In the Arms of a Stranger (Entangled Ignite) (7 page)

“Come on.” She caught his arm and led him into the darkened barn.

“Is he still a secret?” a small voice asked.

JP looked up to see Abby’s son climb down from stacked bales of hay.

“Yes,” she replied. “He’s still a secret.”

The child stared at him for a moment before saying, “Our secret.”

JP smiled at him, hoping a boy that age really knew how to keep his mouth shut.

“I’ll get the basic supplies we’ll need,” she said. “The vet keeps human antibiotics. Are you allergic to anything? Penicillin maybe?”

He shook his head.

“I’ll be back. Come on, Cole.”

“I want to play with Muffin’s kittens,” he protested.

“We’ll come right back.”

Cole still resisted, his whole body in rebellion. “But Mr. John—”

“
Now
, young man.”

JP watched the interaction. She didn’t trust him with her child. She’d taken some huge leaps of faith from the moment their paths had crossed. But she still didn’t completely trust him. Especially not with her son.

Did she really think he’d hurt the boy?

Reluctantly, Cole took her hand. They walked through the barn, a calico cat winding between their legs, making it impossible for them to hurry. Abby bent and lifted the cat, whispered something to her, then put her back down with a gentle rub along her back.

This was his chance
. While they were gone, he could walk away. Disappear. She’d never find him. And he’d never have to hurt her by revealing what he did know about Wade.

If Wade had never told her what he did, why he was gone for months at time, he’d had a reason. Maybe she was the kind of person who’d be horrified if she knew what it took to serve their country.

Hell, be honest, Blackmon. What she thought of Wade doesn’t matter to you. You just don’t want her to know about
you.

But he didn’t leave. Instead, he watched mother and child walk out of the barn into the bright light of day. He had no choice. Before he left, he needed to find out every last detail she might know—even if she wasn’t aware of it herself. Anything that might help his search for the truth.

If he didn’t, he could kiss his life good-bye.

…

Abby rummaged through the supplies Sam kept stored in the workshop so he wouldn’t have to drive all the way back to his office on the other side of the county. She grabbed what she thought she might need, along with antibiotics in tablet form, all the while reminding herself to slow down, to calm her chaotic emotions.

Now she could get her answers, explanations, something to prove she was right about Wade. That Brooks was dead wrong.

“I got carrots, Mommy,” Cole announced from behind her. He loved to feed them to Buck.

Back outside in the increasingly hot morning, he ran ahead, disappearing into the barn just as she reached the wide double doors. It took a second for her eyes to get used to the dark, then another second to realize JP had vanished.
Again
.

She blew out a frustrated breath. “Seriously?” she muttered.

“I’m here,” he said, stepping out from behind a large support post.

Frustration was instantly replaced by relief. He hadn’t left after all. But the intensity of his gaze gave her an odd sensation. Something like a prickling of…what? Danger?

No, not danger.

Feminine awareness
.

“Carrots for Buck!” Cole shouted, running toward him and waving them in the air.

As the little boy reached him, his attention shifted to her son. She shook her head to clear away the rampant confusion. Something about him, about the way he’d looked at her just then, had sent puzzling signals to her overwrought emotions. She crossed her arms over her chest, recognizing a stab of desire, hot and heavy, in her breasts.
No. No way this could happen.
She dragged her gaze away from him, embarrassed by her body’s response.

You’re a widow. You’re entitled
, she told herself.

Cole held a carrot up toward JP, offering him the treat of feeding the horse.

“Cole,” she said, gathering her wits, “why don’t you get…Mr. John a Coke from the refrigerator?”

“But we have to feed—”

“We’ll wait for you,” JP said.

Cole smiled up at him. It was an amazing smile. How could a man neither of them knew get such an unguarded, joyful response from her son?

“Sit down over there, let me take a look,” Abby ordered JP, her voice thick with shame at her jealousy.

JP sat on a bale of hay and unzipped his windbreaker, revealing the holster and gun. They suited him.
A gun suited him
. She should be scared, but she wasn’t. That said more about her than about him.

When she saw the blood-soaked, makeshift T-shirt bandage, she fought back a momentary panic. “Maybe you should lie down.”

“No,” he replied quickly. “No. You can get to it just fine with me sitting.”

All right. Maybe that was too much familiarity for him. Or vulnerability.

She knelt in front of him and pulled up his shirt. She had to bite her lip to contain her gasp.

“That’s deep.”
And bloody
. “Is this a knife wound or a bullet wound?” she asked. She’d never seen either before, never thought she would.

“Bullet. Never mind. I can take care of it myself,” he said, pulling his shirt back down.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, knowing full well he’d understood her shocked reaction.

“It’s pretty ugly.”

“No one could ever accuse a bullet wound of being pretty.” She took clean gauze and soaked it with antiseptic lotion.

He winced as she wiped around the wound. She held her breath.

“How did it happen?” she managed.

“My luck ran out,” he said on a hiss as she used a fresh, antiseptic-soaked gauze pad to dab gently at the area.

“The bullet—?”

“Just grazed me.”

She looked up to see him gazing beyond her, pain evident in the terse line of his lips.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He looked down at the wound, then up, to meet her eyes. “That it grazed me?”

She laughed. Hysteria, she was sure. Prepared to apologize, she caught the uptilt of one side of his mouth. The smile reached his eyes, softened his features. It made him look younger, even more attractive. He held her gaze for an uncomfortable moment, then reached for the gauze still clutched in her fingers.

She shook her head. “No, I can do it. Let me…” But her protest died on her lips. She couldn’t figure out what to do with his hand on hers, couldn’t deal with the look in his eyes. The same look she’d seen when she came back into the barn.

Heat?

No. No way. She was projecting.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said, releasing her hand and the gauze. He was staring at her mouth.

“I can handle it.” She looked at the wound. She wouldn’t look at his face.
Couldn’t
. “Stand up.”

The uncomfortable moment passed. The wound looked even worse from the side. Ragged and inflamed. She cleaned it with antiseptic, put topical antibiotic on a gauze pad, then taped it all up.

Handing him two tablets, she said, “Antibiotics.”

“You sure these are safe?”

“I’m positive. Vets use human antibiotics a lot. This is one I’ve taken myself.” He looked doubtful enough that she added, “I’m still human. Promise.”

He gave her another one of those smiles, proving she was all
too
human—and all too female.

Before she made a fool of herself, she handed him the envelope of tablets. “I wrote the dosage down. You have enough for a week.”

“Coke!” Cole shouted.

Abby jumped. Feeling guilty.
But guilty of what?

JP dropped the front of his shirt and zipped up the windbreaker again before Cole had a chance to see anything.

When her son stood before him, he let Cole take his hand and lead him toward the back of the barn, through the door, and outside. He paused, his stance wary, and looked around as her child pulled at him. With one last look toward the road, they walked along the edge of the corral, still close enough to the barn to be in the cooling shade, a tall man and a small boy. Cole looked up and said something to JP, who threw back his head and laughed. Then he gingerly lifted her son onto his shoulders.

Abby hugged herself. She hadn’t been interested in any man since Wade’s death. When anyone tried to play matchmaker, she’d used the excuse that it was much too soon. And it was, for her. But Cole needed a father. Her brother represented the only stable male influence in his life, but Steve could never take the place of his father.

No one would.

Cole chose that moment to laugh, his giggle so different from the one he used with her that she wanted to snatch her baby from JP and tell him not to enthrall her son with his masculinity.

As he had her
.

The mere thought stopped her cold. She could not open that door. JP was as forbidden a territory as Wade should have been. Worse—once burned, twice shy.

No, not shy.
Scared
.

She mustn’t forget why she’d risked so much by keeping JP’s presence a secret from Brooks, from everyone.

Answers
.

With a deep breath, she dropped her arms to her sides and walked quickly to catch up with JP and Cole, who were looking toward the pasture. June bugs buzzed lazily in the summer heat.

“How do you call Buck?” JP was asking her son.

“Mommy whissus,” he replied.

“Can you whistle?”

“Not like Mommy.” Cole turned toward her. “Whissu, ’kay?”

JP put Cole down.

Abby smiled, put her fingers to her lips, and blew.

The shrill sound carried across the hot, still morning. Cole clapped.

JP’s eyes widened and he smiled. “That’s some whistle your mom has,” he said, his gaze on Abby.

“Petunia comes, too,” Cole said, his face alive with pleasure.

“Petunia?”

“He’s a boy cow. He’s big.” Cole looked up at JP with a serious expression. “He likes for Mommy to talk to him.”

“I heard your mom talk to Petunia.”

Cole smiled. “Doc Sam aks Mommy to talk to Petunia so he can sew him up.”

JP’s reaction to that statement was priceless. His face showed disbelief, then something else. Admiration? Humor?

“I bet anything would hold still for your mom,” he said casually, as if in jest, but the timbre of his voice changed the simple meaning to something beyond. Something heated.

Ashamed of herself, of the places the sound of JP’s voice was taking her, she turned abruptly and pointed, “Look. There comes Buck!”

The light tan gelding was galloping toward the barn. With a whinny and a toss of his beautifully shaped head, Buck came to a bouncing halt at the fence in front of them. In the opposite pasture, still a good distance away, Petunia ambled toward them.

Cole ran to the wire fence topped with barbed wire and stretched his hand through, holding a carrot in his palm for the horse.

“What do we do when Petunia gets here?” JP asked.

“Throw some carrots on the ground for him and leave fast,” she replied with a laugh.

JP stepped back, indicating with a jerk of his head that she should follow him.

Standing not far from Cole, he asked quietly, “Wade didn’t have anywhere else he might have kept things for work?”

She didn’t like the question. It sounded like the ones Brooks had asked.

“Things like what?”

“You said he didn’t keep papers at home.”

“No.”

“He didn’t keep an apartment somewhere, in DC maybe?”

An apartment? Maybe a whole other life? Was that what he was asking? She hadn’t even
thought
of that possibility.

“I have no idea what Wade had away from here.” The statement hurt. A lot. She’d trusted Wade implicitly. He’d said his work wouldn’t touch their life together, and she’d believed him. Until the day it did touch their lives. Until the day she could do nothing to save him. That day had thrown all her preconceptions about Wade, about their marriage—
about herself
—into disarray.

“He sold—” She stopped to correct herself. “He said he sold his family’s place in Texas.”

“Where was it?”

He didn’t know about the Texas ranch. Strange. He’d known about Buck, about the Rangers, but he didn’t know this? He should know. Even Brooks knew. Or…was he testing her?

She faced him directly. “Why are you here, JP?”

He stiffened, the question apparently catching him off guard.

She held up a finger. “And don’t tell me you came to visit Wade. You’re running. Hiding. How do you think Wade could have helped you if he’d been here?”

He didn’t answer. Deciding what to say? How to lie? Oh, he’d definitely know how to lie. Wade certainly had.

“Finding out that Wade’s dead, that he’s been dead for over a year, doesn’t fit with the neat little scenario you had figured out,” she accused. “You have to look elsewhere for help now, but wherever that is, it has something to do with Wade.” She was rambling, thinking aloud.

“Abby—”

“Don’t lie to me. Do not do that.” Anger bubbled to the surface. “Don’t use what I know, then leave me here to wonder.”

“It’s not—”

“Is that how they train you?” she ground out. “To lie, to evade?”

His shoulders went rigid and his eyes hardened. “They train us to get the job done. To survive.”

“Well, Wade
didn’t
survive.” She spat the words at him. “He counted on you and you didn’t help him.”

The sounds of summer, the heat, the smells, all receded, suspended in time. Cole said something, but she barely registered his words.

“I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do for Wade now,” JP said softly.

“Yes, there is.”

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “He’s dead. There’s nothing anyone can do.”

“You’re wrong,” she said. “You can prove that he died a hero.”

Chapter 5

No. That was the one thing JP couldn’t do.

Wade’s widow wanted her husband made into a hero. But everything he knew told him Wade was no hero. The man had set him up with a lie that had branded him a traitor and made him the target of a manhunt by his own country.

But what Abby was asking of him, the niggle of doubt she’d planted in his mind, meant that there could be another possibility.

Maybe both he
and
Wade had been set up.

If so, that changed things, changed the way he’d need to go about clearing himself.

“What did Brooks accuse Wade of?” he asked.

She crossed her arms, wincing a little, then rubbed them as if she were cold. Impossible in this heat. He hated seeing her uncertainty. Hated knowing she wasn’t sure if she could trust him.

Hated knowing she had started to wonder if her husband had done something less than honorable.

“No games, Abby. Tell me.”

She dropped her arms. “Brooks didn’t accuse him of anything. He implied.”

“How?”

“He had our financial records investigated, our friends. Everything.”

“Did you ask him why?”

“He told me it was routine in cases like this.” She said it firmly, but he heard the tears that threatened. “Whatever ‘cases like this’ meant. But I went along with him, not insisting that I see my husband’s body, like some mousy little housewife who wanted the big strong men to take care of her.”

He wanted to smile at that, but didn’t. She wasn’t mousy and he recognized the sarcasm in her tone. “But you didn’t tell Brooks what Wade said.”

“No.”

“That took strength, Abby. A lot of it.”

“I saw him, you know,” she said in a voice so low he had to strain to understand.

“Saw who?”

“Wade.” She looked at the ground.

Damn
. “You said Brooks didn’t want you to see him.”

She nodded, rubbing at her eyes.

God, he hoped she wasn’t crying, because if she was, he was about to make it all worse. But he had to know.

“What did he—?”

“Look like?” She jerked her face up to him. Moisture sparkled on her lashes. “Dead. He looked dead. And wrong. They hurt him.” She took a breath, swiped at a tear that escaped. “I was terrified. I had reached the point where I thought it was all lies. I didn’t know what to believe—if it was even him. I asked the funeral director to leave me alone with the casket. I lifted the lid and pulled up Wade’s pant leg.” Her voice broke.

“Why?” he asked.

She bit her lip, took a breath, and continued. “He had a little scar on his right calf. I”— her voice was a mere whisper—“touched it. We used to joke that it looked like a…valentine.”

She looked so stricken, so alone. He knew about the scar. He’d seen it. Tradecraft was great, but no way in hell would anyone have remembered to fake that tiny scar—not for a closed casket funeral. No, that confirmed it. Wade was dead.

And it confirmed what he already knew. Abby Price was one damn tough lady.

All JP could do now was figure out how Wade’s death played into the betrayal that had left him on the run.

“I’m sorry, Abby. I really am.” Sorry for her pain, sorry for the whole damn fucking mess. “He was a good friend.” Who may not have traded his white hat for black, after all…
Jesus
.

She looked up at him, her gaze plaintive. “Tell me the truth. Did he do anything wrong?”

The question hung between them. JP wanted to make it easier for her. He didn’t want to lie. But he didn’t know anything for sure anymore, and a possible lie was all he could manage. “Not Wade.” The same words he’d used to try to convince himself when he’d first found himself out in the cold.

She rubbed her tears away with a quick swipe of her fingers. She needed reassurance. Needed to have faith in her late husband if she was going to be of any help to JP. So he played the game, even though he’d told her he wouldn’t. But there was this new possibility that he could be wrong about his friend’s betrayal. He’d keep an open mind. He wanted the
truth
, whatever it may be.

“Wade was a good man,” he assured her. Even though Wade hadn’t told her the truth about himself. But in that lack of knowledge, in Abby’s faith in her husband—however shaken it may be—he might find the answers. Without telling her the worst. Without the need for her to know the whole truth about what they did for a living.

“Wade wouldn’t do anything wrong. He couldn’t.” Her voice wobbled the tiniest bit. Enough to betray her uncertainty.

“If I’m going to prove he was a hero, Abby, I have to know everything you know. You must answer my questions.”

“And you have to answer mine,” she returned, her voice firm. No wilting flower, no mousy housewife. She hadn’t known what to do, but she’d shown courage.

“What is it you want to know?”

“I know you’re hiding from Brooks, from the Agency. Do they think you did something wrong, too?”

Asked so directly, so honestly, JP faltered. God, how he hated lying to her, but there was no choice.

“You said no games,” she reminded. “You promised.”

“They think I…was a bit loose with some CIA secrets.” There, that sounded reasonable, and was far enough away from what happened that she would never know.

“A bit loose with what secrets?”

“I don’t think revealing the secrets now would help prove that I wasn’t guilty then, do you?” He smiled.

“Then that must be what they thought Wade did,” she said, as if finally understanding. “Betray secrets.”

He wouldn’t acknowledge or deny. Couldn’t—
wouldn’t
—keep lying to her.

“You believed it, didn’t you?” she asked.

“I didn’t know he was dead.” He hoped she wouldn’t see the total disconnect.

“Did anyone else die?”

She was boxing him into a corner. “As I said, I’ve been out of touch.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, just studied him.

“Mommy, Petunia is coming,” Cole said from behind, startling them both.

Damn
. He’d totally forgotten about the kid…and the damn bull.

“Throw the rest of the carrots on the ground and go on into the barn,” Abby said, calling to her son.

The big bull trotted closer as Cole ran ahead of them as they walked toward the barn.

She stopped JP with a touch to his arm. “You want to find something you think Wade had,” she said, “but Brooks searched the house, the entire property, the bank accounts, the safety deposit box. Everything.”

As they walked, something shiny flashed in the trees between the barn and her house. He slowed to stare at it.

“What do you see?” she asked, her gaze following his.

JP kept his gaze fixed on the trees. “Let’s get inside the barn.”

Petunia bellowed, the sound echoing around them. Buck pranced and snorted as the black bull bent to crunch on the carrots Cole had thrown for him.

JP hurried Abby back into the barn. The interior smelled hot but the darkness felt cool compared to the outside heat. Cole saw the calico cat and followed her up a bale of hay.

“Do you think someone’s watching us?” she asked.

A bad feeling was niggling in his gut. He’d let his guard down when he knew Brooks would still be around. “I need to go.”

“You can’t get away without help. Brooks could be out there right now.”

He smiled, covering his concern. “Don’t worry, Abby. It’ll be okay.”

“Nothing’s okay!” Her flare of anger caught him by surprise. “Nothing!”

He reached out and touched her arm. “Ab—”

“
Don’t!
” She pushed his hand away. “Do not patronize me,” she said in a near whisper. “Wade may not have told me anything, but I
know
.” She took a shaky breath. “I
saw
him. Saw what they
did
to him.”

JP pulled his hand back from the smooth warmth of her arm. He hadn’t meant to sound patronizing, just reassuring. He knew too well what could happen to a man. Much better than she. He’d seen much worse than what had apparently happened to Wade.

But the rush of anger in Abby’s eyes intrigued JP, tempted him into forbidden territory.
Did it mean she cared what happened to him?
Or was it simply human concern, a caring person’s concern for the safety of another?

“I can get away,” he said simply.

“How?” she shot at him.

Good God. How the hell had Wade kept things from her? How had the man hidden his secrets from a woman with her fire, determination, and persistence?

“Sorry. Trade secrets,” he replied.

“Like the trade secret that had you spending the night with Petunia?”

He smiled again, knowing it pushed her anger, using that anger to deflect any of the softer feelings that crept into his heart when he was around her. He tried to think of a comeback that would take the edge off the conversation.

But before he could think of anything, she demanded in a low voice, “Who’ll save you next time?”

It won’t be you, Abby
.

He had to pull back, had to put some perspective on the situation. He had the uneasy feeling that she could see too much of what he felt. But then, he could just be projecting his own insanity onto her. The feelings she evoked in him were clearly not reciprocated. Common decency wouldn’t be, either, if she ever found out the truth about the life he’d led.

“Thanks for helping me,” he said.

“That’s it?” she asked, the bite of anger still in her words. “Nothing more?”

“There is nothing more.” There couldn’t be.

“I want answers.”

“Ask Brooks.”

Her harsh laughter made Cole look toward them. When the little boy began playing with the cat again, she said. “No,
you
tell me.”

JP glanced at the kid and the cat sitting in a shaft of sunshine. A Norman Rockwell painting. Safe, secure. The kind of life he’d only seen from a distance since he’d left home. The kind of life Wade had tried to give her. And suddenly the kind of life he wanted again.

He was insane.

“I told you. I made a mistake and got into trouble.”

She didn’t nod, didn’t blink at his response. He was good at what he did, one of the best. This woman had no idea, but she expected him to continue his explanation.

“I thought Wade could help,” he said finally.

“And now?” she prompted.

“I’ll have to look somewhere else.”

“For what?”

For a traitor
. Even if, despite his death, it was Wade. He nearly said it. Nearly.

“For the reason they’re after me.”

“You came here because Wade knew something you thought could help you. I want—” She paused, her face unreadable in the shadows of the barn. “I
need
to know what happened to him. To understand.”

“Abby—”

“Not national security secrets,” she broke in, holding up a hand. “Nothing like that. I need to know why he didn’t contact me again. Why he couldn’t tell me more, or let me help him.”

“He would never—”

“No,” she said in an angry whisper. “Don’t tell me what Wade would never do. I know exactly what he would never do. He would never involve me. Well, he did this time. He called me. He told me to expect you, to tell you something about springs. You obviously know what that means. Now, I want to know, too.”

“I’m sorry, Abby—”

“I’m the only one who can help you,” she said, a fierce light in her eyes, “and you’re the only one who can help me.”

“Mommy,” Cole said, looking out of the barn window. “That man is here.”

JP looked out through the barn door.

Three SUVs.
Brooks
. It had to be.

Gravel crunched beneath the SUV tires as they pulled up in front of the barn.

“If they find me here, it won’t go well for you,” he said.

“They won’t find you,” she replied. “Cole, stay up there with Muffin until I come back inside. Remember, Mr. John is our big secret.”

She grabbed JP’s arm and ran out the back of the barn and into the corral. Pushing him, she said, “Get in the trough. Cover up with hay. Then don’t move.”

He wasn’t about to argue. He got in and spread the hay she’d removed a short while ago back onto his legs. She ran back in and got more, dumping it on him before moving away.

Then she opened the corral gate and said something inaudible. The big black beast stomped the ground as she waved her arms from just inside the gate. Before JP could react and distract the bull, she was running, the animal trotting behind.

Breath caught in his chest, he watched her through a veil of hay as she climbed up and over the metal railing to get out of the corral. The bull stopped inside and bent his head to the hay she’d dropped. Then she closed the corral gate, trapping him with the animal.

…

Abby tried to control her rapid breathing as she ran back inside the barn after making sure JP couldn’t be seen.

“Come on, honey,” she said to Cole. “Let’s say hello.”

“Is Mr. John still a secret?”

“Yes, he is. Don’t forget.”

“’Kay,” he replied as they walked outside.

Brooks pulled his black SUV in front of the barn. Two dark green vehicles drove up behind him.

“Abby,” he greeted, getting out. Sunlight reflected off his silver aviators.

“Why are you back?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady and calm.

“Got a report that someone ran off your road last night and abandoned a car.”

“That’s what the sheriff’s department told us,” she said.

“You didn’t see anything?”

She shook her head. “No.”

He removed his sunglasses. “You said your car got stuck last night.”

“I told you that. Remember?”

He looked at her with that enigmatic expression she’d grown to hate.
And fear
.

“Mind if we look around?”

“Why would you want to?”

“It’s a good size place. Someone could be hiding out in the barn, or in Wade’s shop, or in one of the pastures.”

“There have been a lot of people here today. I think someone would have noticed.”

“This man’s an expert. You’d never see him. Never know he was here.”

“What man?” Abby asked, wondering if he’d deliberately let that slip, or if he hadn’t meant to say it.