LITMIR.BIZ

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dill pickles.”

      His joke didn’t even elicit a smile. Come to think of it, she’d been a little standoffish since she’d returned from the woods.

      “Have you always worked construction?” she asked.

      “Not always.”

      “What else did you do?”

      “I was a cop for a while,” he told her truthfully. “When that fell apart, I became a bodyguard.”

      “And then you decided to build things.”

      “Yes.”

      “Hmm, so to be clear—there’s nothing between us except friendship?” she said.

      “Well—”

      “That’s a pregnant ‘well,’” she interrupted. “We were more?”

      “In ways,” he said, unwilling to trot out their romance and getting wound up in details that would no doubt make her furious.

      “Then why was I flying in a helicopter to see you? I take it you were expecting me?”

      “No, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t, especially in that company.”

      “You mean with someone who wanted to hurt you.”

      “That’s what I mean.”

      “Why did he want to hurt you?”

      This was the tricky part. Stick to the truth, he admonished himself. “I testified against a guy who hurt a lot of innocent people. He’s in jail but he swore revenge. Thanks to the witness protection program, I’ve been hiding out. Now it appears he hired the bad guys to catch up with me.”

      “I know about that program,” she said. “How could anyone have found you?”

      “Someone must have ratted me out,” Adam said. Someone like Ron Ballard, his supposed liaison in the program.

      “So that’s why you bleached your hair?”

      “How did you know—?”

      “It’s pretty obvious, Adam. Is that why you also keep a week-old beard on your face?”

      He nodded.

      “And the glasses you sometimes wear?”

      “Yes.”

      “Hmm—” She studied him for a second, then added, “Okay, so cutting to the chase, what do I have to do with all this?”

      “Well, like you said, you were traveling to the cabin to visit me. By then I’d left the Bay area. They must have gotten wind you were coming, which meant you knew where I was, and they tricked or forced you into taking them along.”

      “That kind of makes me an idiot, doesn’t it?” she asked.

      He was just about at the point of throwing his arms around her and kissing her into silence, and would have done so willingly if there was a chance in hell she’d let him. He even had a picture in his wallet, so close it burned his backside, but he couldn’t show it to her—he’d ruined being able to do that the moment he told her he was Adam and not Steven.

      “No, it makes you a victim of this creep and I’m really sorry about that,” he said. “You didn’t know about this guy because I never told you. I never warned you. I wish I had. I just thought you were safer not knowing any of the...details.”

      “You and I weren’t really close friends, then?”

      “It’s kind of more complicated than that,” he said.

      She sighed. “Really?”

      “Isn’t it always?”

      “I don’t know, I don’t remember,” she said, sighing. “All this aside, it sounds as though this isn’t my fight.”

      “You’re just caught in the middle of it.”

      She stared at him a moment and bit her bottom lip. “Are my parents the kind of people who would take care of me while I got my memory back?”

      “If they were here, sure.”

      “I think I should go home.”

      “How?”

      “I’ll take a bus.”

      “Not without first seeing a doctor,” he said firmly and knew the second the words left his mouth it had been the wrong thing to say.

      “Tell me you are not issuing ultimatums,” she said.

      “I—”

      “Because that is totally unacceptable. I’m a grown woman.”

      “I know,” he said, “but it’s not that simple.”

      “Is everything complicated to you?”

      “Living is complicated, Chelsea.” He didn’t want to terrify her but the thought of sending her off on a bus made his blood run cold. “Without me to protect you—”

      “I’ll be fine,” she said.

      “Someone could come after you again. They’d figure you know where I was going next.”

      “But I won’t know.”

      “I don’t think your word will carry a lot of weight.”

      “Maybe not, but that’s my decision.”

      “That’s ridiculous,” he said, irritated now. “How are you and your peace-loving parents going to fight off killers like Devin Holton’s merry band of misfits and thugs?”

      “Who’s Devin Holton?”

      He clamped his mouth shut. He hadn’t intended on giving her a name she could repeat at a time when it could cost her dearly. “You’ve been acting kind of strange since we made camp,” he said gently. “What happened?”

      “What do you mean ‘what happened’?”

      “You left here a while ago and came back minutes later kind of...I don’t know, touchy.”

      “Touchy? Okay, maybe I am. Maybe it’s because your story doesn’t hold water. Maybe it’s because I’m afraid. Maybe it’s because I survived a crash that killed two other people and I don’t know who you are and I don’t even know who I am.”

      “I told you who you are and who I am,” he said.

      “How do I know you aren’t making it up? What proof do you have that I even know you, that my name is Chelsea and my parents are Troy and Susan?”

      “Troy and Helen.”

      “Whatever.”

      “Why in the world would I lie about that?”

      “Because,” she said. “Because nothing makes sense. We’re only kind of friends and yet I’m flying to see you? Why would I do that?”

      “They forced you.”

      “Then why shoot the pilot and not me?”

      “I don’t know.”

      She shook her head and winced. “Adam, or whoever you are, all I do know is I’m confused and very tired and I wish you would go sleep outside.”

      “That’s not going to happen,” he said.

      “Why?”

      “Because I need to be in here with you.”

      “And I need you to be somewhere else.”

      She might not recognize that tone of voice, but he did—he’d heard it a couple of times before, never directed at him, but once with a thieving employee and again with a pushy salesman. She had drawn a line in the sand and it would take a fool to cross over it. She needed

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