by J. Kenner
That theory is negated seconds later when the Beemer careens over the barbed wire, makes a wild turn onto the road, and roars toward us. And to make matters worse, someone leans out of the passenger side and fires, shattering our back window.
Winston and I both duck. “Any brilliant ideas?” I ask.
“Lose them.”
“Great. Glad you thought of that.”
I don’t take my eyes off the road to look at him, but I’m positive he’s sending me a sarcastic look. “Just thinking out loud.”
“No. I appreciate it. Anything you can think of to get us out of here works for me.”
“And you? Any ideas?”
“Other than just driving like a bat out of hell? Not really.”
Even as I say the words, though, I see a flatbed loaded with baled hay coming toward us from the opposite direction.
“This will work.”
“Whoa,” Winston says. “What the hell are you thinking?”
“Quiet. I need to concentrate.”
He makes a low noise in his throat, but to his credit, says nothing. He does, however, brace himself with the dashboard and door handle. Smart man.
“Just warn me when you—”
His words are cut off as I make a hard U-turn in front of the flatbed, so close the driver has to slam on the brakes, and we come within mere inches of missing it as I skid off the road, then frantically try to accelerate on the soft shoulder to get ahead of the now-slow truck.
By some miracle, I manage that, and now I aim the Toyota straight ahead, so that we’ll pass the BMW heading west while we go east.
As I’d hoped, the BMW driver doesn’t fire—not with witnesses. And it also can’t turn around to follow us, because it’s now even with the truck, and has no clearance for a U-turn until it’s past the flatbed.
It’s not a lot of time, but we can make it work, and once again, I put the Toyota to the test, flooring it and making the first turn I see, then another and another until we’re lost in a web of ranch roads, county roads, and private drives.
Finally, I pull over behind a whitewashed Baptist church. The parking lot is empty, and as soon as the engine dies, I lean back in the seat, breathing hard.
My heart is still pounding when I feel his hand take mine. I look over to find him grinning like a fiend. “What?”
“That was some damned impressive driving. I thought we were going to buy it in front of that truck.”
“I haven’t had to do something like that in a very long time.”
We grin at each other, both breathing hard, and right then, all I want to do is kiss him. I don’t—crazed killers in a BMW could turn up at any moment. But I definitely bank the thought as a future plan.
I start the car, put it in gear, and pull out onto the road. “Where to?”
“Back toward Austin for now,” he says. “We need to find a place to hole up, and then figure out if there’s a way to break into that damn laptop without the biometrics.”
“Actually,” I say, “we need to pool our resources and see if either of us has a contact who can manufacture fake biometrics. Or a fingerprint, anyway.”
For a moment, he just stares at me. “Wallet, can, magazine. You were gathering fingerprints.”
I nod, pleased with myself for thinking of it, and with him for being up to speed.
“Excellent. You drive. I’ll call Noah.”
“Noah?”
“Tech genius. He’s how I listened in on your conversation with Bartlett.”
“You trust him?”
“I do. But, full disclosure. He’s done some work with the SOC.”
I draw in a breath, knowing that a smarter agent would say no. Because there is no way to guarantee this guy is safe. But maybe I’m not as smart as I used to be, because I nod and tell Winston that if he trusts Noah to keep it to himself, then I’m okay with him calling.
Besides, it’s not as if we have other options.
“Fast food,” I say.
“What?”
“We’ll meet him in a parking lot,” I clarify. “Whoever’s looking for us won’t expect to find us there, and if they do find us, we’ll be close enough to a highway or at least a major road to make serious tracks. Plus, I’m hungry.”
“Good plan.”
“And I think you should ask Noah to bring a car for us. He can either call an Uber to get back or he could take this car. I think he’d be better off with the ride share, though.”
“Agreed.”
Soon enough, Winston maps the way to a nearby McDonald’s, and we’re heading that direction. He texts Noah as well, who replies that he’ll meet us there soon. Since we’re out in the country, and he’s still in the city, we beat him to the restaurant. We order from the drive through, then head to the back of the parking lot where we wait, me fidgety in my seat.
“Have you noticed that neither Seagrave nor Collins has called to check in with us?” I ask.
“What are you saying?”
I shrug. “I’m not sure, really. Just that we haven’t updated either of them after Bartlett’s supposed no-show. Shouldn’t each of them be wondering if they have an agent down?”
He studies my face, then reaches for one of my French fries since he’s already finished his order. After a moment, he nods. “They both trust us to do the job, so it could be that they’re leaving us alone to do it. It could also be that they know that we’re onto them. Whichever one of them is bad.” He meets my eyes. “Or both of them, working together.”
“That’s a horrible thought,” I say. Beside me, he nods. Then he reaches across the car and holds my hand. That simple touch sends shocks running through my body, and I wish we were alone in a room, naked and wild and able to burn off some of this frantic fear and energy.
“You’re not alone,” Winston says, and for a moment I think he’s talking about my sexual fantasies. “We’re in this together.”
“Right.” I hope I’m not blushing. I’m debating the wisdom of kissing him when his phone dings, signaling that Noah has entered the parking lot.
At Winston’s nod, I flash the lights. He’s brought us a Land Rover, and he pulls into the space beside us, then moves into the Toyota’s back seat, frowning at the scattered glass.
“Just a day in the life,” Winston says, and we all laugh.
After the introductions and the summary of what our problem is, Noah nods reassuringly. “Assuming I can get good fingerprints, I should be able to get access. If not, I can try to hack the laptop.”
“No,” I say firmly. I meet Winston’s eyes, and he clears his throat.
“Sorry. We weren’t clear. You’re not getting the laptop at all.”
“It’s not that we don’t trust you,” I say, “although to be honest, I don’t even know you. It’s just that if anything happens to the information on that laptop, we’re really and truly screwed. It stays with us.”
Winston hesitates, then nods. “If it turns out that you need to search the laptop for a clean print, we’ll make more arrangements. But see if you can manage from what we’ve given you.”
Noah nods, looking into the Whataburger bag. “I should be able to tell if I can pull an acceptable print within the next few hours. If you don’t hear from me, then everything’s good.”
“And after that, how long will it take you to make a finger we can use?”
“Minimum of two days.”
“That long?”
He chuckles. “This isn’t an episode of the latest spy drama. I can’t scan a print into the computer and have it spit out a latex thumb that will give you access. I can do this—maybe—but it’s going to take some time.”
I nod.
“And without the laptop I can’t even test it, so we may have to repeat the process all over again after the first time.”
Winston looks at me, and I shake my head again. I want this over. I want to know if the man I trusted my entire life adult life is dirty. And in order to know that for certain, I can’t ris
k whatever information is on that computer. And that means it stays with us.
“Then I guess we’ll have to start over if it comes to that,” Winston says.
Noah nods. “Fair enough. Here are the keys to the Land Rover,” he says, passing them to Winston. “Where can I reach you? This number?”
Winston shakes his head. “No. We’re going to ditch these cell phones and get new ones. Burners.” I look at him, because that’s not something we’ve discussed yet, but I agree, and nod.
“All right then, you contact me. Do you have a safe location where you can wait until the print is ready?”
“No,” I start to say, but Winston speaks over me.
“Yes,” he says. “We’ve got somewhere to go.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Wait,” I say as he maneuvers the Land Rover through downtown Llano, Texas. Which, to be fair, consists of a courthouse on the square and the few retail shops and restaurants that surround it. And, of course, The Marquis, the movie theater that his parents own.
“Wait? For what?”
It’s a fair question. Traffic this afternoon consists of maybe five cars. It’s a darling town, but a sleepy one.
“Just pull over a second,” I say when he looks at me in question.
To his credit, he doesn’t argue, just pulls into a parking space in front of an ice cream store. “I adore your parents, really I do. And I want to see them again, even though it’s going to be really weird. But are you sure this is a good idea? I mean aren’t we putting them in danger? Surely, Seagrave will look for you there.”
“It’s a good point, but no. Exactly because he knows me well.”
I lift my hands in a sign of general confusion.
“He knows that I’d never in a million years put my parents in danger. Which means he knows I would never hide out there.”
I frown, turning that over in my head. And I have to admit, it’s deviously clever. “And you’re certain.”
“Of course I am. Do you think I’d come here if I wasn’t?”
“All right. I’ll concede that Seagrave won’t look here. But what about somebody else? What if it’s Collins? He or Hawthorne search for Winston Starr, track down your family, and there you go.”
He clears his throat, the tips of his ears turning slightly red.
I lift a brow. “Winston?”
“Yeah, well, there’s something else I need to tell you.”
I shift in the seat to look more directly at him. “All right. You have my attention.”
“My last name isn’t really Starr.”
“Oh.” That one genuinely surprises me. Especially since I have a marriage certificate with that name on it. “What is it?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’m a good listener and reasonably clever. Try me.”
He grimaces, but complies. “I applied to be an FBI agent right out of college. I was actually at Quantico when I got recruited into the SOC. And, I don’t know. Maybe I’d seen too many movies, but when they described the kinds of missions I could expect, I started to worry. Not about me, but about my family.”
“Good God,” I say. “What kind of insane recruitment films do they show over at the SOC?”
“It was all my imagination, but it was vivid. I had visions of me hanging by my toenails, finally managing to get free only to find out that my parents were in a cage in the basement, and the only way I could save them was if I shared state secrets.”
I smirk, genuinely amused. But I also understand. “So you changed your name?”
“That was one of my prerequisites to agreeing to sign on with the SOC,” he says. “I told the recruiting officer that I wanted to make sure my parents wouldn’t get drawn in if I was tortured. I think he was just amused enough to agree to my demand.”
I nod, fascinated.
“He helped me set up an essentially unbreakable alias. My brother had always teased me calling me too noble for my own good, and so I started going by the last name of Noble.”
“I thought your middle name was Noble.”
He shrugs. “I took on Starr for the Hades mission. When we got married, I wanted you to at least have heard the name I’d chosen for myself, so I told you it was my middle name. And now—well, now I mostly go by Starr, anyway. I wanted to keep it after … well, just after.”
“After me,” I say softly.
He nods, and I feel that little twinge in my heart.
“On paper, I’m Winston Noble. But my friends know me as Starr.”
“Sounds confusing.”
He smiles. “It’s really not.”
“Well, it explains a lot. After you left Orange County I couldn’t find you anymore.”
“You looked for me?”
“I did.”
Our eyes meet and hold for a moment until I glance away. I clear my throat. “But what’s your actual birth last name?”
“Kellogg,” he says.
“I like it. It’s a nice strong name. But I like Noble and Starr better.” I frown as something else occurs to me. “What about your parents. Do they know about the name?”
He shrugs. “I just played it up to paranoia in law enforcement. They watch a lot of movies. Wasn’t hard to make the case that the point of my alias was to protect my family from bad guys.” He glances at me. “To be honest, I think my dad suspects my law enforcement career goes beyond the Sheriff’s Department. But he’s cool enough not to have ever asked.”
I nod thoughtfully, thinking about what it must be like to grow up in a family of people who love you and respect your choices.
His hand moves to put the car back into gear, but I reach out, stopping him. “Hang on a second,” I say. “If your name isn’t Starr, then were we even married?”
“Yes,” he says firmly. “That was the first thing I looked into before I asked you, actually. I wanted to make sure it was real. Turns out a marriage under a fake name is absolutely legitimate, although I probably should have fined myself for lying on a marriage license application. Apparently that’s a misdemeanor.”
I burst out laughing. “Well, I’m glad it wasn’t a felony, I would have hated to have to bail you out for that.”
He reaches over and squeezes my hand. “I know you don’t think it was real. That our secrets somehow erase what we felt.”
I press my lips together and look down at my lap, saying nothing.
“But if you could have felt the pain that swallowed me after seeing that burned out shell of a car and believing you were dead…”
He trails off, his voice breaking. “Well,” he continues after a moment, “you’d know that not only did I really love you, but that it was as real a marriage as ever was.”
“And you still feel that way? Even knowing the truth?”
He meets my eyes. “That our marriage was real? Yes. That your death broke me into pieces? Absolutely. I loved you, Linda. Christ, I loved you so much.”
My mouth is dry and I swallow so that I can speak past the lump in my throat. “I’m not saying that our emotions weren’t real. All I’m saying is that nothing else was.”
“Well, maybe you’re right and maybe you’re not. I only know what I felt.”
Felt.
The word hangs there, past tense. Not feels. Not now.
It shouldn’t bother me—especially since I’m the one who’s said that everything we had in the past was built on shadows. But it does. It bothers me more than I want it to.
I sit up straighter, shaking off the emotion. “We should go,” I say. “Your parents will think we got lost.”
“They’re going to love seeing you again.”
“Well, about that, the feeling is completely mutual.”
“Linda!” Miriam Kellogg pulls me into her arms and hugs me tight. Just when I think my ribs are about to break, she pushes back, then looks me up and down. “You look fine. Does it hurt? Are you okay?”
“Mom,” Winston says from behind me. “She’s fine physically, unless you b
roke her with that hug. It was her memory that was broken.”
“And I have it back,” I say with extra cheer to hide the guilt of our lie. “I’m all better now.”
She makes a clucking noise. “I can’t believe it. Amnesia. I thought things like that only happened in the movies.”
“Everything that happens in the movies probably happened in real life somewhere,” a deeper voice says from behind me. I turn to find myself swept up in a giant bear hug from Dale, Winston’s father. Like his wife, he ends the hug by pushing me back, his hands on my shoulders as he looks me up and down. “My God, girl, you are a sight for sore eyes. We’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too,” I grin. “Or, I have since I remembered you.” I shoot a sideways glance at Winston, wondering if maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.
He takes my hand. “We’re glad to be here,” he says. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen either of you.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” Miriam says. “I’m so sorry that Richie and Nancy aren’t here. Nancy’s sister just had her third baby, so they went up to Tulsa.”
“Well, we’ll see them next time,” I say, adding a note of sadness into my voice. In reality, I adore both Richie and Nancy, but I think that navigating between Dale and Miriam for the few days we’ll be here is going to be challenge enough.”
“Come on with me, son,” Dale says. “Let the girls talk.”
I feel a wave of panic, but Winston shoots me a smile as he follows his father, and I cling to it like a life preserver.
“I made cookies,” Miriam says. “I used that recipe you sent me. Do you remember? The extra-chocolatey chocolate chip cookies?”
I sift through my memories, trying to pull up those moments of domesticity. It’s not actually in my nature to be in the kitchen, and I faked it a lot.
Those cookies, however, I do remember. I’d gotten the recipe from a neighbor, and passed it to Miriam for bonus in-law points. “Even with amnesia, I don’t think I could forget those.”
She laughs, then passes me an oven mitt. I pull out the tray, then start to salivate at the rich chocolatey smell.