Cut and Run (15 page)

Nonetheless, the local police were conducting a full canvass of the area, both because it was dictated by procedure and because when it came to a child's abduction, all bets were hedged.

In profile, her nose turned slightly upward, her lips looked a little less full than the lips he remembered kissing. Larson adored the perfect pear shape of her ears and was reminded of the dead woman in Minneapolis. There was so much more to tell her, both personally and professionally, but first was the question of Penny's whereabouts.

Larson believed Penny's abductor might call Hope's cell phone, as Penny was believed to have the number memorized. The call wouldn't be for ransom, though. All the Romeros wanted was this woman dead.

For the moment Larson was authorized to oversee Hope's protection (he couldn't think of her as Alice) while his FATF team continued to pursue Markowitz and
Laena
. When and if WITSEC stabilized, Hope would be turned over to Justice for more permanent protection.

He said, “We can't take you to our offices because they're too public and could be being watched.”

“All I care about is getting Penny,” she said, looking out the windshield now. Searching.

“That's all I want, too,” he said. He decided to trust her with the truth. “We think we may have a mole, either in WITSEC or FATF. We've lost something valuable to us. That's why the alert went out. While we figure out how to get Penny back, I'm taking you into a safe house to ride this out.”

“Ride what out? Finding Penny, or the return of whatever was taken from you?”

“Both,” he said, speaking only for himself. Rotem and others would see Penny as an unfortunate; her life would not measure well against the lives of thousands of other witnesses and dependents. While trying to ensure her safety, ultimately they would use her, lose her, if necessary. Larson could not go along with that, but neither could he tell Hope this now.

After a few painful moments of silence, during which the only sounds were her occasional sniffing back a runny nose, Larson said, “We should go.”

“We can't leave. She'll come back home.”

“Your apartment building will be watched twenty-four/seven. I'm in constant contact.”

“I'm not leaving.”

“They want
you
, Hope.” He didn't bother to correct himself—he wasn't going to get used to her as Alice. “We
are
leaving. We're going to get you to safety. Every effort is being made to locate Penny. There's nothing to be gained by staying here and putting you so out in the open.”

“And if I get out of this car?” she asked, her hand on the car door. “I'm allowed to do that, right? WITSEC, any kind of government protection, is voluntary, right?”

She remembered her orientation materials well. “Technically, but we can hold you as a material witness to a crime.”

“Those crimes happened over six years ago!”

“There's no statute of limitations on federal capital murder cases. You're in this now.”

“I'll get an attorney,” she said, still resisting.

“And it'll get ugly,” he shot back. “And all that energy, time, will be diverted away from where we need it most: finding Penny.”

Again, she looked at Larson directly. “Do something.”

Larson turned the ignition.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Larson drove his Explorer down a perfectly straight farm road.
Less than forty minutes west of St. Louis, the McMansion suburban developments finally stopped sprawling and the flat expanse of generational farms took over, the small white houses and silos surrounded by brown tilled ground, rail fence, and pasture. The almost geometrical landscape looked familiar to both passengers. Six years earlier, Larson had sequestered protected witness Hope Stevens in the same Marshals Service safe house—the Orchard House—that now was his destination.

The closer they drew to the final turn, across a wooden bridge and up the hill, the more those memories weighed on him. It was at the farmhouse where they'd first found each other—and had last seen each other.

For six years he'd avoided reliving such moments, no great fan of nostalgia and unwilling to be one of those people who lived constantly with one foot in the past. But now, with her finally in the seat beside him, something allowed him to revisit another time in this same place, and he gave in to it willingly.

Larson had run the protection squad back then, and the rotation of assignments had conveniently left him inside the farmhouse with her, while Stubblefield and Hampton had perimeter patrol. He later wondered whether he'd been set up, whether Hamp and Stubby had felt the chemistry between them and arranged this one night for them. But he wasn't thinking such things at the time. He was thanking his stars.

The two-story, hundred-year-old farmhouse had not been restored since the thirties and remained in a state of neglect. It sagged, with wandering cracks, like lightning bolts, in the green-painted plaster walls and white ceilings, gaping chips drawn by gravity out of the dining room's elaborate ceiling molding, swollen black fingers of cigarette and cigar burns at the edges of much of the furniture, especially the dining room table where witnesses and their deputies had whiled away the hours with games of poker and scotch. The house had been shown little respect since its incorporation into the Marshals Service. The exterior, once a fashionable gray, was now peeling paint, curling away from the western sun and sloughing off like reptilian scales.

What had once been a proper and formal staircase led up to a narrow second-floor hallway off of which were two small bedrooms and a narrow bath wedged between them, probably originally a linen closet or nursery. Another, smaller corridor, added hastily years before and without the care given the original construction, led over a study below and into two oddly shaped bedrooms connected one to the other through an ill-fitted communicating door. A foul-smelling, twisting set of back stairs led from the added bedrooms down to the small kitchen below. Because of these additions the house had a wandering, cut-up, and unpredictable feel to it, seeming larger than it actually was.

She'd called him upstairs. “Lars?”

And he knew before arriving that despite other nights of comforting, of intimacy, that this was their moment of consummation. He knew what she had in mind not from anything said but by the pent-up energy that had been forced to simmer between them while in the company of others. He couldn't identify the moment between them that accounted for the way he felt, nor had she directly communicated to him her own emotions or desires, and yet he knew. He knew this was wrong, against all regulations, and he knew this was going to happen. Knew they wouldn't have long.

All windows in the house had been retrofitted with removable blackout cloth that Velcroed into place. The two exterior doors had blackout blankets that tied to the side by day but hung as light barriers by night. The fixtures in the house, and all lamps, burned compact fluorescents, the government's idea of how to save on energy costs; the resulting light, slightly blue or oddly yellow on the eyes, never looking quite right.

Her bedroom had one jaundiced bedside lamp aglow. The house, closed and shuttered as it was, and without air-conditioning of any kind, sweltered in the late-summer heat, with only ineffective and noisy floor fans left to stir the turgid air. One such beast was at work in the corner, grinding and clapping as its paddles scraped the wire protection meant to defend fingers from accidents. It forced a mechanical rhythm into the room, clippity-clippity-clapping and then whining asthmatically before starting the pattern again.

Hope stood just in front of the lamp, casting herself in a dark shadow. She'd shed the pale-violet blouse, one of two such shirts she alternated day to day, revealing the low-cut, sleeveless saffron tank top that held to her loosely, her egret's neck and strong arms glistening in the bedroom's heat.

“Close the door,” she commanded.

The idea of locking the air in the room went against all logic. It had to be for privacy.

He pushed the door shut with a click.

“Does it lock?”

Larson's heart responded in his chest. “I don't think so.”

“Will they come in the house?”

“Not until shift change.”

“What if they need to use the facilities?”

She'd clearly deliberated on the obstacles that faced them.

Larson's heart continued to race. “No, I seriously doubt it.” The fact was they'd piss into bushes if need be, but he didn't want to get crude at such a moment. Furthermore, both his men would keep well away from the farmhouse in an effort to not place motion near it, not bring any attention to it.

She unfastened her belt, unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, leaving them hanging on the width of her sumptuous hips, her purple underwear showing. “I want to take a bath,” she said. “Warm, not hot. To cool off, if that's possible.”

Standing just inside the shut door, Larson walked toward her.

“I've slept in my clothes the past several nights. We all have, haven't we? I'm sick of sponge baths.”

He took another step closer. “I'm not sure I know where you're going with this.”

“Oh, I think you do,” she said as she dragged the jeans lower, tugged them over her hips and down her legs. She leaned over to step out of them and her tank top fell away, offering a flash of round, pale skin and the white from her bra. She added, “Am I the only one who's been thinking about this?”

“No.”

Another step closer.

“There's something about taking my clothes off, undressing. It's a moment of extreme . . . vulnerability. I'm glad you're here.”

“Hope . . . I . . .”

“If you're ever asked about this, questioned . . . I know you, Lars. You'd never lie about it. I know you could lose your job, and I know how much it means to you, how good you are at it. All those things. So you see . . . there's only one way this can happen. Between us, I mean. I'm usually not the forward type,” she said, pulling off her top and standing now in bra and underwear. “Not at all.” She reached behind her back and deftly unclipped the bra. “This doesn't come easy for me.” As the back strap came loose it slipped half off her breasts, the shoulder straps sliding lower on her arms. “But it has to be that I seduced you. It has to be all me, all my doing. That I came up with some lame excuse about being afraid to undress in the room alone—it was all I could come up with on short notice,” she said. “That I came on to you in a moment of weakness.”

“It's supposed to be me protecting you,” he said hoarsely, his throat gone dry, “not the other way around.”

“We'll look after each other then,” she said. She allowed the bra to fall. Her breasts rode high on her chest, her nipples and areolas far darker than her complexion suggested. She climbed out of the bikini briefs, and he could feel her embarrassed determination to continue. She wore only a thin silver necklace now—something he hadn't yet told her would have to go before enrollment in the program.

She stepped forward and melted into him, her arms between them, her hands already working on his shirt buttons.

He reached around to embrace her and she chided, “No . . . No . . . No . . .” Looking up at him, she suppressed a grin as she explained, “I want it to be
entirely
my doing, Lars.” She mocked a response to her being interrogated about this. “He stood there stoically. He was in the room as I undressed. I asked him to be. I can't explain that, but I couldn't take off my clothes without someone there and Deputy Larson was the one guarding me that night. And, well . . .” She continued working his shirt open. She moved on to his belt and khakis. “I suppose I felt vulnerable, or in need of company, safety, security, but I found myself not heading for the bath, as I'd suggested, but instead, one thing led to another and I found myself flirting with him.” In her regular voice, she said, “Flirting's far too soft a word. Not the right word at all. I'll have to come up with something better.”

“Hope . . .”

“You be quiet, Deputy. We need the record clean. We need our story . . . straight.” With that she had his pants open and him firmly in hand. She brought his fingers up to her chest and whispered, “This once, the first time between us, it has to be all me.”

Her nipple firmed and grew puckered under his touch.

She undressed him, saying, “You're going to lie down on the bed and do your best to resist me.” Again, Larson reached to embrace her, having had enough of the game, but she held him off, saying, “Please,” and he understood from her tone that she was serious. Perhaps she couldn't confront true lovemaking. Perhaps it was too soon for her. Perhaps this was more born of a primal urge to dominate after days—weeks—of having her every movement controlled and coordinated by others. And all of them men, always men.

“My turn,” she said, confirming his thoughts.

She lay him back on the bed and climbed atop him, dragging her warm spot against him, drawing something abstract with her soft paintbrush. She climbed over him and lowered a breast and nipple to his lips, and as he kissed her there, as his tongue raced circles, she reached back and touched him and he shuddered head to toe. She alternated breasts to his lips as her fingers explored him.

She pulled her breast free of him and raised up on extended arms and locked elbows, hovering over him on raised toes like doing a push-up, and slowly lowered herself to where it was the heat from her skin he felt first. Then her breasts lit up his skin and she slowly eased her full weight down onto him, melting down into him to where arm matched arm, belly matched belly, and thigh matched thigh. Then she rocked her hips, opened her legs and reached down there, taking hold, sliding lower along his chest, and with this motion joined them with barely any effort.