Rocky Mountain Revenge

“But you still didn’t know I was here.”

“I looked online, through the archives of the local paper. I saw the announcement last summer about the new teacher. The timing was right, and I thought it might be you.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“Not so easy. There are a lot of layers between you and the feds. Layers I helped design.”

“I forgot you started out as an accountant.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Not the picture most people have of the rough-and-tough federal agent.”

He’d been hired straight out of university to work as a forensic accountant for the Bureau. Following the money put away more criminals than shootouts. But then they’d needed someone to go undercover in the Giardino family and he’d volunteered, wanting a change from sitting behind a desk. He hadn’t counted on getting in so deep. He hadn’t counted on Elizabeth.

“How are you doing?” he asked. “Do you like it here?”

“I don’t dislike it. The people are friendly. I love the children.”

He tried to imagine her surrounded by first graders. He’d never thought of her as the mothering type, yet the image seemed to suit this new, quieter side of her. “It’s very different from the life you lived before,” he said.

“I’m very different.”

“Yeah.” A person didn’t go through the kinds of things they’d been through without some change. “How are you doing, really?” he asked.

“How do you think?” Her voice was hard, the accusation in her eyes like acid poured on his wounds. “It’s hard. And exhausting, being afraid all the time.”

“You don’t feel safe?”

“You of all people should know the answer to that. You know my father—he’ll do anything to get his way. And he meant it when he said he would see that I was dead. If you found me, he can too. Why did you come here?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Well, you’ve seen me. Now you can leave.” She stood, and cinched the robe tighter around her waist.

He rose also. “Eli—Anne. Listen to me. I need your help.”

“For what?”

“I need you to help me find your father.”

“Why? You said you’re no longer with the Bureau.”

“No. But if we find him he’ll go back to prison—and they won’t let him escape this time.”

“I can’t help you. All I want is to stay as far away from him as possible.”

“Don’t you want to put an end to this? Don’t you want to be safe again?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about finding your father and making sure he’s punished the way he deserves.”

“Revenge?” She spat the word, like a curse. “You want revenge?”

“Call it that if you want. Or call it justice. He’s killed too many people. Someone has to stop him.”

“Well, that someone won’t be me.”

“I’m not asking you to risk anything. I just want you to talk to me. To tell me where he might be hiding.”

“I already gave you everything I could. Why do you want more?”

She had given him everything—her body and her beauty and a willingness to risk that had made his own bravery seem a sham in comparison. “I need your help,” he said again.

“You’re as bad as he is—you only want to use people to get what you want.” Without another glance at him she left the room, the door to the bedroom clicking softly shut behind her.

He stared after her, feeling sick. Maybe her words hurt so much because they were too close to the truth. He did want to use her. She was the only link he had to Sam Giardino. The only way he could do what he had to do.

Chapter Two

Anne leaned against the closed bedroom door, her ear pressed to the wood, listening. The silence in the house was so absolute she imagined she could hear Jake’s heart beating—though of course it was only the frantic pounding in her own chest. Footsteps crossed the room, moving away from her, the heavy, deliberate echo of each step moving through her like the aftershock of an earthquake. She bit her lip to keep from shouting at him not to leave. Of course she wanted him to leave. She didn’t want any part of the kind of danger he represented.

The front door closed with a solid click. She held her breath, and heard the muffled roar of a car engine coming to life. The sound faded and she was alone. She moved away from the door and sagged onto the bed, waiting for the tears that wouldn’t come. She’d cried them all out that night at the hotel, believing he was dead, knowing her life had ended.

Jake. One of the other agents at the Bureau had laughed when she’d called him that. “You mean Jacob? No one ever calls him Jake.”

No one but her. And everyone in her family. It was the way he’d first introduced himself to them. His name—but not his name. Like everything else about him, he’d built a lie around a kernel of truth. He wasn’t really a low-level official with the Port Authority, wanting to get in on the Giardino family business. He was an undercover operative for the FBI. Not even a real cop, but an accountant.

By the time she’d learned all this it had been too late. She had already been in love with him.

So what was he doing back in her life now? Hadn’t he done enough to ruin her? Before he came along she’d been happy. She’d had everything—looks, money, friends, family. She wasn’t an idiot—she’d known her father didn’t always operate on the right side of the law. He’d probably done some very bad things. But those things didn’t concern her. They didn’t touch the perfect life she’d built for herself.

Jake had made her take off the blinders and see the painful truth about who her father was.

About who she really was.

She pushed herself off the bed, pushing away the old fear and despair with the movement. Not letting herself stop to think, she dressed, grabbed her keys and headed out the door. She couldn’t sit in this house one more minute or she’d go crazy.

She drove back into town, to the little gym one block off Main. A few people looked up from the free weights and treadmills as she passed. She nodded in greeting but didn’t stop to talk. She changed into her workout gear, found her gloves and headed for the heavy bag and began throwing jabs and uppercuts, bouncing on her toes the way the gym’s owner, a former boxer named McGarrity, had shown her.

She’d taken up boxing when, shortly after her arrival in Rogers, she’d come to the gym for what was billed as a ladies’ self-defense class. Turned out McGarrity’s idea of self-defense was teaching women to box. Anne had fallen in love with the sport the first time she landed a solid punch. She’d never been in a position where she had to fight back before. Now, at least, she was prepared to do so.

She’d worked up a sweat and was breathing hard when a woman’s voice called her name across the room.

Maggie O’Neal taught second grade in the classroom across the hall from Anne. A curvy woman with brown, curly hair, dressed now in pink yoga pants and a matching hoodie, she was the closest thing Anne had to a best friend. “Maybe I should take up boxing,” Maggie said. “You look so healthy and...dewy.”

Anne laughed. “I’m sweating like a pig, you mean.”

“It looks good on you.”

“What are you doing here?”