Identity Crisis

by Rochelle Paige

  “What about your car? If the police talked to my neighbors and they noticed a strange car in the neighborhood, wouldn’t they call it in?” she asked, coming up behind me, her eyes darting around nervously as she looked out the window. “Or what if they saw me when I got home?”

  I reached for her bag with my free hand and gestured for her to lead the way into the garage. “A cab dropped me off and either they didn’t see you or they thought it was a family member. If they’d called it in, the police would have been here by now.”

  “I guess that’s a lucky thing,” she mumbled as I shifted her bag into the hand that held my go bag so I could help her into the passenger seat.

  I walked around to the other side of the car and tossed the bags in the backseat before climbing into the driver’s seat. Smiling to myself at the irritated sound she made as she handed over the keys, I started the engine but kept the lights off as I waited for the garage door to open. Watching the darkened street behind me, I quickly backed out of her drive and got us down the street as fast as possible without squealing the tires.

  “Did you learn to drive in the dark and break into houses while you were a SEAL?” Delia asked, shifting in her seat so she was facing me.

  “Yeah,” I answered, hoping the one-word answer made it clear to her that I wasn’t interested in conversation.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t catch my hint or she just didn’t care because she kept asking questions. “Why?”

  The answer I’d heard my Colonel give enough times over the years that it was now drilled into my head popped out of my mouth. “Y is a crooked letter. Nobody ever got it straight.”

  I hadn’t intended to make her giggle, but damn if I could be unhappy to hear the sound even if I was trying like hell to distance myself from her. “You’re from Vegas?”

  “I live there now.”

  She snorted. “I’m getting the impression you only want me to talk when necessary. Wouldn’t you rather things be a little friendlier than that? We’re going to be together for the next several days, don’t you think it would be a whole lot easier if we found a way to get along well enough so things aren’t awkward between us?”

  “Fine, ask away,” I offered.

  “How old are you?”

  “My birthdate was on my driver’s license.”

  “Darn it, I didn’t even think to look,” she mumbled as she pulled her phone out of her purse and peered at the screen. “Twenty-seven. I would have guessed at least thirty.”

  Fucking A, had she just told me I looked old? “Is that supposed to be an insult?”

  “Oh, please! Like you don’t know how hot you look. I’m sure women all around the world fall all over themselves around you,” she scoffed. “Don’t even try to act offended because I thought you looked older than you really are. It’s the way you hold yourself. You have the confidence of someone older and don’t seem as immature as most of the twenty-something guys I’ve met.”

  “The military will do that to you.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” she sighed. “Are your parents proud of your military service?”

  I hesitated a moment and then surprised myself by answering. “I like to think so, but it’s complicated. My dad died when I was little, leaving my mom to raise me on her own. They were high school sweethearts. Married young. Had me not too long after he finished basic training. The irony is he wasn’t going to re-up when his contract was over. He was all set to move to the IRR so he wouldn’t miss out on more of my childhood. Instead, he came home to us in a body bag.”

  “It must have been hard for your mom when you enlisted.”

  “She wasn’t thrilled, but she understood my decision.” To deflect the conversation away from myself, I lobbed the question back to her. “What about your parents? Are they proud of your writing career?”

  “I’m not sure proud is the right word exactly,” she giggled. “They’re happy about my success but also a little embarrassed I write romance. They had me when they were older, almost in their forties. My mom titters about it with her friends and my dad likes to pretend my books don’t have any sex in them.”

  Hearing the word sex from her lips had my cock twitching in my jeans. I’d never read a romance novel in my life, but knowing she wrote sex scenes had me wanting to crack one of her books open so I could read one of them—maybe get a glimpse into some of her fantasies. Some of her desires. “Maybe I’ll have to give them a try sometime.”

  “Pervert,” she muttered, looking out the window. She finally fell silent just as she managed to catch my undivided attention. The conversation had served its purpose, though. The silence between us was devoid of the awkwardness that had been there initially. It had been replaced with an entirely different tension now—the sexual kind.

  Thirty minutes into the drive, I was kicking myself for not sleeping more while I was on the plane last night. I knew better than that and should have grabbed as much sleep as I could while it was available. Now the rhythmic motion of the tires was making me drowsy. Luckily, we didn’t have much further to go.

  I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and glanced in the rearview mirror again. As far as I could tell, we weren’t being followed, which made me breathe a little easier. When we made it to Damian’s crash pad in the city, my first priority was reviewing all the information Brody had gathered. I fucking hated operating in the dark. It was no way to run a mission, even if it was off-book. I needed to figure out what the fuck had happened to Serena and what kind of shit-storm she’d landed Delia and I smack dab in the middle of.

  ****

  Less than ten minutes later, the door to a penthouse suite in a boutique hotel was closing behind me—courtesy of my boss. Delia’s shocked reaction to our surroundings had me glancing around, trying to see it through her eyes. It wasn’t the type of hotel room most people ever laid eyes on and something I would have been impressed with had I not spent the last year surrounded by even more luxurious surroundings. A big-screen television rested front and center, directly opposite from a black leather couch and matching recliner. A dark grey throw rug covered a large portion of the hardwood floor with a glass-topped coffee table placed in the middle. There was a full kitchen to the left, complete with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. I saw a king sized bed through the door to the right. Another sweep of the room confirmed it was the only bed available.

  “Take the bed. You need to sleep,” I said as I walked into the bedroom and laid her bag on the plush comforter.

  She had followed me into the room but raised an eyebrow at the order. “You’re a lot bigger than I am, frogman. I think it would be better if I took the couch and you took the bed.”

  “I’ve slept in worse places,” I argued. “And it’s going to be a while before I’ll be getting any sleep tonight.”

  I watched her hand as it moved over the dark grey comforter, lightly tracing the cream-colored, horizontal stripes. “The bed’s certainly large enough for two and I’ve been told I’m a sound sleeper.”

  Her hint wasn’t subtle. An image of the two of us entwined together on the bed’s surface flashed through my brain. I was sure she was making the offer out of kindness, wanting to make sure I got a good night’s sleep. Her life as she had known it this morning had been shot to hell. She was in an unknown place, trusting her life to me—a man she had met hours ago when I’d manhandled her after breaking into her home. Yet, here she was, more concerned about my comfort than her own.

  Damn, she was sweet. Too sweet for her own good. A less honorable man wouldn’t hesitate before taking advantage of her softness. She was the kind of woman men dreamed about when they served their country. The reward we hoped to have earned by the time we came back home. And here she was, standing in front of me, offering to share the only available bed—ripe for the plucking.

  “How about you get your pretty little ass in that bed before you fall over and we’ll see where I end up sleeping once I’m done?”

  “
Pretty. Little. Ass?” she gasped.

  She was too damn cute to pull off the outraged look she was most likely aiming for. Even if she had managed it, there was a hint of satisfaction in her gaze giving her away. She definitely liked me thinking of her ass. And based on the heated blush rising up her neck, it was entirely possible she didn’t mind my domineering tone either. It was yet another quality about her that made her damn near irresistible.

  “Bed,” I growled, turning on my heel and striding quickly from the room before I succumbed to temptation and threw her, and myself, onto the bed.

  Gripping the knob in my fist, I shut the door firmly behind me—not slamming it, but using enough force to make Delia think twice before she decided to do something stupid like follow after me. I stood still on the other side of the door, my heart beating wildly as I listened to her muttering before the slamming of the bathroom door let me know she was getting ready for bed. I breathed a sigh of relief before grabbing my go bag and settling in on the couch. I called Brody for a status update as I fired my computer up and connected it to the hotel’s Wi-Fi, pulling up my email so I could see what he’d already sent me.

  “Things have been so damn quiet since we got out, I’d started wishing for trouble just so I could feel alive again. You ever hear me do something as batshit crazy as that again, promise me you’ll kick my sorry ass until I’m thinking straight,” he said before I could even say hello. He sounded more rattled than when he’d woken up in the hospital bed after our last mission.

  “What you found, it’s that bad?”

  “Shit, no. Sorry,” he apologized. “I haven’t been able to figure out the thing with Serena yet. I sent you the background information I gathered on her, her boyfriend, and Delia Sinclair. Serena looks fairly clean, except she lives a much nicer lifestyle than her job should afford her. One that appears to be paid for by the boyfriend, but I haven’t been able to trace the source of his wealth yet. No criminal file on him, but there’s something about him that seems off. I need to do some more digging there.”

  “And Delia?”

  “Clean as a whistle. She doesn’t even have a parking ticket. Pays her bills on time, owns her house free and clear. I even found a purchase for a second home she put in her parent’s name. All the deposits into her account can be traced back to royalties. Not a single sign of anything fishy.” His words confirmed my impression of Delia and my shoulders sagged in relief. “Seriously, Saint. I don’t think I’ve ever run a check on someone that’s come up this clean before. She could steal your nickname if she wanted it, that’s how lily white she is. She sure as hell didn’t deserve to be dragged into this mess by Serena.”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know,” I muttered, once again feeling the weight of the guilt for how I might have to use Delia. She was an innocent, but her striking resemblance to Serena could come in handy down the line. “If I’d been here sooner, Serena would have had other options. Delia would have been clear of the situation and there wouldn’t be a body lying in the morgue right now. One we both know is almost definitely Serena.”

  “Or there could have been two bodies and I’d be on my way into town to avenge your death,” he argued.

  “Killing a defenseless woman is a helluva lot different than taking down a SEAL. If I’d been here, odds are they wouldn’t have been able to touch her.”

  “Except we don’t even know who they are,” Brody retorted. “I know you have to be torn up inside about Serena, but you need to remind yourself that you weren’t the one who got her into this mess. She’s the one who pulled you and an innocent woman into it and didn’t even leave you any clues to help you find a way out of it.”

  “And we only have four days to get to the bottom of this before Delia is going to insist on calling in the cops,” I said before filling him in on the details of my conversation with Delia. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

  “The only easy day was yesterday,” Brody reminded me. He’d always been good at putting things into perspective like that. It was something he’d been doing since the day we met.

  “And every day is a battle,” I agreed.

  “Some battles are harder than others, my brother. When they’re personal, it makes it that much more difficult. Hell, just ask Prez. You wouldn’t believe the shit that went down with Kade. He and D are down in Florida trying to pull his ass out of prison.”

  We’d met Prez, Kade, and D during hell week. They were an interesting trio who had formed a friendship as tight as mine with Brody, one which had strengthened over time as they served on a team together. I’d heard enough stories about Kade to know he’d been a bit of a hothead when he’d joined the Navy, but by the time I’d met him, he’d mellowed out and was on the straight and narrow. “Prison?”

  “Some dumb-fuck jury down in Florida found him guilty of murder.”

  The last I’d heard anything about Kade, he was heading home on a leave of absence because his grandfather, who had raised him, and younger brother were ill. Brody and I were getting ready to head overseas on a mission—our final one. When we’d made it stateside again, we’d had to deal with surgery and rehabilitation plus the news that we’d never be able to serve on a SEAL team again. “When the hell did this happen? Why didn’t we hear about it?”

  “The murder happened while we were radio silent. Kade’s grandfather needed him home so he didn’t re-up. Got into trouble his first day home. The trial just ended a little more than six months ago. I’m not sure why we hadn’t heard the news before this, but he hadn’t been able to get word to Prez and D until now because their mission had been extended. They need some help hacking some company down there and reached out to me last night.”

  “And the hits just keep coming.” It was a tough position to be in, knowing I needed Brody’s expertise to find out what happened to Serena just as much as Kade needed him to clear his name. “I hope you stocked up on those disgusting energy drinks you love so much. It looks like your skills are in high demand.”

  “Aren’t they always,” he joked.

  “Seriously, man. If you need to pull off this to help out Kade, I’ll understand. I don’t like the idea of him living in a square box, paying for a crime we both know he didn’t commit.”

  It wasn’t that I couldn’t believe another SEAL would take a man’s life. With the right motivation, he absolutely would. He would just be smart enough to make sure he didn’t get caught doing it—and sure as shit not on his first day home after he left a career he loved to take care of a dying family member.

  “No way am I going to leave you swinging in the wind, Saint,” he argued. “And you seriously underestimate my skills if you don’t think I’ll be able to handle your thing and crack Consolidated’s system without breaking a sweat.”

  “Just do me a favor and don’t get caught. The last thing I need right now is your brother breathing down my neck because I helped you put your ass in a sling,” I grumbled.

  “What big brother doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

  I laughed at how blind Brody was about Damian sometimes. “You’re bullshitting yourself if you don’t think he knows exactly what type of shit you’re up to even when he’s out of town. Your brother might not be a SEAL, but he would have made one hell of a General.”

  “You looking to trade up in the best friend department?”

  “I don’t know,” I sighed. “Your brother was nice enough to lend me a safe place to stay. Good security, suite on the top floor. Although, it’s only a one bedroom, so I might have to bust his balls about that.”

  Brody’s whistle was shrill, even filtered through the phone line. “Only one bed, huh? You shacking up with an angel on a mission, Saint?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I don’t know, man. I saw her picture and I’m pretty sure you’d much rather be fucking her instead. She looks like she’d be fun in the sack with all those curves.”

  Talking shit about women, even ones we’d banged, wasn’t unusual for us.
When you’d been through hell together, nothing was really off limits. But hearing Brody talk about Delia that way had me seeing red in an instant. “Don’t ever talk about her like that again, Hack.”

  “Holy fucking shit,” he whispered. “Alrighty then. I think I’ll avoid that topic like the plague. But I’ll keep you updated when I get more to go on. My guess is when you’re done reading the reports I sent over, you’ll come to the same conclusion I did.”

  “And what was that?”

  “You gotta find a way to question Serena’s co-workers and see if she was acting weird.”

  I scanned through the report on Serena and found the name of her employer. “Any sign she was close with anyone there?”

  “Nothing in her email or phone records. Looks like she went out to lunch to a Mexican restaurant down the street from work pretty regularly. Receipts show food and drinks for two a few times, so maybe you’ll get lucky during your visit and find someone who knows what was going on in her life before she disappeared.”

  “Thank fuck,” I breathed. Finally, I had a lead to follow. It might be a slim one, but it was more than I’d had all day. “I’ll recon her place of employment tomorrow and find a way in.”

  “I’m sure you will. Send me a text with anything you need me to follow-up. And if it’s anything urgent, call me. I’m sure I’ll be up late tonight getting what Prez needs on Consolidated for Kane.”

  I settled into the couch, making myself comfortable as I read through all the information Brody had managed to pull together. Once I made it through it all, I couldn't help but think, once again, the man was a genius behind the keyboard. I have no doubt he’ll do exactly what he said he would, I thought as my eyes drifted shut.

  Chapter 6

  Delia

  When I’d climbed into bed last night, I was certain I’d never be able to fall asleep. My mind was racing with thoughts about Serena and what might have happened to her, the news story announcing to the world that I’d been murdered, and the breathtakingly hot man who might have climbed into bed with me at any moment. I shouldn’t have been able to roll over and drift off to sleep like I didn’t have a care in the world, but as I opened bleary eyes to a room lit by the sun streaming in through the blinds, I realized that’s exactly what I’d done.