Deadly Cargo

by Jodie Bailey

  It was also a reminder they had to get her safely home. They could talk more about their cases later. “Jasmine gave me her address. I’ll put it in the GPS and take the lead. She’ll be behind me, and you can follow. I’m fairly certain I’m the target, but I meant what I said in the office. Now that she’s working with us, she’s as vulnerable as we are.” He prayed what he was saying was true. If he’d done something to jeopardize her identity, he’d never be able to forgive himself.

  After another quick survey of the area, he escorted Jasmine from the building to her car. As she dropped her bag in the passenger seat and buckled in, he rested one hand on the door and the other on the roof, leaning in to talk to her. He filled her in on the plan for the drive. “When we get there, I want to go in first, just to be safe.”

  She looked around Will to where Sean had secured Grace in his SUV and now sat in the driver’s seat, waiting for them to roll out. She lowered her voice. “I came to Alaska to avoid situations like this.”

  “I know. It’s fine with me if you pretend we’re just doing this for my peace of mind more than for your well-being.” He flashed her a smile that she echoed, if only for a second.

  For the briefest moment, he wondered what it would be like to stand at her door like this and carry on a normal conversation, one that didn’t involve drugs and shooters and law enforcement. One that was about dinner or movies or—

  Nope. He reset his thinking and pulled away from the door. There was no sense in wondering what it would be like to date her or even to be real friends with her. Their interaction was going to be brief and would end soon. He’d move on to other things, and she’d continue her flights into the bush, helping people survive.

  Tapping the top of the car twice, he shut the door then walked over to his SUV. The Alaska State Troopers logo clearly identified who he was, while Alaska K-9 Unit in blue lettering to the left of the rear windows and on the back let the world know Scout was on board. He opened the back, gestured for Scout to jump into his climate-controlled kennel, then secured the vehicle.

  The drive to Jasmine’s was short, only about ten minutes, but it was one of the tensest Will had ever driven. He’d protected witnesses before and had once even been on an escort detail for a visiting vice president, but this? This felt like a personal investment. As though Jasmine’s life was squarely in his hands. And while losing anyone on his watch was unthinkable, he somehow had the feeling that losing Jasmine would be devastating.

  Will scrubbed his hand down his face. The attack last night had rattled him more than he wanted to admit. Operating on pretty much no sleep coupled with the tension of the last twenty-four hours was making him loopy. Once he’d rested and grabbed a shower and had a decent meal, his emotions would fall back into line and he’d remember the truth... That Jasmine Jefferson was another person he’d encountered on the job. Nothing more.

  Forcing himself to focus on the task at hand, he kept his eyes moving as he scanned the road in front of him and the side streets that fed into the main road. The last thing he needed was someone roaring out to clip Jasmine from between his vehicle and Sean’s.

  He exhaled slowly as he turned into the parking lot of her condo. The long, low structure was older, but it had been updated with modern stone accents and well-tended landscaping.

  Pulling into a parking space, he motioned for Jasmine to wait when she stopped beside him.

  Sean parked on her side.

  Will caught Sean’s eye above her car and, in silent agreement, they both slowly exited their vehicles and made a quick survey of the area. Nothing seemed to be out of place, but the sooner he had her inside and safely behind the locked door of her condo, the calmer he’d feel.

  He leashed Scout and let his partner out of his kennel, then walked to Jasmine’s car. “Ready?”

  “I feel like the president with a Secret Service detail.” She shouldered her bag, slipped out of the car and shut the door. “Like before I testified.” Her expression was taut.

  This must be resurrecting terrible memories of why she’d run. Will had seen people die, and those horrid images still woke him up at night. It had to be even more traumatic for a civilian.

  Instead of hugging her, he rested a hand on her back and ushered her forward. “Let me have your key. I’ll unlock the door.”

  She passed him a ring. “The big one opens the outside door. The second opens my condo on the second floor, at the opposite end of the hall from the elevator.”

  “We’ll take the elevator then.” Too much could go wrong in a stairwell. He stepped around her and headed for the building.

  Sean met them at the sidewalk. He and Grace tucked in behind.

  No one was in the small entry, and the elevator ride was silent.

  On the second floor, Will walked out first. He scanned the hallway, a straight line to a large window at the end, next to Jasmine’s condo. The walls were off-white and the floor was carpeted in blue-gray. At regular intervals, blue doors stood closed.

  Seeing no threat and nowhere for anyone to hide, he motioned his tiny crew out of the elevator. They walked to the end of the hall in an awkward line, like kindergarteners on the first day of school.

  As they neared Jasmine’s door, Will halted. Resting his right hand on his pistol grip, he held his left behind him to stop Jasmine and Sean from proceeding.

  “What’s wrong?” Her whisper was loud in the silence, but then she gasped.

  Ten feet away, the door to her condo stood partially opened.

  NINE

  “Secure Jasmine.” Will drew his pistol and barked the order to Sean.

  Jasmine reached out to wrap her fingers into the back of Will’s shirt, but Sean grabbed her arm and pulled her into the corner.

  Will and Scout disappeared into her condo.

  Please, God... There was nothing more. Just the frantic prayer that no one was inside to hurt them.

  Sean stood in front of her, weapon drawn, his K-9 at attention by his side. They watched the hallway toward the elevator, then he tilted his head toward a door to their left. “Stairwell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not quite ready to risk getting trapped in there... or with leaving Will without backup.”

  Will. He’d gone into her condo alone.

  Maybe she’d simply forgotten to shut the door yesterday. Even though she always locked the deadbolt and checked twice.

  This couldn’t be happening. This had to be a nightmare. There was no way her fuel line had been cut and her plane riddled with bullet holes and her condo broken into. Coincidence was out the window.

  So was the idea that any of this was about Will’s investigation. She was clearly the target.

  An eternity passed in crawling seconds before Will’s voice rang out. “Clear!” It was only a moment later when he appeared in her doorway, holstering his pistol. “No one is here.” He addressed Sean, but faced Jasmine. “There was someone inside before we arrived.” Will stepped away from the door and held out a hand for her to enter.

  Sean and Grace followed.

  She steeled herself as she brushed past Will, but no amount of preparation could ready her for the sight. Her backpack slipped from her fingers and crunched her toe.

  She winced, the physical pain jerking her into the truth that this was no nightmare. This was an awful, shattered reality.

  Nothing was in its place. Couch cushions, furniture, photos... Everything had been pulled from walls and cabinets and thrown to the floor. “Why?” Her hands shook. She wrapped them around her stomach and tried to hold herself together. “Who hates me this much?” Besides the obvious.

  But something didn’t fit. If it was about the case that had landed her in WITSEC, surely whoever had broken in would have waited to kill her. Trashing her apartment was a pointless exercise for a hired killer who would want to leave as little evidence behind as possibl
e.

  Not that it mattered. Someone had destroyed her safe space. The one place she felt secure outside of an airplane. Within these walls, she’d had the freedom to be her real, authentic self. The outside world knew Jasmine Jefferson. But in here, Yasmine Carlisle still lived.

  Until now.

  Her entire body and mind went numb. No thoughts, no emotions, no feeling. Nothing. Just empty deadness from the outside in.

  Something brushed her leg, pulling her out of her stupor, and Scout slipped past her. He sniffed the edges of the room, then roamed the floor with his nose down before he dropped into the exact middle of her living room, next to the overturned coffee table, and sat perfectly still with his nose in the air.

  “What’s wrong?” Jasmine took a step back and collided with Will’s chest. Had Scout scented something? Was someone still in the apartment?

  With a heavy sigh, Will laid a hand on her back for a brief second, then edged around her to Scout. He gave a command Jasmine couldn’t hear, and Scout dutifully trotted into her open kitchen, where he repeated the same actions and ended up sitting in the middle of the floor among her scattered utensils.

  “Will?”

  He eyed Scout before he turned to Jasmine. Hesitating, he glanced over her head at Sean, who had come inside and closed the door. “He’s alerting. There aren’t drugs present at the moment, but whoever was in here and wrecked the place either had them on him or had interacted with them recently.” The way he studied her was odd, but then he pulled in a deep breath and looked away.

  Jasmine tilted her head toward the ceiling, relief and fear warring inside her. If this was about drugs, then this was about Will’s case, not about her identity.

  But that didn’t let her off the hook. Someone was still targeting her, likely because she was working with Will. She tipped her chin toward Scout. “How does he do that?”

  “Super sniffer.” Will flashed a grim smile. “And a lot of training.” He pulled a chew toy out of his backpack and carried it over to the border collie, whose tail thumped wildly on the floor. After a brief tug of war, Scout curled up to chew on what was clearly his favorite treat.

  Jasmine almost smiled at the diversion.

  Almost. All she wanted to do was sleep, but her condo was trashed and she had two state troopers and two trained canines in her space. While she wanted to go to her room, shut the door and pretend none of this was happening, she couldn’t. “Now what?”

  Again, Will looked at Sean. There seemed to be a brief, silent conversation between the two of them. They’d probably worked together so long that each knew what the other was thinking.

  With a brief nod, Will reached for Jasmine’s hand and led her to the couch. He set the cushions back into place then gestured for her to sit down.

  This was not going to be a good conversation. Her gut and his expression confirmed it. She wanted to argue that she wasn’t going to sit, wasn’t even sure she could sit with all of the adrenaline racing in her veins, but the truth remained that she was too exhausted to fight.

  She sank to the sofa, and he settled beside her, closer this time than at the airfield when they’d first met.

  She was okay with that. Something in her needed him to be her friend, not just an investigator.

  At the door, Sean stood as still as a guard at the queen’s palace, but his eyebrow lifted in interest as he watched the two of them.

  Jasmine ignored the question on his face, the one Will either didn’t notice or didn’t care to acknowledge.

  With a deep breath, he lifted her hand, staring at it as he traced the knuckle of her index finger. “You can’t stay here.”

  Gently, she extracted her fingers from his grasp and gripped her knees. “It’s my home. It’s my...” She shook her head. Her voice was weak. She was too tired to argue. Weariness lay on her like a damp wool blanket. Every thought struggled to swim up from the bottom of the ocean.

  She knew this feeling, this detached-from-reality feeling. It was anxiety bordering on panic. If she didn’t do something soon—get up, get moving, get out—she would be staring in the face of a full-blown panic attack marked by the irrational need to run.

  Because she’d once actually had to run.

  Shoving to her feet, she paced the room, shaking her hands at her sides. The last thing she needed was to blow to pieces in front of Will and his teammate, but there was nowhere to hide. Trying to regulate her breathing, she walked to the short hallway that led past the kitchen to the bedrooms. “I need a minute.”

  Behind her, the sound of fabric rustling told her Will had stood. “We can’t leave you alone.”

  Jasmine held up her hand and stared at her bedroom door, which hung open. Clothes and bedsheets littered the floor.

  It didn’t matter what he said. She couldn’t do this anymore. “I don’t care.”

  “You should.” Will’s voice shifted from friend to officer, and it held an edge. “Your home is a crime scene. You can’t be wandering around in here until our CSIs sweep it.” He stepped closer and rested his hand on her shoulder. “I want to catch who did this, Jasmine. More than you know. But if you want to apprehend these drug runners and protect the people in the villages you’re flying to, then you have to walk away now.” He gave her shoulder a brief squeeze and lowered his voice. “Pray.”

  Something in his words knocked the panic down a notch. She pulled in a deep breath. This wasn’t about her. From the outside, it appeared to be, but the truth was so much deeper. This was about everyone those money-hungry drug pushers were using and abusing.

  This was about a much bigger picture.

  “Okay.” Will was right. She had to buck up. To find her strength in the God she trusted.

  Her life had ceased to be her own the day she became a Christian. And she’d ceased to be herself the day she chose to testify against Anton Rogers.

  Yasmine Carlisle was already dead.

  She wouldn’t let Jasmine Jefferson die, too.

  * * *

  “She knows something.” Sean crossed the small hotel room and checked the door between their room and the one they’d secured for Jasmine.

  Will’s head jerked up from where he was pouring food into Scout’s bowl while the collie did a happy dance at his feet. “What do you mean by that?” Was his teammate accusing Jasmine of withholding evidence? Working for the bad guys? Or what?

  He ignored the fact that, for a split second when Scout had alerted in Jasmine’s living room, he’d wondered if she might be guilty after all. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d let a woman dupe him. But the K-9’s failure to alert at her presence, her plane or her car said the culprit was a faceless intruder and not her.

  Besides, he wasn’t in love with Jasmine Jefferson the way he had been with Beth.

  With an arched eyebrow, Sean pressed his hand, palm-side down, toward the floor. “Bring it down a notch. I’m not accusing her of anything.” His teammate grabbed his backpack off the bed and withdrew a bag of food and a bowl. He filled it and set it on the floor beside the bed he’d claimed then grabbed a second bowl, which he filled with water in the bathroom and set it beside the first.

  Grace dug in.

  Sean settled onto the edge of the bed and eyed Will. “All I’m saying is, if someone is this determined to come at her, Jasmine knows something. The question is, does she know what she knows?”

  “Really? You’re going to talk in riddles?” Normally, his sense of humor showed up in the bleak moments. It was a known fact among law enforcement, emergency workers and the military that humor was the only way to survive the darkness. Sometimes that humor was dark itself. But this time, Will couldn’t find it in himself to joke back.

  “So it’s finally happened.” The knowing tone of Sean’s voice raked across Will’s last nerve.

  “What’s happened?”

  “A woman managed to ge
t your attention.”

  Will laughed, but it sounded fake and harsh. He stood and grabbed Scout’s water bowl, even though it was still full, and walked into the bathroom. “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “Now who’s cracking jokes?”

  Walking back into the room, Will paused at Jasmine’s door. From the other side, the sound of the TV drowned out any other noise. She’d said something about grabbing a shower and a nap, so it was doubtful she could hear their conversation.

  As Scout gave him a puzzled head tilt, he set the bowl down, scratched the collie behind the ears, then dropped into a chair at the table in the corner. “Nobody’s got my attention.”

  “So you usually hold hands with witnesses?”

  “I didn’t hold her hand.” But even as he said it, he remembered. Multiple times in her condo, he’d reached for her, touched her... And yes, held her hand.

  Will dropped his head against the wall. There was no sense in arguing. Sean had eyes. “What of it?”

  “It was simply an observation.”

  He glanced at the door again. “I guess when you’re forced to stay up looking for bears and fighting off assailants in a busted plane in the middle of nowhere, you get to be friends.”

  “Kind of like this job makes us a family? Because it’s dangerous and a little chaotic?”

  “A little?” Will picked up a pen that lay on the table and began to tap it on the fake wood, trying to bring his thoughts into some sort of order. “It’s out of control right now. In addition to the dozens of usual cases we’re investigating, we’ve got an unofficial case with the Kapowskis and the reindeer ranch. A missing bride who was framed for murder by her killer fiancé and his best man. Oh, and we’re trying to find Eli’s godmother’s family, who are doing their best to stay hidden. I think chaos would be easier.”

  “Speaking of Eli...”

  “Last time I talked to him, he was headed to see his godmother. Hospice was a possibility.”

  “We had a team video conference last night while you were camping.” Sean ducked sideways to dodge the pen Will threw. He chuckled, then sobered. “She’s not doing well. They did move her into hospice care. Time’s running out.”