Off the grid...

And on the run

After years of looking over her shoulder in witness protection, Amy Brady has been found by the dangerous criminals who want her dead. With Amy’s handler killed and WitSec hacked, US marshal Sam Maldonado must break the rules to save her. But without backup as her would-be killer closes in, can he keep Amy alive long enough to reunite with her twin?

JODIE BAILEY writes novels about freedom and the heroes who fight for it. Her novel Crossfire won a 2015 RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award. She is convinced a camping trip to the beach with her family, a good cup of coffee and a great book can cure all ills. Jodie lives in North Carolina with her husband, her daughter and two dogs.

Also by Jodie Bailey

Freefall

Crossfire

Smokescreen

Compromised Identity

Breach of Trust

Dead Run

Calculated Vendetta

Fatal Response

Mistaken Twin

Hidden Twin

Texas Ranger Holidays

Christmas Double Cross

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Hidden Twin

Jodie Bailey

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09650-8

HIDDEN TWIN

© 2019 Jodie Bailey

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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“Get out of here. Now!”

Sam grabbed the backpack. A go-bag packed with essentials for survival, which she’d know meant one thing: they were in trouble.

“Who is it?” she asked, panic in her voice.

He couldn’t tell her who. He didn’t know. “Put on your vest and let’s go.” Sidearm in hand, he let her out.

Amy clung to him, her face pale. He wanted to tell her it was going to be okay, but he couldn’t. Someone had posted their location on the dark web. His phone was tapped, too. “The red car that followed us earlier just pulled into the parking garage. Our location’s been compromised.”

He was dark until further notice. In the wind with Amy, no backup.

“I’m going to get you out of this. I promise.”

He shouldn’t make promises he had no idea he could keep, but Sam steadied his nerves and prepared for flight. This time he wouldn’t fail. They were in danger because he’d let his guard down by sinking into his emotions.

If he did so again, Amy would pay for his mistakes with her life.

I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.

—Psalms 34:4

For Jesus

Who saved me

Who rescued me

Who carries me through

Who delivered me from all my fears

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for being a part of this three-book journey in the town of Mountain Springs...and in Jenna and Amy’s reunion. I’ve had the best time weaving together Erin and Jenna and Amy’s stories.

The common thread for them is fear. Isn’t it amazing how often God has told us in the Bible not to fear? He knew from Creation that we would be afraid. There is so much to fear in this world. But here’s the thing... Fear comes when we forget the One Who created us is the One Who is in control. That’s true for me. When I begin to doubt, I pull a Peter, put my eyes on the waves and sink. The beauty happens when I, like Peter, cry out, “Lord, save me!” He always stretches out His hand and lifts me up.

I pray you know Jesus in that way. That those things you fear are things you can lay at His feet. As one who battled debilitating fear for a decade, I know it is not easy, but when I look back on those years, I see Jesus more than I see fear. Lift your head and seek Him. I promise He is there.

I’d love to hear from you!

Pop over to www.jodiebailey.com or send an email to jodie@jodiebailey.com. Hearing from you all always makes the day a bit brighter!

Jodie Bailey

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Bible Verse

Dedication

Dear Reader

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

ONE

Rain-chilled wind blew dead leaves across the parking lot at South Georgia Community College, a damp reminder that winter was rapidly overtaking fall. Amy Naylor stopped at the end of a covered sidewalk and stared across the wide sea of vehicles to the far row where she’d parked her midsize SUV. The rain that had poured earlier had given way to clear skies, but the accompanying cold front had dropped the temperature a good twenty degrees.

It figured she hadn’t brought a jacket to wear over her navy button-down shirt. Hiking her messenger bag higher on her shoulder, she glanced at the building where her small office offered the warmth of central heat. It would be easy to go inside, make herself a cup of hot coffee and read over the papers she’d assigned her freshmen biology students. For a few more minutes, she could pretend summer wasn’t over.

But it was Friday afternoon and the building would empty rapidly after the next class ended in an hour. The long empty halls that echoed small noises after everyone was gone had always forced her out of the building with the feeling that something was lurking in the shadows. She preferred her third-floor one-bedroom apartment, where there was only one way in and one way out. In her home, the couch faced the front door, and no one could sneak up on her through a half-open window. Even her bed was shoved against the wall so she could sleep on her side, eyes toward the door, pistol at the ready in her nightstand drawer.

No one was catching her unaware.

Something buzzed against her side. Amy jumped and threw the messenger bag off her shoulder, then stared down at the gray fabric as she tensed.

Her cheeks heated as the side pocket buzzed again. It was only her cell phone, still switched to silent mode so she could teach her classes without interruption. Not a bomb. Not a kill shot.

Yep. She was going home. Stepping back inside and pouring more caffeine into her system with another cup of coffee was a bad idea after all. She scooped the bag up by the strap and glanced around, praying no one had noticed her brief dance of panic.

She’d probably never get over the sensation that someone was breathing down her neck or staring at her through a sniper’s scope, seconds away from ending her life. Every time she turned the ignition in her car, she held her breath and waited for the explosion that would finally end her life of terror.

The phone had stopped buzzing by the time she retrieved it from the pocket and ducked deeper into the shadow of the building to see the screen.

Seventeen missed calls.

Adrenaline shot through her with a lightning bolt of pain. Seventeen missed calls, all from a blocked number.

No. The word tried to push past the sudden lump in her throat, but fear overpowered it. Only two people called her from a blocked number. And if one of them had called seventeen times in the fifty minutes she’d been in class then, for better or for worse, her entire world was about to splinter again.

Either she was free, or she’d been found.

Both options were equally terrifying.

It took her four tries to dial the number she’d committed to memory three years ago, her fingers missing the numbers, her eyes constantly roaming the area, reading the faces of students and faculty members who were heading to their cars after their just-dismissed classes. No one seemed to be paying attention to her.

The call only rang once before a clipped voice answered. “Amy Naylor?”

“Yes.” The voice that had so authoritatively commanded her class only minutes earlier could hardly be called a whisper now, fear choking her into silence. Whatever the voice said next, nothing would ever be the same again. She pressed her back against the brick building and kept watching the flow of students passing by, leading normal lives, certain of where they were headed now that they were free for the weekend.

She envied them.

“It’s me. Deputy Sam Maldonado. Are you in a secure location?”

Amy shook her head before it registered that the deputy US marshal on the other end couldn’t see her. “Not exactly, but I can get to my office.” She turned and headed up the breezeway at a quick clip, feeling as though a million eyes watched her and safety was too far away. She could lock herself inside her office, close the blinds and wait for whatever came next.

“Is Deputy Marshal Edgecombe with you?”

“No.” She stopped at the glass doors to the building, her fingers on the handle. If they’d sent a marshal to pick her up, then this wasn’t good news. This level of caution and urgency could only mean one thing—her identity was compromised. Her stomach twisted as chills swept her skin. Danger was heading her way, and this was a college campus. If Grant Meyer’s people came looking for her with guns blazing...

Her brain wouldn’t even consider what might happen to the innocents around her.

Amy slowed and turned on her heel, staring in the direction of the parking lot. Cradling the phone between her shoulder and her ear, she ran her finger absently across the face of her watch, the cracked crystal rough against her finger. “I can’t go to my office. There’s no way to protect any students on this campus if someone decides they’re in the way. And I don’t see Deputy Edgecombe.” She’d recognize the man anywhere. He stood out in a crowd. At well over six feet, his laughing dark eyes and ready humor belied the seriousness of his job as her contact with the US Marshals’ Witness Protection Program.

Along with Deputy Maldonado, Deputy Edgecombe was her first point of contact and had never failed to answer her call or be by her side if needed. If he was supposed to be here, he’d be here. Then again, he was the kind of man to operate under an abundance of caution. It was possible he was waiting in the parking lot for her to exit the building so he could escort her out without causing a scene or raising suspicion. “What’s going on?”

“I’m two minutes from your location. Get into your office and get secure and I’ll pick you up there.”

Maldonado was coming for her? Amy’s knees threatened to give way and drop her to the sidewalk. They’d met on multiple occasions, the first only a few months ago when she’d nearly compromised her own identity. It had been her fault that time, for trying to leave Georgia against WITSEC rules. Through a series of coded communications she never should have been involved in, she’d learned that Grant Meyer had gone on the rampage. He’d been hunting down anyone who could testify against him or his human-trafficking ring, including Amy and another witness she’d hidden herself, a young woman in the country illegally who refused to talk to the authorities.

Amy hadn’t gotten very far.

Deputy Sam Maldonado was a retrieval specialist, part of the elite team that had been sent to find her and bring her back to safety, fighting to keep her alive so she could testify against Grant Meyer. Since that day, he’d been right beside Deputy Edgecombe, always there and watching, as though he and his team didn’t trust her not to run again.

She’d learned her lesson. When Layla Fisher hadn’t been at the house Amy had secured for her in Virginia, Amy had panicked. She’d left herself cut off with no protection and no idea of whether or not she’d been discovered. Sam and his team had found her and brought her back to safety.

If Sam was on his way, the Marshals Service was more concerned than his calm voice would ever let on.

“I’m not staying here. It’s too dangerous to others for me to be on campus.” With quick steps, she headed to her car, fear for her own safety evaporating with the need to protect the students roaming the area around her. “I’m going to my apartment. It’s only a few minutes away. You can meet me—”

“For your safety, do as I say.” The last four words were heavy with emphasis.

Amy kept talking, her eyes landing on a dark green four-door sedan sitting next to hers. The band around her chest released. “I see Deputy Edgecombe’s vehicle. It’s parked next to mine. He’s here.” She killed the call and jogged toward the vehicle, her muscles weak with relief, even as she acknowledged it was only temporary. She was about to be on the run for her life again.

Her feet slowed as she neared the car, the back of her neck prickling with an unease that refused to be ignored. Something was wrong. The deputy marshal didn’t exit his vehicle to approach her the way he usually did when they met, always acting cheerful and friendly, as though they were two friends meeting for a social visit. Even then, Amy had read his eyes multiple times and seen them scanning the area for threats.

This time, he stayed in the car. The glare of the late afternoon sun off the windshield tinted the glass red and prevented her from seeing inside, and the driver’s side window appeared to be rolled down.

She scanned the line of cars as she drew closer. None of the other reflections off the cars seemed to have that red tint to them.

Her feet rooted to a spot between a sports car and an SUV only a few feet away from Deputy Edgecombe’s car. Bile pushed into her throat and almost gagged her. No. No, no, no. She clapped a hand to her mouth to hold in the scream as realization hit. That couldn’t be blood. It couldn’t be. She was rooted to the spot. She should check on Deputy Edgecombe. She should run. She should—

A man stepped from behind her small SUV, his blue eyes locked onto hers, his jaw a hard line as his mouth curved into a slight smile. In his hand, he held a pistol, the barrel pointed directly at Amy’s heart.

Amy froze, her eyes on the weapon. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t even blink. This was how it ended, in a Georgia parking lot in the chill of late autumn. This was the price she would pay for doing the right thing.

The man stepped closer and Amy inched one step back. “I wouldn’t run if I were you.” His voice was low, deep and controlled. “You take off running or try to fight me and you won’t be the one I shoot.” He kept the gun low, and when Amy tore her eyes away from it to his face, he was eyeing a group of students several rows of cars away.

A sob leaked past her fingers as he closed the space between them, his hand wrapping around her wrist and making her hand throb with the pressure. “You walk with me like we’re old friends or I make sure your marshal friend over there isn’t the only one who bleeds today.”

* * *

“I’m thirty seconds out.” Deputy US Marshal Samuel Maldonado spoke into his radio and prayed he wasn’t too late. He ignored the horns blaring at him as he slowed for a red light then blew through it, hanging a left turn into the parking lot of the small community college where Amy Naylor taught biology.

The past chased him, urging him to push the pedal farther down, to shave away precious seconds. The one time he’d been too late, twenty seconds would have made all the difference.

He couldn’t let hesitation wreck another life. Never again.

“Don’t call attention to yourself.” His team leader, Deputy Marshal Greg Hayes, was typically a man who kept his cool no matter what the situation. His strained voice in this moment dug into Sam’s already frayed nerves. “You have no idea if she killed the phone call or if someone killed it for her. You blaze into that parking lot on two wheels and anyone who’s waiting for their moment to snatch her will panic.”

As much as it gnawed at Sam to hear it, Hayes was right. They already had one deputy marshal who wasn’t responding, even though Amy Naylor had confirmed Edgecombe was on-site. There was no telling what the truth of the situation was.

Sam eased up on the gas pedal and kneaded the steering wheel with both hands, fighting every instinct to move faster. He’d worked with Deputy Elijah Edgecombe for several years, and they’d worked closely for several months, ever since they’d tracked down and reacquired Amy Naylor in Virginia. The woman had actually thought she could take off for a few days on her own. She’d been none too happy when Sam and his team had tracked her down and brought her back to Georgia, and she’d been tight-lipped about her reasons for leaving in the first place. Sam had stuck close, working with Edgecombe to ensure she didn’t run off again. Grant Meyer’s people would be all too happy to find her in the wind with no protection.

Her saving grace when she’d wandered off was that Grant Meyer had been in North Carolina, focused on Amy’s twin sister, believing he had his sights on the woman who’d turned him over to federal authorities and outed his human-trafficking ring. He hadn’t realized he had the wrong woman until he was behind bars.

Amy’s identity hadn’t been compromised then. She’d been safely able to return to her life as Amy Naylor, adjunct professor in south Georgia.

Today was a different story.

As Sam broke through the line of trees at the end of the driveway that opened into the community college’s parking lot, he scanned the area, searching for Amy’s red SUV or Edgecombe’s dark green sedan. He rolled along the lot, scanning the area. This side of the parking lot was largely empty, as most of the students were parked closer to the building.

There. In the next to the last row. The sedan and the SUV sat side by side. “Got a visual on the vehicles.”

“Any sign of Edgecombe or Naylor?”

Sam pressed his lips together and scanned the green sedan. It was too far away for him to get a good look inside, but the red tint of the sun reflecting off the windshield told the story.

The truth came like a blow to the solar plexus. He swallowed hard twice before he could speak. “I don’t think he’s in a position to offer any help.”

Hayes muttered something under his breath, likely words Sam didn’t want to hear anyway. “You’re sure?”

“Not without getting out to check. Be prepared to call in an ambulance.” He itched to park the car and race to his colleague, but he was only one man and a woman’s life was in danger. He’d never wanted so badly to be in two places at once. “Where’s my backup?”

“Two deputies on the way.”

Two people appeared behind Amy’s SUV, walking toward a dark gray crossover parked behind hers.

No, that was wrong. The man walked. He was dragging the female along beside him.

Amy Naylor.

Sam stiffened his ankle to keep from pressing the accelerator to the floor. He’d only alert the man and anyone else who might be watching to his presence. Sam had no idea how many associates the man might have, no idea what he was up against. “I’ve got eyes on her, and it’s not good.” He relayed the scene to Hayes as he rolled closer. They needed a plan fast, before the stranger shoved Amy into a car and took this horrible show on the road.

Sam didn’t dare engage yet. While no one was close to the pair, there were too many students milling in the parking lot and pulling out of the main entrance. They were all in striking distance if the situation disintegrated into a shootout.

Sam was out of options. “I could use some help here.”

“Backup is still several minutes out. Can you stall them?”

“I can try.” He’d love to call in the police or give the order to clear the parking lot, but without knowing who the man was or what his plans for Amy were, any broad moves were risky. Whatever Sam did would have to be subtle and calculated.

The man who was holding Amy captive was tall, broad and blond. He was bigger than Sam, though likely not as well trained. He opened the front door of his car and jerked Amy closer.

The front seat. Okay, good. He was likely alone if he was willing to put her in the front seat where she could grab the wheel and wreck the car.

Slipping his pistol onto his lap and holding it at the ready, Sam rolled his window down and pulled to a stop behind the gray car before Amy climbed into the vehicle.

Her eyes widened when she saw Sam. She opened her mouth, then flicked her gaze to the man behind her and closed it again.

Good. If she blew his cover, they’d all be dead.

The stranger slid his hand from her wrist to her back and tried to shove her into the car as he cut his eyes at Sam. “I think you need to keep moving, buddy.” His voice was low and heavy with a midwestern drawl. He wasn’t holding a weapon, but the way his shirt hung at his side said he had one close to the ready.

Good news? It would take him longer to draw than it would take Sam. Bad news? Amy stood between them—a human shield.

There was an easy fix for that dilemma. He caught Amy’s eye, then deliberately looked at the car door, which stood open in front of her. Come on, Amy. Hear what I’m saying to you. “I just need directions, man. No worries. You know where the student center is? I’ve got a meeting with my—”

“I don’t know anything.” He nudged Amy until she climbed into the car, then he shut the door behind her.

Perfect. Now if backup would get here so they could flank this guy and end this thing without anyone firing a weapon. “I could use a hand here. If you could point me in the right direction, you’d be doing me a solid.”

Casting aside all pretense of civility, the man glanced at Amy and strode toward Sam’s car, anger flushing his cheeks and narrowing his eyes. “I told you to move. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll find your gas pedal and use it now.”

Before Sam could respond, a black sedan slipped around his car and into the space next to the one where Amy sat, a hostage to her captor. Another sedan slid behind Sam and into the spot on the other side.

Sam almost sagged in relief. Deputy Marshal Vince Wainwright slipped out of his car, drawing the man’s attention as another deputy Sam didn’t recognize stepped up from the other side.

Amy’s attacker reached for the pistol at his side, but Sam lifted his own weapon and aimed it at center mass. “United States Deputy Marshals. And I wouldn’t even think about touching that gun if I were standing in your shoes.”

The man’s head whipped toward Sam and he hesitated, then flicked his gaze back and forth between the three US marshals who had hemmed him in. In an instant, his posture melted from defiant anger to sullen resignation.

Sam’s stomach unclenched, but he kept his expression hard. “You’re done. Lace your fingers behind your head.”

The man obeyed, and the deputy Sam didn’t know took him into custody.

Sam eased out of his car and turned to Wainwright. “Deputy Edgecombe’s car is right in front of you. I have a bad feeling about what you’re going to find.” Sam would have checked himself, but Amy was his responsibility.

Deputy Wainwright nodded grimly and disappeared around the SUV as the other deputy hauled their suspect off.

Sam headed straight for Amy. As soon as he pulled the door open, she dropped her head to the back of the seat. “You got him?”

“We did.” He had to get her out of here quickly, before any more of Grant Meyer’s goons showed up, but she was pale and shaking. She likely needed a minute to gather herself before he tried to move her. It was probable her legs wouldn’t hold her until she’d caught her breath. Sam knelt beside her, slightly below her eye level. He rested a hand on her shoulder. “Take a minute. Get your bearings, and then we need to move you.”

“This isn’t over, is it?”

“No.”

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Movement at the front of the car caught Sam’s attention. Wainwright, his phone already pulled to his ear, caught Sam’s eye, his face tight. He shook his head.

No words needed to be spoken. Edgecombe was gone.

Shoving his emotions to the side, Sam turned his attention to Amy, who was still watching him. “There’s a vest in the front seat of my car. When you get in, I want you to put it on.” His own was hot under his shirt, but in a retrieval like this, he wasn’t taking any chances.

“Deputy Maldonado?” Her face paled, almost as though she’d heard what the two deputies hadn’t spoken. “How bad is it?”

He wanted to answer her. He really did. But the truth was worse than anything she could imagine. If he’d arrived forty-two seconds later, Amy’s blood would have been on his hands.

TWO

The deputy standing at the front of the car disconnected his call and shoved his phone into a holster on his belt. He seemed to listen to something in his earpiece, then walked over to stand on the other side of the car, watching the entrance to the parking lot.

Amy didn’t have to ask about Deputy Marshal Edgecombe’s condition. The silent conversation between the two men confirmed her suspicions.

Shutting her eyes against the pressure of tears, Amy did her best to swallow the pain in her throat. Deputy Elijah Edgecombe had been her main point of contact since she’d been relocated to Georgia over three years ago. He’d been the one to deliver news, both good and bad, to answer her questions, to check on her in those dark moments when she was certain she’d never be safe again. He was a good man, although she had no idea what his life outside of their occasional interactions looked like. It was certain someone out there would grieve the loss of a son or a husband or a brother.

If only her phone hadn’t been on vibrate. If only she’d answered the first—

“Amy.” Deputy Maldonado’s hand on her shoulder tightened. “You’re okay. We’re going to get you out of here.”

The other marshal spoke. “Two local detectives are pulling in to secure the scene. Deputy Kline is on his way with a team. Two local officers will escort our suspect out. I’m to follow you. We have to get moving though, before we draw a crowd.”

Amy opened her eyes, the full implications of his words bringing the truth back like a slap to her face. Her identity had been compromised. She turned to Deputy Maldonado, who pulled his hand from her shoulder and stood. “I can’t go home, can I?”

He glanced at the other deputy, then back to Amy before holding out his hand to her. His brown eyes were sad, either because of Deputy Edgecombe or because of her situation. “I’m sorry.”

The adrenaline that had been keeping Amy upright ebbed and left her entire body aching. Coupled with the weight of what was about to happen, she wasn’t sure she could move. She lifted her hand and placed it in Deputy Maldonado’s. He helped her out of the car, his support the only thing keeping her on her feet. When the other deputy handed him a bulletproof vest, she let Deputy Maldonado help her into it, the entire scene playing out from a distance.

She grabbed her bag. The other deputy rounded the car and held his hand out over the top of the door. “I’m going to need your bag along with your cell phone.”

Amy opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. She’d done this before and had awakened too many times to count in a cold sweat from nightmares that this moment had come again.

Well, this was no bad dream. This was her reality...again. Surrender everything she owned, leave her entire life behind, become someone completely different.

Silently, she passed the bag to the deputy, then drew her cell phone from her pocket and handed it over as well. All she had left of Amy Naylor—and of the real Amy Brady—were the wedding ring she wore around her neck and the antique watch on her wrist. The ring was the only thing she had left of her deceased husband and the watch was the only memento of the friendship that had landed her in this mess in the first place. If her other watch hadn’t died two days ago and she hadn’t replaced it with this one, she’d have likely been forced to leave it behind.

Amy let Deputy Maldonado lead her to his car. He opened the door and ushered her in, shutting it behind her before he turned to have a quick conversation with the other deputy, the one who was holding what was left of her life in his hands.

With a cold fury, she despised the nameless deputy and she didn’t even know him. He represented the horror she was facing. He’d taken the last of her identity away from her. Everything she was, everything that identified her hung casually from his fingertips in her gray messenger bag. The favorite pen she wished would never run dry. The keychain from a hiking trip along the southernmost part of the Appalachian Trail. Her phone with pictures of her few Georgia friends.

Her friends, who would never know what had happened to her. Her students, who would only know that Ms. Naylor never showed up for class. The entire life she’d built here was firmly erased by the taking of her messenger bag.

The bag with a photo slipped inside a torn lining, the photo she wasn’t supposed to have in the first place.

“Wait!”

Deputy Maldonado had pulled the door open but stopped before he slid in. “What?”

Amy reached across the seat and grabbed his hand, gripping tight, desperate for him to understand that she needed this one forbidden thing or she might lose her real self forever. “In the top pocket of my backpack, the lining is cut. There’s a picture...”

His expression tightened, the no already forming on his lips. She shouldn’t have mementos like that, pieces of her old life that someone could find and use against her. But she couldn’t let this one go. It was all she had left. “Please.”

He eyed her for a long moment before he shoved away from the car and walked over to the other deputy. There was a brief conversation before Sam dug through the messenger bag then returned, passing the picture to her as he shut the door and started the car. “I can’t promise they’ll let you keep it.”

“Thank you for trying.” She stared down at the photo in her hand. Two women and one man, smiling and happy, in better days when they didn’t know that the next two years would rip them entirely apart.

Deputy Maldonado shifted the car into gear and rolled out. He cast a lingering glance in the rearview, likely at the car that held Deputy Edgecombe’s remains.

Amy wasn’t the only one who was losing today. With a crushing weight in her chest, the grief returned. Deputy Edgecombe’s family was about to get a devastating visit. A team of men had lost a colleague. There was a difference in losing a temporary life and losing a permanent one. “I’m sorry.”

Deputy Maldonado’s eyes shifted to her and he eased out of the parking lot. “For what?”

“About Edgecombe. He was a good man.”

“The best.” He massaged the steering wheel for a moment, then tipped his chin toward the photo in her hand. “What’s so important about that photo that you’re willing to risk your neck to keep it?”

Amy turned her eyes to the picture and scanned the faces forever frozen in time. “I can look in the mirror any day and see my twin sister’s face looking back at me, but this is the only actual picture I have of her. And it’s the only one I have left of my husband and me together.”

His head jerked back. “There’s no mention of a husband in your file.”

“Then you haven’t seen my whole file. We were married six years ago, shortly before he deployed to Afghanistan.” Amy stared into Noah’s laughing hazel eyes. Their entire relationship had been the very definition of a whirlwind. They’d met in January, married in April and he deployed in July. On the first chilly autumn day in September, an army chaplain flanked by two other soldiers knocked on her door. From the first time they laid eyes on each other until the day he died, less than ten months had passed. “He was killed in a firefight in the Arghandab Valley.”

“I know the place well.”

Amy started to ask how, but experience with the buttoned-down deputy marshal told her he’d only change the subject without answering. While she’d seen him and spoken to him many times, little had changed between them in the months since she’d first met him. Back then, he’d ridden the edge of frustration and anger for the two days it had taken for him and his team to be certain she hadn’t compromised her new identity. Deputy Edgecombe had been the one to fill her in on exactly what it was Deputy Maldonado and his people did. An elite recovery team within WITSEC, they were sent after missing or endangered high-value targets in the most desperate situations. She’d gone missing on her own the first time, prompting the deployment of his team. She’d deserved his irritation and annoyance then. This time... She gasped, guilt burning in her stomach. “Deputy, is all of this happening because of me? Because you had to hunt me down the last time?”

“Call me Sam. We’re about to spend a lot of time together, and it will make things easier.” Before she could ask what he meant, Sam shook his head. “None of this is your fault. Despite how foolish your actions were a few months ago, no one tracked you then. To be honest, we’re not certain what’s happening now or how you were found. Our cyber expert was trolling the dark web and found a hit out on you placed only a few hours ago.”

“A hit?” It wasn’t possible. This was the stuff of action movies and TV shows. How had she landed here? Three years ago, she’d been a normal person working for a living after the loss of her husband, whose insurance money had gone to his mother. She’d wrapped up her degree in sports medicine and was interviewing for full-time jobs in her field. While working on her college job as a personal trainer and part-time receptionist at a day spa, she’d discovered an ugly truth straight out of her worst nightmares.

Her boss, Grant Meyer, had been using New Horizons Day Spa’s multiple locations in Texas to traffic human beings. Worse, his partner was a man she’d trusted enough to introduce to her twin sister. Logan Cutter had manipulated Eve until she’d pulled away from everyone in her life, including Amy. When Amy had notified the authorities about the evidence she’d found at the day spa, she never dreamed her life would end up jumping the tracks so completely. She’d been forced to leave everything behind and to become an entirely new person. Certainly, she’d never imagined she’d be the target of real-life hit men, something she’d foolishly thought only happened in the movies.

“Why now?” It had been more than three years since she’d stepped into her life as Amy Naylor. Three years in which, while she never stopped looking over her shoulder, she’d at least grown slightly more comfortable in her skin teaching underclassmen biology at the community college. It was the closest she could come to using her real degree without giving away who she used to be.

“The prosecution is close to securing a trial date. It’s possible Grant Meyer was able to make contact with the outside and have you targeted. It seems unlikely, since his organization fell apart after he was jailed and agents rounded up most of his men. Still, if he has any sort of reach, he’ll use it to get to you. You’re the biggest thing the prosecution has against him. Even though he knows the evidence you turned over is enough to take him down without you ever taking the stand, revenge would be a pretty sweet dish to him. Our big concern is how he was able to tell others where to look for you. And why he’d put out a blanket call for a hit on the dark web where authorities could be tipped off, instead of having someone he trusted come after you. At this moment, none of it makes sense.”

The more he talked, the more Amy tensed. Nothing he said made this better. Everything was only getting worse and the crushing weight of it threatened to suffocate her.

Sam glanced in her direction and seemed to notice his words were having the opposite effect of his intentions. “Amy, you’re safe with me. I promise. That’s why they sent me and why they put my team on the job. No one is going to hurt you as long as you’re doing as we—” He tipped his head away from her, to the left where his earpiece was. The lines around his mouth and above his eyes drew tighter and he gripped the steering wheel with both hands, gaze roaming from mirror to mirror.

Amy pressed deeper into the seat, panic threatening to overwhelm her. Whatever he was hearing, nothing good was going to come of it.

* * *

Sam eyed the rearview and immediately spotted the vehicle that had sparked Wainwright’s concern. The gray full-size pickup had slipped in behind them shortly after Sam merged onto the highway headed toward Atlanta and his team’s base of operations three hours and some change to the northwest. The truck hadn’t raised too much concern as it had stayed a few cars back and seemed to be running with the ever-increasing Friday afternoon traffic. He kept his voice low, knowing he couldn’t avoid Amy hearing him but hoping against hope she wouldn’t understand. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” Wainwright’s voice was serious and certain.

Moments like this reinforced the reason Sam liked to travel in pairs and to have someone watching his back during witness transport. There was a reason he liked to have the younger deputy back him up on days like this. Wainwright was competent and quick, with a gift for seeing what Sam couldn’t because his focus had to be out the front windshield. “When you hit the highway, the pickup crossed two lanes of traffic and cut me off to stay with you. I don’t think he realizes I’m back here, so we have the advantage on him there, but he’s definitely latched on to you.”

Sam locked his back teeth and scanned the road signs ahead, looking for an exit that wouldn’t leave him stranded in the middle of nowhere. They were rapidly heading out of town and would soon be in a broad stretch of pecan groves and onion fields, leaving few places to pull off and hide. “Run the plates and get back to me. I’m going to pull off at the next exit. Sign says there’s a shopping mall there. I can make a broad circle in the lot and see if he sticks with me. If he does, there’s a better chance of losing him on a side street than there is on the highway.”

Beside him, Amy stiffened. Sam wished there was a way to have this conversation out of her earshot, a way to keep her ignorant to the danger, but until someone invented silent speech, that was impossible.

His earpiece hummed as Wainwright spoke. “He’ll figure you out the minute you leave the highway. It might make him desperate.”

“I know.” It was a chance Sam had to take. The guy might spook and back off if he thought he’d been tagged, but it might also make him desperate enough to risk an impulsive move. “Back off enough to keep him from being suspicious of you but stay close enough to keep an eye on him.”

“Got it.”

Sam checked his mirrors to make sure he was clear, then slipped from the left lane without signaling, abruptly crossing the right lane and taking the exit at the last second.

The truck followed.

“Someone’s behind us, aren’t they?” Amy had one hand on the grab handle above her head and the other holding tight to the seat beside her. She was even more ashen than she had been before. If Sam weren’t already familiar with Amy and her hard-set determination, he’d think she was about to pass out on him. It was a good thing he’d run up against her stubbornness before. She wasn’t one to knuckle under easily.

But she was also prone to panic attacks, and Sam couldn’t risk one now. From personal experience, he knew they could bring everything to a full stop.

He could skirt the truth to protect her, but in the months he’d known Amy, he’d learned she wasn’t one who would believe an easy story. Edgecombe had always spoken plainly to her when she demanded the truth, and Sam would do no differently. When he’d caught up to her in Virginia the first time he met her, she’d smoked him out immediately and demanded he give her the whole truth about her situation. He had. With both barrels. At the time, she’d deserved to hear how foolish she’d been to run off alone.

This time, the fault was not her own so she deserved none of his righteous anger.

But she still deserved the truth.

“It looks like we’ve picked up a tail, but Wainwright is behind him and our new friend doesn’t seem to know it. We’re fine. We’ll either slip him or we’ll call in local law enforcement to keep him busy and shake him off our scent. We’re fine.” Boy, that had better project more calm than he felt. Adrenaline zipped through his veins. The truth was, the situation could get a lot more complicated. With civilians around and with the driver of the truck being a complete unknown, there were a whole lot of what-ifs that could come to fruition in the next few minutes. More of those scenarios worked against them than for them.

Wainwright’s voice buzzed in his ear. “Just got word on the license plate and you really aren’t going to like it.”

The man had a flare for the dramatic that could make him a little slow with information sometimes, but Sam took the good with the bad. “Probably not.”

“Truck is registered to a student at the community college. He was carjacked about the same time we pulled out of the parking lot and called it in. Guy hit him from behind, so he doesn’t have a description, but local LEOs are still talking to him. Kid’s fine but upset about his truck.”

So their original kidnapper had an accomplice. This operation was more coordinated than he’d suspected. Sam balled his fist and hit the side of the steering wheel.

Amy jumped but remained silent.

He’d have to be careful not to scare her any more than she probably already was, which meant he’d have to be careful what he said to Wainwright. Sam waited as cars turned left on the green light into the large shopping center parking lot. “We showed up at the right time to the college.”

“Looks like. When we descended en masse, he probably made the wise choice to keep himself hidden. Hayes is having our suspect from the college moved into interrogation now, trying to figure out who the partner is.”

In the rearview, the pickup followed Sam into the parking lot, while Wainwright got caught several cars behind him as the light cycled. Sam cruised up the broad center aisle with the pickup still two cars back. At a fork in the drive, Sam hooked a left away from the main lot into a deserted auxiliary lot closer to the road.

The pickup continued straight toward the mall.

Interesting. Far from bringing relief, the truck driver’s odd decision to break away amped Sam’s adrenaline. Their new friend knew something Sam and Wainwright didn’t. “He went his own way.”

“You’re thinking he’s either confident he won’t lose you and he’s trying to throw you off, or he’s got an accomplice who’s finally caught up and who’s got eyes on you so he’s free to move on.”

Sam slowed and eyed the cars on the other side of the parking lot. None seemed familiar. He took a second to glance at Amy, who was watching out the front window, her gaze fixed on nothing. She’d detached from the situation and seemed to be watching from a distance.

It might be for the best. According to her file and Edgecombe’s intel, she’d started having panic attacks when WITSEC faked her death in El Paso. It had been a concern the last time he’d had to pick her up. An attack at the wrong time could compromise everything. He knew all too well the coping mechanism she was using right now. Detach. Watch the world as though the whole thing was a movie. Don’t let emotions creep into the show.

Amy was doing all of that and more. Sam started to ask if she was okay, then thought better of it. The last thing he needed her to do was analyze her feelings before he could get her to a safe place to feel them.

“I’m in.” Wainwright’s voice cut through his thoughts. “I’m going to come around behind you and see if you’ve picked up a second tail, although there’s no one around you right now.”

“Keep an eye out for the first guy.” Sam didn’t like this. He swung back around toward the shopping mall’s entrance. If Wainwright didn’t pick up anything else, he was getting back on the highway double time and getting Amy as far from here as possible. Maybe, just maybe, their tail had figured out he was being followed and had abandoned pursuit.

At the end of an aisle close to the road, traffic was nonexistent and no cars obstructed his view. Sam stopped to check every direction and slipped through the cross aisle. Still no sign of the truck and no indication there was another car tailing him. “I’m heading back for the main road.”

“I’m going to drop in behind you and follow you out, but I’ve got a red coupe three aisles over from me trying to mix into the crowded part of the lot. He’s paralleling your moves.”

So there was another one and he was smart. He’d stayed close to the building where the parking lot was crowded, blending in with the rest of the cars. He glanced at the rearview and watched Wainwright’s car turn onto the row behind him and stop at the same intersection he’d just crossed. “Keep an eye on him. See if he follows.”

“Got it. No sign of the truck. I’m going to—” The screech of tires came from Sam’s earpiece and from across the parking lot at the same time. Metal crunched with a sickening finality.

Sam hit the brakes and turned to look over his shoulder as Amy screamed.

The pickup had appeared out of nowhere and broadsided Wainwright’s car, pushing him at full speed across the narrow intersection and into a light pole. The passenger side was smashed against the truck and the driver’s door curved around the pole.

“Wainwright!” Sam yelled for his partner.

Only silence answered.

Sam gunned the engine and spun the car to face the carnage as people raced toward the accident scene. Inside the pickup, the driver was slumped over the steering wheel. The airbag clearly hadn’t deployed.

His earpiece came to life. “I’m okay.” Wainwright was breathless but alive. “Get Amy out.”

Sam scanned the lot, searching for the red car. To his left, a blur of motion caught the low-hanging sun as the car hung a J-turn and aimed at them, roaring across the empty parking spaces, gaining speed and power.

This was a coordinated attack, and Sam was on his own.

THREE

Amy’s shoulder cracked against the window as Sam executed another sharp turn and floored the gas pedal, leaving her stomach somewhere behind them on the asphalt.

“Hold on.” Sam’s hands were tight on the wheel, his focus on what lay ahead of them. He was intense yet he radiated no stress, only a fierce sense of capability that left Amy with the overarching belief that she was safe. She was safe even inside of a car going way too fast for the empty section of parking lot they were currently speeding through.

There was a brief exchange between him and someone she couldn’t hear in his earpiece, but his words didn’t make sense to her until he said, “We’re going to make a lot of turns without warning.”

Amy pressed her back into the seat even farther than she had before. Her fingers ached around the grab handle above the door, but she didn’t let go. “Is Wainwright okay?”

“He’s okay. Fortunately for him, side airbags are a thing.”

Relief was temporary, flung aside as Sam threw the car into another turn away from the more crowded section of the parking lot.

She should have been panicking right now. Her brain should have already given way to adrenaline and fear, throwing her into a state of sheer terror. It had happened under less harrowing circumstances. An overcrowded store during the holiday season. A sharp sound during a movie. Simply waking up too suddenly in the middle of the night. Panic attacks had become a semi-regular occurrence since she’d fled her real life.

Flying across the parking lot as though they’d been fired out of a missile launcher, the only thing she felt was detachment, as though her body was buckled into the front seat but her mind was somewhere slightly to the left. She was two steps behind what was happening.

She braced herself against the dash with her free hand as Sam navigated the turn out of the shopping center and shot up the road toward the highway entrance. Numb detachment was another thing she was used to, a side effect of the anxiety that had hounded her since the night she realized WITSEC had killed the old Amy Brady and given rise to Amy Naylor. Since the moment she’d realized the person she’d been from birth was dead.

In essence, although she still lived and breathed, she’d died that day. No more job. No more friends. No more sports medicine degree. WITSEC had rewritten and recreated her degree. They had fabricated her past work experience to fit this new person, a community college professor teaching biology, which she had studied a bit while taking sports medicine. She couldn’t even use her experience as a personal trainer, the job that had kept her afloat during college, without risking her own life. Everything she’d worked for and fought for was gone.

Worst of all, there was no hope of ever reconciling with her twin sister. Like the rest of the world, Eve had been told that Amy Brady was dead.

Well, she would have been told if the Marshals Service had been able to find her. Eve had disappeared shortly before Amy discovered the truth about Grant Meyer and began compiling evidence against him. For all Amy knew, Meyer’s coconspirator—who was also Eve’s boyfriend—had murdered her...or worse.

Amy jerked her mind into the present, to Sam taking the highway exit and threading through cars like a madman. If she continued down this road of thought, she’d jerk herself out of the numbness and lose control. There was no time for Sam to stop and coax her through an attack now. He needed both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road.

She stared at her feet braced against the floor mat and prayed her stomach would stay inside her body. Thankfully, she’d never been prone to motion sickness, but a hundred miles an hour on an interstate, weaving between cars, might change everything. “The police won’t like this.”

Sam’s chuckle was low and humorless as he navigated around a slow-moving truck. “My team leader is in touch with them. They’ll give us space, but the guy behind us is about to have his hands full.”

As if on cue, sirens squealed in the distance, seeming to come from all directions at once. Two police cars zoomed past on the other side of the highway. Amy dipped her head to peek at the side mirror. Two more, lights flashing and sirens blaring, were running up fast on the red car from the parking lot. While Sam and Amy blew past the next off-ramp, the car trailing them cut onto the exit and sped off the interstate, the police close behind.

Sam lifted his foot from the accelerator and exhaled loudly as the car leveled out to a more normal highway speed. His relief was the first sign he’d been holding any tension, a slight crack in his cool armor. He dropped one hand from the steering wheel to his thigh, flexing his fingers as though they were tight.

They probably were, given the grip he’d had on the wheel while he was evading their pursuer. His shoulders, his neck... Everything was probably balled into knots. If Amy had been in his shoes, there’d be a tension headache pounding through her skull.

It was a whole lot easier to think about his physical state than it was to think about all that had happened and all that was about to happen. Denial was her friend, and it would be until she had a moment alone to fall apart. “Thank you.”

“Just doing my job.” He winked at her, a rare flash of his personality beyond his role as a deputy marshal. There was a flash of a smile, then he tilted his head slightly as though his earpiece was talking to him again.

The glimpse of the real person who lived inside of him zinged along her spine. Amy looked away. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t noticed him the first time she’d seen him, the epitome of tall, dark and gorgeous. Every time he’d visited alongside Deputy Edgecombe, Sam had dogged her thoughts for days after.

She’d ignored the attraction. Her minor in psychology had taught her to recognize that her childhood could create a fascination with honorable men and heroes who galloped in on white horses to rescue fair maidens.

The men in her young life had been transient, coming and going at her mother’s princess-fantasy whims. Her mother had been addicted to the rush of new love. The minute her high was gone, she moved on to someone else.

Only one man had stayed longer than a month. Only one man had ever come close to being a father figure, and he’d vanished when his connections to organized crime threatened Amy and her sister.

She clenched her teeth. Amy had promised herself she’d never be like her mother, drifting into the princess fantasy of needing a man to rescue her or to complete her.

As it turned out, she was almost as bad as her mother. She’d jumped into marriage with Noah when she was nineteen because he’d not only loved her but had promised the security her life lacked. They were both young, lost and looking for someone to come home to. Sure, she’d loved him, but maturity made her wonder what would have happened with their marriage had he come home alive. They’d still been in the getting-to-know-each-other phase when she’d married him. Like her mother, she’d fallen into the rush of first love.

She wouldn’t make the same mistake again. If she remarried, it would be to someone she’d known for longer than a month.

With a glance at Sam, she created another resolve. If she ever remarried, it would be to a man who didn’t make her feel special simply because he’d rescued her from the gnashing teeth of a human-trafficking dragon.

“You doing okay over there?” Sam’s voice cut through the memories and dragged Amy into the reality she’d been trying with partial success to avoid.

“I’m fine.” A dull ache in her knees and fingers reminded her she was still braced for impact. Painfully, she unwrapped her fingers from the handle above the door and shifted her legs from side to side to relax her knees. “Where are we headed?”

Sam drummed his thigh and the steering wheel with his thumbs. “We’re going to my team’s headquarters in Atlanta. It’s secure. You’ll be safe. While we’re there, you’ll be briefed on everything that’s happened and someone will go over your options with you. In a few hours, you’ll know more than I do.”

That probably wasn’t true, but she’d act as though she believed him. “Last time, when the marshals faked my car accident, I was in a safe house in Ohio for a few days.” It had been horrible. The place had been a nondescript cookie-cutter rental home in the middle of a small residential neighborhood. “I was stuck in a back bedroom with the blinds closed for days. All I had was a TV and some books one of the deputies picked up at a grocery store.” Used to regular physical activity both in her personal life and on her job, she’d craved a run or a good set of weights. The tension had overwhelmed her and, without release, the panic attacks had come on stronger each day. That first run she’d taken after her relocation had been both terrifying and liberating.

Sam cast her a sympathetic smile. “I’m afraid this won’t be much better. It might even be a little bit worse because you won’t be in a house, at least not at first. I suppose when we turn you over to a relocation team, you’ll be in a safe house again for a short time, but for a day or so you’ll be stuck with us in an industrial office building.” He grimaced as though he were silently apologizing. “We do have a couple of rooms with some temporary sleeping quarters. Cots actually.”

Great. She already missed her king-size bed with the down comforter and the memory-foam mattress cover. “You realize I have nothing on me, not even a toothbrush. I didn’t even get to grab my go-bag or my EpiPen.”

“Your go-bag?” His smile quirked higher, then faded. “You actually kept a bag packed in case you had to run?”

“It’s in the hall closet, a duffle bag with some clothes, papers, things I wanted to hold onto, ready to grab if you guys ever knocked on my door and said it was time to go. I never expected you to show up at my job and rip my life away without warning.”

Sam winced, but he didn’t reference the last comment. “I’m sorry you have to live life on edge like that.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Well, when it comes to the EpiPen, we can get you a new one, but I have one if the need arises before that. Let’s just say that bees are not my friends.”

“Same. Along with bee pollen, oddly enough. I took some once as a supplement and it almost killed me.” She’d only had an allergic reaction one time, but not having a shot at the ready made her edgy. “I’ll tell you right now, I bear some contempt for the marshal who took my bag. It’s like he stole...” She sighed. It was as though he’d stolen her identity. Again.

“I could tell you he’s a really nice guy who has a wife and kids, but it won’t help, I know.” He clicked on the blinker and turned onto another highway. “There’s a female marshal, Deputy Dana Santiago, on my team. She’ll make sure you have the necessities you need for the next few days. Much like the last time, you can give us a list and a team will go into your house and try to retrieve what they can. We’ll get some of your stuff to you as you start over again, but I’m afraid it won’t be much.”

She knew the drill. She wished she didn’t, but she did. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Amy Naylor no longer existed.

* * *

For the next hour, they rode in silence. Sam spoke little, listening to the back and forth in his earpiece as his team coordinated with other members of the Marshals Service and tried to piece together what had gone wrong. No one seemed certain who had leaked Amy’s whereabouts or how she’d been found. No one could give intel on how many bad guys were on the hunt. The men they’d taken into custody refused to talk, more afraid of whoever was funding them than they could ever be of the marshals.

In the silence, Sam fought to keep his emotions at bay. A strong sense of relief came with the word that Wainwright had been released with minor injuries after his dustup in the shopping center parking lot. The suspect who’d rammed him had been arrested, and a team was at the shopping mall, scouring surveillance footage from parking lot cameras and security feeds for other suspicious vehicles.

As expected, other news wasn’t so comforting. In the midst of a recovery operation was not the time to give in to grief, but the call that Edgecombe truly was dead had come as a blow. Sam had known, but hearing the suspicion clarified in stark, no-nonsense words hadn’t been easy. It would have been nice if he could pull over and take a second to pull himself fully together.

He needed to get his head on straight, but he couldn’t afford the luxury. Priority number one was to get Amy to headquarters. After that, he could sit down and debrief, then grieve with others who had known Edgecombe, or who at least knew what it was like to lose a brother-in-arms.

In the rapidly fading evening light, they raced around the city of Columbus. Only an hour left. He flexed his fingers on the steering wheel and checked the rearview again. Since they’d evaded the red car, his eyes had roved from mirror to mirror, searching for a tail, watching for signs of danger. So far, so good. If he could keep her safe for an hour longer, he could hand off Amy to his team and relax in the knowledge he’d saved her from a criminal intent on killing her.

Amy shifted in the passenger seat and stretched her legs, pulling her neck from side to side. She had to be tense and tired. There had to be a million questions running through her head, but she hadn’t said a word in over an hour. She’d merely ridden in silence, alternating between stillness and restless fidgeting.

The silence in the car was too loud, leaving him too much room to think about all that had transpired today, on the most disastrous mission of his WITSEC career. Today’s destruction rivaled some of the carnage he’d experienced overseas with his Special Forces team. He’d never dreamed he’d bear witness to such loss at home.

Sam had to break the heavy silence, get a conversation started or something. “We’re almost there. About an hour more.”

She nodded but didn’t look at him. She was probably thirsty, starving or any number of other uncomfortable things. Pulling over for a drink and a burger would invite trouble. While he felt certain they’d left their pursuers behind, there were risks he simply couldn’t take. Unlike some of the witnesses Sam had retrieved, Amy hadn’t complained or loosed an angry tirade. She simply stared out the front window, silently accepting her fate.

Reality likely hadn’t kicked in for her yet. When it did, the fallout would not be pretty. That wasn’t for Sam to deal with. Good thing. Sam had never been stellar at helping people deal with their emotions. WITSEC had psychologists and counselors on staff to handle the mental and emotional ramifications of going into hiding. With her life in shambles for a second time, Amy was definitely going to need a session or two.

“Did you ever talk to anyone about your husband?” Sam winced as soon as the question left his lips. Seriously. There was making conversation and there was prying into places he had no business digging. Keeping his mouth shut would have been the better option.

There was something about this woman though, something that made him feel as if he knew her better than he did. Maybe it was because he’d spent time with her when Edgecombe checked in on her. Maybe it was the way she’d opened up to him earlier in the day. Or maybe it was simply who she was. Amy was different than any other woman he’d ever encountered, on the job or off.

She was definitely different than his ex-wife.

“My husband?” Her voice had a hazy edge to it, as though his question had drawn her from somewhere far away.

“Never mind.”

She stared out the side window and said nothing for a couple of miles. “No. I didn’t.”

So she had caught the question after all. “Was there a reason you didn’t?”

“I talked to my sister. I never saw the need to say anything to anyone else. It hurt when Noah died. I lost him, my future, everything. Even the apartment I was living in, my car...”

That couldn’t be right. The soldier in Sam remembered all of the paperwork he’d had to fill out prior to a deployment. Points of contact for notifications, burial instructions, beneficiaries for life insurance... The whole morbid list was as long as his arm. Things no one wanted to think about when they were headed into a war zone but things that had to be squared away to ensure the protection of their loved ones at home before they could go wheels up to do their jobs. “How is that possible? You should have been taken care of. There should have been so much available to you.” There it was. Another way too personal comment he never should have made.

Amy shook her head, her blond hair spilling over her shoulder and swishing against her cheek. She tucked it behind her ear. “We got married so fast. He never changed his paperwork. I guess he never expected to die. Who does?”

Sam’s heart sank. As a single soldier, all of his benefits had been directed to his mother and father. Amy’s Noah had likely done the same in his single life. And if their marriage had happened on a timeline as tight as the one she’d indicated, he’d already filled out his deployment paperwork and had likely not even considered the consequences of not changing beneficiaries.

She was right. What man wanted to consider his death, especially when he was trying to cram in as much living as possible with a brand-new wife?

“I wasn’t even his primary notification on his paperwork. I found out what happened to him because one of the chaplains in the battalion knew me. His parents got the notification. I heard secondhand. I’d never met his family. They lived in Puerto Rico.” She sniffed, then swallowed and turned away from him. “I didn’t even have the money to fly to San Juan for my own husband’s funeral. I’ve never even seen his grave.”

Sam’s heart shattered. He gripped the steering wheel tighter to keep from reaching for her hand, which would have been a decidedly unprofessional move. When she said she’d lost everything, she wasn’t exaggerating. Had she even felt she had the right to grieve?

For long miles, he didn’t know what to say, how to soothe the ache she was bound to feel at her husband’s death and his family’s slight. The woman beside him was stronger than he’d imagined. “So you never talked to anyone except your sister?” It was the best he had to offer, and it was completely lame.

She didn’t seem to notice. “I didn’t want to fight his family, because I figured they had even less than I did. And nothing was going to bring him back to me, so why bother talking to someone about it? It was going to hurt no matter what.”

“And yet you minored in psychology.”

She cast him a rueful glance, her eyebrow quirked. “That was in my file too?”

At least she was somewhat smiling. It was better than heated anger or chilled silence. “Yep.”

“WITSEC wouldn’t let me do anything that even remotely smelled like my career goals or the work I was doing at the gym to pay my way through college. Truth is, I had enough biology to be able to teach at the community college level since I studied sports medicine. I was accepted to grad school so I could become a physical therapist and work with athletes. A psychology minor made sense so I could dig into a bit of how the mind works so that I could figure out what made an athlete tick, could help them recover from an injury in body and in mind, maybe even in spirit.”

“That sounds kind of New Age.”

“Far from it. It sounds like Jesus. A lot of athletes who are injured, especially at the levels I was shooting for, have their whole lives change when they’re injured. Entire careers get derailed. Dreams die. There are psychologists and counselors for that sort of thing, but I know a lot of people talk to their physical therapists and open up more on the table than while sitting on a couch in a counseling session. I figured I should know something about how to help someone whose world has been completely rocked and their dreams shattered in a way they never saw coming.” She trailed off and ran a finger along the stitching in the seat between them. “I never realized when I was taking all of those classes that all those things I learned would apply to me someday. Or that I’d never get to use my real training. I got to gather up all of my knowledge and teach instead.”

“Has teaching been that bad?”

“I’ve actually enjoyed it, but I miss me. I miss having goals and plans and dreams. It’s been three years and I’ve never figured out what I want to do with this new life. Good thing, since it’s gone now too.” She pulled her hand into her lap and balled her fists between her knees. “Maybe that’s why I never came up with a new dream, because some part of me always knew this day would come and it would all be snatched away again.”

“I’m sorry.” He truly was. Somehow, this whole detour in her life felt like his fault.

“Thanks, but you’re trying to protect me. This is Grant Meyer’s fault. All the more reason to see him locked away forever.”

Sam exhaled a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. Sometimes, when things got too heated, a witness would back down and decide not to testify. While Amy had turned over enough evidence to condemn Meyer without her testimony, federal prosecutors needed her to be willing to testify if any questions came up about those documents and how she’d obtained them.

“I have no regrets about my decision to turn my boss over to the authorities. A lot of people were freed from a terrible man’s clutches.” Her expression turned pensive, and she fingered the antique watch on her wrist. The leather band was scratched and worn, and the crystal over the gold face bore a small crack near the bezel. “I just hope they got far enough.”

“There something special about that watch?”

Amy blanched, her cheeks going pale as she laid her hand over the watch’s face as though she could hide it and possibly even erase it from Sam’s memory completely.

Something was very wrong here. He’d merely asked because the way she absently ran a finger across it made it appear to be some sort of security blanket. He’d thought it might have belonged to her husband or someone in her husband’s family. Now, his radar pinged on high.

Innocent people didn’t have things to hide. The way she was protecting that timepiece, there was no doubt...

Amy Brady was hiding something big.

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