Cold Malice

by Toni Anderson

  Her mouth opened slightly, as if she were pleasantly surprised, but Mac saw her eyes flinch.

  “Momma’s Bible.” She smoothed her hand over the front. “God rest her soul.” Her eyebrows quirked at him cynically when Jessop turned away. Tess obviously shared his opinion that Francis’s soul had withered and died long before she had.

  “Had your daddy’s Bible, too, but I’ve misplaced it.”

  Mac frowned. How did you misplace something like that? Maybe the guy had sold it on Ebay, or was secretly saving it for Eddie’s release. Tess moved to the box and put the books down. She reached inside and pulled out a bookmark made of pressed daisies. “Ellie made this.”

  Tess’s hands trembled. Mac realized it was the first tangible object she’d touched of her sister’s since she’d lost Ellie. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her to him as she fought tears.

  “Murdering bastards,” Jessop muttered.

  “Yes.” Tess blinked rapidly and raised her chin.

  Mac ignored Jessop’s lies. He’d figured long ago that some people existed in their own reality, a reality that didn’t always make sense. No amount of arguing got them to change their minds. They were happy in their fantasy world and as long as they didn’t hurt others he left them there to live out their illusions in willful ignorance.

  But if they crossed a line…

  He drew Tess against him, and she laid her head on his chest and closed her eyes. His heart gave a little twist that she trusted him enough to let him comfort her even this much.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.” Jessop frowned at her. “Thought you might be interested in having something from your past.”

  “I do. I am. Thank you.” Her hair stroked Mac’s jaw as she nodded. It was silky and smelled faintly of lavender. She pulled away, as if suddenly aware of how he held her—as if they really were in love.

  “It’s so unexpected to find all these things after I thought they were lost forever.” She put the bookmark reverently inside the box next to the books. “Thank you. I am really very grateful.”

  Jessop nodded and sent her a smile. “You going to see Eddie tomorrow?”

  Tess drew her chin up and her eyes glittered. “Of course.”

  “You two are welcome to stay the night… Save you driving further in the snow tonight if you’re not used to it.”

  Mac had pretty much learned to drive in snow and ice, but he was tempted to stay anyway. It would give him the chance to do more snooping.

  “Thank you, but no.” Tess put an end to that notion. “We need to hit the road. Don’t we, honey?”

  He heard the steely command in her tone though she disguised it with sweetness. But the pleading in her eyes was the deciding factor, that and the fact he needed to get back to DC.

  “We appreciate the offer, Mr. Jessop—”

  A phone started ringing in the kitchen.

  Jessop held up his hand. “Excuse me a moment. Let me make sure it isn’t an emergency with the stock. I’ll be right back.” He disappeared before either of them had the opportunity to say another word.

  This was Mac’s one and only chance. “Stay here.”

  He didn’t give Tess time to argue just strode swiftly to the bedroom where Jessop had stored the box. He walked inside and took a quick look around. A claw of repulsion raked him. Behind the door, the distinctive stars and bars was draped on the wall above the bed. A Bible that Mac recognized as David Hines’s own sat on the bedside table.

  Why had Jessop lied about that?

  Mac strode to the computer and moved the mouse, praying it was turned on.

  The screen came alive to a chatroom on the Tor server with a green background. The site was called One-Drop-2-Many and Mac didn’t need a Ph.D. to figure out what that was in reference to. It was a white supremacist chatroom. Unfortunately, the chat had timed out and it needed a password to re-access the site.

  A noise behind him had him straightening. Tess pushed the door open, white-faced and wild-eyed. He opened his mouth to tell her to go distract Jessop when he saw the old man behind her. Jessop pressed a revolver to her temple.

  Shit. “What’s going on?” Mac demanded.

  Jessop’s smile grew ugly and Mac knew his secret was out. Well. Fuck.

  “I don’t take kindly to being lied to. Especially by people accepting my hospitality.”

  Mac didn’t bother denying it. The million-dollar question was how’d he figure it out?

  “I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome if you knew the truth.” What had the guy learned? “Sorry for the lack of transparency. We appreciate dinner, but we’ll be on our way now…”

  Jessop spat on the floor. Tess pulled a disgusted face which made Mac smile even though his heart was pounding.

  “You think this is funny?”

  “No, sir. You holding a gun on an innocent, unarmed woman is anything but amusing.” He put his hands on his hips, making himself a bigger target but Jessop didn’t take the bait and didn’t move that firearm a millimeter away from Tess’s skull.

  Shit.

  Tess’s eyes were worried now. No way could she risk a move like the one she’d made at the prison with that barrel pointed at her head.

  “We’ll leave and forget this ever happened—”

  “I don’t think so.” The old man’s hand moved up into Tess’s hair, taking a firm grip and making her cry out in pain.

  Rage surged through Mac. This was the second time today Tess had been manhandled.

  Her chin angled back, no doubt trying to ease the pain of having her hair yanked out. “Mac thinks like we do,” she cried out. “I recruited him the way Daddy wanted us.”

  “If you believe that then you’re a bigger fool than I thought.” Jessop sneered. “You,” he indicated to Mac. “Take out your weapon real slow and toss it on the bed.”

  Mac slowly drew out his Glock. The weight felt beautifully familiar in his hand. He raised it and pointed it straight at Jessop. The man’s eyes widened and he shifted Tess in front of him—typical coward, hiding behind a woman.

  Mac tilted his head to one side and lined up his shot. “One of the first things they teach us at the Academy is never surrender your weapon.”

  “Then she’s dead,” Jessop declared boldly.

  “You’ll be dead, too.” Mac’s smile was cold. If he threw down his weapon, he and Tess were both goners.

  They were at a stalemate and the old man knew it. Mac moved toward the computer and clicked the mouse. “Who’ve you been talking to, Henry? You involved in these murders in DC? Talk to us and I can cut you a deal that may keep you out of federal prison for the rest of your life.” Mac pulled his phone from his pocket and started dialing even though he had no signal. Jessop didn’t know that for sure. These people believed the power of the federal government went way beyond what it actually did. “Can’t wait for the experts at the lab to start taking this computer apart, figure out who you’re working with.”

  Jessop’s gun came up and swung toward Mac. Mac dodged right as Tess elbowed the man in the face. She twisted out of his grip. Mac tried to get a shot off, but Jessop was already gone. He reached down to haul Tess to her feet, pulling her behind him. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” she replied. “Where’d he go?”

  Mac frowned, listening hard. “Kitchen, I think.”

  “Think he’ll make a run for it?” she asked. What sounded like the back door banged open and the two of them edged into the hallway and through the living room. Tess went to grab the box.

  “Leave it.”

  “I just want the bookmark.”

  “No. This whole place is about to become a crime scene. Don’t touch anything.” He took her hand and tugged her into the kitchen, clearing the room before urging her to follow.

  “You think Jessop is involved with this thing?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “He could simply be an old coot who hates Feds. You know how many of them there are around here and how crazy they all
are?”

  “You don’t know how much those words worry me.” He made her crouch behind the stove before picking up the landline. No dial tone. He followed the line. Jessop had ripped the wire out of the wall. “Dammit.”

  He gave Tess a once-over. “Put your coat on in case we have to make a run for it across country.” He nodded toward the chair. She passed him his jacket and he pulled it on, too. “He could be waiting in ambush or he might have run to get reinforcements from the bunkhouse. I’ll go out first and head right.” He tossed her the keys to the Jeep. “I want you to head straight for the SUV, fast and low. Start the engine and keep it running. If bullets start to fly I want you out of here.”

  “What about you?”

  He shot her a look. “I’ll be fine.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You have a backup weapon?”

  He nodded.

  “Give it to me.”

  “I’m not giving you a gun.”

  “You don’t trust me?” she sounded shocked.

  “I don’t know yet.” Honesty went both ways.

  She reared back like he’d struck her.

  Dammit. “Look, fine, I trust you, but I don’t want you to become a target.”

  “But being an unarmed pawn is okay?”

  Shit.

  He wasn’t foolish enough to fall for emotional bribery but hell if his gut didn’t scream at him that they were on the same side. He pulled the Glock-17 from his ankle holster. If he was wrong he was about to lose more than his career. Her eyes widened as he handed it over.

  “Remember how to use it?”

  She nodded. “I still go to the range regularly.”

  “Good.” It was a risk but he didn’t want her to be defenseless if anything happened to him. “It’s for self-defense only. No getting involved in a shootout unless you have to. You don’t want to end up like Eddie.”

  She swallowed loudly, eyes huge.

  “I’ll go out first. You don’t wait more than half a second before you follow and run to the Jeep as fast as you can. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  He touched her cheek. “It’s gonna be okay.”

  A shot rang out and shattered the kitchen window. Tess ducked and shrieked as glass shards flew through the air. The memory of that long-ago raid on her childhood home flashed across her features as clearly as if she’d screamed the words.

  Damn. Going out the front door was suicide and the idea of Tess getting shot did not sit well. He grabbed her hand and tugged. “Change of plan.”

  * * *

  Tess couldn’t believe that in the last twenty-four hours she’d gone from being a boring accountant in the ’burbs to ending up in the middle of another armed showdown in the wilds of southern Idaho.

  “Come on.” Mac dragged her along.

  She pointed the handgun he’d given her at the floor and crouched low as she followed him back into the living room. He turned off the lights as he went and the world became a mass of confusing shadows. The fire glowed in the stone hearth and she eyed the box of things Jessop had given her and swerved towards it as another shot rang out in the kitchen.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Mac said, sliding to a stop.

  It was too dark to see inside the box but her fingers searched and found that bookmark that Ellie had given her for her ninth birthday. Tess didn’t care if it was supposed to be “evidence.” It was her one and only physical link to her dead sister and no one was taking it away from her. She slipped it into her pocket.

  “Come on,” Mac told her impatiently.

  She sniffed something on the air.

  Mac swore.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Gasoline.” His voice sounded funny. “Sonofabitch is gonna burn us out.”

  She crouch-ran towards him. “That’s crazy. He’ll lose his whole house.”

  “If we escape he’ll lose more than that. Assault and attempted murder of a civilian and a federal agent? A man his age. He’ll die in a prison cell.”

  She followed on Mac’s heels, tempted to grab his shirt so he didn’t leave her behind.

  “If he’s involved in the murders maybe the evidence is here and he’s trying to destroy it?” she suggested. “He doesn’t want the Feds combing the place and identifying his accomplices?”

  Mac cursed again, then ran into the downstairs bedroom where he’d been snooping earlier.

  “Jessop came back from his phone call with his revolver drawn,” she told him. “Someone must have told him that we weren’t mourning the loss of my family the way we should have been.”

  Mac started ripping out the cords from the back of a PC tower. She went to the window. Thick snow lay beneath the eight foot drop to the ground. There were footprints at the base and the strong odor of noxious fumes. She opened the latch and forced the window up, getting blasted by a frigid wind and the pungent odor of gasoline.

  If that vapor ignited they were all screwed and considering an open fire burned merrily in the other room it was only a matter of time before this place went up in flames. Her stomach turned over at the thought of burning alive.

  “I’ll go first,” Mac told her. “You pass me the computer.”

  “Hurry.”

  Mac holstered his weapon and slid over the ledge and dropped to the ground. She wrestled the heavy metal box through the same gap and leaned down as far as she could so Mac could grab it.

  A sound made her look over her shoulder a moment before something grabbed her leg.

  She screamed and let go of the PC. Mac caught it. She dropped Mac’s pistol as she grabbed onto the sill. Jessop had her leg, but Mac reached up and caught her wrist. She felt like she was being torn in two, but with a fierce yank Mac pulled her through the window and she fell in a heap on top of him. He immediately rolled them over and over until they were out of sight.

  A loud bang made her flinch and a patch of snow spurted upwards a few yards away from where they lay in the snow.

  “You’ll torch the whole goddamned place, you maniac,” Mac shouted at Jessop. Then a whoosh of flame rushed over their bodies and ignited a weak trail through the snow.

  Mac grabbed her by the hand and dragged her to her feet. A piercing scream came from inside and Tess stared in horror up at the open window. Why didn’t Jessop throw himself out the way they had? A second gunshot reverberated through the night and she gaped in horror, trying to figure out what just happened, but unable to make sense of it.

  Flames swept hungrily over the dry timber and up the drapes, getting louder and fiercer as they consumed the old house.

  Mac fought the heat to grab the computer. She spotted his Glock in the snow and scooped it up. He hooked a hand around her shoulders as they staggered away from the burning building. They reached the Jeep and he tossed the PC on the back seat. “Get in.”

  “What about Jessop?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Tess stumbled in the snow. The stink of smoke and gasoline clung to her clothes. “How do you know?”

  Lines cut down the sides of his mouth. “That’s what the second bullet was. Him taking the easy way out.”

  She put her hand on her stomach to stem the queasiness. She crawled into the passenger seat and dragged on her seat belt. He got in and started the engine, shoving the transmission into drive. She handed him the weapon he’d lent her, glad she hadn’t had to use it.

  Silently Mac placed the Glock back into his ankle holster.

  Tess looked back at the flames which now engulfed the entire ground floor and were working their way up to the second floor. Henry Jessop had fed them dinner and tried to kill them within the space of an hour.

  “Are you going to call nine-one-one?” she asked.

  Mac shook his head. “The ranch hands will spot the flames any moment and use the well water to stop it spreading to any of the outbuildings. By the time the fire trucks arrive the house will be burnt to the ground. Until I know how Jessop found out I’m a Fed I’m not gonna trust any
local cops.” He threw her a look. “I’m hoping that hard drive contains enough information to lead us straight to the killer in DC.”

  She stared at the house in horror. “A man just died. You aren’t going to stop and report that?”

  “I’ll file a report as soon as we get to Salt Lake City.” Mac lurched off the long driveway and onto the main road.

  She glanced behind them again. Orange flames lit up the snow with a devil’s palette.

  Horror swept over her as everything that had happened penetrated. “He was going to kill us.” She covered her mouth to hold back the sobs that wanted to escape.

  “Yep. And bury us in the woods probably. No one would have ever known.” He glanced at her shocked expression and gave a full-body wince. “Sorry, Tess. It’s my fault you got hurt again. You didn’t want to go to Jessop’s. I should have respected your instincts.”

  Reaction set in and her teeth chattered uncontrollably. If she’d died she’d never have had the chance to tell Cole the truth, the real truth, not the surreal fabricated versions constructed by the media. Her family’s past wasn’t pretty but her version was accurate and spoke of people, not monsters. She had to tell him everything. Before it was too late.

  Strong warm fingers wrapped around her clenched hands and squeezed. “You all right?”

  “No. It might be scenic, but Idaho doesn’t seem to agree with me.”

  “We seem to have stepped on the hornets’ nest,” Mac agreed. “I think we pissed someone off—we need to figure out who that someone is.”

  “These people have got to be stopped.” She could barely utter the words.

  His fingers squeezed hers harder. “That’s why I go to work every day.”

  Her hands turned and her fingers entwined with his. He was a brave man and she knew he took his job very seriously. Could she trust him to do the right thing by her brother? Or would he automatically assume the worst about Cole?

  “My little brother’s name is Cole. Cole Fallon.” She closed her eyes, maybe trying to hide from her own betrayal. “He’s a student in DC.”

  She could just see him between slitted lids.

  Mac pressed his lips together. “I know. But thank you for telling me.”