Operation Homecoming Read online

  “Or since we’re presenting my brother as a con artist who obviously hangs in shady circles anyway, make your boss think that Walker has something on him, something that could expose him,” Hayley suggested.

  “The point,” Quinn said, “is to make your boss think he needs to take action. And we wait and see what that action is.”

  Walker listened, then glanced at Amy. “What are the odds anybody in your office is going to recognize my name?”

  “They might recognize your last name, because I spoke so often of Hayley Cole.”

  Not of him, of course. He should probably be thankful, given what she likely would have said.

  “Use your middle name. Campbell,” Hayley suggested. “That way you’re more likely to respond instinctively.”

  “You mean like when Mom used to yell my whole name so I knew I was really in trouble?”

  The moment the words were out he wished he could take them back. He’d meant it as a light reminiscence of their childhood, not a stabbing reminder that he hadn’t been there when she’d been sick, when she’d died or even for her funeral.

  “Yes.”

  Hayley left it at that, but the moment’s hesitation before she spoke told him he’d caused her pain all over again.

  “Hayley.” Her name was wrenched from him, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Would it matter, if he could explain? Would it make any difference at all?

  “You’re sorry. I understand,” she said. “You say you had reason. I understand that, too. Can we drop it, please?”

  “Because nothing can ever make it right,” he said, focused on his sister as if there was no one else in the room. “Don’t think I don’t get that. Don’t think I don’t live with that every day. Knowing I never got to see her, to say goodbye, to tell her I loved her.”

  “She asked for you,” Hayley said softly. “So many times.”

  Walker nearly doubled over with the force of the pain that slammed through him.

  “One of the last things she said was, ‘Tell him I love him. Always.’”

  Walker’s jaw went rigid. His mother—his wonderful, sweet, loving mother—had died thinking her only son hadn’t cared enough to come home when she was dying. And yet her response had been to love him still more.

  It took every bit of his strength not to go to his knees right there. He staggered as he turned away. And barely made it to the bathroom before he did hit his knees and threw up, retching violently as his body reacted to the hideous pain.

  He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t go on like this. He never should have come back. They all hated him, and rightfully so. And he had to give up the pleasant fiction that if only he could tell them the truth, it would make things better. He’d clung to the hope that someday, eventually, even if it was years from now, he’d be able to do that, and things would heal.

  But he knew better now. Nothing could ever make this heal. Nothing.

  Not even saving a few thousand lives and maybe the damned world.

  Chapter 27

  This charade, Amy thought, was going to be awful.

  “Everything needs to look as normal as possible,” Quinn had said. “So as far as anyone is concerned, you were spending time with friends visiting down here for a week. Now it’s back to business as usual.”

  She understood why it had to be this way to work, but it was still going to be awful. She wouldn’t miss the long commute. Just a week of it, even with someone else driving and for company—well, except for the times when it had been Walker, and she’d been too wired to relax—had reminded her why she had reluctantly moved into the city. She wouldn’t even have to miss seeing Hayley, since they had followed along, taking up residence in a local long-term-stay hotel that was about midway between her condo and the office. And since they didn’t welcome pets, she had Cutter with her in the back of her compact hatchback.

  Which, she thought as she headed home for the first time in days, might just save her sanity, having the dog to focus on. And he would be, Hayley had promised, an extra layer of protection.

  “Trust him,” she’d said. “He knows what he’s doing, I promise.”

  Amy was driving because this was her turf, as Walker had put it. And, she’d realized quickly, it freed him to be looking around, watching. Odd, it almost seemed as if he’d done this before, this constant surveillance, the awareness on all sides.

  Her self-appointed, Quinn-approved bodyguard masquerading as boyfriend.

  And that was what was going to be awful.

  “It has to look like you’re head over heels,” Quinn had said. “You’ve got to make it seem like he’s charmed your socks off.”

  Even Quinn had looked a bit uncomfortable at the subtext of that. Amy wished he would have chosen a different turn of phrase.

  “Charming,” she muttered now as she negotiated a turn behind a large delivery van.

  “I can be charming,” Walker said drily. “All you have to do is pretend to believe it.”

  “Do you really have to move in with me? That’s hardly my style.”

  “Hard to bodyguard when you’re not with the body,” Walker said.

  “If that’s your idea of charming, it needs some work.”

  “If that’s your idea of pretending, I could say the same.”

  Cutter whuffed softly from the back of the vehicle. Apparently, he wasn’t happy with their snippy exchange, either. Hayley had always told her the dog had definite opinions, which she’d thought merely an amusing anthropomorphization. But now that she’d been around the animal more, she wasn’t so sure.

  She glanced at Walker. He’d changed, she thought. Something had definitely changed since Saturday night, when Hayley had utterly destroyed him with that simple truth of a dying mother’s unfailing love in the face of desertion.

  She’d been stunned at his reaction. She hadn’t thought he cared enough to be so devastated, but there had been no doubt. He’d gone stark white and practically stumbled as he retreated to be violently, physically ill. She’d felt an unwanted qualm, a rush of pity; she didn’t like to see anyone so destroyed right in front of her, not even Walker. She wasn’t angry anymore; she couldn’t be, not after that.

  He’d barely said a word all day Sunday, and then only to Quinn, to affirm he would go along with whatever his brother-in-law had planned. But by this morning a bit of the old Walker was back. Yet something was different. It was as if he didn’t care any longer what she, or even Hayley, thought of him.

  Or as if he’d given up trying to change what they thought of him.

  Just when she was realizing her thoughts had changed.

  “Let’s set some basics, all right?” Walker said. “I’m not expecting you to even speak to me outside of operational necessity. But nobody’s going to believe us as a couple if you’re this tense.”

  Operational necessity?

  And before, he’d used the words trained operative. He must have picked up the phrases from Quinn, who did revert to such jargon now and then.

  “It’s all an act, okay? A play. Except you need to stay in character from the moment we step outside this door until we’re back. Believe me, it’s easier than trying to go back and forth and risk somebody seeing or hearing something to give you away.”

  And just how, she wondered, did he know that?

  She gave him a sideways glance before making the turn onto her narrow street. “Do you really think we can pull this off?”

  He gave a half shrug. “I hope the fact that we have one kind of history will make the other kind believable.”

  She hadn’t thought about it that way. “You mean because you know things about me from when I was a kid?”

  “Something like that. Isn’t that the kind of thing lovers learn about each other?”

  He said it
so simply, in such an ordinary tone, that it shouldn’t have taken her breath away. But it did. She was starting to think that constantly reminding herself of what he’d done was a defensive reaction. Could it be that she was using that to keep a safe distance between them? Did she even want that safe distance?

  She wasn’t even sure there was such a thing, not anymore. Not with Walker.

  “I don’t know,” she said, not even sure if she was answering his question or her own thought.

  Either way, it was pretty unnerving.

  * * *

  “What do you need?”

  Since Rafe couldn’t see him, Quinn smiled. It was one of the best things about talking to his oldest friend; many steps could be skipped.

  “A couple of things actually. Tangible and not so.”

  “Go.”

  “First, we’re going to need at least one rifle down here, for this office. We’re sidearms-only right now. Thought you’d have the best ideas on that.”

  “You got it. Office going to work out?”

  “Charlie found it.”

  “Yeah. Well.”

  Quinn knew this wasn’t the time so he let it slide. He wasn’t sure there would ever be a time, not with Rafe.

  “Next?” Rafe asked, proving his thought correct.

  “I need you to do something that could get me in a whole lot of trouble.”

  “Shoot,” Rafe said. Not even a split second’s hesitation.

  “It’s kind of about Hayley,” he said.

  Now came the hesitation. “It’s going to get you in trouble with her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then I have to ask what I never ask. Are you sure?”

  The words told him volumes about Rafe’s estimation of his wife.

  “It may never go beyond me.” He didn’t add that it couldn’t go beyond Rafe, either; he knew he didn’t have to. “I just want to have it, in case I need it.”

  “All right.”

  “I need you to get hold of your buddy from Hoover.” He knew Rafe would get the reference to FBI Headquarters in DC.

  “And?”

  “Give him a name to check out. And I’m sending you a rough sketch of a tattoo. Looks familiar, and just that it’s a tat should narrow things down, since they’re forbidden in some quarters. I need whatever he can find on both.”

  “Is this a name I know?”

  “Yes. Newly arrived.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Male.”

  “Got it.”

  Quinn knew he had. Only one person fit, and Rafe wouldn’t miss it. For a long moment after he’d ended the call, he stared at the phone. He didn’t know what Rafe might find out. Didn’t know if he’d ever use it. But every gut instinct he had was firing that there was more, much more, than they knew.

  He just had to hope Hayley wouldn’t get too angry at him for going where she’d never wanted him to go.

  * * *

  Walker had been curious—okay, maybe a little more than curious—to see her place. Wondering what aspects of her personality would show, if she was still a “place for everything and everything in its place” kind of person. Hayley had always said her drive for order stemmed from the lack of it as a child, which made sense. He’d never been in her childhood home, but his sister had, and she’d said it was the worst kind of mess. Her father was apparently usually too drunk to care, and her mother had stopped giving a damn long ago even then.

  It was amazing, he thought as she parked the car in the single garage allotted to her unit, that she’d accomplished what she had. It was a sign of her grit and intelligence and determination.

  And, he realized belatedly, his own family had contributed to her success, as well. Not him, of course, but Hayley, and their parents. They’d taken Amy in until he’d started to think of her as a sister. It had even annoyed him much like sisters would have, when he’d been at that difficult transition into early teenage years, and the two girls got their heads together and started giggling as girls did at that age.

  Amy opened the back hatch for Cutter, and when he jumped out and promptly sat at her feet, looking up expectantly, she laughed and bent to plant a kiss atop the dog’s dark head. Walker felt an odd tug inside. Because it was such a sweet, loving gesture, he told himself. Nothing to do with the way it emphasized the length of her legs, or the slight glimpse of luscious curves he got thanks to the V-neck of her knit top.

  Nothing to do with the unbidden wish that she show half as much affection to him.

  This, he thought, could turn into a very special kind of hell, if he let it.

  He should have run when he had the chance. They probably expected him to run. To take off, as he always had. It was all useless anyway.

  But he wasn’t going to run. He’d toughened up. A lot.

  He’d thought these past five years of living in true hell were the hardest thing he would ever do.

  He’d been wrong.

  Remember why you’re here, he ordered himself. He was here because Amy had run afoul of what could be a dangerous mess. Because a man as ruthless as the man he’d seen in that courtroom video, using every trick in the book and writing a few new ones to win a case, wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice her if he had to.

  Because anytime there was lots of dirty money involved, things got ugly.

  Because one of the main characters in this little drama was a stone-cold killer.

  And Amy was on his radar.

  Chapter 28

  This party, Amy thought, was going to be hellish.

  It was already bad enough that Walker was essentially living with her. Bad enough that she kept thinking of the benefits part of Kim’s teasing about him being a friend with benefits. Bad enough showing up with him all week at local gathering spots, meeting him for lunch in the bistro she and Becca had gone to, for coffee at the kiosk downstairs in her building, anyplace where they would be seen by others.

  And they were seen. She was teased. She’d been prepared for that; she’d known it would come and had even practiced some breezy, happy answers, sounding like she imagined a woman head over heels would sound. When asked about him, she’d given the answers they’d prepared last weekend, answers that would match what anyone inquiring about him would be told. They had even, with Ty’s help, planted a series of back-and-forth emails that, to anyone with less skill than the Foxworth tech expert, would appear to have been going on for a while. And so far it had all gone well; no one seemed in the slightest suspicious.

  Kim had been delighted, not just for Amy but for being proven right. So Amy was fairly confident they’d succeeded in putting on the facade they’d intended.

  But tonight, masquerading as a newly in love couple in front of nearly fifty people, playing the part of a woman utterly infatuated with Walker’s easy charm and eye-catching looks, in front of everyone she worked with, that was going to be a special kind of torture. Not that she thought anyone wouldn’t believe it. They’d take one look at Walker and understand completely.

  She wondered what they’d say if she told them she’d known Walker since she was a child, the stereotypical book nerd, and he’d never teased or been cruel to her; in fact, had defended her rather heroically, for a teenager.

  She sighed as she finished with her makeup. For Walker had indeed been that quiet, shy girl’s hero. She remembered the day he’d pulled out of their driveway in the old pickup, which he had spent much of that two years restoring lovingly. She’d understood that; it had been his father’s. She’d just never expected him to leave in it and never come back. Well, he had come back, but not to stay. Never to stay.

  And you have become a rambling idiot.

  She took a step back, smoothed down the simple knit dress. No fancy, flashy style for her; this dress was all about
the fabric and the color. The color was a rich teal that somehow turned her eyes the same shade, while the fabric clung here, skimmed there and ended up being, as Becca had told her when she’d picked it out for her last year, incredibly sexy and yet so subtle any guy would be reeling before he even realized why.

  She wasn’t sure that was an effect she wanted, hadn’t even had the nerve to wear it before now. It was a regular battle, to remind herself she was no longer the nerdy girl, that her first gut reaction didn’t always have to be protective, defensive. But the dress was perfect for tonight. It needed to be believable that a man who looked like Walker would want her, and this dress just might do it.

  Want her.

  She bit her lip at the stab of longing that went through her. Then made herself stop, before she messed up the lipstick she’d so carefully applied.

  It had only been two weeks since Walker had strolled back into her life, and she was already mooning over him as if she were still that bedazzled little girl.

  So bedazzled she sometimes caught herself thinking he was looking at her as if he did want her.

  Even if that were true, she thought, it certainly shouldn’t give her a thrill. He could be sweet, indeed charming, and those eyes and that smile could still utterly disarm her. But he was still the guy who’d deserted her best friend when she needed him most. Who hadn’t been there for the mother she herself had loved, in many ways, more than her own. But she couldn’t find that gut-deep anger at him anymore. Not in the face of his anguish.

  She took a deep breath, told herself to focus on why she was doing this. It wasn’t any more soothing, given she could well be out of a job no matter how this turned out, but at least she knew it was the right thing to do. And they’d prepared as much as was possible; she’d given him a rundown on everyone likely to be there, even warned him about a couple. Mrs. Caden, for instance, who was going to take one look at him and zero in like a starving carnivore.

  “Fresh meat, huh?” he’d said, making her laugh unexpectedly.