Read In the Arms of a Stranger (Entangled Ignite) for Free Online Page A

Blackmon would ride in on his white charger and save the day. Well, it had taken over a year and there was no white charger, only a stranger driving an old car now stuck in the creek bed. And it wasn’t even white.
    “Don’t you know what he was doing?” she asked, gritting her teeth against the frustration. “Don’t you get reports or something?”
    “No, we don’t,” he answered, his face unreadable. He must have seen that she didn’t believe him and added, “We’re—sort of out of touch.”
    Considering they were talking about the CIA, what he said sounded reasonable. So why didn’t she believe him?
    Then again, why would he lie to her? Had he actually heard from Wade but ignored him? Deliberately left him to die? But would this man, who’d so readily helped her, abandon a friend when he needed him most?
    Suddenly, she wondered… Out on the road, had he known all along who she was? Had he helped her specifically in order to—
    To what?
    She could think of no reason but the obvious. No reason for him to be here—unless he really had thought Wade was alive.
    “Maybe,” he said, interrupting her spiraling thoughts, “if you tell me what you know, I can figure out what happened.”
    Was he serious?
    She couldn’t decide what to do. Would he be able to help her if she told him? Would a man like him—a man with secrets like Wade’s—bother to answer her questions? But if JP couldn’t help her, no one could. Leap of faith or last resort, she didn’t know which.
    So she’d tell him. Not all of it, no. She’d decide along the way how much she’d divulge.
    “Wade had been gone for a couple of months, nothing unusual. We planned to take Cole to the beach for a few days when he got back. He called, just saying he had to meet someone and would be home in a few hours.” She tried to assess JP’s reaction. There was none. “He told me to be ready to leave when I finished at work. I’m an elementary school teacher. It was my last day before summer break.”
    “He didn’t say who he had to talk to?”
    “No, but he would never do that. Tell me who, I mean.”
    “Then what happened?”
    “An hour or two later, he called me at the school. He wanted Cole and me to go to my brother’s until I heard from him.” She hated that her voice wobbled. “He sounded…worried.” Scared . Wade was never scared. “I asked him”— begged him —“to tell me what was going on, what I could do, how I could help.”
    JP nodded, encouraging her. “And?”
    She’d replayed the events in her head so often that it seemed like the retelling of an overly dramatic movie. “He said to remember that he’d never told me anything about his work. He said that was what I could do to help. Remain ignorant of his work.”
    “And he said that he asked me for help?”
    “Yes,” she said, nodding.
    “He said my name?”
    “Oh, yes. JP Blackmon, he said. JP would come. That if something happened to him—” She had to stop, regroup. She didn’t want this man to see her cry. Not again. She didn’t want to be the weeping widow, falling apart in front of a stranger. “He said I could trust you. No one else. You would know what to do.”
    JP’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “How were you supposed to know it was me?”
    “He gave me a description. And he told me about your scars.”
    JP stiffened in surprise. “He told you about the scars?”
    “Like his, on your head and neck,” she said.
    His shoulders notched down. “Yeah.”
    So he had more scars on his body. Just as Wade did.
    “That’s all he said?”
    “Pretty much.” She thought for a moment, still deciding exactly how much to say. If she could trust him. God, if she could just trust someone . She took a breath that eased a bit of the pain in her shoulder, and decided. “He told me to tell you ‘the springs.’ He wouldn’t explain what that meant.”
    No reaction again. No questions. She’d hoped for something, anything, that would give her an idea of