by Debra Webb
“I’m sure you’ve met with the AUSA in your case and done the necessary prepping.”
Assistant US Attorney Samuel Keller was the federal prosecutor in the case against the Armone family. Ali had met with him twice. An attorney had been assigned to represent her interests, and she’d met with him the same. The situation was fairly cut-and-dried. She had never been involved with the family business. She had only in the past two years started to learn and document information she intended to one day take to the FBI.
“Yes. His name is Keller. Samuel Keller.”
Jax nodded. “I’m familiar with Keller. He has a high conviction rate, and he’s ambitious. Two important assets for the case.”
Ali hadn’t liked him very much. He’d made her feel cheap during their first meeting. When they’d met the second time, he had been far kinder. Perhaps someone above him had warned that he shouldn’t frustrate or anger their star witness.
“I don’t think he’s a very nice man,” she admitted. Not that she could trust her instincts as well as she’d once believed. They had steered her wrong with Harrison. Dead wrong.
“Being nice isn’t necessarily a good thing when it comes to prosecutors. Ruthlessness and fearlessness are far more attractive in their line of work.”
The notion made some sort of sense, she supposed. “I guess so.”
Bob galloped ahead, spotting a bird or a squirrel. A gust of chilly wind whipped through the trees. She shivered, despite the sweatshirt she wore.
“When did you move to Atlanta?”
She studied his profile a moment, noting the little differences. A laugh line or two around the eyes. Slightly more angular jaw. He was leaner. “I finished my last semester of college, and I just couldn’t see going back home to that empty house. Mom and Dad were both gone. I needed a fresh start. Something new. A challenge.” She shrugged. “I was offered a position with an up-and-coming company. It felt right, so I threw caution to the wind.”
More so than she intended.
“Did you sell the farm?”
He had been to her parents’ farm once. It wasn’t anything to brag about. A rambling old house on a hundred acres. She had loved the barn and the big old oak trees best of all. She’d lived there her whole life except for when she was away at college and then had moved to Atlanta afterward.
“I did. It was a difficult decision, but I couldn’t stay. There were no career opportunities in the area, and I was reasonably certain that farming wasn’t my strong suit. I was pleased that a guy who attended high school with me had just gotten married and wanted to buy the place. He and his wife have two kids now. They’ve fixed up the house and are really making a go of the farming gig. My dad would be happy.”
Silence settled for a long while. The sun was dropping, leaving the sky streaked with faded grays and blues. The temperature was dropping, too. She should have grabbed her jacket. But she had been thinking of only one thing—getting out of that tiny cabin.
“Does your father still build boats?”
Ali had met his parents twice. Once when they came to Georgia to visit him and once for Thanksgiving when she and Jax flew out to visit them. They lived near the water, and boating was his father’s love—second only to his family. He was one of the few people who still built fishing boats by hand. The craftsmanship was utterly amazing. Despite the gray hair, it had been easy to see that Jax had inherited his good looks from his father. His mother was a schoolteacher and a very lovely woman. She and Ali had quickly connected. Ali’s mother had died the year before, and she had desperately needed that bond.
“He is. I can’t see him ever stopping. He loves it too much.”
Ali appreciated that level of passion. “What about your mother? Is she still teaching?”
“She is, but not in the classroom. She’s the middle school principal now.” He chuckled. “I’m just glad that didn’t happen when I was in school. It was bad enough knowing she was in the same wing teaching biology during eighth grade.”
Ali smiled. “She insisted you were a really good student.”
“She only told you that because she liked you and didn’t want to scare you off.” He glanced at her. “I was a bit of a class clown.”
Ali looked away. She watched as Bob sniffed at the undergrowth farther up the path. She wondered if she would be able to keep Bob when this was over. She couldn’t imagine life without him. They’d been together for six months. The same amount of time she and Jax had spent together a decade ago.
Ali picked up her pace. It was getting colder, and the sun would set soon. They should probably turn back at the top of the next rise. As they reached it, she called Bob to come and waited for him to reach her side. Then they started down together, Jax trailing after.
The idea that he would be sleeping on the sofa no more than thirty feet away needled at the back of her mind. She didn’t want to be that close to him in the darkness.
Too late to do anything about that now.
* * *
BY THE TIME the clearing came into view, it was dark and the occasional snowflake floated down in front of them.
Bob abruptly froze. A growl sounded low in his throat.
“What’s the matter, boy?” Ali surveyed the area as she spoke.
Jax suddenly pulled her into the tree line. “Someone’s at the house.”
The whispered words no sooner brushed against her ear than she spotted the man peering into the house via the back door. He looked for a moment and then moved to a window. He tried the sash to see if it would move. It didn’t. She kept the windows locked. Then he moved around the corner of the house.
“Take Bob and disappear deeper into these trees,” Jax whispered with a nod to his left.
She nodded and did as he’d told her, ushering Bob along when he wanted to stop and stare and growl. Thank God he didn’t bark. She crouched down between two trees and watched the clearing. Bob sat next to her, his warm body reassuring.
The quiet was deafening. She stretched her neck in an attempt to see Jax. It was too dark to see well. She could see the cabin because she’d left the lights on. The moonlight lit up the area around it the slightest little bit. She tried not to blink for fear she’d miss Jax or the other man.
Shouted voices echoed in the night. She strained to see.
Wherever they were, it wasn’t on the back side of the cabin.
More angry voices. Then only one.
Jax.
She pushed out of her crouch and started forward. Bob stayed right on her heels. She moved closer to the clearing, careful to stay in the tree line. Jax had the man pushed against the cabin, his weapon boring into his skull.
Was this someone Armone had sent?
She eased closer still.
Jax repeated his demand to know the man’s name. Finally he sputtered, “Teddy Scott. I work for the utility company. There was a call about the service out here. I came to check it out.”
“On Sunday?” Jax asked, his skepticism clear.
“Hey, man, I just do what I’m told. I work nights, days, weekends. Whenever the call comes.”
Except no one had called. Not from this address.
She dared to slip from the tree line. The guy’s gaze strayed to her. Jax jerked his errant attention back to him.
“Everything okay?” she called out to Jax.
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. Go out to my car and grab the handcuffs from the console, would you?”
Ali hurried around to the front of the cabin. She went to his SUV and opened the passenger side door. She leaned over the seat and opened the console. She reached in and grabbed the metal cuffs.
She rushed back to where he held the man and handed him the cuffs.
“Turn around,” he ordered the interloper.
The man turned around. “Seriously, if you’ll just call the utility c
ompany, you’ll learn I’m telling the truth. The call came in, and I came out.”
“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, Mr. Scott.” Jax snapped one cuff onto the man’s right wrist and one onto the metal pole attached to the cabin. “The problem is, I have to be sure.”
Needing someplace to look besides at the man who may have been sent to find her, Ali traced the path of the pole. It went up to the roof. Antennae. As many times as she’d walked that path beyond the cabin, she hadn’t paid the slightest attention to the antennae. It was just a part of the house.
And now it was the part that would keep Mr. Scott right here until Jax figured out exactly who he was or what to do about him. He withdrew the man’s wallet and checked his ID, she presumed. He carried no weapon, which seemed odd for one of Armone’s thugs.
Jax started toward her. She braced herself for his touch as he reached for her. His fingers wrapped around her upper arm. “Get your purse, if you carry one, and let’s go for a ride. I’ll call Sheriff Tanner and let him get to the bottom of this.”
Ali hurried inside and grabbed her cross-body bag. She tucked the emergency cell phone inside. “Come,” she said to Bob.
Her faithful friend followed her to the front, where Jax waited. He was on his cell phone, presumably with Tanner. He provided the man’s description and the name he listed on his ID, which was the same one he’d given. Jax listened for a bit and then ended the call.
“Is Tanner coming?” Her stomach churned with uncertainty. Six months and this was the first time another living soul besides Holloway and Tanner, then Jax had set foot up here.
Couldn’t be good.
“Tanner and one of his deputies are coming up to talk to the man. If he was sent by Armone, hopefully we’ll know soon.”
“Where are we going?” She told herself not to be nervous. If she had to move again, she would move again. Whatever she had to do to get through this.
Four more days.
“Away from here.” He ushered her and Bob toward his SUV. “We’re not waiting around to see how this turns out.”
Chapter Four
Jax drove faster than he should on the narrow dirt-and-gravel road that would lead to the main highway at the bottom of the mountain. This was not the place to run into trouble. The road was only wide enough for one vehicle. If someone else appeared on the road...
He wasn’t going there just yet.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Ali struggling with the panic no doubt clawing at her. She was worried. She had a right to be. He was damned worried.
He didn’t take a deep breath until they hit the Y in the road. Left went up another mountain road, while the right went to the highway. He gunned the accelerator and barreled to the right. Ali grasped the armrest on her door.
Car lights on the road ahead had him holding his breath again.
The vehicle passed. No brake lights lit up in the rearview mirror. Good. The driver kept going.
“What do we do now? Are we going someplace specific?”
He glanced in her direction. “I don’t know. I’m not familiar with this area. You?”
She shook her head. “No. I’ve been here six months, but I’ve only left that mountain a couple of times.”
They drove on through the darkness, the silence thickening.
Tanner would call and they would make a plan. Until then, Jax would drive.
“Could I go to the hospital and see Marshal Holloway?”
Her question gave him pause. Sometimes witnesses grew very attached to the people assigned with the responsibility of their protection. He’d heard stories of bizarre obsessions, but he didn’t believe this was one of those times. She’d asked about his condition after she learned of the accident, but she hadn’t appeared unduly concerned. Maybe a stop at the hospital would get her mind off whatever was going down back at the cabin.
“I don’t see why not.” He reached beyond the console into the back seat and grabbed the ball cap he’d tossed back there and passed it to her. “You might want to tuck your hair up.”
“Okay.”
As her fingers threaded into all that blond hair, a jolt of tension roared through him. His mind instantly conjured dozens of images of him running his fingers through the silky length. Feeling the whisper of it against his skin.
He blinked away the images and focused on regaining his bearings. He’d driven from the hospital to the sheriff’s office and then here. But that had been in the daytime. There weren’t that many identifying road signs.
A few more miles had him reasonably certain he was lost. Then he spotted the sign he needed. Left to Winchester. It wasn’t long after that left when he began to see familiar landmarks. The drive to the hospital only took a few more minutes from the city limits.
Jax decided to park at the ER entrance and go in from there. Ali gave Bob a rub behind the ears. “We’ll be back soon, boy.”
Jax’s thinking was that anyone watching for Ali would more likely be waiting in the main lobby. He wound through the corridors until he found a staff elevator. Ali glanced around nervously as they waited for the doors to open. Once they were inside and moving upward, she seemed to relax.
When the elevator stopped he said, “Almost there.”
He didn’t know why he felt compelled to make her feel more comfortable. He’d told himself he wouldn’t feel anything like that toward her, but he did all the same. The doors opened, and a scrub-clad woman stared at them as they exited. Jax gave her a nod and kept walking. Ali stayed close behind him.
At the room where he’d visited Holloway earlier that day, he hesitated and knocked.
The door opened, and a man Jax didn’t recognize looked directly at him and asked, “Can I help you?”
Jax glanced at the bed about the same time Holloway said, “It’s Stevens. Let him in.”
They walked into the room, and the stranger closed the door behind them. Holloway frowned. “What’s going on, Stevens?” He gave Ali a tip of his head. “Ma’am, you okay?”
She nodded. “I wanted to see if you were okay and to speak to you. Privately.”
“I should probably go,” the stranger said. He thrust his hand toward Jax. “I’m Chief of Police Billy Brannigan.”
Jax shook his hand. “Jaxson Stevens.”
“The marshal who’s filling in for me,” Holloway explained to the chief. “Keeping a low profile,” he added as he shifted his attention to Jax.
“We had a guy claiming to be from the utility company show up. Tanner is checking him out. I didn’t want to hang around in case more trouble was headed our way.”
“Maybe I ought to check with Colt and see if he needs any help,” Brannigan offered.
“Thanks, Brannigan. I would appreciate it.”
“In that case, I’m gone.”
When the door closed behind Brannigan, Holloway looked from Jax to Ali. “Is something wrong besides your unexpected visitor?”
“I’d like to speak to you privately,” she repeated.
Jax got it now. “I’ll be outside.”
If the woman didn’t want him on the case, he wasn’t going to argue with her. She could do as she pleased.
He left the room, pulling the door closed behind him. Rather than pace the corridor, which was his first thought, he leaned against the wall and waited.
Frustration twisted inside him. He supposed he should have handled the situation better. He’d thought they had reached an agreement of sorts. He would do his job and stay out of her personal space. Four days. It was barely more than half a week. He could get through four days. Why couldn’t she?
Damn it all to hell. He shouldn’t have allowed the past to color his attitude. This was an important case. She needed the best protecting her.
Maybe she didn’t think he was up to the job.
He resisted the impul
se to storm into the room and tell her she was wrong. There wasn’t anyone better.
Damn it.
* * *
“HAVE A SEAT, ALI,” Marshal Holloway said, worry lining his bruised face.
Ali suddenly regretted having come here this way. It was selfish of her to impose upon this injured man. She sighed. Closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry.”
“First off, you don’t need to be sorry.”
She opened her eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay? I really should have thought this through better. This is not a good time for you and—”
“Second,” he interrupted, “every single thing related to this case is about you. Whatever you need, all you have to do is tell me. Marshal Stevens or I will make it happen. You can count on that.”
“Marshal Stevens is the problem.” Her throat ached from having held the words back so long. But they were out there now. Marshal Holloway looked even more puzzled now.
“Is there a problem with Stevens? He mentioned that the two of you knew each other, but he assured me there wouldn’t be a problem.”
Now she was the one confused. “He knew I was the witness in this case before he came to Winchester?”
“No, ma’am, we’ve kept your identity and location as deeply covered as possible. He learned who you are when he arrived and I showed him your file.”
So he’d seen her file. A cold hard knot formed in her chest. “Everything?” She moistened her lips and tried to swallow to do the same to her suddenly dry throat. “He knows everything?”
His blue eyes lit with understanding. “No. No. None of that is in the file I showed him. Ali, those parts of what happened aren’t necessary for Marshal Stevens to carry out his duty. Information about you and this case is on a need-to-know basis.”
Thank God.
She nodded. Grateful for that small measure of relief. “Still, I would prefer someone else. I don’t want to cause any trouble for Marshal Stevens, but I’m not comfortable with him.”
Holloway released a big breath. “I can make the call and try to get someone here, but be aware that every exchange of information creates a possible opportunity for that information to end up in the wrong hands. It’s a shame that we can’t fully trust all the players in a case, but they’re only human. Every human has his or her breaking point. Some have a price. It doesn’t usually start out that way, but life happens. People change.”
