“I wouldn’t be making that arrest,” he said slowly. “You know that. Whatever my motives, keeping you safe is my first priority.” He was disturbed to discover how truthful that was, despite the contempt he’d held her in for so long.
She didn’t say anything, but her expression spoke for her. Yeah, sure, it said, and he had to wonder if she didn’t still suspect he’d set her up for one or the other of these attacks.
“I think we might have two separate interested parties here in Cape Trouble,” he said. “Three, counting me.”
“What?” She stared at him in shock.
Colburn looked less surprised. This was where he’d been going with his question.
“Someone searched your place.”
“Maybe,” she objected.
“I’m going to say probably, given what happened the next day.”
After a moment she gave a reluctant nod.
“He didn’t find what he was looking for in your house, so he waited in the alley for you and grabbed the bag that held your computer and phone. His intent was frustrated again. I think Greg Cobb sent this guy. His orders are to find the video, figure out where you have it stored, who else might have seen it. How bad it is.” He frowned. “It would be interesting to know what spurred Cobb to hunt for you now.”
“What do you mean? Maybe it took this long for him to find me!”
“If he’d tried very hard early on, he’d have found you,” Adam said flatly. As if there was no doubt.
She didn’t like that. “What makes you say that?”
“You continued the same profession. You didn’t move far enough away. Somebody who did their research would have found the adoption decree and your birth name, then the new social using that name.” His eyes narrowed. “Unless you tinkered with the name?”
“Only my middle initial. That’s all I have, an initial. Mom meant to name me Naomi Helena, but it was just H. My friend changed it to R. Oh, and the year I was born.”
“Clever, but not good enough.”
“Why not? You couldn’t find me without help.”
“I wasn’t looking real hard. As you’ve pointed out, the investigation isn’t mine.”
Colburn cleared his throat. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
She ignored him, all that hostility still trained on Adam. “Maybe you led the sniper to me. Did you ever think of that?”
“Why would anybody have been paying attention to me? I’m not one of the investigators. I’d followed up with Santa Monica detectives a few times. That’s all. Nobody had any reason to think I’d go haring off after you the minute I learned where you were.”
He braced himself for one of them to say, Yeah, and why did you? Loyalty to Frank, dissatisfaction with the investigation going cold, only went so far. But neither asked. Daniel Colburn may have understood the agony he’d felt when he heard Frank had been killed. His partner. That counted, but it wasn’t the whole explanation, either. It was his own history that left him feeling raw when he heard the whispers about Frank.
Naomi’s blanket had dropped enough, he could see her shoulders sag. “If the same guy didn’t shoot me, who did?”
Adam rubbed the taut muscles at the back of his neck. He wanted to pace, but her house was so small. “There are two other obvious possibilities. Someone from Greer’s camp, and the third man sitting at that table.”
“But…” The one word was almost silent, her eyes huge and dark. “Would Greg have told anyone else that I’d eavesdropped? Or that I’d taken a video?”
He’d been thinking about that. “Probably not, unless he wasn’t the one who saw you in the first place. Greer was damn near facing the door. What if it was him who saw you? Cobb might have promised to deal with you, then had to give updates.”
She searched his eyes. “Is that what you think?”
“No. I think the shooter is the FBI agent sitting at that table.”
Her chin shot up, defying the fear in her eyes. “Why didn’t he find me sooner, if I was so incompetent at hiding?”
“Because he didn’t see you. The camera didn’t catch his face, which means he wouldn’t have been able to see it, either. He knew you owned the restaurant and that you found the body when you came to open up the next morning. But later… The L.A. office isn’t so huge he might not have heard talk about the wiretap. It’s even possible he’s involved in the operation to bring down Cobb – if he’s on Cobb’s payroll, maybe has been sabotaging it – so he had reason to hear the bit about finding the chef. Big shock there.”
“Alternatively,” Colburn suggested, “he and maybe Greer knew Naomi might have heard something. Like you said, one of them saw her. But way back when, Cobb assured them he’d take care of you. Voila! You disappeared. They’re happy, assuming you’re six feet under. As you say, he didn’t tell them what you were holding over him. It would make him look incompetent.”
Adam took up the narrative. “But something stirs up Cobb, who does find you. Hearing what was said during that call, the FBI agent goes to Cobb, who says yeah, you overheard some of the conversation but don’t worry, I’m taking care of her. He maybe admits you’ve got something on him, so he has to move carefully. The guy is left with a cold chill. Did you hear his name? See him? He thinks, to hell with Cobb. He’ll take care of this problem personally. Thanks to Cobb, he knows where to find you.”
She’d been shrinking in her corner of the sofa. He felt cruel, seeing her diminished by each blunt hammer blow, but also believing she had to fully understand the danger she was in.
“You don’t think he sent somebody else?” she asked, sounding steadier than he would have expected.
Adam shook his head. “Who? I doubt the L.A. office is rife with corruption. No, our guy is doing a little moonlighting. Maybe not happy with his salary, or he made a mistake that Cobb is blackmailing him with. He’s got the skill set to do the job himself besides.”
She met his eyes again. “So does Greg.”
“That’s true.” He gentled his voice. “But we’re positing two people here with different agendas. One wants to find the video before taking any other action. The other is a sniper whose goal is a lot simpler: to kill you.”
“How far away was he set up?” Daniel asked, sounding professionally interested. “Could you tell?”
“Two to three hundred yards. He didn’t make a kill shot, but he hit her. That’s impressive shooting. He saw her go down.” Adam, too, had reverted to thinking like a cop, forgetting that Naomi was listening. “If I hadn’t come over the rise, he could have trotted along to where she fell and finished the job.”
She flung the fleece throw at him and stumbled to her feet. “I have to disappear. I should have done it days ago.” She looked wildly around, as if already deciding what to take or searching for a hole to bolt into. “I’ll email the link to both of you. Just give me your addresses. But then I need to go.”
Adam rose to his feet slowly. She backed away, shaking. Scared of him.
Looking perturbed, Colburn said, “Your testimony would be critical, Naomi.”
She hugged herself, still inching toward her bedroom. “If Greg was the only one who wanted me dead, I might be safe once he’s been arrested. But he isn’t, is he? You’ve just spent half an hour convincing me he isn’t! So I will never be safe if I don’t succeed in disappearing once and for all.”
Adam didn’t make the mistake of pursuing her. Right this minute, she couldn’t go. All she wore were the tight running pants and a scrub top she’d been given at the hospital to replace the shirt they’d cut off her. Her shoes lay on the floor by the sofa.
“I’ve protected you so far,” he said quietly.
She turned one furious, despairing look at him. “For three whole days? Anyway, I got shot today.”
“Because you didn’t wait for me. What were you thinking?” Damn it, had he just yelled at her?
Yeah.
“Nobody had tried to hurt me.” Tears clogged her voice. She’d reac
hed the doorway into her bedroom. “Anyway, he’d have still had a shot even if you’d been right behind me.”
“He’d have been less likely to take it.”
“I need to clean up. Change clothes.” She scooted back into the bedroom and shut the door.
“How big is the window?” Colburn asked in a low voice.
“Little as she is, she could probably get out, but would she try to run without her computer?”
The police chief spread his hands. Who knows? “We’d hear her.”
Now that he was on his feet anyway, Adam prowled the small living room, listening for the scrape of the painted wood window frame being pushed up. “When she uses her head, she’ll realize she needs help,” he growled.
“I don’t know about that. She might have always been a loner. If not, she’s learned to be one. First time I set eyes on her, I guessed she was running from something.” Frustration or something more creased Daniel Colburn’s forehead. “I figured it was a stalker of some kind. That she’d come to me if she needed me, but I don’t think she would have. If not for you, she’d already be gone.”
Adam thought so, too. He grunted. “Maybe I should help her vanish. If she’s willing to show up and testify when the time comes…”
“She goes, and you know the bad guys here in town will creep back under their rocks.” The other man’s steady blue eyes met his. “And we both know how hard it is to really disappear with any success. You going to dump her somewhere and be confident she’s safe? Or that she’ll stay put?”
Crap. “She wouldn’t stay.”
“That’s my take.”
They were both silent, their gazes trained on her closed door.
They heard nothing until the door suddenly opened and she reappeared, having changed to jeans, a baggy sweatshirt and fuzzy slippers. She stalked back into the living room, raising her eyebrows at Colburn.
“Isn’t Sophie wondering where you are about now?”
Colburn glanced down at his phone, expression guilty.
“And you.” She fixed a hostile look on Adam. “Why don’t you go back to lurking? You’ve obviously been watching me. Feel free. Just do it from somewhere else.”
He shook his head. “Nope. I’m not leaving, Naomi.” He turned to Colburn. “Can you stay long enough for me to grab my stuff?”
“You bet.”
She looked from one to the other of them. “I have no say in this?”
Adam shook his head in disgust. “What, you have a death wish?”
Anger glittered in her eyes, almost disguising the fear. “Maybe what I don’t like is being staked out as bait.”
He gritted his teeth, even though in a way she was right. Hadn’t he and Colburn tiptoed around saying just that?
“I’ll be back,” he said, and went out the front door.
CHAPTER SEVEN
He’d have to leave her alone sometime. Sleep.
The voice in Naomi’s head wasn’t murmuring anymore, it was screaming. Run.
She should have gone days ago, she knew now. Except…she had lived with a crushing sense of guilt. She’d saved herself at the expense of a man who might have been a politician but who also, so far as she knew, lived by his principles. A decent man. She could have prevented his death. She’d told herself she had done everything she could, but that wasn’t true. It especially wasn’t true if it turned out the video would have been persuasive after all.
Now, at least, she had handed it over to someone else and it was possible that justice would be served. If the dross she’d filmed really could be transmuted into gold, James Heath’s wife and family would soon know the truth. His reputation, at least, could be salvaged. For his wife, simple grief had to be better than believing he’d died betraying her.
And Dominic Greer would no longer be able to enjoy the fruits of evil. Which sounded stupidly melodramatic, but that’s what Naomi thought every time she saw a photograph of his smug face. Had a sitting United States Congressman ever been arrested for murder? Naomi had no idea, but she hoped whoever arrested him did so in the most public way possible. In the hallowed halls of Congress, if possible. She wanted him to suffer all the humiliation he’d heaped on Heath’s family.
But she also knew that neither Daniel nor Adam were really thinking about her testimony, required on some far-off occasion. Pure and simple, they wanted her to keep wearing a huge target on her back. And maybe the world would be a better place if she did what they were asking, if a corrupt FBI agent was arrested, too, but the chances were a whole lot greater that he’d succeed and she’d be dead. And maybe he’d be stopped then, but she would still be dead. If there was one thing Naomi had learned about herself two years ago, it was that her instinct for self-preservation was powerful.
And now it said, Run.
This time, she was going to obey.
She sat on her sofa, staring straight ahead. Her arm throbbed in time with her heartbeat. She wanted to take a pain pill, but didn’t dare dull herself, not if she was to out-smart two intelligent men who already suspected she intended to take off.
Daniel Colburn sat in the same easy chair, his very blue eyes on her. She’d swear he hadn’t looked away since Adam had left. They hadn’t talked, either, not until now.
“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, sounding awkward, “I did some research on Rostov. There’s no question he is who he says he is. I found a decent photo taken at a crime scene.”
Naomi shrugged. She overcame the temptation to be childish and refuse to say another word. “I told you. Greg Cobb had, I don’t know, half a dozen cops working for him. The one—” Shock buffeted her. Oh, dear God, she’d almost made a gargantuan mistake and said, The one in the kitchen. Throat dry, she swallowed. “The one who was in the bathroom – you know – wore a Santa Monica P.D. uniform. I saw the patch clearly. Another time it was a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy. I told you the dead man was with Santa Lucia P.D. Adam is sure he was a good guy, but I’m not buying that.”
“If he wasn’t, why was he killed?”
The question was mild, his eyes keen. Her heartbeat fluttered. Had he guessed—? No, how could he?
“He wanted out? He tried to blackmail Greg? How am I supposed to know?” She knew her antagonism was only ramping up his curiosity, but couldn’t seem to help herself. “If he was a good guy, how did he get into my restaurant when it was closed and locked? Why wouldn’t he have had a warrant, or at least backup? Why didn’t even his own partner know he had a lead on Greg Cobb? Tell me that.”
He inclined his head but remained watchful. “I don’t know. But how did his killer get in? Did you walk through before you left?”
“No. For the first time in my life, I didn’t. I scuttled out the back, made sure that door was locked, and drove home terrified someone was following me.”
“That’s understandable, Naomi.”
It was even the truth. She was just neglecting to mention a missing chapter of the story.
“All I’m saying is, Detective Rostov shows up out of the blue and claims to be my saviour, and I’m supposed to buy it? I don’t!” She sounded hysterical. Gee, I wonder why?
“But he has jumped in to protect you twice. Tell me why he’d do that if he works for Cobb?”
“Because he’s trying to worm his way into my confidence to get the video, which I just handed him.” With horror, she realized how plausible that actually was.
“Do you distrust me?”
She didn’t even have to hesitate. “No.”
“Unless he plans to knock me off, too, and do it before I get a chance to talk to Alex Mackay, he can’t run to Cobb with it.”
“What if he comes back and guns us both down?” Now she really sounded hysterical.
His mouth quirked. “There’s a witness. Your next door neighbor was watching when we arrived from the hospital. Maybe he shrugged after that and turned on the TV, but I’m thinking we’re more interesting than re-runs. He’s gonna still be watching.”
>
Yes. Bless Arthur and his incessant nosiness. Of course he was stationed right by the window.
“He’s probably not alone, you know,” Daniel continued, his tone kind. “Not in this neighborhood.”
“Yes, but…does anybody but you know who Adam is?”
“Sure. I filled out a report about him rescuing your bag. Elias Burton and Ms. Sanchez both heard his name. I made my officers all aware of him. And don’t forget, he came out in a big way at the hospital today, too. He’s not trying to hide who he is.”
“He lied to me for days,” she said stubbornly.
“You mean, he didn’t tell you what he did for a living.”
“Or that he’d come to Cape Trouble specifically to track me down.”
Daniel nodded. “I don’t blame you for being mad about that. But he didn’t know you. Under the circumstances, I might have done the same thing.”
She opened her mouth to ask if he would have passionately kissed a woman while still lying to her, but a curdling sense of shame stopped her.
Plus, she heard his SUV outside.
“He’s parking here?” She jumped up. “You know what the neighbors will think!”
Daniel chuckled. “Having his vehicle sitting outside your house will also protect you. It’s like posting a sign warning that you have an alarm system.”
She looked out the front window and, fuming, realized he hadn’t parked at the curb. Oh, no, he’d pulled into her driveway, where his gigantic SUV blocked her from getting out in her car. He’d done that on purpose.
She turned to Daniel. “You won’t help me get away?” She knew it was hopeless, but had to try.
“I might, if I thought you could pull off a vanishing act.” His pragmatism didn’t hide the pity he felt. “But it’s next to impossible these days. Realistically, your best chance is to let us handle this and keep you safe.”
“Why don’t you say what you really mean? You’ll try to keep me safe.”
Duffel slung over his shoulder, Adam walked in the front door while she and Daniel were still staring at each other. She had to still be vibrating with hostility, which alternated with terror as her go-to emotion today.
See How She Runs (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 2) Page 11