Prologue
Lisa thought that her life was back on track after it had been four long years since that ill-fated red- eye flight she had taken and had her whole life dramatically changed upside down by a single madman.
Someone who's piercing blue eyes has haunted her every waking moment and dreams at night.
Someone who she believed for a single moment, even as she had stared down at his fallen form after her father had shot him four times in the back, felt that he had some good inside him, despite the fact that he had tried to kill her.
Someone who had touched a lost cord within herself in the moment that he locked themselves both in the airplane lavatory and saw the scar upon her breast and the unfamiliar look of anger took root in those blue eyes.
Something had clicked in his mind. Something that even to this day, four years after the attack and foiled plans of assassinating Keefe and his family, Lisa still felt that human side she had seen within those few brief moments within Jackson Rippner's eyes and face.
"This is total bullshit." Lisa whispered to herself as she sat in the tiny apartment that she had brought three months after the accident. Her father had adamantly refused to have her move out, fearing that she would be more traumatized after what had happened to her. But after much arguing, tears and pleading that she was only doing this for her own self so she could regain some normalcy in her life, her father finally relented and allowed her to move out.
Why Lisa did what she did, she wouldn't or couldn't even answer that question herself as she fought to push past the memoires. Memories of his smile, his laughter, his touch, scent, and intoxicating feeling she got even when he had hurt her and tried to kill her after she foiled his plans.
Because you loved him, Lisa. Her mind told her over and over again. You can't deny it, even how much you try to; Jack is much as part of your life now as he was in those seven hours on the plane. Your heart had opened up to him the moment he saw the scar and anger coursed through his body and eyes.
"I don't love him." Lisa said out loud to the walls of her apartment. "I can't love him for hurting me like this." She whispered as tears began to prick her eyes and fall down her fair cheeks. "Why did you do this to me, Jack?" She said as she allowed herself to fall onto the leather sofa and curl herself around a pillow, staring out her apartment window at nothing in particular.
Why did she even love someone who was hell bent on destroying another person's life and still say in her mind that he was only doing his job when it was obvious that he was a terrorist.?
A terrorist who invaded her heart and mind and still did when she found out that he survived the gunshots in his back and was sent to federal prison. Lisa still remembered the look of regret within those blue eyes when he sought her out at the federal courtroom hearing.
She had shivered with both excitement and fear as she bravely faced him and told the court everything of what took place between them.
Except the one part when they were locked in the lavatory together. She on purposely left that part out and inside her mind, she was pleased at the shocked look on his face when he noticed that she didn't tell them about what he had said and done to her in that tiny bathroom.