From the Shadows

by Rebecca York

  Alex had come to the cemetery in the afternoon to check out the area and make sure he could find the meeting place after dark without a flashlight. After the service, there had been a huge pile of dirt beside the grave, covered discreetly with a carpet of fake green grass. By the afternoon, it was gone, the earth tamped into the new rectangular hole. Too bad, Alex thought. He could have hidden on top of the casket and given his informant a heart attack when he jumped out.

  The image cheered him somewhat. Then he considered that he might have come here to meet nobody at all.

  Because there was one other possibility he’d been forced to consider: that the phone call this afternoon was part of a hoax, perpetrated by someone who wanted to rub in his brother’s murder—or rub in the fact that he wasn’t getting anywhere with the Lee Tillman case.

  It had been raw and cold here in the morning. Now the wind had a cutting edge as it whipped past gravestones and pierced Alex’s exposed skin.

  Pulling up the collar of his coat, he ducked his head and made for a large reddish granite tombstone.

  He never reached it. As he turned toward his right, a crack like thunder suddenly split the air, and he felt a bullet slam into his chest.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He heard gravel crunch, heard running feet. Then Sara’s voice filtered past the pain in his chest. Grimly he struggled to stand but couldn’t manage it, and he wondered if a high-powered projectile had penetrated the bulletproof vest he was wearing and torn apart his flesh. As he analyzed the pain, he realized the shield had done its work and captured the bullet. But the impact had still slammed into him like a steel wrecking ball.

  “Drop your gun and raise your hands, you bastard!” Sara shouted.

  Someone—a man—answered the order with a curse. His weapon landed on the ground with a thump.

  Fighting pain, Alex drew in a ragged breath as he heaved himself up and staggered forward. He found Sara holding the Glock he’d given her—two hands on the gun like a TV cop. She was facing a man who stood with his back against a tombstone.

  “It’s Tripp Kenney,” she informed him.

  The militia leader. Well, well.

  The man stared at him, wide-eyed. “But I shot you in the chest,” he breathed. “Why aren’t you dead?”

  “Bulletproof vest,” Alex spat out, still struggling to stand still. If Kenney tried anything, he wasn’t going to be much help to Sara. “Move away from the grave marker.”

  The man took a step forward. As Sara covered Kenney, Alex came up behind him and cuffed his hands, the way Hempstead had cuffed him days before.

  Turning to her, he growled, “I told you to stay in the car.”

  She stared at him with an “I told you so” look, but she only said, “If I had, he would have gotten away.”

  Alex acknowledged the comment with a small huff that made Sara’s anxious gaze shoot to his face.

  “Are you all right?” she asked urgently.

  “I’ll live.” He shined his flashlight on the ground and spotted the gun that Kenney had dropped. A .380 Walther. Lucky for him, he thought. Something bigger and he might be in the hospital right now, despite the vest.

  He started to reach for the gun, then checked himself. He’d bag the evidence later, so he didn’t screw up the prints.

  Alex turned toward the man who had clearly tried to kill him. “Sit down so we can talk,” he said. Putting a hand on the man’s shoulder, he pressed him down so that he was sitting on the grave. The militia leader’s features hardened. But Alex suspected he was probably shaking inside.

  “So now we’re going to have the chat you promised me when you called me earlier. It was you who called, right?”

  “Yeah, it was me.”

  “First you killed my brother. Then you tried to get me,” he spat out. “Why?”

  “I didn’t kill your brother.”

  “Who did?”

  “A militiaman—Al Bigelow. But he got drilled by another one of our soldiers, Curt Morgan, so it’s a moot point.”

  “Who started the shooting?”

  “Not me. You’ve got to believe that. I had an insurrection on my hands.”

  “You mean, your militia turned into a mob?” Alex asked with a snort.

  “It was brewing for a long time. I thought I could control them, but I was wrong. There was a disagreement about going after you the other day.”

  “Regarding the dog and the firefight?”

  He nodded. “The discussion got pretty heated. Some guys were with me, some thought I’d made a bad mistake—drawing unwanted attention to us.” He grimaced. “Somebody drew a gun and fired. Somebody fired back. And then there was no stopping it.”

  “Like when you shot Emmett Bandy?” Alex growled.

  “I didn’t do him!”

  “Sure.” Alex lowered his face toward the man. “And you didn’t shoot at me just now?”

  “That was different. I needed the money. After the mess at the compound, I needed to get out of here, start over fresh with a new identity. I’m the only guy who got out of there alive, who’s still hanging around here. Everyone else has taken off. And I’ve got to make tracks too.”

  “You’re saying somebody paid you to get rid of me? Who?”

  The man’s lips clamped shut. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Oh yeah?” Alex wanted to plow his fist into the man’s face. Somehow he stopped himself.

  But Kenney must have seen the anger in his eyes. Frantically, he tried to push himself away. Alex clamped a hand on his shoulder.

  “Take it easy,” he said, the advice intended as much for himself as Kenney. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  The militiaman’s eyes darted from side to side, but he stayed where he was as Alex pulled out the Sig he’d gotten back from the police and trained it on him. With his other hand, he extracted his cell phone and gave it to Sara. “Call 911,” he said, “and tell them we’re at Green Meadow Cemetery. Tell them we have a shooting suspect in custody.”

  “No!” Kenney bellowed.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not me you want. It’s—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, a shot rang out.

  Alex grabbed Sara and threw her to the ground, just as another shot whizzed over his head.

  From the sound of it, the bullet had come from a high-powered rifle, he thought with one part of his mind as he covered Sara’s body with his own. Pressing her to the cold ground, he prayed that his dark coat made them less of a target.

  “Are you all right?” he asked urgently.

  “Yes,” she gasped. “I can’t believe this. Someone else shot at us. Someone else is here.”

  “Yeah. Stay down,” he answered, cursing himself again. He’d been prepared to meet a possible assassin tonight. He hadn’t considered that somebody else was coming along to make sure that Tripp Kenney kept his mouth shut.

  For several moments, he remained where he was, but there was no more gunfire. Raising himself to a crouch, Alex half dragged, half carried Sara behind a nearby grave marker, his chest on fire from the effort.

  Cautiously he raised his head and looked around. He saw Kenney sprawled against the white marble. Already dead.

  “Stay down,” he told Sara as he moved off in the direction from which the shot had come. “And call the cops.”

  Behind him he could hear Sara making the call to 911. He’d used the police as a threat when he’d handed her the phone earlier. Now…now they needed the law. The rational part of his brain knew that. They couldn’t leave Kenney’s body in the cemetery and run.

  But another part of his mind was silently screaming, No. Not again. Please, God, not again.

  He found no one else on the scene. The shooter had fled.

  Carefully he replaced his gun in its holster. As he came back to Billy’s grave, he unbuckled the belt and set the whole thing on the ground.

  “Put your gun down,” he said to Sara, keeping his voice flat and even. She followed his
lead, then moved to his side, and he slung his arm around her, holding her close.

  “What’s going to happen when the police get here?” she whispered.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said, still making an effort to keep his voice steady. “But they’re going to have to consider us suspects. At least initially. They’re going to prone us.”

  “What?”

  “They’re going to make us lie down on the ground and cuff us,” he muttered. “When they see what’s happened here, they have to.”

  “But we called them,” she protested.

  “Yeah. But they’re not going to risk their lives on our being nice guys.”

  She made a small, distressed sound, and he pulled her around to face him, held her tighter.

  He felt as if he were waiting centuries for a ten-ton block of granite to fall on him. And at the same time, it seemed no more than the blink of an eye before a couple of patrol cars pulled up on the road.

  Lord, he’d been stupid again, he thought. Stupid for agreeing to this secret meeting. He should have at least called Hempstead and told him what he was doing.

  “Follow my lead,” he said, raising his hands as the cops exited their cruiser.

  Jaw clenched, Sara did the same. It didn’t make him feel any better that he recognized the two uniforms who emerged from the first car. They were the same guys, Glenn and Taubman, who had hauled him in after the chief picked him up for the shooting at Emmett Bandy’s office.

  “We’re unarmed,” he said. “We were meeting Tripp Kenney, the militia leader. Kenney shot at me. Then somebody else shot him. He’s dead.” He jerked his head toward the body propped against the tombstone.

  The two officers followed his gaze, then drew their weapons.

  Sara gasped.

  “Steady,” he whispered.

  “Down on the ground,” Taubman ordered.

  “Do it,” he told Sara.

  They both went down. At least the grass was thick and springy, he thought as Taubman snapped cuffs on his wrists, then patted him down.

  “Bulletproof vest?”

  “Yeah,” he answered. “You’ll find the bullet where Kenney shot me. And holes in my clothing to match. Lucky for me, he wasn’t carrying a cannon.”

  Still, when the uniform helped him to his feet again, he couldn’t hold back a wince.

  “You hurt?” the cop asked.

  “I’ll live.”

  He stayed close to Sara, who was saying, in a high strained voice, “Kenney asked Alex to meet him here, then he shot at Alex. I, uh, I got the drop on him. Then Alex handcuffed him so he couldn’t get away.”

  He took up the narrative. “Kenney was about to tell us who sent him here, when somebody made sure he wasn’t going to spill the beans. You’ll find powder burns on his hands. His weapon’s over there on the ground. It will match the bullet in my vest.” He sighed. “My gun hasn’t been fired. It’s also on the ground, along with Sara’s, which also hasn’t been fired. Is this starting to sound familiar?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Only, this time, he has a witness,” Sara said. “I saw everything. Well, I didn’t see who fired at us while we were talking to Kenney.”

  “Uh-huh.” Glenn cleared his throat. “We do have to take you in for questioning.”

  Alex sighed. “Of course. I’m sure Dan Cassidy will love coming down from Baltimore again.” Raising his chin, he looked from Glenn to Taubman. “And this time, since I came to interview a witness who asked to set up this meeting, I have a tape recorder with me. So there’s no question about what happened. The recorder is in my right coat pocket. You can reach inside and get it, and turn off the tape. Or you can arrest me for recording a conversation without the other party’s knowledge. But I don’t think Kenney’s going to object.”

  Glenn retrieved the recorder. “Let’s go,” he said.

  History repeated itself with another ride in the back of a police car, only this time Sara was beside him. In a kind of warped way, Alex was glad she was there, glad that she turned in her seat and pressed her face against his shoulder. Stroking her with his lips, talking to her in a low, soothing voice helped him calm his own jumping nerves during the ride.

  When he got to the state police barracks, he was forced to make a decision. They could wait in a holding cell for Dan Cassidy to come down from Baltimore, or he could let them start interviewing him and Sara.

  “I’d like to get this over with,” he told Sara.

  “Will they let us stay together?” she asked.

  “No. They want to hear our stories separately. Can you handle that?”

  “Yes,” she answered, but he could see she didn’t love the idea.

  TO HIS VAST RELIEF they were out of the state police barracks just three hours after they’d entered. They even had an offer of police protection, since somebody had clearly shot Kenney in front of them, and they were the only witnesses.

  Alex wasn’t prepared to have his activities monitored, although he’d tried to get Sara to accept the offer. Or to get out of the state. But she was still with him when the officers who had picked them up at the cemetery gave them a ride back to the SUV.

  She was silent the whole way back. Silent as they stood beside the truck waiting for the police cruiser to pull away. And he wondered what she was thinking. Was she blaming him?

  As soon as he unlocked the doors and they climbed inside, she turned wordlessly toward him. When she reached for him, he reached back, folding her into his arms.

  “Alex, I was so scared,” she murmured. “I was afraid they were going to think we did it. And then when they separated us, I thought I was going to lose it.”

  “You did great.”

  “I know it was only a little taste of what you got when they arrested you last time. But it scared me spitless, because I kept thinking that just because you’re innocent doesn’t mean you don’t get charged with murder.”

  His hands soothed over her back. Lord, it felt so good to hold her. So right. And despite all the warnings he’d given himself, all the uncertainty, he didn’t have the strength to resist the need for her.

  Since the last time they’d made love, they’d been carefully moving around each other, as if each of them wasn’t burning for the other. Now she lifted her face to his, and he brought his mouth down to hers for a long, deep kiss that left them both breathing raggedly.

  “I should keep my hands off you,” he muttered. “We have to get out of here.”

  “But I want your hands on me. I need them on me!” To reinforce the point, she found one of his hands and dragged it under her coat, cupping it around her breast. He caressed her softness, found his fingers drawn to her hardened nipple.

  Once he started, he simply couldn’t find the strength to stop. She moved against him, making a frustrated, whimpering sound that turned the blood in his veins molten.

  “Alex, Alex, I need you now,” she gasped, sounding as crazed as he felt. “Oh Lord, I wish I’d worn a skirt.”

  He wanted to keep kissing her, touching her, but the frantic sound of her voice brought back a measure of sanity.

  His rumbling curse made her head jerk up, her eyes searching his.

  “If I were trying to set up another ambush, I couldn’t do a better job than this,” he growled.

  “Whoever shot Kenney is long gone,” she said in a steady voice.

  “Maybe. But that’s no excuse for putting you in danger. And I don’t think either one of us would like it much if the cops come back to check on us.” He saw that comment hit the mark.

  “Put your seat belt on,” he growled. “There’s a seat belt law in Maryland.”

  He drove her back to their current motel, where they stayed long enough to pack up. Then he made absolutely sure they weren’t being followed before driving to another anonymous lodging place on the opposite side of town.

  He was scanning the parking lot when she emerged from the bathroom wearing an oversize T-shirt instead of a nightgown. He saw her
hesitate in the doorway.

  “Are you coming to bed?” she asked in a low voice.

  “I have work to do.”

  He watched her hands clench and unclench at her sides. Then she crossed the room and slipped her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his shoulder. He felt her draw in a breath and let it out before she said, “Are you still trying to pretend that the two of us don’t care deeply about each other?”

  “I should.”

  “But you’ve given it up?”

  He felt his heart pounding in his chest. Probably she could feel it, too. He couldn’t form an answer, not with words. But when her arms tightened around him, he gathered her close.

  “I don’t want to waste time arguing with you,” she murmured.

  “Yeah, well, if you’re thinking of wasting time in some more pleasant way, I’m afraid I’ve got to disappoint you. I wasn’t kidding about needing to work. I’ve got to get back online and check my messages. I’m expecting some information from Randolph Security.” He sucked in a breath, then let it out in a rush. “Sara, we have to deal with the mess we’re in before we can talk about…our relationship.”

  She raised her head and looked at him, and he was pretty sure she knew he was manufacturing excuses.

  But she didn’t call him on it. Instead, she said, “I understand,” and stepped away.

  He had to flatten his hands against his sides to stop himself from reaching for her once more. Her backing off was the single most effective thing she could do to get his full attention. Instead, he deliberately turned away and reached for the laptop computer while she climbed into bed.

  He could feel her watching him as he sat down at the desk, and he wanted to close up the machine, lie down beside her and gather her to him. Keeping his gaze fixed on the screen, he got into his mail system and found a message from Randolph Security.