by Jodie Bailey
It was all a lie. Had that been the feeling her mother was searching for all of those years with all of those men? The feeling of being alive, of being her true self? Or had it been something completely different?
It didn’t matter. No matter what Sam Maldonado made her feel, there were too many reasons to keep him at arm’s length. She wouldn’t become her mother. She was nothing more than his assignment. Soon, he’d disappear to help the next witness and she’d vanish into a new place, a new name, a new identity.
The thought made her nauseous.
Then again, she was starving and that wasn’t helping her gut settle. She should have told Sam to hit a drive-through, but she hadn’t been hungry when he asked and he’d been focused on finding a hotel far enough away from the interstate to throw anyone behind them off their trail. Surely, they were safe here. Surely, no one would follow them this far.
Oh, the lies she told herself.
Amy flipped the bathroom light switch and stepped into her room. The hum of the monster air-conditioning units beneath her window pulsed in the room, the kind of white noise that would either lull her to sleep or keep her awake, straining to hear over it.
She paused by the closed door that connected her small room with Sam’s. No sound leaked through the door. Maybe he was getting some sleep. The door stood shut between them, but he’d insisted she keep her side unlocked in case she needed him.
What was Sam worried about? It wasn’t like someone could break into her room without a keycard, and she’d secured every latch. They were on the second floor. She was as safe as she could get.
And that fact still probably wouldn’t let her sleep.
The room glowed with the light from the bedside lamp, and on top of the bedspread lay a candy bar and a bottle of water. Amy whirled toward the door. Sam must have known she’d be starving and was doing the best he could to provide for her.
Sinking onto the edge of the bed, Amy ripped open the candy bar and ate two bites, staring at the swirls in the carpet’s pattern. Deputy Marshal Sam Maldonado was the strangest man she’d ever met, closed off and by the book one minute, then totally wide-open and acting as though he were her best friend the next. Kissing her one minute, then vanishing into his job the next. He was very good at what he did, although he didn’t seem to think so. There was a slight hesitation to his actions, almost as though he thought them through twice before he made the leap.
Something had happened to shake his confidence, something that had likely started in his childhood and been blown even farther into the stratosphere by his ex-wife’s behavior. He’d acted as though Amy ought to fault him for staying with the woman when she was running around on him, but Amy could understand. Her own childhood had been a fragmented mess. She could sympathize with his need for stability.
There was something more though, a thread of self-doubt that had to do with his job even more than his personal life. For some reason, Sam Maldonado believed he would never be good enough.
Sort of like her. She could thank her mother for that insecurity though. Neither Amy nor her sister had been enough to keep their mother home. Their love hadn’t measured up to what she needed.
Cracking open the water bottle, Amy washed down her meager meal, then propped herself up on the bed against the pillows, giving the pale beige wall a wry smile. Amaryllis and Genevieve. At least the years had given her enough distance so that she could smile about her name being a character in one of her mother’s princess fairy-tale fantasies.
Amy rolled onto her side, pulling her knees to her chest and tucking her chin as she curled into the fetal position. When their mother had left them alone as children, she and Eve had climbed into her bed together, pressing their backs to one another. It was a defense mechanism; she knew that now. They’d had each other’s backs, seeking comfort while facing whatever threat might come at them from the outside. They’d been so young, so scared, so brave. Eve had always seemed a little bit younger and Amy had been the one to take care of her, to comfort her when she was scared and to fend for them when they only had peanut butter and bread and crackers for survival.
Coffee was cheap though, and there were nights when the sisters had curled up with hot mugs, sitting on opposite ends of the couch, pretending they were all grown up and had oh-so-important things to discuss.
The memory clawed at her heart. They’d never had the chance to move their imaginings into reality. If Amy hadn’t taken the job at New Horizons... If she’d realized sooner what Grant Meyer was up to... If she’d known the kind of man Logan Cutter was before she introduced him to her sister...
Maybe they’d still be each other’s best friends and they’d still have each other’s backs. Maybe Eve never would have been hurt, never would have cut Amy out of her life. Maybe neither of them would have had to flee El Paso in order to save their own lives.
Drawing herself into a tighter ball, Amy shut her eyes and tried to block out the memories. What good were they when she could never have her sister back again?
She blamed Amy for her pain. They could never be sisters again, and the best thing for Amy to do was to stay out of Eve’s life forever.
Out of Jenna’s life forever. The pain in her heart seeped into her body until her joints ached. Amy didn’t even know her own sister’s name anymore.
She drifted on that horrible, crushing thought, halfway between wakefulness and sleep until a soul-splitting cry, like an animal in pain, roared into her room.
Sam.
Amy was on her feet, running for their adjoining door. She pulled her side open and shoved on his. It was locked.
The cry came again, lower this time, the sound of movement drifting in with it. Violent movement.
Amy pounded on the door, then shrank away, twisting her fingers together. Sam was in trouble and she was helpless to save him.
* * *
Sam bent at the waist, hands braced on his knees, the rough feel of blue jeans against his palms all wrong. He should be wearing his army combat uniform and sweating under the Afghan sun. There should be explosions, the metallic scent of blood and the smoky residue of gunfire. There should be screams besides his own, which still echoed in his ears.
It had to have been a nightmare, because the visions were all wrong. Instead of one of his teammates lying bloodied on the ground before him, the lifeless eyes that stared up at him in the vision had belonged to Devin Wallace. The two bloodiest days of his life had merged into one horrible, toxic blend to remind him of the man he never was and never could be.
He heaved in air and tried to remember when he’d fallen asleep, where he’d fallen asleep. Tried to rid himself of a nightmare that had invaded all five of his senses and burrowed into his soul. All too real. All too filled with memories he’d give everything to forget. Wherever he was, it was dark and cool. Light filtered under a door.
His heart drummed so loudly he could hear it.
“Sam!”
That wasn’t his heartbeat. Someone was pounding on a door. He straightened as the voice dragged him into the present. Amy. They were in adjoining hotel rooms in a small town between Toccoa, Georgia, and Asheville, North Carolina. As his eyes adjusted, the room came into focus. He was standing by the bed, fully clothed, dragged to his feet by the invasion of his mind.
He inhaled, let the breath settle and hoped his voice wouldn’t crack when he spoke. “Everything’s fine. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t. If he’d cried out loud enough to awaken her, then it wouldn’t take her long to figure out his secret. She was smart, intuitive to the point he was almost afraid to think around her for fear she’d somehow read his mind.
Even worse, if she’d heard him, it was likely someone else had, even though the hotel had appeared to be half empty when they arrived. What if someone came to check on them or, worse, called the police? There wasn’t time for that kind of red tape, and that kind of
attention drawn to them could end disastrously.
The pounding stopped. Maybe she’d taken his word for it and would get some rest. She probably needed it more than he did. He was used to being awake for long periods of time. He could handle it. Had been handling it for years.
Sinking to the edge of the bed, Sam snapped on the light and dragged his hands down his face, scrubbing against two days’ worth of stubble. He’d lain down for a minute to get some quick shut-eye while the shower ran in Amy’s room and he must have fallen deeper and faster than he’d intended.
A nap that had left him dead to the entire world was the worst thing he could have done. Anything could have happened while he was out. An invasion of his room. An invasion of hers. Instead of beating her fist against his door, she could be dead.
His head sank lower. He was going to be sick.
“Sam.” His name drifted through the door, lower now but with a firmness that brooked no argument. “Open the door.”
“Go to sleep.”
“Not until you—”
“I said no!”
The door was thin enough to let her soft gasp leak through. Regret instantly replaced the fear that still had his heart driving against his ribs. He hadn’t yelled, but it had probably sounded that way, the harshness of the words evident even if they were quiet. It was probably the same tone Amy had heard from the men her mother had paraded in front of her and her twin sister.
Sam doubled over, fighting nausea born out of his abrupt awakening coupled with the truth that he truly was a horrible person.
With a grim sigh, he pushed himself up and twisted the lock, then took a stance by the hallway door, staring at the fire evacuation route. He didn’t want to look her in the eye when she came in.
A slight squeak and a soft rustle, then the clean fragrance of hotel shampoo and soap drifted into the room. In some unexpected way, the generic scent washed over him with a warmth he’d never felt before. The process had started when he’d kissed her, the smoothing of the last ruffled pieces of his soul into place. Her presence loosened the bands around his chest so he could fill his lungs for the first time in years.
This was all too weird.
Amy didn’t make an effort to be near him, which was for the best with the memory of that kiss flooding his brain on top of everything else.
From the soft sounds behind him, she’d taken a seat on the chair in the corner of the room farthest from where he stood. “How often do you have nightmares?”
He froze. He swallowed so hard, Amy had to be able to hear it from the other side of the room. Every night.
He wouldn’t be telling her the truth though.
“Come on, Sam. We may have only known each other for a few months, but you have to admit they’ve been some pretty intense months. You watched me fall apart by the side of the road in the most humiliating way possible. You talked me out of a second and a third panic attack because you knew exactly what to do. You told me your story about...” Another soft gasp, this one sharper. “Wait. Was your story even true? About Lindsay? Or were you lying in order to distract me so we could keep moving?”
There it was. Amy had handed him a way out. He could tell her he’d made everything up to help her focus. He could tell her the nightmare was brought on by the pain of a bullet grazing his leg, even though it hadn’t broken skin and only throbbed a little bit. He could shut the door on every way he’d let her in, even pretending their kiss never happened. This twisted, emotional roller coaster ride could end here.
He’d read every possible exit route on the map—primary and alternate—before the answer slipped out. “Everything I told you is true.”
“And the nightmares?”
“More often than I’d like.” Dude. Seriously? Did his mouth no longer listen to the shut-up signals from his brain? This woman wasn’t his friend or his therapist or... Actually, he’d never talked to his friends about Lindsay or any other part of his past and he’d never had a therapist, so maybe that was the reason Amy was able to dig into his psyche and root out all of his secrets. She was no threat to him...as long as he didn’t kiss her again.
Or so he kept telling himself. It was starting to feel as though she’d hooked a finger around his heart and it would be painful to slip away. “Do you always barge into people’s lives this way?”
“Only if I think I can help.”
It fit with everything he knew about her, from the way she’d laid her life on the line in order to stop Grant Meyer from hurting anyone else, to the way she’d risked her neck once before and was willing to do so again in order to protect Layla. Amy Brady had a heart too big for her own good.
If she wasn’t careful, her compassion would get her killed.
When Sam finally turned, she was sitting in the chair in the corner with her chin resting on her knees, which she’d pulled to her chest. Her blond hair hung loose and damp to her shoulders, framing a face scrubbed free of makeup so that a handful of freckles scattered across her nose. Her eyes...
Her eyes. Free of the eyeliner or mascara or whatever she’d worn around them earlier, her green eyes seemed to grow larger, the focal point of her very being. He could drown in those eyes if he wanted to. Could leap in and never come up for air.
It wouldn’t be a bad way to go.
She shifted and looked away, toward the curtained balcony doors, and Sam jerked his head to the side. He’d been staring. After the way he’d turned his back on her after he’d kissed her, he had no right.
Sam cleared his throat. He was too tired for this. That was the problem. Between the months of watching to make sure she hadn’t blown her identity and the intensity of the day, his head was toast. His emotions were out of whack. If he thought the woman in front of him was anything other than a mission, then it was definitely time to hit the rack and aim for some rest. “You should go next door and get some sleep. I left you some snacks and we’ll try to get a real breakfast in the morning.”
“I saw. Thank you.” She didn’t move to obey his order. Instead, she picked at a loose string on the hem of her pants and tucked her knees closer to her chest. “What happens next?”
Sam couldn’t fault her for the question. He wasn’t even sure he knew, but he needed to project control to her. Puffing his cheeks, he exhaled, then walked across the room and sat on the end of the bed closest to her, abasing his better judgment. “Ideally, we’d simply head to Washington and have you reassigned, train you with a new name, a new backstory and—”
“I really can’t go back to Georgia?” The words were heavy, the tone resigned. “Ever?”
“You want to risk it?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know anything right now.” She dropped her forehead to her knees, the words muffled into her legs. “You said ideally. We’re nowhere near an ideal situation, are we?”
“No.”
“At least you’re honest.”
That was probably the only good thing he was. “I’m cut off from my team and anyone else in WITSEC until further notice. There’s no sense in risking a hacked email or a traced phone call. It’s kind of me and you against the world at the moment.” He stood, stretched his arms over his head, then laid a hand on the back of her head and let a couple of silky strands of her hair filter through his fingers before he caught himself and backed away. “Right now, we’re safe. If the threat to you is coming from the inside, then nobody can track us while we’re outside of the box. If it’s coming from the outside, they’ll have to rely on dumb luck to locate us. Get some sleep and let me worry about what comes next, okay?”
It was a long moment before Amy moved, unwrapping her arms and straightening her legs. She was so tiny, even when she wasn’t curled into a ball. Sam’s gut instinct screamed to wrap his arms around her and shield her from whatever came in their direction next, but that was definitely light years past his job description. Ins
tead, he walked to the door between their rooms and shoved her door fully open. She probably didn’t want to face a dark night alone any more than he did, but there was no other choice. “Go ahead. In the morning, we can—”
An ear-jolting buzz blared into the room. Light flashed from the small red box on the wall. Instinctively, Sam jumped toward Amy as she slapped her hands over her ears.
The fire alarm. Either the building was burning, or someone had found them and was trying to smoke them out into the open, to make them targets with no place to hide.
ELEVEN
Amy’s chest ached from her gasp at the horrible sound that had driven her hands to her ears. The pulsing buzz still found its way between her fingers and lodged in the center of her brain. Tears leaked from her eyes at the pain. Whoever had invented fire alarms had definitely known how to get attention. It figured one would go off tonight.
At least it wasn’t her initial fear that a bomb had gone off. Nothing had exploded through the doorway.
Yet.
By the time she’d adjusted to the sound and cleared her vision, Sam stood between her and the door, his focus on the door. His pistol was at the ready, and his mouth was a grim line.
The truth sank in and Amy lowered her hands, watching the man who’d been tasked to protect her as he morphed into a fierce defender. She could read his thoughts all over his face as her mind reeled. He didn’t believe the alarm was merely an alarm. “Sam?”
With his free hand, Sam aimed a finger at the corner near the bathroom and out of sight of the hall door. “Get over there. Stay low. Don’t move once you’re in position.”
Amy rushed across the room on shaking legs, her hip catching the side of the dresser. Pain shot down her leg. She pressed her back into the corner, wedged between the wall and the nightstand as she watched Sam. There was only one reason for her to be tucked away like this. He wanted her out of the line of fire if someone started shooting through the door. Of course, that didn’t leave him any protection, not where he was standing. He should be beside her, away from danger.