The Midnight Hour - Brenda Jackson [80]
Drake shook his head, still refusing to believe any of what she was saying. "No, that's not true. Don't you think that I would have known if Sandy would have survived? She was my fiancee! We were to be married in six months. There's no way in hell she would have lived and not contacted me to let me know she was alive, so you can shut the hell up about it," he said, anger consuming him, clawing at his insides. He was again reliving the anguish he'd suffered knowing he had lost the one woman who had meant everything to him. Just thinking about that time and what he'd gone through made his hands suddenly feel numb. His entire body felt paralyzed as he remembered the grief that had forced him into their grips.
He glared at Tori. "And what makes you think that you know so damn much about it anyway? How dare you stand here and tell me Sandy didn't die like you're an expert on what happened? What kind of sick game are you trying to play?"
Tori didn't say anything for a few moments, and then she lifted her chin and met his stony glare, the hostility she saw in his eyes. "Who I am makes me an expert, Drake. I can stand here and tell you that Sandy didn't die because I know that she didn't. And the reason I know is because," she took a deep breath, then said, "Because I am Sandy."
Moving beyond the shock that immediately covered his face, she continued. "I am the woman you made love to the night before the explosion; the one you sneaked off with into the woods to lie with next to that stream. I'm the woman who you convinced that night not to wait another year to marry but to move the date up and marry in six months."
Tori blinked back tears. "I'm also the woman you told that night that you wanted our first son to be named Deke, after your father, and for our daughter to be named Savannah, after your grandmother. I'm the one, Drake."
She watched him suck air into his lungs as if he needed to relieve some of the pressure overtaking him by breathing. He was remembering that night, every detail, and knew everything she had just said was true. "No," he said, barely getting the word out, taking a step back, as if her claim was too much to bear and he needed distance between them. "You aren't Sandy. You can't be. There's no way."
She shook her head sadly. "Although I don't look like her, I am. There's a lot that's happened and there was a good reason I couldn't tell you the truth. But more than anything, Drake, you have to know that I am Sandy. That's why you felt so many similarities between us. Because of the extent of my injuries, I had to have plastic surgery over more than eighty percent of my body, which is the reason I don't look the same. And Hawk decided that I needed a new identity. When I got better he insisted that I go into the Witness Protection Program since Solomon Cross was still on the loose, but I refused. After begging and pleading, he finally gave in and agreed to let me work for the Agency. You hadn't begun working there at the time so there was no chance our paths would cross."
The force of Drake's glare nailed her to the spot where she was standing, and she knew what she was saying was finally sinking in as he was trying to make sense of everything she was telling him.
"You survived that explosion and didn't tell me? Didn't want me to know?" he snarled, like a wounded animal. "You let me go through those five years believing that I had lost you? How could you do that to me?" he asked, in a voice so incredulous with pain, Tori had to blink back more tears. "The Sandy that I loved would not have done that to me," he added.
"Oh, yes, she would have if it meant keeping you safe," Tori said through clenched teeth. "Don't you see that I had to do it, Drake? Solomon Cross was a psychopath. Had he known he'd failed to carry out what he thought was the ultimate revenge against you, and that I was still alive, he would have tried again and his second attempt may have cost you your life. I couldn't let that happen."
Fury ignited Drake's features.