Lack of sleep was catching up with Natalie by the time she and Luke headed down the ramp toward the tarmac the next day. Long lines at the car rental return and then at security had delayed their expected departure by nearly two hours.
She glanced at Luke’s profile. He didn’t appear to be hurting for sleep, his dark eyes alert, his jaw clean-shaven.
She stifled a yawn, along with her frustration that they weren’t already in the air. After all, today could have been a whole lot worse. They’d managed to check in to the new hotel last night, catch some sleep and get to the consulate’s office right as it opened. Granted, that visit had stretched for hours, but they’d ultimately left with her passport in hand, so she wasn’t about to complain.
Especially considering how relatively peaceful the day seemed so far. They’d spent no small amount of time looking over their shoulders and taking extra security measures, driving convoluted routes and keeping low profiles. But they hadn’t seen one sign that they’d been followed to Cancun. Relief settled over her as they drew closer to the plane. No matter what was to come, she would be safer in the States.
Her gaze slid to Luke. He’d mentioned the community center, and she wondered if he would be leaving Shield when they returned so he could continue to pursue that goal. Curiously, disappointment rose at the thought. She’d made a promise to herself that she wouldn’t date again for a year, but she had to admit that she really liked Luke. He was the perfect cross between strong and protective, and easygoing and lighthearted. He was intense when he needed to be, but adapted based on the situation.
His hand settled lightly on her back as he kept his attention on their surroundings. It was a protective gesture she knew he’d been trained to do, but her pulse jumped around anyway, as if her fiancé had not ditched her at the altar two days ago, as if she hadn’t been attacked, robbed and stalked on her solo honeymoon...as if some sort of meaningful connection had started to grow between them.
Whatever the reason for her dancing pulse, it evened out abruptly as they reached the steps to board the plane and Luke’s hand fell away. The private jet stood sentry, door open to a long set of steps. Luke dropped back so she could go ahead of him.
Roman DeHart waited for them at the threshold, wearing a dark suit and a serious expression. He greeted them with handshakes and what could only be described as a grim smile.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Roman said. He gestured to the other agent on board. “Natalie, I believe you know Jordan Skehan.”
Natalie waved to Jordan and sent him a smile she didn’t feel. He and Kyle had been friends for years, but she’d always felt uneasy around him and couldn’t put her finger on why. Roman hired him shortly after Kyle had introduced the two, and Jordan had been with Shield for just over a year. One of the younger agents on the team, he had bright red hair, a magnetic smile and light blue eyes that Natalie could never quite read. He nodded a silent and serious greeting, and Natalie moved farther into the cabin, suppressing the urge to question him about the morning of the wedding. Her questions could wait.
“Front row’s outfitted with recliners,” Roman said. “Grab a drink or snack if you want.” He motioned to a fridge and a set of cabinets at the rear of the plane. “We’ll be taking off in just a few minutes. Once we’re in the air, we’ll talk.” He ducked into the cockpit.
Natalie sank down into a front-row seat at his suggestion, buckling herself in. Luke took the seat next to her, the narrow aisle between them.
It was time to go home. Her throat constricted and she closed her eyes to the emotions welling up. Relief. Sadness. Anger. Lingering fear. It was hard to believe how much her life had changed since Saturday morning.
Everything about her wedding day had been perfect—from the crisp morning breeze over the Chesapeake Bay right down to the vibrant purple mini calla lilies woven into white rose bouquets. An elegant water-view brunch reception had awaited inside Swan Cove Estates, and a trio of classical violinists had set the mood for romance as guests waited eagerly for the ceremony to begin.
When Kyle’s text had come through, everything around her had faded. For one shattering moment, she had hoped he was playing a poorly chosen prank. Then she’d realized he was serious.
Her heart jolted. What had happened? She thought back to Friday night, reviewing the hours before they’d parted ways. By the time the rehearsal dinner had rolled around, they’d both been tired. Kyle had spent the last few nights pulling together a strategy for an impending case. Natalie had been tying up all the details of the big day while also juggling her regular clients along with a slew of new clients, plus her friend Julianna’s busy public life, which was a job in and of itself.
Yes, they’d both been tired, but the night had been filled with a renewed sense of closeness that had been under repair since that red-flag night weeks before.
They’d sat close at dinner, then mingled with friends and family before exchanging their last kiss as an engaged couple. And then even though Kyle had said he wanted to get a good night’s sleep, his friends had badgered him to go out with them on his last night as a bachelor. Had something happened that night? Or had he really just gotten cold feet? And if his cold feet excuse was true, then why the disappearing act?
These were questions she’d been mulling over for over two days now, but they had no easy or immediate answers.
“Ready to get home?” Luke asked.
She shrugged. “In a way. My schedule at work is packed, so it should help distract me.” In fact, Julianna was organizing an extravagant Fourth of July charity fund-raiser for mental health services within the public school system, and Natalie was looking forward to getting a head start on the press releases. It was the best part of her job—publicizing worthwhile events that made a difference. She far preferred it to practicing interviews with clients who needed to spin stories and save their reputations.
“Really? You’ll go back to work right away? I’d think you’d take a couple more days to recuperate.”
“It’s better for me if I stay busy. I just hope I can get my apartment back. My lease technically ends Saturday.”
“Right. I guess you had already packed up and were ready to move.”
She nodded.
“Are we taking you to your dad’s place when we get back then?”
“No. I’d rather just go home.”
“A boxed-up apartment sounds like a lonely place to go back to after a weekend like this one.”
“I’m hardly ever alone. It might be good for me.”
He looked like he was about to refute her, but Roman appeared again. He flipped down a seat attached to the wall across from Natalie, pulling on a seat belt as the plane rolled toward the runway. He had the darkest eyes she’d ever seen. She’d noticed it when she’d first met him a little more than five years ago, when her dad had switched to Shield from his previous security company. She’d also noticed his tailored suit, his dark gleaming hair, his professionalism and confidence. Though she had spent quite a bit of time at her dad’s house during that time, she’d never thought of Roman outside the realm of family friend and her father’s employee. His perpetual seriousness always unsettled her just a little, though that had changed slightly in the year since he’d gotten married.
“I’ve been in contact with a buddy of mine, Tyler Goodson. He’s with the Baltimore PD. You need to know that there was blood found in Kyle’s apartment.”
Natalie’s heart dropped. Here she’d been assuming he’d simply taken off, and there was blood...
“There’s more,” Roman said, the plane rolling fast along the runway, the engines loud. “He—or someone—emptied his savings account early Saturday morning.”
A seeping cold filtered down her spine as the plane caught air and began its ascent. “How much was it?” she asked, her voice hollow.
“Police are keeping it under wraps,” he responded, and she detected the slightest hesitation before he continued. “But they seem very interested in speaking with you about it. I wanted to give you a heads-up so you wouldn’t be blindsided.”
She appreciated his foresight, but the questions swirling in her mind were draining her energy.
Roman wasn’t done, though. Turned out, he had barely begun. He pulled out a laptop and proceeded to grill her on every detail of her life—her work, her hobbies, her friends, her coworkers, her finances and, of course, her relationship with Kyle. The more knowledge his team had, he told her, the more effective they’d be at securing her safety. She got the impression that he planned to do some investigating on his own as well, though that wasn’t part of his contract.
Eventually, just as Natalie was about to cry uncle, Luke chimed in. “Maybe some of this can wait,” he suggested.
Roman glanced up from his laptop, his attention focused on Natalie. Whatever he saw must have been enough to convince him Luke was right. She was exhausted, and she probably looked it. Natalie self-consciously tucked a stray hair behind her ear and shifted in her seat. Roman closed his laptop and unbuckled his seat belt. “Looks like you’re off the hook,” he said, standing. He flashed an apologetic smile at her, a rare sight. It made him seem a lot less intimidating and a lot more human. “I’ll let you get some rest before we land and you have to deal with everything back at home.” He ducked out of the cabin and moved back to the cockpit with the pilot.
It was chilly in the cabin, and Natalie reached up to adjust the vent overhead. Then she pushed up her window shade, sunlight filtering in. She was aware of Luke’s eyes on her, but she was steadfastly ignoring him, too aware of the quiet, the close quarters, the intimacy of the cabin with Roman gone and Jordan in the far back. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Luke undo his seat belt and stand, then head toward the back of the plane. She closed her eyes, exhausted from answering all of Roman’s questions, and not trusting herself to engage in conversation with Luke.
Every time their talks had veered away from her circumstances and into the realm of friendship, she found herself wanting to share more with him, and learn more about him. Meanwhile, as much as she wanted to fight the idea, it seemed like Kyle may not have disappeared willingly, which made Natalie’s attraction to Luke all the more inexplicable. Plus, she’d vowed to steer clear of men for one year, and since she couldn’t exactly get far away from Luke at the moment, her next best idea was to feign sleep.
She was certainly tired enough to fall asleep, anyway. The sun on her face warmed her, and she started to relax. Then a soft blanket settled over her, gentle hands tugging the edge up to her shoulders, Luke’s nearness making her heart race, despite her silent pleas for it to relax. She expected him to move away, but he leaned over her, the fabric of his sleeve grazing Natalie’s cheek. Her eyes flew open just as he started to slide the window shade back down.
“It’s okay,” she said, and he paused, his eyes meeting hers, the small space between them charged with what Natalie knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was mutual attraction. For one achingly brief moment, she thought he might try to kiss her. And that she might let him. His gaze dropped to her mouth, then moved back to her eyes, as if gauging her receptiveness. Or weighing the risks. He hesitated just long enough for Natalie to come to her senses. “I like the sunshine,” she managed to say, purposely breaking the moment, even as her heart thrummed with longing. “But thank you.”
“Sure,” Luke said easily, and he left the shade alone and straightened, quickly moving back to his own seat. Natalie was relieved. At least, that’s what she tried to tell herself. Because relief made a lot more sense than disappointment. She shifted in her seat and watched out the window, wondering just what she would be going home to this evening, and whether she’d really be ready to face it all alone.
Across the narrow aisle, Natalie was quiet, her profile turned toward the clear blue beyond. Her hair was tussled in the back, and the soft blue blanket drooped away from her shoulders.
Luke’s brother, Cal, had owned a blue blanket. Luke had salvaged it from a pile of someone’s curbside eviction belongings. It had been worn and ratty, but it had been comforting. Luke had read somewhere that some kids felt more secure when they had something of their own to hold on to, like a blanket or a stuffed animal. Cal had carried that blanket everywhere.
He shook off the tender memory. It had seemed to come out of nowhere. But Natalie appeared young and alone as she looked out her window, and maybe a little lost, like Cal had often seemed—and sometimes still did.
Luke glanced out his own window at the speckles of thousands of houses miles below, the horizon that curved into a soft gray-blue until it disappeared around the earth, the puffy white clouds as the jet sliced through them.
“The view never gets old.”
She looked his way. “You fly a lot?”
“A few times a year, for Shield.”
She turned her attention back out the window. “Seeing the world from here always puts things in perspective.”
“In what way?”
“It reminds me... I guess, just how small we—and our problems—are in the grand scheme of life.”
“Interesting perspective,” Luke responded. “I look out the window and see the opposite. I see how big God is, how constant. We see specks for houses in one small corner of the earth. He sees every life, knows every name.”
“I used to believe that,” Natalie said, eyes solemn. “But if it’s true...if He does see every life and know every name, why does He stand back?”
What he saw in her eyes was more than sorrow, worse than fear. It was doubt, and that was a path he’d walked down a time or two in his life.
“I don’t think there’s a person alive who hasn’t struggled with that question,” he responded. “I certainly have.”
“And?” she pressed. “What do you do with it?”
He thought about that for a moment. “I have a wise friend who says that doubt builds when you stop feeding yourself truth. But sometimes, no matter how much I pray, no matter how much I read the Bible, I’ve just had to trudge through times of doubt until I could look back and see how God worked.”
“Could you always see it?”
An image of the dark closet rose in his mind—confined, hot, rancid. And another of his mother, unconscious and heading to the hospital in an ambulance after another overdose, Cal and Triss grasping desperately to Luke as the CPS workers attempted to separate them. Deep emotion welled up that he hadn’t allowed to surface for a long time. He cleared his throat. “I can’t lie. I don’t see His hand in every experience,” he said. “But there’s something I can always see when I look back.”
“What?” Her eyes searched his for hope, for something to cling to.
“I can always see how He was there with me the whole time. I don’t think He stands back when we need Him, Natalie. He stands by and gives us strength to endure. And then, to overcome.”
“Maybe,” she responded softly, but she didn’t look convinced.
Silent minutes passed and it wasn’t long before Natalie had fallen asleep, the hours slipping by until the plane began its descent. She slept through the turbulence of the descent and the bounce of the landing, and only woke when Roman opened the cockpit door and asked how the flight had been.
“Wow. I really slept,” Natalie said, sitting up and unbuckling.
“Good. You’ll need your energy,” Roman said. “A couple of things. First, the news has picked up your story. We’ll do our best to manage the media, but you know how it goes.”
Natalie nodded, looking unfazed.
Luke hadn’t considered paparazzi, but then the media had always been interested in the Harper family. The judge’s recent bid for governorship would definitely make Natalie’s wedding-day disaster and subsequently missing fiancé a matter of public interest.
“Second, everything’s fine, but your sister’s been checked into the hospital with preterm labor, so—”
“She’s still got four weeks until she’s due,” Natalie cut in, worry washing over her face. “Can you bring me there first?”
Roman nodded. “It’s already been arranged.” Then he passed a cell phone to her. “Picked up a replacement phone for you.”
“Thank you.”
Roman turned to Luke. “You good to stick around until third shift?”
“Sure.” Luke wanted to see Natalie settled and safe before he headed home, anyway.
“You, too, Jordan?”
“I can do that.”
Jordan had been so quiet, his eyes closed most of the flight, that Luke had almost forgotten he’d wanted to ask him about the morning of the wedding. As Roman ducked back into the cockpit while the plane taxied, Luke stood and made his way to the back of the craft to where Jordan was sitting. “Quick question for you.”
Jordan looked up. “Shoot.”
“Natalie said you and Kyle are buddies. You were a groomsman.”
“Yeah. We’ve known each other for years.”
“Did you see him the morning of the wedding?”
Jordan shook his head, a concerned frown on his face. “We were all meeting up at his cousin’s place, and he texted us that he was running late. A while later, he texted that he’d meet us at the church. It wasn’t like him.”
“Any signs of distress the night before?”
Jordan shook his head again. “Nah. He was looking forward to the wedding. We had a good night out. I’m real worried about him.”
The plane stopped and Luke thanked the guy for the information before turning back to lift the exit door, his mind working but failing to connect what little information he had into a story that made sense. What had happened between the time that Kyle had seen his parents and when he was texting his buddies? He was determined to do more digging once Natalie got settled, but for now, it was time to get to work watching her back again.
The media wasn’t there waiting for them as they disembarked from the plane and crossed the lot to the airport. Cameras weren’t waiting inside to snap photos. In fact, Roman’s team had done such a professional job orchestrating Natalie’s exit from the airport and transport to the waiting car, Luke was beginning to wonder if they’d managed to avoid publicity altogether.
Next to him, Natalie scrolled through her texts, replying to several and then listening to voice mails.
Finally, she flipped the phone facedown in her lap and stared out the window into the pitch dark of early morning.
Hunter was at the wheel, a Shield agent Luke had gotten to know and like over the past couple of years, and he and Roman were having a quiet conversation in the front. Meanwhile, Natalie had fallen silent.
“Looks like you have a lot of messages,” Luke mentioned.
She nodded. “Mostly family and friends, with a few coworkers and reporters thrown in.” She set her gaze out the window, but Luke didn’t miss her tight grip on the phone, the tense set of her shoulders.
He tapped her hand. “If you’re not careful, you’ll crush your new phone by sheer might alone,” he said lightly.
She relaxed her grip, and Luke pulled his hand away. Simple gestures that came naturally to him—gestures of protection, of comfort—felt more personal with Natalie. Every touch drew him closer to a line of professionalism he refused to cross again.
“I hope your coworkers were calling to check on you, not to give you a hard time about work.”
“They were. For the most part.”
“Well, work can wait a few more days.”
“I’m actually looking forward to getting back. It’s a busy time right now, and I’m up for partner.”
“Wow, that’s great.” It didn’t surprise him that she was good at her job. Natalie seemed like the kind of person who didn’t do anything halfway.
“Thanks. There are a couple people I work with who wouldn’t agree. The argument is seniority versus profit generating.”
“Some of the long-timers are a little jealous of your success?”
“You could say that. I brought on a new client last year—Julianna Montgomery.”
Luke whistled. “The actress.”
“Right. And once I started working with her... Well, she’s big into networking, and so word of mouth...”
“And suddenly you had more than one extremely wealthy client?”
She nodded. “Honestly, it all kind of fell into my lap. So I get where some of my coworkers are coming from. But it’s just the nature of the business.”
They turned a corner into the hospital entrance, and Natalie sat up straighter. They hadn’t escaped the media after all.
Ahead, news vans lined the lot. Cameramen and reporters crowded as close as they’d been allowed to get to the building, several police officers standing sentry to keep them at bay.
Next to Luke, Natalie observed the scene without comment. This was a scenario she was almost certainly used to, but maybe not in such a personal manner.
The scene turned Luke’s stomach. He’d seen it time and again with clients whose cases found supporters and haters alike. Some reporters thrived on preying on people in pain. Tragedy and controversy made for the most compelling news after all. The idea sat festering as the SUV slowed and pulled to the curb near the hospital entrance.
The volume outside seemed to grow, pulsing around the car, reporters closing in and shouting questions to Natalie, despite the closed and darkly tinted windows.
The driver shifted to Park, and Luke tapped Natalie’s hand on the seat between them. “Ready?”
She nodded, her expression closed. Roman and Luke exited the vehicle in tandem, dozens of cameras flashing, reporters shouting questions, microphones thrust toward them, attempting to elicit a response from Natalie. But as he offered her a hand out of the SUV, she appeared calm. She was also silent, refusing to play their game. As she ducked her head to exit, her necklace swung out of the neckline of her shirt, and she palmed the ring, hastily tucking it back into her shirt before emerging from the vehicle with a single-minded focus on the entrance doors to the hospital.
Questions buzzed around them, and Luke was impressed with her serene expression, even as he noted her quickened pace.
“When did you last hear from Kyle?”
“Is it true he sent a text to call off the wedding?”
“Do you have a message for him if he’s watching this?” They pushed through the crowd, and had almost reached the hospital entrance when a woman stepped in front of their path, a blue dress suit tightly hugging her figure, a shrewd expression on her face. She stuck a mic in Natalie’s face and asked the first question that seemed to have any effect at all.
“Natalie, were you aware that your fiancé carried on affairs during your engagement?”