Star Witness

by Lisa Phillips

Aaron held on to the laughter that wanted to spill out. “Sure, Sabine. I’ll do that.”

  * * *

  At the knock, Mackenzie stood up from the bed with her shoes tied but didn’t cross the room. “Who is it?” As if she didn’t know. She’d seen Aaron out front talking to a glamorously beautiful woman fifteen minutes ago, before the shower went on in his room. Of course he was in a relationship. Aaron was a good-looking man, and he could be nice enough...when he wanted.

  Mackenzie pushed away the ridiculous feeling of disappointment and looked through the peephole.

  “It’s me.”

  She rolled her eyes and opened the door. Aaron stood there with one hand high on the door frame looking more casual than she’d ever felt in her life. He wore designer jeans and a collared T-shirt with three buttons. How did he manage to look like a movie star when his hair was still mussed from sleep? She probably had bags under her eyes.

  He smiled. “Ready to go?”

  “Where did you get a change of clothes from?”

  “I ordered them.”

  “From that woman who was here?” Mackenzie’s sleep-deprived brain made her mouth blurt it out before she could catch it. “Never mind. It’s none of my business.”

  “Her name is Sabine.”

  So she had a cool name. That didn’t mean Mackenzie had to like her, or the way she smiled at Aaron as if they were best pals. “Are we coming back? Should I bring my bag?”

  “Pack it and carry it with you. I’m not sure if we’re coming back, so it’s better to hold on to everything since it’s not much anyway.”

  Mackenzie crammed her things in her bag and zipped it closed. “Where are we headed?”

  He was frowning at her. “I figured breakfast, for starters.”

  She ignored his obvious need for her to explain why she was in a bad mood and said, “Great, I’m starving. Is there somewhere within walking distance?”

  He motioned over his shoulder. “Made a call last night and procured us a new ride that Sabine brought, along with clothes. The car is untraceable, so we’ll be able to stay off the radar of anyone trying to find us.” His eyes studied her. “But a walk actually sounds good. There’s a diner around the corner.”

  Mackenzie hesitated. “Am I supposed to know what that means, you ‘procured us a ride’ or should I just not ask?”

  He shrugged. “Means what it means. I didn’t want to leave you unprotected, so I needed the stuff brought to me. I made a call and got it done.”

  Mackenzie couldn’t help it. She had to ask, even if that made her weak and needy. “So who is Sabine? Other than someone who will drop everything just because you called and show up before breakfast with a car that no one can trace and some clothes.”

  And didn’t that just burn a little. Mackenzie was a nice person, wasn’t she? There must be some other reason she didn’t have friends like that. Perhaps she had been such an awful person in the past that it showed through now. Or this was yet more punishment.

  Maybe everyone in WITSEC felt this alone, a pariah who couldn’t seem to make friends. Mackenzie had to hide every single thing she was actually good at, holding it at arm’s length while she pushed papers and tried to convince herself she was doing something worthwhile.

  “You really want to know about Sabine?”

  “Am I not allowed? Is that something we’re not supposed to talk about?”

  He sighed. “Mackenzie. You’re making this a bigger deal than it needs to be. She’s just a friend, who is actually more the fiancée of a friend of mine. Sabine had some troubles a while back. I worked with her brother when he was killed, and my team leader then, Doug, helped her with her problem and they fell in love.”

  “Right.” Mackenzie slung the bag over one shoulder. “Lead the way, then.”

  So she wasn’t his girlfriend, but he still probably had someone special in his life. There was no way a guy who looked like he did was available. Unless there was something wrong with him.

  She’d met enough good-looking people in her former life to know they often didn’t have character to match. And while he didn’t seem completely as though he thought the world revolved around him, he definitely possessed an air of authority—the kind that assumed you’d either hop along for the ride or leave.

  Aaron grabbed her backpack and they walked by the faded gray car parked in front of their motel rooms. He glanced at her. “You look great, by the way.”

  Maybe that was his idea of an apology. She looked down at the clothes she had packed. “Not exactly my style.” She might actually blend in with women her age for once, instead of looking like a librarian spinster.

  “Still.” Aaron held the door to the diner open for her. “You look nice.”

  The chain diner was one she only went to every few months when the need for carbs overwhelmed the desire not to eat a thousand calories in one sitting. They found an open booth, and she studied the options, trying to convince herself she was going to be strong and get the fruit and oatmeal. She let the plastic menu drop. Maybe it was best to accept the inevitable.

  A voluptuous waitress poured coffee for them, and Mackenzie shot her a smile. “I need biscuits and gravy.”

  Aaron nodded. “What the lady wants, she shall have.”

  The waitress leaned in toward Mackenzie. “You’ve got to love a man with that attitude.”

  Aaron laughed, and the waitress walked away smiling.

  Mackenzie squinted at him and crossed her arms on the table. “Why are you in such a good mood all of a sudden?”

  “I can’t be happy?”

  “It’s just weird. You bump into my life—literally—and all of a sudden you’re a mainstay. You never really talk to me except to tell me what to do. You’re in my business and being my protector. Not that I’m not grateful. And now I’m supposed to share all my secrets?”

  A smile played on his lips. “You might want to take a breath.”

  She sighed. “Now what? You want to be friends or something?”

  Aaron’s eyes widened, and he took a sip of his coffee. When he replaced his cup on the table, he looked up at her. “There’s nothing wrong with making this whole thing more enjoyable by being pleasant to one another.”

  Mackenzie stared at him. “Who are you?”

  Aaron tipped his head back and laughed. Mackenzie just sat there. It was as though the stress of the past two days had been wiped away and they were just two people sharing breakfast.

  It was great for him that he could push it aside, but she wasn’t wired that way. Nor was she convinced this would ever be over for her or that she’d come to a point when she wasn’t running from Carosa. Or a bunch of mercenaries who seemed to be able to show up everywhere they went.

  He cleared his throat. “Seriously, though, this will be a whole lot more pleasant if we get along.”

  “So tell me about yourself, then. What is your job like? Did you get injured on a mission? Is that what you’re recovering from?”

  “Yeah, it was a work injury.” He didn’t say any more, just reached for his cup and took another sip.

  Mackenzie took a chance on a different but not less sensitive subject. “Who was Sarah?”

  He blinked. “Eric’s Sarah?”

  “He mentioned her last night. It sounded as if something happened to her. Was she killed?” Mackenzie swallowed. “Will you tell me what happened?”

  NINE

  Aaron would have much rather gone back to the lighthearted banter, or Mackenzie trying to discern whether or not he was in a relationship—which was interesting in itself.

  The waitress delivered his skillet with everything and Mackenzie’s biscuits and gravy.

  The woman across the table was a pretty good distraction with those different clothes on, but she still had her hair in t
hat awful bun that made her face look pinched. Whatever it took to convince him that he wasn’t drawn to her, he had to focus on that.

  When this was done, she would find someone else, and Aaron would go back to being single and trying to repair the damage he’d done to his career. And his friend’s life.

  He set his fork down. He should probably get on with the story.

  “Sarah was...Sarah. Beautiful. Smart, like crazy smart. She was an accountant when she met Eric and they started dating, but after they got engaged she fell in with the wrong people before he could stop it. Then they had her trapped with threats to her mom and dad. Eric had her contact the FBI, but they couldn’t get the evidence for more than surveillance and definitely not enough to get her, or her parents, in witness protection.

  “Eric set her parents up so they could disappear, and she went back to work, under cover of the FBI. She handed the feds everything she could about how her employers forced her to launder money for them. Eric didn’t like it, but figured the FBI would keep her safe. Aside from them running, too, there wasn’t much else they could do.”

  Aaron glanced at the room of diners but didn’t really see any of them. “Sarah discovered that what she knew was just the tip of things. You could make a case that she got cocky and pushed it too far so they made a move to kill her, but the fact is both she and her parents were gunned down in a supposedly random drive-by. As if no one would see the correlation. Sarah was paralyzed and her parents were killed. Eric is convinced someone at the FBI leaked the fact that she was working for them and her employers retaliated. It’s just too big of a coincidence to be anything else.”

  “That must have taken a lot of guts, for her to do that.”

  “What it was is stupid.”

  Mackenzie gasped. “How can you say that? She did the right thing, trying to bring criminals to justice.”

  “Might have been right, but it wasn’t smart. Now her parents are dead, and my brother doesn’t trust anyone because she pushed him away.”

  Mackenzie frowned. “You don’t think there’s a mole?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. It doesn’t mean it has anything to do with you. I’m not big on coincidences, but it doesn’t totally fit. Unless it’s a smoke screen to cover someone helping Carosa. Either way, if it puts you in danger then we have a problem, because there’s more than just Carosa and his mercenaries to worry about, and that’s enough by itself.”

  “What if we could find out?”

  Aaron studied her. “Eric got to you.”

  “So what if he did? He lost the relationship he had with the woman he loved and I feel for him, which means I have a heart. He might be barking up the wrong tree—”

  “Let’s just call it what it is. Paranoia.”

  “Still, even if he’s just grieving the loss of his relationship and—”

  “Unhinged?”

  “You really think that? Explain to me what’s wrong about helping him make sense of all this.”

  Aaron swallowed the last bite of his eggs and tossed his fork on the plate with a clatter. “Those kids at that center of yours aren’t enough of a crusade—you have to take up Eric’s cause, too?”

  Why did she need to save everyone? He didn’t even understand it. She was practically an alien species. It was a good thing he didn’t have his own crusade, or she’d probably take that on, as well.

  Mackenzie flinched. “Since when did helping people become a bad thing?”

  “I didn’t say it was. But if it consumes your whole life because all you’re doing is using up your energy fighting for other people’s causes, then how is that good?”

  “Because they need me.”

  Aaron covered her hand with his. “I’m just saying you might not be doing them a favor if all you’re doing is killing yourself in the process.”

  “That’s my choice.”

  “But why would you choose that?”

  She pulled her hand out from under his. “That’s none of your business.”

  “Maybe I’m making it my business.”

  Her eyes went wide. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not going to protect you so you can go kill yourself trying to save everyone else. If we’re going to help Eric, we do it my way, because you seriously have no idea what you’re getting into.”

  “Wow, thanks. That’s so flattering.” Her mouth flattened into a sneer. “You need my help, oh, poor defenseless female, because you don’t know how to do anything except teach people how to sing, and you don’t even do that because you hide in the office all day.”

  Aaron ran his hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean it like that, okay? You have plenty of skills. Unfortunately, none of them have anything to do with covert investigation into a federal agency. Which the FBI is already doing, I might add.”

  Her head cocked to one side. “And you do?”

  “Actually, yeah.”

  She didn’t relax, still energized with anger. “What do you do?”

  He really wasn’t supposed to tell her. But if a woman in WITSEC couldn’t keep a secret, who could? And she needed to know he could do this. “I already told you I’m a sergeant in the army. My unit is small and specializes in missions that require stealth and finesse.”

  “Like James Bond?”

  “That would be espionage. We’re talking about soldiers.”

  “Special soldiers.”

  He grinned. “I like to think so.”

  “Like Special Forces?”

  “I’m not going to lie, it is specialized work. For the purposes of protecting you, you can know at least that much. We train constantly when we’re not on missions just so that we stay sharp. Each of my team knows the other’s movements like their own. They have to, or one of us could misjudge something and end up getting killed.”

  “And do they all have big egos like you do?”

  He laughed. “Definitely. We work extremely hard to be the best. You can’t afford to be average. That’s how people get dead.”

  Aaron waited while she processed this information. She’d known him as a bodyguard and soldier, an average guy. Not to mention there was a disconnect between sitting in a diner and what she likely knew of covert ops from movies and TV.

  After a minute or so of her opening her mouth but saying nothing, he smiled. “Feel better now that you know?”

  There might be more to the story, since he’d have to fight to regain his standing within the team. But, his disastrous debut as leader notwithstanding, Mackenzie needed to know he was capable of protecting her from Carosa. He might have messed everything up, but he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.

  Mackenzie frowned. “I guess. I mean, there are worse people to have protecting you than a Special Forces soldier, I suppose.”

  “Uh, thanks.” Apparently she didn’t get the significance of what he’d just told her. It was a huge thing in his world for someone to know what they did for a living. Delta Force wasn’t just a job, it was their lives. And keeping it a secret meant everything.

  Together they walked to the front door of the restaurant, where he held the door open for her.

  “Do we have somewhere to be now?”

  Aaron saw the fatigue in her eyes. “No. I think we both need a breather for the rest of today. After we check ourselves out, we can drive and find a new motel, get some rest, hole up for a few days somewhere quiet.”

  Long enough for him to look into Eric’s coworkers, specifically the man he’d mentioned, Schweitzer. And maybe long enough for Aaron to find out how Carosa’s mercenaries had found them twice now. Long enough to get some distance from a woman who smelled like whipped cream and sunshine.

  She frowned. “Didn’t we push it by hanging out here and getting breakfast?”

 
And miss the most important meal of the day? “Gotta eat somewhere. But it’s probably a good idea to keep moving rather than risk being found. They do seem to have a knack for locating us.”

  She looked around.

  “Everything’s going to be fine, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said. But she didn’t sound as if she believed him.

  He waited while she let herself into her room. She strode to the bathroom, pulled back the shower curtain and then came out and looked under the bed.

  “Checking for bad guys? I thought that was my job.”

  Mackenzie straightened. “No, I was just making sure I hadn’t forgotten my shampoo, or a sock, or something.”

  Aaron smiled. “Gotcha.”

  Wheels screeched to a halt outside. Aaron pulled back the curtain an inch. A now-familiar black van was parked out front. “Time to go.”

  “How do we get out of here?”

  A fist pounded on the door. “We know you’re in there. Come out, or we let ourselves in!”

  Aaron pulled out his sidearm. “Bathroom window. Now.”

  Mackenzie swung her backpack over her shoulder and strode to the bathroom. He crowded in behind her and shut the door.

  Mackenzie turned back, wide-eyed. “I don’t think it opens.”

  “It will.” He moved her aside and shielded her with his body while he used the butt of the gun to shatter the frosted glass of the tiny bathroom window. Then he knocked out the remaining shards.

  He heard the front door hit the wall and hauled Mackenzie toward the window, ignoring her shriek. “Go!”

  The bathroom door flew open and a small canister rolled into the room. Aaron spun Mackenzie and stuck her face in his shoulder, covering her head with his arms while he squeezed his eyes shut as the flash bang went off.

  He went for the window again to the sound of boots stomping through the room and calls of “Clear!”

  Mackenzie gripped his arm, her other hand grasping a handful of Aaron’s shirt. She was ready to move, but a surge of men wearing black fatigues and carrying AR-15s stormed in. All the weapons were pointed at Aaron. He forced his fingers to still and not reach for his gun.