by Lexi Blake
Two weeks later
He was feeling pretty good for a guy who’d lost part of his liver. Of course he’d gained something else. He’d gained a wife.
He’d married River the previous weekend after he’d been given the go-ahead to actually get out of bed. He’d needed a cane to prop himself up, but he’d stood in Big Tag’s backyard and said his vows in front of all his friends and their canine ring bearer. That had probably been a mistake since Buster had taken off in the middle of the hastily put together ceremony. Only the Taggart twins had saved the day, corralling the dog and finding the wedding rings in their sandbox.
It had been a good day. They’d found out River’s ex, Matt, had pled to multiple charges and would spend time in jail. They’d started giving money back to his victims. He’d learned nothing felt better in the world than doing good with his wife by his side.
He glanced down at his ring. Something about it gave him incredible comfort. He needed it now because he was sitting in the conference room at McKay-Taggart waiting for Adam Miles to come up from his office downstairs.
He was about to find out who he was. Or rather who he had been.
River put a hand on his. “Are you ready for this?”
He was. He was ready because his past didn’t matter. His future was sitting right beside him. “I’m good, baby. I’m more concerned about Dr. Walsh.”
He’d spent the last week researching Rebecca Walsh. She was a wunderkind neurologist. At the age of thirty, she was one of the top researchers in her field, but then she’d graduated from Harvard at the age of fifteen and Johns Hopkins three years after that. She was an honest to goodness Doogie Howser, and she might also be responsible for the worst parts of Dr. McDonald’s work. Her fingerprints were all over McDonald’s writings. They had authored several papers together and Hope had often called on the young Becca Walsh for help.
Dr. Walsh now worked with a pharmaceutical company in Toronto and her work sounded eerily like McDonald’s. She was researching the ways the brain made connections and how it stored memories. She was researching how those connections were broken. Oh, she said she was working to find a cure for Alzheimer’s and other degenerative neurological diseases, but Jax wasn’t sure. There were questions about her finances that needed to be answered.
And then there was the fact that Hope McDonald had sent Dr. Walsh a package right before her death. He’d hacked the good doctor’s email. McDonald had asked Walsh to keep it for her and told her it was important.
He would like to see that package.
The door opened and Adam Miles walked in carrying a box, followed by another man, a man Jax hadn’t expected to see.
“Hello, Ten.” Jax stood up and held out a hand. “I thought you were in Africa.”
He’d met Tennessee Smith and his wife, Faith, several times while he was staying at The Garden. Dr. Faith Smith had been a revelation. He’d been reluctant to meet the woman since she was Hope McDonald’s sister and daughter to Senator Hank McDonald, who had known and approved of his psychotic daughter’s experiments.
Faith was different. Faith was kind and patient. She worked for charities around the world. It had been hard at first, but he’d had to admit that she wasn’t her sister.
Tennessee Smith was a former CIA operative. He’d been crucial to the mission that ended in Jax and the rest of the Lost Boys being liberated.
He owed Ten.
Ten shook his hand and introduced himself to River. Adam sat down at the head of the table, a mysterious smile on his face. He placed the box on the table to the side.
That smile made Jax’s gut tighten. That smile told him Adam knew something.
He sat back down. “How is Faith?”
Now that he was here, he was beyond nervous. It wouldn’t change anything. He was married to River and he wasn’t going to leave her. If he found out he had a wife somewhere, he would try to do right by her, but he wasn’t the man she’d married. If he had a kid…he would do everything he could to have some kind of a relationship. God, what would River think if he was a bad guy in his former life?
Like Tucker might have been. They weren’t planning on mentioning Dr. Reasor to Tucker, but Adam and his group were looking into the mysterious man who was mentioned in several of the computer files River had smuggled out on that USB drive.
He had no idea how Tucker would take it if he turned out to be Dr. Reasor.
He shoved that worry aside for another day. They had plenty to do before they headed to Canada. In a few weeks they would all be in Toronto setting up for a new mission. Even River would play a part.
“Faith is waiting out in the lobby,” Ten said in his slow Southern accent.
“Why doesn’t she come in?” He started to get up. He didn’t mind Faith sitting in on this meeting.
River put a hand on his arm. “Give it a minute, babe. You need to know a few things before you make that decision.”
River knew? He turned to her. “He’s already told you?”
Adam nodded. “I wanted her to be aware of what I’m about to tell you. Your past is complicated, and it might be upsetting.”
River’s hand slid over his, tangling their fingers together. “It’s going to be okay. I think you’re going to be fine with this, Jax. I think, in some ways, what’s in that box will give you peace. And how you handle the other news, well, I’m with you any way you want to go, but remember we only get so much time here. We need all the love and family we can get.”
What the hell did that mean? “Just tell me.”
Adam opened the box and pulled out a picture. He slid it across the table. “Your name is Jason Reynolds. You were born to Pamela Reynolds thirty-two years ago in a tiny town in rural Oregon.”
Thirty-two. He was thirty-two years old.
He stared down at the picture. A pretty blonde woman was holding up a tiny baby boy and beaming for the camera. That woman was in love with her child. It was there in her eyes.
And his eyes watered. His mother. His mother had loved him.
He’d said he didn’t want to know, but now that the picture was in front of him, he had to know. He’d had a life. “What did she do? What other family do I have?”
He could have brothers and sisters. He could have aunts and uncles.
Adam held up a hand to slow him down. “First off, let’s put your mind at ease about a couple of things. You aren’t married. No kids.”
He sighed in relief. He’d hated the thought of someone out there he owed responsibility to. “I’m married now.” He touched the photo as Adam laid out several more. This was his life, laid out in photographs. There was him as a grinning toddler, his mom holding him up and pointing to the camera. There he was wearing a Little League uniform, his smile gap toothed. Photo after photo chronicled his life. “Where did you get these? How did you find out my name? Is she alive? I’m sorry. I know I’m asking too many questions, but my mind is a little blown right now.”
Adam sat back. “No problem. I can answer all of those for you. The drive River had in her pocket contained a ton of personal files including photographs, but those look personal, too. We have to keep going through them. She had several scholarly papers she was working on and all of her email correspondence. She was likely trying to back them up when she was forced out of the facility. The file contained emails and private thoughts. Unfortunately, it didn’t contain her formulary, but that’s why you’re investigating Dr. Walsh. The emails indicate they were working closely together. However, there was enough information on the files River smuggled out to extrapolate what happened to you. It was never said outright in her emails, but I know how McDonald found you and why she chose you for her experiments. Your mother was born on the East Coast. She was an only child. She went to Georgetown and majored in political science. From all the information I’ve gathered, I believe she intended to go to law school, but she took a year off to intern in DC.”
“What happened?” He shook his head, the truth completely evident.
“I happened.”
“Yes,” Adam agreed. “Your mother left DC a few months before her internship was up. She had one remaining family member, an aunt, who lived in Oregon. Your mom moved out there, had you, and opened a business. She ran a nursery. Pam’s Plants and Nursery. She won small business owner of the year three years in a row.”
“That’s why I know so much about flowers,” he murmured, his eyes on the photos. She was lovely, his mother.
“I suspect so,” Ten continued. “I’m sorry to say but she died in a car accident when you were eighteen. You went into the Marines.”
“Where was my dad in all of this?” There were no men in the pictures. Just him and his mom.
“That’s the complicated part,” Ten said. “There’s no father listed on your birth certificate, but the hospital bill was paid in full, and not by your mother. It was paid for in cash.”
“That’s unusual.” Jax was starting to see an emerging pattern. “So my mom had an affair in DC, likely with a married man. I’m not going to judge her. She was young. She was probably vulnerable. I’m surprised she kept me.”
“I believe there was some pressure on her not to,” Adam allowed. “But she did. From what I can tell, she took a check for thirty thousand dollars from a DC lawyer and she left and never returned. She raised you and by all accounts, she was happy.”
A terrible thought hit him. “Was the car accident really an accident?”
Ten waved that off. “There were witnesses. It was raining and an oncoming truck lost control. It was truly an accident, Jax. You mourned her, but you went into the Marines and you had a good career there. I’ve got your records. You were well liked by your fellow Marines and your commanding officers. In fact one of them kept this box. Before your last deployment, you decided to give up the apartment you were living in. He said you were going to figure out your next move when you got back. He was storing your stuff in his garage. When you died, he gave away the clothes and stuff, but for some reason he couldn’t get rid of that box.”
River’s hand was suddenly on his back and she leaned in. This was the bad part. Whatever they said next would rock his world.
“Died?”
Ten looked grim. “According to the military records, you were killed in a helicopter crash on your way back to your unit in the Middle East. There’s only one problem with that report. Everything was filed properly. Your death is on record and you were buried. There’s a record of you getting on the chopper. But we can find no evidence that you were ever on the plane to Riyadh. We know you flew home six months before. You had arranged transport, but there’s no evidence you got on the plane. As a matter of fact, we believe you were in Houston the day you went missing.”
“Why would I have been in Houston?”
“Apparently someone gave you one of those genetic tests for Christmas two years before,” Adam replied. “You had taken it and gone so far as to make an account with the company. I think you were looking for relatives. By the way, I’m surprised to find out you’re a full tenth Native American. You don’t look it at all.”
“Adam, focus,” Ten said, his voice tense.
“Fine, anyway, one of the services this site provides is to match your DNA if you opt in,” Adam continued. “They send you updates, like so and so is a ninety-eight percent match to be your first cousin or third cousin or so on. Two weeks before you went to Houston, you received an email from the site stating that they had found a potential close family match. You shared 1705 centimorgans over fifty-two segments with this woman who had also uploaded her data. You sent her an email and were invited to Houston to meet her.”
His whole body went tight. “Who did my mother intern for?”
“Senator Hank McDonald.” Ten affirmed Jax’s fear.
“I went to meet Hope McDonald?”
Ten shook his head. “You went to meet Faith. She was the one who had the account, but while she was in Africa, she let her sister handle everything. You have to know Faith never got your email and Hope and her father shut down her account. She didn’t know, Jax.”
Senator McDonald had been on the senate Armed Services Committee. He had deep ties to the CIA. It would have been easy to fake his death. He had no other family except his Marine family. He’d been like a lamb to slaughter. “I assume the senator didn’t want it to get out that he had a bastard.”
“Jax,” River began.
He shook his head. “I can guess what happened from there. I walked into my half sister’s home, she gave me the drug, and I became one of her first experiments.”
“Yes,” Adam agreed. “There’s no record of you after that.”
Ten leaned in. “Jax, Faith is out in the lobby. She wants to see you. She’s eager to have you as a brother, but I have to ask if you can accept her. She’s not like the rest of them. If she’d had any idea, she would have moved heaven and earth to find you. She feels guilty. She thinks she’s the reason you’re here.”
She was the reason he was here, but he understood that could mean several different things. She could be the reason he’d been tortured and lost his memories. She could be the reason he was on the run.
Or she could be the reason he’d found River. She could be the reason he’d found his true home.
It was all in how a person chose to see things.
He stood up, his decision made.
“Jax?” Ten stood, too, his anxiety obvious in the way he held his hands in fists at his sides. “I’m asking you not to take this out on her.”
He was halfway through the doors when he heard River’s reply.
“He would never do that,” she said.
Faith was standing in the lobby and her eyes widened when he strode out. Her eyes were red. Had she been crying? Had she been crying for him?
Did she want a brother? Because he damn straight wanted a sister.
He walked straight up to her. “Hi, sis.”
She gasped out a choked cry and threw herself into his arms. “I’m so sorry, Jax. I didn’t know.”
She would have been there that day in Houston. He could see it plainly. If she’d been the one to get his email, she would have met him at the plane and welcomed him with open arms. She would have asked him everything, trying to learn what she could about her brother.
He let go of all his anger. River had taught him it had no place in the face of love. Love was everything. He would take all the love he could get.
He let go and turned out slightly, though he kept an arm around his sister’s shoulder. “River, come meet Faith.”
Faith brought River into the circle. “I wish I’d been at the wedding.”
“I have lots of pictures,” he assured her. He smiled down at River. “I thought I didn’t have a lot to give you. But I can give you a sister-in-law.”
Faith’s smile was brilliant. “And a nephew. And we’re adopting. I’m so glad to have an aunt and uncle from my side for them.”
Ten stepped up. “And you have a brother-in-law you will always be able to count on. Always.”
Jax shook his hand as Ten mouthed the words thank you.
But there was nothing to thank him for. He was the one who had been blessed.
River moved into his arms. “Should I call you Jason now?”
He held her close. “Nope. I’m Jax forever more. You think you can handle that?”
“Absolutely.” She went up on her toes and kissed him.
“Let’s have a family lunch and I’ll fill you in on everything else we know,” Ten offered.
He followed his new family out, eager to learn more about his past life. But he was more eager to enjoy his new one.
* * * *
Three weeks later
Owen stared at the picture on the screen. Dr. Rebecca Walsh. She wore a white lab coat, her hair pulled back in a severe bun. She wore a pair of glasses and her eyes were serious as she stared at the camera, but there was beauty there, too.
He’d watched videos of the woman. She was awkwar
d until she started talking about her research, and then her face would light up.
Could such a pretty face hide evil intentions?
“I’ve got our base of operations ready,” Ezra was saying. “We leave for Toronto in two days and then we’ll have about a week’s set up before we make contact with the subject. We’re relatively certain she’s never met any of you. She was never at The Ranch, and according to all our records, she never traveled to the bases Dr. McDonald kept you at. We believe they worked together remotely. We know they met a couple of times, but I don’t think McDonald would have brought her experiments with her. Does anyone remember Walsh?”
They sat in the conference room of McKay-Taggart. They’d been working here and living in Adam Miles and Jake Dean’s guesthouse for three weeks, but it was almost time to start the new op.
The thought of getting back to work made his blood pump again. He wouldn’t tell anyone, but he was bored. They’d been hanging out at Sanctum, but he couldn’t get the vision of the doctor out of his head. Something about the woman…
Which proved his instincts were shite. They could take his memories, but they couldn’t take away his awful taste in women.
Apparently in his past life he’d fucked about any woman who would let him, and definitely a few he shouldn’t have. He had the scars to prove it.
Tucker shook his head. “No. She’s pretty, but she doesn’t look at all familiar to me.”
“Me, either,” Robert agreed.
The rest of his team shook their heads.
“If she does recognize one of you, we’ll have more information than we did before. But this is precisely why we’ve got Owen running point on this. There’s no chance she’s met him,” Ezra explained. “How are we on logistics?”
“I managed to find two apartments in the same building as Dr. Walsh. River and Jax will take the one on the same floor, and Owen and I will move in downstairs,” Robert explained. “Tucker has been accepted as an intern at the institute, and Dante and Sasha have jobs there, too.”
“As janitors,” Dante complained. “This is a terrible job. Why does Tucker get to be in the smart job?”
