“What do you think happened?”
“Angel was probably only in the bond fraud as a runner to initiate himself into Trumbella's organization. It might have turned personal at some point. Novak had been working with Trumbella for two years. Angel never mentioned him by name, but maybe he was playing both Ritchie and Angel. That's the only way I can figure a connection between the shooting and the safe house explosion.”
“But Agent Novak died in the shooting.”
“And someone leaked your name to the press. Whoever it was is still alive. Bellows is in on it. I’m sure of it. No one else had access to the house the way he did. To think anything more would mean a major conspiracy in law enforcement. Too many people would have to be involved to keep it under wraps and that just seems too far-fetched to me.”
“Who knew we were going to that safe house?”
“I don't know. The FBI was calling the shots. I don't know how under wraps Charley was keeping things. I don’t even know if Captain Russo knew where we were going.”
“Agent Bellows said the safe house was checked just before we arrived,” Cassie said.
“Yeah. Someone could have easily rigged the house before we got there and then let Bellows finish it once we were securely inside. Or maybe he had it rigged all along and it was just his doing. He was in Providence the night of the shooting.”
“Do you really believe it was just him?”
Jake shrugged. “Charley hand-picked the team to baby-sit. They'd been expecting us.”
“Realistically, we’re talking about two people in the FBI, right? Agent Bellows and—”
“Charley,” Jake said, his tone almost a groan.
Cassie cocked her head to one side. “Someone. There were a lot of agents in that room.” When Jake didn’t say anything, Cassie added, “What are you thinking?”
“I'm beginning to think maybe Ritchie Trumbella was the frosting on the cake.”
“How do you mean?”
“Novak may have been getting too close. When you work undercover, some agents go underground for years. They get so lost in their new identity that they lose themselves. That’s why it’s important to have a connection with someone on the outside. Novak had to have been in contact with someone at the FBI, giving updates. Maybe he got too close to the truth. Maybe Novak was the real target all along.”
Jake looked down the side street before pulling the wheel to make a left turn.
“Whoever leaked my name to the press knew I was at Rory’s,” Cassie said. “Knew my name was attached to the case.”
“The Bureau had access to our files almost immediately. There were reporters crawling all over the streets outside the bar within a half hour of the shooting. Someone had to have recognized you.”
“And now they know I identified Angel Fagnelio as the shooter.”
“We don't have one iota of proof to eliminate anyone in this. I have to talk to Kevin.”
Wordlessly, Jake downshifted spun into the parking lot of a small convenience store. He didn't have to say anything more for her to know what he was thinking. They weren't any closer to finding out the truth than they were the night of the shooting. But at least for now, they were safe.
#
Chapter Ten
Steak was truly wishful thinking. Jake was only slightly disappointed when he had to settle for bacon and a box of Corn Flakes to go with the eggs, and frozen hamburger patties they’d bought for dinner. The general store did have everything else they needed to hibernate for the next week or so. Since it was the only store within twenty miles of the cabin, that was a plus.
Jake gassed up the Jeep for the ride back to the cabin. They probably wouldn’t need to go more than a total of a hundred miles while at the cabin, but it was good to be prepared. As safe as they were in this remote section of the mountains, Jake knew that safety could sometimes be an illusion.
But before they could head back to the secluded woods, Jake had one more errand that demanded his attention.
They stood in a phone booth located in the store's parking lot, Jake dialed the telephone number. Cassie stood just outside the booth's broken door, keeping it open. A ten-dollar watch with a second hand he'd just purchased at the store dangled from Cassie’s fingers as she waited for the call to connect. The caller picked up after the first ring.
“Gordon.”
As soon as Jake heard Kevin's voice, he nodded to Cassie. Her eyes flew to the second hand on the watch, keeping the time as he spoke.
“Kevin, it's me.”
“Dammit, Jake, where the hell have you been? Russo's crawling all over and up my ass, flaming about you and Cassie.”
“Cassie's with me. We're staying hidden for a while.”
“Gotta tell you, buddy, I'm damned glad to hear your voice. The FBI has been very hush hush about what went down at that safe house. I don't know how you escaped that explosion, but…” He let his voice trail, paused before continuing. “I'm obligated to tell you that Captain Russo and Agent Tate have ordered you to bring Cassie back. Immediately.”
“Are they standing over your shoulder or are they relying on a tap?”
Kevin sighed. “It was a given you'd call me first. And you know if Charley was standing over my shoulder she'd be holding the phone by now.”
“I figured as much.”
“She's been spitting fire. And as pretty as the woman is, it ain't a pretty sight. Ever since you took off from the safe house—”
“Like we had a choice! Bellows locked us in, Kev. No matter what Charley is telling you about what went down. It’s an inside job. Someone in the FBI wanted us dead.”
“What? Tate said it was a gas leak.”
“It was. But that’s all I can say right now. I’m going to bring Cassie back in, but only after Angel Fagnelio is behind bars and has been debriefed.”
A heavy breath carried over the phone line, distorting the connection. “Is she really worth all this, Jake? You're killing your career doing it this way. You do know that, don't you?”
“Internal Affairs can strike me from their Christmas list. Get your end set up and I’ll come in.”
“Not a problem, just tell me how I can contact you.”
“I’ll call you.”
“Jake, right now you're a suspect. There's been talk of you being in with Fagnelio from the start.”
“Fuck. I walked right into this one. Charley all but stuck an apple in my mouth and put me on a spit as the scapegoat. Did you tell them about Debra Cantelli?”
“For all the good it did. Just tell me where you are, Jake,” Kevin said. “I’ve got your back. You know that. You can't clear yourself if you're on the run.”
“When you have Fagnelio. Then we'll come in. Not until then.”
The sound of items crashing carried through the phone line. Jake could just picture Kevin pushing something across his desk in frustration. “Jake—”
Cassie reached through the phone booth door and cut the call.
“Time’s up,” she said. “Did he tell you anything?”
“They don’t have Angel Fagnelio. There’s nothing more I need to know.”
Jake stood in the booth with his hand clutching the phone for a moment before either of them made a move.
“What if he lies? What if you call him next time and he tells you that Angel Fagnelio is behind bars and it isn't true?”
“I hate people who lie. And Kevin knows it. He wouldn’t do that to me.”
“Jake, you're not talking about your friend, Kevin,” she said, her quick laugh dry. “He's a police officer who has the FBI breathing down his back. He may not have a choice.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Jake said, stepping out of the phone booth and walking with Cassie back to the Jeep. It had begun to snow again while he'd made the phone call. Snow now clung to the back of Cassie’s ridiculously large coat.
Deep down Jake refused to believe Kevin would betray the friendship they'd spent years nurturing. They'd been in tight sp
ots together before. Some fueled by undercover work gone bad. Some dealing with dirty police politics in the precinct. In those years, they'd developed a connection, a sixth sense about each other. They knew by body movement and tone of voice when the other was holding back.
And they both despised liars. They had reason. And that reason began with Charlotte Tate.
Tate. Yeah, she was probably spitting fire right now. When the safe house blew sky high, Tate would have insisted on taking Cassie to God only knows where. She would have pulled Jake off the case immediately. From what Kevin just told him, he was being made the fall guy. Of course, he’d expected as much. The only way to make the truth go away was to blame him or kill him. Killing him hadn’t worked twice. The only thing left was blame.
It all seemed too clean to him now, too convenient for the guilty party to frame him. There'd been no fuss at all with Cassie's simple request to have him be her bodyguard at the safe house.
Until Angel Fagnelio's conviction, the FBI and the federal prosecutors would want to make damned sure their star witness was safe. He wouldn't know where she'd gone or what had happened to her until the trial was over. He shouldn’t care…but he did.
The thought of Cassie getting lost deep into a red-taped system, losing her identity, her family and everyone else she loved for months—maybe years—made his heart ache. He didn't want her to get lost. Not from him. Not when someone from the very agency who'd be protecting her so clearly wanted her not to testify against Angel Fagnelio. Even if it meant death.
Not when he couldn't figure out what this thing was building between them.
He shook off the thought. Cassie would eventually testify. There would come a day when they'd have to return to face Angel Fagnelio. The FBI would hide her away. Away from him.
A wave of nausea flooded his stomach and he pushed past the distressing thought. This case was so much more than just Angel Fagnelio. He had to find out who leaked Cassie’s name to the press and who rigged the safe house to blow up.
“Do you think Kevin can help us?” Cassie asked, cutting into his thoughts.
He nodded, the conviction of it making him feel good for the first time in days. The one person he absolutely could trust was Kevin.
* * *
There was a good chance the fire had gone out in the ancient potbelly stove while they’d been gone. Jake drove the Jeep out to the back of the cabin where it was normally parked. The smoke that had been pluming out of the pipe chimney when they left was now only an occasional puff when the wind slammed against the cabin. The snow had picked up considerably on the drive. It wouldn’t take long for the small rooms inside to turn into an icebox.
Ignoring the hunger pangs his stomach was screaming, he parked the Jeep next to a pile of split wood. He could easily get the stove going while Cassie started lunch.
Cassie shoved her door open and climbed out of the Jeep, pulling the collar of her coat together. Immediately upon closing her door, she opened the back door and lifted one of the four bags of groceries out of the back seat.
“I’m going to take in an armful of wood for the stove before I come out and get the rest of this stuff. It looks like the fire in the woodstove might have gone out.”
“I can handle these while you get some wood,” Cassie said. As she walked toward the cabin, she reached into her pocket with the hand that wasn’t holding the grocery bag and dug around for the key.
Jake looked at the sky and tried to remember when he’d even noticed that it had begun to snow. When he’d called Kevin, he finally remembered. Since then, the snow had gotten heavier. It was just as well they’d gone out when they had.
His gaze darted from the house to the tree line on the far side of the property where another line of split cordwood was stacked neatly in a long row. Half of the row was covered by a sky-blue tarp. His eyes walked along the smooth satin of the untouched snow in the open area of the small field to the set of tiny prints, most likely made by a lone deer, to another set of deep marks in the snow. Up in these hills there had to be a lot of wildlife lurking about just beyond the tree line.
Jake reached down and plucked a few pieces of wood from the top of the pile that were already wet with snow and tossed them aside in favor of some drier wood underneath.
That’s when he saw them. The deep marks next to the smaller ones in the snow, just beyond the longer woodpile by the tree line, looked innocent enough. But something told him those marks didn’t come from a four-legged animal.
Jake couldn’t remember if Cassie had gotten any wood this morning while he was working on the Jeep, but quickly decided it didn’t matter whether she had or not. They hadn’t been gone all that long this morning, but it was snowing hard enough that the tracks he now saw leading to the house were too fresh to be from this morning.
Dropping the pile of wood he’d just picked up, he shoved his feet through the deeper snow toward the opposite side of the house, which was not visible from the driveway.
His heart slammed against his chest. The small bedroom window was shattered and slightly open as if someone had tried to close it, but didn’t push down far enough. The bleached white curtain ruffled back and forth with each gust of wind. The opening wasn’t all that big, but it was certainly big enough for someone of medium built to crawl through.
His adrenaline kicked in like a boot to the stomach. He went for the gun that was usually snug in his holster, but neither was there. It was automatic, something he’d done hundreds of times. There was a comfort in knowing his gun was secure against his ribs when he walked into imminent danger. But he'd lost the gun after the explosion at the safe house. Damn!
Cassie was in there. And he had nothing to protect her with.
With full force, Jake bolted to the woodpile and grabbed the small ax before heading toward the cabin, his feet moving with a will of their own. His pulse pounded in his ear as he tried to listen for sounds. A struggle. Voices. Anything. Dear God, if the perpetrator had used a silencer, he wouldn’t have heard a thing.
Jake hugged the outer wall of the cabin, gripping the ax with both hands. There was no sound inside as he stood just outside the door. No rustle of groceries being pulled out of the bag. No footsteps on the smooth, knotty pine floors, or clanking of pots or pans on the stove.
“Cassie?” he called out, hoping and praying that the intruder was some local hell-bent on stealing goods from an unused rental property. Maybe they were long gone by now.
When no response came, fear gutted Jake, making his breaths come out in shallow bursts. He closed his eyes for a second and tried not to think of Cassie lying dead on the floor in a pool of blood, but the image wouldn’t fade from his brain.
With his left hand, he eased the cabin door open and walked into the darkness.
* * *
Pain pounded against Cassie’s temple as she tried not to think about the gun pressed against her skull right above her left ear. She hadn’t seen him come up behind her. She was too busy unloading packages from the bag she’d carried in from the Jeep. The scent of the intruder registered seconds before the feel of his hands against her mouth.
She’d been too terrified to scream even if he hadn’t covered her mouth to muffle any warning sound she might make. His fingers bruised her cheeks and the barrel of the gun she’d yet to see dented her tender skin.
The raw scent of his sweat wasn’t concealed by the heavy aftershave assaulting her nose, choking her. He reeked of the same fear Cassie felt deep in her bones. His body, hot and rigid, pressed against her back, making her skin crawl where there was forced contact.
She couldn’t move. He crushed her hard against the counter, her stomach and pelvic bone pressed solidly against the edge.
“Stay quiet,” her captor said against her ear, his threatening voice a harsh whisper.
Cassie flinched at his hot breath and closed her eyes against a wave of nausea that bubbled up her throat. He hadn’t said the somewhat comforting words “and I won’t hurt you” after
demanding her silence. That surely made his intentions unmistakable. He wasn’t there to hurt her. He was there to kill her.
Her chest rose and fell with each breath as she fought to focus and think of what to do. Somehow she needed to warn Jake that he was walking blindly into the tiger’s pen. She’d gotten him into this by insisting he be her bodyguard. He didn’t deserve to die. She wouldn’t let him die. Especially not for her.
Still pressing his body against hers, pinning her in the corner of the small counter space, the stranger slowly released the hand gripping her mouth and whispered, “Not one word or I’ll make sure this is slow and agonizing.”
Quickly he pulled a knife in front of her view, just inches from her nose. The gun pressed tighter against her skull, reminding her that all it would take was the mere twitch of his finger to send a bullet passing through her brain, ending everything.
“What do you…what do you want?” she said, her voice shaky. She had no idea if this guy had already been in the house when they got back from the store or if he’d been waiting in the woods and saw her and Jake.
Jake. Oh, God, had this monster already killed him? She closed her eyes to the harsh image of the cold metal knife and the deadly harm this intruder intended.
“Don’t worry your little head. I’m just going to take a little piece of you to remember you by when you’re gone. We’re going to take a nice picture of you and me. And then it’ll be all over.”
His voice didn’t hold hate or malice or emotion of any kind. It was almost mechanical, as if this man had no feeling or conscience about what he was about to do.
“You stay still and this won’t hurt a bit.”
Her eyes flew open just as the knife disappeared from view. Cassie lost all breath in her lungs as the knife grazed the back of her head. She felt a small tug but no pain, and wondered if the terror of what was happening had numbed her senses.
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