Flirting with Disaster & Fanning the Flames

by Victoria Dahl

  “Why?”

  “A night of illicit love.”

  Jill set the glass down hard. “I knew it! You two were throwing off sparks from day one.”

  “There’s a little chemistry.”

  “So what is there to talk about? Was it weird?”

  “No, it wasn’t weird!”

  Jill arched an eyebrow as she refilled her glass and poured one for Isabelle, too. “I don’t know what you people are into.”

  Isabelle was laughing again, half at Jill and half in delight because she was talking about Tom. That was a sad state to be in. “The problem is that there’s actually a lot of chemistry. And it wasn’t weird at all. And I just wanted...some confirmation, maybe? Some reassurance. You like him, right?” Before Jill could answer, Isabelle held up her hands. “Oh, God,” she groaned. “I don’t even know why I’m asking. It’s only temporary.” What was she thinking? That Tom could be her boyfriend? That it would be safe because she’d see him only once a month so he’d never find out more about her?

  Jill ignored her outburst. “I like Tom a lot. He’s a good guy. I can tell.”

  “Maybe he just makes a good first impression.”

  “Maybe. But I’ve met a lot of people in my life, and I’ve got good instincts. I grew up black and poor. Cops are not my favorite people in the world, but I liked him right away. Unlike, say, that asshole FBI guy who came knocking today.”

  Isabelle’s body went numb. She almost dropped her glass of water. “The FBI?”

  “Didn’t he come by your house? I saw him head over there.”

  “No. He... I went snowshoeing today. He must have missed me.” She pictured him trying to look through her window, and her pulse picked up. “Why would the FBI be here?”

  “Same reason everyone’s here, I guess. He was asking a lot of questions about who lives around here, and he was interested in the summer cabins. Frankly, I got the idea he was checking on Tom’s work. I guess those two agencies don’t like each other.”

  Isabelle nodded, hoping her face wasn’t as pale as it felt. “So he wasn’t asking anything odd?”

  “Odd?” Jill frowned at her, but she shook her head. “Not really. Asked how long I’d known the neighbors and all that. He asked me about an older man. Maybe it was someone related to the guy arrested this morning.”

  “Right.” A man. Could have been any man.

  “He asked about a woman, too. I hadn’t heard there were any women involved, but I guess they must be married and have families, after all. It makes sense.”

  A woman. Sweat prickled her brow. “What was the FBI agent’s name?”

  “I don’t remember. You should ask Tom. Why?”

  Shit. Why, indeed? “I’m just...worried he was rude to you. You said you didn’t like him.”

  Jill clicked her tongue. “No, he was only smarmy. Glad-handing me, pretending we were friends. I don’t trust that.”

  “All right. I’ll keep that in mind.” Isabelle briefly considered running back home and packing a bag just in case this was about her. But that made no sense, did it? How would the FBI have found her after all this time?

  But she knew, of course. Tom. Or one of his team. Mary, maybe. But that didn’t make sense, either. They were US Marshals. If they knew who she was, they’d simply take her in. She was being paranoid.

  “I’ll leave you alone,” Isabelle said, spinning to rush toward the door. “I’m sorry I interrupted.”

  “We can talk more about Tom tomorrow, if you want,” Jill offered.

  Isabelle was actually confused for a moment, forgetting why she’d come here in the first place. “No big deal,” she finally said. “I was just being neurotic. It’s a casual thing with him.”

  “If you say so.”

  She’d tugged on her boots and was out the door in ten seconds flat. Jill turned on the porch light, startling Isabelle, and she suddenly felt far more vulnerable than she had on the walk over.

  Practically leaping down the stairs, she rushed into the deep snow, trying to escape the reach of the lightbulb. Someone might be watching. Not an unknown survivalist, but an FBI agent who knew exactly who she was.

  Instead of marching straight across the rocky field that separated their houses, Isabelle moved toward the back of Jill’s house and ducked into the trees just behind it. She stopped there, back pressed to a tree, eyes closed, trying to catch her breath.

  What if Tom had realized who she was? No. Tom wouldn’t have lied to her this whole time. He couldn’t have.

  Except that he could have. Everyone was capable of deception. She’d learned that from her own father. And she was hardly an exception. Her entire identity was a lie.

  She had to be logical, so Isabelle ignored the pain that twisted through her stomach and considered the possibility that Tom knew. He would’ve contacted the FBI, and they could’ve told him to back off. They wanted her father, after all. They might want to watch and wait, set up another sting to see if Malcolm Pozniak got in touch. Or maybe they suspected he was living somewhere nearby, leaning on his daughter as his contact with the world.

  As if she would’ve done that. Her dad had confessed to her. That he’d done lots of bad things. That he’d shot that officer.

  She might have forgiven him eventually. Even though he’d been her hero, and everything about that had been a terrible, world-shifting lie, maybe she could have forgiven him and loved him and gone to prison to visit on holidays.

  Maybe. If he hadn’t run and left her to face the very men he’d been afraid of.

  They’d started visiting right away. Men she’d known her whole life; men who’d patted her on the head and called her sweetie. They’d pretended to be checking on her at first, but that hadn’t lasted long. Soon enough they’d started pressuring her, and then threatening, and finally she’d come home from class to find that the house she’d grown up in had been ransacked.

  She hadn’t called 911. She’d been too scared to. Instead, she’d called her fiancé’s father. She’d trusted him to take care of her.

  What a helpless idiot she’d been.

  Isabelle opened her eyes. All she could see was falling snow and three or four trees in front of her. Which meant that was all anyone else could see. She was being stupid again. Panicked. She was right back to that fear she’d felt fourteen years before.

  “Fuck this,” she whispered, glad no one else could hear how pitiful it sounded.

  She was a grown woman now. A woman who’d stood alone and made her own life. A woman who’d walked away from everything she’d ever known.

  She could take care of this problem, too. She’d figure out what was going on, and she’d fucking deal with it.

  Isabelle set off through the snow, determined not to be afraid of her own house or the night that surrounded it. If the FBI had found her, then she’d face the consequences of what she’d done. Maybe it would be a relief.

  She’d spent many sleepless nights wishing she could go back and make a different choice. Turn over the evidence her dad had asked her to hide, tell the truth and then disappear.

  But she hadn’t known whom to trust. What if she’d taken the gun to the wrong person? What if she’d told her story to yet another dirty cop and found herself dead for her troubles?

  No, running hadn’t been the wrong choice, but she wouldn’t do it the same way again.

  At least the snow was a comfort tonight. She stopped a few dozen feet from her front steps and looked around. No one had been here since this afternoon. No one was hiding on her dark porch, waiting for her to approach.

  She was alone. Exactly the way she needed to be. And if she wanted Tom here so much that it brought tears to her eyes, that was nothing but the aftermath of shock and fear.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  TOM NOTICED THE fed in the suit right away. The guy was standing a few feet from the meeting room door, a visitor’s pass clipped to his expensive suit jacket. Not the normal FBI agent uniform, and Tom might have mistaken him for an a
ttorney, but he’d looked up Agent Gates’s record, and Tom recognized the face.

  Tom wrapped up his phone call with Mary as he walked past Gates to unlock the door, trying to buy himself a minute to process this. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all.

  He felt the FBI agent come up behind him, but Tom didn’t turn around.

  “Agent Gates,” he said as he opened the door and walked in. He had to acknowledge the guy, but he didn’t have to be polite, which was a good thing, because right now Tom wanted to grab him by his expensive suit and throw him against the wall.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Marshal Duncan,” Gates said, following Tom to the conference table.

  Judging from the guy’s ingratiating tone, he was holding out a hand and expecting Tom to turn and welcome him at any second. Tom didn’t look at him.

  Instead, he busied himself with unpacking files from his case and getting out his laptop. He was angry and alarmed. He couldn’t let a hint of that show.

  But irritation? He could show all of that he wanted. “Please tell me you didn’t fly all the way to Wyoming just because I glanced at a case.”

  “I did,” Gates said.

  Tom finally looked up. Gates looked to be in his late thirties, but he was still lean and in good shape. His brown hair was clipped short and styled to hide the fact that it was starting to thin on top. His eyebrows were suspiciously neat. Waxed, probably. Tom didn’t like anything about him. “I told you it was nothing,” Tom said.

  “Well, I decided to poke around anyway.”

  “And I assume you’ve found nothing, since there’s nothing to find. You’ve wasted your time, Agent, not to mention a lot of money. But by all means, have a seat.”

  Gates smiled and eased smoothly into a chair. “I like to see things for myself. Get a feel for a place. You know how it is.”

  “Sure,” Tom said, taking a chair on the opposite side of the table. “But I’m a little too busy with an actual case to show you around town.”

  Gates waved a hand. “I’ve shown myself around. Talked to a few people.”

  “Good for you.”

  “There’s one woman I haven’t managed to track down yet. Up near where you’re stationed at the judge’s place. She’s the right age and description for Pozniak’s daughter.”

  Tom leaned forward, steepling his hands and letting irritation show on his face instead of alarm. “The daughter?” Tom frowned. “If I remember correctly, she was a white brunette who’d be in her thirties now? That covers a hell of a lot of women in Wyoming. Good luck.”

  “She’s got a wide mouth. Kind of a big nose. Not bad-looking, though.”

  Tom shot the guy an impatient look. “I assume you showed a picture around and didn’t get a hit?” He held his breath, waiting for an answer.

  Gates leaned back and eyed Tom carefully. “Not yet. If they’re here, I don’t want to alert them. These people know how to disappear. I’m not going to give anyone a chance to give them a signal. I pretended I was after someone associated with the Stevensons. Hope you don’t mind. It seemed a natural cover.”

  Thank God. Isabelle wasn’t exactly active on the Jackson social scene, but in a town this size, someone was bound to recognize her. “If you want to go on a wild-goose chase, there’s nothing I can do to stop you, but I don’t have time for this shit. I’ve got real work to do, and now you’re getting in the middle of it.”

  “You mean babysitting a judge?”

  “Yeah, it’s nothing like the exciting search for a long-lost woman who isn’t here and never even committed a crime.”

  “You don’t know that,” Agent Gates countered.

  But Tom did. She hadn’t killed anyone. She wasn’t hiding anyone. The worst she’d likely done was not rat out her own father.

  He sat back in his chair. “We’re on the hunt for an armed and dangerous man here, Agent Gates. You go knocking on strange doors or poking around property that doesn’t belong to you, and you’re likely to get shot, either by Saul Stevenson or one of my team or a nervous property owner. So why don’t you just get out of my hair?”

  Gates shrugged. “I’ve got a job to do, too. No reason for that to interfere.”

  “Really? You were the one who drove up to the summer cabins on White Ridge Road, I assume? My men and I wasted two hours checking out your tracks and following up with the property owners. I’ll be letting your boss know.”

  “You think he gives a shit that a deputy marshal has a bug up his ass? Look...” Gates smiled and shot Tom a wink, as if they were old friends. “I’m sorry I stepped on your toes. There have been a lot of shady dealings around this case. You tripped a wire, and I had to come out and take a look around.”

  “I told you that was happenstance.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I hang around today and get a good look at the folks in the courthouse, right? I mean, a survivalist compound in the middle of nowhere would be a great place for a fugitive to hide.”

  Tom held the man’s gaze, trying not to let his relief show. Gates suspected that Tom had seen someone associated with Pozniak. But he didn’t know where. Around the judge’s home or at the courthouse or just at a restaurant in town. And here in town would be a target-rich environment. “If you think I’m lying to you, then be my guest. Waste all the time you want.”

  “It’s not that I think you’re lying,” Gates said with a smile. “But I don’t know you, do I?” His smile only got friendlier. Tom didn’t like this asshole at all. The problem was he couldn’t actually call the guy’s boss and complain. Not if it would later come out that Tom had recognized and protected Beth Pozniak.

  He stood, forcing Gates to stand, too. Tom waved him to the door, trying to look only mildly annoyed. But as soon as Gates crossed the room and closed the door, Tom grabbed his phone and texted Isabelle.

  You might want to avoid the courthouse area today. We’ve really got it locked down around here and traffic is a mess.

  A few seconds dragged into the eternity of a few minutes before she finally responded.

  No problem. I’m painting all day.

  He hesitated a moment.

  Can I come by tonight? Maybe bring dinner?

  It took her even longer to reply this time. What if she’d already made plans? What if she was going out with her friends and she ran into Gates? Tom couldn’t let that happen. He’d have to tell her the truth.

  But his phone finally buzzed.

  Yes. Let me know when you’re on your way.

  Tom threw himself into the morning with a vengeance. He sent new alerts about Saul Stevenson to every sheriff’s office and police department in the state. He sent a press release to every media outlet. He had one of his men stop at every motel and open campsite in Jackson Hole. He sent another guy to check on each closed campsite he could get to.

  Tom had to get this case under control so he could fix this thing with Isabelle. And something was bound to go down with Stevenson soon. The prosecution had just rested. Ephraim Stevenson’s defense would likely be done in three or four days, and then the case would go to the jury.

  There wasn’t a lot of question about the conviction. The evidence was substantial, and Saul was smart enough to know that. He wasn’t going to hang back and hope for acquittal.

  Of course, there was always the chance that Saul Stevenson would act after a conviction, trying to grab his brother during the transfer to prison, but Tom wanted to get the guy before he got anywhere near innocent civilians.

  A few random leads came in before lunch and a few more around noon, but they were scattered. Stevenson couldn’t have been sighted near Gillette at the same time he’d been spotted near Laramie. The leads were shit. And Tom was pushing this too hard. Concentrating on tracking down Stevenson, when he should have kept his focus on protecting the judge. He was trying to force it because of a personal distraction.

  At two o’clock, just as he was deciding he was being irresponsible, Tom got a real lead. A forest ranger had followed some vehi
cle tracks in the snow to a high-altitude campground that was closed for winter. Someone had spent the night there, and it had been someone with enough skill to hunt and kill and cook a rabbit in the middle of a snowstorm.

  The site was only sixty miles outside Jackson. It was a possibility. But only a possibility. Maybe just a poacher. Or a modern-day mountain man. Or maybe a guy trying to stay off the main roads while he worked his way toward the Jackson federal courthouse.

  Tom didn’t want to spread the team too thin, so he tempered his excitement and sat down with a list of the personnel at his disposal. His first priority was the judge and the judge’s family then the prosecution team. The courthouse itself had bailiffs as protection, though he’d hardly leave it vulnerable.

  “What do you want to do?” Mary asked.

  Tom looked up to see her standing in the doorway, arms crossed and a frown in place that looked more angry than thoughtful. He’d been texting her updates. “I want to go after this bastard,” he said.

  “Then let’s do it.”

  “I’m working out the numbers now.”

  “You got a hunch?”

  “I do,” he muttered.

  “Then fuck the numbers. Court just adjourned for the day.”

  Tom looked up from the paper. “Seriously?”

  “Yep. The defense made a motion, and the judge wants time to research. He can do his thinking at home. Let’s get him settled and hit the road.”

  “Fucking A,” Tom said, folding the paper in half and stuffing it in the shredder. But he narrowed his eyes at Mary. “Why don’t you look happy?”

  She shrugged. “I’m pissed at you for interfering with my life again.”

  “What the hell did I do?”

  “You remember that little rebound relationship you assured me I was old enough to navigate?”

  “I did not use the word old,” he clarified, “but yes.”

  “Fine. I admit that you got me thinking about it. That alone pisses me off. You know I hate letting you in my head. But while I was out this morning, I drove by her place, thinking maybe I’d give her a heads-up about what was going on.”