Suspect Witness

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The last bag was unloaded and he saw Erin take a step toward it.

He hurried forward as she reached for an oversized knapsack.

“Let me take that.” He lifted the bag as he made the comment, leaving her no option but to graciously accept. “Mulu is more beautiful than the brochure promised.”

She gave him a look that could only be called leery.

“I never anticipated this.” He swept his arm in a half circle. “Did you?” He didn’t even consider how inane the comment was. It didn’t fit who he was, but it fit his current persona. He’d just have to watch it so as not to go overboard with it.

“It is, but then that’s why I came here. As I imagine you did, too.”

“Actually,” he said, “I’d never heard of Mulu until a friend enlightened me. I didn’t even make a reservation.” He shrugged. “I don’t like to travel like that, but...”

“No reservation? Really?”

She only looked mildly interested and far from trusting.

“Did you reserve ahead?” he asked and felt her eyes on her bag.

“Yes, of course.” She frowned. Her eyes narrowed as they met his and her lips were compressed in a fine line. “You are lucky it’s October. One of the few months where there’s less tourists.” She held out her hand for her bag.

“You’re sure? I can take it.”

Her hand brushed his. Something shifted in her gaze and her lips softened.

“It’s heavy. Let me,” he said.

“Thanks,” she replied as she led the way with a determined and slight sway to her hips, which despite her slim figure were seductively curvy.

Overhead a bird screeched. The shadow of the bird’s startled flight cut across them as it dove, giving a view of glossy black tail feathers before it disappeared into the lush jungle. She jumped and slipped on the wooden walkway, which was slick from a recent rain. He took her arm, steadying her.

“Careful,” he warned as she looked at him with an expression of fear mixed with gratitude. There was a haunted look in her eyes, or maybe he imagined it, for the look was as quickly gone, and replaced by the determination he’d seen earlier, an emotion that consistently emanated from her.

“I can take it now.” She reached for her bag.

“You’re sure. There’s no need...”

Their eyes clashed, and he handed her bag to her. “I could have taken it the rest of the way.”

“You could have,” she agreed. “But I prefer not.”

She gave him a smile that took some of the edge off her words, and then turned with the bag slung over her shoulder, the straps gripped with one white-knuckled hand as she followed the two men who were already a few yards ahead. Two minutes later he was holding open the glass-plated door to the reception area for her as a rush of air-conditioning swirled around them.

“Well, we’re here,” he said as he graciously waited for the woman behind him to enter before relinquishing the door to a heavyset gray-haired man who was towing a wheeled suitcase behind him.

“We are,” she said over her shoulder and strode determinedly toward the reception desk without a backward glance.

* * *

“WE HAVE YOU booked for a double occupancy.” The desk clerk looked up and then over at Josh as if he were the missing double. “As you requested.”

“That’s right,” Erin said. “My boyfriend will be joining me later.” Her eyes slid to Josh and her hand slipped through the strap of the bag. Her eyes flitted to where a round, white-faced clock hummed on the wall behind the reception desk.

Four o’clock.

She sneaked another peek at Josh and saw only admiration in his gaze. Despite the wire-rimmed glasses and tacky T-shirt, he wasn’t as geeky as she’d first thought. In fact, there was something about him that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She gathered her passport and held it in an iron grip.

She looked away but felt his eyes on her.

“Boyfriend?” he asked, disappointment etching his words.

She nodded as her gaze flitted to his. There was an intensity there, a knowing that belied the unbecoming tourist T-shirt. There was smoke in his eyes that seemed to pierce through the lens of his black-rimmed glasses and a ruggedness to the face behind the frames.

“This place is amazing,” he said as he turned and looked one way and then the other, clearly overwhelmed. She suspected he was an infrequent traveler.

Her lips twitched, and she almost smiled.

“I’ll see you around,” she said as she left him to check in and followed the concierge out the door.

Five minutes later she scanned her room for exits. The airy, sunlit room held a wicker desk and chair and a comfortable-looking queen-size bed, but those were minor points. What was important were the window, the door and what was outside. From what she could see, barring the front entrance, the only exit was the window that looked out onto a narrow catwalk, a thin bamboo walkway that might have been used by resort employees. She glanced at the window. It would do in an emergency. First she had to determine if she could open it or if she would need to break the glass. If the latter were the case, she would need something handy to break the glass with.

She opened the stained bamboo closet door. Inside was nothing but a row of old-fashioned wire hangers. She ran a thumb over one, thinking that these hangers could be used as a weapon if necessary. They weren’t much, but they’d be better than facing any threat empty-handed.

Her hand quivered. Whoever was after her was more sophisticated than coat hangers. They’d blown up a car. They meant business, and they meant to kill her. It was as Mike had said and she hadn’t wanted to believe—only worse. A slight headache began to pulse low in the base of her skull. She missed her friends, her family, her apartment—and she missed her cat.

She’d delivered Edgar to her sister the day before she’d run. Sarah had been sworn to silence and Mike to vigilance. They’d both be fine. The cat would be well cared for, spoiled and more than likely a few pounds over his ideal weight by the time she got home, and her sister would have had the baby she shouldn’t be having. A single woman with no career aspirations and no man willing to stick around wasn’t the ideal candidate for motherhood. But that was Erin’s opinion, not Sarah’s.

Home.

Her thumbnail pinched into the palm of her hand.

“Focus,” she reminded herself as the wave of homesickness, loss and despair washed through her. She took her mind from other places back to the moment and to reworking the plan. She couldn’t worry about family or friends or even cats; there was nothing she could do for them but stay away and stay alive.

She looked at the closet, closed the doors and went through her list of defenses. The list was meager. She had pepper spray from a night market stall. Other than a self-defense course she’d taken with another primary grade teacher, she had little in her favor.

As she thought through the events of the past few days, she realized that she had to get out of the country in a very short time. This escape was only temporary. She didn’t know how good the people hired to find her were, but she suspected they might be very good. They’d found the school she’d worked in, they’d found her new identity and they’d attempted to kill her.

“Stay calm,” she reminded herself. But there seemed no end in sight and no one she could approach for help.

She looked at her watch as if that would give her the answers that weren’t forthcoming.

Her headache was escalating.

She sat down on the bed. She’d run three quarters of the way around the globe and they’d found her. She’d changed her appearance yet again. And she’d been on a cash-only basis since leaving home. She needed to do more.

She wasn’t sure where she was going next, but she knew what she needed in the short term while she was here.

Her nails bit into the palms of her hands. She relaxed her hands and took a breath—panicking would get her nowhere.

“Damn boyfriend dumped you,” she murmured with a laugh that held no humor at all. “And then along came Josh.” She hated every aspect of this story, from its very necessity to its needy woman overtones to using an innocent man—possibly toying with his affections. All of it was distasteful and all of it was necessary. She pulled a box of hair dye from her pack.

Josh Sedovich, an easy man to reel in. She thought that without arrogance but instead with the thoughts of an attractive woman who knew she was attractive.

She wouldn’t hurt him, just engage in some harmless flirtation—the illusion of a couple.

She sucked in a deep breath. Her life was an illusion, an illusion that hurt.

Chapter Seven (#ulink_674b05c8-37e2-5f8e-b706-f55c09c2ae8e)

Josh shielded his eyes. Despite the threat of rain later in the day, the sun beat hot and relentless even in late afternoon. This was the least popular time of year, as the rain made things muggy and uncomfortable. It wasn’t usual for numbers to drop too much, but with renovations on some of the more distant accommodations, tourism was noticeably down. That was good news—less activity to monitor, fewer potential incoming threats.

The drone of a plane’s engine pierced the sultry heat.

It was on schedule. He watched as the plane landed.

He’d just gotten word that, as he had suspected, the last hit had been by one of the Anarchists’s gang members. Bobbie Xavier was not the brightest tool in the shed, but he was one of the deadliest. Josh had gotten confirmation that his diversion had worked. Bobbie was on his way to Hong Kong.

But with the recent news the stakes had just gone up. The Anarchists had hired someone else, a man who wouldn’t work in tandem with Bobbie, and one who wouldn’t depend on luck or the mistakes of a woman who had never had to disappear before. The man was a professional. He had a record of success that ended in a trail of death, and he had a record of outsourcing. That meant the numbers on her trail could and more likely would, go up. That meant that there might not just be one. In the near future, there might be two or three. They needed to get out of here, maybe sooner than he’d previously thought.

Sid Mylo was not someone to take lightly. Why the hell were they hiring someone with Sid’s capabilities to go after someone like Erin? Sure, she had been on the run for five months, but—and that was the next mystery—why had it taken them that long to send someone after her? Until now they had depended on the muscle of the various club members across the states as the alert had gone out and the nets had gone up. But they hadn’t looked outside the continental United States.

“Erin Argon,” he muttered. It was the real woman he would be bringing back, not the actress Erin Kelley. He wondered how she could have gotten herself into this mess. She didn’t look like the type to date bikers. But that was exactly what she’d done.

He knew some women got off on that. Some dated criminals slated for death row, sought out men who were bent on destruction, their own as well as that of others. But it was rather disconcerting to think that a primary-school teacher would spend her free time with men who had questionable ethics. Drug dealers, pimps and murderers—and that was only the beginning of the crimes that could be attributed to various members of the Anarchists. It didn’t seem to fit anything he knew about her. And whether she’d learned her lesson after one colossal mistake, he didn’t know. Only she knew that. And it wasn’t something he needed to know. That knowledge would no more save her than hiding out in Mulu would.

He pulled open the door of the hotel lobby.

The concierge stood by the desk. His brown pants and jacket seemed to fade into the background. But his posture and wide smile, despite his solid but short stature, made him immediately stand out.

Their eyes met and held in a moment of understanding before the concierge looked away.

Josh waited a few minutes, glancing through a display of pamphlets before turning to the concierge. “Must be nice to work here.”

He looped his thumbs into the belt loops of his shorts. In listening range was an older couple that seemed to be involved in their own discussion, but they glanced over at him with what he thought of as a tourist’s curiosity.

“Yes, sir.” The concierge met his gaze this time with a rather puzzled expression, as if he didn’t know where the question was leading.

“Josh.” He held out his hand. “Three,” he mouthed. It was the number of days, maximum, that he planned to stay before getting Erin out of here.

“Tenuk,” the concierge said with a rather solemn grace and tapped his finger silently, one, two, three. It was confirmation, nothing else.