Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Flames leaped from the wreckage of the mangled vehicle, rising from the blackened metal into the night sky. The scene drew Milek Kozminski’s attention from the drink sitting before him on the bar to the television screen above it. Country music emanated from the speakers of the jukebox, so he couldn’t hear what the reporter was saying about the crash. He could hear only the twang of the singer as he crooned about drinking.
Milek could relate.
To the singer.
Not to the crash.
“Milek...” A soft voice, cracking with emotion, called to him. He twirled his bar stool to find not only his sister, Stacy, standing behind him but her husband, who was also his boss at the Payne Protection Agency. Hell, most of Payne Protection had come with them—Logan’s twin, Parker, and their younger brother, Cooper, and younger sister, Nikki. And Mrs. Payne, her warm brown eyes full of sympathy and something else, stared at him the way the others did—with concern.
“What the hell is this?” he wondered aloud. “An intervention?”
He had been drinking more lately than he should have but never enough that he lost control. He couldn’t afford to lose control—as he once had, so long ago. That time had sent him to a juvenile detention center and his brother, Garek, to prison. But Garek hadn’t actually done anything wrong.
The others said nothing, just continued to stare at him. And his heart began to beat quickly and heavily. Tears streaked down his sister Stacy’s face while her thin frame—but for the slight swell of her newly pregnant belly—trembled with sobs. Was something wrong with her baby?
He turned to Garek now—as he and Stacy always had since they were little kids. Their parents had never been there for them, but Garek had.
Garek’s face was flushed with emotion, and he strode over to the jukebox and jerked the cord from the wall. The music died, leaving the bar eerily silent but for the television anchor’s voice.
“Assistant district attorney Amber Talsma lost control of her vehicle on slick roads, causing it to roll down a steep ravine, where it burst into flames. She and her young son are confirmed dead in the crash.”
His heart stopped beating.
No, not Amber...
He twirled back toward the television. In a corner of the screen there was a picture of Amber with her bright green eyes and vibrant red hair. There was also a photo of her son—with his blond hair and pale gray eyes.
A big hand grasped his shoulder, offering support and turning him back toward the others who all stared at him with so much concern and pity.
“He was yours,” Garek said.
With his hair and eye color, the little boy looked like both Milek and Garek.
“She never told you.” Garek looked at their sister. Usually her tears would have affected him—would have had him fussing over her, especially now. Amber had been her best friend. But Garek stared at their sister as if he’d never seen her before. “Stacy knew. But I didn’t know, Milek. I swear I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.” He dragged Milek from the stool then and into his arms. “I’m so damn sorry...”
He had known. Even though another man had claimed the boy as his, Milek had known the truth. But he’d thought then that the kid would be better off without him as a father—just as he’d believed Amber would be better off without him as a husband, which was why he’d broken their engagement.
Even though it had nearly killed him, he had forced himself to give them up—because he’d loved them and wanted better for them. Now they had nothing. And neither did he.
They were gone.
Amber Talsma had been dead for a year. But no one had gotten any closer to finding out who had killed her. Or tried to. Amber hadn’t lost control of her car and driven into a ravine. She had actually been shot at—just weeks after her boss had been gunned down outside his home. Someone had wanted her dead, too.
So she had died—to keep herself and her son safe. The accident had been staged; empty caskets buried in their graves. Then she and Michael had disappeared. They were Heather and Mason Ames now.
But when she glanced in the rearview mirror—as she did now as she drove to Mason’s school—she still saw Amber. Her long red hair had been cut and dyed brown. Brown contact lenses covered her green irises. But her features were the same. Was that how someone had recognized her?
The letter had arrived just an hour ago—delivered to the mailbox of Heather Ames. She hadn’t recognized the handwriting, but she’d opened it. Photos had fallen onto the floor. Several of them of her and Michael—at the park. At his school. At the grocery store. And through the front window of the very house in which they lived now. She’d turned over the back of one of those photos to find a note, an implicit threat, scrawled across the back: I know who you really are...
And obviously where she was, as well.
But how?
Only one person knew she was alive: the FBI agent who had helped fake Amber’s and Michael’s deaths. Special Agent Nicholas Rus had been the one she had called about the shots being fired at her—into her home.
She shuddered as she remembered how close the bullets had come to hitting her son—to taking his life. If she’d lost him...
It wasn’t a risk she’d been willing to take. Sure, she could have hired bodyguards. Agent Rus had even suggested that—while he tried to find her boss’s killer, who was probably also the person who’d shot at her—she should hire the Payne Protection Agency.
But she had been too proud to reach out to Milek again. He would have cared she was in danger, but would he have believed she was? He hadn’t believed her when she’d told him she was pregnant with his son. He’d accused her of using her pregnancy to get him back—to trap him.
Even now, over five years later, the heat of embarrassment rushed to her face. That was why she had never admitted to her best friend she’d actually told Milek about his son. But it hadn’t been just embarrassment. Her best friend was also his sister, and she hadn’t wanted to cause problems between Stacy and her brother.
Growing up as they had, the Kozminski siblings were close. They’d had to stick together because they’d had no one else. When Milek had been in juvenile detention and Garek in prison, Stacy had grown close to Amber, too—so close that they were like sisters. Her husband, Logan Payne, the CEO of Payne Protection, would have protected Amber and Michael. Or he would have tried.
But a year had passed without the DA’s killer being apprehended. Could anyone have kept Amber and Michael safe for a year if the killer had known they were alive?
It had been safest for her and her son to play dead. She had convinced the FBI agent of that, and he’d agreed to help her. Then.
But he’d also promised to find whoever was after