I followed him several times a week for more than two months, stopping in Ada on my way home to visit with Amber and talk about her GED, her future. She could do anything with her life if she had one person willing to give her a push in the right direction. I wanted to be that person.
And then I found threats. Someone emailed me pictures of Megan, her tear stained face on the night after the wedding that never happened. We were at my place, sitting in my living room. I could see the pattern on the curtains. Someone was using a telephoto lens on the street outside my house. Someone was watching me—and watching her.
I took a chance and emailed the same address Luke had used to email me earlier. He answered.
“You have to stop. I’m telling you, you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. There are powerful people out there who are willing to do whatever they have to do to stop you. They’ll hurt Megan, they’ll hurt Cole. They’ll even hurt Amber.”
I couldn’t put my family at risk. But I needed to see Amber one more time.
She was so beautiful. A woman like that wouldn’t want a man like me. I was boring. Simple. She needed excitement. A girl like her would probably get a kick out of the ride Cole could take her on. But me? She’d grow bored sooner or later.
I drove to Ada and sat outside the diner, thinking I should leave. But I went inside, a bottle of very expensive brandy hidden under my shirt. I watched her, pretending to stare at the laptop in front of me. I watched as she moved around the diner, interacting with the regulars. She always had a smile on her lips, even when she was weary and it was an effort to keep it there. When her shift was over, she came over and slid into the bench across from me.
“You okay?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’re drinking. You don’t usually do that.”
I pulled the bottle up above the table, shaking it a little as though I was trying to impress her with the label.
“Want some?”
She smiled, but I could see the caution in her eyes. She only drank a little, content with watching me drink myself into something like oblivion. We talked about literature. She loved discussing the classics more than the literature majors I’d gone to school with. And she got this dreamy look in her eyes that made my heart swell with things I thought I’d never feel again.
She took me home that night. I’d always been too afraid of scaring her off to ask her for a date, or anything beyond the little thing we had going inside the diner. But this time it was her idea. I went, and I told her how beautiful she was and…I was as gentle as the booze would allow. It was a night I’d imagined so many times before that I could hardly convince myself it was real. But then, the next morning, the reality was much too much. I couldn’t believe I’d acted such a cad.
It was time to grow up and do what Luke had said.
***
We made a plan.
It wasn’t really a plan. But Luke thought it would get us both out of this mess and allow him to come back to Megan and fix everything.
I met him downtown in a crowded food court at a local mall. He was dressed in jeans and a hoodie, hiding his face from anyone who might be curious about him. We sat at a table as far from the crowd as possible.
“Have you seen Megan?”
Luke shook his head. “It’ll be easier for her if we do it this way.”
“You really think so? I don’t.”
Luke’s eyes moved over the crowd like he was watching for something. Or someone.
“We should do this.”
I leaned forward a little. “She’s my sister, you know. It’s my job to make sure no one hurts her. The fact that I know where you are and why you left makes me something of an accomplice in all this."
“You are.” Luke studied my face a minute. “If you had backed off of all this when I told you to—”
“They were stealing my software!”
“I told you what you needed to know. You should have stopped investigating it.”
“I have.”
“Not soon enough! You don’t understand the kind of people you’re dealing with here. These are people who would sooner kill you than find another way to stop you. You fell into a hornet’s nest with this, Peter.”
“So now what?”
Luke shook his head. “We have to get you off their radar. You have to stay away from Ada; you have to stay away from John Fuller and Kurt Sanchez, and anyone else you met during the investigation.”
“And that’s enough?”
“No. It’s not nearly enough. But it’s a beginning.” Luke crossed his arms over his chest and surveyed the crowded food court. “Everything we do from this moment on will be to protect Megan and the rest of your family. We have to be very careful about our movements, our actions.” He looked at me for a long moment. “You have to do everything I say. Do you understand?”
The pictures of Megan in my living room had scared the crap out of me. I was willing to do just about anything.
“I will.”
“This is what we’re going to do…”
***
The bright headlights came from out of nowhere. These highways were often deserted this late at night. I could drive for miles without seeing anyone else. But, suddenly, these lights were directly behind me, blinding me.
I reached for my cellphone. I had an idea I knew who it was and what they wanted. I’d been waiting for this. He warned me. I trusted him, but I needed to warn Megan. He couldn’t stop me from doing that, could he?
I texted as quickly as I could. The headlights were brighter now, coming closer. And then…boom! The car slammed into the back of mine. Everything flew forward, including the phone, wrenched from my hand before I could push send.
It was all I could do to keep the car on the road. I stared at the phone, willing it to pop back up into my hand as the car slammed into the back of mine again.
Megan, you’ve got to find it. You’ve got to help him. He can’t do this on his own.
And then…
Chapter 8
Hayden
I tried Megan’s cell again, but it went straight to voicemail as it did the last ten times I’d tried. I paced outside of Dante’s house, watching the police wander around uselessly, studying the damage to his front door. Someone had used a detonation to blow the door open. It took a lot of determination to do something like that in the middle of an urban city.
Megan’s car was parked a block away. Dominic was over there checking it out. And Dante’s SUV was in the driveway. But neither one of them appeared to be inside the house. The cops said the place was deserted. Where had they gone?
My phone rang. My heart jumped into my throat, hoping it was Megan. But it was Cole.
“I’m at her place. There’s no one here.”
“Where else might she have gone?”
“The house in Galveston, maybe? Or one of the safe houses.”
“I have Vincent and Marcus checking out the safe houses.”
“What’s going on, Hayden? Should I be worried?”
“I think so.”
I gave him a brief summary of what had happened that day, the things we’d deciphered from Emily’s notes. I could feel the tension building on his end of the phone as I talked; I could hear it in the sighs that often slipped through the empty air between us.
“I should get Amber and PJ out of town.”
“To a hotel, anyway. Dominic’s already moved Amy to a place downtown.”
“You hear from Megan, you let me know.”
“I will.”
I ended the call and walked down to where Dominic was leaning against the front of Megan’s car, waiting.
“Angela called from the office. The cops swooped in an hour ago with search warrants. They’re confiscating all the computers and phones and interrogating everyone about Megan and Dante.”
“Have they said what the charges are?”
“No. Angela says they’re saying as little as possible. She called M
r. Bradford and he sent over a lawyer, but there’s only so much he can do.”
“We should go back to Sam’s and remove everything off her computers before they find an excuse to confiscate that, too.”
Dominic nodded. “Any luck with Megan?”
I shook my head. “But she’ll find a way to contact me.”
I believed that. But, somehow, I once again felt as though I’d let Sam and Luke down. I was supposed to watch over her, keep her safe. But she was in the wind and I had no idea where.
Chapter 9
Megan
“Do you remember my high school graduation? Remember how we came out here, all of us—Sam, Mom and Dad, Peter and Cole and a whole group of our friends?”
“I remember.” Luke relaxed a little, dropping his arms to his sides. “I remember walking through those doors, surprising you because no one had told you that I’d managed to get leave after all.”
I glanced back over my shoulder before taking a long swig from the wine bottle. I could feel his disapproval as he watched me, but I didn’t care. Let him disapprove. I didn’t really approve of his actions here lately, either.
“Do you remember how we went for a walk alone together after everyone else was smashed and lounging around the back porch?”
He inclined his head, his eyes moving over my face. “I remember telling you that we’d always be together. That you were the only one I wanted.”
“You made a lot of promises to me, Luke. But that was the one I clung to when you disappeared.”
“I was counting on that.”
My head came up a little. I studied him now, trying to find my Luke in Dante’s face.
“Why did you do it? Why did you leave before the wedding? Couldn’t you have given me a better explanation? Couldn’t you have gone through with the wedding and then walked away?”
He shook his head. “They wouldn’t have allowed that.”
“They. You keep saying they, blaming everything on a group of faceless, nameless people. But it’s bullshit, Luke. An excuse.”
He stood, not leaving the room, but moving away from me. He walked to the glass doors that looked out on the water, watching the waves crest against the beach.
“I’ve done the best I could to protect everyone, Megan. I never wanted any of this to happen. If Peter had only listened to me—”
“Don’t blame this on my dead brother!”
He turned, his eyes full of grief, his shoulders broken with the weight of his secrets.
“What he stumbled on was a hornet’s nest. It was a fluke that he found it at all.”
“They were using his software.”
“Yeah. But he shouldn’t have been able to figure that out, let alone who was taking it. They were careful, covering every move. If it hadn’t been for Kurt—”
“Explain to me how Kurt was involved in all this.”
He crossed his arms again, looking so incredibly powerful standing there, his legs slightly apart, his muscles flexing against the material of his clothing. I wanted to crawl into his arms and feel the power of those muscles around me. I wanted him to hold me, and make all this all right.
“Kurt Sanchez was approached by members of the CIA and asked to provide the cellphones that the software would be used in. He worked with them for several months, and then he got cold feet. He thought he could just walk away. When they wouldn’t allow it, he thought that giving information to Peter would make it easier for him to get out—or to end the whole thing.”
“So Kurt pulled Peter into this mess to get himself out? That worked out well for him.”
Luke shrugged. “He deserved to be in jail for what he was doing, anyway.”
“But if he was working for the CIA—”
“It’s complicated. Kurt knew the people he was working with weren’t legit, yet he agreed to do it, and he even gave them some ideas on how to make the whole thing work better.”
“And then? After he told Peter?”
“Peter stumbled across John Fuller, and John alerted his partners as to what Peter was doing. And they were not happy.”
“How were you pulled into it?”
“Peter called me. He asked me to help him.”
“And what did you do?”
“I went to a man I thought I could trust. But it turned out he wasn’t who I thought he was.”
“Is that man the reason Peter is dead?”
“Partly.”
I leaned forward, clutching that wine bottle between my hands. I drank, taking a long couple of swallows as I tried to work all this out in my head.
“Why did you leave?”
“Because another friend, someone I could trust, called me the night of the rehearsal dinner. He told me…”
“Did you tell Garner that Forrester was working on something in Huntsville?”
“I told him I’d handle it.”
“Yeah, well, Garner’s neck deep in the France thing. So is Forrester. You’ve opened a door you can’t close, my friend. And now they’re out to get you.”
“…they were set to take us out at the wedding. You, me, Peter—everyone. If I hadn’t left, we would all be in our graves.”
“Why?”
He shook his head. “That’s complicated, Megan.”
“No, it’s not.” I jumped to my feet, anger burning in my chest. “What’s complicated is telling a church full of people why the wedding some of them came thousands of miles to see isn’t going to happen! What’s complicated is going home to a house filled with gifts, trying to figure out how to return those gifts! What’s complicated is going to bed every night trying to hold on to the belief that the man I loved would never just walk away from me like that, but finding it increasingly difficult to really believe it.”
He came to me and I hit him. I slapped him hard across the face even as he tried to take my face gently between both his hands.
He was stunned for a moment. So was I. But then I turned, intent on drinking the last few sips in that wine bottle. He grabbed it and smashed it against the fireplace, making the flames jump as the alcohol splashed across the bricks and the wood.
“It’s not like you to use a crutch, Megan.”
“What do you know about me? You haven’t been here for two years!”
“But I’m here now.”
I raised my hand to hit him again, but he caught my wrist. He pushed me back, pressing me against the smooth wall that blocked the entryway from the hallway. It was cold against my overheated skin, cold and hard.
“I’d rather break your heart than see you laid out in a coffin.”
“I’m not sure I can say the same.”
Hurt flashed through his eyes, but he refused to let me go. In that second, I saw the hurt that had flashed through Dante’s eyes a dozen times after that first time…even during that first time. The need and the pain, the two so mingled together that I couldn’t quite separate them. It was there again and…I should have known. I should have seen it and known what it meant. I just assumed that Dante was a man with secrets. How right I was.
He held me hard against the wall, my wrists caught painfully between us. But the way he touched me, the way his fingers brushed against my cheek, was far different from the pain. It was a loving touch, one I remembered from the many long, lovely nights we’d spent in this house when we were younger. Before everything fell apart.
“Do you remember my graduation night?” he asked softly against my ear. “Do you remember how we drove down here when the parties were over, and your parents thought you were with Sam and my mom thought I was with Peter?”
“How could I forget?”
“Do you remember how I took you into your parents’ bedroom and lay you in the middle of that massive bed?”
A smile threatened to slip across my lips. “Do you remember how frantic my parents were when we fell asleep and didn’t get home when we were supposed to? Do you remember how they called the police and we were pulled over on the 35?”
H
e did smile. “I had so many intentions that night. But, somehow, it was okay to just lie there and talk. To plan out our future.”
“Planning was never our thing. Every time we made plans…”
He pressed his lips to my jaw, slipping them slowly down the length of my throat.
“I wanted you so desperately that night,” he whispered against my ear. “But I knew it didn’t matter. That sex wasn’t what we were all about.”
“What changed?”
He pulled back slightly, his eyes moving over my face. “Nothing.”
He let me go, stepping away from me. He crossed the room and knelt by the fireplace, picking up the pieces of the broken bottle.
“We should move on. They’ll find us here.”
“Where can we go?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
He stood again, carrying the broken bottle into the kitchen. I followed, suddenly finding familiarity in the movement of his body and in the shape of his shoulders. This was my Luke. This was the man I’d grown up with, who went to the Navy while I finished high school, and waited for me to grow up before he made love to me for the first time in a hotel in San Diego. This was the man who snuck away from his work with the CIA as often as he could, so we could meet up in exotic locales all over the world. This was the man on whose shoulder I cried when I was injured in Afghanistan and had to make the painful decision to stay with the Marines but be forced into a non-combat role, or leave the corps I loved so much. This was the man who encouraged me to go with my brother’s idea of starting a security firm and encouraged my best friend to give up a high-paying job with a computer firm to come and work at Dragon with me. This was the man who’d always had my back no matter the situation.
It took a lot of trust to be in a relationship like the one we’d had. I’d clung to that trust all this time. How could I turn my back on it now?
I touched him as he dropped the glass in the trashcan. He turned, his eyes dark as he regarded me.
“I’ll follow you wherever you want to go, Luke. I just…I need to know the truth.”
He grabbed me by my hips and lifted me onto the corner of the counter.
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