Reluctant Witness

by Barton, Sara M.

  “Well, if you didn’t send it, who did?” Jeff sounded genuinely baffled.

  “Do you have a copy of it? Can we see it?” Tom wanted to know.

  “Sure.” Jeff headed off to retrieve his laptop from the condo down the hall. He was back in less than two minutes.

  “Here we are,” he told us, placing his open machine on the table in front of us. We all leaned forward for a closer look at the opened note. It was forwarded from Lincoln, and contained my email address, along with the digital information on date and time. “Lincoln sent me a copy earlier today.”

  “Huh,” said Nancy, as she read over Jeff’s shoulder. “That’s weird.”

  “There’s only one problem, boss,” Terry announced. “At the time this email was sent, Marigold was with us, playing pool down at the clubhouse.”

  “She was?” Jeff sounded surprised.

  “There were plenty of witnesses.”

  “It’s true,” Tom agreed, pointing to himself with his thumb. “I was there and I can assure you she never was out of our sight at any point in time.”

  “Maybe she sent it on an automated schedule, so she’d have an alibi.”

  “What? Why would I need an alibi?” Numbly, I gazed down at the email with my name and Internet address on it. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “This can’t be happening. It just can’t be. It’s like Jared’s murder all over again.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “All these strange things happening to me again...it’s like some bizarre dream.”

  “I don’t believe she did it. I want to see it on her computer,” Nancy decided. She went and retrieved my laptop from my bedroom desk.

  “It had to come from her computer, Nance,” Jeff informed her, “because the email to Lincoln was encrypted. The only way anyone would be able to fake an email from her is if he hacked into her computer. And he’d have to know her passwords.”

  “Maybe we missed something, boss.” Rocky was staring at the two laptops. “Maybe this isn’t just some jerk trying to rip off clients. Maybe this jerk is a hell of a lot smarter than we are.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Marigold, when you picked the passwords for this computer and the encrypted email account we set up for you, what did you use? Your birthday? Your favorite nursery rhyme? Your....”

  “My old work address for the laptop,” I admitted, knowing that it was a dumb thing to do, but I knew I wouldn’t forget it. “It’s 128Mariner, which was the building number and street in Newport where I had a suite. And for the email account, I used my old phone number without the area code, the one I had on my business cards -- 555Rose.”

  “Did Jared ever have access to your computer back then?”

  “I...I don’t know. It never occurred to me that he would want to, but one day, when he thought I was in the kitchen, I saw him using it.”

  “Someone has always remained a step ahead of you,” Tom pointed out. “It’s like he always knows where you are at any given moment in time.”

  “We sent that watch on a cross-country journey, thinking we had fooled the bad guy,” Rocky sighed. “But maybe all that time, he knew where Marigold was because he was already tracking her by tracking us.”

  “So,” Jeff wanted to know, “why send Lincoln a fake email that purported to be from Marigold? What would be the point?”

  “We’d have to figure out what the bad guy gained from the play.” Tom sat in his chair, pondering the possibilities. He suddenly leaned forward, as if struck by a bolt of lightning. “You started to doubt Marigold, Jeff. You went from having a crush on her to acting like a complete idiot.”

  “I did what?” Jeff sputtered. I could tell he was appalled.

  “Oh, suck it up,” Nancy instructed him. “Admit you have feelings for her. The minute you thought she might be more interested in your brother, you went ballistic.”

  “I did not!”

  “You did too! You acted like a jealous fool! You attacked her and got her all discombobulated! She was ready to flee this place, just so you wouldn’t think she was a gold-digger!”

  “Guys....” Terry tried to interrupt the heated conversation, but the arguing went on.

  “I’m not about to be taken down the garden path like some lovesick little boy, Zemaki! I have a right to look out for my own interests and not get embroiled in some....”

  “Your own interests,” Nancy shot back. “What about hers? Did you ever think maybe she was the one getting the shaft?”

  “Guys!” Terry bellowed, moving swiftly between Nancy and Jeff. “Hey!”

  “What?” Jeff demanded, more than a little perturbed. Nancy glared at her husband, still loaded for bear.

  “Let’s focus on the subject at hand,” Terry suggested. “You’re so distracted by the love angle of the equation that you’re both missing the big picture. You’re being played by a third party, an agent provocateur.”

  Jeff gave Terry his full attention. “In what way?”

  “If Marigold didn’t send that message to Lincoln, it was sent by someone who’s deliberately trying to create trouble,” Terry pointed out, “and it looks like the plan is working. He even knows that in order for Lincoln to believe she sent the email, it has to come from her laptop, because she’s got the encryption program. That’s some serious intelligence behind the effort.”

  Rocky took it from there. “Think about it. Doesn’t that suggest that someone knows about the brothers’ rivalry? Maybe this guy has been right on Marigold’s heels the whole time, from the moment she was kidnapped from the Gilded Nest. That means he knows that Jack and Phil looked after her in Windham, Lincoln took her to Reston, Jeff took her to Atlanta, and now she’s in Florida.”

  “But why is he doing this?” Now I was more curious than scared. “Who is he and what does he want from me?”

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  “He still needs her,” Tom nodded thoughtfully as he looked up at me. “She’s still part of his overall scheme.”

  “Whoever he is, he wants you to cut Marigold loose, Jeff, to send her out on her own. That’s why he is trying to pit one Cornwall brother against the other,” Terry added. “By pushing all your emotional buttons, he’s got you so rattled, you can’t think straight.”

  “But why didn’t he just snatch her? He’s had plenty of chances.” Nancy was puzzled. “We’ve had her out in public on numerous occasions and there hasn’t been a single approach, as far as I can tell.”

  “The watch,” Jeff suggested. “If all he wanted was Marigold, he’d have kidnapped her by now. There must be something important about that particular watch. He needs it back.”

  “It could be something inside the watch that’s important and we just haven’t recognized its significance because it doesn’t look out of place.” Terry bit his lip as he contemplated the possibilities.

  “Or on the outside,” Nancy added. “Could it be some kind of code that only the bad guy understands?”

  “No, it’s more than that,” Rocky insisted. “He must need both the watch and the victim, because he’s also had ample opportunity to snatch the watch. For some unknown reason, Marigold is important to him. The people he hired to snatch her were all professional killers. If all he wanted was the watch, any idiot could have stolen it from her.”

  “Do we know every thing we need to know about it, right down to how it functions?” asked Tom.

  Rocky bobbed his head, lost in thought. “Once we knew it was a potential problem, we checked it from top to bottom. That’s how we found the GPS chip inside. I had the jeweler photograph every inch of it, right down to every mark on the case and even the inscription.”

  “There might be another reason Marigold is being set up with the fake emails,” Jeff suggested. “Let’s say he needs us to cut her loose, so she’s on her own, and he needs the watch. That means he needs her alive even after he gets his hands on the watch. Does he want her to do something or go somewhere before he kills her?”

  I glan
ced around at the people sitting at the table. The solution seemed so simple to me. “Why can’t we set up the guy who set me up? If he wants me and the watch, let’s let him believe he’s getting both and catch him in the act.”

  “It might work,” Nancy concurred, “especially if we lured him in by backing off Marigold’s security. We could fool him into believing he successfully provoked the brothers.”

  “We’d have to keep a pretty close eye on every detail. It would definitely be risky,” Rocky reminded us.

  Tom took a look at the two laptops on the table. “If someone is accessing Marigold’s computer from a remote location, we’ll need an Internet security guy to watch the watcher. We need to know who he is, where he is, and what he’s doing.”

  Nancy thought it would be easy to pull together a team to keep me constantly under surveillance. Terry said that as long as he could control the playing field, he could make sure the bad guy didn’t get the upper hand.

  “It’s all about having the right kind of intelligence,” Tom declared confidently, “and being able to contain the threat.”

  “It’s the only way we’re going to wrap this up,” Rocky acknowledged with a shrug as he sat at the table. “We’ve got to give the creep what he wants because that’s the only thing that will satisfy him. We need to convince him that we no longer believe Marigold’s in any danger. He’ll crawl out of his hidey-hole, and we can catch him in the act.”

  Jeff was the only hold-out. “No way, no how. It’s too dangerous for Marigold.”

  “Boss, if we do nothing, she’s stuck here for God knows how long. This guy could be very patient. He might be willing to wait months to get his hands on the girl and the watch.”

  “You’ve forgotten one important fact, Rocky. He nearly killed three marshals in his effort to get at her. If Marigold is so important to the bad guy that he would be willing to murder federal agents, the risk is too great. If his plan goes belly up, he might kill her with a vengeance.”

  Our eyes met across the table and I felt a shiver go through me. Jefferson Cornwall was in love with me. Now that he had accepted the truth about his feelings, he wasn’t willing to give me up. I put my hand on his and felt him take hold of my fingers.

  “I can’t spend the rest of my life on the run, Jeff.”

  “Marigold....”

  “Please. It’s the only way I’m ever going to be truly free.”

  “I don’t know,” he sighed doubtfully. “If we miss one little thing, we could get you killed....”

  “Boss, we can do this.” Rocky sounded more confident now. “Let’s string him along, let him think you’ve bought the crap about Marigold having a crush on Lincoln. We’ll take it slow before we put the ball in play. I’ll set Lincoln straight. He’ll play his part if he knows this is a real investigation. And if we catch the bad guy in the act, the Justice Department can prosecute him for those attempted murders.”

  Jeff inhaled deeply and slowly let the breath out. He seemed to be reluctantly weighing the odds. When he did speak, his comment surprised me.

  “Before I say yes, I want to know what’s so important about that watch. Let’s get it back and go over it with a fine-toothed comb. If there are any secrets hidden in it, I want to know what they are.”

  The watch...could that really be the key to this entire mystery? I always just assumed it was a love token from Jared. But if there was a tracking chip in it, maybe it contained other secrets as well.

  “Fair enough,” Rocky replied.

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Nancy replied, clapping her hands once. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Things moved swiftly after our meeting concluded. The first thing Rocky did was identify every occupant in the building, to determine who might be spying on me. It turned out to be a guy on the second floor. Not only was the stranger monitoring my computer activity, he had surreptitiously planted cameras at key locations throughout the building. There was even one positioned opposite the penthouse door. Every time any of us stepped in or out, he knew about it. Rocky left those in place, to convince my secret stalker his spying went undetected.

  “He must know you and I argued,” Jeff told me. “No doubt he watched the whole thing unfold by the elevator. He’s probably hoping you’ll run to Lincoln the second I turn on you.”

  “But how do you know he’s not spying on us in here?” I asked.

  “He’d expect us to have security for the condo, some kind of alarm system that probably involves motion-activated cameras. That’s why he’s keeping tabs on the outside of the residence, the part of the building we don’t control.”

  “Oh. So, what do I do?” I wanted to know.

  “You and I are going to have a very big break-up. I’m going to tell you that I’m done looking after you. And you’re going to tell me that you want your watch back, and you’re not leaving until I return it to you. That buys you some time, Marigold. While he’s waiting for that watch to be returned, he won’t harm you.”

  “But shouldn’t we move to a new location and make him follow us?”

  “Better to deal with the devil you know than to take your chances with the one you don’t,” Rocky chimed in. “This guy was hired for the job. He has spent a lot of time getting set up here, Marigold. If we move you now, his boss might get suspicious and create more trouble for us. He could get rid of this guy and replace him with someone else. Don’t forget, the brains of this operation hired two killers for the botched job at the Gilded Nest, just to cover his bases.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “So, here’s what we’re going to do,” the head of Roaring Kill Productions security continued. “Jeff, you and I are going to have a conversation in the corridor. You tell me you think Marigold is putting on an act and you are no longer willing to foot the bill for her antics. I’ll tell you that I think she’s probably still in cahoots with the bad guy, so we should try and get the feds involved in an investigation.”

  “And I’ll break in and insist that she’s the type of woman to go looking for another sugar daddy,” Jeff decided, giving me a quick wink. “We’ll talk about the need the identity of her next patsy. That way, the creep will probably try to use the situation to his advantage.”

  “Sure. I’ll also suggest that we help her set up her own party planning business again, so she can support herself, but it’s really an opportunity for us to track her actions. We can make it look like Marigold is actually getting back into the swing of things on the party front. He might try to mess with her, sending out more phony emails, or he might decide he’s in a good wait-and-see position. I’ll recommend that you leave Terry and Nancy here to babysit her, but we pull everyone else out.”

  “Does that mean I’ll be heading back to Reston?” Tom wanted to know.

  “Hell, no,” Rocky grinned. “You’re going to be our point man down here. We’ll make it look like you’re watching Marigold without her knowledge, but you’ll really be watching the guy who’s watching Marigold. We’ll make a big point of setting you up in another building, as if it’s a secret.”

  Terry agreed with the plan. “That’s good. It will discourage him from getting too close to her if he thinks she’s under surveillance.”

  Jeff uncrossed his legs, stretching to get comfortable in the chair. His slight wince turned into a grimace; it suggested his back was bothering him, but he didn’t let that stop him.

  “There’s one more thing. The creep obviously knows Marigold has been helping me with my condo. She and I should argue about it.” Jeff turned to me. “You can ask me what I want you to do with your design plans. I’ll tell you I’ve decided to sell the place.”

  “You’re selling the place?” I was dismayed. “But it’s got so much potential!”

  “Relax,” he told me. “I’ll just put it in a real estate trust for now and rent it back to myself. The point is I want you to demand that I pay you for the work you’ve already done for me. I’ll tell you that I have no intention of g
iving you any more of my hard-earned cash....”

  “You’re going to do that with a straight face?” Nancy teased. “Won’t the creep think you’re a cheap bastard?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he grinned. “I have no problem with that. And I’ll tell Marigold that she has three weeks to find a new place to live.”

  “I do?” For a moment, I panicked, thinking I would actually have to find a job that could pay the rent, as part of the scenario.

  “Marigold, have you forgotten what I do for a living? I write stories and scripts, and that’s what I’m doing here. We just had a royal battle outside about you leaving. We have to maintain that fiction. I’m not really kicking you out at the end of the month, although we will have to find another place to stash you for a while when this is over.”

  “You scared me there for a minute,” I laughed, feeling the relief wash over me. “But do you really think I can ever have a normal life?”

  Jeff reached over and put his hand on the back of my chair, ignoring the titters of our fellow team members. Leaning in, with his tantalizing lips just an inch from my ear, he whispered words that filled me with delight.

  “I promise you that I will do everything in my power to give you a great life, Marigold.”

  “Hey, what’s he saying to her?” Nancy leaned towards us. “No fair! We have a right to know!”

  “Only if it’s a security matter,” Rocky replied, an amused look on his face. Tom added his own observation.

  “From the way Marigold is blushing, I’d say this is a personal thing between the two of them.”

  “Shoot!” said my bodyguard, her disappointment obvious. “I guess I’ll just have to squeeze it out of her later, when you boys are gone.”

  “Speaking of which,” Tom laughed, “I think I’ll head back downstairs and get to work.”

  “Good idea.” Terry stood up and stretched his long, lean body. “I’m going to make some phone calls to some old buddies, get that ball rolling.”

  A little woof from my bedroom reminded me that there was a little Yorkie still crated in my bedroom. I got up from my chair.