The Marshal's Witness

“When are the funerals?” She struggled for a calmness she was far from feeling. “I want to go.”

“You can’t go to their funerals.” He spoke in short, clipped tones.

Anger flared inside her, overriding her sympathy for him, overriding her horror over what had happened. “I don’t care what you think of me, but I have to go to their funerals. I owe them that.”

He reached toward her arm. Before she could move away, he gently lifted her wrist and unwound the IV tubing that had become tangled around one of her bandages.

“Whether I would have allowed you to go to their funerals is a moot point. In spite of your miraculous survival, you didn’t come away unscathed in the blast. You’ve already been here for quite some time, and the doctor said you’ll be here several more weeks, maybe longer. The funerals were held a few days after the explosion.”

She clasped her hands on the railing beside her, hatred for DeGaullo filling her like a living thing. He’d hurt so many people, including the one person she’d opened up to about her past—Natalie—and now he’d stolen her right to pay her respects to the men who’d died protecting her. “How long has it been since the explosion?”

He pulled up her covers and arranged the call button so she could easily reach it. He tugged at the wrinkles in her blanket, smoothing them out.

She frowned at his actions. It dawned on her, from the faraway look in his eyes, and the way his expression had softened, that he probably didn’t realize what he was doing. His movements seemed automatic, like he was operating on autopilot.

The lines around his eyes were deeper than before. He looked tired, almost haggard. Silver threads shone in his dark hair, as if he’d aged several years since she’d met him at the courthouse.

His hands stilled. He straightened, his eyes frosting over, his cold mask back in place. “Two weeks. The funerals were two weeks ago.”

He yanked his hand back and crossed to the window. A moment later, he squared his shoulders and turned around to face her. “I’m the lead field agent on your case now. When you leave here, I’ll take you to a new location, settle you into another new identity.”

Her mouth dropped open and she stared at him. She shook her head in denial, no longer caring that it made the pain worse. “No. I won’t agree to that. You’re too angry. You obviously blame me for what happened. I’ll tell the Justice Department that I won’t—”

“You think I want to be assigned to this case?” His jaw went rigid as he stepped back to her side. “You’re not an innocent bystander who happened to witness a crime. You chose to cover up your boss’s crimes for five years. The only reason you went to the Feds was because DeGaullo killed your friend, and you knew you were next. As far as I’m concerned, you’re almost as bad as he is.”

Her body flushed hot beneath his scalding words.

“But,” he continued, before she could speak, “since I’m a former army ranger, and people are trying to kill you, the government has decided I’m their most qualified marshal to keep you alive. Against my wishes, they’ve assigned me as your temporary guardian.”

His eyes flashed as he held her gaze. “Four men gave their lives for you. I’m not going to allow their sacrifices to be meaningless. When I became a marshal, I made a vow that I’m honor bound to keep. I will keep you safe, whatever it takes, whether you want me to or not.”

RYAN FIRMLY SHUT the door to Jessica’s hospital room and slumped back against the wall in the hallway. He scrubbed his hands across his face and rubbed his tired eyes. For two weeks he’d sat in that uncomfortable plastic chair in the corner of Jessica’s room, watching over her. He’d slept in the cramped window seat, listening to the machines hooked up to her beeping along with her vital signs, calling the nurses when she cried out in pain. He’d held her hand when she twisted against the sheets in the throes of a nightmare.

And the minute she woke up, he’d been a complete jerk, blaming her for his friends’ deaths. Did he blame her? Yes, partly, but that didn’t excuse his actions. His mother would be appalled if she’d seen her son treat a woman that way, any woman, regardless of what she’d done.

Especially since the reason he’d behaved that way had nothing to do with the explosion, and everything to do with the way she affected him. When he’d looked into her soft brown eyes and that shock of attraction rippled through him, just like when he’d first met her, he’d been so disgusted at himself that he’d lashed out. How could he want her so much, knowing about her past, the choices she’d made that went against everything he believed in?

Physically, she was exactly his type—petite and curvy. Even with her stitches and bandages, she made his blood run hot. He could understand that. She was a beautiful woman, and he was still young enough to appreciate that. What he couldn’t understand was why her appeal went far beyond her outward appearance.

When he looked in her eyes he saw the pain she didn’t acknowledge, the kind of pain that went far deeper than cuts and bruises. He knew what caused that pain in him—the lives he’d taken while performing his duties, the betrayal by someone he’d trusted, the men under his command who’d lost their lives as a result of that betrayal.

But why was she suffering? What had happened to put those shadows in her eyes?

And why did he care?

He rubbed his neck to work out the stiffness. He didn’t know what it was about Jessica Delaney that drove him so crazy. All he knew for sure was that he needed to put some distance between the two of them. The only way to do that was to finalize her new identity and get her new location set up.

He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and texted the message that would set everything into motion…Sleeping Beauty is awake.

Chapter Three

In the three weeks since she’d awakened in the hospital to find Ryan Jackson in her room, Jessica had learned a few things. One was that he had a bit of the devil in him. So, as she stood beside him on the front lawn that had already turned brown in the cool fall air, she did everything she could to hide her disappointment. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d won this round, because the house he’d brought her to was the ugliest she’d ever seen.

And it was hers.

She glanced over at the three marshals leaning against the SUV in the gravel driveway. Judging by the looks on their faces, they agreed with her.

The house boasted rotting wood siding in a sickly mustard-yellow with patches of gray, as if someone had thought about changing the color but had changed their mind. The shutters on the two narrow front windows were missing half their slats. Weeds grew wild and tall, choking what once must have been a concrete walkway that led to the sagging porch.

“I suppose you would have rather gone to New Orleans.” Ryan studied the dilapidated cabin in front of them as if weighing its merits. “Probably more appealing to a city girl like you.”

Jessica pursed her lips, determined not to let his latest city girl comment goad her. He flung the mantra around as if it were the worst insult he could think of. It made her want to ask him why he didn’t consider himself a city boy since he lived in New York, but that would require an actual conversation, and he wasn’t open to that—not about anything personal, anyway.

Her shoulders slumped. He was right. Living in the gatorfilled bayous of Louisiana would have been infinitely preferable to living in rural Tennessee.

Emphasis on rural.

He’d scrapped the original location, reasoning that her notoriety after the bombing would put her at risk in a big city. She was more inclined to believe he just wanted to punish her, especially since her new last name so clearly demonstrated his opinion of her.

Benedict.

As in Benedict Arnold.

“You’ll have plenty of privacy on this dead-end road.” He sounded like a Realtor trying to convince his client a house was cozy instead of cramped.

She glanced over at the only other house close enough to see, a cabin next to hers with about thirty feet separating the two. Its yard was well kept. Its porch had a collection of bleached-white rocking chairs and terra-cotta pots with purple cold-weather flowers spilling over the edge.

In the twenty-minute ride up the mountain, bumping and jarring over every pothole and rock on the gravel road, Jessica had only seen a handful of other houses. What were the odds that whoever lived next door would be her age, someone with the same likes and dislikes, someone she could be friends with? Knowing that Ryan had helped his boss choose this location for her, she figured the odds were just about zero. Ryan wouldn’t want to reward the woman he held responsible for his friends’ deaths.

“Who lives in the cabin next door?” she asked, bracing herself for the worst.

“Me.”

“What?” Her mouth dropped open in shock. When she’d braced herself for the worst, having Ryan living next door wasn’t even on the list of possibilities.

He opened the neon blue front door and rolled her suitcase inside. “For the next few weeks, I’ll be your neighbor. Just until you’re settled in.”

“Oh, sugar.”

The corner of Ryan’s mouth lifted into a grin. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.” Jessica wasn’t about to admit that she’d grown up swearing worse than most boys, and that her last foster mom had gone on a personal crusade to clean up Jessica’s language. She’d made Jessica say sugar instead of cussing, a habit that had become so ingrained, it had stuck with her. Ryan would jump all over that and tease her mercilessly.

She brushed past him through the foyer into the main room. When she saw the faded, baby blue sectional, the dark wood paneled walls, and orange shag carpet, she had to clamp her mouth shut to keep from saying sugar.

Or something worse.

Ryan joined her, his mouth twitching as he looked around.

Jessica curled her fingers into her palms and kept her face carefully blank.

“Nice fireplace,” Ryan said, not bothering to hide his grin.

Jessica raised her brow at the behemoth sitting in the corner of the room. Big. That’s the only word that came to mind when she stared at the soot-covered stonework that went from floor to ceiling. Okay, ugly came to mind, too, but that pretty much applied to the entire house.

Fighting back her despair, she followed Ryan to the left side of the house that contained two small bedrooms separated by a bathroom.

The bathroom was tiny but clean, with a soft peach color on the walls. She’d have to replace the shower curtain because the colors didn’t match anything else in the room, but other than that…wait, what was on the shower curtain? What she’d thought were little birdhouses, on closer inspection were outhouses, with red and blue cartoon cats crawling all over them.

Her gaze flew to Ryan’s. He returned her stare, silently daring her to complain, confirming her suspicion without saying a word. She didn’t know how he’d managed it, but somehow he was responsible for that hideous shower curtain. She wouldn’t put it past him to have ordered the thing online.

Beyond annoyed, she tried to shove past him to get out of the room, but all she managed to do was wedge herself against him in the doorway.

“Would you please move?” she said, her face flushing hot.

His brows raised and his eyes flicked down to where her breasts were crushed against him. She expected him to make some kind of rude comment, but instead he jerked to the side, breaking the contact between them and leaving the doorway clear. His mouth clamped shut as he stared at the oval mirror above the sink, waiting for her to leave.

She rushed from the tiny room, desperate to put some distance between her and Ryan. If he’d been any other man she would understand why her pulse was racing and her breasts were tingling after touching him. But this was Ryan, a man who despised her. How could she possibly respond to him that way?

What made her humiliation worse was the way he’d reacted. How could her traitorous body yearn for his touch when he was so disgusted by her that he couldn’t even look at her?

He caught up to her and silently led the way back to the front of the house to the garage. He opened the door, just off the foyer, revealing a wall of boxes that contained all of her belongings, and a white compact the government had leased for her. Neither of them spoke. She self-consciously fingered her shoulder-length hair, newly shortened as a concession to her new identity.

The tour ended at a round, café-style table in the right, back corner of the living room just off the end of the kitchen. Ryan placed his briefcase on the table and clicked it open.

Jessica was too numb to even react when she noticed the rows of hideous red and yellow roosters marching across the wallpaper in the kitchen. All she cared about right now was getting through the next few minutes with some of her dignity intact, so she could be alone in her misery.

Ryan tossed a ring of keys on the table. He spread out a map, the crisp pages crinkling as he drew a red circle around a dot marked “Providence,” the town they’d driven through at the bottom of the mountain.

He drew another circle a short distance away, and connected the two circles with a red line. “This is your house,” he said, pointing to one of the circles. “Take the road out front down the mountain to get to town. They have everything you need—a grocery store, gas station, hardware store. There’s a diner across from the hardware store that I’m told serves a decent breakfast. There are a couple of chain restaurants farther down Main Street, and a handful of specialty shops.”

He extended the red line past Providence, down the interstate and circled another black dot. “For serious shopping, take I-40 West to Sevierville.”

“Sevierville?” She remembered passing through that city on the way here. “Isn’t that about two hours away?”

“I did warn you this location was isolated.”

Saying Providence was isolated was like comparing a hurricane to a light, summer breeze.

Jessica’s shoulders slumped again. “When you described this place, I thought it would be like Gatlinburg, a tourist town with cabins clustered together all through the mountains. I didn’t think I’d be so…alone up here.” She stopped her nervous chatter, already dreading his next city girl comment.

The silence drew out and she glanced up to find him staring at her with an unreadable expression.

“You don’t have to stay here.” His voice sounded sincere for a change, without a hint of mockery.

She couldn’t remember one time when he’d expressed any real concern for her feelings, so she didn’t trust this new, unfamiliar side of him. “What do you mean, I don’t have to stay?”

“You have to build a new life wherever you go. That’s hard to do if you hate the place. I can take you to a safe house; tell my boss you’ve changed your mind. It will take some time to research alternate locations, but—”

“No, wait.” She started to reach for his hand but stopped herself just short of touching him. She didn’t want to see that look of disgust cross his face again.

“I’ll stay. You said I’d be safe, that no one would think to look for me here. That’s infinitely more important than having a Starbucks on every corner.” She chewed her bottom lip. “They do have a Starbucks in Providence, right? I could really use a Venti Mocha right now.”

He slowly shook his head, his mouth twitching. “Not that I know of.”

“Oh, well. That’s not important.” And it wasn’t, not really. The thought of going back to a safe house again, code words for cheap motel, made her cringe. After flying from New York to Nashville and riding for hours in the middle seat of an SUV, squashed between two broad-shouldered marshals, all she wanted to do was rest. They could have flown in closer to Providence, but Ryan had taken the longer route, insisting it was necessary for security reasons.

He raised a brow, waiting for her answer.

“I’ll be fine. Really.” Would she be fine? She didn’t know, but she was willing to re-evaluate later.

He looked like he wanted to argue with her. But instead, he snapped his briefcase shut. “I’ll show you how to use the alarm.”

Back in the foyer he demonstrated the keypad, forcing her to set and disable the alarm several times until he was satisfied she remembered the code and how to use it.

“This red button is a panic button. It alerts the police station in town.”

“But…you’ll be next door, right?” She hated the fear that had crept into her voice. No doubt Ryan would seize on that and make fun of her.

“For a few weeks, yes.” No sarcasm, no teasing.

Relieved, she followed him out onto the porch and watched with mixed feelings as he spoke to the marshals who’d been waiting outside. She didn’t remember their names, had made a point not to.

There were already four names branded into her conscience. Along with Natalie’s.

The marshals drove away, disappearing to the sound of tires crunching down the gravel road. When Jessica looked back toward Ryan, he was striding across the front lawn to his cabin next door. The rude man hadn’t bothered to say goodbye. Without a word or even a glance her way, he disappeared inside, shutting the door with a resounding thud.

A cold breeze blew through the trees, ruffling Jessica’s hair. She shivered and rubbed her hands up and down her arms. The sun was going down, and the temperatures up in the mountains were dropping rapidly. The trees that had looked so beautiful a few minutes ago, with their yellow and gold fall foliage, now took on a sinister cast. Shadows shifted in the bushes across the street. She could easily imagine a gunman hiding there.

Would she ever feel safe again? Was she safe? Ryan wouldn’t have left her outside if she wasn’t, would he?

The wind blew again, carrying the scent of pine trees and a host of other, unfamiliar scents and noises, robbing Jessica of the last of her courage. She turned and ran inside the house.

Chapter Four

A scream shattered the quiet of Jessica’s bedroom.

Startled awake, she jumped out of bed, slammed into the dresser and fell onto the floor. Cursing the dark, unfamiliar room, she scrambled to her feet.

The noise sounded again—a short, throaty moan that echoed through the room, making Jessica wince.

Sugar. What was that?

Frantically feeling along the wall for the light switch, she bumped something on top of the dresser. She grabbed it to use as a weapon, and her other hand brushed against the light switch. She flipped on the light and whirled around to face whoever was in the room.

The room was empty.

She glanced around in confusion and shoved her bangs out of her eyes. The noise echoed through the room again. She nearly collapsed in relief. The noise was coming from her window, outside the house.

She chewed her bottom lip and debated calling Ryan to investigate. But what if there was some logical explanation for the noise? Did she really want to endure more of Ryan’s teasing if he came over and found a feral cat or some other animal howling outside?

He’d get a real kick out of that, and Jessica’s pride had already taken about all she could of his city girl insults. More important, she was on her own now, or supposed to be. Ryan was leaving in a few weeks. She needed to learn not to panic or assume DeGaullo had found her every time something unexpected happened.

Her mind was made up, but her feet were still deciding. Blood rushed to her ears. She gathered her courage, and inched toward the window. With her back against the wall, she raised her weapon and slowly lifted the edge of the curtain.

Two round, black eyes surrounded by feathers and a beak stared back at her through the glass. Good grief, it was just a bird, sitting on her window ledge. It blinked and gave another throaty howl. As if it was satisfied that it had done its job by waking her up, it screeched again, flapped its wings and flew away.

Jessica let the curtain fall closed. She’d been scared witless by a stupid bird. Was this the kind of life she had to look forward to? Being awakened in the middle of the night by screeching birds?

The bright red numbers on the bedside clock read six-thirty. Okay, so it wasn’t the middle of the night. But since she hadn’t slept well as she tried to convince herself she was safe without a marshal in the next room, it might as well be the middle of the night. She was exhausted.

She was also keyed up, full of nervous energy, so going back to bed would be just as futile now as it had been last night. She raised her hand to brush her bangs out of her eyes and only then realized she was still clutching what she’d grabbed off the dresser to use as a weapon. She stared in disbelief at what she was holding.

A blow-dryer.

Sugar.

What was she going to do if she met up with one of De-Gaullo’s men? Offer to style his hair?

She pitched the dryer onto the bed and trudged through the short hallway into the bathroom. Her shoulders were knotted with tension from her unpleasant wake-up call. Right now nothing sounded better than a hot, steamy shower to relax her muscles.

While she waited for the shower to get hot, she went about her morning routine. Normally she’d carefully fold her clothes and put them in the hamper, but she didn’t have the energy for that right now. She discarded her clothes in a sloppy pile on the white tile floor and stepped over the side of the tub.

Icy water pricked her skin like hundreds of sharp needles. She shouted and hopped out of the tub, right onto the pile of clothes. They shot out from underneath her feet across the slippery tile. Her hands flailed in the air, futilely grabbing for the countertop. She fell hard, smacking her head against the side of the toilet.

She lay there, naked, her head throbbing, while she tried to decide whether to cry, scream, or break something. Above her, the shower curtain billowed out over the tub. Every one of the red and blue cartoon cats grinned down at her as if they were about to burst into laughter.

A strangled gurgle wheezed between her clenched teeth. She rolled over, wincing when she put pressure on her left hip. She grabbed the countertop and painfully pulled herself to her feet. When she caught sight of her face in the mirror, she let out a low groan. A dark bruise was already forming on the side of her temple.

Could this day get any worse?

All those months during the trial, she’d longed for the comforts of her apartment, her Jacuzzi tub, the fluffy down comforter she’d bought two Christmases ago during a shopping trip with Natalie. She’d hated the cheap motel rooms the government called safe houses. She’d longed for the day when she’d be in a place she could call home again.

Now that she was, she realized how good she’d had it all along. At least the cheap motels had hot water. And she certainly didn’t have wild animals perched outside her window, screaming louder than Mrs. Bailey’s grandchildren when they ran up and down the hallway outside her apartment.

She shut the shower off and stood in front of the mirror, finger-combing her hair over her bruise. The tiny red scars that ran along her hairline made her pause. There were dozens of them all over her body, reminders of the explosion. Self-loathing filled her. How pathetically shallow to worry about downy comforters and jetted tubs when four men had given their lives for her.

They’d made the ultimate sacrifice, simply because it was their job, because they’d vowed to keep her safe. She was in awe of men like that, men with courage who did what was right, not what was easy. She’d worked for DeGaullo for years, too afraid to do what was right. Even the night Natalie had died, Jessica had been too scared to do anything more than cower beneath her desk. She’d done nothing to save her friend.