Suspect Witness

by Ryshia Kennie

  “It was too bad about Wade,” she murmured. “You trusted him.”

  “To a point. But truly, in that line of work you doubt everyone.”

  She noted the past tense, wondered at it for a moment and moved on.

  “Even Mike.” She sighed. “I can’t believe that he was that far in debt or that he was able to be bribed.”

  “He had a gambling problem but he didn’t cave in until the last minute. He swore that he thought you’d be safe by then, that you’d left Georgetown. He’d never imagined you’d still be there.” He cleared his throat. “If that’s any justification.”

  She shook her head. She’d lost contact with Mike after she’d arrived in Georgetown. That had been his last bit of advice—go deep and break contact. Now she realized that in an odd way he’d given her a head start before offering up what he knew for what money he could get. In an odd way he’d protected her before betraying her.

  “I trusted him. But he wasn’t a friend. As an adult I wasn’t close to him. Should that make me feel any better?”

  “Betrayal is betrayal. He’s going to be facing a court date of his own, if that’s any consolation. As for Wade, I suspect early retirement isn’t in the cards for him, either. Can’t say I feel sorry about that one. He had you facing an executioner for a paltry sum, not even the full reward.”

  “Paltry?”

  “It’s just money. History tells us how little that can be worth at the whim of a government—think Vietnam or Cambodia. There were times in the twentieth century when their currency meant nothing. Millionaires became paupers overnight at the whim of a corrupt government. It can happen anywhere.”

  “Josh.” She squeezed his hand. “It’s all right to feel like crap because your friend betrayed you. No need to divert with a history lesson.”

  “Divert?” He smiled slightly. “You’re right. Wade took me out at the knees, at least for a day or two. I didn’t expect that of him. But you’re wrong about one thing. Like I said before, he wasn’t a close friend.”

  “Still, like you said, betrayal is betrayal. He endangered you and would have had me killed for money. It’s unbelievable.” And she thought of how, for Josh, it was all about making it right. She knew without him saying it that the money had always been secondary.

  “Maybe after all this we need a vacation,” Josh suggested. He looked at her with a rather impish expression on his face.

  “Vacation?” The thought of flying, of going anywhere after all the months of travel, of flight, was off-putting. She’d put the Canadian and British passports into safekeeping, but she’d yet to pull out her American passport. She had no desire to go anywhere.

  “I thought maybe a spa.”

  “Spa?” The thought of Josh going to a spa, of him enjoying the experience, was improbable. The fact that he would do it for her was, well, it was a self-sacrificing gesture.

  “Something wrong with that?”

  “Maybe a real trip.”

  He laughed, the sound deep and throaty. “Maybe we need to meet somewhere in the middle.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed.

  He reached over, pulling her to him. The strength and ease with which he did it attested to how quickly he’d healed. Stitches and a round of antibiotics had replaced her field dressing, and now there was only a scar to remind them of the bullet that was meant to kill.

  “Maybe? Time alone doesn’t sound romantic to you?”

  “That spa you mentioned?” She grinned up at him. “I don’t know.”

  “We’d be together.” He drew an arm around her shoulder. “And while we’re speaking of that, I have a surprise for you.” He looked at the clock on the wall.

  “A surprise?” She looked up at him just as his lips met hers, teasing them in a light flirtatious kiss, as she wrapped her arms around his neck deepening the kiss and drawing more as she met him kiss for kiss. It was he that drew away first, holding her at arm’s length.

  “First, the surprise,” he said, his voice thick with passion. He ran a forefinger over her lower lip. “For any more kisses, I will want to take you to bed at a completely inappropriate time.”

  “Inappropriate?”

  A knock at the door had Josh turning, his hand going to his gun—instinctively putting Erin behind him.

  “Time?” Josh asked.

  “Ten minutes to midnight,” a male voice responded.

  Erin’s heart skipped a beat, both at the ritual and at the knowledge that the phrasing meant that there was another agent, a bodyguard on the other side, and what that might mean.

  Josh put a hand on her shoulder. “Precautionary,” he said as he went to the door and opened it. A broad, dark-haired man silently filled the doorway before nodding at Josh and stepping back.

  “Sarah!” Erin breathed as a slight, young woman with an anxious expression took a step forward and then another. Her strawberry-blond hair was tied back in an understated bun, and she held a baby wrapped tightly in a pale green blanket. She was hunched almost protectively over it.

  For a minute emotion and shock kept her standing, staring at her sister and the small bundle she held.

  A slow smile spread over Sarah’s face as she bridged the distance between them.

  Erin threw her arms wide, drawing her sister into an awkward hug, conscious of the baby between them. “I can’t believe you’re here. That you’re safe.” She took a step back, her hands still on Sarah’s shoulders.

  Tears filled Sarah’s eyes. “Thanks to you. I can’t thank you enough. Erin...” She choked on the words. “You could have died. I was so scared.”

  “But I didn’t,” Erin said firmly.

  Sarah shook her head. “I prayed every night for you, between that and the fact that you’re the smartest person I know and the best, I knew you had to make it.”

  “Sarah...” Erin felt her face flush at the compliments and with the joy of seeing her sister after so many months.

  “And it’s finally over.” Sarah shifted the bundle in her arms and looked back at the man who hovered in the doorway. “Almost.”

  “My nephew?” Erin breathed and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Liam,” Sarah said and smiled as she pulled the blanket back.

  “The name suits him,” Erin said as she looked down at the baby with the dusting of reddish-blond hair whose face furrowed while he continued to sleep.

  “It was Grandfather’s.”

  “I know,” Erin replied, for the first time contemplating the significance of that name and feeling surprise that Sarah had cared enough about their ancestry to use it. She suspected that the past few months had changed many things for Sarah and that with the baby there were more changes to come. She smiled as Liam’s tiny hand grabbed her pinky. His eyes opened briefly and met hers as if acknowledging her before they closed again. “I’m an aunt,” she said and she knew in that moment that she was hooked. “And I’ll spoil you rotten,” she whispered to the now sleeping baby. “Promise.”

  It was two hours later, and Sarah had gone back to the hotel with the FBI agent who would shadow her until sentencing was complete. Josh had confirmed that would be a few days from now. They sat together on the stiff little couch that Erin had good-naturedly complained about on more than one occasion.

  “I won’t miss this place,” she said softly.

  “You’ll love Tampa,” he promised.

  She looked at him and laughed. “But not the RV.” But she wasn’t moving to the RV. She had her own place for now, a job, a soon anticipated reunion with her cat, Edgar, and a life that she knew would include him.

  “I love you, babe,” he said, his voice deep with promise.

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. “You’re still too risky to love,” she said in a flirtatious whisper.

 
“Maybe not.” Outside, the streetlights winked on. “I suspect I’m too risky not to love.”

  Her lips met his in a kiss that was hot and yearning and spoke to a future that lay wide and open in front of them.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from COLORADO WILDFIRE by Cassie Miles.

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  Colorado Wildfire

  by Cassie Miles

  Chapter One

  Sheriff Samantha Calloway hadn’t cried this much since her husband went missing and was presumed dead. She swabbed the moisture from her cheeks with the back of her hand. These tears didn’t come from sorrow. Smoke had got into her eyes.

  She parked her white SUV with the sheriff’s logo at a deserted intersection, climbed out and rested her elbows on the front fender to steady her binoculars. Beyond a wide field that was green with the new growth of early spring, she could see the approaching wildfire.

  Though the crimson flames were far away, barely visible behind a distant ridge, smoke consumed the landscape. A stinging haze draped the spires of pine and spruce at the edge of Swain County in the high Rocky Mountains.

  When she licked her lips, she tasted ash on her tongue. Her pale blue eyes continued to ooze with tears.

  Caleb Schmidt, a deputy who had been with the sheriff’s department for thirty years, one year longer than Sam had been alive, had followed her to this location. He got out of his vehicle and strutted toward her. A short, wiry man, Caleb thrust out his chest and swung his arms when he walked. Maybe he thought the posture made him look bigger. He pulled the dark blue bandana down from his mouth and squinted at her through his thick glasses.

  “It’s time,” he said in a voice of doom, “time to start emergency evacuation procedures.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Doggone it, Sheriff, we gotta hustle and—”

  “I’ve been in contact with the proper officials,” she interrupted. “Fire Marshal Hobbs will tell me in plenty of time if we need to evacuate.”

  Caleb scoffed. Before he could say anything more, she stretched out her long arm and tugged on his bandana. “Where’s your smoke mask?”

  “Where’s yours?” he retorted.

  This morning when she’d started out, she had two boxes full of disposable ventilator masks that she’d gone to the trouble of ordering even though they weren’t in her meager budget. Before noon, she’d given them all away without saving one for herself. Her late husband, Wade, would have pointed to her behavior as an example of her too-too-responsible attitude. And, she admitted to herself, Wade would have been right. Sam knew she couldn’t take care of others if she didn’t take care of herself first, but the other way around felt more natural.

  “The wind’s picking up,” Caleb muttered. “The fire’s on the move. I hear it’s already burned two thousand acres. I’m advising you to reconsider.”

  “If I had reason to believe it might reach town, I wouldn’t hesitate to get everybody out.” Her five-year-old daughter was smack-dab in the middle of Woodridge at the sheriff’s office in the two-story, red stone Swain County Courthouse, where the dispatch/911 operators were keeping an eye on her. Sam’s regular babysitter had an asthmatic toddler and had driven down to Denver to get away from this awful smoke.

  “We gotta be smart, gotta move fast.” Caleb would not give up; he was a feisty little pug with a bone. “It ain’t going to be easy to get some of these old coots to leave their houses.”

  He was right about that. A mandated evacuation of Woodridge would be a nightmare. Her county was the smallest in the state in terms of acreage and population. They didn’t have a ski resort or a condo development or fertile land for farming. The entire sheriff’s department consisted of twelve people, including Sam.

  She swabbed the moisture from under her eyes and stared at her deputy. “I’m not going to change my mind. No mandatory evacuation unless the fire marshal says there’s an imminent threat. Is that clear?”

  Grudgingly, he said, “I guess you’re the boss.”

  You got that right. None of her six deputies had been thrilled when she took over her husband’s job as sheriff. That was over a year ago, and she’d been duly elected last February for one big fat obvious reason: she was the best qualified. As a teenager, she’d done volunteer search and rescue. She’d been top of her class at the police academy. Not to mention her three years’ experience as a cop in Grand Junction before she married Wade. Still, her deputies second-guessed her at every turn.

  “Deputy Schmidt, I want you to stay right here and keep an eye on things. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, properly chastised.

  The two-lane asphalt road pointed south was one of the few direct routes toward the flames. “Except for firefighting personnel, no vehicles are allowed to pass.”

  “And what are you going to do?”

  She spotted the black Range Rover she’d been waiting for. “I need to go with Ty Baxter to check on a property.”

  “It’s that FBI safe house. Am I right?”

  “You know I can’t tell you.” Not that the location was a well-kept secret. “And you’re not supposed to say anything about the safe house, either.”

  He mimed zipping his lips, fastening a lock and throwing away the key. Then he pulled up his bandana to cover his mouth and marched toward his vehicle.

  FBI special agent Ty Baxter jumped from his Rover and came toward her with long strides. In his Stetson, denim jeans, snakeskin boots and white shirt with a yoke and pearly snaps, he could have looked as phony as a drugstore cowboy. But Ty pulled it off. After all, he was the real deal, the son of a local rancher.

  He’d been her husband’s best friend. They’d gone to school together, played football together and dated the same girls. Ty had won the heart of the prom queen. The whole county had been heartbroken when he and Loretta moved to Denver to pursue his career.

  He gave her a big hug. “Looking good, Sam.”

  “Liar.”

  She knew better. Her blue eyes were bloodshot. Instead of makeup, she had jagged smears of ash across her face. Under her beige cowboy hat, her long brown hair was pulled back in a tight braid that hung halfway down to her waist. Her boxy khaki uniform wasn’t designed to flatter. Not to mention the heavy-duty bulletproof vest under her shirt and the utility belt that circled her waist. On top of all that, she was fairly sure that she had pit stains.

  “How’s Jenny?” he asked.

  “Getting taller every day.”

  “Like you.”

  Sam was six feet tall in her boots. “I kind of hoped she wouldn’t inherit the giraffe gene.”

  Ty grinned and his dark brown eyes twinkled. “Both her parents are giraffes.”

  Wade had been six feet five inches tall. Whenever Sam was with Ty, her thoughts drifted toward her husband. The two men had been close. They even looked kind of alike. Both were tall and lean. Both had brown eyes and dark hair. Ty had been with Wade when he died.

  She shook off the memories and returned Ty’s easygoing smile. “You got here from Denver really fast.”

  “I was already on my way when I called about the safe house. Sam, there’s
something important I need to tell you.”

  She nodded. “We can talk on the way. We’ll take my SUV. I need to be able to hear my dispatcher.”

  After reminding Deputy Schmidt to keep this route blocked, she got behind the steering wheel. When Ty joined her, he was carrying a gym bag from his Rover. Before he buckled up, he reached inside and took out his smooth, black, lethal-looking Beretta 9 mm semiautomatic pistol.

  “Whoa,” she said. “Are you planning to shoot the fire?”

  “I like to be prepared.” He clipped the holster to his belt. “Don’t you?”

  Prepared for what? Sam was wary. First, Ty had mentioned “something important” he wanted to talk about. Now he was packing a gun. She had a bad feeling about what fresh disaster might be lurking around the next corner. Hoping to avoid bigger problems, she asked about his family. “Are your twins still playing T-ball?”

  “They’re getting pretty good,” he said, “and Loretta signed on to be coach of their team.”

  “Good for her.” Sheriff Sam was happy to support women who broke the stereotypes.

  “Surprised the hell out of me. I never thought my Loretta was athletic, but she’s getting into sports.”

  “Imagine that.”

  Apparently, Ty had forgotten that Loretta was a rodeo barrel racer and a black-diamond skier. Because his little Loretta was capable of looking like a princess, he forgot her kick-ass side. Wade had never made that mistake with Samantha.

  The first three miles of paved road swept across an open field. Under the smoky haze, the tall prairie grasses mingled with bright splashes of scarlet and blue wildflowers. Then the road turned to graded gravel, still two lanes but bumpy. The scenery closed in around them as they entered a narrow canyon.

  While she guided the SUV through a series of turns that followed the winding path of Horny Toad Creek, they chatted about family and how much Ty and Loretta missed living in the mountains. His dad wanted him to move back to Swain County and help out at the ranch.