Falling For Danger Page 22

I nodded, figuring I was as ready as I’d ever be.

  “Do you have everything you need?” Blair asked.

  I grinned, nostalgia filling me as Blair assumed her usual maternal role. “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? Did you pack enough shoes? Socks?”

  “Yes.”

  “You always under-pack.”

  I laughed. “I know, but I got this. Promise.”

  “Are you scared?” she asked, her voice thick.

  My expression sobered. “A little.”

  “You can always come home. With more time, we could figure out a way to make it work. And if you need anything, we’ll be there for you. You know that, right? I know you want to do this alone, and I’m not saying that you can’t, just that you don’t have to. There are people here who love you and are willing to fight for you.”

  I smiled, tears welling up in my eyes. “I know.”

  I turned toward Jackie. “I’m really sorry I’m going to miss the wedding. You’ll have to send pictures.”

  She nodded, her gaze watery. “I will.” She gave me a quick hug. “I can’t believe I found you just to lose you again.”

  “I know.” She’d only been in my life a short time, but she was as much my sister as Blair was and I loved her. “Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for us. We couldn’t have gotten through this without your connections and your research.”

  “I feel like I got you into this mess in the first place,” she replied. “I wish I’d never started this stupid vendetta against him. It wasn’t worth it.”

  “It was,” Blair interjected, surprising me. “It was the right thing to do. I thought I could bury my head in the sand, that if I just left town, it would all go away, but I didn’t think of all the people he’d hurt along the way, of all the damage he could still do.” Her gaze met mine and held, understanding flickering in her eyes. “You were right all along; he needed to be stopped.”

  It felt good to have her approval, to know that I wasn’t alone in this.

  We sat together, talking about nothing, focusing on the mundane rather than the jarring fact that this would be the last time we would see each other for the foreseeable future. It felt like an ending of sorts, even though I knew that distance wouldn’t lessen the bond I felt between us or diminish the love I held for them.

  A series of knocks sounded on the door, the code Matt and I had developed so I would know it was him, and then the lock turned and he walked over the threshold, his gaze sweeping over all of us. A smile tugged at his lips; I figured we looked pretty ridiculous holed up in this shitty hotel room, drinking mimosas and eating fancy pastries like we didn’t have a care in the world.

  His gaze softened as it settled on me, the love in his eyes filling me with a flood of warmth.

  “We should probably get going soon. Our flight leaves in a few hours.”

  I nodded. “Did you get everything you need?”

  “Yeah, I did.” He smiled at Jackie and Blair. “I’ll go downstairs and settle the bill with the hotel.”

  “Okay.”

  He gestured toward the computer sitting on the desk. “Have you guys checked Capital Confessions yet?”

  I shook my head. “Is it up?”

  He grinned. “It is.”

  We crowded around the screen, pulling up the Capital Confessions page, gasps escaping as we read the post.

  Senator Edward Reynolds … implicated in the death of his longtime friend … under investigation … mysterious circumstances … using his position on the Senate Intelligence Committee …

  “Holy shit.” I’d expected him to take a swing at my father, but he hadn’t pulled any punches.

  “This is way better than anything I even imagined,” Jackie interjected, her eyes wide.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  Blair just stared at the screen mildly dumbfounded.

  There would be no coming back from this.

  “You did it,” Matt whispered, pressing a kiss to the top of my head, his arms wrapped around my body. “I’ll be right back.” He gave me a quick hug and then he released me.

  We all watched him leave, his departure sucking the air from the room as the moment of reckoning came upon us and we couldn’t avoid the good-bye that faced us now.

  I didn’t have it in me for big speeches, couldn’t find the words I needed to say good-bye. So in the end we didn’t speak, we just wrapped our arms around each other and held on.

  Matt and I held hands as the plane taxied down the runway, as we caught the first leg of our flight to Bali. There was a part of me that couldn’t believe we’d pulled it off, that we were actually leaving. And at the same time, I felt hope for the first time in a long time, like this was our chance to start a life together and find some semblance of peace.

  I stared out the window, looking down on the city, and let go.

  Matt

  When I felt the plane’s wheels lifting off the runway, the nose pointed to the sky, the first stirrings of relief filled me. We’d done it. Somehow we’d actually done it. The rest of the trip wouldn’t be easy, we were in for a lifetime of looking over our shoulders, but at least we were together. And alive. For now, that felt like enough.

  It felt like everything.

  Epilogue

  Kate

  Six months later …

  I stared out at the ocean, the wind whipping my cover-up, my hair blowing around me. The waves were intense today, the water wild. It was February in Bali, and while I would have been wearing a coat and boots in D.C., today was just another day at the beach here, another day in our secret paradise.

  Arms wrapped around me, a warm, hard body pressing into my back. I stared down at the tanned hand resting under my bikini-clad breast, feeling that familiar rush of contentment at the sight of the gold band there, the symbol that had made us man and wife.

  I turned in Matt’s arms, my arms sliding up to curve around his neck, pulling his head down toward me for a kiss, loving the feel of his smooth skin against mine, giving myself over to the pleasure that slid down my body, all the way to my toes as his lips devoured mine, his tongue unraveling me.

  “Good morning,” Matt whispered, his voice throaty.

  I grinned. “Good morning.” My hands slid down his ridged abs to his waist where his wetsuit settled over his hips, the top unzipped, showing a whole lot of tanned, tantalizing skin. “Going surfing?”

  He nodded. “It seemed like a good day for it.”

  It did. He liked surfing on days like this, loved pushing his limits, chased that adrenaline high. I figured it came from the life he’d lived, from the part of him that needed to be on the edge. In a way, it was how he dealt with his PTSD, and maybe it was nontraditional, but it seemed to work for him. I was happy to see him with an outlet, and in the months since we’d moved to Bali, his nightmares had become more and more sporadic. I figured we’d never completely put our pasts behind us, but we’d found a way to cope and thrive, to look toward our future together.

  “Are you going to join me?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I think I’ll just watch.”

  “Okay.”

  He gave me another quick kiss and then he was jogging to the water, board in hand.

  I sat down in one of the chairs on our patio, looking out at the incredible view that had become our backyard. Our place wasn’t fancy; it was small and had needed a ton of cleaning and work, but the view was incomparable. Plus, it had the added bonus of not having neighbors nearby, affording us the kind of privacy we needed to feel comfortable. After a lot of manual labor, we’d made it into a home we loved.

  We’d bought a little fishing boat and spent a ton of our time on the water. Sometimes we ate what we caught, and we even had a little garden where we grew some of our own vegetables. It was so different from the life I’d lived in D.C., but it fit us well. There were still moments when we looked over our shoulders, times when I’d be in the market and someone would push too close or I’d hear a noise, and sudd
enly, I’d think that this was it. That we needed to run. That they’d found us.

  But every time, it was just a false alarm. A vendor hawking their wares, another shopper eager to get the best price on some seafood.

  This felt like home now, but even as it did, we were both prepared to move on, for the time when our pasts would catch up with us. We kept packed bags with cash and a set of travel documents in our bedroom. Somehow that had become our normal, living off of the money Matt had saved in the years we’d been apart taking jobs from which he now carried scars. We lived day-to-day, settling into a rhythm that worked for now. I didn’t know what the future held, if we’d have the kids we’d always envisioned, if we’d ever truly put down roots, but for now we were happy. There wasn’t a day when I regretted my decision, when I even thought about what my life would have been like if I’d stayed in D.C. In the years when I’d thought Matt was dead, I’d learned that home wasn’t a place and family wasn’t a last name. All that mattered were the people that loved you. I walked through life with Matt by my side and carried my sisters in my heart.

  I drank my coffee and watched Matt surf for a while, his powerful body riding the waves, and then I stared down at my cell, calculating the time difference between Bali and D.C. It was late at night there, on a very special day.

  I pulled up the link for Capital Confessions, smiling when I saw the top headline. One of the terms of my agreement with Sean had been that he wanted an exclusive of Jackie’s wedding—a term she’d easily agreed to in order to get him to print the stories about our father.

  The headline read:

  Exclusive! Jackie Gardner and William Andrew Clayton Marry in Lavish Ceremony

  Beneath the headline was a picture of Jackie clad in the gown she’d picked out with me and Blair, an enormous smile on her face, Will’s arm wrapped tightly around her, an equally impressive grin on his.

  Next came a picture of her and Blair together, my heart clenching a bit at the sight of my sisters and the fact that I’d missed this special day.

  I read on:

  Political consultant Jackie Gardner married William Andrew Clayton in a private ceremony this evening at the racing farm of the groom’s maternal grandfather, former Vice President Harrington, in Upperville, Virginia. The bride was attended by her sister, Blair Reynolds, and the groom’s three sisters, Monica, Sophie, and Isabella Clayton. The bride was escorted down the aisle by the groom’s former campaign manager and her employer, Mitch Anders.

  My phone beeped, signaling an incoming text from a phone number I didn’t recognize. One of the many often-replaced burner phones we used to keep in touch.

  Missed you today. Thought of you often. Love you. J.

  I grinned as I read the text from Jackie. We didn’t talk often, but we managed to communicate every few weeks. It wasn’t as good as living in the same town and doing sister brunch on the weekends, but it helped me to still feel connected to them.

  My phone went off again, a different phone number this time.

  I caught the bouquet. Next we’ll all be old married ladies. Love you. Miss you. Be safe. B.

  My smile widened as I envisioned that and thought of how happy I was to see them both settled. Blair had been right. The Reynolds sisters—all three of us—had done well.

  My phone beeped again, another message from Blair, this time a link to a video.

  I pulled it up, feeling a pang in my stomach as I saw my father step into the view of the camera, my mother next to him behind the podium.

  I listened as he gave up his Senate seat and retired from political life, citing his need to “spend more time with his family,” which was the ultimate joke considering he’d lost all of his daughters.

  In the past few months, more details had emerged and while I knew my father was both smart enough and slippery enough to avoid any actual prosecution, his allies had begun distancing themselves from him, he’d become a punch line on evening talk shows, and his approval ratings were even more abysmally low than what was standard in his profession. There had been an investigation into Intech’s actions in Afghanistan, and somehow my father had pulled enough strings behind the scenes to pin the brunt of it on James Ryan. But even with a dead man as a scapegoat, the connection between them had been too close for my father to come out of it looking anything other than guilty. There hadn’t been enough evidence to prosecute him, but in the court of public opinion he’d been condemned, and for a politician, that dealt a killing blow.

  My mother looked completely unruffled by the events, her chin tilted, that same look in her eyes that she’d always had, as though no matter how low they’d been brought, she’d still forever be looking down on the world. My father didn’t look defeated or broken; he sold the story in a way that nearly had me believing that he was stepping down to spend time with his family.

  But because I was his daughter, and like it or not, I had just enough ruthlessness in me to understand, I saw the anger hiding in his eyes behind the faux love for his family, and knew that this was in its own way, justice. He’d lost his power; he’d lost everything.

  I stopped the video midway through and took a moment to breathe in the salt air, to revel in our victory, and then I responded to my sisters’ texts. When I’d finished, I set my phone down and looked out at the water, at the sight of Matt surrounded by all that blue, a speck in the giant ocean.

  I walked down to the beach to join him with a smile on my face and the peace of knowing that all was right in my world and that of those I loved, leaving my past behind me and stepping into my future.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to the awesome team at Berkley and InterMix—especially my fabulous editor, Kate Seaver, and publicist extraordinaire, Ryanne Probst. Thanks to my wonderful agent, Kevan Lyon, for her advice and support. Big thanks to my amazing husband and my family and friends for their love and encouragement. And thank you SO much to all of the bloggers and reviewers who have taken an interest in my work and, to you, the reader, for reading my books and making my dreams come true. I couldn’t do it without you!

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