by Cassie Miles
“I’m guessing the sheriff has his hands full.” Last night, local law enforcement had taken five dangerous men into custody, dealt with the death of U.S. Marshal Hank Perry and started a manhunt. There would be jurisdictional considerations. Not to mention dealing with the media. “I expect they’ll call in CSI’s from Denver or even from the FBI.”
“But shouldn’t a deputy be here to make sure people like us don’t come in and mess up the scene?”
He didn’t sense a trap, but he’d been wrong before. “Let’s not question our good luck. We’ll get in and out ASAP.”
The front door was locked, but enough of the windows had been shot out that it wasn’t a problem to shove one open and climb inside. In spite of the devastation caused by last night’s firefight, Jack recognized the front room and the adjoining kitchen with pine paneling on two of the walls. He remembered sitting at the table, playing penny-ante poker with the marshals; he had suspected Patterson of cheating.
In the middle of the hallway, he went into the room where he’d been sleeping and turned on the overhead light. Shutters were closed and locked over the only window. The simple furnishings included a single bed, dresser and desk.
“Charming,” Caitlyn said sarcastically. “This looks like a pine-paneled prison cell.”
“The Marshals Service doesn’t use interior decorators. The idea is to keep the witness safe. That’s why the windows are shuttered.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to hang a couple of pictures or stick a ficus in the corner.” She went to the desk and pulled open the middle drawer. “What are we looking for?”
“I’d like to find my wallet.” He rifled through the dresser. His T-shirts and clothing were bland and familiar, nothing special. “I didn’t have time to grab anything when we were under assault.”
She held up a paperback book. “Science fiction?”
“I like androids. And don’t bother reading anything into that.”
“But it’s so accurate,” she said. “It totally makes sense that you’d be attracted to a human-looking creature with super-abilities and no real emotions.”
He had emotions, plenty of them. They pressed at the edge of his peripheral vision like certain blindness. When he had slept in this room, his name was Nick Racine. Pieces of that identity were drawing together, threatening to overwhelm him. “It was a mistake to come here.”
“What are you remembering?”
Too much. Not enough. “We should go.”
She stepped in front of the door, blocking his retreat. “You can’t run away from this. Sooner or later, you’ll have to quit using the name of some poor guy who wanted to be my handyman.”
She was right, damn it. “Where do I start?”
“With something you remember. Tell me what happened when you were attacked. It was close to midnight, right?”
“Yes.” He didn’t want to remember.
“You were in bed,” she said.
“That’s right.” He pivoted and went to the unmade bed. In the paneling above the headboard, he spotted six bullet holes in a close pattern, probably fired from a semiautomatic.
“What did you hear?” she asked.
“I was asleep. A noise woke me. The sound of a door slamming or a distant shout. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I got up, pulled on my pants and flannel shirt. Stuck my feet into my boots. Then all hell broke loose. I heard gunfire.”
“Did someone come into the room?”
“The door crashed open. Perry shoved me down on the floor. Everything happened fast.” The vision inside his head was chaos. Bullets flying. The flash of a knife blade. A burst of pain. “Perry was shot, but he got back up. We made it to the door at the end of the hallway. We were outside. Fighting for our lives.”
“What about Patterson and Bryant?”
“Didn’t see them. Perry must have told me they deserted us because I was mad.” A sudden realization occurred to him. “I didn’t have my gun, didn’t have time to get my gun.”
“Why is that important?” she asked.
He looked down into her bright blue eyes. “You’re good at this interviewing stuff.”
“It’s kind of my job, Jack. And don’t change the subject. Why is your gun important?”
“For one thing, I wasn’t supposed to be armed. That’s not the way witness protection works.”
“I don’t suppose it is,” she said.
“If I hadn’t been trying to hide my weapon, I would have slept with the gun beside the bed. Within easy reach.” A mistake he’d never make again. “My response would have been faster. Perry wouldn’t have died.”
He crossed the room. The closet door was open. Hanging inside were a couple of shirts, a jacket and the charcoal-gray suit he intended to wear at the trial. He closed the door, knelt and pulled at the edge of the paneling near the floor. A foot-long section came off in his hand. He had created a cache inside the wall. Inside was a gray flannel bag.
“Very cool,” she said. “Those are some serious precautions you took.”
He opened the drawstring on the bag, reached inside and removed the Beretta M9. This gun belonged to Nick Racine; it carried a lot of memories. The grip felt like shaking hands with an old friend. His identity was coming back to him.
Something else was in the bag. Through the cloth, he felt a round object that was probably about an inch in diameter. He shook the bag, and it fell onto the floor by his feet. The gleam of silver caught his gaze.
“An earring,” Caitlyn said.
Holding the post between his thumb and forefinger, he lifted the earring to eye level. Delicate threads wove a weblike pattern inside the circle. A dream catcher.
He sat on the floor, holding his gun in one hand and the silver earring in the other. Memory overpowered him.
He saw her from afar—lovely as an oasis in the rugged desert terrain. She stood in the open doorway of an adobe house. Her thick, black hair fell in loose curls to her shoulders. When he parked his car and got out, she ran to greet him. The closer she came, the more beautiful she was. Her dark eyes lit from the inside.
She threw herself into his arms. “Oh, Nick. I missed you so much.”
He loved this woman. Elena. His wife.
A sob caught in the back of his throat, and he swallowed his sorrow. Oceans of tears wouldn’t bring her back. He stared at the earring. “She didn’t like jewelry. Rings got in the way when she was working with clay. Necklaces were too fancy. But she wore these earrings. Do you know the legend behind the dream catcher?”
In a quiet voice, Caitlyn said, “The web allows good dreams to filter through and stops the nightmares.”
“I gave her these earrings so she’d sleep easy when I wasn’t around to protect her.” He remembered the silver dream catcher glimmering against her shining black hair. “Nothing could keep her safe. When I found her body, she was wearing only one of these earrings.”
It had been his hope to bury her with the earrings, and he’d searched long and hard for the mate to this one. He’d gone through her closet, checked the box of jewelry she never wore, had felt along every inch of floor in the house, and he’d come up empty-handed.
Someone had taken the earring. The murderer.
But the red-haired man didn’t have it.
With a sigh, he continued, “I lost them both. My wife and her father, my mentor. It was almost four years ago. I blamed myself for not being there, but Elena wasn’t killed because of me. She was staying with her father, and he had enemies.”
“Did Rojas kill them?” she asked.
“Someone hired the red-haired man. I wasn’t sure who and I needed to know. That’s why I created the identity of Tony Perez. Through Santoro, I thought I’d get close enough to the Rojas brothers to find out who was responsible.” But he’d failed. The old familiar emptiness spread through him. He didn’t care if he lived or died. “That’s the life story of Nick Racine.”
An identity he never wished to resume.
CAITLYN KN
ELT BESIDE HIM on the floor with her hands in her lap, itching to reach out to him and hold him. She was there for him, supporting him. If he wanted to talk, she’d listen. If he needed to cry, her shoulder was ready and waiting.
But he didn’t reach out. His gaze averted, he withdrew into himself.
She’d seen this reaction from others. No stranger to tragedy, she had experienced the aftermath of violent death while embedded with the troops. Everyone dealt with the pain of sudden loss in their own way, and his grief was deep, intense, almost unimaginable. His wife had been murdered. At the same time, he’d lost his mentor—a man who not only taught him but was his father-in-law.
No wonder Jack had retreated into amnesia. It must have been a relief to shed the burden of being Nick Racine.
He stared at the dream catcher earring. The delicate silver strands contrasted with his rough hands. What was he thinking? What memories haunted him?
From outside, she heard the grating of tires on the gravel driveway. Someone was approaching the safe house. Though she thought this might be a good time for him to turn himself in, that wasn’t her decision to make.
Softly, she spoke his name. “Nick?”
He didn’t seem to hear her.
“Nick, there’s a car coming.”
Immobile, he continued to stare at the memento from his dead wife.
More loudly, she said, “Jack.”
He looked at her as though he was seeing her for the first time. He pressed the dream catcher against his lips and slipped it into his pocket. Slowly, he rose to his feet. “We’ll see who it is before we decide what to do.”
He directed her down the hallway to the rear door, unfastened the lock and stepped outside. She followed as he rounded the house and stopped. From this vantage point, they could see the front of the house.
Jack peeked around the edge. Under his breath, he cursed.
Caitlyn looked past his shoulder and saw Bryant and Patterson emerge from their vehicle. Until now, she and Jack had been riding on a wave of good luck. They’d escaped from the ranch and hidden at Woodley’s without anyone coming after them. Apparently, that positive trend had reversed. The two marshals were the last people she wanted to meet.
“What should we do?” She looked to Jack for an answer, but he’d sunk back into a daze of sorrow. He leaned against the wall of the house, staring blankly into the distance.
This apathy didn’t work for her. They were in trouble, and she needed for him to be sharp and focused. She needed for him to be Jack.
Bryant took off his cowboy hat and dragged his hand through his hair. “I still don’t get it. Why the hell did you make such a big stink about this place being our jurisdiction?”
“Because it is.” Patterson dragged his feet. The older man’s exhaustion was evident. “This safe house belongs to the U.S. Marshals Service. Besides, I need to keep the CSI’s away. When they start prowling around, they’ll find clues.”
“They’re going to figure out what we did, especially when the men they’ve got in custody start talking.”
“Rojas’s men? They won’t talk. They’re too afraid of their boss to make a peep.”
“It’s over. We ain’t going to get out of this.” The tall Texan leaned against the side of the vehicle. “I don’t want to go to prison, man. I say we make a run for it.”
“There’s another option.”
She watched as Patterson opened the back door of the vehicle and reached inside. Jack had roused himself enough to observe, and she was glad that he’d decided to pay attention.
When Patterson emerged from the car, he held an automatic gun in his hand.
“It’s the SIG Sauer,” Jack whispered. “Perry’s gun.”
Jack had also been using that gun. He’d spent all but two bullets defending her when Rojas and his men came after her at her house.
Patterson rounded the front of the car and raised the gun, aiming at the center of Bryant’s chest. “Sorry, kid.”
The tall Texan turned toward his partner. His back was to them as he held up both hands. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you.”
“Kill me? What?”
“My God, you’re dumb.” She saw disgust in Patterson’s weary face. “I’m so damned tired of having to explain every tiny detail to you. This is simple. I need to convince our supervisor that Nick Racine went off the rails and is dangerous.”
“By shooting me?”
“I’ll tell them that Nick shot you,” Patterson said. “This gun is proof. Nick used it. When ballistics compares bullets, it proves that he’s dangerous.”
“Don’t do it,” Bryant pleaded. “We can go on the run. Rojas will protect us. He’ll give us more money and—”
“Shut up,” Patterson snapped. “I’m not going into hiding. I have a family. I have a pension. I’m not giving those things up.”
Quietly, Jack said, “Patterson can’t trust the kid to keep his mouth shut. He’s going to kill him.”
Apparently, Bryant had come to the same conclusion. He reached for the gun on his belt.
Jack stepped clear of the house, took aim and fired.
His marksmanship was nothing short of amazing. His bullet hit Patterson’s arm. He clutched at the wound near his shoulder and staggered backward. The SIG fell from his hand.
Bryant reacted. He whirled, gun in hand, and faced Jack.
“Drop it,” Jack said.
The Texan looked back at the partner who had intended to kill him. Then at Jack. Caitlyn could almost see the wheels turning inside his head as he made his decision. The wrong decision.
He fired at Jack.
She heard the bullet smack into the house just above her head.
Jack returned fire. Two shots. Two hits.
The Texan fell to the dirt.
Chapter Nineteen
There was a lot of blood, but both marshals were still moving. Not dead. Caitlyn wondered why she wasn’t shrinking into the shadows at the side of the house, paralyzed by terror, and then she realized that she wasn’t afraid; she trusted Jack to protect her.
Patterson lurched backward and braced himself against the car. With his good arm, he reached across his body toward the gun on his hip.
“Don’t try it,” Jack warned. “You make one more move, and my next bullet goes through the center of your forehead.”
The gray-haired marshal dropped his arm. His left hand was bloody from the wound on his right arm. His dark windbreaker with U.S. Marshal stenciled across the back was slick with gore.
On the ground, Bryant struggled to sit up. His face contorted in pain, and he was groaning, almost sobbing. In his beige jacket, his injuries were more obvious. One of Jack’s bullets had ripped through his right shoulder. He’d also been shot in the right thigh. His gun was out of his reach, and he seemed to be suffering too much to go after it.
Caitlyn asked, “What are you going to do with them?”
“First, I’ll make sure they’re completely disarmed. They’re both wearing ankle holsters and probably have a couple of other weapons stashed. Next, I’ll get rid of their cell phones.”
“Will you kill them?”
“Not unless it’s necessary,” he said. “I want you to go back to the ATV and wait for me.”
Her natural curiosity told her to stay and observe. She wanted to see how Jack got these men to give up their weapons and to hear what they said to each other. By leaving, she’d be walking out before the story was finished.
But she was well aware that she and Jack had no backup. This situation wasn’t like anything she’d encountered in the Middle East. Replacement troops weren’t going to be riding over the hill to help them out. The smartest thing she could do was to follow Jack’s orders. “I’ll be waiting.”
She jogged around the house and the barn to the forest where they’d hidden the four-wheeler. Was Jack going to finish what he’d started? With her out of the way, would he kill the marshals? She remembere
d what he’d told her about executing the man who’d murdered his wife. In her frame of reference, an execution meant killing in cold blood. In his identity as Nick Racine, he was a murderer.
But Jack wasn’t. Though he didn’t hesitate to use physical violence, he hadn’t killed anyone. He’d said it wasn’t his job. Had he been talking about an occupation? Clearly, he had training in marksmanship, and his hand-to-hand combat skills were finely honed.
At the ATV, she pulled away the brush that camouflaged the vehicle. There was a lot she didn’t know about Nick Racine. A lot she needed to find out.
Right now, there was a more pressing issue. By shooting the marshals, Jack had—ironically—given credence to Patterson’s plan to discredit him. When the marshals were rescued, they would accuse Jack of ambushing them. Every law-enforcement person involved in the search for Rojas would shift their focus toward Jack. And toward her.
There was no way they could turn themselves in with any guarantee of safety. Not unless she could negotiate the terms with someone she trusted, someone like Danny or Mr. Woodley. She wished she’d kept up with her contacts stateside. At one time, she’d known people in high places. There were still a few. A plan began to form in her mind.
She saw Jack running toward her. Since she hadn’t heard any other gunfire, she assumed he hadn’t shot Patterson and Bryant. There wasn’t any blood on his clothes, so he hadn’t knifed them. She might have thought less of him if he’d murdered the marshals, even though they were despicable men who deserved punishment.
He climbed onto the front seat of the ATV. “Let’s roll.”
“I know exactly which way to go.”
Their first challenge would be to get across the main highway without being seen. Since it was early on a Sunday, there wouldn’t be much traffic, but law enforcement would be watching the roads. Leaning forward and shouting over the noise of the engine, she directed him to a ridge overlooking a section of road that wasn’t fenced. “Stop here.”
He killed the engine. “Use your cell phone. Call 911 and get an ambulance out to the safe house.”
