White lies

"He wouldn’t contact us in the middle of the night unless it was an emergency. It might be too late. Piggot could already be close by, and a light would warn him."

"Piggot?"

"The guy who tried to make me into beef stew, remember?"

"I’ll go with you." In a flash she was out of the bed and fumbling with her clothes in the dark. Lucas started to stop her, not wanting her to leave the safety of the cabin, but if Piggot had found them, the cabin wouldn’t be safe. A hand- held rocket launcher in the hands of an expert, which Piggot was, could turn the cabin into a shattered inferno in seconds.

He stamped his feet into his boots and grabbed the pistol out of the holster, which he always kept at hand. As he left the room he lifted his jacket from the hook beside the door, then shrugged into it as he raced through the dark cabin to the back door. Jay was right behind him; she had on her jeans and his flannel shirt, her bare feet shoved into boots. They slipped across the snow to the shed, staying in the shadows as much as possible. The ramshackle shed was a revelation; Jay had been stunned the first time Lucas had shown her what lay below its surface. He moved a bale of hay aside and revealed a small trapdoor, just wide enough to allow his shoulders through, then pressed a button on the pager that released the electronic lock. The trapdoor silently swung open. A narrow ladder extended downward, illuminated only by tiny red lights beside each step. Lucas urged her down, then he followed and closed the door, once more sealing the underground communications chamber. Only then did he switch on the lights.

The chamber was small, no more than six by eight, and crammed with equipment. There were a computer and display terminal, a modem hookup and a printer against the end wall, and an elaborate radio system on the right. That left about two and a half feet of room on the left for maneuvering, and part of that was taken up by a chair. Lucas took the chair and flipped switches on the radio. "On air."

"Get packed. Piggot has been spotted in Mexico City, and we have word the location of the cabin is no longer secure." Frank’s voice filled the small chamber eerily, without the tinny sound radios normally produced, testifying to the quality of the set.

"How much time do we have?"

"The Man estimated four hours; less if Piggot has already put accomplices in the area."

"His usual method is to move people in, but keep them at a distance until he arrives. He likes to orchestrate things himself." Lucas’s voice was remote, his mind racing.

Silence filled the chamber, then Frank asked quietly, "Luke?"

"Yeah," Lucas said, aware of Jay’s sudden movement behind him, followed by absolute stillness. He hadn’t wanted to tell her like this, but all hell would be coming down in a hurry. Four hours wasn’t a lot of time, and no matter what happened, he wanted her to know his name. For four hours she would know whose woman she was.

"When?"

"A couple of days ago. Any chance of intercepting Piggot before he gets here?" That would be the best-case scenario.

"Slim. Nailing him there would be our best bet. We don’t know where he is, but we know where he’s going."

"He won’t go through customs, so that means he’s in a small plane and will land at a private airstrip, one close by. Do you have a record of them?"

"We’re pulling them out of the computer now. We’ll have men at all of them."

"Where’s a safe place for me to stash Jay?"

Frank said urgently, "Luke, you’re out of it. Don’t set yourself up as bait for the trap. Get in the Jeep and drive, and call me in five hours."

"Piggot’s my mess, I’ll clean it up," Lucas said, still in that cool, remote tone. "If I’d taken care of him last year, this wouldn’t be happening now."

"What about Jay?"

"I’ll get her out of it. But I’m coming back for Piggot."

Realizing the futility of arguing with him across two-thirds of the continent, Frank said. "Okay. Contact Veasey, at this frequency, and scramble." He recited the frequency numbers only once. "Roger," Lucas said, and flipped the switch that cut them off. Then he shoved the chair back and stood, turning to face Jay.

Her entire body felt numb as she stared at him. He knew. His memory had returned. Her time of grace had ended, the mirrors had shattered, the charade was over. The violence that had brought him into her life was about to take him out of it again.

With the return of his memory, he was truly Lucas Stone again. It was there in his eyes, in the yellow gaze of the predator. His face was hard. "I’m not Steve Crossfield," he said bluntly. "My name is Lucas Stone. Your ex-husband is dead."

She was white, frozen. "I know," she whispered.

Of all the things he’d expected her to say, that wasn’t one of them. It stunned him, confused him, and irrationally angered him. He’d agonized for days over how to tell her, and she already knew? "How long have you known?" he snapped.

Even her lips felt numb. "Quite a while."

He caught her arm, his long fingers digging into her flesh. "How long is ‘quite a while’?"

She tried to think. She had been caught in a web of lies for so long that it was difficult to remember. "You… you were still in the hospital."

Scenarios flashed through his mind. He’d been trained to think deviously, to keep hammering at something until it made sense, and he didn’t like any of the situations that came to mind. He’d assumed from the beginning that she was an innocent blind, used by Sabin and Frank Payne to shield him, but it was more likely that she’d been hired to do the job. White-hot fury began to build in him, and he clamped down on his temper with iron control. "Why didn’t you tell me?" God, for a while he’d thought he was going crazy, with all those damn memories coming back and none of them connected with the things she had told him. He might have gotten his memory back sooner if he’d had one solid fact to build on instead of the fairy tales she’d woven.