by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees
Lynn’s heart crashed against her rib cage as Nick cursed. “Let her go, Jonas,” he said, his features taut. “You don’t want to hurt Lynn.”
“Of course I don’t want to hurt Lynn,” Jonas agreed, his voice smooth as silk. “But I will if necessary. Sorry, baby, but there’s no way I’m going to prison. Now, put your gun down, Nick, or I’ll shoot her in the head.”
Nick’s features were tortured, but he bent down and placed his gun on the floor in front of him.
Jonas backed up toward the door as the other three agents stepped into the room from the hallway.
“Hold your fire,” Nick exclaimed. “Dammit Jonas, it’s over. Let her go.”
“You aren’t locking me up,” he said and tightened his hold around Lynn. “Tell your men to drop their weapons. If you have men outside, you might want to tell them that with my last breath I’ll pull this trigger. You’ll get me, but she’ll be dead. Can you live with that?”
Nick glanced at one of the other men. “Go tell them to hold their fire. Hold their fire, dammit.” The agent ran toward the back of the house while the others placed their guns on the floor.
As Jonas half dragged, half carried Lynn out the front door, she felt as if she’d fallen into the middle of a nightmare. The shock of the realization that Jonas would kill her to save himself had her numb.
She hadn’t realized until this moment that a small part of her had clung to the belief that Jonas loved her just a little.
They reached the porch, and still the barrel of his gun drilled into her temple, telling her exactly the extent of his love. He would gladly sacrifice her life to save his own. He would shoot her before he’d allow himself to be taken into custody.
“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Nick yelled as he followed them onto the porch.
As Jonas yanked her toward the car, she knew that if he managed to get her inside, then Jonas would get away and the odds of Lynn surviving were minimal.
“I’m sorry, baby,” Jonas said. “But you shouldn’t have done this. You shouldn’t have set me up like this.” He opened the driver’s-side door, and as he did, Lynn summoned all the strength she’d ever known.
She flung her elbow backward, hitting Jonas’s belly. He grunted in surprise and cracked her in the head with the butt of the gun.
She kicked and hit his hand, sending the gun flying from his grip. He shoved her backward and she fell, hitting the ground hard. Before Nick or the agents could do anything to stop him, he was in the car and had started the engine.
Lynn skittered backward like a crab to stop from being run over as Jonas peeled out. The agents fired at the retreating car, but it didn’t stop. They ran toward their cars parked down the street, but she knew by the time they managed to give chase Jonas would be gone.
“Call it in,” Nick cried as he raced to Lynn’s side. “Are you all right?” He crouched down and grabbed her to his chest.
“He got away,” she cried. At the same time she grabbed the side of her head where she’d been hit.
“We’ll get him,” Nick replied, helping her to her feet. “There’s no way he’s getting on any plane for Puerto Isla. He’ll be in custody in a matter of hours.” Although Nick spoke with assurance, she saw the deep frustration burning in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Nick.”
“It’s not your fault. We underestimated him. It will never happen again.” He took her by the arm. “Come on, let’s get you back inside.”
Once inside, the first thing Nick did was look at her head where a goose egg had knotted. He wanted to call for the paramedics, but she assured him she was fine. He got an ice pack for her, then got on the phone.
Lynn sat on the sofa and held the pack on her head. She’d known that Jonas was a criminal, and she’d known that he’d used her. But she’d never dreamed that he would have the capacity to kill her.
But he did. She’d felt it in the steadiness of his hand as he’d held the gun to her head. She’d heard it in the even tone of his voice. He’d gambled that Nick wouldn’t sacrifice her, and he’d won.
It was fast approaching the noon hour when Nick finally came into the living room and sank down on the sofa next to her. “We lost him.”
“Oh, Nick, I’m so sorry. Although I’m not surprised.”
He shrugged. “The good thing is his bank accounts are useless to him. We’ve got men at every airport. Hopefully he’ll turn up and we’ll be there to arrest him. We have enough on him now to ensure a conviction on a multitude of charges. We’ll get him, Lynn. It’s just a matter of time. How’s your head?”
“Better. You should have taken the chance and shot him.”
“I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t take a chance with your life,” he said. He reached for her hand and grabbed it in a tight grip, his eyes as dark as she’d ever seen them. “I’ve never been more terrified in my life than when I saw that gun pressed to your head.”
She pulled her hand from his, a new pain filling her chest as she realized it was time for her to go. “I’m fine. I need to call a cab. I need to get to the Sleepy Time Motel.”
He frowned. “You don’t need a cab. I’ll take you.”
“Don’t you need to be here, or doing something about Jonas?” she asked.
“It’s out of my hands now. We’ve got agents all over the city looking for him. I can take you wherever you need to go.”
In minutes they’d loaded her suitcases in the trunk of his car. For most of the twenty-minute drive to the motel room, they were both quiet.
It was not a comfortable silence. Rather, it was filled with a tension she’d never felt between them before. She cast a surreptitious glance at Nick. His jaw muscle was knotted, and she wondered what thoughts were whirling in his head.
She was certain he was thinking about Jonas and the escape. After all, he’d worked two long years undercover to see it all fall apart in a matter of minutes. He must be devastated.
She had no words of comfort to offer him, although her heart ached for his disappointment. But that wasn’t the only reason her heart ached.
There was no more time to explore the depth of her feelings for Nick. There would be no more times for making love, no more slow dances at Smokey’s or walking on the beach and talking about nothing and everything important.
It was time to say goodbye.
When they reached the motel, she saw that Dawn’s car wasn’t there. Apparently, she hadn’t arrived yet. Nick helped Lynn unload her suitcases and carry them inside the room.
“What happens now?” he asked, his gaze dark and brooding as it lingered on her.
“My sister should be arriving soon, then we’ll be leaving.”
“Are you going to tell me where you’re going?”
She thought about it, then shook her head. “To tell the truth, I’m not sure exactly where we’re headed.”
He stepped close to her, so close she could feel his breath on her face and smell the scent of him. “Secrets. I see them in your eyes.” She didn’t reply. She didn’t know what to say.
All she knew for certain at this moment was that saying goodbye to him was going to be more difficult than she’d thought. Not that he was asking her to stay, she thought. He’d gotten what he needed from her even though Jonas had managed to escape.
And she’d gotten what she needed from him—a glorious night of lovemaking to remember for the rest of her life….
“Lynnette.” His voice, soft and deep, pulled her from her thoughts. She looked into his eyes, and what she saw there frightened her more than anything she’d ever faced. “Don’t go.”
Those two words shot through her heart like twin daggers. She hadn’t expected to hear them from him. She hadn’t realized until this moment how much she’d wanted to hear them from him.
He placed his hands on her shoulders and drew her closer against him. Her head fit perfectly just beneath his chin. She leaned into him and closed her eyes.
She was capable of doing amazing physical fea
ts, she could hear the wings of a butterfly in the air and endure a man who had a gun to her head, but nothing had prepared her for this.
“Don’t leave,” he murmured into her hair at the same time that his arms encircled her. “I’ve dated a lot of women, have had my share of relationships, but I’ve never felt about anyone like I feel about you.”
It would have been easy if he’d just been using her. She’d hurt when she’d believed that, but it was nothing like the pain that ripped through her now.
“I have to go,” she said, and kept her face turned into his chest.
“Why? Tell me your secrets, Lynn.”
She finally looked up at him. “I can’t, Nick.” Reluctantly she pulled away from him and stepped out of his embrace. “I can’t tell you why, but I have to leave.”
His gaze held hers intently, and he shoved his hands into his pockets. “So this is it? We make love last night and we say goodbye today?”
She felt the pain she saw reflected in his eyes. It shocked her, and she realized his feelings for her were as deep as hers for him. “Nick, there are things I can’t tell you about, things I have to do before I can go on with my life.”
“Are you in trouble?”
She didn’t know how to answer that question. “I’m not sure.” She had no idea where the circumstances of her birth and Rainy’s death might take her.
He reached out for her hands and squeezed them tightly. “I’m an FBI agent, Lynn. If you’re in trouble, talk to me. Let me help.”
“I have to do this for myself, Nick. I had to find out about my past before I can go forward with my future.”
He squeezed her hands once again. “You’re an amazing woman.”
She smiled. “Thank you, but I’m just beginning to know the woman I am…to envision the woman I can be.” Aware that Dawn would arrive at any moment, she knew she could no longer put off the final goodbye.
“Nick—” she pulled her hands from his “—you need to go now.” The words threatened to choke her.
“One more thing before I leave.” He reached out and pulled her back into his arms, and his mouth claimed hers in a kiss so deep, so complete, that tears burned her eyes.
When he finally released her, his gaze held a wistfulness she felt in her soul. “Will you be back?” he asked, his voice sounding deeper than usual.
“Maybe when I’ve taken care of what I need to.”
“How long do you think that will be?”
She drew a deep breath. “I don’t know. Days…weeks…I just don’t know. Nick, I can’t think about any kind of a future right now. I don’t even know what’s going to happen an hour from now.”
“I’ll wait, you know. However long it takes. We had magic, Lynn. I don’t want it to end. All you have to do is tell me there’s a reason for me to wait.”
She started to open her mouth to reply, but he placed a finger over her lips. “Not now. The past forty-eight hours of your life haven’t exactly been calm. You get where you need to go, Lynnette White, then if you want me to wait for you, if you think we can have some kind of future, you call me.”
He didn’t wait for her reply but slid out the door and into the afternoon sunshine.
She moved to the doorway, the late-July sunshine almost blinding her, bringing tears to her eyes as she watched him get into his car and roar off.
The moment he was gone Dawn pulled up in her car and stuck her head out the window. “Come on, shake a leg, sis. We’ve got a flight to catch.”
With those words, Lynn’s future reached out to her, even as she mourned what might have been.
Chapter 15
The next two hours passed in a blur for Lynn. Dawn explained to her that they would be flying into Phoenix, and would rent a car there and continue on to the Athens, Arizona.
They boarded the plane, and she and Dawn made small talk until they were served soft drinks and pretzels by the flight attendant. It was only when the flight attendant left them alone that Lynn began to ask questions.
“Tell me about you,” Lynn said. “Where have you been, what’s your background?”
“I was raised in the lab by scientists,” Dawn began. “I trained at the lab and was educated there except for one year that I spent attending the Athena Academy. I was there my junior year, then went back to the lab to continue my studies and training.”
“What’s the academy like?” Lynn asked. She wanted something, anything, to keep her mind off her painful goodbye to Nick.
“It’s a wonderful place for girls between the seventh and the twelfth grade. It has state-of-the-art training facilities and the best educational programs in the world. Students there not only do the usual studies, but also are trained in martial arts, weaponry, survival courses and at least three languages.”
“Why did you only attend for a year?”
“Look, my background isn’t important,” Dawn said, her eyes flashing more green than gold. There were secrets there, Lynn thought, secrets that Dawn wasn’t willing to share. “What’s important is finding out the truth about us and about Rainy.”
“Tell me about Rainy,” Lynn said, eager to learn anything she could about the woman who had been their biological mother.
“From everything I’ve learned about her, she was a wonderful woman. She was one of the students the first year that Athena Academy opened. She started there when she was thirteen and remained one of the top students in her class until she graduated. But if you really want to find out about what kind of a person Rainy was, you need to talk to the Cassandras.”
“The Cassandras?”
Dawn ripped open her bag of pretzels and nodded.
“When Rainy was a senior at the Athena Academy, she became the leader of a group of girls who called themselves the Cassandras. They began as schoolmates working as a team, but they became the best of friends. Rainy was going to meet with the Cassandras on the night she died.” Dawn popped one of the pretzels into her mouth as Lynn digested all she was learning.
“Did she tell the Cassandras why she wanted to meet with them that night?” she asked.
Dawn shook her head. “All she told them was that she needed them to meet her and Christine Evans, Athena’s school principal, at Christine’s bungalow on the school grounds. All the Cassandras who could showed up to wait for Rainy. All she’d told Christine was that she wanted to look through the school records, but Christine didn’t know what she wanted to look for.”
“And Rainy never showed up for the meeting.” Lynn was surprised to discover a wave of grief sweeping over her. She’d long ago mourned the death of her imaginary parents, and now she mourned the mother she’d never know.
Dawn reached over and touched Lynn’s hand. “I know,” she said softly.
Lynn cast her a smile. “It’s just sad. In the space of a sentence I found my mother and lost her.” She took a sip of her soda. “Tell me about these other women, the Cassandras.”
“There are six of them. Alex Forsythe is a forensic scientist, Josie Lockworth is in the Air Force and is an aeronautical engineer. Tory Patton is…”
“I know her,” Lynn interjected. “I mean, not personally, but I’ve seen her as a reporter on television.”
Dawn nodded. “That’s right. Then there’s Kayla Ryan, who’s a police lieutenant. Samanatha St. John works for the CIA and Darcy Steele is a former Hollywood makeup artist and private investigator.”
“Wow, an impressive bunch of women,” Lynn said. And what was she? Nothing more than an ordinary thief. When this was all over she vowed to make something of herself, to use her talents to become a dynamic and positive influence.
“They’re more than impressive because of the jobs they do,” Dawn continued. “What’s really so special about them is the bond they forged while they were classmates. When these women were at the Athena Academy they made a promise to one another, that if any of them called for help, they would be there for each other. That night Rainy called on the Cassandra Promise.”
&
nbsp; “Well, what happened when she didn’t arrive at the meeting place?”
“Initially it was thought that Rainy’s car wreck had just been a tragic accident, but since then investigators have learned otherwise. Alex and Kayla were the main force behind that. Rainy was murdered, and at the time of her death we think she had realized that her eggs had been mined and was pursuing the truth. We think that’s what got her killed.”
“My head is spinning,” Lynn said. “This is all so confusing.”
“It’s a lot of information,” Dawn replied. “And there’s so much more to tell you. But maybe we should both try to catch a nap. When we get to Phoenix we’ve got a short car drive ahead of us, then we’re meeting with Kayla. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long day.”
Dawn punched the button to put her seat back, and Lynn turned her attention out the plane window. Outside was nothing but blue sky, and she felt as if she’d been thrust into a vast sea where nothing was as it should be and what had been was nothing more than a dream.
Had she made a mistake in coming with Dawn? Certainly the stories Dawn had shared with her sounded fantastic, yet they held a ring of truth she couldn’t deny. No, this wasn’t a mistake. This was her destiny.
It seemed impossible to believe that only last night she’d been in Nick’s arms, and that mere hours ago he’d held her in his arms and told her goodbye.
She felt as if a lifetime had passed. She lowered her seat and closed her eyes, knowing that she would need every ounce of her strength to face what lay ahead.
She awakened when the plane began its descent. Dawn was already awake, and she smiled at Lynn. “Feel better?”
Lynn put her seat up straight. “I don’t know. I think I’ve been numb ever since you broke me out of jail.”
Once again Dawn touched her hand. “It’s going to be all right, Lynn. We’re going to make things right.”
Looking into her sister’s eyes, eyes so like Lynn’s own, Lynn felt a surge of strength. Yes, things would be all right. She and Dawn and the Cassandras would get to the bottom of things and make them right.