Secret Identity

by Paula Graves

  Still-healing red scars crisscrossed her back like a roadmap of hell. Rick had seen scars like that before, in any number of war-torn snake pits and soul-rending refugee camps.

  Whip scars. A sign that she’d been beaten, at the very least. But beatings almost always came with other kinds of torture in places like Kaziristan.

  He let the T-shirt drop and laid his hand on her face, soothing her back to a calm slumber, while inside, his heart felt as if it had been shredded and left to bleed.

  “Oh, baby,” he whispered, pressing his lips to her hot forehead, “who did this to you?”

  Chapter Seven

  “So this is her.” The voice was low-pitched and female, with a hint of a Southern accent.

  “She’s going by Amanda Caldwell,” Rick’s voice answered the female voice. “She doesn’t want to be called Tara.”

  He sounded sad, Amanda thought. Sad that she didn’t want him to call her Tara anymore? Or was his sadness a sign of something worse?

  Was she dying? She felt as if she were dying, the way her head pounded as if someone were drilling a jackhammer into the top of her skull. And where she’d been so cold just a little while ago, now she was flushed and sweaty, her T-shirt clammy against her skin.

  She tried opening her eyes and regretted it. Light assaulted her pupils, making them contract painfully. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  “She’s awake.” That voice was all male and as Southern as turnip greens, delivering the news of her awakening in a flat, just-the-facts tone.

  Amanda forced her eyes open again. The light didn’t seem as painful this time. Her vision was a little blurry, but when Rick’s familiar face came into view, her eyes focused enough to see his look of relief.

  “Hey there,” he said quietly, sitting next to her. She was in a bed, she realized. Not a hospital bed—the mattress under her was soft and comfortable. As home should be.

  She was in a bedroom, large and casually pretty, with walls painted a soothing eggshell-blue and plain brown curtains flanking the tall windows. She tried to sit up but stopped immediately as a wave of nausea pulsed through her gut.

  “I need a trash can,” she moaned.

  “Here.” The owner of the female voice thrust a small garbage can, lined with plastic, into Amanda’s hands. Just before her stomach rebelled, Amanda caught a glimpse of the woman who went with the voice, a tall, striking woman with curly dark hair and sympathetic eyes the color of strong tea.

  There was nothing left in her stomach, so she had to wait through a series of dry heaves before she could finally sit back, moaning, and wait for the gnawing pain in her gut to subside. She looked up at Rick, mortified. “I’m sorry.”

  It was the woman who answered her, tugging Rick out of his position beside the bed. She sat in the place he’d vacated, offering a wet washcloth to her. “No apology necessary. You’ve been running a high fever for the past couple of hours. Rick says you haven’t eaten since sometime yesterday?”

  The thought of food made her stomach cramp, but she nodded.

  “You want to try a little beef broth?”

  Amanda started to shake her head no, then realized that her nausea might be exacerbated by hunger. So she changed the gesture to a nod.

  “Rick, there’s a can in the cabinet. Go heat it up.” Isabel flashed him a wry smile. “Oh—and empty that trash can for me, will you? Wade,” she added, turning to the other person, a dark-haired man a couple of inches shorter than Rick, “you head back to the office and let everyone there know what’s going on. And grab Eric—I think she needs him to take a look at her.”

  Both men headed out of the room—Wade walking with a distinct limp, Amanda noticed—leaving Amanda alone with the woman, who watched her with gentle eyes.

  “You must be Isabel,” Amanda rasped, her throat sore from the dry heaves.

  “Yes. I’m Rick’s sister. And the other guy was our brother Wade.” She patted Amanda’s leg. “You feeling any better? You still look pretty pale.”

  “Has my fever broken?”

  Isabel touched Amanda’s forehead with the back of her hand. “You feel cooler. And you’re sweating now—that’s a good sign.”

  “Who’s Eric?” Amanda asked, remembering what Isabel had said to her brother Wade.

  “He works with us at Cooper Security. Used to be a Navy medical officer, then he joined our agency. Sort of our private physician. Plus he’s our go-to guy on medical-related investigations. He’ll assess your condition and tell us whether you need to go to the hospital.”

  Amanda shook her head, ignoring the resulting pain. “No hospital.”

  “Look, I get that you don’t want to be found. From what Rick tells us, I understand completely. But letting yourself die of an infection doesn’t solve anything.”

  “I’ve had worse wounds,” Amanda answered flatly.

  Isabel’s eyes softened even more. “We saw the scars.”

  Amanda’s heart sank. “Rick saw them?”

  Isabel nodded. “You don’t get scars like that unless you’ve been tortured.”

  Amanda pressed her lips into a tight line, aching with humiliation. “It’s over. I survived.”

  “Where did it happen?”

  She shot Rick’s sister a warning look.

  Isabel sat back, her expression shifting to neutral. “Okay. We’ll get you back on your feet again and then you can decide what you want to do next. Sound like a plan?”

  Amanda didn’t want to like Isabel Cooper, but she found the woman’s matter-of-fact approach and calm demeanor soothing. She didn’t want to be coddled or treated like a victim, and Isabel seemed to get that.

  It made Amanda all the more curious about the thread of sadness she saw in Isabel’s dark gaze. Maybe she was battling a few demons of her own.

  “Where am I?” she asked.

  “My house.” Isabel looked around the room, a faint smile of affection curving her mouth. “It’s really too big for one person, but it was so homey and comfortable. And it’s about ten minutes from the office and just down the street from where my dad lives. I couldn’t pass it up.”

  “Last I knew, you were in the FBI,” Amanda commented. “At least, that’s what Rick said.” She couldn’t really be sure how much of what he’d told her in Kaziristan was the truth. In a lot of ways, he’d been as much a secret-keeper as she’d been.

  “I was.” Isabel’s tone held a touch of bleakness, and Amanda realized she’d stumbled onto a clue to the sadness she’d seen in the woman’s eyes. But she was in no position to ask any questions, given how she’d blocked Isabel’s attempts to learn more about her own scars.

  “So you quit to work for your brother?”

  Isabel’s tone returned to normal. “Yes. About five months ago. I needed a change, and Jesse’s trying to build Cooper Security into a top-notch agency.”

  “I guess grabbing an FBI agent away from the bureau might be quite a coup,” Amanda ventured.

  Isabel laughed. “We’re like a big ol’ bowl of alphabet soup,” she answered, her Alabama accent stronger than before. “Former FBI, DEA, DSS, ATF—and Wade swears one of the former Special Forces guys we hired was really working for the CIA in Afghanistan.” She lowered her voice, her eyes glittering with humor. “But if Mac told us the truth, he’d have to kill us.”

  Rick came back into the room, stopping in the doorway as if to make sure it was all right to enter. Amanda met his gaze, wondering if she’d see pity there, now that he’d seen her scars.

  She didn’t know if she could bear his pity.

  But his expression, while sympathetic, also seemed tinged with admiration, as if he were more focused on her survival than the ordeal itself. She wanted it to stay that way. It’s how she managed to deal with life these days, herself—by concentrating on how far she’d come from the trembling, broken creature who’d managed to break out of her prison and struggle to freedom only moments before, she was convinced, she’d have sunk into irretrievable madness.

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nbsp; “I made some toast, in case you want something a little more solid than broth.” He carried a flat bamboo tray to the bedside and set it on the table at her elbow. “You look a little brighter-eyed.”

  “I feel a little better,” she admitted. It was true—the pain in her head had settled into a nagging ache instead of crushing agony, and the smell of hot broth and freshly toasted bread was kick-starting the appetite she had believed, moments earlier, she’d never discover again.

  “Wade says Eric’s on his way,” Rick said to Isabel, then looked at Amanda. “He’s a former Navy medical officer—”

  “I told her.” Isabel touched her brother’s arm. “He needs to look at your wound, too.” She looked at Amanda. “Don’t let him play tough guy and forget to tell Eric about his injury.”

  “I won’t.”

  Isabel left the room, closing the door behind her.

  Rick picked up the tray. “You ready for this?”

  Amanda pushed herself into a more upright position. To her relief, neither the jackhammer in her head nor the twisting nausea returned with the movement. She held out her hands for the tray and tried a few sips of the broth.

  Within a few minutes, she’d finished the whole bowl as well as the piece of toast. She’d been afraid the food in her stomach would only make her feel sicker, but the opposite happened instead. Her queasiness eased away to nothing, and even her headache had dulled another few notches.

  “Now that’s more like the woman I know and…” Rick stopped short, smiling a little self-consciously. “You were pretty out of it for a while there.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “I was worried you were unconscious, but you fought me well enough when I tried to give you a sponge bath.”

  That must have been when he’d seen her scars. She tried not to cringe at the thought. “Strange,” she said lightly. “A sponge bath sounds like a lovely idea. A bubble bath would be even better.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “You always did love your creature comforts.”

  She laughed softly at how he must remember her from their brief days together. Her CIA cover had been embassy liaison with an American natural gas company in Kaziristan, and she’d played the part to the hilt, wearing designer suits and five-hundred-dollar shoes, eating only in the handful of haute cuisine restaurants to be found in Tablis, the once urbane but rapidly deteriorating capital city of Kaziristan. “You know most of that was part of the cover story, right?”

  “I knew,” he said with a slight smile. “When we were alone, you let more of who you really are show than you probably think. I mean, you kicked off those four-inch stiletto heels the second you got in the door of your flat, and changed clothes immediately.”

  A rush of heat accompanied a sudden flash of memory—Rick had removed her clothes himself, more often than not. They’d had so little time to be alone with each other, in those tumultuous days before Tablis exploded into the violence that the nation was still struggling to recover from. Every chance they got they’d spent exploring each other, as if kisses and caresses could overcome the secrets they’d had to keep from one another.

  It had seemed so real at the time, the passion and devotion developing between them. To this day, she couldn’t remember those weeks with Rick without aching to relive those stolen moments. Maybe she’d believed the promises they’d made, not with words but with passion-darkened gazes and sweat-slick bodies straining to become one.

  The quick rap on the door jolted through her system like a shock. Rick answered the door, coming back with a tall, handsome man wearing a smile that didn’t quite make it all the way to his cool blue eyes. Rick introduced him as Eric Brannon. “Eric, this is Amanda.”

  “Nice to meet you, Amanda.” Eric pulled up a chair beside her and dispensed with further small talk, lifting the edge of her T-shirt sleeve to remove the bandage. The gauze stuck to the dried blood of her wound, making her grimace with pain.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “No problem.” She took a quick peek at the bloody groove in her arm and saw, with some surprise, that the infection didn’t look nearly as bad as she’d feared. The wound also seemed smaller, in this cozy room, than it had appeared in that dank cave.

  “Well, it’s infected,” Eric said flatly a few minutes later. “But not as badly as it could be.”

  “She was pretty out of it when we were driving in.” Rick gave her a worried look.

  “We’d been on the move for nearly twenty-four hours,” she pointed out with a wry smile. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not as young as I used to be....”

  “Exhaustion definitely could have been a contributing factor. And if you hadn’t eaten in a while—”

  “One protein bar around five o’clock last night. Nothing before or since until just now.” They’d thrown away the burgers that had sat overnight in the car while they were dodging the black-clad hunters, and she’d been too sick at that point to want anything for breakfast anyway.

  “Well, there you go.” Eric opened his bag and withdrew a few supplies, getting right to work cleaning out the infected wound. It hurt like hell, bringing tears to her eyes more than once, but she forced them back, refusing to show weakness in front of either man.

  Rick, for his part, winced in sympathy as he watched Eric work. “What about oral antibiotics?” he asked.

  “I’ve got a shot that will get things started, then I’ll prescribe oral antibiotics that should knock out the infection in no time.” Eric smiled that not-quite-a-smile at Amanda once more, piquing her innate curiosity. Something was bothering the good doctor, and the former CIA agent in her wanted the full story. Just as she was similarly intrigued by the sadness in Isabel Cooper’s eyes.

  It had been a long time since she’d let herself become concerned with what was going on in the lives of people around her. She wasn’t sure the return of her nosy instincts was a good thing—she’d fared quite well for over the past few years by keeping to herself and letting the world around her turn without her.

  Eric gave her the shot in her hip and sat back. “That should kick in soon and make you feel a lot better pretty quickly. You should rest as much as you can over the next few days and try not to skip meals.”

  “Can I take a shower?”

  “Yeah—it probably won’t hurt to clean that wound again.” He looked at Rick. “You can bandage it when she’s done?”

  “Sure.”

  The doctor glanced at Rick’s left arm, where the bulk of the bandage showed beneath the cotton of his long-sleeve shirt. “I hear you have a wound of your own I need to look at.”

  With a sigh, Rick shrugged off his shirt, baring not only the bandage she’d applied the day before but his broad shoulders, flat stomach and powerful chest. Whatever else he’d been doing over the past three years, he’d been staying in good shape. He looked as fit and strong as she remembered.

  She knew he couldn’t say the same for her. She’d lost at least fifteen pounds since her escape from al Adar.

  If only that had been all she’d lost.

  RICK WALKED ERIC TO THE front door of his sister Isabel’s house. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “I think so. Infections can always get worse, but we caught it early, and if she follows my instructions, as long as she doesn’t have any underlying immune system issues, she should be back to her old self in a few days. The wound will probably leave a scar, but none of the underlying muscle tissue seems to be affected. She should have full use of her arm.” Eric slanted an amused look at Rick. “Your arm should be fine, too, tough guy. Looks like you treated it quickly after the injury, which always helps.”

  In his worry about Amanda, Rick had almost forgotten about his own injured arm. It barely hurt unless he moved it around too much. “Do you have to report our gunshot wounds to the authorities?” He didn’t want the cops involved if he could help it. He knew Amanda would balk at the idea.

  “I get the feeling mentioning anything to anyone about your friend
being here would do more harm than good, right?”

  Rick nodded.

  Eric smiled. “So, I treated two deep abrasions today.”

  “First, do no harm?”

  “Exactly.”

  Rick closed the door behind the doctor and returned to Isabel’s spare room, half hoping Amanda would already be asleep. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to the conversation he and she needed to have.

  But Amanda was sitting in the chair by the window, looking out at the sprawling backyard of his sister’s house. “Nice view,” she murmured. “I miss the Smoky Mountains outside my door, but this is a lovely area, too.”

  “We’re on the mountain,” he murmured, squelching the urge to touch her pale cheek. “Our office is in Maybridge, on the northern edge of Gossamer Mountain. Here on the southern side is Gossamer Ridge—most of my family and some of my cousins live there.”

  She leaned her head up to look at him. “The cousin you were telling me about—the one who got crossways with Barton Reid? Does he live in Gossamer Ridge?”

  Rick nodded. “He does now.”

  “Good.” She looked back at the window. “I think I’d like to talk to him.”

  “I can arrange that,” Rick said, crouching beside her. “I think there’s something else we need to talk about first.”

  She turned her head to look at him again, her gaze bleak. “Do we have to?”

  “Yeah, we do.”

  She released a soft sigh but said nothing else.

  He asked the question as gently as he could. “Who gave you those scars?”

  “Do you remember the day we called it quits?”

  “Of course.” The memory of her walking away on a Tablis street, spine straight, chin up and her heels clicking on the cobblestones as she disappeared from his life, was an image that still haunted his dreams.

  “I turned the corner near the florist shop and headed back toward the embassy. I made it almost to the patisserie.” Her voice grew faint, as if she’d disappeared from him again.

  He caught her chin in his palm, drawing her face around to look at him. He was afraid of her answer to the next question, because only one answer made sense. And it was a fate he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. “Who did this to you?”