She checked the television, seeing her face occasionally when a talk show ran the story of Heath’s death. There was only so much of that she could watch before she started yelling at the TV, so instead, she straightened up Colton’s already neat home and played with Pudge.
“Man, this is boring,” she told the dog. “How does he stand living like this?”
Pudge didn’t have an answer.
She was getting ready to toss the ball for what felt like the eight-hundredth time when Pudge alerted and barked.
“Is Daddy home?” she asked, thinking her words sounded both odd and appealing. Shaking it off, she went to meet Colton in the garage as soon as she heard the door close.
“Did you get everything?” She was actually bouncing with excitement. There was nothing better than getting a new computer. The speed and all that available memory. It was heaven.
“This thing cost thirteen hundred bucks,” he complained. “Not to mention all this other stuff. I’m a teacher, Angel, not a billionaire.”
She frowned, remembering the billionaire who’d died while she was supposed to be protecting him.
“I’ll pay you back,” she promised quickly. She should have considered the expense. Unfortunately, she didn’t have access to her funds at the moment.
“Sure. Why don’t you just write me out a check? I’m sure no one will be looking at your bank accounts.”
She narrowed her eyes on him. “When I get my life back, I’ll pay you back for this stuff.”
“Yeah, well, not everyone gets their life back,” he said softly.
The truth hit her hard. Up until now she hadn’t imagined she might need to stay hidden indefinitely. She knew she was innocent, and had assumed it wouldn’t take long for the truth to come out. But it was possible she wouldn’t ever find any proof.
It was possible she would never be cleared of this crime.
Chapter Seventeen
Seeing Angel’s face go pale at his comment made Colton feel like an asshole, but she had to know the reality of the situation. She’d seen it enough in her line of work to know what could happen. Even if she managed to clear her name, she wouldn’t be able to go back to work as though nothing had happened.
He didn’t know much about the U.S. Marshals, but he knew the DEA didn’t like having their agents’ faces and names plastered on every television screen across the country. It made undercover work rather difficult.
To make his death realistic, his bank accounts had been distributed to his family as he’d requested in his will, which hadn’t left a lot for him. And his teaching salary didn’t come close to what he’d made with the DEA.
Still, he shouldn’t have snapped at her. It wasn’t really about the money.
He realized it wasn’t the expense as much as what that shiny new computer meant—it was the path for her to be cleared. He didn’t want to be a dick and stand in the way of her freedom. But as soon as it was safe for her to walk down the street without being arrested, she would be gone.
He’d already lived through that and wasn’t looking forward to a replay.
She clutched the box to her chest and frowned. “They took my laptop. I’d had a spare, but I left it at home during my last assignment because I didn’t want to carry two.” She looked away. “I wasn’t prepared.”
For the first time since she showed up on his back porch, he realized she was blaming herself for this entire situation.
Been there, lived that.
When there was no way to make sense of something, the easiest thing to do was to blame yourself. He’d be damned if he was going to let her do it.
“This is not your fault,” he told her firmly. “You could have had ten laptops, and Zeller would still be dead.”
“Still, I should have been ready to run. I blew it. Garrett told me to have extra houses completely off the grid in case of something like this. I thought I did, but I didn’t bury them well enough. They traced them back to me.”
“Who is Garrett?”
“A former teammate. He left the team to go into WITSEC with someone.”
So other marshals had gone into the program with someone they loved. But not her. Oh, no. She’d run off while he was sleeping. His anger flashed again.
And yet, it wasn’t fair to blame her for wanting her life back. It wasn’t right to be angry just because she hadn’t wanted him as much as he’d wanted her.
She must have realized where his thoughts had gone because she quickly continued, “I had three places, but they turned out to be useless when I needed them most. When your face is everywhere, you can’t even walk into Best Buy and purchase your own computer.”
“We can’t always think of everything,” he said. “We’re trained to think on our feet, plan for anything, but in real life there are things we simply can’t anticipate.”
“I still don’t know how they drugged us that night.”
“Both of you were drugged?” Colton asked, glad to focus on something else.
“I didn’t see defensive wounds on Heath’s hands, so he didn’t fight.”
Colton nodded. “There’s some relief in knowing he wasn’t aware of what was happening. He wouldn’t have been frightened.” A small relief, but a relief nonetheless.
“He was completely vulnerable because I missed something,” she bit out.
And there it was. Full-on self-recrimination.
Angel wouldn’t be able to rest until she’d solved this case. Even if it didn’t help her get her old life back, she needed to know what it was she’d missed.
He’d felt the same way with Viktor. Colton had walked into the marina thinking his cover was solid. He’d been with Viktor for two years and didn’t suspect the man was on to him, at all.
Colton always got nervous after an information drop or a call in. But it had been six days since he’d reached out to his handler with intel. He’d thought he was in the clear…right up until the moment Viktor nodded at Weller and the man had pulled out a gun and shot him. And apparently kept shooting.
Fortunately, Colton had blacked out.
To this day, he still didn’t know what he’d done to tip them off. Maybe it hadn’t been anything he’d done. Just as it probably wasn’t anything Angel had done.
“I can’t image you missed anything,” he said soothingly. “You were more than thorough with me. All those little strips of paper you dunked in my water before I was allowed to drink it.” He shook his head at the memory.
She dumped all her new gear in the living room and took over the coffee table to set it up. He would have offered to clean off the desk in the office, but he knew she wanted to be out in the living room with a clear view of the driveway.
“Do you mind if I sit over here and do some work? There’s only one more week of school left, and I have some things I need to turn in.”
“Sure. It’s your living room. I’ll try to leave a piece for you to live in.” She smiled, causing his stomach to do that flipping thing, and reminding his dick it hadn’t seen any action since he’d been with her a year ago.
He’d had a few offers, and there were a number of young teachers who appealed, but he couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t bring an innocent person into this life for more than a dinner here and there.
What if he fell in love, got married, had kids, and then ran into someone who knew Viktor? His options would be to walk away or to uproot his family and take them with him.
No, thanks.
He remembered being a little kid sitting by the window each night, hoping his dad would come home. By the age of twelve, he’d grown out of the constant worry. At age thirteen, his father was killed by an informant who couldn’t pick a side.
Fortunately, Colton’s three older brothers took on the job of male role model, but Colton didn’t want his own children ever to have to go through that. Which was why he had never planned to have children. Or a wife, either, for that matter.
Though, he’d considered marriage with Angel a year ago. He h
adn’t wanted her to stay with him for the sex alone, though that would have been enough. He’d wanted a partner. An equal. And Angel was on the job. She could protect herself. It would have been different to be married to someone like her.
“Do you hate it?” she asked quietly, dragging him from his thoughts on marriage.
“Hate what?”
“Teaching.”
He looked down at the tests in his hands and let out a sigh. “Not really.”
She smiled, but pressed her lips together to crush it. “Do you like it?” she pushed.
The truth was, he did like it. He liked watching kids reach their potential. He especially liked helping the kids who didn’t think they had any potential.
His bitterness toward the profession mostly came from the lonely nights and endless summer it provided. And maybe that his colleagues didn’t carry guns.
He grimaced. “I don’t like being Dunking Willies.”
They laughed together, and he remembered the nights they’d stayed up late playing cards or video games. They’d laughed. Being with her was easy, fun.
“I’ve missed you,” he said without thinking.
To his surprise, she didn’t look away or brush it off.
“You would have changed your mind.” She sounded so sure. As if maybe she’d thought about it and that truth had kept her from regretting her decision.
“I would have liked to talk to you about it, at least. Waking up to a guy named Justin on my sofa was not the best way to find out how you felt.”
“Maybe not. But it was the best thing I could do for you.”
He would have argued if he thought he had any hope of convincing her she was dead wrong.
At the time, his life had still been in upheaval, and she had been wild and exciting, but he was sure they would have been able to settle into a happy life together.
It was nice to think so, anyway.
Chapter Eighteen
“Okay, I’m up and running,” Angel announced, startling Colton from his tests.
He looked up as she rubbed her palms together gleefully and started typing in a flurry.
He might have asked what she was looking for, but then she might actually tell him, and no doubt he wouldn’t understand what the hell she was talking about.
For the next three hours, she sat on the floor in front of the coffee table tapping and clicking and sighing and cursing. Occasionally, she would stretch out a leg or twist her neck from side to side. Even Pudge had grown tired of her company and come to sit by Colton.
He’d finished grading the papers and was looking through a new textbook to be used in next year’s curriculum. There had been a huge debate over the books at the teachers’ meeting last week.
It seemed silly now that he was sitting in the same room with a woman on the run for murder. Everything came down to perspective.
It was human nature to complain about things, even if those things were nothing in comparison to other people’s problems. He was just as guilty of doing that as the next guy.
He’d grown more and more miserable as the end of the school year approached. Knowing he didn’t have any plans. But that was nothing compared to Angel’s issues.
Despite all the tight places he’d been in, he’d never been on the run from his own side of the law. He admired her courage to go outside the protection of her team to seek justice.
He had every intention of standing by her side for this fight.
For as long as she let him.
Chapter Nineteen
“Maybe I should stay home,” Colton said on Monday morning as Angel stretched and went to the kitchen for more coffee.
Not a chance. No way would she allow her presence to disrupt his life more than it already was. She knew it wouldn’t be easy to convince him it was safe to leave the house. He wanted to protect her. She understood that perfectly, because she wanted to protect him, too. So she went for a different angle.
“What? And let those little shits with the eggs get away with vandalism? What’s next for them? A little B and E? Maybe grand theft? You have to stop it before it starts. You have a chance to cut off crime before the criminal is even fully developed.”
Okay, so she was laying it on a little thick. But there was a lot of truth to her words.
Colton just let out a sigh and frowned.
She knew he was worried about her, but she knew he also had another concern. One that was all her fault.
When she’d left like a thief in the night, she’d undermined his trust for her.
“I’ll be here when you get back.” She repeated her promise, hoping it had a different response this time.
He nodded unconvincingly “I get home around four. I’d planned to make Mexican lasagna for dinner. Would that be okay?”
God bless him, he was so domesticated he actually planned out his meals. She generally ripped open a box of mac and cheese. Occasionally she even had enough time to allow the pasta to cook completely.
“Yeah. That sounds great.” It really did.
He paused in front of her, and for a brief moment she thought he might kiss her like every other husband who was leaving for work that morning.
But he just gave her a nod and told the dog to be good and keep watch.
She took her normal spot in the living room, and continued trolling the tech blogs and underground sites, looking for some clue as to who had that prototype.
Technology moved at the speed of light. Whoever had it would want to launch it before someone else developed something similar and took the wind out of their financial sails.
She’d already checked every major player, looking for a new patent or the beginnings of a press release.
Nothing.
If the person who stole it worked for a large company, there would be engineers and programmers already working on it. And those people would be talking about their new toy. They wouldn’t be able to help themselves.
Confidentiality agreements might keep them from sharing the details, but they would still be chatting about having the next best thing. Bragging rights on these sites were the main purpose of their existence.
Once she located a person, she could track them to their company and find out the details.
But no one was talking.
Which could only mean the person who stole it didn’t have a buyer already lined up.
Who would be so stupid as to try to move a piece of technology that was this hot, and connected to a murder? It wasn’t as if they could take out an ad.
She had to be missing something.
“Why would someone steal something so valuable if they had no plans to sell it?” she asked Pudge who cocked his head to the side, then licked her knee.
She wondered if Colton talked to the dog as much as she did.
Probably not.
Her computer dinged with an incoming email, making her jump. No one on her team would be stupid enough to send her an email. The FBI would be watching their communications, waiting for one of them to reach out.
But it wasn’t anyone from Task Force Phoenix. The email was from redgamer3 at a public email account. She opened it to find three lines in small type.
Welcome back.
It took you long enough.
Are you ready to play?
“Well, well, Redgamer3. Who might you be?”
Chapter Twenty
Colton hid his disappointment when the two boys showed up. He’d almost hoped Kenny, and his accomplice, Braden, would have bailed, so he could pack up and go back home.
But there they were. Future bench warrants, eager to serve their time so they could move on to their next stellar idea.
“We’re really sorry about your house, Mr. Willis,” Braden said.
“Just my house? Are you sorry about the other houses you hit with eggs?”
“Oh, yeah. For real sorry about that.”
Good. For real sorry. He refrained from rolling his eyes as he gestured toward the boxes in the middle of t
he room. The desks had all been moved to one side to make room to work.
“You’re going to put those shelves together.”
“Sweet. Do we get to use power tools?”
“No. You get to use the scrench that comes with it.” Colton held up the hybrid screwdriver-wrench device and handed it over to Kenny. Braden had already started rooting through the parts and was laying everything out.
This might not take that long, after all.
“Uh, Mr. Willis?” Kenny said while digging through the packing materials.
“Yeah?”
“There aren’t any instructions.”
“Oh, I know. I have them. Don’t worry. If you do it wrong, I’ll be sure to let you know, and you can take it apart and start over. It probably won’t take you smart lads that many attempts.”
They stood gaping for a moment, probably Colton’s only moment of pleasure for the day until he got home.
Unless Angel was gone when he got home. He should have bought a telephone to plug in so he could call her. Did they still make telephones that plugged in? He could just imagine the look on the kid’s face who’d assisted him through the laptop purchase when he asked for a plug-in phone.
It didn’t matter if he had a phone or not. He couldn’t keep her there if she decided it was too risky to stay. He just had to hope he’d survive it when she left. Because one thing was for certain. Whether it was today, someday next week, or a month from now, Angel Larson was going to leave him again.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Blast and damn,” Angel cursed at the screen. She’d been locked out of a lead and spent an hour getting back in, only to find nothing. “I don’t have time for this!”
Redgamer3 was a ghost. He knew all the tricks to keep her from finding out who he—or she—was. She’d traced him to a home improvement company and through two interesting porn sites, only to come back to her own computer. From there she’d backtracked and found the lead that led nowhere.
Wanted for Life Page 5