Cody Walker's Woman

by Amelia Autin

  “Memorial Day,” Cody said thoughtfully. “Do you think it has anything to do with this?” he asked. “Do you think there’s something going down on Monday?”

  Callahan considered the question. “Anything’s possible. But Steve indicated trouble wasn’t imminent when he spoke to me yesterday morning.” He paused, his face hardening. “But now he’s dead. So, yeah. Anything’s possible.”

  He headed toward the bed, but stopped when Keira touched his arm. “What did you mean earlier when you said not quite?” At his questioning look she explained, “When Cody stated any proof your neighbor had, died with him, you said, ‘Not quite.’”

  “Right.” His glance moved to Cody. “I didn’t tell you everything when we met outside this morning. It’s true Mandy and I couldn’t do anything to save Steve, but he managed to say something to me before he died.” The harsh lines of his face showed his frustration. “I just don’t know what it means.”

  “What did he say?” Cody asked.

  Callahan pinched his lips together with a forefinger and thumb as he contemplated how to put it. “It sounds funny, I know, but he said something like, ‘Vay-nee, vee-dee—’”

  “Veni, vidi, vici,” Keira said, pronouncing the Latin words with a classical w sound instead of a v, then added, “It’s also pronounced with a v—veni, vidi, vici.”

  “That’s it, that’s exactly what he said.”

  “It’s Latin,” Cody explained. “It means, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ Supposedly Julius Caesar said it.”

  Callahan still looked puzzled. “I don’t get it. What’s so important about it that Steve would die trying to tell me?”

  Cody raised his brows in a question to Keira. “Some kind of code?”

  She shook her head regretfully. “If it’s a code, I don’t know what it is. The reference to Julius Caesar could mean anything—the Ides of March, Marc Antony, the Roman legions, crossing the Rubicon. Even the month of July or William Shakespeare. Or it could have absolutely nothing to do with Julius Caesar. Sorry.” She looked at Callahan. “Did he say anything else?”

  “One other word at the very end, but I couldn’t really understand him. That’s when he—” Callahan stopped abruptly before continuing. “It sounded something like center or centaur, but I can’t swear to it. And neither word has a connection to anything as far as I can tell.” He thrust one hand into his jeans pocket and came out with what looked like an ordinary house key in his palm. “He had this in his hand.” Callahan stared down at it, his brows twitching together as he said in a voice from which all emotion had been wiped clean, “It still has Steve’s blood on it.”

  Cody reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a couple of small plastic evidence bags, one of which he opened and held out for Callahan to drop the key into. “Probably too much to hope for a fingerprint other than yours and Tressler’s,” he told the other man, “but just in case...”

  “Yeah,” Callahan said.

  “No idea what door it opens?”

  “Not a clue. His truck keys were still in the ignition, and what looked like a house key was on the key ring. But it wasn’t the same key as this one—that’s the first thing I checked.”

  Cody looked the key over, then held the plastic bag out to Keira. “What do you make of it?”

  She ignored the blood and examined the key closely through the plastic. “It’s a double-sided key for a dead bolt,” she said. “And the maker’s mark on the bow indicates it’s a copy, not an original key for the lock. That’s about all I can tell you.” She handed it back to Cody.

  “We’ll need something more to go on,” Cody told Callahan. “Don’t get me wrong—I believe everything happened just as you said. But with Tressler dead, we don’t even have a starting point.”

  A thought occurred to Keira, but before she could voice it, Callahan said, “I know. But like I said, I’m too tired to think straight right now.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe my brain will function better after I’ve had a couple hours of sleep.”

  * * *

  While Ryan Callahan slept, Cody called the agency and got the contact information for the backup team in Buffalo. He called the head of that team and arranged for the pickup on Steve Tressler’s body, along with everything else. Then Keira and Cody unpacked, sorted and stacked in neat piles the assets they’d brought with them.

  Cody smiled ruefully when they were done. “Doesn’t look like much to take down an army.”

  Keira’s eyes met his. “I thought we were here to investigate,” she said quietly. “Not wage war.”

  “True. But you weren’t around six years ago, so you don’t know how quickly things can heat up with the New World Militia.” He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, tiredness tugging at him. He needed sleep, too. Maybe not as much as Callahan, but... “I wonder who else’s name was on that hit list.”

  “Could yours be on it?”

  “If the list has anything to do with what Callahan calls ancient history, it’s likely. I was working undercover in the militia, too....” He thought back. “Must be almost ten years ago when I started.”

  He smiled slightly. “Unfortunately, my name wouldn’t mean anything to Tressler—he’s not a local. I knew everyone around here when I was the sheriff, and the name Tressler doesn’t ring a bell, which means he had to have moved here after I left. So even if he saw my name on the list...”

  There was an expression on Keira’s face Cody couldn’t read. “Do you think whoever was following you in Denver...”

  “Was there to kill me?” he finished for her. “The thought had crossed my mind. But it’s pure speculation at this point.” He made a face of frustration. “I wish we knew what that key is for. I wish we knew what Tressler meant.”

  “I wish he were still alive to tell us,” Keira said softly, turning her face away momentarily, as if to hide her expression from him.

  Cody realized she wasn’t just regretting Tressler’s death from an investigation perspective; she was thinking about the loss of a human life, the same way Callahan had, and a small pang shot through him that he hadn’t. It was easy to tell himself he didn’t know Tressler, and therefore his death didn’t affect him except in a professional capacity, but still...

  “What’s our next step?” Keira asked

  “I hate to say it after we’ve come all this way, but I don’t see anything much we can accomplish here. We need information we’re not going to get, stuck in my cabin—I don’t even have a phone here, much less internet access. And cell-phone coverage can be spotty at times.”

  “What about Callahan? We can’t just leave him unprotected.” And Cody knew she wasn’t just thinking about him as a potential witness; Keira was remembering her promise to Mandy.

  “When McKinnon gets back, he can shadow Callahan. I want you to focus on the investigation side.”

  She opened her mouth—to protest, Cody was sure, so he added, “McKinnon told me on the drive up you’ve got a knack for figuring things out, putting puzzle pieces together to solve a case. That’s all we’ve got right now—a few scattered pieces of the puzzle that don’t seem to make sense. I need you to concentrate on that.”

  “Okay.” She was silent for a moment. “In D’Arcy’s office you said the New World Militia was destroyed six years ago. What did you mean? What can you tell me about it?”

  He considered what to tell her, what might be important for her to know. “You know who David Pennington was, right?” She nodded. “Callahan and I took Pennington down the hard way, together.” He didn’t have to draw her a picture. “Pennington kept most of the real power in the organization in his own hands, so without him to run it, the militia fell apart.”

  “Paramilitary in name, then, but not really,” Keira threw in.

  Cody nodded, remembering what McKinnon had said about her military service; she knew what he meant. “Then we both testified at a series of trials of the militia’s remaining top brass. That, along with the plea-bargained testimo
ny of Carl Walsh and Larry Brooks—”

  “Wasn’t Walsh Pennington’s second in command at one point?”

  “You’ve done your homework.” Cody felt a flash of admiration for her, and pride. Pride? he wondered. Why pride? “Yeah. He was,” Cody continued, shaking off his errant thoughts. “And Larry Brooks was a federal marshal. It’s a bit complicated. Brooks and your partner were both working the witness security program under Nick D’Arcy. They were supposed to be protecting Ryan Callahan.”

  “Trace did mention that already. He also said he and D’Arcy had to clean up the mess...after the fact,” she said, referring to collecting all the evidence and witness statements related to Pennington’s death and having it ruled a justifiable homicide.

  Cody wasn’t really paying attention to what Keira was saying. He could feel it getting to him, his memories coming alive in gruesome detail as he recounted the story. But she had to know what they were up against. She had to understand, and he wasn’t going to sugarcoat it for her. “The year before Pennington was killed, Brooks was instrumental in betraying Callahan’s onetime partner, Josh Thurman, to the militia. Callahan was working the inside. Thurman was working the outside. The militia kidnapped Thurman’s wife and infant son after Pennington’s conviction, offering to trade their hostages for information—Callahan’s whereabouts.”

  He drew a quick breath. “But Thurman didn’t know where Callahan was,” he said softly. “The militia tortured him, but he couldn’t tell them what he didn’t know.” His voice dropped a notch. “So they tortured his wife and baby in front of his eyes.” He closed his own eyes for an instant, experiencing in his gut the agony the other man must have gone through. “Then, when it was obvious Thurman would tell them where Callahan was if he knew, the militia decided he really had nothing to give them. So they murdered all three of them and dumped their bodies.”

  A small gasp escaped Keira, and their eyes met. Hers contained the horror he’d known she would feel over the senseless murder of a baby. “If the new organization is anything like the old one, that’s the kind of people we’re dealing with,” he told her implacably. “They believe in their cause—fanatically. Nothing is beyond them, not even the murder of children. They’re domestic terrorists, plain and simple.”

  Chapter 8

  “That’s why we can’t take any chances,” Cody told Keira roughly. “That’s why Callahan wanted his wife and children safely out of the way, where the militia can’t touch them. No one knows better than him what they’re capable of. He lived it.”

  Her face was solemn and still. “You lived it, too,” she reminded him.

  Cody shook his head. “Not the way he did. My involvement was more on the periphery, at least until the end.”

  Callahan stirred in his sleep, drawing Cody’s eyes toward him. “Let’s go outside,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to wake him.”

  They sat side by side on the front-porch steps. The sun shone weakly overhead, but it was still cool, and the snow hadn’t melted all the way.

  Cody picked up his story. “D’Arcy knew I was also undercover in the militia. He sent Callahan to Black Rock because he figured I’d be able to keep a watchful eye on him, and if Pennington’s men ever tracked him here I’d hear about it in advance and could warn him. That’s when Ryan Callahan assumed the name of Reilly O’Neill.” One corner of Cody’s mouth curled up in a smile he knew didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s when he met Mandy.”

  “I see.” There was a wealth of understanding in those two words.

  Cody looked down at Keira, but she avoided his gaze. “You picked up on that already, didn’t you?” he asked, watching her delicate profile, drawn to her in ways that baffled him with their complexity...as well as their simplicity.

  “On what?”

  Her nonchalant question didn’t fool him. “On how I felt about Mandy back then.”

  She glanced up. “Back then?” she asked gruffly. “Or even now?”

  His sixth sense was telling him his answer mattered to her. “Back then,” he said softly. Then he added with a complete honesty he didn’t stop to question, “And for a long time afterward.” He breathed deeply and let the air out slowly. “But not anymore.”

  In the silence that followed, Cody watched as a red-tailed hawk lazily circled the sky, then suddenly dived toward the earth. Keira’s gaze also followed the hawk until it disappeared from view. Then, in a voice so casual he knew it was calculated to hide how she really felt, she asked, “Are you sure?”

  Their eyes met, and Cody saw something in the depths of Keira’s brown eyes that shook him, an emotion he was afraid to name. “I’m sure,” he said, a second before his mouth descended on hers.

  If anyone had told him his thirty-seven-year-old body could react to a simple kiss as if he were seventeen, he wouldn’t have believed it. But then, it wasn’t really a simple kiss. And his body was rock hard and hurting before he knew it.

  Those firm lips, lips he’d once thought of as unkissable, melted beneath his. His arms slid around her, drawing her close, and closer, as the kiss went on. In some part of him he knew he should stop, but when she moaned softly deep in her throat and her hand came up around his neck, all rational thought deserted him.

  They broke apart to breathe, but he couldn’t let her go. His blood was pounding in his veins, and his breath rasped in his throat. He wanted...wanted...

  His lips found hers again. His hands threaded through her red-gold curls, and they were just as soft as he’d imagined they would be. Then his hands were cupping her face, and he was kissing her eyes, her cheeks, the hollow beneath her ear. And she was kissing him back. He might have been able to stop if not for that. At least that was what a corner of his brain said, but he knew it was a lie. Kissing Keira was rapidly becoming an obsession.

  And not just kissing her. He desperately wanted to touch her in other places—soft, secret places. He wanted to know if she would melt there for him, too, the way her lips did. He wanted to taste every inch of her skin, to fill his senses with her, to hear her call his name when he brought her to the peak...and beyond.

  She was still wearing her jacket, and he needed to feel her, to touch her everywhere. He whispered her name and pulled away slightly, his right hand sliding between their bodies to fondle her breast beneath the open jacket. Her unexpected whimper stopped him cold.

  He drew back from her. She averted her face from his, but he caught her chin, forcing it up. Her eyes gave her away, and he knew. His face contracted in pain, and he cursed himself silently. “Keira, I...” He swallowed hard. He leaned his forehead against hers. “God, I’m sorry. I don’t know my own strength. I didn’t realize I...”

  She shook her head slightly. “You told me to scream, but I couldn’t, so...”

  Cody remembered the way he’d roughly assaulted her the night they’d met, the way he’d ripped her blouse open and groped her until she screamed, and was devastated. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he whispered brokenly.

  “You did what you had to do to rescue me—to rescue both of us,” she maintained fiercely, defending him and his actions. “It was the best way you could think of at the time. And I already told you I bruise easily.” Her face softened suddenly; her eyes softened even more as her right hand captured his left one and brought it to her right breast. “You can touch me here,” she invited in a breath of a whisper.

  But the spell, or whatever it was that had gripped Cody, was broken. His desire ebbed, replaced by self-recrimination. He pulled abruptly away from her and stood, putting distance between him and temptation.

  “Why don’t you just call me a son of a bitch and get it over with?” he asked, his anger at his earlier behavior forcing bitterness into his voice that was aimed at himself.

  But she misunderstood. He could see it in her expression as she wrapped her arms around herself protectively. Despite that, she said firmly, “Because I don’t think of you that way. How many times do I have to tell you?”

 
He gazed at her and realized she wasn’t just trying to make him feel better; she actually believed it. But it didn’t make any difference in how he felt about what had happened. Guilt made him say, “I should never have touched you.”

  She flinched but held his gaze. “Then? Or now?”

  “Both.”

  He saw his answer sink in, and only the slight crinkling of her eyes betrayed that he’d hurt her...again. He wanted to take the word back, but it was too late. She stood up quickly and dusted off the back of her pants, then mounted the three steps to the porch and put her hand on the door. He watched her—he couldn’t help himself—wishing with all his heart he hadn’t been the one to hurt her. Not then. And certainly not now. He hadn’t realized just how much or how easily she could be hurt, emotionally as well as physically.

  She turned back, and her face was a frozen mask he scarcely recognized as the same woman he’d just kissed. “It won’t happen again,” she said in a flat, toneless voice. She slipped through the door and closed it firmly behind her.

  “Damn!” The word released some of his tension, but nowhere near enough. He wanted to hit something. Hard. But not Keira. Never her. Himself.

  He looked at the door through which she’d just disappeared, wishing he hadn’t driven her to escape, wishing he could explain... Explain what? he asked himself, uncertain what he thought he could explain. Explain that the minute you kissed her you forgot everything, including why you’re here? That you’ve wanted her since the first time you touched her?

  He remembered the way she had responded to his kiss just now, and desire flickered back to life. In his head he heard the soft moan she hadn’t been able to hold back, and his body hardened in a rush again, making his jeans uncomfortably tight. Then he remembered the whimper of pain...and what had caused it in the first place. But he also remembered her placing his hand on her other breast, saying, You can touch me here.