Hidden Twin. Jodie Bailey

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СКАЧАТЬ happen. Denial was her friend, and it would be until she had a moment alone to fall apart. “Thank you.”

      “Just doing my job.” He winked at her, a rare flash of his personality beyond his role as a deputy marshal. There was a flash of a smile, then he tilted his head slightly as though his earpiece was talking to him again.

      The glimpse of the real person who lived inside of him zinged along her spine. Amy looked away. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t noticed him the first time she’d seen him, the epitome of tall, dark and gorgeous. Every time he’d visited alongside Deputy Edgecombe, Sam had dogged her thoughts for days after.

      She’d ignored the attraction. Her minor in psychology had taught her to recognize that her childhood could create a fascination with honorable men and heroes who galloped in on white horses to rescue fair maidens.

      The men in her young life had been transient, coming and going at her mother’s princess-fantasy whims. Her mother had been addicted to the rush of new love. The minute her high was gone, she moved on to someone else.

      Only one man had stayed longer than a month. Only one man had ever come close to being a father figure, and he’d vanished when his connections to organized crime threatened Amy and her sister.

      She clenched her teeth. Amy had promised herself she’d never be like her mother, drifting into the princess fantasy of needing a man to rescue her or to complete her.

      As it turned out, she was almost as bad as her mother. She’d jumped into marriage with Noah when she was nineteen because he’d not only loved her but had promised the security her life lacked. They were both young, lost and looking for someone to come home to. Sure, she’d loved him, but maturity made her wonder what would have happened with their marriage had he come home alive. They’d still been in the getting-to-know-each-other phase when she’d married him. Like her mother, she’d fallen into the rush of first love.

      She wouldn’t make the same mistake again. If she remarried, it would be to someone she’d known for longer than a month.

      With a glance at Sam, she created another resolve. If she ever remarried, it would be to a man who didn’t make her feel special simply because he’d rescued her from the gnashing teeth of a human-trafficking dragon.

      “You doing okay over there?” Sam’s voice cut through the memories and dragged Amy into the reality she’d been trying with partial success to avoid.

      “I’m fine.” A dull ache in her knees and fingers reminded her she was still braced for impact. Painfully, she unwrapped her fingers from the handle above the door and shifted her legs from side to side to relax her knees. “Where are we headed?”

      Sam drummed his thigh and the steering wheel with his thumbs. “We’re going to my team’s headquarters in Atlanta. It’s secure. You’ll be safe. While we’re there, you’ll be briefed on everything that’s happened and someone will go over your options with you. In a few hours, you’ll know more than I do.”

      That probably wasn’t true, but she’d act as though she believed him. “Last time, when the marshals faked my car accident, I was in a safe house in Ohio for a few days.” It had been horrible. The place had been a nondescript cookie-cutter rental home in the middle of a small residential neighborhood. “I was stuck in a back bedroom with the blinds closed for days. All I had was a TV and some books one of the deputies picked up at a grocery store.” Used to regular physical activity both in her personal life and on her job, she’d craved a run or a good set of weights. The tension had overwhelmed her and, without release, the panic attacks had come on stronger each day. That first run she’d taken after her relocation had been both terrifying and liberating.

      Sam cast her a sympathetic smile. “I’m afraid this won’t be much better. It might even be a little bit worse because you won’t be in a house, at least not at first. I suppose when we turn you over to a relocation team, you’ll be in a safe house again for a short time, but for a day or so you’ll be stuck with us in an industrial office building.” He grimaced as though he were silently apologizing. “We do have a couple of rooms with some temporary sleeping quarters. Cots actually.”

      Great. She already missed her king-size bed with the down comforter and the memory-foam mattress cover. “You realize I have nothing on me, not even a toothbrush. I didn’t even get to grab my go-bag or my EpiPen.”

      “Your go-bag?” His smile quirked higher, then faded. “You actually kept a bag packed in case you had to run?”

      “It’s in the hall closet, a duffle bag with some clothes, papers, things I wanted to hold onto, ready to grab if you guys ever knocked on my door and said it was time to go. I never expected you to show up at my job and rip my life away without warning.”

      Sam winced, but he didn’t reference the last comment. “I’m sorry you have to live life on edge like that.”

      “It’s not your fault.”

      “Well, when it comes to the EpiPen, we can get you a new one, but I have one if the need arises before that. Let’s just say that bees are not my friends.”

      “Same. Along with bee pollen, oddly enough. I took some once as a supplement and it almost killed me.” She’d only had an allergic reaction one time, but not having a shot at the ready made her edgy. “I’ll tell you right now, I bear some contempt for the marshal who took my bag. It’s like he stole...” She sighed. It was as though he’d stolen her identity. Again.

      “I could tell you he’s a really nice guy who has a wife and kids, but it won’t help, I know.” He clicked on the blinker and turned onto another highway. “There’s a female marshal, Deputy Dana Santiago, on my team. She’ll make sure you have the necessities you need for the next few days. Much like the last time, you can give us a list and a team will go into your house and try to retrieve what they can. We’ll get some of your stuff to you as you start over again, but I’m afraid it won’t be much.”

      She knew the drill. She wished she didn’t, but she did. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Amy Naylor no longer existed.

      * * *

      For the next hour, they rode in silence. Sam spoke little, listening to the back and forth in his earpiece as his team coordinated with other members of the Marshals Service and tried to piece together what had gone wrong. No one seemed certain who had leaked Amy’s whereabouts or how she’d been found. No one could give intel on how many bad guys were on the hunt. The men they’d taken into custody refused to talk, more afraid of whoever was funding them than they could ever be of the marshals.

      In the silence, Sam fought to keep his emotions at bay. A strong sense of relief came with the word that Wainwright had been released with minor injuries after his dustup in the shopping center parking lot. The suspect who’d rammed him had been arrested, and a team was at the shopping mall, scouring surveillance footage from parking lot cameras and security feeds for other suspicious vehicles.

      As expected, other news wasn’t so comforting. In the midst of a recovery operation was not the time to give in to grief, but the call that Edgecombe truly was dead had come as a blow. Sam had known, but hearing the suspicion clarified in stark, no-nonsense words hadn’t been easy. It would have been nice if he could pull over and take a second to pull himself fully together.

      He needed to get his head on straight, but he couldn’t afford the luxury. Priority number one was to get Amy to headquarters. After that, he could sit down and debrief, then grieve with others who had known Edgecombe, or who at least СКАЧАТЬ