Читать книгу Hidden Twin - Jodie Bailey - Страница 15

Amy’s shoulder cracked against the window as Sam executed another sharp turn and floored the gas pedal, leaving her stomach somewhere behind them on the asphalt.

“Hold on.” Sam’s hands were tight on the wheel, his focus on what lay ahead of them. He was intense yet he radiated no stress, only a fierce sense of capability that left Amy with the overarching belief that she was safe. She was safe even inside of a car going way too fast for the empty section of parking lot they were currently speeding through.

There was a brief exchange between him and someone she couldn’t hear in his earpiece, but his words didn’t make sense to her until he said, “We’re going to make a lot of turns without warning.”

Amy pressed her back into the seat even farther than she had before. Her fingers ached around the grab handle above the door, but she didn’t let go. “Is Wainwright okay?”

“He’s okay. Fortunately for him, side airbags are a thing.”

Relief was temporary, flung aside as Sam threw the car into another turn away from the more crowded section of the parking lot.

She should have been panicking right now. Her brain should have already given way to adrenaline and fear, throwing her into a state of sheer terror. It had happened under less harrowing circumstances. An overcrowded store during the holiday season. A sharp sound during a movie. Simply waking up too suddenly in the middle of the night. Panic attacks had become a semi-regular occurrence since she’d fled her real life.

Flying across the parking lot as though they’d been fired out of a missile launcher, the only thing she felt was detachment, as though her body was buckled into the front seat but her mind was somewhere slightly to the left. She was two steps behind what was happening.

She braced herself against the dash with her free hand as Sam navigated the turn out of the shopping center and shot up the road toward the highway entrance. Numb detachment was another thing she was used to, a side effect of the anxiety that had hounded her since the night she realized WITSEC had killed the old Amy Brady and given rise to Amy Naylor. Since the moment she’d realized the person she’d been from birth was dead.

In essence, although she still lived and breathed, she’d died that day. No more job. No more friends. No more sports medicine degree. WITSEC had rewritten and recreated her degree. They had fabricated her past work experience to fit this new person, a community college professor teaching biology, which she had studied a bit while taking sports medicine. She couldn’t even use her experience as a personal trainer, the job that had kept her afloat during college, without risking her own life. Everything she’d worked for and fought for was gone.

Worst of all, there was no hope of ever reconciling with her twin sister. Like the rest of the world, Eve had been told that Amy Brady was dead.

Well, she would have been told if the Marshals Service had been able to find her. Eve had disappeared shortly before Amy discovered the truth about Grant Meyer and began compiling evidence against him. For all Amy knew, Meyer’s coconspirator—who was also Eve’s boyfriend—had murdered her...or worse.

Amy jerked her mind into the present, to Sam taking the highway exit and threading through cars like a madman. If she continued down this road of thought, she’d jerk herself out of the numbness and lose control. There was no time for Sam to stop and coax her through an attack now. He needed both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road.

She stared at her feet braced against the floor mat and prayed her stomach would stay inside her body. Thankfully, she’d never been prone to motion sickness, but a hundred miles an hour on an interstate, weaving between cars, might change everything. “The police won’t like this.”

Sam’s chuckle was low and humorless as he navigated around a slow-moving truck. “My team leader is in touch with them. They’ll give us space, but the guy behind us is about to have his hands full.”

As if on cue, sirens squealed in the distance, seeming to come from all directions at once. Two police cars zoomed past on the other side of the highway. Amy dipped her head to peek at the side mirror. Two more, lights flashing and sirens blaring, were running up fast on the red car from the parking lot. While Sam and Amy blew past the next off-ramp, the car trailing them cut onto the exit and sped off the interstate, the police close behind.

Sam lifted his foot from the accelerator and exhaled loudly as the car leveled out to a more normal highway speed. His relief was the first sign he’d been holding any tension, a slight crack in his cool armor. He dropped one hand from the steering wheel to his thigh, flexing his fingers as though they were tight.

They probably were, given the grip he’d had on the wheel while he was evading their pursuer. His shoulders, his neck... Everything was probably balled into knots. If Amy had been in his shoes, there’d be a tension headache pounding through her skull.

It was a whole lot easier to think about his physical state than it was to think about all that had happened and all that was about to happen. Denial was her friend, and it would be until she had a moment alone to fall apart. “Thank you.”

“Just doing my job.” He winked at her, a rare flash of his personality beyond his role as a deputy marshal. There was a flash of a smile, then he tilted his head slightly as though his earpiece was talking to him again.

The glimpse of the real person who lived inside of him zinged along her spine. Amy looked away. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t noticed him the first time she’d seen him, the epitome of tall, dark and gorgeous. Every time he’d visited alongside Deputy Edgecombe, Sam had dogged her thoughts for days after.

She’d ignored the attraction. Her minor in psychology had taught her to recognize that her childhood could create a fascination with honorable men and heroes who galloped in on white horses to rescue fair maidens.

The men in her young life had been transient, coming and going at her mother’s princess-fantasy whims. Her mother had been addicted to the rush of new love. The minute her high was gone, she moved on to someone else.

Only one man had stayed longer than a month. Only one man had ever come close to being a father figure, and he’d vanished when his connections to organized crime threatened Amy and her sister.

She clenched her teeth. Amy had promised herself she’d never be like her mother, drifting into the princess fantasy of needing a man to rescue her or to complete her.

As it turned out, she was almost as bad as her mother. She’d jumped into marriage with Noah when she was nineteen because he’d not only loved her but had promised the security her life lacked. They were both young, lost and looking for someone to come home to. Sure, she’d loved him, but maturity made her wonder what would have happened with their marriage had he come home alive. They’d still been in the getting-to-know-each-other phase when she’d married him. Like her mother, she’d fallen into the rush of first love.

She wouldn’t make the same mistake again. If she remarried, it would be to someone she’d known for longer than a month.

With a glance at Sam, she created another resolve. If she ever remarried, it would be to a man who didn’t make her feel special simply because he’d rescued her from the gnashing teeth of a human-trafficking dragon.

“You doing okay over there?” Sam’s voice cut through the memories and dragged Amy into the reality she’d been trying with partial success to avoid.

“I’m fine.” A dull ache in her knees and fingers reminded her she was still braced for impact. Painfully, she unwrapped her fingers from the handle above the door and shifted her legs from side to side to relax her knees. “Where are we headed?”

Sam drummed his thigh and the steering wheel with his thumbs. “We’re going to my team’s headquarters in Atlanta. It’s secure. You’ll be safe. While we’re there, you’ll be briefed on everything that’s happened and someone will go over your options with you. In a few hours, you’ll know more than I do.”

That probably wasn’t true, but she’d act as though she believed him. “Last time, when the marshals faked my car accident, I was in a safe house in Ohio for a few days.” It had been horrible. The place had been a nondescript cookie-cutter rental home in the middle of a small residential neighborhood. “I was stuck in a back bedroom with the blinds closed for days. All I had was a TV and some books one of the deputies picked up at a grocery store.” Used to regular physical activity both in her personal life and on her job, she’d craved a run or a good set of weights. The tension had overwhelmed her and, without release, the panic attacks had come on stronger each day. That first run she’d taken after her relocation had been both terrifying and liberating.

Sam cast her a sympathetic smile. “I’m afraid this won’t be much better. It might even be a little bit worse because you won’t be in a house, at least not at first. I suppose when we turn you over to a relocation team, you’ll be in a safe house again for a short time, but for a day or so you’ll be stuck with us in an industrial office building.” He grimaced as though he were silently apologizing. “We do have a couple of rooms with some temporary sleeping quarters. Cots actually.”

Great. She already missed her king-size bed with the down comforter and the memory-foam mattress cover. “You realize I have nothing on me, not even a toothbrush. I didn’t even get to grab my go-bag or my EpiPen.”

“Your go-bag?” His smile quirked higher, then faded. “You actually kept a bag packed in case you had to run?”

“It’s in the hall closet, a duffle bag with some clothes, papers, things I wanted to hold onto, ready to grab if you guys ever knocked on my door and said it was time to go. I never expected you to show up at my job and rip my life away without warning.”

Sam winced, but he didn’t reference the last comment. “I’m sorry you have to live life on edge like that.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Well, when it comes to the EpiPen, we can get you a new one, but I have one if the need arises before that. Let’s just say that bees are not my friends.”

“Same. Along with bee pollen, oddly enough. I took some once as a supplement and it almost killed me.” She’d only had an allergic reaction one time, but not having a shot at the ready made her edgy. “I’ll tell you right now, I bear some contempt for the marshal who took my bag. It’s like he stole...” She sighed. It was as though he’d stolen her identity. Again.

“I could tell you he’s a really nice guy who has a wife and kids, but it won’t help, I know.” He clicked on the blinker and turned onto another highway. “There’s a female marshal, Deputy Dana Santiago, on my team. She’ll make sure you have the necessities you need for the next few days. Much like the last time, you can give us a list and a team will go into your house and try to retrieve what they can. We’ll get some of your stuff to you as you start over again, but I’m afraid it won’t be much.”

She knew the drill. She wished she didn’t, but she did. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Amy Naylor no longer existed.

* * *

For the next hour, they rode in silence. Sam spoke little, listening to the back and forth in his earpiece as his team coordinated with other members of the Marshals Service and tried to piece together what had gone wrong. No one seemed certain who had leaked Amy’s whereabouts or how she’d been found. No one could give intel on how many bad guys were on the hunt. The men they’d taken into custody refused to talk, more afraid of whoever was funding them than they could ever be of the marshals.

In the silence, Sam fought to keep his emotions at bay. A strong sense of relief came with the word that Wainwright had been released with minor injuries after his dustup in the shopping center parking lot. The suspect who’d rammed him had been arrested, and a team was at the shopping mall, scouring surveillance footage from parking lot cameras and security feeds for other suspicious vehicles.

As expected, other news wasn’t so comforting. In the midst of a recovery operation was not the time to give in to grief, but the call that Edgecombe truly was dead had come as a blow. Sam had known, but hearing the suspicion clarified in stark, no-nonsense words hadn’t been easy. It would have been nice if he could pull over and take a second to pull himself fully together.

He needed to get his head on straight, but he couldn’t afford the luxury. Priority number one was to get Amy to headquarters. After that, he could sit down and debrief, then grieve with others who had known Edgecombe, or who at least knew what it was like to lose a brother-in-arms.

In the rapidly fading evening light, they raced around the city of Columbus. Only an hour left. He flexed his fingers on the steering wheel and checked the rearview again. Since they’d evaded the red car, his eyes had roved from mirror to mirror, searching for a tail, watching for signs of danger. So far, so good. If he could keep her safe for an hour longer, he could hand off Amy to his team and relax in the knowledge he’d saved her from a criminal intent on killing her.

Amy shifted in the passenger seat and stretched her legs, pulling her neck from side to side. She had to be tense and tired. There had to be a million questions running through her head, but she hadn’t said a word in over an hour. She’d merely ridden in silence, alternating between stillness and restless fidgeting.

The silence in the car was too loud, leaving him too much room to think about all that had transpired today, on the most disastrous mission of his WITSEC career. Today’s destruction rivaled some of the carnage he’d experienced overseas with his Special Forces team. He’d never dreamed he’d bear witness to such loss at home.

Sam had to break the heavy silence, get a conversation started or something. “We’re almost there. About an hour more.”

She nodded but didn’t look at him. She was probably thirsty, starving or any number of other uncomfortable things. Pulling over for a drink and a burger would invite trouble. While he felt certain they’d left their pursuers behind, there were risks he simply couldn’t take. Unlike some of the witnesses Sam had retrieved, Amy hadn’t complained or loosed an angry tirade. She simply stared out the front window, silently accepting her fate.

Reality likely hadn’t kicked in for her yet. When it did, the fallout would not be pretty. That wasn’t for Sam to deal with. Good thing. Sam had never been stellar at helping people deal with their emotions. WITSEC had psychologists and counselors on staff to handle the mental and emotional ramifications of going into hiding. With her life in shambles for a second time, Amy was definitely going to need a session or two.

“Did you ever talk to anyone about your husband?” Sam winced as soon as the question left his lips. Seriously. There was making conversation and there was prying into places he had no business digging. Keeping his mouth shut would have been the better option.

There was something about this woman though, something that made him feel as if he knew her better than he did. Maybe it was because he’d spent time with her when Edgecombe checked in on her. Maybe it was the way she’d opened up to him earlier in the day. Or maybe it was simply who she was. Amy was different than any other woman he’d ever encountered, on the job or off.

She was definitely different than his ex-wife.

“My husband?” Her voice had a hazy edge to it, as though his question had drawn her from somewhere far away.

“Never mind.”

She stared out the side window and said nothing for a couple of miles. “No. I didn’t.”

So she had caught the question after all. “Was there a reason you didn’t?”

“I talked to my sister. I never saw the need to say anything to anyone else. It hurt when Noah died. I lost him, my future, everything. Even the apartment I was living in, my car...”

That couldn’t be right. The soldier in Sam remembered all of the paperwork he’d had to fill out prior to a deployment. Points of contact for notifications, burial instructions, beneficiaries for life insurance... The whole morbid list was as long as his arm. Things no one wanted to think about when they were headed into a war zone but things that had to be squared away to ensure the protection of their loved ones at home before they could go wheels up to do their jobs. “How is that possible? You should have been taken care of. There should have been so much available to you.” There it was. Another way too personal comment he never should have made.

Amy shook her head, her blond hair spilling over her shoulder and swishing against her cheek. She tucked it behind her ear. “We got married so fast. He never changed his paperwork. I guess he never expected to die. Who does?”

Sam’s heart sank. As a single soldier, all of his benefits had been directed to his mother and father. Amy’s Noah had likely done the same in his single life. And if their marriage had happened on a timeline as tight as the one she’d indicated, he’d already filled out his deployment paperwork and had likely not even considered the consequences of not changing beneficiaries.

She was right. What man wanted to consider his death, especially when he was trying to cram in as much living as possible with a brand-new wife?

“I wasn’t even his primary notification on his paperwork. I found out what happened to him because one of the chaplains in the battalion knew me. His parents got the notification. I heard secondhand. I’d never met his family. They lived in Puerto Rico.” She sniffed, then swallowed and turned away from him. “I didn’t even have the money to fly to San Juan for my own husband’s funeral. I’ve never even seen his grave.”

Sam’s heart shattered. He gripped the steering wheel tighter to keep from reaching for her hand, which would have been a decidedly unprofessional move. When she said she’d lost everything, she wasn’t exaggerating. Had she even felt she had the right to grieve?

For long miles, he didn’t know what to say, how to soothe the ache she was bound to feel at her husband’s death and his family’s slight. The woman beside him was stronger than he’d imagined. “So you never talked to anyone except your sister?” It was the best he had to offer, and it was completely lame.

She didn’t seem to notice. “I didn’t want to fight his family, because I figured they had even less than I did. And nothing was going to bring him back to me, so why bother talking to someone about it? It was going to hurt no matter what.”

“And yet you minored in psychology.”

She cast him a rueful glance, her eyebrow quirked. “That was in my file too?”

At least she was somewhat smiling. It was better than heated anger or chilled silence. “Yep.”

“WITSEC wouldn’t let me do anything that even remotely smelled like my career goals or the work I was doing at the gym to pay my way through college. Truth is, I had enough biology to be able to teach at the community college level since I studied sports medicine. I was accepted to grad school so I could become a physical therapist and work with athletes. A psychology minor made sense so I could dig into a bit of how the mind works so that I could figure out what made an athlete tick, could help them recover from an injury in body and in mind, maybe even in spirit.”

“That sounds kind of New Age.”

“Far from it. It sounds like Jesus. A lot of athletes who are injured, especially at the levels I was shooting for, have their whole lives change when they’re injured. Entire careers get derailed. Dreams die. There are psychologists and counselors for that sort of thing, but I know a lot of people talk to their physical therapists and open up more on the table than while sitting on a couch in a counseling session. I figured I should know something about how to help someone whose world has been completely rocked and their dreams shattered in a way they never saw coming.” She trailed off and ran a finger along the stitching in the seat between them. “I never realized when I was taking all of those classes that all those things I learned would apply to me someday. Or that I’d never get to use my real training. I got to gather up all of my knowledge and teach instead.”

“Has teaching been that bad?”

“I’ve actually enjoyed it, but I miss me. I miss having goals and plans and dreams. It’s been three years and I’ve never figured out what I want to do with this new life. Good thing, since it’s gone now too.” She pulled her hand into her lap and balled her fists between her knees. “Maybe that’s why I never came up with a new dream, because some part of me always knew this day would come and it would all be snatched away again.”

“I’m sorry.” He truly was. Somehow, this whole detour in her life felt like his fault.

“Thanks, but you’re trying to protect me. This is Grant Meyer’s fault. All the more reason to see him locked away forever.”

Sam exhaled a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. Sometimes, when things got too heated, a witness would back down and decide not to testify. While Amy had turned over enough evidence to condemn Meyer without her testimony, federal prosecutors needed her to be willing to testify if any questions came up about those documents and how she’d obtained them.

“I have no regrets about my decision to turn my boss over to the authorities. A lot of people were freed from a terrible man’s clutches.” Her expression turned pensive, and she fingered the antique watch on her wrist. The leather band was scratched and worn, and the crystal over the gold face bore a small crack near the bezel. “I just hope they got far enough.”

“There something special about that watch?”

Amy blanched, her cheeks going pale as she laid her hand over the watch’s face as though she could hide it and possibly even erase it from Sam’s memory completely.

Something was very wrong here. He’d merely asked because the way she absently ran a finger across it made it appear to be some sort of security blanket. He’d thought it might have belonged to her husband or someone in her husband’s family. Now, his radar pinged on high.

Innocent people didn’t have things to hide. The way she was protecting that timepiece, there was no doubt...

Amy Brady was hiding something big.