by Mallory Kane
“I am a secret agent or something, and I told you to keep your voice down.”
“I don’t want to keep my voice down. I want to scream, but I generally try to restrain myself in public places.” She gritted her teeth. “Now, do you think you could do me the courtesy of introducing yourself?”
He rubbed his face in a weary gesture, then leaned toward her. She resisted the impulse to retreat as a faint pleasant scent of soap and the outdoors filled her nostrils and his breath tickled her ear.
“Jack O’Hara, special agent,” he whispered. “Your fiancé.”
The quiet, ominous words sent a thrill of fear through her as the plane taxied toward the runway, moving her toward the point of no return.
This stranger really was going home with her. She clenched her fists tighter and swallowed against the panicked constriction in her throat.
“Relax,” Jack O’Hara commanded softly.
Desperate to hang on to whatever control she could, she lashed out at him. “Where have you been?” she whispered fiercely. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t we supposed to meet yesterday? Weren’t we scheduled to get married or at least pretend to, this morning?” The irony of the time frame didn’t escape her. Meet yesterday, marry today.
“I got tied up with a case. Just got in from D.C.”
The weariness she’d already glimpsed in his manner had crept into his voice. He sounded exhausted.
Stop making excuses for him. She sat back and folded her arms. “Oh well, that explains it,” she drawled. “You were holed up with the bad guys and had your secretary call me? This sounds like the beginning of a great relationship.”
She felt a little better. Clean, righteous anger washed away her panic. She let the anger grow, let it reach out beyond the FBI agent to encompass her great-uncle.
Uncle Virgil had manipulated her into this scheme to ferret out a killer she was working very hard at believing didn’t exist. And naturally, he’d found the only FBI agent in the entire world who looked like he came from Hollywood rather than Quantico and who wasn’t a stickler for routine and order and, by the way, appropriate FBI dress.
“Sorry I was late, but until a few hours ago I was lying in a ditch using a cell phone to negotiate with a man holding two kids hostage.”
The plane shuddered over a seam in the tarmac at that moment. Holly’s throat closed up again and her jaw dropped open. “Oh,” she whispered. His matter-of-fact description of what must have been a tense, deadly ordeal brought the reality of her situation into sharp focus.
He was a real FBI agent. He dealt in life and death on a daily basis.
She thought about the picture his words painted. “Did everything turn out okay?”
He nodded shortly. “Yeah. This time.”
His flat tone sent a shiver down her spine. Yesterday he’d been in a battle to save children, and today he was here for a reason she couldn’t put words to. Deep inside, where she didn’t want to go, a niggling little voice whispered, What if it was all true?
What if there really was someone in her hometown who had killed her husband and her fiancé and even one of her uncle’s police detectives because of his obsession with her?
Jack O’Hara thought so. That’s why he was here.
The sick feeling that had enveloped her four weeks ago when the latest note appeared rose like bile in her throat. Three unrelated events, years apart, with only one common link…her. It was too bizarre. But then, so was sitting next to an FBI agent whose assignment was to pretend to be her husband.
The monitor suspended just in front of them blinked to life, and an annoyingly cheerful flight attendant began the litany of safety features. Holly pretended indifference like everyone else, but she gripped the armrests until her knuckles turned white, and hung on every word.
“Remember that the nearest exit may be behind you,” the voice droned.
Holly glanced quickly over her shoulder, comforted by the Exit sign so nearby, and relaxed slightly, stretching her cramped fingers.
Closing her eyes, she tried to concentrate on the new theory of muscle regeneration presented at the seminar, the ding in her windshield she needed to get fixed…anything but the fact that she was about to be hurtled through the air at the mercy of a metal box with engines bigger than her car while sitting beside a man she’d met only moments ago. A man who was going home with her to live in her house as her husband.
She glanced down at his hands that would soon take hers and slip a ring onto her finger. They were large and capable looking, with long well-shaped fingers. The nails were neatly trimmed. His coat sleeve had slid up a bit, and his wrist looked kind of bony, but strong. She glanced up at his face, scrutinizing the hollow cheeks and the shadows under his eyes. Because of the hostage situation, he must not have slept in over twenty-four hours. Was that why he looked so drained?
“Well? Do I pass muster?”
She started, realizing she was doing it again. They’d hardly met and she was already drawing him into her world as someone else to worry about, to feel responsible for.
He smiled wryly at her. The curve of his mouth and the remembered feel of his firm lips against her cheek made her tremble inside like a schoolgirl. But his unsettling eyes, shadowed as old glacier ice, chilled her.
She felt her face growing warm. “You don’t look much like an FB—”
He touched her mouth lightly. “Remember what I said?”
Nervously, she moistened her lips with her tongue and accidentally tasted his fingers. The soapy clean flavor of his skin sent shivers up her spine. He tasted like a man.
He jerked his hand away.
She bit her lip, embarrassed. “Sorry,” she said, then realized her apology could be taken more than one way. “No more mention of…that.”
She sat there for a minute, staring at her hands twisted together in her lap, and hating the feeling of helplessness that enveloped her like a shroud. “This is so foreign to me. I don’t know how to act. What to say. How is this supposed to work, anyway?”
“Did you recognize anyone on the plane?”
She frowned at his seemingly unrelated question, but he just leveled that icy stare at her.
“No. No one.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.” She glanced around at the passengers, acutely reminded of how his gaze had scrutinized every face as he’d walked toward her. So different from the way she had entered. She’d been tense and preoccupied. “I really didn’t notice.”
“You need to.”
His voice was low and hard. It rumbled through her like faraway thunder, a promise of a future threat.
“You need to be aware of everything around you all the time. You need to observe, analyze, catalog the information in your brain. The killer could be your grocery clerk, your best friend, your pastor.”
Denial leaped up to shield her from the horrifying possibility of his words. She took a shaky breath. “I can’t believe you’re really going undercover as my husband. I think my great-uncle Virgil overreacted to the notes. He’ll be seventy-three his next birthday and he’s under a lot of stress right now. He’s always been too protective of my sister and me. Those notes could just be from some sick person who wants attention. This is all Danny’s fault.” Saying his name made her heart ache. Poor Danny.
Jack stiffened beside her. “Danny?”
“Detective Danny Barbour. When he moved to Maze back last September, his first case was my fiancé’s disappearance. Danny had the notion there was some connection between Ralph’s disappearance and my husband’s death. But Brad died in an accident six years ago. And Ralph probably just changed his mind about marrying me and couldn’t tell me to my face. Now poor Danny’s gone.” She shook her head as a lump of fear lodged in her chest.
“Why would your fiancé change his mind? Were you two having problems?”
“No. Not at all. I guess I was trying to think of a different reason for him to disappear, other than—”
<
br /> Saying it all out loud made the idea that the deaths were related more real, and Holly did not want to face that possibility. “What if it’s all just a tragic coincidence? You’d be wasting your time. You might not even need to be here.”
“That decision’s been made,” he snapped. “Your case has been turned over to the Division.”
“What division?”
“The FBI’s Division of Unsolved Mysteries cooperates with local law enforcement on unsolved cases. Usually homicide.”
Holly processed that information. “So what about your hostage situation? That wasn’t a homicide, was it?”
He stared past her for an instant, his eyes focused inward. Then his gaze brushed her face briefly. “Yes. The father killed his wife several years ago and stole his kids from their grandparents. We caught up with him yesterday.”
“Oh.” He kept blindsiding her with horrific visions, made all the more sinister by his matter-of-fact recital.
She didn’t like anything about this scheme her uncle and the FBI had dreamed up. Jack O’Hara was obviously a dangerous man, experienced in dealing with atrocities she could not even imagine, and now he was telling her she was stuck with him.
Feminine steel crept into her voice. “So you think you’re going to take over my life because you’ve decided this is an ‘unsolved mystery.’”
Just then the loudspeaker announced that the plane had been cleared for takeoff.
Holly tightened her seat belt with trembling hands. She hated the loss of control she always felt in an airplane, but she couldn’t do anything about that. However, losing control of her life to this FBI agent was something she was not going to allow. She could take care of herself. She always had.
It infuriated her that Jack O’Hara was using scare tactics on her, with his talk of killers. Danny had hinted that her husband’s death and her fiancé’s disappearance might not be accidental. He’d thought the notes she’d received were from an obsessed admirer, but so far as she knew, he’d never found any proof.
“Sweetheart, you need to relax.” Jack took her hand as the plane picked up speed on the runway.
The rough warmth of his touch surprised her, as did her reaction. As irritating as he was, as unsettling as his reason was for being here, his hand cradling hers made her feel safe and protected. It was a vaguely familiar feeling, a memory wafting across her mind like an almost recognized odor. Her tall, handsome father holding her hand as they walked into church each Sunday. Holly had always felt proud and happy, but most of all she had felt safe.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, staring at his long fingers wrapped around hers.
“You’re afraid of flying.”
“How do you know that?”
He squeezed her hand, rubbing his thumb over its back. “You’d be surprised what all I know.”
What was that supposed to mean? How much had Uncle Virgil told him? Everything? She didn’t like the idea that her great-uncle and this stranger had discussed intimate details of her life.
“If you’re trying to make me feel better, you’re not succeeding,” she muttered.
“You like to be in control, and when you’re a passenger in an airplane, you can’t be. You’ve felt that way ever since your parents died in a small plane crash when you were a child.” He glanced past her at the window. “That’s why you like the aisle seat. You feel safer there, more in control. It’s why you take on so much responsibility.”
She sent him a suspicious glance. He had just echoed her own thoughts. Somewhere along the line, while she’d been seeking a way to feel safe and in control of her life, her great-uncle and great-aunt, her sister and the people of Maze had begun to depend on her, and she had accepted the responsibility, hoping for their protection and caring in return. But the hollow fear that had been planted inside her when her parents were killed had never gone away.
“Thanks so much for the ten-second recap of my life, and especially for mentioning crashing. So why did you insist on the aisle seat? Are you afraid of flying, too?”
The corner of his mouth quirked upward. “No. There are too many things you can control to spend time worrying about the things you can’t. You’re my assignment. I always take your vulnerable side.”
Sometimes that feels like every side, she thought, trying to extricate her hand from his grasp, but he wouldn’t let go.
“You’re creeping me out,” she said.
“It’s my job to know all about you, to protect you.”
“That’s what’s creeping me out.”
JACK O’HARA SAW the poorly disguised fear in Holly Frasier’s eyes as she licked her lips. He had to fight to keep his gaze from lingering on her mouth. He ran the pad of his thumb along the back of her hand. Then he realized what he was doing, and stopped.
He hated to admit it, even to himself, but for the first time in his career, his assignment had him disconcerted. From the instant he’d first laid eyes on her, he’d been off his pace. He’d like to attribute it to exhaustion and the lingering pain in his shoulder, but he knew he’d be lying.
He just hoped it hadn’t shown.
He’d been at this a long time, and not much surprised him anymore. But Holly had. She wasn’t at all what he’d expected. The picture her great-uncle had sent him didn’t do her justice. It must have been taken several years ago, possibly right after her husband died. Maybe it was the only one her uncle had.
In the photo she appeared small, fragile, with a lost look on her face. A sad look. She was thin, and her brown hair was carelessly caught in a ponytail.
Her expression in the photo reminded him of his mother, of other stalking victims who lived their lives in terror of the next event in the nightmare that wouldn’t end. It was his job to take that terror away, to give them back their lives. On a visceral level, he knew it was more than his job, it was his passion. But he kept the passion tightly leashed, because he also knew that emotion crippled judgment.
The woman sitting beside him was nothing like her picture. She wasn’t thin or carelessly groomed. Her short-sleeved sweater revealed well-defined arms and shoulders and round, delectable-looking breasts. Her hair was thick and chestnut-brown, as were the delicately straight, no-nonsense eyebrows above her amber-shot brown eyes.
He hadn’t recognized her until she’d looked up and he’d spotted a hint of the sadness that shone so strongly out of the photo. It had disappeared immediately, replaced by wary curiosity, then irritation. But for an instant her brandy-colored eyes had reflected the look of fear that haunted his dreams.
Her fingers tightened around his, wrenching his thoughts back to the task of distracting her during takeoff.
“So, Holly, you surprise me. I thought you’d be less…”
She bristled. “Feminine?”
Oops. He’d spoken carelessly and obviously struck a nerve. What had he been about to say? Less self-assured? Less attractive? Less of a woman? He shrugged.
“I’m a physical therapist, not a Russian weightlifter.” She glared at him.
He cocked a brow at her. “You are definitely not a Russian weightlifter,” he agreed. Then, too aware of her nearness, he shifted and casually let go of her hand. “We’re in the air.”
Her eyes widened. “I didn’t even notice.” She paused. “Thanks for taking my mind off the plane.”
“You looked like you needed a distraction.”
She smiled, and Jack stared. She really was lovely. He was puzzled by his reaction to her. She wasn’t his type at all. She was a little too tall, a little too physical for him. He’d never been one for serious relationships, but when he dated, he generally gravitated toward petite blondes. Women who looked like they needed protection.
Still, no matter how capable and strong Holly looked, she was also human, fragile, female, and being victimized by a stalker.
A flight attendant held out a bag of peanuts, and he reached without thinking. A painful twinge in his right shoulder made him groan. He took the peanuts
with his left hand.
“Did you just groan?” Holly asked.
“No.” Damn it. He was dead tired and he’d been lying in ditches, driving, and flying in planes for the past twenty-four hours. His shoulder was stiff and sore.
She touched his arm. “Yes, you did. What’s wrong with your shoulder?”
Jack shrugged off her touch. He didn’t need sympathy. Just sleep. Being even marginally handicapped by injury pissed him off. “Slight on-the-job injury.”
“Oh.”
Another wide-eyed “oh.” He shifted his gaze away, uncomfortably sure that she’d picked up on what he hadn’t said. The on-the-job injury was a bullet wound.
Why did he get the feeling it wasn’t going to be easy to pretend to be married to her? He’d be happier if she weren’t quite so attractive or so determined to take care of herself. That combination called up a primal urge in him—the urge to protect.
Who was he kidding? The urge to procreate. He clamped his jaw and swept those thoughts from his head. His lack of sleep was eating into his usual detachment.
This was a job, he told himself, a job like any other.
Even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t completely true. Sure, he was the Division’s expert on stalkings and kidnappings, the logical choice to handle this case. But the reason he was here was because he owed Danny Barbour. When Danny called four months ago, Jack had been in the middle of another case, the case that had gotten him shot.
By the time he’d recovered enough to respond to Danny’s call, it was too late—Danny was dead. He’d let his best friend down, and now he was here to make it up to him.
It hadn’t been easy to convince his boss that he was ready to be back on the job. Special Agent in Charge Mitch Decker made it his business to worry about everyone under his command, whether they needed worrying about or not. And he had made it very clear what he thought of Jack’s determination to take this case.
