Authors: Rachel Lee
“So you learned to be a chameleon,” she remarked as she retreated to her desk chair. “How did your parents feel about that?”
“My folks were good people. More tolerant than some. When I adapted to the local culture, it was good for them, too.”
“I guess I can understand that. But what about later? The path you took?”
He paused, sensing dangerous waters here. He resorted to the stock answer, even though he felt bad about not being able to share all the truth with her. “I traveled a lot for the State Department.”
Her face shadowed. “I see.”
And there he had to leave it. She already guessed or knew more than she should. Nor did the irony of it escape him. He was giving his cover story to his cover story. Life sometimes had a twisted sense of humor.
And thinking about cover stories brought him back to theirs. “We never hammered out our story,” he reminded her. “Nothing beyond that I was a guide you hired when you were hiking in the mountains. I need details that fit with what your friends might remember of that trip. Maybe some photos so I don't stumble about what the area looks like.”
She raised her brows. “So there's some place you've never been?”
“Quite a few, actually.” He summoned a smile for her benefit.
“I'll bet most of them are within the borders of this country,” she said tartly. “Okay, then, get ready for the teacher to teach.”
She urged him to sit in her desk chair and carried over the chair he'd been sitting in for herself. Then she opened a folder of photos labeled “Coast Range.” Two hours later, he felt he had a good enough handle on what the area looked like, including some of the small towns at the foot of the mountains. She brought up a map that he memorized quickly, then told her that he would say he hadn't grown up in that area, that he was a relatively recent arrival who had brought his guide skills from the Appalachian Trail.
“It's all about not getting too specific,” he advised her. “Were there any particular stories that you shared with friends that I should know about?”
“Wait, have you walked the Appalachian Trail?”
“Portions of it as I had time, which wasn't very often. Why?”
She put her chin in her hand, green eyes growing dreamy. “That was next on my list. What did you think of it?”
“I enjoyed it. It's truly challenging in places. And not everybody attempts it without a guide. In theory you could do it alone, but not everyone is cut out for that. So you can get guides to lead small groups on hut-to-hut hikes, or even longer trips if you want.”
“So why did you stop doing that and go to the Pacific Northwest?”
“Because,” he said wryly, understanding that she was padding out his cover for him, “for most of the summer, portions of that trail are nearly as well traveled as a highway. I wanted more isolation. More rugged hikes.”
“Okay.” She smiled. “You know enough to be a guide.”
“Stories?” he prompted her.
“Only one that sticks out when I was with the guide. We were off trail, off the lumber roads, which isn't easy to do. Climbing up toward a peak through complete wilderness. Then I saw some footprints. Huge footprints.”
He felt a smile twitch at the corners of his mouth. “Sasquatch?”
She laughed and shrugged. “Who knows for sure? My guide studied them. He was troubled by how separated they were but kept reminding me that when a bear walks it puts its hind foot almost exactly where its front paw landed. That leads to slightly overlapping prints that can often be mistaken for a single huge, human-type print. He pretty much decided that a bear had left them. So I told my friends about it because it was fun and kind of funny. That was the only story they might have remembered. The rest were pretty ordinary, off-trail kinds of things. I got to do some rock climbing belayed by my guide. I'm pretty sure he took me to some views I couldn't have seen otherwise. And the main thing that impressed me was how much wilderness there still is out there.”
He nodded. “That leaves the question of what I'm doing here.”
“Oh, that's easy,” she said, waving her hand as if it were of no importance. “I kept in touch with you by email. I was attracted to you, but you were professional and never crossed any lines. Then when you mentioned you'd hurt your arm in a fall, I was just brazen enough to invite you to visit. They'll believe the brazen part.”
His gaze met and held hers. “Lo and behold, I was feeling that attraction, too.”
He saw her full breasts rise as she drew a quick breath. It would be so easy, he thought, to reach out and touch her. To take this moment to places he had no right to go. She had visibly softened at his remark, and she had leaned ever so slightly toward him, inviting.
And only the vestige of a conscience yanked him back. Hell, he didn't even know who he really was anymore. A chameleon? She ought to be thinking about that, because it could become ultimately important to her if he were here more than a few days. He could become whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, and then leave her feeling used and tossed away.
Absolutely not. Playing those games because it was his job was a very different thing from playing them with a woman who had been drawn into his net inadvertently. He didn't want to cultivate her like some asset.
It suddenly seemed so important to him that whatever happened between them be
true
.
“Julie?”
“Yeah?” she breathed.
“I'm a chameleon. Remember that.” Then he slid off the desk chair and went back to the bar stool. Maybe he ought to take enough of those pills to knock him out. It would at least make her safe from
him
.
* * *
Julie pretended to focus on her lesson planning, even though it was complete, because it gave her an opportunity to stare in a direction that didn't include Trace.
A chameleon
. That had been a warning she couldn't mistake, and she'd be a fool to ignore it. Except that she didn't believe Trace was being a chameleon with her. When he hadn't been able to speak the truth, he'd as good as told her with an obvious statement or omission.
So he wasn't trying to mislead her in some way. Why, then, had he felt the warning necessary? Because sometimes he didn't feel like he really knew himself? Because instinctively adapting to situations was something he did without thinking?
But wasn't that what most people did? The Julie she presented in the classroom wasn't at all like the one her friends saw. That her family saw. Marisa, whom she'd known her whole life, was different around Ryker. Everyone did that kind of thing to some extent.
So she wondered if he was in fact warning himself. That was possible. Whatever deceptions life had forced on him, she sensed a straight arrow inside him. Maybe that missionary upbringing.
She almost laughed as she stared down at her book without seeing it. No, she never would have guessed that two medical missionaries had raised a man who did the kind of job she suspected Trace had done. Yet his motives had been good, she gathered. He had served his country in important, essential ways. She wasn't so naive as to think spying was for other people. Everyone spied on everyone else. Intelligence gathering was important in order to know what was
really
going on in the world behind all the carefully orchestrated speeches and diplomacy. Lives could depend on it.
The fact that he'd had to become different for each person he dealt with seemed only marginally different from what everyone did without thinking. Maybe his changes were bigger, his omissions bigger, even his lies as necessary. But at heart, really no different.
Heck, she thought, she lied often enough when someone asked casually how she was doing. Imagine the shocked responses from some if she'd actually said, “I'm having a rotten day and right now I'd like to gag and bind twenty-two kindergartners.” A short, muffled laugh escaped her.
Maybe she spoke her mind more often than most, but white lies, as people called them, were part of the social grease that kept society moving. And white lies were still lies. The world couldn't stand unvarnished truth all the time.
What if she'd told Martha Beringer exactly what she really thought of that hideous new dress she'd worn last week? Oh, man, the repercussions!
No, something was troubling Trace beyond the fact that he was a hunted man and had been betrayed by his employer. Something that had him questioning himself.
That ticked her off. Whatever he'd done, he'd done it in the service of his country. Treating him like this was the real crime here, and a far worse crime if it made him see his past as wasted, as a lie, as an ugly thing.
Intentions
did
matter. She firmly believed that. A person might not always get the desired outcome, but if the intentions were good...well, that really wasn't a bad thing.
Giving up, realizing that she wasn't going to solve the puzzle of Trace Archer any faster than she had solved the Rubik's Cubeâand she'd never completed thatâshe rose.
Looking out her back window, she froze. “Trace?”
He was sitting in the armchair again, his eyes closed, but as soon as she spoke, he opened them.
“What?”
“There's someone out back moving in the storm. What should I do?”
He jumped to his feet. “Get away from the window. Damn, they couldn't have found me this fast.” But still he was yanking on his jacket, apparently ignoring the pain that brought an immediate sweat to his forehead. “Lock the door behind me.”
“But...”
“Just do as I say, okay?”
She pulled back into the hallway, watching him shove his feet into his boots, her heart beating so fast she felt she could barely breathe. “I should call someone.”
“I'm faster.”
God, she hated this. As soon as he hurried out the door, she locked it as ordered. Then she stood there, wishing she could watch out the window, but knew he was right. Even though all she could see through the whiteout was the dark shape of a person out there, anyone looking toward her window could see as much if she stood there. She shuddered, facing the reality of guns and bullets. And Trace was out there alone.
She'd felt fear occasionally in her life, but never before like this. Trace could get hurt, killed. Someone was out there in this deadly weather. A waking nightmare with no escape.
She stared at the phone, thinking of calling the sheriff, but it was probably already too late and they'd be really slow in this storm. No one had even attempted to plow the streets yet.
And then she remembered what Ryker had said earlier about the cordless phones broadcasting. Had that given them away?
Her nerves stretched as if they were on a rack, and she paced the hallway, unable to hold still. Time couldn't have moved any slower if it had completely stopped. She was ready to scream by the time someone knocked on the door.
Her heart climbed into her throat. Slowly she walked over to it and peered out the peephole. Trace.
Relief turned her knees to spaghetti, and she fumbled at the lock before she was able to open it. He stepped inside immediately, bringing a blast of blowing snow with him.
“Your neighbor,” he said. “Frank Willis. His dog got out. We found him.”
She sagged against the wall, watching him struggle with his boots and jacket. “Really? He was looking for his dog?”
“Given what it's like out there, what choice did he have?”
As relief washed through her, she began to feel angry. “You should have let me call someone!”
“Sure. They might get here by tonight sometime.”
“My God, Trace! It could have been a killer out there.”
“Then I'd have dealt with it.”
His calm infuriated her, but even as it did, she realized she was being unreasonable. Why be mad at him for doing what he considered necessary? It made as much sense as being mad at Frank for hunting for his dog. Trace, she reminded herself, had experience with this. He knew what he was doing. Not that it made her feel a whole lot better.
She paced the hallway a couple of more times, trying to shake the adrenaline that had roared through her. It felt like a lifetime before her anxiety began to ease. She might enjoy adventure, but not this kind.
“You okay?” she asked when she recovered her ability to speak. He had flopped onto the chair.
“Considering more pain meds. It's been a while.”
“If you need them, take them. I think you just proved that even Santa Claus with a GPS would have trouble getting here today. I'm making some more coffee. Interested?” Anything to feel useful. After that little scare, she felt purposeless. What could she possibly do except give this man a roof? Little enough.
“Yeah, it'll keep the pills from overwhelming me.”
She came to stand in front of him, then asked a question she'd thought might be impolite. That didn't seem to matter anymore. “Will it get better? The pain?”
“The doc said it might. He said the nerves are trying to heal. They're raising a ruckus, but eventually they could make the right connections again. Or just give up.”
“How long since you were shot?”
“Almost five months.”
She shook her head and rounded the bar into the kitchen. “Regular or espresso?”
“Regular. Strong but regular.”
So she threw an extra scoop of coffee into the basket and started the brew cycle. When she returned to sit on the couch, he was pouring a single pill into his gloved hand. He took it with what was left of his coffee. “Can you use it at all?”
“The hand? Some. Hey, Teach, here's a question for you. I've always been a leftie for writing, but I always shoot with my right hand. Why?”
She recognized that he was trying to restore normalcy after the scare. “Do I look like a neurologist? At best, I can guess. Cross-dominance, maybe. Or...that's just the way you learned.”