Reluctant Witness

by Barton, Sara M.

  “Of course.” She nodded as she backed out. It was a relief when Lincoln hung the “do not disturb” sign on the knob before shutting and locking the door.

  “Okay, time to hit the hay. Pick your bed, Marigold. Whatever you do, please don’t leave this room. I can’t protect you if you’re not around.”

  “Not a problem,” I laughed. “I’ll be snoring within five minutes of hitting that pillow!”

  “Try and keep it down,” Lincoln teased, giving me a wink.

  I slept until two in the afternoon. When I opened my eyes, the room was still dark and I felt a moment’s panic, wondering where I was. But the throbbing of my ear was a painful reminder of my last forty-eight hours fraught with peril.

  “You want the bathroom first?” my temporary roommate wondered, stretching his long body under the sheets of the bed next to me. “I don’t mind waiting.”

  “Maybe you should take your turn. I plan to take a really long time soaking in that tub, especially since I can’t get my ear wet for several more days.” I was beginning to wonder what my hair would look like when I finally got around to washing it.

  “Perfect. I’ll step out and grab some things while you do that.”

  “You’re leaving me alone?” I was surprised.

  “Not alone. A former colleague of mine works security here. That’s why I picked this place. He’ll keep an eye on the room while I’m gone. Don’t worry. I won’t be long.”

  While I lingered in the hot, sudsy water, trying to wash off the terror and the madness of the last several days, Lincoln was busy. He returned to our room with burgers, salads, and vanilla shakes. I grabbed my pills and swallowed them as we sat in the club chairs and ate at the small round side table.

  “I also bought a few things for you,” he told me, pointing to three bags on his bed. When I opened them, I found designer jeans, leopard-print flats, a pretty blouse, and some knee-hi stockings for me.

  “I don’t want you looking like a bag lady when we dine tonight,” he explained. “I also bought you a turban, to cover your bandage. Don’t be surprised if folks give you that pity look. They’ll probably assume you’ve got cancer.”

  “Because I’m wearing a turban?” I took the brown cloth and slipped it over my head, tucking the escaping strands under the cap. He nodded.

  “My cousin’s an oncology nurse. She says the average person can’t stand to look at a hairless cancer patient for more than five seconds. It reminds us too much of our own mortality.”

  “My mother died of cancer when I was twenty-nine. I helped my dad take care of her for the last two years of her life.”

  “I thought your mother was still alive and well, traveling through Europe, with your dad.” Lincoln seemed surprised by the information. “Aren’t they celebrating their anniversary with a big trip?”

  “That’s what I’m supposed to tell people. It’s my WitSec bio, crafted as part of my cover.”

  “Does this mean your father isn’t a botanist?”

  “Oh, he’s a botanist, but he’s also in the program.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought you were in the program because you witnessed the murder of Jared Spears eighteen months ago.” Was that a note of alarm I heard in Lincoln’s voice?

  “I was already in the WitSec program when I met him.” The admission spilled out of me, and as it did, I saw the FBI agent’s face instantly transform. His mouth dropped open, his eyes widened, and I fully expected him to jump back in fear. Instead, he held up his hands.

  “Stop! Stop right there, Marigold!” He was insistent.

  “But....”

  “You can’t tell me any more!” he told me. For a moment, I half-expected him to cover his ears and start babbling to shut me out. La-la-la-la....

  “I don’t understand,” I replied, confused.

  “I am supposed to look out for you, but my boss didn’t brief me on your actual background, only your current WitSec cover story, the one about Jared Spears. That means either the FBI doesn’t have it or the FBI doesn’t want me to know about the real you.”

  The real you. All these years, I had been on the outside, looking in. All these years, I had never really belonged. The family secret was destined to always keep me separate from the rest of the world. I found that out the hard way on so many occasions.

  It all happened on the first day of June, the year I turned sixteen. That was the day everything changed forever. That was the day my grandfather was dragged out of the greenhouse by three men. My grandmother saw it all happen and tried to run to the house to call the police. They killed her on the front porch, leaving her in a bloody heap. My father was working in the fields that day. He heard his mother yelling for help and came running, but he was too late to save either of his parents. He did get the license plate on the pickup truck and he was able to identify all three men from their mug shots. They were locals hired to kidnap my grandfather and deliver him to his killers, and it didn’t take long for federal agents to arrest them. When my grandfather’s body was finally recovered in Mexico six months later, it showed signs of torture. The case came up for trial sixteen months after my grandparents were murdered. It was the only time my father left us after we went into the program and we were terrified the entire time we were separated from him.

  Seventeen years later, I was still being punished for the purported sins of my grandparents. But were they really sinners or, like me, victims of circumstance?

  “Marigold, are you okay?” The FBI agent dropped to his knees beside me. I felt a warm hand on mine as I sat there on the edge of the bed.

  “Not really.”

  To his credit, Lincoln tried to explain the rules of keeping secrets in a kindly fashion, especially when he realized how crestfallen I was. But the truth is I’m tired of always being someone I’m not. I just wanted one person to know who I really am and why I’m in witness protection. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t hurt anyone. “It’s not that I don’t want to know, Marigold. I’m just not sure that I’m supposed to know. It’s nothing personal. Honestly, it’s not. And I’ll do everything in my power to get my boss to read me in, so I know the whole story. But if people insist on keeping me in the dark, that’s the way it’s got to be.”

  “Right,” I shrugged. Disappointment, combined with that old sense of isolation, left me feeling like I had been towed out into the middle of the shark-infested sea in an inflatable raft and set adrift, expected to find my way back to shore on my own with only a wooden spoon as a paddle.

  “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you? I’m not entitled to the information, Marigold. It’s classified. And if I let you share it with me, I’ll have violated federal law, because you’re not allowed to disseminate it to other people. Didn’t they make you sign a ‘no disclosure’ form when you went into the program?”

  “I...I don’t really remember. It was so long ago....”

  “Surely they review the rules with you every once in a while.”

  “Not really. I think they just assume that because I’ve been in for so long, I automatically know what I can and can’t say.”

  “Well, let’s see. I can and will ask you this, because it’s relevant to your current situation. Did Jared Spears know you were in WitSec?”

  “Yes.” As I gave him my answer, our eyes met. I saw a flicker of movement that I counted as a response. It was brief, so brief I almost missed it. Had he really shuddered at the thought that Jared knew I was a protected witness?

  “Did anyone from the Marshals Service sit down with him and discuss it?”

  “We had a big meeting at the office. They made him sign some papers,” I told the FBI agent.

  “Could he have told someone about you being in the WitSec program?” Those brown eyes watched me carefully. I had never considered the matter before he posed the question, but I did now.

  “I...I don’t know. They reminded him several times that he couldn’t. They even told him that if anyone found out about my status,
I’d be relocated again without him. Tovar tried to explain to him just what a life-changing commitment this was. Jared said he understood....”

  “But?”

  “But when we left, he told me not to worry about the WitSec people. He had the money and resources to protect me himself, and there was no way he intended to ever go into the program.”

  “Did you tell anyone about that conversation?” Lincoln wanted to know.

  “I talked to Tovar,” I admitted sheepishly, still feeling torn between betraying Jared and wanting to stay alive. “I was worried about breaking the rules.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He’d have a talk with Jared and make him understand that my options were very limited and that, due to the nature of my case, leaving WitSec wasn’t a good idea. He promised not to tell Jared that we had discussed my concerns. Two days later, I found Jared’s body when I got home.”

  “How did you meet Jared?”

  “Jared owned Dutch Island Investments in Newport. He was at a meet-and-greet event on Goat Island that I was hired to orchestrate, to introduce local business leaders and entrepreneurs to potential investors.”

  “Who made the first move, Marigold?”

  “Oh, it was Jared all the way. He wined and dined me like there was no tomorrow, took me on business trips to Curaçao and other exotic places, and he even bought me a membership in his country club, so we could mingle with his business clients and social contacts. It never occurred to me that a man with his background would be interested in someone like me.”

  “Meaning he was well-connected and you were a working girl with bills to pay?”

  “Oh, it was more than that. He invested heavily in new companies, and he was very successful at helping start-ups, even in this depressed economy. I was really surprised when Today’s Entrepreneur named him the business angel of the year.”

  “Where did his money come from?” Lincoln asked me. “Was it inherited wealth?”

  “No, Jared always said he was a self-made man. He developed a pair of small tech companies for Helmut Gruen 80 Group, an investment firm in Boston, when he was an intern in his last year at Bentley. Mercury Industries not only bought his two tech companies within a year, the corporation offered him a job. He worked his way up through the ranks and by the time he was thirty, he was part owner of Quicksilver Limited down in Delaware. Just before he died, a group of overseas investors formed Cinnabar Capital in Curaçao and bought a controlling interest.”

  “In other words, Jared had the Midas touch?”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “It seemed like everything he touched turned to gold.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Until he was murdered,” Lincoln reminded me. “I’m guessing you’re not a chemistry wizard.”

  “No. Why?”

  “Well, off the top of my head, I’d say Jared’s businesses were probably not all on the up and up. At the very least, they probably operated as shell corporations, avoiding taxes, but it’s possible they were created to launder money.”

  “What?” I felt like someone had slugged me in the solar plexus.

  “Marigold, mercury is also known as quicksilver, Hg 80, and even cinnabar. To have so many business entities with these names hardly seems like a fluke.”

  “But why would he do that?” I demanded to know. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, maybe now we know why the FBI pulled you out of the WitSec program and why they’re not planning to prosecute anyone for Jared Spears’ murder.”

  “We do?”

  “Jared might have been killed to draw you out into the open. If this had gone to trial, Marigold, and you had testified under an alias, the killer could have gone free because you would have committed perjury.”

  “I would have committed perjury?” I asked. That thought had never occurred to me. And yet, maybe it went a long way towards explaining some of the changes at the United States Marshals Service over the last few months. Did that explain all the delays, the hedging over details?

  “The Department of Justice must have realized how complicated this all was, and it needed a way to extricate itself. By backing away from prosecution, it signaled that you weren’t going to be exposed as being in the WitSec program. Someone didn’t like that response. Maybe that’s why Tovar and the others were attacked. Someone’s trying to create a case that forces you into the public eye as a witness.”

  “But that’s crazy!” I cried out in response.

  “Absolutely,” he agreed. One word said it all. The pieces of the puzzle that were the last two years of my life suddenly began to fall into place. “Maybe this is about putting your family in the spotlight, the family no one is supposed to know about because it’s a closely guarded secret. There might be more to this than meets the eye. It might also be why the FBI assistant director in New York gave her approval to let me take this case,” Lincoln said, more to himself than to me, but I followed the logic behind it. “It’s not like I normally handle these kinds of domestic cases. I just happened to be visiting my family at the time.”

  “What do you mean?” Was it possible that my nightmare was finally coming to an end? Could it be that it would soon be over? Each piece that fit into the puzzle brought me that much closer to a solution. The truth was my salvation. “You think I ended up in Windham on purpose because someone wanted me there?”

  “Think about it, Marigold,” he shot back, his gaze fierce. “Two professional killers went after you and missed. That’s what doesn’t make any sense. The dead woman in the car at the pond...Kelly Wainright, alias Cassandra Klee, alias Lorissa Kraupt...why didn’t she kill you when she had the chance? Why did she shove you in the trunk of that Corolla? And who was the guy who insisted he was trying to help you and then shot at the cops? How did he miss?”

  “But he hit me in the ear!” I responded, tugging on my bandage. “Remember?”

  “It’s possible he wasn’t aiming at you.”

  I scrambled back to that memory, to the instant when I felt that bullet strike my ear back in Windham. What had I been doing at that moment in time? Falling. I was stumbling down the hill, towards the cop who was rushing forward to save me. Three shots had been fired, but only one had found a victim -- me. “The guy shoved me at the cop. Just before he pulled out his gun and shot me, I lost my footing and went crashing down the hill.”

  “Leaving you to conclude what?”

  “He was aiming low!”

  “Exactly,” Lincoln nodded. “And if you hadn’t fallen, you probably wouldn’t have been shot. Think about it, Marigold. Not only didn’t he hit any of the cops when he fired his weapon, he got clean away.”

  “Are you saying you think that wasn’t a fluke?”

  “The guy who tried to grab you has some special skills; either that or he has an accomplice. The question is why did he want you to get caught in Windham?”

  “You think this is part of some conspiracy?” That sounded too convolved to make much rational sense. Was Lincoln off his rocker?

  “No, not the way you think. Who responded to the shooting at the Gilded Nest that left the marshal seriously injured? The local cops did. That resulted in unwanted publicity for the Marshals Service, drawing attention to the party you organized and to you. Any legitimate investigation would look at what the marshal was doing at the Gilded Nest just before he was shot. See? Someone wants you out in the open.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “It can’t be a coincidence that Eve had that terrible fall and Shaun was beaten to a bloody pulp. Folks must want the members of your WitSec team replaced. And when you were kidnapped, you were brought to Windham. Why? What was that professional killer doing with you in her car trunk? She died, but you survived, and when you did, you did what any good citizen would do. You called the local cops for help. Maybe that was the weakness in the plan.”

  “What do you mean the weakness, Lincoln?”

  “Windham’s police force is so small that they have to use the state pol
ice as backup. Phil and Vidal knew right away something wasn’t right about your case, so they brought Jack in on it. That’s why he called me and asked me to check with the FBI, using back channels. And when the FBI found out, the assistant director instructed me to turn my open cases over to the rest of my team and informed me to report directly to her, but she didn’t fully brief me on your real status. That means the FBI knows this is really important and it’s not willing to take any chances. You’re a high priority case, Marigold.”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I wondered, still trying to absorb the implications.

  “Let’s make it a good thing,” he replied, giving me a smile meant to reassure me. “Consider this to be progress. We’re making head way. We know more now than we did a half an hour ago, and that’s going to help me to help you.”

  “I hope so.”

  We spent the afternoon watching old reruns of classic shows and relaxing in the room. Lincoln disappeared into the bathroom every time his cell phone rang. Just before six, he sat up on his bed.

  “Are you hungry? I know I am. Let’s go grab some grub. Don’t forget your pills.”

  We headed out for dinner at one of the hotel’s restaurants, waiting in line to get into the “all you can eat feast” and helped ourselves to the dishes spread on the buffet table. By eight o’clock, we were satiated, sitting at our table and enjoying tiramisu and coffee.

  “This is almost like a vacation for me,” Lincoln told me, leaning back in his chair.

  “Really? How so?” I gave him a slight smile, thinking he must surely be exaggerating.

  “I just finished an assignment over in the Middle East last month, tracking terrorists. Before that, I worked on the Boston bombing investigation.”

  “Wow.” I shook my head. “I guess it must be a relief to get an ordinary case for a change.”

  “Oh, your case is anything but ordinary, Marigold, far from it. We know something big is involved, but we just haven’t figured it out yet.”

  “I couldn’t help but overhear that guy, Ron, when he was talking to your brother. He mentioned another murder and said I might be some kind of help on the case. What was that all about?”