Colton's Secret Service

by Marie Ferrarella

  Incredibly frustrated and stymied, Georgie wanted to scream. “I bet you like making a federal case out of everything.”

  Nick didn’t rise to the bait she’d dangled in front of him and made no comment.

  Desperate, not sure what the man was going to do next but fairly certain she wouldn’t like it, Georgie tried to appeal to his better nature—if he had one.

  “Look, Sheffield, I need someone who knows me. Someone who can make you believe that I’m not lying. Someone who can make you understand that I never sent any of those e-mails.” Because I sure can’t.

  He supposed there was no harm in throwing her a bone. And there could be a very slim chance that she was telling the truth.

  “Okay, let’s just say for the sake of argument, you’re right,” he told her. “You’re innocent. You’re not the one sending those e-mails.” Nick paused, the import of his own words replaying themselves in his head. If what she was suggesting was true, then that shifted the focus. This could be about her, not the Senator.

  Or, that could be what she wanted him to think.

  Nick explored the first question. “Why would someone set this up to make it look as if you were threatening the Senator’s life?”

  How many times did she have to say it? “I don’t know.” She uttered each word carefully so that maybe this time, it sank in. “If I did, believe me I would tell you.”

  His mind whirling, he hardly heard her. “Do you have enemies?”

  She shrugged. She didn’t like to think so. “I don’t know. Everyone’s got enemies, I suppose. But nobody I know wants to see me in prison. Not even Kathy Jenkins.”

  Nick’s interest was immediately aroused. They had a name. “Kathy Jenkins?” he repeated, his manner coaxing her to continue.

  “I beat her in the barrel racing events in the last three towns.”

  The surge of adrenaline subsided as suddenly as it had begun. Nick sincerely doubted that all this was about barrel racing.

  He tried again. “Nobody has it in for you? Your ex-husband? A jilted boyfriend? Some girl whose boyfriend you stole?” With each question, he watched her face for a reaction. Instead, he saw a wall going up.

  “You always think the worst of people?” she asked.

  “It’s my job.”

  “If my daughter wasn’t sleeping in the other room, I’d tell you what you could do with your job.” Blowing out a breath, she went down the list he’d just raised. “There’s no ex-husband,” she deliberately avoided his gaze, wanting to see neither pity nor judgment in his eyes, “there’s no jilted boyfriend and the only thing I ever ‘stole’ wasn’t a boyfriend. It was a twenty-five cent candy bar when I was six. My mother made me give it back and apologize. I worked off my ‘offense’ by straightening bottom shelves in the grocery store for Mr. Harris for a month.”

  He could almost see that. She probably looked a lot like her daughter at that age. “Sounds like a strict mother,” he commented.

  Georgie instantly went on the defensive. “She was a good mother.”

  Well, there was a sore point, he thought. He wondered why.

  “Didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” he told her. Nick looked at her for a long moment, common sense wrestling with a budding gut feeling—or was that just temptation in another guise? “I’ll look into it,” he finally said.

  It had been so long between comments, she wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “Excuse me?”

  “Your alibi.”

  She hated the way that sounded, as if a lie was immediately implied. She didn’t have an “alibi,” she had a life. But in this case, she supposed having an alibi was a good thing.

  “Then you believe me?”

  He’d always played things very close to the vest. It was better that way—for everyone. “Let’s just say I’m trying to keep an open mind.”

  He didn’t strike her as someone who normally kept an open mind. “I guess maybe Emmie’s hitting you with the tire iron did some good.”

  “Don’t push it,” he advised. “I just don’t want to be wrong.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to be wrong either,” she told him pointedly. The subject of logistics occurred to her. “Does this mean you’re going to be staying here?”

  He nodded slowly. It wasn’t something he was happy about, but this was going to take at least a day, if not more.

  “For now.”

  “I’ve got a guest room in the back.” She jerked her thumb toward the rear of the house.

  He knew that. He’d done a very thorough surveillance of the house when he’d first gotten here, thinking he’d find the perpetrator at home.

  The room in question was full of boxes filled with all kinds of things, none of them new. “You’re using it for storage.”

  “There’s a bed in there,” she volunteered. The boxes were piled on top and all around it. “You’re welcomed to it.”

  He could just see her trying to wall him in. “Here’s just fine.”

  Here? Did he mean to stretch out on the sofa? She supposed she could move Emmie and hope the little girl went on sleeping. Unlike her brother Ryder, who could sleep while being tossed around in the funnel of a twister, Emmie was easily roused.

  Moving over to the sofa, she began to pick up her daughter.

  As with the flashlight, Nick caught her wrist and stopped her. “What are you doing?”

  She wished he would stop touching her. “Moving Emmie so that you can have the sofa.”

  “Leave her where she is,” he instructed, releasing her wrist. “I don’t want the sofa. I’ll take the chair.” He nodded toward it.

  Toward the left of the sofa, the item under discussion was an overstuffed chair that had once belonged to her grandfather, the famous rodeo star she’d been named after and whose last name she’d taken when she began riding herself. George “Rattlesnake” Grady. He’d favored that chair for some fifteen years and it still retained his shape. She loved it dearly, but it was hardly comfortable enough for Sheffield to spend the night in.

  Georgie eyed him dubiously. “You won’t get much sleep in it.”

  “I don’t intend to sleep.”

  Which meant that he intended to watch her, she thought, immediately suspicious. And that in turn put them back in two separate camps.

  Still, he wasn’t slapping handcuffs on her and shouting that she was under arrest. She supposed that she could deal with anything short of that.

  And come the morning, she promised herself, after she deposited her winnings into the bank, she’d find a way to set Mr. Secret Service agent straight.

  Once that happened, her life as Georgie Grady, rancher, could finally begin.

  Chapter 6

  “What?”

  Georgie stared across the counter at the bank teller as if he were babbling gibberish.

  It was just a little after nine in the morning and Georgie stood in the center window of the First Western Bank. Of the two banks housed in Esperanza, First Western was the older, more established one. That was why she’d originally chosen it. Safety and stability had always been exceedingly important to her.

  Getting here this morning was a semi-victory on her part. A victory because that Secret Service agent who’d invaded her life hadn’t wanted her to go into town. Semi because in order to leave the house at all, she’d had to accept that he was accompanying her. He’d told her in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t allow her to leave his line of sight for more than five minutes. Five minutes being the amount of time, according to the insufferable man, that a person should be able to take a shower and get dressed again. She hadn’t bothered pointing out how ridiculous that was because she’d been in a hurry to get to the bank to put her money away.

  Because she’d been in a hurry, Georgie had given in to him and even agreed to let him drive Emmie and her in his sedan. All she’d wanted to do was to get to the bank to make this final deposit.

  And now all she wanted was not to throw up. Within the last minute, her stomach had
twisted into a knot and then risen up into her throat.

  If only she could do the last few minutes over again. Walk in, nod at the teller and have the man take her deposit slip with a smile, and not say what he’d just said.

  She just couldn’t have heard him correctly.

  Javier Valdez looked at her over the tops of his small, rimless glasses. “I said I guess we’re going to have to open an account for you.”

  That made absolutely no sense.

  A feeling of impending doom tightened about her throat. She fought to ignore it.

  “But I already have an account,” Georgie reminded him. To back her up, she pushed forward the bankbook she’d brought with her, along with her deposit slip and the money she’d won during the last five months. “This one. Trudy Miles opened it for me the day before she retired,” she remembered. “It was the same month that Emmie was born.”

  The month she’d realized that she wasn’t a child anymore. Eighteen or not, she was a mother. A mother with responsibilities. Clay had given her the hundred dollars that she’d deposited that day. It was a gift for Emmie, her brother had told her. He was giving her money because he “wasn’t any good at buying stuff for babies.” Georgie could remember tearing up as she’d made that first deposit.

  Now tears threatened to come for a completely different reason.

  Javier frowned. “But you closed that account,” he told her gently. “Said you lost the bankbook so we had to match up your signature. Don’t you remember?”

  That was impossible. She hadn’t been here in five months. She hadn’t.

  “You saw me?” she challenged. Behind her, she heard Sheffield shifting his weight. Probably getting ready to handcuff her and lead her off, she thought. With all her heart, she wished the man was somewhere else. Preferably in hell.

  “Everybody saw you,” Javier told her with a soft laugh. “That red hair of yours is hard to miss.” He smiled at her. A widower, it was obvious that he was a little smitten with her. “Nobody else around here’s got hair the color of a Texas sunset.”

  “But that’s not possible,” Georgie insisted.

  Listening to the exchange between the Grady woman and the bank teller, Nick found himself thinking that the distress and anguish in her voice sounded genuine. She was probably an accomplished actress. Most con artists were and this was beginning to take on the shape of a con.

  But still, he couldn’t quite shake off the effect of her voice.

  Moving forward so that he stood beside Georgie, Nick appraised the short, dark-haired teller. “Were you the one who closed the account for her?”

  Javier’s black eyes darted toward Georgie, as if to silently ask if it was all right for him to answer the question. “Is he with you?”

  Beads of sweat slid down her spine at the same time a chill took hold of her. Javier’s voice echoed in her head. It took her a second to make sense of the question. She was doing her best to block the onslaught of some very terrifying thoughts.

  “For now, unfortunately, yes,” she reluctantly acknowledged.

  Javier’s eyes shifted back to the tall man beside Georgie. “No, I didn’t. Mr. Welsh did.”

  “Can you get him over here?” Under no circumstances could that be mistaken for a request. It was a tersely worded command.

  One that clearly made Javier nervous. Sheffield probably got a lot of that, Georgie thought. And he probably reveled in it. Right now, she didn’t care what the Secret Service agent did as long as he got this mess untangled for her.

  Clearing his throat, Javier shook his head. “No, I can’t.”

  Georgie felt Sheffield take a half step closer. The very movement seemed intimidating to Javier. She saw the man’s eyes widen.

  “And why’s that,” Nick’s eyes dipped down to the teller’s name tag. “Javier?”

  “Mr. Welsh is on vacation,” Javier recited, never taking his eyes off the man beside Georgie. “His daughter’s getting married in Colorado, so he and Mrs. Welsh went there.”

  Pretty convenient, Nick thought. “When did he leave?”

  Javier looked like a man whose mind had gone blank. And then, mercifully, he recovered. Partially. “A few days ago.”

  “Can you get him on the phone?” Nick asked in the same no-nonsense monotone.

  Was he actually going to help her? Georgie wondered. The thought made her feel a little better.

  Javier opened and closed his mouth several times without actually saying anything intelligible. A squeak emerged. Flustered, he glanced over his shoulder at the small row of desks lined up against the wall.

  “Mr. Collins?” Javier’s voice cracked as he squeezed out the bank manager’s name. “Could you come here, please?”

  A tall, somewhat heavyset man in his thirties came over after pausing to close a folder on his desk. Crossing to the teller’s window, Allen Collins offered Georgie a genial smile.

  “Nice to see you again so soon, Georgie. Emmie,” he nodded at the child. “Change your mind about closing your account?”

  This was some awful nightmare. It had to be. “I didn’t close my account. I haven’t been here,” she insisted. “I’ve been on the road. Winning this.” She pushed the neatly banded pile of checks forward. “There’s got to be some mistake.” She silently pleaded with him to agree.

  Nick’s eyes shifted from the bank manager’s face to Georgie’s profile. The teller’s statement dovetailed nicely to back up the fact that the Grady woman had been here all along, churning out poisonous e-mail. That was his intellectual take on the situation. His gut, however, said something else. Her eyes conveyed that her whole life had been turned upside down. It had him doubting the validity of his own theory.

  “No, no mistake,” Collins assured her. In the face of her insistence, his expression seemed just a shade uneasy. Suddenly, he held up his right index finger, indicating that she needed to wait for a moment. The manager crossed back to his desk and the old-fashioned rectangular metal file box he kept there. Flipping through it, he found what he was looking for. Collins removed a single index card and brought it back with him to the window.

  Placing the card on the counter, he turned it around so that she could see. “See, there’s your signature, plain as day.”

  Georgie stared numbly at the card. The signature was dated last week. It matched the original one from five years ago down to the circle over the letter i.

  Was she losing her mind? Or was someone playing a horrible joke on her?

  All she could do was repeat what she knew to be true. “I didn’t sign this.”

  “But that’s your signature.” At this point, the smile on the bank manager’s face wore thin.

  Georgie was afraid to look at Sheffield, afraid of what she’d see on his face. Smug triumph. What the bank manager was saying made it look as if she’d lied to Sheffield about her whereabouts. As if she’d been here all the time, conducting her life. Raiding her bank account and sending threatening e-mails to damn Joe Colton.

  But it wasn’t true. None of it.

  Stubbornly, Georgie shook her head. “Someone must have forged it. I didn’t sign the card, I didn’t close the account.” Her voice rose as she enunciated each word. “I wasn’t here.”

  “Mama was with me, riding in the rodeo,” Emmie piped up. The pint-sized defender added in a logical voice, “Somebody stole our money.” And then she turned around to look at the man who’d come with them. “Are you going to help us get our money back?”

  No way was this a four-year-old, Nick thought. She had to be one of those midgets—what was it they called themselves these days? Little people? She was one of them. And right now, this little person was putting him on the spot.

  Rather than answer her directly—he had no idea how to have a conversation with someone too young to vote—Nick looked at the bank manager.

  “You have surveillance cameras in this place?” he asked Collins.

  The bank manager took offense. The smile on his face vanished without a
telltale trace. “Just because we’re a little off the beaten path doesn’t mean that we’re primitive.”

  Nick heard what he needed to hear. “I take that as a yes. Mind if I see the footage from the day Ms. Grady was supposed to have closed her account?”

  Collins squared his shoulders. “I’m afraid that’s highly irreg—”

  Nick stopped him by taking out his badge and ID and holding them up in front of the man.

  The man’s small, brown eyes darted back and forth, reading the information over twice, before he finally raised them to look at his face. “Secret Service?” he asked uncomfortably.

  Nick’s own expression was impassive, giving nothing away. “Yes.”

  Collins and Javier both gazed uncertainly at Georgie. Collins found his tongue first. “This is a government matter?”

  “It’s complicated” was all Nick would say.

  “No, it’s not,” Georgie cried, turning toward him. Her bank account had nothing to do with the government. “Someone’s stolen my money.” She thought of the e-mails, the ones she hadn’t sent. Was there a connection? Had someone done all this to get back at her for something? Or was this a random attack? “And my identity.”

  “Georgie, you don’t look so good,” Javier observed. There was concern on his drawn face. “You want a glass of water or to sit down, maybe?”

  “What I want,” she replied, desperately trying to get a grip, “is my money.”

  This couldn’t be happening. By her reckoning, with this last batch of winnings, she should have been up to a little more than three hundred thousand dollars. More than enough to buy her some time and some peace of mind before she decided what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. Instead, someone had wiped her out. All she had left were the winnings in her hand. Thank God for that.

  And then, as if she wasn’t already reeling from this unexpected turn of events as well as being accused of terrorism by computer, something else suddenly occurred to Georgie.

  Oh, dear God, no.

  Georgie struggled to keep her hands from shaking as she pulled her wallet out of her back pocket. Flipping it opened, she took out her credit cards. There were four in all. She clutched them for a moment, as if that could somehow keep them safe. Keep them hers.