Her face was pale, with dark circles under her eyes. The bandage on her temple had been placed there by EMTs after Wyatt fired his gun and scared Mr. Thomas away. That knife. He’d foregone thought and simply fired in an attempt to save her life. But Mr. Thomas had seen Wyatt, and the shot had gone wide.
When he’d reached her, Nina had been lying alone at the end of the yard, unconscious. She’d refused to go to the hospital, and instead Nina spent the night on Karl and Tashi’s couch with Wyatt sitting in the armchair across from her because she didn’t want to be alone. When she wasn’t waking because a phone rang, wondering if it was news about Tashi’s condition, Nina woke in a cold sweat, convinced Mr. Thomas was back.
If Mr. Thomas had intended to get Wyatt out of the way so he could scare Nina half to death, mission accomplished. But he’d been there to kill her.
The vibrant woman Wyatt had met weeks ago was now subdued, jumpy and constantly looking over her shoulder.
Last night had been her third run-in with Mr. Thomas and his twisted agenda of terror. Despite her determination to see this through to the end, she was doing so with less verve this morning.
Wyatt set his coffee on the dinner table and lifted his phone.
“No news?” Her voice was soft.
Wyatt glanced at her, huddled against the window beside him in the booth, and shook his head. Tashi was still in surgery. She’d been shot twice, once in the thigh and the other—much less serious—across the back of her shoulder as she’d rolled to escape Mr. Thomas. The shoulder wound had taken fifty-six stitches.
Wyatt was more angry than anything else, but they had to keep the appointment with Emily’s mother’s best friend that they’d made the day before. Neither wanted to miss anything worth knowing about Mr. Thomas. Still, he couldn’t help but think there was something Nina wasn’t telling him.
Wyatt gripped his coffee cup so hard he worried it might crack. The man had thoroughly played them, and Wyatt hadn’t even seen it coming. Sure he’d fired at Mr. Thomas, and it seemed he’d wounded the man. But he was supposed to be protecting Nina, and he’d thought he was until he realized that splitting them up was what Mr. Thomas had intended.
Now Wyatt was going to make sure that Mr. Thomas didn’t get to try again.
The protection they had placed on Emily and Theresa had been stepped up and tightened to ensure their continuing safety. All he had to worry about was Nina. And worried was exactly what he was.
“Are you sure you’re well enough for this?”
Nina set her own coffee cup down and shot him a look. “Will you stop asking me that?”
Wyatt sighed.
“Any word from Karl now?”
He flipped his phone over on the table. He opened his mouth, but Nina’s eyes immediately came alert. She had switched on to some kind of “operator” mode and straightened in her chair. Wyatt looked at the door and saw the best friend of Emily’s mother glance around.
He’d looked into her. Ronnie Walters was the mom of three kids, the oldest of whom was about to start high school, but she still had the bearing of a cheerleader. Her husband was a bank manager she’d met in college, and Ronnie cut hair Tuesday through Thursday when her kids were at school.
Wyatt came halfway out of his seat, far enough that she saw him and angled their way. After introductions had been made, she ordered green tea and a slice of whole wheat toast from the waitress. When the food was delivered, Ronnie held the mug in her hands as though the breezy chill of the morning had turned to an early January frost.
“Theresa said you have questions about the man Abby was seeing.” Her gaze darted between them and settled on Wyatt. He didn’t blame her. Nina was an anomaly in this situation Ronnie probably didn’t know how to handle. Wyatt doubted anyone came into her salon bruised up as though they’d been through a war.
Wyatt nodded. “That’s right. Anything you can tell us about him will help.”
“Because you think he killed her, and that he’s killed others, too.”
Wyatt nodded again, holding in the surprise that Theresa had shared that much. He sure hadn’t.
Ronnie said, “His name was Thomas. But I’m guessing you already know that.”
Nina shifted on the seat. “Did you ever meet him?”
Ronnie shook her head, and Nina deflated. Ronnie said, “When Abby finally told me about the new guy she was seeing, it had already been going on for months. Months. Can you believe that? She told me he was a very private person, and that he’d asked her not to tell anyone about him, but she did eventually tell me.”
Ronnie’s face twisted, awash with grief and the betrayal of a deep trust between friends. “Mostly I just figured he was married and that’s why he didn’t want her to tell anyone. What did I know? It was only a few weeks later she was dead. Emily was at her gramma’s for the night, came home after school the next day and found her. Hours and hours my Abby lay on the floor dead and no one knew. So you catch this guy, okay? I want him to pay for what he did to my friend.”
“What about Abby’s husband?” Wyatt fingered his coffee mug. “Didn’t the police consider him a suspect at one time?”
“Mason? Not for long. The man’s a hothead and a soldier, a workaholic if that’s what you want to call it. But he woulda walked through fire for Abby. He never wanted that divorce, but she figured she was giving him the out he never would’ve asked for. Not when they had Emily. I told them there was no way he did it. He was deployed, and he hadn’t sneaked home somehow. He was on an operation. The theory didn’t go anywhere.”
Ronnie sniffed. “I kind of figured that boyfriend of hers was some kind of hit man hired to kill her and then disappear. The police had no clue who he was, where he went or even where he’d come from.” She shrugged slender shoulders. “The police couldn’t even figure out if he existed in the first place. Then they started looking at Mason, thinking he hired the hit man. But he was deployed at the time, and he didn’t have that kind of money. I’ve regretted saying it ever since.”
“Mr. Thomas exists.” Nina’s voice was cold.
She’d latched on to one thing Ronnie said—the question of whether Mr. Thomas existed—and responded to it. He’d known she was in the middle of this, not just close to it. She was bypassing facts to focus on her emotion. She wouldn’t have made a good cop, but Wyatt figured that wasn’t necessarily a character flaw.
Ronnie motioned to Nina’s bruised face. “He do that to you?”
“Yes.”
“Catch him for me.”
“I’m going to.”
Wyatt glanced between the two women, not liking at all where this was going. Nina had to be on board with Mr. Thomas’s receiving justice, not whatever punishment she deemed appropriate. He wasn’t going to stand by and watch, and then allow her to try to explain the mitigating circumstances to whoever was going to be on cleanup duty. The woman was a former spy. She could have killed people in her former life for all he knew.
Before he could lay out some ground rules, Ronnie excused herself. Wyatt glanced at Nina, who bit her lip and looked right back at him. “I’m not going to back down. He’ll keep coming after me.”
“So go on vacation to Australia for a month.” He shifted so he could see her better. “Let me investigate this, and when Mr. Thomas is brought in you can come back.”
“You think he won’t follow me across the world?” She paused. “I used to think he was some kind of clandestine agent, but I could never prove it. He could be anybody, anything. And he won’t stop. The last few days have proven that if nothing else. He cut the power to the house. He was calling me when I had no signal. Sienna got the text about Emily, but she didn’t get any calls on the clone, just me. Mr. Thomas has technical skills we can’t compete with.”
Wyatt nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Don’t shut me out.”
“I won’t.”
She stared at him a moment longer, then her phone rang. “It’s Emily.” She answered the call. “Are you serious?” Pause. “Thank you so much.”
Nina hung up. “Emily went through her phone, and then her computer. She has an old picture. Of Mr. Thomas.”
* * *
Nina was no longer the only person who had seen Mr. Thomas close enough to be able to identify him. Wyatt had chased him from her condo, and Emily—and others—had met him as children. He’d shot at the man in Karl and Tashi’s backyard.
They strode from the diner, and Nina walked out ahead of Wyatt. Where she was in a hurry to get to, she didn’t know. The police were going to email the picture to Wyatt. They should probably be getting home to their own town. She didn’t want Mr. Thomas anywhere near Emily, and if Nina could lead him away from the young girl then all the better.
Wyatt caught her hand with his and unlocked the SUV. She didn’t look at him. It wasn’t that she’d thought he didn’t believe her that Mr. Thomas was real. He’d seen evidence. But a picture? They would be able to run the photo through databases that could match his picture to a name. Finally his real identity would be known.
Nina had never been this close before. It was so tangible she could almost taste it.
Wyatt walked her to the passenger side and held the door for her. She frowned at his gentlemanly actions, but he only shrugged. His phone beeped. Before she could ask if that was the picture, he shut the door. When he got in the driver’s side he tucked away his phone. “Tashi’s out of surgery.”
“That’s good.”
He nodded, a look of relief on his face. “It is.”
This time Nina reached over and squeezed his hand. He held hers back and didn’t let go. He’d been a rock in the two days since she’d nearly been killed in that hit-and-run, and he didn’t seem to be planning to let up anytime soon. Despite being a stubborn, immovable rock at times, he had still helped her. “Thank you.”
He glanced over. “For what?”
“Being here. Staying with me.” She shrugged. “Everything.”
“You’re welcome.” She saw sympathy, not sure if she entirely appreciated the fact that she needed it. But there was an edge there in his eyes also. An edge she’d seen a few times over the last two days, one that said she was a little too determined to find Mr. Thomas.
She was used to it. The men she’d met her whole adult life had each eventually looked at her that way. At least the ones who’d known she was a CIA agent knew why. She’d gathered intelligence that toppled empires of men determined to rip the world apart for their own selfish gain, men who had to be brought low. And she’d been proud to be part of it. To do her part to make the world better. Safer.
This time she would be the one doing the takedown. This time it was personal. Mr. Thomas had bought that with the way he’d systematically destroyed her family, her solitude and her plan to get justice for both of her parents. Not to mention shooting Tashi.
If Wyatt thought she had a one-track mind, it was because she did. There was no room for these personal feelings that seemed to hover in the air between them. No room for the softness he brought out in her. Nina had to stay the course or risk Mr. Thomas’s destroying her completely.
“Home?”
She glanced at him, nodded.
“All righty then.”
Nina would have smiled, but only had the energy for a long exhale. Wyatt squeezed her hand and said, “Sleep.” According to the clock on the dash it wasn’t even lunchtime yet, but Nina didn’t argue.
She woke when they pulled into town. Wyatt handed over his phone. He told her the pass code, and she unlocked it to see the photo was onscreen. “That’s him.” She handed it back, not willing to look at it any longer.
Wyatt tucked the phone away. “Okay.”
That was it? Okay. Nina didn’t know how to respond to that.
As downtown whizzed past, she realized he was headed for her condo. “Actually, could you drop me at Sienna’s?” She tried to keep her voice light, and hopefully it worked. Wyatt didn’t need to know she was relieved that she hadn’t stepped foot in her own place since she’d been there with Mr. Thomas. Or that she had no intention of going back anytime soon.
She pulled out her own phone and sent her friend a text. Sienna would understand, and she’d let Nina sleep on her couch.
Wyatt frowned at her, but changed direction and headed south.
“Sorry, it’s probably out of your way.”
“It isn’t.”
She glanced at him.
“I live a quarter mile up the same road. Hang a left at the tree stump.”
“The tree stump?”
He shrugged. “It’s a dirt track with no street sign. Half a mile up the mountain and you’re at my cabin.”
In a weird way, it made perfect sense. The boots, the jeans. They weren’t just a “look,” they were him. “Huh.”
“It’s not your fancy high-rise, but it’s home.”
“I’m not—”
He pulled up and parked. “We’re here.”
Before she could answer, he climbed out of the car. Nina grabbed her belongings from the foot well behind her seat. He’d made an assumption. She hated when anyone did that, let alone when it was a man whose opinion mattered. A lot. He’d seen her condo, noted its price tag and come to a conclusion that put her in a box. A moneyed, snobby box she’d hated basically her whole life. Was it her fault that her parents had amassed some money? It hadn’t made their lives better. Private boarding school hadn’t made her life better.
While Nina had considered it a blessing she was able to concentrate on the search for Mr. Thomas right now, it wasn’t like she was going to lie on her couch all day, every day and eat bonbons while other folks went to their jobs. She had one starting in a few weeks.
Nina stomped past him and let herself in the house.
Sienna came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel.
“Can I sleep on your couch?”
“I finished the guest room.”
Nina changed directions and headed for the hallway. “Even better.”
Sienna’s gaze was fixed on the doorway, but Nina didn’t want to talk to Wyatt or about Wyatt. Not when he thought she was judging him because he didn’t have as much money as her. For all she knew, he could be a billionaire who wanted to be a federal agent, and who lived in a cabin because he liked it.
Nina slammed the guest room door.
* * *
Wyatt turned to leave.
“Not so fast there, buddy.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Sienna’s raised eyebrow. “It’s been a long day.”
“You’re not going to tell me what that was?”
“I don’t know what that was.”
“And it didn’t have anything to do with why she’s here and not at her place?”
Wyatt shrugged. “I’m tired, Sienna.”
“Fine, I’ll let it go.”
She might have, but Wyatt didn’t. The question stayed with him on the drive to his cabin. He had no idea what was going on in Nina’s head, and it seemed that she didn’t have much intention of sharing with him. And why did that bother him so much? He wasn’t sure he’d ever cared what a woman thought before—why would he when it would be indecipherable anyway?
Okay, so he wasn’t man-of-the-year material. But things with Nina were different. Finally his relationship with a woman had begun with friendship, and he’d thought they were building a foundation from there. Maybe they weren’t. Maybe he and Nina were just too different and they’d never find a common ground.
Wyatt’s thoughts sputtered like he’d run out of gas. He hit the brake and stopped, eyes on his cabin.
The front door was open.