Anne pointed right. “Telluride is that way.”
“How are you holding up?” he asked. Her hair was disheveled and
she wore the same clothes she’d had on last night, reeking of smoke. She had to
be tired and hungry, yet she hadn’t made one complaint. He couldn’t imagine
Elizabeth enduring such discomfort gracefully. She’d been used to living like a
princess and taken for granted she should be treated like one.
With all that finery and privilege stripped away, Jake could
see that Anne was made of stronger stuff.
“I’m fine.” She offered a weary smile. “Before we reach
Telluride, we’ll go through New Richmond.”
“What’s in New Richmond?”
“Not much. But there’s a convenience store where we can stop
for gas and coffee, and to clean up a little.” She leaned forward and touched
his cheek. “You’ve got a smudge of soot.”
The gesture was innocent; she’d leaned back and was looking out
the car window again almost before he’d realized what was happening. But the
sensation of her cool fingers against his cheek lingered, calling forth all the
other times she’d touched him, sometimes not so innocently.
Enough,
he cautioned himself, and
he turned the car right onto the highway. He needed Anne’s help to find her
father, and he wanted to protect her, but he shouldn’t waste time trying to
recreate something that had been built on lies and fantasy. They both lived in a
harsher, if more honest, world now.
Half an hour later, he pulled the car alongside the gas pumps
at the Gas and Ready in New Richmond. She went inside while he filled the car,
and then he made his way to the men’s room, where he did his best with soap and
paper towels to make himself look presentable. He needed a shave and a change of
clothes, but this would have to do.
When he emerged from the restroom, she was waiting. She handed
him a cup of coffee. “Do you still drink it black?” she asked.
He nodded. She’d washed the last of the makeup from her face
and pulled her hair back into a sleek ponytail. She looked very young and
vulnerable. The thought that someone out there was trying to kill her made him
shaky with anger.
“They have breakfast sandwiches, too,” she said. “And we should
get these.” She handed him a dark blue bundle of cloth.
He set his cup on the counter and unfolded a thick sweatshirt,
and read the slogan printed on the front.
Telluride—Higher,
Steeper, Deeper
.
“I got this one for me.” She held up a pink shirt, printed with
the words
Official Ski Bunny.
“I guess this will help us look like tourists,” he said.
“At least we’ll be warmer, and have one thing that doesn’t
smell like smoke.”
He paid for their purchases, thankful he’d still had his wallet
and credit cards when he’d crawled from the burning cabin. “We’ll get a room in
Telluride and shower.” He rubbed his sandpapery chin. “And I need to shave.”
“I hope you have a big expense account for this little
expedition.” She settled into the passenger seat and fastened her seat belt.
“Hotel rooms in Telluride don’t come cheap.”
“I think I can manage.” He’d remained at full pay all the
months he’d been recuperating, the money piling up in the bank with no way for
him to spend it. And he had savings; he didn’t care if he had to spend every
penny to make sure Sam Giardino ended up back behind bars.
“We’ll need some more clothes, too. Those won’t be cheap,
either.” They turned onto the highway once more, the view of snowcapped
mountains against the pink clouds of sunrise worthy of any tourist postcard.
“Telluride used to be a sleepy little hippie hangout,” she said. “But now it’s
home to the rich and famous.”
And the infamous, he hoped. “We have to have new clothes,” he
agreed. “It’s pretty hard to sneak up on someone when you reek like a
campfire.”
“Good point. I know a chichi thrift store on the main drag that
won’t break your bank.”
He laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Elizabeth would have never shopped at a thrift store,” he
said.
“Elizabeth’s dead. You need to remember that.” The finality of
her words sent a chill through him. Of course Elizabeth was dead. And he was
after the man who had destroyed her. The loss had been a tragic one, though he
couldn’t help thinking now that maybe the woman beside him was stronger and
wiser than the pretty, naive socialite he’d once loved.
They drove on in silence. Maybe she was as mired in thoughts of
the past and what might have been as he was. But after a few miles he became
aware that they weren’t alone on the highway anymore. He checked the rearview
mirror and saw a black SUV, windows heavily tinted to prevent any view of driver
or passengers, approaching at a fast clip. “We might be in for trouble,” he
said.
“What is it?”
“I think we’re being followed, and this time they’re not even
trying to hide it.”
Chapter Nine
Anne stared at the black vehicle barreling toward their car. It was driving much too fast for the narrow, winding highway, but the driver expertly negotiated the sharp curves, and the powerful engine appeared to manage the steep grades without strain. “Are you sure they’re after us?” she asked.
“No, I’m not sure.” Jake pulled his gun from beneath his shirt and laid it on the console between them. “But there’s no one else out this time of morning, and I don’t like the looks of them. If they pass us by, no harm done, but I want to be ready.”
“Of course.” There was something sinister about the vehicle, with its blacked-out windows and swift approach. She glanced to the side of the road, where the world fell away into a steep, rocky canyon. On Jake’s side of the car, sheer rock walls rose beside the road. They were stuck on the side of a mountain, with a swiftly approaching enemy who would probably like nothing better than to knock them off into the abyss below.
“They won’t shoot us,” she said. “They’ll try to make it look like an accident. They’ll try to run us over the side.”
“I think so.” He gripped the steering wheel with both hands, and constantly shifted his gaze from the road to the rearview mirror and back. “I’m going to do my best to keep that from happening.”
“What do you need me to do?” she asked.
“Tighten your seat belt, and if they start shooting, duck.”
“I could try to shoot at them.”
“Don’t waste ammunition unless they get really close.”
She picked up the pistol and checked that there was a bullet in the chamber. “Have you shot much before?” he asked.
“After I came to Rogers, someone sent me a gun in the mail. I think it was probably Patrick, though he wouldn’t admit to it.”
“Your father didn’t teach you to shoot?”
“Absolutely not. Women weren’t supposed to concern themselves with that sort of thing. That’s what the muscle was for.”
“What did you do with the gun Thompson sent you?”
“I took it to the local shooting range and practiced, but firing at a moving vehicle is a lot different from hitting a target on the range.”
“It is. But if they succeed in running us off the road and then come after us, you might be able to hit one of them.”
“If they run us off this road, I don’t think either one of us will be shooting anyone.” She took in the steep drop-off to her right and shuddered.
“Good point.” The Subaru sped up and the passing scenery became a blur of gray rock, blue sky and white snow. Anne clutched the armrest and bit her lip to keep from crying out as they careened around one hairpin turn after the next, all the while steadily climbing the mountain. The screech of protesting brakes tore into the early morning silence as the SUV followed, skidding around the turns. “He’s got a higher center of gravity,” Jake said. “He can’t corner as well as we can.”
His logical analysis of such an emotionally charged situation made her feel calmer. But then, she reminded herself, Jake was trained as an accountant to measure evidence and sift facts. Focusing on the things he knew, rather than the things he felt, allowed him to remain in control of an impossible situation.
She took a deep breath, and tried to follow Jake’s example. But the first fact that came to her mind offered little comfort. “They’ve got a more powerful engine than we do,” she said. “They’re gaining on us.” One glance over her shoulder proved the SUV was quickly closing the gap. Sunlight glinted off the windshield, making it impossible to see who was behind the wheel. Somehow, that made the situation more menacing, even though she doubted she’d recognize one of her father’s many “associates.” When she was growing up, they had been a series of faceless, muscular men who accompanied her father everywhere; they’d meant nothing to her.
The Subaru lurched as the back wheels skidded on the gravel shoulder. Anne shrieked, and clutched the dashboard with one hand, the fingers of her other hand digging into the armrest. “Slow down!” she pleaded. “We’re going to run off the road.”
He eased off on the gas pedal a little—enough that she felt she could breathe again. “We can’t outrun them,” he said. “So I’m going to slow down and see what they do.”
“You’re going to let them catch up with us?”
“They won’t expect us to stop trying to outrun them. I’m hoping to catch them off guard.”
“All right.” She had to trust his judgment on this; she had no one else to turn to.
He eased off the gas and the Subaru slowed to forty, then thirty miles an hour. Anne watched in the side mirror as the SUV raced toward them, closing the gap between the two cars in an alarmingly short time. “They’re going to ram us!” she screamed.
“No, they’re not.” He wrenched the steering wheel to the left, sending the Subaru shooting into the next lane, which was thankfully empty of oncoming traffic. The SUV flew past, a blur of black paint and red taillights.
Jake turned the wheel hard right, ramming the front end of the Subaru into the left rear quarter panel of the SUV. The SUV slid onto the gravel shoulder, sending up a rooster tail of mud and rock. The Subaru fishtailed wildly; Jake leaned forward, struggling to maintain control. “Hang on!” he shouted.
The car veered wildly to the left, narrowly avoiding a collision with the rock wall. The SUV slid along the right shoulder, only one wheel still in contact with the pavement. Anne watched in horror as the bulky black vehicle swayed, then began to topple, momentum taking it over the side. Time seemed to slow as the SUV plummeted, sending up sparks as it struck rock, bounced up, then tumbled out of sight.
Jake pulled the Subaru to the shoulder of the road and set the parking brake, but left the engine running. “Stay in the car,” he ordered, and opened the driver’s door.
She ignored the command, and followed him out of the car. On shaking legs, she walked along the shoulder of the road to the place where the SUV had gone over. Black skid marks cut into the gravel; a mirror torn from the side of the car rested on the rocks a few feet below. Trees blocked their view of the wrecked vehicle, but a plume of smoke marked the site of the crash. “Should we call for help?” she asked. “Do you think anyone is alive?”
“We’ll call at the first place we come to with a phone,” he said. “Meanwhile, we’d better get out of here.”
She hugged her arms tightly across her stomach, fighting a chill that had nothing to do with the air temperature. “We can’t just leave, can we?”
His eyes met hers, his gaze hard. “Do you want to answer a bunch of questions for the police?”
Questions that had no right answer, starting with “Who are you?” and “What are you doing with this man?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t want to get involved with the police.”
“Come on, then.” He took her elbow and led her back to the Subaru.
He didn’t say anything for several minutes after they drove away, and she could find no words. Finally, as they neared a scenic overlook outside of Telluride, he pulled in and shut off the engine. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She laced her fingers together in her lap, as if she might squeeze all her turbulent emotions into a ball in the palms of her hands and keep them confined there, with no danger of them rocketing out of control or overwhelming her. “I think it’s all just beginning to hit me,” she said. “The man you killed at my house in Rogers—DiCello—I remember him at my sixteenth birthday party. He wished me happy birthday. I’d forgotten all about that, and it came back to me this morning. And now he’s dead.”
“Because he tried to kill you.”
“Yes, but...” She swallowed hard. “I don’t think anyone is ever prepared for the idea that someone else—especially a parent—wants you to die. It’s too bizarre.”
“So is starting life over with a new name and a new story, trying to pretend the person you were never existed.”
“I thought I was getting used to that.” She stared out the window at the view of snow-capped mountains against a cobalt sky. So different from the jutting spires of city skyscrapers that had formed the backdrop of her old life. “When you go into witness protection, they give you a little training,” she continued. “The counselors tell you to think of your new life as just that—a rebirth, a new beginning. They want you to focus on the positives and all the new possibilities, and not what you left behind. I thought I was handling it pretty well, until you came along.”
“Because I brought all the memories of your old life back?”
“Because you brought back the memories of what happened at the end—why I had to hide in the first place.” She studied his face, and curled her hands into fists to keep from reaching out and touching him, to reassure herself that he was indeed flesh and blood, and not a hallucination of her fevered imagination.
“I thought about you every day while I was in the hospital, and during rehab.” He spoke low, the roughness in his voice catching at something in her chest and pulling. “I tried to get my friends at the Bureau to tell me where you were, but all I could get out of them was that you were safe. When I was well enough to be on my own, I started looking. I found the obituary for Elizabeth and figured out you must be in WitSec. It took a few more months of digging to find you after that—and only because I knew exactly what to look for.”
“Was it awful—after the shooting? You haven’t talked much about your injuries.”
“It’s not the most fascinating subject. I had some liver damage, shattered bones in my legs, pneumonia from a bullet in my lung. It took a lot longer to get back on my feet than I’d have liked, but I was motivated. And I was lucky. I trained for triathlons before I went undercover, so I was in good physical shape.”
“I thought you were dead. Knowing my father had killed you was the final straw—the thing that turned me against him.”
“I did die, in a way. Jake West died. Agent Westmoreland died. I had to learn to walk again, but I also had to learn to live a different kind of life. A life without you.”
She tried to look away, but he reached up to brush her cheek, and gently turned her to face him once more. She raised her eyes to meet his; he was the same man she’d once loved so passionately, and yet he was not the same. In his eyes she saw a pain that touched her, and a new hardness that made her tremble.
He kissed her, his lips silencing her gasp. She closed her eyes and he deepened the kiss, his hand cradling her cheek, the tenderness of that touch, even more than the caress of his lips, breaking down some barrier within her. She sighed and leaned toward him, craving the closeness that had been denied her so long. Eyes closed, lips pressed to his, she gave herself up to memories of the intimacy they’d shared, and love she’d been sure would last forever.
The wail of a siren ripped apart the early morning silence. She shuddered, and pushed him away. “This is wrong,” she said.
“Because I lied to you about my real identity?” His face was still very close to hers, so close she could see the individual bristles of the stubble along his jaw, and the fine lines of tension that radiated from the corners of his eyes. “I don’t see how I could have done anything differently.”
“It’s wrong because neither one of us is the person we used to be. We don’t even know each other.”
“I know you’re still as brave and beautiful as you ever were. And you understand loss and sacrifice. Those are hard lessons to learn, but in the end they make you a stronger, and hopefully a more compassionate, person.”
He made her sound so noble and virtuous, like a saint, not a woman. “We don’t want the same things,” she said. “You want revenge. I just want to be left alone.”
“You’ll never be left alone until your father is behind bars again.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can’t know anything, except that someone—probably your father—wants us dead and I have to do what I can to stop it.”
He leaned back against the driver’s seat and she breathed a little easier, relieved to shift the subject away from impossible emotions. “I can’t understand how they keep finding us,” she said. “I thought DiCello recognized my picture from the Telluride paper. But how did someone follow us to the cabin—and then find us again on the road? It’s as if they have someone telling them our every move.”
His expression hardened. “Not someone. Some
thing
.” He shoved open the car door and climbed out.
“What are you doing?” she asked, but he ignored her. She exited the car in time to see him lie on the grimy snow and slide under the car.
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.” He emerged from beneath the car and stood, holding up a black plastic box about the size of a deck of cards. A green light glowed at one end of the device.
“What is that?” she asked.
“It’s a GPS tracking device. It allows the person who planted it to track your movements—or the movements of the car. DiCello must have planted it before he entered your house.”
“But he was there to kill me.”
“Yes, but he probably had orders to plant the tracking device as insurance—in case you managed to get away.”
She stared at the small black object, feeling sick. “What do we do now? Destroy it?”
“If we destroy it, they’ll know we’re on to them. We need to think of something else.”
“What?”
A second emergency vehicle raced by, siren blaring. “Someone must have seen the smoke from the accident and reported it,” he said.
She drew hands into the sleeves of her sweatshirt and hugged her arms across her stomach. “We have to get rid of that thing.”
“Yes. And I think I know the perfect place. Get back in the car.”
She returned to the passenger seat and had scarcely fastened her seat belt before he turned the car around and headed back the way they’d come. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“You’ll see.”
As they neared the place where their pursuers had run off the road, they saw the flashing lights of emergency vehicles. Jake parked on the side of the road behind a Colorado Highway Patrol SUV. “Wait here,” he said.
He got out and walked alongside the patrol vehicle. An officer approached. “Sir, you need to leave,” he said.
“I just wondered if there was anything I could do to help.” He craned his neck to see down into the canyon, a nosy tourist drawn to the excitement.