True Shot (32 page)

“It’s good to meet you, Sam,” he said.

She tried to smile but failed. She should have run earlier. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

Mac said, “I was going to make some coffee, Noah. Give Sam and Charlie some time to talk.”

Noah took the hint and ambled after Mac into the kitchenette. “I hope you’ve got the good stuff. The crap in our room is for wimps.”

Then Sam and Charlie were alone. Charlie went to the sofa and sat down, gesturing for Sam to take a club chair. Sam did as requested even while her head screamed at her to lunge for the door and flee. No good could come of a conversation filled with the lies she had no choice but to tell.

“So,” Charlie said. “Tell me what?”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

M
ac stood at the railing with his coffee, looking out at the glittery morning and letting the sound of the waves and the cool, salty breeze eat away at his anxiety. The tension that knotted his shoulders had yet to let up, apparently settled in for the long haul. Not surprising, considering he’d awakened to an empty hotel room and the realization that Sam had left him. If she hadn’t encountered Charlie in the hall, she would have been long gone by now. God knew where. He never would have seen her again. Never would have known what happened to her, whether she lived happily ever after or whether Flinn Ford had her throat slit in a dark alley.

The door behind him slid open then closed, and Noah settled onto a low-slung deck chair made of weathered teak. “Now,
this
is good coffee.”

Mac glanced over his shoulder to see the other man enjoying a healthy gulp. “Simon Walker has good taste.”

Noah nodded. “Indeed.”

Mac faced the water again, wishing he could have the balcony to himself to wallow in how absolutely crappy he felt. That’s what happens when the woman you declare your love to walks out without a proper, or even improper, good-bye.

“Is Sam CIA?”

Mac turned back toward Noah, surprised. “You think she’s a spy?”

“She’s got a vibe.”

“There’s a spy vibe?”

“I know law enforcement. She’s not that. She doesn’t stand stiff and straight like a soldier, so she’s not military. I don’t get a mercenary vibe off her. So what’s left? Black ops? Spooks?”

“FBI,” Mac said with an impressed nod. “A secret division called N3.”

“National . . .”

“National Neural Network.” Mac expected Noah to snort in disbelief, but when he didn’t, Mac braced back against the railing and watched the other man carefully. “It’s a unit of psychic spies.”

Noah whistled through his teeth, yet arched no eyebrow and released no you’re-fucking-kidding-me bark of laughter.

Mac cocked his head. “Sam thinks her handler, or boss, is trying to create super spies by combining the DNA of empaths already working for the feds.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. She just got her memory back, and we haven’t had a chance to get back to that conversation.”

“Wait. Her memory?”

“These N3 people have access to some high-tech tools that the private sector has no clue about. James Bond–type stuff. When we first met, she had me dig a transponder out of her back. Messing with the tracker triggered a chemical reaction of some kind that wiped out her memory.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah, it’s been fun.”

Mac settled onto a deck chair that matched Noah’s and sighed, exhausted and . . . hurt. Jesus, he was a putz to think a woman like Sam would ever stay with a guy like him.

“I’ve got some connections I can tap into,” Noah said, “to see what’s what.”

“Sam’s leery of the feds. She doesn’t know who to trust.”

“I know how to keep it under wraps. It might take awhile to work through the channels, but we’ll figure it out.”

Mac let his shoulders relax some, wincing as tight muscles complained. He’d been so tense for so long, he couldn’t remember how it felt to relax. Funny how that was the whole plan behind his vacation to the Shenandoahs.

“Charlie’s empathic, too,” Noah said into the silence.

Mac was as unsurprised as Noah had been about the revelation of a secret, psychic division of the FBI. “I kind of figured when you didn’t laugh me off the balcony.”

“It hasn’t been an easy road for her.”

“I wish she’d told me. I mean, I’m her friend. Maybe I could have helped . . . somehow.”

“It wasn’t something she purposely hid. It . . . developed after she witnessed that hit-and-run outside the newspaper.”

“Ah.” Mac had broken up with her by then, focused on making more money so he could give Jenn the college education he wanted her to have. And Noah had swooped in like the hero Mac could only dream of being. “What about Alex? Also empathic?”

“Yep. It’s been worse for her, though,” Noah said. “A lot worse.”

“I didn’t know.” Mac thought of how hard Alex and Charlie had pushed him to escape to the mountains of Virginia to get his stress under control. At the same time, Alex had had her own monkey on her back, one she couldn’t shake free as easily as Mac had.

Noah finished his coffee. “Alex and Logan are staying with a friend in Lake Avalon. We thought it best to keep her out of sight until we knew exactly what we’re dealing with with Sam. What with the cell phone and GPS issues and the request that we borrow someone else’s car to avoid a locator device being on both of ours . . . going into hiding seemed a bit of a no-brainer.”

“Yeah, it’s all very secret agent man, isn’t it?”

Noah chuckled, and a minute of silence went by, broken only by the rhythm of the waves. Then he set his empty coffee cup on the table between them. “Sam won’t stick around. You know that, right?”

Mac nodded. “Yeah.”

“I’m surprised you got her this far.”

“She got her memory back overnight and tried to take off this morning. Charlie intercepted her in the hall.”

“I imagine she was trying to protect her sisters.”

“I know.”

“She wants to protect you, too.”

Mac raised his head. Really? “Me?”

Noah smirked at him. “You’re still an idiot, Hunter. Think you’ll ever overcome that handicap?”

Mac couldn’t stop himself from grinning in spite of the lingering hurt. Noah had seen something between him and Sam. Maybe he’d gotten another vibe. “Probably not.”

“The point is that you’re going to have to keep close tabs on her. As soon as she gets another opportunity, she’s going to bolt. She made a mistake letting you bring her here.”

“She needs her sisters.”

“She needs her sisters to be safe, and in her mind, as long as she’s around, no one is safe.”

“Unless we find a way to take care of the guy after her.”

“That’s going to take some time. And he might not be alone. He could have the entire might of the federal government behind him.”

“I don’t know about that. He seems like a lone wolf to me.”

“Sam’s a psychic spy. You think people like her are easy to come by? The feds might do everything they possibly can to get her back.”

“They can’t force her to—”

“I’m just warning you that this isn’t going to get resolved overnight.”

Mac sighed. “And it’s already been such a cakewalk.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

W
here have you been the past fourteen years, Sam? What’s with all the mystery?”

Charlie sounded as exhausted as Sam felt. The fact that Sam was the one who’d exhausted her just made her feel worse. But she had a bigger concern at the moment. “You didn’t finish telling me about what’s happening with Alex.”

Instead of answering, Charlie got up from the sofa and walked into the kitchenette.

Sam swallowed against the anxiety growing in her throat. Disappointment that this couldn’t be a happy reunion added to the tension, along with the urgent need to stride the four steps to the hotel room door, open it and walk out. Sad, considering how desperately she’d yearned to come home the past fourteen years. Never once had it occurred to her that maybe home didn’t want her anymore.

She swiped a finger at a brimming tear and cursed her inability to control her emotions. She blamed Mac. He’d opened her up when she hadn’t remembered the vital importance of remaining closed, when N3’s ruthless drugs had taken her memory and her defenses.

Maybe she should blame hormones, too, now that she thought about it.

Resting her head against the back of the club chair, she closed her eyes and concentrated on getting it together. If Charlie couldn’t stand to be in the room with her, then she’d deal. She’d dealt with worse over the years. She’d most likely deal with worse in the near future. But, God, it hurt. So much for the unconditional love of family. Not that she begrudged her sister her anger. If the positions had been reversed—

“Here.”

Sam snapped her eyes open. Charlie stood beside the chair, a coffee cup in each hand, one extended toward her. “I figure we’re both going to need caffeine for this.”

Sam knew her eyes shimmered as she accepted the steaming cup, because the fierce lines in Charlie’s forehead smoothed out and the compressed line of her lips softened.

“Thank you,” Sam said, her voice hitching.

Charlie resettled on the sofa but instead of sitting back, she perched on the front half of the cushions with her elbows braced on her knees and the cup cradled in her hands. “You think I’m not happy to see you.”

“Can’t say I blame you.”

Charlie smiled faintly. “I’ve been mad at you for a long time.”

“Can’t blame you for that, either.”

“This just isn’t how I pictured your homecoming.”

“I’m sorry for the way it’s happened. It’s not fair to any of you.”

“Would you be here now if you didn’t need help?”

“I lost my memory. I didn’t know who to go to for help. And Mac . . . Mac saved my life.”

“Woo hoo, Mac.” Charlie paused, eyes briefly narrowing then widening as though she’d put two and two together and had come up with Sam and Mac. She quickly got over it, apparently, because she said, “Not an answer, though. Would you be here now?”

Sam worried her bottom lip between her teeth. Charlie always had been a reporter to the core. Dogged with the questions, perceptive as all hell, quick to notice when the key questions were dodged. “No, I wouldn’t be here now.”

“Where would you be?”

“Dead, probably.”

A muscle under Charlie’s right eye twitched. “Then I’m glad you’re here, regardless of how it happened.”

Sam swallowed and nodded. “Me, too.”

“Why did you leave? All these years, we’ve never known.”

“Are you deliberately avoiding the subject of our kid sister?”

“I’m thinking I’m entitled to answers first, considering.”

She studied Charlie for a long moment, getting a read on her emotions. Wariness. Relief. Curiosity. Resentment. Underlying them all: fear, worry, helplessness. Sam wasn’t the only issue churning Charlie’s insides. And that churned Sam’s even more. Something was seriously wrong with Alex.

If Charlie wanted answers first, then Sam would provide as many as she could. “Dad isn’t . . . my biological father.”

Instead of disbelief or shock, Charlie seemed to think for a minute, several different emotions—surprise, comprehension, sadness—flitting through her eyes before she sat back, coffee cup resting on her thigh. “Well, that explains a lot.”

“Does it?”

“Mom’s been a wench our entire lives. I figured it had to be something big.” She frowned. “Sad thing is that I kind of thought Dad cheated on her way back when, and that’s why he’s stuck with her all this time despite her broom-ready personality.”

Sam’s lips quirked into a sad smile. “So she hasn’t changed.”

“Nope.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“I’m sorry I left you to deal with her alone. My plan, after I found my father and his family, was to come back for you and Alex.”

“But things didn’t go as expected.” It wasn’t a question.

“Not even close.”

“So how did it go with your dad?”

“
Dad
is my dad. Ben Dillon was the guy who knocked up Mom. I’d known him about a year when he got himself killed during a con gone bad.”

“God, Sam.”

“He used me. It sucked.”

“Understatement.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t much better for our mother,” Sam said. “He bailed on her after she got pregnant. She must have fled her family and changed her name before she met Dad.”

“Do you think Dad knows you aren’t his?” Charlie asked. “Biologically, I mean.”

“If he does, it must not have mattered. He never treated me any differently than he treated you and Alex.”

“It’s more likely that Mom let him think you were his, and that’s why she’s so tense all the time. She’s terrified we’re going to discover her secret.”

“You came close the night you found that photo album in her dresser drawer,” Sam said. “That must be all that’s left of her past.”

“That and you.”

Sam gave her a rueful smile. “I was the daily reminder of how Ben Dillon screwed her over and dumped her. She might have been relieved to see me go.”

Charlie cocked her head, regarding her with searching eyes. “You said he died only a year after you found him. Why didn’t you come home after that?”

Sam hesitated as she thought of her years with Flinn Ford and N3. Every detail was classified. “I can’t—”

“I know it’s bad. I can tell by looking at you.”

Sam glanced down at her cup. Ripples in the coffee gave away the tremors in her hands. “Well.”

“Don’t take that the wrong way,” Charlie said quickly. “You’re beautiful. Gorgeous. You always have been. But life has been hard on you. Your eyes . . . they look . . . God, Sam, your eyes look old and sad. It kills me that I don’t know why, that I can’t make it better.”

Sam covered her mouth with one hand, swallowing convulsively against the raw emotion clawing up from her chest.