Hold on Tight (26 page)

She’d opened it, was holding on to the doorknob. Her shoulders were set, and as he approached her cautiously, slowly, he saw her eyes were wide.

But she wasn’t with it—no, if he had to guess, this was sleepwalking, pure and simple. She was in the middle of a nightmare, and he had to get her back to bed without waking her up.

“It’s okay, PJ,” he said quietly. “Close the door and come to bed.”

“I have to wait for them to come … the police.”

“It’s okay. The call’s been made. Everyone’s safe.” He put gentle pressure on the door, helped her to close it. She was agreeable, let him bring her to the bed. She lay down and put her head on the pillow for a second and then suddenly, she was awake. And she realized what she’d done.

“Shit.” She sat up, hugged her knees to her chest and stared at the corner of the room. “I broke your lamp—shit, I’m sorry. I knew I shouldn’t have stayed inside.”

“Is this … is that the reason you stay outside?” he asked.

“No closets outside,” she said ruefully, although there was a small smile on her face. “I’m sure that sounds ridiculous.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“I tried to memorize Jamie’s face, in case it was the last time I saw it. Which was stupid on so many levels—because if I was dead, I wouldn’t be seeing her face anyway. But I did, burned it onto my mind like a brand. And now, when I look at Jamie, all I can see is that eight-year-old face. How do I make that go away?”

“I don’t know,” he said as he massaged her shoulders to ease the tension in the muscles.

She nodded, let him pull her closer so her cheek rested against his chest. “I thought I heard a phone, in my sleep.”

“Your cell phone was ringing downstairs. I would’ve grabbed it, but then—” He stopped. “I’ll get it for you.”

She tried not to pace while Saint went downstairs, but something was wrong.

After they’d returned from flying, they’d had an early dinner out, came home, made love and fallen asleep. Now, with morning sunlight beginning to filter through the half-opened blinds, the slow, peacefulness of yesterday seemed a lifetime ago.

“The missed call’s from Chris’s phone,” he said on his way back into the bedroom.

She stared at the screen. “There’s a message.”

She dialed her voice mail and let the message play on speaker phone. Jamie’s voice—telling her that their past had truly come back to haunt them.

“Call me as soon as you get this, PJ. Please—let me know you’re safe.”

“Call back now,” Saint said, because PJ sat staring at the phone.

“I don’t want to feel this,” she said, more to herself than to him. “I can’t let myself feel.”

He didn’t know what to say to her—he understood, for sure, but no matter how stoic she tried to be, he knew the feelings would come back to her. They would haunt her, catch her in weak moments like the middle of the night or during the day at the supermarket when she was simply picking apples from the display, and suddenly the aisle was her parents’ bedroom and she was fourteen years old, looking into the eyes of a killer—a man driven by family pride and revenge.

A man who refused to stop hunting until the entire job was complete.

For the first time since Africa, the familiar stab of fear was back; the enjoyment she’d taken from being out in the open and free was gone. Now she was a sitting duck, a target again, no matter what her sister said.

Saint was closing the blinds and locking windows, setting the alarms. He left the bedroom and she heard him repeating the same steps through every room in the house.

She followed him down the stairs, watched as he pulled both a rifle and a shotgun from a locked closet and placed them on the coffee table in front of her, ammunition as well, and they sat on the couch together in the house he’d attempted to make safe for her.

When she didn’t reach for the phone, he dialed Chris’s number and waited to hear his teammate’s voice.

Jamie picked up. “PJ?”

“It’s Saint—she’s here, she’s fine,” he said, then asked to speak with Chris. There was barely a pause, and then he said, “Come here—this asshole can’t get through all of us. Wait until tonight, until it’s dark, and then you and Jamie stay here.” He stared at PJ as he spoke. She mouthed
Thank you
, as he finalized the plans with Chris.

“Your sister wants to talk with you,” he said when he finished speaking with Chris.

She took the phone from Saint’s hand. “Jamie, are you okay?”

“I am. I’ll tell you everything when I get there.”

“It’s Alek for sure?” she asked quietly.

“Yes.”

“I’ll see you later, Jamie. Stay safe,” she told her before she hung up the phone, and then simply murmured his name. She didn’t know what else to say, but luckily, she didn’t have to, because Saint’s arms enfolded her, until her cheek rested against his chest.

“We’ll figure it out, Patricia Jane,” he murmured against the top of her head. And for once, the
we
didn’t scare her.

While they’d waited for the day to pass, he’d spent some time just looking around the old cabin, feeling Maggie’s presence everywhere. Jake sacked out on the floor for a nap, as did Chris at one point, while Jamie curled up on the couch, sleep her only other option beyond pacing.

At one point, Nick had gone outside to the old porch and had called Kaylee, just to hear her voice. Once he did, relief flooded him, although it made wanting her that much keener.

Now he and Jake trailed behind Jake’s Blazer, which Chris was driving to Saint’s house. They were in Nick’s Porsche, with Jake sitting in the passenger’s seat—something he hated, drumming his fingers on the inside of the door at about ninety miles an hour.

Finally, Jake said, “If this asshole Alek knows about Chris …”

“He could know about us. The house.” Kaylee and Izzy.

Jake nodded and Nick knew that had weighed heavily on his brother’s mind since last night. “Isabelle’s visiting her mom in D.C. She’ll have a lot of security. I called, told her to stay there until she heard from me.”

“Did she freak out?”

“She tried not to. She’s trying to accept shit like this, but it’s never going to be easy for her.” Jake ran his hands through his hair in frustration—not at Izzy, but shit, their lives were complicated as hell. Dangerous too. And until the day the men decided to retire, none of it would change.

Nick knew it was hard for Kaylee too—she was always weighing the benefits of questioning him further versus the conversations they’d had about the nature of his job, the things he had to do. The way her life could, at times, be at risk because of it. Then again, Kaylee’s job as an undercover reporter didn’t always land her in the safest of positions either. “Kaylee’s already left for Bangladesh. She’s flying back in late Thursday night.”

“I never thought I’d say this, but she’s a whole hell of a lot safer there,” Jake muttered. “Are we ever going to go any faster?”

“PJ, about the other day …” she started, but her sister stopped her.

“Do you know why I finally came home from Africa?” PJ asked, and Jamie shook her head. “I missed my family.”

The sisters hugged, Jamie holding PJ tightly as she tried not to cry.

“I’ve got some things for you—clothes,” PJ told her. Jamie saw the bags in the corner and was so incredibly grateful to her sister for thinking about her. For simply being here. And so she went upstairs to Saint’s bedroom to change, to wash her face, as she’d rolled into the car straight from a dead sleep in the cabin.

When she came downstairs, everyone except for Saint was crowded into his office. She caught sight of the broad man in the kitchen and she bypassed everyone else, because she had an apology to make.

“Have you eaten recently?” he asked without turning around.

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

“Because they’re worried about you. And you didn’t answer the question.” He put down a plate with a large sandwich on it on the table and pointed. “Eat. I’ll get you some milk.”

“Thanks.” She sat at the table and took a few bites.

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“Was I that obvious?”

“You and your sister get the same look when you’re about to say you’re sorry, that’s all.” He grinned when he mentioned PJ, and then grew serious. “You and Chris can stay here as long as you need to. Until all of this is sorted out.”

“PJ … she told you everything, didn’t she?”

He nodded the affirmative.

“You’re good for her.”

“She’s good for me.”

“Hey, Jamie, PJ needs you in the office,” Chris called. She took her sandwich and walked in that direction, Saint following her.

She found PJ staring at the computer screen where Chris had been downloading the crime-scene photos onto Saint’s computer for Jamie.

“PJ, what’s wrong?”

Her sister had gone white as she stared at the screen with the picture of Handler, lying on his back, arms pointing left, legs right.

“His throat was slit. And he’s lying just the way mom was … he’s been positioned,” PJ said quietly as Jamie and Chris looked at each other silently.

“You remember that?”

“I’m not relying on memory,” PJ admitted. “About ten years ago, I made Kevin show me the entire file. Notes, pictures. Everything. I wanted to make sense of things.”

Jamie never had—it would’ve been available to her at anytime as well, but she’d never wanted to burn something like that into her memory. Her imagination was vivid enough.

Jamie clicked through the pictures on the computer, pulling up the shot of the birth certificate. “Do you recognize this?”

“No.”

“It was inside Handler’s pocket.”

PJ’s eyes met hers. “Why now, after all this time? How the hell did he find us?”

“I think these are questions Kevin needs to answer for us,” Jamie told her sister. “I called him earlier—left a message, telling him to meet us here.”

“I haven’t had any luck with the name Peter Romanov,” Nick called from the living room, where he’d been typing furiously on his laptop. “If he really exists, he’s been wiped.”

“Unless he’s in the Marshal database,” PJ murmured. She frowned for a second and then she leaned in and typed,
Borya Frolov
, Alek’s father’s name, over Chris’s shoulder.

Borya’s obituary was the first thing Google pulled up.

“Shit,” Jamie breathed as PJ clicked open the obituary. “He died while I was in Africa—he died a week ago.”

“And maybe that’s our reason,” PJ said, right before she walked out of the room.

But when he’d listened to it, he’d had to literally pull his car to the side of the road. Sweat poured off his face as he rolled the window down and attempted to stave off a panic attack.

He hadn’t had one of those in years, not since Jamie had first gone to college away from home. For that first week—month, really—he’d lived in abject terror that Alek would find her more easily.

But nothing happened. Nothing.

Until now.

He pulled himself together, wiped his face with his sleeve and mentally steeled for a fight. Both Jamie and PJ would refuse a safe house—he knew that.

He would just have to work that much harder to get them into one.

Quickly, he dialed the familiar number, demanded, “How the hell could this have happened,” before David could get the word
hello
out.

David, his best friend—and the man who Jamie and PJ knew to call in case of emergency—was silent on his end of the line.

“Alek had to be the one to break Gary Handler out of prison.” Kevin ran a hand through his hair and then put his car in gear. He pulled onto the road and began to drive. Finally David spoke.

“The case was widely publicized. Jamie’s name made the papers,” David reminded him. “Of course, that would mean that the chain was compromised somewhere along the way in order for Alek to learn her new identity—it would mean he’s known for months.”

Kevin didn’t bother to correct David—didn’t tell him that, yes, of course Alek would’ve been following Jamie’s whereabouts, and long before her case involving Gary Handler. Alek had known everything about the girls’ lives from the time they’d gone to live with Kevin.

Kevin had been the one to compromise Jamie—and now he had a sick feeling they would all pay the price.