by Jean Thomas
To her surprise, Aaron Fowler from the lab called her the next morning. “We have the test results for you.”
“This soon? I thought from what you indicated it would be much longer than this before we could expect to hear anything.”
He chuckled. “So did I. Turns out, though, this was one job our chemists couldn’t wait to get their hands on. Can you come out to the lab so I can go over the findings with you?”
“Yes, I can grab a cab right away and be there in minutes, if that works for you.”
He assured her it would. Before she knew it, she was facing the technician across his desk. “I think you’ll be pleased with what we learned,” he began.
He went on to explain how, with some effort, they were able to break the formula down to its chemical components, how they were able to recognize those components, how they were blended and what effect that blending had on the women who drank it without knowing it was in their water.
He must have noticed how her eyes had glazed over, because he broke off at that point with a knowing grin. “I’m thinking chemistry was never a strong subject with you.”
“Sorry, it wasn’t,” she apologized.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve got several printouts here with a written report of the chemical analysis. You can look at them later or just hand them out to the people who would like to have them. The only important thing for you to know is this—whatever its creator believed, the formula is not a permanent one. It lasts only as long as the women continue to drink the water laced with it. With no one now placing the formula in the water supply, the effects will begin to fade.”
“Are you saying—”
“No permanent damage. With a bit of time, the women will begin to conceive again.”
That news would have meant everything to Zena. Fanciful of her or not, Brenna wanted to think that wherever her friend was now she would be celebrating.
In the taxi on the way back to her hotel, Brenna realized she had some calls to make. It might take work, but she had to somehow reach Zena’s Aunt Cleo in St. Sebastian and let her know the women of Freedom would soon be able to bear children again. She should also inform the reporter who had interviewed her of this positive development. Will would want to learn of it, too.
And Casey? That was less of a certainty. He’d promised to return to Miami in time for the lab results. That, of course, hadn’t happened. In all fairness, both of them had been given to understand it would be some time before those results would be available. Neither of them had anticipated it could be this soon. Still...
She decided not to do anything yet about trying to contact Casey. Her mind right now was in too much of a turmoil where he was concerned.
When she arrived back at the hotel, Brenna went directly to her room, parked her purse and the analysis reports and prepared to make her calls. And didn’t.
Not yet, she thought. It could wait for a little while. She wanted first to sort out some things in her head. Needed to do that.
Not here. Outside in the open where she had a better chance of clearing her mind.
Locking her door, she went down to the lobby, left her key at the front desk and exited the hotel, headed for the beach across the street.
A moment or so later found her seated in the sunshine on a bench, gazing out at the incredibly blue waters that were in such sharp contrast to the glaring white sands of the sloping shore. The beach was far from crowded. A few scattered groups of sunbathers. Parents wading in the shallows with their kids. Someone paddling on a float.
It made a colorful scene, but for once Brenna wasn’t thinking about painting pictures.
Casey, of course, was on her mind instead. These days it was always the subject of Casey. There was no longer any question of just how vital he was to her. If she’d learned nothing else on St. Sebastian, she had learned that.
With her brother’s help, she had even determined she was strong enough to overcome whatever fears might threaten her when Casey was on assignment. If, that is, she was given the chance.
And there was the big question. Did he still care about her? Care about them? Or was that gone? Is that what this long silence of his meant?
If that was true, she would have to deal with the loss of him. It would be very hard, harder than it had been when she’d given him up two years ago. But what choice would she have?
The sky above her was clear. There were no clouds to obscure the sun, but the day suddenly seemed to dim.
Brenna didn’t know how long she sat there on that bench, knowing she needed to return to her room and make those phone calls but somehow unable to summon the energy to move.
“Ha, this is where you got to! Guy at the front desk said he saw you headed this way. Rembrandt, when are you gonna learn to keep your cell phone with you? Ever since my plane touched down I’ve been trying to reach you to let you know I’m here.”
Was she hearing that cheerful voice behind her just because she yearned to hear it? Brenna twisted around on the bench to make sure she wasn’t imagining his presence. There was no question of it. The familiar, devil-may-care figure of Casey McBride was striding toward her across the sands.
She didn’t wait for him to reach her. Springing to her feet, she rounded the bench and flew at him. Nor did she wait to see if he would take her in his arms and kiss her. She took the initiative herself the second she reached him.
There was a startled look on his face when Brenna reached up, pulled his head down to her level and kissed him so ferociously she almost toppled both of them in the sand.
“Wow!” he said when she finally released him. “If that’s the kind of welcome I’m going to get, then I’ve got to go away more often.”
“I wouldn’t make a habit of it, mister,” she said severely.
“Whoa, first she kisses me, then she accuses me. What did I do wrong?”
“Silence, that’s what. I didn’t hear a word from you the whole time you were gone. For all I knew, you were never going to return.”
“Hey, didn’t I promise I’d be back? And here I am. As for not contacting you...I hardly had a minute to sleep I was so busy the whole time I was in Chicago.”
“Doing what exactly? Come on, tell me.”
“Well,” he began and then stopped, shaking his head. “Nope, I think I’d better make certain of what’s important before I divulge.”
Perplexed, she watched him fish around in his pocket, withdraw something around which his hand was tightly closed and drop down on one knee in front of her.
“Brenna Coleman, will you marry me?”
It wasn’t until he reached for her hand that she got a good look at what was in his other hand. And recognized it.
“That’s the ring I gave back to you two years ago. You kept it all this time?”
“I figured there was a chance I might need it again. I hoped as much, anyway. With the same woman, of course. Who else was I going to love like that?”
“Right.”
“Uh, I’m still kinda waiting for an answer here.”
“Oh, sorry. Yes, I’ll marry you. Do I have any other choice when I’m so crazy in love with you?”
“Thank God.”
He slid the ring on her finger where it felt so familiar. And so very right. “You don’t get it back this time,” she said.
“Let’s make sure of that.”
Getting to his feet, Casey folded her into his arms, demonstrating his own love with a kiss that was long, deep and a promise of a solid future together.
“So,” she said when he finally released her, “tell me what kept you so busy in Chicago. Have they made a decision? Was your suspension lifted?”
“That was taken care of the first day. By noon, actually.”
“Casey, listen. This time I won’t try to stop you from going out into the field. I can’t say I won’t worry when you’re on assignment, but I’ll keep quiet about that.”
“Not necessary. The FBI was ready to put me to work again, but I�
�ve had my fill of adventure. St. Sebastian was proof of that. I’ve quit the bureau. I’ll be staying home in Chicago.”
“You’re serious? But doing what?”
“An FBI buddy of mine is also handing in his resignation. We’re going to combine our savings and start a security company. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. So that’s what I’ve been doing these past couple of days, getting the preliminaries going. What do you think?”
“That with your FBI experience you’re sure to be a success.” She had yet to tell him about the lab results, but that could wait.
“What are we standing here for? We’re wasting all this beautiful white sand.” Hopping first on one foot and then the other, he shed his shoes and socks. “Come on, what are you waiting for? Get those sandals off and join me.”
“You’re asking me to walk the beach barefoot with you?”
“Why not?”
Yes, she thought, why not? Casting off her sandals, she accepted the big, protective hand that closed around hers. He was already squishing sand between his toes, inviting her to join him in the activity.
“Feels nice, huh?”
“Tell me,” she asked him as they set off down the beach, “do you expect us to go through life together barefoot?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
It sounded perfectly reasonable to her.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from DEFENDING THE EYEWITNESS by Rachel Lee.
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Chapter 1
Corey Donohue tossed the odd little note aside as she went to answer the doorbell.
I remember you but you don’t remember me.
Exactly, she thought, the kind of joke she would expect one of her friends to play. They believed she was entirely too busy keeping up with the sewing shop she had taken over from her grandmother and thought she needed to shake up her life a bit. Well, that wasn’t going to do it.
She hesitated, though, for just a second, looking back at the hall table where she had thrown the piece of notepaper. Anonymous envelope, typed... Wouldn’t one of her friends have scrawled something like that with a pen?
But then she pushed the momentary uneasiness aside and reached for the doorknob. Whatever it was, it sounded teasing, not threatening. She supposed some old friend would finally call her to give her a hard time.
She was surprised to find the Conard County sheriff, Gage Dalton, standing there with another, younger man. The guy looked as if he’d just crossed the metaphorical train tracks from the wrong side—shaggy black hair, unshaven, wearing leather and denim, with dark eyes that looked like chips of coal. With bronzed skin and high cheekbones, he looked at once exotic and dangerous.
“Corey,” Gage said, “meet a colleague of mine, Austin Mendez.”
Austin nodded. She nodded back, wondering what was going on here. Strange men made her jumpy, and if Gage hadn’t been there, she would have slammed the door.
“Austin’s just come off an undercover assignment and he needs a place to decompress. I remembered your last roomer moved out, and while I know this won’t be the long-term kind of thing you’d prefer, Austin needs a room for at least a month, maybe more.”
Corey didn’t at all like the looks of Austin. He was the kind a very young woman would find appealing, with his unkempt aura of danger, but she was long past that stage. She was also blunt. She turned to Gage. “You vouching for him?”
“Absolutely. He’s law enforcement.”
She wondered how much that really meant when dealing with a man who had been undercover. Someone had once remarked that the difference between a criminal and an undercover agent was that the agent had to lie.
She looked at Austin Mendez again. A man. In her house. But she felt the pressure of doing a favor for Gage, who had always been good to her. She couldn’t just refuse. Gathering her courage, she said, “You get the whole upstairs. It’s furnished. You can use the kitchen. I don’t make meals for tenants because I’m usually at work. You can go on up and take a look, if you like.”
It wasn’t the friendliest she’d ever been to a tenant, but she didn’t want to be friendly. She was accustomed to renting the space to women, one of the teachers, college students or nurses in the area. The last had been a student at the junior college, a truly nice young woman who had moved on to a four-year school. The fall semester had just begun, and she didn’t have a replacement roomer yet. At this point, she probably wouldn’t until the spring semester.
This was certainly going to be different, she thought as she watched Austin hike up the stairs.
She gave her attention back to Gage. “I just got home and made some coffee. Do you have time?”
He glanced at his watch. “Sure. Emma’s working late tonight and the boys are thrilled to be ordering pizza. I’m a free man for a little while.”
Which she took to mean that he wanted to give her a chance to get comfortable with the new tenant. She appreciated that and finally gave him a smile. “Kitchen or living room?” she asked.
“Kitchen’s fine. We do everything in the kitchen at my place. I can’t figure out why we even have a living room most of the time. These days the boys don’t even watch TV. I can’t pry them off their computer games.”
She laughed. “If I had more time I’d probably get addicted to that myself.”
The strange little note fluttered as they passed. She reached for it, intending to toss it in the trash, but then, on impulse, she tucked it, along with its envelope, in one of the drawers of the hall table.
As she poured them coffee, she looked up at the ceiling. “I guess I’m going to have to get used to heavy footsteps.”
“That last tenant you had was a tiny sprite,” he agreed.
“Just a few months, you said? Because I’m probably going to have students wanting to rent for the next semester.”
“He just needs a little time and quiet. You pretend you’re somebody else for a half-dozen years, and then you have to find yourself again.”
“Was it like that for you?”
“Sometimes, but I didn’t go anywhere near as deep. Austin doesn’t have anybody just now. He went way deep from what I understand, and it leaves you a bit messed up. You also can’t just pick up old relationships, not for a while. It could be dangerous if you get identified. But I don’t know much I can tell you. Or even how much I know. Just rest assured that I wouldn’t have brought him here if I hadn’t vetted him.”
She supposed that would have to do. Sharing a house with a man made her feel uneasy, though, and she questioned whether she should really agree to this. But she had already invited Austin to look around. Could she possibly look at Gage now and tell him she had changed her mind?
“He’s DEA?” she asked.
“He’s a friend of a friend,” Gage answered. “I don’t know which agency. I just know that apparently he spent a lot of time in the border towns in Mexico.”
She blinked. While she wasn’t up on all the details, she’d heard how dangerous it could be for undercover agents. “My God!”
“And I don’t know whether he was involved in trying to stem the drug trade or the arms trade, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Two sides of the same coin.”
She looked up as she heard more footsteps. “That must have been hell.”
“Life on a tightrope, for sure. Anyway, he shouldn’t give you any problems, but
if you have any, just call me. I’ll make other arrangements.”
She nodded, feeling a trickle of relief. “I’ve never taken a man as a roomer before.” For good reason. While she couldn’t remember her mother’s murder, she had had a problem with men ever since, especially men she didn’t know.
She returned her attention to Gage. “I take it you’re doing a favor for this friend?”
“Sorta. I just suggested it would be hard to get a bigger change of pace. We’re mostly quiet and peaceful and don’t have the kind of triggers that could set him off.”
“You would know. What do you mean, set him off?” She didn’t like that phrase.
“Nothing violent. Just that there isn’t much around here that ought to make him edgy. He should be able to start letting his guard down and maybe even take a few steps toward remembering who he used to be.”
She shook her head and looked down. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s that you can never be who you used to be. Somehow you have to try to stitch all the changes into a new you.”
Gage fell silent and drank his coffee. Corey supposed he was the last person on earth she’d needed to say that to. After all, this man had lost his entire family, a wife and two kids, to a bomb intended for him. Somehow he’d put himself together, remarried and built a family and a life here.
She wasn’t sure she’d really finished stitching herself together. Nor was she sure that traumatic amnesia had helped with that one bit. The doctors said it was okay to forget, but she didn’t always believe it. Yet it remained a horror she didn’t want to look at.
Heavy footsteps on the stairs.
“We’re in here,” Gage called.
Austin Mendez appeared in the door and hesitated.
“Coffee?” Corey asked, determined to be polite no matter how uneasy he made her.
“Thanks.”
She motioned him to a chair at the dinette and got him a cup. “Milk? Sugar?”
“Black’s fine, thanks. That’s a nice space you have up there.”