One True Thing

by Marilyn Pappano

  Instead, off-key, she sang a line from another song. “‘Jenny, Jenny, tell me true….’”

  He gave her a dry look. “You just make that up?”

  “No. My father used to sing it to me. There’s more, but I don’t remember it.”

  “Were you in the habit of lying to him, too?”

  “Never. Except for the typical teenage girl stuff—you know, ‘Of course there won’t be any boys at Cathy’s party’ or ‘I don’t know how that dent got in the front fender.’” She watched the shadows cast by the flickering candles, breathed deeply of their hazelnut-cappuccino fragrance, then eased out from under Jace’s arm and sat up. “When I came here, I claimed to be a storyteller. Would you like me to tell you a story?”

  He rolled onto his back, stuffed both pillows under his head and nodded. He looked so undeniably male lying there, not the least bit uncomfortable with his nakedness. Lacking his comfort level, she searched for and found the T-shirt he’d discarded earlier and pulled it on. The sleeves reached her elbows, the hem falling well past her hips. It smelled of laundry soap and sunshine and him.

  “Once upon a time, there was a man by the name of Richard Arthur Addison, called Rich by his friends. He was the oldest child and only son in a family that included four daughters. In high school he was voted the ‘boy most likely to succeed,’ and in college he was the big man on campus.” She smiled faintly. “Have I missed any clichés?”

  Jace must be wondering who Rich was and what he had to do with her, but he didn’t ask and he didn’t show it. He just watched her, his expression serious, his manner patient.

  “Rich met a girl named Jennifer, and they married at the end of her junior year. He got a job working for a company that was in construction and land development, among other things. When she finished college, they bought a pretty little house in an old neighborhood not far from where she grew up. Every day he went to his job and she went to hers, teaching at the same elementary school she’d attended, and every night they worked on their fixer-upper and planned for the babies they intended to have.”

  A particularly loud clap of thunder made the entire cabin, even the bed, vibrate. Rich, big, strong man that he was, would have been swearing and pacing now, she thought with a fond smile, but Jace didn’t appear to have noticed it.

  “One day Rich was reviewing the accounts at the big land development-slash-construction company and he came across some…discrepancies. He asked a few questions, didn’t like the answers and continued to snoop around, and before long he’d uncovered evidence of extensive wrongdoing, much of it involving government contracts. With Jennifer’s support and encouragement, he took the information to the FBI, and eventually he testified against his bosses in court. Because these bosses were very powerful, very ruthless men, he and Jennifer were placed in the U.S. Marshal’s Witness Security Program. They were given new names, new backgrounds and relocated to Portland, Oregon.”

  She fell silent for a moment, remembering the blankness with which she’d greeted the naming of their new home. The marshals might as well have told them they were resettling on Mars. She’d never been west of the Mississippi River, except for that one childhood trip to San Diego. She didn’t know anything about the Pacific Northwest, except that it was wet and lots of computer types lived there and it was far, far away from home.

  “So Rich and Jennifer Addison became Philip and Rebecca Martin. They adapted to their new life, though it was difficult. They had another fixer-upper house, and jobs, and a few friends. They missed their families, though, and had pretty much given up on the idea of having all those babies they’d wanted. Still, they were alive and they were together and they were safe.”

  Until that awful summer night. In almost three years she’d never spoken of that night. She’d dreamed about it, thought about it, cried about it…but who could she have told? Who could she have trusted?

  “One evening Jennifer—rather, Rebecca—went home after work and found Rich—Phil—there with a guest. Bill Edmonds was a deputy marshal. He was their contact, their problem-solver. Phil called him their baby-sitter. I went in—Rebecca went…” Swallowing hard, she drew her knees to her chest, tugged the T-shirt as low as it would go, and wrapped her arms around her legs. “I went through the garage and into the kitchen, and I heard them arguing in the living room. Phil— Rich was angry, but there was something else in his voice, something I’d never heard before. Fear. The man had testified in court against people who thought nothing of killing other people, and he’d never shown fear, but that night…

  “Edmonds said he was sorry, said the money Rich’s bosses had offered was too good to pass up. I walked to the living-room door and saw him point a gun at Rich. Rich yelled at me to get out, and…Edmonds…shot him. His next shot was at me, but I threw the bags I was carrying and ran. I’ve been running ever since.”

  She stared at her clasped hands, afraid to look at Jace, afraid to see that he didn’t believe her. There was no reason why he should, given her track record, but she desperately wanted him to show that much faith in her. If he didn’t, she had no one to blame but herself…oh, but she hoped!

  The silence drew out, broken only by sounds that had nothing to do with them…the whir of the fan motor, the thunder, the pounding rain. Finally the springs creaked as he shifted into a sitting position. “What happened next?” His tone was emotionless, the cool, detached voice of a cop who wanted information but had no emotional investment. It made her throat tighten, but she managed to sound just as cool and detached when she answered.

  “From the time we settled in Portland, Rich had insisted we keep as much cash on hand as we could—for emergencies. We stored it in an old, beat-up popcorn tin in the garage, right next to the door, where it would be easily accessible. I grabbed the can on my way to the car, and I took off. I was hysterical. I drove for thirty minutes, maybe an hour, then finally I went to a pay phone. I called another marshal who had worked with us and told him everything. He wanted me to meet him, but I refused. He said he would talk to his boss and they would see that Edmonds was arrested and that I was safe. But…when I checked into a shabby little motel a hundred miles away, I heard on the news that both the marshal I’d called and his supervisor had been shot to death in the parking lot outside their office. I got right back in my car and disappeared.”

  Again Jace remained silent a long time before asking in that same unemotional voice, “You never tried again to get this guy Edmonds arrested?”

  “No.”

  “And he’s the one you’re hiding from.”

  She nodded, then, not knowing if he was looking at her since she wasn’t looking at him, said, “Yes.”

  “You think he’s looking for you?”

  “I’ve seen him twice. The first time he almost caught me. The second time was a year ago. That time I saw him, but he didn’t see me. I ran like hell.”

  After a third, long, stiff silence, he muttered a curse. “This is so typical. A traffic violation turns into a felony stop. A domestic dispute becomes assault with a deadly weapon, and a simple affair becomes…hell.”

  Ice spread through Cassidy, starting in her chest and working its way out. She was grateful for it, though it made her suddenly, unbearably, cold, because if she was frozen inside, it would temper the pain. “You asked,” she said, barely able to move her lips.

  “And you couldn’t have lied or clammed up, like you did every other time? No, for once you have to answer, and now I’m supposed to…what?”

  She forced her fingers apart, slid her feet to the floor and stood. Unlike him, she hadn’t undressed in a hurry. Her shirt, shorts and underwear were neatly folded on the chair near the bathroom door, together with her sandals. She didn’t bother getting dressed, but picked up the pile and held it to her chest as she faced him. “You’re not supposed to do a damn thing. You’ve made it amazingly clear that you’re not in the help-giving business anymore. My life is my problem, not yours. I just wanted—”

 
She’d just wanted him to know. Wanted to show him she trusted him. Wanted him to wrap his arms around her and to assure her everything would be all right. Wanted him to—

  Oh, hell, she did want him to do something—to fix it. To take care of Edmonds and to solve all her problems because that would mean he cared. She wanted him to make her safe so she could quit running and spend the rest of her life here with him. She wanted him to love her…and prove it.

  Oh, God.

  Tears burning her eyes, she turned and walked out. He called her name and the bedsprings squeaked again, but she was already outside and stepping off the deck into the waterlogged grass by the time he got his cutoffs on and followed.

  “Damn it, Cassidy, stop!” he shouted, then made her do so by grabbing her arm and swinging her around. “You can’t just dump something like this on me and expect me to—”

  “Dump it on you?” She jerked free. “You’ve been asking questions and demanding answers since the day we met, and now that you’ve got them, you accuse me of dumping it on you?”

  “That was a bad choice of words, okay? I didn’t mean—” He held out both hands in a placating gesture, but she backed away. “I appreciate your telling me. It’s just an awful lot to take in at once. Come back in the house—”

  She shook her head.

  “Look…” He took a breath, then wiped the rain from his face, for all the good it did. It plastered his hair to his head and ran down his face, washing over the reluctance obvious there but not washing it away. “Come back inside and…we’ll figure out what to do. I know some people who can help you.”

  She didn’t want people to help—she wanted him to. She wanted to be that important to him, wanted him to care that much about what happened to her. But the best he was willing to offer—the best he could offer?—was to put her in touch with strangers who were paid to help people in trouble.

  “Don’t put yourself out,” she said politely. “It’s not your problem. I’ve taken care of myself for the past three years, and I’m sure I can do it for the next thirty.” With a taut smile, she walked away from him for the second time in minutes.

  “Cassidy…Jenny! Damn it!”

  She let herself in her cabin, closed and locked the door, then went into the bathroom to dry off and change clothes. After spreading all the wet clothes around to dry, she calmly fixed herself a glass of tea, turned the boom box on for company, set a roll of packing tape on the table and removed the stack of broken-down boxes from the closet. There was no way she could sleep right now, and no way she could stop moving without falling apart, so instead she would do something productive.

  As soon as the storm passed on its way, she was leaving.

  And this time, nothing would stop her.

  He’d known she was trouble practically from the start. He’d told himself to stay away from her, but had he listened? Of course not. That would have been too freakin’ smart. God help him if he ever got smart where a woman was concerned.

  Jace undressed, dried off, then pulled on a pair of boxers. His hair standing on end, he hauled out the laptop, hooked up the cell phone and got online. As usual, he ignored the e-mail, went straight to a search engine and typed in Richard Arthur Addison. “Sounds like a rich kid,” he grumbled as he began scanning the hits. A couple were from Penn State, where he’d attended college. The rest were clips from news articles about the trial.

  So far, Cassidy’s story—Jennifer’s story— Whoever the hell she was, her story was holding water.

  Then he scowled. He didn’t need corroborating proof to know she’d told him the truth. He’d seen it in her eyes, heard it in her voice, felt it in his gut. It was all true. I’m-never-gonna-get-involved-again had stepped right square into a triple homicide with a cop for a bad guy who wouldn’t rest until the only witness was dead.

  He was ashamed to admit that there was a part of him that wanted to tell her to pack up and hit the road again—that wanted the temptation she represented out of his life.

  But what kind of life would he have without her in it? What kind of life could he have if something happened to her and he could have prevented it?

  He was going to help her, to keep her safe, even if it meant living with her in the Canyon County Jail. Even if she chose to leave him once it was all over, if it turned out that what he’d thought was affection had really just been a ploy to get his protection, he was going to handle this as if it were the most important case of his life.

  Because it was.

  He read through everything he’d found on Richard Addison and Philip Martin, as well as the unsolved murders of two U.S. marshals in Portland. Depending on the newspaper, the archived articles weren’t always available in their entirety—some required a subscription to access the complete article—but he found enough to verify everything Cassidy—Jennifer had said.

  If I were making up a name, don’t you think I would choose something other than Cassidy? she’d said before. And another time, Why would I fib about something so basic as my name? But she had made it up, out of thin air, like all the other names, and she had fibbed about it. The knowledge made his teeth hurt.

  It was nearly 6:00 a.m. when he signed off. At some point while he’d read, the storm had passed on, though the rain continued. He hadn’t even noticed the relative quiet.

  He stood up and stretched, then looked at the bed. He was tired as hell but doubted he could sleep, not with the sheets and the pillows and the very room smelling of Cassidy and him and sex. Instead, he got dressed, fixed himself a cup of coffee and went to the living-room window to stare out over the lake. Without knowing the time, a person would be hard put to guess. Black clouds hung low in the sky, heavy with moisture, and off to the northwest, forks of lightning indicated another storm cell making its way in. Lousy weather to be out. Not bad at all for staying home.

  Slowly he let his gaze shift to the other cabin. The lights were on, but the blinds were closed. Was she writing? Reading? Crying? She’d been crying when they’d stood out in the rain, but he’d tried hard not to notice as she’d oh, so politely told him to screw himself. Okay, so she’d said, Don’t put yourself out. It’s not your problem. But she’d meant “Go screw yourself.”

  And he’d given her every possible reason to mean it. Hell, she didn’t even know all the reasons he’d given her—didn’t have a clue that he’d snooped through her computer case, that he’d found the cash and thought she’d stolen it, that he’d turned the driver’s license numbers and her fingerprints over to Reese to try to narrow down the list of suspects.

  And for all that, they hadn’t learned a thing.

  Absently he rubbed at an itch between his shoulder blades. Of course Cassidy McRae didn’t show up in the system because she didn’t exist, but Jennifer Addison did exist—or, at least, used to—and she was in the system. It was standard procedure. Everyone taken into the Witness Security Program was fingerprinted, but that didn’t mean a cop got a match when he ran their prints. Instead, those prints were flagged and a heads-up went to the Marshals Service, while the cop got back a not in file response, just as Reese had.

  So before Reese had heard a word, the Marshals Service had known one of their missing witnesses had been found, and they would have passed that information along to the local office that had overseen the Addisons’ new life as the Martins.

  And if Bill Edmonds was still working out of that office, still doing WitSec, he would be among the first to know that Jennifer Addison was in Canyon County, Oklahoma.

  The coffee mug slipped from Jace’s hand to the floor, breaking into a half dozen pieces and spilling hot coffee everywhere. Ignoring it, he went into the bedroom, shoved his feet into running shoes, grabbed his gun and holster from the top shelf of the closet and a waterproof jacket. By the time he reached the front door, the gun was tucked in the small of his back and he was wearing the jacket.

  His hair and jeans were soaked before he’d gone ten feet. The rain blew in horizontal bands, changing direction
as the wind did the same. His shoes splashed through puddles as he crossed to the bridge, where the inlet had reached the top of its banks. In another month, everyone would be praying for a rain like this, but this morning it was just a nuisance. It was going to be hell to drive through into town, with every mile of dirt road between here and there turned into a muddy bog.

  He took the steps two at a time, banged on the door and yelled, “Cassidy! Open up! I need to talk to you!”

  It was so still inside for so long that he thought she was going to refuse, but finally the lock clicked an instant before the door opened six inches. She stared through the space, pale, eyes bloodshot, face utterly expressionless.

  “Let me in.”

  Though she would obviously rather not, she didn’t waste time arguing. She walked away from the door, as if she didn’t care whether he came in or left to never return.

  He stepped inside, swiped the rain back from his face, then looked at the boxes stacked next to the dining table. This time there were no open flaps, no items sticking out. This time she’d taken the time to do the job right, with each box taped shut and neatly labeled.

  He looked at her again. “Last night you promised not to leave without giving me a chance to change your mind. I guess you lied again. Big surprise, huh?”

  She said nothing. She looked wounded, fragile, as if a gust of wind might carry her away, and he wanted nothing more than to scoop her up in his arms and to hold her tight for…forever. First, though, he would have to make up to her for last night, and before he could do that, he had to take her someplace safe.

  “You have a slicker?”

  “Why?”

  “We’re going to Buffalo Plains.”

  “For what?”

  “To see Reese.” He glanced around, saw her computer on the floor next to the boxes and headed that way.