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His eyes were wide with concern as he took in Olivia’s appearance. It was probably good that he had detected that something was wrong earlier. Otherwise, he might’ve been even more shocked. She had covered up the damage as best she could, but no amount of cosmetics was going to cover everything. The bruised ribs and multiple bruises on her arms and legs were hidden but a painful reminder when she moved too abruptly.
“What the hell happened?” he asked.
She went to one of the chairs in the sitting room and gratefully sat. Despite the pain meds, her head was still pounding from whatever drug she’d been given, and her body felt as though she’d gone a couple of rounds with a heavyweight boxer.
“That’s hard to say.”
She started from the moment she’d heard the intruders and ended with the moment she’d woken up this morning.
“Did you see any of their faces?”
“No. They all wore ski masks. One of them was Albanian. I’d never heard his voice before. The others had mottled accents—American— but nothing distinct.”
“What did they want?”
“They asked me about intel going back to when I worked for the British government.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Yes. Most of the people involved are either dead or don’t exist in the same roles. It makes no sense.”
“And you say some other men rescued you?”
“Yes. I don’t think it was long after I was injected with the drug. All the images were blurred, but whoever they were, took care of my attackers fairly quickly.”
“Have you seen a doctor yet?”
“No… I—” How to say this without sounding insane?
“You what?”
“One of the men who rescued me… He took care of my injuries.”
She only vaguely remembered waking up to the feel of a warm, damp cloth bathing her face and firm, gentle fingers testing her ribs to check for fractures.
“Did you see him?”
She had tried, but her eyes had refused to cooperate. Every time she had told herself to open them, they had opened in little slits, giving her only a blurred glimpse of a tall, broad-shouldered man with a full beard.
But she hadn’t needed to see him to know his identity. She had recognized him the moment she’d heard him speak.
“I didn’t see him. I heard him, though.”
“You know him?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it?”
“My husband, Nicholas Hawthorne.”
“But I thought—”
“That he was dead? Yes, so did I.”
For every second she told herself it wasn’t possible, the next second she reminded herself that it was. People faked their deaths all the time. Everything could be faked these days.
Telling herself that he wouldn’t have done that to her…that the love they’d once shared, the commitment they’d made to each other, wouldn’t have allowed such a betrayal would be a gigantic lie. What they’d had had already been destroyed before he disappeared. She had just not been willing to accept it. With his reappearance, she had no option now but to accept it. All this time, he had been alive and had never contacted her. He had let her believe he was dead.