by Alison Kent
She smacked his shoulder and stuck close.
Soon enough, King picked up the chatter and realized the driver was indeed DOA. That put the accident ball back into Tuzzi’s court.
King couldn’t see McKie working with anyone but a pro, and a pro would’ve been aware of what was coming at him instead of being too singularly focused to avoid head-butting Jarrell’s truck.
The single trooper on scene had pulled the driver’s wallet from his pocket, and the name Deshon Coral whispered through the growing crowd. King tried to move in to hear more, but Cady held him fast in his tracks.
The second he looked at her he knew something had soured. “What’s wrong?”
“Deshon Coral. I know that name. I’m pretty sure he was at school when I was.”
That would put him at school with Tuzzi and Malling and the rest. It would also hammer the final nail in the coffin of who King was going to hold responsible for Cady suffering through today’s hell.
Just then, the tone of the chatter changed, growing louder, more agitated. Heads began to turn, attention shifting from the accident to him and Cady.
“Uh-oh,” he heard her say, and quickly told her, “Don’t mention recognizing Deshon Coral’s name,” and she came back with, “Yeah, I’d already decided that for myself.”
Notebook in hand, the Statie left the body to be guarded by another local and walked toward them. King steeled himself and got a good grip on Cady’s hand. “Morning, folks. I hear you may have seen this car before.”
King nodded. “It looks like the one that ran us off the state road yesterday. A couple of miles back. That’s why we’re here. My SUV’s in Jarrell Bradley’s shop.”
“Cushing Township isn’t used to this activity, and here we have the same problem twice in two days? Not to mention the issue of a ticking package that seems to have produced a whole lot of smoke but no fire?” the trooper added, glancing toward the B&B and back. “Anything you have to tell me about what’s going on?”
“If we knew anything, we’d be happy to.”
“Then you have no reason to believe someone’s got it in for you or your girl here?”
King’s first response had been half truth, half lie. He wouldn’t be happy about revealing anything. But getting around this second question was going to be trickier. His experience with the judicial and penal systems had taught him to watch every word coming out of his mouth.
“Until today, I wouldn’t have thought anyone was out to get us, but even if that’s the case, I can’t give you a reason.” Not without Fitz giving him the okay.
At the sound of sirens, the three of them turned to see three state police vehicles, two cars, and a Jeep speeding toward them. The Jeep continued on to the B&B, a crime scene van following, while the cars stopped just outside the circle of accident onlookers.
While the newly arrived state troopers herded the crowd away and barricaded the immediate area, a dark, unmarked sedan pulled to a stop behind them, looking as government issue as the man who climbed from behind the wheel.
“It’s about time,” Cady muttered under her breath as King watched Fitzwilliam McKie walk toward them.
The trooper who’d been taking King’s statement, held up his pen and said, “Don’t go far. Either of you. I’m not done with you two yet.”
“No problem, sir,” King said, figuring what sticking there was to be done was out of his hands.
Fitz flashed that same impressive badge for the Staties, which got him inside the barricades. He was decked out in better than government threads, the long tails of his greatcoat flapping behind him and giving him an authoritative edge. Must be what they meant by clothes making the man…
“You two okay?” he asked, his gaze furiously intense and flicking back and forth between them. “Is there somewhere we can go to talk?”
This man had left them hanging for twenty-four hours during which two attempts had been made on Cady’s life. King could give him lessons in furiously intense. “Talk? You drop in and out of our lives on your schedule, fuck what we’re going through, and that’s all we get? No explanation as to where the hell you’ve been?”
“I couldn’t get here yesterday. An unavoidable delay. I did make the necessary calls to be sure you were taken care of. And if there’s somewhere we can go to talk, we’ll get things sorted out.”
“Did you send the package?” Cady asked before King could mention it.
“Package? No. I haven’t sent you anything. And just to be clear? I won’t.”
King gave the other man a look that conveyed a whole lot of the fury he was feeling. “That’s what I was thinking. Besides, smoke bombs don’t seem your style.”
“Smoke bombs? Not the real thing?” Cady and King both nodded, and Fitz glanced down the street to where the crime scene team was at work at the B&B. “Did it say who it was from? The package? Or who delivered it?”
“A courier service out of Reading brought it. The return address on the label had the logo of my insurance company. A local branch,” King told him, watching with interest as the troopers with real guns and real uniforms and real badges continued to give Fitz deference.
It was definitely an unexpected scenario, and left King even more uncertain about who he was dealing with—though the seal and signature on the agent’s badge were obviously good enough for government work—an irony that he mused on with no small amount of derision.
“Since someone did call the body shop, we weren’t sure if the delivery from the insurance people was legit or bogus. In fact, we’re having a lot of trouble figuring out what’s legit and what’s bogus. Care to help?”
“That’s why I’m here, King. You find us a place to talk,” Fitz said, “and I’ll see what I can do.”
Twenty-eight
“So what you’re saying is that you had nothing to do with the accidents or the smoke bomb. That the trooper who stopped yesterday was the real deal. That this was all directed by Tuzzi and executed by Malling, who did a really piss poor job hiring a competent driver.”
Fitz nodded at Cady’s rambling and inquisitive statement while pouring cream from a tiny stoneware pitcher into his coffee, adding sugar from a matching bowl.
He continued to stir long after the mixture was a creamy tan. “The troopers today were the real deal, too. The only thing I’ve done was call the garage after getting word of where the Hummer had been taken.”
“That’s some network you’re running there,” King said, pulling his cell from his waistband, and tapping the touch screen. “Jarrell barely had the Hummer unhooked when he got the call. Strange that I didn’t get one. This thing seems to be working okay.”
The three of them were camped around a table in the far corner of McCluskey’s dining room. It was, Cady mused, much like a reenactment of the morning they’d huddled over tea and coffee in the hospital cafeteria after King had lost his first Hummer in the explosion.
His new one wasn’t lost, only out of commission, and the restaurant, opened for breakfast, was much more inviting than the cafeteria had been. But none of that made Cady feel any better now than she had then.
If anything was lost, it was her faith in McKie. He hadn’t contacted them following the accident. Yes, he’d called the mechanic to make sure King’s vehicle was put to the front of the repair line, but that didn’t do diddly-squat to soothe the two human beings involved.
All she’d wanted was some small reassurance, a word, a quick phone call to let her and King know that Fitz was aware of what they were going through.
Was that too much to ask from the man who’d asked her to risk her life? The fact that he hadn’t shown an inkling of human compassion made it harder to trust him now.
It also made continuing to put her life in his hands next to impossible. “That’s all we wanted, Fitz. A word, you know? We can’t do this for you if you’re not willing to understand what it’s like in our shoes.”
Fitz set his fists on either side of his coffee mug, clenched and unclench
ed them, and stared down between them instead of looking up. His words, when they came, were glacial, and almost cruel. “I thought you were here because you were tired of being hunted like a dog.”
Cady swore King was going to come out of his chair. He was sitting beside her, and the blocky legs scraped as he scooted back on the hardwood floor. She laid a hand on his wrist to keep him in place. Or at least to ask him to stay. She wasn’t strong enough to keep him anywhere.
Then she leaned across the table toward Fitz, forcing his gaze up to hers with nothing but her will. “I can handle being hunted like a dog as long as I know you’re just as aggressively dogging the heels of these creeps. If I die, they die. That I can accept.”
This time, King wouldn’t stay put. He jerked away from where she held him, and with what sounded to Cady like a feral growl, surged from his seat and headed for the restaurant’s front door. She watched him go, felt a knot of sadness grow in her chest, her heartache choking off her words.
She returned to her own coffee and cinnamon roll, digging her fork into the latter and not looking up until there was nothing left but crumbs and ribbons of sugary cinnamon glaze on the plate. Then she set the fork beside it, and finished off her coffee.
Once there was nothing left for her to eat or drink and no reason to avoid the man she was sitting with, she folded her hands in her lap, sniffed, and looked up. “This wasn’t what was supposed to happen, McKie.”
“I know that—” was all he got out before she cut him off.
“Malling was supposed to scare me or haunt me or whatever, and report back to Tuzzi on whether or not I was sufficiently freaked. You were supposed to follow that information, follow Malling, listen in on his calls with your satellite or whatever, and find out how he’s getting his information into prison without making a personal visit.”
“I know that, Cady,” he said, though he still hadn’t moved his fists.
“Well then, Fitzwilliam. In case you didn’t notice, the guy dead behind the wheel of that car? He was not Jason Malling.”
Fitz finally moved, sat back in his chair. “But he was someone Malling knows. Someone you know.”
Had he been using his satellite to listen in on her conversations with King, too? “I don’t know him. I know of him. Or knew of him. But just his name, that was all. And that was a long time ago.”
“You may have known him then, but he came after you twice in two days,” he said, as if she needed the reminder. “He came after you now, not a long time ago. Don’t you want to know why?”
“I know why. Don’t I?” Deshon had been connected to Malling. What else was there to know? And then it occurred to her…“Wait. You have no idea who Deshon Coral is, do you?”
Fitz’s gaze returned to his coffee mug. “He wasn’t on our radar, no.”
Oh, this was perfect. Just perfect. She wasn’t just bait, she was a guinea pig, a lab rat whose cage had no walls, but a lab rat all the same. Next thing she knew, he’d be injecting her with some sort of transmitting virus….
Crap. He’d been at the hospital. He’d been in their hotel room. What if he’d bugged her, the bastard? What if he wasn’t using a satellite at all, but a transmitter?
There could easily be more than the onboard GPS in the Hummer he’d provided, and then there were all those supplies, so many places to plant bugs…
“If you’ve got such a flaky radar, maybe you should stick to your satellite,” she said, and shoved out of her chair. She was going after King. “If you don’t even know who Malling has doing his dirty work, then you and I obviously have a different concept of what aggressively dogging means.”
Twenty-nine
King was still leaning against the front of McCluskey’s building when Cady flew out the front door. He’d meant to be a lot farther away than he’d made it by the time she came after him. He hadn’t intended to be there for her to find.
He’d thought about hitching a ride toward New York and having Simon meet him halfway. Then he’d considered ponying up the bucks for a low slung sports car with a herd of wild horses under the hood and making his wild west way to Louisiana pronto.
He’d be just peachy keen happy for the rest of his life if he never laid eyes on another Hummer.
It was the idea of never seeing Cady again that had stopped him outside the restaurant’s door. And it was knowing that she could accept dying over this fucked-up shit that had kept him there.
Her relief at finding him was palpable. Not only was her sigh loud and heavy, the tension draining from her body visible in the way her shoulders drooped, she seemed, too, to shed the skin she’d been wearing, the protective shell shielding her from the prospect of finding him gone.
She came to him, leaned into him. He wrapped his arms around her, backpack and all, and pretended his heart wasn’t aching. Pretended, too, that his life today was the same as it had been yesterday. Pretended, finally, that he wasn’t a changed man.
“I thought you’d left me.”
“I’m not going to leave you, chère.” He kissed the top of her head. “But I don’t want you talking about dying. Nothing here is worth you dying for. McKie can find another way to get what he needs without you giving up your life.”
“But Kevin—”
He cut her off. He wasn’t going to let her guilt over her brother’s death claim another minute. “You dying won’t bring your brother back. You staying alive means you can make sure no one forgets him.”
She hugged him tightly, her cheek damp against his shirt, her hands skating up and down the muscles of his back. She played his spine like piano keys; he was so tense, she had to feel it. But she didn’t say anything, just melted into him as if she never wanted to let go.
If the group still huddled around the accident two blocks away hadn’t begun to stir, he would’ve gladly stood there as long as it took her to finish her song. But they were stirring, looking, turning, waiting. Things were going to get itchy if he and Cady didn’t move.
Just then, Fitz exited the restaurant. “We need to go. Now.”
Now was cutting it close to too late. “Whisking us out of here, are you?”
He hadn’t waited for them to follow, but kept walking. “I am. Unless you’d rather deal with all the questions local law enforcement is going to have. And by now I imagine Homeland Security’s been alerted to the ticking package, so they’ll have some things to say, too.”
The Pennsylvania Staties King wasn’t so worried about. But the threat of Federales with official badges? That spurred him into motion, and he spurred Cady in turn.
Once Fitz had herded them past the cluster of law enforcement vehicles clogging Cushing Township’s main drag and opened the back door of his car for Cady, King asked, “What about the Hummer in Jarrell’s shop? You planning to leave that here?”
Fitz nodded.
“With my name on the title and registration? And my insurance company footing the bill?”
“Your name’s no longer connected to either that vehicle or the first. And your insurance company has never been involved,” he said, closing the door behind Cady and circling to the driver’s side. “Get in. Now.”
King glanced over his shoulder just long enough to see two state troopers walking toward them. Fitz started the car and hit the gas the minute King’s butt was in his seat, leaving nothing but rooster tails of gravel and King’s toothbrush behind.
Five miles later, he was still mulling over the issue of vehicle ownership when Fitz pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned gas station and stopped his sedan next to an H3 identical to the two that had come before.
King didn’t even look at Fitz. He stared instead at the man in black with the sunglasses and jarhead haircut climbing down from the SUV. “And this one? Am I connected to it? Or does it belong to Mr. Ray-Ban there?”
“This one’s yours.” Fitz pushed open his door, got out and headed around to Cady’s.
King beat him to it. “Now what? Since you’re the man with the plan?�
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Fitz ignored him and turned to Cady. “Do you know how to get to your grandmother Josephine’s farm from here?”
She nodded, her frown one of concentration rather than the confusion King felt. “I think so.”
“If you have any trouble, it’s programmed into the Hummer’s GPS.”
“Wait a minute.” Forget Cady having a relative nearby who she hadn’t bothered to mention and didn’t seem set on avoiding. “You want us to be sitting ducks on some farm?”
“You’ll be safe there.”
“Can I take that to mean that we weren’t safe on the road.” When Fitz lifted a brow, King realized the absurdity of what he’d said. “Scratch that.”
As if they needed reminding, Fitz told them, “For some reason, Tuzzi has escalated his attacks.”
King blew out a snort. “Yeah. Attempted murder’s a lot higher up the scale than psychological terror.”
“This is all happening in real time, King,” Fitz said, waving one arm expansively. “While we stand here? The clock is ticking. Malling will be on the way to report to Tuzzi. I need to be there to follow that. But I need to know you and Cady are safe before I do anything.”
“I can get us to the farm,” Cady said.
King broached the subject of family no one had mentioned. “What will your grandmother say about us barging in? Is she on your side, or your parents’?”
“She passed away years ago, before Kevin died. My parents take two weeks of vacation every summer and spend it there fishing. They keep water and canned foods stocked. We should be fine for a few days.” She turned to Fitz. “That’s all you need, right? A few days?”
Fitz nodded. “If we can get Tuzzi on the accidents and the bomb, then it’s over and you can get back to living your life.”
King didn’t say anything. He just headed for the driver’s seat, started the SUV, and put it into gear, waiting for Cady to ditch the government man and join him.
Thirty
