She felt him everywhere—a joy, a passion, a sense of completion so absolute she was no longer sure who she was anymore. She knew nothing outside him, outside what they were experiencing….
Reece’s stroke grew slowly faster, harder…
Mara moaned, wrapping her legs around his waist even as he held her down with a hand against her lower stomach, allowing for deeper penetration.
Oh, yes…
Oh, dear Lord, yes…
“I love you.”
She wasn’t sure who had said the words, or if it even mattered, because in that one moment as he groaned and stiffened in orgasm, and she exploded around him yet again, the only thing that did matter was that love was present….
* * *
JON FELT DIFFERENT SOMEHOW. As if he’d ventured into a hidden grotto, bathed in miraculous waters, and reemerged a changed man.
For a long time afterward, he lay with Mara cradled against his side, her head on his chest, caressing her back as naturally as if he’d been doing it forever. And he wanted to continue doing it forevermore.
Never had he been so moved by sex.
Mostly because it hadn’t been sex he’d been having.
The instant those three words had come out of his mouth, he knew them to be true. At some point over their ordeal, he’d fallen fully, hopelessly in love with Mara Findlay. And just then, it was the most remarkable thing in the world to him.
He’d thought he’d known love. Thought he’d understood it. But he realized now that love wasn’t something to be quantified or measured. It just was.
How do you know you’re in love? The age-old question teased his mind.
You just know.
He got that now.
Grasped it 100 percent.
He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that what he felt for Mara was love.
And he also knew she returned it as strongly.
“What are we going to do?”
It took Jon a moment to register her soft words. He felt them against his skin as breath before actually hearing them.
“About?” he asked.
She swallowed thickly. “About ending this….”
Even though he knew she was referring to the price on her head, he couldn’t help giving a start at her choice of words.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
She shifted slightly, then sighed against him again.
“I think it’s time we called in our backup….” he said quietly.
Her instant stiffening told him she knew exactly to whom he was referring: the FBI.
“Not now. Not this minute,” he said. “Not until you’re ready.”
Only, he was afraid she’d never be ready.
“They’ll arrest me,” she said.
He didn’t respond immediately.
“You know that.”
“Maybe.”
She shifted again, this time to move away from him.
He felt her absence so fully, he nearly shivered.
He looked to find she’d rolled completely away, her bare back to him.
“I’m open to suggestions,” he said quietly.
She didn’t say anything.
He rolled so he was facing her but wasn’t touching. He rested a hand against the silken heat of her back.
“Mara?”
“I say you take what I have to them. Prove my innocence….”
His fingers hesitated against her skin. “I wish it were that easy.”
She rolled back to face him. “Why isn’t it?”
“Because we both know this is more complicated than that. It surpassed that watermark some time ago.”
“No, it hasn’t.”
“Yes, Mara. It has.”
He watched her bite her bottom lip.
“The Winslow sheriff’s… Everything that happened while we’ve been on the run… The militia…”
She stared at him, waiting for something he wasn’t sure he could give her.
“It’s not enough to prove just your innocence. It’s time you came clean.”
She squinted at him and he glimpsed suspicion in her eyes. “I’m not following you….”
He could tell by the tightening of her every muscle that she understood exactly what he was saying.
“Mara, you need to tell the authorities everything you know about your former ‘family’ and Butler…. Bring them down, dismantle them, for good.”
“Authorities? And just what would they be the authority on, Jon? Guilt or innocence? Excuse me if I don’t happen to trust them enough to find their own asses, much less clear mine.”
She’d called him Jon instead of Reece.
The simple act made him wince in a way it shouldn’t have, but did.
“But you’re not alone anymore, baby. I’m right here with you.”
“And what is turning over everything I know going to accomplish?”
“It’ll free you from this.”
“I’m already free.”
“You’re wanted for murder.”
“By people whose opinion doesn’t matter.”
“Not to you. But so long as you have people hunting you, you’ll never be free.”
That seemed to catch her up short.
“Look, Mara,” he said, needing to convince her this was the right thing to do. “Our system may not be perfect. Hell, it’s anything but. But it is our system. The only one we have. The key word being we.”
She wasn’t listening to him. He could tell. She was shutting him out.
“It’ll free you from the past.”
She focused on him again.
“I’ll be the first to admit I have no clue what you went through when you were one of them. Or what causes that look in your eyes when you internally visit a place I cannot follow. It’s almost like a part of you dies.”
He remembered watching her prick her finger on the cactus at his mother’s house, how alone she’d looked, how isolated, cut off not only from him, but from herself…
“If we’re to have a future—”
She rolled away again. “We don’t have a future.”
There was no body armor that would ever be available to stop her words from penetrating his skin and doing untold damage as they spun around inside like saw blades.
He tried to speak, but it took him a minute to force the words out.
“If…you’re to have a future…you’ve got to close the door on the past.”
“Closed, bolted, boarded, forgotten.”
“Is it?”
She went quiet.
Jon lay back and slid his arm across his eyes, trying to ignore his own pain and focus on hers, on what needed to be said, needed to be done.
But, damn it, all he could seem to think about was how he couldn’t stand the thought of her not being a part of his life anymore.
“Mara, I…”
He what?
He swallowed past the sandy wad in his throat.
“Do you trust me?”
Nothing. Then she shifted. But she didn’t turn back to him.
“I know you’ve trusted others and had that trust betrayed.” He was reaching, he knew it. “Betrayed? Hell, they set you up for murder.”
She said something he couldn’t make out.
“What?”
“No fair,” she whispered a little louder. “I said that wasn’t fair.”
No, it probably wasn’t. But he didn’t know how else to get his point across.
“Do you trust that I’d never hurt you?”
Silence.
“I think you do.”
Her lack of a vocal response told him that she might at least be considerin
g his words. He hoped so.
“My advice would be this. Turn yourself in. Turn the information you got at the compound over. Cooperate with…them. Come to understand it’s not the past that makes us, but what we do with it.”
“Betray the trust that was put in me.”
“Protect yourself. And place your trust where it’s safe…and truly returned.”
Neither of them said anything for a long moment.
“My father always said you’re only as good as your word. Take away the money, the job, the family, and you’re defined by what you say…what you do. Period. There is no other value of a man or a woman,” Mara whispered.
“And what do you think your father would advise you to do now?”
She didn’t answer.
That was it. All he had. He didn’t think there was possibly anything more he could say, anything more he could do, to try to convince her to do anything other than what she was already determined to do.
Had she heard him? Really heard him?
He couldn’t be sure.
All he knew was that the past two days’ events weighed heavily on him, his emotions for her being the heaviest. And exhaustion was creeping in.
Mara shifted. He half expected her to get up and move farther away from him. Instead, she moved nearer.
He groaned somewhere deep in his chest and drew her closer, curving her back to his front and holding tight.
If this was the last time he was going to hold her, he intended to make it count….
24
HOURS LATER, JON WOKE to the unforgiving Arizona sunlight slicing through the crack in the motel room curtains and cutting a path across his face. He blinked and covered his eyes with his arm. He didn’t have to look; he already knew Mara was gone. He felt her absence as profoundly as the bruise that stretched across his chest.
Still, he looked. Her side of the bed was empty. The bathroom door was open and the Winchester was gone.
He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed then scrubbed his face with his hands. How in the hell had he gotten into this mess?
And worse, what did he do from here?
He picked up his watch from the bedside table and looked at the time. He knew what he needed to do. He needed to go home. Close an important door of his own and put his own life in order.
Damn. How pious he must have sounded. Mr. Fathomless Pit of Wisdom. Just last week he’d had his life all planned out.
And now?
Now he needed to go face a jury of his own making.
He got up, grabbed a shower, stowed his stuff in his duffel and then walked outside to stand in the bright morning light.
If he blinked a little too hard and felt as though he’d been in the deep depths of a tunnel for too long, only he had to know that.
Mara…
Well, he was afraid he’d very well lost any chance with her forever. Because despite everything he’d said, what he had done would probably shatter whatever trust she ever had in him.
* * *
MARA SAT IN THE MIDDLE seat of the cross-country bus next to the window, staring outside at the Arizona landscape that would soon be history. Leaving Reece that morning…
She blinked quickly, pretending it was the sun that bothered her eyes.
Leaving Reece that morning had been one of the most difficult things she’d ever done, ever, outside of attending her father’s funeral.
How could she have fallen so hard, so fast?
Two days ago…
Two days ago, he hadn’t even been a remote blip on her emotional radar.
Now he dominated it.
His words still rang in her ears.
Do you trust me?
She shifted in her seat, disturbing the elderly lady beside her who sat with her arms crossed over her purse dozing.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
“It’s all right, dear.”
But it wasn’t all right.
What was she doing?
She hadn’t slept at all last night. And she didn’t think Reece had, either. She was pretty sure he’d known when she’d gotten up, collected her things and left. But he hadn’t tried to stop her.
And if he had?
She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the glass, feeling both the heat from the outside and the air-conditioned coolness from within.
Who could say what might have happened.
But they both knew she had to do this.
What, exactly, “this” was…well, remained to be seen.
She’d taken the first bus out, which happened to be going to New York City, with stops along the way. She planned to get off at one of those stops. Which one was still a mystery.
All she knew was that she had to work this out on her own.
She had made copies of all of the documents she’d taken from Butler’s safe, only some of which she’d sent via messenger to the federal prosecutor in charge of her case before catching a cab to the bus terminal.
Until her name was cleared, she planned to stay on the run.
You’ll never be free…
She scrunched her eyes shut tighter.
Get out of my head, Reece.
She would have thought that to be easier than it was proving.
It was her heart she’d anticipated a problem with.
That thought made her aware of the sharp ache in her chest, one that intensified whenever she breathed.
She couldn’t remember being this broken up when she’d left Butler and the compound. She’d heard childbirth was like that: even the most difficult deliveries were mostly forgotten once a mother cradled her baby in her arms. Was love like that? Once you’d gotten over the pain, did you forget about it?
No. She knew that wasn’t the case here.
Reece…
She curled her fingers into her palms, her short nails biting into her flesh.
Do you trust me?
She needed to stop this…
The passenger in front of her was looking at something outside the window, then said something to the man next to him, who got up in order to look out, as well.
Mara looked out to see that a black SUV with flashing grill lights had drawn even with the bus, motioning for it to pull over.
FBI.
Damn.
She grabbed her bag. “Excuse me,” she said to the woman next to her.
Her hurting heart beating erratically, she rushed up the aisle, hoping to get out the back before the bus completely stopped.
Her foot caught on something and she went flying, smacking palms first onto the rubber mat. She looked to see she’d tripped over a baby blanket. The mother apologized and picked it up while another passenger asked if she was all right.
She scrambled to gather the things that had fallen out of her bag, only to see a cell phone.
Not just any cell phone, but Reece’s.
The bottom dropped out of her stomach.
She reached for it, and saw that it was live…and that there was a small note attached to the back.
“Trust me.”
In that moment, Mara knew she could never trust anyone again.
25
“I NEED YOUR HELP.”
Those were Jon’s first words when he’d stood in Darius Folsom’s office at Lazarus the morning Mara had taken off on her own…and he’d planted his cell phone on her, guaranteeing the FBI would pick her up in no time.
While he argued he’d done it for her own protection, he knew he’d also done it for selfish reasons. But not entirely. By allowing the FBI to take direct custody of her, Lazarus lost out on the lucrative bounty.
Which made his words to Darius all the braver.
“Let me get this straight,” Darius had said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms after Jon had outlined what he needed. “You cost this company money…and now you’re asking for a favor?”
As ridiculous as it seemed, Jon had found himself smiling. “Yes, I am.”
Darius had rocked in his chair for a few moments, then slapped his hands on the desk. “You got it.”
Now, a week later, he received the call that the charges against Mara had been dropped and she’d been set free, thanks to Darius going to Lazarus partner Lincoln Williams, who was ex-FBI, among other things.
Truth was, Jon had always suspected the documentation he’d helped Mara get wouldn’t be enough to assure her being cleared. She was right—the “authorities” couldn’t be trusted entirely. They could be shortsighted…especially when they already had those sights set on a suspect.
So he’d felt motivated to do what he could on his end to make sure her innocence was established.
He rocked back on his heels where he packed up the last of his boxes at the house he once shared with Julie, taking a look around the place that had never been home.
He’d bunked with a fellow Lazarus buddy for the past seven days. Julie’s meltdown had been as bad as he’d anticipated when he’d hit her with the news he was leaving. It had taken her this long to calm down enough to allow him inside to get his stuff.
He glanced up to find her standing in the doorway with her arms crossed.
She really was quite beautiful. At least physically. Looking at her, he didn’t have to wonder how he’d stayed with her as long as he had. But there was no future for them. He understood that now. And he’d known that fact even before letting Mara into his heart. He’d had just to acknowledge it.
No, he hadn’t told Julie about her. On some level, he supposed he should have. Maybe she could find some comfort in blaming their breakup on another woman.
But he hadn’t wanted to hurt her any more than he already had.
Besides, if she was this hypercritical now, what would happen if she had a cheating ex-boyfriend to add to her list of why life was so unfair to her?
“How’s Brutus?” she asked.
He had taken the dog with him last week. “Fine. He misses the backyard.”
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