"You could almost feel sorry for the guy."
"Almost," Curt chuckled.
"I'll be back as soon as I can. There's coffee in the coffeemaker. Just put a quarter in the box and help yourself."
"No, thanks. Mary already filled me full of coffee before we came here," Curt recalled with a grin.
Jack pursed his lips. "Well, well, fraternizing with the enemy are you?"
Curt shrugged. "She's a pretty enemy."
"No argument there. See you later."
Curt sat down in the chair across from the desk where Mary was working. She peered over her laptop screen at him.
"You're very quiet," she remarked.
"I didn't want to disturb you while you were working," he replied.
"I'm just rechecking my notes, so that I'll have them in order for court."
"What did this guy do, that you're prosecuting?" he asked.
"He smuggled a bale of marijuana into the county on a truck in between bales of real hay," she said. "He was distributing it to a dozen high school kids for resale when we tipped the DEA boys and they took him down."
"High school kids," he muttered. "Selling drugs, shooting classmates...we live in a crazy world."
"Everybody can tell you why," she said simply. "Too much time unsupervised, too unconnected from their parents, too little natural sunlight, too much time spent at a computer keyboard, video game violence, and the list goes on and on. But nobody has a solution."
He leaned back in the chair and studied her. "Make your kids tell you where they are every minute," he suggested. "Be home when they get home from school. Know who their friends are."
"How many kids do you have?" she asked sarcastically.
"That was my mother's recipe," he said with a smile.
"Obviously, it worked," she had to admit.
"Not really. I found ways to get around her and do what I liked. She was a sound sleeper. I could go out the window after she went to bed, and she never knew. Until I got arrested. I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time—with a group of kids using drugs, that is." He grimaced. "You know what was worse than being arrested? It was having her come to bail me out, and the disappointment in her eyes when she looked at me. I'd let her down. It really hurt her. I never quite got over it." He smiled. "Needless to say, I kept my nose clean forever afterward."
"I guess so. Your mother's a really nice person," she added slowly.
"And you think a bad kid has bad parents, right?"
"Oh, no," she said at once. "That's a naive opinion. Some of the worst lawbreakers have the nicest, most decent parents alive. If a child is inclined to break the law, there really isn't any way to stop him or her. And once they see the consequences, a lot of times they are scared to death and become model citizens."
"I am living proof that it works," he told her with a chuckle.
She grinned. "I got pulled over for speeding once," she volunteered.
"You bad girl."
"It was the only time I broke the law. My dad grounded me for two months. I missed the junior prom and a date that I wanted more than food. I really learned my lesson."
"You don't talk about your mother," he noted.
Her face grew taut. "She and I don't speak."
"Why?"
She stared at her computer screen. "She left my dad and ran away with her aerobics instructor."
"Tough."
"He was one of those health nuts who don't eat real food and spend every spare second exercising. I guess he drove her crazy, because she left him two months later and tried to come back to Dad." Her face hardened. "He wouldn't let her in the door. Neither would I. She moved to California. Last we heard, she was living with a martial arts teacher."
"I'm sorry."
"She wasn't ever much of a mother," she replied coolly. "It was Dad who took me to parties and school dances and track meets. She was never around. She was playing bridge with her friends or working out or traveling somewhere."
"She didn't work?"
"She didn't have to, her parents left her a small fortune," she said coldly. "Dad was never interested in money, although he works hard," she added with obvious pride.
"Do you look like him?"
"Well, I'm not tall, but we have similar coloring," she confessed.
“Is he college-educated?''
She grinned. "Yes, he is. He got his degree about seven years ago. I was so proud of him!"
"I expect you were," he said with a smile.
"She didn't even graduate from high school," she added coldly.
"Maybe education wasn't important to her. It isn't, to some people."
She cocked her head. "It was to you."
He nodded. "My mother worked hard just to get me through school and make sure I had clothes to wear and a house that I wouldn't be ashamed to ask my friends into. When I started college, she helped as much as she could, but I earned most of my tuition by myself. I never failed a course," he added proudly. “Money was hard to come by."
"I felt the same," she said. "Dad helped, of course, but I put myself through college on scholarships and working as an assistant manager at a fast-food place at night."
"Hard work."
"Yes," she said, sharing memories with him. "But I graduated in the top ten percent of my graduating class. Dad was very proud. She didn't even come."
"Did you invite her?" he asked.
She averted her eyes. "Well, no. Because I knew she wouldn't come," she added belligerently.
"How about your ex?" he added.
She chuckled. "We're not that friendly," she replied. "I don't think his wife would like it. She's very nice, though."
"Lucky him."
"I'm nice, too," she said. "I can cook. I can even sew a little."
His eyebrows lifted. "Are you auditioning?"
Her eyes slid down to his chest. "You look very good without a shirt," she said outrageously. "And you aren't as stuffy and by-the-book as I thought to begin with. You might have potential."
"As what?" he asked, stonewalled.
"I'll have to think about that," she assured him, and with a secretive little smile, she went back to her laptop.
Curtis Russell, FBI agent, folded his arms across his chest and felt vaguely threatened. In a nice way, of course.
An hour later, Jack was back. He walked into the office, looking disturbed.
“There wasn't a sign of entry or occupation in your barn at all," he said. "Are you sure you saw evidence of a vagrant?" he asked Curt.
Curt didn't protest the question. He just nodded.
"I had the guys go over the place with magnifying glasses. There wasn't a thing. Considering the lack of evidence, how do I justify a stakeout?"
"Good question," Curt had to admit. He stood up with a sigh. "I guess that leaves me. I'll get my black ops outfit out of storage and sit in the woods with the chiggers all night."
"You could have been mistaken," Jack persisted.
"I could. But I'm not," Curt said simply, on the defensive because most of his statements were questioned these days, by the world at large. You make one dumb mistake in your life, he thought silently, and it follows you to the grave!
Jack was watching him. He grimaced. "Okay, Russell, I'll do whatever you want me to do, if you're that sure."
"I'll carry my cell phone out with me. If I call, come running," he added. "That's all I'll ask. Oh, one more thing," he said with a rueful glance. "Tell your boys not to drag me away in handcuffs in case any of the neighbors see me outside and get twitchy. Will you?"
Jack hid a grin. "Okay."
"What about me?" Mary asked.
"You go to bed and dream of brilliant summations," Curt told her. "While the FBI protects you."
"Gosh, lucky me," she drawled.
"Don't start that again, or I'll dribble honey into your bedroom and pour it over your feet. Remember the ants...?"
"You can't threaten women," she pointed out "It's against the
law."
"Who's threatening women? I'm only planning to feed ants."
She glowered at him, but he was already out the door with Jack while she was fumbling with her laptop's power switch.
It wasn't rainy, but the woods were damp at night. Curt was uncomfortable in his bed of leaves, with his cell phone in his pocket and his listening device in one ear. All he heard were crickets. There wasn't even an occasional loud howl from Big Red in his mother's living room. Since last night, the dog had been oddly silent.
When he'd returned home, after being arrested, he'd begged her to phone the pound and have the hairy menace taken away, but she was already attached to the big dog. In fact, she went out later in the day and bought the animal the premium dog chow in defiance.
Curt, taking matters into his own hands, had phoned veterinarians' offices asking about the big dog, but nobody had reported one missing. Probably, he summed up, the previous owner was enjoying his sleep and didn't want the nuisance back again.
After spending the evening fighting for enough space to sit on the sofa, and with a long-suffering sigh, Curt got up to prepare for his evening's work. When he left, Big Red was headed into his mother's room with her. He moved quietly to the dark back door, and went out to play spy.
He was watching the barn covertly, but it was empty and it remained empty. He knew he'd seen sign, positive sign, that the culprit had been skulking around the outbuilding. But he had no proof. And because he'd tipped off the man by alluding to a visit by the police, all the clues had been skillfully lifted.
That caused him to wonder if he had the right man. The potential federal witness, Abe Hunt, was a city boy, born and raised in Miami. He had no background that included outdoor activities, including scouting or other boyhood faculties. So how could a guy like that obliterate signs of his occupation?
There was another curious thing. The man's cousin, who lived down the street, had packed up his wife and kids and left town. Curt had gone by the house tonight, sneaking around its perimeters to make sure the family hadn't vacated it so the cousin could hide out there. But there was no sign whatsoever that anything had been disturbed since the family's abrupt departure.
The barn was empty and it remained empty. Oddly enough, the big dog wasn't howling at the window tonight. Everything was sublimely peaceful. Curt leaned back against a tree with a quiet sigh and watched the night go by.
Four
Curt dragged himself through his mother's back door at daylight, to be met by a wagging tail and a bark from the huge red dog.
"Isn't he sweet?" Matilda asked from the stove, where she was flipping pancakes on a griddle. "Come in and have breakfast, dear. You must be tired."
"Tired and all for nothing," he said, removing the black cap and jerking a paper towel from the roll to wipe off his camouflage paint. "There wasn't a peep out of anybody."
"I noticed. Big Red didn't bark."
He scowled. "Think that's why?"
"Well, he was howling and barking like crazy the night you and Mary got arrested, and you said somebody took food out of her kitchen. He even woke me up, just as they were driving away with you."
"He was outside," he pointed out.
"He was under my bedroom window, dear, where the basement door is," she corrected. "He's very loud."
"Yes, he is. Odd, isn't it, that he was barking there," he said almost to himself.
"Wash your hands, Curt."
He did, absently, at the kitchen sink. "You don't suppose that our fugitive tried to hide out in our basement while we were tracking him down, do you?" he asked, to himself.
"We don't lock the door," she replied.
"Today, I'm going to get a padlock and put it on," he said as he sat down to the table. "If he did, he won't do it again."
"Isn't it curious that a fugitive would try to hide out near an FBI agent," she mused as she served breakfast.
"I was thinking the same thing. And all the while his cousin lives down the street—when he isn't fleeing the scene—but there are plenty of safer places."
"Just what I thought."
After breakfast, and an errand that took him to the hardware store, Curt drove down to the district FBI office in Lanier County to see Hardy Vicks. He arrived just before lunch.
"I've had a wild thought," he told his superior.
"Yes?"
Curt leaned back in his chair. "I'm not going to put it into words until I'm sure. But can you spare me two men for an around-the-clock stakeout?"
The reply was so loud that the secretary stuck her head in the door to see why her boss was laughing his head off.
"Never mind," Curt muttered. "I'll ask the local police or the GBI or the sheriffs department. And if we catch who I think we might catch, the newspapers can give them the credit!"
"Russell, you're always sure you know what's going on," his superior reminded him, "and most of the time you haven't got a clue. You were still chasing down the blonde in San Antonio in that high-profile Texas murder case, when the lieutenant governor's wife was being booked for murder."
"She was a material witness and I caught her," he reminded the other man. "I even managed to have her extradited from South America to stand trial."
His superior's eyebrows rose. "Yes, I suppose you did." He thought for a minute. "Okay, I'll see what I can do about a surveillance unit, since this is a federal case. Where can we put them?"
"In my basement," Curt replied.
"Up to their necks in dirt with the snakes and spiders," the other man exclaimed.
Curt glared at him. "It's a walk-in basement. There's even a billiard table, if they're so inclined."
The other man grinned. "In that case, I might take the assignment myself. I'm partial to billiards."
Curt almost forgot himself and suggested that might be because the older man's head bore a striking resemblance to a cue ball.
"I'll get back in touch. It might take a couple of days, though."
"Okay," Curt said. "Let's hope the fugitive doesn't get spooked and run for it meanwhile."
"That's why we pay you, isn't it, Russell?" he was reminded blithely.
On his way out of the courthouse, Mary Ryan caught up with him. She was wearing a gray pantsuit and looked very professional.
"Any news?" she asked.
"Yes. My boss likes to play billiards," he said irritably.
She chuckled. "So does mine."
"It may take a couple of days to line up a surveillance team," he said impatiently. "But I think our fugitive's likely to take a powder long before then. When the police carried us off, the dog was howling under mother's bedroom window—right where the basement door is."
She whistled. "You think he might have been under your house?"
He nodded. "I went in this morning after breakfast to check it out," he said. "There were no obvious signs, but a couple of books were misplaced and the balls were set up on the billiard table. I always leave them in the pockets."
Her eyes narrowed. "He's blatant, for a fugitive, isn't he?"
He nodded slowly, with his hands in his pockets. "I was thinking that very thing. He acts less like prey than a predator."
"They won't want Abe Hunt to talk," she continued. "He could send his mob bosses to prison with what he knows."
"He could send one of them to his death. And Hunt might not be hiding from us at all," he added for her. "There might be a hit man after him, and that's why he's running scared. He's afraid of someone named Daniels."
She whistled. "Oh, that's just great. I'll sleep so nicely, knowing there might be a hit man parked in my barn or your basement!"
"It doesn't make me any more comfortable," he told her. "And my mother's in the line of fire, too."
"At least you have the dog," she remarked.
He pursed his lips. "Another odd piece of the puzzle," he agreed. "Where did he come from? Where's his owner? Why is he living with my mother?"
"Because she likes dogs?" sh
e ventured.
"He turned up at a strange time."
She glanced up and down the street. "I'm going to have a nice salad. Care to join me?"
He looked at his watch. "I might as well. By the time I get home, that soup mother promised to save for me will be in the dog."
She laughed delightedly. "Your mother's a character."
"You have no idea. When I was a kid, I never knew where she'd call from to say she was going to be late. Once she was behind a bank of police cars waiting for a sniper to be taken down. Another, she was racing to the scene of a drug-related bombing."
"It sounds like an exciting life."
His dark eyes sparkled as they walked into a nearby cafe. "It was. She had law-enforcement types around her half the time, men and women. It didn't take much guesswork to understand why she got so many scoops right from under the noses of the other reporters."
"But she retired."
"When I got in my middle teens, I started giving her fits," he confessed. "She gave up a higher-paying job to do feature work so that she'd be around when I needed her. I guess it was a good thing. I was headed straight to hell for a while. No matter how good a mother is, there's no real substitute for a father when boys are involved. That's not a politically correct statement," he added with a long glance. "But it's my opinion."
She smiled sadly. "I can't imagine life without my father."
"I'd like to meet him."
"Would you?" Her eyes brightened.
She was pretty when she was animated. He smiled down at her, and watched her cheeks color just slightly before she moved along in the line with her tray. When she lifted a glass to fill it with ice, there was the nicest little tremor in her long fingers. He felt pleasantly flattered.
Seated at their table, sharing a side order of vegetable chips, they talked about the mob case in Atlanta.
"If there really is a hit man camped out in our neighborhood," she said, "our fugitive must know it. So why is he there?"
"That's a question I wish I could answer. I didn't dare tell my boss what I suspected." He grimaced. "I got into some trouble in my last case. They've been giving me grief ever since I joined."
"From what they say at the courthouse, you had some help joining," she fished.
Books By Diana Palmer Page 328
