DEFENGING THE EYEWITNESS

by Rachel Lee

  She froze. “I thought you’d left.”

  “I went out to get the paper for you.”

  “Thank you.” Feeling as if her joints were stiff, she walked over to the pot and poured herself a cup. “Thanks for making coffee, too.”

  “No hay problema.”

  “Does that mean no problem?” she asked, tentatively sitting at the table.

  “Oh, sorry. Yeah. It’s not a problem. No problem. You’re welcome. All purpose.” He shook his head, giving her a crooked little smile. “I think I was dreaming in Spanish again.”

  “Do you do that? Really?” Some of her tension slipped away.

  “Sure. I always have, on and off. My dreams are bilingual. But dreaming in Spanish was a good thing when I was in Mexico. Imagine the consternation if I’d started speaking English in my sleep.”

  A totally unexpected bubble of laughter rose from her stomach and popped out. “Not good.”

  “Very not good. I’d have had a lot of explaining to do. Nobody’s ever told me I talk in my sleep, but you never know. It only needs to happen once.”

  She was amazed to feel a tiny spark of jealousy at the idea that anyone had shared a bed with him long enough to know whether he sleep talked. But, of course, people had. Women had. He was thirtysomething and probably had had at least a few girlfriends.

  In fact, she couldn’t imagine that he didn’t have to fight women off. She looked down at the newspaper, afraid her face might reveal something. It wasn’t just that he was good-looking, but that he had that smoldering look. The Latin lover. She might have laughed at herself if this train of thought wasn’t making her so aware of her own inexperience.

  He saved her with an unexpected comment. “You said your grandmother and aunt brought you here?”

  She nodded.

  He sighed. “You’ve sure had your share of loss. I guess I’ve been damn lucky. Both parents. Check. Two brothers, check. Too many cousins to count, check. Nieces and nephews. Check. When we get together, we make half a town.”

  She lifted her head, interested. “Do you all get together often?”

  “Annual family reunion that I’ve been missing for a while. One year at the finca, the next in San Antonio.”

  “Your mother’s family, too?”

  “Of course. Let me tell you, chica, that when you marry into a Latino family, you’re family. You and all your relatives, at least those who want to be part of it.”

  “So your mom’s family wants to be part?”

  “As far as I know, all of them always did. My dad jokes that they were a little reserved at first, but the Mendez family cured them.”

  “That’s really neat.”

  “That’s the way it is. Of course, when we fight we can get just as passionate.” He was smiling, his dark eyes dancing. “No Hatfields-and-McCoys stuff, but I had two uncles who didn’t speak for ten years.”

  “How’d they get over it?”

  “Their wives had had enough. I never got all the details.”

  Another laugh escaped her. “It sounds amazing.”

  “It can be. It’s not perfect. Nothing is. But we hang together pretty well. We squabble, we spit, we make up and start all over again. We’re very passionate people.”

  A shiver ran through her as he said that, but it wasn’t at all unpleasant. “But you got both sides of that?”

  “Let’s just say I can play the reserved bit when I need to. But it general I don’t think people are naturally reserved. I think it’s cultural, what’s acceptable and what’s not.”

  “You might be right.”

  “Now, I don’t know you very well, but so far, you seem pretty reserved to me. Stiff upper lip, soldier on, all that. Very ladylike and upper-crust.”

  She blinked. “Me? No way.”

  He laughed quietly. “I’m not criticizing you at all. Maybe I’m just experiencing some more cultural transitioning, and noticing things I wouldn’t otherwise notice.”

  She bit her lip, then asked, “Was it hard to come back?”

  “Depends on what you mean by hard. I came back pretty angry, I can tell you that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they left me rotting in a Mexican jail long enough that I got severely beaten several times and had three broken ribs. I got carted out on a stretcher.”

  Shock and horror rippled through Corey. “Why so long?”

  He shrugged. “They didn’t want to blow my cover.”

  “My God.” All she could do was shake her head at the dreadfulness of his experience. Her stomach knotted just thinking about it. “I can see why you wouldn’t want to do it again.”

  “It wasn’t all fun and games, but the job needed doing. Right now I’m glad I did it, and I’m glad I don’t have to do it again.”

  “So what’s in your future? A desk job?”

  “Or training position. I’m not sure.”

  “But you can’t go home yet?” She knew she’d already asked about that, but conversation over breakfast was definitely something she wasn’t used to. Any subject would do.

  “Not for a while. I’d hate to run into someone on the street who recognized me.”

  There was so much more she wanted to know but was afraid to ask. She figured he probably couldn’t get into much detail about what he’d actually done, and, very likely, he didn’t want to. “I’m sorry you can’t go home.”

  He surprised her with a wink. “Well, I could bleach my hair and grow a mustache. Think I’d look like a surfer?”

  Despite what he’d told her, the instant she pictured him with blond hair and a mustache, a giggle burst out of her.

  “No way, huh? Oh, well.” Then he dropped the rakish grin. “What about you, Corey? Do you have anyone?”

  “Not anymore,” she admitted. “Friends, but no family.”

  “And you don’t know anything about your dad?”

  “I must have had one.” Discomfort began to fill her again. This was not something to discuss with a stranger. Then what he had said about her reserve hit her. She was reserved. Maybe too much. It felt awkward when he’d opened up about his own family. “I don’t know who he was. I suppose my mother did, but he wasn’t from around here. Apparently she got pregnant when she was out of town. I don’t know. Then a while after she had me, we moved to Denver.”

  “I don’t know whether I should say I’m sorry.”

  “I gather she wasn’t. Grandma and Aunt Lucy both said she was happy to be pregnant and didn’t seem at all concerned about my father. So maybe he was a mistake. Anyway, my family were all black Irish. Dark hair, blue eyes. They joked that my mom must have met up with a Viking.” She touched her long blond hair.

  He smiled. “I’ve been thinking you looked like a Viking princess.”

  That remark reached past all her walls and barriers, settling into her guarded heart with heat. Even as alarms went off, reminding her that she had so many problems dealing with men and this could lead nowhere at all, another part of her welcomed the totally unique thawing inside. Maybe she could get past her hang-ups? Just once?

  Sheer craziness. It wouldn’t happen. On the few occasions she’d been asked on a date, she’d struggled to say yes but always said no. Her psychological block was too big to get around.

  Finally, she’d just started freezing men out of her life. It had been a long time since any man had asked her out, almost as if her aura deflected them. It had been a relief to her to be left alone and not have to deal with those awkward moments any longer.

  So what the heck was she doing now? Toying with something she knew to be an impossibility? Austin was attractive, all right. Women probably swooned as he walked down the street. But he was not for her.

  She rose. “I need to get to work.”

  “You haven
’t eaten,” he said mildly.

  “I’ll get something at the bakery.” Then she grabbed her lightweight jacket and wallet, and scrambled out the door.

  The man was confusing her, making her want and need things she didn’t want to want or need. This was not good.

  * * *

  Austin sat in her wake, bemused and maybe a little concerned. Had he gone too far too fast by talking about his family, then asking about hers? It seemed like such an innocent conversation, the kind of thing most people talked about willingly enough. All he’d been trying to do was encourage her to be more comfortable with him.

  She was an extraordinarily attractive young woman, though, and the way she was living her life told him all he needed to know about her trauma. Men around here weren’t blind. They should have been beating a path to her door. Instead, there was nary a one in sight.

  Remarkable.

  He ate a few tortillas, finished another cup of coffee and then set out. Today he had a mission, one he was sure Corey wouldn’t like. Too bad. While she was insisting on remaining in her cell, someone needed to deal with the big bad world.

  Ten minutes later he entered Gage Dalton’s office in the rear of the sheriff’s department. Gage wore his full tan uniform, except for the cowboy hat that hung on a coat tree in one corner. He leaned back, the springs of his chair creaking, and waved Austin to sit across from him in one of the two battered chairs.

  “You see what’s on my desk?” Gage remarked.

  Austin nodded. A stack of papers on one side, a computer on the other. In between were writing instruments, a family photo and a nameplate that looked as if it made a habit of falling to the floor.

  Gage pointed. “Paper.” Then he pointed again. “Computer.” Then he waved to the corner where a printer stood on a stand. “Printer.”

  “So?”

  “Back twenty-five years ago, maybe thirty, someone told me that switching to computers would eliminate paper.”

  Austin started to laugh before the sheriff finished.

  “Exactly. If you ask me,” Gage said, “all they’ve done is multiply the amount of paper. Why? Because you can’t really trust this dang machine not to flip its lid. Lose things. Crash. Whatever. So we fill out our reports, print them out, file them in a good old-fashioned filing cabinet, and all I can say for this machine is that it’s made carbon paper and correction fluid obsolete.”

  Still laughing, Austin said, “Ah, but email.”

  “Nuisance.” But then Gage paused, his dark eyes twinkling. “Enough of being a curmudgeon. What do you think of our town?”

  “It’s growing on me. The longer I’m around, the friendlier people get. Pretty soon I’ll be part of the background.”

  “I bet you’re good at that. Getting along okay at Corey’s?”

  “Fine. But I want to talk to you about that.”

  “Depends on which that.”

  Austin nodded his understanding. “I want to know about her mother’s murder. I need to understand. She doesn’t remember, but it certainly left her terrified.”

  “Makes her a bit difficult to deal with sometimes,” Gage agreed. “She keeps her circle tight and mostly confined to women.”

  “You knew that when you took me over there. So why did you inflict me on her?”

  Gage frowned. “Is she making you feel that way?”

  “No, but I’ve got a picture of what’s going on here and I need to understand. You put me in play for a reason, Gage. There’s a room over Mahoney’s, and I’m sure you knew it.”

  “Of course I did. I used to live there.”

  “So maybe you can tell me why you took me to Corey knowing she’s afraid of men.”

  Gage sighed. “Hope.”

  “Hope?”

  “Yeah, hope.” He leaned forward, wincing a bit, and put his crossed arms on the desk. “That woman needs to break out of her shell. I watched her grow up, and it’s really bothering me that she can’t seem to get past what happened.”

  “So why me?”

  “Lots of reasons. Handy excuse because you needed a place to stay. After I checked up on you, you seemed to be trustworthy. You’re someone she doesn’t know and already have a pattern with. Plus, you must be pretty good at getting into closed circles.”

  Austin wasn’t at all sure he liked this. “So you manipulated the two of us?”

  “You could say that. Or you could just say I was hoping she might find a wedge so she could peek out of her shell. I’m not asking you to do anything. I was just hoping it might turn into a good mixture. There’s always that room over Mahoney’s if you’re furious.”

  “You wanted me to con her.”

  Gage slammed a hand down on his desk, clearly angry now. “Absolutely not. If I had for one minute thought that was possible, I’d never have let you stay in this town, let alone Corey’s house.”

  “Then what the hell do you mean by me being good at getting into closed circles?”

  “That’s what you did in Mexico, wasn’t it? It’s a gift. How you use it can make it a con. But you’re not a con artist. You were a freaking agent doing a god-awful job, which I well know since I did it myself. I pretended a lot on the job, but never off the job. Did I mismeasure you?”

  Austin glared right back. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. And what you do or don’t do with Corey is between the two of you. I’m not working any angle at all here, just hoping like I said. Nobody in this damn town was getting past her walls, and she sure as hell isn’t traveling. I figured you might get her interested enough to come out of her shell a bit. I also figured you must be sensitive enough not to break the eggs, so to speak. If that’s a crime, leave.”

  Austin wanted to stay angry. He was feeling used. He figured Corey would feel the same if she guessed, not that he was going to tell her. But he also saw Gage’s point. The man was concerned about a young woman. Evidently he’d been concerned for some time. So he’d taken a flier. He even understood Gage’s reasoning, because he was the last person on earth who wanted to inflict harm on some innocent person. He’d just spent six years avoiding that with every means at his disposal, six years trying to protect people he didn’t know and would never meet.

  “I just wish you’d have told me.”

  Gage gave a crooked, humorless smile. “That would have worked real well.”

  Probably not, Austin admitted to himself. In fact, he’d have found another place to try to get himself together again. Instead, he’d found Corey, and her whole mess was focusing him again in a way he thought he’d lost indefinitely. He might not be doing her much good, but she was doing some for him.

  “Let’s move on,” he said finally. “Tell me about the murder. About Corey.”

  “You have a reason for that?”

  “Yeah. I’ll tell you when I have the picture.”

  Gage told him, and it wasn’t pretty. A gunshot would have been bad enough, but as a child, Corey had witnessed her mother being stabbed over thirty times. The assailant had left no clue at all. Corey, covered with blood, had been taken out of the room in a nearly catatonic state. She hadn’t spoken for days, hadn’t cried, had spent all her time trying to hide.

  Austin swore fluently in two languages. “And no leads?”

  “Zip.”

  “So the murderer might have even been a woman?”

  “The Denver P.D. is pretty sure the culprit was a man, from the angle of the wounds and the strength of them. Then, there’s Corey’s fear of men.”

  “True. Well, from the sound of it, it’s probably better that she can’t remember anything.”

  “A blessing,” said Gage. “Besides, what if she did remember? Any description of the assailant she might give us would probably be useless. She was a child, she was in shock, and I doubt she’d re
member much except what happened to her mother. The guy might even have had his face concealed.”

  Austin sat pensively for a few moments. “Does everyone here know that she can’t remember?”

  “I can’t answer that factually, but if you want my suspicion, then yes, most folks probably know that. Her grandmother Cora talked about it some with her friends. I imagine it made it to the furthest reaches of the grapevine.”

  Austin was intimately acquainted with rumor mills like that. They’d served him well and often. “Well, there went that, then.”

  “What?”

  “The day I arrived, Corey got an anonymous note in the mail. She dismissed it as a prank, but at the same time she was uneasy enough to keep it. It was mailed in town here.”

  “What did it say?”

  “‘I remember you but you don’t remember me.’”

  Gage’s eyes narrowed. “Why do I think that’s not the last of it?”

  “Because it’s not. She got another one yesterday. Same M.O. This one said, ‘I know about your mother.ʼ”

  “Well, damn,” Gage said sharply.

  “She’s trying to treat the notes as a sick joke, but I don’t think she truly believes it. I can’t dismiss it.”

  “Hell, no,” Gage agreed, drumming his fingers rapidly.

  “The thing is, there’s nothing in these notes that couldn’t probably be said by anyone who knows about what happened. It’s the two of them together that make me worry. No threat, just a kind of torment for Corey. Frankly, Gage, I have little patience for tormentors.”

  “Even less when they might keep it up, or make it worse. She doesn’t need this, joke or not.”

  Austin didn’t answer. This was Gage’s town. He knew it inside and out. Austin was on the outside here and needed a whole lot more information than he had right now.

  “Did you bring the notes?”

  “No. Got a warrant? They’re not mine, I’m not operating in an official capacity, and anyway, I don’t want to betray her trust. I did look them over pretty closely when she and I talked about them last night. No identifiable markings, cheap paper, cheap envelopes, self-sticking stamps. Hell, even the envelope flaps are self-sticking. They appear to have been printed on an inkjet printer.”