One Wrong Step (Borderline Book 2)

by Laura Griffin

  Kate looked at the pictures. “Two males?”

  Rowe nodded. “One got out to use the phone. They made a quick call, then left in a hurry. Any of those trucks look like the one you saw?”

  Kate shuffled through the papers, pausing several times to study them closely. She wasn’t wearing makeup today—not that she needed it—and she looked even younger than twenty-three.

  “This one,” she said, shoving a picture at him.

  He cleared his throat. “The Avalanche? You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. It’s got that distinctive back part. I remember now.”

  “Thanks.” He returned the pictures to his pocket, then slipped on his sunglasses.

  “So maybe you can trace the phone call. From the gas station? It’d be interesting to see who they were calling. Seems like they would’ve used a cell phone, unless maybe they were worried about caller ID.”

  “We’re working on it.” He headed for her front door. As he passed the hallway, he caught a glimpse of an unmade bed in one of the rooms.

  “Your roommate out?” he asked, then wondered why in the hell he cared.

  “I don’t have a roommate.”

  He turned around. “That woman who was here yesterday? Silver nose ring? She told me I’d find you at Jiffy Lube.”

  “That’s Amber. She lives across the street. She just comes over sometimes so she can use my Internet.”

  Perfect. “And you gave her a key?”

  “She uses my hide-a-key, mostly.”

  He thought of a dozen things to say, and then decided not to say any of them. Kate Kepler’s personal security was none of his business.

  Except that she was a witness, of sorts, in his investigation. His investigation of one of the most dangerous DTOs in Mexico.

  Goddamn it.

  “You need to be more careful,” he snapped.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your house. It’s wide open. Anyone could get in here.”

  She laughed. “Why would they want to? This place is a dump. I mean, it’s cozy, yeah. I like it. But it’s not like I’ve got diamonds lying around.”

  “That’s not the point!” He was glad his eyes were covered by sunglasses, because he probably looked a little strange. And it was strange, coming over and getting all argumentative with this girl he barely knew. He needed to detach.

  He took a deep breath. “Lock up behind me, will you?”

  She had a “what’s with you?” look on her face, but she didn’t say anything. She just nodded and opened the door.

  He looked down at her plastic rock and sighed. “And find a new place for your key, okay? You’re a smart girl, Kate. Use your brain.”

  “You know where Robert stashed the cash? What, did he tell you?” John wanted to kill that prick all over again for getting her involved in this.

  “He didn’t tell me,” she said. “I found it, actually.”

  “You found two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where was it?” Not that it even mattered now.

  “You remember that night down in Mayfield, the night the FBI and everybody came out to Feenie’s house?” she asked.

  As if he could forget. Celie had found out her husband had helped try to murder her best friend, who’d just become hip to his money-laundering operation. She’d rushed over to tell Feenie. Robert had followed her over there, hoping to shut her up, probably. When Celie told him she’d called the police, he gave her a bloody lip and fled the scene.

  “I remember,” he said now.

  “Well, ever since that night, the FBI’s been grilling me about money. Where was Robert getting it? Did he have a stash hidden somewhere that he took when he fled the country? When he was living as a fugitive for so many months, he had to have something to live on.”

  “I thought he emptied your bank account,” John said. “That’s what Feenie told me, anyway.”

  “He did. But that wouldn’t have gotten him far, and the FBI knew it. They thought he’d taken off with some of Saledo’s cash.”

  “Okay. So Robert took the money. Then what?”

  She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “That’s the thing. He only took some of it. The rest he left back in Mayfield.”

  “Why would he do that?” If he’d taken time to empty their account, why leave behind two hundred grand?

  “Because he was in a hurry.” She sighed. “And because the money was hidden in a storage unit on the outskirts of town, and Robert’s key was missing.”

  “His key?”

  “Yeah, I’d found it in a drawer and put it on my key chain, thinking it was mine.”

  She leaned her head against the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling. “I think that’s why when he came to Austin and went through my purse and saw that Public Storage card, he thought he could find the money there. I had to hide it somewhere, and it’s not like you can just show up and put that kind of cash in a bank.”

  She was right. Banks paid attention to deposits over ten thousand, as did the federal government.

  “Then Robert must have met with these guys and told them he knew where the money was,” she said. “Maybe he promised to lead them to it in exchange for some. Or maybe he was trying to buy himself off Saledo’s blacklist. I don’t know.”

  The pieces were coming together. “So they killed him, took your keys and the card, and went after the money themselves?”

  “That’s my best guess.”

  John brushed a wisp of hair out of her face. “How about some aspirin? You don’t look very good.”

  “It’s okay. I want to get this over with.”

  He tried not to let that sting.

  “So,” she continued, “Robert flees the country, and I’ve got this extra key on my key chain. It’s to this storage unit where we kept some furniture my grandmother had given me that we didn’t have room for. It was baby stuff mostly. A crib and a rocker, things like that.” She looked away. “We were saving it for when we had a baby.”

  Thank hell that never happened. But John kept that opinion to himself. Celie probably wanted to be a mother. She was terrific with kids—her whole personality just lit up around them.

  “So I went over there one day. I was feeling sad, I guess. About lots of things.” She wouldn’t look at him. “I was going through this box of old toys I’d saved. Underneath a few old dolls was just this stack of money.”

  John smiled. “Bet you didn’t expect that, huh?”

  She scoffed. “Nope. I started opening all the boxes, and it was unreal. The money was squirreled away everywhere. Tens, twenties, hundreds. Little stacks all over the place. He’d hidden it all in boxes of stuff I never use. I guess he figured I wouldn’t see it.”

  John visualized her in a storage unit surrounded by piles of cash. It made a funny picture. She wasn’t the least bit materialistic. Other people might have been elated, but she’d probably been terrified.

  He took her hand. “You were scared, huh?”

  “Heck, yeah! Wouldn’t you be?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never run into that problem before.”

  Her hand was soft in his, and she stroked his fingers with the pad of her thumb. He wondered if she realized she was doing it.

  “But you didn’t go to the police,” he stated.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She looked down. “I guess I was in denial. I kept thinking maybe it was legitimate, that he’d earned it and not stolen it, and maybe he was just hiding the money from me, or trying to avoid paying taxes on it. I knew he did some off-the-books accounting work for friends, people he never ran through his firm.”

  This was where everything got sticky, John knew. She’d decided to keep the money. But why? She was a law-abiding citizen. Little Miss Honor Society. The FBI had turned her life inside out looking for evidence connecting her to Robert’s criminal enterprise. They’d found zilch. Nada. Celie didn’t have so much as
a parking ticket. But she did have a track record of working tirelessly for bleeding-heart causes—food banks, cancer kids, the Red Cross, you name it. Investigators had struck out.

  “Why’d you keep the money, Celie?”

  She hesitated a moment, then met his gaze. “Have you ever wanted something so badly, it just knotted you up inside?”

  He stared at her. “I don’t know,” he lied. “What was it you wanted?”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore, but I was pretty sure I could buy it if I had enough money.”

  What the hell was she talking about?

  “So you spent some,” he said.

  She nodded, staring down at their hands. “And I can’t get it back.”

  Shit, how much had she spent? And what could possibly be worth risking the wrath of not only the FBI, but a drug kingpin?

  “Whatever you did, I’ll help you. I promise. But please, please tell me you didn’t spend all of it.”

  She bit her lip.

  “Celie?”

  “I didn’t spend all of it.”

  He released the breath he’d been holding. “Damn, I’m glad to hear you say that.”

  He kissed her forehead, and she slid her hands around his neck. They felt good there, like they belonged, but he pushed the thought away.

  “McAllister?”

  He sighed. Just once he’d like her to call him “John,” not “McAllister,” like they were drinking buddies or something.

  “What?”

  “Let’s talk about something else. I’m getting a headache.”

  “Fine by me. How about I get you an icepack and we can talk about all the reasons you’re not getting rid of me tonight?”

  She pulled away from him, her eyes guarded suddenly. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I’m feeling a little…freaked out right now. I need some time alone.”

  He watched her for a moment, trying to read her mind. Was she freaked out about her attack, or merely nervous about him? He knew he’d come on too strong in the past, and he realized now that had been a mistake. She wasn’t like the other women he’d known.

  “I’ll leave you alone,” he said. “If that’s what you really want. But I’m not leaving you by yourself tonight.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  Celie lay beneath her comforter, completely exhausted, yet unable to sleep. The sensation was familiar.

  She glanced at the clock. One thirty-four. She’d been trying for nearly three hours now, but sleep wouldn’t come, and she knew it would continue to elude her until just before daybreak. Then she’d get a few uninterrupted minutes—an hour, if she was lucky—and start the next morning with kinks in her neck and sandbags under her eyes.

  Celie threw back the comforter and rolled onto her back. Sometimes that helped. But after squeezing her eyes closed, she saw the same images that had been plaguing her for hours: the abandoned alley, the rusted blue Dumpster, and the empty black hole at the end of the gun.

  Her chest constricted as she relived the helplessness. She’d been at their mercy. They could have done anything to her.

  She stared at the ceiling and tried to regulate her breathing. She wouldn’t panic. She was safe at home, behind a locked door. A security guard was on duty downstairs, and John McAllister was asleep on her sofa.

  A soft tapping sounded at her door.

  She propped up on her elbows. “Come in,” she said, her voice gravelly.

  The door creaked open. McAllister stood in the opening, silhouetted against the yellow light of the hallway.

  “Trouble sleeping?” he asked.

  She sat up and tugged her nightshirt down over her thighs. She’d gone to bed in Robert’s old Dallas Cowboys jersey. It had been washed about sixty thousand times, and it was the most comfortable thing she owned. Alluring lingerie, it was not.

  “Sorry about my couch,” she said. “It can’t be nearly long enough for you.”

  He stepped into the room, and her pulse quickened.

  “I’ve slept on worse.”

  He walked over to the bedside. “Since you’re awake anyway, there’s something I need to ask you. Mind?” He nodded toward the bed.

  She scooted over, trying to ignore the way her heart was racing. The mattress sank under his weight as he sat down, and she had to catch herself to keep from rolling into him.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  She watched him scan the room. He couldn’t see much in the dimness, but she wondered anyway what he thought about it. He’d probably been in dozens of women’s bedrooms over the years. His gaze paused on the rocker in the corner.

  “Your grandmother’s rocking chair, huh? The one you had in storage?”

  Here was the problem with confiding in this man. He filed everything away, no matter how inconsequential. “That’s what you wanted to ask me?”

  He picked up her hand. “No.”

  She waited, wishing she didn’t like the way his hand felt, all warm and callused. How did he get calluses, anyway? He was a reporter.

  A fact she needed to remember.

  Moonlight filtered through the window, and she could see his face in the shadows: the strong jaw, the faint stubble, the little white scar just below his ear that he’d picked up somewhere along the way. She knew nothing about that scar. She knew nothing about him, really, which made it all the more unnerving to have him sitting on her bed in the dark.

  “I need to ask you something, even though I know you think it’s none of my business,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “What did you do with all that money?”

  He was right. It wasn’t any of his business. And yet she had this insane urge to tell him.

  But she couldn’t. “It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t understand anyway.”

  “You might be surprised what I’d understand.”

  What could she say to that? She didn’t say anything.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let me ask you something else then. Are you absolutely sure you can’t get it back?”

  That was an easy one. “Absolutely.”

  “Then I think you need to go to the FBI. Tell them what happened today—”

  “I can’t. I told you, those men threatened to kill me.”

  He took a deep breath and looked down. He fidgeted with her fingers. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe you should try to join the federal Witness Protection Program.”

  Her first reaction was absurd. She felt hurt. Part of her was devastated he would suggest that she disappear.

  Which just illustrated how screwed up she’d allowed herself to get over this guy. She did not have a future with John McAllister. They were complete opposites. And he didn’t want her anyway, not for anything serious.

  “I couldn’t do that.” She pulled her hand away and folded it in her lap. “I know it may not seem like it to you, but I do have a life. I have a mother, and two sisters. And friends. And a goddaughter. I couldn’t just abandon all that.”

  He touched her calf now. Which was worse than his holding her hand. “Feenie’s daughter?”

  “Yes,” she answered. His hand was giving her goose bumps.

  “Don’t you think your mother and Feenie and everyone would rather you be safe than anything else?”

  “Sure, but what about what me?” she asked, annoyed.

  “What do you mean?”

  What did she mean ? It was her life they were talking about. Unlike most people she knew, she didn’t have a marriage, or a child, or even a career to speak of, but she still had a life. And what she had meant something to her.

  “I mean, what about what I want?”

  “Okay. What do you want? Do you even know?”

  Anger welled up in her chest. “Yes, as a matter of fact. I want to finish my degree and become a social worker. I want a family someday. I want everyone to stop worrying about me and pitying me, including you! I want to have control over my goddamn life!”

  Whoa. Where had that come from? She was breathing hard,
and her hands were fisted at her sides.

  His fingers had stilled on her leg. “You think I pity you?”

  She took a deep breath. She might as well get it out there. “Yes, I do.”

  “Celie…” He shook his head. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, really? Let me ask you something then.”

  “Okay.”

  “When was the last time you slept with someone?”

  Silence.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” he finally answered.

  “I think it has a lot to do with everything, actually. Just answer the question.”

  “Three weeks ago.”

  Three weeks ? He’d been even busier than she thought. She felt a little burr of jealousy in her chest.

  “And is she your girlfriend?”

  He tipped his head back. “No, she was just…Shit. No, she’s not my girlfriend.”

  She waited for him to get it, but he just sat there staring at her. “I haven’t slept with anyone in a lot longer than that,” she said. It had been nearly a year, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “So, we’re totally different.”

  “What, because I had sex three weeks ago?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Because you have sex often. Without strings attached. It’s no big deal to you.”

  “How would you know?”

  She laughed. “You tried to have sex with me at my office ! Sorry, but that’s not really normal for me. When I sleep with someone, it’s a big deal, but to you it’s like tying your shoes or something. We’re completely different.”

  She held her breath, waiting for him to deny it, but he didn’t.

  “Don’t you see?” she continued. “The only thing we have in common is that our pasts overlap. And every time I get hit with some new trouble, you feel sorry for me, like everyone else.”

  “I don’t feel sorry for you. Jesus. That’s the last thing I feel.”

  Yeah, right. If there was one thing she recognized, it was pity. She’d been on the receiving end of it for a decade now, and it pissed her off.

  “McAllister, let’s be honest, okay? You’re here because you want to protect me, right?”