Identity Withheld

by Sandra Orchard

  That much, at least, he believed. But this latest fire had all the earmarks of being another of their elusive firebug’s. That made five in the past nine weeks. Four of those had been on his watch, and this was the only one they’d come close to getting a lead on the culprit...in the person of Kara Grant.

  Jake gritted his teeth. His gut told him she wasn’t the firebug, as he’d initially suspected, but no way was her wild-eyed panic merely a post-traumatic reaction to a random attack. She thought she’d been deliberately targeted.

  If he hadn’t been sure of it before, he was now. As far as he was concerned, she was the key to nailing this guy. He steered her to an overhang, out of the rain. “I volunteered to help with the fire investigation.”

  “Wow, that’s really nice of you.”

  “So I’ll probably see you again.”

  Kara fussed with the zipper on her hoodie, clearly reluctant to meet his gaze.

  “This guy needs to be stopped, Kara. He’s gotten away with torching places across the county for too long.”

  Her attention snapped to his face. “You think tonight’s fire was the work of a serial arsonist?” An odd note of hope rang in her voice, as if she knew it was personal, but hoped it wasn’t.

  “Yes, didn’t the sheriff tell you? That’s why if you think of anything else you heard or saw tonight, we need to know.” He cocked his head. Something about her expression seemed eerily familiar. He blinked, recalling the day his mother-in-law had shown up on their doorstep, the first time she’d left her abusive husband.

  Was that why Kara had resisted being photographed?

  Jake’s concern for her ballooned. He pulled a card from his wallet and jotted his number on the back. “That’s my cell number. Call me if you think of anything that might help. Or if you need anything, okay?”

  Nodding, she tucked the card into her hip pocket. “Sure.” Her gaze strayed to a car pulling out of the parking lot—the car of the guy who’d seemed to be following her. As it disappeared around the corner, her shoulders relaxed. “I really need to go now. My friend’s still waiting for me.”

  Jake caught her hand. “Hey, let me give you a lift.”

  The wild-eyed look returned as she jerked free of his hold. “That’s okay. I can walk.”

  He raised his palms to assure her he meant no harm. “What kind of gentleman would I be if I let you walk in this weather?”

  Doubt flickered in her eyes.

  Had an abusive husband put it there? His gaze flicked to her bare ring finger. Except that a missing ring didn’t mean anything. He traced his own ringless finger, remembering the Thanksgiving night five years ago that he’d lost his wife. He drew in a deep breath.

  After he’d lifted Kara into the ambulance earlier, he hadn’t been able to walk away as he normally would have. Not when her gaze kept straying his way, as if he was the one person who made her feel safe. His wife used to tease him about his hero complex.

  Except in the end, of all people, it’d been her he hadn’t been able to save.

  “I prefer to walk, thanks,” Kara said, already backing away.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Her tiny smile nuzzled into his chest as palpably as his five-year-old son at bedtime. “Yes. Thank you for your concern.” With that she ducked around the side of the building and jogged toward the street.

  For half a second, he debated letting her go, but if he was right about Kara’s situation being the same as his mother-in-law’s, he couldn’t just walk away. Not when his mother-in-law’s fatal mistake had been agreeing to meet the abusive husband she’d fled from. Bracing himself against the staggering regret that piggybacked that thought, Jake hopped into his truck and followed Kara. He tried to stay far enough back to not spook her, but twice she threw a glance over her shoulder and quickened her pace. When she veered into the coffee shop’s parking lot, he pulled onto the side street flanking it.

  The rain had stopped, but that didn’t make the dimly lit shop, with its tired awning and ancient-looking specials scrawled on the front window, look any more inviting.

  A lone guy, shaggy hair, leather jacket, sat at a booth next to the window, his back to it as he chatted with the waitress. Was he the friend she was supposed to meet? What kind of jerk wouldn’t walk the two blocks to meet her at the hospital?

  Her steps faltered as she neared the door.

  Jake gripped his truck’s door handle, ready to move in if she needed help.

  The waitress and customer looked Kara’s way as she pushed through the shop’s door. Without moving any closer, Kara chatted with them a moment, then took a seat at the counter.

  Okay, not what he expected. Had she been feeding him a line about meeting a friend here? He scanned the deserted parking lot. Or had her friend given up waiting for her?

  Jake released his grip on the door handle and returned his hands to the steering wheel. Maybe he’d let his imagination get the better of him about the danger she was in. For all he knew, she’d been petrified that he was still trying to pin the arson on her.

  He could see only her back through the window, but there was no mistaking the way her shoulders slumped. If her friend didn’t show soon, he could happen in and offer her a lift. With her house burned, she was going to need to find a place to crash for the night. Hadyn didn’t have a hotel, and the only one in Stalwart was likely already booked solid for the holiday. And chances were she hadn’t escaped the house with her wallet to pay for a cab to get her any farther.

  His cell phone rang. “Hi, Mom. Is everything okay with Tommy?”

  “Yes, but he insists you said he could wait up for you. How much longer do you think you’ll be?”

  Jake blew out a breath. As much as he wanted to make sure Kara was really meeting a friend, his son was his first priority, especially tonight of all nights. “Not much longer. I have to check in on one of my men at the hospital and then I’ll head straight home.” He started his truck and gave Kara one last glance.

  The smile she’d given him when she’d thanked him for caring flickered through his thoughts. Given time, he was pretty sure he could coax her to be more forthcoming. Except they didn’t have any time to spare.

  Up until tonight, their arsonist had struck every other Friday, and he’d torched vacant buildings, abandoned sheds. The only lives threatened had been firefighters’. But tonight, the stakes had escalated.

  Kara could have died in that fire.

  With lights on in the upper part of the house and her car in the driveway, there was no way the guy who torched the place couldn’t have known that someone was in there. But did he know that someone was Kara?

  * * *

  Where was the marshal? Kara had almost lost her supper when two steps into the coffee shop she’d yelped, “I made it,” and the man who’d turned in the booth to gape at her had been a stranger. Part of her had wanted to bolt right back outside, but instead she’d shaken her hood off her head and griped about how wet it was outside, then sank onto one of the stools lining the long counter.

  The waitress pushed a coffee-stained menu her way. “What can I get you, sugar?” she drawled, sounding as if she belonged in Texas, not Washington State.

  Kara dug into her pocket and came up with a wrinkled buck and a couple of quarters. “Uh, just a coffee, please. Black.” She pushed the money across the counter as the waitress filled a white mug from a pot that had probably been sitting around all day. “I guess you haven’t had too many people in tonight?” Kara fished.

  “Not a soul until Bruiser—” the waitress hitched her elbow in the other patron’s direction “—stopped by to keep me company.” Returning the coffeepot to the burner, she glanced at the clock. “You only just made it. Be closing in twenty minutes.”

  Kara swallowed a mouthful of the bitter brew. Not a soul? She twisted on he
r stool and scanned the dimly lit lot through the main windows. Would Ray have waited for her outside? “No one all night?” she clarified.

  “Nope, not since before supper.”

  Before the fire, too. What did she do now? He should’ve been here hours ago. Did he get her message and go straight to the hospital? But then why not phone to let her know?

  The waitress deposited the money in the till, then looked curiously at a business card and pushed it back across the counter. “This must be yours.” She resumed her conversation with Bruiser.

  Kara glanced at the card, realized it was the one Jake had given her and breathed in his lingering scent—as calming and steadfast as a pine forest. He’d looked ruggedly handsome in his jeans and flannel-lined jacket. She traced her thumb over the number he’d scrawled on the card. Had he volunteered to assist the fire investigation so he’d have an excuse to see her again?

  If only...things were different.

  If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

  How many times had she recited that nursery rhyme to her students to encourage them to act instead of sitting around dreaming?

  If only she were free to act...

  She stuffed the card back into her pocket and twisted the mug of coffee between her chilled hands, the brew as black as her future seemed. As much as she wanted to believe that she’d merely been the victim of a random arsonist attack, she didn’t think she’d imagined the guy in the parking lot coming after her, or that nurse’s less-than-subtle attempt to stab her with a needle.

  And what made her think Jake could be trusted?

  Seemed way too convenient how he kept showing up when she was in trouble, acting like someone she could depend on. Hadn’t she once thought Clark was a guy she could depend on?

  Look how wrong that perception had turned out. They’d dated for six months, but he’d walked away the minute the Boston paper had hit the stands with a front-page story on an unidentified kindergarten teacher who’d exposed an illegal adoption ring. Unidentified, that was, if the reader didn’t look too closely at the grainy picture of her that accompanied the article. Worse than that, he’d all but said “I told you so” after a bomb had nearly killed her later that same day. He’d never cared about her. Only himself. Just like her father.

  No, Jake would turn out to be like every other man in her life—never there when she needed him most.

  Not even the marshal showed up when needed. And he was paid to protect her!

  She closed her eyes and let out a bone-weary sigh. Lord, can I count on You?

  She sipped her coffee and slipped her phone from her pocket. No missed messages.

  The coffee curdled in her stomach. She was wet and cold, had no money, no ID, and in twenty minutes—correction, seventeen minutes—she’d have nowhere to go. The last place she wanted to show her face again was at the hospital. The whole way to the coffee shop, she’d had the creepy feeling someone was following her. She glanced at the window and shrank at the realization of how easily someone could be watching her even now. The thought of going back out there without the marshal made her stomach lurch.

  She thumbed a text message to Ray. I’m at the coffee shop. Where are you?

  She set the phone on the counter and forced down another gulp of coffee as the clock’s second hand ticked its way around the clock face. After four minutes went by, she punched in his number. It immediately went to voice mail. Maybe he’d been trying to call her. She waited another three minutes. Checked her messages.

  Nothing.

  The screen on a small TV mounted in the corner above the counter flicked to an image of a bloated body being pulled from the Charles River in Boston. She choked on her coffee as the camera zoomed in on the man’s face. She couldn’t believe it! It was the man she’d seen collecting money for the child he’d handed over. If the adoption ring would kill its own employee...

  Her heart hammered in her chest as she punched Ray’s number into her phone again. Again, it went straight to voice mail, and a scarier thought gripped her. What if they’d gotten to him, too? Gotten his phone? Heard her messages?

  They would’ve guessed she was at the hospital anyway, but now they’d know she was at a coffee shop, and there weren’t that many of those in a town the size of Hadyn. Not to mention, they’d have her number, be able to track her phone.

  She turned it over in her hand. She had to get rid of it.

  Snatching up her spoon, she pried open the back of the phone, pulled the battery. But what if that wasn’t enough? She had no idea how GPS tracking worked. She slipped into the bathroom, tossed the phone into the trash can, stuffed crumpled swaths of paper towel in over top.

  Only...now, Ray had no way to reach her.

  It couldn’t be helped. She finger-combed her hair, scrubbed smudges of soot from her face. When she was far away from here, she’d find a pay phone and try calling him again.

  Except what if they were already outside waiting for her?

  A high-pitched scream pierced the air.

  “Down on the floor,” a deep male voice barked, followed by the crash of dishes.

  Terror squeezed her chest. Oh, dear God, please don’t let them find me.

  THREE

  After checking on his injured firefighter in the E.R., Jake hurried back out to his truck to get home to his son. The poor little guy wouldn’t be happy to learn his dad had volunteered tomorrow’s day off to consult on the arson investigation. The least Jake owed him was some cuddle time tonight. Kara’s frightened face flashed through his thoughts as he stopped at the hospital parking lot’s exit. He still had an uneasy feeling about the supposed friend she’d gone to meet. It would take only a couple of minutes to stop by the coffee shop to see if he, or she, had shown.

  An ambulance whipped out of the next lane and veered across his path, sirens blaring.

  Jake glanced after it and his heart rammed into his throat at the sight of swirling emergency lights two blocks down. He peeled his truck out after the ambulance. Cruisers blocked the streets around the coffee shop. Jake slammed the steering wheel. He never should have left Kara there. She’d been too edgy.

  Jake screeched to a stop, half on the sidewalk, just outside the roadblock and cut around the cars on foot. Two deputies hauled a handcuffed punk from the asphalt. Another recovered a sawed-off shotgun—oh, God, please not again. The deputy waved the paramedics into the shop and Jake raced after them.

  Someone slammed him into the side of a cruiser. “You can’t go in there.”

  He strained to see around the deputy who’d body checked him. “My friend’s in there.” He spotted the sheriff giving orders to one of the deputies outside. “Sheriff, is Kara okay?”

  The sheriff headed Jake’s way. “This has been one wild night. There must be a full moon behind all those clouds. What are you doing here?”

  “Kara was in the shop. Is she okay?”

  “The woman from the fire?”

  “Yeah.” Jake jutted his chin toward the suspect—a mercenary type sporting military fatigues, a shaved head and the muscles to back up his threats. “Is that our arsonist?” And if his guess was right, an ex-husband or ex-boyfriend, too.

  “You say she was here?”

  Jake’s heart jackhammered his ribs. “She’s not now? Was there another guy? Did he take her?”

  “Slow down.” The sheriff waved off the deputy who’d manhandled him and led Jake toward the front door of the shop. “The waitress said there’d been another customer, but that she disappeared before the gunman came in.”

  “What do you mean disappeared?”

  “She thought she went to the bathroom. Except she isn’t there now. But the window was unlatched.”

  “So she escaped?” Except that meant she was out there alone. Unprotected. “You need men searching for her
. A K-9 unit.”

  “We don’t have one, but trust me, we’ve got men combing the streets. Seems your first instinct about her at the fire might’ve been right. Sounds as if she could’ve been the gunman’s accomplice. The waitress said she’d been texting just before the gunman stormed in.”

  Jake snatched his cell phone from his hip. “You got her number?”

  “Yeah.” The sheriff flipped open his notebook and recited the number as Jake punched it in.

  “Her friend was supposed to meet her here.” The phone rang and rang. Voice mail never picked up. He clicked it off. “She’s not answering.”

  The sheriff opened the shop door and motioned to the paramedics tending to a guy on the floor. “That the friend she came to see?”

  Jake recognized the victim’s leather coat, longish hair from the coffee shop window. At the sight of the man’s bloodied face, Jake almost heaved. That could’ve been Kara.

  “He wrestled the gunman to the ground while the waitress called 9-1-1.” The sheriff let out a soft clicking sound. “But the gunman got in a couple of nasty gun butts to the head.”

  Jake hadn’t gotten the impression this guy was who Kara came to see, but... “Sounds as though he might’ve been.” Kara had said he’d keep her safe. Apparently she’d been right. Jake hoped.

  The sheriff flipped to a fresh page in his notebook. “So what am I supposed to make of the woman being at two of my crime scenes in one night? If she was the target and not the instigator, why didn’t she ask for protection?”

  Jake’s gut tightened. He could think of one reason. Maybe whoever Kara was running from was good at convincing the authorities he was an upstanding guy. Just like his father-in-law. Cop by day, abuser by night.

  A waitress hovered over the paramedics, mascara streaking her cheeks.

  “You know the victim?” Jake asked her.

  She nibbled nervously on her fingernails. “He’s my boyfriend.”

  The sheriff’s gaze snapped to Jake. “You sure you’ve got your facts straight?”

  Jake refocused on the waitress. “The customer you mentioned to the sheriff, was she wearing a dark hoodie, about five-four, shoulder-length brown hair?”