Reluctant Witness

by Barton, Sara M.

  “Looks good, doesn’t it?” said Davis, nodding enthusiastically. “Very believable. Are our witnesses there yet?”

  “There are a couple of cars coming up to the scene now.”

  My heart grew cold as I listened to the conversation all around me. Even the nurse, Véronique, seemed impressed by the burning wreckage on the island highway. I was appalled.

  “How can you be so excited about Jean-Claude’s death? Are you completely heartless?”

  “What?” Davis seemed confused momentarily, but then he tapped his forehead and laughed. “Oh, you didn’t really think we sent the guy off to die, did you? That was all staged with a couple of cadavers we intercepted over in the Virgin Islands, on their way to potter’s field.”

  “Oh!” I let that sink into my confused brain a moment. If they were going to pretend that Jean-Claude and I were dead, they must have a plan. “What happens next?”

  “We’re going to put you somewhere safe and then, with your help, we’re going after Le Scorpion.”

  With my help, he said. Did that mean I would continue to work with Jean-Claude?

  Davis monitored the police radio frequency, tracking the developments. Firefighters got to the blaze fifteen minutes after the first frantic call and they put it out quickly, but by then the car was fully engulfed in flames and its driver and passenger were deceased. The accident was still under investigation when the de Havilland Beaver set down on the airfield near Fort de France in Martinique. Just before I left the plane with my escorts, I listened to Alain make a public statement to reporters about the tragic loss of his wife. Not only did my phony husband profess his undying love for me, he claimed that I had been stalked for weeks by Inspecteur Noiret, and this policeman’s obsession with me culminated in my kidnapping earlier in the evening. Maurice, formally identified as Officier Baland, confirmed the information, adding that his boss had refused to allow him to detain the Interpol agent prior to the crash.

  “What lying bastards!” I exclaimed. “How dare they?

  “Oh, they dare, to the tune of three million dollars a year,” Davis replied. “Their drug trafficking operation is quite a moneymaker. Le Scorpion is trying to expand rapidly, and that’s allowed us to get a foot in the door, because he’s been so busy recruiting. But if we’ve got any chance of taking him out of the game, we’re going to have to contain him without him knowing we’re pulling the strings.”

  “You mean you’re not going to arrest him?” I was surprised.

  “If we do that, someone else from his extensive network will simply take over the helm and rebuild the network capabilities. No, Nora, we need to cause problems for his organization and make the players turn on one another, so the structure crumbles,” Mifkin told me. “It’s our job to make it difficult for them to operate. When we make some noticeable progress, we’ll turn it over to the DEA and let them finish the job.”

  As I read that, I couldn’t figure out what that would mean for Nora. How could she go on being who she was? What if Le Scorpion discovered she was still alive? In my experience, once you began your life underground, it was hard to come out from the shadows. The only solution would be for her to disappear completely -- no more Nora Hazen. She could never go back to Guadeloupe or the company she and her parents built, Le Papillon. All that hard work, all the years of buying the land and carefully nurturing it to produce coffee and spices -- it was suddenly all gone. I couldn’t even see a way for Jean-Claude to return to her, not after he had managed to destroy his own identity when he pretended to perish in the car crash. I found myself mourning for the characters and the lives they had built.

  “You okay?” Nancy plopped down on the chaise lounge beside me, toweled off her short hair, and leaned back. “Something in the book bothering you?”

  Her eyes were set upon me, studying my face. I found myself flinching under such scrutiny.

  “Talk to me, Marigold,” she insisted firmly.

  “I’m almost done with the book and I can’t see how the main characters can ever find their way clear of the mess they’re in. She’s been betrayed by a man who only married her to get his hands on her coffee plantation, so he could use it as cover to export drugs from Guadeloupe. And the man who helped her, an Interpol policeman, faked their deaths so his colleagues could penetrate the drug smuggling operation. Where does that leave them? In limbo....”

  “Living off the grid?” she suggested. “Underground?”

  “Doesn’t it mean they will have to assume new identities somewhere far away?”

  “Like you’ve done more than once?”

  I nodded. I had to admit I was worried about the future, especially now that I had been kicked out of the witness protection program. It had been my sanctuary since I was sixteen. I worried about who and what I would become next.

  “Marigold, what if your fiancé started this whole thing independent of you? What if Jared had problems of his own before you two met? You said that he arranged for you to go with him to Curaçao, to sign papers for a bank account. That should have caused quite a stir for the marshals. After all, how would they be expected to protect you if you’re out of the country?”

  “Yes, but they approved the trip,” I replied. “It’s not like I had to beg them for permission.”

  “That’s the odd thing about all this. It was their job to protect your safety, but towards the end of your time in Windham, you were the proverbial sitting duck.”

  I felt my chest tighten at those words. “You think one of my handlers deliberately compromised my identity?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Why would someone do that?”

  “It could be for any number of reasons. If this is all about Jared, it’s possible that when he showed up in your life, he triggered law enforcement alarm bells, not because of your history with the WitSec program, but because of his own.”

  “You mean he wasn’t murdered because of me?” All these months of carrying around the burden of my guilt had taken a toll on me. The emotional weight had been heavy on my shoulders. How could I not believe my past caused the man I was about to marry to forfeit his life?

  “Maybe Jared’s been the problem all along. Think about it. You’ve been in WitSec since you were a teenager. You’ve spent your whole life on the run, so to speak, living a lie so you could hide in plain sight. Along comes Jared, this international businessman, and all those years you lived in relative safety are lost. The guy gets murdered in your condo and you get kicked out of the witness protection program. You’re on your own, without family or friends. That makes you expendable, Marigold.”

  “Expendable?”

  “If you were murdered, who would know, let alone care?” The words were so blunt, so matter-of-fact that they hit me like a sledge hammer. I found myself suddenly feeling nauseated. But Nancy wasn’t done. “If you knew someone’s secret, it would die with you.”

  “What kind of secret?”

  “Maybe Jared told you something before he died. Or maybe one of his associates fears he did. Maybe you pose a unique threat because you were in the witness protection program for so long and you were so well-protected, the only way to bury that secret is to bury you. But first, it was necessary to get you kicked out of the WitSec program. That way, by turning suspicion on you, the bad guy deflected attention from himself. Everyone would assume Jared’s death, like yours, was the result of what happened to your family when you were a teenager, instead of something Jared did.”

  “You think I know something important?”

  “It’s possible. Did you ever meet Jared’s friends?” Nancy wanted to know. I nodded.

  “Sure, lots of times.”

  “I wonder if you met the man who arranged for you to be stalked. Lincoln says there were two attempts to kidnap you on the same night. The first contract killer got into a shootout with your handler, and the second was shot in her car. But there was also the man who shot at the state police when they tried to help you.”

  “
He was a stranger,” I told her. “Not the same man who showed up at the Gilded Nest and shot Tovar, but I think he showed up at the ski chalet later that night.”

  “So, we’re looking at someone who has enough money to hire some well-trained muscle. That kind of help doesn’t come cheap.”

  “I never did get to collect the money from that bank account in Curaçao, even though Jared told me his lawyer would handle it if anything happened to him. Maybe someone is afraid I’ll try to claim it. Could that explain the contract killers?”

  “If Jared arranged for you to benefit from his death, maybe someone needs to keep you alive long enough to move that money to a secret bank account, and once that’s done, it’s time to carry out the hit on you.”

  “But surely Jared’s attorney could just arrange for the money transfer.”

  “Not if there were business associates with a financial interest in his estate. They would want to legally claim any monies as company assets. It’s possible that reporter stirred up the pot by focusing too much attention on Jared. That might explain why folks want to take you alive and why they don’t mind killing anyone who gets in the way.”

  “Is it possible that the person doing this thinks Jared shared a secret with me?”

  “Either that or your fiancé actually did tell you something,” Nancy replied thoughtfully. “And that something can unravel a well-laid plan, even if you don’t understand the meaning of the information. Someone might be worried you’ll eventually figure it out and spill the beans. It could explain why your WitSec team was hit.”

  “But they survived, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, they survived, but that was more luck than anything else. With three members of your team assaulted, Washington would normally order a major investigation into why they were targeted. I’d love to get my hands on that report. Who interviewed you after the two incidents in New York?”

  “Interviewed me? Philomena and Inspector Vidal did, at the state police barracks.”

  “No, no. Who from the Marshals Service came to speak to you?”

  “No one did,” I shrugged.

  “No one from the United States Marshals Service questioned you about what happened?” Her eyebrows shot up.

  “The only people who were interested in me were the New York State Police.”

  “That’s strange. Maybe Linc can find out why you weren’t interviewed.” Nancy pulled out her Smartphone again and starting tapping on the tiny screen.

  Half an hour later, we had an answer. According to the United States Marshals Service, I had voluntarily left the witness protection program, signing all the paperwork right before I disappeared.

  “But I didn’t disappear, I was kidnapped!” I protested. “And I didn’t sign anything!”

  “We know that, Marigold, but that’s the official story according to Washington. That’s why there was no interview with you after your handler was shot. He insists you notified him that you were leaving the program. He was coming to see you to find out why.”

  “Tovar came to the Gilded Nest that night because I quit? But I didn’t!”

  “The man drove from Rhode Island to catch you at the event you were working and he just happened to get shot when he arrived. You got snatched by a second contract killer. That can’t be a coincidence, Marigold. That was an effort to tie up loose ends. The question is can we follow the thread and unravel the concocted story? My gut is telling me that the second we pull on one thread, the others will follow. This whole plot has depended upon one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nobody asked any questions.”

  “Which isn’t normal,” I pointed out. “You’ve all gotten farther in the last couple of days by asking me questions than anyone else did.”

  “Exactly,” Nancy nodded. “Somebody went to a lot of trouble to convince the marshals you left the program voluntarily and to convince the FBI that you were a security problem. But should folks sit down to compare their notes, they’d know that you were set up. That means someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure that never happens, and there’s only one way to do that. You have to provide the answers before anyone gets too curious.”

  “Who could manage to pull those kinds of strings?” I wondered. She considered the question.

  “Only someone with access to you, someone with credibility.”

  “Oh. That’s not good, is it?”

  “Well, there’s another way to look at it, Marigold. You’re with us now and we’re not going to let anyone from your past to get that close.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments, absorbing the implications of this mess. The magnitude of the problem was what I couldn’t wrap my head around. But another concern popped up on my radar.

  “Nance, why did the killer flee after he killed Jared? Why not just wait for me to come home and then kill me, too?”

  “Your status as a protected witness was supposed to be the explanation for Jared’s murder. Someone had to get rid of the guy, so you were used as the scapegoat, to prevent anyone from looking into your fiancé’s life.”

  “So, now what do we do?” I wondered.

  “You finish that book. I’m going to talk to Jeff and Rocky. We’re going to get this solved, Marigold.”

  “We are?” I took heart from the aura of determination she exuded.

  “Sure. You think whoever is behind this will just stop because he can’t find you?” She grimaced. “He won’t stop until you’re out of the picture. Unless I’m mistaken about the creep, he’ll use any means necessary to stop us from exposing him.”

  “That’s a scary thought.” I shuddered, despite the warm air.

  “I didn’t say he’d succeed, Marigold. You’ve got us to look after you, and we’re not going to quit. We just can’t let the bad guys win.”

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Once we were back upstairs, I grabbed a can of soda from the fridge in my hotel room and made my way to the tiny balcony overlooking the water. The afternoon breeze was warm and light, even this high up; it felt good on my skin. I relished the chance to be outdoors after the long, cold winter spent in Lake Placid. Settling in the patio chair, I opened my paperback. If Nancy needed to read the book in order to understand my world, I was more than happy to oblige by finishing the tale. I picked up the story at the point where Nora found herself in the Virgin Islands.

  I sat alone on the veranda in the late afternoon, watching the sea birds follow the fishing boat back to Christiansted. Here on St. Croix, there was little for me to do as the idyllic days seemed to crawl by at a turtle’s pace. This was very much a waiting game. According to Davis, we were stuck here until Jean-Claude returned. It had been five days without any word, and my heart seemed to shrink a little every day that passed without him.

  Mifkin and Davis had rented a compound on the island. It consisted of a main house with four bedrooms and two guest cottages nestled on a cliff above Cane Bay. They used one of the cottages as a command post.

  Nurse Véronique was my constant companion, hovering over me day and night. We had adjoining rooms at her insistence and the door was left open. She was not about to let me out of her sight. Davis told me on the second day that Jean-Claude assigned her to keep me safe. Desperate to fill the hours, I finally broke down on the third day and asked her if she knew how to play any games. We found a backgammon board in a closet and set it up on the dining table under the covered veranda, playing a few rounds here, a few there, throughout the day. Once in a while, Mifkin would challenge me. He said his preferred game was chess, but he was content to roll the dice and move his checkers around the backgammon board.

  Véronique finally seemed to relax on the fourth day. I found some books in a bookcase in the living room. They were mostly about local history, but they helped fill the time. She got out her needlework and stitched away as I read on the patio. Once in a while, I would put on my bathing suit and take a dip in the small pool. Not Véronique. She was on the clock and duty came firs
t.

  It struck me that Nora and I had more in common as she hid from Le Scorpion and her pursuers. She, too, spent a lot of time waiting for life to happen while she was in hiding and took solace in reading. It was a comfort to see witness protection through her eyes, for I respected her as a character, and her frustrations were so similar to my own. It was as if we were kindred spirits. But we had other traits in common, I found out, as I read on.

  Meals were takeout from area restaurants. Usually one of the men would go fetch them, and by the time they arrived, most were unappealingly soggy or cold. I asked Davis and Mifkin if they had any objection to letting me cook once in a while. They did not. Véronique agreed to a trip into Christiansted early the next morning. We shopped for fresh fish, vegetables, and fruits, along with some sundries, like flour, sugar and butter, at a local market.

  I was in the kitchen as the clock struck eleven, chopping mangos for a cream pie, when I heard an unusual noise, a dull thud. I crossed the tiled floor and peered out onto the patio. There I saw a wicker chair overturned. Davis was on his back, a large red stain spreading across his chest; for a brief moment, he struggled to rise, but then he slumped down in defeat. As I started through the doorway, an enormous man stepped into my path. His wicked grin terrified me.

  “Well, well, well,” he laughed. “Look who’s alive! If it isn’t Miss Nora!”

  A chill struck my heart with such force I gasped, trying to breathe. Here before me was one of Alain’s henchmen, Pierre LeFort. The burly man lunged at me, trying to grab me by the throat. As I fought him off, I managed to utter a guttural gurgle that was my best attempt at a scream. Véronique came running.

  “Let her go!” she hollered as she charged toward us. I could hear shouting in the background as the men came running. Pierre’s hands were now squeezing the life out of me, even as Véronique fought desperately to stop him. That’s when another man stepped into view. He had something in his hand and he sprayed it in my direction. I recognized him. It was Arno Foch, the man once introduced to me as Alain’s silent partner. He grabbed my nurse, tossing her to the side. I watched helplessly as she scrambled to extract herself from the bougainvillea. The harder I worked to free myself, the more difficult it became. My head grew dizzy and everything became blurry. My legs gave out beneath me, my muscles unable to support my body weight. I found myself dropping to the ground like a burlap sack of potatoes.