Sandman (Unknown Identities #3) (9 page)

Renata stared at Matthew, her worst fears confirmed. “Why did you fake your death?”

“
Oh, no.” He shook his head. “You were supposed to die back there. Tell me what you’re into.”

“
You weren’t there to rescue me?”

The look he leveled on her gave her chills. This wasn
’t the sweet guy she’d dated years ago, the youthful Marine with a tender streak she’d loved with all of her young, untested heart. This was a man hardened by his circumstances. She trembled, more than a little unnerved by how much she liked the tough new edge.

“
I promise I’ll tell you everything, but just answer one question first, how did you know where to find me?”

He checked the dashboard, then the rearview mirror before glancing her way again.
“I told you. I bought you online.”

“
What?”

“
You’d rather I let the kidnapper sell you to someone else?”

“
Of course not, but –”

“
I made the purchase – officially – for the purpose of following my orders and killing both you and your kidnapper.”

Furious, and more than a little worried about the danger she was in, she turned the citrine ring on her finger. Changes or not, she couldn
’t believe he would have gone through with it. She shifted a little closer to the door.

“
Don’t even think about making a break for it,” he said. “This might make sense if you’ll tell me what the hell you were into.”

She swore. Matthew wasn
’t dead. He had a codename: Sandman. The man who’d used it, the guy who was invisible, had bought them time to escape. She rubbed at the goose bumps on her arms. There’d been a business card on the seat and she’d tucked it away, wondering if Matthew had left it, or someone else. “Where are we going?”

“
That depends on what you tell me.” He accelerated as the sun tried to peek through the clouds hovering at the horizon.

“
When you died, I was… I was devastated.” It was too late to hold anything back even if she’d wanted to. Should her life be cut short in the next hour, day, or week, she refused to live with any regrets.

“
I wanted to believe there was another answer, that someone had made a terrible mistake.” She couldn’t seem to get enough air into her lungs and her palms tingled, but she had to tell him the whole story. “I ran down reports of soldiers and Marines who survived attacks unscathed, those who were imprisoned conflicts and wars, those who wandered lost and disoriented only to be found later. I’ve met people all over the world, Matthew. I’ve heard all kinds of stories. I studied anything and everything that gave me a shred of hope that you were alive. My heart refused to accept your death and look, it was right all along.”

“
Renata.”

The velvet
-soft tone nearly brought her to tears. “I’m not nearly as flighty as everyone wants to believe. Of course I love my shoes and fashion, but I go a little deeper than that.”

“
I know.”

“
I think you’re the only one who did. Does,” she corrected. As much as she loved her family, they’d never expected too much from her. There had been a lovely acceptance in Matthew, before he’d been ‘killed’. With him, she’d felt safe enough to be herself, to test and explore ideas about who she wanted to become. In some ways, his death had empowered her.

Why hadn
’t she realized that until now?

“
Anyway, being with the diplomatic corps meant meeting a lot of diverse and interesting people. I was on my way to Madrid not to socialize with a wealthy man, but to use his connections to meet with a recluse who verifies old documents. He specializes in World War I and World War II eras of scientific advancement. It’s rumored he has some original research records from Mussolini’s efforts to create the ultimate soldier.”

“
That’s absurd.” Matthew adjusted his speed as they drove through a sleepy little town.

“
You can say that, but I think it’s clear you are one of them. The idea of a super soldier is almost as volatile a topic as cloning. The potential concepts are coveted intellectual property and I believe there are places where terrible experiments are already taking place. Obviously you didn’t die in some far off place. You left me for this research project, or whatever they call it.”

“
No. Part of me did die,” he contradicted quietly.

Surely, h
e was speaking figuratively about the man he’d been, at least she hoped that was the case. Losing him, so suddenly with no explanation, left her with an open wound in her heart, and her pain felt as fresh today as it had been when she’d first heard the news. These past years, she’d walked around with an emptiness inside her that nothing could fill.

“
But you didn’t die.” She squeezed her eyes shut against the tears blurring her vision. “Unless… is that your way of saying there really is a ghost classification in your system?”

“
No.” He flexed his hands on the steering wheel, his knuckles going white. “I don’t know where you’re getting this stuff.”

Oh, yes he did.
“Now who’s lying?” She couldn’t stand it. “Let me out. I’ll call the family for help, unless you plan to follow through and murder me.”

“
You know I could never kill you. But you’re treading in deadly waters, Renata. I can fake your death, smuggle you out of the country, and teach you how to survive where they can’t touch you.”

“
And forever be looking over my shoulder for your mysterious ‘they’ to kill me. No. There is another way.” She couldn’t imagine a life without her family. She didn’t want to settle for a life without Matthew, unless he told her outright he didn’t want to be with her. “What about you? What happens if you let me go?”

“
That doesn’t matter.” His gaze jumped from the road ahead, to each mirror, then landed on her for a moment. “You’re not safe with me. This topic isn’t safe. You have to drop this if you want to live.”

“
Absolutely not! It’s too important, Matthew. There has to be a way to ultimately assist those in combat without abusing others as guinea pigs. Those old experiments were barbaric and the rumors I’ve heard –”

“
Stop!”

She jumped at his outburst, stunned into silence.

“I know how I got to this point. How did
you
get here?”

“
My curiosity, as I said. But I – I needed some way to make sense of losing you and all the others.”

“
Others? What do you mean?” He turned off the main road and parked near the front door of a grocery store still closed for the night. “Tell me quickly and don’t leave anything out.”

“
The published reports about your death listed a six man team, three of you killed during an attempt to bring down a terrorist cell. It got ridiculous play on the embassy circuit and a few of your CIA leaders were investigated as a result. If it’s any consolation, all three of you were regarded as heroes.”

“
No consolation.” Matthew snorted. “And no one died on that mission.”

“
I was afraid you’d say that. But it gets worse, two more of your team died shortly after returning to the States. One in a bar fight, another in a traffic accident a few days later. Then Rafe called a few days after that, inviting me for coffee. He said he needed to talk. We were both grieving so much.”

Matthew smiled, covering her trembling hands with his.
“I’ve always been so grateful your cousin introduced us.” He lifted her hands to his lips, pressing a warm kiss to the backs of her chilled fingers. “What did he tell you?”

“
Nothing.” Tears rolled down her cheeks as the horror replayed in her mind. “He was killed in a drive by shooting in front of the café. Right in f-front of me.” Her hands caught in his, she blotted her tears against her shoulder. “He loved the Marines, loved that he’d made his way on his own merit.”

His
silence soothed her, sharing those dark days with the man she’d never stopped loving served as a balm to a heart battered by so much loss in a short time frame. “My uncle was nearly inconsolable when Rafe died. It remains an unsolved case, but the gang assumed responsible, identified by witnesses who noted their colors, suffered heavy losses in the weeks that followed.”

Matthew released her hands to scrub at his face.
“Do you recall any gang colors or signs?”

She shook her head
, overwhelmed again by the sadness, the waste of it all. “All I recall is his guarded expression. He wasn’t smiling that day. Then he was down…”

He looked around.
“We have to find a safer place to hide out and make some decisions.”

She fished the card out of her pocket.
“This was on my seat when I got in the car. I noticed a sign for it a ways back. I think we must be close,” she added while Matthew looked at the card.

“
How did a bed and breakfast card wind up here?” He turned the card over. “Do you know this name?”

She examined the back of the card.
“Reservation for Bennett Anderson? No, it’s not familiar.”

“
The agent in the barn must have left it. He claimed he was acting as a friend.”

“
But you think it could still be a trap.”

“
Yes.”

She appreciated his honesty, even if she didn
’t like it. “We may as well check it out. There’s nowhere else to go is there?”

“
Not anywhere safe for you.”

“
You keep saying that.”

“
Because it’s true.” He started the car and resumed their drive east.

“
Will you at least admit you’re part of some covert agency? You and the invisible guy. And the man you called a ghost.”

“
That one’s more likely a hallucination.”

“
What does that mean? We both saw him.”

“
Nothing. I still don’t understand how or why you thought getting involved with all this old science research and documentation was a good idea.”

“
Diplomats, politicians, and military leaders like to talk trash, for lack of a better term. Most social events are really about bluster, tenuous allies, and hidden meanings.”

“
Men strive to impress you.”

“
Yes.” She wasn’t ashamed of using any of her God-given gifts. “They often said more than they should in front of me, thinking it would go over my head. Instead I followed the rumors.”

“
And you found documents about super soldiers.”

She nodded.
“I did. I met with a research scientist in Greece who wanted me to translate some old records for his program. Scientists are very secretive about these things and he couldn’t ask just anyone. The information wasn’t all that exciting, but it was one more step. In the past I’ve offered similar services for museum curators I’ve met along the way.”

“
Have you translated scientific documents for other researchers?”

“
No. The man sent me a gorgeous watch as a thank you gift through the embassy channels. But after that one experience, I claimed I was too busy when he asked for more assistance. What I learned scared me and I was afraid my translations would go to the wrong people or to an organization like the one that snared you.”

“
God forbid there are more organizations like this one.”

“
Amen,” she agreed. “After that I became more of a collector than a translator.”

“
To get the documents out of circulation?”

He knew her so very well.
“Yes.”

“
No wonder my boss wants you dead. You’re impeding the work.”

“
What does your boss look like?”

“
Why do you want to know?”

“
I kept running into the same man, an American, at different events and galas. It’s a small, esoteric community that gets off on old paper. We were never introduced, but I was on the phone with a curator one night and before the connection was broken, I overheard a terrible argument about access and ownership of papers from a long-dead scientist. The next day, the curator was found dead at his desk.”

“
Murdered?”

“
Not officially. It was ruled a heart attack. There,” she pointed. “There’s the place from the card, right there.”

“
You think this man you overheard killed the curator?” He slowed down, turning off the main road.

“
Isn’t that something he’d do?”

“
I’m not sure my boss would get his hands dirty.”

She shrugged.
“I recognized his voice. Smooth, controlled. Arrogant. And he overworks his accents when he speaks French. Does that sound like your boss?”