My Everything
Authors: Julia Barrett
Table of Contents
My Everything
Copyright © 2010 Julia Rachel Barrett
Ebook Production: JW Manus
Cover Design: Winterheart Designs
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
The story of Ben and Grace came to me in its entirety as a dream. Many thanks to the night spirit who thought he or she would have a bit of romantic fun.
The author wishes to acknowledge the advice of an undercover agent who chooses to remain anonymous. A lot of his time is spent waiting, watching and listening…
My Everything
is the winner of the 2011 Lorie Award for Romantic Suspense.
Newton’s Third Law:
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Summer
At the dog’s
warning bark, Ben lifted his head. He brushed the dirt from his jeans as he rose to his feet. A boy stood at the gate, his hand resting on the handlebars of an old Schwinn. Ben recognized him. He was the son of an American ex-pat, the owner of the local coffee shop. He spoke two words, “Tom called.”
Tom called
. Ben hadn’t heard his friend’s name in thirteen months. He’d given the phone number of the coffee shop to Tom for emergencies only, and the message meant either Tom was in trouble or Ben was.
Reluctant but curious, Ben climbed onto his motorcycle and beat the boy back into town. He used the old pay phone in the town square. Tom answered his personal cell on the first ring.
“I have a job for you,” he said.
That was the clincher. Ben knew Tom didn’t have a job for him. Ben had unilaterally ended their professional relationship a year ago.
“We’ll meet in two days at three twenty-one.”
That was their code for
something’s up, I need your help
. Tom was talking about the hotel. He meant he’d already blocked room 321 at a hotel in Pomona, California. The room would appear in the computer as occupied by Benjamin McCall. It was a decoy in case they needed to smoke someone out. Ben would stay in a room three doors down.
Much as he wanted to, Ben couldn’t say no to Tom. They’d been best friends long before either of them dreamed of entering the military, or training with Special Forces, or finally opening a security agency together. Long before Tom had married his high school sweetheart and had two daughters.
That had been before the day Ben’s wife, Julie, had been killed by a car bomb outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, the day any illusion Ben had about living a real life ended.
Julia had been twenty-six when she died, pregnant with their first child. The bomb hadn’t been intended for her.
Ben blamed himself.
He’d been in charge of the ambassador’s security. He’d ordered a change of cars at the last minute. It wasn’t that he’d suspected anything; Ben had merely followed his instincts. He’d planned to personally inspect the other limo when they returned. Unfortunately, his order to stay clear of the vehicle had been deliberately misdirected.
When Julie had accompanied the ambassador’s wife on an outing, she’d been killed along with the ambassador’s wife, the driver and two bodyguards.
Thirteen months ago, Ben McCall had vanished without a trace. As far as his associates knew, he was dead. Tom was the only person he trusted to keep his new identity a secret.
Ben had seen too many deaths and been responsible for more than his fair share. He’d wanted to get as far away from his old life as he could, so he’d moved to a country without an army, Costa Rica. And he’d moved onto a mountainside in Cañitas, near a town that boasted only a single mile of paved road and one gas station.
It was a four hour slog to San Jose on narrow, winding, rutted dirt roads in good weather; during the rainy season, the roads were often impassable. As far as Ben was concerned the muddier the roads, the better.
Having spent his early years in Brownsville, Texas, the only child of a white man and a Hispanic woman, Ben was bilingual. His olive complexion and his lean, muscular build made it easy to blend in. Costa Ricans were accustomed to American ex-pats.
Within a short time, Ben had absorbed the dialect and his neighbors seemed to have accepted him. He carried an American passport and his birth certificate read Hector Luis Reyes, born in 1973 at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona.
If there was one thing Ben had learned over the years, it was never stand out. Blend into your surroundings. He did that very well. His home was modest, small and unpretentious, similar to every other home in the area. The stucco was painted a pale blue. The front door opened onto a large tiled courtyard. Serious crime was almost non-existent in Costa Rica, but there were episodes of petty theft. Ben hoped to avoid any unexpected guests. He still had some equipment and computer files to protect, and some armaments. He locked them in a woodworking shop that opened directly off his kitchen.
Ben had what he considered the best security money could buy—a German shepherd dog. Barron weighed just over a hundred pounds. He was fast, strong and his teeth were as hard as steel. The bite of a German shepherd was nearly as crushing as the bite of a wolf. Ben’s dog could break a forearm with ease. Most Costa Ricans had street mutts, not trained purebreds. A well-trained protection dog was one area where Ben wasn’t willing to compromise.
As Ben checked and rechecked his bags, he wondered what he’d be walking into and if he would be up for it. He prodded his dormant brain cells, trying to revive them, trying to consider every possibility. He felt like a rusty nail. He’d left the country to forget, to heal, and maybe, just maybe, find a reason to start over.
After Julie’s death, Ben dove into his work with a zeal that was almost religious in nature. Mostly because he’d been determined to hunt down and kill the bastard who’d killed her.
Fifteen months ago, he’d succeeded, but by then his rage had caught up with him and he’d burned out. He had to vanish. He’d become a danger to himself and everyone he worked with. However reluctant, Tom had recognized it, and the two of them made the arrangements.
Ben caressed the lining of his worn leather jacket. He’d once carried Julie’s unused passport, sewn into the lining like a talisman. He’d burned it once her murderer was dead.
The past year spent in the solitude of the mountains had helped dampen much of the killing rage. Ben was beginning to feel almost human again. No phone, no television, no radio, no newspaper. A couple of times a week he hiked or rode his motorcycle into Santa Elena, the town center, to do some shopping and grab a cup of coffee or some juice at one of the internet cafés. He never logged in, but he liked to listen to the local gossip and any news of the world the young backpackers shared among themselves. Ben was fluent in French, Spanish, German, Hebrew, Arabic and Farsi, and he knew enough Italian, Japanese and Russian to follow a conversation. But he never let on that he understood. He simply listened without comment as he drank his coffee and then he returned to the isolation of his mountain.
Movement caught his eyes and Ben looked up from his carry-on bag. The tropical sun shone through his bedroom window, and he studied his hummingbird feeders. He estimated there were twenty or thirty hummingbirds, all different sizes and colors, vying for time at one of the feeders. Costa Rica was home to close to forty species of hummingbird, some of them bigger than the sparrows back in the States.
Ben suddenly found himself reluctant to leave his adopted home, but he didn’t have a choice. Tom needed him. If it wasn’t important, Tom would have let him be.
Ben returned to his packing. He reminded himself to speak with the caretaker about the hummingbird feeders and the dog. Ernesto was a contact from long ago and he did double duty as Ben’s one-man security force and caretaker. He lived in a small cottage on the property with his own large nondescript mutt. Ernesto and his dog were light sleepers, and the man was good with a weapon, any weapon.
Ben sniffed the air, smelled the rain.
He was reminded of the first time he’d seen Julie.
He was in Paris, drinking coffee in a café on the Left Bank one cold November morning when he noticed a woman standing in front, her lovely freckled face turned up to the rain. He could tell from her open expression that she was an American and he couldn’t resist. He went outside to offer her an umbrella. He ended up buying her a café au lait and a croissant. Julie was the first time Ben had taken a risk in years. He allowed himself to fall in love.
It had been a mistake. It had cost him everything.
Thunder dragged Ben from his reverie. Julie had been dead two years. He didn’t want to revisit that time. It hurt too damn much.
He wondered, why the call from Tom? It could mean that someone else knew he was alive. He and Tom had taken precautions, but that didn’t mean they’d been perfect.
Ben’s father had died when Ben was ten years old. His mother, Monica Medina McCall, had left Brownsville and moved to Austin. Between grants and loans, she’d earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and remained in school, getting a master’s degree. She coordinated a system of shelters and resources for abused women in central Texas. Ben regretted the fact that she believed her only son was dead, but there was no alternative. He didn’t want to put her at risk, or his step-father and his half-sister, Angel.
Angel would be fourteen now, nearly fifteen. She’d be graduating high school in a few years. Ben rarely allowed himself to think of his family.
He could be with them right now if it hadn’t been for the car bomb, if his life hadn’t stopped that day in Jakarta.
Ben returned to his packing and sifted through his paperwork. He’d use his false passport until he got through customs in Houston. He had a reservation from Houston to Los Angeles in another name, one he rarely used, Matthew O’Connor, the same name he’d use at the hotel. He would need to make a point of answering to it. The corners of his mouth twitched.
Yeah. It had definitely been a while since he’d played the game.
Grace pasted a
smile on her face. She was exhausted and she could feel a migraine creeping up behind her like a midnight stalker in a dark alley. Why on earth had she agreed to come to this techno-club? She’d flown into LAX on the red-eye, waded through the line at the rental car agency, maneuvered through the ubiquitous Los Angeles traffic, arranged for early check-in, thrown her bags into her hotel room and headed straight to the campus for the Geriatrics Seminar. She’d lectured nonstop on pain management and then sat with the panel for the discussion on Death and Dying.