Jake already had Sahara trailered when Hannah came out of the house at five o’clock in the morning. He didn’t know why she had insisted they bring her horse with them, especially since he had offered to have the mare delivered to her if she decided not to come back home with him.
He knew when she had agreed to work with his grandmother he’d promised to drive her to Raleigh and leave her there if that was what she wanted, but now that she was approaching him with all of her belongings, he wished desperately he could retract his promise.
He couldn’t fathom what life would be like if Hannah walked out of his world for good. She reached him, her gaze dropping to the ground as though she too didn’t want to face what might come next.
“Stella came over a few minutes ago,” Hannah told him.
“Are you all ready?”
“I think so. Did you put my bridle and saddle in the trailer?”
“Yeah. They’re back there.” Jake took her bags and put them in the backseat of his truck before holding the door open for her to climb inside. She slid in, but instead of closing her door, Jake stood there waiting for her to look up at him. “Are you sure about this? This friend you’re meeting couldn’t be involved in your dad’s death, could he?”
Hannah shook her head. “I trust him.”
He took her hand. “You can trust me too.”
“I do trust you,” Hannah said softly.
He wanted more, more than what she was willing to give, but he didn’t know how to voice the words or even what words to say. Instead, he leaned closer and captured her mouth with his. The kiss sparked a fury of emotions inside him, a longing for some deep need that had yet to be met, an ache to put his future in place.
He laced his fingers through her hair, holding her head as he changed the angle of the kiss and let himself dream of Hannah being part of his tomorrows. The thought shocked him, and he pulled back, stunned. He wanted this woman in his life more than anything he had ever wanted before. How was it that he had avoided facing the truth until this very moment?
“Don’t go.”
“I don’t have a choice.” She whispered the words, and he saw the moisture in her eyes.
Words he wanted to stay caught in his throat, and he stepped back. He saw a tear spill over when Hannah watched him close the door between them.
* * *
Charlotte felt like she was drowning in the silence. Since Jake had climbed into the driver’s seat of the truck, he hadn’t spoken a word to her. That had been over an hour ago. She finally had to say something. “Jake, I hope you know I don’t want to leave the farm. I don’t want to leave you.”
“Then why do you have all of your belongings with you? And why did you insist we bring your horse?”
“Because this is one of those times that I don’t know if what I want and what is required of me will be compatible.”
“You know, I’m getting pretty sick of you always speaking in riddles.”
“I wish I didn’t have to.”
“You don’t have to do anything. You can make your own choices,” Jake said with a sense of panic and desperation in his voice. “I can hire security for the house. If that won’t make you feel safe, we can go to New York for a while or somewhere else, for that matter. I wouldn’t want to find someone else to watch after Grandma, but I could for a little while if that would help you change your mind.”
Charlotte fell silent once more, her heart feeling like it had been pierced by the possibilities she couldn’t consider yet. He couldn’t understand, she reminded herself. He had no idea the information she carried inside her head could mean life or death for dozens of intelligence operatives. He wasn’t in the tiny circle of people trusted to run the guardian program, and she was bound by the secrets she had sworn to keep, the promises she had made to her father and those who had trained her within the NSA.
She hated knowing this time together—what could be their last moments together—was being spent with angry words between them. Couldn’t he understand that she loved him?
The thought, the startling truth of it, shocked her.
What would her dad say, she wondered, if he was still here to talk to about her dilemma? Would he give her permission to share the truth with Jake? Normal circumstances required permission before she could tell anyone who she really worked for, but these weren’t normal circumstances.
She glanced down at her watch. Only another thirty minutes before Jake would drop her off at her initial destination. She would make her way to the meeting from there, making sure he didn’t know where she really went. That thought alone reminded her that she had sworn to protect the guardians.
She couldn’t share her secrets, but maybe she could help him understand why she had to keep them.
They reached the outskirts of Raleigh, and Charlotte mustered her courage to speak to him once more. “When you decided to stay in Virginia after your parents died, why did you do it?”
“You know perfectly well why I stayed. I had to.” His intensity was still evident. “My grandmother needed someone to make sure she stayed safe.”
“This meeting today is important for the same reason. There are people who need me to help keep them safe.”
“You aren’t making any sense. Why would you be expected to keep people safe?”
Charlotte couldn’t answer his question but gave him directions for where he needed to take her. He looked at her with curiosity when he pulled into a parking lot in a strip mall. Ironically, the dominant store, the one on the far end, was a large bookstore.
“This doesn’t exactly look like a part of town that’s horse friendly.”
Charlotte had already come to the same conclusion. If she tried to ride Sahara around here, she would stand out, and that was the last thing she wanted right now. “I’ll walk the rest of the way. Are you still willing to wait for me?”
“Of course I am.” Jake raked a hand through his hair impatiently. “In case you missed it the first dozen times I said it, I want you to come back home. It’s driving me crazy not knowing what’s going to happen next and knowing that you won’t confide in me.”
“I may never be able to explain everything to you, but I promise to come back if I can.”
“How long do you think you’ll be?”
“I don’t know. I’ll try to meet you back here at five o’clock.”
“And if you aren’t here?”
“Then you should go home.”
“What about your horse?”
“Consider her a gift.” Charlotte didn’t wait for him to respond before she opened the door of the truck and climbed out, taking only her leather satchel with her. She didn’t know if it was optimism that made her leave her clothes behind or if she wanted an excuse to come back and see him if Ace told her she couldn’t return. Shaking those thoughts aside, she started to walk away only to hear Jake call after her.
“Hey, Hannah?”
“Yeah?” She turned back to see him staring at her intensely.
“You asked me why I stayed in Virginia,” Jake said. “I may have stayed for my grandma, but the reason I didn’t leave was you.”
Her eyes met his, and she blinked back the tears trying to escape. Quickly, she turned away, forcing herself to head for the first stop of her next journey.
* * *
Charlotte slipped into the alley behind the strip mall, cut through a parking lot, and walked another two blocks to reach her destination. The Mexican restaurant was currently closed, but when she approached the back door, it immediately swung open.
“Were you followed?” Ace asked in the way of a greeting.
“Not exactly, but someone brought me to Raleigh.”
“Who?” Ace immediately looked around before motioning her inside and closing the door. “You were taught better than to trust anyone.”
“I know, but I didn’t expect to be without ID and transportation,” Charlotte countered. “Besides, it’s not like he could possibly know anything about me.”
Ace’s posture relaxed slightly. “How did you meet?”
“I took shelter under a tree on his farm.” She gave Ace a pointed look. “I was traveling on horseback at the time. He offered me a job taking care of his grandmother. I thought hiding out in the country was better than trying to move around unnoticed.”
“What exactly happened?” Ace led her deeper inside the currently vacant restaurant and motioned for her to sit at one of the tables. “Why didn’t you follow the plan? You should have had your fake credentials and Dwight’s truck.”
Charlotte related the events of the day she left home, struggling at times to keep her emotions in check. She went on to describe the living situation at Jake’s house.
“Do you trust this guy who brought you here?”
“I do, but there is one problem I’m hoping you can help me with.”
“What’s that?”
“I found a newspaper article in my mom’s things. The guy I was staying with helped me do some research on it.”
“What happened?”
“He went to Richmond, and he requested the birth records for four people who died in a car accident.”
Ace reached out and gripped Charlotte’s hand. “What four people?”
“A little girl, her parents, and her grandmother. Jonah, Linda, and Hannah Richardson and Nikolina Tomov,” Charlotte said. “At some point, he also requested mine.”
“He did what?”
“He knew I didn’t have any ID, and he thought he was helping me,” Charlotte explained. “The name I gave him was Hannah Thomas, but I need you to erase the search. I hope no one is running traces on vital records requests, but I suspect if we can do it, someone else might be able to figure it out too.”
“When did this happen?”
“I found out about it three days ago,” Charlotte said.
Ace pushed out of his chair, standing abruptly. “Three days is an eternity with today’s technology.”
“There was one saving grace. He didn’t use his real name when he made the request. Any logs would list his pen name.”
“His pen name? Who is this guy?”
“Professionally, he’s known as Jackson Clark, but he goes by Jake Bradford.”
Ace’s hands came down on the table, palms flat against the surface as he stared at her. “Are you talking about the author?”
“Yeah, that’s him,” Charlotte said. “From what Jake said, if someone tried to track him down, the information would lead back to his agent in New York, not the family farm in Virginia.”
“He’s too big of a name to be anonymous. Eventually someone will figure it out.” Ace lowered himself into his seat once more.
“What do we do? He’s waiting for me until five. I told him if I didn’t come back by then, he should just leave.” Charlotte took a step back in the conversation, desperate to know the truth. “The people killed in the car accident. Were they my parents?”
Ace averted his eyes just long enough to heighten Charlotte’s suspicions. She felt her throat close up as the truth washed over her. All this time she had been training and learning everything she could to work within the guardian program, never understanding why her dad had trusted her with so much so soon.
“The little girl,” Charlotte began, her voice hoarse as she fought back her emotions. “It was me, wasn’t it? I’m a ghost, aren’t I? I’m Hannah.” Again, Ace remained silent. She reached out and gripped his arm. “Why, Ace? Why would I need to be a ghost? Who could possibly care about a three-year-old orphan?”
“All I can tell you is that whoever killed your real parents could be the same people you’re running from now.”
“Why?” Charlotte repeated.
Ace straightened and looked her in the eye. “Charlie, you aren’t just a ghost. You’re the key.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You’re talking about the password my dad gave me.”
“That’s part of it. Your father, your biological father, designed the guardian database and put in biometric locks as an extra precaution. Those locks were going to be changed as soon as the system went online, but when your biological father died, Dwight was afraid to reveal that you were the only back door left in the program.”
Charlotte’s world crashed down around her. All these years Dwight and Belinda had raised her as their own daughter. Had they done it because they loved her, or was it to protect her role as an integral part of the guardian program? Memories of her childhood flooded through her: horseback riding with her father, the adventures with her mom through old Civil War battlefields, learning to shoot in the backyard and cook in the kitchen.
Slowly she worked through her shock and the grief that replaced it. “What are the keys?” she asked. “Retinal scan, fingerprint? What?”
“I believe it’s a three-prong system: password, retinal scan, and fingerprint.”
“When do you want to reactivate the system?”
“That’s the tricky part. Somehow we have to figure out who is after you and neutralize them. They have the equipment. We have to find it.”
“I thought there was a backup.”
“There is, but as soon as we activate the system, they could be able to access it,” Ace explained. “If these guys were able to find the equipment in the first place, we have to assume they would have the ability to hack into the database once it’s back online.”
“How long do we have until we run out of funding?”
“Our emergency funds were supposed to last another six weeks, but with the increased activity in the Middle East and Asia, we only have enough for about two weeks. Three, tops.”
“What do we do now? We can’t process any new funding as long as we’re locked down.”
“Kade is setting up shop nearby. Let’s get you some ID and compare notes. We need to coordinate our efforts if we’re going to find these guys.”
Charlotte stood, slid her satchel over her shoulder, and reminded herself that the guardians needed to be her priority. “Lead the way.”