Protecting His Witness

скачать книгу бесплатно


For a moment, Zack wrestled with his thoughts. He’d been undercover for several months now and things were obviously coming to a head. But his gut told him that this woman had no connections to the identity-theft ring he and his team were trying to break up. Wounded, bleeding and disoriented, he had come to her, she hadn’t sought him out. That made her an outsider.

He didn’t want to repay her act of kindness by telling her a lie. He really didn’t have to tell her very much at all beyond a few nebulous pieces of information. At the very least, she deserved to know who she’d gone out of her way for.

“My name’s Zack McIntyre.”

“Okay,” she said gamely. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

She really didn’t want to know anything, did she? That either made her incredibly unique, or afraid of something. “No, but you didn’t ask me what my name was after you told me yours.”

Slender shoulders rose and fell in a careless shrug. “I figured if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me.” She looked at him as if her point was made. “And you did.”

Zack shook his head. His sisters could certainly take a few pointers from her. They acted as if they had the right to know every single detail of his life.

“You don’t have any curiosity, do you?” he marveled.

“I know all I need to know to get me through the day,” she replied complacently.

He didn’t have to be a mind reader to know that as far as she was concerned, that was enough.

Zack watched her as she got ready to leave. “I’d be careful if I were you,” he told her.

He was kidding, she told herself. But she still couldn’t bank down the fear that suddenly spiked through her. Was he giving her a veiled warning? She succeeded in keeping her voice cool as she asked him, “And why’s that?”

He watched as she slipped on her high heels. They gave her an extra four inches. “Well, a woman with no curiosity is a rare creature. Someone might be tempted to kidnap you and put you in a museum dedicated to rare and mythical creatures—like the unicorn.”

Kasey slipped her purse straps onto her shoulder. “There are no such things as unicorns.”

He winked at her as she crossed to the door. “Or so they’d like us to think.”

It was just a simple little movement, a flutter of an eyelid. Why did that feel so unsettling? She hadn’t even looked at another man since Jim had died. Hadn’t even thought about anyone else. Where was this coming from?

It didn’t matter where it was coming from, she upbraided herself sternly. What mattered was sending this man on his way, out of her life.

“Where do you want me to drop you off?” she asked as she opened the front door.

Home, Zack thought. Either the bachelor digs where he kept most of his clothes, or better yet, his mother’s house where he and his brother and sisters had grown up. Just the sight of his mother would make him feel that God was in His heaven and all was right with the world. Especially now that Lila McIntyre was finally going to be marrying the man she should have been married to all along, her former partner and the current chief of detectives, Brian Cavanaugh. She would have had a much more peaceful life had she been Brian’s wife and not his father’s. They would all have had more peaceful lives if she’d married Brian instead.

Zack locked away the thought. No point in going there. And physically, he couldn’t go to his mother’s house anyway, not right now. Until he was told otherwise, until his captain pulled him off the case, he was still Danny Masters, a hacking genius with a talent for resurrecting information on so-called reformatted hard drives and with an unending need for other people’s money.

So for now, he would return to the run-down motel room where he’d been staying for the duration of this charade. Because Danny Masters couldn’t afford any better digs. Master computer wizard though he was and blessed with a silver tongue, he had one very bad fatal flaw. He gambled. On anything and anyone. Which made him the ideal employee for an unscrupulous employer. His addiction made him easier to control, easier to have power over. In essence, “Danny Masters” owed his soul to the company store.

He leaned against the whitewashed brick as he waited for her to lock the front door. “I’ll give you the address,” he promised, “once we get into your car.”

The look in her eyes was wary, as if she was debating whether or not to believe him. And then she seemed to make up her mind and nodded, tucking her purse under her arm.

“All right,” she announced briskly, turning away from the house, “let’s go.”

Zack caught his lower lip between his teeth to suppress any sound of discomfort that might escape. His side really hurt. He fell into place beside his solemn angel of mercy, moving not nearly as quickly as he would have liked to.

But he was making progress, which was all that counted to him. His life and his job had taught him how to be a patient man.

Andrew Cavanaugh threw open the front door before his younger brother even took his finger off the doorbell. Brian had the keys to his house, as he had to Brian’s, but an inherent respect for each other’s privacy kept those keys in his pocket.

“We need to talk,” Andrew declared, doing his best to harness the emotions that had prompted him to call and ask Brian to come over as quickly as possible.

“As I recall, you do that far better than me, big brother.” Chief of Detectives Brian Cavanaugh braced himself as walked into his older brother’s house.

The former chief of police had summoned him via a voice message that he’d left on his answering machine. Andrew’s message, unlike his normal, friendly fare, was very somber. He hadn’t a clue as to why.

Considering the fact that he and Lila McIntyre had given Andrew carte blanche to do whatever he wanted for their wedding reception, he would have expected his brother to be in fantastic spirits. Since leaving the force to care for his then-motherless brood of five, Andrew had turned his attention toward his second passion: cooking. Cooking was his way of keeping not just his immediate family but his entire family together. With one hand tied behind his back, the man could create huge, sumptuous meals for an amazing amount of people. No one who ever went to Andrew’s house remained hungry once they crossed his threshold.

But one look at Andrew’s face told Brian that this wasn’t about food. Still, trying to keep the mood light and far too happy to allow himself to be brought down, Brian cracked, “What’s the matter, the man doing the ice sculpture decide to back out?”

Andrew didn’t even attempt to smile. Instead, he led the way to the kitchen and nodded toward a chair. “Sit down, Brian.”

Something in Andrew’s tone undercut any further attempt at humor. Andrew sounded just the way he had when he’d broken the news to him that their middle brother, Mike, had been killed in the line of duty.

They’d all followed in their father’s footsteps and joined the force in their early twenties. Of the three of them, Mike had been the black sheep, the one who grew more and more resentful of the rut he found himself in. Andrew had done his best to keep Mike in line, to make him see and appreciate just how rich his life actually was. But Mike would have none of it, becoming envious as both his brothers received accolades and promotions while he remained a beat cop. Toward the end, there’d been hatred in Mike’s eyes when he looked at them. Hatred because he felt he could never “measure up.” Hatred mingled with self-loathing he’d tried to anesthetize with progressively more alcohol. All that did was generate even more problems.

Brian looked at his brother, trying to fathom whatever was coming. “I’ll take whatever you have to say standing, Andrew.”

This wasn’t easy for him. Andrew had been the patriarch ever since a heart attack had claimed their father all those years ago. The patriarch and the voice of reason. After everything he’d been through in his life, he’d earned the right to expect tranquility, not turmoil, to fill the end of his days. But even beyond the grave, Mike managed to toss a little chaos their way.

“I had a visitor the other day,” he began, searching for the right words. This was going to be a shock. Not just to Brian, but to Patrick and Patience, Mike’s kids. Maybe especially to them. “Three visitors, actually,” Andrew amended.

When Andrew paused, Brian prodded him along. He’d promised to stop by Lila’s. Her oldest was on some special assignment and she hadn’t heard from him in a week. She needed reassurance.

“And?”

Andrew gazed at him. Brian tried to remember when he’d seen so much sadness in his brother’s eyes. “They were Mike’s kids.”

Was Andrew getting muddled? He knew the names and ages of not only his kids and their spouses and children but the names and ages of all his nieces, nephews and their spouses and children.

“Mike didn’t have three kids,” Brian reminded him. “He had two. Patrick and Patience.”

Andrew’s expression never changed. “Besides Patrick and Patience.”

Brian’s eyes narrowed and his mouth dropped open. “Mike had three other kids?” That didn’t seem possible. They would have known, he and Andrew. “You’re kidding, right?”

If anything, Andrew seemed more somber. “You know me better than that. I never kid about family.”

“When? How?” Questions popped up in Brian’s head like wild mushrooms after a summer rain. “Do they live in Aurora?”

An ironic smile twisted Andrew’s lips. “Not only do they live in Aurora, but they’re all cops, the lot of them.”

“I’ll take that seat now,” Brian murmured, sinking down onto the barstool.

Chapter 4

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.