Reluctant Witness

by Barton, Sara M.

  “Yes, it does,” he replied, and I knew as he spoke he was sincere.

  “Oh.”

  “Why? Is that a bad thing?” he demanded, sounding slightly exasperated with me. “What’s the problem now?”

  “Doesn’t that mean I’m in more trouble, not less?”

  “How so?”

  “Twice people tried to kidnap me.” I dried my eyes with another tissue. “Not kill me, kidnap me.”

  “So?”

  “If Jared found out about my family and shared it with the drug cartel, maybe someone is trying to manipulate my father through me. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t killed. They need me alive, as a hostage.”

  Arms folded across his chest, Jefferson Cornwall stood like some impenetrable wall, ready to repel my feeble attempts to uncover the truth. I thought about Nikolas Skerba’s book about heroin on the table in his bedroom, about the work Jeff had done for his mother when she wrote Vanilla Orchid Magic. Was I imagining something that just wasn’t there? Surely, if anyone would know whether we should be worried, it would be Jeff. Suddenly, his arms dropped as a stunned expression took over his face. That’s when I knew I was right.

  “Shoot!” he groaned. “Shoot, shoot, shoot! Oh, why didn’t I see that coming?”

  “What?”

  “We’ve got to get you the hell out of here!”

  “You do?”

  That’s how quickly my dreams of a future were shattered. One moment I was happily imagining a new career in interior decorating and the next I was a victim of unfortunate circumstances once more.

  “You’ve got to pack,” he urged me. “Make sure you have everything you need.”

  Even as I prepared to flee, I could feel that old, familiar numbness creeping into my heart, the harbinger of trouble yet to come. In the few hours I had been in Atlanta, I had begun to feel hope. I liked it here in Jeff’s condo. I felt safe wandering from room to room, exploring the promise of a new future. In a single second, it was forever lost to me, all because I asked that question of my host. What was so important about me that people wanted to kidnap, rather than kill me? We didn’t know all the details, but at least we knew I was in danger.

  The news that Jared might have played a role in his own killing made it even more important to get me out of town as quickly as possible. If the drug cartel had people looking into the shooting in Windham, they might be able to trace me to the Cornwall family. We had to put down some distance between us. It took almost three hours to make all the arrangements.

  It was necessary to send Kary back to Reston with Tom. Jojo called Deirdre with the news. She made a point of letting Lincoln’s ex-wife know that I was out of the picture, claiming I was just a stranger he picked up at an Atlanta casino during a weekend getaway. Deirdre seemed satisfied, and Rocky was confident that Kary would no longer be a pawn in her game.

  But I was miserable. It was bad enough losing my furry companion, but the idea of having nothing to fill my hours on the run left me totally bereft. Would I die of boredom before the killer could succeed?

  “It’s only temporary,” Jeff told me. “Once we get a handle on this, life as you know it will go back to normal.”

  “Normal? I don’t think so,” I sighed. “This kind of life is never going to be normal for me, not by any stretch of the imagination.”

  As I stood at the door, ready to say goodbye, Jeff took my tote bag from my hand and excused himself for a brief moment, disappearing into the den. Upon returning, he thrust the tote bag at me. “Take these with you. They’ll keep you occupied during the long hours.”

  “Thanks.” I looked inside. He had added several paperbacks. “At least I’ve got plenty of reading material.”

  “You do. Good luck, Marigold.” He took my hand in his and patted it. “Be safe.”

  “You too.”

  I was hustled down to the underground garage of the Park Place on Peachtree and shoved into the backseat of a Lincoln Navigator for the trip to Smyrna to rendezvous with my new security team. Tom confiscated the Smartphone and laptop Jojo had given me and handed them off to the director of security for Roaring Kill Productions.

  “We’ll have to start fresh, Marigold. We can’t afford to let your safety be compromised,” he told me. “You have to trust me on this.”

  Rocky placed them in a small metal suitcase, which he put in the back of his SUV. “I’ll have my guy remove the batteries when he gets to Louisville, so if they’re following you, they’ll concentrate their efforts in Kentucky.”

  It had been decided that I would keep the alias of Marigold Flowers, at least a little while longer. Jojo suggested that since I flew into Atlanta under the name of Susan Langforth, it was best to just let the name die there. With no further activity, anyone seeking information would likely come to the conclusion that Susan Langforth was just a temporary alias, abandoned as soon as the plane landed at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. Tom and Rocky hoped that meant the bad guys wasted time and resources trying to find a ghost.

  Tom made plans to hand me off to the new team in the parking lot at an Atlanta Bread Company restaurant on South Cobb. While we waited for them to arrive, he tried to reassure me that everything would work out. I wanted to believe him, but I had my doubts, borne of too many disappointments over too many years in WitSec.

  “Marigold, I worked with these two for more years than I care to remember. They’ll take good care of you and get you to your next stop.”

  “Sure.” I nodded forlornly. What else could I say? I was on the run again and I had no idea where I was going, what would happen, or if I would even survive it. I was going to miss the little dog most of all. He filled a void in my heart I didn’t even know I had.

  “I promise you it’s going to be fine. Trust me, Marigold. We’re going to figure this thing out. In all my years as an FBI agent, I never lost anyone on my team.”

  “Thanks,” I smiled, half-heartedly, trying to be hopeful for his sake. How I wished I could go home with him to Reston. Jojo would mother me and I could be with the dog.

  “We haven’t eaten yet,” he reminded me. “Let’s go grab some grub for the road.”

  He put the little dog into his travel carrier and zipped him in, placing the nylon bag on the back seat before we got out of the SUV. The warmth of the day had slipped away, leaving a chill in the air. I zipped up the red fleece Atlanta Hawks jacket Jeff had lent me and tucked my hands into the pockets as I stood waiting. “Will he be okay in there?”

  “Don’t worry about Kary. He’ll be fine,” Tom promised. “We aren’t going to be very long. It takes a while for the SUV to cool down.”

  Crossing the pavement, we entered a nearly empty restaurant and placed our order with the only attendant at the counter. While the young man prepared our sandwiches, Tom made conversation.

  “One thing I learned a long time ago is always make sure you eat when you can, because sometimes you just don’t get the chance. I once had a case where I was stuck doing surveillance without relief for twelve hours straight.” He shook his head, remembering. “We had a couple of suspects holed up in a mountain cabin. My partner went for reinforcements while I kept watch. I chewed the same piece of gum for what seemed like a lifetime, trying not to think about how hungry I was, or how I could have stopped for a couple of burgers on my way to my assignment.”

  “That’s your way of telling me to force myself to eat?”

  “You never know what might happen, Marigold, so live in the moment.”

  “Sounds like what I’ve been doing all these years, just taking it one step at a time. I just wish I could live a normal life and make plans for the future, like other people do. It’s hard to never feel like I can put down roots, Tom.”

  “I hear you, kid. It’s like you’re living on borrowed time and someone can come along and snatch it back from you. I felt like that for the last three years of my first wife’s life. We never knew how she’d be month to month. Sometimes she’d be fine and then she’d relapse. It f
rustrated her to work so hard at feeling healthy, only to find out that the sneaky cancer of hers went behind her back and invaded another organ.”

  For a brief moment, I saw the sadness in Tom’s eyes as he remembered those difficult times. I wondered what his life would be like if he and Jojo hadn’t discovered each other. Would he have remained miserable and alone, holed up in a house he shared with a ghost?

  And what of her life? Would Jojo have continued to assume all the good men were taken and settle for second best? She and Tom were friends before they were lovers. Was that the secret? I found myself wondering if Tom felt as strongly about his second marriage as he had his first. Could we humans love even after our hearts were shattered? Did all of our passion die with the departed, or could it begin again with someone new?

  I thought my heart had shattered the day I came home and noticed something amiss. The door was slightly ajar when I climbed the stairs up to the hallway, key in hand, ready to insert it into the lock. I pushed the door open, expecting Jared to be there, waiting. We were going to drive up the coast, to check out a new restaurant. It wasn’t as if I was running late. I returned on time.

  “Honey?” There was broken glass on the floor, sharp, tiny shards of it. I heard the unexpected crunching sound as I stepped upon them.

  “What the....” I rounded the corner and there was blood. More blood than I ever thought was possible.

  Joe DiMarco, my neighbor, heard me screaming and came running up the stairs. He was the one who called the police. He was the one who hurried me out the door and down the steps, into the office of his restaurant. He was the one who sat with me while I shivered and sobbed uncontrollably. That was the moment when I thought I would never again feel warm, when I believed life was over for me. And yet, here I was, hoping there was someone out there for me, someone who needed me the way Tom needed Jojo. I felt that little stab of fear, that I would spend whatever time I had left in this world on the run, never knowing a lasting love, one that would sustain my soul. How could I possibly ever find a man when I was never in one place long enough to get to know him? And now, with so many questions about Jared, how would I ever be able to trust someone else?

  The young man returned to us, putting three bags on the counter. “You’re all set.”

  We sat in the SUV, ready to move the moment the new team to arrived. Just before quarter to nine, a Coachmen Freelander pulled into the parking lot and parked next to us. It was time to bid Kary and Tom farewell. I climbed aboard the RV with my coffee, turkey club sandwich, and a bag of muffins in hand. I put them down on the counter by the door. Tom handed me my suitcase and addressed my new security team.

  “Take good care of our girl here. Don’t let anyone mess with her,” he instructed them.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get her there, safe and sound,” said the driver, Vince. He kept the engine idling as Nancy settled me in the back. She gave me a quick tour, pulled down all the shades, and returned to the front passenger seat. “We’re off.”

  By nine o’clock, we had all scattered in different directions. I was in an RV, heading towards Boise, Idaho, accompanied by a couple of retired FBI agents Tom hired as my protectors. Jeff was at the airport to catch a flight to Los Angeles for a hastily scheduled business trip -- anything that would get him out of town in case a hired hit man showed up in Atlanta. Rocky was holed up in his office, working to track down information on my case. Tom was on the road, headed back to Virginia with Kary, to connect with Lincoln and coordinate the federal side of things.

  Vince was a gruff, no-nonsense kind of guy, a bit scruffy around the edges, but according to Tom, more than capable of keeping me alive. His partner, Nancy, was a twenty-year veteran of the bureau and every bit as tough, but at least she had a sense of humor.

  “Well, it’s too bad we’re taking you to Idaho, Marigold. I would have preferred something warmer, like Miami.”

  “You and me both,” I agreed. I settled down for a long night of travel, as Vince drove us all over the state of Georgia to determine if we had a tail. After three hours of backtracking, he and Nancy decided it was safe to proceed on our adventure.

  I dozed on and off, rolling around on the double bed in the back. I would have preferred to be on terra firma, but as recreational vehicles went, this one was fairly comfortable, and compared to some of the relocations I’d had in witness protection, this went smoothly.

  For the next three weeks, Vince, Nancy and I meandered around the country, ostensibly on our way to Boise, all part of the plan to give us credibility as tourists on an extended road trip. I was instructed to call them Mom and Dad. They took to calling me “kid” and “buttercup” in public.

  We didn’t really have specific travel plans. Instead, we played it loose and went with the flow, so that our journey wouldn’t be predictable. Nancy had always wanted to see Graceland, so we took a detour to Memphis for a couple of days, seeing all the tourist sights and staying at a Best Western in the city. My bodyguards took shifts, one sleeping in the bed beside me, the other taking the watch in the rather uncomfortable arm chair. With no obvious signs of a killer on the hunt after five days, we headed back to Nashville and checked into a Comfort Inn that night, Nancy and I sharing a room, Vince next-door in a single.

  The following morning, Nancy and I stayed behind at the Hilton while Vince left to take care of some business. He was in the process of making arrangements for our trip to Kansas City, where we were expected to meet up with Rocky for a briefing.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Nancy and I went down to the pool for a swim just after breakfast. I brought my copy of Vanilla Orchid Magic and read, lounging in a chaise, while Nancy did laps. I fell back into the story as the heroine, Nora Hazen, was explaining the coffee business on Guadeloupe:

  My father bought his first plot of land in Petit-Bourg on Basse-Terre Island ten years earlier, just before he retired as an investment banker up in Boston, Massachusetts, and as his agricultural endeavors became more profitable, he continued to buy more, until he had several hundred acres of farm land in several plots across the bigger of Guadeloupe’s two main islands.

  His plan of working with local farmers to produce Guadeloupe Bonifieur coffee for export involved creating a coffee co-operative that would eventually expand to other islands in the Antilles. Although susceptible to rust and other diseases, the Bonifieur coffee tree produced one of the finest types of Arabica beans in the world, often blended with lesser beans. This Bourbon Pointu relative, similar to Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, was legendary for fetching high prices in the coffee commodities market.

  In order to insure the quality of the Bonifieur beans, my father hired an agricultural adviser, Guy Cloutier, to oversee the implementation of pesticide-free coffee production; Guy was responsible for everything from the soil testing to pest maintenance on our land, enabling our coffee to be sold as organic. The men and women who worked for the company were paid fair base wages, and they shared the profits whenever the beans sold above market estimates. My father believed in the people of Guadeloupe and wanted them to benefit from the efforts to resurrection of the coffee industry, and he was willing to take the risks with his own money.

  As the years went on and the mature trees became established, he began to branch out, adding cacao, nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon, as well as the vanilla orchids that yielded the valuable vanilla beans so coveted by gourmet cooks. His dream became Le Papillon Coffee and Spice Company, based in Baie-Mahault.

  After graduating from college, I spent a summer in Guadeloupe, seeking to learn about the coffee and spice business. It was my father’s hope that I would join him stateside and promote the products offered by Le Papillon Coffee and Spice Company. That year, we launched our mail order business in Natick, just outside Boston. The beans were shipped in oak barrels to our warehouse....”

  “Good book?” Nancy gave me a poke as she plopped herself down in the chaise lounge beside me.

  “It is,” I nodded, marking
my page and turning my attention back to my protector. “How’s the water?”

  “A little chilly, but I’ll take it. There’s only so long I can stand being cooped up in a hotel room. I get restless.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “Don’t let me keep you from your book, kid.” She toweled off, her alert eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of danger.

  “No, I’m good.” A part of me wanted to get back to the story, but I didn’t want to be rude.

  “Relax, buttercup. You don’t need to amuse me. I’m a working woman. Or did you forget I have a job to do here?” She gave me a playful poke in the arm. “Go ahead. I know you’re dying to get back to reading.”

  It was true. I felt the pull of my past, of my summer days the more I read Nora’s story. We actually had quite a few things in common.

  My childhood was made up of magical journeys and sunny days in the country. I couldn’t think of my grandparents without remembering fields of poppies, daisies, and lupines that seemed to go on forever, carpeting the hills with color. Artists would come quite a distance when the flowers were in bloom, lugging their canvases and paints with them. And as I got older, I began to take more of an interest in what was grown on the farm.

  My grandfather often took me along as he made his rounds on the flower farm. We would walk the land, inspecting plants for signs of infestation or disease. Sometimes, it was just a matter of snipping off a piece and bagging it. Other times, my grandfather would dig up the entire plant and remove it, for the sake of the others.

  He also had a large greenhouse, where he kept rows and rows of potted plants in various stages of development. This was where he grew exotic blossoms from faraway lands. He was constantly trying to propagate plants, in the hopes of preventing them from becoming extinct in their native habitats, whether rainforest or desert. His favorites were the African impatiens, commonly known as the poor man’s orchids.

  My grandmother kept honey bees and grew vegetables in her carefully tended garden by the old farmhouse. Trellises invited beans to climb skyward. I used to till the soil with her, letting my hoe tear through the packed dirt as the twins played near by. At night, I would sit in at the farm table in the kitchen, shucking peas or slicing strawberries, while she got busy cooking on the stove. Those were the times she would pass along little snippets of wisdom.