In the Arms of a Stranger (Entangled Ignite) (23 page)

She followed his orders. He was, after all, the expert. That didn’t mean her heart wasn’t pounding like a drum by the time she fumbled with the keys and let them into her kitchen. She gulped down air after the sprint to the house and her breathing steadied. Beside her, JP made no sound, as if the run had not fazed him. It probably hadn’t. It was probably nothing compared to what he usually did. She reached for the light switch.

“No!” he whispered.

She jumped, feeling like an idiot. Of course. No lights. If Brooks or Ron were watching, they’d be seen.

“It’s bright enough without lights. Make sure the curtains and blinds are closed if you use a flashlight.” He cast a quick look around the kitchen.

The refrigerator hummed. Everything looked as it should. The kitchen clock ticked loudly. Three-thirty. They had until seven. Unless this was all a ruse, a trap to capture JP.

Oh, God
.

“I’m going to check out the rest of the house,” JP said. “Stay here.”

By the time he came back, she wanted to scream her impatience.

“Here,” he said, holding something out to her.

A penlight. She wondered how he knew where she kept it, but didn’t ask. It would be a pointless question.

“Be careful not to aim at the windows.”

This was it, she realized. Do or die. Literally. She had found Wade’s hiding place before, but this time it really mattered. This time she couldn’t afford to fail.

“Don’t worry,” JP murmured. “We’ll find it.”

“It would be a report, right? On Boyle’s illegal activities. That means—”

“Don’t think in terms of a report. Keep your mind open. Whatever it is, it could be thick or thin, small or large. Hidden or in plain sight. Paper or even digital.”

Defeat crept into her thinking. “How can we possibly find it if we don’t know what we’re looking for?”

“Think as Wade would have thought, the same way as when he hid the papers in Buck’s stall, and the things he left in the boat. Something, somewhere, that’s important to him.”

“He loved Cole,” she said, hoping she was right about even that much. “I’ll start in Cole’s bedroom. That would make sense.”

He nodded. “I’ll start in your room.”

She started to protest, to tell him he couldn’t go in her room. It was too personal. But they’d shared something much more intimate than just a bedroom. She simply turned away.

She hadn’t made Cole’s bed. She’d been so rushed, so tired, the morning he’d left. She’d been awake most of the night, thinking about JP and her missed opportunity.

Now she was back, and the lives of her son and brother would end if she couldn’t figure out what the stranger who had been her husband had done with something a killer desperately wanted.

She began by examining the walls, checking behind the colorful posters she’d had framed. Methodically, she continued toward Cole’s dresser. She checked the drawers, then pulled the dresser away from the wall and checked the back, underneath.

An eternity later, after squeezing every one of Cole’s stuffed animals, running clammy fingers over every car, truck, and game he owned, she sat on the floor and bowed her head. A bubble of hysteria surged up her chest.

“Abby?” JP said from the doorway.

She couldn’t afford the luxury of rest. Or panic. She had to move. She had to think.

“Any luck?”

“Nothing,” she said, standing, her throat closing around the word.

“I’ve checked everything in your room. Anything you can think of that would be unusual in there? Any place he might have used?”

“Did you check the walls and baseboards?” she asked, more in control.

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t know of anything else.”

“Which do you think is more likely, the living room, the dining room, or the kitchen?”

She didn’t know. God help her, she had no idea. But she had to. Had to find this or—

No
. She wouldn’t think that.

“You take the dining room. I’ll take the living room. Wade hated to cook.”

She followed JP down the hall, her penlight pointed at the dark floor. She remembered the drop of blood she’d found that first night. Ron had been here, too. Checking the phone in her room. Had he searched it then? While she’d been in the bathroom with Cole, had he been searching through her things? If they found nothing in the living room and dining room, she’d go back to the bedroom and check, even though JP had already searched it.

In the living room, she checked the baseboards for any sign of disturbance, the lamps, behind the photos on the wall. Then moved to the furniture. She tried to picture Wade, tried to remember his movements, the things he’d habitually handled. Tried to picture him sitting in this room with her. But so much of him had faded from her memory. She’d forgotten so much, hadn’t known so much more.

When she saw her tears hitting the hardwood floor in the oppressive silence of her house, she realized she was crying.

For all she’d lost. For Wade’s life, for the way he’d died. For everything he’d felt he had to hide from her.

For the fear of losing her son.

…

Abby was crying silently. Sitting on the couch, holding a cushion, crying.

JP wanted to reach out to her, hold her, tell her everything would turn out fine. But everything might not turn out fine. Guilt swept over him. If he hadn’t come here hunting Wade, Cole and Steve wouldn’t be in danger. Abby wouldn’t have gotten involved. None of this would ever have happened.

He wouldn’t have fallen in love with her
.

Emotion.
Emotions get you killed
.

Wade Price had taught him that. And now he stood in Wade’s house with his widow, determined to save his youngest son, no matter the cost to himself.

She must have heard him move, because she looked up. Her eyes were hollow reflections of fear and despair in the golden glow of the afternoon light filtering through the curtains.

It was a little after six-thirty. They had less than a half hour to call Boyle.

JP walked into the living room and sat down beside her. “We’re going to find it,” he said, hoping his voice held more conviction than he felt. “Whatever it is. We’ll get your family back.”

“I don’t know where else to look.” She swiped at her tears with shaky fingers. “There’s no time left. And there’s no place else to search.”

“Let’s talk about it. Let’s think,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing and confident tone. “Was there something he did when he was in here? A habit he might have had?”

She stared at him, her eyes swimming with unshed tears. “You don’t understand,” she said, anguish in her voice. “I don’t remember!” A trickle of tears flowed down her cheeks. “I can’t remember the details of Wade. The things he did or said. Not anymore.”

Was that good or bad? Good, but he couldn’t help but think selfishly.
Not now
. He pushed everything from his mind except the need to find Wade’s secret hiding place.

Focus, get the job done, and survive
.

Another of Wade’s rules.

“He knew he’d been set up,” JP began. “When he was worried, or when he did talk about work, what did he say?”

“Nothing. I never knew what he did exactly,” she replied. She’d controlled her tears. “I still don’t know. He was so contained. He had nothing here from his life before. Buck. Buck was what he cared about, what he brought with him.”

“What about you and Cole? Anything of yours that was important to him?”

She stared at him for a moment, then bowed her head. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

This wasn’t helping. But he didn’t know what else to do.

Damn it!
There had to be something!

“Framed,” she said, her head still bowed.

“What?”

“He was set up.” She looked up and met his gaze. “Framed. That’s what it said on that receipt. But he knew you’d know that. Right?”

He nodded, even though he hadn’t.

“So why write that one word? Not an explanation?”

JP’s mind raced.
Framed
. So, what else could it—Jesus. How had he not thought about the other meaning? As in…a
frame
? He regarded her, hope blossoming. “There was another word on the paper. ‘
Back.’”

“My God!” She jumped up and looked at the wall. A watercolor of a southern plantation and several other paintings hung on one wall. On the one opposite, above a drop-leaf table, a collection of family photos hung, all framed.

Framed. Back
.

“That’s it! The back of one of those,” she said, pointing excitedly.

JP shook his head. “No. Brooks searched the house. That’s definitely one of the first places he would have looked.”

“Not the picture, the frame,” she replied. “Would he have searched the frame itself?”

JP considered that. “Maybe not thoroughly.”

“How about a frame behind his back?”

JP’s eyes narrowed. “Did he sit there?” He indicated one of the overstuffed chairs closest to that wall. “Maybe with one of those behind him?” He studied the family pictures.

“No,” she said after a pause, her voice firmer than he’d heard so far. “He always sat on the couch, so he could put his feet on the coffee table.” She turned toward it. “Cole. He loved
Cole
.” She pivoted toward the lamp table with the pictures of Cole.

There were three photos. Cole, sitting up, probably not a year old. A posed picture. She opened the back and tore apart the frame, checking it by tapping on it, then rapping it against the edge of the lamp table. “It would sound hollow, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Let me have it. He took a pocketknife and pried open the narrow wooden frame.

Nothing
.

They tackled the other picture, the one that showed Cole with a stuffed animal. A bear. And again there was nothing.

“What about his stuffed bear?” JP asked.

“I checked it. There’s nothing,” she replied, reaching for the third picture. She stopped. “It wouldn’t be a microdot or some other small spy thing would it?”

He’d thought of that, but had discarded the possibility. Wade had no way to create something like that without help from the techies. Not as quickly as he’d needed it. “No, I don’t think so. More likely it would be an old-school paper list, or maybe a thumb drive or some other computer storage device.”

She shook her head. “Wade didn’t use a computer here. Ever. Besides, Brooks took away my computer and every thumb drive he saw. He’d have found anything Wade might have left.”

“And Boyle would know if Brooks found something because he somehow has access to Agency information.”

The third picture was one of her with Cole, laughing. Cole’s second birthday. She stopped. “Wade wasn’t even here when this was taken.” She looked up at him, then opened the portrait anyway. There was nothing there, either.

“Another picture then. What was important—” He reached for the picture he’d seen that first night. The one that told him he’d found Wade. A photo of Abby in her wedding dress. Wade had his back to the camera; only one side of his face was visible, as he looked over his shoulder.

His back
.

“Ron was there, at the wedding. He came late,” she said when she saw which photo JP was looking at. “That’s why Wade turned. I never really thought about it before, but he hated for anyone to be behind him.”

JP pulled the backing away. The picture fell to the floor, faceup. The backing slid to one side. He ignored them and pried open the wood along the corners.

And there it was
. A tightly rolled piece of paper, not thick, not too long. A note, like one from those pads his mother had kept on her refrigerator for her grocery list.

He unrolled it.

Abby pointed the penlight at it. “It’s gibberish,” she said, her voice betraying despair.

Code
. Wade had written this in code, with tiny writing, on both sides. A code they’d agreed on several years ago.

“It’s proof. Evidence he planned to use,” JP said. “He gathered this over time.”

He read quickly, stumbling a few times as he tried to decipher Wade’s random words. “He worked with Frank Boyle during Boyle’s last year. He didn’t trust him. When Boyle came here as Ron, Wade got even more suspicious and decided to check him out.” JP stopped interpreting, read on. Silently.

Wade. The cowboy. Everything black or white. No gray for Wade.

But no real proof, either, just suspicious coincidences. But Wade believed Boyle was using his knowledge of Agency operations to interfere with field assignments. JP seethed when he read which ops Wade thought Boyle had sold out, remembering the men who’d died.

JP read this entry carefully, fully aware of the intensity of Abby’s gaze on him. Her expectations. When he reached the end, he folded the paper.

“What does it say?”

He couldn’t tell her the specifics, and not just because these were clandestine operations. He didn’t tell her because it would reveal so much that she didn’t need to know. About Wade, about himself. About what they did.

“It’s Wade’s suspicions of sabotaged jobs within the Agency.”

“Yours?”

“The last one, yes.”

“Would this be enough to prove to the CIA that you and Wade didn’t do anything wrong?”

He hesitated. “Maybe. If Brooks listens, which after a year of chasing me, he probably won’t.”

“Which is why you ran.”

“Yes.”

“And the reason Brooks came here accusing Wade.”

“Yes.” The same reason JP had come here. Frank Boyle knew just how to play things. To set him up.

“I don’t have any way to make a copy. No scanner. After you give this to Ron, will you remember what it says?”

She still wanted to prove Wade a hero. This might just do it. JP nodded. “Yes, I will.” He pulled out his cell phone. “But just in case, I’ll take a couple of photos. Not sure they’ll come out, or that they’ll stand up as real evidence, but it’s worth a shot.” He clicked a few photos of the front and the back, getting as close as he could and still be in focus.

He felt a surge of relief. He hadn’t lied to her. And he’d managed to keep the most damaging of Wade’s—and his own—secrets hidden.