Reckless Abandon (Phantom Protector Book 1) (11 page)

She’d never considered herself a crybaby and
never dreamed of needing a man to lean on for support, but here he was. Max had
turned out to be her rock. A man who would have let her cry until every last
tear had left her body. Jamie sniffled and wiped away the evidence of her
uncharacteristic breakdown.

She glanced up into his eyes. They shone with
untold compassion and pity and something else she didn’t recognize. He’d seen
her at her weakest, and it wasn’t a place she planned to visit again. Her
throat was hoarse as she spoke. “We still have no answers about the key. She
didn’t even mention it in her letter.” Jamie picked up the letter and held it
up to him. “It’s useless.”

Max leaned down and pressed his lips to hers.
“It may not have the answers we need, but it wasn’t useless.”

Jamie pushed herself up and straightened her
shirt. “There’s nothing in her words that are going to help us keep the others
alive, and that’s all that mattered.”

Max held up the paper. “May I?”

She nodded and turned away, walking to the
bathroom to clean her face. She needed to snap out of the hurt and focus on
what mattered most, and it wasn’t the family that had thrown her out like the
trash. It was the people she called family now she was most worried about.

****

Max had walked into the room knowing that Jamie
had time to look through whatever her mother had left for her. He’d tried to
take his time returning to the room to give her whatever space she might need.
From the moment he’d opened the door, he wished he’d came back to her sooner.

The once-vibrant, kickass woman was in a heap at
the base of the bed crying uncontrollably. His heart broke for the woman
sitting before him. He pushed the door closed and went to her side, sitting down
next to her. He hadn’t had to comfort any of the Bennett sisters. He felt out
of his element, but he reacted the way his gut and heart led him. He pulled her
into his arms. She shook as she uncontrollably cried, dampening his shirt in
the process. He didn’t have any words to soothe her hurt, so he just held her
for as long as she needed, as long as she’d let him. He placed a kiss on her
forehead as if he could possibly absorb some of the hurt she was feeling.

Max quickly read the letter in his hands, and it
gave him an understanding of how she must be feeling. She’d said that it was
useless, but it wasn’t. She now held the knowledge of why her mother had let
her go, even if she might not have agreed with the woman’s decision. He pulled
the phone from its clip and called the only man he could trust with the
situation.

“Speak to me,” Butch said from the other end of
the line.

Butch was one of a handful that he called a
friend. He was married to Abby Bennett, and he just happened to be the best
computer hack that Max knew.

“I need you to pull the records from the local
hospital in Jonesville. I need the birth records for every baby girl who was
born on March 13, 1977. I’m helping Jamie find her parents, and it’s an
emergency.”

Max could hear Butch clicking at the computer as
he spoke. “You mean the same Jamie who is supposed to be watching out for
Abby’s sister?”

“The one and the same.”

“Give me ten minutes, and I’ll call you back.”

Max replaced the phone on his clip. He folded the
paper and pocketed the letter from Jamie’s mom.

He pushed up from the floor and walked over to
the closed bathroom door. “Jamie, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he heard her whisper from the other
side of the door.

He reached for the doorknob and wrapped his
fingers around it. A war raged in his head. Somewhere in the back of his mind
he knew that if he went in there his world would never be the same. He
hesitated.

He turned the knob and pushed the door open, and
he was right. Jamie was leaning over the sink. Her hands cupped her face, and
she silently sobbed. It wasn’t that he hadn’t witnessed her cry, but this time
she seemed to want to pull away from him and hide her insecurities.

He reached for her and pulled her back into his
arms. “You’re going to be okay. I know it’s hard to believe right now, but
you’re going to be fine.”

He ran his hands down her back and back up in a
slow motion that was meant to comfort her. He had to shake her from her hurt,
but he didn’t know how. He took her by the arms and looked deep into her
tearful violet eyes. “You have to snap out of this. This isn’t who you are. You’re
stronger than this. Where’s the woman who kicks Brody’s ass just for the fun of
it?”

She narrowed her eyes. Her nostrils flared. At
least he’d sparked something other than despair from her. He might regret his
decision later, but he’d rather see her pissed than hurting, and she looked as
though she might take that anger out on him. “You’re right.”

Chapter
11

Jamie steeled herself against the feelings
gripping her heart. Max was right. She’d been brought to her knees by a letter,
and that wasn’t the woman she’d become. Her hard life had made her stronger
than that. Her heart was still beating, and she was still standing. Her mother
would never be able to hurt her again. She’d faced the cold hard facts, and
she’d won. Max’s eyes no longer gleamed with pity. It was something else
entirely, something she couldn’t name.

She slid her hands up his chest and threaded
them into his hair. She leaned up and pressed her lips to his, melding them
together. She needed him in a way she couldn’t explain. His breath caught in his
throat. He hesitated before pulling her closer, smashing her body to his.

He broke the kiss. His eyes searched hers. “Not
like this, baby.”

“Why not? I want this, and from the feel of your
body, you want this too. Please don’t deny me.” Her voice sounded needy to even
her own ears.

“You’re right; I do want this… more than my
body’s betraying itself.
 
But you’re not
thinking clearly.”

Jamie’s heart sped up. She wanted him. She
needed him. “I am thinking clearly.”

He released her and stepped back. “When I make
love to you, it won’t be because you’re trying to erase the pain.”

Jamie turned her back to him and dropped her
head.

His fingers snaked around her waist as he
pressed into her back. He leaned down and kissed her neck before he whispered,
“Besides, we have work to do.”

As if on cue, his phone rang, breaking the
awkwardness of the moment.

Jamie scooted around Max, leaving him to follow
in her wake.

“What do you have?” he asked into the phone.

Jamie only heard the one-sided conversation. A
lot of uh-huhs and yeps.

“Send it under the name Holliday.”

She had no clue whom he was talking to, and did
it even really matter? Her cheeks felt as though they were on fire. She’d
wanted him to make love to her, and he’d turned down her request. Jamie pulled
back the curtains and glanced down at the parking lot. Women and men carrying
suitcases in and out of the hotel, some with children in tow, they all looked
happy, unlike the despair that was eating away at her gut. What she wouldn’t
give to be any one of those normal people below. She let out a sigh.

“Grab your backpack. We’ve got some hunting to
do.” Max’s voice pulled her from her one-woman pity party and brought her back to
reality.

She lifted her chin, grabbed her bag, and
followed Max out of their room and into the hotel elevator. The doors dinged
and closed behind them.

He took a step closer, wrapped his arm around
her waist, and pressed his lips to hers. “When all of this over, I plan to make
love to you for days.”

As much as she wanted to hear those words and
believe him, she was starting to lose faith. Realization struck her like a
punch in the gut. He wasn’t a Phantom. He wouldn’t be sticking around even
after Lydia
was safe and out of harm’s way. He’d be leaving her too, just like everyone
else she’d loved.

Jamie stepped out of his hold. “Where are we
going?”

She watched the mixed emotions on his face
before he cleared his throat and turned back to the elevator doors. “We’re
going to find your mother and figure out where that key fits.”

She nodded once. That was, after all, what
they’d been sent to do. “And just how do you suppose we’re going to do that?”

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. He
stepped out and walked to the reception desk. He smiled at the young girl
behind the counter. “I believe you have a fax for me.”

The girl batted her long eyelashes and sized Max
up. “What’s the name?”

“Holliday, Room 612.”

She turned and pulled a page off the fax
machine. “It just came in.” She glanced at Jamie and dismissed her before she
held Max’s gaze. “Do you need anything else?”

“No.” Max turned and threw his arm around
Jamie’s shoulder, reading the fax as he walked. “This is going to be easier
than I thought.”

Jamie glanced up at Max as he stopped outside of
the sliding doors.

“Care to go meet your mother?”

“How are we going to do that if we don’t even
have a name much less transportation?”

Max steered her toward a white SUV parked two aisles
away. “I rented wheels after I left the orphanage. And we do have a name. We
just need to see if she’s still around.”

Jamie climbed in the SUV and clicked her
seatbelt in place. She waited as Max slid behind the wheel and turned to him.
“Tell me how you figured out who my mother is in the last thirty minutes when
I’ve been looking all of my life.”

He backed the SUV out of the parking lot. “Easy
really. Did you know there were forty-two babies born in the same hospital the
year you were born?”

She glanced out the front window. “No.”

“Well, there were. Did you know that there were
six on the day that you think you were born?”

Jamie chewed over that information like she
chewed on her bottom lip. “I never had access to the hospital records, but that
narrows it down.”

“Your mom was more helpful than we could have
hoped for.” He glanced at her. “She gave us your real birthday, and it’s not
the day either you or the orphanage thought.”

“What are you talking about?”

“In the letter she wrote to you, she said that
she left you one year to the day you were born. That makes March 13
^th
your birthday, not the 18
^th
like you think, and that you were born
with the same name you go by now. Do you know how many Jamie’s were born on the
13
^th
?”

Jamie’s mind was spinning with the new
information. How is it that he’d found all of this out while she’d had her
meltdown? Her heart raced. She was minutes away from finding out her mother’s
name. She wrung her fingers together in her lap. “Let me guess. Only one?”

Max grinned as he turned on the

Jamie knew her mouth was hanging open. She
finally, after all of these years, had a name for the woman who’d brought her
into this world. The same woman who had abandoned her as a baby. Her voice came
out in a whisper. “I can’t do this.” She shook her head from side to side.
“Take me back.”

Max pulled into a grocery store parking lot and
put the SUV in park. He turned in his seat and took her shaking hand in his.
“Yes, you can.”

She felt the color drain from her face as she
lowered her head. “No, I can’t.”

Max put his finger under her chin and lifted her
gaze to his. His eyes searched hers. “You are the bravest, smartest, most
beautiful woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. If anyone can do this,
you can. And I’ll be beside you one hundred percent of the way.” He leaned in
and pressed his forehead to hers. “I won’t let her hurt you again.”

Jamie squeezed her eyes closed. She knew she had
to go meet her mother if she ever wanted to know the mystery behind the key,
but that didn’t make it any easier. She could do this; she would do this. The
Phantoms were counting on her to do this, and she wouldn’t risk the lives of
the only family she had left. No matter how fast her heart was beating and how
much she was dreading going to find her mother, she had to, and that was all
there was to it. The years she’d spent preparing for this fateful day and the
talk she knew was yet to come, all rational thoughts and conversations she’d
had with herself in the mirror, all seemed null and void.

She lifted her gaze. “You’re right. I may not
like it, but I have to do this for the unit.”