Hideout at Whiskey Gulch

by Elle James

  The exact MO of the Carver.

  How was that possible? The details of the FBI’s ongoing serial case in Chicago hadn’t been released, to prevent copycats from falsely taking up the killer’s moniker. And Jeff Burnes’s communications and visitor logs were monitored 24/7. There was no way he could’ve contacted anyone to get to Camille. The date, the victim—it was all too much of a coincidence. How the hell had the bastard gotten an accomplice to finish what he’d started all those months ago? The USMS had the most secure database in the country, not to mention that all records of her previous identity had been wiped completely. How had her attacker located Camille at all? “Take it easy. I’ve got you.”

  “Finn.” Not “Marshal Reed.” His name barely made it past her lips with the amount of damage beneath the thin skin of her throat, and rage coiled tight in his gut. She’d already been through so much since the attack in Chicago, already given up an entire life in order to stay off the Carver’s radar. How much more was she expected to survive before she broke completely? Images of her leaving the hospital after the attack, of being forced to face the media as she recounted every painful and panicked moment of the attack, flooded to the front of his mind. She hadn’t been handed off to the US Marshals Service at that point, but even then his protective instincts had pushed him to put himself between her and her would-be killer.

  “Try not to talk until someone can look at your throat. I’m going to get you out of here.” Finn forced the pain in his midsection to the back of his mind as he swept Camille into his arms. He needed to get her to safety. Then deal with the masked intruder who’d attacked her.

  But when he rounded back into the hallway with Camille in his arms, it was empty.

  No sign of the man who’d attacked her. No movement from the shadows.

  The suspect couldn’t have gotten far with his hands cuffed behind his back. Shock tightened the tendons between Finn’s neck and shoulders as battle-ready tension took hold, but he couldn’t stop. Not until he got Camille out of the house and called in backup. Someone had targeted her, tried to finish the job the Carver had started. He’d been assigned to protect her. She was the only one that mattered. His boots echoed off the hardwood as he carried her down the hall, and he slowed. Hell, the bastard had taken his gun. Calling that into the chief deputy would be fun in and of itself. “I don’t know about you, but I think I’m killing it with this witness-protection gig. Lost my gun and the bad guy all in one night.”

  “My hero.” Those mesmerizing blue-green eyes locked on him, and every cell in his body spiked with awareness. Thick eyebrows that matched the color of her hair stood out from creamy pale skin, and there was a hint of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Long lashes dusted the tops of her cheeks and left behind dark streaks under her eyes. From the large red markings around her neck to the color of her darkly painted toenails, he cataloged every aspect of her appearance in order to keep the details straight for the report.

  Strained coughing brushed all that long red hair against his arm. The patterns of blood beneath her T-shirt had spread, and Finn picked up the pace. He’d had enough training as a combat medic in the army to know her wounds weren’t severe, but the thought of her in pain pushed him to the edge of reason. He retraced his steps back through the house until cool air cleared her lavender scent from his system. Although, given how close he’d come to losing his witness tonight, he wasn’t sure that was possible.

  Movement registered from the tree line thirty yards across the property, hiking his pulse into overdrive. The shadows somehow seemed thicker than they had before he’d gone inside, as though there was something beyond the trees his eyes couldn’t lock onto. Or someone. Finn rounded to the passenger side of the SUV, settled Camille in her seat and pulled his loaded backup weapon from the center console.

  “It’s him, Finn.” Strain was evident in her words. She closed her eyes, tilting her head back against the seat as though intending to fall asleep. “He wants to finish what he started.”

  Turning away from the invisible threat, he strapped the seat belt across her midsection. Her T-shirt peeled from her bloodied skin at the collar and revealed deep, straight gouges carved into the puckered scarring from that first attack a year ago. Hell. “Then he’ll have to come through me.”

  * * *

  VALENTINE’S DAY.

  She could still feel the tip of the blade cutting into her from a year ago, taste the betrayal on her tongue. One minute they’d been having dinner together, and the next she’d fallen back in her chair as he’d lunged at her from across the table, his hands around her throat.

  Just as—she’d come to learn—he’d done to so many other women.

  Camille Jensen didn’t exist anymore. She was Camille Goodman now. She’d worked so hard, left behind everything she’d ever cared about after Jeff Burnes’s arrest, cut herself off from everyone she’d loved. He wasn’t supposed to be able to find her.

  The edge of the office chair bit into the backs of her thighs as she clutched the ice pack to her throat. The swelling had gone down some, but experience said it’d be a few more days of rawness and at least two weeks of dark bruising before the muscles stopped hurting. Ringing phones, low conversations and whirling printers cut through the walls of glass as she waited in the conference room. The Oregon district office of the United States Marshals Service had gone on full alert, and in the center of it all was the deputy who’d been assigned as her point of contact while she’d been in witness protection.

  Finnick Reed.

  If it hadn’t been for the marshal responding to her rushed text message before she’d secured herself inside her bedroom, she wouldn’t be here.

  She watched him through the glass as he spoke with another deputy on his team. Bulky veins threatened to break free from beneath the thin skin of his forearms, while those mountainous shoulders and that chest stretched his T-shirt almost to a tearing point. She hadn’t been able to focus on the design across his chest when he’d whisked her out of the house, but now the white star surrounded by red, white and blue circles made sense. It was the shield of one of his favorite superheroes. Fitting, considering he’d become somewhat of a hero for saving her life tonight. Styled dark brown hair matched the thick growth along his jawline, but it was those piercing blue eyes—the ones she’d locked on the moment she’d gained consciousness after the attack—she couldn’t seem to detach herself from.

  His attention shifted over his teammate’s shoulder. To her. Her heart rate hiked into dangerous territory. Wedging her bare feet into the industrial carpet, Camille forced herself to focus on her name written on the tab of a file folder on the shiny surface of the table in front of her. But it was in vain. The single glass door leading into the conference room opened, and her internal body temperature spiked. She didn’t have to look up to know who’d come through the door. She’d become finely tuned to him over the past twelve months.

  “Thought you could use a glass of water.” Finn placed a small plastic-dipped cup, the kind that came stocked with office water dispensers, in front of her and took a seat at the head of the large conference-room table.

  “Thank you.” Two words at a time. That was all she’d been able to manage since he’d brought her here to his office in Portland before the pain flared. She wrapped shaking, blood-crusted fingers around the cup, the edges nearly folding in on themselves when she raised the brim to her mouth. Cool water soothed the stinging along the sides of her throat, but it’d take a lot more than a cup of water to help her recover from tonight. “For this. And earlier.”

  “I’m just glad I didn’t misinterpret your SOS message for a grocery list.” His lips curled up, and warmth flooded through her. She couldn’t help but lock onto his face with everything she had left before the smile drained from his expression. She just needed a glimpse of something outside of the nightmare closing in. He dropped his gaze to the file in front of her, the on
e she was sure documented every moment of her life, starting with the attack she’d survived in Chicago and ending right here, and something in her chest tightened. Marshal Reed—Finn—interlocked his fingers on the reflective surface of the table and slid his elbows forward. He pointed to the folder with her name clearly labeled with both index fingers. “Earlier you told me ‘it’s him.’ That he’d come back to finish what he’d started. Tell me what you meant by that.”

  “I...” She hadn’t realized she’d said those words aloud. Dread skittered up her spine as she realized the light conversation between them had run its course, and suddenly she was back in that interrogation room in Chicago. Answering questions as to how she hadn’t noticed the man she’d been sleeping with—been engaged to marry—had spent his nights killing women rather than working, as he’d claimed. Camille had known this part was coming. The marshals needed a full account of what had happened tonight. Otherwise, Finn wouldn’t have brought her here after the emergency-room staff had dressed the new gouges on her chest. They’d had to leave the blood on her hands for the forensic tech to collect. Evidence.

  She couldn’t deny there were similarities between what’d happened a year ago and tonight. Though the haze of nearly dying in a house that didn’t belong to her hadn’t completely lifted yet. This didn’t make sense. Jeff Burnes couldn’t have been the one in her house tonight. The only reason she’d escaped to Florence, changed her name, resigned from the job she’d worked her entire life for and left her friends and family was because he was still awaiting trial. Shivers snaked down her arms, and she swallowed to lubricate her throat before answering.

  “I can’t explain it. Other than it felt like him. I know that doesn’t count as evidence, but when he...” Her lungs threatened to spasm at the memory of those large hands around her neck. She closed her eyes, shaking her head as if that was all she had to do to forget someone had tried to kill her a second time. She’d barely survived the first attack, and it’d cost her everything. How was she supposed to do it all over again? “When I looked into his eyes beneath the mask, it felt like him.”

  “You mean the Carver,” he said.

  Every muscle across her shoulders bunched when he said the moniker the media had given the man she’d intended on spending the rest of her life with. The fresh cuts on the left side of her chest constricted, and Camille battled the urge to wrap her arms around herself. “I didn’t know what he was doing.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean... I can’t imagine how difficult this must be for you after everything you’ve already been through, but the more you can tell me about this attack, the faster we can catch the guy who tried to kill you tonight,” he said. “I can protect you from it happening again, but I need all the facts. Even the smallest detail can make a difference in us finding the man who broke into your house.”

  But it wasn’t her house. This wasn’t her life.

  Finn ran a hand through his hair, then leaned back in the chair, taking the remnants of heat she’d been holding on to since she’d realized he’d been the one who’d brought her back to life. “Camille, I need to know if you broke protocol, if you reached out to someone. Anyone from your old life, any acquaintances from work. Did you log on to an old social-media account or your email?”

  “The marshals monitor those accounts. You know I didn’t.” Her stomach soured at the idea that she’d made a mistake, that she’d brought this on herself, but it wasn’t possible. She’d followed every rule, every guideline he’d handed down to her the day she’d been transferred into his protection. She’d given up a piece of herself for the sake of survival, and it’d all been for nothing. The Carver had still found her. He’d sent someone to finish what he’d started, sent them to carve the rest of his claiming mark into her chest and complete his sick ritual. Who else would’ve known exactly how he’d killed his victims? That information wasn’t available to the public. Bile clawed up her esophagus as she picked at one corner of fresh gauze, and her eyes burned with tears. Anger mixed with fear in a nauseating combination, which only made the pain in her throat worse. “I don’t know why this is happening again. I don’t know who my attacker was or how he found me, and I don’t know how he got inside my house—the safe house. So if you don’t have any other questions, I’d like to go now.”

  But the thought of walking back into that big empty house, alone, only made the knot in her chest larger. She was scared. Didn’t he understand that?

  “Camille.” Her name, said so deliberately reverent, kept her anchored in the moment. “I have every officer, including the chief of police, combing through the scene for evidence. Sooner or later, we’re going to catch this guy and find out what connection he has to the Car—to your ex... But until we do, you can’t go home. It’s not safe there.”

  Safe. She studied the patches of dried blood—her blood—on her hands and slipped them beneath the table. Out of sight. It’d been a long time since she’d felt anything close to safe. The FBI’s case in Chicago was stronger with the help of her testimony, but as long as there was a chance Jeff Burnes could be released, she wasn’t entirely sure she understood the meaning of the word. “Where am I supposed to go?”

  Blue eyes quieted the hard pounding of blood behind her ears the longer he leveled his attention on her. “We’re working on that—”

  Three taps on the glass ripped her back into reality, and she looked up to see the deputy Finn had been talking to earlier at the door. Behind him, chaos had overtaken the main office space as other marshals and law-enforcement officers loaded fresh magazines into their weapons and fit themselves with Kevlar. The deputy waved Finn out of the conference room, and the marshal sitting across from her stood to leave. The second deputy spoke once Finn was on the other side of the glass, but Camille couldn’t hear the conversation over the soft ringing in her ears. Had the officers at her home already found evidence? Had they made an ID on the intruder? Finn snapped his gaze to the deputy before drawing his replacement weapon from the shoulder holster.

  Warning pressurized behind her sternum, and she stood.

  Something had happened.

  He barged back into the conference room, threading his free hand between her ribs and elbow in order to wrap his arm around her. The scents of clean laundry and citrus dove deep into her lungs as he dragged her to his side. “We’re leaving. Now.”

  “What’s going on?” Ice-cold fear worked through her as he walked her back through the Oregon district office in a rush.

  “We reached out to the federal team assigned to the Carver’s investigation to update them on your attack tonight. In return, they told us your ex-fiancé escaped federal custody three days ago.” Swinging her around to face him at the elevators, Finn released his hold on her to check the ammunition in his weapon. He pulled back on the slide and loaded a round into the chamber. He hit the button beside the elevator before turning that piercing gaze on her. “The only thing the Carver left behind in his cell was a photo of you.”

  Copyright © 2021 by Natascha Jaffa

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  ISBN-13: 9781488072598

  Hideout at Whiskey Gulch

  Copyright © 2021 by Mary Jernigan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or r
eproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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