“Nah, Bryson’s a tough guy. We’ve been Tasered before.”
Her eyes widened at his words. He’d said them so casually. “You have? Why?” Maybe it was another crazy witness, she thought.
“It’s all part of the training,” he said casually, as if getting thousands of volts of electricity shot into your body happened all the time.
She shook her head, then continued with the questions.
“Does Bryson ever give up?” She knew the answer before Axel spoke.
“Not once since I’ve known him, and that’s been a lot of years. He will win this case. He doesn’t know the meaning of losing. We have a powerful attorney who wants Jesse’s head on a platter. None of us will stop until that happens.”
The victory in his eyes seemed to say the case was already won, though Misty knew that was far from true. For the moment, at least, Jesse was very much free — free to come after her any time he wanted.
The conversation must have been over, because Axel stood and took their garbage to the wastebasket. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
With that, she found herself alone in the interrogation room.
When the two men came back in, everything seemed to move at warp speed. The documents were placed before her, and she was left alone again as she read through them. After an hour, she found there really wasn’t a good reason not to sign.
Once she’d turned the papers over, she was escorted outside, transferred to a jet and on her way to her new life with a new identify. Well, a new identity until this was all over.
And no longer than that, she vowed. Because as she sat down in her small home and looked at her new driver’s license, with the name Magnolia Linhart and a different date of birth, she knew she didn’t want this to be her.
Yes, her life had been anything but perfect, but Misty Elton was who she was; it was the name the children’s services department had given her, anyway. It was all she knew, and she didn’t want to start again.
This would only be temporary, right?
Misty was about to find out how slowly the wheels of justice turned.
Chapter Five
A sweet smile flitted across Misty’s lips as she lifted her face to the sky and enjoyed the sun beating down upon her. Yes, it was a bit too warm, and, yes, sweat was beading on her neck, but it didn’t matter.
This was her second month in her new home, and she finally felt as if she were secure again. She finally felt free to sit out on her front lawn and dig weeds from the flower beds. Up until the week before, she’d gone straight to her part-time job as a graveyard shelf stocker, and straight back home again, too afraid of being outside in the daylight hours.
Fear.
It was real; it made a person fight or flee; it shaped a person; it could mean living or dying. Fear was a constant with Misty, but she wasn’t going to let it rule her anymore. She wasn’t going to allow Jesse the satisfaction of knowing that even though he was free to do what he pleased, she was locked in a cage.
Bryson had been gone since he and Axel had dropped her off at her new home, working on finding other witnesses, on building the case. The agent who’d been checking on her was unfamiliar, and unbelievably rigid. The guy made her thoroughly uncomfortable. She just didn’t trust strangers — didn’t trust anyone, really. So why did she find herself missing Bryson? He was a stranger, too.
She had known him for only a day, and it appalled her to be upset that he was no longer her agent.
It was just that she was depending on him, counting on him. Then, she was suddenly thrust into the care of another agent. It was confusing.
Mystifying her even more had been the phone calls from Bryson to see how she was doing, to make sure she was adjusting. She didn’t think it was exactly protocol in these situations if he wasn’t her agent anymore, but she didn’t have friends, didn’t have family, so the shoulder he was offering, even if it was only over the phone, had been too nice for her to turn down.
It had been two weeks since the last time he’d phoned, though. She didn’t know if he was in a situation where he couldn’t call, or if it simply meant that he’d grown bored with their conversations.
Either way, though she hated to admit it, she missed the sound of his voice. When would she learn to not depend on anyone else but herself?
The lesson clearly hadn’t sunken in yet.
Still, something she had learned was how to control her fear. Being with Jesse had been forced upon her; she wasn’t the one in the wrong in that situation. Once she had accepted that, although the fear was still there, at the back of her senses, she was making a valiant effort to really live — well, live as much as she could while residing in a place that wasn’t hers for long.
As the sun rose higher in the sky, Misty’s skin turned pink, and she knew she should go back in, since she didn’t have sunblock on, but she couldn’t make herself do so. She was also strongly considering a haircut, but for some reason she wasn’t able to bring herself to have it done. She’d never felt beautiful, but the only compliment she could ever remember from her childhood had been when her fourth-grade teacher said she loved her hair.
From that moment on, Misty had taken pride in her long, dark tresses, brushing them more gently, from the bottom to the top, the way one foster mom had shown her, and braiding her hair loosely at night so it would have a pretty curl to it in the morning.
Still, with the sun beating down, she wouldn’t have minded having a little less hair at this particular moment. But she’d rather be too hot, enjoying the sun, than stuck back inside the small, lonely house.
Dumping water on her shoulders gave her instant relief. It cooled her down just enough that she could get at least another half hour in her front garden before she had to drag herself back in or risk heat stroke.
Digging her hand shovel happily into the ground, she pulled at another root, hoping she’d still be here to see the roses bloom next month. Lifting her hand, she ran her finger gently across one of the stems, feeling the sharpness of a thorn.
It made her smile. No matter how beautiful roses were, they could cause a lot of pain. That concept worked for people as well. Though Special Agent Bryson Winchester was a very beautiful male, he could certainly inflict a lot of damage.
She’d learned that from the conversations the two of them had shared. His voice over the phone was no less masculine, was no less sexy, than he was. The man had sensual energy seeping through his skin, and the phone line seemed only to accelerate the speed with which those waves reached her.
After grabbing her shears, she was cutting away dead debris when she heard a vehicle pull up to the curb alongside her house. Heart racing, Misty found herself frozen, though that reaction ticked her off, especially after she’d delivered that lecture to herself on bravery. Much as she struggled to relax her muscles, however, she couldn’t seem to turn her head, to reassure herself that it was just a neighbor, simply someone who lived next door and was returning home.
Her fear wasn’t quite as much under control as she’d hoped.
“Breathe,” she whispered, then forced her head to inch upward. When she spotted the long, lean legs encased in a pair of fitted jeans, her breath whooshed out in relief, and then she tensed for a completely different reason.
As her eyes continued to travel upward, they rose over the light green polo, and she locked gazes with Bryson Winchester. Nope. Two months of not seeing him had done nothing to her libido. She was just as affected by him now as she was the first time they’d met. If not more.
Only this time, she wasn’t afraid.
Running a hand through the escaped tendrils of her damp hair, Misty was suddenly self-conscious about the way she was dressed. She looked down to see dirt-caked hands and grass stains on her clothes. It shouldn’t matter — but somehow it did.
Walking up to her, Bryson didn’t say a word, his eyes intense, a smile flitting across his lips. Misty wondered whether she would find her voice in the next few moments, before the situation became any more awkward.
“What are you doing here?” she finally asked, her voice a bit too breathy.
He seemed to be taking his sweet time answering, and Misty was feeling a whole new kind of heat creeping down her neck. Her stomach tensed. How it was that she felt any kind of attraction toward this man? Men weren’t trustworthy. Not even this special agent who’d saved her from Jesse — for now.
He wasn’t here on a social call. This would be business. That’s all the two of them had together. Even if he were making a social call, it wouldn’t matter. She wasn’t interested in a relationship — she just wanted to live her life without drama. Without men.
Someday, that might be possible.
“My supervisor sent me. We’ve gathered all the witnesses and I’ve now been reassigned to you,” he finally replied as he squatted down, putting himself at eye level with her, and making her feel at a huge disadvantage.
The surge of disappointment from his answer irritated her.
Of course he was here on business. She’d already known that. It changed nothing. She’d just been telling herself that they would never be anything to each other but casual acquaintances. When this was all over, she would never see him again.