Page 109 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name

She’d said, “A neutral site in Baton Rouge can take her.”

He’d nodded, even though Sharrow hadn’t been able to see him. “Okay. Good. I can get her there.”

“But there’s a hurricane coming in. Big one, they say.”

He’d heard. The news had been full of it. Right then, though, he’d had bigger problems to worry about. “I’ll get her there.”

“Are you sure? There are warnings out for the whole Gulf coast.”

They’d been calling his flight, so he’d stood up. “I’ll be fine. They always say they’re gonna be worse than they are.”

When he’d landed in Tallahassee, he’d contacted Mark Lyman, a deputy marshal he’d worked with on a case in the Caribbean a year ago. He’d given him the same story he’d given Sharrow, about the phony Collierville raid and the laptop and the subsequent need to get Jessica Meeks into immediate protective custody.

Only this time, the need was genuine. But not because of some fictitious surveillance stills.

Because of him.

He’d borrowed the deputy’s vehicle and driven like hell to Panama City Beach. The view out the window had been monotonous: stands of slash pine and the yellowing grass verge of the interstate, pocked with divots of sand as white as snow.

A little over two hours later, he’d arrived at Meek’s house. Flashing blue lights painted the ransacked building in an eerie glow, and the officers’ grim faces spoke of a horrifying scene.

He’d been too late.

When he’d discovered that the woman hadn’t been home during the invasion, that she’d been at work, he’d nearly dropped to his knees in relief. He’d raced to Femme Fatale in time to find her safe and sound. Albeit scantily clad.

And he’d known the moment he’d laid eyes on her, he couldn’t let anything happen to her. He was going to get her to that neutral site in Baton Rouge if it killed him.

It nearly had. And yet he’d still failed.

Now she was lost and alone and terrified. And it was all his fault.

It occurred to him now, sitting on that log in the middle of nowhere, that it was always going to end this way. That at some point, someone was going to investigate his story. Someone was going to put the pieces together and realize the whole thing was a lie.

Jessica would have figured it all out eventually, too. In his heart of hearts, he’d known that all along, too. Which made all his hopes for some kind of a…thingworking out between them seem even more futile.

What on earth had he been thinking? That he’d get to live happily ever after with the woman he’d sold out to the men who were trying to kill her?

He stared down that muddy road in the direction she’d had gone. And was reminded with a sickening jolt that those same men were still out there.

THIRTY-SIX

Jessica grippedthe steering wheel with both hands, her eyes glued to the yellow line in the middle of the road. It was her only guide. Tears blurred her vision, and she swiped them away irritably.

She’d trusted him completely.

Why? Because he was a lawman?

At least partially, yes. Trust was the invisible scaffolding that supported every law enforcement agency on the planet. Without it, they simply wouldn’t exist. Sometime in history, humans had collectively agreed that a person with a rank and a badge and a gun was to be held in higher esteem than anyone else. That, based solely on the presence of those items, they were to be listened to. They were to be believed. They were to be trusted.

But she hadn’t just trusted him as a cop. She’d trusted him as a man. She’d let him in, mentally and emotionally. She’d told him things she’d told no one else. She’dfeltthings.

She gave a brittle laugh, remembering one thing she’d told him.

I’m like an asshole-seeking missile.

And she’d just struck another doozy of a target.

She wondered now what his plan had actually been. Where had he really been taking her? Or, more likely, to whom had he been taking her? And what had been his motive? Money? Was he expecting payment on delivery of her, like she was boxed goods?