“Don’t apologize. It’s fine.” Compared to some of the places she’d slept, this was fancier than a suite at the Ritz. She walked to the bed and set her bags on the mattress. After leaving Six Points, they’d stopped at Target so she could replace some of the items destroyed in the apartment fire. Mostly clothes, toiletries, and a few other necessities. The rest would have to wait until she secured a new place and filed a claim with her insurance company. She had no clue when that would be. At the moment, it ranked fairly low on her long list of priorities.
Now that she had time to think about it, the full weight of the day finally hit her like a bag full of bricks. Her stitches ached, a constant reminder that barely twenty-four hours had passed since Vaughn tried to kill her. Fighting the pull of exhaustion, she sank down at the foot of the bed. “Any word on my car?”
Jackson shook his head. “Hatch found something wired into the battery, but he didn’t have time to safely remove it before he had to leave for work. He said he’ll take care of it when he gets home tonight and let us know what it is.”
“If you give me a ride to his place, I’ll do it myself.”
“Why? What’s the rush? Hatch lives clear across town, by the attractions. Even if we get lucky with traffic, it’ll take at least an hour to get there. It’s been a long day, we could both use some rest, and it’s not like you’ll need it tonight.”
“Vaughn’s still out there.”
“And he’ll still be out there in the morning. Austin’s got Nina locked up tighter than Area 51, so you might as well get some rest and start fresh tomorrow.”
Essie pressed her lips together. He was right. It annoyed the hell out of her. She was exhausted, a headache was building in her temples, and she really wanted to take a long, hot shower, which would be a challenge with the stitches that needed to stay dry for a little while longer.
And yet she felt as though she should be doing…something. Anything. Not sitting here twiddling her thumbs.
Tilting her head up, she found Jackson’s gaze focused on her as if the rest of the world didn’t exist. She remembered that heated look all too well, remembered how it usually led to them naked and breathless in a tangle of limbs.
God help her, a part of her wanted that to happen again. To feel that alive, that complete. It pulsed through her veins and electrified her blood—a sharp, insistent craving that had never completely gone away, no matter how hard she tried to exorcise it.
The room suddenly felt too small. Her breath caught in her throat. She shook her head to clear her mind before she did anything she’d later regret, like strip Jackson bare and take every last thing he was willing to offer. “I should probably get settled in.”
“Need any help?”
“No. It’s not like I have all that much to unpack.”
His eyes tracked to her emergency bag. “That’s the same one you had when we were married, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“It’s not a big bag.”
No, it wasn’t. In a pinch, the black leather bag could double as an oversized purse. “I wasn’t planning on living in the woods for three months. What I keep in there gives me the ability to acquire whatever I might need later.”
Spies made a habit of traveling light, because you never knew when life would throw an unexpected curveball. What covert operatives considered essential items was vastly different from that of a survivalist. As far as spies were concerned, they didn’t need enough supplies to ride out a natural disaster or zombie apocalypse. Most of the time, all they needed was to evade detection or capture long enough for an extraction team to arrive.
Jackson’s eyebrows rose. “Now I’m dying to know what you got in there. You haven’t let it out of your sight since this morning.”
She shouldn’t have let it out of her sight last night, but events had gotten the better of her. She wouldn’t let that happen again. Honestly, there wasn’t anything in there that should shock him in the least, just the basic necessities to make her life easier if she had to go to ground for a while.
“You could have looked. I wouldn’t have minded.”
He shook his head. “I don’t go through anybody’s stuff unless they give me the all clear.”
Even when they were married, he’d been respectful of her personal space, a fact she’d always appreciated. By nature, she was a private person. Her career choice had amplified the trait a few notches, but she didn’t see any harm in letting him take a peek in the bag. She opened the zipper and held it open. “Be my guest.”
After a brief hesitation, curiosity got the better of Jackson. Although, if he were being honest, he really wasn’t fighting it all that hard. For years, he’d been dying to know what she kept in her bag but hadn’t wanted to be one of those guys who stuck his nose into every nook and cranny of his woman’s life. Especially this woman. She would have kicked his ass up and down the block if he’d pulled that crap on her.
With the bag between them, Jackson sat on the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. Leaning over, he peered inside, and the first thing he noticed were the straps of twenties, five in all, for a total of ten thousand dollars. Beside it lay a small stack of passports of varying colors, bound together with a plain rubber band. “You kept your fake credentials?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” She said it as if any other response was inconceivable. “You never know when they’ll come in handy.”
He reached for the stack. “How many you got in here?”
“I don’t know…five, maybe six.”
In reality there were seven: two American, one German, one Australian, one South African, and two from the Russian Federation. Each listed a unique identity, none of which belonged to her. The color and style of her hair changed with each persona, but they were undeniably Essie, if you looked closely enough. One of the American passports was for Paige Wolford, the alias she’d been working under when they met all those years ago.
