Carla Cassidy - Pawn

She’d been curious when the cops had pulled her over and they had acted out of character. She wasn’t curious any longer. She was just tired and wanted to go home.

“I paid my dues, Mr. Blake. A year ago I did what I could to help the FBI. Now I deserve to be left alone.” She didn’t want to hear what he had to say, what he might want from her. She was terrified of getting sucked into a drama she didn’t need or want in her life. It was better to walk away knowing nothing.

“Sometimes we don’t get what we deserve,” he countered.

Lynn had enough. “Am I under arrest?”

“Of course not.”

“Then give me my car keys. I’m out of here.”

There was a split second when she thought he wasn’t going to comply. She saw something dark and angry flash in the depths of his cold blue eyes, but after a moment of hesitation he held out her keys.

She snatched them from his hand, overwhelmed with the need to get out of here, to escape this man, this place. “Thanks, and I hope we never meet again.”

She couldn’t get out of the office fast enough. She looked neither right nor left as she walked back down the hallway toward the exit.

As she left the building the night air embraced her, but she was unsure if the heat was from the outside temperature or the edge of anger that stirred inside her.

She strode to where her car had been parked and didn’t feel quite safe until she was behind the wheel with the doors locked. She couldn’t quite believe how easily he’d let her go.

It took her only minutes to orient herself as to where they had taken her and get back on the highway that would take her home. Home to her apartment on the south side of Phoenix.

The small apartment was a far cry from the mansion where she’d been raised in the lap of luxury. Her Uncle Jonas had kept her isolated from friends but had made sure she had the best of everything that money could buy. She’d also been raised to believe she was the heir of wealthy parents who had died in a tragic boating accident.

Lies. All lies. She clenched her fingers around the steering wheel as she thought of the lies that had filled her life.

When the FBI had gone after Jonas and frozen his accounts, Lynn had discovered she had no trust fund. She had nothing. She hadn’t cared, because she thought she had Nick. As always, thoughts of FBI Special Agent Nick Barnes brought with them a deep regret, an ache of love lost.

Nick Barnes had worked for her uncle. Of course, neither her uncle nor she had known that he was an undercover FBI agent determined to bring Jonas down. In the course of his investigation he and Lynn had fallen in love, but the timing for that love had been all wrong.

Lynn had just discovered the beginnings of the truth of her birth and the surprising existence of two sisters. One, Faith, lived in Louisiana where she worked in the evidence department for the New Orleans police. The other, Dawn, traveled the world on all kinds of hair-raising missions as some sort of mercenary soldier, fighting for justice. Lynn, left Miami and Nick behind to come to Phoenix to find out more about herself and the special school, Athena Academy, that their biological mother had attended. She’d known then that she couldn’t go forward in her relationship with Nick until she had the answers she so desperately needed.

As she drove she began to relax. Driving had always been the way she unwound when she’d been younger. The only difference was when she’d been living with Jonas she’d driven a new model red convertible with all the bells and whistles.

She now drove a five-year-old sports car with a dented front fender, but she’d paid for it with money she’d earned and nobody and nothing could take it away from her.

She breathed a sweet sigh of relief as she parked in front of her apartment building. She’d half expected to be followed home, but had seen no suspicious cars behind her.

Familiar scents greeted her as she walked into her apartment. A trace of her perfume lingered in the air, mingling with the orange-scented furniture oil and the fragrant candles she loved to burn in the evening. The decor was simple, but suited her. She’d chosen earth tones in keeping with this desert place, much different from the lush tropical colors of the Miami mansion she’d shared with Jonas.

She dropped her keys on the desk in the corner of the living room, then headed for the kitchen and leftover pizza from the night before.

She zapped the pizza in the microwave, snagged a cold beer from the fridge, then sat at the table to enjoy her meal. But any peace the day had brought to her earlier had been destroyed by the unexpected events at the end.

What had they wanted from her? It was important enough that they’d hunted her down, pulled her over and brought her in. They apparently knew her mindset well enough to understand that she wouldn’t have come in to see them on her own.

Dammit, she had earned the right to be left alone. Even though she had known Jonas was a criminal, even though she had known he needed to be put behind bars, one of the most difficult things she’d ever done was agree to help the FBI put him there.

Pizza half-eaten, she got up from the table and carried her beer out to the back patio where the night sky was filled with a million stars.

When she’d first come to Phoenix over a year ago, she’d been on a quest to learn the truth about who she was and where she’d come from. What she’d discovered about her beginnings was like something out of a science fiction movie.

Her past included a murdered mother, a secret lab with human experimentation taking place and enough conspiracies to make her head spin.

But, in addition to the horrors she’d learned of, she’d also been united with two sisters who, like her, were part of an experiment, all three genetically enhanced with special gifts.

She upended her bottle of beer and took a deep swallow. Damn the FBI and damn Mr. Richard Blake for making her think about things she didn’t want to think about.

Her computer mentally called to her, reminding her that she’d promised to have the Chastain Pharmaceutical Company Web site done in a month and it was a huge job. It was easy to lose herself in work, and that’s just what she needed to banish all thoughts of the FBI.

She carried her beer back into the house and went into the spare bedroom, which she used as an office. In the past year she’d gained a reputation as a top quality Web site designer and had managed to earn a living by using her computer skills. It was a job she enjoyed and that allowed her to pick and choose the hours she worked.

As she waited for her computer to boot up she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, willing away the headache that niggled at the base of her skull.

The day had begun so well. She’d had lunch with Kayla, a friend of her late mother’s, who served as police lieutenant of the small town of Athens, Arizona. Then Lynn had driven out to Athena Academy and had walked the grounds of the school where the mother she never knew had once walked.

Visiting the state-of-the-art college prep school nestled at the base of the White Tank Mountains brought a comforting peace to Lynn. It was a place of connection for her, a piece of her mother’s history that Lynn cherished. She loved seeing the new science wing, which has been completed over the summer. Another friend of her mother’s, TV news reporter Tory Patton, had given the dedication speech at the ribbon-cutting ceremony in July. Lynn had visited with more of her mother’s dear friends afterward.

She’d never meant to make her home here in Phoenix, it had just happened. She’d always intended to return to Miami and Nick. When she’d first left him to seek the pieces of her life that had been missing, they’d managed to call and e-mail each other frequently. But, time had a way of slipping by and long-distance relationships rarely had a chance of working.