In the Arms of a Stranger (Entangled Ignite), page 8
“Wait a minute,” Abby said. “You did this before. Why are you doing it again?”
“I told you. The man we’re looking for is dangerous,” Brooks replied. “We have to search for him everywhere.”
As she followed him out, Cole by her side, Steve drove up in his pickup, pulled close to the barn, and got out.
“Steve,” Brooks said, extending his hand.
“What’s going on?” Steve demanded, ignoring Brooks’s outstretched hand, but meeting his gaze. Steve had taken a real dislike to Brooks the year before, one he had no problem displaying.
“We’re looking for an ex-officer. He’s armed and dangerous,” Brooks said.
“Why would he come here?” Steve asked.
“He was Wade’s partner,” Brooks replied.
“I’ve told him Wade never brought anyone from work home,” Abby said to her brother.
“We know that,” Brooks said testily. “But this man is desperate. He’s been on the run for a long time.” A flash of irritation shot through his eyes as he stepped away to talk to the man who’d checked outside the barn.
“You okay, Abby?” Steve asked.
She nodded.
Brooks and two other men strode toward the workshop.
“You know what’s really going on?” her brother asked.
“All I know is what Brooks tells me.”
Steve turned toward the shop. “I wish we knew more about what Wade did, but he was always so close-lipped about work. He never said anything to me about a partner, and we were together a lot.”
And I was married to him.
“You have Cole’s things?” Steve continued.
She nodded. “Cole’s backpack is in the living room back at the house. But I think I should stick around here until Brooks and his men leave.”
Steve looked down at her. “I’ll wait, too. I don’t like the idea of some crazed agent running around anywhere near you.”
Crazed agent. Officer. Whatever. Was that what JP was?
Had Wade been crazed, too? Was that why he’d died?
She convinced Steve to go ahead and get Cole’s things. The last thing she needed was more people around with JP hiding in the corral.
With a million memories of Wade flitting through her mind, she waited with Cole in the barn, playing with Muffin and her kittens as the men searched. Hopefully she and her son both appeared unconcerned.
Finally, one of the men stuck his head in. “All clear,” he told her. “Sorry about this. We didn’t disturb anything.”
“I still don’t understand.” She climbed down from the hay bales. “Why do you think this man would come here? If they were partners, wouldn’t he know Wade’s dead?”
The question seemed to catch the man unprepared. “I, um—”
“I’m worried about your safety, Abby,” Brooks said, coming through the barn door. “I’m sorry to say there were some indications that Wade and his partner compromised national security.”
“Not Wade,” she said, and immediately remembered JP’s words. They think I…was a bit loose with some CIA secrets. And her reaction to them. Then that must be what Wade did…
“I’m sorry,” Brooks said when he reached her. “Evidence points in that direction.”
She straightened. “What evidence? And why are you telling me this now? Why didn’t you tell me last year?”
“We were still investigating then. Now we’re trying to capture a rogue officer. Are you sure you don’t remember anything Wade might have said about his work?”
“Wade would never do anything wrong.” She took a breath, more sure of how to speak to Brooks than she had been last year. “You should have told me last year you had this insane idea.”
“There was no need for you to know.”
“But now there is?”
“With JP Blackmon running loose, there is.”
Had Brooks meant to give her JP’s name? Or was it a slip of the tongue?
“What could this guy do?” she asked.
Brooks looked at her, his face drawn. “Anything,” he said. “He’s capable of anything.”
…
Steve came back from the house with Cole’s bag, ready for their trip, just as Brooks and his men finished their search. With nothing more than a nod toward her and Steve, Brooks gathered his men and left.
Frantic to get JP out of Petunia’s feed trough, Abby hoped she didn’t look as harassed as she felt.
As soon as Steve said they’d stop for burgers, Cole asked, “Unca Steve, can Stevie and me have ice cream for lunch?”
“Steve, that’s not—”
“Good Lord, Abby. I’m going to feed them right. Beth would have my hide if I didn’t.” Her brother mitigated his tone with a gentle smile as he mentioned his wife. “He’ll be fine.”
They turned at the sound of a vehicle approaching from the highway. It was Pete Avery in Sam O’Neil’s veterinary pickup.
Great, just great! The whole damn county was showing up, and JP was still stuck in the corral with a bloodthirsty bull. But she pasted on a smile she hoped looked sincere.
“Steve, Abby,” Pete Avery said, joining them. “I think I left my gloves out back earlier. I just stopped to get them since I was passing by.”
“I’ll help you look,” she said, hurrying ahead of him but trying to look as though she wasn’t in a panic. But she didn’t want Pete Avery anywhere near the corral. Thankfully, she found the gloves on a bale of hay inside the barn. After rushing back, she handed them to Pete, who was still talking to Steve.
“Thanks,” the young vet said.
“Mommy!” Cole called. He stood next to Pete, beside the veterinary trailer hitched to the back of the truck.
“Cole,” she said, reaching her hand out toward him. “Uncle Steve’s ready to go.”
“But Mommy,” Cole replied, shifting from one foot to the other.
“Do you need to potty, honey?”
Pete got into the truck, waved at them, and pulled away.
“No,” Cole said, looking back toward the pickup and trailer.
She squatted next to her son. “Cole, do you want to stay home?”
“No,” he said emphatically, shaking his head.
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“No,” Cole replied. “You’re going on a grown-up bacation.”
Guilt rushed through Abby. A grown-up vacation with friends intent on having her meet “a sexy guy to heat up your life,” they’d said. Her friend Rachel had even talked her into going back on her birth control pills when they’d first planned the trip a few months earlier. “Just to be really careful, buy condoms, too,” Rachel had said. Condoms! What was she thinking? One-nighters with strangers were so not Abby.
And now she was letting her baby go off all alone, without his mother there to—
No. He was going with her brother who knew him and would take good care of him.
Cole leaned toward her, as if to whisper something in her ear.
“Cole knows you don’t like to fish, Abby,” Steve said before she could ask what Cole meant to tell her. He bent and picked up his nephew. “We’re going to fish and hike, and you and Stevie can play. You’ll have fun.”
Cole smiled and held on tight as her brother swung him around. “I know, Unca Steve. I can’t wait!”
“Then let’s get you in your car seat.” He put Cole down.
Abby bent and gathered her son close in her arms. She didn’t want to let go. “You take care of Uncle Steve and Stevie. Remember to be polite to Uncle Steve’s friend.”
“’Kay,” Cole said, hugging her back. Then he wriggled out of her arms and climbed into his car seat.
She fastened him in and gave him one last kiss on his forehead.
“Mommy, is Mr. John still a secret?”
“Yes, baby. Please don’t tell anyone about him, okay?”
“’Kay. But—”
“Ready, buster?” her brother said, standing beside her.
At Cole’s nod, Steve closed the back door and turned to give her a hug.
“Call me,” she said, her words muffled by her brother’s shoulder.
“I will, I promise, but only if there’s a problem. You need this time for yourself.”
“Thanks, Steve. Love you.”
“Love you, too, sis.”
Then they were gone and she was alone.
And free to pursue her answers.
Answers she wouldn’t like. Not if what Brooks said was true. Not if JP Blackmon was “capable of anything.” What did anything mean? That he’d hurt her? Worse?
No way.
The gentleness he’d displayed with her and Cole told her that wasn’t possible. He’d helped her, not hurt her. But common sense also told her she couldn’t know for sure. It could just be an act. After all, Ted Bundy had charmed countless people until the day he was executed.
Stop it, she ordered herself as she strode through the barn, headed toward the corral. She was letting her imagination run amuck. But when she got to the corral, Petunia wasn’t munching straw in the middle of the corral. He had his head buried in the trough.
Oh, God.
Her pulse tripped into a fast staccato. Amazed she could make her mouth behave, she whistled loudly. The big animal looked up, and then came toward her. With a shaky voice, she spoke nonsense as she climbed up on the metal corral rails. The bull snorted as she held on, balancing herself near the top rails in order to see into the trough.
Her heart stalled.
JP wasn’t there.
Chapter 6
JP hid in the back of the vet truck and jumped out when it turned slowly onto a dirt road. He then hitched a ride into the tiny town closest to Abby’s where he bought an old pickup from a farmer. Three hours later, he drove into Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
Wade had always called the small Gulf Coast town “the Springs” in his lazy Texas drawl. JP had met him here once, a couple of years ago, when Wade had gone to visit an old Ranger friend who’d since died. JP also knew some of Wade’s aliases. With the help of the phone book, he found one of the aliases and the address of Wade’s house.
Fifteen minutes later, JP was idling outside the house. It was exactly the kind of place his partner had liked. Nondescript, with clear views of the surrounding area. Everything he’d always told JP he should find for himself.
JP sat in the truck, familiarizing himself with the terrain and location. The bayou flowed south, into the bay. He’d followed the road around it as he’d been looking for the house. It was surrounded by an ocean of grass with enough flow in places to allow a small boat to pass through. He figured the bottom was thick with mud, snakes, probably alligators. Basically, a three-sided moat.
Wade had chosen well.
The house itself was small—wood-framed, two-story, built on pilings. The first level provided a parking space, with storage or a laundry room in the middle. The second floor’s wrap-around veranda presented a three-sixty observation post. A couple of ferns hung in pots and a rope was wound around a beam. The usual things found at a coastal home. Nothing to draw attention to the fact that the owner wasn’t there.
It still struck JP as unbelievable.
Wade. Dead.
The man who’d befriended him, who’d taught him how to survive by insisting on three simple rules—and who’d saved his life at least twice.
Probably because JP’s father had died when he was ten, Wade had been one of the most powerful male influences in his life. They’d met at Fort Bragg, when JP was just short of making a decision on whether or not to reenlist. He loved what he did, but Wade, nearly seventeen years his senior, said he could do the same type of work outside the service and have more freedom to make his own spur of the moment decisions during an operation. Between Wade’s Ranger training and JP’s Delta experience, they had bonded instantly.
JP was now feeling even less certain that Wade would betray him and set him up. It made no sense. It never really had. Their assignment had been simple, nothing that unusual. JP was to take out a terrorist so that Wade could rescue a high-ranking Egyptian official from the bastard’s Jordanian hideout. But, as both he and Wade had agreed, it didn’t feel right from the moment they’d started the mission. When JP had positioned himself to take out the badass, Wade had gone behind the single story house they’d been watching, and that’s when things had gone to hell. The Egyptian official was dead, shot through a window by an unknown sniper who was either one lucky son of a bitch or an expert marksman, given the shot he’d taken. The terrorist had gotten away.
JP and Wade had split up right after contacting Brooks, who’d ordered them back home. Wade caught his flight back to DC, but JP had gotten stuck in traffic and, by the time he’d gotten to the airport, it was too late to catch his. He’d booked a later flight and left to get a decent lunch. On his way to a little restaurant he frequented, a lucky move had saved him from a high caliber bullet.
He’d immediately called Brooks, who told him, again, to come in. Again, someone took another shot at him. He’d tried to contact Wade, but knew it was fruitless. Wade was en route home. Unreachable.
So JP had run for cover. Wade had taught him how to do that. But it got harder and harder to stay alive as time passed, and when all his usual hiding places became kill zones, his suspicions grew. No one he knew could have taken that shot through the window except himself, or Wade. And no one else had known all his bolt holes except Wade. The evidence had been convincing.
Until now. Abby had planted a seed of doubt, and it had only grown bigger over the past two days.
But if Wade didn’t set him up, then who?
When they assisted in rescue ops, they normally accompanied a military unit, usually Delta. But they’d been told by the CIA Chief of Station at the Jordanian embassy that on this one they’d be working solo. JP and Wade had figured they were alone because of the need for high deniability—no way to tie the dead terrorist to the US government.
Brooks was the one who’d always given them their orders, the one who moved them around like so many chess pieces on an intricate board. JP and Wade had done as they were told, but always knew that what they did was a smaller piece of a much larger puzzle. They had a certain amount of freedom, license to do what was needed. And they had. Countless times. Times when they were alone, cold, wounded. When the only person they could trust was each other.
They didn’t even trust Brooks completely, using their training to maintain a distance between their work and their own lives. Wade’s Rule Number Three: Keep work away from home; keep it all separate, nothing at one place that could lead to the other. So no one in their personal lives would know what they really did.
Like Abby.
That’s what this house was to Wade—a hideaway. Something Brooks and even JP didn’t know about. Something beautiful Abby—Wade’s widow, he mentally corrected—didn’t know about. Wade had told her to tell JP “the Springs.” In order to get him to come here, to find his place. But had Wade expected him to show up before he ended up dead? Had Wade thought he could somehow save him?
Or was it all a trap, one Wade had intended to end by drawing JP in, then killing him…?
Only to be killed himself instead.
JP shook off the questions bombarding him and peered out at the house. It was empty, that much he could tell. Cared for, but empty.
It was too light out to go in now. He’d wait until dark, then check it out carefully for any traps before breaking in.
He drove away. And wondered what the hell he’d find when he returned.
…
“I can’t, Rachel,” Abby said into the phone as she sat on her living room couch an hour after JP had vanished. “I’m sorry. Something’s come up.” She paused, listening to her friend, trying to figure out what else to say. How to lie. God, she’d thought of Wade and JP as liars, and here she was, doing the same thing. To protect her friend’s feelings, but still. Did that make it any less wrong? “Cole has a cold. I thought I’d drive up there. Not to stay with them, but to be close by.”
She listened again as Rachel tried to convince her to join her and Angel, another college friend, as planned, for their mini vacation.
“We’ll help you find a man—”
“I know.” Abby laughed at the absurdity. She’d found a man, only not for the purposes Rachel intended. “I’m not ready, Rache.” That much was the truth. She felt her throat tighten. “Yet. I’ll get there, but not this weekend. You all have a good time. I would just be a spoilsport.”
Rachel must have heard the tears that went unshed, because a few minutes after telling her to join them if she changed her mind, she hung up.
Abby had packed her bag the day before, afraid she would wait so long she’d back out. She didn’t need half the stuff in there. Like a bathing suit and a fancy new dress. Things Rachel and Angel said she needed in order to meet a man and move on with her life. She hadn’t had a party dress in years. She and Wade had lived simply.
Well, she had. God only knew what Wade had done.
And that was the whole point—what she’d intended this break to be. A demarcation line between the past and the future. Leaving the past behind and forging ahead into a future without all the baggage she’d gathered over the past year.
But JP Blackmon’s appearance had changed that, had changed so much. Instead of wanting to forget the past, she now felt an even greater pull to understand more than just what had happened to Wade. So she’d know what to say to Cole when he asked, but also for her own peace of mind. It was all so much more complicated than she’d ever imagined, calling into question everything she’d always believed about Wade. And about herself.
She wanted to understand the enigma of her husband, and now, of JP and their relationship.
Nothing JP had said had helped with any of that, but she had picked up on a few things. No, she had not intended to go haring off to find answers. But answers were what she needed, and she was determined to get them. Both for herself and for her son.
The first step she would take began to take shape. JP had asked if Wade had an apartment in Washington. He must have had a reason for asking. So that’s where she’d start.
