Tears sprang to her eyes, and he opened his arms. She raced into them, and the two just held each other close. When she finally could sniffle back the joy that threatened to bubble over, she said, “Seriously, if you knew I was here all this time, why didn’t you contact me?” she cried out. He looked at the two men as if for their help. “You did this, didn’t you?”
Nico stared at her steadily. “Are you now unhappy that you know that he’s alive?”
She was stunned. “But we just had that conversation about an hour and a half ago,” she said.
“But it has been several hours since we had the original one,” he said. “And the bottom line is, it was time to bring him in anyway.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. She couldn’t stop staring at Joshua. She had one photo of her parents, and he looked so much like their father. Her gaze kept going from one man to the others. “Why?”
Joshua answered, “Because I’ve been undercover, working for the government,” he said. “And some threats were raised, and some alarms were set off that maybe I was compromised. And that your kidnapping might be connected.”
“But that would mean that somebody would know that I existed, as your sister, that is,” she said. “For all I knew, you were dead, running away from foster care and hitting the streets at sixteen and dying of an overdose.”
He laughed at that. “You always did have a great imagination.”
She gave him a pained look. “I imagined a million scenarios,” she whispered. “But I can’t say that you knowing that I was living here while you were alive and well, yet not contacting me, was one of them.” Instantly she could see the sorrow on his face.
“It was for your own safety,” he said. “And I know that sounds very hollow and empty, but, considering that you were kidnapped and two of the kidnappers and a lone gunman have since died, obviously there was a reason for it.”
“Maybe,” she whispered. “But what about before you went into the Secret Service?”
“My work was overseas mostly for another department,” Joshua corrected her.
Charlotte waved her hand. “What about before you became an undercover whatever it is that you do? Couldn’t you have contacted me then?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But I went through a really rough childhood after they separated us. I became very suicidal, and I figured that you were much better off without me. We’d spent enough years apart at that point in time, and I didn’t even know how to find you back then. I never did finish school, but I finally entered the military and found that I was on a fast track somehow, moving on up into the work I currently do. And I’m good at it. Finally being good at something was great, but it also meant that, when I went into it, I had to get rid of my true identity. It was perfect in a way because I didn’t have any family. They knew that I had a sister lost in the system, but I hadn’t had any contact with you for so many years that it became just one of those little footnotes at the bottom of the page.”
“And you think that one of those little footnotes was read by the wrong person?”
“It’s possible,” he admitted. “It’s really hard to have any answers. I hope not, as in I really hope not, but I can’t be sure.”
“And what would the bad guys getting a hold of me mean in terms of your work?”
“Blackmail’s the biggest threat. I can’t give you many details of the work that I do or possibly was doing,” he said. “But the minute you become compromised, and you can be blackmailed, then …” He just opened his hands. “Basically that means my job’s over.”
She sagged down again on the kitchen chair, finding that her world had suddenly just shifted in a huge way. “I can’t believe that you were so close by.”
“Not really. But, once my cover seemingly was blown, the government removed me from my undercover assignment and, after being debriefed in DC, I got the message about you being here. So I came to Coronado,” he said. “I landed about thirty minutes ago and came straight here.”
“Then you made good on the traffic.”
He laughed. “I did, indeed.”
“Is it safe for you to be here?” She looked at him anxiously because the last thing she wanted to do was lose him now that he was here.
“As safe as I can be,” he said.
She groaned. “This is all that super-secret spy stuff. It’s not a world I know.”
“No, you wouldn’t. When I did see your name for the first time in the papers, your maiden name, I was shocked. I enjoyed following you in the news, but I couldn’t dare reach out to contact you at that point in my career. Here you were making headlines all around the world,” he said with a grin. “While you lived out in public, I lived in the shadows.”
“And I get that you say you were good at it,” she said, “but did you like being in the shadows?”
“It was good for a while,” he said. “I’m two years younger than you, so you can imagine how many years I’ve been doing this.”
“Time for a change maybe?”
“Maybe. I may not have a choice at this point.”
“Right,” she said. “I’m sorry if I caused you any trouble.”
He smiled. “And I’m sorry if I caused you to get kidnapped. That can’t have been very much fun.”
“For me, not so much,” she whispered. “But two of the four original kidnappers involved had it much worse.”
“Not to mention the gunman who died,” Keane added.
“And that is a concern,” Joshua said. “Because, if the mastermind is killing people, they’re cleaning up their tracks.”
“Who would do this?” she asked.
“I was working in Russia,” Joshua said. “Very close to
