by CINDI MEYERS
“I never imagined you as a schoolteacher.”
“I had a degree in English from Barnard. The Marshals Service pulled a few strings to get me my teaching certificate. They found this job for me, and this house.” She looked around the room. The plain, old-fashioned furniture was as unlike her hip Manhattan apartment as he could have imagined. “I suppose they thought this place was as anonymous as a town could be.” Her gaze shifted back to him. “Yet you found me.”
“I had inside information.”
“Other people can pay for information.”
Other people being her father and his goons. “I knew about this place. That it was on a list of possible hideouts. I persuaded a former colleague to let me take a look at the accounting records for the period after you disappeared and I found payment to a Colorado bank. I was able to trace that to this house.”
“But you still didn’t know I was here.”
“I looked online, through the archives of the local paper. I saw the announcement last summer about the new teacher. The timing was right, and I thought it might be you.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“Not so easy. There are a lot of layers between you and the feds. Layers I helped design.”
“I forgot you started out as an accountant.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Not the picture most people have of the rough-and-tough federal agent.”
He’d been hired straight out of university to work as a forensic accountant for the Bureau. Following the money put away more criminals than shootouts. But then they’d needed someone to go undercover in the Giardino family and he’d volunteered, wanting a change from sitting behind a desk. He hadn’t counted on getting in so deep. He hadn’t counted on Elizabeth.
“How are you doing?” he asked. “Do you like it here?”
“I don’t dislike it. The people are friendly. I love the children.”
He tried to imagine her surrounded by first graders. He’d never thought of her as the mothering type, yet the image seemed to suit this new, quieter side of her. “It’s very different from the life you lived before,” he said.
“I’m very different.”
“Yeah.” A person didn’t go through the kinds of things they’d been through without some change. “How are you doing, really?” he asked.
“How do you think?” Her voice was hard, the accusation in her eyes like acid poured on his wounds. “It’s hard. And exhausting, being afraid all the time.”
“You don’t feel safe?”
“You of all people should know the answer to that. You know my father—he’ll do anything to get his way. And he meant it when he said he would see that I was dead. If you found me, he can too. Why did you come here?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Well, you’ve seen me. Now you can leave.” She stood, and cinched the robe tighter around her waist.
He rose also. “Eli—Anne. Listen to me. I need your help.”
“For what?”
“I need you to help me find your father.”
“Why? You said you’re no longer with the Bureau.”
“No. But if we find him he’ll go back to prison—and they won’t let him escape this time.”
“I can’t help you. All I want is to stay as far away from him as possible.”
“Don’t you want to put an end to this? Don’t you want to be safe again?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about finding your father and making sure he’s punished the way he deserves.”
“Revenge?” She spat the word, like a curse. “You want revenge?”
“Call it that if you want. Or call it justice. He’s killed too many people. Someone has to stop him.”
“Well, that someone won’t be me.”
“I’m not asking you to risk anything. I just want you to talk to me. To tell me where he might be hiding.”
“I already gave you everything I could. Why do you want more?”
She had given him everything—her body and her beauty and a willingness to risk that had made his own bravery seem a sham in comparison. “I need your help,” he said again.
“You’re as bad as he is—you only want to use people to get what you want.” Without another glance at him she left the room, the door to the bedroom clicking softly shut behind her.
He stared after her, feeling sick. Maybe her words hurt so much because they were too close to the truth. He did want to use her. She was the only link he had to Sam Giardino. The only way he could do what he had to do.
Chapter Two
Anne leaned against the closed bedroom door, her ear pressed to the wood, listening. The silence in the house was so absolute she imagined she could hear Jake’s heart beating—though of course it was only the frantic pounding in her own chest. Footsteps crossed the room, moving away from her, the heavy, deliberate echo of each step moving through her like the aftershock of an earthquake. She bit her lip to keep from shouting at him not to leave. Of course she wanted him to leave. She didn’t want any part of the kind of danger he represented.
The front door closed with a solid click. She held her breath, and heard the muffled roar of a car engine coming to life. The sound faded and she was alone. She moved away from the door and sagged onto the bed, waiting for the tears that wouldn’t come. She’d cried them all out that night at the hotel, believing he was dead, knowing her life had ended.
Jake. One of the other agents at the Bureau had laughed when she’d called him that. “You mean Jacob? No one ever calls him Jake.”
No one but her. And everyone in her family. It was the way he’d first introduced himself to them. His name—but not his name. Like everything else about him, he’d built a lie around a kernel of truth. He wasn’t really a low-level official with the Port Authority, wanting to get in on the Giardino family business. He was an undercover operative for the FBI. Not even a real cop, but an accountant.
By the time she’d learned all this it had been too late. She had already been in love with him.
So what was he doing back in her life now? Hadn’t he done enough to ruin her? Before he came along she’d been happy. She’d had everything—looks, money, friends, family. She wasn’t an idiot—she’d known her father didn’t always operate on the right side of the law. He’d probably done some very bad things. But those things didn’t concern her. They didn’t touch the perfect life she’d built for herself.
Jake had made her take off the blinders and see the painful truth about who her father was.
About who she really was.
She pushed herself off the bed, pushing away the old fear and despair with the movement. Not letting herself stop to think, she dressed, grabbed her keys and headed out the door. She couldn’t sit in this house one more minute or she’d go crazy.
She drove back into town, to the little gym one block off Main. A few people looked up from the free weights and treadmills as she passed. She nodded in greeting but didn’t stop to talk. She changed into her workout gear, found her gloves and headed for the heavy bag and began throwing jabs and uppercuts, bouncing on her toes the way the gym’s owner, a former boxer named McGarrity, had shown her.
She’d taken up boxing when, shortly after her arrival in Rogers, she’d come to the gym for what was billed as a ladies’ self-defense class. Turned out McGarrity’s idea of self-defense was teaching women to box. Anne had fallen in love with the sport the first time she landed a solid punch. She’d never been in a position where she had to fight back before. Now, at least, she was prepared to do so.
She’d worked up a sweat and was breathing hard when a woman’s voice called her name across the room.
Maggie O’Neal taught second grade in the classroom across the hall from Anne. A curvy woman with brown, curly hair, dres
sed now in pink yoga pants and a matching hoodie, she was the closest thing Anne had to a best friend. “Maybe I should take up boxing,” Maggie said. “You look so healthy and...dewy.”
Anne laughed. “I’m sweating like a pig, you mean.”
“It looks good on you.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I just got out of a yoga class. Marcie Evanston teaches one every afternoon at this time. You should join us sometime.”
Anne had tried yoga once. While everyone else lay still in savasana, her mind had raced, unable to grow quiet. She needed physical activity—punching the heavy bag or an opponent in the ring—to shut off the voices in her head and drown out the fear.
“Can I talk you into a break for a smoothie or some juice?” Maggie asked.
“Sure.”
Anne stashed her gloves in the cubby marked with her name and the two women made their way to the juice bar next door to the gym—McGarrity’s latest effort to squeeze more profit out of the facility. The idea seemed to be working—the juice bar was usually busy, favored by tourists and local office people as well as gym members.
They sat at the counter and ordered banana-berry smoothies.
“Look what Ty gave me for Valentine’s.” Maggie extended her pinky, showing a gold ring with a row of tiny diamonds.
“It’s beautiful,” Anne said. “Was it a surprise?”
Maggie nodded. “We saw it in the window of a store over in Grand Junction last month and I remarked how I’ve always wanted a pinkie ring. When I saw the ring box on my plate this morning, I squealed loud enough to wake the next door neighbors.” She smiled at the ring. “Did I get lucky or what?”
“You got very lucky.” Anne ignored the pinching pain at her heart. In her party-girl days she’d dismissed love as some fanciful notion from novels and movies. She’d liked being with men, but she hadn’t needed one to make her happy. And the thought of wanting to spend the rest of her life with one had seemed ludicrous.
And then Jacob Westmoreland—she’d known him as Jake West—had walked up to her at one of her father’s clubs and asked her to dance. She’d thought he was handsome and a decent dancer, but then she’d looked into his eyes and her world had shifted. A flood of lust and longing and locked-in connection had rocked her like a tidal wave. Nothing had ever been the same after that.
And now he was back. She didn’t have the strength to go through that heartache again.
“Did you see your picture in the paper? Great promo for the carnival.”
Anne realized Maggie had been talking for several minutes about something. “My picture?”
“In the Telluride paper today. You made the front page.”
She fought back the nervous flutter in her stomach. “I don’t remember anyone taking my picture.”
“You remember that reporter who came around Saturday, when we were working on our carnival booth? He must have taken some candid shots after he talked to us. He got a perfect picture of you framed by the heart cutout in the side of the booth. I think you leaned out to say something to Ty.”
“He should have asked me before publishing it.”
“Oh, come on! I know you don’t like having your picture taken, but it was a great shot, I promise. I’ll save my copy for you. And maybe it will pull in a few more people to our booth at the carnival.”
“That’s great.” Anne managed a weak smile. The first and second grades were teaming up to sell hot chocolate and cider at the Winter Carnival in the town park next weekend, an annual fundraiser for local charities. She wanted to do her part to help, but the thought of her picture circulating in the public made her uneasy. What if someone from her old life saw?
She shrugged off the thought. After all, it was just a small-town paper, a very long way from New York.
“Hey, ladies, how you doing?” A stocky man with broad shoulders and a shaved head came to stand beside their bar stools. Evan McGarrity was rumored to be in his sixties, but he looked two decades younger, and had the energy of a man half his age. “Annie, did your friend find you?” he asked.
Anne went cold. “What friend?”
“There was a guy in here earlier, asking about you. Said he was a friend of yours from New York.”
Aware of Maggie’s eyes on her, Anne kept her expression noncommittal. McGarrity must mean Jake. “What did he look like?”
“Not too tall. About my height, maybe. Good set of shoulders on him. Looked like he might have played football. Dark hair. Expensive suit.”
Jake was tall, with sandy hair and a slim build. This wasn’t Jake. She stood, knocking the half-empty smoothie glass onto its side as she groped blindly for her purse.
“Anne, are you all right?” Maggie asked. “You’ve gone all gray.”
“I’m sorry about the mess.” She stared numbly at the purple liquid spreading across the countertop. “I really have to go.”
She ran to her car, still dressed in her workout clothes, not feeling the icy evening breeze against her bare legs, ignoring the shouts of her friends behind her.
Someone had found her—someone who wasn’t Jake. Someone who might mean her harm.
* * *
ANNE’S FIRST INSTINCT was to go to Jake for help. But she had no idea where he was staying. And maybe he’d led them here. She could call Patrick Thompson, the marshal who’d been assigned to her, but he was hours away in Denver. By the time he got here, it might be too late.
She drove home and raced into the house, locking the door behind her. In the bedroom, she dragged her suitcase from the top shelf of the closet and began throwing things in it. She’d wait until after dark, then she’d leave. She’d drive as far as she could toward Denver. It was easier to get lost in the city. She’d ditch the car there, maybe buy a new one or take a bus. She couldn’t travel out of the country. The feds wouldn’t let her get a passport—letting her leave would be too risky, they said.
But she had to leave. The last time she’d seen him, her father had vowed to erase her. That was the word he’d used—erase. As if she were a mistake he needed to blot out. She’d never seen such coldness in his eyes before. His daughter was dead to him already—disposing of her body was of no consequence.
Never mind that she still had plenty of use for that body.
A knock on the door made her freeze. She tried to think. Would the man who was looking for her knock and announce himself?
Yes, she decided, he would. He’d want her to open the door. To let him inside where he could dispose of her quietly, without the neighbors seeing. He’d slip away without anyone noticing and tomorrow, when she didn’t show up at class, someone would find her. Someone else would discover her true identity, and the newspapers and gossip magazines would print the news in bold headlines. Mob King Takes Revenge on Daughter Who Betrayed Him or Mafia Princess Gets Hers.
She waited, but no second knock came. No friendly voice called out in concern. She forced herself to breathe, ragged, metallic-tinged breaths that tasted of terror.
When she could stand the tension no more, she tiptoed into the front room and peered out a gap in the blinds. The street in front of her house was empty. Dark. After another half hour of stillness, she decided no one was there. But maybe they were waiting across the street, waiting for her to open the door.
She pulled on her coat and gloves, then took the loaded pistol from her bedside table and slipped it into the pocket of her coat. When she’d asked for the gun the Marshals had dismissed her, saying she had no need to be armed. She was merely an innocent schoolteacher. Patrick Thompson had assured her the U.S. Marshals Service would provide all the protection she needed. She’d argued with him to no avail.
But three days after her arrival here she’d received a package in the mail. The handgun, ammunition and an unsigned note. I hope you never need this,
the note read. But just in case...
One hand on the pistol, she slipped out the back door. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees with the setting sun. The air was brittle with cold, the ground crisp beneath her feet. Staying close to the side of the house, she moved toward the street. She took a step, then waited, listening. She repeated this process all the way down the side of the house, so that twenty minutes passed before she reached the corner. She craned her head around to look toward her front door.
The small porch was empty, the light shining down on the doormat and a rectangle of white that lay on the mat.
Chapter Three
Anne studied the rectangle of white that gleamed on the doormat. It looked like an envelope, and a simple envelope shouldn’t be so ominous. But this one was out of place. The mail carrier delivered letters through the slot in the door. Other people who had messages for her telephoned, or contacted her at school. Did this envelope contain an explosive to injure her, or a poison?
Neither of those things were her father’s style. He believed in personal retribution—not necessarily from him, but from his goons. His representatives, he called them. She remembered overhearing him on the phone with a contractor he suspected of double-crossing him. His words had been so calm, in sharp contrast to the menace in his voice. “I’m sending a couple of my representatives over to discuss this with you.”
When the police found the man, he was floating in the sound, his face gone. Cut off, she’d heard later, while he was still alive.
Shivering with cold and fear, she turned and raced back around the side of the house and through the back door. She ran to the front, opened the door just wide enough to snatch the envelope from the mat, then sat on the sofa, shaking.
She turned the envelope over and read the childish printing. Miss Gardener was rendered in uneven printing. Below that, a more adult hand had penned Happy Valentine’s Day.
Inside the envelope was a crooked heart cut from construction paper, decorated generously with silver glitter and stickers bearing images of cupids and more hearts. The crayoned signature was from one of her students, a wide-eyed little boy who clearly had a bit of a crush on his teacher.