Criminal Deception

by Marilyn Pappano

He carried the bike down the steps and was cinching the helmet strap tightly when he caught the sound of a door closing nearby. Not Liz, he thought, hoped grimly, but of course it was.

  With her hair in a ponytail, khaki shorts and a short-sleeved chambray shirt, she should have looked as casual as hell. She didn’t. She looked beautiful and elegant-there were creases pressed into her shorts, for pity’s sake-and uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “Hi.”

  He nodded curtly as he mounted the bike.

  “I, uh, wondered if we were still on for our ride to the lake today. Natalia said I could, uh, borrow her bike.”

  He’d made the suggestion less than forty-eight hours earlier, just before some thug had tried to run them down on the sidewalk. It had seemed a good idea then-a nice place, a picnic lunch, a pretty woman…Now he couldn’t think of much he wanted less than private time with Liz. “Later, okay?”

  “Oh. Okay.” She shifted, her sandaled feet coming into view in the grass where he was staring. She sounded part disappointed, part phony. “I can give you a ride wherever you’re going.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I don’t mind. We could talk.”

  Oh yeah, that sounded like fun. He’d tried talking last night, hadn’t he, and look where it’d gotten him. “Look, I’m not in much of a mood for talking. Maybe later.” Maybe never.

  Her cheeks flushed and she took a step back. She tried to smile, but it was shaky. “Okay. Sure. Later.”

  She watched as he rode away. He swore he could feel her gaze on him long after distance and Miss Abigail’s house had blocked her view.

  It was good weather for riding: sunny, not too hot or too humid, just enough breeze to cool without affecting control of the bike. He hardly noticed it, though. His attention was focused on the upcoming call.

  He would tell Josh to stay away from the Mulroneys, from their parents, from him.

  He would ask what was between Josh and Liz.

  He would ask what she wanted from him.

  He would ask why he shouldn’t give her the phone number.

  And he would tell his brother, if he bothered to ask, that their parents were fine.

  And to be careful.

  Assuming, of course, that the number was still good, that he got to talk to Josh at all, that his brother was even alive to talk to.

  Hands tight on the grips, Joe waited for a break in traffic, then turned left onto Carolina Avenue. The mall was a half dozen blocks to the east, small, one-story, sitting in the middle of a six-acre parking lot. There were no bike racks, so when he stopped near the main entrance, he climbed off and secured the bike to a light post with the chain and padlock he kept looped around the crossbar.

  The air inside was cool, processed, stale. The food court was busy, shoppers moved from store to store, and kids congregated wherever there was room. A good chunk of Copper Lake still believed that Sunday was the Lord’s day and ate dinner with family after church, but the rest of them were shopping or hanging out here.

  Holding his helmet by the strap, he headed toward the little-used south entrance, where a small alcove just inside the doors housed two pay phones and an ATM. Turning his back to the shoppers, he dug the number from his pocket, dropped in two quarters and, with hardly a tremble to his hand, he dialed.

  At the other end, the phone rang four times before going to voice mail. The recording was to the point: “Leave a message.” It was Josh’s voice, not so flippant, not so smug as usual, but proof that two months ago, at least, he’d been alive.

  Before Joe found his voice, the phone disconnected. He fed in two more quarters, dialed again and this time, after the beep, said, “It’s me. Joe. I’m at a pay phone at 706-555-3312. I’ll hang around here for ten minutes. If you don’t call, I’ll try again later.”

  When he hung up, his palm was sweaty. He dried it on his jeans, then turned to gaze across the open area of the mall. The nearest store on the left was a clothing boutique that catered to well-dressed toddlers, dressing them like miniature versions of their well-heeled parents. Directly across from it was a sporting goods place, and in the middle stood a jewelry kiosk. Listening to seconds ticking off slowly in his head, he scanned the people sitting on couches just past the kiosk, recognizing a few of his regular customers before movement drew his gaze back to the jewelry. It hadn’t been much-a swing of black curls lassoed into a ponytail-and he was sure there were other women in town with curly black hair even if he couldn’t think of any offhand.

  Then the clerk inside the kiosk moved, and Joe’s gaze locked with Liz’s. The look on her face was funny-grim, resigned, guilty-and brought with it a numb realization: She had followed him.

  And it wasn’t because she wanted to talk about last night. Oh, she was talking, all right, to whoever was on the cell phone. He was too far away to hear any of her conversation, but he had a sick feeling in his gut that it was about him.

  His chest was tight, his skin cold. He’d never had premonitions, but at that moment, he felt the way he had when the stranger in Armani had approached him, when he’d turned and seen the gun and known he was going to die. Liz wasn’t going to kill him-not in public when she’d had plenty of time alone with him-but he suspected it was going to hurt like hell just the same.

  She ended her call and started toward him. The pay phone rang when she was twenty feet away. He looked at it, looked back at her, then picked it up on the third ring. His hand was unsteady. So was his voice. “Yeah, this is Joe.”

  “It really is you,” Josh said. “What’s up? Is it Mom? Dad? Is something wrong-”

  “They’re okay.” Joe watched Liz, stopped in her tracks.

  “Thank God.”

  An odd phrase coming from Josh. He never worried about anyone but himself.

  “I figure I’m the last person you’d want to talk to about anything concerning yourself, so what’s up?”

  Joe’s reasons for calling now seemed pointless. To warn Josh? His brother knew people wanted him dead. To ask about Liz? To find out if he was nothing more to her than a substitute for his brother?

  To find out. Why she had come to Copper Lake. Why she had followed him today. Anything. Everything.

  Grimly he turned his back to her. In the reflective glass that encircled the alcove, he could see her, not hesitant, not uncertain, but simply waiting. Watching.

  “Tell me what you know about Liz Dalton.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Josh blew out his breath. “Jeez, I should have known she wouldn’t give up, not when I left her handcuffed to the bed. Has she been bugging you? Is she bothering Mom and Dad, too?”

  “Not that I know of. She said-” Joe’s brain caught up with his brother’s words. “You left your girlfriend handcuffed to a bed?”

  Josh laughed, but there was more scorn to it than humor. “I know we put on a pretty good act, but come on. You know my type, and Liz ain’t it. For one thing, she’s got that whole right-and-wrong, law-and-order thing going on. For another, her IQ is way higher than her bra size, and for another, can you really imagine me-your brother, Josh-introducing her to my buddies-‘Hey, guys, meet my girlfriend, Liz. She’s a deputy U.S. marshal.’ No freakin’ way.”

  The rushing in Joe’s ears gave Josh’s next words a distant, hollow quality. “And by the way, her name isn’t Dalton. It’s Dillon. Marshal Dillon. From the old TV show. Get it?”

  Joe got it.

  All of it.

  Chapter 10

  Liz had just been outed. She could tell by the way Joe went stiff, could feel it in the chill radiating across the distance that separated them. He knew she was a fed. Knew that every single thing she’d said or done since the moment they’d met had been a lie.

  Her muscles were knotted, holding her in place. She couldn’t move closer as she should, couldn’t grab the phone and demand that Josh turn himself in-for it had to be Josh. Who else would Joe call only from a pay phone?

  She couldn’t do a damn thing but stand there and regret.
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  She’d known it was going to be a tough day. She should have stayed in bed.

  Hell, she should have stayed in Dallas.

  His call was short, less than five minutes. He returned the receiver to the cradle, leaving his hand on it for a moment, before stepping away, then walking out the door.

  Finally she could move. She jogged to the door and outside, and caught up with him fifty feet away before matching her pace to his. “Joe, we should talk.”

  He acted as if he didn’t hear her.

  “Joe.” She laid her hand on his arm, and he jerked away as if her touch had seared him. He came to a stop so abruptly that she had to backtrack a few steps to face him.

  “Talk?” he repeated softly. “What do you want to talk about, Marshal Dillon?”

  She winced at the venom he put into her title and name. “I know you’re angry-”

  “Why should I be angry?” The emotion came off him in waves, heavy, relentless, suffocating. “You lied to me about your name, about your job, about your connection to Josh. You came to this town, you lied to Miss Abigail and Natalia and everyone else. You spied on me. You slept with me. And you think I might be angry?”

  He wasn’t yelling or gesturing or doing anything that might make a passerby think he was upset. He stood, loose-limbed, his expression blank, and his voice was pitched low and smooth. By all appearances, he was a normal man on a normal day having a normal conversation.

  “I won’t apologize for the lies,” she said flatly, though someplace inside she was aching to do just that. “I was assigned to Josh’s protection team undercover. The U.S. Attorney didn’t want the Mulroneys to figure out the identity of the witness against them. I had no choice, for Josh’s safety.”

  A muscle twitched in Joe’s jaw, and his skin paled a shade. “So you kept Josh safe. You just let me get shot.”

  She flinched again. She had blamed the shooter, the Mulroneys and Josh-everyone but herself-but Joe was right. They should have been prepared for a murder attempt, however unlikely it seemed. They should have taken precautions to protect Josh’s family, especially the brother who looked just like him. She, her team and her agency had nearly cost Joe his life.

  Oh, God.

  She drew a shallow breath. “I am sorry about that. We didn’t know…We didn’t think…We screwed up, Joe, and I’m damn sorry.”

  “Just not enough to be honest for once.”

  His scorn rankled, especially considering that she wasn’t the only one who’d lied. “What if I’d been honest, Joe? What if I’d walked into your shop last week and said, ‘Hi, you know me as Liz Dalton, Josh’s girlfriend, but in reality, I’m Deputy Marshal Liz Dillon, and I’m trying to find your brother because he escaped custody’? Would you have said, ‘Hey, yeah, I have a phone number for him’? Or would you have lied the way you lied to Tom Smith and to Deputy Marshal Ashe and to Daniel Wallace?”

  Color crept into his face, and heat shaded his voice. “That’s the only thing I lied to you about.”

  “Considering this is a criminal case, that’s a pretty damn big lie.”

  “So arrest me.”

  “If we didn’t have the information we need, I probably would.” She watched his eyes widen, then narrow again. “As soon as I saw you on the phone, I called my supervisor. By the time you finished leaving your message, we had the number you dialed, and the instant Josh called back, we had his location pinpointed to within 75 feet. The Boulder police were setting up a perimeter before you hung up.”

  “You think I didn’t figure that out? You think Josh didn’t? He was moving while we talked. By the time we hung up, he was gone.”

  “Which makes you an accomplice in his escape.”

  Scowling, he dragged his fingers through his hair, leaving it on end. Liz sympathized with him more than she could say. All he’d wanted was to stay out of his brother’s mess, but he’d wound up right in the middle of it. Again. Josh’s fault. And hers.

  When he finally spoke, his tone was quiet and bitter. “So, you got what you wanted, and it didn’t even take much. A little deception, a little dishonesty, a little sex. Now you can get the hell away from me and, please, God, never come back.”

  He started walking then, long strides, around the corner and toward the front entrance of the mall. She matched him pace for pace. “Last night wasn’t about the job, and you know it.”

  “Why? Because you say so? Hell, Liz, you wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you on the ass.” He directed a sardonic glare her way. “You do go by Liz, don’t you? Or is it Beth or Elizabeth or Sandra or Jane?”

  She quick-stepped to reach the bike before him, blocking his access to it. “Last night was about you and me and wanting what we’d believed for two years we couldn’t have.” He might deny it now, but he had wanted it, wanted her. She was positive of that. “It had nothing to do with work. Jeez, I could lose my job for it.”

  Her own words stopped her cold. Although it wasn’t likely, she could lose her job. A few years ago, even a few weeks ago, that would have been unthinkable. All she’d ever wanted to be was a marshal. It had been the number one priority in her life. She couldn’t have imagined not being a marshal.

  But now she could. Now there were things she wanted more. To be a lover. A wife. A mother. To live a small-town life without weapons and badges. To stay in the same place year after year. To make friends without having to leave them behind with the next case or the next transfer.

  And she wanted-oh, God, how she wanted-to see if she could have that life with Joe. Just a chance. Was that too much to ask?

  Judging by the scorn with which he regarded her, apparently so.

  “Don’t worry. I sure as hell won’t tell anyone. It’ll be our dirty little secret.” He gripped her shoulders and firmly moved her out of the way, then unchained the bike. “Pack your stuff and get out. I’ll say your goodbyes to Miss Abigail and Natalia.”

  Every nerve in Liz was quivering as she folded her arms across her middle. She couldn’t force him to stay and listen to her. Well, actually, she could make him stay; he might be bigger and stronger, but she knew moves he didn’t. But he couldn’t hear words that he was too angry and hurt to acknowledge. Later, maybe. Once Josh had been taken into custody, once the initial surprise and the sense of betrayal had passed, once Joe was his reasonable, logical self again, she could explain.

  Or maybe he would never be reasonable and logical again where she was concerned.

  Without another glance her way, he climbed onto the bike and pedaled away. She stood where she was, ignoring the customers arriving and departing, ignoring for a time the ringing of her cell phone. It stopped after four rings, then immediately began again. She reached into her pocket and muted it, then pulled her keys from her other pocket. She waited for a car to pass, then stepped off the curb.

  She’d grabbed the first parking space she found, near the end of the row directly in front of the entrance. There’d been a soccer-mom van in front of her and a candy-apple red Mustang beside her. Both cars were still there, along with a white panel van on the far side.

  She would go home, she decided, and try to talk to Joe again. When he refused to listen, she would call Mika; no doubt, that was who had just called her. Then she would…She would…There had to be something she would do, and curling up in bed for a good cry wouldn’t be it. She wasn’t a cryer. Growing up with three brothers had made sure of that. The stinging in her eyes was just from the sun or the humidity, and the lump in her throat just meant it was dry.

  But her brothers had never had their hearts broken before, and at that moment, hers felt as if it would never mend.

  She was thirty feet from her car when she realized that, next to it, the van’s engine was running. There were no side windows in the back, and the front passenger windows were so heavily tinted she couldn’t tell if it was occupied. There were no markings on the sides either. It was a completely nondescript van, the sort people would look at and forget entirely a minute later.r />
  Goose bumps raised up her spine, and she slowed her steps for a quick scan of the area. It was one of those lulls in mall traffic where the parking lot was pretty much empty of people, and yet…Footsteps, slow and measured, sounded behind her. Sliding her cell phone from her pocket, unfastening the flap of her purse so her pistol was in easy gripping range, she made an abrupt turn at a hot orange Bug, crossed to the next aisle and cut back toward the stores.

  Daniel Wallace stepped out from the cover of an SUV to block her way. “Forget something, Ms. Dalton?” he asked silkily.

  A plan: Pretend she didn’t know who he was and try to bluff her way past him? If there were people around, that might work; she might get close enough or make enough of a stir to draw attention her way. But he was big; he was fast; like her, he was almost certainly armed; and he wasn’t alone. Someone was waiting for him in that van.

  Liz edged to her right, putting the dinged-up rear end of a primer-coated Chevy between them. “What do you want?”

  “You know the answer to that. I’m sure that in addition to warning the young girl who works at the coffee shop, Mr. Saldana warned you about me as well.”

  He’d called her Dalton, so he likely wasn’t aware of her true identity; he would, like most men, underestimate her. He wouldn’t want to give her a chance to cause a scene-someone could drive into the lot or come out of the mall at any moment-but he wouldn’t expect her to put up a real fight. Grimly, she remembered her oldest brother’s mantra from his high school sports days: Ain’t going down without a fight.

  Behind her the van’s engine revved, underscored by the slow, rhythmic rub of tire on pavement. The driver had pulled out of the parking space and was approaching at a snail’s crawl. She eased the GLOCK free of her bag, holding it loosely, comfortably, out of Wallace’s range of vision. “If I knew where Josh was, I’d be there instead of here.”

  “If I believed you, I’d be in Chicago instead of Copper Lake.”

  She edged a few inches to her right. “Feel free to leave anytime.”

  His smile would have been charming if he wasn’t so dangerous. “We think you and/or Mr. Saldana know how to contact the errant Josh. We think if he’s not already in the area, it will take just a small amount of persuasion to bring him here.”