Now, though, that wasn’t the only thing he had to do. The mission—whatever the hell it was—might be his priority, but alongside it was another need, one very close to his heart. He had to make sure that Sara didn’t suffer for his sins.
Chapter Five
The next morning Sara awoke stiff and sore, and for a moment didn’t know where she was. Her living room came clear around her first, reassuring in its familiarity, and she had a half second of thinking she’d fallen asleep in front of the TV, which although rare, was something she did from time to time.
Then she saw the silhouette of a man standing at one of the front windows, peering between the drawn curtains. Heat shimmered through her alongside dread, though it seemed odd that the two could coexist. “See anything?” she asked softly.
His shoulders tensed, but he kept up his surveillance for a moment longer before he turned to her. “An unmarked sedan has been by a couple of times, no doubt thanks to your friend. I haven’t seen anything I would consider suspicious.”
Sara frowned and sat up on the sofa, rubbing her face to clear the sleep from her system. “How long have you been standing there? You’re supposed to be resting that shoulder.”
“I can rest when I’m dead for real.” He paused. “I borrowed your gun. If that’s a problem for you, just say the word and I’ll hand it over.”
She couldn’t see his expression or read his mood, could only see the outline of his body against the light coming through the curtained window. Oddly, though, she wasn’t bothered by the thought that he was armed. He’d been a cop when they met, so she was used to him wearing a gun. “Keep it. I’m not the world’s best shot.” She rose and crossed to him, putting herself between him and the window so she could see his face. “How are you feeling? And don’t lie.”
“Sore,” he admitted. “But alive, thanks to you.”
His face was drawn and tired, more gaunt than she remembered, and covered with a day’s worth of stubble. She’d never seen him looking so rough before…and she’d never had a stronger impulse to throw herself against him and sob into his chest. Or kiss him. Or pound her fists against him.
Emotions jammed her throat, forcing her to swallow around a huge lump of tears, anger and elation.
His expression changed, going from guarded wariness to concern. “Hey.” He reached out to her. “It’s okay.”
She jolted away, batting at his hands. “It is not okay.” Part of her wondered if it would ever be okay again. She’d thought she’d gotten used to him being out of her life, first as an ex, then as a dead man. But now, having him standing in front of her…she didn’t know how to cope, didn’t know if she could.
She’d come to Bear Claw hoping for a calm, orderly life, one where she could do good work for the ME’s office and the young, progressive mayor. She’d found a home and friends she loved, and for a while, a man, as well. Even when her and Romo’s relationship had ended, she’d managed to keep things on a relatively even keel, at least outwardly. She’d functioned. She’d dealt. She’d mourned his death. And time had gone on. Except that now, more than a year later, the city was under a terrible threat of violence, her job was on the brink, Romo was back and things were rapidly spinning out of her control.
“We should sit,” Romo said. “We need to talk.” He took her arm and urged her away from the window, in the direction of the kitchen. “Come on, I’ll make us some coffee.”
Near-hysterical laughter bubbled up in her chest. “My coffeemaker’s busted. I broke it yesterday morning, back when my biggest problems were my wonky windshield wipers, my sticky office door and the acting mayor’s vendetta against my staff.” But she let him guide her to one of the stools at the breakfast bar. When he started boiling water for tea, finding the bags in the third cabinet he tried, she scrubbed her hands over her face again, and sighed. “God. I hate feeling so out of control.”
“Finally. Something we have in common besides what I have to believe was some really great sex.”
His offhand comment was so dry, delivered so perfectly, that she laughed in spite of herself. Then again, he’d always had a knack for turning her knee-jerks back on themselves, making her see them for the old patterns they were. That was why she’d agreed to go out with him in the first place, after resisting for nearly a month—he’d convinced her that despite his reputation, he was no playboy. He’d claimed that while he’d dated around when he’d first arrived in Bear Claw, he’d been a serial monogamist, and that a handsome, charismatic devil like himself was no more likely to cheat than any other man, comparisons to her father notwithstanding.
And he’d been right. For a while, anyway.
The memory didn’t sour her mood so much as it reminded her of what she’d begun to process the night before, as she’d slid toward sleep—namely that the fact of Romo being alive didn’t rewind the months prior to his death. If his funeral hadn’t taken away the sins of his life, then neither did his resurrection.
“Here.” He deposited a steaming mug of tea on the breakfast bar, took one for himself and made a vague gesture. “You want milk or sugar? Lemon?”
The question was a poignant reminder of how much he’d lost. The old Romo had kept a running file of her likes and dislikes in his head, which she’d taken as evidence that he’d paid attention, that he’d cared. And maybe he’d done both of those things. But he’d also played her.
She shook her head. “This is fine. I take it that means you didn’t wake up with all your memories back?”
“I wish.” He took the other bar stool, spinning it to face her and covering the wince when the move jarred his injured shoulder.
“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” she said automatically, though he looked far stronger than she would’ve expected, given what he’d been through the previous day, and far better than he ought to, wearing her sweats and tee.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he countered, seeming to search her eyes for a response she wasn’t sure she could give.
“If we assume you were working against the terrorists—and, having known you as well as I did, I’m sticking with that assumption until given reason to doubt it—then I’m probably safer if you stay,” she said bluntly. “They’ll be looking for you, and eventually they’ll look here, based on our past relationship if nothing else. I’d rather not be alone when that happens.”
His face darkened. “You should go into protective custody.”
“And tell them what?” she countered. “I can lean on Tucker for some extra drive-bys without too much of an explanation, but I’d need more than that to get myself locked down. I’d have to tell them about you, and without knowing who you were working for—and therefore who I could trust—I wouldn’t be able to control the information flow within the task force. You’d have the cops and al-Jihad after you, doubling the complications you’re going to have while you try to remember what you were doing, and for who.” She paused and said dryly, “Not to mention that while you’re putting on a good show right now, ten bucks says you’re fast asleep within the next half hour.”
Now that they were in the brightly lit kitchen and the caffeine was kicking in, she could clearly see the grayish cast to his haggard skin, the pain lines beside his mouth and the tired way he favored his injured shoulder and neck.
He grimaced. “Sounds like you’ve been doing some thinking.”
“Hard not to.”
“Yeah.” He sat for a moment, pensive. “I hate that I’ve put you in this position. I wish…I don’t know. I wish I’d gone any place but here.”
“If you had, you’d probably be dead by now,” she said with little conceit. “If you’d wound up in the medical system, they would’ve reported the gunshot injury and whoever is looking for you would’ve found you. If you holed up somewhere without treatment, you would’ve died from the shock and blood loss. And although there’ve been days I would’ve said I hated you, I’d still much rather have you in this world than not.”
That earned her a sharp
look, but he said only, “I saw the bag in the gun safe.”
At first she winced, thinking he’d take that as a sign of disloyalty. Then she decided that she didn’t care if he did. She said, “If you can’t remember anything, maybe the evidence can help tell us.”
He nodded, expression guarded. “My thoughts exactly. Did you keep the bullet?”
“Yep. I couldn’t tell you what caliber it was, though. It fragmented, and is fairly deformed. I’d like to give it to Cassie, along with the clothes.” When he stiffened, she said, “Cassie’s the top forensic analyst in the BCCPD, and she’s a good friend. I trust her with my life.”
Do you trust her with mine? Romo’s sardonic expression seemed to say. But aloud he said only, “Can you give her the evidence without telling her where it came from?”
“If I told her what was going on, she’d keep it to herself.”
He must’ve seen something in her eyes, though, because he said, “You’re not sure of that. You don’t trust her.”
“I do,” she knee-jerked, but then clarified, “It’s her husband, Seth. He’s one of the top forensic analysts for the FBI, and I can’t swear she wouldn’t tell him.”
“And you don’t trust him.”
“I trust him to do what he thinks is right, but that’s not always what the person in question has asked him to do,” she said, remembering a couple of times over the past year that Seth had gone against his word in making his own judgment call. Granted, those instances had worked out for the best, but she wasn’t sure she dared run the risk.
Romo shifted in his seat, and was less able to hide the wince this time. “Then either you can’t use Cassie for this, or you have to lie to her about where the samples came from. Can you do that?”
The answer should’ve been a categorical “no.” But Sara found herself hesitating. “How about talking to Fax? He was undercover. If anyone knows who you’d be likely to report to, it’d be him.”
“That’s still assuming I was undercover,” Romo said. “What if I wasn’t?”
“Then I should definitely turn you in to Fax.” She paused, a little skitter of nerves dancing down her spine. “You’re not saying…”
“I don’t know what the hell I’m saying anymore. I don’t think I’m a bad guy, but how do I know for sure? And if I was doing something wrong, then I need to make it right somehow, which means staying free long enough to figure it out.” He reached out with his good arm and took one of her hands in his. “I hate that I’ve put you in this position.”
“I’m not too thrilled about it, either.” But the strange thing was, she wasn’t entirely unhappy about how things were turning out. Surprising them both, she said, “I’ll take the samples to Cassie and tell her they came from an informant.” It wouldn’t exactly be a lie that way.
He looked at her with wary hope. “You’d be willing to do that? Willing to get involved that way?”
She hesitated for a moment before she said, “Normally, the answer would be no. I’m not a risk taker, I like my life simple and this is pretty much the definition of risky and complicated. If I get caught, the acting mayor will fire me in a heartbeat, my friends will know I lied to them and I’ll probably face some major charges. Not to mention what might happen to you. But the thing is, Bear Claw is my home, and it’s under siege. If I can do something to help fix that, then I guess I have to, don’t I?” Those were only some of the conclusions she’d come to as she’d dozed off, decisions that had been cemented in her mind as she’d slept.
Hiding from the police reports and task force bulletins because she’d felt she couldn’t do anything to help was one thing. Refusing to do something that actually might help was another. And besides, regardless of how things had ended between her and Romo, the history was there. She couldn’t turn him in until she was sure of his guilt. She just couldn’t.
He squeezed her hand. “You’re a brave woman.”
“I never was before,” she answered. “Maybe now is the time to start.”
By midmorning, though, she wasn’t feeling at all brave. She just felt like a total sneak.
She had falsified official documentation and basically lied her ass off to get Cassie to fast-track the processing of blood samples from two small pieces cut from Romo’s shirt, and the analysis of the bullet fragments he’d had in his back.
Cassie, of course, didn’t know that was where they’d come from. Sara had sent them over as “don’t ask, don’t tell” samples, which in task-force speak pretty much meant what it said. With so much of the suspicion falling within the law enforcement agencies themselves, there were undercover stings running within undercover stings. At least Sara got the feeling there were—she wasn’t in the middle of the information flow. Which, she hoped, wouldn’t trip Cassie’s suspicions too badly, making her wonder why the heck don’t-tell materials were coming through the ME’s office.
Once the samples were sent off, Sara plowed through three routine cases while Stephen worked on the two dead agents. True to his word, the other ME had come in to work the cases, even though it was Saturday. On one level, Sara was beyond grateful that she didn’t have to deal with those particular bodies, especially given her near certainty that Romo had been among the targets of the federal manhunt. On another level, though, she found herself wanting to be alone in the autopsy theater, wished she could turn off the relentlessly cheerful dance music Stephen liked to play while he worked.
As soon as she finished with the third case, she stripped out of her protective gear, cleaned up and escaped to the peace and quiet of her office, not even bothering to be piqued when the door stuck. She had way bigger problems than that. Like a lover returned from the dead, and the very real possibility that the terrorists, or the cops, or both, were looking for him.
Romo had insisted she carry the .22 when she went in to work. She’d agreed because she’d done the necessary paperwork to carry concealed, and was able to get the weapon through the heightened security measures that now surrounded the buildings that housed the BCCPD and ME’s office. And maybe it made her feel slightly safer, knowing she had a means of defense. But still, she hated the necessity, and couldn’t bear to imagine actually using the weapon on anything but gun range targets.
Hopefully, I won’t have to, she thought morosely, then sighed, dug her fingers into her hair and muttered, “I hate this.”
“Trouble?” a voice said from the doorway.
Sara looked up quickly, gasping a little at the jolt of surprise. Cassie stood in the doorway, holding an official-looking folder. Tall and blond, with legs that went a mile and pinup-type curves, Cassie was a bombshell who cared little for her own looks, and wore a don’t-mess-with-me attitude that, according to Alyssa, anyway, had mellowed a fair bit in the years since her marriage to Seth.
As far as Sara was concerned, if this was Cassie in mellow mode, she must’ve been a holy terror before. Sara loved Cassie as a friend, but was a little intimidated by her at the same time. Especially now, under the circumstances.
“Hey!” Sara said, her voice cracking a little with the effort of trying to sound normal. Knowing the BCCPD’s top forensic evidence analyst missed little, she nodded to the folder, which was of the sort usually used to transmit results from one division of the task force to another. “I didn’t expect you to hand-deliver.”
“A priority is a priority, especially these days,” Cassie said matter-of-factly. Her words were friendly enough, but behind them was a hard edge that was pure business. The members of the task force—and ancillary members like Sara herself—had all lost acquaintances in the attacks, most had lost friends. They were committed to doing whatever it took to break al-Jihad’s hold on the region and bring down his terror cells, including those potentially rooted within the BCCPD and FBI.
Swallowing against a knot of guilt at deceiving a friend, Sara asked, “Did you find anything interesting?” She tensed with hope, because “interesting” could mean the DNA from the blood spatter was a match to som
eone other than the dead agents, or that the bullet traced to a non-PD weapon. “Interesting” could suggest Romo hadn’t killed either of the agents, that she wasn’t being an enormous idiot by keeping his secret.
“Maybe,” Cassie said, her eyes narrowing slightly. “And the hand delivery was because your message made it sound urgent. Which leaves me wondering about the source of DNA samples that didn’t come from either of the bodies you’re not autopsying.” Her telling look went to the autopsy theater, where Stephen was hard at work on the dead agents, who hadn’t been wearing clothing the same type as the ones Sara had sent over. Cassie looked back at her. “What have you gotten yourself into, Sara?”
Heart thudding as her panic level rose, Sara faked a grimace, and said, “I’m doing a favor for a friend who wants to keep a very low profile, that’s all.” It wasn’t a lie. But it didn’t feel good, either.
So turn him in, the logical part of her brain whispered. Tell Cassie right now. Say, “Romo Sampson showed up at my place yesterday, wounded and covered in blood, alive, with no clue where he’s been for the past bunch of months, what he’s been doing, or who he’s been working for.” Yeah, that was what she should say, she knew.
But she didn’t.
Cassie gave her a long look, then shook her head. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Me, too, Sara thought wildly, hoping she wasn’t in the process of making the biggest mistake of her life. “Did you get a hit on the DNA?”
Frustration glinted briefly in the analyst’s eyes. “No, damn it. No matches in any of the databases. Not even a partial hit off a relative. You’ve got one male donor, and the DNA is useless until you’ve got another sample to compare it to.”
“Isn’t that the story of our lives?” Sara said, and she wasn’t faking the regret. Although CODIS grew by leaps and bounds each year, the federal DNA database still only held a fraction of the available samples, and then primarily those belonging to major violent criminals, such as murderers and rapists. Although the repository of DNA profiles held millions of samples, matching an unknown was still a long shot. Cautiously she asked, “Did you check the samples against the PD and military databases?”
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