Love Inspired Suspense January 2014 (13 page)

He was halfway through the living room when the floor at the top of the stairs creaked. He knew Annie was on her way down, but he walked to the staircase anyway.

She'd hooked her purse over her shoulder and pulled her hair into a high ponytail that brushed her nape. Head down, eyes focused on a piece of paper she was holding, she seemed oblivious to his presence.

“Ready?” he asked, and she jumped.

“I didn't realize you were there,” she said with a little laugh.

“I wasn't trying to make a secret of it. What are you studying? Notes for the trial?”

“No. I'm prepared for that. I'm just...” Her cheeks went three shades of red, and she folded the paper and shoved it into her purse.

“What?”

“Reminding myself why I'm doing this.”

“Going to talk to Steven Antonio?”

“Testifying.”

He didn't say anything as he led her into the kitchen.

He was curious, though.

He wanted to know what was on the paper.

He waited while she kissed Sophia goodbye and gave Serena instructions that probably wouldn't be followed. Serena would do her own thing with Sophia, and that would be fine. As long as the little girl was safe and happy, Hunter didn't see any harm in that.

Once she was finished, he cupped her elbow and led her into the garage. He unlocked the door to the SUV, and she slid into the passenger seat. He was uncomfortably aware of her presence. He took his time getting into the SUV, letting the cold garage cool his blood and refocus his thoughts.

He had a job to do, and he needed to get it done.

Until he did, nothing else could matter.

THIRTEEN

A
nnie leaned her head against the seat and closed her eyes. Maybe if she kept them closed, Hunter would make the trip in silence.

She should have known better.

“So, what was on the piece of paper you stuck in your purse?” he asked before they even pulled out of the garage.

“A list.”

“Of reasons why you're testifying?”

“Yes.” As silly as it seemed, she'd written them down before she'd left St. Louis, and she'd carried them with her to Milwaukee and back again because she'd wanted to remember why she'd agreed to work with the marshals.

“What were they?”

She didn't really feel like talking about them. She didn't want to think about the horrible hours she'd spent after Joe's murder. Didn't want to remember how desperate she'd been to find Sophia or how scared she'd been that she never would.

She'd been at the hospital, dressed in a stranger's clothes because hers had been taken as evidence, waiting and praying that the police would find Sophia and that she was okay.

When the door had opened and a police officer had walked in with Sophia, she'd almost passed out with relief. She'd stayed with her parents for the next week, huddled in her old room, terrified and grief-stricken.

Eventually, she'd identified the two men she'd seen in her kitchen. She'd have known either of them anywhere. John Fiske's pinched weasellike face. Luke Saunders's dragon tattoo dancing along his forearm as he'd pointed the gun in her direction.

She shuddered.

The police had arrested them both, and she'd been approached by Hunter. He'd asked her to testify and promised to keep her safe until trial. It had seemed like the right thing to do until a couple of days before she was supposed to leave town.

Then she'd doubted her choice, wondered if maybe she'd be better off staying in St. Louis. That was when she'd written the list.

It seemed like a lifetime ago, and she felt like a different person. Not the young and happy woman she'd been before Joe's murder. A jaded, older version of herself.

The reasons she'd written a year ago seemed so naive, so simplistic.

“So, you're not going to share?” Hunter asked as he backed out of the garage and pulled onto the quiet street.

“There's nothing to share, really.”

“Which means there is plenty to share.” He glanced in the rearview mirror, probably making sure they weren't being followed.

She resisted the urge to turn around and see for herself.

“I wanted to do it for Joe. I thought he'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wanted justice for him because it felt so unfair that he died for nothing.”

“It still is unfair, Annie. Just because your husband borrowed money from the wrong people doesn't mean that he deserved to die,” Hunter said gently.

She knew he was right, but things had felt different since she'd found out about Joe's secret life. It wasn't that she thought he deserved what he'd gotten. It was just that she kept thinking that he could have prevented it. “I know, but he was part of the tragedy that happened to him. A knowing participant in the events that led to his murder. That doesn't mean he deserved it, but it means that it could have been prevented.” She sighed and looked out the window. “That's what I can't forget.”

“And what you can't forgive him for?”

“I've forgiven him, but I can't seem to forget that all the plans and dreams and goals we had died with him. I can't stop thinking that if he'd just been doing the things he'd said he was, he wouldn't be dead, and we'd still be raising Sophia together.”

“Do you really think that?” he asked as he pulled onto the highway and headed toward the suburbs. “Because the way I read the Bible, we each have a certain number of days. Once those days are up, our lives on earth are over. There's nothing we can do to stretch that number out, so we've got to live the best way we can every day that we have.”

He was right, but it was so much easier to think about other things. Like Hunter with a leather Bible in his tan hands. “You read the Bible?”

“You sound surprised.”

“I...guess I am.” He'd been accompanying her to church every Sunday since she'd returned to St. Louis, but she hadn't realized that attending meant anything to him.

“Why?”

“Because you're all about facts and figures and rules.”

“And that means I can't have faith?” he asked with a short laugh.

“No, but you've never mentioned it.”

“It isn't something I talk about to witnesses.”

“You're talking about it now,” she pointed out.

“Because the subject came up.” He sighed. “And because I've been thinking about it a lot more lately. I guess that's what happens when you go to church every Sunday.”

“You weren't doing that before?”

“Sleeping seemed a little more important than getting up early to attend services.” He offered a wry smile. “Thanks to you, I've learned the error of my ways. But we weren't talking about me and my mistakes. We were talking about Joe and how hard it is for you to forgive him.”

“It isn't hard,” she protested, but it was.

No matter how many times she told herself that she'd forgiven Joe, she couldn't let go of the pain. He'd lied to her, betrayed her trust and then he'd been killed.

It was all tied up together in a knot of unhappiness that spent most of its time sitting right in the center of Annie's chest. Some days, it was so heavy and tight she could barely breathe.

“It
is
hard, Annie, because you were supposed to have an entire lifetime with someone who promised to love and honor you. Instead you're raising your daughter by yourself, spending your days locked away because you're afraid for your life. You took vows before God. You lived by them, but Joe didn't, and now you're left cleaning up the mess he left behind.”

He was right.

She couldn't deny it.

She stared out the window, watching as trees and houses whizzed by, hot tears burning her eyes.

“It's okay to admit that you're angry,” Hunter said quietly.

“What good will that do? Joe will still be dead. I'll still be alone raising a little girl who will never know her father.” She sounded pitiful, and she hated that. She'd always tried to maintain an attitude of thanksgiving, but over the past year that had been difficult.

She knew that God had a purpose and plan for everything. Even the hard things.

That didn't make it any easier to go through.

“You're not alone. You have me and my team.” He patted her thigh, his hand warm through her cotton dress. Even after he pulled away, the warmth of his touch lingered.

“That's even more pitiful than being alone.” She kept her voice light, tried hard not to let any of her feelings seep into the words. There was no place for them in her life. Not then. Probably not ever.

“It's not pitiful, and neither are you,” he said as if he'd read her mind, knew exactly what she'd been thinking.

“At this moment, Hunter, you are the closest thing I have to a friend and, aside from Sophia, the closest thing I have to family. If that's not ridiculously pitiful, I don't know what is. So, how about we change the subject?”

“To what?”

“Did the police find anything at the apartment complex yesterday?”

“A homemade explosive device. Small. The car it was in was parked away from other vehicles,” Hunter replied. He'd wondered how long it would take before she changed the subject.

“So, whoever planted it didn't want to hurt anyone?”

“It's hard to say.”

“But you have an opinion about it, I'm sure.” She tapped her fingers on her thigh. The same thigh he'd patted. Unintentionally. He hadn't been thinking about the job, protocol, right and wrong. He'd just been thinking about Annie and how hard things had been for her since her husband's murder.

He also hadn't been thinking that that simple touch would warm his blood, leave him wanting more.

His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “My opinion,” he said, trying to refocus his thoughts, “is that the bomb was a distraction. The perp didn't intend to hurt anyone with it. He detonated it remotely. Which means he was either waiting somewhere close by, watching for you to exit the apartment, or he had someone else close enough to do it for him.”

“What about your security footage? You'd been watching the entire building, right?”

“Most of it. We have footage of the car entering the parking garage about an hour before you left the apartment. The perp got out and walked away. He was wearing a hat and scarf. Not unusual this time of year, but certainly good for hiding someone who doesn't want to be identified. Obviously, he knew when your appointment with Antonio was, and he was waiting for you to leave for it.”

“Why not just shoot me when I walked outside, then?” she asked, her muscles trembling slightly.

“Too easy for him to be seen. He was probably hoping to take a shot as we were leaving. Either that or he was just using more scare tactics and never intended to attack you physically.”

“If that's the case, it worked. I'm scared.” She turned to look out the side window, her ponytail swinging slightly as the SUV bounced over a rut in the road.

“Don't be. The bomb was an act of desperation. The perp might have known where you were, but he still wasn't able to get to you.”

Saunders and Fiske were small-time thugs. Their criminal records were rife with petty crime and drug dealings. Nothing big. Even considering the money Joe owed to the crime organization they were affiliated with, it was surprising that they'd crossed the line into murder. Someone else was calling the shots. More than likely, someone both men were afraid of.

They weren't saying, though.

They'd been silent on the motive for murder, refusing to answer questions during the year that they'd been awaiting trial. That wasn't going to affect the outcome of the case.

Thanks to Annie.

She was the perfect witness. Intelligent. Hardworking. Focused. A law-abiding citizen who'd never even gotten a parking ticket. She'd spent her life playing by the rules. The prosecuting team had left no stone unturned. Antonio had looked for even the smallest thing because he'd wanted to make sure the defense wouldn't be able to plant doubt in the minds of the jury.

There'd been nothing.

Annie would go to trial with a pristine past, her memory of her husband's murder clear and crisp in her mind. She'd seen everything. Saunders pulling the trigger. Joe falling. Blood splattering on the white cabinets and the floor. John Fiske hovering in the back doorway, urging Saunders to hurry up. The gun pointed at her head, misfiring and clattering onto the floor.

Hunter had heard the story dozens of times over the past month. Annie had told it the same way every time, her voice shaking a little, her face pale. He'd detached himself from her fear and pain because he'd wanted no part of it. Staying focused on protecting her meant not giving in to the compassion and sympathy he had for her.

She needed more than that, though. She
deserved
more.

She'd said it herself—he was all she had. The closest thing to friends and family she had.

He pulled on to a cul-de-sac lined with oversize houses and drove to the end, where a brick two-story hulked over a pristine yard. The driveway was three cars wide to match the garage. Antonio's black Cadillac was already parked in one of the spots.

“Is this it?” Annie asked as he parked next to Antonio's car. “The house is huge!”

“Looks like twenty people could live in it comfortably,” he agreed, but his mind wasn't on the conversation or on the house. It was on Annie. On everything she'd been through, everything he'd shoved to the back of his mind because he didn't want to see her as anything other than a job he had to do.

Something had changed.

He'd acknowledged that to himself, but he wasn't quite sure what to do about it. He knew what he
had
to do. Get her into the house, let her be questioned for hours in preparation for trial.

He touched her shoulder, his fingers curving around narrow bone and firm muscle. “When this is over, when the trial ends and Fiske and Saunders are in jail—”

“
If
they are. We don't know what the outcome is going to be.”

“
I
know. Your testimony is flawless, and the case is airtight,” he assured her, worried about the dark circles under her eyes and the pallid cast to her skin. Despite the cookies she loved so much, she was still losing weight, her cheekbones gaunt, her eyes hollow. The year of hiding had taken its toll. He wanted to take away the stress and anxiety, give her something that would make her smile.

“I hope you're right, Hunter. I just...” She bit her lower lip, her gaze dark and troubled. “I want to get my life back. I want to go to the park with Sophia and know that we're going to be safe. I want to go for a jog, buy groceries, drive to work without looking over my shoulder. I want all the things that I took for granted before.”

“You'll have them.”

She sighed. “You want to hear something funny?”

“Sure.” But he had a feeling it wasn't going to be funny.

“I've never really liked St. Louis. I always wanted to live somewhere rural. Like Wyoming or Montana or North Dakota. I wanted a lot of wide-open space where my kids could run and play in clean, fresh air.”

“I know a place like that. I spent every summer there for the first eighteen years of my life.” Because his father had been too busy to take a vacation, and his mother had been too overwhelmed to plan a vacation for her kids, they'd flown to Montana to visit her family every summer. Hunter's uncle Nate had taken all three kids under his wing, but Hunter had been the one who loved the ranch, the fresh air, the clean crisp air the most.