by Cassie Miles
“Not that I’m volunteering my SUV for your getaway, but what changed your mind?”
“If I have your car, it connects you to me. I don’t want anybody coming after you.”
She agreed. Being targeted by the Santoro family wasn’t her idea of a good time. “We should call the police. I have a friend, Danny Laurence, who’s a deputy sheriff. He’s somebody you can trust.”
“I’m better off on my own.”
He rose from the table, and she knew he was ready to depart. She hated the thought of him being out there, on his own, against powerful enemies. She bounced to her feet. “Let me call Danny. Please.”
“You’re a good person, Caitlyn.” He reached toward her. When his large hand rested on her shoulder, a magnetic pull urged her closer to him. Her weight shifted forward, narrowing the space between them. He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “It’s best if you forget you ever saw me.”
As if that would happen. There weren’t a whole lot of handsome mystery men who appeared on her doorstep. For the past month, she’d been a hermit who barely talked to anyone. “You won’t be easy to forget.”
“Nor will you.”
“For the record, I still think you need to go to the hospital.”
“Duly noted.”
From outside, she heard the grating of tires on gravel.
Jack had heard it, too. In a few strides, he was at the front window, peering around the edge of the curtain.
A 1957 vintage Ford Fairlane—two-toned in turquoise and cream—was headed down her driveway. She knew the car, and the driver was someone she trusted implicitly. His vehicle was followed by a black SUV with tinted windows. “Do you see the SUV? Are these the people who are after you?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “They’ve seen your car so you can’t pretend you’re not here. Go ahead and talk to them. Don’t tell them you’ve seen me.”
“Understood.” She gave him a nod. “You stay in the house. I’ll get rid of them.”
Smoothing her hair back into her ponytail, she went to the front door, aware that she might be coming face-to-face with the enforcers for a powerful crime family. Panic fluttered behind her eyelids, and she blinked it away. This wasn’t her first ride on the roller coaster. She’d gotten through war zones, faced terrorists and bloody death. A couple of thugs from Chicago shouldn’t be a problem.
From the porch, she watched as the Ford Fairlane parked near her back door. The black SUV pulled up to the rear bumper of her car before it stopped.
She waved to Bob Woodley—a tall, rangy, white-haired man who had been a longtime friend of her family. He was one of the few people she’d seen since moving back to the cabin. A retired English teacher, he had been a mentor to her when she was in her teens. “Hi, Mr. Woodley.”
He motioned her toward him. “Get over here, Caitlyn. Give an old man a proper hello.”
When she hugged him, he must have sensed her apprehension. He studied her expression. His bushy eyebrows pulled into a scowl. “Something wrong?”
“I’m fine.” She forced a smile. “What brings you here?”
“I was visiting Heather at the Circle L when these two gentlemen showed up. Since I’m a state congressman, I figured it was my duty to extend a helping hand to these strangers by showing them how to find your cabin.”
She looked past him toward the SUV. The two men walking toward her were a sinister contrast to Mr. Woodley’s open honesty. Both wore jeans and sports jackets that didn’t quite hide the bulge of shoulder holsters. Dark glasses shaded their eyes.
Woodley performed the introductions. “Caitlyn, I want you to meet Drew Kelso and Greg Reynolds.”
When she shook their hands, their flesh was cold—either from the air-conditioning in their car or because they were reptiles. “What can I do for you?”
Woodley said, “We understand that you had a visitor this morning.”
How did they know about Jack? Had her cabin been under surveillance? “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“The dappled gray mare,” Woodley said. “You had Heather come over and pick it up.”
“Oh, the horse.” She rolled her eyes in an attempt to look like a ditzy blonde. She didn’t want these men to take her seriously, wanted them to dismiss her as harmless. “Silly me, I’d already forgotten about the horse.”
The one named Reynolds said, “It belongs to someone we know.”
“Your friend needs to be more careful,” she said. “The horse showed up on my property without a saddle or a bridle or anything.”
The friendly smiles she offered to the two thugs went unanswered. They meant business.
The taller, Drew, had sandy hair and heavy shoulders. His mouth barely moved when he spoke. “We’re looking for the guy who was riding that horse.”
“I didn’t see anybody.” She widened her eyes, even fluttered her lashes. “Like I said, no bridle or saddle.”
Drew said, “If you saw him, it’d be smart to tell us.”
His comment sounded a bit like a threat. “Who is this person? What’s his name?”
“Tony Perez.”
With complete honesty, she shook her head. “Never heard of him. But I’ll be on the lookout. Is there a number I should call if I see him?”
Drew handed her a business card that contained only his name and a cell phone number.
“I guess that wraps up our business.” Woodley checked his wristwatch. “I’d better shove off.”
She wanted to cling to him and plead for him to stay until these two men were gone. “Can’t you stay for coffee?”
“Sorry, kiddo. I’m running late for an appointment in Pinedale.” He strolled toward his vintage Ford Fairlane. “I hope you gents can find your missing friend.”
They gave him a nod and headed toward their SUV. Caitlyn breathed a little sigh of relief. They were leaving. The crisis was averted.
Before Woodley climbed behind the steering wheel, he said, “Don’t be a stranger, Caitlyn.”
He drove down her driveway and turned onto the road. The two men stood beside their SUV talking. With every fiber of her being, she wanted them gone. These were two scary guys. Why hadn’t Mr. Woodley been able to see it?
They came back toward her. Drew said, “We want to take a look around. To make sure he’s not hiding around here.”
“That’s not necessary.” She positioned herself between him and her front porch. “There’s nobody here but me.”
Drew glanced over his shoulder at the other man, Greg Reynolds. He was neat and crisp. His boots were polished. His charcoal sports jacket showed expensive tailoring, and his thick black hair glistened in the sunlight. She guessed that he was a man of expensive tastes, definitely the boss.
Greg gave a slight nod, and Drew walked toward her cabin. Short of tackling him, there was no way Caitlyn could stop him. Still, she had to try.
“Hey.” She grasped his arm. “I told you. There’s nobody here.”
Slowly, he turned toward her and removed his sunglasses. He didn’t need to speak; the curl of his upper lip and the flat, angry glare from his eyes told her that he wouldn’t hesitate to use violence. And he would most likely enjoy hurting her.
She stepped back. Silently, she prayed that Jack had hidden himself well or had managed to slip out the back door.
“This is for your own safety,” Drew said. “Tony Perez is dangerous.”
As she entered her cabin, her heart was pumping hard. She shoved her hands into her pockets so no one would notice the trembling.
Jack had cleaned up every trace of his presence. On the dining room table, there was only one plate and one bottled water. She watched as Drew went into the bathroom. Jack’s discarded clothing had been in there. Apparently, his shirt and undershirt were gone because Drew emerged without saying anything.
When Tony brushed past her, she caught a whiff of his expensive cologne. It smelled like newly minted hundred-dollar bills. He rested his hand on the door handle of the front closet and ya
nked it open. She noticed that her rifle was gone.
IN THE LOFT ABOVE the stalls in the horse barn, Jack lay on his belly and sighted down the barrel of Caitlyn’s rifle. This weapon lacked the sophistication of the sniper equipment he was accustomed to using. Her rifle scope was rudimentary and so poorly mounted that he had removed it. At this range, he trusted his marksmanship. His first shot would show him the correction for this particular weapon, after which he would be accurate.
His plan was simple. Take out the tall man with sandy hair; he was the most deadly. Then the boss.
Holding the rifle felt natural, and he easily comprehended the necessary strategy in an assault situation. These skills weren’t inborn. He couldn’t remember where he’d learned or who taught him. But he knew how to kill.
When Caitlyn and the men entered the house, Jack adjusted his position, trying to keep track of their movements through the windows. So far they hadn’t threatened Caitlyn, except for that moment when she touched the sandy-haired thug. The bastard looked like he wanted to kill her. If he’d hurt her, Jack would have squeezed the trigger. He’d gotten Caitlyn into this mess, but he wouldn’t let her be harmed.
The optimum scenario would be for them to make their search and then go. She wasn’t a part of this.
Not being able to see what was going on inside the house made him edgy. If they didn’t come outside soon, he needed to move in closer to protect her. He started a mental timer for five minutes.
In the corral below him, the two horses—one light and one dark—stood at the railing. Their ears pricked up. They nickered and shifted their hooves. Animals could sense when something was wrong. The horses knew.
He was nearing the end of his countdown when the small group emerged from the back door. Caitlyn looked angry. Earlier, she’d tried to act like a dumb blonde and had failed miserably. Her intelligence showed in every move she made and every word she spoke.
The two men walked ahead of her toward the barn. Jack got ready to shoot. His position gave him an advantage, but he needed to time his shot so there was no chance they could retaliate. He wished there was some way to signal Caitlyn to keep her distance from them.
They walked toward the corral. Coming closer, closer. They were less than fifty yards from his position. The tall man was in front. His hand slid inside his jacket, and he pulled his handgun.
Jack aimed for the center of his chest, the largest target. If he’d been using a more sophisticated weapon, he would have gone for a head shot.
He heard Caitlyn object. “What are you doing? Why do you have a gun?”
The other man assured her, “We have to be prepared. The person we’re looking for is extremely dangerous.”
Damn right. Jack knew he was capable of lethal action. A trained killer. Damn it, Caitlyn. Get out of the way. The slick-looking man with black hair, the boss, stayed close to her. Too close.
Jack adjusted his aim. He’d kill the boss first. As he stared, he realized that he knew this man. Gregorio Rojas. He was the younger son of a drug cartel family that supplied the entire Midwestern United States.
Hatred flared in Jack’s gut. His finger tensed on the trigger. Rojas was his sworn enemy. Take the shot. Rid the world of this bastard whose actions have been responsible for so much misery, so much death.
Rojas paused, took a cell phone from his pocket. After a brief conversation, he motioned to the other man. They headed back toward their vehicle.
Still, Jack didn’t relax his vigilance. Rojas was still within range.
His memory was returning. The blank spaces knitted together in a tapestry of violence. Take the shot.
Chapter Four
Jack knew he had killed before. As he stared down the barrel of Caitlyn’s rifle, his vision narrowed to his target. The center seam of Rojas’s tailored jacket. His hands were steady. He was focused. Cool and calm, as always.
He remembered another time, another place, another killing.
He was in the city, the seedy part of town. On the fourth floor of a dirty brick hotel that rented rooms by the hour, he set up his sniper’s nest and assembled his precision rifle with laser scope, silencer and tripod. With high-power, infrared binoculars, he observed the crappy apartment building directly across the street. Fourth floor, corner unit. Nobody home.
He checked into the hotel at sundown. Hours passed. Dusk turned to nightfall when lights flickered on throughout the city. Not that he had a glittering view.
When the lamp in the apartment across the street came on, he eased into position. Though he sat in the dark, the glow from a streetlight reflected dully on the barrel of his rifle and silencer.
He peered through his scope. Through the uncurtained window of the apartment across the street, a man with fiery red hair paced from room to room with his gun in his hand, looking for danger.
“I’m here,” Jack whispered. “Come to the window, you bastard.”
This man deserved to die.
But his target hadn’t been alone. A small woman with brassy blond hair and a child entered Jack’s field of vision. Two witnesses.
The killing had to wait.
From the loft in the barn, Jack watched as Rojas and his companion got into the SUV and drove away from Caitlyn’s cabin. She turned on her heel and rushed back into her house, moving fast, as though she had something burning on the stove.
When the black SUV was out of sight, he rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling in the barn that needed patching.
He knew who he was.
A stone-cold killer.
INSIDE HER CABIN, Caitlyn wasted no time. She dove into the swivel chair behind her small desk in the living room and fired up her laptop. It felt good to see the screen come to life. Back when she was a working journalist—especially in the field—her computer had been an ever-present tool, almost an extension of her arm.
Her hands poised over the keyboard. But I’m not a journalist anymore. Not right now. She had no assignment, no story to investigate, and she wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted to go back into the fray.
Her main reason for moving to this cabin had been to purposely distance herself from the 24-hour-a-day news cycle. During this time of self-imposed seclusion, she hoped to regroup and decide what to do with the rest of her life.
Her parents and nearly everyone else who cared about her had encouraged Caitlyn to seek out a safer occupation. Not that they wanted her to quit writing, but they hoped she would leave the war zones to others. As if she’d be satisfied reporting on garden parties? Writing poetry about sunshine and lollipops?
She wasn’t made that way. She thrived on action.
Jack’s arrival at her doorstep might be fate. She hadn’t gone looking for danger, but here it was. She had armed thugs searching her cabin. If Jack Dalton had a story to tell, she wouldn’t turn away.
She jumped on the internet and started a search on the name of Jack’s supposed “friend,” Mark Santoro. Expertly, she sorted through news stories, mostly from the Chicago Tribune, and put together the basic facts.
As Jack had said, Mark Santoro was dead. He and four other members of the Santoro crime family had been killed in a shootout on a city street five months ago. One of the men had his hands cut off. Mark had been decapitated. A gruesome slaughter; it was intended to send a message.
Allegedly, the Santoro family handled narcotics distribution in the Midwest, and they had angered the powerful Rojas drug cartel—the suppliers of illegal drugs.
Agents from the DEA and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were all over this incident. They arrested and charged several members of the Rojas cartel, including the top man, Tom Rojas. The federal murder trial was due to start on Tuesday, four days from now, at a district court in Chicago.
Reading between the lines, Caitlyn suspected that much of this story never made it to print. She used to date a reporter who worked at the Trib—a sweet guy who had taken her for that romantic sailboat ride on Lake Michigan and beg
ged her to stay in the States. She’d refused to settle down, and he’d moved on. A typical pattern for her relationships. The last she’d heard, her former beau was happily married with an infant daughter. If she needed to find out more about the trial, she could contact him.
Rapid-fire, she typed in the names of the two thugs: Drew Kelso and Greg Reynolds. A quick search showed several people with those names, but nothing stood out. She wasn’t surprised. Drug lords and thugs don’t generally maintain websites.
Next, she searched for Tony Perez. After digging through a lot of worthless information, she tightened her search and linked it to Mark Santoro. In one of the articles about the shootings, Tony Perez was mentioned as a bodyguard for Santoro. Perez had been killed at the scene.
But Jack Dalton was very much alive.
Slowly, she closed her laptop. Though she hadn’t heard him enter the house or walk across the living room floor, she sensed Jack’s nearness. She knew that he was standing close, silently watching her.
A shiver prickled down her spine. She wasn’t afraid that he would physically harm her. There wasn’t a reason, and he was smart enough to avoid unnecessary violence. But she was apprehensive. Jack was pulling her toward a place she didn’t want to go.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.
She swiveled in her desk chair to face him. “You look pretty healthy for a dead man.”
He crossed the room and returned her rifle to the front closet. “I brought your gun back.”
The smart thing would be to send him on his way and forget she ever saw him. But finding the truth was a compulsion for her. “Those men were looking for Tony Perez. Is that your real name?”
“Tony’s dead. Call me Jack.”
“They said you stole a horse, and that you’re dangerous.”
“Half right.”
“Which half?”
“I didn’t steal the horse. I borrowed it.”
He approached her, braced his hands on each of the arms of her swivel chair and leaned down until his face was on a level with hers. “Those men are unpredictable. There’s no telling what they might do. I strongly advise that you stay with a friend for a couple of days.”
