Circumstantial Marriage (3 page)

He stopped in the doorway, wincing at the bright afternoon glare. He glanced in both directions, not having seen which way she’d gone.

She’d headed left. He spotted her first, then the car sliding forward down the street a heartbeat later.

His pulse immediately kicked into a higher gear. He watched in horror, knowing exactly what was about to happen.

She was halfway down the block, preparing to cross the street. Her head was down and the collar of her coat pulled up, no doubt to hide her face. It couldn’t give her much in the way of peripheral vision, meaning there was no chance she could see the car inching forward down the street. She glanced both ways before stepping onto the road. Either the car stopped at that moment or she simply didn’t see it, because she proceeded forward.

Just as the car did.

He took off at a dead run.

He didn’t bother to call out a warning. Shouting out her name would only cause her to stop and look back in surprise. She needed to keep moving. It was the only chance she had.

Then it happened, exactly as he knew it would, when he was still impossibly far away. The car lurched into sudden motion when she was almost to the middle of the street.

At the sound of those squealing tires, she did the instinctive thing, the worst possible thing. She stopped and glanced up, frozen in shock and surprise at the sight of that car barreling toward her. Even if her preservation instinct kicked in, even if she managed to surge into motion, there was little chance she would be able to get out of the way.

His heart exploding, pounding, driving in a way it hadn’t in years, he ran as hard and fast as he could, heading straight toward her, even as the car did the same.

And then he was on top of her. He slammed right into her, his arms automatically locking around her, knocking her to the ground. He heard her scream. The noise barely registered among the whirlwind of impressions crowding his senses. They were rolling, over and over, the pavement hard and unforgiving against his back and arms and legs. He felt the rush of wind gusting past as the car blasted by, the roar of its engine drowning out her scream. He felt her in his arms, rigid and yet soft, as soft against his chest as the ground was hard against his back.

Their momentum gradually slowed. They rolled over one last time near the curb. He landed on his side.

His body aching, his chest throbbing, he could barely move. He gradually realized his head was tucked down, his chin resting against the top of hers, her face buried in his chest. Slowly, painfully, he managed to raise his head. He knew he should release her. He couldn’t. The tension still gripping his system held him in place, locking his muscles where they were. He could only lie there and peer down at the woman in his arms.

At first she didn’t move. Alarm shot through him. He tried to catch his breath, tried to choke out the words to ask if she was all right.

Then she finally shifted. Like someone wakening from a dream, she moved slowly, one limb at a time twitching, testing itself. Finally, she pulled away from his chest and lifted her head. Blinking rapidly, her eyes took a moment to land on his. When they did, they widened even more than they already were. He could read the shock in them, but also see they were clear and focused.

Relief unlike any he’d ever known shuddered through him, rocking his body from head to toe.

He’d made it in time. She was okay. They hadn’t gotten her.

Which was what they’d intended. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind it had been deliberate. It was exactly what he’d known it was from the instant he’d seen that car. In the back of his mind, he registered what he hadn’t heard: the sound of brakes squealing. He’d heard the roar of the engine, the growl constant, uninterrupted. There’d been nothing else with it. He figured if he checked the pavement, he wouldn’t find any skidmarks. He wouldn’t bother.

It was exactly as she’d said. They’d come after her, whoever “they” were. Bridges’s people?

She didn’t ask him to let her go. She didn’t try to push him off or pull away from him. She simply lay there, her breathing short and rapid, and stared into his eyes.

Sucking in a breath, she finally spoke, her gaze steady and weary and sad.

“Now do you understand how much trouble we’re in?”

Chapter Two

“I’m not sure we should be here.”

Seated across from Stone in a diner not far from the bar, Audrey eyed her surroundings with unease, especially the large windows on the far walls. Stone had asked for a booth in the back, but Audrey still felt entirely too exposed. Anyone passing by the windows would likely be able to spot them with little difficulty. Every ten seconds or so she felt her gaze drawn back to them. She didn’t know what her pursuers looked like, but she somehow expected to find them staring at her through the glass.

“Where exactly should we be?” Stone asked in that laconic way of his.

“Somewhere less public.”

“Public’s the best place for us now. It’s not like they’d make a move on us in here.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Audrey muttered, not about to put anything past these people at the moment. The terror of those moments when Stone had crashed into her still hadn’t died down, her heart pumping harder and faster than usual, her nerves on edge.

She shifted restlessly in the booth. Her body immediately protested, a thousand little aches and pains making themselves known at various points all over her.

Close. So close. She had no doubt that if it wasn’t for Stone, she would be dead right now.

She realized she hadn’t thanked him. But looking into his stony expression, she didn’t think he would appreciate the sentiment.

“Where else do you want to go?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” That was the problem. She didn’t have any alternatives to offer. They couldn’t go back to his place. They couldn’t trust that her—their—pursuers hadn’t located it, too. It seemed like the only way the pursuers could have caught up with her after she’d managed to avoid them for several days. Even if she’d been spotted on the street, there couldn’t have been enough time for them to be contacted and make it to the bar to catch her coming out. More likely they’d followed her from Stone’s place to begin with, or Stone’s neighbor had told them where to find him just as she had Audrey.

The waitress who’d taken their order finally reappeared, setting two cups of coffee on the table. “Here you go. Do you need anything else?”

“Not right now,” Stone said. “Thanks.”

Neither of them looked up to watch the waitress walk away. Stone slowly reached for one of the cups and dragged it toward him. “Besides, I need this if I’m going to clear my head enough to think.”

She had to concede the point. Chances were, he’d had at least a few beers back at the bar. She was lucky she hadn’t found him later in the day. He didn’t seem drunk, but he should know his condition better than she would.

Audrey didn’t bother reaching for the other cup. She was jumpy enough without the caffeine. Even as she thought it, she couldn’t restrain another sweeping glance across the diner, lingering on the windows.

When she returned her attention to Stone, she saw that he hadn’t taken a drink from the cup. Instead, he was slowly peeling off the gloves he was wearing.

Audrey knew she should look away, knew exactly what those gloves were concealing, knew it was rude to stare. She glanced away, only to find her attention unerringly drawn back.

The diner’s bright fluorescent lights cast an unforgiving glow on his hands, illuminating the thick scars marring his palms. She’d never seen burn marks so severe or so up close. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how much it had hurt when they’d been burned.

“Since you don’t look surprised, I assume you already know what happened.”

Audrey jerked her gaze upward to find him watching her, no expression on his face. So this was a test. She wondered if she’d passed or failed. “Yes,” she made herself say as evenly as possible. “I know what happened. Hal told me. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Not a single flicker of emotion passed over his face to acknowledge the loss he’d suffered. But then, there didn’t have to be. The man’s general appearance was a testament to it. He raised the cup to his mouth, cradling it in those hands. “What exactly did he tell you?” he asked, never taking his eyes from her.

“That your wife and daughters died.”

“No,” he said simply, a hard edge in his voice. “They didn’t die. They were killed. Murdered.”

So this is what it’s like to be questioned by Jason Stone,
she thought as she stared helplessly into the intensity in those eyes. “Yes,” she managed to say.

“Did he tell you how?”

Audrey swallowed. “A car bomb.”

He arched a brow. “And?”

She hesitated, not sure what he was going for, not sure what to say. “And the bomb was rigged to your car. It was intended for you.”

“Because?”

“Because of a story you were working on. Something you were investigating.” He’d been looking into a small private defense contractor that was purportedly conducting illegal deals with foreign nationals, something that had proven all too true, something the people involved hadn’t wanted revealed.

So they’d set a bomb, one that would have succeeded at its intended purpose, except that at the last minute his wife’s car had begun showing signs of engine trouble. So he’d given her the keys to his, kissed his family goodbye and unknowingly sent them to their deaths.

From what Hal had told her, Stone had been inside the house when the car exploded. He’d run outside and thrown himself at the fire, tried to tear one of the doors open to get to his family even though they were likely already long gone by the time he’d gotten out of the house. His hands had been burned by the hot metal as much as by the flames. He’d refused to let go. The neighbors had had to pull him back, fighting the whole way.

It was a horrifying scenario, one she’d had no trouble picturing in vivid detail. A man desperately fighting to save a family that was already gone, burning before his very eyes.

She understood why he’d disappeared of course, though he’d only done so after reporting the story they’d tried to keep him from revealing. It was the only justice his family had received. No one had ever been directly connected to the bombing nor charged with the crime. The only charges brought were those in the original crimes Stone had been investigating. It was reasonable to believe that the people who’d ordered the planting of the bomb had been punished, if only for their lesser crimes. But the person or persons who did the actual bombing remained at large, and would likely remain so.

I gave up on justice a long time ago, lady.

“So you can see why I’m not really interested in playing investigative reporter anymore,” he said flatly.

“Yes. But I don’t think you have a choice,” she said, not without some sympathy. “They’re not going to give you one.”

From the look that flashed across his face, he couldn’t argue with her, and he wasn’t any happier about it than she was. He would rather be back in that dingy bar, insulated from the outside world, losing himself in alcohol. She almost couldn’t blame him, even as compassion struck for the condition she’d found him in. At least he’d been safe there, from everything but his memories.

And yet, for all he’d lost and all he claimed not to care, he was here now. He’d come after her when he hadn’t had to.

It seemed there was still some part of him that was alive, no matter how far beneath the surface it lurked.

“What else do you know about the book?” he asked roughly, a hint of irritation in his tone that he even had to talk about it.

“I know Hal had a title in mind. He wanted to call it
An Honorable Man.
”

The corner of his mouth quirked slightly. “I’m assuming the title was intended to be ironic.”

“I’m sure. Hal wasn’t one for hagiographies, and I doubt he would have been so excited about having found out something wonderful about Bridges.”

“There are certainly enough people out there singing the guy’s praises.”

Stone should know. He’d once been one of those providing the almost universally positive press Bridges had received over the years, a rarity for a politician, to be sure.

“You’ve met him,” she said. “What did you think of him?”

Stone appeared to consider the question. “Honestly, I thought he was a decent guy. I mean, he was a politician to the core, and there’s no way to really get a sense of who they are beneath all the smiles and polish. But if I’d had to put money down, I would have said he was a good guy. Just a gut reaction.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Guess it just shows, you never can tell.”

“No, you can’t.” Heck, before any of this happened, she probably would have voted for Richard Bridges herself. The guy had the whole package. In his early fifties, he was handsome, but not so much to turn off men or be dismissed as a pretty boy. He had a quick wit and charm to spare, enough that his appeal crossed party lines, winning opponents to his side while fighting passionately for what he believed in. There’d never been the slightest hint of scandal around him. He’d been married for more than thirty years to the same woman, with whom he had three children. From all appearances, he seemed to be the very thing Hal’s title had implied. When Hal had revealed that he’d uncovered something about Bridges, declaring it with a level of glee that told her it had to be something major, she’d actually experienced some doubt that Hal could have found what he thought he had. Richard Bridges had seemed to be that rarest of things—a good man. Unfortunately, like so many others, it seemed he was merely too good to be true.

“Mr. Stone—”

“It’s Jason,” he said bluntly. “Given the circumstances we might as well be on a first-name basis.”

“All right,” Audrey agreed. “Jason then. I’ve been thinking about it. Bridges has spent most of his adult life in the spotlight, with much of it thoroughly covered by the press, especially once it became clear he was going to run for president. If there was anything to be found in his past from the past several decades, someone would have done so by now. He’s been gearing up for this presidential run for years, so I have to believe he’s been careful, which probably rules out something recent. That leaves his early years as the most likely place where he’d have a skeleton in his closet. I know Hal intended to cover Bridges’s full life story in the book, including his childhood and teen years. It makes sense that if he found something, it was in that period.”

Stone took a drink from his cup. “That meshes with what Hal told me, how he wanted to learn more about Bridges’s early life. I actually don’t know much about it beyond the obvious. Who his father is, where he comes from.”

Yes, those were pieces of information few people didn’t know about. Richard Bridges was actually Richard Bridges, Jr., his father, Dick, having been a long-serving senator from the commonwealth of Virginia before him. The Bridges clan had long been powerful and politically connected in the state. Dick Bridges had had presidential ambitions of his own decades ago, only to find he couldn’t expand his popularity far enough beyond his home state. His only son far exceeded him in terms of charisma, and now appeared on the brink of fulfilling the dream his father had failed to realize.

The family homestead was in a small town in Virginia called Barrett’s Mill, the same town where Bridges was holding his campaign kickoff event in just three days. The family owned a horse farm there where Richard Bridges had spent his early years before being sent to a fancy prep school, then the University of Virginia, then Harvard Law. Audrey had never heard rumors of anything untoward in those early years. But then, that was the point. Whatever Hal had found, whatever was worth killing him over, was something no one had heard about before.

“What else did Hal tell you?” she asked.

“He wanted to know if I knew anyone who knew Bridges when he was younger who might be willing to talk to him,” Stone said. “I told him to contact Gabe Franklin.”

Audrey frowned. “Who’s that?”

“He’s a lawyer, a big name when it comes to constitutional law. He lives here in D.C. and teaches at Georgetown. Most important, he went to prep school with Bridges. I don’t know if Franklin gave him anything. We should talk to him and find out. If he did give Hal something, it might be something we should know.”

“Sounds good.” It sounded more than good. It was exactly what she’d hoped for, that Stone could provide the knowledge and contacts she lacked to get to the bottom of this.

“Of course, there’s the matter of how Bridges and his people found out that Hal had found anything, given how secretive he was being.”

“Maybe there was a leak in his agent’s or publisher’s office.”

“Maybe,” he said, leaving the possibility up in the air. Because there was no way to know for sure. Audrey shook her head with a sigh. So many questions, and after three days she wasn’t any closer to answers.

The thought made her uneasy, and she couldn’t help but do another check of the windows.

And then she saw him, a man standing on the other side of the glass, staring right at her.

He was a big man, forty-something, with a buzz cut and blunt features. She must have glanced in his direction at just the right moment. Their eyes met across the distance. He almost immediately looked away, but not before she saw the hard edge in his stare and knew without the slightest doubt who he was.

It was just as she’d thought. They’d been found.

With some effort, she forced her throat to move, to make sounds. “Jason—”

“I saw him,” he said before she could say anything. “Let’s go.”

“What—” She looked at him in surprise to find that he was already sliding out of the booth, tossing a few bills on the table to cover the coffees.

She didn’t even have a chance to ask where he expected them to go before Stone was on his feet and standing beside the booth with his hand, encased in its glove again, extended. He kept his eyes on the window. She followed his gaze. The window was empty, the man she’d seen there now nowhere in sight. But she had no doubt he was out there, just waiting for them to emerge.

“Come on,” Stone said with a trace of impatience.

The urgency in the order propelled her into motion. She grabbed her bag and moved to the end of the booth. As soon as she was standing, he took her arm and pulled her forward. He didn’t head to the front door as she expected, walking instead to the back of the diner.