Tempted by a Touch (Unlikely Hero)

by Kris Rafferty

  “Moments before I woke you.” He believed her. Because he wanted to? Maybe, but he did.

  “Is this it?”

  “Isn’t it enough?”

  “Folsom mentioned the locket yesterday. Why are you only finding the SIM card now?”

  She shook her head with frustration. “At the time I thought he was…” She waved off the direction she was about to take the conversation. “It doesn’t matter now. I didn’t think he’d hidden a SIM card in the locket. And didn’t know it was there until I threw it against the wall.”

  Once again, he believed her. “So Folsom did tell you where the list was in that meeting, you just didn’t realize it. The bastard. Though this might put him a few more rungs up the ladder of hell.”

  “He gave me the list without telling me, put me in danger under the guise of giving me a gift. No. He gets no hand up any ladder, thank you very much.” Her hands trembled as she packed up the laptop, her gaze skittering around the room, searching shadows.

  “I need to get dressed.” Lucas wasn’t sure who to contact first. Lieutenant Zimmerman, maybe. Then he’d contact IA. Shit. This was happening. Dane was going to champ at the bit to be involved. And Harper. He needed a safe house not connected to the MPD.

  “What are we going to do?” she said.

  “You’re going into protective custody.” He dialed his phone, ready to do just that. Harper grabbed it from his hand and disconnected the line.

  “No.” She shook her head.

  “Don’t fight me on this, Harper. I need to know you’re safe.”

  “Caleb’s men are outside, and the FBI special agents follow us wherever we go. How much safer can I be? Just take the SIM card and bring it to the lieutenant. I’m fine here.”

  “Don’t you understand?” Lucas grabbed her hands, forcing her to hold his gaze. “We know it’s not some imaginary list anymore. It’s real, and it is radioactive, Harper. Smith’s men, the FBI, they both want it for their own reasons, so I don’t trust them. Certainly not with your safety. So we slip away and hide you in a safe house until I can come up with a plan.”

  “Well,”—she sighed and then shrugged—“if you can give our babysitters the slip, I have a place we can go.” She sounded confident, but this was Harper, not some secret agent. He hesitated, not sure what to say. “Trust me, Lucas.” Her confidence made him believe her. She was, after all, a MacLain. Why wouldn’t she know a place with the necessary security parameters to keep them safe? “You drive. I’ll navigate.”

  Lucas threw on jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers, worried about the unfamiliar safe house Harper suggested. “Tell me about this place.”

  “It’s where Dane put me and Elizabeth when he was building his case against Whitman Enterprises.”

  His heart sank. “You were caught. Elizabeth was kidnapped.”

  “Because I left. Wow, rub it in.” She turned the lights out and then peeked out the window. “Time for you to trust me, too. I’m telling you, this place is safe. And I don’t want to be around a bunch of strangers in some smelly protective-custody hotel room. I’ve heard stories my whole life about those accommodations. One word—bedbugs.”

  “We need to contact your brother. I don’t care how safe your hideaway is, I’m not leaving you there alone. Your brother will keep you safe while I get the list.”

  She walked to the bed and pulled a handgun out from under her pillow.

  They’d just had raucous sex on and around that pillow. “Please tell me a bullet wasn’t chambered.”

  “No.” Harper pulled back the slide. “Now one is.” She tucked it behind her in the waistband of her jeans, hidden under her T-shirt. “So what’s the plan? Caleb’s men aren’t slouches. How will we get past them?”

  “I’ve been studying their movements—”

  “You have?” She seemed impressed, and though part of him wanted to preen, the other part wondered if she had any clue about his credentials…what he’d done in his career.

  He shook off the weight of his past. “They switch patrol responsibilities every half hour. Smart. Keeps them alert. But they meet up in the backyard by the hydrangeas, give their reports, and then split up again. In five minutes, they’ll meet there again. That gives us one escape route that either they or the feds on the street can’t see at all times.”

  Harper’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about? They chose their meeting place well—it gives either them or the feds a complete view of the circumference of the property. Unless you intend to jump out of my bedroom window and into a rosebush.”

  Lucas grimaced and tapped his watch. “We have four minutes before they meet. We’ll have thirty seconds to get it done, and there’s still a risk of getting caught.” He pushed aside the drapes. Smith’s men were still in place, glancing at their watches. “If they catch us—”

  “They’re Caleb’s people, Lucas.”

  “Exactly, Harper. He’s a criminal.”

  “He’s Marnie’s friend. If they catch us we’ll be embarrassed, but nothing more. I know you don’t like him—”

  “We’ll lose our shot to get away. There will be no shaking them after that. So we get it done the first time, or risk bringing the problem to Zimmerman and hope for the best. Are you okay with that?”

  Harper nodded, glanced out the window, and then studied the room. She indicated the bed and they both stripped it, tying the sheets together and then to the bed post. “If we move the bed closer to the window, we won’t have to drop that far,” she said.

  Lucas easily moved the four-poster bed closer and knew there was no way it would carry his weight without making a lot of noise. Window to the ground was at least fifteen feet, and though he’d jumped from greater heights, it’d been from a helicopter into water, not onto a rosebush. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  He carefully opened the window and screen and saw Smith’s men tense, giving a last look at their area of responsibility in preparation of moving. His watch said it was almost time. Barely breathing, Lucas waited, and when they finally moved, he threw the sheet out the window, grabbed Harper’s satchel and put it over his shoulder, and then he gripped her wrist, as she gripped his, and then lowered her out the window. When she could go no lower, Harper grabbed the sheet and slid quietly down its length, pushing off the side of the house to avoid the rosebush below.

  Smith’s men were giving their reports. He had moments left before they’d be in position to see him and Harper race across the yard. Lucas didn’t take a chance that his weight would cause the sheet to pull on the bedpost, crashing the bed into the windowsill, so he lowered himself down, hanging from the sill. Kicking off the house, he dropped, cleared the rosebushes and rolled, never stopping his momentum, but rather grabbing Harper and running to the edge of her yard. He lifted her up and over the fence separating the yards, and then hopped it himself. They didn’t stop running until Lucas was sure they were in the clear, then he pulled Harper into the shadows of a closed convenience store and pulled out his phone, dialing Dane.

  There’d be no sleeping tonight.

  Chapter Ten

  The next morning, Harper woke yawning, stretching until her quilts fell to the floor. Throwing her feet over the side of the bed, she curled her toes away from the cold hardwood, and struggled to clear her head and open her eyes. It felt surreal to be back at the farmhouse, her family’s hideaway. Deeded to a blind trust, invisible to bad people who had an interest in knowing where the MacLains hid in times of trouble, it was bought as a bug-out spot for her and Elizabeth when Dane was investigating his wife’s murder. Marnie encouraged him to keep it because…you never know.

  Summer was nearing an end in Candia, New Hampshire, and mornings were cool. The bedroom she’d chosen was on the second floor, minimally furnished with old lace curtains and an antique wood bed. The wallpaper was water stained, the wide plank flooring dinged from a hundred years of wear and tear. Two lifetimes of living.

  She hated it here.

  When she’d l
eft a couple of months ago, she’d hoped never to see the place again. She should have known better. The MacLains were magnets for trouble.

  She found everybody in the kitchen, drinking coffee. Harper craved a vat of it.

  “Hey.” Marnie drank her coffee black.

  Dane’s blue eyes flashed with amusement. “You don’t look awake yet.”

  She wasn’t. It had been a late night, and they’d been there with her, so why was she the only one who looked worse for wear? She poured herself a cup of coffee, feeling disgruntled. Lucas sat with them at the dinette table, rumpled and sexy, too big for his chair. She opened the refrigerator and saw that it was well stocked. “Shit. Does this mean I’ll be here for a while?” She frowned at the three of them. They exchanged knowing glances. “Is that my phone?” Sure looked like her phone. The one she’d left in her pocketbook, hanging from her bedroom closet door.

  Lucas held it up. “I had to turn it off just in case.”

  “In case someone tried to track you with it,” Marnie said. “My idea.” She seemed too perky for a pregnant woman early in the morning. Leave it to Marnie not to suffer morning sickness.

  Harper reached for the open shelf and grabbed a bowl large enough to hold a dozen eggs. “Where’s Elizabeth?”

  “Still at Millicent’s house. We thought it would be best,” Dane said. Elizabeth’s emotional recovery from her mother’s murder had been slow, but she was making strides. Harper didn’t blame Dane for wanting to keep her far from their latest challenges.

  “Did you tell her about Joe?” Harper said. Her brother shook his head, not meeting her gaze. “Maybe she’ll never have to know.”

  “She’s a MacLain.” Marnie sipped coffee and then set her mug down. “MacLains sniff out the truth. Better she hears it in a safe place, from people who love her.”

  “Harper? Right now,” Dane said, “I’m worried about you.”

  Nothing new about that. Harper cracked a dozen eggs into the bowl. Whisking, she attempted to make eye contact, but they were all staring at their coffees. “What did the lieutenant say? Is he forcing me into protective custody?”

  “Well—” Lucas hesitated, glancing at Dane.

  Marnie sat at the edge of her chair. “We’ve been thinking—”

  Lucas held up his hand, stopping Marnie. “We’re afraid of leaks, so we’re not sure that’s such a good idea.”

  “You and me both,” Harper said. “So I stay here until you and Dane figure things out. I’ll be safe. I know how the surveillance equipment works. If there’s a problem, you guys come a-running.” She chopped the onions and tomatoes and dumped them into the pan as everyone stared at her, poised…for what? The vegetables hissed and sizzled. She stirred. Still, they stared.

  Lucas broke first. “Remember how you remarked that the street knew you had access to Folsom’s list before even you did? Well, we don’t know how, and that worries us. Now the lieutenant, Internal Affairs, the FBI—”

  “—and every opportunist on the street,” Marnie said.

  “—are looking for you for their own purposes,” Lucas said. “But if we hand you over to the authorities, we run the risk there are bad players in the system who might gain access to you.”

  “Not acceptable,” Dane said.

  “Like they gained access to Joe,” Marnie said under her breath.

  Harper scowled at Marnie, stirring the sizzling veggies a little faster. “Stop trying to freak me out, Marnie. What about the SIM card? We know where the list is. What does the lieutenant want to do?”

  “We haven’t told the lieutenant,” Dane said.

  “Yet.” Lucas gave the impression that was a topic of contention, and so far, Lucas wasn’t winning.

  “Dane, you don’t trust the lieutenant?” She shook her head, throwing a pinch of salt in the pan. “Damn. What about jumping up the chain of command, handing the location of the list to a judge you do trust?”

  Lucas nodded. “We’re weighing our options.” He joined her at the kitchen counter, snacking on a slice of cheddar she’d pulled from the refrigerator.

  “And?” She hated how she was out of the loop.

  Lucas glanced at Dane. “The guards transporting the prisoner who killed Joe were under orders to take him to interrogation room one. Where you were. Where Joe had just left.”

  “By whom?” Harper poured the beaten eggs over the vegetables.

  “His sergeant,” Lucas said, “who was given orders by his lieutenant, who was ordered by the DA’s office, who had a court order by a judge. The higher up we go, the less it’s clear where the order came from. Paperwork was signed all along the way. All forgeries.”

  “What does this mean for us?” Harper searched their expressions, trying to see what they were keeping from her. “That we can’t trust judges? That’s insane.”

  Lucas grimaced. “Or there is someone so wired into the system they can pull strings at will. Whitman specialized in extortion. The list might contain more than just cops. We could be talking about elected officials.”

  “So,” Dane said, “you’re the most valuable player. Everyone’s link to this list. The more we discover, the more valuable it becomes. Harper, I don’t want you anywhere near it. You’re in real danger.”

  “Plastic bubble. Gotcha. Well, right back at you,” Harper said. “Are you going to have a job after this is all figured out? Last I heard you weren’t supposed to be anywhere near this case.” She took the omelet off the heat.

  “You’re my sister,” Dane said. “I’m in this whether you like it or not.” Harper wanted to argue, but he was her brother and a cop. No way he was standing on the sidelines.

  She plated the omelets and brought them to the table. “Eat.” She watched her brother frown at the food. “Go on. Taste it. Tell me if I put too much pepper on the eggs.”

  Marnie took a bite. “Perfect.”

  Dane tasted it and nodded. “Yeah. Good job, Harper.”

  “We have a plan.” Lucas sat next to Dane. He looked as tired as she felt; bloodshot eyes, rimmed with dark circles. From the looks of him, Harper suspected he hadn’t slept last night. “We open the safe-deposit box, acquire the list and see who is on it. By default, we learn who we can safely hand it off to.” He rubbed his face, yawning. “I used my contacts, did a little digging. The safe-deposit box is definitely in your name, Harper.”

  Harper heard the frustration in his tone. When she served him his omelet, she stood over him, waiting to see if he liked it. When his eyes lit up, she sighed, ready to deal with the next challenge. “So what I’m hearing is, I have to go to the bank to open the box, but you don’t want me to.”

  “Right.” Lucas spoke around his food. He ate like he was starving, so she patted his shoulder, pleased. She liked when people enjoyed her food.

  “We should put her back in the shipping container,” Dane said.

  Marnie scraped her plate, and licked her fork. “Your sister is an adult. It’s time you start treating her that way.”

  Lucas drank his coffee and then took a piece of toast from the plate in the center of the table. “Harper, we’re looking into getting someone to pretend to be you.”

  Harper thought that was a great idea. Someone actually trained in police work to retrieve this important piece of evidence. “Who?”

  “I volunteered,” Marnie said. “But your brother nixed that idea.”

  Lucas nodded, but his expression told Harper he would have nixed it himself, too. “I was able to contact someone at the bank who could give me information on the account. It seems Joe set up a safe-deposit box that has a fingerprint lock,” Lucas said. “Did you go with Joe to set up the account?”

  Harper shook her head, arching a brow. “I think I would have remembered, and if I did, it would have been the first place I’d have thought to look.”

  “Well,” Lucas shrugged. “He got your thumbprint somehow. Joe needed it to set up the account.”

  “I’m telling you,” Harper said. “I didn’t gi
ve him my thumbprint. I’ve never been to that bank.”

  Lucas nodded. “I believe you. I’m just saying it’s a problem.”

  “No, it’s not. I’ll just have to go,” Harper said.

  “No,” Marnie said. “We could create your thumbprint, like Joe did. All it would take is a fingerprinting dusting kit, or the equivalent, and tape. Scan it into the computer. I have the software. Then we download it to a three-D latex printer. That way, anyone with a fake id and the prosthetic fingerprint can bypass security to gain access to the box.”

  “That’s terrific,” Harper said.

  “No, it’s not,” Lucas said, scowling at Marnie. “The best Marnie can do is a waiting list for the hardware. A three-day delay.”

  “It works great,” Marnie said.

  “We don’t have three days,” Lucas said. “Whoever has better connections than us could have access to that kind of equipment and they could swoop in and get the list while we wait. All they’d need is your fingerprint and we’re screwed.”

  “Not hard to get,” Harper admitted. “Just break into my house, I guess. Or fingerprint my car. It’s at the garage. Easily accessible.”

  “It’s a problem, but we’ll figure it out,” Lucas said.

  “So I go to the bank,” Harper said. She feared an ulcer before this day was through.

  “No,” Lucas said. “We’re working the problem.”

  “We’re stumped,” Dane said. Marnie nodded, nibbling on toast.

  Harper made a plate for herself and sat next to Lucas, smearing butter on her toast. There wasn’t a person at the table who wanted her at that bank, but the bank was where she needed to be.

  They spent the next half hour creating and discarding plans that would allow Harper to acquire the contents of the safe-deposit box without unduly risking her life. On and on they went, no closer to the perfect plan, so Harper gave up. She took a shower, dressed, and when she returned to the kitchen and they were still arguing, each one more bullish looking than the next, she made an executive decision.