Drew was frowning.
Which didn’t surprise Willow. She didn’t expect to be believed. At first.
“Does he sound like Jack?” Drew asked.
“Yes, but with a gravelly voice and a European accent. He never loses that accent, no matter how hard I try to trip him up. I don’t mind, though. It’s sexy.” She grinned at Drew, trying to get him to smile back at her.
“Jack’s good with language and accents. Not as talented as Kyle was, but damn good still,” Drew said slowly, raising Willow’s hopes that he was at least considering the possibility Jack was alive. “Foreign Accent Syndrome would also explain the accent.”
“Foreign what?” Willow asked.
Drew explained. “It’s rare,” he finished. “But it happens. And if Jack lived, and I’m not convinced he did, his brain has been rewired by the blast so he can’t help but speak with that accent. It’s involuntary. Tell me more about this Con guy.”
Willow launched into her story as she made a circuit of her house.
When she finished, Drew’s expression was unreadable, calm. She recognized that particular expression as one of Jack’s spy faces. They must have learned it at The Farm. Anyway, that expression was better than blatant disbelief. It meant Drew was thinking about it.
Staci looked optimistic and excited. “You really think Jack’s alive? And fooling you? But why? Could he have lost his memory?”
“Lost his memory? I’ve thought of that. But Con is way too with it and he has a complete social media presence with a full life. No, he hasn’t lost his memory,” Willow said.
“As to why he’s trying to fool me? I really don’t know why. But I need to find out. And for that, I need a DNA test.”
Drew was slow responding. Staci clutched his arm and implored him, “If there’s even the slightest chance this Con is Jack, Drew, we have to help Willow.” She lowered her voice and whispered to Drew, but Willow had keen hearing and caught the gist.
Staci felt she owed this much to Willow.
“We can’t leave Willow, and ourselves, in the agony of not knowing for sure,” Staci said.
Drew glanced between his wife and Willow on the computer. “If he’s Jack, there’s a reason the Agency doesn’t want anyone to know. And Jack. He’d have to have an awfully damn good reason to keep this from all of us.”
“Yes, I’ve thought of that, and I agree. He has a reason; I just don’t know what it is.”
Drew stared directly at her through her computer screen. “I could lose my job for digging around in this.” He set his jaw. “But, damn it, if he’s Jack…”
He gave Willow a sympathetic look. “What will you do if Con does turn out to be Jack? Can you keep it secret? Can you live with the fact that Jack doesn’t want you to know he’s still alive?”
“If he’s Jack, he’ll have a good reason. And I promise, I’d never try to pry it out of him.”
“If he’s Jack, and we find out it’s him, you can’t confront him. You could be blowing a highly sensitive mission.” Drew ran a hand through his hair. “You can really let him be Con for the rest of his life? Live your life without him?” He gave her a truth-serum stare.
No, she couldn’t. But she needed Drew’s help, so she lied. Fortunately, she didn’t have Staci’s problem with lying. Staci had never been any good at it. “If Jack’s alive, I’ll just be grateful and let fate take us where it may.”
“You’re trusting to fate now?” Drew sounded skeptical.
Willow nodded. Yes, she trusted fate to get things right, including bringing Jack back to her.
They sat in silence for a minute while Drew thought. “I know a guy who may be able to help. He owes me a favor.”
Willow let out a breath she’d hardly been aware of holding and came to a complete stop. “Great! What do I need to do?”
“Keep pacing, for one,” Drew said.
“Oh, sorry.”
When she was back in motion, Drew gave her instructions on how to collect a DNA sample and contact his guy.
“Don’t we need a sample of his DNA to compare it to?” Willow asked, explaining that she didn’t trust the report she had.
“I can get a copy of the Agency’s DNA report,” Drew said.
“How long will it take to get the results?” Willow asked. “I’m afraid Jack will disappear. If I had my choice, I’d be with him every minute.”
“With my guy and a good sample?” Drew answered. “Less than twenty-four hours.”
Willow nodded. Less than twenty-four hours! “I’ll get the sample tomorrow evening and overnight it.”
They chatted for a few more minutes and then signed off.
Great, now all she had to do was preserve Con’s drinking glass, mail it to Drew’s guy, and she was golden.
Unless she could get Con to let her swab the inside of his mouth with the swabs the kit provided. But somehow that seemed less than subtle.
Here, prove you aren’t my dead husband seemed a crazy thing to ask him, even for her. If he was Jack, there’s no way he’d go for it. And if he weren’t, she’d just scare him away. So she had to go for subtle and hope he didn’t insist on helping her load the dishwasher.
Willow sighed. She was going to do her own test for Jack tomorrow night. Good scientists always used every means possible to verify their results; why shouldn’t she?
She was going to feed him and bed him. That was the plan. Cook up an absolutely stunningly delicious dinner—chock-full of every food Jack despised—and see if he could choke it down without giving himself away. Then take him to bed and make him chuff. She tingled at the thought. The menu was already running through her mind.
A fresh pea salad, Italian-style. Jack hated peas. Eggplant Parmesan, because, of course, she didn’t cook or eat meat. And Jack loathed eggplant. And for dessert, apple dumplings, with the flaky crust she’d learned in pastry school. Because this was apple country after all. And Jack didn’t like cooked apples. And to add insult to injury, she was going to put cheese in the crust. Plenty of it. Many people loved cheese in their apple piecrust. Jack wasn’t one of them.
It was just too bad Jack didn’t have any food allergies she could exploit. A nice peanut allergy or gluten intolerance would have made her life a little easier, temporarily.
If Con could make it through the meal she dreamed up and not gag, she’d give Jack props for being a better actor than she thought.
His chuff, however, was involuntary. She grinned, grabbed a piece of paper, and began making a shopping list.
* * *
Despite Drew’s counterintelligence tactics, Jack heard most every word Willow exchanged with Drew and Staci when he listened in on the voice-activated bugs he’d planted in Willow’s house. Yeah, he was damned good with a bug.
Hearing Drew’s voice again, and Staci’s, Jack swallowed hard. Damn, he missed them, particularly Drew. Soon enough Jack was sure they’d cross paths on a mission again. Drew understood what it meant to be a secret agent, the constant need for lies. Hell, Drew lied with the best of them. He’d forgive Jack. Jack hoped. At least Drew was making excuses for him already.
Staci he wasn’t so sure about.
And Willow? Hearing her voice, the urgency, the desperation, the longing …
She was going to let fate do what it would? He only half-believed that.
Jack almost broke down, almost decided to trudge over there and tell her the truth.
He took a deep breath and drew upon his training on how to endure torture, how to avoid spilling sensitive information, how to resist, damn it, resist. This was torture, heinous punishment.
If he were an ordinary guy, not a trained killer, he’d charge right to her. Beg her forgiveness. Make everything up to her. Take her in his arms, make love to her, and show her just how much he missed her.
But he wasn’t. And he couldn’t. Because he loved her.
Willow didn’t really know who he was or what he did and had done. And who he was and what he did were the antithesi
s of everything Willow believed in and loved.
He could blame who he was on his childhood. He’d been the scrawny kid of two backwoods parents who moved around way too often, always had too little money and dreams that were too big. He was quiet, the opposite of socially adept, and a huge disappointment to his stout, stocky bully of a father.
Jack’s father berated him emotionally and disciplined him to the point of physical abuse while his mother looked the other way. He still had the scars to prove it. Mostly emotional ones now. The explosion had covered many of the physical ones.
Jack reacted by becoming a prankster and acting out in school, trying to use humor to diffuse things. Which led to more beatings—from both his dad and the other boys who didn’t appreciate Jack’s pranks. Or his intelligence. He had always been a whiz at math and science, which only seemed to irk those with lesser gifts.
When he was thirteen a group of boys beat the shit out of him after school. When he finally got home, his dad beat Jack again for scaring his mother, losing the fight, and not coming right home after school. Something in him snapped.
He knew it was only a matter of time before he was picked on and beat up again. Hell, no fight was going to be a fair fight any way Jack looked at it. Bullies always traveled in groups. Jack didn’t have any friends, period, let alone anyone who’d play backup for him. He decided to go down fighting next time, dirty, and teach the next guys who took him on a lesson so no one messed with him again.
He studied how to fight. Put on boots with steel in the toes. Bought a switchblade. And then next time he was jumped after school he fought like a scrawny alley cat. No finesse, just anger lashing out.
He slashed the main bully, got him on the ground, and started kicking him, unable to stop. It took all the other boys to pull Jack off before he killed him.
Jack sent the main bully to the hospital. He wasn’t sorry. He had absolutely no remorse. His dad beat him after that, too. But the other boys didn’t mess with him again.
Too bad he moved shortly after and had to start all over again in town after town. That wasn’t Jack’s last fight. Not by a long shot. After taking his share of beatings, he finally wised up, bought a gun from a thug off the street, and learned to shoot. He had an aptitude, a real talent, and practiced until he was skilled. After a while, word of his proficiency got around. No one bothered him anymore.
If he hadn’t been such a loner, he would have been an asset to just about any gang. But no one had enough courage to approach him and he liked his solitude and reputation.
Jack got an ROTC scholarship and went to college. Emmett recruited him into the Agency in college, where Jack was studying math and chemistry and had pulled a good many pranks. Emmett had Jack’s juvenile and academic records. He told Jack the Agency had been watching him for years, since high school and before. His intelligence, interests, and ability to lash out and strike at others without conscience made him a perfect candidate to be a CIA assassin. It was either that or end up in prison. Because Jack was going to end up killing someone one way or another. The CIA could train him to do it with finesse for a cause. But first he had to pay his debt to his country. But the Agency would see he got all the right assignments, get him assigned as a sniper.
It sounded like the perfect opportunity to Jack. He agreed with Emmett’s assessment. Jack sure as hell didn’t want to spend his life in prison. Little did he know that besides being a thrill and giving him the opportunity to use his talents to do the right thing, the CIA was its own kind of prison.
Willow, gentle, gentle, loving Willow who took in every stray, didn’t know any of this about him, except for the bare essentials of his abuse at the hands of his dad and a few bullies. Nothing about the way Jack fought back. Nothing about what he was trained to do and did for the Agency. She thought he was just your garden-variety intelligence-gathering spy.
He met her after he’d trained at The Farm and made his first few kills as a spy. At a time in his life when he felt as if there were nothing but violence and hate in the world. And he was simply fighting back the tide. At the time when he wondered whether the violence he saw, the violence he lived with, would completely overtake him and he’d be no better than those he fought. If he’d simply become a killing machine.
And then there she was, a woman so peaceful and serene, so full of good, that she calmed his soul and gave him hope—for himself and humanity. And miracle of all miracles, she fell in love with him. Someone actually loved him, for the first time in his life.
From then on, he fought for her and all the people like her who must exist in the world somewhere, even if he never saw them. But mostly for Willow, so she’d never see the violence. So she’d never change.
If she ever found out the truth, she wouldn’t love him. And he’d lose everything, including his drive to do what he did, his faith, his peace. He was convinced of that. The explosion in Ciudad del Este gave him the opportunity to set her free without burdening her with guilt over who he really was.
So he cooled his heels, forced himself to remain calm.
He wouldn’t let Drew get in any trouble over him. But he did have to alert Emmett that Willow was trying to get a fast read on Jack’s DNA. Knowing the chief, Jack believed Emmett was probably anticipating it.
Not that Willow would succeed. As Jack had already noted, that report she was counting on was bogus.
He made another note to himself—he had to replace the hair on that brush he stole with someone else’s. Jack never took chances.
He was thinking a few strands of his “cousin” Aldo’s would do nicely. Aldo’s was a close visual match. Or hell, any nice dark-brown hair from a brush at the barbershop.
Jack looked in the mirror. Yeah, he was getting a bit shaggy. He could use a trim. Besides, he wanted to look his best for this date he was supposed to have at Willow’s tomorrow.
Jack grabbed his smartphone. He had a Facebook friend request from Willow. And a LinkedIn request. And she was following him on Twitter now, too. He grinned. Nice try, Wills.
He accepted all her requests. Good luck tripping me up and spying on me this way, babe.
He wouldn’t slip up and she wouldn’t learn anything. The Agency kept up his online persona. He didn’t envy the guy who had that desk job back at Langley.
Jack was only responsible for tweeting a few personal things about his stay in Orchard Bluff. He rolled his eyes. Social media was a pain in the ass.
Which reminded him …
He sent out a tweet. Need a haircut.
Yeah, scintillating.
Then he dialed the big house, as Aldo called the main house. Aldo picked up.
“I’m a shaggy dog,” Jack said. “Can you recommend a good barber?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Willow pulled to a stop at Shane’s house as close to the back door as possible. He’d called her and asked her to pick him up from the hospital, apologizing that with the festival going no one else was available. It had cut into her plans for the day, but what could she do?
He opened the door and got out of the car slowly, stiff from the accident and his injuries. The old-man movements were directly at odds with his athletic build. Almost as soon as he stood he staggered and leaned against the car, gripping the roof for support.
“Easy. Take it easy. Are you still dizzy?” Willow rushed around to the passenger side to help him. “Don’t pass out on me. Don’t you dare. I’ll never be able to move you.” She was only half-joking. He was over six feet tall and stocky.
“Nothing to worry about. Stood up too fast.” He gave her a half grin that should have made her heart race but somehow fell short of its intended effect when it didn’t reach his eyes.
Still, she smiled back. “Take a deep breath.” She stared up at him into his hazel eyes and rubbed his back with one hand to comfort him. “Here, put your arm around me.” She took his hand and guided his arm around her shoulder. “I’ll help you in.”
“There’s an offer I can’t refuse
.” He slung an arm around her, leaned in, and spoke softly, as if the admission was hard to make, “Sorry about this, Willow. The doctor says the dizziness should go away in a day or two.”
Shane’s breath warmed her neck but not her heart. His arm was solid on her shoulder. He smelled clean, like hospital soap, but Willow felt uncomfortable around him. The vulnerable look he gave her should have made her melt into emotional mush. Only …
She couldn’t explain it, but it seemed put on, as if he was acting a part, overacting maybe, trying to play on her sympathy. It was crazy, but since Con came to town Shane had been acting differently. A little too possessive. A little too much in competition with Con in all aspects. It was almost as if Shane was trying to make Con jealous. Which made no sense. But then, what men did often didn’t seem sensible.
Jack had always teased her that she was a sucker for a wounded animal. Somehow, Shane had picked up on this, too. She couldn’t help feeling he wasn’t quite as helpless as he seemed.
She adjusted his weight on her shoulders and helped him down the sidewalk to the house. “We’ll take it slow.”
“With my arm around you, slow’s just fine.”
Half the women in Orchard Bluff would have gone weak in the knees just then from his nearness and the tone of his voice. But Willow’s land legs were just fine.
Inside the house, the dogs went wild, barking and growling as she and Shane approached the kitchen door. Thank goodness the dogs were back to normal.
Shane called out to them jovially, “It’s me, you big fools. Calm down in there!”
“They sound happy to see you. You think it’s safe to go in? Or will they plow us over with enthusiasm?” Willow hoped her relief at their complete recovery didn’t show. “Your boys are a little too exuberant sometimes.” She unlocked the door. “Brace yourself.” She pushed it open.
Duke and Bud barked happily, charged Shane, and jumped up on him, nearly toppling them both.
Shane stood his ground, pulled Willow to him, and stared into her eyes, trailing his gaze to her lips. “Told you I’d protect you.” He cocked his head and lowered his lips toward hers.