It was former Senator Steve Lydell – a retired attorney and rumored candidate to be appointed to Secretary of Defense – in living color and doing all sorts of kinky shit with someone who wasn’t his wife and the mother of his four children.
Sucking in a breath, Josie rubbed her temples where a headache had begun to bloom. She’d known politics was dog eat dog but she hadn’t realized that power was something to murder over. Then again, she’d never craved power and prestige. And be willing to do whatever it took to get there.
“Oh Amy,” Josie whispered, an ache in her heart as she thought of her best friend. She’d barely allowed herself to mourn this last week but everything was beginning to catch up with her. Amy was gone and she wasn’t coming back, and that reality was beginning to settle into Josie’s brain. Her friend was gone and the hole in her heart wouldn’t be healed for a long time, if ever. “What did you get yourself into? Why do you have this and how did they find out about it? You told me not to trust anyone but I don’t know what to do or where to go.”
Her voice broke as a sob rose up in her choked throat. Her body shook with a mixture of terror and sadness as she slid to the floor, her back against the desk. Rocking herself back and forth, she silently allowed herself the catharsis of tears until she didn’t have any left, her tear ducts drained and sore. All cried out, her eyes swollen and red, she ejected the thumb drive and placed it safely into the small compartment in her backpack. For a moment she’d contemplated hiding it somewhere in the house, but if she needed to make a quick getaway she didn’t want to be scrambling to retrieve it. The backpack wasn’t perfect, but for now it was the best she could do.
She wasn’t some spy or double agent. Amy said not to trust anyone but she couldn’t stay on the run the rest of her life. Perhaps sending the evidence to a news outlet might help but there was no guarantee she still wouldn’t be accused of Amy’s murder. News organizations were owned by large multinational conglomerates and they had political agendas of their own.
Just because the video might become public didn’t mean Josie herself was off the hook. It only meant Lydell’s political future was in peril. He probably wouldn’t take too kindly to that and she was sure it was his men coming after her. It was the only thing that made sense.
Except that nothing really made sense at all.
She’d avoided thinking about her situation or making any decisions but the sand had run out of the hourglass. It was time to put on her big girl panties and figure out what the hell she was going to do.
And whom she was going to trust. Because she had to trust someone. She couldn’t do this alone.
Chapter Twelve
Josie opened her lids a mere slit before closing them tightly again. Sun was streaming through the curtains, telling her that without a doubt that it was past the early morning she’d hoped for and well on its way to midday. Groaning with effort, she opened her eyes again and glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Eleven-oh-six.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit,” she chanted, realizing she’d screwed up. Again.
Flying out of bed, she stumbled over her backpack that she’d placed close to the bed so it would be within arm’s length. Her knees hit the hardwood as her legs gave way, not completely awake yet, and she let fly a string of curses that would have made a sailor blush. She’d planned to be on the eleven-fifteen bus out of Cypress Corner and that meant she had nine minutes to dress, pack her few belongings, and convince Evan to drive her to the bus station. It would be a miracle but she wanted to believe it could be done.
Despite sore and protesting muscles, she was scrambling through her backpack for a pair of semi-clean jeans when the door flew open, banging against the wall. Evan stood there, his chest rising and falling rapidly as if he’d charged up the stairs two at a time.
“Are you okay?” he asked urgently, his gaze sweeping her from head to toe and then back up again. She must look quite a sight with her bedhead and creases on her face from the sheets but she was too frantic to care.
“I’m fine. Just in a hurry. I have a bus to catch in nine minutes.”
Yanking pants and a t-shirt out of her backpack along with a clean pair of panties and socks, she gave him a look that she hoped said something like thank you for the concern but go away while I dress.
He didn’t get the message.
“I heard something crash.”
She sighed and got to her feet, time ticking away. “That was me getting out of bed. I think I mentioned that I was kind of accident prone, plus I’m still kind of sore. Now if you don’t mind…”
He just stood there. Scowling.
“I need to get dressed,” she prompted, sighing in exasperation and not bothering to hide it any longer. “Right away. They won’t let me on the bus in just your t-shirt no matter how much they love AC/DC. So if you could…”
She made a shooing motion with her hands and that seemed to get his attention.
“You’ll never make it so you might as well relax.”
She shook her head and glanced back at the clock. “I have nine–wait, make that seven minutes. I can do it but I need to get dressed.”
Instead of leaving he stepped into the room, a smile tugging at his lips. “You have two minutes and it’s a ten minute drive into town anyway. You won’t make it, honey. Just relax and we’ll go into town for some lunch.”
He wasn’t making the whole leaving thing easy for her.
“I have seven–”
“Two,” Evan interrupted. “That clock runs five minutes slow. At least. Even when I reset it the darn thing loses time. Trust me, at most you have two minutes. If I had a rocket ship I couldn’t get you there on time.”
“Fuck,” Josie muttered, her entire body sagging with disappointment. She fell back onto the mattress with a groan and buried her face in her hands. She was stuck here another day and there were men out there who were willing to burn down a motel to make sure she was dead. “Dammit, I needed to be on that bus.”
Evan leaned against the desk, his arms crossed over his chest. “There will be another bus tomorrow—what does it matter?”
“It matters. I need to leave.”
A part of her desperately wanted to trust Evan with the burden she was carrying but another part, the part that was trying to keep her alive, stayed silent. He was a good man and he sure as hell didn’t deserve to be dragged into this…mess. It might make her feel better not to be in danger all alone but it wouldn’t help Evan in the least. She’d keep her mouth shut and move along. Maybe when this was all over, she could write him a letter and tell him the truth. She was so grateful for everything he’d done so far. He didn’t have any idea how much he’d helped her already.
She was shoving her pajamas into her backpack when he shocked her.
“What if I don’t want you to leave? What if I want you to stay?”
Evan wasn’t smiling anymore and his expression was intensely…intense. She watched as he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat and his jaw growing tight at the silence that followed his question. The last thing she wanted was to have this conversation.
Sitting down on the bed, she abandoned packing. This had to be dealt with first. “We don’t always get what we want. I sure don’t, anyway. I like you. A lot. But I have to go.”
More heavy silence and her nerves screamed for relief. Josie had to make him understand.
“From where I’m standing I’m not seeing why you have to go. Unless, of course, you just want to. I’m going to take a chance here, Lisa. It’s one of the things I said I was going to do when I left the Marshals. I was going to do what I wanted and stop doing what people expected. Seems to me that you expect me to smile politely and drive you to the bus station. Fuck that. I like you too, honey. A hell of a lot. I’d like to see where that takes us. There. I said it. But maybe you already knew that. Maybe that’s why you want to leave. Am I running you off? Am I being too forward?”
Shit and hell, she wasn’t in the righ
t frame of mind to deal with this. At any other moment in her life, his words would be pure heaven and she would have thrown herself into his arms and kissed him until they both fainted from pleasure. But she was in deep shit and didn’t have the luxury. How did one let down the man of their dreams? Had any woman ever been that stupid before?
She opened her mouth to reply but the words kept getting stuck in her throat. “I–It’s just–You don’t understand.”
He pulled the desk chair out and lowered himself into it, stretching out his long legs as if settling in for the duration. He wasn’t going anywhere until he was satisfied with her answer. “You’re right, I don’t. Help me understand. I want to.”
Defeated, Josie hung her head and stared at her bare feet. “I can’t stay. I wish I could.”
“Honey, you don’t sound happy about it. In fact, I’d go as far as to say you sound mighty sad to be leaving. What can I do to fix things so you can stay?”
Everything that had happened in the last week welled up inside of her, stealing her ability to even draw breath. It was too much. Way too much for any one person to handle and although Amy had pleaded at the end not to trust anyone, the pressure of being alone and on the run and scared was simply too much for Josie. She hiccupped as a sob escaped from her lips and tears welled, spilling onto her cheeks.
“Can you turn back time, Evan? Because that’s the only thing that can help me.” She finally looked up into the kindest eyes she’d ever seen, eyes that practically begged to help her. “I am so fucked, I don’t know which way is up and I don’t know what to do. There are people that want me dead and they’ll do anything, even burn down a motel with innocent people in it to kill me. If you had any brains whatsoever you’d save yourself and drive me to the nearest bus station, drop me there, and never look back. I could only get you killed or injured.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I’ve never been all that smart, so I think you’re staying right here. Talk to me, Lisa. Tell me what’s going on and why you’re so scared. Let’s start with why you think someone wants you dead.”
Holy hell, Evan was finally getting somewhere with Lisa but she wasn’t making it easy. She had some delusion that the fire was set to kill her. She seemed so levelheaded most of the time, so being hysterical like this didn’t make sense.
Lisa hopped up from the bed and began to pace back and forth. “I don’t think someone wants me dead, I know it. I’ve been on the run since leaving D.C. Hell, they set fire to the motel last night, Evan. I don’t want them to do that – or worse – to you.”
The color in her cheeks was high and she was getting herself all riled up. He’d never get a coherent explanation out of her at this rate. She was working herself up into stroke territory.
“Calm down, honey. You need to stay calm.”
She rounded on him then and leaned down until they were nose to nose, her finger poking him in the chest.
“Never in the history of calming down has anyone actually calmed down when told to calm down.” She straightened, her jaw jutting out stubbornly. “And I am calm. At least compared to that night. Believe me, after everything I’ve gone through this is calm.”
Fighting to suppress a grin, Evan nodded, keeping his expression neutral. Or as neutral as he was capable of.
“I’m sorry. You’re right, that wasn’t helping. How about we go downstairs, have some coffee, and you start from the very beginning? How does that sound?”
For a moment he thought she was going to argue, but instead she nodded and padded on bare feet out of the bedroom and downstairs, leading the way into the kitchen. He waved her to a chair while he poured them both a cup of coffee, the pot still fairly fresh from when he’d made it late in the morning.
“Now,” he said, sliding a cup in front of her and settling into the chair opposite at the tiny kitchen table. “Why don’t you go all the way back to the beginning? Pretend I don’t know anything at all about anything. No detail is too small.”
Waiting wasn’t easy, but Evan sipped his coffee while Lisa added cream and sugar and gathered her thoughts. She had a few false starts but eventually put down her mug and spoke.
“First of all, my real name isn’t Lisa. It’s Josephine Eleanor Carlton. My friends call me Josie. I’m sorry for lying to you about that but I had my reasons for wanting to remain under the radar.”
She kind of looked like a Josie. More than a Lisa. But he was still hurt she hadn’t trusted him with the truth, although at the time he’d done nothing to earn that trust.
“Okay, Josie.” He tried the name out on his tongue, careful to keep his own emotions from derailing her story. This wasn’t about him. “You’re not Lisa. I guess that’s what I get for not asking for references and paying you in cash.”
Her eyes widened and she took another gulp of her coffee. “I wouldn’t have taken the job if you wanted those things. I would have left town, I guess.”
That would have been a shame. Despite all this drama, she was the best thing to happen to him in recent memory.
“So Josie, you were telling me why people want you dead,” he reminded her, watching her expressions and body language closely. He’d participated in hundreds of interrogations but this one might be the most important.
Her fingers twisted around the handle of the cup, her knuckles white. “I was coming home from work. I was working as a waitress after getting laid off and my shift ended late, after the restaurant closed. It was almost one in the morning.”
“You lived in Washington D.C.?”
Lisa—no, Josie—nodded. “Like I told you before, I moved there to be closer to a friend from college – Amy. She helped me find a place to live and get a job.”
Tears glistened in Josie’s eyes and Evan reached out to place his hand over one of hers, squeezing lightly. He had a feeling there were going to be many more tears before this story was told.
“She sounds like a good friend. Does she know you’re on the run?”
More tears. Shit, he’d hit a nerve.
“She does. I mean, did. She died that night.” Josie released the mug and her hand flew over her mouth to cover a sob. “When I got out of my car I could see two men running from Amy’s car. She lived in the same apartment complex I did. Anyway, they jumped in a car and drove away. I walked over to Amy’s vehicle and she was lying on the pavement next to it. She was still alive but bleeding from her stomach. There was blood everywhere. I pulled out my cell phone to call 911 but Amy grabbed my arm. I remember being shocked that she still had that much strength. Anyway, she told me there was a thumb drive hidden in the covered saucepan in her apartment. She told me to take it and get away from there, to hide. I wasn’t to trust anyone because they would kill for it.”
Evan was struggling to wrap his mind around Josie’s words. It sounded like something out of a Bond film. Thumb drives and deathbed warnings. However, he’d been in law enforcement long enough to realize that some things were more complicated than anything Hollywood could come up with.
Josie had pulled her legs to her chest, her arms wrapped around her knees as she’d recounted her friend’s last moments. She appeared alone and lost and more than a little frightened. He hoped he could reassure her that he could and would protect her. He hadn’t lost anyone under protection yet and this woman wasn’t going to be his first.
“Honey,” he said gently, walking a fine line between allowing her to wallow in her misery and needing to hear the rest of the story. There had to be more than what she’d told him. “How about a drink? I think you could use one.”
She scrubbed at her damp cheeks and nodded, sniffling as he dug into his pocket for a handkerchief.
He reached into the cabinet over the refrigerator, far out of Josie’s reach, and pulled down the hidden bottle of whiskey he hadn’t touched in weeks plus two glasses. She shouldn’t drink alone and he had a feeling he’d need one himself before her story was over.
He poured two shots and pushed one closer to her, watchin
g as she knocked it back, a gasp coming from deep in her gut as it slid down, warming her stomach as it was heating his own. She wiped off her mouth with her hand and licked her lips nervously.
“I called 911 but it was too late. Amy died right then and I knew that I had to help her. She’d been frantic with worry so I had to get the thumb drive and get out of there. I just didn’t know where I was going or what I was going to do. She didn’t have time to tell me what was on it. And then–”
Josie broke off and reached for the bottle, pouring herself another generous measure. “I’m not sure about the rest of this, Evan. You were a cop before, right? Isn’t there a saying…’once a cop, always a cop’? I need you to be on my side here. I need you to believe in me because some of the stuff I’m saying is going to sound pretty far out.”
Josie had been watching too much television.
“In all my years in law enforcement I’ve never heard that once I’m a cop I’m always a cop. Never. I was a cop and now I’m not. That doesn’t mean I still don’t often think like one or still have the instincts, but I am not an officer of the law. Actually, I’m an out of work loser right now. And I am on your side.”
“You’re not a loser.”
“Thank you. Before you go further, can I ask a few questions?”
He was struggling to picture the scene in his mind and he needed it to be clear.
“Sure.” Josie shrugged and took another sip of whiskey. “I’m not all that keen on telling the next part anyway.”
“You said your friend Amy was lying on the ground, right? Next to her car? How far was that from her apartment and did she…well…pass on before you went to her place to retrieve the thumb drive?”
“Yes, she was lying on the ground next to her car. The apartment building was maybe twenty feet or so. Not far. And I did stay with her until she was gone. I didn’t leave her. I wouldn’t do that. She was my best friend. But even that came back to bite me in the ass.”
Justice Reborn (Cowboy Justice Association Book 8) Page 8