Hold on Tight (7 page)

Saint slid the door open roughly. “You’re going to freeze to death.”

“And you don’t want the trouble of calling the coroner?” she asked sleepily. “I may not be Navy, but I can handle the weather. Besides, it’s spring.”

All right, then. Far be it from him to argue. Again. He slammed the door shut, locked it, just to make a point, and tried to figure out what the hell to do now.

Mark’s memorial service wasn’t for another week. Still no body, and Saint couldn’t get the uncomfortable absence of closure from his mind.

What if he’s still out there?

Mark’s face—beaten and bruised—had followed him in his dreams all night, made him toss and turn, until he’d woken up half-dazed, sweating as though fevered, everything on the nightstand pushed to the floor.

“Fuck.” He’d knocked over the glass of juice he’d been attempting to pour; it shattered, flying everywhere. And she was there, watching through the door that went straight across from the den to the far side of the kitchen, making for a spectacular view of the ocean—and of him, walking through glass and leaving a nice trail of bloody footprints because he didn’t give a shit.

He sat heavily in one of the kitchen chairs and looked at the ceiling, wondered when the hell any of this would get easier.

When he brought his gaze down, she was kneeling in front of him.

He didn’t bother to ask how she’d gotten inside as she gently inspected his sole.

“I’m going to have to pull this piece of glass out—it’s going to hurt,” she told him. He snorted and she yanked.

He cursed as she held the dish towel she’d grabbed from the counter near the stove to staunch the bleeding. “You’ll need a stitch.”

“I can do it,” he said roughly.

“So can I.”

His cell phone began to ring—without thinking, he grabbed and answered it. “St. James.”

“It’s Admiral Tucker, returning your message.”

Saint instinctively sat straighter, all business, as he spoke. “Thanks for getting back to me so soon, sir. I’m hoping you’ll allow—”

The admiral didn’t even let him finish his sentence. “The answer’s no.”

“Admiral, please …”

“St. James, I get it. But I’m not losing you in that riot. Once it settles down …”

“Once it settles down, there won’t be anything left.” He hated pleading, hated more so that he had to do it with his superior.

“There are Marines in that area, our own boys. They’re holding this in the highest priority.”

They might be, but it wasn’t the same. Yet he said, “I understand. Thank you for calling, sir.”

He hung up without knowing what the admiral said next, wasn’t sure how long he sat there, staring into space with the cell phone held loosely in his hand. He hadn’t noticed that PJ was still there and had begun to work on his foot.

She’d grabbed a stool, sat on it and placed his foot in her lap. She’d cleaned it and was just starting to make the first stitch. It was obvious that she had done this type of thing before. Her face was serious, and he watched for a second.

And then, “They won’t let me go look for his body.” He didn’t know why the hell he was telling her this … or letting her stitch up his foot.

She sat back, raised her eyes to meet his. “Are you going anyway?”

“I don’t have the leave. Or the clearance. I’d basically be giving up my career to do it.”

“And your friend wouldn’t want that.”

He sighed, ran his hands through his hair.

“Where did it happen?”

“Africa. Sudan.” Classified, but he didn’t give a shit—the mission was all over the news. Not that PJ had seen any of that, sleeping out on his deck. “Thanks … for the first aid.”

She’d finished with his foot and he took it from her lap and began to bandage the stitches himself. Then he stood, walked toward the door.

“I’m going to try to make up with my sister.” She didn’t look as if she relished doing so, not at all. But he couldn’t give her a reason to stay. Admitting he didn’t want to be alone wasn’t something he ever did, and he had to go to base and make sure Chris kept his meetings with the JAG and the doc.

“You can use the shower … and you can come back,” was all he said, gruffly. He didn’t pick his head up from sifting through his mail on the front table, where his neighbor had dropped it for him. “Spare key’s under the side mat.”

There was a long pause, and then a short, “Thanks.”

He didn’t stick around to see if she’d take him up on the offer.

Now Jamie sent Kevin a text and checked her e-mails. Her supervisor had cleared her of all cases except Josiah’s.

The department’s counting on you to get to the bottom of this
, he’d told her earlier that morning as she’d poured coffee into her mug in her office’s kitchen. She’d poured it out of habit, and a moment later dumped it in the sink. Until she could assure herself that what Chris told her about the pregnancy was wrong, she’d stick with water.

The reassignments meant that her current witness protection case had been shifted. She was relieved, and upset with herself for feeling that way … but that was one more thing she didn’t need to relive.

She was still
living it
on a daily basis.

As she sifted through her messages, she saw that Cam’s lawyer had blocked the day’s planned interview, as had Chris’s. And so she spent time rereading her notes of both accounts of the story, plus reviewing her typed recollection of sitting with Chris when the hospital was under fire; she went over them until she knew them by heart and her eyes saw only blurred words on the page, running together into one long, tragic story of a failed mission.

Then she turned back to the 3D diagrams of the area in Africa. Daniel, an FBI programmer extraordinaire had helped her plug in the team’s members and given her the ability to play out a number of different scenarios, including the one that Chris and Cam asserted.

But nothing she’d come up with seemed right. The pieces didn’t fit together.

All she wanted to do was
not
think about Chris, and yet her entire day consisted of thinking about him, imagining his thought process … his fears.

She thumbed through his file right before she’d left for the day—all classified intel and nothing that surprised her. Most of his previous missions had been blacked out, leaving at her fingertips only the barest bones of his life as a Navy SEAL.

His earliest records showed the government had signed off on the judge’s orders for him to stay in the Navy for six years or spend the rest of that probationary period in jail.

Chris had gone Navy and never looked back, but unlike his brothers, he hadn’t bothered with Officer Candidate School and the like. Instead, he’d moved up the ranks of the enlisted, his status as something of a sniper extraordinaire happening very early in his career.

The FBI and the CIA had both tried to recruit him multiple times, even before his six-year commitment was up. The most recent was another FBI attempt, in March. Right before she’d met him.

Now she sat in the driveway in her car, listening to a song on the radio that Chris had sung to her in Africa when she’d been scared and in pain.

She’d never been big on signs, but lately there were far too many for her to ignore.

She grabbed the drugstore bag—she’d gone to the store early that morning but had chickened out of taking the pregnancy test before work—got out of the car and headed for the house. Gun drawn, she opened the front door and inspected the living room. Last night, she’d spent a couple of hours rearranging the furniture and dishes back to where she liked them. Now, with the lights blazing, she saw that the furniture remained exactly as she’d left it.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she closed the front door behind her and locked it. It had most definitely been Wanda who’d moved things around—Jamie had thought about calling her last night or today to ask, but she’d felt foolish. Now she was glad she hadn’t.

She went straight to the bathroom and peed on the stick. She’d leave it for the requisite few minutes and go to the bedroom to change and calm her nerves.

She wasn’t two steps in when her breath caught. No, she’d been wrong, all was not as she’d left it, not in there.

The bed was moved, much more haphazardly than the furniture had been yesterday. All her drawers were open, her clothing spilling out. The closet doors were both open as well. All her clothing had been yanked off the hangers and tossed to the floor. Mike’s closet was empty, but she’d done that herself a month ago.

At least it was obvious no one was hiding in it.

But he could still be in the house. Waiting.

A chill ran over her skin. Forcing herself to breathe calmly and quietly, even though what she wanted to do was hyperventilate, she palmed her pistol and swept the room. Closet, clear. Shower, clear. Under the bed, clear.

She crept toward the doorway, but a tapping noise froze her mid-step. For a horrible moment, she thought she’d missed something. She whirled, aimed at the window … where the knock of a tree branch against the glass made her heart leap again, and dammit, she had to get a grip.

She eased down the hall, her steps light and silent, leading the way with her weapon. Adrenaline rushed through her veins, but she kept the gun steady. Sweeps of each room turned up nothing. Whoever the asshole was, he’d left. She double-checked the locks on the windows and doors, the sense of violation growing by the minute. She tamped it down with ruthless effort. She could freak out later.

Still, she didn’t want to be inside the house, where someone had broken into her life and torn through her things.

Snatching up her keys, she headed for the door. She passed by the bathroom, where the little pregnancy stick lay on the sink. For a moment, she hesitated, her heart beating wildly.

“What the hell,” she breathed, and snatched it up. Two clear, pink lines.

Oh, God. Pregnant. And it was most definitely Chris’s baby.

Numbly, she flung the test into the garbage. Funny how when she was searching the house for some maniac intruder, her hands had been perfectly steady, but now they shook as she collected the garbage bag and tossed it into the outdoor trash can on her way to the car.

Not that she knew where she was going, but she couldn’t be in that house one more second. Not until she got her head on straight. Who would have broken into the house? And why?

And why did she have to be pregnant?

Still trembling, she climbed into the car, locked the doors and started it up.

She jammed it into reverse … but didn’t hit the gas. Screw that. She wasn’t running. She’d had enough of that as a kid.

But she wasn’t taking any chances, and she kept the engine running and an eye on her surroundings as she dialed the phone, tried to keep her voice as calm as possible as she spoke. “Kevin, it’s Jamie.”

“What’s wrong?” Her foster father’s voice held worry immediately. She’d had to get used to calling him Kevin rather than Dad when she joined the Bureau—very few people knew of her relationship with the U.S. marshal who worked in close conjunction with the FBI, and she wanted to keep it that way.

“Someone’s been inside my house. I’d call the police—”

“Don’t. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Okay.” She closed her phone and pocketed it. Outside, a breeze blew through the trees, making shadows move, and though she felt a little silly looking for the bogeyman inside them, she kept watch, the radio humming softly in the background. Before she’d met Chris, she’d never used the radio for anything more than news and traffic reports. Now she listened to music all the time, found it soothed her.

Her hand involuntarily went to her belly again—she hadn’t had time to fully process this news, but God, Chris had been right.

Damn him.

Several times over the course of her job, she’d helped a marshal herd a new family off to witness protection—her job ended once they reached the new location. She’d never see them again, and they’d never be themselves again either—some of them cried about that, the way she had, others were silent with shock and some argued. Bargained. Begged.

In the end, there was no choice—they’d leave the comfort of the car and head into the small building that was no more than a prison with a kitchen and a bedroom, a place that would be their lives for the next three to four weeks, until new identities were created.

It had taken Jamie a long time to stop referring to herself as Ana. Longer still to stop calling Sophie “PJ”—and even today, hearing her sister refer to herself by that long-lost name tore at Jamie’s heart.

Who would they have been had they never been found? It was a question Jamie didn’t often like to revisit and one that she couldn’t help thinking about during times like this, when the walls seemed to be closing in on her.

She’d sworn she’d never do that to a child. Mike hadn’t wanted children either, hadn’t argued or cajoled like the boyfriend she’d had before.

Mike hadn’t known much about her at all. She’d liked it that way, liked being the woman with the made-up past given to her like a checklist—her real childhood blotted out to form a more generic, happy one. Mike didn’t know she was adopted, thought Kevin Morgan and his wife were her and PJ’s biological parents.

She didn’t even know where her own parents had been buried.