Undercover Wife

Before they reached the main visitors area, the guard hesitated in front of one of the doors leading to an interview room. The same room where Erin had met with her lawyer on the two occasions he’d seen fit to show interest in her case.

“I’ll be waiting right here to take you back to your cell.” His words more warning than statement of fact, he opened the door and waited for her to enter the room.

“I don’t understand.” Erin felt the sudden, unbidden urge to run. “Why am I here?”

“Go on.” The guard gestured to the door. “You have a visitor.” This time his tone was clearly impatient, annoyed.

A visitor? For her? Had Jeff, the bastard, come to apologize? To tell her that this whole thing had been a huge misunderstanding? That she was free to go now? Erin almost laughed at that. He had used her. She gritted her teeth at the pain still simmering beneath the barely controlled surface she maintained. He had ruined her life, her career. Everything. She would never work in a position that required a security clearance again. And he had come out of the whole mess smelling like a rose. She had taken the fall for him. All his promises had been nothing more than lies.

Now she was paying the price for her naïveté.

Erin squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. Whoever was here to see her in the middle of the night, it wouldn’t be Jeff. It wouldn’t be her lawyer either. He had told her she was doomed from the beginning. Of course, Jeff had been the one who hired him. She had been such a fool.

The door closed with a loud clang behind her. Erin jerked at the sound of it locking. God, how she hated being locked up. As if on cue, the walls began to close in on her. How would she ever endure the remainder of her sentence? Her breath came in quick, shallow puffs. Fate and Jeff had left her without any choice. She was a prisoner and no one was going to rescue her as she’d foolishly prayed during her first month in this horrible place.

Calm down, she ordered herself. Focus on anything else. This room. She’d been here before. But this time it was only dimly lit. Since it was the middle of the night, no light shone in through the window on the far wall. A singular bulb spilled its sparse light over the empty table in the center of the room. The two mismatched chairs were vacant.

“Have a seat.”

Startled, Erin turned toward the sound of the voice. She didn’t recognize the tall, dark-haired man who stepped into the pool of light near the table. He’d been waiting there and she hadn’t even noticed. And she would definitely have remembered meeting a man as handsome as this one. Five o’clock shadow darkened his chin and chiseled jaw. The white cotton shirt he wore was a bit wrinkled. His jeans were slightly faded, worn enough to be comfortable. He looked rumpled, as if he had traveled a very long way or had just awakened and pulled on the same clothes he’d worn the day before.

Since he made no effort to introduce himself Erin didn’t ask. She crossed the room and settled into the chair on her side of the table that stood between them. She was a prisoner, without any rights to speak of. When she was told to jump, she did so. Erin had no intention of doing anything that might keep her in this place one minute longer than necessary.

The man sat down and began flipping through the file on the table before him. “My name is John Logan, Ms. Bailey, I’ve come here to offer you a proposition.” His gaze settled on hers then, watching, analyzing.

His eyes were disturbing, too seeing, and so brown they were almost black. Erin tamped down the anticipation that welled inside her. She would not get her hopes up that this man could somehow rescue her from the living hell her bad choices had plunged her into.

“It’s the middle of the night,” she countered. “Isn’t this an awfully odd hour to discuss business, Mr. Logan?”

Erin had learned the hard way that business conducted after hours was usually a little shady. Besides, she didn’t know this man. What kind of proposition could he possibly want to offer her? Could he be from the district attorney’s office? Maybe they had decided that pursuing Jeff was worthwhile after all. But her visitor’s manner of dress and the fact that it was definitely past business hours seemed to negate that possibility.

He closed the file and leaned back in his chair to assess her. Erin held his gaze. She would not give him the satisfaction of looking away. She was in prison, for God’s sake, what else could he do to her? Then she remembered the threats lurking within these very walls and she shuddered. There were too many despicable and degrading possibilities to consider.

“You’ve only completed four months of your sentence.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw as if he were tired, and had no patience for any of this. “Five years is a very long time, Ms. Bailey.”

Erin twisted her right wrist inside the confining handcuffs. She still couldn’t understand why the guard handcuffed her for this meeting. She wasn’t a violent inmate. And she could definitely count. “I’m very much aware of the time I’m facing, Mr. Logan.”

He leaned forward, pressing her with that unsettling gaze. “Then I wouldn’t be complaining about what time of day or night my one hope for freedom came.”

Freedom? Who was this man? What was he talking about? “Who sent you here?” she demanded, afraid to believe his words and equally scared not to. The false hope his insinuations engendered in her was too cruel for words.

“I can’t tell you that.” He folded his arms on the table, covering the file that likely contained information about her. “And even if I told you, you wouldn’t know any more than you do now.”

“I don’t understand.” For the first time since stepping into the room, fear for her safety rocketed through Erin. Was the guard still outside as he had said he would be? “I think I should go back to my cell now.”

She started to stand, but his next words stopped her.

“I can make all this go away.”

That was impossible. “How can you do that?” she demanded, knowing full well it couldn’t be true. She lifted her chin and glared at him, daring him to prove his statement.

“The people I work for are very powerful. If you cooperate with us, they will clear your record. You’ll be free to resume your life in any way you see fit.”

That sounded too good to be true. There had to be a catch. “And what do I have to do in exchange?” She surveyed the angular features of his handsome face, lines and angles, shadow and light. His expression gave nothing away, nor did those dark, dark eyes. How could she trust him? No matter how good-looking he was, or how important he appeared to be. She didn’t know him. He was a stranger. A stranger with enough power to waltz into a federal prison in the middle of the night and have the guards at his beck and call. That realization sent a chill straight to her bones.

He studied her for a while before he responded to her question. “We need you for a mission that involves national security. You will assume someone else’s identity, and you’ll be working very closely with me. Without you, the mission will have to be aborted.”

National security? Someone else’s identity? “Whose identity?” She had to be dreaming. This couldn’t be real. Stuff like this only happened in the movies.

“You’ll be briefed on everything you need to know before the mission begins.” He lifted a briefcase from the floor and placed it on the table. Once he’d opened it, he placed the file inside, then closed the case and stood. He leveled his gaze back on hers. “Any questions?”

“Wait.” She resisted the urge to reach out to him, touch him…just to see if he was real. This was all far too unbelievable. Surely he couldn’t expect her to make a decision based on so little information. She had to know more. “I can’t make a decision without more details than what you’ve given me. And I’ll need time to think it over.”

Impatience pounded in the muscle jerking in his tightly clenched jaw. “We don’t have time. If you choose to cooperate, you will do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you. There will be no discussion.” He lifted the briefcase from the table. “Now, are you in or out?”

Erin shook her head. This was crazy. “What kind of mission? Where?”

“I can’t answer either of those questions. You will be given that information on a need to know basis, and right now you know all you need to. What’s your decision?”

A mixture of irritation and fear fueled Erin. “You can’t expect me to just say yes. There are things I have to know and consider.”

“Like what?” He cocked his handsome head and glared at her. “Like whether or not you’ll survive if Inmate Evans decides she wants to do to you what she did to that judge in Savannah?” He lifted a speculative eyebrow. “Or maybe you want to contemplate Guard Roland’s next move as the months and years of your sentence crawl by.”

How could he know those things? No one knew. She hadn’t told anyone. “Who are you?”

“I’m your fairy godfather, Erin Bailey. I can make your greatest wish come true. I can clear your name, and I can make your old friend Jeff pay for his evil deeds.” Logan stared directly into her eyes for two beats before he turned and strode away. He didn’t stop until he reached the door. He glanced back at her, his expression challenging, openly condescending. “Are you in or out?”

Erin swallowed the fear climbing into her throat. What if he was right? What if this was her one chance for freedom? I can make all this go away. The mere thought of Jeff getting his due made her giddy.

“There’s one thing I have to know,” she insisted, delaying her answer though anticipation bubbled inside her at that last thought.

Irritation rolled off the handsome stranger in waves, but he waited for her question just the same.

“This mission you want me to help with, is it dangerous?”

Something changed in his eyes. All signs of cockiness and condescension drained from his expression. Erin’s heart hammered violently in the silent seconds that elapsed before he answered.

“Very.”

The solitary word echoed around her, filling her with renewed desperation. His gaze never leaving hers, he pounded once on the door. It opened instantly. He walked out, leaving the door wide open. Allowing her to make her own decision.

In or out.

Chapter Two

Two little words. I’m in.

Logan had stared at her for what felt like an eternity, something vaguely like regret in those dark eyes, before he turned to the guard and informed him that he’d be taking Erin with him. The guard had immediately removed her handcuffs as if the warden himself had given the order. Heart still pounding, palms still sweating, and a full twenty minutes later she settled into the back seat of a large black SUV parked outside the main prison entrance. Every second of those twenty minutes had ticked by one by one in Erin’s frantic mind. It didn’t seem possible that it was really happening, but it was. She was free to go with this stranger who’d shown up in the middle of the night.