The Man Wearing My Husband

On our wedding night, out of nowhere, my boyfriend said our highestlevel danger signal out loud. "Tell me something.

What kind of rabbit walks on three legs?" He had only just come home from three years undercover across the Mexican border. It was the riddle we'd agreed on before he left.

The rabbit meant danger. The number meant how bad. And a rabbit with three legs meant the highest warning there was. Chapter 1 Something went off in my head like a blast.

A second later I pushed the horror down and made myself breathe slowly. "Oh, you.

You have to do brain teasers right now?" Beckett lifted his head from my neck and bit at it lightly. "Somebody asked it when we were going table to table at the reception.

Nobody could get it. I figured my wife's smart, she'd have it in a second." Yes. Of course I knew it. That riddle had no answer at all.

Three years ago, Beckett had been sent deep undercover into a compound across the Mexican border, with no promise he'd come back alive.

The night before he left, I said, "Let's set one up.

A signal only the two of us know." "A rabbit with three legs means danger, because nothing in the world reacts to danger faster than a rabbit." "And three, because a rabbit's foot is a goodluck charm.

A rabbit down to three legs has used its luck up. That's the highest danger there is." "That way, Beck, if you're ever in trouble, I'll know." He didn't laugh at me for being naive.

He hooked his little finger through mine and meant it. "Okay. Then I'll just wait for the missus to come save me." But the Beckett in front of me had no idea what it was.

It had only been three years. Had he really forgotten? His expressions, his voice, even the order he liked to do things in when he touched me, none of it had changed.

The doubt wouldn't leave me alone. I caught his hand before it could go anywhere. I let embarrassment show on my face. "Wait.

Beck, I think my period just started." "That fast?" A flicker of suspicion went through his eyes. "When we picked the date, didn't we work around your cycle?" I put on an apologetic voice. "Work's been insane.

I stayed up a whole week straight getting everything off my plate so they'd approve the time off.

It probably threw my hormones off." He cupped my face, all concern. "Nothing about work matters more than your body, silly girl.

From now on I'm going to have to keep an eye on you." Looking at how plain and real the concern was in his eyes, I let out a quiet breath. Maybe I was the one being paranoid.

Three years undercover, every single day on the edge of dying. Forgetting one throwaway joke was normal.

A minute later Beckett brought me a heating pad, and he'd thought to make me a cup of chamomile tea too. "Here.

Warm yourself up." I put on a sweet smile and took it, and on the first sip my heart dropped all the way through the floor. There was honey in it. I'm severely allergic to honey.

In college, a smoothie at the campus coffee shop got made with honey by mistake, and I broke out in hives head to toe on the spot.

Beckett had to spend that whole night with me in the ER. There was no way he didn't know. No. Something was really wrong. He wasn't Beckett at all.

I lay looking up at the black ceiling with my heart going fast. We'd had the wedding at the old family farmhouse in Keaton Hollow.

Beckett's parents died when he was young, and the whole hollow raised him. Going table to table earlier, he had placed every relative and neighbor without one mistake.

He even remembered that his uncle had hurt his leg working, had been on blood thinners ever since, and couldn't touch the greens they'd served at the reception.

How could there be two people in the world that identical? Fear ran back into every vein I had. Had they hypnotized him? Turned him? Impossible.

Beckett was the most loyal man alive. The year of the big flood he threw himself into the rescue work, all heart.

That was exactly why they'd picked him for the most dangerous assignment there was. I rolled over quietly and opened his Instagram.

He kept to himself, so there were only a handful of posts on the account. The newest was from three days ago. Chapter 2 He'd put up an old photo of the two of us.

We were holding flowers, standing under the arch on campus, smiling at each other. His caption read: My girl. Let's walk like this until our hair goes white.

For a man about to get married, nothing could be more normal. The comments under it were all congratulations. Something pulled tight behind my eyes. No. We had an agreement.

His work meant he couldn't show his face anywhere, and Beckett had always been careful about it. "I've made a lot of enemies, Lettie.

You have to watch yourself too." Once I took a selfie that caught half of his profile, and he made me delete every trace of it.

I really got angry. "I waited three whole years for you. Three years I didn't dare tell one person where you'd gone. You won't come to anything of mine, you won't meet my friends.

People think I invented my boyfriend." "That compound got taken down ages ago.

Beck, could you relax?" But he wouldn't bend. "The devils in that place are worse than anything we imagined. I'm afraid some of them slipped the net.

Don't hold it against me for being suspicious, Lettie. Careful is the only reason I'm alive after three years." I bit down on my lip and kept scrolling.

Two weeks ago Beckett had gone back up to the hollow to fix up the old house for the wedding. On April 26 he posted two pictures.

One was the front door of the house with its fresh coat of paint. The other was a page out of an intro philosophy textbook.

The book was mine, left behind the summer after junior year, the first time I went home with him. So why post it?

And then I remembered that summer, when Beckett got it into his head to teach me the basics of codes. He liked to write them in my palm and make me find the rule. I'm ticklish.

Every time I'd giggle and squirm into his chest. "Beckett, are you using the lesson as an excuse?

Are you actually teaching me?" He kept his face severe and looked at me dead serious, and wrote three numbers in my palm again. "Numbers can stand for letters. Use what I told you.

Work it out yourself." I struggled with it for a long time, then blurted out, "I… I love you?" The second it was out I knew I'd walked right into it, and I hit him, furious.

Beckett laughed until his chest shook, his eyes full of the pleasure of having pulled it off. "That's right. I love you. Congratulations, Miss Thurman.

You've learned something." The memory came back clearer and clearer. My heart pounded like a drum while I zoomed in on that page, over and over.

Line by line, comparing, breaking it apart, putting it back together. Beck, wait for me. You have to wait for me.

I followed the method he'd taught me back then: take the first letter of every block, then shift the second block over by one, the third by two, and keep going from there.

In the end, out of all those packed rows of letters, I put together two lines. [THE RABBIT HAS HUMAN EYES] [TRUST NO ONE NOT EVEN ME] Every drop of blood in me froze.

The rabbit meant danger. So Beckett already knew something was wrong. Why didn't he tell me? Was he afraid of pulling me into it? And why would a rabbit have human eyes?

I turned the two lines over and over. Beck, what are you trying to tell me? Who was it that slept beside me last night?

Thoughts slammed around in my head, and the more I thought the worse the panic got. I went out the door for air. My feet stopped dead.

Because across from the old house I saw it, that shabby little country store propped up at the side of the road. Taped to Mr.

Hensley's cooler was a beatup old advertising calendar, years out of date, and nobody had ever pulled it down. The picture on it was a rabbit.

Where the rabbit's eyes should have been, some kid had scribbled in a pair of human eyes. This was it. The rabbit with human eyes.

I forced everything churning in me down and made it sound like small talk. Chapter 3 "Mr.

Hensley, I'll bet Beck was in here bothering you the whole time he was working on the house." The old man waved that off, laughing. "Listen to you.

It's Beckboy been looking after me, all along." "Beckboy don't miss a thing. My eyes ain't good, and folks was always walking off without paying.

He's the one told me to set up right here, said anybody stiffs me, come find him." "And he went and put in a camera for me, special.

So now if somebody tries it, I know exactly who." My heart went faster. A camera? So the rabbit with human eyes meant two things.

The second one was the camera. "Could I take a look at it?" I watched the screen with my hands clenched, the palms slick and cold with sweat. April 26. The day he made that post.

On the screen, Beckett walked in fast. He didn't come out until half an hour later, carrying a bag. I sat bolt upright. It had just rained that day.

Going in, his work boots were caked with mud. Coming out, the boots looked brand new. Spotless.

Rage, and the fear along with it, ran back into every vein I had, and I went cold all over. The Beckett who came out was a fake. The real one had been swapped inside that half hour.

My head was roaring. If the one who came out was fake, then where was the real Beckett?

Beckett came out of Special Forces, then spent years undercover and came through more fights than I could count. How could anyone take him down that easily?

What had happened to him? I didn't hesitate. I called Beckett's group supervisor. He heard my whole report out, and didn't react the way I expected. "Ms. Thurman.

You're saying the Beckett who came home is a fake?" He sounded distracted. "Just because he forgot a joke the two of you made three years ago?

Because he forgot you can't have honey?" I was getting frantic. "Please believe me. I don't know how he did it, but that man is not Beck." "Do you have proof?

Something solid." My throat was dry. "I… don't." The supervisor sighed. "Do you know what he's been through these three years?" My chest tightened. "He said it was classified.

He never told me anything…" "He ran highrisk operations over and over. More than once he came back half dead. Missing you is what carried him through.

So he could live like a normal man again, we put him under light hypnosis and sealed off the worst of those memories." His voice turned suddenly serious. "And we ran identity verification on him, of course.

There is no possibility he was replaced." My eyes went hot, but I didn't move an inch. "If I'm what he held on for, then the memories between us can't be the painful ones.

He wouldn't forget them." "I love him, and that's exactly why I can tell. This man is not Beck. I'm sending you the security footage. Watch it and you'll see." There was a silence.

Then he agreed anyway. I watched the upload bar creep forward, notch by notch. At 98 percent it stopped dead. Signal is bad in the mountains.

I was about to move somewhere else when a voice came from behind me with no warning at all. "It won't work.

You can't send it." Every drop of blood in me ran backward and the hair went up on my arms one by one. I turned my head, stiff.

Beckett stood there with one hand in his pocket, watching me calmly.

There was no telling how long he'd been there. "Lettie, the cell tower up the hollow just got taken out by a mudslide.

Service will be down for fortyeight hours." His voice was so gentle you couldn't hear a single thing wrong in it. "Good timing, actually.

Now we get a honeymoon where nobody can bother us." Chapter 4 "We're so happy, aren't we?" Fear came in like a flood