Undercover Bride (24 page)

The door opened and Rikker greeted her with a frown, his jaw covered in white foamy lather. He glanced up and down the empty hallway before pulling her inside. Shutting the door, he turned. “What are you doing here? Something happen?”

“I can’t do this anymore.” She paced a circle around the room, wringing her hands.

He reached for a towel. “Do what?”

She whirled around to face him. “This job. This—” She shook her head, and her voice wavered. “Don’t you ever hate what you’re doing? Hate the lies? The deceit?”

Rikker’s face darkened. “I’ll tell you what I hate. I hate crime. Last month I helped put a mass murderer away. Did I feel guilty for befriending his wife to get to the truth? Not one bit. It’s our job. It’s what we’re trained to do.”

He turned to the dry sink and scraped the lather off his chin with a straight razor. He met her eyes in the mirror. “What’s the matter with you? I’ve never known you to act this way.”

“No job has ever required so much from me.” She clenched her hands into fists by her side. “No job ever involved children or—”

“Or what?” He wiped his face off with a towel and turned. “What happened to get you all riled?”

“This morning…” She swallowed hard and forced herself to continue. “This morning Garrett handed me papers to sign. The deed to his property. He’s putting my name on everything. Don’t you see how that makes me feel? It’s not bad enough that he trusts me with his children. Now this.”

“You knew it was a tough assignment when you took it.”

She thought she did know, but she was wrong. Never had she imagined how hard it would be. “It’s not just that.” She sank into the only chair in the room. “I don’t believe he’s the man we’re looking for.”

Rikker shook his head. “We’ve gone all through this.”

“I know.”

“Everything points to him.”

“I know.” She closed her eyes. Big mistake, for a vision of a crooked smile came to mind. She looked up at Rikker. “You always told me to go by my gut feeling, and that’s what I’m doing.”

She knew he hated it when she tossed his own words back at him, but she didn’t care.

Rikker flung the towel onto the dry sink “You’re letting your personal feelings interfere with your job, and that’s not like you.”

“That’s not what this is about.”

“Isn’t it?” His eyes blazed. “You’re a professional. You have a job to do. Whatever feelings you have for Thomas or his children can’t interfere.”

“That’s easy for you to say!” she snapped. “You don’t have to live with them. You don’t have to tuck the children in bed and hear their prayers. You don’t have to see the love and trust in their eyes as they look at you.” Nor did he have to lie in bed at night and listen to Garrett pace the floor, and fight the urge to go to him and give in to the desires of her heart.

Rikker’s expression softened, and he blew out his breath. “I know this is hard, Duffy. But it will soon be over.”

That’s what she was afraid of. Because no matter what happened, she couldn’t imagine a happy ending for anyone. Not for Garrett. Not for her.

Rikker pulled his suspender straps over his shoulders. “If we don’t come up with something soon, we’ll both have some explaining to do. You know Allan. He wants results, and he won’t be happy to hear that his best agents came up empty-handed. Is that what you want?”

“What I want is out.” Her mind suddenly made up, she added in a quieter, more contained, voice: “I’m leaving on tomorrow’s train.”

“Don’t be a fool!” He snapped the last suspender into place. “You mess this job up and your career is over.”

“That’s the chance I’ll have to take.” She stood and reached for the doorknob. “Sorry, Rikker.”

She hated leaving him in the lurch, but it couldn’t be helped. Her only hope was that in time he would forgive her. Opening the door a crack, she peered into the hall. Seeing no one, she slipped out of the room and down the hall.

A
hot breeze blew across the desert when Maggie picked up the children from school later that afternoon. Sand and dust spiraled upward, turning the sky a murky brown.

“Can we stop for ice cream?” Elise asked.

“Not today, pumpkin. It’s too windy,” Maggie replied. The children liked nothing better than to stop in town for an after-school treat. Elise looked disappointed but didn’t argue.

For once Toby’s and Elise’s chatter failed to raise her spirits. This would be the last day they spent together, and the thought nearly crushed her. She only hoped to get through the night. The worst part was leaving town without an explanation—of simply disappearing. But what could she say?

I’m sorry, but this was all a farce. I never intended to marry you.

She turned the wagon homeward with a heavy heart. Toby said something, and Elise’s laughter barely cut into her troubled thoughts.

Concerned about Elise’s still delicate lungs, she handed her a clean handkerchief. “Put this over your mouth and nose.”

Toby, as usual, was in his own little world. “Did you know that even when you can’t see the moon it’s still there?”

“Why can’t we see it?” Elise asked.

“Because the man in the moon turns out the light,” Toby said.

Maggie smiled through her tears. She was going to miss the boy. Miss both children. She didn’t even want to think about missing Garrett.

“Why are you crying?” Elise asked.

Maggie swiped away a tear. “It’s the wind. It’s making my eyes water.”

Elise peered at her from over the top of the handkerchief. “Can we have a tea party when we get home?”

Maggie was just about to say no when she changed her mind. She wasn’t leaving until tomorrow. No reason not to make a little girl happy today, especially after denying her request for ice cream.

“I think that’s a very good idea.”

Elise’s eyes shone. “Can we have it in our tree house?”

Maggie drove the wagon alongside the house and set the brake. A tree house, boogeyman, and a man in the moon; there seemed to be no end to the children’s imagination.

“Toby said that only special people get invited to your tree house.”

“Papa said you’re special,” Elise said.

Maggie’s breath caught. “Your… your papa said that?”

Elise nodded. “Can we have a tea party in the tree house? Pleeeeeeeease?”

“It’s
may
we have a tea party.”

“May we, can we?” Elise asked.

Maggie forced her brightest smile. She’d played dozens of roles as an undercover agent, but none were as difficult as the role she now played.

“A tea party it is!”

Much to Maggie’s surprise, there actually was a tree house. Not the kind she expected: this one was located in the barn’s hayloft.

Whitewash greeted her in the yard with wagging tail, and she bent to pet him.

Straightening, she studied the open window above and stepped back. Whitewash had been up to his old tricks and her heels sank into the newly turned soil.

“You must train your dog to stop digging,” she said.

Elise’s face grew serious. “It’s not Whitewash. It’s the boogeyman.”

“Whitewash, the boogeyman, whatever. These holes are a hazard.” She stared up at the ladder clinging to the side of the barn. “You aren’t going to make me climb that, are you?”

“It’s the only way to get into our tree house,” Elise assured her. “I’ll show you.”

Elise scampered up the ladder with the ease of a cat climbing a tree. Toby placed the picnic basket in the wooden hay lift next to the ladder. He then scrambled up after his sister.

Both children hung their heads out of the narrow window above and beckoned to her.

“You can do it!” Elise called.

Maggie wasn’t so sure about that, but she wasn’t about to disappoint the children on her last day in town. Tongue between her teeth, she grabbed hold of the ladder and placed a muddy sole onto the lower rung.

The ladder trembled beneath her weight and the wind played havoc with her skirt, but somehow she made it to the top.

With the children’s help, she crawled through the loft opening and landed on a prickly bed of hay. Standing, she brushed off her skirt and looked around. So this was the tree house she’d heard so much about.

The loft was cut off from the barn’s first floor by a wood partition. Elise pointed to a corner piled high with scraps of metal and an assortment of tools. “That’s Toby’s room,” she said with sisterly disgust. “Over here is mine.”

Her area was much neater and included a doll bed and small rocking horse. A child-sized table and two chairs stood on a rug beneath a hanging lantern.

“I like your house,” Maggie said.

Toby flung his upper body over the window ledge. Crying out, she rushed to his side and grabbed him by the shirt. “Be careful.”

He turned the hay lift handle. With a grinding of gears and a clank of metal, the picnic basket rose from the ground.

Together, they hauled the basket inside. “Cookies and lemonade,” Maggie announced.

Elise frowned. “I thought we were going to have tea.”

“It’s a bit warm for that, don’t you think?” Maggie pulled out the canteen. The wind had made the temperature rise, and it felt like summer.

Toby returned to his “room” and began fiddling with a strange-looking object.

“What is that?” she called.

“A horse,” he said. “A wind-up horse that will take you anywhere you want to go.”

Maggie smiled. “Now wouldn’t that be something? A horse that you wouldn’t have to feed.”

“You wouldn’t have to clean up after him, either,” Toby added.

“Can you make a wind-up horse for me?” Elise asked.

Toby shook his head. “You’re too little. You’re not strong enough to turn the key.”

Maggie handed Elise a cookie and whispered, “Don’t worry. When you grow up, you’ll be strong enough to do anything you want.”

“I want to be big and strong like Papa,” Elise said.

Maggie’s heart wrenched at the thought, and her misery felt like an iron weight. Garrett was strong all right, and she could sure use his shoulders right now.

She rubbed the ring on her finger. The band would have to come off, of course. Not that it meant anything. It was nothing more than a prop, like in a stage play.

Still… it surprised her, how much she enjoyed wearing it. How special it made her feel, like she finally had a place in the world—a home, a family. A purpose.

The ring.
Oh God, that was the least of it. She’d lied to him, forced herself into his home—into his children’s lives—under false pretenses. And for what?

Not wanting to upset the children, she blinked away her tears. Fortunately, they were too occupied to notice her misery. Toby pounded on a piece of metal with his hammer, and Elise pretended to feed her rag doll.

Maggie tried sitting on one of the chairs, but when her knees came up to her chin, she dragged a bale of hay over to the table to use instead. After arranging the cookies on a plate, she placed the picnic basket on the floor and poured the lemonade into three tin cups.

“What’s in the bag over there?” she asked, pointing to a worn leather satchel. It was the one thing in the playhouse that seemed strangely out of place.

Elise looked up from her doll. “It’s a secret,” she whispered, her eyes wide.

“Hmm, a secret, eh,” Maggie said, playing along. “I’m very good at keeping secrets.”

“Toby said we can only open it if it’s important.”

“I think tea parties are important,” Maggie said. “Don’t you?”

Elise gave her a dubious look. “Kind of. But it’s not like when the school burned down.”

“No, I guess not,” Maggie agreed. Apparently the school fire had left an impression.

“Or when Linc needed new clothes,” Toby called from his “room.”

Elise nodded. “And don’t forget the beggar with the crooked foot.” Maggie stared at her. “What… what did you say?”

Elise looked worried. “Did we do something wrong?”

“No, no, of course not.” She could think of only one thing that the school, Linc, and the beggar had in common, and that was a Lincoln banknote. Was it possible? Could it be?

Willing her trembling limbs to still, she cleared her throat. “Will you let me see inside the bag?”

Elise glanced at her brother who shrugged. “I guess it’s okay,” he said. “Long as you don’t tell nobody.”

Elise hopped off her chair and tugged on the handle. It was heavy, and her brother had to help her drag it to the table. Toby then undid the clasp and opened it.

Maggie’s body stiffened in shock, and it was all she could do to breathe. The satchel was packed with money.