by Jade Allen
I woke up some time later, though it was still just as dark as when I’d first closed my eyes, but it only took me about a second to figure out what had woken me up. Sarah’s hand was gliding softly over my chest, and then my shoulder, down and back up my arm.
She moved slowly, as if she was exploring every inch, beyond the tattoos that had garnered her attention the night before. I kept my eyes closed, feigning sleep and letting her continue—not entirely for her benefit. But it wasn’t long before her fingers ghosted down my abdomen, and if she moved any lower, she was going to quickly realize I wasn’t as fast asleep as I appeared to be. So, I shifted slightly as if I was just then waking up. Her hand was suddenly gone and I wished I’d feigned sleep just a little longer.
As I opened my eyes, her head was resting on my chest, but she was looking up at me, and I no longer regretted letting her know I was awake. I could wake up to that face over and over again for the rest of my life and never get tired of seeing her there.
Fuck, thinking like that was breaking a whole new set of rules I’d never even had to contemplate before, and I had no intention of letting thoughts like that slip back in again.
This was physical. Sure, it was taking a bit longer than usual to get my fill of this woman, but that’s all there was to it. Just to emphasize my point, I pulled her closer to me, focusing instead on the feeling of her naked body against mine. Her tits pressed against my chest. The moist heat of her as I slipped my thigh between her legs…
****
I awoke again at 4AM, feeling Sarah slipping out of bed. She wasn’t sneaking exactly, but she didn’t seem to want to wake me up with her movements. Little did she know, I’d long since learned to wake up to the slightest change in my surroundings. I listened for a moment, but when she didn’t return to the room, I followed her out soundlessly, years of surveillance probably lending to my curiosity.
She was in her father’s old office, wandering around the room, touching things, running her hands along the desk and the books on the shelves. She wasn’t just reminiscing, she was thinking. I lingered back, preventing her from noticing me, all the while wondering—hoping—her father hadn’t left anything behind that I’d be forced to explain.
She reached up high on the shelf a moment later and pulled down an old cardboard box. I gritted my teeth as she placed it down on the desk and lifted off the lid, but it appeared to be nothing more than a bunch of family pictures, old artwork Sarah had probably made in school, and a bunch of other stuff I couldn’t figure out why a person would want to keep. It all sat hidden away in boxes for twenty years, to be pulled out once in a fit of melancholy before being forgotten again for another two decades. What was the point?
She sat down at the desk with her findings and I could see her face again, her cheeks moist with tears, and I suddenly felt like a jerk, secretly prying into her private moment of grief. Even worse, I felt the urge to do something; to make her feel better somehow. But that definitely was not my department.
I was just about to creep back to her bedroom, leaving her to reminisce over handmade gifts and photo booth snapshots, when she pulled something else from the bottom of the box. Something that made me cringe while my pulse pounded double-time.
Even before she’d laid them open on the desk, I knew exactly what they were: passports—one for a young woman and another for a baby girl—and I knew without seeing them up close that the woman looked an awful lot like Sarah’s mother. The baby on the other passport would look just like Sarah had as an infant—because it was Sarah.
The only problems? The names on those passports were ones Sarah had never heard before. If her father had merely adopted her, she would no doubt wonder why her mother’s name and her own were different on those passports; that, and why the hell the child’s date of birth didn’t match the one she’d identified with all her life.
This was certainly going to poke holes in my whole ‘adoption’ story.
She sat there staring back and forth between the pictures, a crease of confusion forming in the middle of her usually smooth brow. Part of me wanted her to know, of course. My mother had been right: I did think she deserved to know the truth about who she was. About who her father was. But I’d been on the job long enough to know it wasn’t about what I—or even she—wanted. So, there was only one thing I could to do.
I stepped out from where I’d been hiding. I hadn’t bothered getting dressed when I followed her out of the bedroom, so I was reasonably hopeful I’d be able to entice her back to the bedroom. And though clouded with emotion just a moment before, her eyes were almost instantly clear and full of desire.
Fuck, the woman seemed to have an appetite as insatiable as my own.
Once she’d leave for work, I’d clear the house of every incriminating piece of evidence her father had carelessly left behind. And then, that’d be it. It would be time for me to hit the road.
But until then…
****
We’d barely drifted off to sleep when Sarah’s alarm brought us back from the brink. While I’d long become accustomed to interrupted sleep, it surprised me that she was able to so easily force herself out of bed. The Sarah from a decade ago couldn’t function on less than a full night’s sleep, though I was coming to realize there were vast differences between that Sarah and the one that had consumed nearly all of my thoughts since I’d come back to Westport.
That was it, though. It no longer mattered how many ways she was different or the same as the girl I’d known back then. She’d be off to work soon, and I’d be long gone by the time she got home. Still, I couldn’t resist joining her in the shower—where was the harm in one last time?
Later, though, I got the feeling she sensed something was different, and the professional façade she donned along with her work clothes confirmed it. Or maybe she wasn’t sensing what I had planned; perhaps she was forging her own distance.
I’d made it no secret that this was nothing more than great sex, and maybe that’s all she wanted, too. We’d had a couple of good days together; she was probably ready to move on and start looking for the next guy for a good time.
Damn, I didn’t like the thought of that, though I’d never been the jealous type before. It was time to get out of there before I started proposing something crazy, like seeing what else we’d be great at besides having sex. Definitely a bad idea.
“I had a really great time last night,” she said, pausing to lock the front door on our way out. I’d unlocked the back door while she was getting dressed for work earlier, so I’d be able to slip back in easily once she was gone.
“Me too, Sarah.” We hovered there for a moment, and while I should have just hightailed it to my bike, I leaned in instead, kissing her cupid bow lips one last time. They tasted like honey and jasmine—the tea she’d been drinking in between darting around the house getting ready. I’d never forget it; the sweetened floral taste etched permanently into my brain, along with the memory of the taste of every inch of her body.
I tried to call up the taste of another woman I’d been with—any of them—but nothing came to mind. Not one woman had ever left a permanent mark like Sarah had. And she’d left a multitude of them.
Without even closing my eyes, I could see her eyes sparkling with desire; her back arched and her hips writhing in the throes of passion. I could feel her fingers grazing along every tattoo on my body; I could hear every noise she’d made, from fevered whispers to the cries she couldn’t hold back when I made her come again and again.
Maybe worse than that, I could clearly hear her gentle inhaling and exhaling as she drifted off to sleep, and I could see the tiny furl between her brows when something in her dreams made her scowl.
“Alright, well, I’m going to be late…” she said as she took a step back and started down the front steps. She didn’t ask if I’d be there when she got back, or if we’d see each other again. Whether she knew what was on my mind, or had made up her own, she knew this was the end.
“Goodbye, Sarah,” I whispered too quietly for her to hear me.
I made for my bike, revving the engine as I rode away without another glance, but I didn’t go far. I circled around the neighborhood a few times, making sure she was long gone and turned back. Ten minutes later, it was safe to say she was gone for the day, and I headed back, leaving my bike parked around the corner—just in case.
It took me nearly four hours to rummage through it all: boxes, file folders, storage containers scattered throughout the whole house, from the garage to the hidden cubby at the top of her dad’s bedroom closet.
I had absolutely no idea what a pack rat Erik Wells was. It just didn’t mesh with the job: travel light and leave no trail. Hell, if Erik had ever tried to get out of there in a hurry, he would have had to burn the house down to hide his shit. Maybe that was his backup plan.
In my rummaging, it became clear that Erik had been keeping tabs on the whole lot of them all these years. It wasn’t surprising; he and I had both known Sarah’s mother’s death hadn’t been an accident.
And the things that had been placed randomly around the storage spaces that would act as perfect kindling confirmed my off-hand suspicion that the man had known he’d have to burn the house down to destroy all the evidence he had stashed.
It wasn’t until I’d nearly completed my sweep that I came upon a thin folder, tucked discreetly beneath the floor boards under Erik’s bed. Even if Sarah had cleaned out the place from top to bottom, she never would have stumbled upon it. And when I opened the folder, the letter at the top of the pile told me it had never been meant for Sarah to find, or anyone else.
Except me.
Declan, it read.
I know ours has been a bumpy road, but I still believe I was right in recruiting you that fateful day long ago. While you may at times question the means by which we live our lives, rest assured that you have done good. I truly believe that. You have been like a son to me all these years, and I can tell you in all honesty that I am proud of you.
There is one more thing I must ask of you, though. I wish it wasn’t quite so large of a task I was leaving you burdened with, but I think perhaps you will thank me in time.
I have left everything I know for you about Dominic Cane, where he’s been, his associates and every move I’ve been able to follow. I wish I had been able to complete my task. I would very much like to have been able to exact revenge on the man who took Sarah’s mother from us. But if you’re reading this, obviously, that was not meant to be. He is still out there, Declan, and Sarah will not be safe until you find him.
However, once you have completed the task I’ve charged you with, put it away. Put it all away. I know this is a heavy burden; something that’s not easy for men like us to do. But you have done great things, and it’ll be time to move on.
And I believe Sarah will be there to help you to do that, if you’ll let her.
With all the love and affection of a father,
Erik
How the hell had the man known I’d be back here searching his floorboards?
I set the letter aside. I fully understood what it was he wanted me to do, at least as far as Dominic Cane was concerned, but he wanted me to ‘put it all away’ after? And about Sarah…was Erik saying what I thought he was? The man wanted me to give up the life he’d gotten me into—the life of an international vigilante—and settle down in my hometown…with his daughter? Was the man insane?
But then again, it was a reasonable choice for a father. He’d taught me everything I’d ever need to know to keep Sarah safe. What more could a father hope for in a partner for his daughter? Well, for starters, how about a guy who was meant for the small-town life…one who had even the faintest inclination to settle down with one woman…
A guy who was anyone but me.
Nevertheless, that was an issue I’d worry about later. Right then, I’d have to focus on the task at hand. Obviously, Erik felt that Dominic was still a threat.
The man had hoarded the case to himself for decades, determined to be the one to find him, and I knew why. It wasn’t that he wanted to be the one to bring Dominic Cane to justice; Erik wanted to be the one to exact his own kind of justice. It was a difficult line—justice and vengeance—a line more than a few of us skirted this way and that on many occasions, so there was no way in hell I was going to judge him for which side of the line he’d landed on.
Dominic Cane had completely altered the course of Erik’s life, in some ways for the better, perhaps, inadvertently bringing him and Sarah together. But Dominic had also murdered his friend…and then his wife…and god knew how many other people in cold blood. Whether it was vengeance or justice that put a stop to the asshole, it didn’t really matter.
So then it was left to me to pick up where Sarah’s dad had left off. I scanned through the pages of information—notes, grainy photographs, a hand-drawn route of where Cane must have been spotted in the past couple of years—and I suddenly got a nasty feeling. The last place Erik had marked on the crude map was Baltimore. That’s where Sarah had been working prior to moving back home.
I’d bet when Erik found out his daughter had been in potential danger, he’d gone rushing there in a hurry. The coroner’s report had stated that her father had had a heart attack while driving, dead long before the car wrapped itself around a tree. Was that the case? Or had Cane gotten to him? And if it had been Cane, why the fuck had the bastard left Sarah alone?
Maybe Cane was only after Sarah to strike at her father.
Sarah’s father had long given up on the idea of a wife or family when she came into his life. He’d been devoted to his profession well into his forties, and had figured that would forever be his only companion. And then a young informant had come into his life, along with his wife and newborn daughter. Nearly a year later, upon finding the informant murdered, Erik offered sanctuary to the man’s wife and daughter, bringing them home to Westport, and giving them new identities. And though still devoted to his job, he’d fallen helplessly and hopelessly in love with the both of them. If someone wanted to hurt Erik, those women would be the place to strike.
But was that the end of it then? Was Sarah safe because there was no one to hurt with her death?
The shocking truth of that hit me hard, much harder than I’d expected. Sarah had no family. Aside from my own who thought fondly of her, she had no parents, no siblings…no one who would mourn her if she was gone.
I would. The thought came to me unbidden, but I chalked it up as pity. Who wouldn’t feel bad for a girl who had no family to miss her?
Still, was it safe to assume Cane was finished? No. I didn’t even need to give it a second thought. Erik had been responsible for the death or incarceration of three of Cane’s brothers, two uncles and a handful of cousins. My gut told me this wasn’t the end of it.
Alright. So, I had no idea where Cane was, nothing but a few grainy photographs to figure out what the guy looked like, and some notes about business interests and family connections. Well, in the past I’d been given far less to work with and managed just fine.
I checked over the house once more, making sure I hadn’t missed anything and that all signs I’d been there had been cleaned up. Aside from the file folder in the floor, I’d come up with a handful of letters, pictures and other things that would be best if Sarah didn’t find. I was erasing all evidence of who she really was; I knew that. But then, more than ever, it was best she knew as little as possible, at least until I could figure out where to go from there.
I stopped by the hospital on my way back to the motel, though I kept my presence there discreet. I just wanted to see with my own eyes that she was alright, though the chances of Dominic Cane waltzing into the ER and shooting her point-blank was unlikely, at best. I spotted her quickly, and while I should have just turned and left the way I’d come in, I stood there for a moment, watching her. She was stitching up a patient’s arm, talking soothingly to him while her hands moved quickly and confidently.
Just then, I saw those same hands in my mind’s eye moving in a very different way, slowly, tantalizingly over her own body like she’d done to tease me the night before. Fuck. I turned around hastily and fled, not caring if she happened to spot my retreating form. This was going to have to be the fastest job I’d ever done because there was no way in hell I was sticking around for long.
Chapter Six
Sarah
“I come bearing dinner,” Declan greeted as I opened the door, thrusting a large, brown paper bag into my unsuspecting arms.
I’d been quite certain by his demeanor this morning that he was ready to make a beeline out of town, so why was he standing on my front porch? Could my senses have been that off? It was possible, but I’d made my peace with his leaving; at least, I’d thought I had.
I wasn’t going to overanalyze the fact that something fluttered inside me when I found him standing there. And I certainly wasn’t going to consider the irrational possibility that he’d come back because he realized he wanted more than just mind-bending sex.
“Thanks, but what brings you here?”
He nodded to the bag I held in my hands. “I thought you might be hungry, so I picked up something for dinner. I was hoping you’d provide dessert, though,” he added suggestively, stepping inside and making me take a step back.
Okay, so he was just back for another round. Was I alright with that?
I mentally shrugged. I suppose I’d have to be, given the way every fiber of my body had sprung to life at the sight of him. It was a weakness I was fast realizing I would forever fall helpless to. It had been ingrained in me at a young age with an infatuation that had lasted far longer than I’d thought.
“Fine, but you’re on dish duty.”
“I’ve got that covered, too,” he said, rummaging through the top of the bag, pulling out paper plates.
