Mistaken Identity

by Shirlee McCoy

  Someone stepped away from the group, walking toward Trinity and Mason with a long brisk stride that reminded her of her Chance. Her oldest brother had a way of commanding attention without even trying. This guy seemed to do the same. He met her eyes as he approached.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “I’m Sheriff Judah Dillon, Whisper Sheriff’s Department.”

  “I’m Trinity Miller.”

  “From Annapolis, Maryland,” he said. “We ran the plates on your Jeep. You want to tell me what brought you to Whisper?” he asked.

  “I came to see Mason.”

  “He says he doesn’t know you.”

  “He doesn’t. I wanted to speak with him about a friend.” She glanced at Mason. He was watching her dispassionately and didn’t seem inclined to verify her story.

  “I see,” the sheriff said.

  It was obvious that he didn’t. He hadn’t asked enough questions to understand her motive, and it didn’t look like he was going to.

  “Sheriff—” she began, but he raised a hand, cutting her off.

  “I’ll have a deputy take you to the station. You can warm up there. I’ll take your statement when I finish here.”

  “I’d rather not—”

  Too late, he’d already motioned to a young-looking deputy who seemed eager to do whatever the sheriff wanted. What he wanted was to get Trinity out of the way.

  “Get her some coffee and let her wait in my office. We’ll make a decision about pressing charges after I figure out what’s going on,” he said as the deputy took her arm and started leading her away.

  “Charges? For what?” she protested, suddenly understanding something her nearly frozen brain hadn’t been able to process before. They thought she was a criminal, that she was someone connected to the guy who was lying on the ground bleeding.

  “We’ll make that decision later,” the sheriff repeated, already turning away and walking back toward the fallen man.

  “But, I haven’t done anything wrong!”

  “Ma’am,” the sheriff said, turning to face her again. “Trespassing is a misdemeanor offense. I don’t think I need to explain that to you.”

  “But—”

  He was moving again, and Mason was walking with him, the two of them talking quietly, probably discussing whatever trumped-up charges they planned to make.

  Then again, she had trespassed. That wasn’t trumped up, and she couldn’t even say she wasn’t guilty if the sheriff decided to book her on the charges.

  “This is all a mistake,” she said, but the deputy didn’t respond. He had his mission, and he seemed intent on it. Maybe he wanted to prove himself. He was young. Probably a couple of years younger than her. He couldn’t have been a deputy for long.

  “It really is a mistake.” She tried again, and this time he did look at her, his dark eyes gleaming in the moonlight.

  “It’ll all get sorted out. Right now, let’s just concentrate on getting you inside and warmed up.”

  They’d reached the path, and she wanted to yank her arm from his, run back to Mason and the sheriff and explain herself.

  But she thought that might cause more trouble than she already had, so she kept moving, stepping onto the path and glancing back.

  Mason had stopped halfway to the crowd of people and had turned in her direction. His face was hidden in shadows, but she thought he might have been smiling.

  * * *

  Trinity looked like she was being led to the gallows, and she was eyeing Mason as if he were the reason for it. In point of fact, he was. He’d asked Judah to have her transported to the station. He hadn’t wanted to expend energy keeping an eye on her, and he was still uncertain of her status. She was either a criminal or an innocent bystander. Until he knew for sure which she was, he wasn’t giving her the opportunity to escape.

  “You know I can’t hold her there for long, right?” Judah asked as Trinity and the deputy stepped onto the path and disappeared from view.

  “You don’t need to hold her for any longer than it takes to get her statement. I just need her out of the way. I don’t want to deal with more chaos than I’ve already got.”

  “You don’t have chaos. I do. It’s my town, my jurisdiction. My problem. I’ll take care of it. All you need to do is answer questions and stay out of the way.”

  “You know that’s not going happen, right?”

  “Yeah, but I thought I’d give it a shot. You really think Trinity has something to do with this?” He waved toward the fallen man. EMTs were lifting him onto a stretcher, and Mason thought he could smell the scent of blood in the chilly night air. His stomach heaved, but he ignored it.

  “I’m not sure, but I’m not much into coincidence,” he responded and was relieved that his tone was even and controlled. He’d spent years learning to compartmentalize the past, keep it tucked neatly away so that he could be in traumatic situations and not panic.

  “Me, neither. Which is why it strikes me as odd that your house was broken into on a night when you were supposed to be out of town. Who knew you were going to the funeral?”

  “You and John’s widow, Sally. That about covers it.”

  “And, Sally knew you were coming back tonight? I was under the impression you’d be away until Sunday.”

  “That was the plan. It changed.”

  “Because?”

  “I attended the funeral out of a sense of obligation, but John and I weren’t exactly buddies these last few years, and I’ve never been all that fond of his wife. I thought she might need help settling John’s estate, but all she really wanted to do was sob in my arms. I decided to cut the trip short.”

  “Was she happy about that?”

  “She tried to convince me to stay. At least for another night. So that she didn’t have to face the empty house.” Those had been her exact words. When he’d refused to stay the night, she’d begged him to stay for a couple more hours. Through dinner. Or lunch.

  “She knows what happened between you and John, right?”

  “They were married when he and I were business partners. Seeing as how he signed over his share of our company in exchange for me not pressing charges, I’d say she does.”

  “You should have pressed charges,” Judah said.

  Maybe, but Mason had partially blamed himself for what had happened. He hadn’t wanted to deal with the financial aspects of the company. He’d left it to John, trusting him because they’d been army buddies and friends. He’d known John’s weakness—that he drank too much, partied too hard, sometimes hung with the wrong kind of people. He’d also known that John was a computer programming whiz. It was his program that allowed Mason to design the kind of prosthetics he created. John was also the one who’d had the idea of implanting a computer chip into the prosthetic limb. If he’d been honest, if he’d played by the rules, if he hadn’t cheated someone he’d called friend, he’d have died a millionaire. Instead, he and Sally had been living in a single-wide trailer in a run-down trailer park.

  Mason tried not to think about that, tried not to wonder if he should have handled things differently when he’d found out about John’s crimes.

  “Instead of pressing charges, I got his half of the company,” he said.

  That had been the agreement.

  The quarter of a million dollars John had syphoned from their business account had been a little more than half the value of the company. In exchange for not having charges brought against him and not having to repay the money, John had agreed to hand the company over to Mason.

  “In my opinion, you let him off easy, but we’ve talked it out a dozen times. The past is past. What I’m wondering now is what tonight has to do with John and his widow.”

  “Maybe nothing.”

  “You really think that?” Judah eyed the EMTs who were carrying the injured man away.

  “N
o. John and I were still working together when I had this house built. He knew I had a hidden office, and he knew I was keeping sensitive material there.”

  “And you think he sent someone here to access that material?”

  “Have you heard of Tate Whitman?”

  “The name is vaguely familiar.”

  “You know that court-martial case that’s been all over the news?”

  “Bigwig army general accused of selling information that got half his battalion killed? Who doesn’t know about it?”

  “Tate is the star witness in the case. He’s also one of my clients. He entered witness protection a while back. Last week, a couple of government officials came here asking for information about his whereabouts. The MPs came, too. Apparently he’s on the run.”

  “And they think you can find him?”

  “I can find him. I won’t. There are tracking devices in all my prosthetics, Judah. They’re part of the program that allows me to design the best possible limb for the client. It’s common knowledge among people who work with me. I’m contracted by several government agencies, so there’s no secret to what I do and how I do it. They want to track Tate using that chip. I refused to allow it.”

  “Do you think the guys who came tonight are feds?”

  “No. Their work was too sloppy.”

  “Then what do you think?”

  “If the MPs and the feds are looking for information about Tate here, they probably aren’t the only ones. If Tate doesn’t testify, it’s going to make the case against the general really hard to prove.”

  “You think someone affiliated with the general knows you have the ability to track Tate?”

  “It makes as much sense as anything else does.”

  “If that’s true, the information could have come from one of your employees or from—”

  “John? Exactly. He was my first thought. For the right price, he’d sell his own mother out.” He sounded bitter, and he didn’t like it. He’d forgiven John a long time ago. He didn’t trust him. He wasn’t friends with him. But he had forgiven.

  “What about his wife? Would she do the same?”

  “Sally? She’s an unknown to me. We were never friends, and I’m not sure what she’s capable of.”

  “I’ll check her out. See what I can dig up. If she and John were passing information along, we can probably assume they were getting paid for it. I’ll get a warrant to access bank and cell phone records. It could take a few days, but I think I can prove probable cause.”

  “I don’t know how much John shared with her. He might have told her everything about the way the prosthetics are designed, or he might have told her nothing. They had a rocky relationship most of the—”

  A gunshot rang out, cutting off Mason’s words.

  Seconds later a woman screamed, the sound chilling Mason’s blood.

  Trinity.

  It had to be.

  He took off, sprinting toward the trees. He didn’t know the woman, he wasn’t sure of her agenda, but he didn’t want her hurt. He sure didn’t want her killed.

  She’d made her way onto his property.

  He needed to make certain she made it off. Alive. Unharmed. Capable of answering all the questions he needed to ask.

  FOUR

  “Don’t scream again. You hear me?”

  Trinity heard. Loud and clear.

  She was going to listen, because the guy had the barrel of his gun pressed to her jaw. She could feel the metal digging into her skin, but it didn’t hurt. Maybe it did, and she was just too scared to feel it.

  “I said,” he growled, slamming the gun into her face, “did you hear me?”

  “Yes,” she bit out, and he shoved her forward with his body, one arm around her waist, the other around her shoulder, that gun still pressed against her jaw. They were moving fast, and she was terrified of tripping and causing him to pull the trigger. She doubted he’d care if that happened.

  He’d shot an officer of the law. He wasn’t planning to be caught. She wasn’t planning to be kidnapped. She needed to get back to the deputy. He’d been shot in the chest, but she hadn’t seen any blood. If he’d been wearing a Kevlar vest under his shirt, he should be okay, but she’d barely had time to feel for a pulse before she’d been dragged into the forest.

  One scream. That’s all she’d had time for.

  It didn’t matter. Between the gunshot and her scream, there was no way the sheriff hadn’t been alerted to the trouble. Help would arrive. Eventually. She just hoped eventually wasn’t sometime after the guy got her to his vehicle. She knew how these things worked. Once she was in a car traveling away from the scene, her chances of survival went from grim to none.

  They moved through dense forest, branches and twigs snagging in Trinity’s hair and pulling at her still-wet clothes. She couldn’t feel the cold any more than she’d felt pain. Adrenaline was a gift God gave people to get them out of terrible situations. She hoped it would be enough to get her out of this one. Her family would be devastated if something happened to her. Her brothers would probably blame themselves. Her parents would, too.

  She’d be safe in the arms of Jesus—just like the old song said—and they’d be left to move on without her. Only they wouldn’t be able to move on any more than they’d been able to move on after her sister had been kidnapped. They’d spend every holiday leaving a place at the table for her. They’d visit her grave and put flowers there. They’d wonder what they could have done to help her, and she wouldn’t be there to remind them that she’d made her own stupid choices and gotten her own not-so-great consequences.

  Just thinking about it made her tear up. Of course, she’d thought this through before she’d decided to come, but in all her thinking, she’d never imagined getting into a situation where she might actually die.

  The forest opened onto an old logging road, the dirt deeply rutted from years of heavy trucks hauling out logs. Even now, decades after the last load had been transported, the ruts were still there, deep, black lines in the packed earth. She stumbled into one, her ankle twisting, pain shooting up her leg. She went down hard, the guy’s hold loosening as he lost his balance, the gun falling away. No explosion of bullets. No violent report.

  She didn’t think. She didn’t need to. She’d practiced the move hundreds of times with her brothers. She grabbed the guy’s forearm, yanking him toward her with enough force to send him flying. She was on her feet before he landed, darting into the trees, searching for shadowy areas to hide in. There were plenty of them. There were also twigs, branches, thorns, roots. She tripped and flew into a tree, bouncing off and landing with a loud crash that carried through the darkness.

  She thought she could hear the guy coming after her, running through the forest in pursuit. She didn’t know who he was. She didn’t know what he wanted. She wasn’t going to wait around to find out. She also wasn’t going to try to outrun him. She was making too much noise and she’d be too easy to track.

  She eased between trees, forcing herself to slow down, to be quiet, to urge a little calm into her frantic heartbeat. She could do this. She had to do this. Think. Act. Escape.

  Except she wasn’t sure where she’d be escaping to.

  The woods were dense, the foliage tangled masses of thorny brambles. She could get lost out here. She could lose her bearings and wander so far away no one would ever find her. Safe from the gunman and undone by her own terrible sense of direction.

  She stopped, listened.

  He was behind her, pushing through the thick patch of brambles she’d just run through. In the distance, men and women were calling out to one another. A dog barked and sirens screamed. Lots of help, but all of it too far away to do her any good.

  She had to switch gears. Be smart rather than fast.

  She moved silently, ducking under the heavy bough of a pine tree and
grabbing hold of one of the lower branches. This would be an easy climb and a better option than fleeing. She scrambled up, perching on a thick branch and waiting as her pursuer thundered past. Rain dripped through the umbrella of pine needles, landing on her head and her exposed neck. She still had Mason’s coat, but her clothes clung to her nearly frozen skin and she shivered, the tremors shaking the branch and sending pine needles tumbling.

  If he returned, he’d notice.

  If he noticed, she’d be trapped. Nowhere to go but down, straight into his waiting arms. She could still hear people in the distance. She thought about shouting for help but the gunman might return before help arrived.

  She waited another few heartbeats, listening as the voices drew closer. Nature was its own kind of song and she was hearing it in the drip of rain and patter of ice, her heartbeat the backdrop rhythm to which it all played.

  She felt lulled by it and by the cold that had seeped through to her bones. If she waited any longer, she’d fall asleep in the crook of the old pine tree, her body slowly freezing as the temperature dropped.

  Not a good image and not any more pleasant to think about than being kidnapped.

  Her movements were sluggish as she climbed down, her efforts clumsy. Her fingers felt thick and stiff, her grip tenuous. She should have thought this trip through a little more. She should have consulted with her brothers. They would have insisted on coming along, and she’d have let them, because she loved them and hated to upset her family.

  Should have. Could have.

  Hadn’t.

  Now she was alone—just like she’d wanted to be. She’d have to figure things out on her own. Just like she’d planned. She’d have to face things head-on. She’d have to do what she’d been telling her brothers she could for years.

  Her feet slipped and she fell, her hands grasping a branch as she tumbled. She jerked to a stop, body dangling for a split second before she realized she was right above the forest floor. A quick drop and she was down. Breathless. Cold. Alive.