his name had really been Wade Price. If he’d trusted her enough to reveal his true identity. Maybe his last name had been Humperdink. Maybe hers was now. The dark humor did nothing for her.
“Will Mr. John eat with us?” Cole persisted.
“No,” she said quickly.
Cole scrunched up his mouth, then began, “But—”
She held up a hand. “You’re right, honey. I should have asked him.” She’d been much too quick to dismiss feeding JP. He probably hadn’t eaten, which might be why he looked so bad. “Dinner’s still warm in the oven—”
“Thanks, but no.” He turned, his body tense, and she heard a car. Headlights flashed across the living room.
“That’s not Brooks,” she said. “He drives an SUV. Whatever it is, it’s smaller. Probably one of the sheriff’s deputies. They’re checking on those of us who live way out, because of the storm.”
JP didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He was hiding, and not just from Brooks. And the reason for that had something to do with Wade. He’d come here expecting to find her husband alive. What did he want?
“Whoever it is, I’ll make sure they leave. Why don’t you go to the back and clean up for dinner?” She was so close to knowing that no matter who was out there, she wasn’t going to let JP go without finally learning the truth.
She pulled the coffee table back to its original position and called Cole. Squatting so he could see her clearly, she asked, “Remember our make-believe game?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, turning to JP. “He’s a secret.”
“That’s right,” she said. “He’s just our secret. Yours and mine.”
“’Kay.”
She nodded at JP, who picked up his boots and vanished into the darkened recesses of the hall. She turned to answer the knock on her door.
Ron Hodges, who volunteered with Search and Rescue, stood on her front porch. She couldn’t help the quick glance she threw toward the hallway.
“Evening, Abby,” Ron said, smiling, as he removed his baseball cap. Ron had fished with Wade and sometimes stopped by to see if she needed any help. But if it weren’t for the storm, she’d suspect he was here looking for JP, too.
“Evening, Ron,” Abby replied.
“Talked to Sam. He said your power’s out, so I thought I’d better check on you.”
“I’m fine,” she said with a forced smile.
“When did your lights go out?”
She leaned against the doorjamb. “Half hour ago, maybe.”
“Called the power company?”
She shook her head. “My phone’s out, too.”
Ron looked around her, into the house. “Why don’t I check the phone for you?”
