Guarding the Witness

“How about chess?” Kevin asked from the kitchen area, gesturing to the chess set perched on a shelf, while Brody crossed to the door.

“I don’t play it. Where are you going?” she asked Brody as he opened the door.

“Outside. I’m relieving Mark.”

“But he just left.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Can I come with you?” the imp in her asked.

He frowned and left, the door slamming shut.

“Ms. Jackson, I can teach you to play chess. It’ll take your mind off what’s going on.” Kevin moved into the main part of the room.

“Nothing is going on. That’s the problem.” She strode toward the table and took a chair. “Sure. I might as well learn.” She checked her watch. Noon. It was going to be another long day.

* * *

Finishing his last trip around the perimeter of the cabin, Brody took a deep breath of the fresh air, laced with the scent of earth and trees, then mounted the steps to the porch. When he reached the door to the ranger’s cabin, he panned the small clearing. Nearing midnight, it was still light outside. The temperature began to drop as the sun finally started its descent. When moving to Alaska, the only thing he really had to adjust to was the long daylight hours in summer and equally long nighttime ones in winter. At least in Anchorage where he was living it was farther south and the days and nights didn’t get as skewed as they did up here nearer the Arctic Circle.

Inside the cabin, he left the shotgun by the door for Kevin, who was relieving him on patrol. He turned to find Arianna sitting on the couch, staring at him. Her gray eyes with a hint of blue reminded him of the lake he’d flown over this morning.

“Did you see the mama bear that’s been hanging around the cabin lately?” she asked and went back to playing solitaire.

“No. Where’s Kevin?”

“Right here. Sorry. I figured I needed a jacket since the sun was going down.” Kevin picked up the shotgun and exited the cabin.

“So it’s just you and me since Mark is taking his turn sleeping.”

For a second he thought he saw a teasing gleam in her eyes before she averted her gaze to study the spread of cards on the coffee table in front of her. He sat in a chair across from her. “Have you won any games?”

“Two probably out of fifty.” She raised her head. “Wanna play Scrabble?”

“I’ve been warned about you and Scrabble.”

“I took you for a man who likes a good challenge.” A full-fledged smile encompassed her whole face.

“And baiting me guarantees you’ll have an opponent.”

“Yep, kinda hard playing Scrabble with yourself. No challenge really.”

“You’re on. Where’s the game?”

Arianna gestured toward the bookcase behind him. “I think I’ll leave the ranger who lives here a thank-you note. I don’t know what I would have done without some of his games. I brought a deck of cards and some books, but I went through the books in the first four days and I’m sick of playing solitaire. Do you have any idea when I’ll get to testify and can move back to civilization?”

“No. Rainwater’s attorney gets big bucks to delay the trial as long as he can.”

“Because he’s got people out there looking for me.”

“Yes, you know the score. If you testify, he’ll most likely go down for murder. Without finding the ledger Rainwater killed Perkins over, you’re the main witness in his trial. Without you, he’d probably get acquitted, if they even went ahead with the trial.”

“Something very incriminating must be in the ledger Rainwater was looking for.”

“Perkins kept the books for Rainwater. The public set has been sanitized not to include anything incriminating. We think Perkins kept a second ledger with all the dirt on the man. As you know, risky for Perkins to do, but it could be invaluable to us. Rainwater has gone to great lengths to find it.”

“We can’t afford for people like him to win. I’m even more determined to testify.”

“And he’s as determined to stop you.” Brody rose and retrieved the box with the Scrabble game in it, then laid the board and tiles out on the coffee table. When he sat again, he pulled his chair closer. “Ready to get trounced?”

“Is that any way to speak to a poor defenseless witness?” Arianna said as she laid down seven tiles for a score of seventy-six points.

He looked down at his letters and could only come up with a twelve-point word. Now he was beginning to understand what Ted meant. Forty minutes later it was confirmed. She was very good at Scrabble.

“What do you do? Study the dictionary like Ted threatened?”

“No. Don’t have to. I have a photographic memory, and I enjoy reading a lot. Once I see something, I remember it.”

“So that’s how you could give such a detailed description of what went down the day Thomas Perkins was murdered.”

“The gift has helped me in my job. When I go on a new assignment, I case the house or wherever I’m staying with the client so I can pull up the layout in a hurry in my mind. It has helped me on more than one occasion, especially in the dark.” She gathered up the tiles and began putting them into the box.

“I do something similar although I don’t have a photographic memory.”

One corner of her mouth lifted. “I consider it one of the weapons in my arsenal.”

He laughed, folding the game board and laying it on top of the tiles. “That’s an interesting way to put it.”

Arianna yawned. “I’d better call it a night and try to sleep.”

“Are you having problems sleeping?”

“Yes. Wouldn’t you if you were in my position, with all that’s been going on?”

“We’re guarding you. You don’t have to be alert and on the job.”

“Actually the quiet is too quiet. I’m glad to hear an occasional animal call in the night.”

“I grew up in New York City. The first few years after I left I had the hardest time with the silence at nighttime. Until I was assigned to L.A., I was located in smaller cities. Now when I get it, I love it. My house is outside Anchorage where it’s—”

A blast from a shotgun exploded in the air.

As Arianna dove over the back of the sofa with a wall of the cabin behind her, Brody moved toward the door. Another gunshot sound reverberated through the quiet.

Mark rushed down the hallway, weapon drawn. “What’s going on?”

“Stay with Ms. Jackson. I’ll go check.”

Suddenly there was a rattling on the window on the left side of the room as if someone or something was tearing at the screen. Brody moved toward it. A roar split the air as he opened the blinds to find a grizzly bear attacking the window. The screen hung in metal shreds from its frame. The huge animal batted it away, only a pane of glass now between him and the bear.

“Stay put, Arianna.” Brody signaled for Mark to keep an eye on the window where the bear was.

Where is Kevin? His heart pounding, Brody charged toward the exit, knowing his Glock might not be enough to stop a bear coming at him or Kevin. In the gray light of an Alaskan night this far north, he saw his partner backing around the corner of the cabin while squeezing off another shot into the air.

“I’m behind you, Kevin,” Brody said as he approached him.

The tense set to his partner’s body relaxed. “She’s leaving. Finally. When I was making my rounds, two cubs came out of the woods close to where I was. Mama bear followed not five seconds later. I tried not to show any fear and backed away. She came toward me—not charging, but making sure she was between her cubs and me. When I fired my first warning shot in the air, both of the cubs ran into the woods. She didn’t.”

Kevin kept his gaze fixed on the departing bear while Brody watched the front of the cabin. When the threat disappeared into the woods, they both headed for the porch.

“Good thing she doesn’t know how to open doors or windows. It took three shots to scare her off,” Kevin said, then positioned himself by the steps.

“She’s establishing her territory. Next time stay closer to the cabin and don’t play around with a grizzly sow and her cubs. They are very protective of their babies.”

“Believe me I’ll stay glued to this place. I don’t want to tangle with one of them.”

“I’ll be turning in soon. Mark will be on duty in the cabin. I’ll relieve you in five hours.” When Brody reentered the cabin, Arianna stood behind the couch. “What part of get down do you not understand?”

“The last order you gave me was stay put.” She pointed to the floor. “I stayed put. Besides, Mark was here.”

Brody shook his head. “I guess I’ll have to spell it out for you next time.”

“There’s gonna be a next time with that bear?”

“If she’s hungry enough or we threaten her cubs. Obviously she didn’t like Kevin near her cubs or shooting his gun—even in the air.”

“Oh, good. If she comes back to us, I’ll get to take a photo.”

“Photo? Of a bear charging you?”

“No. Don’t you remember you’ve ordered me to stay in the cabin? I’ll be watching from the window. No charging bear will be coming at me. Now that’s not to say she won’t come after you or your partners...”

He chuckled. “I’ll make sure I’m not your model for that picture.”

Mark laughed, too. “I’m going back to bed for the little time I have left. I’ll leave you two to hash things out.”

As Mark left, Arianna said, “When I finished a job in Africa, I went on a photo safari. One of the rare vacations I gave myself. After this job I was going to take a second vacation and see some of the wildlife. I don’t think that’s going to work out unless I can get the wildlife to come to me.”

“Give me the camera. I’ll take a picture for you.”

“Not the same thing. Besides, the bear is long gone by now. At least I hope so.” Another yawn escaped Arianna. “That’s my cue to say good-night.”

“Good night. Mark will be back in here—” he checked his watch “—in an hour.”

“Sleep tight then.”

“Don’t you mean sleep light? After all, I am guarding you.”

“Every bodyguard has to grab some good sleep if he or she is going to do a good job. And believe me, I want you to do a good job protecting me.”

He studied her body language as she said those words. “I think you believe what you said, but you also believe you can take care of yourself.”

She smirked. “I’m gonna have to work on fooling you better.”

“No one, not even myself, is invincible. We all need help from time to time.”

“And who do you turn to?”

“God and my partner on the job. In that order.”

Her eyes widened for a second before she rotated toward the hallway and headed toward her bedroom.

Brody watched her leave, flashes of his own experience questioning God’s intention going through his mind. He’d been the lead marshal on an assignment in Los Angeles. The witness he’d been guarding ended up being gunned down on the way to the courthouse because the cell phone in his pocket was used to track his movements.

Brody shook the memory from his mind. That was the past. He couldn’t change it, but he could learn from it. Now Brody needed to be the sharpest marshal he could be. He wasn’t going to lose another witness on his team.

When Mark relieved him later, Brody strode toward his bedroom. His glance strayed toward Arianna’s closed door. She was an interesting woman whose life would never be the same. How would he deal with giving up all he knew and starting over?

* * *

Her earlier adrenaline rush finally subsiding, Arianna removed her Glock from under the mattress and put it on the bedside table within easy reach. That was the only way she would be able to get any kind of sleep. When she lay down and closed her eyes, the image of Brody Callahan, laughing at some of the words she came up with, popped onto the screen of her mind. Though she’d won the Scrabble match, he hadn’t gone down without a fight, challenging a few of the words she’d used that he didn’t know. But mostly she remembered his good nature at losing to her.

Sleep faded the picture of her and Brody facing each other over the Scrabble board and whisked her into a dream world that evolved into a nightmare she hadn’t had in a year—one where she was shoved into a prison cell. As she swept around to rush out, the bars slammed shut, the sound clanging through her mind.

The noise jerked her awake. Her eyelids flew open. Silence greeted her and calmed her racing heart.

Until she heard a muffled thud—as though a silencer had been fired.

TWO

The distinctive sound of a gun with a silencer discharging nearby yanked Brody from sleep. As he rolled out of bed, he grabbed his Glock from his bedside table. Kevin and Mark didn’t have silencers on their weapons, which meant someone had made it inside. Had there been more than one shot? Since he hadn’t heard his partners’ guns going off, he had to assume something happened to them. What had he slept through?

Hurrying toward his door, he shoved deep down the thought of the worst occurring. He couldn’t afford to be sidetracked. He had to be as detached and professional as possible. There would be time later for emotion.

He eased open the door a crack and listened. Silence ruled. For a second he wondered if he’d dreamed hearing the sound. Hoped he had. Then a whisper of a noise alerted him to Arianna easing her door open slightly. His gaze seized hers, and he knew she’d heard the same thing. It wasn’t a dream.

The cabin had been compromised. Fortifying himself with a deep breath, he swung the door open wide and stepped out into the hallway with his Glock pointed toward the living room. To his side he noticed Arianna stepping into the corridor. He shook his head. She ignored him and continued out into the hall with a gun in her hand.

He shouldn’t be surprised she’d brought her own gun to the cabin. He would have in her place. But still he frowned and tried to convey silently that she get back into her room.

A low moan coming from the living room refocused his full attention on the threat in the cabin. Short of handcuffing her to her bed, she would be backing him up. Waving her behind him, he crept down the hallway. At least this way he could shield her.

Toward the entrance into the living room, he slowed and flattened himself against the wall then inched forward. Much to his dismay Arianna copied him but on the other side of the corridor. She brought her Glock up, both hands clasping it. She ignored the displeasure he knew showed on his face, her gaze trained on the living area.

At the moment, survival was the most important objective. He gave up trying to have Arianna hang back. He knew from all the reports she was very capable of handling herself so he indicated she cover the left side of the room while he took the right. They entered in unison.

One large man was dragging Mark’s body out of sight while Brody glimpsed another intruder by the front door.

“Drop your weapons,” Brody said, preparing for them not to obey.

The guy moving Mark ducked down behind the kitchen counter while the one at the door raised his gun and fired. Arianna squeezed off a round at the shooter then stepped back behind the wall into the hallway for cover. While that intruder went down with a wound to the chest, Brody dived behind the couch and crawled forward to get a better angle on the attacker in the kitchen. He popped up at the same time Brody aimed his Glock and took the man out. The thud resounded through the cabin when he crashed to the floor.

Brody rose, swinging around in a full circle to make sure there were no more assailants in the cabin. Arianna had disappeared down the hallway, and the sound he heard now of doors opening and closing as she checked each room raised his admiration for the lady’s skills.

When Arianna came back, he said, “I’m checking outside. There may be more. I need to see where Kevin is. You’ll have to see if Mark is alive. From his injury, I don’t think he is.” But he prayed his partner was. And Kevin.

“Be careful. Sending two men to kill four doesn’t make sense.”

“I know. That’s what concerns me.” As he approached the intruder by the door, he leaned over and felt for a pulse. “This one is dead.”

Arianna arrived in the kitchen. “So is this guy.”

He opened the door. “What about Mark?”

Ducking down behind the counter, Arianna answered in a heavy voice, “Dead.”

That was what he’d thought. With a head wound Mark hadn’t had a chance to get a shot off. And to get into the cabin they had to go through Kevin. A young marshal with only a year’s experience. Again he reminded himself to tamp down his emotions. Later he could mourn the dead. His only goal was to protect Arianna.

“Lock this after I leave.” Dread at what he would find blanketed him as he slipped through the front door out onto the porch. Already the night sky started growing light as sunrise neared at four-thirty.

No one was on the porch. Alert, every muscle taut with tension, Brody descended the steps and slinked toward the left side of the cabin. When he rounded the corner, a man plowed into him, sending him flying back. Brody managed to keep a grip on his gun even while his arms flung out. The impact with the ground caused the air to swoosh from him. The bulky assailant crushed him into the dirt, sitting on him, knees pinning down his arms and fists pounding into Brody’s upper body and face. Stars swam before Brody’s eyes. From deep inside him he drew on his reserve, fueled by a spurt of adrenaline. He was the only thing standing between Arianna and death.

Between punches Brody sucked in a shallow breath, laced with the scent of sweat, then poured what strength he had into freeing one of his pinned arms. When he did, Brody cuffed the brute on the side of the head with his Glock. The man’s drive slowed. Brody struck him again with the butt of the weapon.

His assailant growled and swiveled his upper body, grasping the hand that held the weapon. His attacker wrestled Brody for the gun, trying to twist his arm—possibly to break it. The Glock hovered between them. Brody focused all his will on an effort to regain control of the weapon. His chest burned with the lack of oxygen. The gun wavered inches from Brody, the barrel slowly turning toward him. A dark haze edged into his mind. Brody sent up a silent plea to God, and with a last burst of strength, he halted the Glock’s momentum, then he began turning the end toward his assailant’s torso.

Brody pulled his finger around the trigger with the man’s hand still covering his. Brody stared into his attacker’s dark eyes as the bullet exploded from the weapon, striking his assailant’s chest. He jerked then slumped over, pinning Brody to the ground.

His ears ringing, the scent of gunpowder filling his nostrils, he shoved the man off him and scrambled away, never taking his eyes off his attacker. In the dim light of predawn he felt for a pulse. Gone. He checked the man’s pockets for ID. There was none, but he found a switchblade with blood on it. Brody searched the area.

What happened here? Where is Kevin?

Tension stretched every nerve to beyond its limit. Rising, Brody kept scanning the terrain as he circled the cabin, using the shadows to cover his presence as much as possible. By the time he reached the porch again, he was even more confused by what had happened. Kevin was nowhere he could see, and he hadn’t encountered anyone or anything else suspicious.

When he knocked on the door, he said, “It’s Brody.” He noticed the drapes over the window move, then a few seconds later the click on the lock sounded in the quiet. Too quiet. No birds tweeted. No howls of the wolves he’d heard earlier. The hairs on his nape stood up.

How did the assailants arrive? Not by helicopter. He would have heard that. By four-wheel drive? By foot?

The door swung open. Arianna took one look at him and dragged him inside. “I hope the other guy looks worse.”

“He’s dead. I can’t find Kevin. At least he’s not near the cabin or in the open area.”

“I almost came out when I heard the gunshot to check on you.”

“What stopped you?”

“Whether you believe it or not, I can follow orders. I figured if someone killed you, my best chance was in here, and if you got the jump on one of them, you’d be back. I was going to give you another five minutes before reassessing what I needed to do. In the meantime, I checked the pockets of these two. No identification on them. All they brought with them was their Wilson Combat revolvers and this.” She held her palm flat with a piece of paper on it. “A detailed map to this cabin.”

“Great. They didn’t just stumble upon us.”

“You thought they did?”

“No, but I could dream they had and no one else knew about the cabin yet. At least until I could get you safely away from here.”

Arianna’s mouth pinched into a frown as she stared at the nearest dead assailant. “As you know, we have to assume the worse. Did the guy outside have anything on him?”

“He had a switchblade with blood on it and no ID.”

Her gaze returned to his face. “No gun?”

“In a holster at the small of his back under his jacket. Not the best place to draw quickly. I surprised him coming around the corner. We’re getting out of here.”

“You’re not calling this in?”

“No. Something isn’t right. How did these guys find us? Where’s Kevin?”

“Do you think he’s dead, too, or that he let someone know I was here?”

“Don’t know, and since I don’t, I can’t trust anyone until I know more. My job is to keep you alive to testify. I intend to do my job. Even more now. Rainwater has made this personal.” Brody strode into the kitchen and washed the blood off his hands and face. “Get one of the marshals’ duffel bags. Stuff what you think we can use in it. We don’t have transport out of here, so we’ll have to go on foot and find a place to camp. Bring food that is easy to carry. We won’t use a fire to cook.”

“Yeah, too risky.”

He gestured at his bloody clothes. “I’m changing and gathering what I can from the bedrooms. I imagine the ranger has a lot of what we may need for camping.”

Arianna snapped her fingers. “Be right back.” She rushed down the hallway and returned a half minute later with her camera.

“I don’t think this is a good time to take pictures of the wilderness.”

She smiled. “Not the wilderness but these two animals. When we get back to Anchorage, I want to make sure we find out who they are and who they work for.”

“That’s easy. Rainwater.”

“But who they are might help us get Rainwater for a murder of a federal agent.”

He covered the distance to the hall. “Are you sure you weren’t a cop before this?”

“No, but when you protect others you learn things. Change and take care of those cuts or I will. There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom.”

“Don’t have the time. I’ll do it later. I want to leave in ten minutes. We don’t know who else is out there and how long it will take them to realize these guys didn’t succeed. When they figure that out, they’ll come looking for us.”

The thought there could be more than three sent to kill them spurred him to move as fast as his throbbing body allowed. Now that the adrenaline had faded, the pain came to the foreground. But he wouldn’t allow it to interfere with what had to be done.

* * *

After snapping pictures of both of the intruders, Arianna found a backpack in the storage closet off the kitchen and decided to use that instead of one of the marshals’ duffel bags. Easier to carry and since it was large it would hold about the same amount of items. As she stuffed what food she could into the bag, she glimpsed Mark on the floor nearby and steeled her resolve to bring to justice the person responsible for his death.

As a soldier she’d seen death, sometimes on a large scale. As a bodyguard she hadn’t been exposed to it much in the past four years. She’d worked hard to keep it that way by protecting her clients the best she could. But now there were three dead bodies in the cabin and at least one outside, possibly Kevin’s, too. She’d wanted to help and protect people without the death. But it had found her that evening when she’d witnessed Thomas Perkins’s murder and wouldn’t let go.