He looked up toward the sound of her voice and saw nothing but the dark and rainy skies above. I don’t think I can do this. He made sure the flashlight was still tucked firmly in his back belt loop. He glanced around the room in vain for anything that could be used as a rope in case they needed one to climb down, then yanked down the valance curtain and tied it over his shoulders.
Then he bent low and slowly stepped out onto the window ledge, crouching on the balls of his feet. His fingertips gripped the shingles of the dormer window overhang above him. Almost immediately one came off in his grasp, throwing his body backward into the thin air, with nothing but his toes on the ledge and the fingers on his other hand to keep him from falling. Help me, God. I need You now! Then his second hand found its grip on the window ledge again. He gasped a breath.
“You there?” Leia called down.
“Barely,” he called back through gritted teeth. “I’m hanging out the window backward.”
“Just hoist yourself up. There’s a mini rooftop over the window.”
Yup, he remembered.
He stood slowly, his body hanging backward at an uncomfortable angle as his arms spread wide so his hands could grip both sides of the small, peaked roof. Then he held his breath, let his feet leave the ledge and hoisted himself up on top of it, trying to tell himself this was no different than some of the strength exercises he’d done in training.
He scrambled up onto the ledge over the window, crouched on his feet and braced his hands against the slanted tile roof above him.
“Hey, I can see you!” Leia’s warm voice floated toward him.
“Really?” he asked. Because he couldn’t see a fool thing.
“Well, I can make out your general shape,” she said. “All you have to do now is stand up and jump. The window will be only about six or eight inches above your head.”
Right. Easy-peasy. He unfurled his legs slowly and walked his hands inch by inch up the slanted roof above him until he was half standing and half lying at an awkward angle against the shingles. And it hit him: this might actually be the most faith he’d ever placed in another human being.
“Just a few inches more,” she said. “You’re almost there.”
He stretched his hands up over his head as far as his arms would go and felt her fingers as she reached down toward him. Her fingertips brushed his palms.
“See?” she said. She was panting slightly, and he wondered just how far she was leaning out the window. “You’ve got this. Now, the window ledge is maybe six to eight inches above you. I’m going to step back and you’re going to jump up and grab it, okay?”
Confidence radiated through her voice as if she had absolutely no doubt that he was going to do exactly what she’d told him to. It made him feel stronger somehow. As if he didn’t want to let her down.
“Got it,” he called. “Step back!”
He tensed his legs and took a leap of faith up into the darkness. His left hand caught the window ledge and gripped it tight. His right swung out into nowhere, grasping ineffectually against the shingles as they pulled off under his grasp. Pain shot through his left arm from his fingertips to his shoulder as it was wrenched against suddenly holding up the full weight of his suspended body. And he became terrifyingly aware of just how few one-handed pull-ups he could do at the best of times. His muscles tensed as he pulled his body up. His feet scrambled ineffectually against the wet roof.
Help me, Lord. I’m going to fall.
Then he felt both of Leia’s hands grab on to his forearm.
“It’s okay,” Leia said. “I’ve got you!”
Instinctively his other hand grabbed on to hers. He swung there, suspended, with his left hand still on the window ledge, both her hands on his left arm and his right hand gripping her hands as they held him.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s going to be fine. Just let go of the ledge and grab both my hands. I will help pull you up.”
Let go? But what if she couldn’t pull him up? What was she even bracing herself with? What if she wasn’t strong enough to support his weight and they both fell?
“No,” he said. “Let go of me and I’ll pull myself up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You’ll fall! Now come on. Trust me.”
Vertigo swamped his brain. No, they couldn’t do this. They weren’t strong enough. He glanced up and saw her form leaning out the window above him.
“Jay!” Her voice broke. “Let me save you!”
What other choice did he have?
He set his jaw, whispered a prayer and dug his toes into the tiles so hard they ached. Then he let go. Instantly, he felt her hands grab ahold of his wrists. He grabbed hers back. For a second nothing happened—he just hung there suspended with their arms locked in each other’s grasp. Then he felt his body begin to rise, inch by inch, as she leaned back and supported him, and they pulled him up together with their joint might. When his elbows scraped the window ledge, he felt the rain leave his head and back. He tumbled through the window and into the shelter of the attic. She let go of him and he of her, and they both collapsed on the floor, side by side, with their backs against the wall.
“Thank you,” he said, the moment he found his voice.
“No problem,” she replied, and he realized she was panting from exertion.
“You okay?”
“My arms have seen better days and my abs feel like I just planked for a week.” She laughed. It was an infectiously happy sound he wished he could hear every day. “Told you that we could do it.”
“You did,” he said.
She stumbled to her feet. He followed and switched the flashlight on. The attic was maybe even smaller and plainer than he’d remembered it. It was slanted from floor to ceiling on both sides, forming two triangular-shaped brick walls at either end, only one of which had a window. He set the flashlight down and it rolled, sending cascading lights bouncing off the walls.
“Hang on, are you wearing one of Mom and Dad’s curtains as a cape?” she asked. “If you know how to fly, you have to tell me.”
He turned and looked at Leia. Her dark hair fell around her face in waves. Laughter lit up her violet eyes and slipped through the infectious smile curled on the corners of her lips. Suddenly his legs felt oddly weak.
She had no idea how incredibly beautiful she was or how his heart leaped every time he looked at her.
“Not a cape,” he said. “I was actually looking for rope or something like that. I didn’t have much time to think. If I had, I probably would’ve panicked. I think you might’ve saved my life.”
“Maybe,” Leia said lightly. “Either way, I’m really glad you’re here in one piece.”
Her arms slid around his neck in a quick and lighthearted hug. He hugged her back hard and gleefully swept her feet off the floor for a moment. But then somehow, as he set her feet back down and she pulled away from the hug, her hands still lingered there, linked right behind his neck. His hands found her back and his fingers splayed as if trying to hold every inch of her that he could.
“Don’t even doubt I’ll come through for you,” she said. “Like it or not, we’re in this together.”
He liked it. Very much so.
“I don’t know what to say,” he admitted. “I’m sorry I underestimated you. Both how strong you were physically but also emotionally. I never imagined you’d still speak to me once you found out the truth, let alone help me.”
She leaned forward and rested her forehead against his.
“You’ve rescued me, and I’ve rescued you,” she said. “It’s what people do when they care about each other. And I really did care about you, a lot.”
“But how can you say you cared about me?” he asked. “You didn’t know me. Any feelings you thought you had for me were based on a lie.”
That had been the whole deal about
living an undercover life. He had no siblings. His parents were gone. His only real friends would be in law enforcement. Nobody else would ever really know him.
“I knew you,” she said. “Maybe not the details of your job or why you were here, but I didn’t like you because you were a handyman. I liked how you thought about things and what you cared about. I liked how you treated me and respected my family. I liked how you responded to the world around you. I liked the man you were inside your undercover story. At least, until I realized you were the kind of man who could just turn off his feelings for me and throw what we had away.”
He had to be that kind of man. He didn’t have a choice. But that didn’t mean he’d wanted to let her go. Not back then. Not right now.
The tip of her nose brushed his. Then their lips met. He tightened his arms around her; she held him closely and they kissed for a long moment, feeling happy and complete in a way that he hadn’t in a very long time.
Even as a voice in the back of his mind told him that it was a mistake, that it would only happen this once and that he could never do it again or he’d risk losing everything else in his life that mattered.
EIGHT
For one long and breathtaking moment, Leia let herself kiss the only man her heart had ever longed for and never gotten over, blocking out the voice inside telling her that it would only be a matter of time before he pushed her away and broke her heart again. There was something that felt right about it, like she was where she was meant to be.
But it barely lasted a moment before they pulled apart again.
“You deserve so much better than a man who can never be honest with you,” Jay said, “and who’s always off living some undercover life that his wife and kids can never be part of or even know about.”
Was he even capable of truly falling in love with someone? Either way, she couldn’t love a man incapable of loving her.
“You’re right,” she said and rolled her shoulders back. “I do, and after growing up with a father who kept secrets from me that’s the last thing I want for my life.”
And it was high time she remembered that. Jay had told her that he didn’t want to fall in love or be in a relationship. He had talked about his feelings as if they were something he could easily push aside. She couldn’t give Jay her heart. No matter how attractive he was or how much she might like him.
“You deserve to be able to chase your dreams and be the man you’re meant to be without having a wife or family holding you back,” Leia added. She wondered if he could hear the slight chill she felt creep into her voice.
“I’m just sorry I didn’t find a way to tell you what was really going on,” Jay said. “Maybe if I’d gone to your father, he might’ve agreed to fill you in on who I really was and what I was doing there.”
“Or he’d have refused, stopped cooperating and kicked you off his property,” Leia said. “My dad kept this secret from us for our entire lives. You couldn’t have changed his mind. He was the most stubborn person I’ve ever met.”
Suddenly hot and angry tears filled her eyes, and she didn’t know if she was upset with her father, Jay, herself or all three.
“My own father didn’t trust me,” she went on. “He kept this from me my entire life. Dad spent all these hours homeschooling us, teaching us survival skills and telling us fairy tales. Even when he knew he was dying he didn’t breathe a word of it and instead chose to take his secrets to the grave.”
Then last summer, she’d developed romantic feelings for a man who was equally closed off and secretive. Thankfully their relationship had ended before it had gone much further. She stepped even farther away from Jay now, feeling that one brief, blissful moment they’d shared break into shards around their feet.
“Even this, being here in the attic with you, is a reminder of the fact that my dad kept me in the dark my whole life, just like you did last summer,” she said. “Why was I forbidden from coming up here? There’s nothing here. Just cobwebs and floorboards, with a hatch door leading back to the second-floor hallway. I can believe that my mom left my dad, went to Toronto, got close to Franklin Vamana and saw him kill someone. I believe my dad came to rescue her, that she made an anonymous call to police that wasn’t followed up. And then my dad lived in fear for the rest of his life that Vamana was going to send men to kill me and my sisters in revenge, or something. All that actually makes sense to me. What I don’t understand is why he didn’t just tell me!”
“Maybe he wanted to protect you,” Jay said. “Maybe he did something he was ashamed of or didn’t want you to think less of him or your mom. People are complicated. I desperately missed my dad and wanted him to come back, no matter how many times well-meaning people tried to convince me I was better off without a recovering alcoholic in my life. My own mother never stopped loving him and believing he’d have never voluntarily left us. Maybe that’s why I was so drawn to being an undercover officer. It meant I could change lives and help people, without getting too close to anyone and risking getting hurt like she did.”
She turned away, picked up the flashlight from where he’d dropped it and swung it around the attic. It was so small it could barely be called a room; Jay’s hideaway in the barn’s loft was downright spacious by comparison.
“You weren’t kidding when you said there was nothing here,” she said. “I used to imagine my dad hid something valuable or special up here. But there really is nothing.”
Jay chuckled self-consciously and ran his hand over the back of his neck.
“Yeah,” he said. “I even felt around for loose floorboards and found nothing. It’s not like your dad was about to give me permission to start tearing the place apart brick by brick.”
“And yet when we were first on the run from the bad guys, your instinct was to come up here,” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Your dad’s mind was pretty muddled by the end, but he just seemed convinced there was something up here.”
He stepped closer and she felt her shoulders relax just by having him near. But she moved away. She didn’t want to relax and couldn’t afford to.
“Dad was an amazing storyteller,” she said. “His stories were so detailed, and they were always the same ones, too. It’s like he’d heard them somewhere and felt compelled to repeat them.”
She could feel her hand tightening to a fist by her side. So she closed her eyes and prayed.
Lord, I’m frustrated. I know I should love my father and forgive him despite the choices he made. I know he loved me and I loved him. But I’m in trouble. I need my dad to help save me right now. But he’s gone. So please, settle my heart and guide my mind.
“Did your dad ever tell a story about an attic?” Jay asked, like he was hazarding a wild guess.
“Yes, actually.” Her eyes snapped opened. “Well, sort of. In one story, the four princesses find this tower with a triangular room at the very top. They discover that the brick wall is musical and they need to tap out a song on it to open a secret hatch.”
Jay’s eyes widened.
“How did the song go?” he asked. “Can you see what happens if you tap it out on the wall?”
“Really?” she asked. “That’s a real long shot.”
“I know,” he said. “But I think we’re all out of short shots right about now.”
Wow, he was really suggesting she do it.
All right, then. She walked over to the wall and counted the bricks until she found the exact center one. She felt a chill lick her spine.
“I have to sing it,” she said. “It’s the only way I know.”
“Got it,” he said.
She placed her fingers on the cold dry bricks and started tapping. “Right, right, right, up, up. Left, left, down, up, up.”
Finally, she reached the final note and her fingers lingered on the last brick.
“Okay, this is it,” she sai
d. “Thank you for not laughing.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Jay said. He crossed over to the room and stood next to her. He pulled a small pocketknife from his pocket, flicked it open and gently pressed the tip of the blade in the mortar between the brick she’d landed on and the one beside it. She stepped back and watched him work. If there was anything bricked away within the wall, it had been there so long the mortar surrounding it was as old and set as the rest of it.
She took the flashlight and shone it at the space as he worked, carving the brick out of the wall on all sides. Finally he was done. He gripped it with his fingertips and pulled. It wiggled slightly in his hands, then slowly it came free from the wall with a low scraping sound.
“Whoa,” Jay said. She shone the light into the dark hole behind. He reached for the flashlight. “Want to do the honors?”
“Thanks,” she said. She reached in. The hole was dry, cool and only about six inches deep. She felt something soft yet rough under her fingers and pulled it out slowly.
It was a small burlap bag.
* * *
Jay stood back and watched, wordlessly, as she slowly unwrapped the canvas bag, reached inside and pulled out two items. The first was a metal storage box the size of a Bible with a safe-type combination keypad on the front. The other was a small photo album, the kind with printed four-by-six pictures in plastic sleeves.
His heart stopped. They’d found it—whatever it was that Leia’s mother, Annie, presumably had hidden in the house. But what was it?
He waited as Leia punched a code in the keypad, half expecting the box to suddenly open. But it didn’t. She frowned and tried another code, then another and another, until she’d hit at least twenty. Then she shook her head and held it out to him.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said. “I’ve tried Mom’s birthday, Dad’s, mine and my sisters’, along with their wedding anniversary and the date Mom died. I also tried converting all of our names and middle names to numbers, and all his favorite Bible verses.”
Undercover Protection Page 9
