He nodded, his gaze enigmatic as it lingered on her. “It’s a start,” he finally said.
“The days I’ve been missing since I arrived here, do you think it’s the work of one of the gang members?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. If one of the gang members had found you, they wouldn’t have kept you for four days, but at this point I’m not ruling out anything.”
She frowned thoughtfully. “I can understand them wanting to kill me before this all went to trial, but if I already testified against them, then why would they still want to kill me? Why did I have to go into Witness Protection after the trial was over?”
“Several reasons. First of all, we never got the specific shooter who killed our agent. Although you insisted you saw him perfectly, he wasn’t among the men we rounded up. Those men you testified against were all tried on a variety of charges, but the man we most wanted escaped. Because you saw that shooter we’ve always known that there was a possibility of you being our star witness in a new trial. The second reason is revenge, pure and simple. These are real bad guys and reputation is everything. If you testify against them and they let you get away with it, then that diminishes their reputation.”
She noticed there was no trace of his lazy Texas drawl at the moment. He stood and plucked at his wet T-shirt. “I’m going to change into some dry clothes. There’s no point in me going back out until this rain passes.”
He dug around in his suitcase, sitting open in one corner of the room, then pulled out a clean T-shirt and a pair of jeans. “You okay?”
“I guess. I’ve spent most of the time you’ve been gone today trying to figure out what happens to me when we leave here.”
“We get you relocated someplace else and you build a new life,” he replied, making it sound as easy as packing a bag.
“But no matter where I go, these people, these gang members will be looking for me.” Even though she tried to suppress it, her fear was rife in her voice.
He dropped his clean clothes on a nearby chair, then once again sat next to her on the sofa. He reached out and took her hand in his. As his long, warm fingers curled around hers, confusion filled her head.
He’d told her their past relationship had been a strictly professional one and yet she was struck with the feeling that this wasn’t the first time he’d held her hand.
“I promise when we leave here, I’ll get you settled someplace where you’ll be safe,” he said. “You’ll have a new name, a new occupation and we’ll get you far away from Boston. This gang isn’t everywhere. They’re a local gang and their power isn’t all reaching.” A frown raced across his forehead. “I don’t know why they kept you in the New England area to begin with, you should have been sent someplace farther away than here.”
She stared down at their hands. She wasn’t sure why, but his touch evoked contradicting emotions inside her. On the one hand, it felt comforting and familiar with an edge of excitement. On the other hand, his nearness to her, his fingers entwined with hers, made her feel vaguely threatened.
He jerked his hand away from hers and abruptly stood. “I hope you figured out what’s for dinner. I’m used to eating around five o’clock.” He grabbed his clothes from the chair and disappeared into the bathroom.
She stared after him, irritation replacing her fear. He had to be right. Their previous relationship had to have been strictly professional, for surely there was no way she’d have any other kind of a relationship with a man who was as irritating, as chauvinistic as Ryan Burton seemed to be.
RYAN STOOD beneath a lukewarm shower, trying to ignore his weakness where Britta was concerned. He’d always considered himself a strong man. He’d had to be strong to survive the childhood he’d been handed. As if surviving the battlefield of his parents’ marriage hadn’t been enough, years of military training followed by his FBI work should have increased his strength, not just physically but emotionally.
And yet Britta made him weak. She made him forget that he had vowed a long time ago to hold himself detached from any woman who might blow into his life. Short-term affairs were fine, but he had no desire to let anyone in on a permanent basis and he didn’t intend to change his mind for one beautiful Norwegian blonde.
The second he’d taken her hand in his he knew he’d made a mistake, but she’d looked so scared, so lost, and all he’d wanted to do was ease some of that fear. But the moment he’d taken her hand in his he’d wanted to go further, he’d wanted to draw her into his arms, feel the warmth of her silky smooth skin against his.
He got out of the shower, dried off, then pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt. By the time he left the bathroom he felt better able to cope with Britta.
She was in the kitchen, seated at the table, a notebook and pen in front of her. “What are you doing?” he asked as he rummaged in the cabinets looking for a can of coffee.
“I’ve been trying to decide where I want my new life to begin when this is all over.” She leaned back in the chair and frowned thoughtfully. “What do you think about Seattle?”
“Too rainy,” he replied.
“What about Arizona?”
“Too dry.”
She grinned at him. “I can see you’re going to be no help.” Her smile fell and she looked at him curiously. “Why did I come here to Raven’s Cliff? I mean, who decided it?”
Ryan found the coffee container and began to make a pot. “It was FBI Agent Michael Kelly who set up this location and the job working at the inn. He came late onto your case. The agent before him was Bill Rankin, who set you up with your new identity.”
“All these people, it would be nice if I could just remember one of them.”
“You wouldn’t remember Kelly, you never met him in person.” As the coffee dripped into the glass carafe, Ryan leaned against the cabinet to wait for it to finish. “Kelly told me he picked this village after seeing an ad in a tourist magazine for a housekeeper at an inn. He figured it would be a good fit for you. Coffee?”
She nodded and stared at the paper in front of her where he noticed nothing had been written. He poured them each a cup of coffee, then placed a sugar bowl on the table, knowing she liked her coffee sweetened.
“Doesn’t look as if you’ve made much headway in picking a place to start a new life.” He sat in the chair opposite her.
She smiled ruefully. “It’s more difficult than I thought, trying to decide on a place to start again. Boston was always my home. I don’t know anything else.” Her smile faded. “One thing is certain, you have to buy me some different clothes. I appreciate what you got for me, but they’re all too big and too hot.”
He’d intentionally bought the clothes big, figuring if she looked like a bag lady it would make things easier on him. “It isn’t as if you’re going to be modeling in a fashion show,” he replied. “As long as they are serviceable.”
She shook her head, a mutinous expression on her pretty face. “If you have the receipt, you can take back the things I haven’t worn. If you don’t want to do that, then I’ll…I’ll just go naked. It’s bad enough I feel as if I’m living somebody else’s life. I hate the feeling of wearing somebody else’s clothes.”
Ryan nodded curtly, taking her threat half-seriously and the last thing he needed was a naked Britta in the house. “I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” She picked up the pen and made a series of doodles on the paper, then dropped the pen and looked at him once again. “So, you didn’t find out anything while you were out.”
He took a sip of the coffee, then set the cup down. “I found out that the fishermen in the area are making a killing pulling in record fish. I heard that some stranger has bought an abandoned seaside cottage close to the old lighthouse and that Camille Wells’s body still hasn’t been found.”
“The mayor must be beside himself,” she said, remembering the article she’d read in the newspaper the previous morning. “What happened was horrible.”
“From what
I heard he’s back at work, business as usual.”
“That seems rather cold,” she observed.
Ryan shrugged. “What good is it for him to sit at home? He might as well work while the search teams do their thing.”
Britta looked toward the window where the rain still fell in sheets. “There won’t be any search teams working today.”
“According to the locals, Camille’s plunge off the cliff and the lack of spring sunshine is just part of the curse of Raven’s Cliff.”
“The curse?” She eyed him curiously.
“Yeah, the curse of Captain Earl Raven. Sometime in the late 1700s it seems the good captain was sailing from England to Maine with his family to settle on a sprawling estate he’d bought to start a new life. As they neared the coastline a storm erupted and he lost his wife and two small children at sea. He settled here and built the lighthouse so that no other ships would wreck on the same rocky shoreline that he did.”
Ryan paused to take another drink of his coffee, then continued. “Anyway, the legend goes that the Captain had promised that life in Raven’s Cliff would be idyllic as long as the lighthouse keeper promised that every year on the anniversary of his wife’s and children’s deaths, the light would be shone on the rocks where they died. For years Raven’s Cliff prospered as each keeper of the light honored the tradition.”
“But somebody must have messed up if there’s now a curse,” Britta said.
He nodded. “A descendant of the captain named Nicholas Sterling III. Five years ago, apparently, he didn’t light the rocks that he was supposed to on the anniversary. Nobody knows for sure what happened, but apparently his grandfather tried to light the lamp and a fire ensued. His grandfather was burned to death, and rumor has it that Nicholas wound up jumping from the top of the lighthouse into the sea. That night a category-five hurricane hit, nearly wiping Raven’s Cliff off the map. When the storm had passed, Nicholas Sterling was gone, his grandfather was dead and Nicholas’s fiancée, Rebecca Johnson, was missing. Two other people died that night and a curse was born.”
“Do you believe in curses?” she asked, her eyes as clear and blue as the skies he’d left behind in Texas.
“I’m an FBI agent. I’ve been trained to believe in facts and evidence. What about you?”
“I’m from Norway, our culture is rich in legends and myths.” She released a small sigh. “If there is a curse here in Raven’s Cliff, then I feel as if I’ve become part of it.”
Her shoulders slumped slightly and she looked so vulnerable he wanted to pull her into his arms and promise her that everything was going to be all right.
Instead he reared back in his chair and looked pointedly at his watch, then at her. “My rumbling stomach tells me it’s about dinnertime, and my watch confirms it. How about you rustle up some grub for us?”
Her eyes narrowed, but not before he saw the flash of anger that lit them. Good, he’d rather have her prickly than soft and appealing.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re an ass?” she asked.
He laughed. “More times than I can count.”
Dinner was tense. It was obvious he’d made her mad, and that was just fine with him. It was easier to keep his distance from her when she was angry with him.
He knew exactly what buttons to push, and, unfortunately, because she had no memory of their previous time together, she had no clue how to push his. He had an unfair advantage that he intended to use to keep safe distance between them.
After dinner they cleaned up the kitchen together, Ryan trying to ignore the brush of their hands as she handed him dishes to dry, the familiar scent of her that drifted in the air.
She kept silent, and after the kitchen was cleaned she went into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her.
Ryan found a sheet and a light blanket in the hall closet and made up his bed on the sofa. He placed his gun within easy reach on the coffee table, then shucked off his jeans and T-shirt and, wearing only a pair of briefs, got under the sheet.
Thunder rolled, rattling the windows as another storm moved overhead. Ryan certainly didn’t believe in curses, but Raven’s Cliff bothered him in a way no town had ever bothered him before.
On the surface it looked like any other quaint New England fishing village, with antique shops, upscale eateries and turn-of-the-century inns, but beneath it all, there was a simmering energy that felt unhealthy.
He tried to tell himself that it was because his first experience in this place had been watching in horror as a prospective bride plunged off a cliff into the raging sea below.
Or maybe it was because he couldn’t come up with an answer to why Britta had been wandering around in a white gown and wearing a seashell necklace at the top of the very lighthouse that had spawned the talk of a curse.
Curse or no curse, what he feared most was that he and Britta were not going to get out of the fog-shrouded, storm laden village without their lives being irrevocably changed.
Chapter Five
Britta paced the small confines of the living room, bored to death as she waited for Ryan to return. He’d left the cottage early with a promise to be home around noon. It was now after two, and besides the boredom a little niggle of fear had worried its way inside her brain.
She’d been reluctant to call him on his cell phone, afraid that he might be in a place where the ring of his phone might put him at risk.
She pulled the curtains aside to peer out the window, then, remembering Ryan’s admonition that she should stay away from the windows, allowed the curtain to fall back into place.
Where was he? Where could he be? He’d told her to look for him around noon.
What if something happened to Ryan while he was out? What if one of those nefarious gang members found him and killed him? How would she know if something happened to him? How would she know if he were in danger?
Despite her fear for him, she couldn’t help but think of what would happen to her if Ryan never returned to the cottage. What would she do? Where would she go?
She threw herself down on the sofa and instantly was engulfed by the scent of him, that fresh, slightly spicy scent that felt so darned familiar.
Of course it was familiar, she told herself. According to him they had spent months together in close quarters. Business associates forced to live together and nothing more, at least that’s what he’d told her.
She got up from the sofa and began to pace once again. It was ridiculous to think that there might have been anything more between them. In the past three days that they’d been together, she’d decided she wasn’t even sure she liked him. They bickered over the stupidest things, and there had been more than once when she thought he was intentionally picking fights with her. There was still a part of her that didn’t quite trust him, and that worried her.
The sound of a key in the door pushed all other thoughts aside as he walked in, alleviating her worry for his safety. “You’re late,” she exclaimed. “You should have called.”
He looked at her in surprise, then narrowed his gaze and gave her a lazy smile. “Gee, sorry. I’m not used to having a nagging wife to answer to.” He closed the door behind him and locked it, then threw a large shopping bag on the sofa.
“I’m not nagging,” she protested, his response irritating her to no end. “And you couldn’t pay me enough to be your wife. What I’m talking about is common courtesy. You said you’d be home by noon and it’s now after two. I was worried. I was afraid some of those gang members found you and killed you.” She was appalled by the slight tremor in her voice as these words left her mouth.
He stared at her, the smile on his face immediately disappearing. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t think about you being worried. I should have called.” He jammed his hands into his pockets, looking so appealing she wanted to walk into his arms.
She wanted him to hold her against that muscled, amazing chest of his and take away the hard lump of coldness that had been inside her since the m
oment she’d awakened in the clinic.
“What’s for lunch?” he asked, completely dispelling the momentary flash of insanity she’d just entertained.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you go in there and figure it out for yourself, because I had lunch at noon when you said you’d be home.” Once again she was in a huff and she knew she was being irrational but she couldn’t help it.
“I’m not going to spend day after day a prisoner in this place waiting on you with nothing else to do.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him.
He didn’t respond but ambled into the kitchen with that loose-hipped gait that made it nearly impossible not to look at his butt, and a fine-looking butt it was.
She followed him into the kitchen and sat at the table as he pulled cold cuts out of the refrigerator and began to build himself a sandwich. “Want one?” he asked.
“No, thanks. I already ate.” She waited while he got chips and poured himself a glass of milk. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be a witch.” She frowned and tugged at a strand of her hair.
“Forget it,” he replied. “You’re right, I should have called when I knew I was running late. By the way, I finally stopped at the store and returned those clothes and got you some other things.”
“Thank you.” She’d been waiting for him to do it for the past three days, but at the moment, clothes were the last thing on her mind.
How could she explain to him the utter helplessness she felt each time he walked out the door and left her alone? How could she make him understand that she felt as if her life had suddenly been pulled out from under her and she was falling and he was the only thing left to steady her?
Even though it had been seven months since she’d lost her job and the life that she’d known, because of her missing memories it felt as if it were only yesterday. She was grieving all over again.
With the Material Witness in the Safehouse Page 5