In the Arms of a Stranger (Entangled Ignite) (16 page)

God, he wanted her
.

But good sense prevailed. If being reminded how different their lives were was what it took for her to quit looking at him as she had when he’d lost control earlier, so be it.

Because the next time she looked at him that way, he wasn’t stopping, no matter what she thought of him, no matter who she’d been married to.

“Why didn’t you know about Wade’s other name, this Asa Pickett?”

He was so caught up in her that the question came out of nowhere.

The reason could be totally innocent—after all, Wade hadn’t told him all his secrets. Or, there was the other possibility, the one he’d been convinced of just yesterday, the one that could destroy her if it were true. That Asa Pickett was the name Wade had used to funnel money for his eventual rejection of his oath to serve his country.

For the moment when he’d marked JP for assassination, and abandoned his family.

Chapter 11

JP wasn’t going to answer Abby’s question about Wade’s other alias. The straight line of his mouth said it all. He’d brought her here, let her tend to his wound, but he was holding back, and he’d continue to do so.

Why?

“If you knew about Luke Abbott, why didn’t you know about Asa Pickett?” she repeated.

He leaned onto the sink with both hands, looked down, then up at her reflection in the mirror, the muscles in his arms and chest taut. “We didn’t tell each other everything.”

“Did he know your aliases?” she asked.

“Some of them, just as I knew some of his.”

“Have you done whatever you do to check those other names of his, to see if he left you any sort of message?” She kept her gaze locked to his in the mirror.

“Abby, I honestly don’t know what happened to Wade. There’s nothing to go on.”

“He said you’d come. He believed you would.”

Those cool brown eyes bored into hers. “And I would have if I’d gotten the message in time. We may never know what happened.”

“We will if we find out about Asa Pickett.”

“What makes you so sure about that?”

“What Kyle told you Wade said. To forget keeping family and work apart.” She watched him for some sort of reaction, but he showed none. “It was basically a message telling you he’d left something for you to find. The papers in Buck’s stall, the link to this other alias in the boathouse—there’s a pattern. He left things in places that represented something he cared about. This name has to be what will lead us to something else that was important to him.”

“Why are you so damn convinced he left anything more?”

“Why else would he contact you? Leave you cryptic messages?”

After a long silence, he said, “There may be nothing to find.”

She’d come a long way, risked a lot for answers. She wasn’t about to give up now. “There has to be. The man in the boathouse asked me where ‘it’ was.”

“What?” Something flashed in his eyes. Anger? Disappointment? “You didn’t tell me he said anything,” he said, his expression grim. “Why not?”

“I forgot.” She truly had. Or had she subconsciously stopped herself from remembering so she wouldn’t tell him? She wanted him to tell her what he knew, and was one hundred percent sure he hadn’t. So, why should she?

“What else did he say?” he demanded.

“Nothing. He just kept asking where
it
was.”

“Abby,” he said, warning in his tone.

“There’s nothing else for me to tell,” she insisted, meeting his gaze. “But I bet you can’t say the same.”

“We’ve had this discussion. I can’t divulge—”

“National security secrets. I remember.” They were getting nowhere. “The ham should be warm by now. I’ll heat the rice and vegetables.” She backed out of the bathroom and closed the door with a firm
snick
.

She should have kept what that man said to herself. She had nothing else she could use for leverage. She instinctively knew JP meant to leave her behind.

But that wasn’t happening.

She was going with JP.

He’d just have to accept it.

…

So the lady had added up the pieces. Great.

JP wondered if Abby really had forgotten what the man in the boathouse said to her. She’d been terrified, so it was possible. Probable, even. Abby Price didn’t have a conniving bone in her body.

That was why he had to come up with a way to convince her to stay here, so she’d be safe. But
would
she be safe? And would she stay here once he left, even if she promised to do so? What if he couldn’t get back to her?

As he tried to think dispassionately about the situation, he realized something. He’d been so wrapped up in himself, in his reactions to her, that he hadn’t thought about the fact that next to him, no one knew Wade better than she did. That made her of interest to his pursuers. Brooks had been checking up on her, probably had her phones tapped. And now that she was with him, she was a target, too. He knew Wade as a soldier. She knew him as the man she loved. They simply knew different things about him. Both could be of value to the Agency and to Cal, whoever he was.

JP pulled the towel from around his hips and slung it over the shower curtain rod. Even if she would stay put, what if Brooks’s or Cal’s men found her? He was between a rock and a hard place. Few options and no one he could trust.

It suddenly struck him that this might have been exactly the way Wade felt. If he’d tried to contact JP and couldn’t because he was already on the run, what would Wade do? Abby was right. If he’d had time before he was killed, he’d leave something, some clue.

As JP dressed, he admitted that his sense of betrayal had been so strong, he hadn’t really considered the scenario that Wade might be as innocent as JP of whatever had happened—until he’d met Abby. Everything he’d heard from every contact he made pointed straight to Wade, and, by association, JP had been branded a traitor, too. If he was wrong, that meant…

Someone they knew, either together or individually, had enough information about them and their ops to do this.

Who? And why?

JP had come straight out of the Army to the Agency. Wade had trained him, had been his mentor, his only partner. But Wade had had several partners. One, Frank Boyle, had died during a mission. There had been at least two others, two men, but JP only knew one. Jonathan Ethridge.

He’d met Ethridge when JP and Wade were at Langley for a few months. The ex-paramilitary operations officer had moved from clandestine services to the analysis side. He and Wade had been close. Real close. As JP dressed, he tried to remember everything he knew about Ethridge, about a way to get in touch with him, to feel him out.

He had a friend, a fellow paramilitary officer from his hometown that he trusted completely, but the Agency knew about their friendship, so his friend was out. But maybe, just maybe, Ethridge could be trusted with Abby.

For the first time, he felt a trickle of hope.

…

Whatever Abby expected to happen next, nothing had prepared her for what did happen. She and JP simply sat down and ate the dinner she’d made. And talked. She found herself telling him about college, about coming home and meeting Wade when he spoke with her father about buying some of his land after her dad had closed his veterinary practice.

She didn’t elaborate on how he’d pursued her, on how charmed she’d been by the older man, by his easy manner, innate confidence, and his larger-than-life presence, a man so different from any she’d ever met.

Until JP
, a tiny voice added silently.

Her fiancé in college had wanted her to be the sort of wife he thought an up-and-coming attorney should have. She’d taken a teaching job close to him, but within a year, she’d realized she didn’t want to be told what to do or how to act, and had broken off the engagement. Home again, her mother developed cancer and died, leaving a huge void in her life. Then Wade was there, solid, mature, and he partially filled that gap.

Their relationship built gradually until, on one of his return trips, he’d asked her to marry him. They’d shared a love of simple things. He’d wanted stability, children. They’d been blessed with Cole. Wade hadn’t been there when their son was born, but by then, she was used to his absences. She’d loved Wade, but had recognized early on that their marriage wasn’t typical. His work made that impossible. But it hadn’t mattered to her.

Had their relationship been flawed? Now she wondered.

“What about you?” she asked, unwilling to let her thoughts dwell on her marriage, on second-guessing her decisions.

“What about me?”

“How did you meet Wade?”

He looked away, as if deciding how much to tell her, then back again. “I was in the Army—”

“Rangers?” she asked, sure he’d been way more than just regular Army.

He paused for only a second. “Delta.”

That surprised her. Not that he was, but that he’d told her.

“My tour was up. I had to decide what to do,” he continued. “Wade introduced himself, we talked, I decided.”

“Just like that? What about your family? Did you tell them what you were doing?”

“They know I do something involved with the government. They just don’t know exactly what it is.”

Just as she hadn’t known what Wade did.

“Why did you do it?”

“I was tired of the structure in the Army. I wanted some latitude. Wade indicated I’d have that.”

“Did you?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I did.”

Oh, there were untold stories behind that comment. She was on a roll and wanted to know more.

“How did you get the scars?”

He stared at her for a moment. “Wade didn’t tell you?”

“He only mentioned flying glass. What were you doing?”

He looked away, staring beyond her. “It was one of those situations where we’d done all we could.” He returned his gaze to her. “We’d accomplished one of our goals, and were leaving. We didn’t know there was another interested group. They’d planted a bomb. Big plate glass windows everywhere.” He turned back to her and she knew he would say no more.

But there was a whole lot more.

“What made you stay with a job that dangerous?” she asked, truly curious.

He smiled at that. “It’s a challenge.”

“The wild rush of it?”

“It’s not always wild rushes,” he said. “Sometimes it’s so dully boring I wondered why I’d decided to do it.”

“But you still stay.”

He shrugged. “It’s what I do best.”

And that said so much.

“What about your family? Do you see them?”

He took a sip from his glass of water. “I haven’t in a while, but I’ve always gone back to visit when I can.”

“Do they know about this place?”

He put his fork down. “No. I told you. No one does.”

She knew her next question would sound…insecure. But she needed to know. “Did he have another safe house?”

“I told you, we didn’t know everything about each other, we—”

She held up a hand and interrupted. “Look, I’ve had my shocks about Wade already. Nothing else will surprise me.”
At least she prayed nothing would
. “You knew some of his aliases. You said you used them to find the house in Ocean Springs.”

“He’s not likely to have had another place. It’s not cheap to do this, you know.”

No, it wasn’t. She thought about those canceled checks. They’d never had that kind of money. But then, she’d never known they had enough money for Wade to have a waterfront home in Ocean Springs. She hadn’t known about the woman in the pictures.
Mary. His wife
. Even if Mary wasn’t real, how had he managed two homes? They hadn’t lived extravagantly, just comfortably. Her schoolteacher’s salary had been neither a luxury nor a necessity, but rather just what they needed for their lifestyle.

What she’d thought was their lifestyle
.

Boy, was that pathetic. The little wife who didn’t have a clue what her husband was up to. Had he really been doing illegal things?

No
. He wouldn’t. If he had been, he wouldn’t have told her about JP. He wouldn’t have said anything at all, unless he really thought JP could help. But at that point, had he only been trying to save his own life?

No, not Wade. He couldn’t have. He was a good man, despite the lies.

“How will we find out where he used his Asa Pickett identity?”

“I’ll visit a public library somewhere, use their computers. I should be able to narrow down a location.”

I
, he’d said,
not we
.

“What about me?”

He hesitated.

“You’re going to leave me somewhere, aren’t you? You’re not going to let me come with you.” She knew it!

“It’s dangerous, Abby. People are shooting at me, and by association, at you. It was way too close last night. You have a son. I don’t want it on my conscience if something happens to you.”

“You don’t want—” She took a breath to calm herself before continuing, but he didn’t let her finish.

“One of Wade’s former partners could be safe, but I’m not sure. So for now, you go with me. I have no choice.”

Because he had no choice. Swell. That alleviated her worry, as well as fueled a touch of anger. “I’m not useless, you know,” she bit out. “So far, I’m the one who found the things Wade hid.” She stood, picked up her plate, and looked down at him. “Don’t treat me like a child.”

He stood, too, his gaze never leaving her. “You do what I say, when I say it. Exactly as I say.”

He wasn’t going to comment on her usefulness. Fine. “I agreed to that before.”

“Remember that, because things are going to get tough now. Really tough. I don’t know who Cal is or what his agenda is. I can’t make you any promises.” He stood and picked up his plate.

“I don’t expect promises.”

“I’ll try to keep you alive,” he said. “If that means turning you over to Brooks when he gets too close, I’ll tell him I kidnapped you.”

The plate she held shook in her hands, the fork clattered. “Are you crazy? That’ll only make it worse for you!”

“But you’ll be alive for Cole.” He turned and took his plate to the sink. “Take your shower, Abby. I’ll do the dishes.”

“You can’t just expect me to accept what you’re saying,” she said, coming to stand next to him. “I can make my own decisions.”

He shook his head. “Not in this, you can’t. This is what I do. This is what I know. You
will
live, Abby. Cole lost his father, but he won’t lose his mother. Not while I’m still breathing.”

She started to argue again, but she saw the look on his face. Implacability, yes, but there was something else. Regret?

“And Abby,” he said, his eyes shadowed in the cabin light, “I have never, ever, thought of you as a child.”

…

Abby took the bag with her things, went into the bathroom, and shut the door. JP could see she was angry. Confused. Because of him and what he’d said. But he couldn’t control his feelings for her, couldn’t explain or stop what he felt. Annoyed with himself for his total lack of willpower, he ran water in the sink.

She wouldn’t get hurt, damn it. He wouldn’t allow it.