Merline Lovelace – Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover (страница 53)

“What does that tell you?”

He looked at her. “That you’re scared and on the run from some threat that still haunts you. But you’re not running from the law, or your first response wouldn’t have been to call Gage Dalton.”

She nodded stiffly. “Okay.”

“I noticed the security system. You can’t afford it.”

“No,” she admitted.

“I’ve been involved in WITSEC ops overseas.”

“WITSEC?”

“Witness security. Witness protection.”

“Oh...my...God...” She sank onto the rocking chair, arms still tightly wrapped around her.

“All the signs are there for someone who can read them. Which most people can’t. It took me more than a day to figure it out, so don’t worry that you’ve tipped off everyone in the county. I’m sure you haven’t. But it’s the only picture that fits. Am I wrong?”

She shook her head stiffly. “It was that easy?”

“Actually, you made it very hard. Like I said, I didn’t glom on to it immediately. But when I put a few things together, it was the only explanation I could think of. The alternative was to think you’re just crazy, and you’re not crazy, Cory.”

She felt numb, almost out of her own body, with shock. This man had figured her out so fast, and yet he said it had taken him too long. How did that add up?

But if he’d figured it out, how many others had? No one, he said. But could she safely believe it?

“Trust me,” he said, “it wouldn’t occur to anyone not familiar with the protocols. You don’t give anything away.”

“I...find that hard to believe, now.”

“Well, believe it. WITSEC is not the first thing that would occur to anyone about you. It would probably be the last.”

“Why?”

“Because no one would suspect you of being a criminal, even if they suspect you have some secrets.”

“I’m not a criminal!”

“I know that. It’s obvious. And since everyone thinks that only criminals get witness protection, you’re even more covered. Very well covered.”

Her eyes burned and she felt hollow as she looked at him. “What now?” she asked, a bare whisper.

“Well, all I have is a suspicion. But you can choose how to act on it. Call the sheriff, I’ll tell him everything I noticed about the guy. Call the Marshals and they’ll move you again. Or...I can try to protect you until we get something solid.”

She’d already made up her mind she didn’t want to move again. Once was enough. What few tenuous connections she had managed to make here were more than she wanted to sacrifice. She couldn’t face another blank slate in a blank town, couldn’t face having to start all over again, small though her start here had really been. After all, there was Emma, Marsha, Gage, Nate and Marge Tate. While she hadn’t exactly gotten close, she had come to know them a bit. And she discovered she wanted to know them even better.

She raised her eyes to his, resolve steadying her. “I’m not running again.”

He nodded. “I kind of decided the same thing this morning.”

She nodded slowly. “I guess you did.” Her decision made, her muscles began to uncoil slowly, one by one. “I guess I need to tell you the story.”

“Cory, you don’t have to tell me a damned thing. I can work this without knowing. Your secrets can remain your secrets. But I gather, since you didn’t recognize the guy at the store, that he’s not someone you’re afraid of.”

“No. Actually...I saw only one man. The man who killed my husband and shot me.”

“Shot you?” He stopped short.

She nodded, and for some reason she didn’t understand, she opened her robe and tugged her pajama top up enough to reveal the scar across her midriff. “He killed my baby, too.”

He swore, a word she wasn’t used to hearing, and the next thing she knew he’d gathered her up off the chair and was carrying her through the house toward her bedroom. There he laid her down on the queen-size bed, and stretched out beside her. Without another word, he drew her into a close embrace, as if he wanted to surround her with the shield of his body. As if he wanted to shelter her from it all.

But nothing could. She stared blindly at his chin as her head rested on his upper arm, feeling as if a wind had blown through her and left her empty in every way, empty of her past, empty of her hopes and dreams, empty of feeling.

Something in her had died all over again.

In the hollowness that seemed to engulf her, she heard her own voice. It sounded dreamy, disconnected, as if it belonged to someone else and she wasn’t in control. And maybe she wasn’t.

“I didn’t really grieve about the baby,” she heard herself say. “I’d just found out that morning. Not enough time for it to become real.”

“Mmm.” A sound to let her know he was listening, indicating no reaction whatever. She didn’t want a reaction. She couldn’t have handled one just then.

“What was real was that when I woke up from surgery they told me that the only part of Jim I had left was gone, too. I miscarried because of the trauma.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was...I was at the best and brightest point of my life that night. The happiest. I had Jim, we were going to have a baby. Maybe no one is entitled to that much happiness.”

“Everyone is entitled to that kind of happiness.”

“Really? Even you?”

He didn’t answer, his silence speaking volumes.

“We went out for dinner to celebrate the news, came home and...made love. I was so happy I couldn’t even sleep. And then some son of a bitch came through our door and took it all away with a gun.”

He murmured something, but she didn’t try to make it out. She didn’t care. Numbness still wrapped her like cotton wool.

“I saw the man. They couldn’t find him, though, couldn’t identify him. We think...they think...he was working for a drug gang that Jim was about to bring in indictments against. A hired gun, probably. They put me in protection from the instant I got to the hospital. They wouldn’t even let me go to Jim’s funeral.”

His arms tightened a bit, but he said nothing.

“Then, after three months in a safe house, they told me I had to relocate because the word on the street was there was a contract on me because I could identify Jim’s murderer.”

“Not penny-ante criminals then.”

“No. Sometimes I think they were bigger fish than even Jim realized.”

“Maybe so.”

“There wasn’t even a threat beforehand. No warning of any kind. The grand-jury testimony was sealed, the indictments were going to be sealed until they’d rounded everyone up. Maybe there was a leak from somewhere. No one seemed to know. I’ll probably never know.”

“So three months in a safe house, and then the beginning of the journey to nowhere.”

“First, first they did a little plastic surgery. I had a nose job. Just enough to make me look different if anyone had a photo of me. My hair...I have to color it. I wear it differently now. Not big changes.”

“Big enough changes. The nose especially. Minimal change, maximum impact.”

“That’s what they said. Change a nose and you change the whole face.”

“That must have been hard for you.”

“Even now I sometimes jump when I look in a mirror. Anyway, they moved me through three towns before the nose job. After that, it was another six towns. We’d stay for a while, then they’d pack me up and move me again. They said they were making sure nobody could follow me.”

“That’s right.”

“So you’ve done that part, too?”

“I’ve done it all, from the moving to the safe-house protection. Of course, I had the disadvantage of having to protect a couple of really bad guys. Sometimes it seems hardly worth the trouble.”

“But it is, right?”

“If they have enough information, yes. In your case, it would have been an honor.”

She reached up with one hand and touched his chin. At once he tipped his head to look at her. “I hated it.”

“I imagine so.”