Winsor, Linda (12 page)

"Then
it would be extremely tragic for you." Victor needn't elaborate. The
silence on the other end told him his informant understood completely.
"You know the information we'll need. Don't call without it."

"No,
sir." The connection went dead.

Behind
Victor, the sun broke through the morning cloud cover, reflecting his much
improved humor. Now his denied urge to squeeze the life out of the little fool
heartbeat by heartbeat lived again. Victor could almost smell the stench of
fear seeping through Majors' pores—the fear that precipitated the last breath
of a man who looked death in the face.

The
leather of the chair creaked as Victor swung his attention back to the habitat.
A disappointed sigh escaped his lips. He'd missed the kill. The rabbit was
gone. Satisfied, the snake constricted the muscles beneath the diamond and oval
patterns of its brown and cream skin around the unresisting remains.

Survival
of the fittest. Animal or human, the same rule always applied. Which was why
Victor used his money and power to stay fitter than the next man—or woman, as
the case may be. He looked forward to the same satisfaction as his pet, growing
stronger on the weakness of his prey. At this point, the money was secondary

Shep
pulled his Jeep headfirst in front of the sheriff's office, scattering a small
puddle left over from the early morning shower. The sun had come out shortly
after the rain and glared off the wet road the entire drive into town.
Unaccustomed to wearing sunglasses—they only got in a cowboy's way—he winced
from the blinding light that worked its way under the brim of his hat. That and
guilt over the searching looks Deanna had given him across the breakfast table
had worried the fire out of him.

When
he'd emerged from the shower first thing that morning, fresh dressed and
shaved, Shep had found his tousled house-guest preparing breakfast in his robe.
As much as he'd seen Aunt Sue in the same getup on many a morning, it had never
hit him like a cross between a kick in the belly and the flu. Worse, he almost
liked it.

Nothing
he said sounded right after the lie he told about going into town for some
forgotten supplies, so he'd stuck to little more than polite conversation. He
insisted the omelet she'd made was delicious, even if he'd left part of it
untouched. And it was. It just didn't go well with the casual deceit sometimes
required by his former profession.

Shep
would like to think he fooled her, but the half-frightened expression on her
face as she stood in the door and saw him off left him unsure. The only thing
he was sure of was that the sooner this was over, the better.

"There's
our boy now, right on time," Clyde Barrett announced when Shep entered his
office to the eighth strike of the courthouse clock.

"Clyde,"
Shep acknowledged, waiting for his eyes to adjust to being inside.

His
chair scraping on the hardwood floor, Clyde got up and cleared his throat.
"Shepard Jones, meet I.S. Special Agent Voorhees. He's the fella handling
your little gal's case."

"Not
my
little gal." Did Clyde say
Voorhees?

At
Shep's disclaimer, the agent stepped into his line of sight. "Long time,
no see, buddy. How's the knee?"

Shep
heard Clyde's introduction as well as recognized the agent extending his hand
to him, but he had a hard time believing either. Gearing down to avoid the ice
patch instinct of what lay ahead, Shep turned without a word and hung his
Stetson on the paneled wall next to the door. Unlike the rest of him, his mind
was in overdrive, jerking him into the past where his last encounter with Jay
Voorhees lay incredibly fresh.

There
was Jay, years younger, hovering over Shep's stretcher as the paramedics loaded
him into the ambulance with his knee blown to bits.

A
fierce anger Shep had thought long buried flashed over, curling his fingers
into tight fists against his palms as he stared at Voorhees's outstretched
hand. From beyond the heated turmoil, a voice reminded him that he'd forgiven
the man. It had been part of his healing process.

"It
reminds me it's there now and then," Shep replied, completing the
handshake out of polite obligation, nothing more.

He
had
forgiven Voorhees, hadn't he? It wasn't as if Jay had intended to
end Shep's career and engagement. The ambitious agent had simply pushed the
envelope of risk, ignoring Shep's instinct and protest. It had all been the
result of the same-old, same-old interdepartmental competition common to
different agencies forced to work with each other.

Shep
was to protect the DEA witness against a major drug trafficker. As head of the
DEA investigation, Voorhees was Shep's senior, there to make certain the U.S.
Marshal succeeded in his assignment. Shep's wariness of the forced partnership
had been justified by too little shared information and too much fervor to
advance a career.

"You
two know each other then?" Clyde remarked in surprise.

"We've
worked together before." Shep shifted a riveting look back to Voorhees.
"International Services, eh? You've been moving up the ladder."
Voorhees had been a Special Agent assigned to the Intelligence Center in the
District of Columbia, where Shep worked. His loose-cannon approach evidently
hadn't hurt his career.

"I'm
in the highest percentile for conviction rate. That kind of record speaks for
itself," Voorhees answered without a modicum of modesty

"Well,
I'm glad to have played my part in your success." Shep's wry drawl sent
his memory fast-tracking back to the past, defying his notion that he'd let it
go and let God.

The
desk clerk had clearly been out of his element when they checked in at the
Interstate Motor Lodge after a twelve-hour drive. Although reservations had
been made and paid for by the agency under their assumed names, the clerk had
to start the check-in procedure over three times. Then he had trouble finding
the right keys, the whole while wiping sweaty palms on his shirt and saying he
was new at the job.

While
his explanation seemed reasonable, it just hadn't felt right. As a precaution,
Shep suggested they just go elsewhere on their own when he returned to the car,
but his partner nixed the idea. Voorhees joked that if it were a setup, they'd
catch the hit men too. At least Shep had thought the agent was joking at the
time.

That
night Shep slept in a chair behind the only entrance with one eye and both ears
open—a move that saved their lives. He'd heard or rather sensed their stealthy
approach in time to send the witness into the bathroom with Voorhees. When the
intruders burst in, SWAT style, semiautomatics firing, Shep took them both out
from behind, but not before a ricocheting bullet caught him in the knee. Two
dead men and hospitalization for Shep later, the witness testified, putting a
major hitter in the drug world away. Voorhees got a commendation and a
promotion. Shep got a commendation and a disability discharge.

"Oh,
I've earned a few on my own since then," Voorhees said, pulling Shep back
to the present. "Heckuva bad break for you though."

Voorhees
was as full of himself now as back then. Shep maintained indifference to hide
his quagmire of emotions. "Goes with the job, I guess."

Clyde
broke the awkward silence that followed. "Can I get you some coffee,
Shep?"

"No
thanks. Let's just take care of Agent Voorhees's business and let me get back
to my own. So what's the story on Deanna Manetti, Voorhees?"

"Maybe
embezzlement, maybe money laundering, maybe poor taste in lovers... or maybe
all of the above."

Shep
took the first two in professional stride but mentally tripped over the word
lovers. It wasn't as if it was news that Deanna had made a bad choice in men,
but the shabbiness implied by Voorhees's word choice didn't fit Shep's
perception of her. She needed help, not persecution.

"...car
bomb, but forensics found no body," Voorhees went on. "My guess is,
he double-crossed the Canadian cartel and faked his death to throw them off his
trail."

"Whoa,"
Shep said, throwing up his hands to gain time to catch up. He was
not
Deanna's
keeper... not now.
"Cartel?
Deanna was laundering money for a drug
cartel?" Beyond skeptical, Shep was incredulous. "She hasn't got a
dollar's worth of change to her name, unless it's stashed somewhere else. I
flipped through her purse."

Had
she lied about being strapped, too? Considering her state when he found Deanna,
she hadn't. If she'd had money, a woman like her would have lit out for
anywhere but Buffalo Butte.

"You
can take the man out of the job, but you can't take the Marshal out of the
man." Coming from anyone else, Voorhees's observation might have been
flattering. "But we checked the car this morning... nothing."

The
agent helped himself to some of Clyde's coffee from the pot that always brewed
next to the restroom door. Three packets of sugar later, not to mention enough
creamer to make latte an inadequate description of his concoction, he stirred
it as though lost in thought until it threatened to brim over the side.

Too
much thought,
Shep
noted with suspicion. If his instinct was right, the prolonged pause in the
conversation meant Voorhees was already withholding information of some sort.
Most likely he was deciding what more Shep needed to know and what he didn't.
Interagency distrust at its best, Shep thought, taking in every nuance of the
agent's behavior and assessing it.

"Someone
ransacked her place while she was being questioned by the local police,"
Voorhees said at last.

"Maybe
it was the boyfriend." Shep found Voorhees's word
lover
too
distasteful to use. "Which would prove right there that she was just a
dupe being used by him. Any prints?"

"Place
was clean as a whistle," the agent told him. "I don't think Majors
was that professional. I mean, the guy blew up a car with no body"

"At
least he didn't kill someone innocent." Substituting a body would have
bought him a little more time to operate if the people he swindled thought he
was dead—time for him to split with the money, while authorities and his
cronies chased after Deanna. No wonder she'd bolted. She must have been
frightened out of her wits with the law
and
unknown thugs after her.

"Are
we talking a small-time disgruntled perp or a cartel looking for her?"
Shep asked.

"Or
the lover," Voorhees said. "But there are implications in the
investigation that we're talking big-time drug operators and money laundering.
Personally, I vote for the lover."

"Who's
to say Majors didn't take the money and isn't living the high life in a Mexican
resort or some other remote paradise? That makes more sense to—"

"A
man matching C. R. Majors' height and build was picked up by a security camera
in Manetti's apartment building
after
his alleged death. Blasted hat hid
his face, but my bet is on him. The cartel would have taken out the camera
first. It's not like it was hidden."

Going
to Deanna's place after the fact? Something must have gone wrong, if Majors
intended to frame her for his crime. Otherwise, he'd have been nuts to tarry
after his
accident.
"Okay, so he's definitely not a
professional."

"A
greedy little white-collar twerp," Voorhees agreed. "He used Deanna
Manetti to pull off this caper and left her holding the bag—quite literally, we
think."

Shep
wrestled against accepting that Deanna was knowingly involved. "So
something went wrong with his plan to frame her and make off with the
money."

"No,
evidence points to her being part of the scheme and planning to follow him
later with one of the tickets he bought to the Caribbean."

It
wasn't making sense. Something had to have gone wrong. "Did he use his
ticket?"

Voorhees
shook his head. "That's why we think he's still around somewhere and that
she's our key to finding Majors, not to mention our only link to the
money."

And
the drug ring's only link. Majors was penny-ante, but the involvement of a drug
cartel sent a chill raking down Shep's spine. Deanna's situation grew more
ominous by the minute. Greed usually led to foolhardiness. Majors not only
pulled the wrong tiger's tail, but he was taking Deanna along for the ride.

"So
why don't you just take her into custody? Why go through all this with
me?" Shep acted like he couldn't see what was coming. The ice patch of his
direct involvement in the case was widening by the second, and there were no
guardrails.

"Because
we want him more than we want her. She wouldn't tell the police anything before
anyway... claims she made the deposits to the account as a favor, that she had
no idea what was going on."

"So
Deanna's just bait." History was repeating itself. Voorhees was still
ignoring the bird in the hand for more in the bush. "Majors can finger the
ringleaders in the cartel, if they don't take him out first."

Voorhees
grinned. "That's the big picture, Jones... which is where
you
come
in."

Shep
clenched his jaw, bracing as he hit the slippery slope in his mind. He'd
already heard more than he wanted to know, the momentum toward the point of no
return.

"I
understand the woman is stranded at your place until her car is repaired,
right?"

With
a short nod, Shep pulled up a chair and straddled it, leaning on its back with
folded arms. "And you want me to keep a lid on things until this Majors
tries to contact Deanna." He wasn't going to go along with it, but he was
curious. "Just how do you expect him to find her? You can't possibly
believe they chose this little fly speck on the map as a meeting place...
if
she is even guilty of complicity."

Which
is something Shep seriously doubted. For all her smarts, Deanna Manetti had a
gullible side. It was more dangerous to someone like him than any combination
of beauty and brains. Shep had been called to aid and protect the innocent, to
champion justice. It was an inherent part of him, even if he wasn't quite as
idealistic as he'd been when he entered the Marshals.

"No,"
the agent acknowledged, "but Majors knows where she is—or at least where
her car is."