Divorced, Desperate and Deceived

by Christie Craig

  He hadn’t cleared the porch when the phone in his hand started vibrating. He’d put it on silent when the calls last night kept coming. He glanced at the number on the screen. What did the guy want now?

  “What is it, Calvin?” he answered.

  “Luke Hunter?”

  Luke hesitated, fear building so fast he couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t Calvin’s voice.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Jacob Wells, US Marshal. Wherever you are, get out. There’s been a breach in security. If you had a set place to meet, don’t go there. Get out, and when you feel safe, call me at Calvin’s number and I’ll set a new meeting place.”

  “What do you mean?” Luke said. Goodwill was yapping again.

  “I repeat: Wherever you are, leave. Lorenzo’s men know where you are.”

  “Fuck!” Luke grabbed the dog, swung around to head back to the cabin—and that’s when he heard the first shot.

  Gun held ready, he looked around. He didn’t see anyone. Another blast sounded, but too far away to be aimed at him. Nonetheless he ran back into the cabin, locked the door behind him, put the dog on the floor and pushed open the bathroom door. Kathy stood outside the shower, naked and dripping wet.

  “Get dressed!” he yelled. “We’ve got company.”

  He saw the panic in her face, but he didn’t have time to comfort her. She grabbed her green tank top and slung it on.

  “Hurry!” He ran to the front window. He could swear he saw movement to his right, through the trees. But whoever was out there was staying in the woods.

  Another bullet was fired. Luke stood there listening. The bullets weren’t coming toward the cabin. What the hell was going on?

  Silence echoed. Goodwill started barking again. Luke’s gaze shot to the Dodge Charger parked in the drive. Could they make it to the car without getting shot?

  A noise sounded toward the rear of the cabin. Luke swung around. A man passed by the back window. He wasn’t dressed in a suit, but he sure as hell was big enough to fit Lorenzo’s type. Luke took his first shot and shattered the glass.

  “Luke!” Kathy screamed from the bathroom.

  “Don’t come out!” he yelled in reply. He’d seen the man drop, but he wasn’t sure if he’d hit him.

  Kathy appeared at the door, fully dressed.

  “Don’t come out!” Luke yelled again. “Shut that door and lock it.”

  Another shot sounded outside, in the distance. Luke’s heart thudded. Then he heard a bullet hit the back wall of the cabin. Who was shooting at whom? He kept his gun aimed at the window—and that’s when he heard the sound of a car pulling up out front. More of Lorenzo’s men, he feared.

  Car doors opened and then slammed. Luke’s gut clenched. His thoughts were on Kathy, on keeping her safe. How many of Lorenzo’s goons were there now? How many could he possibly fight off? How in the hell was he going to get Kathy out of this alive?

  Another shot sounded from the back of the cabin. Seriously, who was shooting at whom? He went to the front door, counted to three, and then went out, gun held ready. His gaze flicked left then right, but he saw nothing. Nothing except the classic Mustang parked there. It was familiar. He’d seen it at Lacy Kelly’s house. It belonged to Jason Dodd, the cop married to Kathy’s friend.

  His gut twisted. Were Kathy’s friends working with Lorenzo?

  “HPD! Hold it right there!” a familiar voice boomed behind him. “Put down the gun, Bradley.”

  Then Dodd came around the side of the cabin, his own gun drawn. “Do as he says. Put the gun down and then let’s talk.”

  “About what?” Luke asked, his weapon still held tight. He figured the man behind him was Officer Kelly. But could he trust these people? How did they know he was here if they weren’t with Lorenzo?

  “Where’s Kathy?” Dodd asked.

  “You leave her out of this. I swear to God if you lay one finger on her, I’ll—”

  “Why would we hurt her?” Kelly asked.

  Right then, something caught his eye. A big guy, this one wearing a suit, stepped out of the woods holding a pistol. Luke raised his gun and fired at the same moment he felt something slam into his shoulder. The man standing at the edge of the woods dropped. So did Luke. Officer Dodd spun toward the man, and a few more shots were fired.

  The pain was crushing Luke’s shoulder, but he forced himself to roll over, gun still tight in his grip. “Who sent you here?” he demanded, pointing his gun at Kathy’s two supposed policeman friends.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “Are you with Lorenzo?” Luke ground out, the pain in his shoulder getting worse by the second.

  “Put that gun down!” Officer Kelly had Luke covered as well. The tension in the air thickened, but Luke refused to drop his weapon until he knew they weren’t a threat.

  “Neither of us knows any Lorenzo,” Dodd spoke up. “Your landlady told us she let you use this place. We took a chance you’d be here.”

  “Claire?” Luke tossed down his weapon.

  “Noooo!” Kathy screamed, barreling out of the cabin, a toilet tank lid held in her hands. God help him but he loved that woman, whatever she thought she was doing. “You’re shot!” she realized. Then, looking at her two friends, she flung the tank lid down and ran to Luke, dropped onto her knees. “You shot him!” Tears were running down her cheeks, she looked white and pasty. “Oh, God, no.”

  Luke tried to reach out to her, but it hurt like hell to move his arm. “I’m fine,” he promised. “It’s not bad. And they didn’t shoot me. Someone else did.”

  Kathy continued to sob.

  Luke sat up a bit and reached for her with his other hand. “Kathy?” he said. He touched her face. “Look at me. I’m talking to you. I’m going to be okay. You understand?”

  She blinked, and he thought he’d finally got through to her. She nodded, but her tears seemed to flow even faster. Then she fell into him.

  Her weight hit his shoulder and he let out a hiss. “I’m fine,” he whispered in her ear, “but my shoulder is hurting like hell. Can you not…lean on me quite so much?” Then he saw over Kathy’s shoulder that her friend was reaching for his phone. “Please don’t call this in.”

  “Why?” Officer Kelly asked.

  Kathy drew back. “He was working undercover and—”

  “You’re a cop?” Officer Dodd asked, clearly surprised.

  “No,” Kathy said, and hiccupped. “He’s a federal agent.”

  Officers Dodd and Kelly did a quick search around the property because Luke realized they’d lost track of the big guy he’d seen in back of the cabin, but the investigation turned up nothing. Then Luke made a call to Calvin’s number. Jacob Wells answered, and he had men pulling up at Claire’s cabin within thirty minutes. Luke, Kathy and her two friends spent the whole time on alert.

  Right before Luke was taken away by US Marshals, Kathy leaned in and whispered, “I’ll be waiting.”

  I love you, was on Luke’s lips, but he held the words back.

  Five hours later, and less than sixty minutes after he woke up from surgery, he wanted to kick himself. He should have told her his feelings. But he hadn’t because he’d been afraid the words would scare her. Now he was scared about not having said them. About leaving her. About Kathy pulling away, closing him off again.

  On the drive to the hospital he’d insisted that she be protected, in case any of Lorenzo’s men were still around. The marshals had assured him she was safe, and he’d assured them that if anything happened to her, he’d give them a personal escort to Hell. His shoulder had been hurting like a son of a bitch, and he was already missing her, so he wasn’t at his calmest.

  He was still trying to clear the post-surgery cobwebs from his head when Jacob Wells walked in. “I hate to do this to you, Hunter, but they want you moved to a safe house and put under protective custody ASAP. Do you think you’re up to traveling?”

  Luke looked up. “Shoot me up with another dose of morphine and I’ll go wherever y
ou want. When’s the trial?”

  “It’s set for next Wednesday.”

  It took a moment for Luke to recall what day it was. The last thirty-six hours had sort of messed up his internal calendar. Suddenly, he remembered a question he’d thought to ask right before they’d taken him into surgery: “The security leak. What happened?”

  “They kidnapped Calvin Hodges’s wife. They were forcing him to cooperate.”

  “How is he?”

  Wells shook his head. “He didn’t make it. Lorenzo’s men shot him just before he managed to get away. But his wife is going to be okay.”

  “Damn,” Luke said, truly aggrieved.

  “The last thing he did was report in about you, admit what had happened.”

  “I’m sorry,” Luke said.

  “Yeah. I didn’t know him personally, but I’ve heard from several who said he was a good man.”

  “He seemed like a decent guy,” Luke agreed. “That’s why I didn’t want to believe…I mean, my gut kept telling me something was up, but…”

  “Guts are always right.” Wells handed over a bag with clothes in it.

  Luke hoped like hell that the US Marshal was wrong—and not because of anything to do with Lorenzo, but because right now, despite what Kathy had told him, Luke had a gut feeling that he wasn’t finished fighting with Kathy about them being together. His gut said that this time apart was only going to make things harder.

  Shaking off those worries, because there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about them, he focused back on Wells. “Where’s the trial going down?”

  “In Dallas.”

  “Home sweet home,” Luke said, remembering how after he’d signed the divorce papers he hadn’t been able to leave town fast enough.

  “Do you need me to get a nurse to help you get dressed?”

  Luke glanced into the bag and saw the pants were sweats. “I think I can manage,” he said. Then, as Wells started to walk away, he remembered to ask, “How did things shake down back at the cabin?”

  The marshal turned around. “Oh. In addition to the guy at the edge of the woods, they found two other bodies. One was a state trooper.”

  “The other guy—a big fellow—he was one of Lorenzo’s, right?”

  “Yeah…although Kelly and Dodd said you told him the guy was wearing a gray T-shirt.”

  “He was.”

  “Well, the guy they found was in a suit and tie.”

  Luke’s gut clenched. “So one of them got away?”

  “Sounds like it. But we think he was wounded. There was blood at the back of the cabin, so you probably hit him. We got people checking the hospitals. Or maybe the guy went somewhere and died. We’ll find his body sooner or later.”

  And if they didn’t? “You’ve got Kathy Callahan in protective custody, right? Because I swear—”

  “We’ve got her in protective custody,” Wells reassured him. “Last time I talked to my guy, she was giving him hell.”

  Luke smiled, remembering her snagging his gun. “She’s good at that. Make sure she knows I’m okay. She’ll worry.”

  “So that’s the way it is,” Wells said, a cocky grin on his face. “We’ll make sure she hears you’re okay. The men who picked you up saw the way the girl acted, and they were talking.”

  “Well, tell them to stop,” Luke growled. He didn’t like the idea of anyone discussing Kathy.

  Wells tucked his hands in his pockets. “The trooper they found dead—he’d been dead for at least twelve hours. We found the gun that we think killed him. We’re running it through ballistics.”

  “That can’t be right,” Luke said. He thought back to what he was doing twelve hours before the body was found. Shoot, those men could have stormed the house and killed him and Kathy both, he’d been so preoccupied with making love to her. He started to beat himself up mentally, but as the memories of his time with Kathy replayed in his mind, he decided to let himself off. He’d made a mistake, but nothing had happened. And he wouldn’t trade in their time together for the world.

  “If they knew we were there, why wouldn’t they have stormed the cabin?” he wondered aloud.

  “We don’t know. The coroner put the trooper’s time of death between eight and ten last night. The other two bodies each had multiple bullet wounds…by different guns. It appears as if you had help, or someone was just trying to take out Lorenzo’s men.”

  Luke shook his head, confused. “Who?”

  Wells shrugged. “God only knows. Lorenzo doesn’t make friends, but few people have the balls to go after him.”

  Luke tried to remember. “Right after you called, I heard shots and they didn’t seem to be coming toward the cabin. But…this doesn’t make sense.” The information took a few laps around his head. “Did you find the dead guy in the porta-potty I told you about?”

  “No,” Wells said.

  Luke shook his head. “Something is happening here that we don’t understand.”

  “Yeah,” Wells said. “We were hoping you might be able to shed some light on things—after you’d had some time to think.”

  Luke met the Marshal’s gaze. “I don’t have a friggin’ clue. It’s like I had a guardian angel.”

  “One hell of a guardian angel,” Wells agreed. “Let’s hope he keeps it up until we get Lorenzo behind bars.” The marshal shrugged and pointed to the bag of clothes. “Get dressed, and I’ll be waiting right outside the door.”

  Twenty-four hours after leaving Claire’s cabin, Kathy sat in the kitchen of a cheap apartment in Houston, held against her will in protective custody. She had thumbed through the same magazine at least a dozen times. A magazine about insects. Who in their right mind read magazines about insects?

  She groaned and was almost to the point of telling Mr. I’m-in-Charge that he was the one going to need protective custody. A person could die of boredom here, so killing him would be self-defense. And, hey—she knew where the toilet tank lid was.

  Hoping for anything to take her mind off Luke and off all the crappy memories the last few days had churned up, she started reading about the life of a housefly. When she got to the part about mating, she tossed the magazine aside and dropped her head on the table. He’d been shot, for Chrissakes! She just wanted to hear his voice and know he was okay. Sure, Mr. I’m-in-Charge had told her that Luke was fine, but she wanted to hear that from Luke himself. Why couldn’t they understand that? But each time she asked, all she got from Mr. I’m-in-Charge was, “No can do. No can do.”

  “Hey,” the U.S. Marshal said as he popped his head into the kitchen. “You’ve got company.”

  “Luke?” Kathy jumped up so fast that her chair crashed backward, and she whizzed past the officer, but disappointment filled her as she saw who was standing in the living room. Her two pregnant best friends both opened up their arms for a hug. Kathy spotted Jason standing behind them and ran right past Lacy and Sue. “Have you heard anything?” she asked. “Can I please talk to him?”

  “Well, I guess we know how we rate,” Lacy muttered.

  “Oh, that hurt,” Sue said.

  Jason looked from them to Kathy. “I heard he got through the surgery fine, and they’ve moved him to a safe house to await the trial. But they don’t allow phone calls.”

  Kathy felt her throat tighten, but she swallowed that super-sized lump down. “Why not?”

  Jason held up his hands. “I didn’t make the rules.”

  Kathy faced Lacy and Sue, who from their downtrodden expressions, felt ignored. Since nothing was more pathetic than two dejected pregnant women, she walked over and embraced them. The group hug drew out. The women’s arms held Kathy so tight that the stupid lump in her throat rose back up. This time, she couldn’t stop the tears.

  “Lord have mercy,” Sue said, sniffling. “You scared the pee out of us.”

  “I’m sorry.” Kathy wiped the tears from her face. “Let’s go to the kitchen.” They walked into the small, sparsely furnished room. The U.S. Marshal now sat at the t
able, flipping through the bug magazine.

  Kathy stared at him and pointed to the door. “Out.”

  He rolled his eyes, stood and joined Jason in the other room.

  “I guess you have him toeing the line,” Lacy snickered.

  Kathy sniffled and looked at her friends. “You gotta help me break out of here. I swear, I’m going bat-shit crazy.”

  “I don’t think we can break you out, but we did sneak you something in.”

  Lacy pulled a small bottle of Jack Daniel’s from her purse, which Kathy took and hugged like a long lost friend. “God, I love you guys.”

  The trio sat down at the table. Sue found some glasses, filled two with water, for herself and Lacy, and poured a couple fingers of whiskey into the third. Kathy picked up the glass, ready to feel the burn and hoping it might relieve some of the ache in her heart, and she forced herself to take a little sip. Heat slid down her throat as the smell filled her nose.

  “Goodwill sends his love,” Sue mentioned.

  “Oh, gosh! I forgot to ask about him. How is he?”

  Sue smiled. “He’s giving my cats hell. But he’s so sweet. I think I’ve finally talked Jason into our getting a puppy.”

  “Thanks for keeping him,” Kathy said. “I don’t know why they wouldn’t let me keep him with me here.”

  “You’d have to walk him,” Lacy pointed out, “and they don’t want you outside.”

  “I guess.” Kathy picked up her glass again and took another small sip.

  “Okay,” Sue demanded, no sooner than Kathy set her glass down, “you’ve had the truth serum, now spill it.”

  “It was awful. Terrible.” Kathy took another sip of Jack.

  “It was?” Sue asked.

  Lacy giggled. “I don’t think she’s talking about the sex.”

  Sue chuckled. “Well, duh—what does she think we came all the way over here to talk about?”

  Kathy couldn’t help but laugh. “How do you guys even know I had sex?”

  “Please,” Lacy said. “Both Jason and Chase said you were all over him. That there was only one bed in the cabin, and…well, Chase said it was really messy, as if someone had gone at it really good.”