Free Mountain Investigation by Jessica Andersen Page A

see him for what he was. You’ve got to believe me,” she said urgently, leaning in closer. “I didn’t know. I didn’t suspect. If I did, I swear I would’ve done something before those bombs went off.”
    And for the first time since three days after the Santa Bombings, when dark-suited men and women had appeared on her doorstep with a search-and-seizure warrant and had asked her to come with them, she thought there might be a chance that the person she was speaking to might finally believe her. She’d lived so long under a cloud of suspicion and self-recrimination that she’d thought she’d never find her way out. But somehow, in that moment, she saw a glimmer of hope, a small clear spot in the dark fog. At its center was a pair of cool eyes.
    Gray’s face was very close to hers, making her aware of small details she’d been oblivious to before. Fine creases ran from the corners of his mouth and eyes, suggesting that he’d once smiled far more than he seemed to now. The touches of silver at his temples made him seem older than his years; she guessed he was in his late thirties. He projected a tough, battle-ready demeanor, but in his eyes, she thought she saw another man—not the soldier or the special agent, but a younger, softer version of both.
    “It wasn’t your fault, Mariah,” he said, gripping both her hands now, as though trying to make her believe.
    For a moment she thought he was talking aboutwhatever had happened to make him the cool, cynical character whose façade he presented to the world. Then, realizing he was talking about Lee, she blushed slightly. Inside her, a coil of uncertainty loosened, even as something else drew tighter. “I lived with him. I was married to him.” He was my first and only lover, she thought, but didn’t say that because that was the one thing she’d never shared with another human being, aside from her ex.
    Since Lee hadn’t mentioned that fact, either to sneer about it in the courtroom or gloat over it in his letter, she prayed he’d forgotten that detail as inconsequential. But knowing him—or rather knowing the man he’d turned out to be, she feared that he was saving that information for the moment when it would inflict the maximum amount of pain. That was the sort of man he was.
    She didn’t tell Gray any of that, though. Not because he was a Fed, but because he was holding her hands as though he could keep her safe through that simple contact, and because he was looking at her with a new heat in his eyes, one that sparked something deep inside her, something she thought had died the day she’d learned that Lee had been lying to her from the first moment they’d met.
    “He never loved me,” she said matter-of-factly, having come to terms with that. “And he’d never been to Paris.” It wasn’t the most important thing, but it seemed to encapsulate their entire relationship. The first words he’d ever said to her had been a well-researched lie.
    Gray’s lips twitched. “Bastard.”
    And though she knew full well that the agent’s main purpose in life was bringing down people like Lee, she liked that Gray played along with her in that moment. Incredibly, impossibly, she began to laugh—a deep, belly laugh, tinged with hysteria. Within moments, though, the laughter threatened to turn to sobs as everything started pressing in on her.
    It was all too much—the guilt she’d lived with for too long, the fear of captivity, the complications that had arisen in the wake of her escape…once again she was trapped in a life she didn’t want, one that kept her from feeling safe and at ease in her own skin.
    Face burning from the embarrassment of Gray—of anyone—seeing her on the verge of losing it, she tried to pull away from him. “I’m sorry. You’re going to have to give me a moment here.”
    He didn’t leave, though, and he didn’t let her withdraw. Instead, he held on to her hands, squeezing tight in support. “Don’t beat yourself