He reached for his earpiece, clipped it to his ear and turned on his phone. Celeste’s fingers brushed his arm.
“Wait, aren’t we first going to talk about what happened?” she asked.
He sat back. “I don’t know what went wrong, how those criminals found you or what they’re really after. Clearly, someone’s out to get you and trolling to rope in any criminal element they can find, from people with tactical weapons and smoke bombs, to idiots with cell phones. Hopefully, talking to my supervisor will help.”
He dialed the number.
“Louise Hunter.” His supervisor’s voice came on the line, crisp and clear. He had no idea how old Chief Deputy Hunter was, but both the streaks of gray in her jet-black hair and the stories she told led him to believe she was probably hovering somewhere on either side of sixty. She was the kind of woman who’d been married to the same man for forty years, had fourteen grandchildren and a career that spanned countless escaped convicts, national manhunts and hundreds of lives saved.
Jonathan gave her a heads-up that Celeste was sitting beside him in the truck and then filled her in on Rod Cormac’s death and the ambush at the safe house. As much as he hated briefing his boss in front of the person he was assigned to protect, time was of the essence and there weren’t that many options. Then she confirmed what he’d feared—this was the first update she’d received about the situation at the safe house since he himself had called for backup before going to find Celeste. Communications were still down at the farm. He could only hope Stacy and Karl were okay.
“Rod was a dedicated marshal,” Hunter said. “He’ll be deeply missed.” There was a pause, long enough to let him know she felt the sudden loss every bit as hard as he did. “Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to confirm anything about the situation or the safety of the other marshals on-site. But we have a team currently moving into formation. I will make sure you are updated as soon as we have more information. How is Miss Alexander doing?”
Jonathan glanced over at Celeste. Her head was turned away from him. The morning rays caught her golden hair.
“Miss Alexander is safe and well. She was thankfully unharmed and has come through her ordeal with remarkable resilience,” he said. Was remarkable too strong a word? Perhaps. But it was true. “She’d like to speak to you personally about the man she saw in the safe house. She said he looked like Dexter Thomes.”
“I’d like to speak to her, as well,” said Hunter.
He reached to turn off his earpiece, then paused. “Are we certain that Dexter Thomes is still behind bars?”
“Last I heard,” she said. “But I will be confirming that immediately.”
“Thank you.” He kept one hand on the steering wheel. With the other he switched off the earpiece and then he held out the phone toward his passenger. “Celeste, my supervisor, Chief Deputy Louise Hunter, would like to speak to you. I’ve switched off my earpiece, so her voice should come through the phone’s speaker now. But if not, I’m sure you know how to change that in the settings.”
“Thank you.” Her fingers brushed his, just briefly, as he handed her the phone and he felt something like electricity rush through him.
What was it about this woman that had this strange impact on him? Her file had been thin. Her parents had died when she’d been just nineteen, and had no siblings and no significant romantic entanglements. She’d taught herself programming in elementary school and won several computer, electronic and robotic awards in high school and university. She’d started getting a master’s degree but had to drop out for financial reasons and had made her own way as a self-employed computer programmer after having been turned down for way too many tech jobs that she was clearly overqualified for.
Brilliant and attractive, not to mention tenacious, it was no wonder he was attracted to her. He could rationalize that much at least. But, even if circumstances had been different, she deserved better than a man like him who, when faced with a choice between the career he felt called to and his own family and Amish heritage, had walked away and chosen work because the call on his heart to serve his country had been too loud for him to ignore.
Yes, he’d been eighteen, Mamm had just died, his older bruder and only sibling had told him he had to make a choice, and his pa had never been someone he’d felt like he could talk to. But it had been his choice and one he could never undo. He shuddered to think what a woman who had no family would ever think of a man who’d walked away from his.
He took a deep breath, pushed aside the unwanted thoughts and listened as she talked to Hunter. Truth was, he wasn’t sure what to expect. After all, she’d been pretty stubborn back at the safe house and dug her heels in pretty hard. To his surprise she was crisp, polite and thorough, going through exactly what she’d heard and seen without any embellishments or exaggerations.
“The man I saw looked exactly like Dexter Thomes,” she told Hunter, “even though my vantage point was obscured by smoke and low light. Clearly, if Dexter is still in prison, he must be a doppelgänger, but the similarity was uncanny. I researched everything I could find about Dexter Thomes before I contacted the feds and told them my suspicions he was Poindexter. His mother is deceased, his father is not listed on his birth certificate and he has no known siblings. If he had a secret twin I should’ve uncovered it.”
The women exchanged a few more words, and he noticed Celeste made a point of asking his boss to please let them know when the safe house had been secured and if the other marshals were all right. Then she handed the phone to Jonathan. He switched his earpiece back on.
“I’d like you to take her to the central Pennsylvania safe house outside of Altoona for one night,” Hunter said, “while we do another sweep of the Pittsburgh apartment and also confirm that Dexter Thomes is really still behind bars. Barring any unforeseen difficulties, she can move into the Pittsburgh apartment tomorrow.”
“Understood,” he nodded, feeling the lines of a frown wrinkle his forehead. The plan would add extra travel time and delay the start of her new identity and life. Not to mention the diversion would take them right through Amish country and painfully close to the family farm he’d left behind. He thanked his boss and they ended the call.
“Everything okay?” Celeste asked.
“I hope so,” he said. “She’ll keep us posted. We’re going to take a brief detour to another safe house for one night and then head on to your new apartment in Pittsburgh tomorrow.” He paused. Worry hovered in the depths of her eyes. “I have faith that Stacy and Karl will be okay. They’re very good agents. They know what they’re doing. And don’t worry. We’ll be at the temporary safe house later today, and if all goes well you’ll be in your new life tomorrow.”
They lapsed into silence as the truck drove through the winter morning. The sun rose higher. They passed farms with rolling fields and empty roadside wooden fruit and vegetable stands that reminded him of those his mother had expected him and his brother, Amos, to help out with during the summer.
“Did you grow up in the city or the country?” Celeste asked after a pause so long he wondered if she’d fallen asleep.
He guessed she was trying to change the subject away from Dexter, the fallen marshal and what had happened at the farmhouse. He was thankful for it. He pressed his lips together for a long moment and debated how to answer. He didn’t talk about his past for a very good reason. Most people knew nothing about the Amish, and the last thing he wanted was to listen to someone else’s uninformed opinion about the world he’d grown up in or answer questions about why he’d left. But maybe Celeste wasn’t like most people. “The country.”
“I always wanted to live in the country,” she said. “I don’t know why, but even though I’m a born-and-bred city girl, I always felt like something—God, maybe—was calling me to live in the country. When I was little, my parents used to rent this summer house, surrounded by nothing but trees and fields. I
loved it. Then my parents both got cancer and we couldn’t afford it anymore. There were a lot of medical bills. I always told myself that one day I’d save enough to buy my own place outside the city, but Dexter Thomes took all that.” She looked up at him. “You know he stole all my money, too, after I turned him in? Took out multiple loans in my name, stole my identity and utterly destroyed my credit.”
He didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.”
“At least I knew the risk I was taking. I chose to hunt him down and tell the feds what I found. I put myself in his crosshairs. All the other people who had their life savings, college funds and retirement nest eggs stolen didn’t do anything. They just woke up one day to find their lives ruined. I just wish I’d found where he hid the money.” Her hands clenched into tight fists on her lap. “Not to mention it looks like he’s now using his stolen money to pay criminals to come after me.”
Instinctively, his hand reached out and brushed her arm. Her muscles were so tense she might as well have been carved from stone. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe no matter how many criminals he throws at you.”
Something fierce flashed in the depths of her eyes. “And who’s going to stop the next Rod Cormac from dying? Or get those people their money back?”
He didn’t have an answer to that. Then again, he wasn’t sure she was expecting one. After a while, he saw her eyes close and her lips move in silent prayer. He found prayer filing his own core, too.
God, I don’t reckon You and I are on speaking terms. But, please be with Rod’s family and friends right now. Comfort them in their sadness. Please, may no one else die because of Dexter and his crimes. And be there for Celeste, too. Help me keep her safe, protect her from anyone who would want to hurt her and make her dreams for the future still come true.
He’d seen the size of the new apartment he’d be moving her into tomorrow, and it was a long way away from a house in the country. He could still remember the day he’d stopped believing that God called anyone to anything. He’d been eight and had excitedly told his brother, Amos, who was then seventeen, that God had called him to be a cop. And Amos had told him that it wasn’t God—it was his own stubborn willfulness, because he couldn’t be both a cop and Amish.
He turned off the small rural highway onto a larger one. After a while, a large, expansive truck stop came into view. It was teeming with vehicles and several big chain restaurants. He pulled to a stop in a row in the back beside the big blue pickup. He cut the engine. “Now we grab our stuff, switch vehicles and get back on the road.”
They hopped out of the black truck and into the blue one, after he’d done a complete sweep of the vehicle for tracking devices or anything so much as a speck of dust out of place. Thankfully, it was clean. A moment later they were weaving their way back through the crowded parking lot.
The smell of doughnuts and coffee wafted toward them. Normally he’d have taken her in to grab a quick bite before hitting the road again. It was easy to be anonymous in a crowd, and there was no way any criminal organization could have eyes on every single rest stop of the highway, even if they happened to either figure out or guess what direction they were headed. After all, WITSEC expected their marshals to spend just a couple of weeks with witnesses helping them integrate safely into a community and letting them know where to reach help before leaving them to live their new lives. Starting over safely was the goal—not spending the rest of their lives hiding behind a closed door.
Still, something about this particular case and this particular witness gave him pause. If Dexter Thomes had been able to find a WITSEC safe house, was it possible he’d be able to find her in Pittsburgh? It wasn’t like hunkering down behind her computer screen and cutting off all contact with the outside world was going to be an option for Celeste. Hunter had been very clear the plan to ensure her safety involved keeping her off-line. Yes, they’d stop for food, and he’d use that opportunity to introduce her to the idea of watching her own back when he wasn’t going to be there. His gut told him to find somewhere much smaller and more remote. Fortunately, he knew just the place.
Suddenly her fingers grabbed his arm and squeezed so tightly he almost winced.
“We need to go—now.” She pointed with the other hand out the window at what looked like a remote-controlled helicopter hovering behind them. “Because I think we’re being watched by that drone.”
FIVE
The small skeletal machine hovered around the parking lot like a wasp looking for a place to land. She couldn’t spot the person who was controlling it.
“It just looks like a toy.” Jonathan shrugged.
The small device flew until it was almost parallel to the back window. It was only then she realized her fingers were still latched onto his bicep. She let go and pulled her hand back. “It might be a hobby drone, but that doesn’t change the fact people can use them to take video and pictures.”
“You think that toy helicopter is spying on us?” he asked. “Trust me, we weren’t followed and nobody knows we’re here.” Well, when he said it like that she sounded ridiculous. But he didn’t understand technology the way she did. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back on the highway in half a second, and if it follows us, I’ll shoot it out of the sky.”
Was he joking or trying to reassure her? Maybe both. His voice was so dry she couldn’t tell. Moments later they were flying down the highway again. The drone didn’t follow.
“Should we be worried that we haven’t heard from anyone on your team yet?” Celeste asked.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “We’re talking about securing a sprawling location with multiple hostiles and possibly multiple casualties. It will take time. Hunter will want to get all her facts straight before she calls, including confirming Dexter Thomes is still safely tucked away behind bars. Not that I think it’s remotely possible he could’ve broken out of prison without us knowing.”
“So you’re convinced we’re dealing with a Doppelgänger-Dex?” she asked.
He chuckled. “Doppelgänger-Dex is what we’re calling him now?”
“Unless you can think of a better name,” she said. “Though maybe Doppel-Dex for short.”
He laughed again. It was a comforting sound that rumbled from somewhere in the back of his throat. “Well, when the safe house is secured and someone on the team gets in touch, hopefully, they’ll confirm that the real Dexter is still in jail, the man you saw will have been apprehended and we’ll know who he is.”
“Hopefully.” She leaned back against the seat. Her eyes closed. Jonathan Mast seemed to be a good man, and she had to admit there was something about him that made her feel safer than she’d ever imagined being able to feel under the circumstances. But between Doppel-Dex and the hobby drone, it seemed that the US marshal assigned to protect her probably thought she was crazy or at least seeing things.
The tablet full of data she’d gleaned from Dexter’s website sat like a dead weight in her pocket. Were there answers on it? Something that would tell her where the stolen money had gone? If so, she had no idea when or how she’d ever be able to access it.
She hadn’t been online or even been able to check her phone in almost three days and it irked her, like she’d lost a part of herself. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone this long without scrolling through the news or logging into chat groups. She stared out at the endless countryside streaming past her window. All the plants and animals living on her virtual farm would probably be long dead before she could ever log back into it.
Yes, she’d chased down a criminal online and didn’t regret it; however, she’d never imagined the cost would be getting cut off from technology and losing her ability to still do her job. And then there was her money being stolen, and the explosion in the apartment where she’d grown up with her parents, taking with it a lifetime of memories. She’d been left with nothing but borrowed clothes, a tablet full of data t
hat she couldn’t read and the protection of the man sitting beside her.
She cast a sideways glance at him. There was something about him that she just couldn’t put a finger on. It was like some invisible piece of coding had created a glitch in the circuits in her brain. Or a kind of connection that drew her in and made her want to find out more, while also feeling the irksome urge to prove herself to him and to make sure he knew she wasn’t just someone in need of rescuing. She couldn’t begin to identify it or figure out the source code. Maybe it was because her entire life was in his hands. It couldn’t just be how good-looking he was. She’d never thought herself shallow about people’s looks. Although he was definitely handsome.
There was a strength to his body and form that made her think he should be tossing heavy bales of hay into a wagon or a barn, or herding cattle. Yet, whenever his hickory-brown eyes had fallen on her face, there was something protective and hardened in their depths that was all cop. Or if not a cop, then some other profession like a soldier, firefighter or paramedic, who ran into chaos and put their life at risk to rescue others. There was something sad about him, too, and a severity to the lines of his jaw that made her suspect he didn’t smile enough and was in need of a good home-cooked meal.
His hair was properly black, not one of those shades of dark brown that people sometimes mistook it for. It curled slightly, down at the nape of his neck and on top, and she suspected that if he ever let it grow out it would turn into a full head of curls. His trim black beard swept down the strong lines of his jaw and under his chin, like an artist had defined them with charcoal. The eyes that scanned the snowy vista outside were dark and rich brown with black rings around the iris. If someone had ever asked her what she thought of brown, she’d have said she figured it was the least interesting color there was. But not this shade. Not his eyes. No, these eyes seemed to contain a depth that made her think of rich, dark earth.
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