Fatal Judgment (30 page)

Once in the hall, he pulled the door of the condo shut behind him and headed for the elevator.

Once more, his BlackBerry quivered to life.

A glance at the screen told him this was a page, not a call. From Cole.

He frowned. Cole never paged unless it was an emergency. Maybe something had happened to his mom or Alison.

Putting the call to Matt on hold for sixty seconds, he keyed in his brother’s number, then punched the down button beside the elevator.

Cole answered immediately. “Sorry to bother you. I know things must be crazy. But I might have a lead on the judge for you.”

That got his attention. “Okay. I’m listening.”

“I’m having breakfast with Bill Lewis, my high school buddy. He was doing some work at a house yesterday for a guy who’s out of town. After the sister wrote him a check, she showed him some of her brother’s check stubs. Above the signature line, he’d written ‘without prejudice UCC 1-308.’ That fits with the whole sovereign citizen thing the FBI profilers came up with. And get this . . . Bill was picking gold hairs off his pants legs. From a cat that kept brushing against him at that house.”

Jake stopped breathing. “What’s this guy’s name?”

“Martin Reynolds.”

His breath whooshed out of his lungs.

Bingo.

The evidence might all be circumstantial, but Jake knew they’d found their man.

“Do you have an address?” He dug through his pocket for a notebook as he jabbed the elevator button again.

“Yes.”

He jotted it down as Cole recited it. “We’re on it. If this pans out, I owe you. Big time.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. By the way, Alison said to let you know she’s praying for the judge.”

“Tell her I said thanks.” The words came out raspy, and he cleared his throat. “I’ll be in touch when this is over.”

As the elevator door opened, he punched in Mark’s number.

After he relayed the news, they agreed to meet at Reynolds’s house. While Jake placed a second call to Matt to bring his boss up to speed, Mark got a search warrant in the works. Not that they needed it. They had grounds to search on the basis of exigent circumstances. But it never hurt to cross all the t’s and dot the i’s.

Five minutes later, as he slid behind the wheel of his Trailblazer and fumbled for his key, he realized his hands were shaking. That had happened only once before in his career. In Iraq. When he and two other SOG members had been ambushed en route to the courthouse by a band of militant jihadists intent on disrupting a high-profile trial. They’d been badly outnumbered, and he’d expected to die.

But he and his colleagues had fought hard. And they’d survived.

Today, he intended to fight just as hard for Liz.

Because as the tremors in his fingers proved, saving her life was as important to him as saving his own.

The judge’s moaning was getting on his nerves.

Martin glanced over at her from his seat at the wooden table. She was still slumped against the support beam, and the right side of her face had taken on a purple hue. The edges of her eye were also turning black. For a brief instant, a tiny flicker of remorse licked at his conscience. Hitting a woman went against everything he’d ever been taught. He’d been raised to respect the opposite sex.

But this wasn’t about gender. This was about ridding the world of tyrannical, corrupt judges. Defending the Constitution. Saving America. It was about preserving freedom and liberty and God-given rights.

The anger he’d directed at her when she’d whacked him with that piece of wood had been justified.

Pressing his lips into a thin line, he turned his back on her.

Besides, she didn’t have long to suffer.

In less than four hours, she would be dead.

Mark was waiting in his car when Jake pulled up in front of Martin Reynolds’s house. The agent met him on the sidewalk near the concrete path that led to the front door, falling into step beside him as he picked up his pace to escape the steady rain that showed no signs of abating.

“Luke sent Nick and one of our other agents to have another chat with our friend Jarrod. And two of our people are on their way to the copy shop where the meetings are held to talk to the owner. We’re also running intel on Reynolds.”

“Okay. Let’s see what the sister has to offer.” Jake pulled out his badge and pressed the bell.

A sixtyish woman with cropped silver hair and a deep tan answered. She was wearing a coat, as if they’d caught her about to leave.

“Ms. Reynolds?”

“Yes.”

Jake flashed his badge. “I’m Deputy U.S. Marshal Jake Taylor. This is Special Agent Mark Sanders from the FBI.” He waited while Mark displayed his creds. “Is your brother at home?”

The woman’s eyes widened, and a flicker of panic sparked in their depths. “No. He won’t be back until this evening. Is there a problem?”

“May we come in? We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Her hand tightened on the edge of the door, and Jake had a feeling she was going to refuse.

“Ma’am, it’s a matter of life and death,” he pressed.

At his grave tone, she drew in a sharp breath, and the color drained from her face. Pulling back the door, she moved aside and gestured for them to enter.

“The furnace is out. The kitchen is the warmest room. We can talk there.” A tremor ran through her words as she closed the door and started toward the back of the house.

Jake eyed her stiff back. She was way too nervous . . . suggesting she knew—or suspected—something. He glanced at Mark as they followed her. The other man quirked an eyebrow, confirming he’d picked up the same vibes. He also pointed to a photo on a side table in the living room as they passed, then nodded. It showed a man with salt-and-pepper hair standing beside a middle-aged woman on a beach.

Jake interpreted that gesture to mean that the man Mark had met at the Patriot Constitutionalists meeting and the owner of this house were one and the same.

Conclusion: they needed answers from Patricia Reynolds.

Fast.

As the two government men followed her into the kitchen, Patricia slid into one of the wooden chairs around the table, perched on the edge, knotted her hands, and tried to suppress the shiver that rippled through her. She couldn’t blame her sudden chill on the room temperature, either. The small electric space heater she’d picked up at Walmart was doing a stellar job of keeping the kitchen warm. This ominous coldness came from deep in her heart. And it was accompanied by a paralyzing dread.

“Ms. Reynolds, do you live with your brother?” the FBI agent asked.

“No. I’m in the Peace Corps. In Sierra Leone. I’m just here on vacation.”

“Where is your brother, ma’am?”

“I don’t know.” She tightened her clasp, whitening her knuckles. “I thought he was on a hunting trip, but when the furnace went out yesterday I called the wife of the man he said he’d gone with and found out his buddy died three years ago.”

“When was the last time you saw your brother?”

“Sunday morning. Before I left for church. He was gone when I got back.”

Josie padded into the room, surveyed the scene, and jumped into her lap. The warmth of the little body was welcome, and she cuddled her close. Stroking the cat helped comfort and calm her.

But the appearance of her brother’s cat had the opposite effect on the two men sitting at her table. Their tension was almost palpable, and they exchanged a look she couldn’t interpret.

When neither spoke, she leaned forward, fear clutching her heart. “Is Marty in trouble?”

The marshal folded his hands on the table. “Ms. Reynolds, are you aware that your brother is active in an organization called the Patriot Constitutionalists?”

“No. What kind of group is that?”

“Have you ever heard the term sovereign citizen?”

She searched her memory, then shook her head. “No. What does it mean?”

“Essentially, people who ascribe to the sovereign citizen theory believe the United States government is illegitimate and is encroaching on the freedoms and rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Some work to subvert the government through peaceful means. Others resort to violence. We have reason to believe your brother is in the latter category.”

Shock drove the breath from her lungs. “You think Marty would do something violent?”

The intent gaze the marshal fixed on her was deadly serious. “We believe he may be the person who kidnapped federal judge Elizabeth Michaels.”

Her mind grappled with that bombshell. Marty, a kidnapper. And if the articles she’d been reading in the paper about that case were true, the authorities believed the kidnapper was the same person who’d killed the judge’s sister.

They thought Marty was a murderer.

The room tilted.

“Ms. Reynolds . . . would you like a glass of water?”

The question from the FBI agent seemed to come from far away. Forcing back the dizziness, she shook her head. “No. I’m just trying to . . . I can’t believe my brother would be involved in anything like that. He’s always been a churchgoing, law-abiding citizen. Are you sure you have the right man?”

“We think so,” the agent replied. “And we need to find him as soon as possible. As far as we know, the judge is still alive. But if he told you he plans to be back tonight, I suspect time is running out. Do you have any idea where he might be?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

The grim expression on the faces of the two men grew more somber.

“Ms. Reynolds, we have a search warrant in process for this house. But we need to start searching now.”

Patricia’s first instinct was to protest. She’d always done everything she could to protect her baby brother. As a child, she’d lavished him with love, trying to mitigate the damage their father had inflicted with his constant hounding and criticism. She’d always known Marty was a sensitive soul, and she’d tried to shield him from hurt, both inside and outside their home. She hadn’t wanted him to carry any psychological scars into adulthood. And she thought she’d succeeded. He’d gone on to live a productive life, and he’d been blessed with a wonderful, supportive wife and a happy marriage.

Sometime in the past few years, though, Marty had changed. A lot. In many ways, he seemed like a different person. Where once she would have called the suspicions of these men ridiculous, now she wasn’t certain. And with the judge’s life hanging in the balance, how could she refuse to cooperate?