On the List

by Patricia Rosemoor

  How much would he tell her?

  By the time they approached her building, it was nearly noon. People were coming and going, so they lucked out and found a parking spot on the next block. Gabe kept his eyes peeled for trouble all the way to her entrance. But if anyone was staking out her place in the middle of the day, it wasn’t apparent to him.

  The ride up to the third floor in the elevator was as stifling as it had been the last time. Only the source of the tension was different.

  No attraction here, not from her. Only suspicion. It came from Renata in waves.

  How long would it take her curiosity to explode?

  Once inside her apartment, he said, “Why don’t you introduce me to your laptop and I’ll start a search on Russell Ackerman while you change?”

  Renata gave him a long look but didn’t argue. “Laptop’s over there.”

  She indicated the desk by the front windows before disappearing through an open door, which undoubtedly led to her bedroom. Before he could see inside, she slammed the door shut. Gabe took a big breath. It was like waiting for the ax to fall. He knew it was going to; he simply didn’t know when.

  A glance around the large room that included living, dining and kitchen areas assured him that Renata was as organized in her home as she was about everything else. Not a thing out of place. The walls were cream, the upholstered furniture taupe; the decorative paintings and hangings in soft colors were equally soothing. Each item on the low tables near the couch and chairs was precisely placed.

  As was the laptop on her extraordinarily neat desk.

  Being this neat was unnatural, he thought, making himself comfortable in her chair.

  He brought up a browser and search engine and typed in Russell Ackerman and Michigan. The search engine responded with dozens of links.

  He’d just clicked on one when Renata came up behind him, asking, “How is it going?”

  Gabe turned to see her dressed casually in jeans—tight jeans, he noted with appreciation—and a pullover in a flattering dark red. She’d brushed her hair back in a ponytail. For a moment, he simply stared. This was a whole new woman, a more relaxed version of Agent Renata Fox, a woman he’d like to get to know better. And then he realized he hadn’t answered her question.

  “I was just getting started, but Russell Ackerman seems to be popular on the net.”

  He turned back to the laptop, his gaze connecting with the LCD screen and the headline: Embry Lake Massacre Evokes Ruby Ridge Memories.

  For once in his life, Gabe was shocked into silence.

  “EMBRY LAKE?” Renata said, unable to keep the shock out of her voice. “No wonder I thought the name Ackerman sounded familiar. I must have read it and heard it dozens of times.”

  Trying to absorb this unexpected connection, she watched Gabe punch in a Find command for Ackerman. A second later he had it.

  His voice was cold as he said, “Russell Ackerman is listed as one of the nine dead.”

  “Dead? Wait a minute. Ackerman…Leigh Anne Ackerman…his ‘widow’ has made a lot of noise over the deaths. What does the article say about him?”

  She felt the need to sit and did so in a nearby chair. Gabe swivelled to face her.

  “He wasn’t shot like the others. He was one of the two who died—supposedly died, that is—in that building that burned,” he said, his voice tight. “Identification of a burned corpse can be a pretty difficult proposition.”

  “Especially if someone saw Ackerman go into the building…or if the identities were somehow switched ahead of time,” Renata said, her mind going back to Ned Coulter and his back-store business. “What if Ackerman’s identification were near the body?”

  “Could be,” Gabe agreed. “Apparently, someone made a big mistake. At least it looks like maybe we found something we can use. Now if only we knew the significance.”

  “Russell Ackerman was supposed to be dead…and now he is.”

  “Killed while hiding in plain sight under an assumed name. The question is why.”

  “Maybe it had nothing to do with Embry Lake,” Renata said. “Maybe Chuck LaRoe made himself a powerful enemy.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  She didn’t even have to think about it. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  But she didn’t know what to believe. Embry Lake had happened before she’d come on board at S.A.F.E., so she was not all that familiar with the case other than what she’d read and seen in the media.

  The Embry Lake Brigade, a militia headed by a man named Joshua Hague, had been under scrutiny for months as being a possible link to international terrorists. S.A.F.E. had placed a man undercover there who’d sent out reports of members being held in the compound against their will.

  So S.A.F.E. had used that to go in—ostensibly they were to make sure that anyone who wanted out was able to come out. Only something had gone terribly wrong and in the end, there’d been no viable link to terrorists they could find, either.

  Furthermore, a few of the innocents had died along with the militia men. The final count had been seven shot, two burned to death as a result of a bullet gone astray. To make things worse, no one knew who had fired the first shot and started the massacre.

  But Elliott Mulvihill, the supervising agent in charge of the operation, had been promoted to director of S.A.F.E. afterward, Renata knew.

  “How familiar are you with the Embry Lake failure?” she asked Gabe.

  Failure being a delicate way of putting things.

  “Familiar enough,” he said tersely.

  “This could be a bombshell.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” he asked. “Bring it to Mulvihill?”

  “I don’t know if he would believe me. If I can’t produce a source—”

  “He’ll bury it like he did your report.”

  She nodded. “My best guess.”

  “Then what?”

  “We’ll have to get proof. We’ll have to go to Embry Lake ourselves.”

  HE CURSED as they left together. He’d been counting on the man leaving alone again, so he could get to the woman.

  It seemed Agent Renata Fox was counting heavily on her bodyguard.

  What she wasn’t counting on was him.

  The man, he’d learned, called himself Gabriel Connor. He was carrying what looked like an overnight bag and the Fox woman was carrying what he expected was her laptop. Were they going somewhere?

  Not without him, they weren’t.

  As if he sensed they were being watched, Connor looked around, peering into shadows, as if he could see the danger he was in.

  Grinning, he wanted to shout, “Look up, you big hulk.” But, of course, he did no such thing.

  The elevated structure continued to hide him from any observer on the street. They couldn’t see him, but he could see them through the rails. Well, for the moment, anyway. Soon they would be out of sight.

  Not that he was worried.

  He’d found the car and had bugged it.

  Wherever they went, he would be right behind them.

  Chapter Ten

  Anxious to get to Embry Lake, Gabe had been hard-pressed to conceal his impatience when Renata had insisted on stopping first at S.A.F.E. She’d slipped in and out of the building through the alley loading dock entrance, but had kept her own counsel about her purpose. Then she’d insisted on stopping to see her mother on their way to Michigan. His heart had nearly stopped when that headline linked the sniper victim with the massacre, and it had been all he could do to cover.

  They were on the right track. He knew it.

  So why the hell were they diddling around now?

  “My putting myself in the spotlight has made Mom worry about me,” Renata said. “I want her to see me, to know I’m okay, so that if she can’t reach me…”

  Trying to empathize, Gabe hadn’t argued. A small delay was nothing, he’d told himself, not after all this time. So he’d simply followed Renata’s directions and had taken Lake
Shore Drive south of the Loop to the Kenwood neighborhood, down a tree-lined street to the century-old graystone two-flat where her mom lived.

  “Let’s just play it casual,” Renata said as they climbed the stairs.

  “Casual, it is.”

  They entered a vestibule with two doors. Renata rang one of the bells, and mere seconds later, the first-floor door was opened by a woman who looked nothing like Renata. Her hair and eyes were fair and she was shorter and more well-rounded. But upon seeing Renata, her face lit up and Gabe had no doubts as to who she was.

  “Sweetheart, I’ve been so worried about you.”

  Renata hugged the woman and kissed her cheek. “I told you everything would be all right.”

  “And who is this young man?”

  “Gabriel Connor,” Gabe said and, extra-casually, added, “A friend.”

  Mrs. Fox’s eyebrows shot up. “I see. Come in.”

  “Just for a minute,” Renata said. “Then we have to leave.”

  “Why the rush?”

  Renata met Gabe’s gaze and said, “We’re on our way to Michigan, and I just wanted to stop by for a moment.”

  “Oh.” Soft color brushed Mrs. Fox’s cheeks and she gave Gabe a more appraising look.

  Renata quickly added, “We won’t be back until really late tonight. I just figured you might worry if you couldn’t get hold of me again. So before we left, I just wanted you to see me in person for yourself. I know how worried you’ve been with all the media attention.”

  “It just reminds me of—”

  “I know, Mom.” Renata gave her mother a big hug.

  And Gabe gave them a moment.

  He wandered farther into the living room, which looked as if it had been decorated a few decades ago and had never been updated. He stopped before a curio cabinet whose top shelf held a photo of a man in uniform. Renata’s father, no doubt about it. He looked even more Native American than her. And in addition to the portrait, there were a couple of medals. And a framed newspaper clipping—his casket being carried by other policemen in dress uniform and a headline that screamed that another cop had been killed on the job.

  Obviously, after all these years, Mrs. Fox was still mourning her late husband. And Renata was trying to reassure her mother that the same thing wouldn’t happen to her. As if she could be sure of anything herself, considering the things that had happened in the past several days.

  “Well, don’t rush back,” Mrs. Fox was saying. “You deserve some time off. You two have fun.”

  “My middle name,” Gabe assured her with a wink.

  They headed back for the car, and Renata’s mother stood in the doorway, watching until they pulled away.

  Considering Renata was so up front most of the time, Gabe couldn’t quite get what had just happened. “Do you really think dishonesty protects your mother?”

  “I didn’t lie.”

  “No, you just led her to believe you and I were going away to play. She thinks we’re—”

  “I know what she thinks. She made an assumption and I simply didn’t bother to correct her.”

  “You let her think what you wanted her to think,” Gabe said. “What you planned on her thinking before we ever walked into the house.”

  “All right. I admit it. Mom had a really hard time after Dad died. I guess you’d call it a nervous breakdown. She wouldn’t even go out of the house for months, unless it was to visit his grave. It’s really hard sometimes, knowing the right thing to do. I believed in Dad, in his wanting to make the city safer. And I always wanted to follow in his footsteps. I tried not to for a while—for Mom’s sake—but I felt I wasn’t being true to myself.”

  “And to your dad.”

  “And to my dad,” she admitted. “I have to do this, Gabe. And not just because someone is after me, though that is a great motivator. I have to do this for my family—Mom and my sister Lucille.”

  Gabe saw Renata’s choices as her trying to protect her mother while living her life for her father. A real juggling act. Whether or not she wanted to admit it, she was trying to make up for what had happened to her dad, as if she could clear his name by doing well on the job herself. Somehow she must think that once she did that, her mom and her sister and she would be okay.

  Not necessarily, as he knew from experience.

  No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t fix the past. And sometimes you couldn’t even forget it. It followed you around like a dark shadow, waiting until you’re at your most vulnerable…

  But he knew she had to try.

  Gabe could identify with the family entanglement. That was something they had in common and another reason to feel close to her.

  Trouble was, he was feeling a little too close for his own comfort.

  POSSIBILITIES ABOUT what might happen next ran through Renata’s mind from all directions, but no answers came to her. She was running on empty, her mind exhausted by the friction at work, the media attention and trying to keep her mom from pitching over the edge again.

  And then there was Gabriel Connor. Or whatever his real name was. Rather, her growing feelings for him. What the heck was she going to do about them?

  The attraction might be mutual, but she wasn’t foolish enough to get crazy romantic ideas. Nothing romantic about this situation at all. They were simply two people drawn together by uncertainty and danger. She imagined when this was all over, they probably would never see each other again.

  An unsettling thought, one she didn’t want to probe into more deeply, any more than she wanted to probe into Gabe’s true identity.

  Renata didn’t know why, but Ned Coulter’s asking if he was still using the name Gabriel Connor had shocked her. Knowing he had his own agenda and hadn’t been totally up front with her, she should have been prepared for another curve. But she hadn’t been prepared for that.

  There’d been that moment between them when she’d wanted to ask…but she’d let it pass.

  Gabe wasn’t volunteering any more information about himself, and Renata simply couldn’t ask him. Her greatest fear was that if she knew who he was—someone with a record?—she would have to walk away. And then she would be alone in this.

  Finding the truth about the City Sniper, about who was trying to kill her, was challenge enough. She was juggling too much now and didn’t know how to make sense of things. Or even to slow down. This thing had built a life of its own and she was simply following where it led them.

  Currently to Michigan, she thought, forcing away a sudden yearning to be in Gabe’s arms.

  She checked her watch. They’d been on the road about an hour and a half, so they were more than halfway to Embry Lake, one of many small lake towns in southwestern Michigan, and she still didn’t know exactly what she could or would do when they got there.

  “We’ll have to start with Leigh Ann Ackerman,” she mused, forcing herself to concentrate on the only thing she did know for sure. “The ‘widow’ has been making waves ever since the standoff at Embry Lake.” Even though she hadn’t been part of S.A.F.E. when it had happened, she preferred thinking of the Embry Lake incident that way—a standoff rather than a massacre. Things had somehow gotten out of hand, though, and civilians had been the ones to die. “She got herself a top lawyer who’s demanding millions of dollars for the survivors.”

  “Hmm. Do you think she really believes her husband is dead?” Gabe asked. “Rather, that he was killed in the standoff?”

  “I don’t know. Unless he had reason to want out of the marriage. Though why he wouldn’t simply divorce her…” The name switch kept bugging her, though. “Why would Russell Ackerman have felt it necessary to change his name?”

  “He was afraid someone would put a bullet in him?” Gabe offered.

  She didn’t miss the irony of the man’s fate. “But why? Who?”

  “If he was in on a scam with his wife, maybe someone who didn’t want to pay up,” Gabe said. “More likely, it was someone who didn’t like the fact that he ran out on hi
s militia compatriots.”

  “But Joshua Hague was already dead.” As far as Renata knew, he would have been the one to fear. “Who else?”

  “If we answer that question correctly, we win a new washer and dryer and the identity of a murderer.”

  Gabe injected humor at the strangest times. Another why. What had happened to him to make him so flippant about serious matters? His way of dealing with them, she supposed, though he hadn’t been flippant earlier, when they’d first found the information.

  “Let’s hope Leigh Ann Ackerman has some answers,” she muttered.

  THE AIR FELT thick and Gabe was having a hard time breathing by the time they arrived in Embry Lake. Gabe’s need for the truth and justice was becoming more urgent with time.

  He pulled into a gas station and stopped at a pump.

  “We need gas,” he told Renata. “See if you can get directions to the widow’s place.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  He met her gaze, which held a shadow of that curiosity that had him worried. She hadn’t asked about his real name or why he’d had to change it. He hadn’t had to lie.

  He wanted to keep things that way.

  They both got out of the car and stretched. And while Renata went inside to find someone who could give them directions, Gabe opened the tank, swiped his credit card and started filling up.

  Gideon had put him on to Ned Coulter. When he’d originally hit town, the club owner had used the identification specialist to help him create a new persona. Gabe had done the same, not because he’d ab solutely had to—not like Gideon—but because change had become a habit that was difficult to break. If you didn’t settle down in one place, didn’t keep the same name, you couldn’t be found by someone who could hurt you…who could possibly be the death of you.

  He’d learned that mantra the hard way, and he couldn’t shake it and relax.

  Not even now.

  Thinking about the past made him want to call his own mother, just to hear her voice. And to tell her he was finally going to get justice for Danny. But he couldn’t do that to her. She would know. And then she would be frantic for him, just like Renata’s mother was for her.