Hidden Identity (Harlequin Intrigue)

by Alice Sharpe

  He pushed aside a few things and swore. “There’s not enough room in here for me to move if you’re standing. Sit back down until I get outside, then walk to the door and I’ll help you. Let’s do it as quickly as we can, okay?”

  She nodded again and sat. He climbed from the plane, reached inside and swept a bunch of crushed red flowers out of the way. “Walk over here to me,” he said. “You can do it.”

  She stood, steadying herself by grabbing the back of the seat in front of her. Her head spun and she felt nauseous, but the sensations passed. She glanced down and to her left and found a blood-covered man belted into the pilot’s seat. His sightless eyes looked blank. Her hand flew to her mouth.

  “Just come to the door,” her rescuer urged.

  She did as he told her, mainly because she couldn’t think of another plan. Gazing down at him, she paused for a second. His bloody unbuttoned shirt revealed a well-muscled chest, while the strap crossing his body was attached to a rifle held behind his left shoulder. He’d tucked a handgun into his waistband. He looked like someone you saw on a news report, a mercenary or a bandit, a man not to be taken lightly, sexy and scary at the same time.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She nodded. He clutched her waist and effortlessly lifted her out of the aircraft. She landed right in front of him, once again standing too close.

  “Steady now. Dizzy?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “Yes.”

  Unable to process the intensity of his expression, she lowered her gaze to the ground, where she found the bruised red flowers. He kneeled in front of her and plucked a small gold foil card from the ribbon that held their stems together and shoved it in his pocket. Taking her hand, he led her a few steps from the crash. She looked back once.

  Not a plane, but a helicopter, or what was left of one. The image of the dead pilot’s slack, bloodied face filled her head. Had she known him? Was he her boyfriend or husband or something? Then why was she sitting in the back? Why couldn’t she think?

  And wait, had there been someone in the passenger seat, too? She wasn’t sure.

  Keep moving, she willed herself as they left the path and took off into the dense forest, ripe with dark mysteries that mirrored those playing out in her brain. The only thing she was sure of was the lifeline of her rescuer’s warm fingers.

  Chapter Three

  Okay, so where were the questions, the accusations? As Adam guided Chelsea onto the cabin’s surrounding deck, he steeled himself for a barrage of all of the above, but none came. Once on the deck, he grabbed the binoculars he kept hanging from a nail under the eaves, then used them to scan the horizon and the small road that emptied into the meadow. So far, so good.

  The sky had grown dark and the smell of impending rain filled his nostrils. How long did he have before more of Holton’s men showed up?

  He put back the binoculars and discovered Chelsea had disappeared. He found her sitting on the sofa, blood smeared across her face, hands limp in her lap. He crossed to the bathroom, where he moistened a clean washcloth and grabbed the box of bandages. As always, the glimpse of his own altered appearance in the mirror jarred him. So did the dead man’s blood all over his shirt. He grabbed a clean one and changed.

  Kneeling in front of her, he gently cleaned and bandaged the laceration. “You must have a million questions,” he began.

  She sagged against the sofa and closed her eyes. “No,” she said.

  “Don’t you want—?”

  “No,” she interrupted, rubbing her temples. “All I want is to sit here.”

  “Does your head hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  He got up to retrieve two aspirin and a glass of water and returned to find her staring around the room. He handed her the tablets and she swallowed them without comment. “I’d like to close my eyes for a moment,” she said as she gave him back the water glass.

  There wasn’t time for her to nap, but how did he thrust her into action after what she’d just endured? “Go ahead. I have a few things to do.” Like pack up and get us out of here.

  He desperately wanted to know how she’d ended up on his doorstep with a hired killer along for the ride. The most likely scenario was that they’d kidnapped her and forced her into taking them to him, but that didn’t wash because she hadn’t known where he was. No one did. His hands itched with the desire to shake her awake and ask her what was going on, but he couldn’t do that. They also itched with the desire to caress her, to tell her he loved her, that he was sorry he’d left, that finding her here was like a gift from heaven. Would she want to hear any of that? Judging from her aloofness, no, she would not. He shoved his hands in his pockets to kill the urge to shake her awake.

  The fingers on his right hand brushed a hard ridge of folded stock paper. He pulled the small foil card he’d found with the flowers from his pocket and opened it, immediately recognizing Chelsea’s concise handwriting.

  “‘My beloved Steven,’” he read. Steven. That’s the name he’d chosen when he’d relocated to California. It was the only name he’d ever given Chelsea. He cleared his throat and continued reading. “‘I think I know the location of the cabin you described the night you asked me to marry you. My plan is to drop these roses in the nearby river as a way of letting you go. I don’t want to do this but the reality is you’re dead. I’ll never stop loving you just as I wonder if I’ll ever understand what really happened to you or why that man from the government asked me a million questions, but wouldn’t answer even one of mine. Sometimes it feels as though I’m grieving a shadow. Goodbye, my love. Rest in peace knowing I will move heaven and earth to make a wonderful life for our baby. Yours forever, Chelsea.’”

  “Baby?” he whispered, looking from the note to Chelsea. She was pregnant?

  A huge smile came and went in a flash as the enormity of this development hit him in the gut. Had the baby survived the crash? What in the world should he do?

  Protect her. Protect them! That’s what he should do. And right now that meant getting them out of here.

  He threw his meager possessions in a box, then trotted out to the Jeep parked in the tiny shed/garage. The back was already filled with camping gear, a shovel and a chainsaw. To these he added the new box, then he went back inside to take whatever food and drink he could lay his hands on. He wiped things down and carried the perishables out to the Jeep, where he stowed them with everything else before covering the whole thing with a tarp, which he tied in place.

  Small rocks separated the cabin from the riverbank. He drove across them and set the parking brake just as rain began to fall. The nonprescription glasses immediately blurred with raindrops and he pocketed them. The abandoned logging road, their only escape route, was a quarter mile downstream. The Jeep had no roof, and its engine was temperamental to say the least. It would be a miracle if it made it to the top of the ridge—if Chelsea hadn’t been there, he would have left it in the shed and hiked out just the way he’d hiked in. But she wasn’t up to that.

  Of course, if an attack came from the air, they’d be sitting ducks, but it seemed more likely to him that ground reinforcements would show up instead. The downed helicopter had looked like someone’s paycheck-to-paycheck livelihood and that probably meant there wasn’t a handy fleet that Holton could summon from his jail cell at will.

  “It’s time to go,” he said as he gently shook Chelsea’s shoulder.

  Her eyes blinked open. “Where am I?” she said, and for a moment, he thought the catnap had cleared her head. “Do I know you?”

  There went that hope. “Kind of,” he said carefully.

  “I don’t remember you.”

  “Not at all?”

  Her eyes widened. “No. Should I? I mean, yes, of course I should—you called me by a name.”

  “Chelsea Pier
ce,” he said.

  “Then you know me?”

  “Yes,” he said, confused. He sat back on his heels. “Do you remember how you got in the helicopter, who the passenger was, the gunshot, the pilot? How you got here, what happened...anything?”

  She shook her head and winced. “No, none of that. I don’t even know who I am.”

  His throat went dry. She was talking about amnesia. He’d known she was confused but he hadn’t followed that trail to this conclusion. “We have to leave,” he said.

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  Her brow narrowed. “I don’t understand. Where are we going?”

  “We’re both in danger. We have to get away from here right now.”

  She sat up slowly and his heart went out to her. He saw no blood on her tan jeans and that probably meant the pregnancy hadn’t terminated. “Do you hurt anywhere besides your head?” he asked her.

  “My knee hurts a little.”

  “How about your...tummy or abdomen? You know, where the pressure from the seat belt might have...bruised you?”

  “No,” she said.

  He took her hands and pulled her upright, resisting the urge to hug her reassuringly, sensing it wouldn’t have that effect. His gaze dropped to her midsection. She’d lost weight since he’d last seen her, but there was definitely a small swelling that hadn’t existed before. He tried to figure out how far along she could be and decided on no more than four months. He handed her the rain gear he’d set aside to shelter her from the weather and helped her put it on. “Hurry,” he said with a last look around.

  They walked down to the river to the Jeep and he helped her climb aboard. The rain was coming down harder now. Once he’d stowed the rifle and jumped behind the wheel, she looked up at him, her face shaded by the oversized hood, blue eyes questioning. “What should I call you?”

  Would the name Steven ring any latent bells that might help her place him? Probably not, so he gave her his real name. “Adam.” He was done lying to her.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said with a wan smile.

  The Jeep waddled into the river like an old wrestler climbing back into the ring. Thanks to the almost daily treks along this river, he knew to stay close to the western bank, where the water was relatively shallow. When he spied a small grove of red-barked madrones, it would be time to cross the river to the opposite shore, but only until a dead pine tree signaled a pool ahead, at which time he’d cross back to the west. It was slow going, the river gurgling under the vehicle, water washing under the doors and dousing their feet during the cross to the other side. A few times he turned to look behind to see if anyone was there, or to stare up into the sky. It was during one such glance that he remembered he’d left the binoculars hanging under the eaves. Lightning flashed to the south and he counted under his breath. On six, a clap of thunder sounded to the east.

  At last he found the place to exit the river to access the logging road and jerked the steering wheel to the left. The Jeep grumbled its way out of the shallow water. The tires spun on the mud before finding purchase on harder ground. He drove forward a hundred feet, then ran back to scatter forest debris to cover their tracks. It wasn’t perfect but it would have to do. He ran back to the Jeep and gunned the engine.

  The road was eroded and heavily rutted. He dodged the worst of it while steadily climbing. Every now and again, he’d have to stop to use the front mounted winch to pull aside fallen branches, or shift rocks out of the way, then restart their journey. During those short breaks, he listened for the approach of another vehicle or aircraft. All he ever heard was the sound of thunder getting closer.

  Chelsea silently allowed him to work. What did she make of this frantic dash in the rain with a man who was a stranger to her? When would she start demanding an explanation?

  And what would he tell her?

  Anything she wants to know, he told himself.

  From the first moment he’d seen her he’d been drawn to her humor and beauty. It was like a man standing in the middle of the desert being hit by a rainsquall. All the loneliness and restlessness that had plagued him for well over a year disappeared with the genuine wattage of her smile. For someone with no past he could ever talk about, suddenly having a future had filled him with renewed energy and that bred hope. Weeks of being with her, loving her, spinning dreams, well, that had been heaven on earth, until he had to leave without telling her, knowing he’d never see her again and that she would never know he’d faked his own death.

  Just as he’d faked almost everything she thought she knew about him.

  If she ever got her memory back, she’d hate his guts and he wouldn’t blame her.

  And now, wonder of wonders, here she was, carrying his baby and not knowing who either one of them were.

  “Why are you staring at me?” she asked.

  “You’re very pretty,” he responded.

  “I feel like a drowned rat and I’m the one with the rain parka. Thank you for that.”

  “You’re welcome. How’s your head feeling?”

  “Probably a lot like the tires on this Jeep.”

  “Hopefully we can stop pretty soon and you can stretch out.”

  “Hmm...” she said. Her face grew serious. “Back at the cabin you asked if I remembered a gunshot. What did you mean?”

  “Your pilot had a fresh gunshot wound in his arm,” he said.

  “Is that what caused the crash?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it. I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “And who exactly are you?” she asked, her brow narrowing.

  He felt a vibration in his pocket and took out the monitor. Back at the cabin, a vehicle had triggered the road sensor. It would take about ten minutes to get to the cabin, another five or so to tear the place apart. Maybe they’d take a look at the downed chopper. For that matter, maybe the sensor had detected a police car or emergency vehicles sent to investigate the crash site. There was no way of knowing for sure who was on their way up the road. With any luck he might be able to see when the Jeep reached the top of this blasted mountain and he could chance a scan below.

  “What’s that?” she asked as she stared at the little electronic device in his hand.

  “Insurance.”

  She shook her head, then closed her eyes. “Why are we running away?”

  “Someone is after me. Or us, I guess. I promise I’ll tell you more but not now.”

  Speculation settled on her face as she peered at him. Of all her expressions he’d witnessed over the months, this one of wariness was new. He yearned for her to look at him the way she had before. Fat chance of that right now.

  “Okay,” she said at last. “I’ll wait.”

  Thirty minutes later the Jeep, as victorious as a wheezing climber, crested the hill. “I’ll be right back,” he told Chelsea, stopping under the trees where there was still some cover from the rain.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and nodded.

  He fetched a smaller, less powerful set of binoculars out of the glove box and walked into the clearing. It took him a few seconds to locate the cabin. Adjusting the focus, he finally spied a dark van parked close to the cabin’s deck. A man with white-blond hair stood near it, an automatic rifle in his hands. No uniform. No bells or whistles on the car. Within a few moments, two more armed men came out of the house and joined him. They moved under the protection of the eaves, apparently unaware he and Chelsea had escaped via the river. The blond guy took out his phone and made a call while the others watched.

  An instant after lightning pierced the dusky skies, an explosion rent the air. Adam jerked his binoculars toward the forest on the other side of the meadow. Flames climbed the trees where the helicopter had gone down. The lightning must have made a direct hit. One man immediately jumped off the deck and took off across the meadow, while the other two h
eld their ground. And then one of them began a slow turn toward the ridge on which he stood. It appeared he’d found Adam’s good binoculars and now he held them to his eyes. Adam immediately lowered the set he held, but not before he saw the man’s lips move and his arm shoot out toward the crest, seemingly right at Adam.

  Adam stood without breathing, without moving, until the need to know what was happening outweighed the risk of looking. He all but oozed backward into the shadows before raising the binoculars again.

  More lightning flashed, followed by thunder still startlingly close by. In that moment, Adam witnessed the man previously seen hurrying toward the explosion now running to the cabin, presumably called back by the other two. They all hopped into the van and tore off down the road.

  Adam had seen enough. They might know he was up here but he knew the low clearance of their vehicle wouldn’t handle eroded roads and trails. That meant they would locate the main highway and watch for him, or at least that’s what he would do in their place. So, instead of finding a nice paved highway and leaving the forest, he’d stay on logging roads until he found a suitable place for them to spend the night. His first priority was to get Chelsea to a doctor and then he needed to study a map. There were decisions to be made and in her current condition, those decisions would have to come from him.

  He’d envisioned his final escape many times over the past few weeks, but he’d never imagined he’d have to drag another person along with him. A month ago, when he’d asked Chelsea to be his wife, he’d thought he was safe and in the clear, never dreaming she would wind up in danger because of him. None of that mattered now because the only reality existed in this moment—not yesterday and certainly not tomorrow.

  And now it wasn’t just her—it was their baby, too.

  Once more he got back in the Jeep.

  “What did you see down there?” Chelsea asked.

  “Three armed men. I think they’ll try to cut us off.”