Back on Bittercreek Ranch

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Good question. I’m not directly involved on the task force and I’m getting everything secondhand but it’s believed she had a falling-out with other members of the cell and perhaps went into hiding.”

  “How do you know it’s the same woman?”

  “I’ve seen her papers, Mason. Jane Withington is twenty-eight years old with brown hair and blue eyes, five three, a hundred ten pounds. Sound like your mystery guest?”

  “And thousands of others.”

  “How many of them have British accents and happen to speak Vandish and according to her papers at least a dozen other dialects, including Tagalog, Parsi and Arabic?”

  Nausea churned through him. He didn’t want to believe this. Couldn’t believe it.

  “Look,” Cale said at his continued silence, “do you have a secured fax? I can send you her photo and then you’ll know for sure.”

  He hated himself for holding on to any tiny shred of hope that this was all some horrible mistake but he had to be sure.

  “Yes. Send it.” He gave Cale the number.

  “Okay, give me a second,” the FBI agent said.

  By the time Mason walked numbly into his office, he could hear the fax machine whirring. After the longest thirty seconds of his life, the machine spat out a page. His heart pounding, Mason picked it up and watched that shred of hope crumble into nothing.

  Jane gazed back at him, though the grainy fax did nothing to capture her soft beauty or the way her eyes could light up one moment and go dark with sadness the next.

  Damn her. It was all an act. Everything, from the moment he found her on the road to their slow kisses that afternoon.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face hard enough to leave marks in his skin. This was a frigging nightmare.

  “Mason? Are you there?” Cale asked in his ear and Mason realized he had never disconnected the cell connection.

  “Yeah.” His voice didn’t sound like his own.

  “Did you get the fax?”

  “I did.”

  “Can you verify the woman staying in your house matches that photograph?”

  It sure didn’t show what a hell of an actress she was, how her eyes could soften with vulnerability and her mouth could seem as innocent as a day-old kitten’s.

  She had listened to him talk about terrorists today, about the Betrans, and had seemed so damned sympathetic. All the while she was part of the VLF, which was strongly linked to Jemaah Islamiyah and no doubt Abu Sayyef, the shadowy group responsible for that car bombing.

  “Mason? You still there?” Cale asked again.

  He shoved his fury away and yanked himself back to the conversation. “Yeah. I’m here. It’s her.”

  Though he tried to be cold and emotionless, something in his voice must have alerted Cale to the wild rage prowling around inside him. When his friend spoke, his voice was low. “I’m sorry, man.”

  “So am I,” he said briskly. “Want me to bring her in?”

  “That’s going to be tricky. I haven’t told anybody you’ve got a British woman staying at your ranch. We need to figure out how to play this to keep you out of it.”

  He appreciated Cale trying to protect him but he saw the implications clearly. He was a former intelligence operative who had left the business under less than ideal circumstances—a handy little euphemism that covered the fact that he had pissed off just about everybody he’d ever worked with by quitting the game in midplay.

  “I’ve been harboring a suspected terrorist for three days. No matter how you spin it, I’m going to be dragged in, whether I like it or not.”

  “We can at least try to minimize your involvement.”

  “Just what is my involvement?”

  “I can testify that you didn’t know her identity, that you came to me for help the first day you found her,” Cale said. “That should help a little.”

  Mason sighed. The first shock of rage had passed and he felt battered by it. He felt at least a hundred years old, worn and tired.

  “Just come and get her.”

  He thought for a moment. He wasn’t ready to just hand her over to the authorities. That would be too entirely simple, too clean for her. No, she had dragged him into this and he deserved to know why.

  “How long will it take you?”

  “Half an hour, maybe. As soon as I notify the task force, I’m sure they’ll put a rush on sending agents to get her.”

  “I need a favor. See if you can stretch it out to an hour, will you?”

  Silence met his request. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Cale finally asked.

  “What? I only want a few minutes to talk to her.”

  “Only talk?”

  “You think I’m going to break out the rubber hose? Yes, just talk. The woman made a fool out of me and put the kids in danger. I just want to know why.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about stalling for a half hour but I can’t make any promises.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mason ended the call and set his phone down carefully on his desk next to that grainy fax.

  The woman gazing up at him from that image was a stranger. He thought he had come to know Jane in the last three days. He had laughed with her, had shared her nightmares, had even shared some of his own.

  An illusion. All of it. How the hell had he allowed himself be so taken in by her?

  What was she after here? He didn’t think it could be revenge. He had never investigated VLF—or not directly, anyway. Abu Sayyaf had been his chief area of expertise.

  He could think of no information he possessed that they might find of interest.

  And what about her head injury? As Lauren said, X-rays didn’t lie but one solid thunk with a metal pipe wielded by friend or enemy could have done the same kind of damage. Maybe it was part of some elaborate plan to infiltrate his household, though he couldn’t begin to guess why she might want to.

  His fury seemed to hit him in waves. The initial assault was done, but now he could feel more anger building. Cale’s delay would only buy him a few minutes. He didn’t have much time to figure out what game she played—and why she had chosen him as one of the other players.

  He found her in the kitchen with the children. All three of them had aprons on and Jane stood at the sink running water over a strainer full of vegetables.

  He stood and watched them together for a full sixty seconds, while she laughed at something the children said, while they smiled at her and at each other, thoroughly content with her company.

  Deceitful, lying bitch.

  She had fooled them all, he thought as bitter fury gnawed holes in his heart.

  Charlie caught sight of him first. “We make the salad to go with the fish. You cook it now?”

  “In a minute.” It took every ounce of control for him to keep his voice calm. “Miriam, can you look after your brother for a few minutes and carry on here with the salad? I need to talk to Jane.”

  “Yes, sir,” Miriam said, her wise old eyes suddenly apprehensive at something in his tone or his body language.

  Jane followed him from the room. His lungs felt tight, oxygen-starved, so he led the way out onto the wide porch overlooking the mountains.

  “You look upset,” Jane said as soon as the door closed behind them. “Everything all right, then?”

  “Just great. Brilliant, isn’t that what you Brits say?”

  With the savage fury still churning through him, Mason decided it would be better all around if he maintained a safe distance between them, though it took all his control not to shake her until her teeth rattled out. He moved ten feet away and leaned against the porch railing.

  She watched him go, blue eyes dark with sudden wariness. “What’s happened? Why are you angry?”

  “You tell me, Jane.”

  * * *

  He knew.

  Something about that peculiar emphasis he placed on her name sent all the blood rushing from her head and she felt herself sway.

  Perhaps it wasn�
�t what he said or how he said it so much as that hard, implacable light in his eyes.

  He had taken a phone call. Whoever had rung him up had given him information about her. Why that should make him so angry at her, she couldn’t guess. Maybe he feared, as she did, that her presence here might bring danger to his family.

  She couldn’t think what to say, where to begin so she just gazed at him in helpless misery.

  “Why here? Why me?”

  His voice stropped her nerves like a sharpened blade and for a long moment she could only stare at him blankly. “S-sorry?”

  “Why did you have to drag me and my family into this? Those children in there have been through enough, damn you.”

  He was right, she had put the children in unnecessary danger. She had no defense to offer so she tried to think what Harry Withington would do. He was a genius at diplomacy, at smoothing out rough waters. She could certainly use his help now.

  She did her best to try for a noncommital tone. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

  “Bullshit.”

  The curse word hit her like a shotgun blast and she flinched.

  “You’re Jane Withington, aren’t you?” he asked.

  Twelve hours ago she had been plain Jane Doe. Mysterious, maybe, certainly untrustworthy. But at least he hadn’t looked at her with this consuming hatred.

  She let out a breath and sagged onto a rocker on the porch. “How did you know?”

  “You picked the wrong man to screw with, lady. Next time maybe you ought to pick somebody without connections.”

  She wasn’t quite sure what that meant. But then, she wasn’t sure what any of this meant.

  “So you know everything, then? About the…the planned attack at the trade summit?”

  He blinked at her words as if he hadn’t expected them. Perhaps she’d been wrong. Perhaps he didn’t know everything.

  “I know everything I need to. Your name is Jane Withington and you’re connected to a VLF cell with plans to carry out a chemical attack aimed at preventing the signing of a trade agreement between Vandelusia and several western countries.”

  Her laugh was short, harsh. “Connected to them? I suppose that’s one way to put it.”

  “How would you put it?”

  “They tried to kill me! If not for a broken lorry door and a rattly mountain road they would have succeeded!”

  CHAPTER 14

  He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the porch railing, his expression as hard and unmoving as the mountains around them.

  “Let me guess. You’re just an innocent bystander, dragged into their hatred and conspiracies against your will.”

  “Yes! Exactly!”

  “Nice try. Just answer my question. Who leaked my identity to you and put my family in danger? And why the hell did they want to drag me into this?”

  She tried—and failed—to puzzle through his words. What difference would his identity make? It was sheer coincidence that he happened to be the one who found her.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she admitted. “All I know is that three days ago, I knew exactly who I was. Jane Withington, an interpreter with the British diplomatic corps. My life was safe and rather boring, just as I liked it, until I happened to be sitting in a Park City restaurant and overheard four men talking in Vandish—which unfortunately for me, happens to be one of the languages with which I am familiar.”

  “And?”

  “And they kidnapped me and stuffed me in the back of the lorry so they could kill me and drop my body where it wouldn’t be found. Only I somehow managed to get free before they could carry out their plan.”

  “Assuming I believe your story—which I don’t—that explanation still begs the question of why, in the last three days, you didn’t come forward to the authorities with what you heard.”

  “I had amnesia! You know I did! I didn’t remember any of this until this morning when I heard a radio report that three Vandish men had been arrested.”

  “Is that right?” His tone and skeptical expression clearly demonstrated he didn’t believe a word she was saying.

  “I didn’t! I swear it. All I remember is trying frantically to escape, knowing they would kill me as soon as the lorry stopped. I didn’t want to die. Not like that, like—” my father, she started to say but the words tangled on her tongue.

  “While I was trying to figure out how to escape,” she went on after a pause, “I discovered the doors weren’t latched properly and somehow I was able to push them open from the inside. I’m still not sure how. Things are hazy from there, but I think I remember falling out. I must have hit my head because the next thing I remember is waking up to find you standing over me. Then I heard that radio report and everything came flooding back.”

  “Convenient for you, your memory coming back all in a rush like that, right before the net closed around you.”

  She shivered at his cold words. “Convenient? I was terrified when I remembered! It was like going through it all over again. None of this seems real. It’s like some horrible nightmare.”

  A nightmare she had lived before, but she wasn’t prepared to share that with him now. Not when he was looking at her with such cold fury.

  “It’s real enough. And thanks to you, I’m in it now. Who gave you my name?” he asked again, and she grieved for the disappearance of the man who had held her and kissed her so tenderly not two hours before. There was no trace of him in this hard, dangerous man.

  “No one! Why would anyone? Mason, you must believe me. If I had remembered for one second there might be VLF terrorists after me, I would never have come here. I would never deliberately put you and two innocent children in harm’s way.”

  “Sorry, sweetheart, but I’m done believing you. You might as well save your lies for the FBI.”

  “FBI?”

  “You didn’t think I was going to let you just hang around on the ranch for another week or two and play with my kids until you decided you were bored, did you?”

  It is good you have bought the loyalty of your two FBI lapdogs.

  She could hear that VLF terrorist’s words as clearly as if he were standing beside her. Fear grabbed her in a stranglehold. If Djami had FBI agents on his payroll, she would be no more safe in FBI custody than she’d been in the back of that lorry.

  “No! You can’t do that. Please, Mason!”

  At her words, a light she hadn’t noticed before seemed to blink out. She realized how her words must have sounded to him, that she was guilty and afraid to face justice.

  That tiny spark had been hope, she realized, despair thrumming through her. He hadn’t wanted to believe she was guilty but everything she said seemed to point in that direction.

  His words confirmed it. “Now why would an innocent woman be so afraid of dealing with the FBI? It’s not like they’re going to shove bamboo shoots under your fingernails to make you talk or anything. Oh, I forgot. You have nothing to tell them, do you?”

  Should she tell him all she had learned that night? She didn’t want to drag him in further, to possibly endanger him with her knowledge but right now he was the only person she could trust. She had no choice.

  “I’ve had a great deal of time to think about this since I heard the radio report this morning. I realized that only three of the four men I know to be involved are in custody. I suspect I know which one is not.”

  She thought of Simon Djami, of the chilling indifference in his eyes when he ordered his henchmen to take her into the mountains and kill her. He had seen her as nothing more than an annoying bug to be squashed.

  “I know who the mastermind is behind the attack and who’s secretly leading the VLF. Why do you think they tried to kill me?”

  “I only have your word that they did.”

  “I swear it’s the truth. And if you turn me over to the FBI, they’ll succeed. I won’t live long enough to share what I know with anyone.”

  “What are you talking ab
out?”

  “When I was in that restaurant overhearing them, the leader claimed two FBI agents were helping him. His ‘paid lapdogs,’ they called them.”

  He shook his head, mouth curled with disgust. “You are a piece of work, lady. Don’t you know when the game is up? You really expect me to believe two U.S. intelligence agents were profiting from a plot to launch a chemical attack inside our borders? Sorry, sweetheart. I’m not buying.”

  “All I know is what I heard. If you turn me over to the FBI, I know Djami will find a way to kill me.”

  “Djami?”

  “Simon Djami. The Vandelusian trade minister. He’s the fourth man I saw in that restaurant.”

  He wasn’t buying any of this. She could see the disbelief and anger in his eyes and wanted to weep at it. Though she had virtually been on her own since she was fifteen, she had never felt so horribly alone.

  “You have to believe me, Mason,” she pleaded. “You’re the only person I can afford to trust. You were an Army Ranger. You could help me escape!”

  * * *

  He stared at her for a full-on thirty seconds, unable to believe she had the sheer gall to propose such an idea after tangling him and his two innocent children in this unholy mess.

  The safe, comfortable world he wanted for Miriam and Charlie after all they had been through seemed a distant mirage now, thanks to Jane Withington, and now she wanted him to help her escape the justice she deserved.

  He would have laughed in her face if he wasn’t battling a deep sense of hurt and betrayal.

  “Now why would I possibly want to help you escape?” he asked.

  She took a shaky breath at his bluntness. “I don’t know. For some silly reason, I thought perhaps you wouldn’t want to see me tortured and killed by vicious terrorists. I must have been mistaken.”

  “You were.”

  She flinched as if he’d sucker-punched her. Her hand tightened on the railing and her body braced as if expecting another blow.

  “I see,” she murmured. “And what if I were to take off right now and try to escape on my own before the FBI agents arrived?”

  “You can bet I would stop you before you made it very far.”