The Business of Strangers

by Kylie Brant

  “And you’ll give me…?”

  “I’ll tell you everything I know then.” It was, she knew, an uneven exchange. She had bits of information, none with more than a tenuous connection to recent events.

  “And we’ll decide on a plan of action then.” He waited for her gaze to jerk to his before lifting a brow. “I know you, better than you think. You’re going to go after Colton as soon as you get your hands on that information. You might as well get used to the fact that you won’t be going alone.”

  “Wait for her to get out of sight of the school.” Ria lowered the high-powered Steiner binoculars, speaking into her cell phone. Too many people monitored police chatter with scanners at home. She never used the radio for investigative work.

  Deputy Cook’s voice sounded dubious. “You sure? Seems easier to pull over as she stops to let the kids out. Neater that way.”

  “Her children are going to have enough to deal with today. They don’t need the memory of their mother being arrested as well.” A social worker would be dispatched to the school, and the children would be placed in foster care until their mother’s drug trial. Given the information they’d put together on the woman’s operation, Ria was certain that Vickie Witherspoon would be serving time. Her kids would be grown up before she got out again.

  Ria decided that she could feel sympathy for the child even knowing that they’d be far better off out from under their mother’s influence.

  “Suspect is leaving the school and traveling east down Dawson.” Cook spoke again. “How far you want us to go?”

  “Catch her at the next turn.” Dawson Avenue would end in another half mile at a T intersection. By the time Ria caught up with Cook and Ralston, they already had the woman out of her car and cuffed. Ralston was reciting the Miranda.

  The woman twisted around at Ria’s approached and said, “Sheriff! Hey, Sheriff. I wanna talk to you. Private.”

  “Save it for your lawyer,” Ria advised. She nodded for Ralston to complete the recitation, after which Cook opened the back door of the car.

  “Wait, you gotta listen to me. This is important.”

  The insistence in the woman’s face had Ria hesitating. After a moment, she motioned for the two men to step away. “All right. What is it?”

  Vickie Witherspoon moistened her lips, tried to smile. She had a long narrow face with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose that stood out in sharp relief against her pale skin. “You got a kid? Doesn’t matter. I got three. Their daddy ran off years back and we’ve got no one else. I can’t go to jail. What would happen to them?”

  “The time to think about that would have been before you started manufacturing meth in your home. The same home your children live in.” Ria’s voice was as devoid of sympathy as her heart. The explosive nature of the chemicals used in the drug’s manufacture was highly dangerous. That the woman subjected her children to that risk day after day didn’t speak highly of her motherly concern.

  “I had no other choices, don’t you get it?” The woman’s gaze shifted to the two deputies, who were already moving restlessly. “I had to provide for my kids. I got no skills. What else was there for me to do in this part of the state?”

  “Others manage. Have you ever seen a meth lab explode? Do you have any idea what would have happened to your children if that had happened?” Ria shook her head, sick at the thought. She motioned to the two men, who stepped forward and placed the woman in the car.

  Witherspoon spat at Ria’s feet. “What do you know about trying to find a way to feed your children? You never been faced with the problems of a mother alone.”

  That was true enough. Whatever else had transpired in her life, Ria had never borne a child. She thought of Luz then, and of how difficult it must have been for her, living on the edge of poverty, not seeing her child for weeks at a time as she tried to carve out a living for them.

  Ria reached for the door, shoved her face close to the woman in the back seat. “No, I haven’t had that problem. But if I had, I wouldn’t have made the choice you did.” Straightening, she slammed the door and waved for the deputies to take over.

  Ria had never considered herself particularly hard-hearted, but nothing in the woman’s tale of woe had touched her on any level. As traumatic as her mother’s arrest was going to be on the children, it couldn’t come close to inflicting the kind of damage living eight years with the woman would.

  Opening her car door, she slid behind the wheel. Maria had been eight when Luz had died. By now she’d be the same age as Luz had told Ria she’d been when she married. In a third world country, choices were even more limited than those Witherspoon had whined about. Not for the first time Ria wondered what kind of options faced Luz’s child.

  She stopped by D.A. Richmond Davis’s office at the courthouse to fill him in on the most recent arrest. “Witherspoon may try to deal,” she concluded, her shoulder propped against the wall next to the door. She’d dismissed his offer of a seat, not intending to stay long, and the man didn’t seem to know whether to remain standing as well, or seat himself.

  “But no plea bargains.” He slapped his palm on the desk hard enough to shake his immaculately groomed hair. “This office doesn’t go lightly on drug dealers.”

  Which was, she noted, a far cry from the tune he’d been singing just a few short days ago. “You can listen to what her lawyer has to say. I doubt she’s got anything worth dealing. We did pretty intensive surveillance before her arrest. We’re rounding up her known customers now. If there’s anyone bigger in the picture, we haven’t caught word of him. Or her.”

  Shoving away from the wall, she turned to go.

  “Oh, miss, er, Sheriff.” Davis’s diffident voice stopped her. “That other suit isn’t going away as you promised. My office has been buried in paperwork from that man’s attorney.” At her raised brows, he hastened to add, “Not that we’re backing down. This county is tough on crime. We’re not going to give an inch.”

  He’d be more persuasive with even a modicum of conviction in his voice. “Don’t worry, Richmond. It will never see trial. But if it does, that little speech you gave a while ago would make a dandy closing argument.”

  With his mouth opening and closing like a spotted bass, she shot him a grin and headed out the door.

  Cook and Ralston had beaten her to the offices with the suspect. There was no sign of Cook or Vickie Witherspoon, but Ralston was in the parking lot talking to a couple of reserve deputies. As Ria walked up to the small group, one of the reservists caught sight of her and elbowed his buddy. The two men looked down and shuffled their feet, but Ralston kept talking, not seeming to notice their restlessness.

  “Can you believe that? Thinking you’re going to get anywhere appealing to Kingsley as a woman?” He guffawed. “They may have the same equipment, but from what I hear, Kingsley don’t play for the same team, know what I mean?”

  Ria folded her arms across her chest, cocking her head. “No, Ralston, I don’t think I do know what you mean. Would you care to elaborate?”

  The man went still, and the two reservists seemed to find the toes of their boots worthy of contemplation.

  The tips of Ralston’s ears reddened as he slowly spun around. “Sheriff.” His voice was insolent. “Haven’t you ever heard that eavesdroppers rarely hear good about themselves?”

  She pretended to consider, then shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that. Today seems chock-full of new learning for me. C’mon.” She clapped him on the shoulder, steered him toward the door of the building. “You can teach me all about teams and such.”

  There was a scrambling of feet behind her. Ria could only assume that the reserve deputies had quickly made themselves scarce. The idea seemed catching. Once inside the building, everyone they came across seemed to have trouble maintaining eye contact. Maybe they could sense danger. If so, their instincts were dead-on. Ria had never been closer to decking a man in her life.

  Opening the door
to her office, she waited for the deputy to enter before closing it gently behind him. She didn’t invite him to sit. “You know, Ralston, I’m getting the feeling you don’t like me.” She rested her hips against her desk, facing him.

  “I don’t think this is a job for a woman,” he said stiffly, looking somewhere over her shoulder. “Commissioners made their decision, no getting around it. But I’m entitled to my opinion.”

  “I guess I don’t understand. First you say I’m not a real woman, now you’re saying I am. Which is it?”

  The man’s lips flattened, but he said nothing.

  Tiring of the game, she straightened. “I can’t force you to respect me, but I can demand that you treat me with respect. Until your attitude changes, I’m putting you back on nights.” The man’s jaw dropped, and he glared at her. Duty rosters typically had the least senior deputies on night duty, supervised by the newest officers. “You’ll trade places with Sergeant Morris. Finish out your shift today. You can report for your new hours tomorrow. We’ll reevaluate the change in a month.” Crossing to the door, she opened it, waited for him to exit.

  He did, brushing by her with a defiant air that told her better than words she’d made a bad situation worse.

  She swung the door shut behind him. Ralston wasn’t going to change his opinion of her, regardless. But she had had to do something about him or risk losing the respect of the other members in the department. She didn’t fool herself into thinking the skirmish between the two of them was over. Her action had merely delayed it.

  Dismissing the man from her mind, she went to her computer and spent the afternoon combing the databases for a man who went by the name of Colton. She found several matches, but the pictures looked nothing like the individual Jake had caught on his monitors. She hadn’t really expected to find anything. Anyone who took the precaution of bringing no ID with him wasn’t going to give out his real name.

  The air outside when she left held a bite that had her hunching into her leather jacket. Although January in Alabama was a far cry from winters in Denver, it hadn’t taken long for Ria to grow accustomed to the milder temperatures. Apparently she had already gotten spoiled.

  Dusk turned quickly to night at this time of year. Her headlights speared the falling darkness as she made her way home. As she turned into her lane, she couldn’t prevent a quick glance at the stand of trees across the road. The same stand that had given cover to the newest assassin.

  How many lives was one person allotted? Had she been a cat, she’d have been a third of the way through hers. The dark humor failed to amuse her. There was a prickle of instinct warning her that sometime soon her luck was bound to run out. Skill and sheer guts would carry her so far, but no one could outrun death forever. She just needed to dodge it a little longer, until she had all the answers she’d been seeking.

  With her usual caution, Ria turned off the car and took the flashlight out for the perimeter check. She stepped carefully across the trip wire she’d restrung after the night of the attempted shooting, circling the house, examining the “tells.” When she was assured that the security hadn’t been breached, she let herself in the back door.

  With her mind already on the task ahead, she reengaged the alarm and slipped her coat off, hanging it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. Then she made her way to the extra bedroom, turned on the computer.

  While it whirred and hummed in the act of starting up, she went to the filing cabinet, unlocked it and withdrew the sheaf of papers she’d been painstakingly going through. So far she had a list of one hundred three Army personnel who had been reported dead about the same time she’d been thrown lifeless in the ocean. Twenty-six of those names were women.

  Ria didn’t want to think of how much work still remained to be done. She’d cross-check the list for similarities in post locations and field of training. But time was running out.

  The contract on her life had dictated a week. She had a little over five days left. After spending more than six years on the search, she felt closer than ever before to discovering the truth about her past.

  She just had to stay alive a little while longer.

  The strand of tiny crystal lights she’d run along the baseboard began to wink. She raised her head, hand going to her gun. The lights were connected to the trip wire around the perimeter of her house. She’d had to pay a pretty sum to a puzzled electrician out of Phenix City to hook it up to her specifications, but anytime something over fifty pounds so much as touched it, the circuit of lights in every room of the house began blinking.

  Rising, she flipped off the light switch, throwing the room into total darkness, save the glow from the computer screen. Padding lightly down the stairs, she entered the kitchen, heard the creak of the steps. Someone was on her back porch.

  The voice, when it came, wasn’t totally unexpected. “C’mon, Ria, open up. It’s freezing out here.”

  Checking the Judas hole, she determined that Jake was alone before unlocking the door, then stepped aside, gun still in her hand. He gave her only a quick glance as he stepped through, using his shoulder to push the door closed after him.

  “Reset the alarm,” he ordered, going to the kitchen table to drop the sacks he carried. He flipped on the light switch with a familiarity that reminded her he’d been here before.

  She reactivated the security system, all the while watching him take small boxes out of the sacks. “I had one of my men drop me off. Crossed the property southwest of here to come in the back. Don’t even know if this is still warm, but I figured you weren’t going to have anything edible around here.”

  He rummaged around in her cupboards and drawers, taking out plates and silverware. Quickly setting them on the table, he seemed to notice for the first time that she still had a gun leveled at him. He looked from it to the boxes of Chinese food. “What? You wanted Italian?”

  The irony of the scene wasn’t lost on her, even as she reholstered her weapon. She was going to sit down and eat dinner with the most notorious criminal in the area. The man who freely admitted he’d accepted a contract to kill her.

  The man who, God help her, had just become her partner.

  Chapter 7

  “Eat up.” His tone brooked no arguing. “You’re going to need your strength. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

  Slowly, she pulled out a chair and sat. Without asking, he pushed a full plate of chicken chow mien toward her.

  “Did your men report back on Colton?” she asked. At his curt nod, her frustration grew. “Well? What do we know about him?”

  “We—” she didn’t miss the inflection he gave the word “— know where he lives. Where he works. By sometime tonight I’ll have his real name.” Jake shot her a hard look. “Like I said. I want some answers before this goes any further.”

  She waited for him to begin eating before reaching out to switch their plates. Under the circumstances, she figured her paranoia could be excused. Picking up a fork, she took a bite. “The deal was you were going to get me answers, remember?”

  His eyes gleamed at her action, but he let it pass. “Tit for tat, baby. I want to know what I’m in for. No more holding out. I need your whole story.”

  He was managing to annoy her. Especially since she’d spent most of her waking moments today trying to figure a way to avoid giving him just that. “How about a trade? You give me something you learned today, and I’ll answer any question you ask.”

  He looked at her, finished swallowing. “Okay. The man who gave his name as Colton—the same guy who we agree most likely had Stanton killed—works at the Pentagon. So why don’t you tell me how the hell you got on the wrong side of someone like that, hmm?”

  For a moment she felt as though each one of her organs shut down. Air stopped moving in and out of her lungs. Blood clogged in her veins. Her brain went abruptly blank.

  “Ria…” Jake’s silky tone held a note of warning.

  She blinked, remembered to haul oxygen shakily into he
r lungs. “I don’t know,” she said truthfully.

  “Bull.” Quick as a snake striking, he had her wrist in his hand, and there was nothing loverlike in his grasp. “Don’t yank me around. Until you showed up at Donaldson Prison, I had a good thing going with Stanton. Now he’s dead and my plans for Alvarez are in jeopardy. And I’m starting to get a real bad feeling that this guy isn’t one it pays to double-cross.”

  Easing her chair back gave her greater mobility in case she needed to draw her weapon again. And from the look on Jake’s face, she might have to. With a start, she realized from his grim expression that he distrusted her. If the situation hadn’t been so lethal, it would have been amusing.

  She pulled free of him. “Having second thoughts about not following through on that contract? Go ahead,” she invited. Every nerve in her body quivered with readiness. “But your plans for Alvarez aren’t going to be delivered by a dead man.”

  Jake brought another forkful of food to his mouth, took his time chewing and swallowing. “I have a feeling that’s a possibility either way.” He sounded more irritated than frightened. “Whoever this Colton is, he’s got powerful contacts. It’s getting harder and harder to believe he thinks I’m ever going to get a chance to spend that money he promised me.”

  She relaxed, inch by infinitesimal inch. “Given that the money is in exchange for killing me, you’ll forgive me if I don’t get too choked up about that.” Finding her appetite returning, she dug into the food on her plate.

  “Stanton said he applied those tattoos on a group of six or seven, all men except for one woman.” Pointing his fork at her, he continued, “It goes without saying that you’re the woman. He thought they were army, but I suppose he could have been wrong about that. But your timeline doesn’t add up, regardless. Ria Kingsley was attending the University of Iowa at the time you got that tattoo. She spent seven semesters there, and attended classes every summer so she could graduate early. So that can only mean one thing. You’re not Rianna Kingsley.”