Away From the Dark (The Light #2)(30)

I lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles again. “I’d be OK if we stick with Jacob and Sara. I recently heard something about Sara, and I’m confident Jacob feels the same way.”

“I can’t . . .”

“I’m not asking you to,” I reassured her. “What did you want to ask?”

Her baby-blue eyes held the innocent Sara gaze I’d come to adore. “Are there really polar bears?”

“Yes!” Of all the questions she could have asked, this one made me smile. “I’ve seen them myself, especially out by the landing strip.”

“Then I hope he gets mauled.”

“You don’t need to worry about him.”

“Will you tell me why?”

“I’ll tell you anything. You never need to ask that way again.”

She nodded.

“I don’t know the details, but the US Marshals took care of him.” When her expression blanked, I realized what that sounded like. “Not as in dead. Your confirmation that he took you against your will gave them probable cause. Deputy Hill guaranteed that Thomas would be lost in the federal system longer than I needed.”

“Longer than you needed? What does that mean?”

“My assignment isn’t over. The FBI needs more time to coordinate all the raids, and there’s more I want to learn. Today was only the second time in nearly three years that I’ve spoken with my handler. Thomas is a weak link. He could have easily talked to Father Gabriel. He had to be silenced.”

“Are you going back? Did I mess everything up?” She sighed, adjusted her pillow, and lay back.

“It’s like I said, it depends on you.” When I looked toward Sara, she was on her side with her knees drawn up. “What is it?”

In a short time, her complexion had paled. With her eyes closed, she shook her head. “I think I’m hungry.”

“Damn, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” I stood. “When did you last eat?”

“Sometime at the marshals’ office. It’s probably the stress too.”

Her forehead glistened with a sheen of perspiration.

“Let me go get you something to eat. It’s kind of late. I can get fast food.”

She nodded. “Thank you. I think that would help.”

“If I leave you alone?” I looked at the phone on the stand near the bed. “I can’t. I can’t leave you alone.”

“I’m not sure I can go with you. I’m suddenly not feeling very well.”

Even if I pulled the phone cord out of the wall, she could always walk next door and borrow someone’s phone. I couldn’t say it, but in reality she too was a weak link.

Looking around, I found plastic cups wrapped in cellophane. Opening one, I filled it with water and brought it back to her. “Here, try drinking some water.” Her beautiful eyes opened as she sat back up.

“Thank you,” she said, taking the cup. Though the water sloshed in her shaky grasp, she smiled. “This reminds me of the clinic.”

I watched the color return to her cheeks. Once she was done, I took the cup and brushed my thumb over her right cheek. “See, we do have a past.”




I rolled the handle of the paring knife in my fingers as I paced the room and Sara slept. I should have been sleeping too, but I couldn’t. My mind couldn’t settle from the whirlwind of thoughts. Though I hated what Thomas had done to her, the knife made me smile. I hadn’t been able to believe it when she removed it from her boot. It was obviously the reason I’d thought she was walking oddly, why I was worried that he’d hurt her sexually. She was so much braver than I knew.

I’d finally gotten the nerve to ask her the question that had eaten at me since my call with Raquel. I’d asked whether she was pregnant. Her answer made me feel neither better nor worse. She said she didn’t know. It had been only three weeks since her last period, which she said was too early to know. I wasn’t sure whether that was totally accurate. Though it’d been three years since I’d watched television—yes, even while in motels, I didn’t; I wanted to stay in Jacob mode—I seemed to remember commercials that talked about home pregnancy tests that could determine results earlier than that. With her sound asleep, I considered driving to a store to buy one, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to know.

We’d talked about so much, but I’d never posed the question that the morning would require. Once she ate the fast food we’d gone together to get and began yawning, I’d decided it could wait. Obviously the future was something neither one of us was ready to tackle. However, we’d done a bang-up job on our past. Maybe it was because it was relatively short, but we’d covered nearly everything, and I’d done my best to explain the whys behind each decision. The time of forbidding her questioning was over. For there to be a chance at a future, she needed to understand everything. The change in dynamic was refreshing yet unsettling. The conditioned man from The Light wanted to take control and tell her what to do. The man I had once been, and hoped to be again, appreciated a partner, not a submissive.

Sara wasn’t the only one who felt like two different people. My two perspectives had me torn.

I didn’t want to ask her to come back to The Light. It was too dangerous. Then again, the idea of never seeing her again created a void I couldn’t imagine navigating. There was a reason agents stayed unattached. Lying in the bed, in nothing more than her bra and panties, was that reason. No, it wasn’t that I’d waited for Sara. It was that I f*cking hated having an Achilles’ heel.