by Dana R. Lynn
“I’m sorry, Malcolm? I don’t know any Malcolm.”
Robert sneered, contempt in his eyes. “No, you wouldn’t have. You knew him as Phillip.”
Dan had suspected that Phillip was not Maggie’s late husband’s real name. “I take it you were closely acquainted with him?”
But how closely? Was this man also involved with those hunting Maggie down?
“Yeah, you could say that.” Robert looked at them, his lips twisting. “His real name was Malcolm Phillip Hutchins. He was my brother.”
A shocked silence followed this announcement. Robert chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound. The glance he leveled at Maggie was filled with derision. In fact, he looked at her almost as if he hated her. Had he ever met her?
“I don’t understand,” Maggie burst out. “Why would he give me a false name? Why wouldn’t Phillip, I mean Malcolm, tell me who he really was? I wasn’t a stranger! I was his wife.”
“You were his current wife,” Robert taunted her. He seemed to take pleasure in adding to her pain. “He was married before, when he was still going by the name Malcolm.”
Dan had put up with all the cruelty he was going to take from this guy. Who did he think he was to talk to Maggie this way? She was an innocent in all this. He no longer doubted that Maggie knew nothing about what her late husband had been involved with. But this guy, brother or not, had been in it deep enough that he had broken into the wedding chapel, destroyed legal documents. Dan just had to find out why.
“Enough with the attitude. I need you to start from the beginning. Whoever killed your brother is still out there, and he is still willing to kill. I need to know why.”
Even though the light was dim, Dan could still see the way that Robert paled. A look of terror entered his eyes. His hand on the phone started to shake.
“I can’t be seen talking to you!” Robert dropped the phone and jumped to his feet. He backed toward the door. The prison guard stopped him without saying a word. It was obvious that Robert was not going back to his cell until Dan said they were done. He said something to the impassive guard, but all Dan could make out was the desperation in his tone. When the guard merely pointed to the phone he had dropped, Robert snatched it up. “Don’t you see what’s going to happen?” he shrieked. “If anyone finds out that I was talking to you, if anyone knows that I had a clue about what happened to Malcolm, I could be in danger, too.”
Maggie and Dan both held the phones away from their ears, wincing.
“Okay, calm down and stop shouting,” Dan ordered the older man.
Robert meant every word he said. His fear was nearly tangible. But Dan had to focus on the danger to Maggie, Siobhan and Rory. Just thinking about the twins strengthened his resolve. He would solve this and make Maggie safe so she could be with her children. And continue to make amends with her mom.
“Just tell me what you know. As soon as we know what’s happening, we’ll leave you alone.”
Nervously, Robert lowered himself down onto the stool again. His contemptuous expression had vanished, leaving a much shaken man in its place. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead.
“Okay, let’s try this again,” Dan said. “I need to understand what happened. Let’s go back to the beginning. Why was your brother using a fake name?” Dan kept his voice as soothing as possible. He held the phone in his left hand, his right hand he kept below the counter so that Robert couldn’t see it, and reached out to grip Maggie’s fingers. He could feel her shaking. He squeezed, just to let her know she was not alone. Then he dropped her hand.
Robert leaned his elbows on the counter and covered his eyes with the hand holding the phone. “It started about, oh, about six years ago. My brother and his wife Lily were having trouble. Money troubles. Lily worked as a nurse, and my brother worked at a tool and die company in Cleveland. They had school loans they were still paying back. So Malcolm decided to take a second job. And at first the job seemed to be good for them. He was working at a family business. It was a men’s clothing warehouse, and he really liked it.” Robert wiped his sweaty forehead on the sleeve of his prison shirt, leaving a wet spot.
“Lily began to notice strange things, though. Malcolm was agitated. He was working strange hours and was acting secretive. She tried to talk to him, but he would just get angry. She told me she thought he was having an affair. He denied it, but when she told him she wanted him to quit that second job, he said he couldn’t do it. She ended up leaving him. About six months later, Malcolm called me in the middle of the night. It turned out that his new boss was running a money laundering business. Malcolm was working in the finance department. He had found some evidence early on, back when he was still with Lily, but was making good money, so he kept his mouth shut. When the boss realized he wasn’t planning on talking, Malcolm was given more work—and more pay to stay quiet about it. Then some feds showed up one day at his house. I’m not sure of the whole story, but he agreed to get evidence for them if they would give him protection and clear him of any charges for what he had done. Well, he gave them evidence, and his boss sent some goons to kill him. The feds decided they couldn’t protect him unless he went into the Witness Protection Program. So he became Phillip.”
Maggie sat forward, her face intense. Her eyes blazed into Robert’s. A hot, angry flush stained her cheeks.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that in the Witness Protection Program you cut all ties with your former life. How is it that you were still in touch with your brother?”
It was a fair question. One that Dan had planned to ask himself.
“He did cut ties with me,” Robert protested. “At least for the first six months. But we had always been really close, and he didn’t have anybody else to talk to. He called me one day and told me what had happened. He also told me that he had kept some evidence from the feds. He wanted to have some kind of leverage just in case his old boss ever came after him.”
Dan and Maggie both sat up straight. They looked at each other and then at him. Dan felt a tingle of excitement. This could be huge. All he needed was one break, and he could find the man behind all this. “What evidence did he keep?” He couldn’t quite keep the urgency from his tone.
But Robert just shook his head helplessly. “I have no idea. Maybe some pictures, maybe he taped something. I don’t know. I told him he should let me know, but he just said I would be in danger if I knew.”
“Tell me about the break-in.”
“I hadn’t heard from Malcolm in a while. He called me out of the blue one day and said he’d fallen in love again. He planned to marry this girl, but she didn’t know anything about him. He needed my help. My brother was afraid that the people who were after him might have found out his new identity. He was paranoid that way. So when he wanted to get married, he called me ’cause he knew I would help him make sure her name wouldn’t be officially tied to his. I was working at the courthouse, so I was able to go into the computer after hours and delete the application you’d filed that day. He called me later and begged me to make sure the certificate wasn’t filed. He couldn’t let the marriage information make it into public record, where there might be some kind of automatic search for his name. So I agreed to take care of it.”
“But you got caught!” Maggie blurted. “And now you are in jail for helping your brother.”
“Well, I never told anyone why I broke into the wedding chapel. Once the files were destroyed, the evidence of his marriage was gone.”
Dan was honestly curious. “Why not just tell people why you had resorted to a criminal act? It might have made the jury more sympathetic.”
Robert gave him a pitying look. “He was my kid brother. If anyone knew I had done that to help him, who knows what could have happened. Anyway, I got five years. At the time I thought it was worth it to protect him.”
“I get the feeling you helped you
r brother out of lots of messes through the years,” Dan mused. He stopped himself from using the word enabling, but it wasn’t easy.
“Your brother died a year and a half ago,” Maggie said gently. “The federal agents knew about it. Didn’t they let you know?”
A weary sigh escaped him. His chin sank down onto his chest. “Yeah, they told me. But I was hoping that it meant that they were just relocating him with a different alias. You know what I mean?”
Dan nodded. Something else had occurred to him. “When we entered, you looked at her.” He pointed to Maggie. “It was almost like you knew her.”
“I never saw her before, no, but Malcolm had sent me a picture.” Meeting Maggie’s eyes, he shook his head. “Meeting you killed him, you know.”
* * *
Maggie didn’t think anything else could shock her, but those words combined with the venom in Robert’s tone sent her reeling. She reared back in her seat, gasping.
“Excuse me?”
“Hey,” Dan protested. “That’s—”
Robert made an angry motion with his hand. His face hardened. “He had to fall in love with someone working for the press!”
“But I wasn’t working as a reporter,” Maggie protested, pressing her free hand tight against her abdomen. “I was an entry-level fact-checker It never even occurred to me that my husband was leading a double life.”
The man on the other side of the glass flushed. A vein pulsed at his temple. “He wasn’t living a double life! He had left everything behind to start over with a new life. And because of your job, he lost even that!”
A gentle hand touched her wrist. Maggie turned her gaze to Dan. He gave no outward indication that he had touched her. His body was leaning forward, his eyes focused on Robert. But his hand below the counter brushed her wrist again. She understood. He needed her to calm down and let him take the lead. It was the only way to get the information they needed.
It went against the grain, but she leaned back in her chair and allowed Dan to take the lead. Part of her wanted to flee so she would not learn about her husband’s past. How could she ever take anyone at face value again? The man she had loved, the only man she had let that close since her stepfather’s betrayal, had been lying to her all along. She hadn’t known him at all. It felt like a new betrayal.
Setting her jaw, she steeled herself for whatever else she might learn. Flicking a glance at Dan, she saw that even with his longer hair, he looked 100 percent cop. It was in the level stare he settled on Robert. A stare that said he would brook no lies.
“I need to know everything, and I need to know it now. People’s lives are in danger as we sit here.”
My babies. The thought flashed across Maggie’s mind, reminding her how important it was for her to focus.
Robert swallowed. “I don’t know everything. I know that Malcolm had a zip drive on him with information against his old boss. He took her—” he jerked a thumb in Maggie’s direction “—out for dinner and realized the drive was gone. The next morning, he stopped by her office and found it lying under a pile of papers on her desk. He took it home and hid it. But two days later, the information he had on the drive appeared in a column in the Journal. Nothing that accused anyone of anything, but just enough to arouse suspicion.”
Maggie shot forward in her seat. “I never saw any zip drive! And I had nothing to do with writing articles.”
“Maybe not, but obviously someone else took the opportunity to swipe it during the night.”
Guilt swamped her. She pushed it aside. There was no way she could accept responsibility for that. If the information was that sensitive, Phillip, or Malcolm, should have kept it locked away from the start.
“What information?” Dan ground out, probably clenching his teeth. Yep, that jaw was tight. “Which columnist?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that he tried to keep an eye on the man in question for a few days. And he was convinced he was sniffing around for more information. He was positive he was correct when the man was killed four days later.”
“Brandon Steel!” Maggie gasped. “I remember now! The police thought he had died during a random mugging.”
She shuddered, remembering walking past his empty desk. She had never liked Brandon. He had been a player and a dishonest one at that. It had also been rumored that he came by his information illegally. But he wrote well, and his cutting wit sold papers. The people in charge were willing to overlook his lack of ethics as long as he brought readers to the newsstands, and as long as he never got caught doing anything illegal.
It had never crossed her mind that he had gotten information from foraging stuff from his coworkers’ desks. It didn’t surprise her, though.
She was so lost in her own thoughts that she started when Dan touched her elbow. Jerking up her head, she saw with astonishment that Robert was being led through the door back to his cell. Dan was standing next to her seat, concern shadowing his warm gray eyes.
“Maggie? You okay?” His deep voice sent a shiver down her spine.
She cleared her throat. Straightening her shoulders, she stood, careful not to stand too close to him. The man was starting to mess with her senses.
“Fine. Just thinking.”
Fortunately, Dan didn’t press her for more details. Instead, he gave a slight nod. His hand was warm on the small of her back as he wordlessly guided her toward the exit. Funny how it both comforted and unsettled her.
A kaleidoscope of thoughts whirled in her head, making her feel light-headed. The effort to hold a conversation was beyond her capabilities at the moment. Dan appeared to be likewise preoccupied, his brows lowered and a wrinkle carved into his forehead.
They caught a taxi back to the airport. Maggie leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. It was the only way she could be alone with her thoughts. Sort them out so they could make sense. Inches away from her, she could hear the clicking sound of Dan’s fingers on his phone as he tapped out a detailed email report to Chief Kennedy. It would be so easy, she thought, to reach out and grab his hand. Just to assure herself of...what?
In reaction to her irrational thought, she flexed the fingers of the hand lying on the seat between them. Suddenly, she was filled with the urge to ask him his impressions of the interview with Robert. Biting her lip, she stared out the window, biding her time.
The remainder of the drive to the airport was completed in silence. No longer a comfortable silence, though. Maggie had gotten used to Dan, she realized. Used to him enough that she didn’t feel the need to fill the space between them with banal conversation. But now, when she wanted to talk, she felt the presence of the taxi driver. Tension filled the cab like a thick, oily fog, making her feel as if she couldn’t get a full breath.
It was with great relief that she stumbled out of the cab outside the airport. Drawing the air deep into her lungs, she waited for Dan to pay the cab driver, then followed when Dan took off at a brisk stride toward their gate. The urgency in his pace was contagious. She was getting paranoid, she thought, constantly feeling as if someone was watching them. She forced herself to move faster. He looked back at her, consternation filling his expression as he shortened his strides to match hers.
“You should have told me I was going too fast,” he reprimanded her.
Heat crawled into her already-warm cheeks. “I didn’t want to slow us down.” Or appear weak.
A snort from her companion let her know he wasn’t impressed. “Next time say something. I wouldn’t want to leave you behind by accident.”
The fear of being watched continued until they were seated on the plane. She sank into her window seat with a sigh. Her arm was jostled as Dan situated himself beside her. Their arms touched as he diligently scanned the other passengers. It would have been easy enough to casually readjust her posture so that their arms weren’t tou
ching. She knew it would. But she didn’t. Nor did she allow herself the luxury of examining why beyond that she felt safe.
The com system dinged as the flight attendant’s voice filled the cabin. At the direction to put all cellular devices on airplane mode, Dan scowled. So Mr. Confident didn’t like being disconnected. Interesting.
Maggie attempted some light conversation, just enough to keep her mind occupied. For her efforts, she got one-word answers and several eye rolls. Clearly, someone was not feeling communicative.
She huffed back in her seat, feeling childish, but also so jumpy she positively itched with it. She tapped her fingernails on the plastic armrest, getting some satisfaction out of the staccato sound. A large hand covered hers, stopping the motion.
She slanted her eyes toward Dan and saw a smile hovering around his mouth. Well, glad she could amuse him!
“Maggie, it’s going to be a long enough flight. Please settle down.” His deep voice was barely above a whisper, but she heard it just fine.
“I can’t,” she hissed back. “I miss my kids, my husband was a liar, someone’s after us and, on top of that, I’m terrified of flying!” The last word left her mouth, resulting in chuckles around them. She blushed as she realized her voice had risen with her last complaint. “Sorry,” she whispered, mortified.
The hand on hers tightened. “I noticed you seemed frightened on the airplane out. But you handled it well.”
“I was acting on autopilot.”
“Maggie, I need some quiet to process everything we’ve learned. I am not ignoring you, but I need to think. I will keep you safe.”
Guilt swamped her. This man had suffered injuries for her, and she was whining like a two-year-old because he wouldn’t play Distract Maggie. She ducked her head and absently traced the fingers of her free hand over the back of his. There were several scars, she noted idly. This was a man who wasn’t afraid to put himself in danger for others. His muscles tensed as she gently rubbed the scars. Burn scars, if she wasn’t mistaken.