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A couple of things clicked into place. Her mind raced. “And back in Hopeville when we met?”
He tossed her a coat, then once she’d put it on, grabbed her by the wrist, heading out to the garage. “Yes.”
Of course. He’d been new to town. But then again, she’d been new, too. They had bonded over being outsiders who were trying to get their small side-by-side shops going, trying to fit in.
“Is Reid Graham your real name?”
“Yes. I was hoping to find a way into the cell through an old army acquaintance who knew me back then. He’d gone the wrong way after he quit the army. He has a cousin on the fringes of the cell. My record was doctored to make it look like I quit, too, shortly after him. I ran into him ‘accidentally’ and was trying to get into his confidence. Anyway, I had to use my real name.”
“Who was the blonde at the restaurant?”
“An asset. She had information I needed.”
A disposable asset, apparently. Obviously, his business involved using people and casting them aside if necessary. Then she thought of something else, and her throat constricted.
“Was seducing me part of your cover?”
“You came to me.” His voice was low, tightly controlled. “But regardless—” He paused while he let his car quietly roll out of the garage. He was scanning their surroundings. “What I allowed to happen…plain bad judgment on my part.”
Tears burned the back of her eyes as they reached the street and he stepped on the gas. She looked away from him, blinking rapidly, staring out the side window at the houses that zoomed by.
“I have a situation here.” He was talking on his phone again. “Personal. I need a safe house somewhere near Hopeville, P.A.” He listened. “Not much. I have the tag numbers of the SUV the shooters drove.” He rattled that off, then looked at her. “What’s your husband’s name?”
Husband? Oh, Allen. “Allen Birmingham.”
“Anybody by the name of Allen Birmingham at the restaurant?” His face darkened as he listened to the response. “I figured,” he said before ending the call.
She gripped the seat belt. “What? What happened to Allen?”
“The cops talked to him when they showed up. They asked him to wait in the manager’s office because they needed to talk to him again about your kidnapping, after they secured the scene and got what they could from the rest of the witnesses.” He looked at her, regret in his cinnamon eyes. “By the time they came back to him, he’d disappeared. Hey.” He took her hand, his fingers warm and strong around hers. “I’m sorry.”
“You think those men took him?” She was beginning to feel light-headed. “They wouldn’t hurt him, would they?”
He didn’t say anything, just squeezed her hand, the car flying over the road. It was getting late, so that traffic was beginning to thin, not much standing in their way.
She pulled away to wrap her arms around herself. “He isn’t my husband,” she said at last, dazed.
“Boyfriend? I guess he’s the father of your boys?”
She held Reid’s somber gaze when he glanced over. Bit her lip. Sooner or later… It wasn’t as if he wanted anything to do with them anyway. God, she’d been dreaming about this moment, wishing for this miracle for so long. And now that her most impossible dream had come true, nothing was as it should have been. It broke her heart.
She ignored the pain and filled her lungs. “No. You are,” she told him.
Chapter Three
He almost drove into oncoming traffic. Reid eased off the gas and straightened the steering wheel, trying to get his racing mind under control. “This would not be the best time to mess with me.”
She said nothing.
“How is that possible?” Don’t be an idiot, he thought as soon as the words were out of his mouth, just as she said the exact same thing out loud.
He swallowed back a snappy response. Okay, so, yes, they’d done the necessary deed. But still, a pregnancy wasn’t possible. But if he wasn’t the father, then who was? Why wasn’t he told that she was pregnant? He had asked for an update on her after he’d been evacuated from Hopeville. Someone had gone out, checked on her and reported back that she was fine.
Of course, her pregnancy might not have been showing at the time. The report had focused on the fact that her butcher shop had burned, too, but she’d received enough insurance money to rebuild. Not that he hadn’t felt guilty anyway.
He stole a look at her from the corner of his eye and decided to play along, figure out what her game was. “Which one?” She’d said Zak and Nate.
“Both. They’re twins.”
He gave a strangled cough as saliva went down the wrong way. He had to give it to her, when she did some thing, she really went to town with it. He loosened his hands on the steering wheel, which he’d been gripping so hard, his knuckles were beginning to ache.
“How did the fire start?” she asked.
And his muscles tightened again. “I can’t talk about that.”
Her voice deepened with anger. “I think you owe me an explanation.”
Words she stole right out of his mouth. He waited a couple of seconds while he arranged his thoughts. He could give her the generalities. She did deserve something. “I was watching someone I suspected was a member of a group we had an interest in.”
“We?”
He didn’t respond.
“Law enforcement? Some government agency?”
“Something along those lines. Anyway, there was a leak somewhere. They figured out who I was. They came after me.”
She was watching him, wide-eyed. “But then whose body was that in the ashes?”
Right. The body she had buried. An image rose in his mind—her standing by a headstone carved with his name. No reason he should feel bad about that—he’d just been doing his job—but he felt like a jerk anyway. “I took one of them out before they got to me.”
That revelation silenced her for only a second. “How did you get out?”
“I wasn’t as dead as they thought when they set the place on fire. I crawled off, called for help. The decision was made that it’d be best if I wasn’t officially resurrected.”
“You could have told me.” Her voice was full of accusation.
“I was under orders not to. And the less you knew the safer you were.” The safer I was.
If they’d spent any more time together, if he’d gone back… She would have become a complication. She would have made him vulnerable. He couldn’t afford that. No weaknesses were allowed in his line of work. Soft spots had a way of turning deadly. He’d had to cut her off before she could come to mean too much to him.
She took a few seconds to digest his words. “Who were you watching?” she asked after a while.
He considered how much he could tell her. He was skating dangerously close to lines he should not cross. “Remember the gun shop across the strip mall?”
“Jimmy Sparks? Weird guy with the shaved head and the red goatee?”
He nodded.
“He closed shop and moved to Nevada right after the fire.”
“Not exactly. He realized we were onto him and took off. Location unknown.” Along with his buddies. That whole operation had ended as a total bust, not one of his finest moments. It had taken two years of hard work to get this close again. And not a moment too soon. The cell was getting ready to pull off something major, after having practiced on single victims.
Reid hoped Jimmy would surface before it was all over. The two of them had a score to settle.
“Did he…kill anyone?” she asked, white-faced. “Why were you watching him?”
“He, um, made stuff.” That was as much information as he was willing to divulge for now.
But she was quick on the uptake. “Oh. With his resources…” Her violet eyes went wide. She shook her head, muttering, “The butcher, the baker and the bomb maker,” under her breath.
He couldn’t help a pained grin. “A nursery rhyme for the twenty-first century, huh?”
She shook her head, looking dazed. “In Hopeville? It doesn’t seem real.”
Welcome to my world, he thought, but didn’t say it. Truth was he didn’t want her in his world. He wanted her as far from his world as could be arranged. The second she was bundled up with her kids in a safe house somewhere, he was putting as much distance between them as possible.
Now she knew he was alive. She could stop going to the damn cemetery. She had closure, or whatever she thought she needed. Best thing for her was to forget him.
THE REST OF THE TWO-HOUR drive from New York to Hopeville was spent mostly in silence, questions asked now and then and sparingly answered, both of them just trying to deal.
Reid called in once they were on her street. “I’m here. We’re going in to get the kids. I want an invisible escort back to the highway, then I’m good. What did you find for me?” He memorized the address he was given. “Thanks.”
He pulled into the driveway. “Stay.” He got out, looked around, made two unmarked cop cars down the street. He nodded toward them and walked around to open the door for Lara. “Stick close to me. Everything looks quiet in there,” he added, since she was almost vibrating with nervous energy.
She nodded and started forward, the first step a little shaky.
He cut in front of her, one hand on the gun in the back of his waistband. The door wasn’t even locked. Small-town America. The kind of safe, idyllic life that was quickly disappearing, no matter how hard he and others like him fought to keep it going.
“I’m back,” she called out from behind him, once he’d shoved the door open.
An elderly lady appeared from the kitchen, wearing pink sweatpants with a sweatshirt that had a kitten on the front, not someone he remembered from his brief stint in town. The woman didn’t seem to recognize him either, which was all for the best. She gave him the once-over with a glint of disapproval in her squinty eyes. “I thought you were going with Allen?”
“Long story.” Lara was hustling off toward the back of the house. She called over her shoulder, “Ran into an old friend.”
“Hi,” Reid said politely, cataloging as much of the house as he could see. While he’d known where Lara lived, he’d never been inside her home.
The place was small but tidy, toys neatly stacked in plastic bins. An old-fashioned model airplane hung from the ceiling. The sorriest-looking Christmas tree he’d ever seen stood in the corner, decorated with homemade ornaments, most of them color cutouts of a weird guy in a cape. The sign on his chest said Henry Hero. Probably the kids’ favorite cartoon character.
He noted the furniture that was well worn, the carpet that had seen better days. When he’d heard that she’d gotten the insurance money, he’d figured she would be set. But now, knowing that she had to raise two small children alone, knowing that she’d paid for part of his funeral, he wondered, for the first time, whether things were tight for her. He didn’t like the pang of guilt that came with that thought. In fact, he resented it.
She had come to him. But while that was true, there was also another truth in there somewhere. He could have, should have, sent her away. Strings of guilt twisted together with strings of lust, forming a rope that could bind him if he wasn’t careful. He shook that rope off. He was not supposed to have any feelings, of any sort, where Lara Jordan was concerned.
“Well, I’ll be going then.” The babysitter nodded at him with a world of reservations, then called after Lara, “I’ll take my payment in pork chops for Denis, as usual. I’ll stop by the shop to see you. Allen likes chops, too. Did he tell you that? All alone in that big house of his. The man must be starved for a good, home-cooked meal.”
“Okay,” came from the back in a distracted tone. “Um, I might not be in the shop for a few days. I’m thinking about driving down to Florida to see my uncle.”
“Bring back some sunshine if you go.”
Reid stood by the window and looked after the old woman as she walked home down the street, her golden sneakers glittering. She glanced back from the corner to scowl at his SUV. Other than the waiting cops and the occasional passing car, nobody was out there.
Ten minutes didn’t pass before Lara appeared, a car seat in each hand, two identical bundles inside. Between the blankets and the fuzzy hats, he didn’t see much of the little sleeping faces. “Let me help.”
She’d changed into jeans and a coat of her own, but had left on the Kevlar. She held out a car seat for him.
“I’ll take the bag.”
She set the baby on the couch so he could slide the enormous bag off her shoulder, and he noticed how tightly her full lips were pressed together, the worried shadows in her eyes.
“It’s almost over. Stay behind me on the way out.” He moved toward the door, looked out, stepped out, then signaled for her to follow.
He opened the back door of his car for her, let her secure the baby seats while he stashed her bag in the trunk. She was visibly shaken, but kept it together, efficient with the baby stuff. Then they were all in at last, and he got on the road, watching in the rearview mirror as the unmarked police cars followed them. In ten minutes, he was back on the highway and their escort fell back. In half an hour, he was crossing the state border to New York. The safe house, a small ranch home, wasn’t far from there.
He found the key in the back, taped under the roof of the gazebo, as promised, and entered first, looked around and then motioned for her to follow. Two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, bathroom. Not much, but enough until he figured out what to do with her long term.
He had enough favors owed to him that he could put her into witness protection. And never see her again. A perfect solution for all involved. And yet, the thought didn’t sit as well with him as it should have, especially considering that for some reason she was trying to con him. Because, despite her two little bundles of joy, which she was unwrapping in one of the bedrooms at the moment, the truth was, he couldn’t have children. He’d known that for a fact since he’d been nineteen.
The question was, what did she have to gain by lying to him?
THE BOYS HAD WOKEN UP for a little while, but she’d been able to settle them back to sleep. They were good sleepers, the both of them, thank God. Otherwise, she didn’t know how she could have managed as a single mother. She looked at their sweet baby faces. They were the most important things to her in the world. She would do anything to give them a happy, normal life, to keep them safe.
There was a time when she’d wanted to be wild and free. She’d been that, for a single night. Then the man she’d been infatuated with had died, her business had burned down and she’d become a single mother of twins, struggling to survive. She’d learned her lesson. She was done with adventure. All she wanted was an average, safe life. There was great comfort to be found in mediocrity.
She shored up the edge of the bed with pillows so the babies wouldn’t roll off, then walked out, leaving the door slightly ajar.
Reid was sitting on the couch, legs apart, head back. Only one small light in the corner of the room was on, leaving his face shadowed and mysterious. He wore biker boots and faded jeans with an unbuttoned black shirt over his black T-shirt. She had a sudden flashback to the day she’d first seen him, appearing out of nowhere in the door of her shop, leaning against the frame and watching her, looking at her like no man ever had, before or since.
She’d been so stunned by the sight of him that she’d dropped ground pork into the ground beef bin. She should have turned tail right then and run for the hills. Except, then she wouldn’t have Zak and Nate, and she couldn’t regret them, not ever, not for a second.
“Someone will bring us food.” Reid stayed sprawled on the couch. “If you give me a list of what you need for your boys, I’ll call it in.”
“Our boys,” she corrected.
He looked up at her with his cinnamon eyes narrowed, his thick lashes shading them. He had a chiseled face and lips that could… Lips that said he’d been born to be wild. “I don’t think so.”
Anger spread through her veins. “You think I’m lying about this?”
“I know you are. Look, I was going to give it some time and figure out why you’re doing it, but I’m tired. There’s a lot going on right now. I’ll be leaving in a little while, handing you over to someone else. So let’s cut through the games, and you tell me what you’re up to.”
“We slept together.” She still thought about that night nearly every day. The possibility that he might have forgotten was humiliating.
But he said, “Believe me, I remember that part,” his voice dropping a notch.
Heat crept into her face.
“But I’m telling you, honey, I can’t have kids.”
“Well, I’m telling you that you can, and you have,” she snapped.
