The Marshal's Witness

by Intrigue Romance

  The force of that cold stare had her heart hammering in her chest and she suddenly felt like she’d just crossed a line she didn’t even know was there. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Oh, no. You started this. You can finish it. Why shouldn’t I trust Stuart? Before you answer, I should warn you that we grew up together in Colorado. We graduated from the same high school. We joined the army together. Why, exactly, do you think I shouldn’t trust him?”

  She swallowed hard and clutched the seat. “It’s just that, well, without me knowing him, things just look kind of...strange.”

  “Explain.” His voice was short, clipped.

  She waved her hands in the air in frustration. “I don’t know, it’s just...okay, at the motel, you told me you trusted that other man, in Afghanistan.”

  “Aamir.”

  “Right, Aamir. You knew him for years and he betrayed you. I’m not an expert, but I always heard that men confess their sins when they’re dying. They don’t tell more lies, not when the end is near and they’re worried about their soul. Don’t you think it’s odd your friend swore he hadn’t betrayed you as he lay dying? You said Stuart is the one who helped you set the trap to catch whoever had ambushed your men. Tell me, who shot the bullet that killed Aamir? Was it Stuart?”

  His eyes widened, then his jaw clamped tight.

  Jessica was obviously right. Stuart was the one who’d shot Aamir.

  “What would Stuart’s motive be for wanting to kill you?” Ryan insisted. “For that matter, if he wanted to kill you, why didn’t he do it when he picked us up in the mountains? Or when we were at the motel?”

  “I don’t know why he would want to kill me. As far as not killing me after he picked me up, maybe he didn’t want to risk hurting you, or he was afraid that you’d kill him if he tried. Or maybe he just wanted an alibi so he could send someone else, like the men in the mountains who tried to kill us.”

  Ryan jerked the steering wheel, ignoring the honking horns of passing drivers as he fishtailed onto the exit ramp.

  Jessica gripped her seat and the armrest as the tires squealed around a curve. Making him angry probably wasn’t the best idea while he was driving seventy miles an hour.

  He shifted gears and raced down a little two-lane road. A minute later he slowed the BMW to a saner speed and pulled it under a clump of oak trees.

  He cut the engine and stared through the windshield at the gravel road. “Get it all out now. Say everything you want to say about Stuart, and then I don’t ever want to talk about this again.”

  Jessica straightened in her seat and narrowed her eyes at him. There was only so much arrogance and bossiness she could tolerate at one time, and she’d just reached her limit. “You want me to talk? Fine. I’ll talk. When Stuart picked us up in the mountains, I was convinced I’d met him before, or at least seen him. The only people I was allowed to associate with when I worked for DeGaullo were other people who worked for him. What does that say about Stuart?”

  Ryan’s faced turned slightly red, as if he was struggling to control his temper.

  Jessica plunged ahead. “Stuart is a demolitions expert. Could he rig a toy car to blow up a van?”

  “You, of all people, shouldn’t question a decorated military officer.”

  She jerked back. “Me, of all people? You know about my past, the choices I made, and why I made them. I thought we’d moved beyond all of that. I thought you understood and that you’d started to trust me.”

  “Stuart’s not the mole.”

  “Forget Stuart. I want to know if you trust me. Do you?”

  He didn’t look at her. They sat in silence for a long time. Jessica finally turned back toward the window, her throat so tight she could hardly breathe.

  Ryan swore next to her and started the engine. He floored the gas, sending grass and dirt flying as he spun out onto the gravel road and headed back toward the interstate.

  They didn’t speak for the rest of the afternoon. Ryan kept driving. Jessica kept wondering how she could have given her heart to a man who looked at her and only saw her mistakes.

  When they stopped for gas, she started to get out of the car but he grabbed her arm.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Unless you want a puddle on the leather seats, I’m going to the restroom.”

  He studied the parking lot, which was empty except for them. The ladies’ room was on the outside of the small food store, to the right, clearly visible from where they were parked. “Okay. But if you’re not back in five minutes, I’m coming in after you.”

  She got out and slammed the passenger door. Three minutes was all she needed, but she took the full five just to spite him. The second hand slowly ticked around the face of the clock on the wall inside the bathroom. Jessica studied her nails and leaned against the sink. Another minute went by.

  The door flew open even though she distinctly remembered locking it. Ryan stood in the opening. When he saw her leaning against the countertop, his mouth tightened into a hard line and his eyes narrowed dangerously.

  Even though she didn’t believe he would ever hurt her, not physically, at least, she barely suppressed a shiver beneath that menacing stare.

  She stiffened her spine and stepped past him with as much dignity as she could muster after having him follow her into the bathroom. Ryan followed close behind, closing her car door with far more force than necessary. He peeled out of the parking lot without a word.

  A few minutes later, he pulled into a hotel parking lot. Certainly not five-star, but it was nicer than the motel they’d been in the previous night, and much more modern than the ones the marshals had put her in. It was four stories, with no outside access to the rooms.

  He kept her with him as he registered, as if he were afraid to let her out of his sight. Guiding her through the lobby, he blocked her from view and herded her into an elevator.

  They emerged onto the top floor and he led them down the hall to a room marked “Honeymoon Suite.”

  She raised an eyebrow when she saw the plaque.

  He shrugged, and inserted the key into the reader. “It was all they had available. There’s some kind of convention going on.”

  The suite boasted a kitchenette with chocolate-brown granite countertops, a flat-screen television in the plush-appointed sitting room, and an enormous bedroom dominated by a king-size, four-poster bed with a canopy and brown silk drapes hanging from each corner.

  She peeked into the bathroom, her eyes widening when she saw the Jacuzzi tub sunken into the floor.

  Ryan joined her in the doorway, backpack in hand. “If you want to take a bath now I’ll order us something to eat.”

  She glanced up at him, some of her hurt and anger fading at the prospect of getting clean again. “Is it that obvious how badly I want to get in that tub?”

  He grinned and for a moment it seemed like none of the tension of the past day had ever happened.

  “Baby, you groaned when you saw the tub.”

  She returned his smile, only to see his smile fade and that shuttered look cross his face again. Their relationship had altered in the past day. It would probably never be the same again.

  Without a word, he placed the backpack on the floor beside the tub, then crossed to the door. He was starting to pull it closed when she called out.

  “Ryan?”

  He hesitated, his hand on the doorknob.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  For giving her a glimpse of what life and love could have been like, even though she knew she would never love another man after him. At least she’d experienced that emotion once in her lifetime, rather than going through her entire life without knowing.

  “For protecting me, taking care of me. I owe you far more than I can ever repay.”

  Some kind of dark emotion flashed in his eyes. Pain? Anger? She wasn’t sure. It was gone so fast she might have imagined it. “Quit thanking me. You don’t owe
me anything.” He closed the door behind him.

  Jessica sighed, wondering how something so incredibly right had gone so wrong so quickly. After filling the tub with warm water and bubble bath from one of the tiny bottles on the vanity, she slid into the water, groaning with pleasure as the steam rose around her.

  She leaned back and tried to blank out her mind and relax. For a few minutes, she just wanted to forget that people were trying to kill her. She wanted to forget the hurt, angry look in Ryan’s eyes when she’d told him her suspicions about Stuart.

  When the water began to grow cold, she sighed and turned off the jets. Her moment of luxury was over. She’d just started to rise from the tub when a knock sounded on the door. She slid back into the water and grabbed a towel to hold over herself.

  “Come in,” she called out.

  Ryan opened the door and lounged in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. His gaze flicked to her towel, then he looked away. The little lines around the corners of his eyes were more prominent than usual. And when he finally spoke, his voice was flat, without emotion.

  “All right,” he said. “We do it your way.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ryan turned and left the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

  Jessica didn’t know what had made Ryan change his mind, but from the empty, hollow look in his eyes, she suspected he was beginning to have doubts about Stuart. She hoped her fears were wrong, and that Stuart wasn’t the one working with DeGaullo to kill her. Ryan had already suffered a terrible betrayal once, and had a hard time trusting anyone, especially her. If Stuart betrayed him, he’d probably never trust anyone else again.

  She yanked a comb through her hair, wincing at the tangles. After throwing on her usual ensemble of uninspired jeans and a T-shirt, she rushed through the bedroom to the hotel suite’s living area. She paused in the doorway, thinking at first that the suite was empty. Then she noticed the curtains had been pulled back from the sliding glass doors. Ryan was standing on the balcony, his hands shoved into his pockets as he stared out across the parking lot below.

  A laptop computer sat on the end table beside the couch, bearing a sticker with the hotel’s name. She left the computer sitting there and padded across the carpet to the open sliding glass doors.

  “Don’t.” Ryan’s deep voice stopped her just as she was about to cross the threshold onto the balcony. He turned around and leaned back against the railing. “Stay inside, away from the windows. You shouldn’t take any chances.”

  “Neither should you. If you’re with me, you’re in danger, too.” She crossed her arms and stood in the doorway, challenging him.

  His jaw tightened and he stepped inside, firmly pushing her back as he closed the doors and the curtains. Ryan might be reckless with his own life, but he would never be reckless with hers.

  “I called room service while you were taking a bath.” He went into the tiny kitchenette. “The food arrived a few minutes ago.” He turned with a tray of covered dishes and carried it to the coffee table in front of the couch. As he raised the covers, Jessica’s mouth began to water at the delicious aroma. When she saw exactly what he’d ordered for them, her eyes began to water, too.

  For an entirely different reason.

  Ryan had ordered steak, asparagus and French fries. Her favorite meal, right down to the side of barbecue sauce. She’d told him that was her favorite meal once when they were hiking through the mountains. She didn’t think he’d even been listening. Obviously, he had.

  “You remembered,” she whispered.

  He shrugged and arranged her plate in front of her on the table before sitting back on the couch with his own plate of steak and a baked potato. He grabbed the remote control and flipped the TV to a twenty-four-hour news station.

  Jessica ate in silence, casting occasional glances at him. He only pretended interest in the broadcast, because every time she looked at him, he frowned. Then the news reporter gave an update on the story about the courthouse bombing, explaining that unnamed sources had linked the bombing to a house fire in Tennessee earlier in the week. Based on the newspaper found on the lawn, with DeGaullo’s picture on the front page, speculation was that Jessica Delaney was the target.

  Based on police activity in the area and the teams of trackers in the Smoky Mountains National Park, the reporter theorized that DeGaullo was after Jessica Delaney, and that she might have fled into the mountains with her U.S. Marshal protector. Rumors were the marshal used to be an army ranger.

  Ryan cursed and turned off the TV. “So much for government secrecy.”

  The steak began to sit like a cold hard knot in Jessica’s belly. She set her plate back on the tray and pitched the napkin onto the table. “How do reporters get this stuff?”

  “I have no idea.” He looked over at her. “You didn’t eat much.”

  Jessica glanced at his half-full plate. “Neither did you.”

  He shrugged and picked up the complimentary newspaper the desk clerk had given them.

  Jessica let out a frustrated breath and reached for the computer. She crossed her legs under her on the couch and powered up the laptop. Hacking into the FBI database was just as easy as the first time, even though they’d installed additional safeguards since she’d first contacted them this way.

  They really needed better programmers.

  “I’m in.” Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she circumvented the normal screens and hacked her way into a backdoor. A few minutes later, she’d linked into the server that housed the WitSec files.

  An hour later she was still hacking her way through fire walls and encryption schemas, searching for any files that had her name in them.

  Ryan set their tray outside in the hallway so room service could retrieve it. He paced back and forth across the suite, occasionally peeking through the curtains to the parking lot as if searching for any threats.

  Another hour in, he stopped in front of her, his frustration evident on his taut face. “How much longer?”

  “Hard to say. WitSec’s security is a lot better than the FBI’s security. Depends on how many more layers I have to hack through to get to anything useful.”

  “Minutes? Hours? Days?”

  Minutes, probably. But Jessica didn’t want to tell Ryan that, because he’d be hovering over her shoulder the whole time. “Another hour or so.”

  Ryan tapped his thigh in agitation. “I’m going to grab a shower.” He crossed into the bedroom to the bathroom beyond, leaving both doors open. Jessica assumed he wanted to make sure he could hear her if she needed him, but she didn’t want the distraction of hearing the water running and knowing he was naked just a few feet away.

  Thinking back to the shower they’d shared together had her hands shaking and her mouth watering again. She set the laptop aside and quietly eased the bedroom door shut. Then she went to work on the set of files she’d found that she suspected were the ones she was looking for.

  Sure enough, once she broke through the last layer of security she had exactly what she needed. She compiled a list of all the users who’d accessed her files, a surprisingly large list. But most of the accesses were after she and Ryan had fled into the mountains, so she eliminated those names. The person who’d set her up would have gotten the information long before the fire that had burned her house to the ground.

  Cross-referencing the list of names against the employment database allowed her to remove a few more names. She was banking on her theory that the mole wasn’t one of the employees, because Ryan’s boss should have had time to investigate all of them thoroughly by now—unless Ryan’s boss was the mole. But she’d already eliminated him as a suspect when she’d cross-checked some of the other files.

  What she was left with were four names. She didn’t recognize any of them. She saved the names to a file on the computer’s hard drive and carefully backed out of the Federal database, careful to wipe out any traces that she’d ever been there.

  Starting with the
first name, she surfed the net to get his bio and current address. This part didn’t require anything illegal whatsoever. It was pathetically easy to get the most intimate details about people online. Social networks were the fastest, easiest path to the information she needed. Again she was amazed at what people put out there for anyone to see, never realizing how vulnerable that kind of information made them.

  The bedroom door opened. Ryan crossed to the couch and plopped down beside her. His dark hair was damp, slightly curling at the ends. He’d shaved and he was wearing a tight, dark blue shirt tucked into his jeans. Jessica swallowed hard and forced herself to look back at her laptop.

  “Find anything yet?” Ryan scooted up next to her to look at the screen.

  “Four people accessed my files in WitSec that I couldn’t find on the employee database.” She punched up the Word document she’d created that contained the information she’d gathered. “I put together short bios and last known addresses on each of them.” She paged through slowly so Ryan could see the information. “I couldn’t find much about these first three, no more than you can on the average person, anyway. Nothing jumped out at me about any of them.”

  Ryan read the screen. “Yeah, nothing jumps out at me, either. Who’s the fourth person?”

  She paged down. “His name is Dominic Ward. He’s the—”

  “Director of the CIA.”

  “You know him?”

  Ryan’s mouth tightened into a hard line. “I know of him, but I’ve never met him. He worked with my C.O. to give us intel for special-ops missions.”

  “C.O.?”

  “Commanding Officer, my boss in the army.”

  Jessica frowned and studied the picture of Ward, a black and white photo she’d pulled from a newspaper search. “Why would the director of the CIA have access to the Witness Protection database?”

  “He wouldn’t, not for legitimate reasons, anyway. Search on another name—Alan Rivers.”

  “Who?”

  “Alan Rivers. Alex said he’s some higher-up who passed down orders about your case.”