RJ drew in a breath, not sure what to say. Finally, “Out east.”
In fact, it had taken her roughly sixteen hours since this morning’s news flash to find a flight, rent a car, and drive east from Seattle through the mountains. Sixteen hours and still it was only pushing 8:00 p.m.
She could sleep for a year.
Because, really, she hadn’t slept in a month already.
“Say,” RJ said, glancing out at the park, “did you hear that woman singing earlier?”
Darcy was wiping the table. “That was Raven Darnell. She’s a local. Her father owns Jethro’s, the place that burned last night. She’s good, right?”
She nodded, all truth. “And this Mack Jones guy she mentioned?”
Darcy lifted a shoulder. “Some guy they hired a month ago. Not sure where he’s from, but he seems like a good guy. Apparently, he saved Jethro’s life in the fire.”
Of course he did.
“I drove past a burned building on the way in, just a block away.”
“That’s the one. The town volunteered all day to help with cleanup. If I know Jethro, they’ll rebuild.”
RJ tucked that information away and headed upstairs as another crooner took the stage.
Her bedroom overlooked the park. But it wasn’t a terrible place to hide out as she spied on York—a queen bed with a soft white cotton cover, a table and two straight chairs, a white-painted fireplace, and a quaint bathroom with black-and-white checked tile and a clawfoot tub.
She debated running a bath and instead climbed onto the bed and pulled out her phone.
Her mother picked up on the second ring, and RJ wasn’t exactly sure why she’d dialed that number, but for some reason her mother was the only one in the family who didn’t hover.
She didn’t need her brothers to swoop in and—
“Hey, honey, how are you?”
And that’s all it took. “I found him, Ma. I found him.” She drew her legs up to herself and wrapped an arm around them.
A pause then, “Um—”
“York! He’s here, in a little town in Washington State—I just saw him.”
“Is he okay?”
Outside a female voice had taken over, was singing Diana Ross’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”
“I don’t know. I…yes. He looks fine. Not hurt at all.”
“Oh?” And her mother said it appropriately, with question in her tone. Because her mother had been there when York found them in the hotel room, a dead body on the bed. Had seen the way he’d grabbed up RJ, held her, so much panic, so much relief in his embrace that his feelings could have been written in headlines.
Her mother had probably even seen the way he’d kissed her in the fish market not long after, like he not only missed her but…well, maybe needed her.
Maybe loved her.
So then, “Yeah, but…he’s with this other woman.”
Silence. “I don’t understand, RJ. What—?”
“I know. I don’t know what’s going on!” RJ could imagine her mother, maybe in the apartment in Seattle that Wyatt had purchased, with its wide windows that overlooked the Sound, sitting in the darkness watching the lights play over the dark waters. Her hair would be up in a jumble of brown curls, and maybe she’d still be wearing her jeans and a T-shirt, or maybe already changed into her yoga pants and an oversized shirt, one of their father’s old flannels.
Gerri Marshall had become the foundation of the family, someone who knew how to weather the storms her children stirred up. “How did you find him?”
RJ didn’t know what she’d do without her mother’s wisdom. “I saw York on the news—he’d saved some guy from a fire, and it made a round-the-nation brief this morning.”
“So naturally you thought it was York and hopped on a plane—”
“Ma! It is York. He’s alive.”
“Honey.”
“Okay, it might not be him—he is wearing a beard and looks a little leaner than York, but Ma, you should have seen him. Some fireworks went off and he nearly shot out of his skin and tackled this girl next to him. I’ve seen him do that before.”
“I’m sure you have.”
She could almost see her mother’s smirk on the other end.
“Ma—”
“RJ. I know you loved York—it was clear from the moment you returned from Russia pining for him. But could your hope that he’s alive be clouding your vision here? Didn’t you say he was with a woman?”
RJ let go of her clench around her legs and got off the bed, walking to the window. Her light was still off and the sky arched a deep blue over the reflection of the lake, stars blinking down on it. “Yes. He was with a woman.”
“As in, with?”
She drew in a breath. “She kissed him.”
A pause, then, “York was in love with you, too, RJ. No one could miss that. If he was still alive, don’t you think he would have contacted you? And he certainly wouldn’t be kissing someone else.”
RJ pressed her hand on the window. “What if he couldn’t? What if he’s undercover? The woman called him Mack Jones. Doesn’t that feel like an undercover name?”
Another pause.
“Okay, don’t say it. I know I’ve been watching too many episodes of Alias. But still, Ma—maybe he had to come here, had to change his name, had to—I don’t know—fake his death?” The thought caught her up. “Maybe he’s faking the entire thing.”
“RJ—”
“Ma. I have to find out what’s going on—”
“What if…and I’m not saying this is him, but didn’t you say that York wanted to leave his life and start over?”
Her mother’s question came like a slap, something bright and hard and—
“Oh.”
True. He’d told her that more than once.
Fact was, the man in the park didn’t look at all like the man she’d known a month ago, the spy who had saved her life.
This man looked like a lumberjack. Or at least a mountain hipster.
Maybe he wasn’t York.
Or at least the man she knew.
Maybe he was trying to leave his world behind.
Leave her behind.
She closed her eyes.
“Honey, I’m not saying York wanted to leave you. I know he loved you. That’s why I don’t think this could possibly be him. But—”
“But I have to find out.” She walked back to the bed, sat on it.
A sigh. “How are you going to do that? If it is York and he’s undercover…”
“Right. Okay so…apparently there are volunteers helping with the cleanup of the building that burned. So maybe tomorrow I show up with a shovel.”
“That’s my girl.”
“That’s why I call you. You believe in me.”
“Of course I do.”
“Wyatt and Ford and Tate think I’m in over my head.”
“They’re your brothers.”
“Not my babysitters.”
Her mother laughed.
“Ma, it’s not funny. I don’t want them getting hurt—”
“I think they’d say the same about you.”