Authors: Vicki Hinze
Tears welled in her eyes, and she crossed her chest with her arms to hold in all the pain. “Where is he?”
Sara braced for the fallout. “I can’t tell you that.”
“What do you mean, you can’t tell me? Damn it, Sara, he’s my husband.”
Sara lifted her chin. “Look, if you charge in there—with or without the authorities—David and a lot of other people will be killed. So will you, Lisa, and me. We’ve got to do this my way.”
“Which is what?” Brenda challenged. “For you to do some training that’s going to screw up your mind?”
“Temporarily confuse, Brenda. There’s a difference.” Sara dug in her heels. “You’re going to have to trust me on this.”
“But what if something goes wrong?” Lisa asked.
It could. And from her taut expression, even Lisa realized it. “It’s the only way I can find out what exactly happened to David and get the proof I need to shut this operation down.”
Lisa persisted. “So what if something goes wrong?”
Sara gazed at her niece. “Then you know what to do.”
“Dr. Kale?”
Sara nodded. “Have you heard back from him?”
Brenda interrupted. “Who’s Dr. Kale?”
“A friend of mine,” Sara said.
“The testing is done.” Lisa claimed Sara’s attention. “All of the notes were written the same day by the same person, except one. Same person, different time.”
The sample of Fontaine’s writing Sara had swiped. “Good.”
Lisa continued. “There was also stuff strongly indicating they weren’t authentic accountings.”
“What are you two talking about?” Brenda demanded.
“You don’t need to know. At least, not yet.” Sara turned to Lisa. “Don’t tell her.”
“Sara!” Brenda protested. “Don’t instruct my daughter to lie to me.”
“She’s not,” Lisa said flatly, her gaze boring into Sara’s. “She’s trying to save your life.”
“Hang on to what you’ve got, Lisa.” Sara pulled an envelope from her purse. One containing a full accounting of her findings and her suspicions. “Do
not
open this. It’s my protection, and yours and your mom’s.”
Lisa tucked the envelope into the waistband of her pants, then dropped the tail of her T-shirt over it. “Should I take it to Dr. Kale?”
“No. Just keep it someplace safe for now. If I don’t contact you within the next two weeks, then take all of it to the press. Not the local press.”
“Cable news?” Lisa suggested, her eyes sparkling.
“Yes,” Sara said. “Someone in prime time will do what’s right and safest for you.”
Brenda stared at Sara in sheer disbelief. “You’re sending my daughter to a major news source without telling me a damn thing?”
“If necessary, yes, I am,” Sara said. “Because I love you, Brenda.”
She popped the top on the canned drink. The soda fizzed and dripped over her fingers. They weren’t shaking. In fact, her entire reaction to David being alive seemed almost anticlimactic. Brenda didn’t seem stunned, shocked, or even surprised.
Why?
As if a light bulb had gone on in her mind, Lisa stared openmouthed at her mother. “You knew. You’ve been looking for Daddy.”
Brenda lifted her face to the breeze, but her voice went whisper-soft. “I didn’t know he was alive, Lisa.”
Even Sara heard the duplicity in that remark. She glared at her sister. “The last thing I want to hear right now is more half-truths or lies, Brenda. Spill it.”
“She’s been looking for Daddy,” Lisa interceded. “That’s why she’s marrying every guy who asks her. Then, as soon she finds out they’re not Daddy, she divorces them.”
It made sense. Sara turned a questioning gaze on Brenda. Her face went red, but she didn’t deny it. “Well?” Sara urged her. “Is that true?”
“I knew David’s coffin was empty.” Brenda looked down at the dirt. “I wasn’t supposed to know it, but I did. I wasn’t sure if he’d died on a mission, or if his cover had been blown on a covert operation and he’d elected to legally die and take on a new identity so he could keep his job. He’d never settle for a non-Intel assignment. I couldn’t make myself believe he had willingly forfeited me and Lisa, but it was the not knowing that chewed me up and spat me out.”
“And so,” Sara speculated, “you looked for him in the eyes of every man who showed interest in you.”
Brenda nodded, her eyes filling with tears she wouldn’t cry. “Sometimes covert operatives who are exposed receive plastic surgery and new identities. I knew David loved us, and if that had happened to him, he’d find a way back to us.”
Finally, Sara understood. Brenda
had
been searching for something. But not for peace or acceptance or even for a new love. She’d been searching for David, seeing sparks of him in other men. “I understand now.”
“I’m sorry.” Brenda looked at Sara, then at her daughter, and removed the engagement ring from her finger.
As if it were worthless, she dropped Williamson’s rock into her purse. To her, it was worthless. He wasn’t David.
“I couldn’t tell either of you the truth,” Brenda said. “If one of the men turned out to be David, I would be risking his life.”
That made a twisted kind of sense. All of Brenda’s husbands had been new to the area and all had had David’s brown eyes. “Risking lives brings up another point I need to discuss with you,” Sara said. All of this discussion had been hard, and what was coming wouldn’t be any easier. “This training I’m going to go through uses your emotions against you. So, to minimize damage, I have to resolve my outstanding issues so they can’t use them against me.”
“What issues, Aunt Sara? You don’t have any—do you?”
“Oh, yes, Lisa. I do.” Sara’s mouth went dry. She licked at her lips. “I’ve worked hard to become a PTSD expert and to find out what happened to David for the two of you—because you’re my family and I love you—but I’ve done it for me, too. I want a family like you guys had more than anything in the world. Yet I couldn’t have one because I couldn’t have all you had lost. It seemed
. . .
selfish.” Sara shrugged. “So I had to fix things for you two first. Then, getting what I want wouldn’t flaunt all your broken dreams in your face.” Sara shook her head. “Oh, hell. This isn’t coming out right.”
“Sure it is, Aunt Sara. You would have felt guilty. I get it.”
“It sounds ridiculous, really. Totally illogical and absurd for a shrink, but it’s the truth. The point is, I’m not some perfect paragon. I’ve got as much emotional baggage as everyone else.”
“What your aunt is saying, Lisa,” Brenda chimed in, “is she has realized she’s just a mere mortal like the rest of us, and she’s going to do something really dangerous to help us find out more about your dad.” Brenda cut her gaze to Sara. “Isn’t that what you’re saying?”
Sara nodded.
“I can’t let you do it, Sis.” Brenda sighed. “All my life, you’ve bailed me out. It’s time for me to take care of me. I’ll go.”
“You can’t just step in,” Sara insisted, lifting a hand. “And what about Lisa? I
will
come out of this confused, Brenda. It’ll take weeks for me to get normal again.” Provided all went well, it would. “Lisa needs you normal.”
“She’s done fine for the past five years.” Brenda set her jaw in stubborn mode. “I’ve hardly been normal, Sara.”
“That’s true,” Sara admitted. “But it’s also different—and it’s been damn hard on your daughter.”
“Mom, there’s something you’re not getting.” Worry laced Lisa’s tone. “Isn’t there, Aunt Sara?”
Sara didn’t answer. Lisa was far more intuitive and insightful than her mother. Even if the news about David hadn’t stunned Brenda, she had been delivered a whale of shock that rocked her world. It dulled her thinking.
Brenda shoved her purse strap up on her shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“Aunt Sara is afraid she could be more than confused. She’s afraid she could end up like Dad, or maybe even die.”
“What?”
Brenda spun toward Sara. “Is that possible?”
“It’s not probable.”
“It’s possible
and
probable, Mom.” Lisa stood before Sara. “Stop protecting us. I talked with Dr. Kale. He doesn’t want you to go, either.”
“How does he know I’m going?”
“We hacked into the computer and figured it out.”
“You what?”
“It’s okay,” Lisa assured Sara. “He’s got clearance. Anyway, we think it’s too dangerous for you to go.”
“If I don’t, they’ll do to other men what they did to your father. I can’t turn my back on them, Lisa. Please, don’t ask me to do that. I’ve seen these men and how they suffer. I’ve watched one man fight the demons from hell in his mind until he was so exhausted he couldn’t lift his head off the floor. He whimpered like a wounded child. I can’t just take the safe way out and protect me, knowing I’m condemning other men to that. I can’t, and I won’t.”
“Forget it, Lisa.” Brenda put an arm around her daughter’s shoulder. “It’s her noble side. You can’t break it.”
“I don’t want to break it. I think she’s right.” Lisa turned a troubled gaze on Sara. “I just don’t want to lose you.”
“I don’t want to be lost, either.” Sara swallowed hard. “A friend has been helping me. We’ve found a way to minimize the damage.”
“Major Jarrod Brandt,” Lisa said.
Surprised, Sara frowned at her. “How did you—”
“Dr. Kale. I told you, we’ve been working together. He says Jarrod’s a good man, and don’t worry. We’ll watch over him.”
A lump formed in Sara’s throat. “Thank you, Lisa.”
Lisa sent her a speculative look. “He’s the one, huh?”
Sara nodded. “Yeah, he’s the one.”
“Damn,” Brenda groused. “You’re in love, and I didn’t even know it. Why doesn’t anyone tell me anything around here?”
Lisa rolled her gaze heavenward. “You don’t tell people high-risk stuff when you think they’ve lost it, Mom. That’d be a stupid move, you know?”
“I guess, but still
. . .
” Brenda looked at Sara, pain filling her eyes. “David will be all right? I mean, he’s being cared for and treated well?”
“He’s got one of the finest nurses I’ve met in my life, Brenda. I swear it.”
Her eyes glossy, her jaw trembling, she nodded. “Okay, but get us to him soon, Sara. He belongs with us.”
“I will.” She hugged her sister. “Just as soon as I can.” Her throat thick, she cleared it and backed away. “I’ve got to get back.”
Sara gave them her promise to be careful, hugged them good-bye, and then drove back to Braxton. Lisa had watched through the rear window until Sara had driven out of sight. She hadn’t missed her niece’s tears. They tore her heart right out of her chest.
Sara was really proud of Lisa. She seemed far better at covert operations than Sara. At least she would be there to help her mother deal with this, and she would be more content now that the wedding to the judge—H. G. or G. H. or whatever-his-name-was Williamson—was off. David was alive. Brenda now knew it, and she had taken off the engagement ring. She’d never remarry.
Would Sara ever marry?
Maybe. If Jarrod could work past his fear of betrayal. It had a firm grip on him, and what had happened to him at IWPT had made it stronger. Even if he could work past it, it would take a while. But that was okay. He was worth the wait.
One thing was clear. Sara had been wrong in deciding what she was worthy of having or not having in her life based on what Brenda and Lisa had in theirs. Hearing herself verbalize her feelings and seeing their reactions had been a revelation. Somewhere along the line, she’d become obsessive and skewed about this family business. It wasn’t right.
Thank God. Because she was tired of being wrong, and alone. Especially now that she had found Jarrod and he had fired her.
She pulled the car back across the ditch and into the woods. Pocketing the keys, she headed for the fence, mentally reviewing the things she still had to do before leaving for IWPT. Three items remained on her list.
Talk to Foster.
Prepare Shank.
Say goodbye to Jarrod, and pray it wasn’t forever.
Shank kept an eye out
while Sara used the secure line to call Foster. He didn’t answer. Twenty minutes later, he still wasn’t answering. And at twenty-one hundred—their agreed-upon contact time of nine P.M.—he still didn’t answer.
Sara gave up.
“No luck?” Shank walked back to the desk.
“No.” What did she do now?
“Let’s go outside.”