Identity Withheld

by Sandra Orchard

  Davis agreed and pulled down the ball cap. “How do I look?”

  Sam chuckled. “Just keep your back to his car and the marshal won’t know the difference. Jake, give us a good five minutes before you leave. I’ll call if he veers off before then.”

  “Got it.” Jake’s fingers tightened around the keys as he prayed Kara stuck around that long.

  * * *

  Jake turned up his shirt collar against the misty chill as he jogged the last three blocks to his parents’ house. The glow of a computer screen seeped past the slanted blinds of Dad’s office. The rhythmic ping of a sledgehammer slamming metal traveled from the vicinity of the backyard. Jake slowed to a walk as he reached the driveway. If his dad was still working on the fence, hopefully the light in the den meant Kara was still here.

  He joined his dad in the backyard. “Where is everyone?”

  “Your mom took Tommy to the Black Friday sale to get that new action figure he’s been after. Your friend is in my den, if she didn’t sneak out the front while I wasn’t looking. You learn anything I should know?”

  “Not yet. But pray I can convince her to trust me, okay? Because I’ve got a real bad feeling about where she’s heading if she doesn’t let someone in.”

  Dad squeezed Jake’s shoulder. “Lord, give Jake the words that will convince Kara to trust him, to trust You, to know that we sincerely want to help her, to help her stay safe.” Dad’s hold tightened and his voice grew wobbly. “Our lives are in Your hands. We know that. But—” His words faltered and Jake hugged him, struggling to shut out the memories rising like a specter to taunt him.

  “Thanks, Dad. Keep praying.”

  “I will, son.”

  As Jake turned toward the back door, he glimpsed movement at the kitchen window. His heart did a funny staccato in his chest. Had Kara seen him standing in the middle of the yard, praying with his dad?

  He pushed through the door and she sidestepped away from the window, her arms folded over her chest, looking very much as if the last thing she wanted to do was talk.

  “Hey.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “Thanks for staying.”

  Her arms tightened around her middle as she shrugged. “Had nowhere else to go.”

  The light glistened off a single tear clinging to her impossibly long eyelashes, and his heart cracked open.

  “Where’s Sam?”

  “Leading the guy who was looking for you out of town.”

  Her face turned ashen, making her eyes look even bluer, more frightened, more desperately alone. “Who?” she choked out.

  Jake shepherded her into the living room and urged her to sit. He flicked on the switch for the natural-gas fireplace to take the chill out of the room and then sat in the chair he’d pulled close earlier. “He said he was a deputy marshal. Clay Rogers. Do you know him?”

  She shook her head, but from the bob of her throat and the whiter her cheeks paled, he didn’t believe her.

  “Kara, why would a deputy marshal want to speak to you?”

  She averted her attention to the box of Christmas decorations his mom had left on the coffee table. “Does your family put up a real Christmas tree? I always wanted—”

  “Kara?”

  She picked up a strand of silvery garland and twisted it nervously. “Are you sure he was a marshal?”

  “No, but Sam will find out for sure.”

  “Why—” Her voice faltered; she chewed on her bottom lip. “Why didn’t you tell him where I was?”

  Jake reached for her hands. They were like ice. He pried the garland from her hands and rubbed them between his own. “A guy tried to kill you, Kara. I’m not about to tell anyone where to find you. I don’t care if he claims to be the president of the United States.”

  A tiny smile quirked the corners of her lips, sparking a flicker of hope that she’d finally open up to him.

  “Kara, I want to help you if I can. But I can’t protect you if I don’t know who I’m supposed to be protecting you from.”

  Her gaze dropped to their clasped hands, and his heart did a traitorous jig. His instant reaction was to jerk away. How could he hold this woman’s hand so...so intimately, here in the same room where he’d once courted his wife?

  But something deep inside him stayed the reaction. If he was going to convince Kara she could trust him, she needed to see that nothing would make him turn away. Not even the oppressive sense that he was a hypocrite. If he’d been half as determined not to accept April’s pat answers five years ago, she might be alive today. His eyes blurred.

  “It’s not your job to protect me,” Kara whispered, not looking up.

  He eased one hand from hers and lifted her chin until she met his gaze. “Everything in me says otherwise.”

  * * *

  Kara’s heart melted at Jake’s words, at the warmth of his touch. No one had ever felt compelled to be there for her before. Certainly not Clark. Her father hadn’t even been there to celebrate her accomplishments. He’d even missed her high school graduation.

  She recalled the sight of Jake’s dad squeezing his shoulder a few moments ago, of them bowing their heads together in prayer, their hug. Yearning tightened her chest.

  She gave her head a mental shake. She should be grateful that, as absent as he’d been, at least her father had provided for their physical needs. That was more than a lot of people in this world could say. Besides, the Lord was a father to the fatherless.

  The tightness in her chest intensified. These past couple of days even God had felt absent.

  Her gaze skittered over the Bible on the side table, the Bible verse plaque propped on the mantel above the fireplace, Jake’s hands cradling hers just as they’d done when he prayed with her earlier. No, God wasn’t absent. He’d brought her to this place of refuge. Maybe even to a man she could...

  Her heart thundering, she lifted her gaze to Jake’s. “Why do you care what happens to me?”

  He blinked, clearly caught off guard by her question. His lips pressed together as if he might not answer.

  At the apology in his eyes, her insides twisted. Why had she asked? No man would ever care for her that way. And she certainly never intended to pin her hopes for happiness on a man anyway. That was one lesson her parents had taught her well. She tried to ease her hands from his hold.

  Jake held them fast. “I don’t want another woman to die on my watch.”

  She stilled. “You’re talking about your wife.”

  A heavy sigh deflated Jake’s chest. “My wife died because I didn’t pay enough attention to what was going on.”

  Kara squirmed at the admission that made him sound uncomfortably like her absent father.

  “My mother-in-law died at the hands of her abusive husband two months before Tommy was due. My wife took it really hard and went into early labor because of it. Because I failed to convince her mom to press charges in time to save them.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she whispered.

  He rubbed his knuckles over the vicinity of his heart. “Tommy was born healthy and that helped ease April’s grief, but she was really tired, even after days in bed. I was concerned, thought we should go back to the hospital. But it was Thanksgiving and my turn to work. She said it wouldn’t be fair if I called in, said she’d be fine, so I asked my mom to stay with her.” He shook his head, his eyes unfocused. “April didn’t tell me how heavily she was still hemorrhaging. Clots we learned later from not moving around enough. But I should’ve recognized the signs. I shouldn’t have gone off to work. I—”

  Kara pressed her fingers to his lips. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Her heart ached at the anguish on his face. He’d obviously cared deeply for his wife.

  He clasped her fingers, drew her hand back down to her lap. “Please let me help you, Kara. You have a P.I. and a fe
deral marshal and a gunman after you, not to mention the sheriff. How much longer do you think you can stay ahead of them on your own?”

  She should’ve trusted Peter Towns. Whether or not he was familiar with Ray’s cases, he, at least, was a marshal. He’d said he’d come personally to get her. Except...some other guy claiming to be a deputy marshal had shown up at the fire station. Within twenty minutes of her call! Had he sent him, or did their phone breach go a lot deeper than they knew? If she’d told him her location over the phone, the wrong guys could have beaten Peter here.

  Concern radiated from Jake’s gaze. After all he’d said and done, she was sure she could trust him, and right now she didn’t know who else she could trust. And he was right. With so many people looking for her, left to her own devices, she wouldn’t get far before someone found her.

  She pushed to her feet. “Let me show you something.” She marched to his father’s den and opened the computer’s web browser. A few clicks more and the image of the body pulled from the Charles River appeared on the screen.

  Jake sank into the office chair and scanned the article beneath the photograph. His brow furrowed. “This happened two days ago on the other side of the country. What does it have to do with you?”

  She’d been searching the internet for this story, hoping the discovery of a dead adoption agency employee would expedite the arrests, but aside from a vague reference to the kindergarten teacher who’d raised concerns about illegal adoptions happening in Boston, the article was mute on the investigation.

  She pointed to kindergarten teacher on the screen. “That was me.”

  His eyes widened.

  “My real name is Nicole,” she rushed on. “Until three months ago, I lived in Boston.”

  Something akin to pain darkened his eyes.

  She looked away, needing to say it all before she lost her nerve. “I was jogging with my dog in the park and when I stopped to tie my shoe, I overheard two men talking on the other side of some bushes. From the snippets I caught, I was certain they were up to something illegal. So I snapped photos of them with my cell phone.”

  Staring at the body on the computer screen, she rubbed her arms, but couldn’t dispel the chill that crept through her bones or the chilling thought that she was next. “When money and a child exchanged hands, I realized I’d stumbled upon a black market adoption, or worse. But before I could get away, they heard me.”

  She tore her gaze from the image and paced the room. She paused at the bookshelf, at the photograph of Jake’s wife holding her newborn son—the same photo he had in his truck. He had a son. Unlike Clark, he’d at least understand why she’d had to go to the police with the photos. She cleared her throat. “One guy—” She pointed to the small employee picture superimposed over the corner of the image of the dead body. “That guy pulled a gun and ran after me. I managed to get away. I went to my boyfriend’s work. Told him what happened. He told me to go home, to forget about it. He told me that I didn’t want to get messed up in anything like that, that organized crime was behind things like that and that I’d be dead by morning if I went to the police. He actually got mad at me for coming to his work with my dog as if he was afraid I’d led them to his doorstep.” She swiped at a tear, furious that his reaction still hurt so much.

  Fisting her hands, she turned to the window. “I went to the police with the photos and begged them to rescue the child. They’d supposedly been trying for some time to crack a black market adoption ring operating in town. But instead of arresting the men in the photos, they decided to keep them under surveillance, or at least the one they could identify, hoping he’d lead them to the real brains behind the operation.”

  “What about the child?” Jake said vehemently, clearly thinking about his own son.

  “They said they needed to consider the future children they’d be saving, that they’d eventually find this boy, too.”

  Jake scraped his hand over his mouth, shaking his head.

  “They told me not to talk to anyone about what I saw. But the next morning a reporter broke the story on the front page of a Boston newspaper—Kindergarten Teacher Exposes an Alleged Black Market Adoption Ring, the headline said, accompanied by a grainy picture he must’ve snapped of me as I left the police station.”

  “What did the police do?”

  “Nothing at first. I didn’t even know about the article until one of the teachers at school was reading the paper at lunch break. She pointed to the photo and said, ‘Hey, that’s you.’ I tried calling the officer I’d talked to, but was only able to leave a message.” She watched Rusty prance around Jake’s dad in the yard, the pain swelling in her chest. “When I got home that same afternoon, there was a package waiting for me. I—” She choked at the memory. Struggled to stuff back down the pent-up sorrow clambering for release.

  Jake stepped up behind her at the window, turned her into his arms. He didn’t say anything, just held her, and the warmth of his unspoken support melted the ice around her heart.

  “It was a bomb,” she blubbered between sobs. “My—my sweet pup tore into the package. His mischievousness saved my life. But I lost him.”

  Jake stroked her hair. “I’m so sorry, Kara.”

  She rushed on to keep from falling apart completely. “The police put me in the witness security program. Shipped me out here. Told me I couldn’t tell anyone who I really was. And I didn’t. I didn’t. But they still found me.”

  Jake’s arms tightened around her. “It’s going to be okay.”

  And in his protective arms, she could almost believe it. Almost. She pushed her palms against his chest. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

  He cradled her face in his hands, capturing her gaze, his own resolute. “It’s going to be okay,” he repeated, emphasizing every word.

  She pulled his hands from her face, and injected a strong dose of resolve into her backbone. “The friend I tried to call was the marshal who’s supposed to get me out, but they told me he’d been in a car accident. But what if it wasn’t a car accident? What if this guy hurts you, too? You have Tommy to think about.” At the flick of a muscle in his jaw, her voice faltered. “Maybe I should’ve just let that marshal come get me, except...I didn’t know if I could trust him.”

  “Deputy Marshal Clay Rogers?”

  “No, he said his name was Peter Towns. And he said he’d come get me personally. So there’s a good chance that the guy at the fire station was a bad guy.”

  “Sam will be able to figure out that much,” Jake murmured.

  “No!” Kara clasped Jake’s arms. “You can’t tell Sam what I’ve told you. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.”

  Jake’s tender look communicated how much he appreciated her gift of trust. “He can help us connect you to a marshal you can trust.”

  She shook her head. “The more people who know...” She drew in a sharp breath. “Wait. My handler’s true partner would know where I worked. He might ask for me there.”

  “Let’s call your boss, then, and find out.” Jake handed her the phone.

  She tapped in star sixty-seven first to ensure the number wouldn’t show on her boss’s caller ID. Never mind that Jake didn’t think it could be traced back to the house. “Hi, this is Kara,” she said when her boss answered. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to come to work for a few days. My house—”

  He expressed his sympathy for her situation.

  “You know?” Of course, he must’ve recognized her picture from the newspaper.

  “Yes, the sheriff called and a couple of other fellows, too, trying to find out if I knew how to contact you.”

  Kara turned to Jake, the blood turning to ice in her veins. “Two men asked about me?” She hadn’t even realized she’d clutched Jake’s hand until his thumb swept across her wrist, sending a surge of reassuring warmth through her body. She too
k down the information and then relayed it to Jake. “One man called only an hour ago. Didn’t leave a name.”

  “Could’ve been the marshal I spoke to.”

  She handed him the paper she’d written the other man’s name on. “This guy called this morning. Asked my boss to ask me to call him.”

  Jake pulled a business card from his back pocket and compared the names. “That’s the supposed P.I. who stopped by your house this morning.”

  Her legs wobbled. She braced her hands on the desk. “The adoption ring leader must’ve hired him to find me.”

  Jake nudged her into a chair, then whipped the office chair around and, taking a seat, pulled himself up to the computer again. “I asked Sam to see what he could find out about him, but then we got called to the fire station. Let’s see what we can learn from the internet.” He typed in the guy’s name and a slew of sites came up confirming his affiliation with several private investigation associations. Jake typed in an image search next. “Well, that’s the guy. So he is a P.I.”

  Kara picked up the business card Jake had placed on the desk. “Do you think he’d tell me who he’s working for?”

  “You can’t call him. That’s too dangerous. Sam could get a female deputy to call and impersonate you.” He scrubbed his hand down his face, muffling a groan. “Except even that is risky. She’d need to tell him that she got his number from your boss, not me. We don’t want this P.I. to deduce that I’m helping you and track you to here.”

  The sound of scurrying feet and clicking dog nails sounded in the kitchen, headed their way.

  Kara swallowed her objection to involving Sam. “Okay, we’ll do it your way,” she said, a second before Tommy skidded into the den, holding up a superhero action figure.

  “Dad, look what I got! It’s just like Lucas’s.”

  Jake swooped Tommy onto his lap and took a commendable interest in the gadget, considering the slant of their conversation only moments earlier. Rusty planted himself in front of Kara, obviously expecting some attention of his own.