“What did your… husband say?”
She tried not to read too much into the way he seemed to stumble over the word husband. She was overanalyzing, just wishful thinking.
“He told me I was being selfish. That I was screwing up our family, that I was breaking the agreement we’d made when we got married.” That awful argument, the rage in his voice, the pain she’d caused, all came back to her as real as if she’d just walked out the door of their little red brick house. “We’d promised each other we were a team. Where one went, the other would go.”
“Yet you left anyway.”
After all the angry—but logical words—he’d shouted at her, it was the strangled pain in his final question that haunted her most to this day. Who the fuck’s gonna braid Stella’s hair?
“Freelancing was our compromise.” A brittle peace settled between them. “I wouldn’t take it on as a full-time job.”
“He was not happy.”
Not by a long shot. “Neither of us was, but we made it work until Stella was fifteen.”
“And then you ‘died.’”
There was an implied question in his tone she couldn’t miss. How did Sam manage to get her to share so much so quickly when by all rights she should still be reeling from the hurt of how he’d played her? Maybe a part of her believed she deserved any and every bad thing that came her way as retribution for the pain she’d caused her family.
“You’re wondering if I used my faked death as an out to abandon my family.”
“I did not say that.” But still the hint of a question remained.
Although oddly, she found no condemnation. Either he really didn’t blame her—or he was that good of an actor. With nothing to lose anymore, she kept on talking, needing to pour out the words she’d kept bottled inside for so many years.
“But you’re thinking it. Believe me, I’ve questioned myself on that more times than I can count. In my head I know I didn’t have a choice. My identity had been compromised in a major way in southern Africa, and I needed to assume a new life to keep my family safe.”
She’d opted to stay in Africa for two reasons. She wanted to minimize the temptation to seek out her family anyway, even for a glimpse. And she still wanted to help. Funny how in the end she’d found returning to her roots in more of a teaching and aide manner brought her far more satisfaction than any large-scale mission.
Sam nodded slowly as if processing. “Annie Johnson was born.”
“Such an innocuous name… Smith. Jones. Brown. Johnson. Jane or Anne or Mary. I could take my pick mixing and matching.”
“Why did you choose to leave your family behind? It is my understanding witness protection will keep a family together.”
His words made her realize she cared what he thought of her, deeply. She wanted him to know she’d truly tried her best. “My sons were already heading off to college. And my daughter… I had to keep her safe. Staying out of all their lives was the best way to do that.” But in her heart she’d harbored doubts. Even though she’d missed them every single day, she feared that she’d made a selfish choice to stay in Africa. Life wasn’t clear-cut with simple answers. But she’d known one thing for certain. Living on the run? That was no life for a child.
“And your husband agreed?” Sam’s stern tone made it clear he wouldn’t have made the same call.
Something stirred in her stomach, something that felt strangely like… butterflies? At her age? Just because this man hinted with a tone of his voice that he would have fought to keep her?
She hadn’t given her husband that chance because she’d already known his answer. He loved her, but he would have let her go, given the choice. So she’d saved him the pain of deciding. “He was told I was dead. The agency even found an unclaimed body at the morgue that looked enough like me and with such extensive injuries to that body, no one looked too close or questioned. That was for the best. I didn’t want to tie up his life with my mistakes. The agency assured me that I was dead, legally, so there were no repercussions if he decided to remarry…”
Except he hadn’t. The agency had told her that much in one of the few times they’d contacted her—after his death. She had mourned him despite all the ways they’d hurt each other. Mourned the lost chance at happiness they might have had together bringing up their children. They’d shared some big dreams at one time, but somewhere along the way they’d drifted apart. Still, she had grieved for all he’d given up for her and all the ways he’d carried on without her. She’d owed him better.
But that was in the past. Annie Johnson’s quiet life of hard work had been part of her healing.
Sam folded his arms over his chest, his face foreboding in the hazy red glow of the lights lining the ceiling. “I would not want those choices made for me without my consent.”
The censure in his voice set her on the defensive. “I did the best I could then… Would I make the same choices now? I don’t know. At the time, I was in so much pain…”
“Pain?” His arms slid down, his judgmental air easing.
“My cover was blown when I was kidnapped along with two others I worked with. The local warlord who took us had international black market connections. He was an evil man and…” She forced her voice to stay steady. “He was a harsh interrogator.” He was a rapist. “The other woman in our group broke, told him everything.”
She’d been damn close to breaking as well. When she’d thought she couldn’t take anymore, she’d found an opening to kill the lead interrogator. She’d escaped with the other remaining hostage.
As she thought back to those harrowing moments, she realized he hadn’t said anything.
“Didn’t my file mention any of that?”
She could read in his eyes that it had. A fast pulse throbbed in his temple, his fists clenched as he just let her talk. He’d somehow known she needed to share all of this that she hadn’t been allowed to discuss with anyone.
Had he kept things so platonic between them for so long because he worried about her?
Or because he saw her as defiled? She’d thought he was holding back from physically comforting her now to give her space… That he might see her as untouchable…? That thought was beyond bearing.
She’d dealt with the attack as much as anyone could. She’d found her own peace to move forward with her new life. But she understood rape was perceived differently in this region of the world. Archaic views still prevailed, that the woman was damaged goods, somehow to blame.
“Once I was rescued, I could only think of them taking my children… my daughter…” Her voice choked off and she struggled for control, looking around the plane and seeing that no one here even really noticed she existed. She was just one of a number of passengers on a noisy transport plane. “Once the decision was made, there was no going back.”
Although now that she looked back, perhaps she hadn’t been in the best state of mind to make decisions that large, that fast.
She looked down and realized at some point, Sam had placed his hand on top of hers. She’d been so wrapped up in the past, she hadn’t noticed, just like he’d slipped past her defenses this past year. He had a way about him that made it easy to simply… exist. And maybe that was a part of his undercover training, low level or not, but at the moment, she decided to go with the flow and continue talking.
How much more could she be hurt anyway?
“Every child I saw, I thought of mine at the same age and wondered what they were doing. I hoped they were thinking of me, remembering memories we’d made. When my daughter was eight, I rented the movie Out of Africa to give her a sense of where I went when I left home. She would draw pictures and mail them to me—pictures of me passing out mosquito nets to children. And she always drew herself as well, standing beside me. I was supposed to get rid of everything from my prior life, but I kept one of those pictures.”
With that last confession she ran out of words. She was emptied out, exhausted. This time in the CV-22 with Sam was all the indulgence she could allow herself. She didn’t know what would come next for her or if she would even see Sam again. If this relocation was anything like the last, the coming couple of days would move quickly and radically. She needed to get her head together, because all too soon they would be on the ground and things would be out of her control.
In fact, the aircraft was starting to slow. The CV-22’s loud rotors cranked into motion, shifting the blades to an upward helicopter position for landing. Still, Sam held onto her hand. Why hadn’t she thought to ask more about him?
Because she didn’t trust yet that he would tell her the truth. She didn’t want something to be said, more lies told, that she couldn’t overlook. After living through some of the worst experiences life could dole out, somehow knowing that Sam hid his identity to protect her didn’t feel like an unforgivable sin…
The CV-22 settled on the ground with a light thump that echoed in her stomach. Her hand clenched around Sam’s. This was it. When the hatch lowered, life as she’d known it for the past fourteen years would be officially over. Could Annie Johnson handle the upcoming intelligence meetings? The reorganization of her life?
She couldn’t screw up much worse than Melanie Carson had.
And she was older now, stronger. Tougher. She let go of Sam’s hand and tried not to think about how much she wanted to hold on and drag him into her next incarnation.
Shoulders squared, she walked down the load ramp, dry wind funneling around tan military buildings and whipping her loose pant suit around her. She was ready, damn it. Prepared for anything…
Except the sight of her daughter standing only twenty yards away.
***
Stella’s gasp sent Jose’s protective radar on high alert.
He scanned the troops off-loading from the CV-22 at the airport in Mogadishu, wondering which one was Smith’s new contact and why Stella was so upset. She staggered back a step and he caught her, steadying her with a palm to her spine. Smith had brought them all out here for the arrival of some new intel contacts, but beyond that, the lead agent on this had been damn tight-lipped about where he thought the list of operatives was about to be exposed.
Or why the coded cloth had been draped on the VP’s wife.
Irritation was running high. He’d always been able to stay detached during an operation, but with Stella involved, the stakes for him became all the more personal. Her moods fed his and that was a scary thought.
He wanted to pin Smith and demand answers for Stella. Now. No more jerking her around. If the guy didn’t want to talk, why the hell had he dragged them out of bed?
Jose ducked his head to her ear. “Are you okay?”
Eyes wide and stunned, she shook her head, pointing. “The woman there, one of the last off the load ramp… That’s my mother.”
“Your what?” Squinting into the late morning sun, he scanned the stream of people pouring off the CV-22, a mix of soldiers and civilians.
He followed the line of Stella’s attention to a couple trailing the rest. A dark-skinned man dressed in local garb stood beside a fair-skinned woman in a loose linen suit and a scarf that almost managed to hide her brownish-red hair. “You mean that lady looks like your mother?”
“No. That woman is my mother.”
Stella’s mother was alive? This was Smith’s special contact they’d been brought out here to meet? The implications of this woman’s name being on the list of operatives in the area took on a whole new complexity now.
She pivoted hard and fast toward Smith, anger vibrating from her. “You knew. Why the hell didn’t you warn me?”
Smith didn’t even wince, his craggy face unapologetic. “I was curious to see if you already knew she was alive, if she’d broken the terms of her agreement and contacted her family after all. That information could have provided a lead to how this list leaked out.”