Helen Brenna - Along Came a Husband

They were friends. Good friends, but still only friends. She could trust him, and she owed him the truth. At least part of it. “It’s a long story,” she whispered. “I need you to keep this between us.”

“Missy?” He grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Who is he?”

She swallowed and looked into his eyes. “He’s my husband.”

JONAS STRUGGLED TO MAINTAIN consciousness, strained to hear the conversation taking place down the hall. Whispers. Quiet and intimate. Missy with another man. He didn’t know why it should surprise him. As far as she knew, he was dead, and his death would’ve only given her a ticket to ride anything and anyone her freestyle heart desired.

Old familiar stirrings of jealousy reared up inside him and, at the sound of the front door closing and steps coming down the hall, he quickly tamped back the feelings. He couldn’t spare the energy for jealousy. Not now. Not ever.

Slowly, Jonas retrieved his gun from the bedside table. He slipped it under the covers only seconds before Missy came back into the room, looking confused and unsettled. “Why—”

“Will your doctor tell anyone about me?” he interrupted, not at all up for the interrogation she was sure to be formulating.

“No.”

“Who is he to you?” he murmured in spite of himself.

“None of your business.”

“I need to—”

“You’re dead, remember. You have no needs or rights when it comes to me!”

“Well, unless that divorce you were planning went through before my death, you’re still my wife. And I’m still your husband.”

“Husband? I haven’t had a husband for more than four years. As a matter of fact, as absent as you were for most of our marriage, I’m not sure the term husband ever applied to you.”

He closed his eyes and took several breaths in and out. “I just need to make sure your doctor can be trust—”

“He can be.” She paced beside the bed. “Unlike some men I know Sean keeps his promises.”

“Good for him,” he murmured.

Suddenly tired to the bone, Jonas wrapped his fingers around the cold but oddly comforting grip of his gun. As he closed his eyes, the remembered sound of gunshots echoed through his mind. One. Two. Then, as if in slow motion, he once again saw Matthews taking a direct double hit to the chest and flying through the air.

Jonas remembered turning, his weapon drawn, and that’s when he’d gotten hit in his side. He’d managed to fire off several shots. Before spinning out of the alley, he’d hazarded a quick glance at Matthews. His partner had been lying in a puddle on the ground, his head bent backward at an unnatural angle. Dead. This time for real.

Fatigue settled swiftly over Jonas. He was tired of the lie he’d been living these past years. Tired of trying to be someone he wasn’t. Tired of…just plain-ass tired.

“Jonas?” Missy said.

Feigning sleep, although the reality wasn’t far off, Jonas didn’t answer. More so than hearing her, he sensed her stepping back, maintaining her distance.

“Jonas?” she said impatiently. “I want some answers.”

He imagined her standing there with her arms crossed protectively in front of her, her chin tucked defensively. He let his breathing turn heavy and she hesitated. She wouldn’t touch him. He knew it, was counting on it.

“Are you awake?” She waited a minute, maybe two, then he heard her rummaging through a dresser drawer. Suddenly, she spun around and flicked off the light. “Asshole,” she muttered on her way out of the bedroom.

Yeah? Tell me something I don’t already know.

“THE BIGGEST DEAL OF MY LIFE is coming together!” Delgado yelled. “You assured me nothing—nothing—would get in my way!”

“Don’t worry.” Pretending a calmness he sure as hell wasn’t feeling, Mason Stein spoke into his cell phone while searching the frame of the couch. “You’re still on.”

“What about your renegade agent?”

The man who may have foiled Mason’s plans to be on a tropical beach in about three weeks with a couple million in an offshore account? “We’ll find him.” He pulled out his switchblade. “Before he does any damage. You have my word.”

“Your word doesn’t mean shit to me,” Delgado bit out. “You don’t get your money until my deal goes through.”

“That goes without saying, but it might not be a bad idea to move up your timetable.”

“Impossible. This deal is done. It’s going down in three weeks, regardless. I want this taken care of before I get back to the States next week.”

“I’m working on it.”

“I get busted, my men get busted, or my inventory is confiscated and you’re a dead man.”

Click.

“Son of a bitch!” Mason shoved his phone in the holder at his waist and then slashed open a cushion with his knife. He gutted the couch. Nothing. The chair. More nothing.

Frustrated, he flung his knife across the room, and it stuck with a satisfying thud in a kitchen cabinet. He’d torn this damned apartment to pieces and had come up with zilch. No addresses or phone numbers. No laptop or memory devices. Not even a single cell phone record. The man took the concept of anonymity to an entirely new level. How were they going to find him when they had absolutely nothing to go on?

As Mason stood there his cell phone rang. He glanced at the display and answered. “Tell me you found him.”

“Not a trace.”

“Dammit!” he bit out. “I want—”

“Relax, Mason. With all that blood in the alley, he’s dead or dying.”

“Not good enough.” Mason paced around the mess he’d created of furniture stuffing, hunks of broken dishes and fractured picture frames. An end table was the only piece of furniture still standing. “This is your fault. You told me he’d turn. You told me—”

“So I was wrong. Shoot me.”

“I want the body.” Mason struggled to keep his voice down. “Then I want it never found.”

“What do you think I am, stupid? If he’s identified, people are going to start asking questions. Did you tell Delgado?”

“I didn’t have to tell him. His people did.” Mason closed his eyes. “If I go down, I won’t be going alone. Understand?”

“Oh, I understand. Do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re working outside the lines right now, remember? This is no-man’s-land. So don’t give me any more orders. Understand that?”

“Yeah,” Mason muttered. And when all this is over and done with, you’re dead, no matter what.

“Good. ’Cause we got bigger problems on our hands than you think.”

“How could this get any worse?”

“He kept files.”

“Of what?”

“All the evidence he turned over to you over the course of the last four years. He backed up everything on a memory stick.”

Mason broke out in a cold sweat. “You gotta be shitting me.”

“If we don’t find him soon, he could turn everything over and we’re dead anyway.”

“Why didn’t you grab his files while you had the chance?”

“Why didn’t you kill him in the alley? If you had this wouldn’t be a problem. Did you find anything at his apartment?”

“What do you think?” Mason barely held his temper in check. He hadn’t really expected anything to be here, but every base had to be covered. “I have meetings tomorrow in D.C.”

“I can handle things on this end.”

“I’m telling you he’s hiding with someone he knows. Someone he trusts. His father. His wife.”

A loud laugh sounded over the line. “There is no one. Why do you think I suggested him for this assignment in the first place? No one in the world gives a rat’s ass whether Jonas Abel lives or dies.”