Free In the Arms of a Stranger (Entangled Ignite) by Virginia Kelly Page A

that.” Anger bubbled to the surface. “Don’t use what I know, then leave me here to wonder.”
    “It’s not—”
    “Is that how they train you?” she ground out. “To lie, to evade?”
    His shoulders went rigid and his eyes hardened. “They train us to get the job done. To survive.”
    “Well, Wade didn’t survive.” She spat the words at him. “He counted on you and you didn’t help him.”
    The sounds of summer, the heat, the smells, all receded, suspended in time. Cole said something, but she barely registered his words.
    “I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do for Wade now,” JP said softly.
    “Yes, there is.”
    He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “He’s dead. There’s nothing anyone can do.”
    “You’re wrong,” she said. “You can prove that he died a hero.”

Chapter 5
    No. That was the one thing JP couldn’t do.
    Wade’s widow wanted her husband made into a hero. But everything he knew told him Wade was no hero. The man had set him up with a lie that had branded him a traitor and made him the target of a manhunt by his own country.
    But what Abby was asking of him, the niggle of doubt she’d planted in his mind, meant that there could be another possibility.
    Maybe both he and Wade had been set up.
    If so, that changed things, changed the way he’d need to go about clearing himself.
    “What did Brooks accuse Wade of?” he asked.
    She crossed her arms, wincing a little, then rubbed them as if she were cold. Impossible in this heat. He hated seeing her uncertainty. Hated knowing she wasn’t sure if she could trust him.
    Hated knowing she had started to wonder if her husband had done something less than honorable.
    “No games, Abby. Tell me.”
    She dropped her arms. “Brooks didn’t accuse him of anything. He implied.”
    “How?”
    “He had our financial records investigated, our friends. Everything.”
    “Did you ask him why?”
    “He told me it was routine in cases like this.” She said it firmly, but he heard the tears that threatened. “Whatever ‘cases like this’ meant. But I went along with him, not insisting that I see my husband’s body, like some mousy little housewife who wanted the big strong men to take care of her.”
    He wanted to smile at that, but didn’t. She wasn’t mousy and he recognized the sarcasm in her tone. “But you didn’t tell Brooks what Wade said.”
    “No.”
    “That took strength, Abby. A lot of it.”
    “I saw him, you know,” she said in a voice so low he had to strain to understand.
    “Saw who?”
    “Wade.” She looked at the ground.
    Damn . “You said Brooks didn’t want you to see him.”
    She nodded, rubbing at her eyes.
    God, he hoped she wasn’t crying, because if she was, he was about to make it all worse. But he had to know.
    “What did he—?”
    “Look like?” She jerked her face up to him. Moisture sparkled on her lashes. “Dead. He looked dead. And wrong. They hurt him.” She took a breath, swiped at a tear that escaped. “I was terrified. I had reached the point where I thought it was all lies. I didn’t know what to believe—if it was even him. I asked the funeral director to leave me alone with the casket. I lifted the lid and pulled up Wade’s pant leg.” Her voice broke.
    “Why?” he asked.
    She bit her lip, took a breath, and continued. “He had a little scar on his right calf. I”— her voice was a mere whisper—“touched it. We used to joke that it looked like a…valentine.”
    She looked so stricken, so alone. He knew about the scar. He’d seen it. Tradecraft was great, but no way in hell would anyone have remembered to fake that tiny scar—not for a closed casket funeral. No, that confirmed it. Wade was dead.
    And it confirmed what he already knew. Abby Price was one damn tough lady.
    All JP could do now was figure out how Wade’s death played into the betrayal that had left him on the run.
    “I’m sorry, Abby. I really am.” Sorry for her pain, sorry for the whole damn