Assumed Identity(74)

Squeezing the haunting images from his mind, he looked down into her sweet, gray-blue eyes and nodded. “Honey, I’m supposed to save you.”

A flash-bang detonated in the bedroom behind them and all three of them jumped. “I think you’ll still get your chance.”

He hugged Emma as close to his chest as he dared. “Stay low to the ground. And run.”

Once he had Robin and Emma secured behind triple hay bale stacks in the barn, Jake pulled out his half-spent Beretta. “You know how to use a gun?”

“No.”

He placed the gun into Robin’s hands and gave the quickest lesson of his life. “Safety’s off. Squeeze the trigger—don’t jerk it. And don’t shoot me.”

She grabbed hold of him, curling her fingertips into his chest. “Where are you going? Backup’s coming, isn’t it?”

“Maybe not soon enough. If this guy’s like me, only one of us is getting out of here alive.” Her skin paled and Jake leaned in and kissed her. This is who he was, who she needed him to be. “I intend it to be me.”

“I love you,” she whispered as he pulled away.

Jake nodded and kissed her again.

The lights of the approaching sirens finally diverted their attacker’s attention away from the house. With the rain muffling his footsteps, Jake snuck up on the man’s flank. The light wasn’t good, but it didn’t have to be at this distance.

Jake pulled his knife and flipped it in his hand. And when the perp in the trilby hat finally realized he wasn’t alone, he swung around with the semi-automatic. But Jake was quicker.

Twenty seconds later he was standing over a dead man with a knife stuck in his heart. Robin and Emma were finally, truly safe.

He kicked the stupid hat aside and looked back toward the barn. “I love you, too.”





Chapter Twelve



“Joe! Hey, Joe!”

Jake looked up from the baby cooing in his lap on the gurney where a pair of EMTs had bandaged the through-and-through in his shoulder. The guy, blond-haired and long-legged, was chasing the ambulance in his jeans and cowboy boots, trying to catch it before the doors closed and they drove him away for a routine check and some stitches in the E.R.

The man wasn’t much older than Jake, but the badge and sidearm on his belt demanded that he didn’t just blow him off for a private ride with the Carter girls and, he hoped, one of those conversations that Robin liked.

“Detective Montgomery said you’d been avoiding me. If you aren’t the cagiest son of a gun to track down. The rest of the squad thought you were dead.”

Robin got up from the side bench and sat on the edge of the gurney beside Jake. Did she think he was in trouble with this cop? He grinned at how protective a mother could be, even with someone who didn’t need protecting. “Who are you?”

“Ma’am.” He extended his hand to introduce himself. “I’m Nash. Agent Charles Nash. DEA.” He pulled his badge off his belt to show her, and she passed it along to Jake. Hell. He sat back a little. It looked just like the badge he’d kept all this time—with a different name, of course. When Jake returned the badge to the officer, he made a face. “It’s Charlie. Your handler?”

“Charles Nash?” Jake repeated, waiting for some sort of recognition to kick in. “I work for you?”

“Yeah, Joe. What kind of game are you playing?” Agent Nash snapped his fingers at whatever revelation he was about to share. “Oh, man. I knew you’d been hit, but I had no idea it affected your memory.”

“You know me?”

“Yeah. Joseph Lonergan. DEA agent. Best undercover man I ever worked with.” He climbed up into the ambulance to take the seat Robin had vacated. “We lost you on a mission to Tenebrosa. You infiltrated Diego Graciela’s cartel. Killed the don yourself to save some girls he’d kidnapped to use as prostitutes. Blew your cover, of course. I tried to pull you out. But the compound got leveled by a rival cartel’s truck bomb, and the agency assumed you were dead.”

Explosions. Heat raining down. The nightmare was a real memory.

“I didn’t give up on you, though. I know how resourceful you are. I figured if there wasn’t a body, then you’d gone underground. I’ve been looking for you ever since. Thought I’d warn you about the hit Graciela’s brother put out on you.” He pointed out the door to the coroner’s wagon that was hauling away the shooter KCPD had identified as Johnny Cortez. “The symbol carved into this lady’s coffee table was Graciela’s—I’m sure that was a message from the brother. But I gather you already figured that out.”