Wanted By The Marshal (American Armor Book 1)

by Ryshia Kennie

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Are you alright?” Travis asked a few minutes later when they were inside her condo.

  “I’m fine,” Kiera assured him. “It’s you we’re worried about.” She’d waited outside on her stoop as he’d spoken privately to Devon and then put in a phone call to the local police. Since then the ambulance had arrived. They’d pulled into the driveway with lights and sirens off as requested. The paramedics had checked the head wound, cleaned it up and agreed with her assessment. Although all parties agreed they’d prefer if he followed up. And again, Travis refused. But at least there was a consensus that odds were he had no concussion and he’d had on the spot treatment from professionals with equipment she didn’t have access to.

  He glanced at Devon and she didn’t miss the subtle nod they exchanged.

  “I’ll check the neighborhood,” Devon said.

  Silence filled the room for a few seconds after Devon left.

  “How’s your head?”

  “Fine,” Travis said.

  “I’ll get you some water,” she said, for his voice sounded choked, hoarse even.

  “Did you get a good look at who did it?” he asked after she’d returned a minute later and seconds after he’d taken a swallow of the water she’d brought him.

  She shook her head. “Kind of yes and kind of no. It was a quick look and I saw only part of her face.”

  “Tell me again what you saw?” he said. “The details.”

  She sat down beside him and he took her hands in his.

  She held on to his hands tight as the image of that face flooded her memory. “Long black hair, streaked with gray, and braided. I think she was middle aged, her face was tanned and lined. At least the part of her face that I saw. I never made eye contact. She turned away in just a split second.”

  “I know you only remember seeing one of your kidnappers. But was there anything familiar about her? Anything that triggered a memory?”

  And they both knew what he was asking. Was she the elusive second kidnapper?

  She shivered. “I only heard him. At least, I thought it was a man, but the voice—” she frowned “—could have been either male or female. That’s all I have and your attacker didn’t speak, and I didn’t completely see her face.”

  His hand turned hers over and his thumb stroked her palm. The action was both surprising and comforting, and completely not the Travis she knew. He tried his best to keep their relationship professional.

  As if reading her thoughts, he squeezed her hand and let go. “We’ll talk about this later. In the meantime, I need to report what happened today.”

  He stood up, pulling her to her feet. “You’ll be okay for an hour or so? Devon will be here. This time he won’t be leaving. And there’ll be a police cruiser in the area. I won’t be long, but I need to file the report on this. I’ll send a sketch artist here and let Devon know to expect them.”

  “No worries,” she said. “The question is, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said as she walked with him to the door. He opened it and stood in the doorway, looking at her as if contemplating something about her, or the situation or both. She wasn’t sure what was going through his mind.

  “Kiera...” His voice dropped off as if he were considering what he wanted to say or even how he was going to say it.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I just want you to know, that I’m completely behind you. We have one killer behind bars but I know that there’s someone else out there. Whether this was her or not, we’ll get them sooner or later, Kiera. One killer at a time.”

  She shivered. “She found me.” It was as much a question as it was at statement.

  “Maybe, but she’s at a disadvantage. You’ve seen her and you’ll never be alone.”

  “I have my gun. I’ll keep the doors locked and...” She looked at him, remembered that he’d been wounded protecting her. “You be careful tool”

  He touched her cheek. “Call me if you need me, if you’re scared at all—anything. We’ll make sure you’re safe. Promise.”

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “I’ll be alright,” he said and the look in his eyes said he appreciated her concern. “You worry too much,” he said as he pushed a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail back from her cheek. He took her by the waist, pulling her closer to him. “I like that.”

  “Do you?” she said in a voice that was soft, almost provocative.

  For heaven’s sake, she thought, you’re flirting with the man who almost died protecting you. It was an outrageous thought. Yet, she wanted nothing but to run her hands along the firm lines of his body.

  She didn’t have any warning when he kissed her. It was hot and hard and wet all at the same time. It was passion and the promise of more. It was the perfect kiss as she melted into him, kissing him back, mating her tongue with his. She fit against him like they were meant to be. She ached for this kiss to never end, for it to become more.

  But with it came the knowledge that in the aftermath of what had happened, nothing could come of this. She pulled away. She needed to keep her head straight, her wits about her, and so did he.

  “Go. You’ve got work to do,” she said in a voice that didn’t sound like hers at all. It felt strange and distant, and far from sincere. “Go,” she encouraged.

  He looked at her strangely as if he didn’t believe what she was saying. And then a curtain seemed to come down and there was a distance between them again. It was like a professional space that breached the growing personal connection. She breathed a sigh of relief. That was the truth of their relationship. She was a client or a case, whatever it was that marshals called their assignments—nothing more.

  Travis looked at his smartwatch. “Give me an hour, no more, and I’ll be back. You’ll be okay?” he repeated as if repetition would assure that she would be.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. She pointed to the end table where her gun lay. “I have the old standby, Devon and apparently part of the police department.” It was a relief to know that he trusted her and knew she wasn’t going to take off. This was the safest place she could be.

  “You do.”

  “I’m not worried,” she said. “Do what you need to.”

  * * *

  “I DON’T LIKE THIS,” James said twenty minutes later. “Especially the fact that you were attacked. Damn it, you could have been killed.”

  “I’m fine,” Travis assured him once again.

  James shoved back in his chair and stood up. “That’s the one good thing to come out of this conversation. The rest...” He shook his head. “The two-kidnapper theory, the fact that no evidence of their existence was ever found over an almost fourteen-month investigation, seems implausible. Except, and here’s where I contradict myself, there’s been too much happening for it not to all be related. I just can’t get over the fact that one killer may have flown so far under the radar.”

  “Except now they’re out and not so quiet,” Travis said. “The phone calls, the attack on me—casing Kiera’s place. All of it. What if Kiera’s right? What if the one that got away is now after her?”

  It was a question for which they didn’t have the answer. But he needed to talk this out. The theory of two killers, the attack—all of it added up to a threat to their witness, a threat to Kiera.

  “We can’t dismiss the idea that we don’t have this case locked up,” Travis said.

  James frowned. “I don’t like anything that came down this afternoon. Especially that I can’t marry any of these incidents up to solid facts. I don’t want any of this affecting her testimony.”

  “It won’t. With any luck we’ll have the pair of them locked up well before then.”

  “Sounds like best case scenario. If there are two killers. Otherwise, if they’re all separate events then we have
a variety of crimes happening and only one commonality—Kiera. All the crime happens around her. All the crime happens after she escapes the serial killer,” James said slowly, contemplating the suggestion as if it had become fact. “Interesting, if we factor in the possibility that someone acquired leaked information.”

  “Not likely,” Travis said.

  “Agreed,” James replied. “But a remote possibility.”

  “Never mind that—just look at the evidence. The phone calls, the stalker. You start piling the evidence together and it’s adding up to a big something.”

  “Like I said, I can’t disagree,” James said slowly. “What I can say is that this is completely out of the ordinary. It’s not the pattern that the average serial killer follows. Of course, there’re exceptions, there always are. Even so, the specific cases of couples working together are rare. The Wests in England for one. But, in that case, she wasn’t the dominant player, he was.”

  The more Travis thought about the recent events, the more convinced he became. But the more evidence they could gather, the better. He intended to sit down and talk to Kiera. The memories were still coming back, so the possibility of her remembering something new, something more tangible, in the next few days was a possibility. He knew the FBI would speak to her in the days leading up to the trial but somehow, he believed that he might have more success. She trusted him. In a way, the desire she ignited in him aside, they were friends.

  “In the meantime, we know there’s a threat—that fact no one disputes. So we need to move our witness to a safe house.”

  “I agree,” Travis said with a feeling of relief. That was one item off the table. There was no discussion, done deal. He knew James would get that in the works and it was only a matter of alerting Kiera. He pushed that from his mind, knowing that convincing her might not be so easy. Despite her claims that another killer was still at large, she was anxious to go back to work and return to the life she’d put on pause since the incident. He’d convince her one way or another. He had no choice. What he had now was another issue—one almost as big as the one they’d just put to bed.

  James leaned forward, his elbows on his desk. “I’m sensing another request in the works.” He looked Travis in the eye as if forcing the point.

  “I’d like to interview Eric Solomon,” he said as he moved to the next item on his agenda.

  “You’d like to what?” James said in a voice that was strained. It was a voice that barely held back his outrage at Travis’s request. “What do you expect that will accomplish? He’s already been interviewed and said next to nothing.”

  “I’m not sure,” Travis said, unsurprised at the reaction. “Considering everything that’s happened, the playing field has shifted.”

  “In your opinion.”

  Travis shrugged off the interruption. “Different questions, different interviewer, might get a different response. Maybe a different insight.”

  “You think he’ll let something slip?”

  “Maybe he can help us connect the dots.”

  “The odds are that he may say nothing at all,” James said.

  “True. But we also might gain some insight. Plus, he’s had time to think. Maybe he’ll reveal something that will give us that connection.”

  “Doubtful. While he hasn’t lawyered up yet—that doesn’t mean he won’t request one. And that will change everything. Right now, he’s just refused.”

  Travis was silent for a second digesting that interesting piece of information. “That aside, it would be negligent not to let me interview.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s a shot. Something might have changed. I know it’s changed for us. This assignment isn’t what I expected and maybe Eric is willing to shed some light on it.”

  James was shaking his head.

  “We have the chance of changing the odds,” Travis finished as he saw the stormy look on James’s face. “Especially sending someone like me in.” He held up his hand, staving off James’s interruption. “Why? Because, I wasn’t part of the original arrest so I’m unknown to the perp. The bonus? I’m actively involved in the case. But he doesn’t know that. I have an inside scoop on the possibility of a twist...”

  “There is no twist,” James said with gritted teeth. “At least none that has any backing.”

  “So, let me do it.”

  “I don’t know, Travis.”

  “What will it hurt?”

  James shrugged. “Fair enough. I don’t think you can do any harm. Maybe this idea of there being a partner in these crimes is a theory that dies as a result of this interview. I can only hope, because that surely complicates things. In the meantime, maybe you’re right, it definitely has the potential to change things—or not.” He shrugged.

  “Agreed. Fifteen minutes, that’s all I ask.”

  In the hall a door slammed shut. Someone laughed. Silence settled thick and uneasy between them as they sat on either side of the old oak desk.

  “Alright, fifteen minutes and not a minute more. I’ll arrange it ASAP. Let’s say tomorrow at ten o’clock.”

  Travis stood up. “Thanks,” he said to his friend and, for the duration of this case, superior. It was an awkward situation but one that they so far were handling without injury to their friendship.

  “Don’t thank me yet. You could walk out of there looking like an idiot.”

  “I’ll buy the round,” Travis said. “But if I’m right...”

  “No chance of that.”

  “If I’m right that changes everything.”

  “Agreed,” James said with a frown. “We can both hope that the theory is as whacked as it sounds. Neither one of us needs this complication.”

  Travis didn’t disagree. He hoped that James was right. And he prayed that Kiera was wrong, but he feared she was very right. If that was the case, there was another killer on the loose, exactly as she’d said. And this time, they might very well have Kiera in their sights.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Travis had already had two cups of coffee when he arrived the next morning in Rawlings, Wyoming. It was a little after nine thirty in the morning. The Rawlings State Penitentiary was where the notorious serial killer, Eric Solomon, was being held as he awaited trial.

  It was Thursday, exactly fifteen minutes before ten, when Travis entered the facility. He immediately felt trapped, confined, as he always did within the walls of a prison. He hated this aspect of his job, for prisons always made him feel claustrophobic. There was no reason for the feeling, no past trauma or phobia that he could put his finger on. Maybe it was just a subconscious aversion at the thought of being confined.

  He pushed the thoughts from his mind and went through clearance. He was then ushered to the interrogation room. He was fifteen minutes early. He’d planned that, for he’d known that by the time he cleared security and made the necessary pleasantries with the officials, he’d be right on time.

  As he entered the room and the door clanged behind him, the noises of the prison fell away and he pulled out a chair and sat down. It was the position in which he began any interview with someone who was incarcerated. It was less threatening than standing. He glanced at his smartwatch to make sure he was still ahead of schedule and to mark his time. He was now five minutes early. From everything he knew from the file and what James had told him, the murderer had said little. As a result, the odds that he’d open up to Travis were slim, but he still had hope. That the possibility was there meant that he had to take it. He knew that was the reason James had agreed—the faint hope of information.

  Five minutes later the metal door opened. A medium-sized man, with blond hair that curled over his ears and average looks, leaned nonchalantly against the doorframe. His face was boyish and younger looking than Travis had expected. Eric Solomon was only two months younger than he was and yet he looked a decade younger. His youthful face
helped make him look trustworthy. It was what had lured too many women to their deaths.

  Travis tried to maintain a friendly look while feeling nothing but loathing for this man who had brutally killed so many women. He had to clench his hands at his sides and struggle to keep a pleasant expression. This piece of crap had threatened Kiera, had touched her, torn her clothes and meant to violate and then kill her. He couldn’t think of that, for the rage it built in him would become uncontrollable in seconds. He’d stand up and take this piece of trash’s throat in his hands and...

  Damn it, Johnson. Cool it.

  He couldn’t. He’d kill him for what he’d thought that he could do to the woman he cared about.

  He took a mental step back. What the hell was he thinking? He didn’t care about Kierra not in that way, not in a romantic way. He hated this piece of trash. That was it.

  There was no getting around it. It was too soon. He didn’t know her. It didn’t matter. He was falling for her.

  Focus, damn it.

  The guard gave the man a push. Eric took another step inside. The step was reluctant, forced on him from behind. He gave Travis a bland look that showed little emotion as he was forced to take another step into the room by a second shove from the guard.

  “Behave yourself,” the guard ordered. “Fifteen minutes,” he said as he looked at Travis.

  Travis gave him a nod and the guard walked out closing the door behind him with a distinctive click.

  Travis made a snap decision. He guessed that sitting for this interview wasn’t going to work, or at least sitting and waiting for him to sit wasn’t working. He needed to meet him halfway. Pride was standing between them and, to eliminate that problem, they needed to be on equal footing. He stood up and held out his hand.

  “Eric?”

  “Marshal Johnson,” Eric said with a sarcastic look.

  “Travis.”

  Just like that, Eric smiled at him, the previous antagonism gone.