Shadow of Doubt

by Linda Poitevin

  As nonchalantly as she could manage with her heart thundering in her ears and her gut screaming at her to run, she strolled toward the changing rooms, wiping her face with a towel to hide it as she kept as many of the machines as possible between her and the windows onto the pool. She hesitated long enough to ensure the couple hadn't yet moved or taken an interest in her, and then she pushed into the men's locker room.

  A nude, dripping Jonas looked over his shoulder at her entry and dropped his towel to cover his butt. "Kate! What the—"

  She held a warning finger to her lips, then scanned the room, ducking to make sure no one was in any of the toilet stalls. They were alone. Thank God most of the men in the building favored a later evening workout time, leaving the gym to the female occupants at this hour. She motioned for Jonas to join her at the door. He wrapped the towel around himself and strode to her side.

  Kate cracked open the door. "See them? The couple by the pool."

  Jonas paled. "Bloody hell. Ramirez and Lewis. I saw her get out of a van across the street earlier, but I thought I was wrong. She's dyed her hair. Is there another way out?"

  "That's the only door. I'll have to create a distraction, something to draw their attention—"

  "Wait.” Jonas put a hand on her arm, holding her back. He nodded across the locker room, and she followed his gaze to the long, narrow windows running along the top of the wall, each covered by a wire mesh screen. “We can get out there.”

  "We?" she echoed as he returned to his clothing on the bench. She had barely enough time to register denim sliding over strong legs and molding itself to tight, muscled buttocks before he swiveled back to her.

  "You can't stay behind. If they're here, it means they know who you are." He brushed past her and grabbed his T-shirt out of a locker.

  "I'm a cop, Jonas. What are they going to—?" She broke off as he tugged the T-shirt over his head and sent her a sardonic look.

  What would they do? How about shoot her, for starters? And leave her for dead? Like they'd done to one of their own.

  Like they'd done to Jonas.

  Hell. Still hesitating, she cracked the door open for another look at Ramirez and Lewis. If there had been a uniformed officer with them—someone official—she might have given them the benefit of the doubt. Might have insisted she remain behind to talk to them while Jonas escaped. But there wasn’t. Instead, the couple was showing something to a group of swimmers near the diving board, and Kate’s next-door neighbor was pointing toward the weight room. She eased the locker room door closed.

  Jonas dragged a bench across the ceramic floor toward the windows. She winced at the noise reverberating off the metal lockers as he positioned it parallel to the wall. He glared over his shoulder at her.

  "Kate. You have no choice. You have to come with me."

  She dragged a hand over her curls, hating that he was right. Then, with a nod of acknowledgment, she grabbed the end of another bench and pulled it over to rest against the door. First things first. They needed to get out of here, at least for now. Needed to buy themselves time so Jonas could figure out his next move and she could figure out how to extricate herself from that move. She placed a second bench end-to-end with the first. When someone opened the door, there would be about six inches of give before the opposite end met the lockers. It wasn't perfect, but it would work.

  Jonas flashed a look over his shoulder as she joined him. "Good thinking," he said, handing her the mesh grate he'd pulled from the window. "What's on the other side of this, anyway?"

  Kate leaned the grate against the wall. "The back alley, I think. I've never paid that much attention. Never thought I'd be crawling out one of them."

  "I doubt very much you ever thought you'd be doing any of this." He motioned her onto the bench beside him. "Come on. You first."

  Kate grabbed the windowsill and, gritting her teeth against the strain in her shoulder, hauled herself up. She had her torso through the opening and was swinging one leg up to follow when there was a sudden commotion outside the room door. Looking back, she saw her makeshift barricade slide forward a few inches before it caught and held. A man peered through the opening, and startled eyes met hers. The face disappeared, and more shouting ensued.

  "They'll be coming around," she told Jonas.

  "We're good. Just go," he replied. But the tension in his voice belied the calm of his words.

  Adrenaline surged through her veins. For a split second, she viewed herself and the situation from a distance, as if watching a movie. Because things like this just didn't happen in real life.

  Then Jonas’s hand was on her hip, urging her up.

  "Go," he said again, and Kate went.

  She landed awkwardly in the alley and crouched against the brick wall of the building, massaging her shoulder. Above her, the right side of Jonas’s upper body emerged from the window. One of his legs slid through the opening, then the other. He hung for an instant by his hands, then dropped to the ground beside her. Sweat beaded on a brow a shade paler than it had been a few minutes before. Catching her look of concern, he grimaced and shook his head.

  "Don't ask," he advised, then scanned the alley behind her. "We need to move. Somewhere with a lot of people is best."

  With an effort, Kate mustered her scattered thoughts. Where did you run when you were the hunted instead of the hunter?

  "A mall?" she suggested. Anywhere she could catch her breath and pull herself together again.

  "Too bright. What about somewhere downtown? We can look for a pub or something where the lights are low."

  "This is downtown."

  "I thought you said Ottawa was big enough to hide in."

  "When you're on the right side of the law, it seems plenty big enough to lose someone. I've never had to look at it from the other perspective." She heaved herself to her feet. "We'll head down to the Market. It's Friday, so there should be enough of a crowd to lose ourselves in for a while."

  She hoped. Dear heaven, how she hoped.

  ***

  There may have been a steady stream of pedestrians along the sidewalks of Ottawa's Byward Market, but Jonas decided crowd was a gross exaggeration. He scowled as he followed in Kate's wake, dodging a couple perusing a menu tacked to a board outside a tiny cafe. There certainly weren't enough people here to hide among. Especially not dressed as Kate was, in her gym shorts and a tank top. All along their route, people were looking back as she passed them, smirking and shaking their heads at the nutcase who didn't know how to dress for a rapidly cooling, late October evening. Blend in, she did not.

  Kate stopped under the overhang of a questionable-looking restaurant, and Jonas watched her dig through the pouch she wore clipped around her waist. Whatever was in it was all they had between them. Everything else was either in her locker at the gym or in her apartment, neither of which he could let her visit anytime soon.

  "Hold out your hand," she ordered. Jonas obliged, and she counted out some small change into his palm. "...eighty-five, ninety-five, four, four twenty-five, four fifty." She grinned at him triumphantly. "Enough for two coffees. This place even offers free refills. Interested?"

  Jonas peered into the restaurant, past the signs and menus covering the grimy window. Small. Dim. No matter where they sat, they'd be able to see who came in the door. It was a good place to for them to get their bearings. And to get Kate off the street and out of the wind. Shoving the handful of change into his pocket, he reached for the door handle.

  A few minutes later, he curled his fingers around his steaming mug of coffee and waited for the waiter to move to another table. As soon as he was out of hearing range, Kate cleared her throat.

  "Well," she said, "this is an interesting turn of events."

  Elbow on the table, Jonas rested a fist against his mouth and stared at the shivering, inadequately clad woman across from him. With makeup removed and blond curls scraped up into a haphazard ponytail, she looked about fifteen. He shook his head. He didn't even know where
to begin.

  "I should've left sooner," he said finally.

  Rubbing her hands over her upper arms, Kate shrugged. "They would've still found me."

  "But only you. You could have denied any knowledge of me. Told them the same thing you told your OPP friend. They would have had nothing, Kate. They would have left you alone and moved on." He scraped fingers through his hair. "But now..."

  Silence met his words. The ones he'd spoken, and the ones he hadn't. Now they know you're involved. Now you're in it up to your neck. Now they can't let you live because of what you might know. What you might say.

  Kate shivered again.

  Jonas nudged her coffee mug closer. "Drink. It'll warm you up."

  She sipped at the steaming liquid. Two tables away, a raucous group of teen males burst into laughter. Jonas glanced over and met the bold gaze of one. The boy made a display of studying Kate's long, bare legs, smirked at Jonas, and then disappeared behind his hand to make a remark to his friends. Fresh guffaws filled the tiny restaurant. Jonas scowled. Dressed as she was, Kate was entirely too memorable and would make it all too easy to track them.

  "So," Kate said, "what now?"

  "We get you as far away from them as we can. Your sister is out of the question—that's the first place they'll watch. Who else can you stay with?" He didn't like how she'd started shaking her head, but he forged on anyway. "I'll move fast to get things wrapped up, so it should only be a few days. Two weeks, tops. I'll call you when it's safe."

  Kate shook her head again. "You forget one thing. I'm a cop. Ergo, just about everyone I know is a cop, too. If I turn up on someone's doorstep wanting to hide out for a few days, there'll be some serious questions. And before you ask, a hotel is out of the question unless I can get back to my apartment first. I have no money, no credit cards, no ID, nothing."

  Jonas pointed at her waist pack lying on the table by her elbow. "Nothing in there?"

  "The change I gave you and my keys. Not my car keys, mind you"—she grimaced over the rim of the coffee mug—"because that would make things too easy. Just the ones for the apartment and the locker I can't get near, because it’s too bulky to carry the others with me at the gym."

  Jonas leaned his head back against the wall behind his chair and closed his eyes. Damn, damn, damn. It wasn't just that he wanted Kate out of danger; he wanted her out of his hair, too. He didn't want to be responsible for someone else's life.

  Especially not hers.

  He cracked his eyelids open enough to study her. Her confidence in her abilities was a good thing overall. Hell, a cop without that kind of confidence couldn't do the job. In this case, however, he suspected it was overconfidence, because no matter how capable she thought herself, he'd swear on his own life she'd never tangled with the likes of Ramirez or Lewis. Which made the abilities she prided herself on untested. And that made her dangerous—to herself and to him.

  She would, without doubt, slow him down. Get in the way. Distract him. He closed his eyes again and gritted his teeth until his jaw ached. He'd be second-guessing his every move, his every step, all so he could make sure she stayed safe. Alive.

  She was a liability. It was that simple.

  Which was why he couldn't take her with him.

  But he couldn't leave her behind, either.

  Chapter 19

  Kate watched a host of emotions play across Jonas's face, none of them nice. The anger and frustration of the man she'd brought in from the storm had resurfaced with a vengeance, and she realized just how little she really knew about him.

  How little she wanted to know.

  Hell.

  She tugged the elastic from her hair and slid it into the pouch at her waist, then ruffled her curls into a semblance of order. In all honesty, her avoidance of Jonas this week hadn't been entirely due to unruly hormones. Part of it had been simple self-preservation. A certainty that she hadn’t wanted to learn more about him or his story or the mess he'd landed himself in. And now they were here.

  "You'll have to come with me,” Jonas announced.

  Kate couldn’t help but bristle at the peremptory tone. “Excuse me?”

  “Just until I can find somewhere safe to stash you," he added, as if she hadn’t spoken.

  "You're not stashing me anywhere."

  He scowled back. "Well, I'm sure as hell not taking you with me. It's too—"

  "Dangerous," she interrupted. "Yes, you've told me. And I've told you: I'm not some fragile piece of pottery that needs to be wrapped up and stored away somewhere. I'm a cop, Jonas, and a damned good one at that."

  Refusal darkened his expression—as if it needed darkening—and she sighed, waving away the words she saw forming on his lips.

  "Enough," she said. "I get that you don't want help. Hell, I don’t particularly want to give you help. But if you're right about me being a target now that your friends have shown up, then I'm up to my ass in this—whether either of us likes it or not—and that changes things."

  She caught the waiter’s eye and held up her mug for a refill. He headed in their direction. She turned her attention back to a tight-lipped, simmering Jonas.

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into,” he hedged.

  “Then tell me.”

  “Damn it, Kate...” He trailed off, cradling his head in his hands, elbows resting on the table.

  The waiter refilled both their mugs and departed. Kate regarded Jonas’s bent head. Was it really that hard for this man to accept help? As if he heard the thought, he raised his head and met her gaze, his own diamond hard.

  “Fine,” he said. “You want the story? Here it is. Six months ago, I was assigned to infiltrate a weapons ring in New Jersey. We'd received intel that a small-time arms dealer, Joseph Quinlan, had a new client in the works, someone with a lot of money, and that his business would be growing exponentially as a result. My usual handler had been sidelined with an injury, so Lewis and Ramirez were assigned to work with me. Once I had Quinlan cold, they were responsible for—"

  "I know how a takedown works."

  "Right. Well, when it came time for the buy, the only ones who showed were Quinlan, me and my two partners." Jonas’s mouth twisted. "There was no buyer, no money, and no backup. Just us. Lewis and Ramirez shot Quinlan first, then me."

  “What about the money they said you took?”

  “As fictional as the buyer, I’m guessing.”

  “Wait.” Kate frowned. “You think Lewis and Ramirez set up both you and Quinlan? But why?"

  "My guess? Me, because I was nosing around too much. Quinlan, because he was bad for business."

  Her jaw dropped. Cops on the take was one thing, but what Jonas suggested? Holy shit. “You think they’re dealing,” she said. “Agents in the ATF.”

  “Yes. And not just them.” Jonas took a swig of coffee and set down the mug again, staring into it. "About eight months ago, I started digging into some old files at the Bureau in my spare time. One of my deals had gone sour at the last minute a few weeks before—something I thought I'd tied up tight. Not only did the perp come out squeaky clean at the takedown, but the shipment never surfaced again. Anywhere. It was the third time it had happened since I transferred to the New Jersey bureau."

  His gaze returned to hers. "I'm not a careless man, Kate. Before Jersey—in fourteen years with the Bureau—I'd screwed up exactly once. I found it hard to believe I'd become that sloppy almost overnight. Then, when I started digging, I found a lot of deals in Jersey had a tendency to go bad."

  "Hell," she breathed. "You think someone higher up is involved?"

  "I think it's possible. That's why I haven't called in. I don't know who I can call."

  Kate sat back, digesting the impact of his words. Their enormity. Her brain churned. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized, she’d been considering the possibility that Jonas would turn himself in to the RCMP after all. She’d been prepared to guarantee his safety if he did, certain she could ensure he was handed over to the
custody of someone other than Lewis and Ramirez. Someone who could carry out an investigation, who would make sure Jonas stayed alive for a fair trial. But this...this changed everything.

  Regardless of Jonas's story, the force would have no choice but to turn him over to the ATF, because refusal to do so would do untold damage to the working relationship between the two agencies—not to mention cause serious political waves. And if Jonas was right about having stumbled into a whole nest of dirty cops, then it wouldn't matter which agents took actual custody of him. It would just be a matter of time before some kind of "accident" resulted in his death. Guaranteed.

  And if he died, any loose ends would die with him.

  Kate tucked her hands under the table, clenching them in her lap. Hell, hell, hell. There really was no way to extricate herself from this, was there? For better or worse, until this whole mess was sorted out, her future had just become inextricably linked with Jonas Burke's.

  And her career was about to be shot all to hell in the process.

  God. Laura was going to kill her for this. If Kate lived long enough.

  She swallowed against the lump in her chest and tried to think past the paralysis of panic. They needed a plan. They. Jonas and her. Together for the foreseeable future. She forced herself to take a long, slow, controlled breath.

  "All right, then," she said. "I guess we'd better figure out what we're doing. I assume you have proof of all this?"

  "Not here, I don’t."

  Of course. Any evidence that existed would be in New Jersey, which was about as accessible as the Antarctic at the moment, given that Jonas had no passport or ID with which to make it past the border guards. Kate drummed fingertips on the tabletop. There was no way around it. They were going to have to bring someone else in on this. Someone they could trust. Someone who would trust them.

  Jonas so wasn't going to like this.

  She stood abruptly and held out a hand across the table, palm up. "I need a quarter."

  Blue eyes narrowed. "Why?"

  "So I can get us across the border."