Touch of Betrayal, A (16 page)

Pierce dropped his chopsticks on his plate and stood. “That’s why the rumors. No one knows exactly how the formula works.”

“Except Kahuna Aukele and Millie.” The words slid from my mouth before I thought about it.

Three pairs of eyes focused on me, and then shifted to Maddie when she let out a screech. With graceful, tandem movements, Adam plucked Merlin from the playpen and Annie lifted her daughter, cuddling her close. Pierce made his escape out the kitchen door.

Adam was quick to follow. “I’m going to take Merlin for a walk, maybe set up a watch schedule with Pierce for tonight.” He attached a leash to Merlin’s collar and left the kitchen.

I whipped around to face Annie. “You really believe Mitch is guilty of working for the bad guys, don’t you?”

She reached behind her to grab a sippy cup from the counter, then handed it to Maddie. “I believe he was recruited by a supposedly friendly, under-the-radar government agency to learn about you, what you know about Loyria Gray’s discovery, and whether or not you’re a threat to national security.”

My heart flared into a painful rhythm. “Me? I’m not a threat to anyone.”

But I would be. As soon as I located Xifeng.

“Oh, sweetie. As far as we know you’re the only person who can control the toxin once it’s been released. That’s a lot of power. And I’m not surprised Xifeng has sent people to find you.”

Annie called me sweetie. A first. And my neck pricklies told me it wasn’t an endearment. More like a warning. Fear skittered under my skin.

“You think this Xifeng person sent someone to find me?” Maybe I wouldn’t have to figure out how to confront her after all. Another surge of adrenaline hit my bloodstream, and I trailed my fingers over the butt of the gun in my pocket, then jerked my hand away. This new me was damn scary, and the old me didn’t know what to do with her.
And
it would be really good if I could control the shakes that had taken over my muscles.

Annie shrugged. “Not sure. Her name means western phoenix. I’ve always thought her goal was to rise above her injuries, to become the myth, and pull off a rebirth. To do that she’d need some kind of miracle, and she wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who got in her way.”

Panic. Doubt. Confusion. Emotions assaulted me, and I couldn’t pin the sudden spike of pain in my temples to any of them. Bottom line: my head hurt with too much information too fast. “But why would she murder my parents? If she believed my mom had the formula that was key to her rebirth, she essentially killed her only chance for a cure.”

Except now there was me. And I could supposedly control the toxin.

“We think it was an accident.”

A fresh surge of anger exploded in my gut. “Accident? Hell of an accident.” I grabbed my glass of Diet Coke and chugged, hoping to calm the rage that was making me decidedly queasy.

I set the glass down, and inhaled. “You said we. You and Pierce?”

She nodded. “Everything about the Xifeng situation makes him crazy—that they expunged her from my kill roster because of a political payoff bothered him for years. It got worse after he met you and found out about Loyria Gray. It was one of the reasons he showed up in North Carolina when he did. He’d been following leads, and one of them led to your mother, and eventually to you. I never believed there was a connection, so honestly didn’t pay that much attention to what I thought were crazy theories.”

Shock washed over me. Pierce had been tracking Loyria? My mom? “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Annie rescued the sippy cup before Maddie could fling it on the floor. “I didn’t know for sure. Not until today when he went off like the Kilauea volcano.”

I bit my bottom lip with just enough pressure to help me focus. “He cares about all of us in an odd sort of way, and he wouldn’t have left his job unless it served his purpose, helped him to do… whatever he’s doing. Probably going after Xifeng. Am I right?”

She shook her head. “No, Everly. He left the agency because he suspected they were the ones who hired Mitch. He ran his suspicions by me when he first showed up in North Carolina.”

“Neither of you said anything. Why did you let us get married—stupid question. You were still unconscious most of the time, but Pierce wasn’t.”

Annie laid out a blanket and shifted Maddie to the floor. She made fast work of crawling back to her mother’s chair, pulling herself up, and gurgled something that could have meant ‘up.’

“I didn’t have enough facts to justify stopping your wedding back then. I’ve only had access to the relevant files for about twenty-four hours, and Pierce collected you within minutes after I let him know,” Annie said, adjusting Madigan on her lap.

Mitch. I had to focus on my husband before I went after Xifeng. That meant acting totally calm and normal for the rest of the day. Fat chance.

So I hid. From everyone.

SIXTEEN

I set my alarm for six.
Mitch said he’d arrive at eight, and I wanted to be awake, alert, and functioning before he showed up.
No one had knocked on my bedroom door, joined me when I took a swim in Annie’s pool, or slipped encouraging notes under the slider.

A wrong kind of quiet filled the house. When an eleven-month old child is in residence, there should have been a lot of giggling going on, and at least a few screams of delight. The house had amazing soundproofing, so it made sense that Annie had taken Madigan upstairs to her playroom. She probably thought they’d have a mother-daughter date to ensure that everyone got a good night’s sleep. But the quiet made me twitchy.

Pierce headed out to do something with his team right after our late lunch-slash-early supper, so Adam took first watch. He was outside doing whatever guys did when they were in protective mode, but with Annie’s security system, there shouldn’t have been any reason for him to patrol the grounds. Maybe ‘watch’ meant something else altogether. It niggled at my curiosity. Did Annie and Sean have a control room somewhere, with cameras?

A lingering wisp of Pineapple Passion soap floated from the bathroom and followed me as I wandered around the bedroom. I ran my hands over the furniture, straightening the coverlet on the bed, and aligning the two club chairs Annie’d tucked into a corner adjacent to the window-walls. They were covered in white denim—totally impractical and super elegant—which meant my room was off-limits to Maddie.

The early evening wind blew across the swimming pool, and as the sun dipped behind the hills the pool lights came on. They had to be on a sensor rather than a timer because it was still early. The clear purple-blue water lapped against the slate tiles in a soothing rhythm that stole the edge from my anxiety, so I snuggled into one of the chairs to soak in the beauty. Curling my legs under me, I let my eyes drift shut and relaxed in the cushy texture of chairs.

Mitch would be here in mere hours.

I didn’t have a clue what to say to him. It wasn’t like he’d cheated on me in a weak moment. That I could handle with righteous indignation and the slap of divorce papers. Marriage and monogamy went together—simple, straightforward, black and white. But if Annie’s research was correct, Mitch didn’t just spy on me, he’d broken my trust with forethought and planning.

Shades of gray. And there wasn’t an easy answer.

Irritated that my mind wouldn’t calm, I hustled outside with my yoga mat for an extended session on the patio. I’d done a series of Sun Salutations and was working on a Warrior sequence when I caught sight of Adam making rounds.

My legs wobbled. I hadn’t realized the guys were
that
serious about keeping watch. Annie and Sean’s security system enclosed the property like a fortress, so it shouldn’t have been necessary.

Seeing their plan in action unraveled whatever serenity I’d been searching for with my yoga practice, so I gave up and retreated to the shower. The cool water and pungent fragrance of Annie’s Pineapple Passion bath gel helped to calm me, but I still hadn’t come up with a plan for confronting my husband.

Dusk crept into the back yard with gauzy shadows that ate the daylight…and the last few hours before the showdown with Mitch. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he had perfectly reasonable and excellent reasons why his assignment roster looked so incriminating. And maybe I needed a glass of wine.

I cracked open my bedroom door. No sound except the normal breathing of Annie’s house. That worked for me, especially since I could barely face my own doubts about Mitch, and didn’t want to hear anything negative from anyone hell-bent on protecting me. Not even Annie.

I headed for the kitchen, my bare feet making a sticky sound against the wood floors. The snick was barely audible, but crashed against my ears in a series of tiny explosions. Anxiety shivered over my skin leaving goose bumps behind. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out to make a relationship work.

The scent of Chinese food lingered in the kitchen, and my stomach did an uncomfortable flip. I started to back away without raiding Annie’s wine stash but spied a corkscrew sitting on the kitchen counter. It called to me. Loudly.

Annie had left a note under the corkscrew:
There’s chilled Moscato in the wine cooler. Help yourself. And if you want to talk, you know where I am. Love, Annie.

It was the first time I’d smiled all day. I poured a glass, added a
Thank you
to the bottom of Annie’s note, and made my way to my room, my footsteps lighter. I wasn’t alone. Well, I was, because no one could help me face Mitch, but I had backup. For the first time in hours I managed to inhale a full breath.

The Moscato left a lingering sweetness on my tongue as I drifted into restless sleep. The night couldn’t end quickly enough. Or would it be better to suspend time in this moment of not-knowing? Or turn it back to before Pierce kidnapped me? Or maybe all the way back to pre-Mitch days?

The scent of heat with a pale undertone of sweat drifted into my dreams. Callused hands stroked my thigh, slid under my tank, and stroked my back with sweet promises. A wisp of warm air nudged my nape, and then the pressure of soft lips teased my skin and flowed over my shoulder. I snuggled into the familiar, content that all was right in my world.

My eyelids fluttered open, barely long enough to appreciate the wash of moonlight reflecting off the bamboo floor.

Safe.

Annie’s house.

My brain easily accepted the facts, and I sighed more deeply into sleep.

“Sunshine.” The single word combined with the rough timbre of his voice broke through the haze clouding my brain.

I jerked upright, landed on the floor next to the bed, and cracked my elbow. The sharp pain jarred me awake, and I rolled to my knees, glaring at my husband over the edge of the bed. “It’s not morning.”

“No. Are you hurt?” He swung his legs off the bed and reached for me.

I scuttled away, scanning the room, frantic for something. I wasn’t sure what. “Talk. We have a lot to talk about.” My words sounded brittle, like they belonged to an old woman.

“Come back to bed, Sunshine. Let me hold you while we talk.” Stubbornness laced through his words, and my nerves zinged with irritation.

Hold me? Not a chance. “Bathroom,” I mumbled, escaping into the heady leftover fragrance of Pineapple Passion bath gel and the protection of a locked door. I’d never locked a door between Mitch and me before. Not even in the beginning of our relationship. My heart ached with lonely emptiness.

Not bothering to turn the light on, I took my time using the facilities, brushing my teeth, and splashing handful after handful of cool water on my face. I didn’t want to see what I looked like, wanted the conversation we faced to happen in the moonlight. It was cowardly of me, but I didn’t want to see Mitch’s eyes, not until daybreak. In these early hours before dawn, I just wanted to hear his voice, to absorb the nuances while he explained how wrong Annie and Pierce were about his activities.

Scrubbing my face dry with a thick terrycloth towel helped to center me. I folded the pristine white towel precisely into thirds and hung it on a rack behind the sink before I unlocked the door. But I stepped back before I turned the knob.

Breathe, Everly. If you don’t breathe, you won’t survive this.

For once I listened to my internal wisdom and took time for several deep breaths. Ever so slowly I reached for the doorknob, turned it. The soft click of the mechanism sliding free echoed loudly in the silence. Was Mitch waiting for me? Or had he left? Surely he hadn’t run away from the disaster facing us.

I swung the door open to an empty room and my heart skidded to a stop. One breath. Two. A breeze lifted a damp strand of hair away from my face, and my attention darted to the open slider. The pool lights outlined the shadows floating over my patio. Pierce or Adam, someone should be on watch.

Nausea erupted in my stomach.

I’d been right to keep the inside lights off. My night vision picked up someone sitting in one of the patio chairs, and I tiptoed toward the open slider, not breathing. It could be anyone—Harlan, my grandfather, Adam, Pierce, or Mitch. Too tall to be Annie.

Or it could be someone Xifeng sent, lying in wait. Had they captured Mitch?

A flash of adrenaline hit my bloodstream, and I skimmed my hand over the night table, palming the gun I’d lifted from the dead guy.