Authors: Kelly Abell
“
Oh, this one is pretty too,” she exclaimed excitedly. “Jack, do you have any idea how many antiques your family has in this house? There are some priceless pieces in here.”
“
Its just furniture, Caroline.” Jack started to pull another dust cover from a piece against the wall that looked like a small desk and then he stopped. Why deny her the pleasure? She seemed to be having a great time. He had other things that needed to be taken care of, like getting some running water in the place.
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Men.” Caroline rolled her eyes. She squealed again as she jerked the old sheet from the desk where Jack was standing. “Oh, Jack, it’s beautiful.” She ran her hand lovingly over the walnut surface of the small secretary. She couldn’t believe all the small treasures that she was discovering in the dilapidated old house. This was great fun.
She was reminded of Saturdays back in Georgia when she would visit her mother and they would antique shop together. She pictured the small-framed woman with brown hair and glasses perched on her pert little nose. Even though her mother was a brilliant doctor, she had enjoyed setting up her home with beautiful things. It was where she spent her down time and she always wanted to be surrounded by pretty things. Her mother would have loved this desk.
“
Well, you just enjoy yourself, Jane.”
Caroline looked up at the use of her new alias. “Boy, that sounds weird. It will take me some time to get used to that name. Do you think we need to call each other by those names while we are here alone?”
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Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea. The more we get used to it the less likely it is that we will slip up out in public. Think of it as acting out a role in a play.”
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Maybe I should have paid more attention in the one drama class I took in college,” Caroline said.
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You’ll get used to it soon enough.” Jack stepped through the doorway into the kitchen. “I’m going to see what I can do about getting us some running water in this place. I think they have a well and a pump that I can get going until we get the county water turned on. Once I get it started, you may want to run some water through the pipes to run the rust out. I imagine it has been a few years since any water has run through them.”
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Okay. Just yell when it’s on and I will turn on all the spigots. Once I have some water I will start cleaning up. Are there any cleaning supplies around here?”
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Check the pantry. There might be something there. If not, we can go to a store. I think I saw a Wal-Mart somewhere in town as we were driving out here. We will need some food and supplies any way.”
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Sounds like a plan. I will finish uncovering the furniture and find some sheets to dress the beds upstairs.”
Jack left the kitchen and the screen door slammed behind him. Caroline watched him go. He was an amazing man, she thought. Here she was a complete bundle of nerves because of all that was happening to her in such a short time and he seemed as calm as could be. She also thought about his background compared to hers. She couldn’t image growing up the way he did with a single mother and a sister in a small apartment. It sounded like his mother had worked hard to keep food on the table, but what did it cost his small family for her to work all the time? Caroline just couldn’t relate.
She took the sheets that she pulled off the furniture outside to shake the dust out. She folded each one neatly and put them in a pile to be washed later. She wasn’t even sure if the house had a washer and dryer. Doing as Jack suggested, she looked in the pantry to see if there were any cleaning supplies. On one of the shelves stood a half-gallon plastic jug of bleach and a bottle of ammonia. She remembered her mother telling her once about a woman who mixed bleach and ammonia together and created a toxic gas that nearly killed her. The woman was one of Caroline’s mother’s patients and she was rushed to the hospital to help save her. Unfortunately, she was too late. The gas burned her lungs and she hadn’t made it.
Caroline sighed. It was funny what you remember at the strangest times. She had thought of her mother twice in a short span of hours and it resurfaced the old ache she always felt when thinking of her parents. They were such a loving couple and though their medical practice kept them both very busy, they would always find time for Caroline. There were weekends at the beach, trips to France and Italy, and just fun times at the wonderful mansion where they’d lived in Buckshead.
Caroline felt her heart squeeze as she thought about the day they died. They were on their way to a conference in San Francisco. They decided to drive in order to see some of the country along the way when they were killed in a head on collision with a semi truck. Caroline was devastated with grief. When she’d gotten the call she remembered calling Warren at the office and expecting him to rush home, instead he told her that he was about to enter an important meeting. He gave her instructions about who to call to set up the funeral arrangements and told her to go ahead and book her flight to Atlanta without him. He told her to let him know when the funeral would be and he would see what he could do about being there.
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That bastard,” she said aloud to the pantry door as she closed it. He was no support to her at all. He played a great game at the funeral appearing to be all supportive and loving to her in front of the press, but when they were alone he offered her no consolation at all. In fact, he demanded she have sex with him the night of her parent’s funeral. Said he could take her mind off things. She shuddered as she remembered the rough sex he called lovemaking.
Her stomach knotted in an emotion she couldn’t quite explain. There was anticipation mixed with fear and a little bit of excitement. She was glad to be free of that evil man but she wasn’t sure who she was without him. He overshadowed her for so long that the real Caroline Boulet had gotten lost somewhere. Rediscovering who she was without Warren, was a daunting prospect. In fact, it was scary. She took a deep breath to settle her nerves. She would do exactly what Jack recommended. She would take it one minute at a time. Gradually, she would move forward in this new and strange world where she could rediscover who she was while pretending to be another person. Jane Reynolds, that was her new name and she needed to get used to it.
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Jane Reynolds.” She said the name aloud. It didn’t sound so bad, a little plain maybe, but not so bad. She could get used to it. “Well, Jane, this place is not going to clean itself up. Let’s go see if Jack has the water turned on yet.”
Jack was out in the barn fiddling with the engine that worked the well pump. While trying to get it started, he was rewarded with a face full of black smoke. Cussing and swiping at his eyes with the tail of his shirt, he turned a few knobs, pushed a few buttons and tried again. This time the electric motor sputtered and spurted to life. He heard deep sucking sounds as the siphon on the pump tried to draw water from the deep well. He sincerely hoped the well had not gone dry. They would have county water within the week but he really would like to have some to clean the place up and be able to bathe.
As he waited to see what the motor would do, he looked out the barn door and noticed Caroline shaking the dust out of the sheets on the back porch. He chuckled. He bet she had never had to do that before. She is being a good sport, he thought. He still doubted his decision to bring her along, but she needed him. She needed protection from that bastard she was married to.
What would he do with her once this was all done? He enjoyed her company and he liked the feeling of domesticity that he felt when he was with her.
He’d never felt that with a woman before, the feeling of home. He’d been with lots of women, but they were only lovers. He never felt the connection with them the way he felt connected to Caroline. He knew this was hard for her. It went against her entire moral code to be sneaking around hiding from the world and not being who she thought she was. What she didn’t realize and he had pointed out to her, was that she lived that way all her married life. She couldn’t be who she truly was because of the way she’d been treated by Warren.
Jack felt a sudden burst of anger. If he ever got his hands around that son of a bitch’s neck he would kill him. His fists balled up at his sides while he watched Caroline fold the sheets into a neat pile. She didn’t deserve to be treated that way. No woman did, but especially Caroline. She was exquisite. She was beautiful, intelligent, and the type of woman that made a man feel proud to have on his arm. She was the type of woman that was way out of his league, but if she were his, he would treasure every minute with her.
Guilt poked at his Catholic upbringing. Here he was lusting after another man’s wife. He hadn’t been to confession in years, and lusting was certainly the least of his sins but he could still hear his mother reciting the Ten Commandments. Thou Shall Not Covet. That was one of them. He couldn’t remember which number it was or if there was even a particular order but he knew it was a commandment. He sighed. Thou Shall Not Kill was one of them too, but he had certainly disobeyed the hell out of that one hadn’t he? Why should coveting bother him so much? Maybe it was because he knew he couldn’t have Caroline, that she belonged legally to someone else. Men often wanted things that were a challenge to acquire. He clamped down on the warmth that shot through his belly straight to his loins. He wanted her, that was so true, but he was not about to jeopardize the relationship that was developing between them. It felt like friendship and for now that was enough. She could use a friend and so could he.
She turned toward the barn and saw him standing there staring at her. She smiled and waved a hand. He smiled and waved back. She was so easy to look at. The soft breeze was ruffling her new blond curls. He couldn’t decide if he liked her better as a blond or a brunette. The shorter hairstyle was definitely sexy but he liked the deep chestnut brown that was her natural color. He hoped all this would be over soon and she could go back to her original hair color. He admired the slim body in the jeans he bought for her at Wal-Mart. When she bent over to pick up the sheets she’d folded, he couldn’t help but notice her butt, which was firm and round. She was too skinny, he decided. While they were here at the farm he would work on fattening her up.
Suddenly behind him, there was a huge belch and the machine that was being so difficult decided to spew forth the water he so desperately sought. He heard the pipes rattle as the pressure built and water flowed through them. He adjusted the pump so the pressure wouldn’t be too strong and watched the gauge as the needle bounced.
His thoughts turned again to Warren Walters and Caroline. He knew without a doubt he would keep Caroline from him if it cost him everything. Warren needed to learn that he could not treat women as punching bags. Jack thought back to all those times in the Navy when they would be in the field. If there were time between assignments, they would go into a nearby town and party, find some women and take care of those necessities of life. He remembered how many times they would be thrown out of whatever house of ill repute they visited because of Warren’s violent tendencies toward women.
That man was bad news. Jack knew that the Navy covered up a number of his indiscretions because he was so valuable to the SEAL team. Jack often wondered if it was worth it. Warren was top notch with explosives and bombs but he wasn’t that good. In fact, Jack knew of a time when …
A flash of memory exploded in Jack’s mind. The sight of it knocked him backward and he sat down hard on a bale of moldy hay. If that bale hadn’t been there he would have cracked his skull open. Oh God, Jack thought. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as the memory came more fully into focus. He saw Warren standing over him with an electric probe in his hand and a cigarette burning in his mouth. He saw the boot rising and felt the pain again as the toe of that boot knocked him unconscious.
The reality of what he was remembering hit Jack hard. It was Warren who tortured the Iraqi woman he saw in his dreams. It was real. It had really happened. The entire sequence of events began to flood back into his mind. They were on a search and destroy mission in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction. They had gotten a tip from an unknown source that there were weapons in the palace and that an assistance to Saddam Hussein knew where they were being kept.
Warren had rushed in and captured a woman that he was convinced was the woman they were looking for. Jack had the photographs and while they were questioning her realized she was not the right woman. Warren argued, not willing to admit he could possibly be wrong, since he was the one who made the capture. He wanted this to go on his record that he found the key to where the weapons were being held and saved the USA from the evil Saddam Hussein.
The methods the team used were unusually cruel, but Jack was okay with it at first. Poking the woman with an electric probe to give her a brief shock would get her to talk, but once he realized she was the wrong woman and she didn’t know anything he told Warren to stop. The look he received from Warren that night was pure evil. Jack swore he’d seen the devil himself looking back at him through those icy blue eyes. That was when it all went dark.
He then remembered waking up and seeing Warren continuing to torture the woman and he yelled out, but he couldn’t move. The bastards had tied him up. His own team had immobilized him so he couldn’t interfere. That was when Warren had come over and literally stomped his lights out again. He remembered seeing that pitiful creature slumping in her chair as his vision darkened.