Strangers When We Married

The fabrication tasted vaguely sour in his mouth. She eyed him knowingly and he felt his cheeks warm. He sighed. “I just wanted to look at him for a minute,” he finally confessed.

He could tell his answer didn’t particularly please her. “It’s awfully early in the morning to start off angry,” he said. He grinned. “But as I remember, you never were much of a morning person.”

“And as I remember, you were always nauseatingly cheerful in the mornings,” she replied with a touch of crankiness.

“But I always made the coffee for you,” he said, wondering how she could look so damned beautiful with such a scowl on her face. “And this morning isn’t any different.”

Her scowl eased somewhat and she pulled the robe more tightly around her. “Coffee sounds good,” she said grudgingly.

Together they went to the kitchen. She sat at the table while he poured her a cup of coffee and refreshed his own. “What time is it?” she asked.

Seth checked the clock on the oven. “Just a few minutes past six. Did you sleep well?” he asked as he eased down next to her at the table.

“No.” She paused long enough to take a sip from her mug. “I didn’t sleep well because there was a stranger in the house.”

“I’m hardly a stranger. We were married for seven months.”

She sipped her coffee, eyeing him over the rim of the mug. Her eyes looked large, luminous, but he knew he was probably nothing more to her than an indistinct shape without her glasses. “Okay,” she relented. “We were intimate strangers.”

He couldn’t argue with that. In truth, it described their brief relationship perfectly. They had been physically intimate, but when they’d finally tried to share their hopes, their dreams, their expectations for their future together, they’d realized their error in judgment about each other.

“What time do you normally go into the office?” he asked.

“Usually, I’m there around eight-thirty or quarter to nine. But, I intend to go in early today and log some time on the computer before anyone else arrives.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I can’t let anyone know what I’m doing for you.”

“Can’t you do a lot of the work here? You still have your monster computer, don’t you?”

She nodded. “Yes, but I prefer to work at the office. It’s less conspicuous for me to use the official computer at work.”

Although it sounded logical, he had a feeling she had another reason to prefer working at the office rather than here at home. She didn’t want to spend any more time with him that she had to, and she particularly didn’t want to give him an opportunity to spend time with Kirk.

Before he left here, he’d make sure he changed her mind about him seeing Kirk. There was no way he could not be a part of his child’s life now. But he also knew now wasn’t the time to discuss this particular issue with her.

At that moment the object of his thoughts cried out. It was not a cry of distress or fear, rather it was a demand for attention.

Meghan finished the last of her coffee and stood. “Feel free to use the guest bathroom to shower or whatever,” she said, then she disappeared out of the kitchen.

Seth got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. He had all day to shower. In fact, he had a feeling the most difficult part of this entire ordeal was going to be sitting in this house doing nothing…waiting for Meghan to come up with the information he needed.

Seth wasn’t accustomed to doing nothing. He was a man who thrived on action, craved challenge. Hiding out in a house where nobody was home wasn’t very appealing, but at the moment it was his only option.

He walked over to the kitchen window and stared out, watching as the sun crested the horizon, shooting out tentative fingers of light.

It was going to be a beautiful, clear day. It was unusual for D.C. not to have snow by this time of the year. He was grateful there wasn’t any. Snow always reminded him of the months he’d spent married to Meghan.

Several weeks of his marriage to Meghan had encompassed the worst winter in D.C. on record, involving blizzard conditions and widespread power outages.

He and Meghan had spent several nights wrapped together in blankets in front of the fireplace, providing warmth for each other. They’d eaten canned p?tе and crackers and read to one another by candlelight.

It had been a singular moment, a magical halt of reality when time had seemed to stop and the world outside their home had disappeared.

He turned away from the window in irritation. Damn the memories. They were the one thing he hadn’t considered when he’d made the decision to come here. And why such selective memory?

What he had to focus on was the fact that marriage to Meghan had required too high a price…the relinquishing of his very soul.

He turned as she reentered the kitchen, this time dressed for the day and with Kirk in her arms. With her hair neatly tied back at the nape of her neck and the wire-rimmed glasses firmly in place, she looked nothing like the sleepy-eyed seductress she had earlier.

“We’re off,” she said.

“But what about breakfast?” he asked, his gaze going from her to Kirk, who was clad in a turtleneck and a pair of corduroy overalls. “Even if you don’t eat, doesn’t he need something?”

“Grandma Harry will give him breakfast,” Meghan replied.

Kirk grinned. “Mama Harry,” he said.

“Harriet Winslowe at the Happy Time Day Care Center,” Meghan explained.

He trailed her from the kitchen to the living room, where she stopped at the hall closet and withdrew her coat and Kirk’s.

Seth leaned against the wall and watched as she placed Kirk on the floor and wrestled him into his coat and hat. Kirk laughed, as if it were a game to him, and Seth found a ridiculous grin decorating his own face at the sound of the childish giggles.

“Meghan,” he said as she put on her coat and picked Kirk up from the floor. “I know this whole situation is uncomfortable for you, but I do want you to know I appreciate it.”

She nodded and ducked her head, as if not wanting him to see whatever expression lit her eyes. “I’m usually home between five and six,” she said, then she opened the door and was gone, leaving Seth alone in the cold, empty house.

Uncomfortable. He’d said he knew the situation was uncomfortable for her. Meghan looked at her wristwatch and stifled a yawn. It was just a few minutes past seven in the morning and already she was exhausted.

She pulled her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. Uncomfortable, that didn’t even begin to describe what she felt about Seth hiding out at her place.

He filled the entire house with his presence, invading her personal space with his scent, his very essence. He’d always seemed larger than life to her, more colorful, bolder, stronger than any other man she’d ever known.

Even sleeping, he’d bothered her, making her own sleep elusive. She’d tossed and turned, remembering the look on his face as he’d gazed at Kirk. She’d seen that same troubling expression on his face this morning when she’d walked into Kirk’s room and found him standing there.

Shoving the disturbing image aside, she put her glasses back on and eyed her computer screen thoughtfully. If she had a criminal mind and was in possession of seven hundred pounds of uncut heroin, if she wanted to undermine the standing of a secret government agency, where would she go to orchestrate her attack?

The possibilities were endless, the countries who would welcome a traitor and dissident vast. She wasn’t sure where to begin a search for the elusive Simon.

As part of her job, Meghan maintained identities in dozens of chat rooms. Rooms with white supremists, tax evaders, bomb builders and weird splinter religious groups. Meghan knew which groups were truly dangerous and which were merely a bunch of nuts with shared delusions.

But Simon wouldn’t show up in a chat room and announce his presence or hold a sale for the drug product. And, of course, it was also possible he’d never left the States and instead was someplace near.

The problem was, Meghan couldn’t hunt Simon. She didn’t have enough information to track him. She had to hunt down the drugs. It was the only way to get to the man.

For the next hour, Meghan pulled up newspapers from around the country, studying front page stories and crime beat columns to see if any one city was suffering a rise in crimes or deaths affiliated with heroin in the past three days.

The man the SPEAR agents were after had already proved himself more than dangerous. The agency had managed once before the L.A. debacle to intercede a large shipment of weapons intended for Simon. That time Simon had escaped empty-handed. But this time Simon had the means to buy more weapons, and Meghan knew the desire for the weapons and drugs he now possessed were the keys to finding his whereabouts.

There was also one other way to find out what was going on where Simon was concerned, but she didn’t want to use that access unless absolutely necessary. She could hack into the most sensitive, secured files in the SPEAR computer, but that avenue was highly risky and she’d only do it as a desperate last resort.