Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover. Merline Lovelace
She couldn’t face another blank slate in a blank town, couldn’t face having to start all over again, small though her start here had really been. After all, there was Emma, Marsha, Gage, Nate and Marge Tate. While she hadn’t exactly gotten close, she had come to know them a bit. And she discovered she wanted to know them even better.
She raised her eyes to his, resolve steadying her. “I’m not running again.”
He nodded. “I kind of decided the same thing this morning.”
She nodded slowly. “I guess you did.” Her decision made, her muscles began to uncoil slowly, one by one. “I guess I need to tell you the story.”
“Cory, you don’t have to tell me a damned thing. I can work this without knowing. Your secrets can remain your secrets. But I gather, since you didn’t recognize the guy at the store, that he’s not someone you’re afraid of.”
“No. Actually...I saw only one man. The man who killed my husband and shot me.”
“Shot you?” He stopped short.
She nodded, and for some reason she didn’t understand, she opened her robe and tugged her pajama top up enough to reveal the scar across her midriff. “He killed my baby, too.”
He swore, a word she wasn’t used to hearing, and the next thing she knew he’d gathered her up off the chair and was carrying her through the house toward her bedroom. There he laid her down on the queen-size bed, and stretched out beside her. Without another word, he drew her into a close embrace, as if he wanted to surround her with the shield of his body. As if he wanted to shelter her from it all.
But nothing could. She stared blindly at his chin as her head rested on his upper arm, feeling as if a wind had blown through her and left her empty in every way, empty of her past, empty of her hopes and dreams, empty of feeling.
Something in her had died all over again.
In the hollowness that seemed to engulf her, she heard her own voice. It sounded dreamy, disconnected, as if it belonged to someone else and she wasn’t in control. And maybe she wasn’t.
“I didn’t really grieve about the baby,” she heard herself say. “I’d just found out that morning. Not enough time for it to become real.”
“Mmm.” A sound to let her know he was listening, indicating no reaction whatever. She didn’t want a reaction. She couldn’t have handled one just then.
“What was real was that when I woke up from surgery they told me that the only part of Jim I had left was gone, too. I miscarried because of the trauma.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was...I was at the best and brightest point of my life that night. The happiest. I had Jim, we were going to have a baby. Maybe no one is entitled to that much happiness.”
“Everyone is entitled to that kind of happiness.”
“Really? Even you?”
He didn’t answer, his silence speaking volumes.
“We went out for dinner to celebrate the news, came home and...made love. I was so happy I couldn’t even sleep. And then some son of a bitch came through our door and took it all away with a gun.”
He murmured something, but she didn’t try to make it out. She didn’t care. Numbness still wrapped her like cotton wool.
“I saw the man. They couldn’t find him, though, couldn’t identify him. We think...they think...he was working for a drug gang that Jim was about to bring in indictments against. A hired gun, probably. They put me in protection from the instant I got to the hospital. They wouldn’t even let me go to Jim’s funeral.”
His arms tightened a bit, but he said nothing.
“Then, after three months in a safe house, they told me I had to relocate because the word on the street was there was a contract on me because I could identify Jim’s murderer.”
“Not penny-ante criminals then.”
“No. Sometimes I think they were bigger fish than even Jim realized.”
“Maybe so.”
“There wasn’t even a threat beforehand. No warning of any kind. The grand-jury testimony was sealed, the indictments were going to be sealed until they’d rounded everyone up. Maybe there was a leak from somewhere. No one seemed to know. I’ll probably never know.”
“So three months in a safe house, and then the beginning of the journey to nowhere.”
“First, first they did a little plastic surgery. I had a nose job. Just enough to make me look different if anyone had a photo of me. My hair...I have to color it. I wear it differently now. Not big changes.”
“Big enough changes. The nose especially. Minimal change, maximum impact.”
“That’s what they said. Change a nose and you change the whole face.”
“That must have been hard for you.”
“Even now I sometimes jump when I look in a mirror. Anyway, they moved me through three towns before the nose job. After that, it was another six towns. We’d stay for a while, then they’d pack me up and move me again. They said they were making sure nobody could follow me.”
“That’s right.”
“So you’ve done that part, too?”
“I’ve done it all, from the moving to the safe-house protection. Of course, I had the disadvantage of having to protect a couple of really bad guys. Sometimes it seems hardly worth the trouble.”
“But it is, right?”
“If they have enough information, yes. In your case, it would have been an honor.”
She reached up with one hand and touched his chin. At once he tipped his head to look at her. “I hated it.”
“I imagine so.”
“But they were really doing everything they possibly could for me. Even while I hated it, I understood it. They went out of their way for me.”
“Because you were innocent.”
“Because my husband was an assistant U.S. attorney. Because he was one of theirs. I don’t kid myself that I would have gotten the same kind of care except for Jim. The only man I could put behind bars is the man who killed a federal prosecutor.”
Something in his dark eyes seemed to soften just a hair, but he didn’t argue with her, probably because he knew she was right.
“Those kinds of resources,” she said, “don’t get spent on just anybody. I could have witnessed almost any other murder, been the only one able to identify the killer, and I’d have been on my own before long.”
“Seems like you’re kind of on your own now.”
“That’s the way it works.”
He nodded. “Most of the time. Are you angry about that?”
“That I got first class instead of coach? How could I be angry about that? What I’m angry about is that every single thing I cared about was stripped away from me. My family, my friends, my career. Sometimes I get angry at myself for letting them take me away.”
“Be sensible. What good would it possibly have done to get yourself killed?”
“It might have spared me the limbo I’ve been living in.”
He sighed and cupped her cheek with his warm hand. “Now that’s crazy talk. Somehow we’ll get this guy and then you can get on with your life.”
“Can I? I’m not so sure of that. I was supposed to be safe ever since I got here, but I haven’t spent one hour of one day without looking over my shoulder.”
“All I can tell you is that things may be coming