Brace For Impact (HQR Intrigue)

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  The struggle to survive had required all her inner resources in recent days. His reminder brought it all back in a rush, from the shooting to all the consequences that followed.

  “If they really were friends, I bet he’d have ditched his vacation to get back.”

  Will conceded her point with a dip of his head.

  “I guess there’s no reason to wait,” she said, although she felt a cramp of anxiety. What if Scott was wrong about this friend of his? Who would be more likely to have known the details of his plans for picking her up?

  “I remember the Robert part.”

  “Robert Ruzinski.”

  “And he’s a marshal, too.”

  “That’s what Scott said.”

  Will kept watching her, making her wonder if she was succeeding in hiding all her worries.

  “Do you know something about this Ruzinski?” he asked, confirming her suspicions. “Had you ever heard the name before?”

  Maddy shook her head. “All I know is that Scott said to trust him, and no one else.”

  “Okay.” He didn’t move. “What’s worrying you?”

  “Can we really trust anyone in the marshal’s office?”

  After seeming to ponder he said, “I don’t think we have a good alternative. You seem to have trusted Rankin.”

  Past a lump in her throat, she said, “Yes.”

  “Then I think we need to keep trusting him. Our only alternative is to turn to the Seattle PD detectives who worked the crime.”

  “What about the FBI?”

  “Would they even have jurisdiction?”

  “The fact that Torkelson was up to be a federal judge might give them the excuse they need,” she suggested.

  “That’s true.” Will hesitated. “Your call.”

  Maddy remembered the awful last moments with Scott, the way his fingers had bit into hers. His intensity. The moment when his hand fell away.

  He’d called Robert Ruzinski a friend as well as a fellow US marshal. His dying words were, Trust him. How could she do any less?

  She had to clear her throat. “Let’s take a chance on Marshal Ruzinski. Although...won’t he want to talk to me?”

  “Eventually.” Will’s voice turned steely. “When I trust him.”

  She offered a wobbly smile. “I’m so lucky to have you.”

  He brushed that off, as he had all her thanks. A minute later he pocketed the lists and left, after instructing her to keep the doors and windows locked. He approved her plan to nap.

  It was all she could do not to roll her eyes like a teenager. She didn’t, because he was all that had stood—and probably still did—between her and an assassin.

  The sound of the Jeep engine receded, leaving her in a silence that wasn’t as soothing as it should be. She’d been fixed on the single goal of getting out of the mountains where she could recover physically. It was weird now to realize how little thought she’d given to all the future steps. Part of that, it occurred to her, was that she’d had to give her independence, every meaningful choice about her life, even her name, into the keeping of the US Marshals Service. She’d had no choice but to become a passive participant in the plans. Once in Everett, Scott would have set up meetings with the prosecutorial team, arranged for transportation to the courthouse, armed escort inside. Now...

  How could she safely meet with this Ruzinski? What would he want from her? Would Torkelson’s minions dare attack her when she arrived at the courthouse? And...what would she wear?

  Even knowing how silly it was to obsess over something so unimportant, she looked down at the navy blue sweatpants that stayed up only because of the drawstring, and that she’d be tripping over if she hadn’t rolled up the legs half a dozen times. No panties beneath, and no bra until she could wash both. T-shirt sized for a man with formidable shoulders, which meant it swamped her and hung to midthigh.

  She could hardly stop by her apartment—former apartment?—to pick up suitable clothes and heels for her court appearance. She didn’t dare call her mother and have her mail an appropriate outfit.

  Humor came to her rescue as she tried to imagine Will shopping at Nordstrom for a stylish business suit.

  Surely, if he’d lend her his credit card, she could buy what she needed online.

  Chapter Eleven

  Will had belatedly realized that he could have accomplished all his errands at Fred Meyer, if only he’d thought to ask Javier to send the prescription here. As it was, he picked it up in Sedro-Woolley, then continued down Highway 20 to Burlington, a small city straddling I-5, the major north-south freeway connecting California, Oregon and Washington to Mexico on one end and Canada on the other.

  He’d never had a reason to shop for women’s clothing, which made this a first. Picking out jeans, shorts, T-shirts and a sweater for Maddy was no problem. Socks and flip-flops, he could handle. The lingerie department was another story. Feeling conspicuous, he struggled to choose a bra and panties. Since he didn’t want to linger, he went for items as close as he could get to what she’d been wearing.

  He picked up a hair dryer, brush, elastics and gel, too, although he had to wing it where the gel was concerned when he couldn’t find the brand she’d suggested. Groceries came next, then the phone with a charger.

  Once he’d stowed his bags in the rear of his Jeep, he figured the Fred Meyer parking lot was as good a place as any to charge the phone and make the call.

  Frowning as he noticed the time, Will feared the man might have left the office for the day. He might have to try again in the morning.

  It took some doing to reach a real human being, but she listened to his request and said pleasantly, “I’ll connect you to Marshal Ruzinski, sir.”

  He got even luckier when his call was answered on the second ring by a brusque voice. “Ruzinski here.”

  Amazing.

  Now was when it got tricky.

  Will had decided to go for blunt.

  “I’m calling on behalf of Madeline Kane. Marshal Rankin told her to contact you.”

  The long silence didn’t surprise him. Nor did the cagey response.

  “What do you know about Ms. Kane?”

  “I’d rather not say yet. Marshal Rankin told her that they had to have been betrayed by somebody within your agency. He said she could trust you. No one else.” He paused. “Can she?”

  Another silence ensued.

  “Give me fifteen minutes,” he said abruptly. “I’ll call you back.”

  Satisfied, Will moved the Jeep to the Haggen parking lot half a mile away. He opened the back hatch, rummaged in the bags and came up with a package of Fig Newtons. Good to indulge his sweet tooth while he waited.

  When the phone rang, the number that came up was unfamiliar. Will answered with a “Yes?”

  “I’m calling from my car using a burner phone. I always keep a few around,” Ruzinski said. “Now, tell me what you know.”

  As uneasy as Will was, they’d made the decision to trust this man. That started now.

  “I know that Marshal Rankin had gone to fetch her. They were to stay in Everett, or so he said. She’s the prime witness in a trial that starts next week. The small plane crashed in the North Cascades National Park. It broke apart. The pilot was already dead when she found him. Rankin wasn’t. He had time to tell her it was a bomb, that she needed to hide.”

  “She wasn’t injured?”

  “She was. She has a broken collarbone, humerus, possibly ribs. She was concussed and had multiple gashes and horrific bruising. She is, however, alive and prepared to testify.”

  Ruzinski swore softly. “Scott and she just disappeared. He drove over the mountains to get her, and that was it. A chartered plane had disappeared. No one has spotted it. That’s all we could learn.”

  “I can tell you where to find the wreckage and the bodies. It’s po
ssible the wreckage has been tampered with—say, proof that there was a bomb wiped out. I doubt there was any reason for them to have done anything to the bodies.”

  “They?” the marshal echoed.

  “Black helicopter, markings covered. It dropped two men wearing camouflage and outfitted with heavy packs and machine guns. It appears their task was to find Maddy and make certain she never made it out of the mountains.”

  “And how do you know all of this?” Ruzinski asked with deep suspicion.

  “I found Maddy,” Will said simply. He explained that he’d intended to scavenge from the plane, but the helicopter beat him there. “I’ve been out of Army Spec Ops less than a year. I’m a medic,” he added. “I was up there climbing alone when I saw the plane go down.”

  He summed up the rest of the story in as few words as possible: the shooting, the ambush laid for them at the Torrent Creek crossing. The multiple days it took him and Maddy to make the trek out because of her injuries.

  “Ideally, she should get X-rays,” he concluded, “but we can’t risk taking her to a hospital. I’ve...acquired some antibiotics to knock out the infection, which is her first hurdle.”

  “You want me to find a place for her?”

  “No.” Any offer like that was off the table. “She’ll stay with me.”

  “Good.” The marshal’s relief was apparent. “You can keep her until the trial?”

  “Yes.”

  “The prosecutor will want to put her through some prep before then. Let me think about that. I’ll need to talk to her, too.”

  “We can arrange that,” Will agreed, having expected the demand.

  “I need to know who you are, too.”

  He was less enthusiastic about this, but had assumed he’d have to put his name out there. He’d worry more if he believed he could be found. He’d paid cash, six months up front, for the cabin, for no particular reason. The owner was a guy in his sixties, a Vietnam War vet who’d recognized what Will was going through the minute he’d seen him. At the moment the only snail mail he received was addressed to “occupant.” He paid his bills online. The utility company was his only concern.

  “Will Gannon. William Bradley Gannon. I should warn you that everyone from the driver’s license bureau to Mastercard thinks I still live in the barracks at Fort Lewis.”

  “And you don’t.”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s fortunate.”

  “Do you have a plan yet?”

  Ruzinski wanted to start by finding the wreckage. Will did his best to pinpoint the location and added, “The plane did some damage coming down. I’m sure the pilot did his best to reach an elevation with smaller trees to break the force. Should be visible from the air.”

  “All right. I’ll get search and rescue out to find it, and bomb experts to examine what’s left of the plane. I’d really like to recover the bodies. Scott and I have been close friends for a lot of years.”

  Hearing the grief, Will held his tongue.

  “I’ll speak to the prosecutor, too, but only her. Officially, I heard about a crash, but don’t know if it was the plane Scott chartered or not, and if so whether there’s any chance of survivors.”

  “You trust her?”

  “I do. She’s good. They start jury selection Monday, you know. She seems confident they can convict Mooney—he’s the guy who did the hit—even without Maddy’s testimony, but Torkelson is another matter. My call will make her day. Maybe even her year.”

  Will smiled. “You should know that Maddy is a remarkable woman. She told me what happened. I don’t think she needs a whole lot in the way of prepping, especially given that she’s an attorney herself.”

  “Never hurts to plan for what the defense will throw at her.”

  “Only if we can assure her safety.”

  “Can I call you at this number?”

  “Better if we set up a time and I call you.”

  They settled on two days hence, eleven in the morning.

  Call over, Will did some meandering through Burlington until he found a big green dumpster in an alley. He wiped the phone clean with the hem of his shirt, dropped it on the pavement and stomped on it before tossing it in the dumpster.

  A glance at his watch told him he’d been gone longer than he’d intended. Urgency to return to Maddy thrummed inside him.

  He kept a sharp eye on the rearview mirror during the drive and, because there were several cars behind him when he reached Concrete, he continued on a couple of miles until he could turn into a driveway framed in dense foliage. He waited until he heard no traffic, backed out and got back on the highway, eastbound now. No one was behind him; no one appeared interested when he turned off the highway this time.

  * * *

  MADDY HAD NO warning before the front door opened. Her heart came close to stopping. She hadn’t heard Will’s Jeep—her gaze swung wildly. She could go out the back door—

  “Maddy?” he called.

  “Will?” His name came out in a near whisper.

  Apparently too quiet, because he roared, “Maddy?”

  “Here!”

  He strode into the kitchen and his eyes locked on to hers. His face had been honed by some tension. “You scared me,” he said.

  “I didn’t hear your Jeep. I thought—” Without thinking, she flew into his arms.

  They closed hard around her. “Log walls are good insulation.”

  “Oh,” she mumbled against his chest. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Hell with it,” he interrupted.

  When she lifted her head in surprise, his mouth closed over hers, hot and hard. The kiss seemed to explode. His tongue drove into her mouth and she met it with her own. Her body became hypersensitive. Her palm rested on his chest and she felt the hammer of his heart. His hand wrapped her hip, his fingers digging into her buttock. The ridge against her belly had her rocking, pushing herself up on tiptoe as if she was climbing him. He nipped her lower lip and she did the same to him. He broke the kiss long enough for them both to gasp for air and then bent to reclaim her mouth.

  Or so she thought. The heat in his eyes didn’t diminish, but they narrowed slightly. She saw his internal struggle on his face. Finally, he rested his forehead against hers.

  “Damn. I didn’t mean to...”

  His withdrawal stung. She didn’t want to hear why he shouldn’t have kissed her.

  Maddy lifted her hand away from his chest and stepped back. Given no choice, he let his hands drop. They stared at each other for a searing moment. Maddy was overwhelmed by everything she felt: desperate passion, an unfamiliar bone-deep hunger, light-headedness, an echo of the fear that a stranger had entered the house, and so much anger.

  “You’ve been through so much,” he said slowly.

  “Think of the damage you might have done,” she said, her flippancy slicing like a knife. She hoped. “With me so enfeebled and all.”

  “You’ve had a raging fever for days,” Will snapped. He sounded really mad. “Broken bones. And me? I was about to set you on the table and—” Color streaked the jut of his cheekbones.

  For an instant all she saw was herself, stripped of the sweatpants—and that wouldn’t have been hard to do, especially since she had no panties beneath them—lying back on the kitchen table, legs spread. Will standing between them, ripping at the snap and zipper on his jeans...

  She blinked a couple of times. She’d melt where she stood if she let herself take the fantasy any further at all.

  As an excuse to turn away from him, she opened the refrigerator and grabbed a soda. “Forget about it.” Without letting herself look at him, Maddy went to the living room and plopped down on the sofa. There was only silence behind her.

  Will took his time but did follow her. Instead of going to his usual spot at the other end of the sofa, he handed her a pil
l bottle and then chose a chair.

  “Quicker you start on these, the better.”

  “I hope they work fast.”

  “I talked to Ruzinski.”

  “He believed you? I mean, about me?”

  “He had to. I knew too much.” Will reported most of the conversation virtually verbatim, or so she guessed from shifts in intonation.

  “So he didn’t want to put me in a safe house or something.”

  “No, I think he was relieved to be able to leave you with me. Who could he trust? I blindsided him. Now he has to look at everyone in his office and wonder.”

  “Unless jury selection drags, I should be testifying next week.” She could hardly believe the time had really come.

  “They sound like they’re on schedule.”

  “Wait, didn’t you buy groceries?”

  “Crap!” He shot to his feet and jogged out the front door. “What am I thinking?”

  * * *

  HE’D LET A stew of lust and fear, frustration and anger do his thinking for him, that was what.

  Damn, he loved kissing her, but he was still brooding when the two of them sat down to dinner. He’d fallen on her like a rabid wolf. He was still ticked that she’d taken offense at his apology. Had he ever discounted her intelligence or her strength? No. So what was her problem? He hadn’t been rejecting her! All she’d had to do was look at him to see how aroused he was.

  Will tried to shut down that kind of thinking. His meal sat untouched in front of him. Maddy was talking, wondering if she could safely call her parents.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “We’d better ask Ruzinski. If there’s any chance their phone has a tap on it...”

  “But all that would give them is a phone number, right? If I use one of those prepaid phones, how could that hurt?”

  Surprised, he said, “Your parents still have a landline?”

  “Well...they did a year ago.”

  “I doubt they’d have dropped it given that they’re probably desperate to hear from you,” he said thoughtfully.

  “I’m sure they wouldn’t.”

  She looked so eager, Will hated to shake his head, but he did anyway. “We’re talking to Ruzinski Saturday. After a year...”