by Jan Springer
She concentrated on his voice. Strong and so beautiful. She breathed in nice and slow. Did it again.
“That’s it. Hold it. One. Two. Three. Four. Let it go. It’s just like having a baby.”
Just like having a baby.
She exhaled on a chuckle and caught his grin but only felt nausea uncoil into her stomach.
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“You’ll be fine. Inhale. That’s it. Hold it in… Let it go.”
She followed his soothing voice for what seemed an eternity and finally the sickness clawing at her belly resided, only to be replaced by an intense uneasiness.
“Better?” he asked as he watched her with concern.
She nodded and bravely held back the dam of sharp tears threatening to unravel her.
“I guess I can’t drop big news without expecting some sort of fallout,” Steve said.
Worry lurked in his blue eyes. Blue eyes not green.
She shook her head in denial.
“This is unbelievable. A bad joke. A nightmare.”
Steve smiled and squeezed her hands in reassurance.
“The nightmare is over, Emily. I’m home.”
Heart pounding against her chest, she found herself asking questions she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear. Surely he had some sort of good excuse for pretending to be dead all these years?
“What happened to you? Where have you been?”
“I think maybe you need some time to digest everything.”
Indecision lurked in his eyes and she suddenly got the feeling if he didn’t start answering her questions right now, he’d disappear. He made a move to usher her out of the chair but she gripped his hands, refusing to let him go.
“Tell me everything. Tell me now,” she begged, feeling despair creep deep into her bones. What had happened to have him do this to her? To pretend to be dead all these years.
“Emily, there’s things you shouldn’t know.”
“I want to know the truth. All of it.”
He frowned and his eyes narrowed.
“Do you really?”
“Yes,” she lied. Maybe later. No. Now. Before he leaves. Or before she woke up from this dream.
“I need to know. So I can somehow hold on to my sanity.”
Her heart clenched as she recognized the intense pain, the haunted sadness in his eyes. His mouth was unsmiling now. Serious. Deadly serious.
He stared into her eyes a long time before he finally spoke.
“What do you want to know?”
“What happened to you? Your face. Your voice. All those scars. Your eyes are different… Where have you been?”
Her voice trailed off as she looked into those stranger’s eyes and saw pain. Hurt. Anger. Other emotions she couldn’t put a name to swirled like a brewing storm.
“Death row,” he whispered it so low she wasn’t sure she’d heard right.
“Death row?”
Was he crazy? Was she?
He nodded and she shook her head in disbelief as the two words resounded in her head like a maddening echo. Leaning over, he picked up the medallion and accompanying necklace from the floor. The gold item glittered in his hands as he pulled up a chair and sat down beside her.
With trembling fingers he lay the medallion out in front of them on the table as if it were a piece of precious jewelry. Then he leaned his elbows on the table and scrubbed his trembling hands over his face in apparent frustration. A moment later he bowed his head, dropped his hands beneath his chin and clasped them tight as if in prayer.
It took several breathtaking moments before he dropped his hands to the table in apparent defeat. That’s when she knew he would tell her what had happened all those years ago.
“That day…when it happened. I was in a hurry to get back home to you. I resigned just like I said I would. I decided not to stay the night in New York.”
His voice cracked and he cleared his throat.
“It was late when I’d just stepped onto Sweet Lies where I had her berthed on the main island when the authorities swarmed the boat. They found drugs. They were planted.”
“I never believed they belonged to you. Not for a minute.” He had to know she trusted him regarding that.
Steve nodded. His lips were twisted in grim distaste.
“They used the drug charges as a lever against me. A prosecutor presented me with a deal. He’d drop the drug charges if I told him what he wanted to know.”
“What did you know?”
His gaze drew to the laptop then swung back to catch her again.
“I knew enough to know I was set up and that they wanted information about the disc someone had sent to me anonymously that morning. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it, but I wanted to just get on with our lives. I told him I didn’t know anything and that deals should be made with my lawyer present. He left and came back after a while with some guards.”
He winced. She wished he wouldn’t say any more. She didn’t want to know what happened. Didn’t want to dwell on the fact she hadn’t been able to help him.
“Let’s just say I didn’t talk and they got carried away. I ended up in a coma. Lost my eyes and there was extensive damage to my kidneys so they gave me a kidney transplant when I was in the coma. They told me I was in it for six months. When I woke up, I had a new kidney, new eyes and a new identity.”
Oh my God. This wasn’t happening.
He emitted a strangled sort of laugh, and the sound felt like the sharp tip of a knife piercing her heart as she pictured him lying in a hospital bed all alone God knew where without any family around.
“I thought I’d gone mad. I tried to tell people I wasn’t Chance Donovan. They quickly transferred me to a prison infirmary in the States via I believe private plane. When I got better, they sent me to solitary. I think for a while I did go mad. I wouldn’t answer any of their questions. They kept asking me where is it? Where is it?”
“Where is the disc.”
“Yes. The disc. The one I found on our doorstep. Someone put it there. I inserted it into the laptop and read a couple of pages and knew this was dangerous shit. I knew I had to turn it over to…”
“To those people who you were working undercover for?”
He nodded and then suddenly it was as if a dam was bursting within him. He started talking and didn’t stop.
“I also knew that there was a hell of a story on that disc. I wanted to stay out of it. Wanted us to start our family. I couldn’t do that if I stayed on this case. I also know how governments work. They can make things disappear if they want. They can make people disappear too. So I wanted the word to get out about the stuff on the disc. It was my best chance of coming out of this whole thing in one piece. Or at least that’s what I thought. So I made a copy and also downloaded it to the hard drive. Then I put the laptop in my hiding place in the lighthouse. I figured if I handed it over to Helena and Skip there wouldn’t be any trouble coming our way. So with the disc I went to New York to give it to Skip and Helena. I found Skip in her office but Helena wasn’t around. So I left my resignation on her desk and gave Skip the disc. I cleared out my desk and came back. I wanted so badly to get home to you. But the minute I stepped on Sweet Lies I was surrounded.”
His words chilled her and she wanted to ask him to stop, but she sensed he needed to spill all the hurt so he could begin to heal. He picked up the Saint Christopher medallion from the table and rubbed it gently between his thumb and forefinger.
A tiny smile lit up his lips.
“When I was in prison they finally they gave me back the medallion and I began to have hope. I was who I said I was. I started to look for a way out.”
She pressed a hand to her heart, trying to calm the intense pounding as she tried to absorb what Steve was telling her. She couldn’t make sense of it. Couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t grab a hold of it. He was alive. He’d been held against his will in a prison?
How can something like this happen? It did
n’t make sense. Nothing made sense. She swallowed back the bitter bile climbing up her throat and tried to maintain eye contact with him.
Eye contact with her man who had stranger’s eyes. Her husband who was also her intimate stranger.
“After a couple of years they started letting me out into the exercise yard. I managed to get a few convicts to believe me. It seemed everyone who tried to help me ended up dead.”
She shook her head in denial. Could he be crazy? Could she be crazy? Prisoners ended up dead if they tried to help Steve?
“Dead?” she whispered as she tried to get her head around everything he was saying.
Steve nodded.
“I couldn’t believe it myself. The private prison I’d been locked in had many eyes on me and it was obvious they weren’t going to let me go until I told them what information I knew and where I got it.”
“But you got out.”
“With the help of Michael…”
“The man in the grave you visited the other day?”
Steve nodded. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed back emotions that she could read clearly on his face.
Guilt. Pain. Sadness.
He looked away and shook his head. He continued speaking. Continued telling her things she didn’t want to hear.
“It took me another couple of years to gain his trust. I had to be careful. God! It was like something out of a conspiracy movie. I was a nervous wreck. Didn’t know who I could trust. Didn’t know if I wanted another death on my head. Finally I managed to get to Michael. He was the top man. If you wanted something done like having another inmate killed, he was the man to arrange it. For a price. Said he’d take on my problem if I agreed to bury him over on Prince Edward Island. Wanted bachelor buttons and lupines on his grave. Wanted to know if I could arrange it when I got out.”
Steve emitted a strangled laugh and his eyes were piercing as he gazed at her again.
“When I got out? Can you believe it? The man had confidence in himself in getting me out.”
Emily shivered and pulled her robe tighter around her neck. Her husband had been held captive in a prison and she hadn’t known a thing. All these years he’d been suffering and she’d gone on with her life.
Oh God, she was going to be sick over this whole thing. She wanted to beg Steve to stop talking. But she knew he needed to say these things. To tell her what had happened.
“I told him my problem. He said he’d heard about me. Rumors mostly. He didn’t take the rumors seriously because he didn’t believe in rumors. Only cold, hard facts. He eventually believed me that I was Steve McCullen, a journalist.”
Steve smiled.
“Not Chance Donovan, convicted inmate. I warned him not to tell anyone we were talking or he’d end up dead. He said he’d heard those rumors about people ending up dead who spoke to me too. Since he didn’t believe in rumors—”
“He decided to help you.”
Steve nodded and frowned.
Thank God for Michael.
“Big-time. In that prison on death row every visitor is monitored. He didn’t want to put any of the people who came to visit him into possible harm’s way so he never spoke about me to them. Instead we spoke in the exercise yards and extremely briefly every time. He did manage to smuggle out a note through the channels, telling my whereabouts, but the note must have got lost somewhere. No one came to help.”
Steve lifted the Saint Christopher medal from the table and turned it over.
“I scratched my convict initials and TX meaning Texas into the back of the medallion. I knew it was a long shot that anyone would even figure out what it meant. Michael managed to smuggle it out and had it delivered to Daniel. We waited for weeks but no one came. By then my kidney was starting to reject. Surprisingly the eyes didn’t do too badly. I got a little cocky with the guards when I lost the medallion. They put me back into solitary again.”
“Oh Steve.”
He cracked another grin.
“I wasn’t a model prisoner. I had a defiance problem.”
Then his face fell into a severe frown.
“Michael probably thought I didn’t have much time. I think he somehow fixed it so we were in the same exercise yard again on that final day. He picked a fight with an inmate who was three times his size. I think he wanted me to rush the wall and I was about to, but the guards started shooting. I saw him get killed and then I got shot.”
In all the excitement she had forgotten his scars. In the darkness she hadn’t seen them. In the shower she’d been too aroused to pay much attention.
Emily touched the bullet hole above his heart.
“That’s how you got this scar.”
He inhaled a shuddering breath, and she noted something flicker in his eyes. Something that resembled fear. Why was he suddenly afraid?
“The prison officials transferred me to a private hospital…in another state. Someone needed a new pair of lungs. I was a perfect match. Anyway, the hospital was under investigation at the time. I was in the private hospital in Florida where Daniel shot and killed the organ transplant surgeon Seth Martin last year.”
Emily finally understood his fear. Betrayal swamped her as she became painfully aware of the timing. Last year. Steve had been free for a year and hadn’t contacted her.
“They were using that private hospital to harvest organs from prisoners and other kidnapped people from across the country.”
“It happened a year ago, Steve. Obviously you were found and everyone neglected to tell me.”
“Why should I have contacted you?”
His cold question sent her reeling.
“How can you say that? You don’t think I would want to know my husband is still alive?”
“So you could see what they had done to my face? To my mind? So you could feel sorry for me?”
He shook his head.
“Thanks, but no thanks. Over the past year I’ve been in the hospital more times than out. The kidney they forced into me rejected. Daniel was a perfect match and so he donated one of his to me. My face needed numerous surgeries and my temper…I was so angry, Emily. I was sick of life—I’m surprised my brothers and dad stuck with me through it.”
A swarm of emotions slammed into her and her anger overflowed.
“In sickness and in health, Steve. Those words were in our wedding vows. I guess you didn’t take them as seriously as I did.”
“’Til death do us part, Emily. You thought I was dead. I didn’t want to interfere—”
Emily let out a strangled laugh. How in the world could he think this shit?
“Oh my God. Are you for real? Didn’t want to interfere? What do you think you’re doing now?”
“I want you safe. I want you safe and happy.”
“Happy? Do I look happy? Didn’t you think I’d be glad to know my husband was alive? All these years I’d lie awake in our bed thinking about you. I used to dream about the things we’d planned for. My heart would break every time I thought about you.”
He grimaced at her words.
Good. She wanted him to hurt. Hurt as badly as she was hurt by his actions of not letting her know he was alive.
“There has to be a better reason why you didn’t tell me you were alive, Steve. There has to be. I mean, come on. Your face? Whoopee shit about a face. What’s the real reason? Like maybe you didn’t love me enough?”
Her heart clutched at the shocked look slashing across his face. Okay, that was a low blow but she was pissed off.
“I can’t give you the kids you want, Emily.”
Each of his words punched her like a physical blow. But she remained steadfast. She had to.
“I see. One of the side effects of anti-rejection drugs could be sterility. There are other ways to have children. Adoption. Sperm donation.”
He turned his face away from her and she felt a spear of shame shoot directly into her heart at hounding him like this. But she didn’t care. He should know he was more than just a sperm don
or to her.
“That’s why you didn’t tell me you were alive? Because you can’t give me kids?”
“That’s one of the reasons.”
“Why did you come back to me now? Is it because I’m marrying Skip?”
“Yes. He might be behind what happened to me.”
Okay she could understand that angle of why he’d come back.
“Why are you pretending to be someone else? Were you ever planning on telling me who you really are?”
Steve shook his head. “I don’t know.”
You don’t know? The shock of his answer screamed along her nerves.
“So I don’t mean a thing to you. This attraction. The sex. Us. It all means nothing to you.”
He cursed and slammed a fist onto the table in anger. His eyes flashed with annoyance.
“Dammit! How can you say that? All I want to do is wake up every morning next to you. All I want is to see your beautiful smile every day. I’ve never stopped loving you. You are the reason I’m alive today. Just you. So don’t go putting bullshit into your head. I love you like I haven’t loved anyone in my life.”
“You sure have a funny way of showing it. I’ve never stopped loving you either but I can’t let you walk into my life and rip my heart apart again.”
His eyes narrowed and he scowled. Obviously he didn’t like the implications of what she was saying.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m saying you just can’t show up here and expect to come into my bedroom and make love to me and then decide you have to leave because you don’t want me to get hurt.”
“I can’t stay, Emily. It’s too dangerous. I’ll take you to my brother’s place. Daniel and Jo will keep you safe while I take care of the fallout over this information.”
“And after that?”
He shook his head.
“I can’t say.”
Damn him! She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation with Steve. It was insane. Her husband was alive? He was neck-deep in bad stuff and he wasn’t even going to tell her who he really was. How could she even go on with her life knowing what he’d gone through? Knowing he was somewhere out there in the world without her by his side.