In the Arms of a Stranger (Entangled Ignite) (4 page)

Cole said something, but her attention was riveted to the man’s eyes, on the way lightness faded from them and moved into darkness, the way his whole demeanor shifted to predatory attention.

“Who are you?” she repeated, struggling to keep her voice even.

“Cole,” he said to her son quietly but firmly, his gaze steady on her. Her son stopped talking at the sound of his name. “Do you know where your mommy keeps the towels?”

“Uh-huh,” Cole confirmed with a nod.

“We’re still all wet,” John said. “Why don’t you take the flashlight and go get us each a towel?”

Nerves on edge, she watched her son do as he was asked.
Asked
, she repeated silently to herself.
Not ordered
. The man had used a gentle, patient tone. Calm patience.

She had reached the end of hers. As Cole headed down the hall, the flashlight beam bobbing in front of him, she asked, “For the last time, who are you?”

“Wade’s friend,” he said, then added, “JP.”

The name hit her like a blow to the chest. She wanted to drop to her knees. Or scream. Or hit him.

Hurt him, that’s what she wanted. She wanted to hurt him, as she and Cole had been hurt. Hurt by his failure. By Wade’s.
By hers
. Over a year she’d waited, and all but given up hope.

His face cast in shadow, he asked his own question, “Your turn. Where’s Wade?”

She stared back at him. “You don’t know?” she whispered, sure her throat was closing.
Damn
.

“Know what?”

“Oh, God. We didn’t…”

He came toward her, big, powerful.
Alive
. “Didn’t what?” he asked, one hand on her good arm, his brown eyes unreadable.

“We didn’t help him.” She drew a breath into oxygen-starved lungs. “He wouldn’t ask me. He asked you, but you didn’t come.”

He shook his head, a small, quick movement that spoke of his confusion. Or denial. “I don’t understand.”

She swallowed, aware of nothing but his face looming above her, of his hand holding her upright. She would have fallen without that support. “We’re responsible. You and me. We killed him. Wade’s dead.”

Chapter 3

That was a lie
. It had to be, JP told himself.

Because if Wade was dead, so was he.

If
Wade’s wife—widow—was telling the truth, it was all over.

She wasn’t crying, though. She should be, shouldn’t she? Women didn’t just say their husbands were dead without tears. Maybe she didn’t care. Or maybe Wade had ordered her to tell him he was dead, when he really wasn’t.

JP regarded Wade’s wife. Abby. That was her name. His partner had often mentioned his wife, though rarely by name. She’d usually just been “my wife,” or, after a few beers, “the pretty country girl I married.” A couple of the guys had teased Wade about marrying a much younger woman, but JP never had. He’d admired Wade too much, and a twelve year difference didn’t seem that big a deal to him. Those twelve years meant she was a couple of years older than his own thirty. She’d been away the one time JP had come here with Wade before he built the house. Wade had spent more time showing him the area, the topography of the place he’d chosen to call home, than he had talking about her. But that was Wade, always into details, not people.

He frowned. “What do you mean he asked for my help? When?”

Her body tensed with determination, with anger. He barely had time to step aside before she took a swing at him. Not a woman’s punch, but a man’s swing that caught him along his ear and made him flinch.

Surprised, he grabbed her hand before she completed the arc of a second swing, then realized she was coming at him with her other fist. Determined to stop her, he pinned her arms down by hugging her to his chest.
Damn
. He was bleeding again. The warm wetness spread down his hip.

Fury blazed from her eyes as she struggled vainly against his grip. She couldn’t hope to overcome him. But she wanted to hurt him.

She blamed him for Wade’s death
. She couldn’t know the truth and still blame him.

Then he remembered exactly what she’d said.
We killed him
.

What the hell did that mean?

She fought on in silence, her right arm weaker than her left, until tears began to flow and silent sobs replaced her struggles. Fire stabbed at his right side with each twist of her body against his. Finally she stilled, and he relaxed his hold.

A beam of light flew around the room. “Mommy?”

At the sound of the child’s voice, he released her. She pulled away, swiping the back of her hand over her wet cheeks, and pasting a smile on her lips. Crystalline tears glistened on her dark lashes as she blinked them away.

“Did he hurt you again?” the little boy asked, holding the flashlight beam unsteadily on his mother’s face. He hugged the towels against his chest.

“I stepped on your mommy’s toe by accident,” JP said. Well, that should do it. The kid had to hate him by now. He’d run over his mother, attacked her, and now he’d made her cry.

It shouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to him what the boy thought, or what Wade’s wife—Abby—thought, given who they were. But it did, damn it.

The kid shone the light on his mother’s bare feet and asked him, “Did you rub it?”

“Rub it?” JP repeated uncertainly.

An exasperated sigh escaped the boy’s lips. The flashlight beam bobbled as he stepped forward. “Don’t you know? You have to rub it, then kiss it. Then you get a SpongeBob Band-Aid.”

“Cole,” his mother interrupted with a nervous laugh, “it’s not that bad. I’ll be fine. Please give me the towels and go dry off. You can change clothes.”

The boy looked like he might refuse, then he smiled and asked, “Can I wear my dinosaur shirt?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m going to talk to—”

“John,” Cole filled in. “That’s his name.”

The kid was quick, JP thought. What about his mother? How much did she know about her husband’s—her
late
husband’s—work?

“I need to talk to him for a few minutes, honey.”

Cole looked doubtful. But then he said, “’Kay,” and hurried down the hall to change.

She turned to JP. “I won’t hit you again. I don’t know why I did that.” She rubbed her right shoulder. “It was pointless. I’m sorry.”

Her voice, with its barest touch of Southern heat, made the apology sound dignified. He’d met her under the worst of circumstances and she’d held herself together—pretty much—despite fear and pain. There was basic dignity in that, dignity he admired.

So what should he say now? Should he offer his condolences? Did he tell her he’d come here to do whatever it took to prove her late husband had betrayed his country and set JP up to take the fall?

It all really came down to one basic question: Did he believe her?

He sure as hell didn’t want to believe Wade was dead, just as he hadn’t wanted to believe Wade would set him up. He didn’t want to think this respect-inspiring woman would lie to his face, either.

Not that it made any difference. Saving himself was all that mattered now.

“Where’s my gun?” he asked.

He was about to demand an answer when she replied. “I hid it and the one in your bag so Cole can’t get to them.”

That was logical. “Where?”

She hesitated.

“I’m
not
going to hurt you,” he insisted for the dozenth time. He supposed lack of trust ran both ways.

“The closet, on the top, in the back.” She indicated a door on the other side of the room.

Or not
.

He crossed over, careful to watch her as he went, opened the door, and reached up, ruthlessly ignoring the pain in his side. He found not only the Glock, but the Ruger, next to it. Smart woman—she’d gone through his backpack. He pulled both guns out, then checked to see that they were loaded.

“The silver one’s safety is still on,” she said. “I couldn’t find it on the other.”

So she knew a little about firearms; at least, knew to be careful. But then, as Wade’s wife she’d have had to.

“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.”