Though Logan knew Jack’s flirting was harmless, he couldn’t help a small twinge of jealousy from hitting him. Before Karen died, Logan had no problems with women. Her death had zapped out all need to have fun with chasing a woman he found attractive, not that he bothered to ever initiate that chase with any woman.
Allie had been the only woman in his life in any capacity since Karen, and even then he had fallen into their casual relationship without much thought. She had approached him, hinted at wanting something more, and actively pursued him. The only part he had in it all was kissing her first, and that was only after she told him she wanted him to do it.
Women no longer came naturally to him, not that he needed one in his life anyway, at least not for anything more than what he had with Allie. That was not a path he wanted to go down again and risk hurting someone else if they decided they wanted more. He also didn’t want to get involved with someone on a deeper level, especially not a woman who would disappear into WITSEC in a few days. It was far better for Jack to flirt with Sara and for Logan to ignore his own attraction to Sara. It wasn’t like anything could come out of it anyway, even if he did decide to pursue her.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Sara swallowed the last bite of strawberry pie and pushed her plate away. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten that much.”
“This is pretty standard for us,” Jack said. “Well, maybe not the delicious pie. Charlie will have to learn to bake now.”
“I loathe baking,” Charlie said.
“We could just take Sara with us on all our jobs,” Lester said. “Make her our official pie chef.”
Sara laughed. “Tell you what. I’ll give Charlie the recipe before we leave. Then he can decide if he wants to use it.”
“Oh, I’ll make him use it,” Lester said.
Sara’s stomach felt like it would burst open at any moment and all she could think about was walking off the meal. “I’d love to take a walk before bed,” she said. When no one responded immediately, she looked at Logan. “If that’s okay with you.”
He pushed his chair out from the table and stood up. “Of course it’s okay. I’ll go with you.”
“You guys go ahead,” Charlie said. “Les and I are on dish duty tonight.”
“A walk sounds like a good idea,” Jack said.
Logan held up his hand. “Sara and I should be fine by ourselves. Right, Sara?”
She read the meaning of his words in his tone. “Maybe we can go running again tomorrow morning, Jack.”
Jack smiled. “It’s a date.”
Sara said her goodnights to the other men, thanked Charlie again for dinner, and followed Logan out of the dining room. Stepping onto the back porch, she took in a deep breath of the cool night air. Chirping crickets greeted them, and she relaxed with their pleasant song.
“Did you enjoy dinner?”
She looked up at Logan and smiled. “It was wonderful. I liked getting to know everyone. Thank you for letting me spend time out of the room today.”
“I had no intention of making you stay in there for long. I just didn’t want you trying to leave without knowing your life was in danger.”
The mention of the hit brought her back to reality. “I am grateful that you all saved my life, but it’s still a bit difficult to grasp that my own father wants me dead.”
“If I know one thing about Hugh Langston, he doesn’t care who he has to kill to get his way.”
“He’s done a lot of things wrong, hasn’t he? More than just money laundering.”
“I’m sorry to say it, but money laundering is just one of the many criminal ventures he’s involved in.”
Sara didn’t want to know any of his other activities, although murder seemed to be one of them. “How do you know so much about him?”
“I used to work for him.”
Surprise stopped Sara’s feet from moving forward. “You worked for my dad?”
Logan turned to face her. “Unfortunately, for almost a year. My organization needed someone to infiltrate his operations. The government had tried time and again and fell short. Schaffer offered me up as someone who could do it, and I did.”
“What kind of work did you do for him?”
“I started out as a grunt, but I worked my way up the ladder. I had to do a lot of illegal things, but Schaffer helped fix them on the back end. I never killed anyone, though. Somehow I always managed to weasel my way out of that.”
“Killing people?” Sara’s head spun with the words. The real Hugh Langston was nothing like the father she thought she knew.
Logan started walking again, and she fell in step beside him.
“Did you get to know my father well when you worked for him?”
“Too well. About nine months into the assignment, I met him for the first time. He took to me, which was good for our end game, but it also put me in jeopardy of being caught. I had to play it very carefully for a long time.”
“Did we ever meet?” Since he confessed to working for her father, Sara had tried to remember if she saw Logan while on school breaks or in the summer.
“No, we didn’t. I spent a lot of time in his home, but I think you were in school when I came around. I heard your name from time to time, but that was about it. Never even saw a picture of you until this job came around.”
“He was never the sentimental type to keep pictures of family in the house. How old were you when you worked for him?”
“Seven years ago… that would have made me 24.”
“I would have been 19. My freshman year in college.”
“Sounds about right. I remember Langston mentioning something about you being in college.”
She shook her head. “That’s unbelievable. I had no idea you knew him so well.”
“Both him and Mathers.”
Sara’s heart skipped a beat at his revelation. “You knew Stephen, too?”
“Almost as well as your father.”
Logan’s words about how she didn’t want to marry Stephen came back to her. “I’m guessing you didn’t get along.”
“No, we didn’t. Mathers is a wild card, someone I never knew how to act around. He came up the ranks, much like I did, but he was always suspicious of me. It may have been because your father was looking for a new second-in-command and Langston took a real liking to me, while Mathers would have done anything for that position. He questioned everything I did, had me followed, tapped my phone, bugged the safe house I was living in for the job.”
“Stephen did all that?”
“He thought I was working for someone on the outside, which I was. He did his best to convince Langston of that, but until the end, it didn’t work. Then I made a mistake and it all went to hell. I got out as fast as I could, but a couple years ago, Langston found me and learned my real name.”
Though afraid to hear the answer, she desperately needed to know every ugly truth about her father. “What did he do when he found you?”
“He hired someone to kill me.” Logan took a deep breath before continuing. “But they missed.”
With his words, a strange bond forged between them. Both targets of her father, both still alive. Yet with her father as the common thread, she had a good guess as to why Logan had been so eager to save her.
“Is that why you’re so interested in saving my life?” she asked, looking up at him. “So you can get to him through me?”
“I can’t say that has nothing to do with it, because it does. I’m vested in seeing Langston pay for what he’s done and I will make him pay for it, one way or another.” After a moment of hesitation, he said, “But if I had a choice between saving your life and putting Langston behind bars forever, I’d go after him another time. Your life is worth so much more than getting revenge for his past misdeeds.”
Her heart skipped a beat, then resumed thumping at record speed. She ripped her gaze away from him and focused on the ground beneath her feet. Something in Logan’s voice when he spoke about saving her made her
body tremble.
She pushed away her attraction to him once more. Still engaged to Stephen, thoughts about another man had no place in her world. With everything Stephen had done to Logan, after all the revelations about him, one question about her fiancé plagued her, one she hoped Logan could help answer.
Terrified to speak and learn more about her father and fiancé, Sara finished their walk in silence. Before they reached the back porch, she worked up the courage to talk again. She couldn’t go another night not knowing the truth about Stephen’s involvement in her current situation.
“Does Stephen know about the hit?” she asked.
They stopped a few feet from the back door and Logan turned to her. “I believe he does. The others think maybe he doesn’t. As far as I know, Langston doesn’t do anything without Mathers. If Langston put a hit on you, he wouldn’t hide that from Mathers, especially since you two were getting married. To do it behind Mathers’s back would send the wrong signal to Mathers and the rest of his guys.”
Sara’s heart sunk. Logan had intimate knowledge of both her father and Stephen. Given everything she had learned about the two just tonight, Logan seemed to know them better than even she did. She didn’t want to believe Stephen knew about the hit, that he would marry her knowing she would soon die. That he would spend their last morning in bed together, pretending to love her, using her for his own gratification instead of truly caring for her.
“I’m sorry, Sara. I know it’s got to be hard to hear these things and I wish I could tell you it’s not true.”
She raised her eyes to Logan’s face. “Is there a chance he didn’t know?”
“There’s always a chance.”
Her fingers reached for her necklace. She tugged on the locket and moved it up and down the gold chain. “It’s all so surreal. Just two days ago I was preparing to marry someone I thought I’d spend my life with. Now I find out my dad was trying to kill me and my fiancé may have known about it. Instead of spending my life with Stephen, I’m going to spend my life in witness protection.”
“But you don’t love him.”
She froze. After a moment, she lowered the locket back down on her skin. “I don’t love him,” she said. “I never have and marriage wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
“Then why were you going to marry him?”
Remembering Mary’s words at the beach, Sara smirked. “Because Daddy told me to. Ever since my mom died, I’ve been told what to do. What’s best for me, what I need, what I want. Nothing is ever my decision. Everything I do is decided by either my dad or Stephen. It’s like I can’t take care of myself, or at least no one ever trusts me to.
“And now I have to go with the FBI, where I’m sure someone else is going to tell me what to do, and I won’t have a choice in any of it. They’ll tell me where to live, they’ll change my name. So I’m stuck again, not having a voice in my own life.”
Logan caught her eyes. “I know you’re frustrated. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have ditched your security detail. It’s like you had something to prove, to do something that was your decision.”
“I didn’t mean to do that, it just happened. The moment came and I went for it. Mary is always telling me to do what I want, and I do have some little things that are all mine that Dad and Stephen have nothing to do with.”
“Like what?”
“It’s stupid, really.”
“Tell me.”
She shrugged and a smile took over her face. “There’s a food truck down at the beach Mary and I always get tacos at. Stephen doesn’t know about it, at least I don’t think he does.”
His eyebrows jetted up. “A food truck, huh?”
“A little weird since we can eat anywhere we want, but we love the food there. The owners are a couple brothers that have had the truck for a little over 10 years. They’re both married with young kids and they drum up a living with their truck and the best tacos in the world. And then after we get our food, Mary and I always walk across the street and sit on the short wall at the beach. I love walking barefoot in the sand.”
Logan didn’t respond, but instead watched her. Uneasiness crawled across her skin at his stare, the same one she could never read.
“I’m sorry,” she said, to break the silence. “I didn’t mean to ramble on about it.”
“You’re fine. I was just thinking that in the short time I’ve known you, I already know you’re nothing like Langston or Mathers.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Not at all. It surprises me that you spent so much time with them and yet it’s like you’ve never been around them a day in your life. None of their influence rubbed off on you in anything.”
“Except for the fact that I let them tell me what to do all the time.”
“You are your own person, Sara. You always have been. Them telling you how to live your life is one thing, but you constantly rebelled and remained true to yourself. It shows in the little things, like your personality and the way you carry yourself. They may have told you what to do, but they didn’t control who you were or who you became.”
“I’m not quite sure who I am anymore. Everything’s changed so drastically in such a short time and it’s going to change even more, but again, it will be out of my control.”
Logan stepped forward. “You are going to have to surrender some control of your life to the feds, but not like you have with Langston and Mathers. Think of this as a chance for you to find yourself. It’s not ideal, but it’s your second chance at having the life you always wanted.”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that, but you’re right,” she said.
“But, Sara, when the air clears and Langston and possibly Mathers are behind bars, and you’re out there finding yourself, do one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t marry someone you don’t love because someone tells you to. That’s not how it’s supposed to be. You deserve someone who loves you more than life itself, who will take care of you and keep you safe. Someone who is willing to give everything he has if that’s his only chance of being with you. Don’t settle for anything less than that.”
His eyes held hers captive and his words opened her heart. She always believed in that kind of love, unconditional and unrelenting, but in committing to marry Stephen, she thought her chance had passed. Though horrified at the thought of her father trying to kill her, with it came the opportunity to start again, to find love, to be happy.
Still mesmerized by his gaze, guilt flooded her again. “I’m so sorry I cut you with the glass,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You didn’t know me and you were scared. I don’t blame you.”
“I hope it doesn’t scar.”
“I’ll just add it to the others.”
She chuckled. “I guess it does give you something to remember me by.”
“I don’t need something to remember you.” Though his face remained stoic and largely unreadable, emotion danced in his eyes under the glow of the back porch light. “You are someone I’ll never forget.”
Sara swallowed hard and her tongue flicked across her lips. Whereas Jack’s flirting at dinner had been fleeting and fun, Logan’s eyes held something more permanent. Whether real or imagined, her heart crashed into her stomach. The mystery of the man in front of her ran deep and with each layer she peeled back, she only wanted to unravel him more.
She opened her mouth to say something, anything to break the tense, emotionally-charged silence, when the back door opened.
“There you two are,” Jack said, stepping onto the back porch. He aimed his large smile in her direction.
Sara blushed and averted her eyes, not so much at Jack’s obvious flirting, but at him catching her and Logan in a moment, though she was still unsure what had transpired between them.
“We were just heading inside,” Logan said.
“That’s why I was coming to get you,” Jack said. “The news says th
ere is a hell of a storm heading this way.”
Sara looked up at the dark skies, but could only see the clouds around the full moon. A flash of lightning in the distance caught her attention.
“We better get you inside,” Jack said, holding his arm out to her.
She glanced at Logan for direction.
“You two go ahead,” he said. “I’m going to stay out here for a bit longer.”
“Did you want to stay up with us and watch television?” Jack asked.
“I think I’ll just head on to bed. I’m pretty tired and I want to be rested for our run in the morning.”
“Goodnight, Sara,” Logan said.
Sara watched him walk toward the woods until he disappeared into the night shadows. She turned and slid her arm through Jack’s.
Smiling, Jack escorted her in the house and back to her bedroom. “Last chance,” he said after they reached her room. “In a few days, you’ll be with the FBI and they are not nearly as good looking as I am.”
Unaccustomed to having a man so straightforward with his flirting, Sara laughed and a deep blush crept into her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I need some good sleep tonight, but tomorrow night I will. I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” he said with a wink.
As soon as he shut the door, Sara’s smile fell. As sweet and cute as Jack was, Logan had not left her mind since she came inside. She didn’t know what would have happened if Jack hadn’t come outside when he did, but she had a strong sense that Logan would have kissed her. Though surprising, that she had wanted him to do it shocked her even more.
She moistened her lips and lowered herself on her bed. “What the hell is happening to me?” she whispered aloud. She had never so much as fantasized about another man since she started dating Stephen and now she couldn’t stop thinking about what Logan tasted like. Between that and the revelations about Stephen and her father, it would take a miracle to fall asleep.
Chapter Thirty
After several hours of tossing and turning in bed, sleep finally embraced Sara, but not for long. A strong hand over her mouth dragged her out of her peaceful dream. Her eyes popped open to find a face hovering over hers.