ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) (8 page)

Ash

I held David’s file on my lap as the plane took us to the hanger at an excruciatingly slow pace. I should be at the office, meeting with new clients, talking to old clients, trying to get to the bottom of the attack on Kirkland. Six weeks and nothing else had happened, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all related. That Donovan’s accident—the first he’d ever had, according to him—and Kirkland’s shooting had to be related. David thought I was paranoid. Kirkland had upset a lot of people in the three years we’d had him in our employ. Yet, if some jealous husband was going to come after Kirkland, he probably would have done it long ago.

Rose was moving into Donovan’s old cottage this weekend. Mina had been working all week to get it ready. I needed to be there for that, too.

And Mina…

The look on her face when I left this morning haunted me. She wouldn’t even come and say goodbye to me in front of everyone else. She stood alone in the kitchen, Ford cooing in her arms. And that look…how did I explain this to her?

How did I explain this to myself?

I needed to know. It was as simple as that. I had to know if Alexi was alive or dead; I had to put the past behind me before I could move forward. And this trip was the only way to do that.

I opened the file and looked at the pictures that had haunted me all these months. They wouldn’t haunt me anymore. I was going to know the truth, good or bad. And then I was going to move on with my life.

***

I stood outside the elementary school and watched as parents talked among themselves, waiting for their children to be vomited out the main doors as the final school bell rang. A few cast long glances my direction, but most didn’t seem to think anything about the tall, muscular man leaning against a tree across from their children’s school. It was New York after all. Lots of odd creatures in this city.

The relative quiet of the residential street suddenly exploded as the bell rang and the children, as predicted, came running out the front doors. I found myself watching the little boys, imagining dark-haired Ford carrying a dark blue backpack, the color of his eyes, running out the doors to jump into his mother’s arms. Or blond-haired Aidan, her eyes a darker green than mine, but petite like her mother, walking with a group of similarly dressed little girls as her father waited impatiently on the sidewalk.

There was once a time when I couldn’t imagine a life filled with children. Now, it seemed like that was all I thought about.

And then I saw her. She stepped out of the building, talking to a child who was clinging to her dark slacks, her dark hair turned red. No one would ever guess that red wasn’t her natural color, not with her pale skin and the spattering of freckles across her nose. Only I knew, and that knowledge tore me up inside.

She walked the child to a tall, dark-haired woman who was clearly not the child’s mother. A nanny, perhaps. They spoke for a few minutes, then she turned to go back into the building. The play yard quickly cleared, parents rushing their children to dance and music lessons, or nannies rushing to get back to their afternoon soap operas. I crossed the street and entered the building without drawing any more attention to myself. The hallways were silent now, the smell of paste and urine and stale tacos almost overwhelming. I caught sight of her again, turning a corner a few yards ahead of me.

She wore slacks and a white blouse, her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. She once said that ponytails were for ponies. Clearly, she’d changed her mind. It bounced as she walked. She paused to stick her head in a classroom to ask someone about crepe paper for decorating the math center in her room. Then she was off, down the hall again. I thought I heard her whistling. But it wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be whistling Dixie the way she used to do to annoy me. Not here. Not in this place. Not now.

Alexi.

At the Compound

David watched Mina take the baby upstairs, wondering why she suddenly looked like the world had dropped out from under her. The woman always had a quick smile for everyone, and she was so gentle with that baby that he couldn’t help but stop and watch sometimes when she was talking to him. But someone had sucked the wind out of her sails today, and David was pretty sure he knew what it was.

Ash had the proof that Alexi was alive since February. It was August, and he just now decided, overnight, that it was time to go see her. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

David closed his eyes and sent up a silent prayer. Let Mina be as good a person as she seems. Let her be the one who can give Ash what he needs. Let Ash finally find a little happiness in his life.

Everyone else had. It was finally his turn.

David settled back down behind his workstation and reviewed the video feeds. He didn’t have to watch them all the time. The program was set to alert him to any anomalies. But he liked to take a look from time to time, just to make sure the program hadn’t missed something.

Donovan was shadowing an executive whose new wife had a brother who was schizophrenic and had threatened to kill him if he got out of the hospital. He’d been accidentally released from the mental institution a week ago and the cops had yet to find him.

Kirkland was watching over a socialite who was going through a nasty divorce and was afraid her husband would disregard the restraining order taken out against him.

All the video feeds looked good. There’d been nothing unusual on either of the cases so far. But there was always the potential of violence, so they were vigilant.

Then he started to answer emails.

It was usually routine stuff, things he could answer with a few lines here or there. But then he came across an email that sent the hairs on the back of his neck sailing.

Watch your back…

Ash

I stood in the hallway a long time, even after she disappeared into her classroom. I still couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it all. Why hadn’t she come to me? Why hadn’t she found a way to let me know she was still alive?

We’d had a plan. If one of us was ever in a situation we couldn’t get out of, we would leave a sign. Something that only one of us would understand. Hers was to leave her engagement ring in a place I could easily find it. I searched everywhere for the damn thing, tearing up furniture and making my fingers bleed from prying up window. Nothing.

Nothing.

She didn’t follow our protocol; she didn’t try to get a message to me. Yet, she was here in New York.

I could have walked away. I’d seen enough. I even turned, even walked a few feet down the hallway toward the exit doors. But I couldn’t do it.

I had to know.

She didn’t look up when I opened the door. She was stacking dried paintings on a desk at the back of the room, giggling from time to time as she studied the artwork. I didn’t realize first graders were quite that amusing in their artistic endeavors.

I let the door slam behind me. Still, she didn’t look up.

“Just a minute, babe. They were quite rambunctious today. It’s going to take me a few more minutes to put this place back together.”

“It’s only been three years. I suppose I can wait a few more minutes.”

She froze. I could hear the crackle of the paper she held in her hands, the sudden absence where her breathing had been. And then, slowly, she laid the papers carefully down on the desk, making the stack neat, as though I hadn’t spoken.

“The only thing I don’t understand is why. Why didn’t you warn me? Why didn’t you try to contact me, to let me know you were alive? Why did you let me believe you were dead?”

“How did you find me?”

Her voice was low. Controlled. The kind of voice she used when interrogating terrorists.

“I didn’t. Not because I didn’t try, because I did. I spent the past three years chasing one lead after another. But it was David.”

She nodded. “David and his computers.”

“David and his loyalty to his family. That’s more than I can say about you.”

She turned then, hurt in her eyes. She studied me, her eyes moving slowly over my face, then sliding over my arms, the way they were held tight over my chest. Then back to my face, to my eyes, tears spilling over the edge of hers as she took in what was so familiar about me.

I did the same, making notes in the back of my mind on all the things that were the same and the things that had changed. Her hips seemed wider, but I supposed that came with having a child. And her middle was a little doughier. She hadn’t lost the weight as Mina had done. But her face…that was still the same. And I could still read her expressions like a page from a book.

“I tried,” she said. “I tried to tell you; I tried to ask you to come with me. But I knew…” She pressed her hands to the center of her chest as though she was in great pain, tears streaming down her face. “I knew you would never leave your family.”

“How could you know that if you never asked?”

“I couldn’t make you choose between them and me!”

“Why not? Were you afraid of the choice I’d make? Were you afraid I’d chose you?”

She shook her head, but I could see the truth in her eyes. She forgot how well I once knew her.

At least, I thought I’d known her.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Ash. You’ve got to know that.”

“How am I supposed to know that? You walked away without looking back!”

“I had to get out of that life!” Her voice rose, her tone almost hysterical. Again, she pressed her hands to her chest. “I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t watch innocent people die because we were a day late in identifying the bad people. I just…I couldn’t have that weight on my shoulders anymore.”

“You should have told me.”

She laughed, the sound filled with bitterness. “I went to the funeral, you know,” she said, scrubbing at her face with the back of her hand. “I saw you, saw how broken you were standing up there all alone. But you were still your father’s son, still Ashford Grayson the Second, the son of Senator and Mrs. Grayson. You were still that stuffy son of a bitch that you always told me was just a façade. But we both knew…when it was over, when there were no more terrorists to kill, we both knew you would follow your father’s footsteps.”

“Would that have been so bad?”

“Yes!”

She turned from me, covered her face in her hands, sobs wracking her body. It took her a minute, but she finally got control of herself.

“You never asked me. You never wanted to know what it was I wanted.”

“I thought you wanted me and that was enough.”

“I thought so, too,” she said softly. “For a while. But then I felt like I was drowning, and I had to get out of there, away from you and the CIA and everything…”

“Who were you when I met you, Alexi?”

She groaned softly. “I haven’t heard that name in so long.”

“Who were you?” I asked again, my voice low. Dangerously low.

She looked sharply at me, fear dancing through her eyes.

“I was a CIA agent. I was working with Colonel Cunningham.”

“What did you say to me the first time we spoke?”

She shook her head. “I know what you’re getting at, but I’m not that person anymore.”

That was it in a nutshell. She wasn’t that person anymore. Hadn’t been for much longer than I’d ever suspected. But when I looked at her, my blood boiled and my hands itched. I didn’t know if I wanted to kiss her or strangle her.

“Three years. Three years I searched for you. They told me you were dead and I refused to believe it. I held your mother in my arms and promised her I would find you. What am I supposed to tell her now?”  I let my arms fall to my sides, slapped my hands against my thighs. “Tell me, Alexi. What do I do now?”

She shook her head, the tears still flowing freely.

“I don’t know.”

“She thinks her only child is dead. She has no idea that she has a granddaughter.”

“Ash—”

“No.” I turned away. “Don’t give me any more excuses. No more lies. I can’t listen to them any longer.”

I had my hand on the doorknob when she caught me, tugged at my arm. For a brief second, it was as if nothing had happened, as if no time had passed. I turned and looked into those eyes I once loved so much, and I pushed her up against the wall, stealing a kiss I’d been aching to have for longer than either of us could appreciate. And, for a long second, it was everything I’d wanted it to be.

But then it wasn’t.

I stepped back, my hands stretched out at my sides.

“You aren’t my Alexi anymore.”

“No,” she said softly, the tears still flowing even as she touched her lips, her eyes filled with regret and hurt and need. “I’m Rachel Nelson. I’m a first grade teacher and a mother and a wife.”

I nodded. Maybe that was it. Maybe we’d both been lost, both struggling to figure out who we were outside the shadow of our parents, our friends, our schools. Maybe we thought we knew, but life had other plans for us.

She finally knew who she was.

Now it was time for me to figure out who I was.