Colton's Secret Service

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Mind if I take a look, Sheriff?” Adam asked, nodding at the photograph.

  “Help yourself.” Jericho handed over the photograph, then waited for some kind of comment. “Recognize her?” he prodded.

  Wide shoulders rose up and down in a noncommittal shrug. He had the photograph back to the sheriff. “Looks a lot like Miss Grady.”

  “That’s the whole point,” Jericho told his deputy patiently.

  “Yeah, I guess it is,” Adam agreed sheepishly.

  It struck Nick that as far as deputies went, this one wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.

  Georgie returned with a plastic bag. It still had the faint smell of the apples she’d just emptied out about it. Jericho nodded at her, then deposited the wig inside the bag, tucking in the long braid. It was a tight fit.

  Jericho paused to ask her a few more questions, then seemed satisfied for the time being.

  “We’ll be back,” he promised her, slipping the photograph that Nick had created into the front pocket of his shirt.

  Georgie walked the two men to the door. “Thank you for coming so fast.”

  Opening the door, Jericho paused one last time. He glanced at his deputy. “I could leave Rawlings here to watch the house,” he offered.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she assured the sheriff quickly. She glanced over at the man who had shared her bed. “I’ve got Nick.”

  Again, there was no indication what he thought of her answer. “And that worked out pretty good for you, didn’t it?” He was clearly referring to the fact that the intruder had broken in and gotten as far as she had with this “Nick” in attendance.

  A wave of defensiveness rose within her. Her green eyes slanted toward Nick. “Overall, yes,” she informed the sheriff quietly.

  “Suit yourself,” Jericho told her. “I’ll be in touch,” he repeated, tipping his hat to her, then nodding at Nick.

  “Want some coffee?” she asked as soon as she had closed the door and the sheriff and deputy were on their way.

  Nick glanced at his watch. It was barely five o’clock. “Why don’t you go back to bed?” he suggested gently.

  Georgie shook her head. There was no way she could go back to sleep.

  “Too keyed up. Dawn’s almost here anyway.” She sighed. How had everything fallen apart like this? Was there someone out to get her? The very thought was guaranteed to keep her awake nights. “Might as well get ready for it.”

  Being with her this short time had made him a student of the inflections in her voice. He recognized that tone. She was too anxious to sleep.

  “Then I’ll take that coffee,” he told her, following her into the kitchen. “As long as you hold back on the asphalt.”

  She laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  He couldn’t talk Georgie out of coming with him, although God knew he’d tried. Knowing that the sheriff could only devote a small amount of time to finding the woman in the photograph, he’d printed up more than a hundred and got to work questioning people.

  It was a day later and his showing the photograph around to the various shops, restaurants and bars in Esperanza had finally paid off.

  The affable bartender/owner at Joe’s Bar & Grill recognized the blonde.

  He rubbed a cloth over the permanently scarred and stained counter as if it was second nature to him. “That looks just like the little girl who came to me looking for a job a while ago.” He took a second look in the sparse light. It was the middle of the day outside, but inside the bar it was on the cusp of midnight. “I didn’t have an opening, but I had her fill out an application anyway, in case one came up.”

  “You still have that application?” Nick had asked.

  “Well, sure. Somewhere.” The answer was meant to end the conversation, not tear it wide open.

  “Would you mind getting it?” Nick asked. When the bartender remained where he was, massaging the counter, Nick took out a fifty and placed it in the path of the man’s towel. He stopped rubbing.

  Favoring his left foot, the bartender lumbered into the back to an overcrowded, small storage room. Nick followed with Georgie shadowing his every step. He would have felt a great deal better leaving her home but Georgie refused to be left.

  It took the bartender a few minutes and several curses before he came across the application. The paper was stuck in a manila folder that had an altercation with a bottle of beer. Consequently, some of the writing was gone. But just enough still visible for Nick to piece together an address. He hurriedly wrote it down on the pad he carried with him.

  “Okay,” Georgie declared the second he handed the folder back to the bartender, “what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

  “I’ll take you home,” he told her.

  “You will not,” she informed him in no uncertain terms. “Whose life did she steal? Whose house was she squatting in?” Georgie demanded as they walked back out into the sunlight. “Mine, not yours. Mine,” she repeated. “There’s no way you’re going to confront this Rebecca Totten without me,” she told him.

  He had a feeling that she meant that. That even if he brought her home, she’d follow him. She got a good look at the address as well. And because they’d left Emmie with Clay early this morning, there was no stopping Georgie from doing just that.

  He could stand here and argue with her, but that would waste time. She was more stubborn than a legendary mule, even if she was a hell of a lot prettier.

  “If you think that I’m going to let you—”

  Nick threw up his hands, not wanting to listen to any more of her tirade. “Okay,” he declared, knowing he was going to regret this, “You can come.”

  “Damn straight I can come,” she shot back, striding to where they had parked his car. “Woman steals my money, taking food out of my child’s mouth, not to mention my good name, there’s no way I’m not going to take care of business,” she informed him hotly. Reaching the vehicle, she waited for him to unlock the door.

  Nick hit the proper button on his key ring. The car made a piercing noise and all four of the locks popped open.

  “You know, you can put it down,” Nick told her just as she got in on the passenger side.

  “Put what down?” she asked, confused.

  He rounded the trunk and then got in on the driver’s side, slamming the door a little louder than he’d intended. “That chip on your shoulder.”

  “Just drive,” she told him.

  He backed out of the space, then put his car in gear. They drove down the main thoroughfare. “We don’t know if this Rebecca is really the one we’re looking for,” he pointed out.

  Rebecca was the one. She could feel it in her bones. But to forestall another argument, she told him, “Don’t worry, Nick, I promise I won’t punch her out until we have proof.”

  “Why doesn’t that comfort me?” Nick shook his head as he took a right turn on the next corner. Georgie Grady was one of a kind, all right.

  There was no answer when he knocked. After a second time, he took out his cell phone.

  “Who are you calling?” she asked.

  “A friend of mine to see if we can get a search warrant.”

  “That’s going to take time,” she complained.

  “Yes, it is. You have any better ideas?” It was a rhetorical question. He didn’t expect an answer. Waiting for his friend to pick up the phone on the other end of the line, Nick turned around to look at Georgie.

  “Oh, look, she left the door open,” Georgie announced glibly, turning the knob and walking in.

  The door had been locked less than two minutes ago. An answering machine kicked in on the other end of his call. Nick cut it off, shutting the phone. “How did you learn to do that?” he asked.

  “A girl picks things up along the way” was all she said. He had no need to know that Ryder had taught her how to pick a lock, or that Ryder was currently serving time in prison.

  Once inside the small apartment, Nick pulled on a pair of rubber gloves b
efore he started to methodically go through Rebecca Totten’s things.

  Impressed by the gloves, Georgie smiled. “You certainly come prepared,” she commented.

  “Saves time,” was all he said.

  Since she didn’t want to leave any incriminating fingerprints here herself, Georgie put on a pair of work gloves she had stuffed into her back pocket and undertook her own search.

  Because of the size of the apartment—little more than a studio—the search went quickly. There was nothing hidden in the bureau drawers, or, it appeared, the closet. Nothing in the tiny pantry either.

  But the apartment came with a Murphy bed and when he pulled it down, Nick hit the jackpot. The unimaginative woman had succumbed to a cliché and hidden incriminating evidence under her mattress.

  “Well, she’s obviously not a professional,” he murmured, letting the bed, now unmade, pop back up into the wall. He held the folder he’d extricated.

  Georgie, on her knees examining the contents of pots that were stacked inside the stove, looked up excitedly. “You found something?”

  The question wasn’t even out of her mouth before she hurried over to join him in the tiny area designated as the “bedroom.”

  The folder contained several photographs of Georgie and a couple of the Senator. There were also a few receipts stuffed into the folder, including one for the wig and one for the ring from the jewelry store that had captured her on tape.

  Nick almost found it amusing. What did the woman intend to do, use the receipts for tax purposes when she filed her 1040? Would she identify them as items bought in order to commit identity theft?

  Or were the receipts intended for someone else to act as proof of what she was doing?

  “We got her, don’t we?” Georgie asked excitedly, clutching the large book she’d been going through in hopes of shaking loose evidence that might have been stored inside.

  “Looks like,” he agreed. “Right down to her crooked little feet.”

  Georgie closed her eyes, exhaling a deep sigh of relief. She tucked the folder into an oversized book that was on the coffee table in order to keep the photographs from bending. “Oh, God, it’s over. The nightmare’s really over.”

  That was when she heard it.

  The sound of a gun being cocked.

  Georgie turned around slowly to find herself looking at a young, petite blond woman who looked like her only in so far as they were both roughly the same age and had the same complexion.

  “Not yet,” Rebecca Totten told her. She held a gun directly at them. “You know, if you two stand just like that, one in front of the other, I can kill both of you using just one bullet. I like being frugal,” she said, an unnerving smile curving her mouth. And then she sighed. “I really wasn’t counting on this. You weren’t supposed to figure out who I was,” she said, seeming clearly put out. “But then, that’s what makes life interesting, isn’t it? All the twists and turns that you can’t predict.”

  She looked at Georgie, her quirky smile deepening. “Bet you never predicted it would end like this. And, for what it’s worth, I am sorry. But you are going to have to die. You know that, right?”

  Even as she asked the question, the blonde raised her hand and took careful aim. Her hand began to tremble. Uttering a curse, she took hold of her right hand with her left, intending to steady it so that her aim was true.

  Chapter 15

  The moment she saw the gun, adrenaline surged through Georgie at the speed of light. Operating purely on instinct, she launched the book she held at Rebecca’s arm to deflect the shot.

  At the same moment, Nick threw his body in front of Georgie to keep her from being hit by the bullet. Seeing the book hit the woman, he dived for Rebecca, bringing her down. Grabbing her right arm, he forced it up so that the gun barrel was aimed at the ceiling as he tried to disarm her.

  “No, no,” the blonde cried wildly, frightened as she struggled for possession of the weapon.

  Georgie scrambled to her feet, searching for something to use as a weapon or to knock Rebecca out. There was nothing readily available.

  The sound registered belatedly.

  A single, deafening shot going off.

  For a split second, Georgie froze. She’d been around the sound of guns all her life, but this time, it was surreal.

  A sick feeling twisted the pit of her stomach as she swung back around. Nick was on the floor, on his knees. There was blood all over him.

  “Nick!” she screamed, fear all but gutting her.

  Darkness swirled around her, threatening to swallow her whole. She fought to keep it at bay. It took a long, life-draining moment before she realized that Nick hadn’t been hurt. That the blood that covered his signature black suit wasn’t his, but belonged to the woman he now held in his arms.

  “I’m all right. Call for an ambulance,” he ordered Georgie. And then he looked at Rebecca. He could all but see the life force ebbing away from her. The woman was dying. He needed to know the answer before she was gone. “Rebecca, did someone put you up to this?”

  The blonde’s eyes were unfocused, staring off at something that was beyond his shoulder. Fear and bewilderment etched themselves into her pale, young features.

  “It…wasn’t…supposed to be…like…this…”

  They were the last words she uttered.

  Watching, holding her breath, Georgie squeezed the cell phone in her hand. “Is she…?”

  The word didn’t need to be said out loud. Nick nodded, then gently slipped his hand over Rebecca’s eyes, closing them. Very carefully, he lowered the body onto the floor and then got up. Everything else was left just as it was, including the gun they had wrestled over, the gun that had been twisted so that it fired into her chest instead of his.

  He’d literally dodged a bullet that time, he thought cynically, relieved to still be standing.

  “You’re not hurt, are you?” she cried. Not waiting for an answer, she pulled back the sides of his suit jacket, anxiously looking for holes.

  He’d seen enough death to be rendered numb to it, but this one had shaken him. The young woman’s life force had all but slipped through his fingers.

  Glancing down at himself, he looked for a telltale hole that might have been the source of at least part of the blood flow. He knew that some victims of gunshot wounds didn’t even feel the bullet entering and his entire body had numbed and tensed.

  But there was no hole, no wound. All the blood belonged to Rebecca.

  “No,” he murmured almost distantly. “But this is going to generate one hell of a cleaning bill.”

  “Shut up,” Georgie cried, throwing her arms around him and just holding him, grateful beyond words that he was still alive.

  Nick looked over Georgie’s shoulder at the body on the floor.

  What a waste, he thought. What a useless waste. Rebecca Totten looked to be in her twenties, if that old. Ten minutes ago, she had her whole life ahead of her, and now, now there was nothing.

  Very gently, he extricated himself from Georgie’s hold. “Call the sheriff, Georgie,” he instructed woodenly.

  Stepping back, still holding the cell phone in her hand, Georgie did as she was told. Less than a minute later, the other end was being picked up. “Yates,” a deep voice announced.

  Her pulse still pounding, not to mention her head, Georgie drew in a long cleansing breath, then began talking.

  Jericho and his deputy had been less than a mile away when the call came in. They were there, at the studio apartment, in under five minutes. The sheriff quickly took in the scene, his hazel eyes sweeping from one end of the studio apartment to the other, coming to rest on the woman on the floor.

  “Dead?” he asked Nick. The latter nodded. Jericho squatted over the body without touching her, slowly absorbing everything. “How did she happen to get that way?” His even, low tone gave no clue as to what he was thinking.

  “Self-defense,” Nick replied.

  Jericho rose, shifting his penetrating l
ook to the Secret Service Agent. “We’ll get back to that,” he promised mildly. “Secure the scene, Rawlings,” he told his deputy.

  “Yes, sir,” Adam murmured.

  A thorough search of the small studio apartment yielded the final damning evidence. Under a pile of clothes in the back of the walk-in closet was an old gym bag. It was crammed full of money. Nearly three hundred thousand dollars.

  Georgie’s money.

  Nick took a quick inventory of the amount after Jericho handed it over to him. “Looks like you’re going to be getting that horse ranch after all,” Nick commented.

  “That’s evidence for now,” Jericho warned. “But there’s no reason it won’t be available to you soon,” he added, his voice softening slightly.

  The elation Georgie felt at actually recovering her life’s savings was tempered in the next heartbeat by not just the pall of death, but the haunting realization that Nick would be leaving. The threat against the Senator was over.

  She couldn’t bear the idea of there being half a continent between them, be it California or Washington, D.C., and yet, pride kept her from asking him to stay. Especially because she wasn’t sure of his answer. He’d seemed too focused on advancing his career when they talked last night.

  And if she asked him to stay and he said no, it would drive a stake through her heart.

  “Call the doc,” Jericho said to his deputy. “Tell him we have a body for him.” It was far from a usual occurrence. When Rawlings made no move to comply, Jericho paused to glare at him. The deputy looked pale. “You all right, Adam?”

  Adam blew out a breath. Unable to draw his eyes away from the prone body when he first walked in, now he avoided looking at the dead woman.

  “No,” Rawlings said in a low voice. And then, because the single word begged for a follow-up, he explained, “I’ve never seen a dead body before.”

  Jericho nodded, understanding. “Not exactly a common sight around Esperanza. At least, not like that. Folks around here tend to die of natural causes, not from lead poisoning.” Rawlings went to summon the doctor the department had on retainer. Jericho turned his attention to Nick and the next step in procedure. “I’m going to need a statement.” Jericho’s words took in Georgie as well. “From both of you.