US Marshall 03 - The Rapids (14 page)

Even as out of sorts as he was, he knew not to get into his reasons for being in Ravenkill with a U.S. Marshal. “My head hurts.”

“How did it happen? The bump on the head.”

“I told you. I fell into the river.”

She braked hard, putting the truck into first gear as she glanced over at him. “Like Thomas Kopac?”

“Well, he had a .22 round in the back of his skull. I just hit a rock—”

“Or got banged on the head with one. Which is it?”

“I think I fell.”

“You think? You don’t know. Goddamn it, Brooker—”

“I’ve slept with your plants and fish.” The contents of his stomach were oozing up his throat, and the pounding in his head hadn’t even begun to let up. “We should be Ethan and Juliet to each other by now.”

She had a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. “You rattled my brain showing up last night.”

He smiled. “First piece of good news I’ve had today.”

“You don’t remember anything about what happened? Don’t tell me you slipped. You
don’t
slip. I saw you jump forty feet into the Cumberland River
that day in Tennessee. You had a guy with a gun at your head, two dead guys at your feet—”

“At the point I jumped, the gun was at
your
head.”

“God.” She raked a hand through her short curls. “I don’t trust you, Brooker.”

“Ethan. And, yeah, you do.”

She softened again, and he could see the tension going out of her shoulders, her blue eyes shining with a depth of compassion that he suspected she preferred to keep at bay. He saw it because he was that way himself. It was easier. Less chance of getting your heart ripped out of your chest.

She gulped in a breath and averted her gaze, as if looking at him would just make her fall apart. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

He couldn’t involve her in his mess. Raleigh, Kopac, Janssen. Ravenkill. Whatever they all amounted to, he wasn’t sucking Juliet into it. He’d crossed lines, but he could—he didn’t answer to anyone. She did.

“Relax, Juliet,” he said. “I’ve hurt my head worse than this fixing my car. I’ll be fine. I just need some time.”

“You
are
hurt, then?”

“I don’t remember what happened. Until I do—”

“You’re not trusting anyone. You’re not talking to anyone.”

He let his silence be his response.

“Ethan…” She sighed.
“Damn.”

His stomach settled down. He wasn’t going to vomit, but he couldn’t keep his eyes open, felt his body sinking and his fatigue overtake him.

“You don’t scare me,” she said.

He tried to focus on her through his pain and exhaustion. “I don’t want to scare you.”

It was all he could manage, but he saw her look of shock and confusion before he closed his eyes again, unable to stop himself from drifting off.

“Sleep well, Major Brooker,” she whispered. “You’ve come too far to get killed on us now.”

He didn’t have the strength even to open his eyes.

Char…

His wife was gone, her memory like a stab of heat and guilt.

He thought he heard Juliet sigh. Or maybe it was his dead wife’s ghost, leaving him alone to sleep and dream.

Nate Winter would rather be on Cold Ridge where he grew up in the White Mountains, immersed in a thick fog and fierce wind, than more or less alone in a room with the President of the United States.

John Wesley Poe, however, never showed any sign he noticed Nate’s discomfort or shared it. His focus was on his reasons for calling Nate to the White House.

They were in a sitting area, Poe on a wing chair, Nate on a love seat.

Nate was surprised at how quiet it was.

Poe shook his head. “Rob’s got himself mixed up with Philip Spencer’s daughter and William Raleigh. I can’t believe it. It’s like I saw this coming, knew it would get here, but couldn’t admit it.”

Nate shifted positions, trying to get comfortable on the love seat. “Mr. President?”

“They were a pair. Raleigh and Spencer. Before my time.”

“Intelligence operatives?” Nate asked, guessing.

But Poe didn’t give a direct answer. “Friends. Good friends. Spencer was killed eighteen months ago in Prague.” He sighed. “It was before my time in office, not that it matters.”

Poe’s emotional involvement—his dread—was palpable, beyond what Nate could understand. “Philip Spencer was killed when he walked into the middle of a bank robbery—”

“That’s the story.”

“There was no bank robbery?”

“Oh, there was a bank robbery.” Poe sank back into his chair, looking tired, a rarity for a man with his renowned stamina. “I don’t know how much it had to do with what happened to Spencer. Raleigh wants his killer. Some people think he’s responsible for Spencer’s death—that he screwed up, plain and simple. He’d retired, supposedly. Went back to drinking. Again, supposedly. There are rumors he talked out of turn, bragged to the wrong person.”

“So Raleigh’s not only looking for a killer,” Nate said. “He wants vindication.”

“From what I understand, the man’s a riddle. I’m not sure anyone really knows what he’s up to. He could simply want to look after a friend’s daughter, no matter how competent and skilled she is.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

Poe shook his head. “I have no idea.”

“Mr. President,” Nate said, leaning forward, folding his hands over his knees as if somehow it would help him understand this man who meant so much to the Dunnemores, who was so much a part of their lives. “What’s worrying you?”

He averted his eyes. “I’ve been waiting for this moment. It’s like watching a drought in the west, knowing the fire season’s coming and that there’s nothing you can do. The conditions are there. They’re perfect. All it takes is a dropped match, a lightning strike, a spark of a dragging muffler.”

Poe sometimes had a metaphorical way of talking that he seemed to think drove home his point. He could spin a story—Sarah said it was a Night’s Landing tradition, a skill born and developed on their quiet stretch of the Cumberland River. But Nate was from the Granite State, raised by a Vietnam vet uncle. He tended to be more direct. “Mr. President?”

“Rob’s not going to stay in the Marshals Service.”

There was nothing Nate could add. He knew what
Poe said was true. He’d known it the minute he’d met Rob earlier in the year, when Rob had been assigned to the southeastern New York district. It wasn’t that he didn’t belong in the USMS. He just wasn’t staying.

“He’s suited to intelligence work. William Raleigh will reel him in, just as he reeled in Philip Spencer. And it scares me.” Poe sighed heavily, no longer dancing around the truth about Raleigh and Spencer. “It scares the hell out of me.”

“Because Rob’s a Dunnemore,” Nate said.

“Leola and Violet wanted me to stay in Night’s Landing,” Poe went on, referring to the two unmarried sisters who’d raised him. “They worried about me all the time, from the day I left home.”

Orphaned at seven, Nate had faced different kinds of fears. “I think it comes with the turf.”

“I know Rob can take care of himself. It’s just—” He broke off. “Damn. He thinks his father and I don’t believe in him, but that’s not it. It’s a visceral thing, Nate. This fear. I’ve never had a son of my own.”

“Is anyone in touch with Raleigh? You could get him to back off—”

“No, I couldn’t. Whether I could get in touch with him or not, I could never interfere that way.”

“You wouldn’t, you mean.”

“That’s right. I wouldn’t.”

“I respect that, Mr.—”

“Wes,” he said, managing a ragged smile. “Just once can you call me Wes?”

“Maybe when you’re out of office, Mr. President.”

Poe rose, and Nate followed his lead, the Washington humidity noticeable even in the air-conditioned White House. “What’s Sarah up to today?” the president asked.

Nate relaxed at mention of his future wife. “Digging in her dump.”

“She’ll know—”

“She already does. She denies there’s a twin connection between her and Rob, but it’s there. She knows he’s in trouble. This Raleigh character—he’s not drinking now?”

“There are rumors he had a mental breakdown. But I’m told William Raleigh is one of the most clear-eyed people we have.”

“He’s back on the payroll?”

Poe didn’t answer.

“Then you don’t believe he got Philip Spencer killed,” Nate said.

“No. I don’t.”

Poe sounded more presidential just then, less like a tortured friend.

When Nate got back to Arlington, he found Sarah on the back porch in a T-shirt and overalls, her dump-digging clothes. His sister Antonia, an E.R. doctor married to the junior senator from Massachusetts, was there with their new baby, Jill, a bald bundle of drool, gums and bright eyes.

Nate tried to get his head around how much their
lives had changed in the past year. Antonia’s, their sister Carine’s, his own. They’d faced fear and stress and their own deepest desires, their toughest challenges, and come out on the other side—strong, united, ready to tackle a new future.

The Night’s Landing Dunnemores weren’t anything like the Cold Ridge Winters, except for that one thing—they didn’t seem to do anything the easy way.

Sarah had her honey-colored hair pulled back, and she frowned at him. “Rob,” she said. “Something’s up.”

Nate turned to his sister. “Don’t you medical types tell me there’s no such thing as twin radar.”

Antonia laughed, her baby laid across her lap, chubby bare legs kicking. “I stopped trying to tell you anything long before I became a ‘medical type.’” She scooped up Jill, who smiled, looking more Callahan than Winter. “Say bye-bye to Uncle Nate. We’ll see him another day. Right now, he’s got to talk to Aunt Sarah.”

Jill was barely two months old and didn’t understand a word her mother told her, but she smiled and cooed all the way down the porch steps.

Sarah blew the baby kisses. “I could get into babies,” she said without looking at Nate.

Six months ago—before Sarah—he would have choked at such talk. Now he just felt a little tight in the throat. But it wasn’t a remark, he decided, that
needed a comment from him. “I just came from the White House.”

The baby out of sight, his fiancée shifted back to him. “You saw Wes?”

He nodded.

“You talked about Rob,” she said confidently.

“It’s a complicated situation.”

“Meaning you’re not going to give me the details.” She smiled at him, giving him a knowing look. “You don’t think I’d interfere in marshal business, do you?”

“You? Never.”

“I haven’t seen Rob since Janssen was arrested,” Sarah said quietly, serious now. “Since the murder in Holland—”

“You know I’d never stop you from seeing your brother.”

But she was suddenly tense, her smile gone. “I won’t ask what Wes said.”

Which just killed her, Nate knew.

She took a breath, let it out. “But Rob…If he’s in over his head—”

“Rob can handle himself,” he reminded her gently.

She squeezed her eyes shut a moment and nodded. “I know, I know. But if he’s in the dark—if Wes knows something—”

“He won’t be in the dark after I talk to him.”

She relaxed visibly. “That’s what I wanted to
hear.” She started for the porch door. “I finished up early and made fried apricot pies while Antonia and Jill and I visited.”

Fried apricot pies were a Dunnemore family favorite, and a sure sign that Sarah was feeling the stress of whatever was going on with her brother.

“You cooked in this heat?”

That made her laugh. “It’s not that hot.”

When she pulled open the screen door, Nate noticed the small diamond on her finger, and it was as if he was seeing it for the first time. He’d given it to her on Cold Ridge.

In a few weeks, he and Sarah Dunnemore would be married.

Rob couldn’t still be sneaking around with spies and DS agents then. He had to be at his sister’s wedding.

Nate knew he had to do what he could to make that happen.

The rest was up to Rob.

M
aggie drank unsweetened iced tea on a bench in the village of Ravenkill, the afternoon heat and humidity having built up to an uncomfortable level. She’d left Rob at the inn. The walk had helped her work out the kinks from her encounter with Brooker and settle her mind.

The kinks were easier to deal with than the mind.

Keeping his word, Raleigh had called her at the inn and asked her to come to the village.

Alone.

She’d showered and changed by then, getting her physical reaction to Rob more or less under control. They’d had lunch on the porch, and she’d told him exactly what had happened with Brooker and then with Raleigh.

But when Raleigh called, she hadn’t told Rob she was off to the village to meet with the former economist, or whatever he was.

She’d said she needed some time alone.

Her bench was directly across from an upscale flower shop with an attractive sidewalk display of pots, cut flowers and birdhouses. On either side of it were antique shops, which dominated the small, pretty village.

She watched Raleigh come out of the too-cute restaurant where she’d bought her iced tea and cross the street, sitting down next to her with a huge iced coffee. “I didn’t think the large would be
this
large,” he said. “I’ve been away too long. I have to get used to American sizing.”

“Mr. Raleigh—”

“You can call me William. Most people do. For some reason, I’ve never been a Bill or a Willie. Just William.” He removed the plastic cap from his iced coffee and took a sip. “This is enough for a family of four.”

“Where’s Major Brooker?”

“Resting.”

“Resting where?”

“That’s for him to say.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “You two don’t have to be so damn cagey—”

“Perhaps not,” he said, taking another sip of his drink, “but we’re used to it.”

“How did you meet?”

“We were both on Nick Janssen’s trail.”

“I understand why Brooker would be looking for
Janssen, but why would you?” She felt the humidity, which brought out the smells of the passing cars, the grass, some of the flowers in the display across the street. “Did he have something to do with my father’s death?”

Raleigh lowered his drink and winced. “My calves are acting up. I could have used my walking stick today, tramping out in the woods. I left the bloody thing in Amsterdam. It’s more a nuisance than anything else.”

Maggie stared at him a moment. Beads of sweat had collected on his forehead and nose and seemed to make the sprinkle of brown spots across his cheeks stand out more.

“Are you CIA?” she asked him quietly.

“I’m just a tired old man, Maggie,” he said.

“You’re not that old. What, sixty?”

“Sixty-two.” He smiled sideways at her. “Sixty. I like that. You know I look older. You’re just too polite to say so.”

She smiled in spite of herself. “No, you look as if you’ve had a hard life. There’s a difference.”

“Most of my hardships were self-inflicted.” He sipped more of his iced coffee, but didn’t seem to enjoy it. “I’d better restrain myself. Rest rooms in this quaint little village are difficult to come by.”

“Why are you here?”

He focused on something across the street, avoiding her eye. “There’s been another killing.”

“Jesus. Who? Where—”

“London. Your colleagues in federal law enforcement will know soon, if they don’t already. A Russian arms dealer named Vlad Samkevich turned up dead there late today. He’d been dead for some time. At least a few days.”

Maggie recognized the name. Investigators believed Samkevich was one of Janssen’s main suppliers of illegal small arms. Janssen never touched any of the illicit goods he moved around the world. He made deals happen. Already a rich man, he got richer from them.

“How?” Maggie asked.

“A .22 round to the back of the head.”

Just like Tom Kopac.

“A neighbor found him.” Raleigh made a face at his iced coffee. “How can anyone drink this much of anything? Well. I should talk. If it were whiskey—” He sighed with a sense of acceptance mixed with regret. “There’s enough caffeine here to end anyone’s jet lag, that’s for sure.”

Maggie’s mind wasn’t on iced coffee. George Bremmerton had told her that Janssen was refusing to cooperate with Dutch authorities. American investigators, in the process of getting permission from a Dutch judge, had yet to question him. His attorneys had vowed to fight his extradition to the U.S. Nick Janssen’s criminal friends and associates had to be wondering if he would give them up in exchange for
another kind of deal, one with prosecutors instead of exortionists, murderers, drug and arms traffickers.

Maybe they were all jockeying for the top position now that their deal-maker was in custody.

“Do we have a turf war on our hands?” Maggie asked. “Is that what you think? It doesn’t explain Tom’s death—”

“Perhaps it does.”

“Are you suggesting he was working with Janssen? I don’t believe it. Mr. Raleigh—William—if you know anything, now is the time to tell me.”

He gave her a dry look. “I suppose I should remember that we’re in the U.S. now. You have the powers of arrest here. And I see that you’re armed. I’m not, in case you were wondering.”

“I should take you in and let the FBI and the marshals grill you just for being here and knowing Major Brooker—never mind the rest of it, the kooky phone call, Den Bosch.”

“Your instincts tell you to trust me.”

“My instincts tell me you’re manipulating me.” She had an urge to fling the rest of her iced tea in the street and walk away from this man. Tom Kopac. Now this Samkevich. What the hell was going on? And her father. Where did he fit in? “People say you’re mentally ill, you know.”

“Ah, yes. Of course they do.” It didn’t seem to bother him. “There are days I wish I were. I wish I could take a pill and discover that all the bad voices
and images in my head were imaginary. There are days I wish I were delusional.”

“Did you kill Tom Kopac and Vlad Samkevich?”

He set his drink on the bench next to him. “Maggie.”

His tone. The lucid blue eyes on her.

“Hell,” she said. “You believe we have an assassin at work. You
know.
”

“A paid assassin, not someone who believes in any cause but money.” He leaned back against the uncomfortable wooden bench, stretching out his bony legs, flexing his feet. “It’s someone I’ve been tracking for eighteen months.”

Eighteen months.

Maggie didn’t breathe.

“I picked up where your father left off. But I’m the one who put him on the trail.”

“How—” She paused, composing herself. “How do you know? Who the hell are you? Who was
he?
”

But Raleigh didn’t answer her. “Nick Janssen must have hired our assassin. He must have had a contingency plan in the event of his capture. He wouldn’t leave anything to chance. His arrest could only make him more dangerous. It’s all or nothing for him now. He has no choice, in his view, but to be bold and ruthless.”

“He’ll eliminate any rivals who threaten his position, any friends who could turn against him.”

“Anyone he blames for his current predicament could also be a target.”

But Maggie reminded herself not to get sucked into Raleigh’s sense of drama and to stick to what she knew—and to remember what she didn’t know. Like whether or not the man sitting next to her was even in sound mental health. He could still be spinning wild fantasies and conspiracies.

“Why are you here?” she asked him pointedly.

“Tom Kopac and I were to meet in Den Bosch the morning he was killed.”

“His idea or yours?”

“Mine. I heard through my contacts in Prague that he’d been asking questions about your father.”

“My father? But why?”

“That’s what I wanted to find out. I caught up with him at his apartment early Friday morning after Janssen’s arrest. He was on his way to the embassy. We agreed to meet in Den Bosch the next day.”

“Why Den Bosch?”

“Another unanswered question.”

“Then it was Tom’s idea,” Maggie said.

Raleigh nodded. “I phoned you. I wanted to meet Mr. Kopac first—”

“Where?”

“The cathedral.” But he anticipated her next question. “I don’t know why he went to the river. Perhaps he was curious about where Janssen was arrested. His safe house was nearby. I’d planned to tell you
everything I knew. Then he was killed, and there was your deputy marshal.”

“Why Ravenkill?”

“I saw a printout on the inn at his apartment. It was in plain sight. I thought…well, I wanted to see your reaction when I mentioned it, for starters. I didn’t know if it had anything to do with your father or his death, if it was significant at all. Perhaps a place you and your father went on vacation when he was alive. Something of that nature.”

“I’d never heard of it,” Maggie said.

Raleigh cast her a steady glance. “Your father never mentioned Mr. Kopac, I take it? I didn’t want to use his name. I wanted to see your reaction to Ravenkill and the Old Stone Hollow Inn first.”

“No, you didn’t. You knew for sure I’d never let you out of that cathedral if you mentioned Tom. And no, as far as I know he and my father didn’t know each other.” The air was still and very warm, and she hoped for a rumble of thunder, a bolt of lightning—anything to jump-start her brain. “Did you leave the printout in Tom’s apartment?”

“Yes. I left everything just as it was.”

“Then presumably the police have it now.”

“Unless he tossed it,” Raleigh said.

“George Bremmerton didn’t mention it when I spoke to him this morning. Maybe the Dutch police are still sorting out what they found and don’t believe it has any significance—”

“It may not, Maggie. Major Brooker thinks he probably slipped and fell in the river and wasn’t attacked.”

“Is that what you believe?”

He shrugged. “What I believe hasn’t mattered for a long time now. I’m not being morose or self-pitying. It’s the truth. You’re here in Ravenkill because of me. I’m here because of you. Major Brooker’s here because of both of us.”

“Janssen’s in custody,” Maggie said. “You’d think Brooker would call it quits and go do whatever comes next for him.”

“I don’t think he knows what that is.”

“That’s a hard way to live.”

“I think it’s how your new marshal friend is living, too.” Raleigh returned the cap to his iced coffee and made a face. “Look, I’ve drunk it down just an inch and I’m swimming. What a waste.”

“Take it with you. Where are you staying?”

“Me? Oh, here and there.” He nodded at the shops across the street. “Tom Kopac was a serious antiques collector. He could have been planning a shopping trip to Ravenkill.”

Maggie shook her head. “I doubt it. I didn’t know him that well, but I understand he didn’t take vacations, never mind shopping jaunts to the States. There are plenty of antique shops right in the Netherlands.”

“Was your father interested in antiques?”

“No.”

“Phil was a good man. Intelligent, interested in
everything—he gobbled up information like no one I’ve ever known.” Raleigh seemed to be talking to himself more than to Maggie. But he smiled suddenly at her. “Perhaps our Mr. Kopac had more than a friendly interest in you.”

“I can’t—” She faltered, picturing him in the Binnendieze. “Please don’t. There was nothing romantic in our friendship.”

“I’m sorry.” Raleigh patted her knee, his hand cool from the massive iced-coffee cup. “I’m very sorry for all of this.”

“Tom was just a good guy. Who the hell would walk up to him and put a bullet in his head?”

“He had secrets, Maggie. He didn’t tell you he was asking questions about your father, did he?”

She didn’t answer. There was no point. Raleigh already knew that she and Tom had talked about nothing more substantial, more important, than doughnuts.

“I know it’s difficult,” Raleigh said. “I remember early on, someone told me it doesn’t get easier. It was a frightening thought to me at the time. I wanted it to get easier. I didn’t want to have to suffer so much when someone I knew, someone I liked and admired—a friend—died. But now?” He sighed heavily, sweat dripping down the end of his red nose. “It’s a comfort to know it doesn’t get easier. That every loss still matters.”

Maggie dumped out the last of her tea and melting ice in the grass. Her father was dead. Tom was
dead. A Russian arms dealer was dead. She and William Raleigh and Ethan Brooker and Rob Dunnemore were all in Ravenkill. They all could be spinning their wheels in the picturesque little Hudson River Valley town.

“I was hoping if I ended up with egg all over my face over this excursion, it’d be with fewer witnesses,” she said, her shirt sticking to her back in the crushing humidity. “This assassin could still be in London, picking out another victim.”

Raleigh seemed rooted to the bench, his legs outstretched. “You know your father wasn’t killed by bank robbers?”

“I’m fairly certain he wasn’t just a business consultant, either. Do you know how he was killed? I was never told—”

“It was a .22 round to the heart.”

“Your assassin?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Now you’re sounding like a nut again.” She squinted at him against the afternoon glare, realizing she was stiff from her dunking in the Ravenkill. “But you’re not a nut or a drunk or a breakdown case, are you?”

He didn’t answer.

Maggie watched a middle-aged woman pick up a pot of bright yellow mums, examine them with a skeptical frown, then shrug and take them inside the shop.
I should be buying mums.

But she glanced again at the man next to her. “How can I believe a word you say?”

His pale eyes twinkled. “Magster. You must have been an adorable six-year-old. Freckles, turquoise eyes, red hair and skinned knees. Am I right?”

“It’s not that hard. I still have freckles, turquoise eyes and red hair.”

“And skinned knees. Brooker did that?”

“My own damn fault.”

“Phil wanted to be a better father to you,” Raleigh said softly, seriously. “I suspect when it’s all said and done it’s what most of us wish. That we’d done better by those we love.”