Authors: Aimee Laine
“I talked with Detective Bland before we started over. Apparently you guys—” Wyatt pointed to Charley and her group. “You have a lot of people on your side. My mother even.”
Over the years, they’d led Katherine, Wyatt’s Mom, to believe Charley left the house to her granddaughter, named after her. They’d all been too taken in by her to sever their ties.
“Anyway,” Wyatt continued. “They’ve got it all laid out, multiple officers tracking leads and sources—”
“We could assist more.” Cael sat upright. “We have our own resources. We’ve scoured every connection we could come up with on our own already. We need to be prepared for every possibility.”
“Yes, but since you’ve got a vested interest in this, they want you to remain outside the bounds of the investigation.” Wyatt’s gaze tracked to Stuart.
“We need to do something.” Lily spoke through a small hitch in her own breath.
Cael pulled her in tighter to him.
“As the victim’s family, the best thing you can do is let the professionals do their job,” Wyatt said.
Stuart jumped up. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
Charley and Lily both jerked back. Cael and James leaned forward, their elbows on their knees.
“Give ’em access, Wyatt. You know you can trust Cael, at least,” Stuart said.
Surprise warred with excitement over the possibility they’d have more to do. Wyatt turned to Stuart, a serious glare in his eye. Charley’s heart skipped a beat; he’d dashed her hopes as fast as Stuart raised them.
“Cael?” Wyatt said. “Can I speak with you privately, please?”
Cael nodded and released Lily, rose from the couch and stood. He lead Wyatt out of the room.
“What does he need to really let us in on this, Stuart?” Charley asked.
She’d give him anything if they could be more active participants. They’d been designed for investigative missions, and Charley knew they would find success if someone gave them entry to the FBI’s greater resources, not just their own.
“I don’t know.” Stuart flopped onto the couch. “He’s Director level, so I’m not privileged to most of his information. But … he is going to transfer me to his department.” Stuart added a sweet smile—one Charley knew meant he’d found his place again with Wyatt.
Her own frustration clouded her happiness for him.
Wyatt came back in, followed on his heels by Cael.
“Wyatt’s going to transfer me to his department, and I’ll get the information we need. Whatever I relay to you must be held in the strictest of confidences—which, of course, most of us know how to do.” He shot a glance at Stuart. “I don’t know if this will help or not, but it’s worth a shot.”
Charley stood and walked to Wyatt. He tilted down to her, his gaze meeting hers—the same but different, mature but young, tough but soft. So many memories, so many times she’d lain in bed and wished him there beside her. The man before her, despite everything she’d done to him, had once again put her first—whether he did it for her or his duty.
“Wyatt—”
“Don’t.” He brought one hand up and wiped away a tear that made its way down her cheek. He closed his eyes as his thumb caressed her skin.
Charley took a tentative inch of a step forward. The connection remained, no matter the number of lies that formed the wall between them.
She laid her hand on his, left his against her face and looked up into his green eyes. “Thank you.” She poured sincerity into those two little words in the hope it could begin to mend what she’d ripped into so many pieces.
His lips firmed into a tight line as he dropped his hand. “Just doing my job.”
• • •
Charley moved away as Cael touched Wyatt’s arm, taking his attention. Her departure burned right through his core. He’d wanted to crush her against him. He’d wanted to feel her move under him like he’d always imagined. Yet, he couldn’t put the face with the memories.
Instead, he reverted to his work. With the boy as priority, a relationship would lose precedence.
“We can set up here if you have an office, or back at mine if you’d like,” Wyatt said.
“We have an office this way.” Cael walked toward the home’s entrance again.
Wyatt turned to follow with Stuart and James in tow. They traipsed down the hall by the stairs. Art covered the walls, signed by Charley and Cael—who Wyatt remembered he’d known before as Carter.
Cael led him to an office decked out in state-of-the-art equipment—pieces Wyatt had attempted to requisition for years with no luck. Some of it, he knew, cost as much as his car. Thousands of dollars of computer hardware lay in front of him.
“What do you guys do, exactly?” Wyatt asked as he took in the room, three times the size of his own office.
“Exactly what you hired us for. Intelligence,” Charley said from behind him.
Intelligence my ass.
Cael took the controls at the computer, motioning for Charley to sit at the phone. “We just need to dial in Detective Bland before we make this call.”
Wyatt nodded him forward.
Charley’s hands shook as she took the phone. For a seasoned agent who worked with the FBI, her nerves surprised Wyatt.
Cael pressed a few buttons, which meant the call would be recorded.
“We’re good to go here, folks,” Bland said.
Wyatt and the rest placed headsets over their ears.
“You ready, Charley?” Cael asked.
She nodded, bringing the phone to her ear.
“Hello?” A robotic female voice answered.
“This is Charley Randall. Who is this?” Her voice lent itself to a plea.
“That doesn’t matter.” The voice held a harsh undertone. “Took you long enough.”
Wyatt bristled at the tone and the implication they’d waited to call.
“Are you alone?”
She glanced up to Cael, Wyatt, James and Stuart. “Yes.”
“Good.” The voice turned deep and menacing. “You found the girl, then?”
Charley froze, her eyes growing wide. “Of course. But what about—”
The voice chuckled. “The boy? What about the boy?”
The room, while silent, remained as still as if frozen in time.
Charley opened her mouth as if to speak, but the voice interrupted. “He was a nice prize once we figured out she wasn’t you, Charley.”
“But—”
“No interruptions. You get this one call to us. That’s it. From now on, we’ll call you.”
Charley shivered in her seat, the phone rattling against her earring. Wyatt’s need to comfort warred with his role as investigator.
“Is he safe?” Her voice carried in a whisper.
“Yes.” The line died with one second to spare on their trace.
Charley dropped the phone and ran from the room with her hands over her face.
Wyatt laid the headphones on the desk. Three faces stared back at him.
“She’ll be on her balcony. I’m sure you can find the way,” James said.
• • •
Charley pushed through her door and marched onto her balcony. She grabbed one of her afghans and walked to the rail where she flipped the blanket around her shoulders and let it fall across her back.
The cool air calmed the fury which burned within her as the captors confirmed Chase’s containment but gave nothing more away. A fresh batch of tears spilled over her cheeks. She wiped them away with the back of her hand as footsteps signaled behind her.
Charley didn’t turn around but breathed deep.
Wyatt.
She hadn’t led him, but he’d found her.
“James told me where you’d be.”
“I figured one of them had.” She let a small laugh free.
“Can I sit?”
Charley motioned with a wave but didn’t turn around. Her desire for closeness warred with her need to focus on Chase.
“If you’re going to try and convince me Chase will be fine, don’t. You don’t know. We don’t know. No one knows, no matter what they said on the phone, which was nothing. It could all be a ploy, a ruse to build up my hopes.” She continued to stare into the vastness of the fast-approaching night.
Chase’s absence put her emotions on a roller coaster with no end.
“Ah … okay. So what I was actually going to say … you did a really great job on the phone. I know it might not sound like it, but … well … you did.” His shuffling feet reminded her of years passed.
She closed her eyes, dropped her head forward. “Thanks.”
“Okay then, I’ve … uh … I’m going back.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
She’d not only lost Chase, she had a long way to win Wyatt again.
16
Wyatt returned to the office where Cael, James and Stuart sat in front of the monitor.
“Everything okay?” James shifted to the end of the desk.
Wyatt shrugged, leaned into the doorframe. “I guess. She says she’s okay.”
The raised eyebrow on James’s face suggested Wyatt should have stayed longer.
“Let’s go ahead, put the paperwork through for your transfers, and pull the little data I’ve found,” Wyatt said.
Cael slid from the computer. Wyatt took his spot, typed his codes into the FBI’s remote system, and followed the menus to the appropriate section for a transfer.
“I’d like to go through the information with you,” Wyatt said.
“I’m in,” James and Cael said.
“Me, too,” Stuart said.
Wyatt turned to find Cael and James on the other side of his desk with their gazes fixed on him.
His confidence in himself waned. “I’m in for the long haul, too.”
“There’s a chance this could hurt worse than any other assignment you’ve had.” Cael nodded toward the open door as the printer began to buzz.
Did he mean Charley?
Wyatt cocked his head as he realized the implications of what he’d offered. The assignment would be a no-brainer—if they found the child. Charley, on the other hand, could, in fact, be the metaphorical death of him. He could give them the data and go, walk out, and leave as she’d done to him, or stay and potentially go through it all over again.
Wyatt turned back to the screen to finish the transfer. “I’ll take my chances.”
Stuart, Cael, and James each found chairs and pulled them up the desk where they waited with an impatience Wyatt knew came from personal ties to a problem. They drummed fingers, tapped toes, and cracked bones in their fingers and necks.
Wyatt shivered each time they did it. He typed to the speed of the system. When he reached the last page, he turned to Cael. “You’re sure you want this transfer?”
Cael nodded.
“Because if I put in for it, you’re going to have to work for me for two years before you can change again.”
Cael acknowledge his ‘yes’ with another head nod.
Wyatt hit the return key. “Done. Now, gentlemen, we have a little boy to track, and I need to know what you’ve found out about that phone call.”
For the next two hours, James and Cael brought Wyatt up to speed on the work they’d done outside the perimeter of law enforcement. Wyatt knew they had to wonder if their trip to Montreal had any connection to Chase’s disappearance. It had happened while they’d been gone, there’d been no leads—typical of cases Wyatt had handled—and Chase’s family had a lot of money—also normal. The fact a note had been left on Sophie, with a number, suggested Charley had been the real target.
The kidnappers made an error, and Chase became their fallback plan.
According to all records, detectives notified the Center for Missing and Exploited Children on the day of the event. The local authorities had issued Amber alerts that stayed active for three days while they gathered leads, none of which panned out. The cops continued to cull through them.
“It’s like sifting for gold,” Cael said. “You think you find a piece and damn if it isn’t pyrite.”
Wyatt looked up from his own stack of information. “I was thinking nearly the same thing.”
The phone log provided nothing new. After another two hours without success, Wyatt’s stomach grumbled. In the quiet of the room, all three faces turned to him.
“Sorry,” he said.
“No, we’re sorry.” James turned from his seat to the clock on the side wall. “We need to eat. It’s way past dinner, and we’ve offered you nothing. Charley will have my hide for that.”
Wyatt smiled at the thought of Charley and James head to head. Big tough man, tiny woman. He could see it. “Let’s take a break. Stuart and I can go get something and come back.”
“Oh, no. No, you don’t. We have food here, and unless you want to deal with the wrath that is Charley, then me, because I’ll have to deal with her, you’ll stay,” James said.
Wyatt noted Cael remained quiet, but his smirk did enough to convey the same message.
Stuart rose. “I’ll ah, just go check in with them,” he said. “See if Lily did any cooking.” He disappeared and left Wyatt with James and Cael.
“We have a confession,” Cael said.
Uh oh.
Wyatt braced himself with elbows on the mound of papers before him. He clasped his hands together. “Okay.”
“Now, don’t get mad, but we thought you should know this before much more happens.” James turned to Cael for confirmation.
“Stuart has known about us for a little while,” Cael said.
Stuart had said he’d learned about them in the beginning, right? This I can deal with.
“A little while? How long is ‘a little while’?” Wyatt’s question surfaced rife with sarcasm. He sucked in a breath.
They looked at each other before James murmured, “All sixteen years. He’s … ah … been a part of our family the whole time—or, rather, most of the time.”
Stuart hadn’t gotten further with details before he’d dragged Wyatt into his own past. He’d assumed, by way of Stuart’s tag on Lily all those years ago and being yanked into the Army, that he’d left it at that, or maybe seen them once or twice since they both worked for the government. The way James said it made Wyatt think Stuart not only knew but kept up.
But what do I know? I’m the odd man out, good for nothing more than my job.
Wyatt made sure his eyes showed none of the emotion that turned him to stone. Sixteen years and Charley really had come between him and Stuart. Wyatt had found her again only to be stabbed in the heart by her choice.
She’d kept the wrong man close.
• • •
As they reached into the dinner hour and beyond, Charley’d left the safety of her balcony, pulled Lily into the kitchen, and forced her into some semblance of normalcy. Charley took a spot on a barstool while Lily stirred a pot of who-knew-what or even if it would be edible. On the couch, Sophie wavered between quiet and asleep, and awake and tearful. She stayed hidden under her covers most of the time, thanks to a dose of pain killers administered on a regular basis.
Stuart had taken on Sophie’s latest crying jag when he’d appeared from within what Charley called the man-cave.
“Smells good in here,” Charley said.
“Mmm-hmm,” Lily murmured.
Charley smiled as she saw, for the first time in almost a week, an inkling of the normal Lily. The tiny bit of happiness she’d allowed herself crashed with the footfalls that stormed behind her. Charley turned as Wyatt barreled into the living room. He pointed at Stuart, a firm line to his lips, turned, and pointed outside without a word. Behind him, James and Cael hurried into the living room. Stuart’s wide eyes told her Wyatt needed some explanations.
“Uh-oh.” Charley rose as Stuart did. “Wait, Stuart.” She walked back into the living room.
Wyatt turned to her. “No, Charley, or whoever you are. I’ll help you find your boy. I’ll do my job. But that bastard there owes me some explanations.”
“No, Wyatt, he doesn’t,” Charley said.
Wyatt cocked his head.
“But I do,” she said.
“I’ll talk to him, Charley.” Stuart started to stand again.
“Outside.” Wyatt pivoted toward the front door and with one foot, stepped forward.
“No.” Charley’s answer hit her mark. “Stuart, sit. Wyatt? You talk to me.” She stalked through the living room as Stuart sat back down.
Lily stopped stirring, and James and Cael let her pass.
“Follow me.”
Without a word, he did.
She stepped outside, onto the front porch. Once Wyatt joined her, she closed the door with a slow and meausred control to her movements. The evening’s sun had long since set, bringing along a significant drop in temperature. She shivered, wishing for her blankets, a jacket, or something to cover her arms, though the chill came from yet another bout of nerves rather than from the cold.
Wyatt’s silence added to her anxiety, but Charley turned to face him as he stood just outside the door’s edge, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Why did you leave me?” Wyatt started the moment their eyes caught.
Straight to the heart.
Charley dropped her gaze.
“Oh, now you don’t want to talk?” Wyatt threw his hands up into the air. They fell against his slacks with a thud.
Charley raised an index finger, hoping he’d give her the minute she needed. Two deep breaths later, ready to explain, she prepared to launch into the story. “You remember what happened in Montreal?”
“Yes.” He nearly spit the answer.
“The fact that I changed physical shape right in your arms?”
Wyatt nodded at her, but she caught the hesitation.
“I’m a mimic.” She waved her hand in front of her face. “It doesn’t matter. You saw. You know. I can take others’ shape.” Charley took a deep breath before she continued. “Seventeen years ago, you nearly caught me when you and Stuart were changing a flat. Sixteen years ago, I wanted to get to know you but realized you had your whole life ahead—”
“Don’t give me the ‘whole life ahead of you’ shit. I don’t give a fuck.” His eyes reflected the pain his voice projected.
“Well, since I’m a lot older than you, and have a lot more experience with life, that’s how I looked at it.” Charley turned her gaze to the tiled porch.
“How old are you?”
“Don’t you know you’re never supposed to ask a woman her age?” She drew a small smile from him as she looked back up. “Two hundred and thirty-four—almost.”
Wyatt’s eyebrows rose but he quashed further expression. “And you don’t look a day over sixty.” A small chuckled emanated from him.
Am I getting through to him? Or is it angry sarcasm?
“I opted for an exchange student so you’d know she had to leave. I agonized over doing it, though. James even gave me his blessing to go.”
“Go where?” Wyatt asked.
“With you.”
“You could have told me. You could have been honest.” His shoulders relaxed, though he stiffened again.
Charley’s frustration level ratcheted up a notch. “Are you kidding?” A small laugh flew from her. “Eighteen and in love—what did you know? You about freaked when I showed you my eyes on the dance floor. How would you have reacted if I told you I could change shape and was a couple centuries old?” She laughed again. “You’d have had me committed. Most of us don’t last this long. Gotta throw that in there.” She angled her head to him.
“What do you mean?” Wyatt frowned and shook his head. “I get that you can change shape, though I don’t understand it. Were you about to die or something?”
Charley restrained her smile.
He’s interested.
“When we find a match, it … changes our lives forever—literally.” Charley paused.
So much to tell. How do I say this so he’ll believe me?
“Anyway,” she began again. “After you and Stuart came here that night, Lily and I decided we’d make it look like we’d actually returned to New Zealand. We planned the whole airport thing, just never got on the plane. Unfortunately for me, Stuart had been pissed enough to come after Lily who’d turned into Mira to make our farce more realistic.”
“Why did Lily have to be you?”
“I can’t mimic anyone on my birthday. If I try, that is the form I’ll hold for the remainder of my life. It’s one day a year that I must be me and only me. It’s a permanent eighteen-year-old day.”
At Wyatt’s blank stare, Charley figured she should explain further. “I’m eighteen on my birthday. Every time.” She waved a hand in the air. “Anyway, mimics usually find the right mate somewhere before their hundredth year and make their final change—to live a normal life—like yours. We want to grow old, live, love, laugh, and eventually pass away. But we can only do that if our match shares a birthday with us.”
“Oh,” he said.
“I’d promised a number of people I’d walk away from you, and I knew it was the right thing. You were too young to take on what I’d need … long term. And, I do keep my promises.”
“So, you had to leave.” His tone remained dark but softened.
“Yes. Lily pretended to be me, but Stuart followed her.”
“Good ol’ Stuart.” Wyatt chuckled. “Always the man in the wrong place.”
Charley agreed, though she owed a lot of her sanity to Stuart. “Apparently, Lily didn’t do a great job in her transformation—she’s younger and not as experienced, but she was willing. So Stuart saw through it, and she had to bring him back here to explain. Since that point, he’s been a part of our secret, but he didn’t know all of it.”
“Who else knows your not-so-secret secret?”
“A number of people in the government but not just in the U.S. Most simply don’t believe it. You remember our dinner when Stuart told us all what Julie’s father said?” Charley smirked at the memory.
Wyatt nodded.
“That’s what most people who can’t believe think. For me, it’s more about being able to be anything I want. Because I’ve also been blessed with a photographic memory, I am considered one of the world’s greatest weapons, so our illustrious government keeps me on their payroll and helps keep us … under cover.”
Wyatt cocked his head.
“Stuart had no plans to join the Army.” Charley mirrored the tilt of his head. “The government takes care of us. It takes care of those who learn the truth, too.”
“Oh.” Wyatt moved to the seat next to Charley.
“When Stuart found out, he was forced into service without much explanation … only that it was for the security of the nation.”
Wyatt tilted in the other direction.
“Then, this one time, we were on separate missions. I got caught away from Cael and James. American military came in as insurgents opened fire. We fired back. I recognized Stuart, told him who I was, why I was there, and what I needed. He blinked once, since we hadn’t seen each other for a few months, and grabbed my arm. He believed me at that.”
She closed her eyes at the memory.
“A bomb or something hit the restaurant we were in shortly after. I’d never expected to be in the middle of fighting, Wyatt. I was never supposed to be—am not supposed to be. Stuart managed to get me out of there, back to the Embassy where Cael and James met me.