Over Maya Dead Body

by Sandra Orchard

  I hadn’t put more than twenty yards between us when Carly’s cry pierced the darkness, followed by Moore’s voice. “I’ve got her, Jones.”

  I froze.

  “I’ve got your gun pointed at her head.” Carly’s sobs punctuated his words.

  I didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

  “I guess you’d just as soon I shoot her?” Moore taunted. “She told you she silenced Jack, then?”

  My breath caught. Was it true? Or was he fishing for a reaction? Something to give away my position? My mind rewound through everything Carly said from the moment I got to Jack’s. Her voice had cracked on then when he found out about Jack.

  I’d assumed she meant that when Moore found out Jack had called the FBI, Moore killed him. But . . . he’d arrived on the island the same day as me. I gave my head a mental shake. Not necessarily—he could’ve been here the night before and taken the ferry out in the morning.

  “I didn’t. I didn’t,” Carly cried out. “You have to beli—”

  Whatever Moore did to her cut off her explanation.

  Carly must’ve interpreted my silence as abandonment. And I can’t say I wasn’t tempted. But steeling myself against the urge to play judge and jury and leave her to her punishment, I skirted around the trees, branch club still in hand, to try to get the pair in my line of sight.

  Movement to their left caught my attention, and I prayed it was Tanner, not a sidekick of Moore’s.

  He swung his weapon that way and squeezed off a shot.

  Okay, he definitely wasn’t expecting a partner. I dashed out and slammed my club across his shooting arm. The gun—my gun he’d pinched from my waistband—tumbled to the dirt.

  As I took another swing at him, Carly broke free of his grip and ran.

  Moore caught the other end of my club midair and in a blur had me in a chokehold.

  “Let her go,” a steely male voice ordered from the darkness.

  My heart dropped. Nate? How did he find me?

  Holding me as a shield, Moore jerked down and scooped up the dropped gun.

  I rammed my heel into the arch of his foot, jabbed my elbow into his gut, and then reared, driving him into a tree behind us, but his chokehold on my throat tightened. Cut off my airway.

  Stars danced in front of my eyes.

  Then cold hard steel dug into my temple. “Drop your weapon or she’s a dead woman,” he growled in the shadowy direction Nate’s voice had come from.

  “She dies, you die,” Nate said way too coolly for my comfort.

  This was not poker. You don’t bluff about expert marksmanship. Not when your opponent is a twitch away from blowing the brains out of the pot.

  Moore’s laugh sent an arctic chill down my spine.

  “It’s over, Moore.” The steely declaration sliced through my oxygen-deprived brain and Moore’s hold around my neck instantly slackened.

  The pistol lifted from my temple and someone behind us grabbed it from his hand.

  Sucking in air, I pulled away and turned to see my rescuer. “Tanner! I knew you’d find me.”

  His gun still trained on Moore, Tanner spared me only a second’s glance as he passed me the recovered weapon. “Grab Carly,” he said, then ordered Moore to the ground.

  “I’ll get her,” Nate volunteered as Moore dropped to his hands and knees.

  One hand slipped inside his jacket.

  “Gun!” I shouted at the same instant he rolled to his back and opened fire.

  35

  Moore’s shots went wide as he swept Tanner’s feet out from under him.

  My gun jammed. I flung it down and lunged at Moore to buy Tanner time to regain his feet.

  Moore tossed me off.

  My back slammed against a tree, knocking the breath out of me.

  Moore leveled his gun at my chest.

  I dove to the dirt and the bullet bit bark.

  Another shot rang out, this one from farther away.

  My gaze snapped to Moore’s empty bleeding hand and then to Nate. His feet were squarely planted, his gun double-gripped in steady hands and trained on our suspect.

  With a primal roar, Tanner tackled Moore.

  The next few minutes passed in a blur. Tanner subdued Moore. Then uniformed officers stormed through the trees and restrained both Moore and Carly.

  As one of the officers hauled Moore off the ground, Moore smirked at me. “Now I see why you keep the sidekicks around.”

  “Did you kill Jack?” I blurted, the adrenaline running amok through my veins. I turned on Carly. “Or did you?”

  “Wait,” Tanner ordered and recited their Miranda rights.

  I glared, even though I knew he was doing the right thing. We didn’t want a confession ruled inadmissible because we’d failed to inform them of their rights.

  “Okay,” Tanner said after he’d finished, “now you can answer her question.”

  Carly shrank back.

  “I was in Boston Tuesday night at a Red Sox game with friends,” Moore said and named three guys who’d vouch for him. “I’ll wait for my lawyer before answering any more questions.”

  My heart hammered my ribs as I returned my attention to Carly. Carly, who’d shown up at Jack’s house accusing Ben and Ashley of murdering him.

  “I didn’t kill him. I swear,” Carly vowed.

  “Were you there? At Menemsha Hills?” I pressed.

  “Just to talk to him. To beg him not to turn Charlie in. He was alive when I left him.”

  “Lying at the bottom of the stairs with his head cracked open on a rock?” I spat.

  “He must’ve tripped. I didn’t kill him! I wouldn’t. Please, you have to believe me.”

  Oh, but I didn’t. My hands fisted.

  Tanner placed a firm hand on my shoulder. “Let’s leave the rest of the questioning to the state police and Special Agent Jackson, okay?”

  Everything in me rebelled at the suggestion. Without a confession, the state police wouldn’t have enough to prosecute her for Jack’s murder.

  “Serena?” Tanner said gently. “They’ll get to the truth.”

  I forced my fingers to unclench and nodded.

  As officers collected evidence, we trekked back to the road where a paramedic checked my vitals and another officer questioned me. When I got to the part about Nate shooting the gun out of Moore’s hand, I paused and looked at him. “How did you learn to shoot like that?” I asked Nate.

  “Don’t be too impressed. I was aiming for his head.”

  I chuckled, but I didn’t believe him. He’d looked calmer and steadier with that gun than any agent I’d ever seen.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Yeah,” Tanner interjected, “how did you find her?”

  Confused, I slanted a look at Tanner. “You didn’t come together?”

  “No, I raced to Jack’s as soon as I got your text about Carly. By the time I got there, you were long gone. I found your phone on the porch and your purse still in the car and got a bad feeling.”

  “Ashley and Ben didn’t hear anything?”

  “No, not even me, until I pounded on her door and burst in. The TV was playing full blast.”

  The image of Tanner barging into Ashley’s cottage, demanding to know where I was, tugged at the corners of my lips and reminded me of his warrior cry when he’d charged Moore. The FBI side of me knew I should be miffed he didn’t think I could hold my own, but that didn’t stop my heart from going warm and gooey at Tanner’s seemingly primal need to protect me.

  “I called dispatch,” Tanner went on, “requested an island-wide BOLO, and asked if any cars had been reported stolen. I figured Carly couldn’t have abducted you with her bike.”

  Almost reflexively, my breathing quickened. “Moore zapped me, then tied me up and threw me in the car’s trunk,” I whispered.

  Tanner groaned. The ordeal would’ve been terrifying for anyone, but Tanner understood how much worse the confined space would’ve made it for me.

  I smiled at
him. “I could hear you ordering me to breathe in that bossy voice of yours.” My heart fluttered at the little white lie, and I wondered why I’d felt compelled to tease him.

  He searched my gaze, his own looking conflicted. “I’m glad you listened to me, Jones.”

  There he went with using my last name again. What was with that?

  Drawing a line in the sand I shouldn’t cross?

  Because I had a bad feeling I’d been tiptoeing around it ever since that fake kiss in the car that felt a little too real.

  Tanner cleared his throat. “Anyway, sure enough there’d been a car reported stolen, so I took a gamble and went after it. The owner had left his iPhone in the console, and he was helping the police track the car when I called. But the signal was so intermittent, I was afraid you’d been dumped in the state park.”

  The heart flutters escalated at the thought of Tanner being afraid for me.

  “Meanwhile, Ashley had called Preston, prompting your aunt to call Nate, who somehow knew you were on the Chappaquidick ferry.”

  I squinted at Nate. “How did you know that?”

  Tanner mimicked my stance. “Yeah, how did you know?”

  Nate reached across the distance between us and stroked his thumb down my cheek, his lips pressed in a grim line. His fingers fiddled with my shirt collar and a moment later, he held out his hand. A tiny GPS locator sat on his palm.

  “You planted a locator on me?” My voice spiked. “Why? When? How did you get it?” I gasped, remembering the when. “You straightened my collar at the memorial service.”

  He nodded. “Winston supplied the toys. Between everything that had happened, I was worried about what this unknown attacker might try next, so I asked your aunt if Winston had any surveillance equipment we could use.”

  “Winston?” Tanner sounded confused. “Isn’t he a real estate agent?”

  “Former Secret Service,” I explained.

  Tanner narrowed his eyes at Nate. “So that’s why you didn’t argue when I suggested taking you back to Preston’s. You figured you’d watch her electronically instead.”

  I didn’t know how to react. On the one hand, his scheme saved my life. On the other hand . . . “Why were you so secretive about it?” A fistful of righteous indignation surged through me at the thought of being spied on behind my back.

  He gave me a pained look. “If you knew the chip was on your collar, you might’ve inadvertently alerted the suspect to the surveillance.”

  “How would you know that?” I scrutinized him, recalling other times he’d seemed to know things most civilians wouldn’t. “And don’t tell me you saw it on television.”

  36

  Despite the late hour, everyone was waiting at Ashley’s to see me after the kidnapping. Even Harold was happy to see me. He jumped into my lap the second I sat down and nuzzled my chin. “Ooh, it’s nice to know I’m loved.”

  My gaze skittered to Tanner’s and my heart thumped at the intense look in his eyes.

  After hugs all around and assurances that I was unharmed, I summarized the short version of the night’s events.

  “So Jack’s death was an accident?” Ashley asked.

  “We may never know for sure,” Tanner said.

  I winced. Just like Granddad’s murder.

  “Well,” Aunt Martha said, “at least Carly will do time for antiquities smuggling.”

  Yes, we’d brought her to justice of a sort, but it was small consolation. Yet . . . more than I’d managed for Granddad. Ever since learning the painting his murderer stole wasn’t even the original, I’d lost hope it would one day turn up in an auction or gallery and somehow help me identify the thief.

  The old familiar guilt churned in my stomach, despite the absolution Nana had given me last fall when I confessed I’d been hiding in the secret passage behind Granddad’s office the night of the murder. Only ten or not, if I’d come forward then, what I saw and heard might’ve helped solve the case.

  Nate watched me intently from the other side of the room as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. His where do you live? question from earlier in the evening flitted through my thoughts.

  I shoved it from my mind. I lived plenty.

  “We should probably let you rest.” Mom’s voice broke through my thoughts.

  “Yes, thank you. I am tired.”

  Nate rose as if to leave, but Tanner intercepted him with a whispered, “Not so fast. You still owe us an explanation.”

  Preston drove Mom and Dad back to his house, but Aunt Martha said she’d have Nate give her a lift. Ashley and Ben retired to their rooms.

  “Let’s talk outside,” Tanner said.

  Aunt Martha concurred that was a good idea, and I suddenly felt like the only one not in the know.

  Aunt Martha meandered over to Uncle Jack’s front porch, and the rest of us fell into step behind her. She sat in one of the rockers, and the men leaned casually against the porch rail facing her. Tanner seemed a tad nervous. Nate had that cornered look Harold got when he knew I was about to scoop him up and banish him from my room.

  “Let me guess,” I said to Nate, trying to break the tension, “you used to be a cop and for some reason you didn’t want me to know. You’d confided in Aunt Martha, who agreed to keep your secret until Tanner somehow found out and threatened to out you if you didn’t come clean.”

  It wasn’t until the words came out of my mouth that the pieces seemed to suddenly fall into place in my mind. Nate helping Aunt Martha secure a gun permit. All the little police details he’d claimed to have seen on TV. How calmly he’d reacted to my pulling a gun on him as he scooped cat litter. How confidently he handled his gun while facing down Moore. His joke about the CIA telling him not to tell anyone when he . . .

  I gasped. “Don’t tell me you’re CIA?”

  His heavy sigh felt like a punch to the gut.

  “No way! So you and Aunt Martha would have a giggle behind my back every time I teased you about the secret agent classes?”

  Aunt Martha chuckled. “That was funny.”

  I shot her a scowl.

  “I’m sorry, dear.” She ducked her head.

  “When were you planning to tell me? Were you ever? I can’t believe you almost kissed me when you were keeping this whopping big secret from—”

  “You almost kissed!” Aunt Martha squealed. “I knew you two would be perfect for each other. Just give him a—”

  This time Tanner pinned her with a scowl. “Don’t you think she deserves to know what she may be getting herself into before her heart’s entangled?”

  I glared at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Would you have believed me?”

  I thought about that for a minute and realized he’d tried to warn me in a dozen different ways. When Nate was helping investigate the art forgery, how many times had Tanner said he didn’t trust the guy? Then he told me about Nate flying planes in Yugoslavia and asked me if I did background checks on the guys I date.

  Nate hunkered down in front of me. “I’d planned to tell you this week. I’d been waiting to see . . .” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Yes, I used to work for the CIA. I didn’t tell you because it’s in the past, and it is supposed to be a secret.”

  “But you told Aunt Martha.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Aunt Martha interjected. “I recruited him.”

  I gaped at her. “You? Recruited?”

  How she knew former Secret Service agent Winston suddenly made sense. Everything did. She’d spent her entire life flying from one country to another . . . as a businessman’s assistant, she’d told us.

  “Of course. You’re a spy,” I said.

  Wow. How could I have been so utterly and completely blind?

  I tried to rally, mustering up a game smile. “Next you’ll be telling me you’re Madame X.”

  Nate and Aunt Martha exchanged guilty looks.

  Nate straightened. “Um, yeah . . .” he began, but I brushed away his explanation,
even as my jaw dropped. Madame X was only a legend in the CIA—the spy who’d infiltrated more corrupt regimes than any other. Naturally, I’d suspect my harmlessly eccentric great-aunt.

  Or not. “How could . . . ?” Question after question whirled through my mind, but my mouth and brain seemed to have stopped communicating. “Do Mom and Dad know?” I finally blurted.

  Aunt Martha shook her head. “No, and I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

  “Why?”

  “Just because I’ve retired doesn’t mean my enemies have. In fact, when our brakes blew this afternoon, I called Winston because I half-suspected a past associate had recognized Nate or me.”

  Nate shifted and raked his hand through his hair.

  “Bad guys are looking for you?” I asked.

  “No.” Nate silenced whatever Aunt Martha had been about to add with a glare. “I’ve been out for five years without an incident.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “After my parents died, my brother’s life ran off the rails. His reaction to the plane crash in Yugoslavia made me realize how far off. And I wasn’t ready to sacrifice another family member.”

  Another family member? I gasped. “Your parents were operatives?”

  He nodded.

  My heart pummeled my ribs. Was he telling me all this because he was hoping Aunt Martha’s dreams for us would come true? I glanced at Tanner, who was watching me quietly, and something shifted inside of me. I admired Nate so much. He’d sacrificed his career for his family. He knew how to embrace life. He shared my love of art and old movies and tea. And . . . he totally understood my career. But . . .

  When I thought I was going to die in that car trunk, it was Tanner’s voice that calmed my fears. When Nate came to my rescue in the woods, my heart had dipped just a little that Tanner wasn’t there instead. Then when Tanner appeared, my heart had leapt and I was pretty sure it wasn’t just gratitude.

  Maybe I was crazy to think there could ever be anything more between us. We worked together. He was ten years older than me. Half the time he treated me more like a kid sister than anything else.

  Except for that kiss. There was nothing sibling-like about that kiss.