Protecting His Witness

Kasey dropped Zack off in a less than upscale part of town, in front of a motel. The area brought back memories of where she’d first stayed right after she’d staged her own death.

The idea to escape that had occurred to her the moment she’d come across an unclaimed Jane Doe who’d died at her hospital. It was almost like a sign telling her this was the way out. God forgive her, she’d managed to get the body out of the hospital’s morgue in the wee hours of the night. She’d left it in the master bedroom of her house, taken care to dispose of the teeth so that a complete identification would be impossible. After taking a few possessions that were important to her, more for sentiment than for value, she’d torched the house where she and Jim had lived.

It killed her to do it, not just because she was leaving behind a life she’d struggled to make for herself, a life where she’d been truly happy, but because, to protect her grandmother, she had to die.

Six months later, she’d assumed that the furor over her death and the case had died down. Guessing that Jim’s murderer felt more secure, and that she was no longer a threat, she’d mailed her grandmother a postcard with a carousel horse on it.

There’d been no message written on it, no return address and she had taken great pains to mail it a good fifty miles away from where she was actually staying. But she was fairly confident that her grandmother would make the connection and understand what the postcard implied. That she was still alive. Her grandmother had always loved carousels and had a small, precious collection of figurines depicting all sorts of different carousel horses. She’d given her grandmother several of the pieces herself, scraping together what money she could spare while wrestling with the staggering cost of putting herself through medical school.

As Zack got out of her car and shut the door, she realized today was her grandmother’s birthday.

The ache in her chest came out of nowhere. With all her heart, Kasey wished she could at least pick up the phone to say happy birthday. But she couldn’t risk it. For all she knew, the man she was running from, the man who had paid off the police detective to kill Jim and to try to kill her, might have even placed a tap on her grandmother’s phone.

Anything was possible. And if he had, then all her plans, all these long, isolated months that saw her go from one place to another, afraid to even make eye contact, afraid to get close to anyone, would have been for nothing.

Zack leaned down to look into the car one last time. “Thanks again.”

She brushed off his words and nodded at his side. “Get that looked at as soon as possible,” she told him, shifting the vehicle into Reverse.

And then she took off.

He stood for a moment, watching her go down the street. Wondering what secrets she had. He would have bet his life she had more than her share.

But all that was for another time. Right now, he needed to check in, to let the captain know what had happened. After circling the multi-unit structure, he went toward the back. His room was on the second floor, facing the unpaved rear parking lot.

Zack tried to pull his thoughts together. He had to admit that he wasn’t as clearheaded as he would have liked. Not because he was weak from the loss of blood, he was dealing with that. Without being vain, he prided himself on being pretty damn healthy and strong. No, his brain wasn’t as focused as it normally was because the woman who had taken him in had really aroused his curiosity—among other things.

He wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Or her.

Letting himself into the rented room, he nearly sauntered right in, then thought to take an extra wide step over the threshold so as not to disturb the flour he’d purposely left there.

He went straight to the closet and pulled out another shirt. Peeling off the one he had on, he glanced down at the bandages. She’d been thorough all right, wrapping them securely around his rib cage. His ribs were sore where the other man had kicked him, but he was pretty sure they weren’t cracked. For one thing, it didn’t hurt to breathe. It was just sore. What did hurt was the area where his wound was.

He was lucky to have found Kasey rather than someone else who would have freaked out and left him to bleed to death. Someday his luck was going to run out. He just hoped it wouldn’t happen for a few years yet.

“Seales is dead,” he was saying into his cell phone less than ten minutes later. After changing, he’d made a quick sweep of the area to make sure that nothing was moved and that no one had entered via the window. There were items he’d left seemingly scattered about, items that he would have been able to tell if they’d been moved even a fraction of an inch.

Nothing had been touched. And the thin layer of flour along the threshold had been undisturbed. No one had walked through it—although he almost had, he thought with a rueful smile. That had been the first indication that Kasey Madigan had messed with his mind.

The deep, gravelly voice on the other end said, “Yeah, I know.”

He should have known. Mike Valdez was always on top of everything. At times, he had a feeling the man didn’t sleep, he just changed his batteries every so often. Valdez’s dedication to the job had cost him two wives and a son.

“Woman walking her dog this morning discovered the body,” the captain elaborated. “Nearly had a heart attack, they tell me. Didn’t stop screaming until someone came over to see what was wrong. They called in Aurora’s finest. So what happened?” Valdez asked.

“After the meeting broke up, I followed Seales to an Internet café. I think he’s cheating—was cheating,” Zack corrected himself since everything about the man was now in the past tense, “on his buddies. There were a few people in the café. I didn’t think he saw me, but I guess he must have. When he slipped out the back, I did too. That was when he jumped me. He was waiting right at the door,” Zack explained, irritated with himself for not being prepared. “Probably thought I was going to rat him out to Randall,” he guessed, mentioning the name of the current leader of the identity-theft ring that he was dogging.

A roach ran over the toe of his boot as he talked. He stepped on it with his other foot, grinding it into nothingness. Spiders he didn’t mind, but roaches were a different story. Roaches were filthy. He hated roaches.

“Why don’t you present that to Randall?” Valdez suggested. Zack could almost hear the wheels in the man’s head turning. “Tell him that your suspicions were aroused by Seales’s actions and you were just following a hunch. Things got out of hand, he tried to kill you, you fought back.”

Zack switched the phone to his other ear. He supposed it was worth a try. “You don’t think my cover’s been blown?”

“Only one way to find out,” Valdez theorized. A chuckle followed his statement.

“Right,” Zack sighed. He was going to march back into the lion’s den—and hope the lion’s already had lunch. “You know where to ship my body if something goes wrong, right?”

Valdez blew off the implication behind the words. He operated as if his men were invulnerable. “Hey, from what I hear, the Cavanaughs have always been damn lucky. Rumor has it that you’re becoming one of them by proxy—real soon.”

Since the wedding involved the chief of detectives, Zack was fairly certain that the topic was number one when it came to making the rounds at the precinct. “Nothing gets by you, does it, Captain?”

“Just my ex-wives’ infidelities,” the man cracked dryly. “Never saw either one coming until it was too late. By the way, the uniforms on the scene said there was a lot of blood behind the Internet café. Lab makes it out to be two different blood types.” There was a pause, as if the man was waiting for him to say something. He didn’t. “You get hurt, McIntyre?”

Zack looked down at his shirt. He still hadn’t buttoned it and the bandage around his rib cage was visible. “Nothing that won’t heal.”

“Keep it that way,” Valdez ordered.

“I’ll sure try, Captain.” He knew that Valdez was about to go. His superior never talked more than was necessary. “By the way, the punk managed to slash my tires, when I couldn’t begin to guess. I need a ride delivered to the motel.”

“How did you get to the motel in the first place?”

He thought about Kasey, then decided Valdez didn’t need to know about her. So he covered his butt by simply saying, “Hitched a ride with an angel.”

“Never mind.” Anticipating more, Valdez cut him off. “I don’t think I want to know. Car’ll be there soon,” he promised, then abruptly broke the connection.

“Goodbye, Captain,” Zack murmured sarcastically to the empty air. He flipped the phone closed and was about to put it away. Changing his mind, he flipped open the lid again. He hit a single button that would connect him to a preprogrammed number that represented the first phone number he’d ever memorized.

It barely rang once. A breathless “hello?” echoed in his ear.

He smiled to himself, picturing her as he said, “Hi, Mom.”

“Zack! Zack, are you all right?” Lila McIntyre demanded, concern vibrating in every syllable.

Like his late father, his mother was part of the Aurora police force. Years ago, she’d been a detective, partnered with Brian Cavanaugh before a bullet had all but robbed her of the rest of her life. Brian had stopped the flow of blood with his own hand until the paramedics came and most likely saved her life.

She’d left the force after that to take care of him and his siblings. His father was responsible for that more than her wound was. He gave her no peace until she retired. And even then, he gave her no peace. It had been a hard life for his mother. For all of them.