Chapter 22
22
T he next morning, Lina’s old instincts came roaring back as her head and her heart battled. The latter wanted nothing more than to soak in the comfort of lying in Jackson’s arms, their naked bodies warm and sated. The former wasn’t so sanguine, though, and kept trying to compartmentalize what was happening between them. “Friends with benefits” didn’t fit. They were those things, but labeling it with that seemed…limiting. But acknowledging something deeper—something indescribable—felt a little terrifying. Real, but terrifying.
“I saw the makings for pancakes in the kitchen when I made the coffee earlier. You hungry?” Jackson asked, running his fingers through her hair. A welcome distraction from her spiraling thoughts.
“In a minute. This is cozy. And since we don’t have an immediate plan of action, there’s no reason to hop out of bed.”
He brushed his lips across the top of her head. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said, his voice holding an uncharacteristic hesitancy.
“Yeah?” she said, rolling up and resting her chin on his chest.
He combed the hair from her face, his fingers lingering along her hairline. She’d expected him to be a force of nature in bed—powerful, demanding, and tuned in to her body language. He’d been all that and more. What she hadn’t anticipated was his gentleness, tenderness, and affectionate side.
“I was thinking about the three places we’ve found things. Your dad traveled with you to Long Shadow and Leavenworth. He didn’t camp with you in Eureka, but you said he visited.”
“But he didn’t come to Orcas,” she pointed out.
“He didn’t, but did you have a good time? Doing whatever you were doing?”
She couldn’t help but smile, her memories now a full reel rather than the snippets of a few nights ago. “I did. It was the first time I experienced tide pooling. My mom and I climbed on rocks all day long. We also stayed with a friend of hers who had horses. I’d ridden ponies up until then, but that was my first time on a horse. I fell in love with it. I took lessons for years after that. One of the reasons they let me ride when we camped in Eureka.” As delicious as his fingers felt combing through her hair, the pensive expression on Jackson’s face had her bracing herself. “What are you thinking?”
His lips thinned, and he looked almost apologetic. “I think it’s possible that your dad paid more attention to you than you think. All the places we’ve been so far have brought a smile to your face when you talk about them. He might not have traveled with you, but I think he took note of the trips that impacted you.”
“And he tied the clues to places he thought I liked?” she said, the idea rolling around in her head.
“Or places you enjoyed,” Jackson said.
The urge to reject the idea rose swift and sure. The possibility that her dad was that emotionally attuned to her almost laughable. Not to mention, she and her mom traveled a lot ; how would he have picked the places he’d picked with so many options?
Then again, if she looked objectively, if she set aside her resentment and examined the possibility through the eyes of an agent, it held promise. He’d accompanied her and her mom on two of the trips—Long Shadow and Leavenworth. And her experience on Orcas led to her lifelong love of riding horses, so maybe he’d taken note of that.
But what about the other four items: the magnifying glass, the spool of thread, the toy soldier, and the postcard from Murphys?
“I’m not discounting the idea, but I find it hard to believe,” she finally said.
Jackson studied her, a host of questions and thoughts clouding his eyes. Finally, he gave a short nod, then, leaning forward, he dropped a kiss on her forehead before sliding out of bed.
“Think about it,” he said. “I’ll go rustle up breakfast.”
He strode across the room, the long lines of his naked form giving her a show. Bodies changed with time, muscles aged, hair grew gray and fell out. He wouldn’t always look the same, nor had his looks been the first thing that attracted her to him. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t appreciate the view, though.
“Like what you see?” he teased, looking at her over his shoulder as he tugged his boxer briefs on.
She waggled her eyebrows. “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”
He chuckled as he pulled on a shirt before digging a pair of sweatpants from the large duffel Maya insisted they take. Lina didn’t want to think about how the woman had known not only what they’d like, but what would fit, too. She hadn’t tried anything on yet, but she’d looked in the bag, and damn if everything wasn’t her size.
Jackson disappeared into the bathroom, and as the muted sounds of him getting ready for the morning filtered into the room, she considered his suggestion.
Logically, it was possible. Her dad had an exceptional memory, and if he’d listened to any of the conversations between her and her mom over the years, he would have noted patterns more than emotions. He wouldn’t have picked up on the fun she’d had on Orcas, but he would have noted that of the four days they spent there, three of them included exploring tide pools. The fact that she’d come home a veritable “horse girl,” and ridden horses for years after, wouldn’t have gone unnoticed either.
All that assumed he’d listened, though.
In all the dinners they’d shared, she couldn’t remember him ever participating in the conversation. Often, he’d leave the table as soon as he finished, regardless of whether she and her mom had eaten. He’d just quietly pick up his plate, take it to the kitchen, and disappear back into his study.
But did lack of participation equate to a lack of awareness? Of all people, she knew that it didn’t. As an intelligence agent, following a conversation without being a part of it was a critical skill. One she’d practiced more than her fair share of times.
Had her father done the same all those years? Had he quietly taken everything in, listening without participating?
The possibility disconcerted her. She’d already been wondering if she’d too easily written him off. If maybe she’d never given him a chance to be a part of her life because he didn’t fit into it the way her mom did. But if he’d been listening to her all along, that was even worse.
Well, it made her feel even worse.
She groaned and rolled over in the big bed, her gaze drawn to the view from the picture window. If her dad knew her better than she thought, she needed to look at the clues he’d left her in the tin in a different way. How she felt about the possibility, she’d deal with later.
Tossing the covers aside, she went through the same motions as Jackson before heading downstairs in a pair of the world’s most comfortable leggings and a deep blue sweatshirt that shouldn’t be a good color for her but was. In her hand, she carried the tin.
Jackson was dropping a cup full of batter onto a griddle when she entered the kitchen. Bacon sizzled in a pan beside it. Taking a seat on a stool, she placed the tin on the counter and methodically took each item out. Jackson glanced over his shoulder but said nothing.
Setting aside the toy car, the receipt, the postcard of Orcas, and the two PO Box keys they’d already used, she stared at the remaining pieces.
Picking up the toy soldier, she turned it over in her hands, her fingers brushing the detail of the man’s face and clothing. Klaus’s words—tinker, tailor, soldier, spy—came back to her as her mind wandered.
“Tinker” had meant the car, so what did the others mean?
“What was your life like as a soldier?” she asked. Jackson glanced at her again as he slid a pancake onto a platter in the warming drawer.
“The day-to-day?” he asked. Like her, he couldn’t talk about any of his classified missions, but she wasn’t interested in those.
“Just throw out words,” she said. Holding the toy up, she added, “If this soldier is supposed to have a connection to me, I need help figuring it out. Maybe something you’ll say will trigger a memory.”
“Grueling at times,” he started. “And I wouldn’t go so far as to say fun, but we had moments of fun during our downtime.”
“Did you have a lot of downtime?”
He bobbed his head from side to side. “It’s relative. I have more now. When you’re Special Forces, you’re always training. Whether that’s weapons training, intelligence training, survival skills, mission exercises, all those sorts of things. So, no, not a ton of downtime, but enough to keep us mostly sane.”
“Say that again,” she said, a memory teasing her mind.
“Not a ton of downtime?”
She shook her head. “You did survival training?”
He snorted. “Yeah, tons of that shit. MacGyver has nothing on the stuff they taught us. Not dissing MacGyver or anything, it’s a damn good show, but they never dropped him from a plane in the middle of a rainforest with nothing but a couple of water filter pills and Band-Aids and told him to find his way back.”
“Will Bourne,” she said, the memory falling into place like a puzzle piece.
“Who’s Will Bourne?” he asked, plating the bacon atop a couple of paper towels.
“A friend of my mom’s,” she said, the possibility taking root. “She’d take me to his ranch every summer.”
“Where’s the ranch?”
“Central Oregon. He had a huge spread outside Pendleton. He’s former British military. When his wife died, he quit his position, took his daughter, moved to the US, and opened a successful security business. More military style than HICC, but same idea. He has a team of people he sends to places either the US or British military can’t go.”
“And you went every summer?”
She nodded. “For two weeks. His daughter is my age, and we were close friends. We’ve fallen out of touch in the last several years, but we were tight as kids. Will and my mom would teach us all sorts of things during those two weeks.”
“So, not a vacation?”
She laughed. “Sort of. But also mixed with survival skills and weapons training.” Memories came flooding back, and she made a face. “We also did scenario analysis. They’d give us the facts of a completed mission, and we’d break down what worked well and what could have gone better.”
He set a plate in front of her stacked high with pancakes and a side of bacon. “How old were you?”
She gave him a wry grin. “We started going when I was five and went until I left for college. The training changed over time,” she said. “At first, they were fun little games I’d play with Serena, puzzles we’d solve together. As we got older, it got more focused, and Serena and I knew exactly what our parents were doing.”
“And what were they doing?” he asked, sliding the butter closer to her along with a jar of real maple syrup.
“Training us to be spies or military or something along those lines,” she replied, smearing a healthy pat of butter on her pancakes. “Like I said, I grew up thinking that it was a given I’d go into intelligence. The only question was in what way. Serena was raised the same.”
“What did she end up doing?”
Lina grinned as she finished chewing a hefty bite of delicious pancake. “She went into film.”
He snorted. “Film?”
She nodded. “She consults on military and political thrillers, but she also runs a successful stunt double company. She lives in LA, is happily married, and she and her wife have three kids.”
“Can you call Will and see if your dad left anything for you?” he asked, plating his own breakfast.
She shook her head. “I can, he’s still around, but he sold the Oregon place about four years ago. Needed more space. There’s a post office, though. Will used to take us to town with him most days for supplies, or a trip to the ice cream parlor, that sort of thing. We’d stop by the post office a couple of times a week. I remember because the man inside always reminded me of Colonel Sanders, but a northern one. He gave us lollipops and sometimes Cracker Jacks.” He was single-handedly responsible for her love of caramel corn.
“Okay, let’s assume that’s one location,” he said, returning to the counter with his food. Rather than sit beside her, though, he remained standing on the other side. “What about the others?”
She picked up the spool of thread in one hand as she nibbled on a piece of bacon in the other. A cheap roll, available in most grocery stores, synthetic material. In short, nothing special. She glanced inside to double-check the center and, again, found nothing. With no other ideas, she decided to unroll it. Maybe that would tell her something. Searching for the end, she ran her finger around the spool in the opposite direction as the spin. Way up at the top, her finger brushed over a tiny bump, one she hadn’t noticed before as it was practically flush against the top of the spool.
Using her nail, she picked at the small bump. Three tries later, the end of the thread, tied into a tiny knot, popped out. Her mind stilled, then jerked forward with certainty.
“Do you have your phone?” she asked. He nodded and grabbed it from the counter. “Shine the flashlight on this thread, please.” He did as asked, the dark navy thread revealing a knot, recognizable only by the tiny shadows it created.
“A constrictor knot,” Jackson said, his head close to hers.
She nodded, her hair brushing his cheek. “My nanny taught me how to tie it. I was so proud when I mastered it. She taught me all sorts of knots.” She felt more than saw Jackson’s eyebrows go up. “She was retired British Navy and, yes, she was part of the big conspiracy to turn me into a spy like my grandfather and mother. She taught me a lot of interesting things. We had so much fun together.”
“I bet you were an interesting teenager,” he muttered.
She chuckled. “Believe it or not, I was one of the popular kids. Prom queen and everything.”
“Maybe they were scared of you,” Jackson pointed out, making her laugh. “So, can you find this nanny now?”
She shook her head. “She died nine months ago, but after I was too old to need a nanny, she retired and moved to Port Townsend. My mom and I visited her four or five times a year. After my mom died, I kept it up.”
“So Port Townsend is on the list,” Jackson said, making a note on his phone.
She picked up the last item. If they were looking at each article as a tie to her, as something important to her, she didn’t need to think hard about the magnifying glass. “Arch Cape,” she said, twirling the toy slowly between her fingers.
“Where’s that?” Jackson asked, refreshing their coffee from the fresh pot.
“Oregon coast, south of Cannon Beach. My grandfather has an estate there. Away from the water, but with a view. A couple of hundred acres, a huge house built to look like an ambling English manor.” She chuckled as more memories filtered into her mind. “My grandfather came every summer and, like with Will, my mom and I would visit for several weeks. He loved being with us, but he did not like leaving England, so he weirdly re-created it in Oregon. I think the house was in the design of the dower house on his main estate.”
“Dower house?”
She nodded absently, her mind replaying those visits. As soon as she joined the CIA, he stopped traveling to the US. She still saw him in England a couple of times a year, but those weeks at his estate were some of her favorite memories. “The dower house is the house set aside for the widow of a lord so that the heir and his family can move into the main estate.”
“Lord?” Jackson asked, almost choking on his coffee.
She flashed him a rueful look. “My grandfather is a viscount. My father would have inherited the title, but I suppose now it will go to a cousin.” The family home in England was a lovely estate, but those grand dames cost a pretty penny to maintain, and she didn’t envy whichever cousin would shoulder the burden when her grandfather passed away.
“You’re related to the royal family?” Jackson said, his body very still.
“Distantly. I’m not in line for any throne or anything if that’s what you’re worried about,” she added with a smile.
“That is a world that, well, if you’d told me at fifteen that my girlfriend would be a member of the British aristocracy, I wouldn’t have a clue what you meant,” he said before taking a huge sip of coffee that had to have burned his mouth.
“Girlfriend?”
He set his coffee down and narrowed his eyes. Not at her, just in general. “I hate that term. At least, at this age, I do. But I’m not sure about ‘partner’ either. It fits, but with all the law enforcement people we know, it feels more like a more professional designation than, well…”
She couldn’t help but smile. Yes, nothing they’d done, especially not in the last ten hours, had been remotely professional.
“And ‘significant other’ is way too much of a mouthful,” she said, popping the last of her bacon into her mouth.
“And ‘bae’ is ten years too late to be anything but cringy,” he said.
“I guess girlfriend it is,” she said, watching Jackson over the rim of her cup as she took a sip.
His gaze softened. The tiniest of upward twitches of the corners of his mouth telling her he’d been worried. She didn’t love the term either. It sounded kind of demeaning for a thirty-three-year-old woman to be called a “girl.” But she liked the sentiment. Despite her weird hang-ups and emotionally stunted development, she wanted to be with Jackson. And she never wanted him to doubt that she chose him.
Sliding off her stool, she rounded the counter. He turned, resting his back along the edge of the cool granite. Without a word, she slid her hands behind his neck and pulled him into a deep kiss. His free hand came around her back, slipping under the hem of her sweatshirt, splaying across her skin.
“Thank you for breakfast,” she said between kisses.
“You’re more than welcome,” he replied, his voice deep with desire.
“I guess if I’m your girlfriend, that makes you my boyfriend,” she said, stroking him through his sweatpants.
He jumped under her hand. “It does,” he said.
“That means all of you, including this”—she squeezed—“is mine and only mine?”
He nodded, his eyes nearly black. “Only yours. For as long as you want.”
“And I definitely want,” she said before sinking to her knees.