It's Always Been You Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Synopsis

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  For the amazing ladies of EDG, rock on!

  IT'S ALWAYS BEEN YOU

  By Victoria Paige

  Copyright © 2014 Victoria Paige

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9891337-7-7

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places, events, organization either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, places or locale is entire coincidental. The publisher is not responsible for any opinion regarding this work on any third-party website that is not affiliated with the publisher or author.

  Cover Design by Robin Ludwig Design Inc., http://www.gobookcoverdesign.com

  Edited by: Hot Tree Editing

  Synopsis

  Former Navy SEAL Travis Blake is a rising star in the security business. In two short years, Blake Security Inc. has become highly sought after by the who’s who in Washington DC.

  But unbeknownst to many, Travis is haunted by the mysterious death of his wife three years before. He carries with him the guilt of not being there to protect the one person who meant everything to him. He has buried his wife, but his heart refuses to accept that the body six feet under is hers. His obsessive search for her leads him deep into the trenches of covert ops—where everything is not what it seems.

  Caitlin Kincaid has been on the run for a while. The sum of her memories began three years ago when she awakened with a broken arm and leg and a severe concussion. Hunted down by a secret group within the U.S. government, her companion persuades her to stay off the grid because of the standing kill order on their heads. One night, while fleeing assassins, she is left on the side of the road with a cryptic message: “It’s time for you to stop running. I’m not the one you love.”

  When Travis receives news that the woman who has turned up at the American Embassy in Berlin could be his wife, he wastes no time getting to her. He is unprepared for the devastation that shreds him when Caitlin looks at him with no recognition in her eyes. Amnesia is a challenging enough obstacle for winning the love of his life back, but with lies defining the past three years of her life, Caitlin becomes wary of anyone’s help.

  Love was never the problem. A marriage cannot survive without trust. As sinister forces threaten the bond they are trying to rebuild, trust must come quickly or one of them will die.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Bullets shattered the rear windshield as their car careened dangerously close to the steep embankment. Their vehicle swerved left, the motion catapulting Caitlin to the right of the backseat. She lost hold of her gun.

  “Are you all right?” Jase yelled from the driver’s seat.

  “I will be once you learn how to drive.”

  “Stop fucking around, Caitlin. Did you get hit?”

  Caitlin didn’t answer him; instead, she groped through the darkness for her Beretta. Finding the weapon, she resumed her shooting position. With the barrier of the windshield gone, it was now easier to fire from the car.

  Another spray of bullets zinged past their car. If their attackers managed to shoot out their tires, it would be game over.

  “Keep the car straight!” Caitlin screeched as she hunkered down, keeping herself steady by kneeling on a leg and bracing her other foot against the seat in front of her. With two hands gripping the gun, she focused below the glaring headlights of the black SUV pursuing them.

  “Steady…” Caitlin muttered more to herself.

  Deep breath and hold. Focus. Squeeze trigger.

  Almost simultaneous with the recoil of her gun, their attackers’ car listed to the right and then fishtailed before screeching to a halt.

  “Fucking A!” Jase enthused, thumping the steering wheel with his fist. “Good job, buttercup!”

  Caitlin grunted and shook the shards of glass from her hair. She hadn’t had time to gather her blonde locks in a ponytail. The minute Jase had barged into their apartment and ordered her to get moving, she’d known that there hadn’t been a second to spare.

  She scooted in between the front seats and plopped down on the passenger side. After his initial exhilaration, Jase had gone deathly quiet. And he had winced.

  “Are you hurt, Jase?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Where?”

  “I said it’s nothing!” he snapped.

  “Pull over.”

  “Are you nuts? You know they hunt in pairs. Their backup won’t be too far behind.”

  Caitlin knew he was right. She could feel some glass cuts on her knees and forearms, but they were superficial. If he was shot, he needed attention. Bleeding out was not an option. They couldn’t go to a hospital without attracting attention, and the quicker they attended to the injury, the less likely they’d wind up there.

  “If it were me—”

  “Damn it! Left shoulder blade, okay?”

  “Is there—”

  “No exit wound.”

  “Jase—”

  With a muffled curse, he pulled off to the side of the road. They were twenty miles from Berlin on a two-lane country road lined with trees, tall grass, and miles and miles of nothing. This was their eighth escape in three years. They had gotten better at evading whoever wanted them dead. The first time was challenging because Caitlin had been encumbered by the casts on her leg and arm. She had cried for Jase to leave her, but he had refused, and somehow they had made it out alive.

  Caitlin shuddered at the memory as she got out of the car. “The medical kit is in the trunk.”

  Just as she reached the back of their vehicle, it shot forward twenty feet.

  Her heart leapt into her throat. Was Jase abandoning her? What the hell?

  A backpack was tossed out; she watched as it tumbled down the ditch.

  Caitlin ran toward the car knowing Jase had already rolled up all the windows. She had a brief image of herself climbing through the broken rear windshield.

  She angrily tried the door. Locked.

  She banged on his window. He was staring straight ahead, his jaw working convulsively. Finally, he lowered his window an inch.

  “What are you doing?” Caitlin shrieked.

  “I’m a dead man walking, Caitlin,” Jase said sadly. “They could still leave you alone. But they want me dead.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “There’s a village about two miles up,” he continued without answering her question. “Hide there for two days, and then go to the American Embassy in Berlin.”

  Caitlin was confused. “They’ll arrest me.”

  Jase sighed, his shoulders slumping. “No, they won’t.”

  “I don’t understand.” Fear started clawing up her throat. There was a grim resoluteness on his face—one she had never seen before. “Open the fucking door, Jase.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to end this way between us,” he whispered.

  “You’re scaring me.” />
  There was a suspicious sheen in his eyes. He lowered the window, reached out with his good arm, pulled her head down and kissed her. Just as quickly, he let her go. “It’s time for you to stop running. I’m not the one you love.”

  With that cryptic message, the man who had been her rock for three years left her by the side of the road.

  *****

  Travis Blake stared at the stack of résumés before him and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. For every ten he received, only one deserved a call. He had been interviewing applicants for the past two days, and only three had made the cut. Blake Security Inc. had made its name by providing high-quality security services. Each client had different needs and each client’s profile was individually assessed by any of his five team managers before they made recommendations in terms of manpower and equipment requirements. Most of his clients were politicians and foreign dignitaries. He frequently received assignments from the Secret Service, and his deep connections within the CIA and FBI didn’t hurt either.

  In just two short years, he had cultivated a client list of the who’s who in Washington DC. Repeat business and word of mouth had quickly turned his security company into a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

  “Will that be all, Travis?” a lilting musical voice spoke from the entrance of his office. Emily was his personal assistant. She was married to Edward Shephard, one of his team managers and a former Navy SEAL just like Travis. Emily did everything from office management to logistics, and Travis was thankful that he had her to take care of the mundane activities that went with running a business. With the rapid growth of BSI, Ed had been grumbling to Travis about hiring an assistant for Emily, who was consistently putting in almost sixty hours a week.

  Travis glanced up at Emily, his eyes cutting over to the clock on the wall. It was 8:00 p.m. on Friday night.

  “Yes, Em. Thanks. Sorry for keeping you so late.”

  “If you need me to stay, Travis, I can.”

  “No, I’ll be bugging out soon,” Travis lied. “Go on home. Ed’s arriving tonight, right?”

  “Yes, his flight arrives at nine.”

  “Enjoy your weekend.”

  Emily hesitated at the door. A troubled look crossed her face, and it seemed like she was about to say something, but changed her mind. “You too, Travis. See you Monday.”

  After Emily left, Travis leaned back in his chair and sighed, thankful that Emily had not lectured him again about finding a girlfriend. His eyes drifted to the photograph on his desk—a picture of an achingly beautiful woman with long blonde hair and the most amazing hazel eyes. Sarah . . .

  No. He would not allow himself to think about her tonight. He’d done enough of that this morning when he’d sat in front of his laptop at 2:00 a.m. and looked for her. If anyone knew of his predawn habits, he would lose his business and would be committed to an asylum. A man looking for his dead wife—if that didn’t scream of insanity, he didn’t know what else would. Three years ago, his mind had buried her. She was in a closed casket. All logic dictated that the DNA result and autopsy hadn’t lied. But his heart and soul had refused to accept that the putrid flesh the authorities had recovered, which Travis had banished beneath six feet of earth, was his Sarah.

  Travis stood up and walked to the liquor cabinet to pour himself some Scotch.

  Not a single day. For three years, not a single day had passed without him thinking of her. Although the ache in his heart had dulled with the passage of time, it could sometimes still spike to an unbearable pain. Like this week—tomorrow would be their wedding anniversary. They would have been married for five years. He’d only had her for two.

  But there was a method to his madness. A little over two years ago, while working security for a senator, Travis had managed to take down an assassin. The coroner had sent him pictures of all the man’s markings to determine if he belonged to any organization. He had many tattoos, including one on the sole of his foot that looked like the infinity symbol. Sarah had the same mark in the same location. She’d told him she had done it as a form of teenage rebellion.

  He threw back the Scotch and welcomed the burn of the alcohol down his throat. He had no time to do this. He blanked his mind for the next few hours to tackle the résumés in front of him.

  At about 11:00 p.m., his cell phone buzzed.

  “Nate?”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  “What’s wrong, buddy? Did something happen to Perot?”

  “Our detail wrapped up with no problem. Did you check your e-mail?”

  “No. What—”

  “Check it.”

  Frowning at his best friend’s vagueness, Travis opened his email and clicked on the most recent one from Nathan Reece.

  The bottom fell out of his gut at the graphic pictures before him. “What the fuck?”

  “The fingerprints threw up alarms in the CIA database,” Nate said grimly. “Luckily, I was working out of their station in Frankfurt. I hauled ass to Berlin. That man is John Cooper . . . or was.”

  “John Cooper died with my wife,” Travis said, his voice turning hoarse. “How can he be alive?”

  “Or recently dead?”

  Travis stared at the picture of the man he had hated with every fiber of his being. John Cooper’s blood had been found at their house the night Sarah had died. Their bodies had been found together.

  “He was killed execution style?”

  “That’s the initial report. They’re still doing the autopsy.”

  “I’ll take the next flight out.”

  “Travis, let me handle this. I’m already here. Use me.”

  “No!” Travis snapped. “If Cooper is . . . was . . . alive, Sarah—”

  “Can you just leave?”

  Travis hated the challenge in Nate’s voice because it was true. He had shit to wrap up.

  “Give me forty-eight hours. I’ll charter a flight out.”

  “There’s something else. I’ll see what I can dig up from here, but Cooper had three passports on him. His American passport says his name is Jase Locke. The other two passports were German and Russian with different names. And Travis?”

  “Yeah.”

  Nate sighed deeply, twisting the knot in Travis’s gut further.

  “What, Nate?”

  His friend hesitated another beat before saying, “John Cooper had the same tat on the sole of his foot.”

  “Fuck! Are you telling me that—?”

  “I’m pretty certain now that specter agents are real.”

  “Including Sarah?”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “I couldn’t find a single fucking shred of substantiated evidence of their existence, Nate. They’re fucking urban legends of the CIA. Ghosts.” Also probably why they were called specter agents.

  “Much like the Delta Force, man. The government once denied they exist,” Nate said. “You’re tight with Admiral Porter. What does he say?”

  Benjamin Porter had been one of the high-ranking naval commanders when Travis had been a SEAL. It turned out the admiral was a top-level recruiter for the CIA Special Activities Division, which was a euphemism for Black Ops.

  “He wouldn’t confirm or deny.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Nate muttered. “Look, I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Nate, watch the embassies.”

  “I will. Chances are, if Sarah’s alive, she would hold the same passports.”

  If Sarah is alive.

  Travis ended the call. His mind was in a daze and he wanted to jump on the next flight out to Berlin. He stared at the stack of résumés before him again. Fuck.

  *****

  The sounds of pans in the kitchen woke him. Travis was chest down on his bed, his face smashed into a pillow. He looked up at his alarm clock and groaned. It was noon, and the only person who could be in his kitchen was his mom, Lillian Blake. His mom had called him last night to let him know she was dropping by this morning, so he left the alarms off.

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nbsp; Pushing up from the mattress, he stumbled into the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and brushed his teeth. Travis stared at his reflection. His blue eyes were bloodshot, and three days’ worth of stubble outlined his jaw. Throwing on some clothes, he made his way to the kitchen. The smell of bacon hit him. And his stomach actually grumbled. He hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday, that is, if one could consider candy bars food. He grimaced when he noticed the empty wrappers had disappeared from the dining table where he had left them. After leaving the office, he came home only to continue pounding away on his laptop until 6:00 a.m.

  Lillian Blake was a reed thin, elegant woman of sixty. She was of average height, had pale skin, and chestnut hair. He was a carbon copy of his dad. Travis was slightly taller at six-three, but the dark hair and blue eyes were all Daniel Blake.

  “Hey, sweetie.”

  “Mom.” Travis gave his mom a hug and a peck on the forehead. “You never told me why you wanted to see me this morning.”

  “Emily gave me a call last night.” At his scowl, his mom added, “She’s worried about you, Travis. She says you’ve been working too hard, and you’re not eating right.”

  “I’m thirty-five years old, Mom.” Travis poured himself some coffee. “I have a company to run, and I can take care of myself.”

  “Trav—”

  “Emily should stay out of my fucking personal business. She should be thankful I’m keeping her man and her in style.”

  “Travis Blake.”

  He was careful not to curse whenever Lillian Blake was around because even at his age, his mom could shrivel his balls with just a look and a censuring tone. But sometimes, like right now, he could slip.

  “Sorry, Mom. Look, her concern is duly noted,” Travis said to appease her. “Now, is the bacon ready? I’m hungry.”

  His mom smiled at him indulgently and fished the bacon from the pan, transferring the strips to a paper-lined plate. “Take the pancakes to the table, sweetie.”