by Jodie Bailey
Dana stopped moving. “Deputy Edgecombe’s death isn’t your fault. Neither was Devin Wallace’s.”
Sam froze. How did she do that? Dana could read him as easily as she read computer code.
But she was wrong. “You can’t say that.”
“I can.” She faced him, her expression serious. “Edgecombe was doing his job. And Devin Wallace made a bad choice by setting up a meeting with someone from his old life. That’s not your fault.”
“I should have been there.”
“Then you and your team would have been killed in the crossfire.”
Sam looked away. Dana was amazing with what she did, but she dealt in black-and-white code, not in real world flesh and blood.
“Sam, you’re not God. Only He knows when our end comes. You don’t have any control over that.”
Enough. Much more lecture, and he’d crack. Sure, God was in charge, but He’d also called Sam to protect, and Sam had failed. Twice. He knocked his knuckles on the table and edged toward the door, desperate for some levity. “Get me what I need to take down this guy and I’ll keep you in lumpia for a year.”
Dana looked like she had more to say, but then she smiled. It didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Now there is some supreme motivation. And Sam? You should feed the lady down the hall.” Dana leveled her gaze on him. “She’s a strong one.”
“She is.” Stronger than any witness he’d ever dealt with.
“She seems to be handling this well.”
“Better than most.” Sam angled toward the door. He should check on Amy. For all that Isaac was as friendly as could be, he was also quiet. Quiet paired with his sheer size could make him menacing to people who didn’t know him.
“She’s pretty too,” Dana said.
“Very.” Wait. Sam’s head jerked up. “I mean, I guess she is. I hadn’t noticed.”
There was a knowing look, the one that almost made him question why he was friends with someone who could see right through him. Her brown eyes sparked as she landed a hand on her hip. “Oh, you noticed.”
Sam started to argue, then thought better of it. Dana was the kind of person who could sniff out a lie from three doors down. The marshals would have been better off tasking her as an interrogator than as an tech specialist.
Fact was, she’d only led him to say out loud what he’d already been thinking. Amy Brady was unlike any woman he’d ever met.
“You’ll figure it out.” As though dismissing him, Dana turned to her monitor and went to work, seeking intel in ways Sam could only sort of understand.
Sam nodded but didn’t move. He needed to reset his expression and his thoughts before he headed up the hallway and into close proximity with Amy. She might be intriguing, but she was also his job. Crossing business with personal would make him hesitate in the clinch and could get them both killed. For him to do his job, he had to be focused, 100 percent on his game.
He stared at a monitor over Dana’s head, the one tapped into the building’s security cameras. Only a few people milled about, most of the nine-to-fivers in the other offices leaving for the day. No one appeared to be out of place, not that he’d expected anyone to be. Their location was a well-guarded secret.
“Be kind, Maldonado.” Dana didn’t turn from her work. “Feed her before she wastes away on that little pack of crackers.”
Dana had to bring up those stupid crackers and remind him he had unfinished business with Amy. There was an interrupted conversation between them, a truth he had to tell before she could make decisions about her future. She had to know her sister was alive and well, at least for the moment. “Dana, can you do me a favor that makes you seem more like my secretary than a computer ninja?”
“Maybe. But it’ll cost you dinner.”
He smiled. “You’ve got it. Dinner’s the next thing on my agenda.” After he talked to Amy. His humor died quickly. “Call the police chief in Mountain Springs, North Carolina. Name’s Arch Thompson. Make sure he knows we had to pick up Amy and that Jenna Clark might be in the crosshairs again. Have them bring her into protective custody if they feel the need to, but they have to let me know where she is if they do. Sooner or later, Amy could have the possibility of being reunited with her sister and—”
“My sister?”
Sam’s breath caught in his throat. Across the room, Dana’s hand froze on her track pad.
Letting out a ragged exhale, Sam closed his eyes and counted to five, the same way he’d done since he was a kid and had to face something he didn’t want to. Maybe he’d imagined Amy’s high strained voice. Maybe he was hungry or tired and this was all a horrible hallucination.
But footsteps behind him sliced off all hope. “Sam? What’s this about my sister?”
He didn’t turn toward her. Wasn’t sure how he could face her when he’d been withholding information. The subterfuge had been necessary for both of their safety, but she wouldn’t see it that way, not when he’d stepped down from his professional pedestal and crossed the line into friendship with her more than once, something he’d known all along he shouldn’t do. “Where’s Isaiah?”
“He took a phone call and stepped out of the room. I was looking for a restroom.” Thinly veiled anger iced the words. “Now turn around, look me in the eye and tell me what’s happened to my sister.”
SEVEN
She’d heard him wrong. There was no way Sam had actually said what she believed she’d heard. Maybe fatigue had dulled her senses or brought on some sort of strange confusion. After all, Jenna Clark wasn’t anyone she knew, let alone her sister.
But Sam had clearly said Amy and reunited and her sister in the same sentence.
Her knees weakened beneath her and Amy wobbled, reaching for the metal door frame as Sam turned to her, his expression guarded and closed in a way she’d never seen before, even when he was at his most professional. “Amy...”
“My sister is alive? And well?”
There was a slight hesitation, and Sam glanced over his shoulder at Dana.
Dana never turned away from the monitor she was intently studying, a series of progress bars flowing across the screen in multiple colors that seemed to bleed together. The multiple patterns made Amy’s eyes twitch.
“Jenna is fine.” Sam’s voice dragged her attention to him.
There was that name again. Jenna. Amy’s heart, which had started beating faster at the possibility of finally having information about her twin, seemed to thump harder against her rib cage.
He was wrong. Whoever he was talking about wasn’t her sister. “I don’t know anyone named Jenna. My sister is Eve. Her name is...” Wait. Amy’s jaw slackened as the pieces fell into place. Jenna. Eve. “Genevieve. My sister’s name is Genevieve.” With her mother’s penchant for the overly romantic, she’d saddled her twin daughters with names fit for any fairy-tale princess. Genevieve and Amaryllis. Amy’s fingers went for the necklace she no longer wore, the delicate amaryllis pendant her sister had given to her years ago, the one Anthony had asked her to surrender to him before Amy Brady “died” in a horrific single-car accident in downtown El Paso.
She’d legally changed her name years ago, hating Amaryllis and all it represented about her past. Eve had held tight to her nickname while keeping her legal name, no matter how hard Amy had campaigned for her to change it.
Amy let her eyes slide closed and her chin drop to her chest, enjoying a prayer of thanks and a brief moment of blessed relief. Her sister was safe. She’d escaped Logan’s clutches. Amy could stop waking up in the middle of the night tortured by visions of her twin sister’s horrible death.
But it changed nothing. They could never be a family again, not only because WITSEC likely wouldn’t allow it unless both of them were willing to go into hiding, but because there was no way what Amy had done when she’d introduced her sister to Logan Cutter would ever be forgivable. Amy might o
nly be three minutes older, but she’d always been the responsible one, the one who made sure they were both fed and in school when their mother was off with her latest man. She’d always been the mother figure, the protector, yet when it mattered the most, she’d failed.
After letting the peace come to rest in a permanent place behind her heart, Amy opened her eyes to find Sam watching her. He hadn’t reached for her or touched her, but he leaned toward her slightly as though something in him wanted to.
But no. Amy wouldn’t let him. He’d lied to her. She wouldn’t let him comfort her in the aftermath. “So she changed her name from Eve to Jenna.” It would be hard to shift her thinking. Much like herself, Eve had become an entirely different person. She’d become a Jenna.
Sam nodded, tight-lipped and grave. “After her last...” He inhaled deeply and searched the ceiling as though the words he needed might be written there in neon ink. “After her last altercation with Logan Cutter landed her in the hospital, Anthony Reynolds helped her escape. With our help, he changed her identity and got her a new start.” The story ended abruptly, and Sam seemed to straighten and square his shoulders, almost as though he were daring her to ask more.
“She’s okay?” Amy clinched her fists at her side to stop the shaking that had built from the inside out, threatening to rattle her into pieces. It was a tough fight to keep her teeth from knocking together. The emotion wasn’t one she could pinpoint. Not fear. Not dread. Not even joy. This tidal wave defied description, rocking her core and heating her skin as though she had been hit with a sudden deathly fever.
“Last intel I had, yes.” He tilted his head toward Dana. “As you heard, Dana is going to check in and make sure she’s safe now.”
“Why wouldn’t she be?” Amy’s words were heavy with a suspicion she wasn’t even trying to hold back. Every ounce of the indefinable emotion overwhelming her drove into the question. There was more to this. Sam’s posture, his demeanor, his tone of voice... All of it said he was hiding something else.
Sam stopped fidgeting and looked her square in the eye, his brown-eyed gaze unwavering. “Jenna is your twin sister. Other than you being a blonde and Jenna being a redhead, you’re exactly the same. Until we know who’s hunting for you, we have to assume they could mistake her for you. I’d rather operate with an abundance of caution than to keep my mouth shut, then wake up in the morning and find out your sister—” As Dana cleared her throat a little too loudly, Sam clamped his mouth shut and nodded. “I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
So would Amy, for more reasons than Sam would ever know. “Does she know I’m alive?”
“You’re in WITSEC. No one should know you’re alive.”
“Let’s keep it that way.” Amy pivoted on one heel and walked away, her hands still fisted, her stomach roiling around the crackers she’d washed down with a little too much water. Her sister was alive. She was safe.
And Anthony had known the whole time.
This heat sweeping through her was either intense anger or bone-rattling fear. Anger with Anthony for his extended silence. Fury with Sam for knowing the truth and not telling her. Terror that one day Amy would cross paths with her sister and be forced to face the disappointment and pain she’d caused. That she’d have to look her twin in the eye—the one person in the world who had been her closest friend and confidant—and pay for what she’d done to her.
Amy had ruined her sister’s life, had nearly gotten her killed. Eve, Jenna, whatever her name was now would hate her, and Amy never wanted to see that look in her sister’s eye. She’d prefer to remain dead to her for the rest of her life.
* * *
“Well, that went well.” Dana’s voice was low, full of a compassion that made Sam wince.
He’d almost rather she’d gone for full-blown derision or sarcasm. He deserved it. Sometimes, it was as though his team watched him flame out in disastrous failure and somehow missed the carnage for all of the smoke. Surely, Dana saw where he’d royally burned out in that entire encounter with Amy.
Dana could argue that Sam had done what the job dictated, and he shouldn’t feel as though he’d wounded Amy. It wouldn’t make a difference. Guilt dug into his shoulders with razor claws. If only he had told Amy about her sister when she brought the situation up in the car earlier. If only there had been two extra minutes with her in the other room before Isaiah had interrupted them. He could have told her himself, without her having to overhear. The fallout might have been hot, but it wouldn’t have been nuclear.
The pain that had bled into Amy’s expression had nearly compelled Sam to reach for her and pull her to him, in front of Dana and whomever else on the team decided to walk into the room.
Doing so would definitely have violated every protocol he could imagine.
“Go talk to her, Maldonado.” Dana wasn’t finished with him yet. “Don’t let her wander off and stew over this. The longer she’s angry, the angrier she’ll get. She needs to understand why you couldn’t tell her before now.”
Maybe. Or maybe he should just walk up the hallway, knock on Watkins’s door and turn Amy over to someone else entirely. He was definitely too personally invested.
Sam stood in the doorway. To the left was the room where Amy had retreated, the door tightly closed in a silent message of betrayal and anger. To the right was Watkins’s office and the freedom forever from the responsibility for Amy Brady’s life.
“I can practically read your thoughts from here.” Dana walked up behind him and leaned over his shoulder. “Go to her. Don’t abandon her on top of everything else. You’re the only friend she has right now.”
“I shouldn’t be.” Sam stepped into the hall, away from the weight of Dana’s convictions. “Being a friend to her is the exact reason I should walk away.”
“Sometimes it’s more about people than it is about protocol.” Dana planted her hands on his shoulders and turned him to the left. “It’s okay to care about a person. To think of them as more than a case number. Go make sure she’s okay. And then, if you care at all about any of us, you’ll find some dinner somewhere.”
Sam chuckled and walked up the hall to Amy’s temporary quarters, his footfalls muffled by the carpet. With every step, his heart changed its mind, whiplashing between dread and anticipation. At the door, he hesitated and glanced toward Watkins’s office, but Dana stood watching him. She gave him a gentle nod, then ducked out of sight.
Fine. He’d talk to Amy, or he’d never hear the end of it. Squaring his shoulders, Sam pulled his head from one side to the other to fight off some of the tension, then he tapped on Amy’s door.
A muffled “What do you want?” was his only answer.
So she knew it was him. He eased the door open and slipped inside, leaving it cracked behind him. Some protocols shouldn’t be violated, like being behind closed doors with a woman who made him feel things he really shouldn’t feel on a mission...or ever.
Amy sat on the edge of the cot, her head in her hands. Far from angry, she appeared to be defeated, as though the knowledge of her sister’s survival had added weight to her emotions instead of lifting a burden.
Sam eased down beside her, careful not to let his shoulder or elbow brush hers. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I know it would have taken a lot of worry away if I had.”
“You did your job.”
Sam lifted an eyebrow. Well, that was unexpected.
Amy straightened and stared at the wall in front of her, unshed tears shining in her eyes and a haunted expression on her face. “How is she? Jenna?” The name came out awkwardly, as though she’d hesitated before choosing it over the Eve she was used to.
That question was a loaded cannon. Jenna had been through a lot in the past few months. It was because Grant Meyer had mistaken Jenna for Amy that the man had been arrested. But with the load Amy was apparently carrying right now, it wasn’t the time to tell her al
l of the details. “She’s fine. Engaged to a police officer.”
“Really?” The news seemed to lift Amy’s spirits a bit. “That’s better than your sister tying you to a human trafficker.”
Sam didn’t know what to say. The depths of Amy’s pain were deeper than he was qualified to plumb. While his own heart felt the razor’s cuts of the hurt, his mind couldn’t wrap around why she was feeling it. Somehow, based on her comment, she felt some responsibility for what Cutter had done to Jenna, but the burden wasn’t hers and should never have been hers.
Logan Cutter and Grant Meyer were scum. They preyed on the weak and valued their pockets over any sort of human decency or dignity. None of what they’d done was Amy’s fault. “You can’t blame yourself.”
Hmm. Seemed he’d heard Dana say the same to him. Sam shoved her voice aside. This was a completely different situation.
“Don’t do that.” Amy jerked her head toward him, a certain fire in her eyes that said she was angry after all, and she was about to unleash the full force of her fury on him. “Don’t talk about things when you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
One tear broke free and blazed a trail down her cheek, then another followed. “I can’t.” Her voice broke. “You’ll look at me differently.” She turned away, leaving Sam with a clear view of the back of her head.
And her fist around his heart.
Sam gave up. There was no pretending he didn’t feel differently about—feel more for—Amy than he had any other witness he’d ever worked with. She was his friend and he was hers. Dana was right about their relationship, and pretending the situation was different would only end up hurting them both.
“Come here.” Sam reached for Amy. He had to hold her, touch her, let her know she wasn’t in this alone and someone cared.
