Alice Sharpe - Hidden Identity

He had to make that work for her and yet in his gut, he knew she was safest if she was with him.

Oh, really , his subconscious said in a snarky voice. Is it safer for her to be with you, a hunted man, or is it just possible you can’t bear the thought of losing her again now that you’ve found her? Maybe the idea she’ll regain memories that include the fact you allowed her to grieve for you, that you left her to fend alone, maybe that’s what’s really bothering you.

But his next thoughts spoke just as clearly. You left her once and they used her. They could easily have killed her. She’s damned with or without you.

He called out as he approached the camp to announce himself before veering to dig maps out of the Jeep’s glove box. His first priority had to be to get them out of this forest and somewhere reasonably safe. Chelsea moved aside as he crawled into the tent. He set the rifle in front of the flap and turned in the tight space to sit down. She’d unrolled a couple of sleeping bags and had wrapped one around herself.

“Okay,” she said. “For starters—“

“Just a second,” he said as he grabbed the wilderness map. “Let me check something out.” He unfolded the map and did his best to locate their position. It appeared to him that the road they’d been on had emptied into the town of Black Boulder several miles before. What if they doubled back? If he were Holton’s men, he would have staked out that town yesterday afternoon and perhaps moved on to others down the line by now. Scanning the map more closely, he decided that would be their best bet. The added bonus was the place appeared big enough to support a few amenities and services. It had begun to prey on his mind that he’d lost phone connection with Whip. The old guy might have been an Arizona cop for years but he was also a consummate worrier.

Adam looked over more of the map, half plotting a route east, when he recognized the town of Spur located less than twenty miles from Black Boulder right over the state line in Nevada. With a twinge of hope, he wondered if another of his dad’s longtime friends still lived there. Doc Fisher could be a lot of help if he’d maintained his Nevada address.

“Are you stalling?” Chelsea asked.

He looked up from the map to find her knees bent, arms wrapped around her legs, eyes piercing. In a few weeks, a pregnant belly would prevent that position.

“A little bit.”

“Start by telling me who I am.”

He folded the map and set it aside. Her dark hair glimmered in the dim light as she peered at him. Who was she? The love of his life; the mother of his baby; the woman he would take a bullet for. That’s who she was, at least to him.

He started with the basics. “Your name is Chelsea Ann Pierce and you’re twenty-six years old. You live in San Francisco, where you run a food truck that mostly caters to business clients. You’re a fantastic chef, which makes sense since you graduated from culinary school just a couple of years ago. Your parents’ names are Troy and Helen. They live north of the city in a tiny coastal town called Bodega Bay, where they run a seaside tavern. You have three sisters and two brothers. Everyone lives in Northern California except your oldest sibling, Bill, and he lives in Nevada on a few dozen acres of sand with his wife, Jan, and enough guns to overtake a third-world nation.”

“Who are you and how did we meet?”

“My name is Adam Parish. I work construction.” That had been true when he met her and since he was still on the fence about how much to share, he left it at that. “One day, you and your truck rolled up to the building site I was working on. You made me the best pastrami sandwich this side of New York. As you were leaving, your truck rolled over a few nails. I changed the resulting flat and our friendship was born.”

“Based on deli meat and tires?” she asked.

“And pickles. We both love dill pickles.”

His joke didn’t even elicit a smile. Come to think of it, she’d been a little standoffish since she’d returned from the woods.

“Have you always worked construction?” she asked.

“Not always.”

“What else did you do?”

“I was a cop for a while,” he told her truthfully. “When that fell apart, I became a bodyguard.”

“And then you decided to build things.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm, so to be clear—there’s nothing between us except friendship?” she said.

“Well—”

“That’s a pregnant ‘well,’” she interrupted. “We were more?”

“In ways,” he said, unwilling to trot out their romance and getting wound up in details that would no doubt make her furious.

“Then why was I flying in a helicopter to see you? I take it you were expecting me?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t, especially in that company.”

“You mean with someone who wanted to hurt you.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Why did he want to hurt you?”

This was the tricky part. Stick to the truth , he admonished himself. “I testified against a guy who hurt a lot of innocent people. He’s in jail but he swore revenge. Thanks to the witness protection program, I’ve been hiding out. Now it appears he hired the bad guys to catch up with me.”

“I know about that program,” she said. “How could anyone have found you?”

“Someone must have ratted me out,” Adam said. Someone like Ron Ballard, his supposed liaison in the program.

“So that’s why you bleached your hair?”

“How did you know—?”

“It’s pretty obvious, Adam. Is that why you also keep a week-old beard on your face?”

He nodded.

“And the glasses you sometimes wear?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm—” She studied him for a second, then added, “Okay, so cutting to the chase, what do I have to do with all this?”

“Well, like you said, you were traveling to the cabin to visit me. By then I’d left the Bay area. They must have gotten wind you were coming, which meant you knew where I was, and they tricked or forced you into taking them along.”

“That kind of makes me an idiot, doesn’t it?” she asked.

He was just about at the point of throwing his arms around her and kissing her into silence, and would have done so willingly if there was a chance in hell she’d let him. He even had a picture in his wallet, so close it burned his backside, but he couldn’t show it to her—he’d ruined being able to do that the moment he told her he was Adam and not Steven.

“No, it makes you a victim of this creep and I’m really sorry about that,” he said. “You didn’t know about this guy because I never told you. I never warned you. I wish I had. I just thought you were safer not knowing any of the...details.”

“You and I weren’t really close friends, then?”

“It’s kind of more complicated than that,” he said.

She sighed. “Really?”

“Isn’t it always?”

“I don’t know, I don’t remember,” she said, sighing. “All this aside, it sounds as though this isn’t my fight.”

“You’re just caught in the middle of it.”

She stared at him a moment and bit her bottom lip. “Are my parents the kind of people who would take care of me while I got my memory back?”

“If they were here, sure.”

“I think I should go home.”

“How?”

“I’ll take a bus.”

“Not without first seeing a doctor,” he said firmly and knew the second the words left his mouth it had been the wrong thing to say.

“Tell me you are not issuing ultimatums,” she said.

“I—”

“Because that is totally unacceptable. I’m a grown woman.”

“I know,” he said, “but it’s not that simple.”