Text copyright ©2017 by the Author.
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Hidden Asset
An Omega Team /MacKay Destiny Crossover
By
Kate Richards
Edited by Laura Garland
Cover by Laura Garland
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Also by Kate Richards
Dear Reader,
Thank you for purchasing this book. As well as being a contribution to The Omega Team Kindle World, this is also book eight in MacKay Destiny, a series I share with the fabulous L.J. Garland. We hope you’ll enjoy our tales of this Northern California family as it crosses through several Kindle Worlds as well as an upcoming novel. From Chief Mac and all the gang,
XOXO
Kate Richards
Hidden Asset
Jenna Gibson MacKay has been widowed for two years. A fact she’s just learned to accept. But the man at the door may change everything. What does a woman do when the guy she’s mourned turns out to be a little less dead than she thought? Does she take him back or send him down the road?
Gordon MacKay went dark to save his wife from a threat she never knew existed. The computer software engineer was working on a secret government project as well as helping out The Omega Team when Eastern European hackers forced him to fake his death. But the hackers are back and threatening everything he holds dear. If he and Scott and Caroline, other Omega Team operatives cannot stop them, the criminals may blow up a thousand wedding guests. But how can they be stopped when no one has seen them and nobody knows what they want? And now that he’s returned from the dead, can he convince his wife to trust him enough to let him stay?
Chapter One
With only a couple of days remaining before the double wedding that had brought every MacKay in the country, and some from beyond, home to Cedar Valley, Jenna Gibson MacKay’s Foothill Inn was filled to the rafters. Even with every MacKay relation and friend offering their spare rooms and sofas to visitors, the motel by the highway flashed its No Vacancy sign as well—not that she had a flashing sign at the inn, only a tasteful handcrafted wooden one. By Saturday, there’d be tents filling relatives’ backyards, and some late arrivals would be forced to stay in Sacramento, over an hour away.
Served them right, she supposed, for not making reservations. As an innkeeper, Jenna’s pet peeve was people who showed up at her door assuming there’d be an empty bed in the attic or somewhere. Old holiday movies did those in the hospitality industry no favors whatsoever by indicating such things.
No, most hotels, inns, and B&Bs did not have a never-rented, but nauseatingly cute, room tucked under the eaves for just such an occasion. Her attic area consisted of a crawl space where she stored holiday decorations and a few boxes and trunks of her late husband’s grandmother’s things. Unless someone wanted to sleep on a dusty plank laid over open joists, her “attic” was not for them.
Straightening the local attraction brochures on the polished table built by Gordon shortly before his death, Jenna silently fumed. Although she did not usually wait up for late arrivals, tonight she’d made an exception. For Grey Holden, co-owner of The Omega Team and a good friend of Gordon’s, she’d do just about anything. Including force two MacKay cousins who had made reservations months in advance to double up in one room. Luckily, the pair of elderly ladies treated her breach of professionalism as a lucky happenstance and had settled in to share gossip and a pot of Earl Grey tea hours earlier. Jenna had added a plate of wedding cookies to their tray in gratitude.
She couldn’t explain to them that she’d given the other room to the only visitor to Cedar Valley this week who did not have an invitation to Kat and Bridget’s double wedding. At least, she didn’t think he did. In typical fashion, she’d only been given information on a “need to know” basis, which, apparently, did not include her guest’s name. But after a day that had begun well before dawn, filling in for her breakfast cook who was a bridesmaid and therefore unavailable to work the rest of the week, then chasing after the details of a full house and preparing to cater the rehearsal dinner, Jenna was dead on her feet. The grandfather clock in the entryway bonged eleven times. She had to get up at four. Even for Grey, she wouldn’t try to function on fewer than five hours of sleep.
He had been good to her after Gordon’s death, though. Sure, the MacKay clan helped, too, but they were his family and also deep in grief at the loss of one so young and vital. Her own family lived hundreds of miles away. Grey showed up on her doorstep and took over, walking her through the funeral arrangements and dealing with the lawyers and the civil suit.
She hadn’t wanted to file one, but he’d insisted the company’s negligence and poor employment practices led to their exhausted tomato truck driver plowing right across the center divider into Gordon’s motorcycle. They had to be taught a lesson. She could stop them from taking another life. Put that way, she’d seen no option. He’d handled it all for her, leaving her to grieve in peace.
But, despite her gratitude, she needed to get some sleep, or she’d be putting salt in the sugar bowl in the morning and breaking eggs into the overnight honey-pecan oatmeal in the slow cooker.
Just as she reached for the sign on the front door to flip it to Closed-Late arrivals please ring bell, she heard the distinctive “potato potato” sound of a Harley Davidson, and her heart clenched. For a split second, her exhausted mind leapt in reaction as it had every night when Gordon returned from work.
But it wasn’t Gordon. It would never be Gordon, ever again. Her beautiful, kind, brilliant, amazing man lay in the Cedar Valley cemetery, under a headstone with her name and date of birth also carved on it, next to his, waiting for the final date when she joined him. For the first year, she’d gone to the site every day, feeling as if he was truly there instead of merely the deteriorating remains of her high school sweetheart turned lover turned husband...turned “loss.” The loss everyone was sorry for, as in “sorry for your loss.”
Two years later, she didn’t go every day, but she did go every week. Sometimes twice. She told him about her days as she had at night after they’d made love, recounted the small details nobody else would be interested in. Shared her feelings.
Her friends tried their best to distract her, invited her to parties and outings, shopping trips to Old Sacramento and weekend getaways to the coast, but she hadn’t been able to summon the energy to do more than work hard and sleep. Even eating, until very recently, took monumental effort.
She’d always wanted to be a size eight, but not for this reason. And Gordon’s admiration for every curve had taken a less-than-confident girl and helped her become a proud, confident woman. As soon as Kat and Brigit got back from their honeymoons, she’d take them up on their shopping spree offers. Her clothes hung on her, loose and unflattering.
Shaking herself, Jenna smoothed her hair and brushed away the tea
rs that remained too close to the surface. Although the inn was her project, and Gordon had worked in a computer lab, developing software so high security he couldn’t even tell her about it, touches of his love for her, like the foyer table and the cedar rocking chair on the terrace outside her room, remained. They used to joke he’d quit his job one day and become a full-time woodworker. When they could afford to live without his income. And she’d done her damndest to make the inn pay so that day would come sooner. If only she had...he wouldn’t have been on that stupid bike, commuting to Sacramento when the tomato truck driver, on his third sixteen-hour shift in four days, fell asleep.
A clomping of boots on the wide front porch made her heartbeat speed up again. Could the fates be more unkind? She’d thought she’d gotten past the stage where similarities could trigger a reaction. For months, a glimpse of anyone his height and build drove her to search for him in crowds. A tiny portion of her brain surfaced daily to try to convince her he couldn’t really be gone. Suppressing that foolish thought for the millionth time, Jenna pasted a smile on her face and opened the door, ready to scold her late arrival.
One glance at his tight red curls, dark-blue eyes, and the tiny Celtic cross in his left ear, and the world began to spin. She grabbed for something to stop her from falling but only managed to take the little table and its load of brochures down with her when she hit the floor. A crueler trick had never been played on anyone than the widow MacKay.
“Jenna.” Gordon lurched forward as his wife crumpled in a heap on the floor, that stupid table he’d made for her landing next to her. “Jenna!” Damn, Grey was right. He should never have come back, especially not like this. Dropping to his knees at her side, he continued to call her name. He sat cross-legged and lifted her over his lap, stroking her satin cheek. She hadn’t changed much, except maybe lost a few pounds. More than a few. The pictures Grey’s contact had sent had not done justice to her weight loss. Damn. “My poor baby. What did I do to you?”
All his decisions had made sense until this moment when he held her pale, limp form. Now, nothing did. He’d left to protect her and returned for the same reason, but maybe it would have been better to take her somewhere far away to start with. How could he have asked her to live underground somewhere, far from her beloved inn and all her friends, and both of their families? Not to mention the threat had international roots and could follow them almost anywhere. No, the only way he’d been able to guarantee her safety was to be “dead.”
Even most of The Omega Team did not know that Timothy Baker who had worked from home doing computer research, thinly veiled hacking, and developing some new software for the past two years was Gordon MacKay. Everything in his HR file masked his real identity, his past, and his current location. They’d planned to keep it like that permanently, until the current crisis arose.
He had one chance to fix things, to make it right and eliminate the threat once again rearing its ugly head. This time, it menaced more than him. More than the two of them. This time, the ugliness hovered over everyone in Cedar Valley. The entire MacKay clan gathered for the weddings of two of Fire Chief Mac MacKay’s grandchildren, unaware of the danger swirling around them. His family and oldest friends’ lives were in danger
He had three days to fix it—he and a few other Omega operatives stationed around town. Tomorrow, he’d go talk to Fire Chief Mac and fill him in on the situation. If he could not contain the threat, they’d have to cancel the wedding. Just try telling nearly a thousand wedding guests related by blood or friendship to go home with no explanation. Worse...try keeping the secret from that many MacKays.
Shifting his unconscious wife in his arms, Gordon hungrily took in the sight he’d denied himself for so long. Wisps escaped the blonde hair twisted in a bun at her nape, floating in a cloud around her face, softening the new lines bracketing her eyes. Lines she shouldn’t have at thirty, lines his disappearance had put there. Nobody had to tell him that. And, as he’d already noted, she’d lost a lot of weight. Funny, she’d always fussed about her size, while he loved every bit of her from her rosy cheeks to her full breasts and double-handful bottom. With her small waist, she had a pinup girl figure he never tired of looking at, and touching.
Her new figure was almost supermodel thin, and every bit as beautiful to him. Because she was his Jenna. He’d love her when they were ninety. Even if she threw him out, which she probably would, when she awoke.
For the first time since the opportunity to return occurred, he doubted the intelligence of re-entering her life. He reached into his pocket, fingertips grazing his cell phone. One call and Jenna would open her eyes to another face. One of the operatives sitting in the temporary headquarters off Main Street could slip in and take his place. With the unlikelihood of Gordon’s being present at all, Scott could easily convince her she’d been mistaken. They even looked somewhat alike. Grey, in his wisdom, had set it up that way. The bastard.
A single tear streaked down her cheek, and he watched it travel over her pale skin to cling to her chin. How much more pain could he cause her? Telling himself it had been for her benefit served no purpose, fixed nothing. Time had begun to heal her, according to their source. How could he justify ruining what she’d built through so much suffering?
His loneliness for the past two years was not her fault, but hers was certainly his. Closing his fingers over the phone, Gordon drew it from his pocket, the weight in his chest so heavy he could barely draw breath. If he left now, he’d never be back. Bending to kiss her cheek, he closed his eyes, prepared to bid her farewell.
“Gordon?” Her hoarse whisper sliced through his grief with the force of a dull knife. “Oh my God. How?”
He opened his eyes to see her watching him, white as a sheet but conscious. Relief mingled with a little shame that he didn’t have to do what his conscience insisted was right. Before she woke, he could have stepped away. Now, he had to play it out. “It’s a long story.” And one he couldn’t tell her quite yet.
“I can only imagine,” she said, her tone so flat he feared the worst.
“Are you all right?” He patted her arms and legs until she shrugged him away. “You didn’t hurt yourself when you fainted?”
Sitting up straight, she patted her hair down, attempting to push it back into place. “I think I’m fine. But I should be asking you that. Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
He tried to read her tone. Once he’d have known what she felt from it, but that was not now. The few inches between them on the area rug they’d bought in Mexico on their honeymoon might as well have been an ocean for all the connection he sensed. What had he expected, though? Welcome home, honey? No explanation needed? Holding her gaze, he spoke quietly. “I’m not dead.”
“No kidding.” Icicles dripped from her words, chilling him to the bone. Every day of their life together, from the first time he wandered into Desserts du Jour to pick up some muffins to take to the office, heat had radiated between he and Jenna. Cold never entered the picture. Maybe she wouldn’t forgive him, even after he explained.
“You know I’d never have left you without a good reason, Jenna.” He hated to beg, but what alternative did he have? She deserved so much more. The security the “lawsuit” money provided could not make up for his leaving when he’d promised her forever. “I missed you every day.”
She stared through him, thinking, but what? Was she about to ask him to leave? “Well”—she chewed on her lower lip—“it’s funny how I wished so much to see you again. Now, I don’t know what to think.”
“I love you.” What a stupid thing to say. Did he expect her to reply I love you, too?
“Okay.” At least she didn’t tell him she hated him. “If it’s not too much trouble, maybe we can take this somewhere else? I can’t imagine how I could explain to any of my guests why I’m sitting in the middle of the floor with my dead husband.”
Ouch.
Rising, he held out a hand, but she ignored it and pushed to her feet. “Come on.
” Without looking over her shoulder, she started toward the back of the building. What would happen when they got there, he had no idea. Only that his time to state his case was limited, and the speech he’d practiced for two years would not serve after all. It had seemed so smart and logical until she stood in the open doorway and his sins rose up to meet him. Those words he’d repeated in front of the mirror addressed his guilt but not her pain. And he had to keep things quiet a bit longer, for her sake.
His phone held pictures of her, sent by the contact. None of them reflected the waves of suffering she emitted now. Perhaps discovering his betrayal triggered it. Damn. Why had he attempted a reunion at all? The door to her—their—room yawned open halfway down the hallway, but she didn’t stop there. Of course not. Why would she?
“Coffee,” she said, striding through the swinging door into the kitchen. “I plan to stay awake through the whole long story.” If she could manage snark, maybe he stood a chance. Moving to the cupboard, Jenna glanced at him over her shoulder. “I’m inclined to throw you out. You’re dead. That is, you were dead. And I’ve mourned a man who cared so little for me and for our life together he walked away without a word.”
She selected a bag of coffee beans, espresso rather than his favorite Sumatra, which sat right next to it, and dumped it into the top of a stainless coffee grinder/brewing machine then pressed a series of buttons. When he’d left, she’d still been using a Mr. Coffee and a small freestanding grinder. What else had changed?
Chapter Two
Jenna set two mugs on the counter and added cream and sugar to one for herself, cream only for him, and then brought them over to the prep table where her husband—not her late husband but her back-from-the-dead husband—Gordon sat munching on an oatmeal cookie as if he’d never left. Sliding the cup toward him, she restrained herself from shoving it hard enough to land in his lying, betraying lap.
The Omega Team: Hidden Asset (Kindle Worlds Novella) (MacKay Destiny Book 8) Page 1
