“Why would they think I need that?” Amanda turned her baleful gaze on Rick, suspicion shining in her eyes.
“I have no idea.” He hadn’t mentioned a word to anyone in his family about what Amanda had experienced in Kaziristan, which is the only event she might need help remembering. He looked at his sisters for an explanation.
“It was my suggestion,” Megan admitted quietly, drawing Amanda’s fiery gaze to her.
“Why?” Amanda demanded. “What do you think I need to remember that I don’t already?”
Megan glanced at Rick, then back at Amanda. “A couple of years ago, I was working on a three-state Homeland Security task force, studying the rise in incidents of domestic terrorism. One of the things we were given was a list of potential threats. Citizens who, for one reason or another, might be motivated to act against the federal government in a violent way.”
Rick stared at his sister in surprise. “Are you saying—?”
“Amanda was on the list.” Megan’s gray eyes were gentle as she took a step around the counter toward Amanda. “We weren’t told all the details of what happened to you in Kaziristan. Just that something had, and that your loyalties may have been compromised in some way by events there.”
Amanda uttered a low profanity and turned away from them.
Rick rounded on his sister. “I asked her to trust us, and you ambush her? Thanks a lot.”
“It’s not an ambush,” Isabel said in a firm, quiet tone. “Nobody here believes Amanda is a potential terrorist threat.”
Amanda whirled around. “Then why hypnosis? You need one last bit of proof that I’m not a terrorist?”
“It’s not about proving anything,” Alicia interceded. “It’s about helping you remember more about what happened to you.”
“Why?” Rick asked, sliding his arm around Amanda’s trembling shoulders. A surge of fire poured through him as he felt her lean against his side. “Why should she relive that?”
“Because there must be a reason someone’s after her now after leaving her alone for three years,” Megan answered.
Amanda pulled away from Rick’s embrace. Her chin rose, reminding him that for all the trauma she’d gone through in the past three years, she was still the strong, brilliant woman who’d first caught his eye on a street in Tablis.
When she spoke, her voice was steady, her words a statement of fact, not a question. “And the best chance of learning that reason is to find out what really happened to me in Kaziristan.”
NOW THAT SHE’D AGREED to the hypnosis, Amanda was surprised to discover her only emotion was relief. As unpleasant as she might find the idea of digging into that part of her past, she couldn’t deny the logic that had led Megan to the suggestion. If nothing else, Alexander Quinn’s initial cryptic message—the box with the fake fingernails—had suggested a direct Kaziristan connection to the threat coming her way.
She found a certain sense of freedom, too, in being able to release the feelings, fears and memories she’d spent so long holding locked inside her, where they had festered until her soul had become infected with doubt and fear. It would be good to let go of those emotions. Maybe then she could rediscover the woman she had been before.
The woman she wanted to be again.
She could tell Rick didn’t share her sense of relief. He paced the floor in front of the chair where she sat, his brow furrowed with worry. “You don’t have to do this. My family shouldn’t have ganged up on you that way.”
She caught his hand as he made another pass in front of her, stilling his movement. “They didn’t force me to do this. I need to.”
He gazed down at her with eyes as dark as the night that had fallen outside the window. “Hypnosis might make you remember things you don’t want to.”
He was still afraid there were things she hadn’t told him. If she’d had missing pieces of her memory, she might worry the same thing. But she hadn’t lost consciousness. She hadn’t been incapacitated, despite the torment.
She knew what had—and hadn’t—happened to her.
But if hypnosis could help her remember forgotten details about her captors, then there was a chance she’d discover the missing clue that would explain why she’d become someone’s target so long after her escape.
“I need to do this,” she told him softly.
From the hallway, the sound of voices gave them a little warning that their quiet cocoon was about to be invaded. She let go of Rick’s hand and he stepped away, claiming a seat on the ottoman at her feet and pasting on a smile as his brothers and sisters entered. While he and Amanda escaped to the living room after dinner, they’d stayed in the kitchen to wash up.
Considering they’d used paper plates and plastic utensils at dinner, Amanda suspected the other Coopers had stayed in the other room to give Rick and Amanda a moment alone to discuss the coming hypnosis session. It hadn’t been necessary for her—she’d made her decision. But maybe Rick had needed the time to regroup, for he seemed less tense now than he had just a few minutes earlier.
His youngest sister, Shannon, ruffled his hair as she passed him to take a seat on the end of the sofa, making Amanda smile. She was a tall, coltish woman in her mid-twenties, with dark hair and bright brown eyes. She resembled her sister Isabel, except for the splash of light freckles across her nose that reminded Amanda of red-haired Megan’s Irish complexion.
The room was small, and all the Coopers perching on any available flat surface only made it seem smaller. If Amanda were prone to claustrophobia, she might be climbing the wall, but to her surprise, she found an odd sense of comfort sitting there surrounded by Coopers.
Rick’s eldest brother, Jesse, was the last to enter the room. Unlike the others, he chose not to sit, standing instead in front of the group as if he’d called a meeting to order.
He had come as a surprise to Amanda. She supposed his status as the elder brother had made her expect a man who looked bigger than life, but Jesse Cooper turned out to be a whipcord-lean man of average height with a quiet demeanor and watchful eyes the color of dark chocolate.
Rick had asked earlier where their father, Roy, was. He’d looked a little dismayed when Jesse told him that the elder Cooper was on a fishing trip to Texas with their uncle Mike, probably because that left Jesse as the de facto head of the family.
The tension between Jesse and Rick had been immediately obvious in the wary looks exchanged between them, a tension that didn’t exist between Rick and his other siblings. Jesse was another secret-keeper, she’d realized right away. A man who had a whole life going on beneath the placid surface of his outer facade.
But were those hidden depths a threat to her? Or an untapped source of help?
She wasn’t sure. But she was tired of running, tired of looking for ulterior motives behind every act of kindness. If Jesse Cooper was planning to betray her, then he’d be betraying his family, as well, for the rest of the Coopers seemed open, friendly and eager to help her out.
“Will tomorrow morning around eleven be too soon? For the hypnosis session, I mean.” Alicia spoke first, despite Jesse’s commanding presence at the front of the room. Amanda felt her nerves jerk at the unexpected sound of her voice.
“Tomorrow at eleven should be fine.”
“Are there any particular questions I should ask?” This time, Alicia’s question seemed to be directed more toward the other Coopers than toward Amanda.
“I’ll brief you first thing in the morning,” Jesse said.
Amanda looked up at him. “What do you know about what I went through?”
He turned his cool, dark gaze to her. “What Megan told me about the Homeland Security report.”
Amanda wasn’t sure he was being completely honest, but she decided to pretend she was. “I can’t imagine the CIA spilled all their secrets in a report,” she answered with matching calm. She looked at Alicia. “Is there any way for me to direct the session? Will I be aware enough to do that?”
“I pretty much believe all hypnosis is self-hypnosis,” Alicia answered with a wry smile. “You’re focusing your attention inward. I can make suggestions to help you keep your focus, but if you have something particular in mind that you want to explore, you can certainly do that.”
“Good. I think that’s how I want to handle it.” She looked at Jesse again. “The CIA would never have put the details of what happened to me in a Homeland Security report.”
“Do you want to be alone with me, or do you want someone with you?” Alicia asked.
Amanda looked into Rick’s worried eyes as she answered Alicia. “Everyone will hear it anyway, right? I mean, you’ll be recording the session—”
“That was the plan,” Alicia agreed.
“Then I’ll be there with her,” Rick said in a raspy voice. “If you want me to be,” he added in a lower tone to Amanda.
“I do.”
He gave a nod, though she could see dread in his eyes.
“Then we’re set.” Jesse’s tone suggested the meeting had come to an end.
As if on cue, all of Rick’s siblings started moving, stopping where she sat to say their goodbyes. Only Isabel stuck around—it was her house, after all. She saw the others out, giving Alicia and Rick another minute alone.
“You should go home and get some rest. Tomorrow may be a long day.”
He slid the ottoman closer so that he could touch her face. “This is home. Isabel’s trading houses with me for a few days.”
She arched an eyebrow.
“I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“Isabel would be here.”
He didn’t answer, but she could see in his eyes the real reason he didn’t want to leave her here with his sister.
“You think I’m going to run the second your back’s turned.”
“And if I leave you here with Isabel, you’re not going to hare off and make me chase after you again?”
She supposed he had reason to doubt her. She’d already run once. And staying here, trusting him and his family, felt like a huge gamble.
She hadn’t been a gambler in a long, long time.
“You don’t have to worry,” she promised. Unless something happened between now and later to make her believe that leaving was safer than staying.
His knowing half smile made her feel uncomfortably certain he’d just read her mind. He bent closer, until his lips brushed against her ear. “If you run, take me with you this time.”
A shiver ran down her body, sparking sizzles of awareness along her nerves. His lips brushed her ear again, but this time he said nothing, just pressed a light kiss against the lobe.
His lips traced the tendon down the side of her neck, settling warm and soft against the curve of her collarbone, his tongue brushing the skin over that ridge of bone.
Her sex contracted, making her clutch at his arms just to stay upright. Beneath her fingers, she felt the bulge of the gauze bandage under his sleeve a half second before his breath exploded against her throat in a hiss of pain.
She pulled back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
He laughed softly, though pain had brought moisture to his eyes. “We’re a sad pair with our matching gunshot wounds, aren’t we?” He touched the furrow between her eyes. “Maybe we should take it as a sign it’s time to hit the sack.”
Wrong choice of words, Amanda thought, memories scorching her mind. Seeing his dark eyes dilate until they were as black as ink, she knew the same memories were blazing their way into his mind, as well.