His Witness, Her Child

by Ann Voss Peterson

  “And you think one of these assistants may be telling Swain everything the group is doing?”

  He grimaced as if in pain. “That’s what I think.” Obviously the idea was a tough one for him to accept.

  “What would an assistant D.A. have to gain by doing something like that?”

  “Political position, bribe money—it could be any number of things.”

  “Who is on the task force?”

  “Myself, Britt Alcott, Dex Harrington and Kit Ashner.”

  Alarm seized her chest, making it hard to breathe. “Britt? The blonde? Wasn’t she the woman who took Amanda to her office?” Horrible images of Amanda in the clutches of the woman responsible for Mark’s and Val’s deaths invaded Jacqueline’s mind. She forced herself to remain seated on the couch.

  Dillon shook his head. “Britt wouldn’t have anything to do with Swain,” he said, his drawl calm, confident, soothing. “I wouldn’t have involved her if I suspected her.”

  She tried to believe his assurances, but her heart still thumped in her ears. “If not Britt Alcott, who do you suspect?”

  “It could be anyone else on the task force or the detectives on the case. But I’m betting my money on Dex Harrington or Kit Ashner.”

  Harrington. The man they’d run into while they were trying to sneak out of Dillon’s office. The man who’d insisted on questioning Amanda. “Let’s start with Dex Harrington.”

  Dillon nodded, a look of dislike stealing over his taut features. “Rumor has it that Harrington fancies himself Neil Fitzroy’s chief opposition in the coming election for D.A. He would love to discredit Neil and myself in a big case like this.”

  Jacqueline could barely believe her ears. “Enough to cause two people to be murdered?”

  He shot her a you-wanted-to-know look. “Not very pretty, is it? About a year ago I had a case against an armed robber. A prominent citizen had been robbed, so Fitz was under a lot of pressure from the press and the powers that be. My case was weaker than a newborn calf, but I had the defendant believing I could put him away. He was about to deal. That was before he learned just how flimsy our case was. Needless to say, we lost. Last month the snake was arrested for armed robbery and murder in Chicago.”

  “And Dex Harrington was the person who told him your case was weak?”

  “Dex isn’t stupid. He covers his tracks well. I can’t prove it, but it had to be him. He’s the only one besides Fitz and me who knew enough about the case.” Dillon’s eyes hardened, his voice sharpened with contempt.

  She had no doubt that if this were the Old West, Dillon wouldn’t wait for a noose to be lowered around a criminal’s neck. He’d dispense six-gun justice the moment the guilty verdict was read. “Can’t Fitzroy fire Harrington?”

  “Not without justification. Besides, Fitz doesn’t want to deal with the kind of political fallout Harrington could cause.”

  “Can’t you just avoid telling him anything important?”

  “I could if he was the only possible leak. But there’s Kit.”

  Jacqueline made a mental note. “Another assistant district attorney?”

  “Right. She’s a damn good lawyer, but her public relations skills leave a lot to be desired.”

  Jacqueline definitely wasn’t following him. “Why does that make you suspect her?”

  “Fitz doesn’t like her to grant interviews with the press. He’s afraid she’ll make him look bad, so he keeps her away from the high-profile cases. The cases that lead to career growth. And as an ambitious lawyer, Kit is a little bitter.”

  “So you think she might be trying to get back at Fitzroy?”

  He shrugged, his shoulders rigid. “She can be pretty ruthless when she wants to be. I don’t know if she would go so far as to cause someone’s death, but I certainly can’t rule it out.”

  Jacqueline shook her head. Is that what justice was all about? Political ambition? Had two people been murdered because of one of these lawyers’ ambitions? Did her child’s life depend on someone’s hunger for power? The idea made her sick.

  An uncomfortable thought niggled at the back of her mind. All the players in this sick game seemed to have their own agenda. She knew Dillon did. There was no doubt in her mind he felt guilty about his failure to protect Mark. And well he should. But that wasn’t reason enough to bring them to his home, to vow to lay down his life to keep them safe. And it wasn’t reason to explain why he’d turned his house into an anticrime war room nor his life into a crusade. There was something else going on here. And she needed to find out what. She narrowed her eyes on Dillon. “How about you? Do you have political ambitions?”

  His dark brows arched with surprise. “Me? I’m about as political as a peeled rattler.”

  “Then why are you doing this?”

  “This?”

  “Bringing us to your home. Vowing to protect Amanda with your life. It seems everyone in your office is motivated by the prospect of political power. What motivates you?”

  His eyes darkened. His brows pulled together. “I want to get murderers off the streets.”

  A tiny chill worked its way along her nerves. “That sounds like a political spiel if I ever heard one.”

  He leaned toward her, gripping the arms of his chair. “I’ll get Swain. He won’t hurt your little girl. He won’t hurt anyone ever again.” His voice dropped an octave, vengeance echoing in his words.

  The chill grew. Uneasiness tightened in the pit of her stomach. Vengeance? Was that what Dillon was after? “Did Swain do something to you? To someone you loved? If you’re using Amanda for some kind of personal crusade, I want to know.”

  “No. Swain has never done anything to me personally.”

  “But you’ve turned your home into an office, and you’ll risk your life to protect a witness? That’s what you promised me. You said you’d protect Amanda with your life.”

  He nodded, resolute, the muscles in his jaw tight as piano wire. “And I aim to keep that promise.”

  “Why? Why is this crusade you’re on so important?”

  He gritted his teeth. The lines of tension around his eyes and mouth deepened. “A crusade. I guess that’s what it is, isn’t it?”

  “Why is it so important?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Opening it, he plucked out a small photo and handed it to Jacqueline.

  She took the photograph from his hand and turned it to the light.

  A girl grinned from the picture. Wavy dark hair wisped around her oval face, framing her delicate features like smoke on a windless day. Her skin was smooth as ivory with the unmistakable bloom of youth.

  But the thing most noteworthy about her was her smile. Sparkling. Full of life, joy and unquenchable curiosity.

  “Who is she?”

  His lips hardened. “My little sister. Janey.”

  Yes, she could see the resemblance. The chiseled cheekbones. The wavy hair. But most of all the eyes. Their eyes had a penetrating quality, as if they could see right through a person’s defenses and into her soul. “You look a lot alike.”

  Dillon nodded.

  A niggle of trepidation shimmied up her spine. “You’re from Texas, right? Does she live in Texas? Do you see her often?”

  He said nothing, his features hard, unreadable.

  Foreboding tightened her throat. She forced the question from her lips. “Something happened to her, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Ten years ago.”

  “What happened?”

  He was silent for a long time. Nothing broke the stillness of the room except the quiet ticking of a clock on the wall. Not a word from his lips. Not a movement. Just when she thought he wasn’t going to answer, he drew in a deep breath.

  “I was just out of law school when Janey decided she wanted to go away to college.” His voice rumbled in the still room like approaching thunder. “My daddy was dead by then, and Mama was set agains
t Janey leaving home so young. Hated the idea of her being so far away in a strange city.”

  Jacqueline leaned back on the couch, bracing herself against the soft cushions. She could easily imagine how his mother had felt, how she herself would feel faced with the prospect of Amanda moving hundreds of miles away.

  “She wanted to come here, to the University of Wisconsin. I visited the campus with her once. Good school. Nice town. Low crime rate. So I encouraged her to go, despite Mama’s objections. I paid for her tuition, her dorm and her bus ticket.”

  The rumble of his voice stopped, leaving nothing but the labored sound of his breathing. His eyes seemed to grow blacker, void of light.

  The clock ticked out the seconds from the corner of the room. A minute passed. He drew in a deep breath. “A month later, Janey’s body was found naked in a muddy ditch.”

  Against her will, Jacqueline gasped out loud. She shook her head, trying to banish the horrible picture from her mind, his aching grief echoing in her ears.

  He shook his head slowly. “I quit my job and took a job with the district attorney’s office up here. I wanted to be near the investigation, to keep an eye on things, I guess. But it didn’t do any good. We never found the snake who killed Janey. She can never have justice. But Mark can. And Val can.”

  She looked down at the picture in her trembling hand. It was so clear to her now. His obsession. His drive. His commitment to winning justice for murder victims. “This is all for your sister. Your crusade. Your obsession with justice. All to make up for the justice that she’ll never have.”

  “And it will never be enough.” He lifted his eyes and he looked down at her, those sharp black eyes boring past her defenses. “No matter what I do, it will never be enough.”

  She closed her eyes, shutting out his pain, his crippling guilt. She didn’t want to know this much about Dillon Reese. She wanted to hold on to her anger toward him, to wrap it around her like a protective cloak. She wanted to blame him for Mark’s death, for the danger Amanda faced. She didn’t want to feel for him, ache for him, understand his drive more clearly than she understood her own heart.

  She leaned forward, elbows on knees, and cradled her head in her hands. When she’d first met Dillon she’d believed there could be something between them, something special. God knew there was plenty of sexual attraction sizzling in the air when they were together. She had only to remember the night she’d received the first threatening phone call from Swain, the night Dillon had held her in his arms. The warmth of his body wrapping around her, the hard strength of his chest as she’d laid her cheek against him, the electric charge that had raced along her nerves, making her feel more alive than ever before.

  But it was more than that, more than just sexual. They seemed to share an understanding, a bond. She’d even entertained fantasies of asking him to dinner some evening after her impending divorce from Mark was finalized and after she had gotten back on her feet.

  But that had all changed when the threats started. She’d seen then how vulnerable Amanda and she were. She’d seen then that Mark cared more about being a celebrity than about his daughter. She’d seen then that Dillon was more driven by his need for justice than by a desire to do what was right for Amanda or for her. The fantasy had crumbled.

  After that, she’d built walls, brick by brick, to protect Amanda and herself from the mess Mark had made of their old life. And she’d built walls around her heart to protect herself from trusting a man again—especially Dillon Reese.

  And now Dillon’s pain had scaled those walls. But she couldn’t let him swing a leg over the top. Dillon was about justice, pure and simple. And now that she understood the reason behind his crusade, she could see how misguided her long-ago fantasies of him were. Because Dillon had no room in his heart for anything but justice. And she’d suffered too much heartbreak to take a chance on something that could never be.

  He leaned toward her. “Are you all right?”

  Jacqueline nodded but didn’t look up at him.

  “Now you understand why I will go to any lengths to keep your daughter safe.”

  Yes, she did understand. Amanda was the key to locking Swain away, to winning justice for Mark and Val, to helping Dillon pay his debt to his sister. He’d sacrifice everything to protect her little girl, of this she now had no doubt. She only prayed it would be enough.

  “I DON’T KILL CHILDREN.” Buck Swain ground out the stub of his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray and scowled into the telephone. How in hell was he supposed to explain a thing like honor to someone who had none?

  “Unless you want to add to Reese’s conviction record, you’d damn well better start.”

  “If you want the girl dead so bad, kill her yourself.”

  “She didn’t see me.”

  “But if I go down, you go down. Remember that.”

  “I’ve had it with your blackmail, Swain. If it wasn’t for your incompetence, this whole mess would be behind us.”

  The familiar pressure started to build in Swain’s head, rattling in his ears like the discharge of an M-16. He gripped the phone tight in his bad hand until it creaked with the pressure. Despite the missing fingers, despite the scorched skin and damaged nerves, he still had enough strength in the hand to break the cheap plastic. Or crush a human trachea. The person on the other end of the line would be wise to take that into account. “Go to hell.”

  “I should just let Reese have at you.”

  Contempt twisted Swain’s gut. Dillon Reese. The lying SOB. Even the name made his blood heat, his trigger finger ache. He’d had to sit in that damned courtroom day after day and listen to Reese’s lies. Lies maligning Swain’s honor, his dignity. As if Reese had any idea what true honor was. He hadn’t served his country. He hadn’t laid his life on the line as Swain had. How dare Reese or any of them judge what they didn’t understand? “How am I supposed to off the girl if I don’t know where she is? You said Reese didn’t tell anyone in the task force where he was taking the girl and her mother.”

  “I’ll find out where he’s hiding them. Leave that part to me. You be ready to take care of the girl. And her mother, just to be safe.”

  The mother. It didn’t take much effort to remember the mother. Jacqueline Schettler had the kind of body a man didn’t forget easily. But good-looking or not, Swain wouldn’t have any trouble taking her out. Without a second thought he’d squeezed off the round that had killed the blond bartender. He had slit Liz’s throat as easily as gutting a deer. Killing adult women didn’t bother him. As long as he had a reason.

  But killing a child…

  Damn the people who’d forced him into this mess. Liz with her open thighs and loose lips. Mark Schettler, the nosy, fame-seeking bastard who’d witnessed him disposing of his bloody clothes after Liz’s murder. Jacqueline Schettler for going to the cops after he’d warned her to get out of state. Dillon Reese, the self-righteous attack dog, for standing up in a packed courtroom and spouting lie after lie. Damn them all. He pulled a battered pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shook one free. God, he needed a smoke.

  “Well, Swain?”

  Tapping the cigarette’s filter on the scarred table in front of him, Swain scowled into the phone once again. Good thing he wasn’t meeting this two-faced fraud in person. The hypocrite would probably want to shake hands on the deal. Maybe Swain would offer his bad hand with the slick, burned skin and the missing fingers, just to watch the disgust creep over that pious, holier-than-thou face. “Fine. I’ll take out the girl. It’s a deal, partner.”

  Swain could almost feel the revulsion reaching out over the phone line. Smiling, he slipped the cigarette between his lips.

  Chapter Six

  Dillon leaned his elbows on the desktop and stared into the darkened hall leading to the bedroom. Jacqueline had gone to bed over an hour ago, and he’d been staring ever since. Staring and thinking.

  Jacqueline’s questions echoed in his mind. She’d picked up on his desperation, his
driving need for justice, and now she knew how deep his need ran.

  Automatically his fingers pulled his wallet from his pocket and flipped open the leather flap. Slipping out the battered picture, he cradled it gently in his hands.

  Janey. His little sister Janey. So young and fresh. So eager to take on the world. So full of the joy of life. Pain twisted in his chest like the thrust of a dull and rusty blade.

  He’d never told anyone about Janey, about his need to avenge her death, about his need to absolve his own guilt. It was too raw, too personal to explain. But he’d told the story to Jacqueline. He’d torn open his private hell and laid it at her feet.

  And she’d listened. She’d looked into the emptiness yawning inside him like a gully long since dry, and she’d understood. He’d seen it in her eyes.

  A longing assaulted him. Longing so open and raw it took his breath away. How he yearned to know Jacqueline better. How he yearned to do normal things like take her to dinner and hold her in his arms and talk to her about the future. How he yearned to be more to her than a bodyguard and she more to him than a witness.

  But all the yearning in the world couldn’t change anything.

  Tucking the photo back in its place, he reached for the key stashed under the top of his desk, unlocked the top drawer and slid it open. Cloaked in shadow, his .357 Colt Defender lay in the bottom of the drawer. Cleaned, loaded and ready. He lifted the revolver, its weight reassuring in his hand, the dim glow of the nearly full moon reflecting off its nickel-plated finish.

  He might not be able to be everything he wanted to Jacqueline, but he could keep her and her daughter safe until he was able to put Swain away.

  And once that happened, they could go back to their lives. And he would go on to the next case. And the next. Until he finally joined his family in that little burial plot outside Amarillo. Only then would it be over. Only then could he rest.

  A SCREAM SHREDDED the night. Dillon jolted awake. The bedroom. Jacqueline. Heart hammering, he reached under the couch. His fingers brushed cold, hard metal.