Lawman on the Hunt

by Cindi Myers

  It didn’t sting. Or if it did, a little sting didn’t have a chance to claim her attention, competing as it was with the hot flutterings of arousal that danced up and down her skin at his touch. Apparently satisfied that the wound was clean, he tucked the wipe into a pocket of the pack and took out a tube of antibiotic ointment and began dabbing it onto the cut. “I don’t think we need to bandage it,” he said. “He didn’t go deep.”

  “He just wanted to scare me.” Duane was an expert at that.

  Travis’s hand stilled and he looked down at her, though the light prevented her from seeing his expression. “You say that like it wasn’t the first time,” he said.

  “It wasn’t.” She had spent most of her time with Duane in various stages of terror. It was how he operated. How he maintained control.

  Travis busied himself putting away the first aid supplies, then shoved the pack to his feet once more and switched off the light. He settled back against the rock, their bodies pressed together all along that side, but desire had left her, his silence a wall between them.

  She didn’t have the words to heal the wound she had caused him, so she waited, letting the night sounds fill the void: the rustle of wind in the trees, the creak of a branch, the whisper of some small creature in the leaf litter on the forest floor. Eyes closed, she breathed in deeply of the Christmas-tree fragrance of the cut spruce, and thought of the last Christmas she and Travis had spent together. They had attended the lighting of the National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse, and later enjoyed a concert at the National Cathedral. It had been the most magical holiday in her memory, his love the best gift she could have ever received.

  And three months later, it all ended. Duane had stolen that magic from her, and as long as she lived, she didn’t think she would have it in her to forgive him for that.

  “I’ve spent the past six months trying to make sense of what happened.” Travis spoke softly, but she heard the anger and hurt behind the words.

  “It’s not something that makes sense,” she said. “Not even to me, sometimes.”

  “I’m ready to listen.”

  “Are you?” She angled toward him, wishing she could see his face, but the darkness was too complete. She had only her awareness of him, of the broadness of his shoulders and the angle of his arm and the muscles of his thighs where he touched her.

  “I saw you with Braeswood this afternoon,” he said “You were afraid of him. And he didn’t look at you with anything close to love.”

  “Oh, Duane doesn’t love me. He doesn’t love anyone but himself.”

  “Do you love him?” Travis asked.

  “Never. I couldn’t. I’ve seen him kill. I know how ruthless he can be.”

  “Your note to me said you had changed your mind. I thought you meant you found someone else. I believed all this time that you were in love with Braeswood.”

  “No.” She felt in the darkness and found the back of his hand. When he tried to pull away, she laced her fingers with his and held on tight. “I lied. I didn’t love anyone else. I don’t love anyone else.” Though if her feelings for Travis were still love after all that had happened, she couldn’t say.

  “Why did you lie?” He asked the question in the same tone he must use to interrogate a suspect. Why did you kill that woman? Why did you swindle those people out of all that money? How could you pretend to justify your crime?

  She sighed and closed her eyes. What could she say that would ever persuade him she wasn’t lying now? All she had was the truth. “I didn’t want you to come after me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he would have killed you.”

  “Braeswood?”

  “Yes.” Duane had made her choice very clear—give up Travis, or he would be dead. Either way, she would lose him. Better to let him escape alive.

  He rolled onto his side to face her. Their bodies were so close she could feel the heat of him, smell the sweat and spice fragrance of him. “But you said you didn’t love him. Why did you go with him?”

  “It’s a long story.” One she wasn’t sure she could tell without breaking down.

  “We’ve got all night.”

  Yes, and when she was done, he might hate her even more. “I’ll tell you, if you’ll listen to everything before you judge,” she said.

  “I don’t—”

  He started to protest, but she put her fingers to his lips, silencing him. “I know you. You want to fix things. This isn’t something you can fix.”

  “All right.”

  She moved down, the space blanket crackling under her, until she was flat on her back, staring up at the blackness, and prepared to relive a darkness far worse than the absence of light in this shelter.

  * * *

  “HELLO?” LEAH ANSWERED the phone that March afternoon over six months before with her usual efficiency. The display on her cell showed her sister Sarah’s number. “Sarah, why didn’t you call on the office phone? You know that’s the best way to reach me during working hours.” Her younger sister also worked in the Senate Office Building, and the two often got together after work for drinks or to take in a movie. She glanced toward the open door into her boss’s office as she answered her cell phone, but Senator Diana Wilson was engrossed in a phone call of her own.

  “Leah, you’ve got to help.” The words came out half choked, so unlike Sarah’s usually cheery rush of conversation.

  “Sarah? What’s wrong? Why are you crying? What’s happened?”

  “Your sister is perfectly safe. For now.” The man’s voice on the other end of the line was calm. Too calm, almost like one of those robotic voices that gave directions on voice mail. “As long as you cooperate, she’ll remain that way.”

  “What are you talking about? Who is this?”

  “Keep your voice down, Leah. You don’t want to upset the senator. Not if you want to see your sister alive again.”

  The words froze the blood in her veins. Panic squeezed her chest. She had to fight to breathe and couldn’t speak. She glanced over her shoulder toward the senator’s office again.

  “Tell the senator you need to take off work a little early and come to the address I’m going to text you. Come alone. I promise your sister will be there and the two of you can talk.”

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

  But the man had already hung up.

  Shaking, she opened the bottom desk drawer and took out her purse, then staggered to the senator’s door. Senator Wilson was still on a call, but she raised her eyebrows in question. “I...I’m not feeling very well,” Leah said. “I think I need to go home.”

  Eyes full of concern, the senator nodded. “Take care,” she mouthed, and waved Leah away.

  She didn’t remember leaving the building. She was on her way to the metro station when her text notification signal chimed. The screen showed an address off Dupont Circle. Running now, Leah hurried to the metro station and caught a train just leaving that would take her to Dupont Circle.

  Sarah answered the door to the basement apartment where Leah had been directed, but as soon as she had pulled Leah inside, a man she would soon come to know as Duane Braeswood, along with two other men, emerged from a back room, all three carrying guns.

  Leah forced herself to be strong, for her sister’s sake. “What is this about?” she demanded.

  “It’s very simple,” Duane said. “You have something I want. Cooperate with me and I’ll let your sister go.”

  Leah looked at Sarah, whose brown eyes silently pleaded for help. At twenty-two, she had just begun her first job, working at the State Department. She was engaged to the man she had dated all through college. She was a sweet, optimistic person who had never made an enemy. And right now she looked absolutely terrified, ghost white and shaking so hard Leah could hear her teeth
chatter. “All right,” Leah said. “Let her go now and I’ll do whatever you want.”

  Duane nodded and one of the other men walked to the door of the apartment and opened it. Sarah looked at the man, then at Leah. “Please let my sister come with me,” she said.

  “You let us worry about your sister,” Duane said. “Unless you want to stay here with her.”

  Sarah turned to Leah again, tears in her eyes. “Go!” Leah urged. “I’ll be fine.”

  Sarah nodded, then fled, out the door and down the street. Leah closed her eyes, remembering the relief that had flooded through her—a false hope that everything was going to be all right that Duane soon destroyed.

  “What did he want?” The words burst from Travis, who had kept his promise to remain silent until now. Leah couldn’t blame him for asking. She had asked herself the same question a thousand times in the past six months.

  “He wanted a lot of things,” she said. “Little things at first. He told me I had to break up with you, but first I had to tell him everything I knew about you.” She was glad he couldn’t see her face in the dark, glad he couldn’t read the shame of those interrogations, when she had broken down weeping and begged Duane to believe she didn’t know anything about Travis’s work with the FBI. “In the end, he realized I couldn’t tell him anything useful.

  “He wanted me to tell him secrets about the senator, and to use my influence to find out more.”

  “Senator Wilson headed the Senate Committee on Homeland Security,” Travis said.

  “Yes. He asked me to steal paperwork from her office. I refused.”

  “Did he hurt you?” He gripped her wrist so hard she winced, fury vibrating through him.

  She gently pulled away from him. “What he did to me physically didn’t matter as much as the other ways he hurt me,” she said. “He killed Sarah. He made it look like an accident, but I know he was responsible. He made sure I knew.”

  Travis swore, and he pulled her close, cradling her in his arms. She pressed her face into his chest and blinked back tears. “You should have called me,” he said. “I would have helped.”

  “I thought you hated me for dumping you the way I did,” she said. “And I was so afraid you’d be the next to die. Duane told me he would kill you, and I believed him. I’ve never met anyone as ruthless as he can be.”

  “So you gave him the senator’s secrets,” he said.

  “Yes. Though nothing I told him seemed especially incriminating to me. She was an honest woman. I didn’t know about any backroom deals or scandals. All I could tell him was about legislation she had proposed and issues she was interested in. But when she resigned three weeks later, I felt so guilty. I thought her resignation was my fault—that Duane had used something I had told him to drive her from office. Then I learned her husband had cancer and she wanted to spend more time with him. I don’t think even Duane could give someone cancer.”

  “Senator Wilson resigned five months ago,” he said. “What happened after that?”

  “Duane took control of my life. I didn’t have a job anymore. I came home one day and he had had someone move all my belongings out of my apartment and cancel my lease. He moved me in with him. He made me sign over everything to him—my car, all my money, even the cabin here in Colorado that I’d inherited when my parents died.” Saying the words now made it sound so bizarre. How could a stranger make an independent adult woman do something like that? Looking back, it was as if he had brainwashed her with terror. “I should have fought back,” she said. “I should have refused his demands, but I was so afraid.” She buried her face in her hands. “Why wasn’t I stronger?”

  Travis caressed her shoulder. “He knew how to manipulate you,” he said. “You probably weren’t the first person he had controlled that way.”

  “It doesn’t even seem real now,” she said. “After a while I was just...numb. Paralyzed.”

  “Why did he choose you?” Travis asked. “Was it only because of the senator?”

  “I don’t know why he chose me,” she said. “Though I’ve thought about that a lot.”

  “Maybe it was just random,” Travis said. “You were unlucky.”

  She shook her head. “Duane never acts without a reason. He’s very methodical and focused. More like a machine than a man at times.” A vicious, horrible machine. “Maybe at first it was because of my connection with Senator Wilson. Or maybe it was because of the other things I had. You know I inherited quite a bit of money from my parents. And he was really interested in the family cabin.”

  “The one on the old mining claim?” Travis asked.

  “Yes. You remember when we visited there—it’s in the middle of nowhere. It doesn’t even have electricity or plumbing. But he asked me dozens of questions about it.” When she was a child, her family had spent a month in the remote mountain cabin every summer. She and Sarah had played “prospector,” gathering chunks of rocks and bouquets of wildflowers, and her parents indulged in long hikes and lazy afternoons drinking gin and tonics on the cabin’s front porch and watching spectacular sunsets. She had never thought of the cabin as having value to anyone other than her family. “When Duane announced we were moving to Colorado, I was sure we were headed there,” she said. “But I should have known that wasn’t his style. He likes his comforts, and he has plenty of money to indulge them.”

  “Maybe he chose you because he wanted someone he could bully.” Travis’s embrace around her tightened again, more gentle this time.

  “I wondered if maybe he chose me because of my ties to you,” she said. “I worried about that. A lot.”

  “Because he thought you could give him information about investigations I was involved in?”

  “More as a way of getting back at an FBI agent. He hated the Feds. He felt they had singled him out for harassment.”

  “He’s right about that. The man is responsible for the deaths of at least a dozen people. And now that I know what he’s put you through...” He kissed the top of her head, the gentlest brush of his lips that brought her close to tears again. He smoothed his hand down her back, caressing, and she stiffened.

  “There’s something else you should know,” she said. “About me and...and Duane.”

  His hand stilled. Though he didn’t move, she felt him pulling away emotionally. “You lived with him for months,” he said. “He told people you were his wife.” He swallowed hard. “Were you lovers?”

  “Not willingly,” she said.

  “He raped you.”

  “Yes. Though after a while, I learned not to resist. I just... I pretended I wasn’t there.” She felt small and dirty when she said the words, but she fought past that. “I did what I had to do to survive,” she said.

  “You were strong.” He caressed her back again. “I’m going to stop him. I promise. He’ll pay.”

  “And I’m going to help.” She rested her hand, palm down, over his heart, reassured by the steady rhythm of it. “I don’t know if I can make you understand what a gift you gave me when you arrested me this morning.”

  “I was angry with you. I didn’t understand.”

  “And I didn’t expect you to. But when you took me away from that house, from Duane and his group, it was as if you broke a spell he had over me. You gave me hope—something I’d lost.”

  “I should have come after you before now,” he said. “I should have realized that note was a lie.”

  “If you had come after me when I first left you, Duane would have killed you. That’s why I never returned your calls or texts, and I avoided all the places we might run into each other. I didn’t want to hurt you, but I was terrified of what he might do to you.”

  “He won’t get away with this.”

  “He’s going to keep coming after us,” she said.

  “Because he knows how damaging your testimon
y against him could be.”

  “Partly that, but also because he’s a man who doesn’t like to lose. I once saw him kill one of his team members because the man beat him at a poker game and made the mistake of laughing about it.”

  “He thinks you belong to him now, and he doesn’t want to give you up.”

  The words hurt to hear, even though she knew they were true. But she didn’t want Travis to believe them. “I don’t mean anything to him,” she said. “But he won’t let the FBI get the better of him if he can help it. And he has a lot of people and resources on his side. It’s frightening how many followers he’s recruited to the cause.”

  “What is his cause?” Travis asked. “Or rather, what does he say is his cause?”

  “He’s convinced the United States government is irretrievably corrupt and headed down the wrong path, so it’s up to people like him to correct the course. He’s persuaded himself and a lot of other people that he’s going to save the country by destroying everything he thinks is wrong with it.”

  “Including us,” Travis said.

  “He won’t stop until he’s dead.” A shiver ran through her, and she clung to him even tighter. “Or we are.”

  Chapter Seven

  Travis lay awake a long time after Leah had fallen asleep. Her description of her ordeal—and his own imagination supplying details she hadn’t provided—made sleep impossible. He saw the hatred he had nursed for her for what it was now: armor around his hurt feelings. He had thought he was the strong one, carrying on despite her betrayal, yet she was the one who had suffered so much in an attempt to protect him.

  He couldn’t say what his feelings were for her now. Guilt and relief combined with tenderness and the desire to protect her, but all of that was mixed up with a continued wariness. Too much had happened for them to simply pick up where they had left off. When they were both safe again—tomorrow, he hoped—they both had some healing to do.

  Weariness eventually overcame the turmoil in his mind and he slept, and woke to gray light and the first hint of coming dawn through the trees. Leah stirred beside him. “We should go,” he said. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”