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“I was the first to get to the building where they held the hostage. The other guys were behind me. As I went in, someone detonated a bomb. The hostage and I were closest to it.”
“That’s dreadful!” she exclaimed, half not wanting to hear what had happened and half of her needing to know.
“Someone had tipped the guys off. If the bomb had blown seconds later, all of us would have been killed.”
“But why didn’t anyone know you were alive?”
“When the car bomb exploded, I was directly in its path. The others knew they had to run for it. Mike, Jonah and Boone probably would have looked for me, but they saw me take the blast. They had to run for it. From what I pieced together later, the news reports had listed five men killed in the explosion, one unidentified. So, they would have assumed I was dead.
“From what I learned later, when the local authorities found us,” Colin continued, “they thought I was dead, but then someone detected a heartbeat so they rushed me to a hospital.”
His attention returned to Isabella and he focused on her as if realizing her presence again. “I was told all that much later. I had amnesia and to this day do not remember one thing from the moment of explosion until long afterward. Long, long afterward.”
“Colin, I’m sorry,” she said, reaching across the table to squeeze his hand. Instantly his fingers closed over hers and he held her hand firmly, his gray eyes focusing intently on her. Electricity streaked from his touch over every cell in her body.
“You make me feel like I’m home even more than when I saw my family and really was at home.”
“I don’t know how that can be,” she answered, her pulse quickening. She had reached out in sympathetic gesture, but the instant his hand had closed over hers and he’d looked at her, the contact transformed into a fiery, physical awareness. She didn’t react this way to other men and she didn’t want such a response with a man who was danger personified. Besides, as she dimly recalled, Colin had a fiancée in his past.
He was not wearing a wedding ring, but she would not be surprised to hear that he was married by now.
“Why didn’t you let your family know you were alive?”
He dropped her hand. “It’s a long story,” he said in a tone so filled with bitterness she was sorry she had asked.
“So you got over the amnesia,” she prompted, wanting to hear the rest of his story and why her brother and his friends might be in danger.
“Somewhat,” he said, taking another bite of potato. “I remember most everything except the explosion and a couple of weeks afterward.”
“That was a long time ago. Why does it matter now?”
“The ringleader of the terrorists escaped the blast, but I’m sure he doesn’t want me to live—I’m the witness who can identify him if I can just remember what went down. My memory is gone. No one knows when it might fully return. If it does, I may also know enough to identify a double agent who was involved. Someone tipped the terrorists about our plan to rescue the hostage, who was a U.S. agent. There’s a good chance the spy was one of our own men and he wants me dead.”
“How do you know a double agent was involved?”
“Someone had that meeting set up to kill us and the hostage. If we had all gone in together as we’d originally planned, they would’ve succeeded. Someone arranged things a little too well—it had to be an inside job.”
She shivered. “That’s dreadful. Someone you worked with set all of you up?”
“Right. The CIA suspect they have a double agent high up in the ranks. Secrets are getting out that have hurt them. Men like us have been killed because their cover has been blown.”
“That’s dreadful, but if my brother and Mike and Jonah weren’t there with you and the hostage, why are they in danger?”
“For that, we need to go back to when I was injured. After the explosion, I was in a foreign hospital for over a year. It was a while before I knew who I was.”
“You were an American. Didn’t they try to contact someone about you?” she asked.
He stopped to take a long drink of beer, wiping his mouth and eating a bite of roast. After a moment he continued. “When I began to remember enough to know who I was, I contacted—” He stopped abruptly and looked away. A muscle worked in his jaw and she realized he still was emotionally entangled in the memories of his past.
She was uneasy, a chilling fear growing that even though he didn’t want to bring trouble to them, he had. But maybe, as he was trying to tell her, the trouble was already here and his news would help alert Boone, Jonah and Mike.
Colin was silent so long, she wondered if he had forgotten what he was saying. “You said you contacted—whom?” she prompted him. “The army?”
“No. Danielle, my fiancée. She was my first thought when I regained my memory. I thought if I could just reconnect with her, I’d be okay. But she had gotten married. The hostage exchange was to take place in one of those obscure Eastern European countries near Russia. I was brought into the hospital with no identification and no memory. Since I could speak fluent Russian and no authorities or military were looking for me, I was pretty unimportant. Those people had their own civil war going on and there was so much unrest and turmoil going on that I was hardly worth any interest at the time,” Colin said quietly between clenched teeth. He had stopped eating and was staring into space again. “After that I didn’t care then whether I lived or not. Nothing made sense. To most of the world, my family, my friends, the army, I was dead. So, as far as I was concerned, I was dead.”
“That’s terrible! Colin, your family was so hurt. They were at Mike’s wedding and they were still grieving.”
“I know and I regret their hurt. I was in and out of surgery, had to go to therapy, had setbacks. Then, because of the political situation, I was put into prison. I didn’t care and wanted to die.”
“Things went from bad to worse for you!” she exclaimed, knowing how tough all four men were and amazed that Colin had succumbed to grief. Then she realized how vulnerable he would have been with a memory loss and injuries and on medications and totally cut off from family and friends. “I’m sorry.”
“No need for you to be sorry. You had nothing to do with any of what happened. I finally managed to contact the military. They got me out of there and to a hospital on a U.S. base in Germany.”
“Why didn’t you contact your family at that time?”
“I hurt and didn’t care to live, and for a time, didn’t know whether or not I would survive. If I didn’t get well, I didn’t want my family to go through losing me twice. Maybe it was wrong, but my thinking was fuzzy. Half the time I was medicated too much to think clearly.”
“So what happened?”
“Once the military got into it, things changed. I got good medical care and had a lot of reconstructive surgery. Actually, they did a fair job on my face. They had to rebuild my cheekbones and my jaw and my nose.”
“They did a great job. You don’t have any visible scars on your face at all.” Isabella reached out and touched the tips of her fingers to his cheek. “Actually, you’re still a very good-looking guy,” she said lightly.
He focused on her to the extent that she wished she hadn’t admitted the last. That she hadn’t touched him.
“Thank you,” he replied. “I suspect you’re saying that because I’m Boone’s buddy and you’ve known me forever. But that’s all right.”
Isabella had been talking with him not quite an hour, yet she could see he had become bitter, cynical and hard. She was saddened by his words, because even in this brief time, she could tell that Colin was not the man she’d once known. She remembered that day at the fair. Boone had ridden the roller coaster with Vince while Colin had ridden with her. Colin had been a fun-loving, carefree, easygoing man who’d always laughed a lot and made the others with him laugh. Now he wouldn’t even smile.
“Go on, Colin. Finish your story,” she said, dropping her hand back to her lap and sipping her tea.
“The military wanted me to keep my survival quiet, even from my family. Special Forces started me working again on ferreting out the CIA double agent. I was flown to Langley and looked at pictures of everyone in the agency, studied their whereabouts at the time of the explosion, talked to psychiatrists. Doctors did all sorts of things to trigger my memory. Most of it gradually returned. Everything in my life except the explosion and about a month afterward. To this day I don’t remember the blast. When, and if, my memory does return, it might not help. On the other hand, I may have seen something that would help identify the spy.”
“So where do Boone, Mike and Jonah fit into this?”
Colin finished eating and pushed back his chair. She stood to remove his plate and clear the table.
“Sit down, Isabella. I’ll help in a minute.”
She sat again. “Go ahead with your story.”
“Not long ago, I was in Virginia. Someone tried to run me down. They came close enough to put me back into the hospital with bruises. Someone was trying to kill me, which meant whoever the double agent in the agency was, knew about me. That knowledge narrowed the possibilities. He knew I was still alive. We assume he was bound to know that my best buddies were Mike, Boone and Jonah.”
“So they think you might have let your friends know what you knew.”
“Possibly. They obviously don’t know enough to act on their knowledge or they would have already. As long as no one knew I was alive—including my family and friends—then they were safe. But now someone knows Mike, Boone and Jonah might have information that will help me trigger my memory. It’s a long shot, but not out of the question. And the person involved is desperate. To try to run me down when I was with an agent is the act of someone on the edge, determined to get rid of me. I was fine being dead, if it meant everyone else was safe. But now someone knows. And I’ve got to see if I can remember what happened before my family is put in danger.”
“So that’s why you’re here,” she said, thinking about the danger the men could be in. As well as their families just for being with them.
“I’m sorry if I’ve frightened you. You may want to pack and get out of your brother’s guest house for a time,” Colin said.
Isabella shook her head. “Don’t be silly, I’m not any more afraid than Boone will be. If there’s danger, I’ll be careful.”
“The men may not be in danger, but we don’t know. I want to warn them in case they are.”
“What about your family?”
“I’ve contacted my family twice since then. The first time was right after Mike’s wedding. But they were never involved in my work and seeing them didn’t help my memory lapse. I was with them only briefly.”
“They have to be overjoyed you’re alive.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to bring danger down on them needlessly. The last time I saw them, I slipped in and out the way I hoped to do here. I’m hoping my parents are in less danger because they weren’t part of my military life. But I can’t risk staying with them, risking my family. I’ve been away from home a long time. In my adult life, I’ve been with Boone, Mike and Jonah more than with my parents and being with them may trigger that last bit of lost memory.”
“I hope for your sake, seeing your friends does jog your memory.”
“The person after me is desperate. Agents have been killed because of this spy. I want to catch him.”
Once again a chill slithered down her middle. “I guess you need to see my brother and the others. I think I can safely say they’re in for a shock.”
“Thanks for letting me sleep here tonight,” Colin said.
She merely nodded, thinking about the gaps in his story. “It’s been five years. That’s a long time.”
“Little things trigger bits of memory. If I can recall what happened in that house and who I saw, I might be able to end this whole thing and stop running. Also, my enemies may suspect these guys here know more than they actually do.”
“So you avoid phones, a paper trail, all that stuff.”
“Every bit of ‘that stuff,”’ he agreed.
“Let me pick up a little,” she said, rising and gathering up dishes. “If you want, we can go sit in the other room to talk.”
“Sure. It’s good to see you again, Isabella,” he replied, standing and gathering the rest of the dishes to help her. “In fact, it was downright agreeable after the first ten minutes.”
“Well, what were you expecting when you broke into a house?”
“I expected to find Mike and to talk to him and leave. But then, life is always full of unexpected twists and turns.”
They cleaned together, restoring order to the kitchen, and then Isabella motioned toward a door. “Let’s sit in the family room.”
When he walked beside her, she was conscious of how tall he was. “So where do you go from here?”
“You don’t want to know. It’s better if no one knows.”
“Do you trust anyone?” she asked, wondering about his solitary life. He was ruggedly appealing with dark, brooding, craggy looks. What was it about him, she wondered, that attracted her? When they looked at each other or barely touched, sparks all but danced in the air. She couldn’t understand the unwanted, volatile chemistry between them. He was not the man to take home to the family.
Not in the next hundred years. He was solitary, dangerous, in trouble, cynical, brooding, hurt. Everything undesirable, yet when he had held her close in his arms to try to stop her attack, she had felt an electrifying charge that she couldn’t recall experiencing with a man before.
Now, as she strolled beside him, she tried to focus on what he was saying to her.
“I trust Mike, Boone and Jonah. For their own sakes, there are things I won’t tell them, because they’re better off not knowing.”
“Do the doctors ever think your memory will fully return?”
“They don’t know. But they didn’t know about some things that have already happened,” he said.
She gazed at his full lower lip, the slightly full upper lip, a sensuous mouth. Unbidden images of his mouth on hers had her pulse beating faster. She tried to stop unwanted thoughts and to concentrate on their conversation.
As she switched on a light in the family room, he paused to look at the room. Trying to see it through his eyes, she also glanced around at the cozy room with its leather furniture and huge fireplace, thick, patterned area rug and mahogany furniture.
“Mike’s mansion is elegant,” Colin said. “I’m pleased for him. I hope he’s happy.”
“He and Savannah seem blissful, and they love little Jessie.”
“I’m glad for him and the life he’s found here.” Colin sat in a winged chair and Isabella sat in a corner of the brown sofa, tucking her legs beneath her. When he stretched out his long legs, her gaze drifted down the length of him and then up again to find him watching her.
While a blush heated her cheeks, she was at a loss for conversation.
“Bring me up to date about my friends, Isabella,” Colin said. “I have only sketchy information.”
“Okay, Mike has a security business, and Savannah still practices law although she’s home a lot with Jessie. Jonah inherited a cattle ranch and he and Kate live there,” Isabella replied, but her thoughts were more on Colin.
“I heard Jonah has a son.”
“That’s right, Henry. And another baby on the way.”
“So he and Kate got back together. Miracles never cease. I suppose the bone of contention between them is gone since he’s out of the service. What about your brother?”
“Boone just married Erin, the manager of the horse ranch that he inherited.”
“All the guys are married,” Colin said, once more bitterness clearly filled his voice. “And you’re not. So what do you do, little sis?”
“I’m a photographer. I have a shop in Stallion Pass.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“I love it. As a matter of fact, why don’t you let me photograph you, Colin. You have an interesting face.”
He shook his head. “If I didn’t know you were Isabella, I’d be highly suspect of your request.”
“You have an interesting face,” she protested.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever been told that. I’m sorry, but no, I don’t let anyone take pictures of me. Too dangerous to have them around. I don’t want anyone who’s looking for me to pick up my trail.”
“What if I take a few pictures of you and keep them to myself until this is over?”
He locked his hands behind his head. “It may not be over for years.”
“Then I’ll keep your pictures hidden. Let me take them. You’ll be a grand subject.”
