Reluctant Witness (9 page)

“Of course.” She nodded as she backed out. It
was a relief when Lincoln hung the “do not disturb” sign on the
knob before shutting and locking the door.

“Okay, time to hit the hay. Pick your bed,
Marigold. Whatever you do, please don’t leave this room. I can’t
protect you if you’re not around.”

“Not a problem,” I laughed. “I’ll be snoring
within five minutes of hitting that pillow!”

“Try and keep it down,” Lincoln teased,
giving me a wink.

I slept until two in the afternoon. When I
opened my eyes, the room was still dark and I felt a moment’s
panic, wondering where I was. But the throbbing of my ear was a
painful reminder of my last forty-eight hours fraught with
peril.

“You want the bathroom first?” my temporary
roommate wondered, stretching his long body under the sheets of the
bed next to me. “I don’t mind waiting.”

“Maybe you should take your turn. I plan to
take a really long time soaking in that tub, especially since I
can’t get my ear wet for several more days.” I was beginning to
wonder what my hair would look like when I finally got around to
washing it.

“Perfect. I’ll step out and grab some things
while you do that.”

“You’re leaving me alone?” I was
surprised.

“Not alone. A former colleague of mine works
security here. That’s why I picked this place. He’ll keep an eye on
the room while I’m gone. Don’t worry. I won’t be long.”

While I lingered in the hot, sudsy water,
trying to wash off the terror and the madness of the last several
days, Lincoln was busy. He returned to our room with burgers,
salads, and vanilla shakes. I grabbed my pills and swallowed them
as we sat in the club chairs and ate at the small round side
table.

“I also bought a few things for you,” he told
me, pointing to three bags on his bed. When I opened them, I found
designer jeans, leopard-print flats, a pretty blouse, and some
knee-hi stockings for me.

“I don’t want you looking like a bag lady
when we dine tonight,” he explained. “I also bought you a turban,
to cover your bandage. Don’t be surprised if folks give you that
pity look. They’ll probably assume you’ve got cancer.”

“Because I’m wearing a turban?” I took the
brown cloth and slipped it over my head, tucking the escaping
strands under the cap. He nodded.

“My cousin’s an oncology nurse. She says the
average person can’t stand to look at a hairless cancer patient for
more than five seconds. It reminds us too much of our own
mortality.”

“My mother died of cancer when I was
twenty-nine. I helped my dad take care of her for the last two
years of her life.”

“I thought your mother was still alive and
well, traveling through Europe, with your dad.” Lincoln seemed
surprised by the information. “Aren’t they celebrating their
anniversary with a big trip?”

“That’s what I’m supposed to tell people.
It’s my WitSec bio, crafted as part of my cover.”

“Does this mean your father isn’t a
botanist?”

“Oh, he’s a botanist, but he’s also in the
program.”

“I don’t understand. I thought you were in
the program because you witnessed the murder of Jared Spears
eighteen months ago.” Was that a note of alarm I heard in Lincoln’s
voice?

“I was already in the WitSec program when I
met him.” The admission spilled out of me, and as it did, I saw the
FBI agent’s face instantly transform. His mouth dropped open, his
eyes widened, and I fully expected him to jump back in fear.
Instead, he held up his hands.

“Stop! Stop right there, Marigold!” He was
insistent.

“But....”

“You can’t tell me any
more!” he told me. For a moment, I half-expected him to cover his
ears and start babbling to shut me out.
La-la-la-la....

“I don’t understand,” I replied,
confused.

“I am supposed to look out for you, but my
boss didn’t brief me on your actual background, only your current
WitSec cover story, the one about Jared Spears. That means either
the FBI doesn’t have it or the FBI doesn’t want me to know about
the real you.”

The real you. All these years, I had been on
the outside, looking in. All these years, I had never really
belonged. The family secret was destined to always keep me separate
from the rest of the world. I found that out the hard way on so
many occasions.

It all happened on the first day of June, the
year I turned sixteen. That was the day everything changed forever.
That was the day my grandfather was dragged out of the greenhouse
by three men. My grandmother saw it all happen and tried to run to
the house to call the police. They killed her on the front porch,
leaving her in a bloody heap. My father was working in the fields
that day. He heard his mother yelling for help and came running,
but he was too late to save either of his parents. He did get the
license plate on the pickup truck and he was able to identify all
three men from their mug shots. They were locals hired to kidnap my
grandfather and deliver him to his killers, and it didn’t take long
for federal agents to arrest them. When my grandfather’s body was
finally recovered in Mexico six months later, it showed signs of
torture. The case came up for trial sixteen months after my
grandparents were murdered. It was the only time my father left us
after we went into the program and we were terrified the entire
time we were separated from him.

Seventeen years later, I was still being
punished for the purported sins of my grandparents. But were they
really sinners or, like me, victims of circumstance?

“Marigold, are you okay?” The FBI agent
dropped to his knees beside me. I felt a warm hand on mine as I sat
there on the edge of the bed.

“Not really.”

To his credit, Lincoln tried to explain the
rules of keeping secrets in a kindly fashion, especially when he
realized how crestfallen I was. But the truth is I’m tired of
always being someone I’m not. I just wanted one person to know who
I really am and why I’m in witness protection. I didn’t do anything
wrong. I didn’t hurt anyone. “It’s not that I don’t want to know,
Marigold. I’m just not sure that I’m supposed to know. It’s nothing
personal. Honestly, it’s not. And I’ll do everything in my power to
get my boss to read me in, so I know the whole story. But if people
insist on keeping me in the dark, that’s the way it’s got to
be.”

“Right,” I shrugged. Disappointment, combined
with that old sense of isolation, left me feeling like I had been
towed out into the middle of the shark-infested sea in an
inflatable raft and set adrift, expected to find my way back to
shore on my own with only a wooden spoon as a paddle.

“Do you understand what I’m trying to tell
you? I’m not entitled to the information, Marigold. It’s
classified. And if I let you share it with me, I’ll have violated
federal law, because you’re not allowed to disseminate it to other
people. Didn’t they make you sign a ‘no disclosure’ form when you
went into the program?”

“I...I don’t really remember. It was so long
ago....”

“Surely they review the rules with you every
once in a while.”

“Not really. I think they just assume that
because I’ve been in for so long, I automatically know what I can
and can’t say.”

“Well, let’s see. I can and will ask you
this, because it’s relevant to your current situation. Did Jared
Spears know you were in WitSec?”

“Yes.” As I gave him my answer, our eyes met.
I saw a flicker of movement that I counted as a response. It was
brief, so brief I almost missed it. Had he really shuddered at the
thought that Jared knew I was a protected witness?

“Did anyone from the Marshals Service sit
down with him and discuss it?”

“We had a big meeting at the office. They
made him sign some papers,” I told the FBI agent.

“Could he have told someone about you being
in the WitSec program?” Those brown eyes watched me carefully. I
had never considered the matter before he posed the question, but I
did now.

“I...I don’t know. They reminded him several
times that he couldn’t. They even told him that if anyone found out
about my status, I’d be relocated again without him. Tovar tried to
explain to him just what a life-changing commitment this was. Jared
said he understood....”

“But?”

“But when we left, he told me not to worry
about the WitSec people. He had the money and resources to protect
me himself, and there was no way he intended to ever go into the
program.”

“Did you tell anyone about that
conversation?” Lincoln wanted to know.

“I talked to Tovar,” I admitted sheepishly,
still feeling torn between betraying Jared and wanting to stay
alive. “I was worried about breaking the rules.”

“What did he say?”

“He’d have a talk with Jared and make him
understand that my options were very limited and that, due to the
nature of my case, leaving WitSec wasn’t a good idea. He promised
not to tell Jared that we had discussed my concerns. Two days
later, I found Jared’s body when I got home.”

“How did you meet Jared?”

“Jared owned Dutch Island Investments in
Newport. He was at a meet-and-greet event on Goat Island that I was
hired to orchestrate, to introduce local business leaders and
entrepreneurs to potential investors.”

“Who made the first move, Marigold?”

“Oh, it was Jared all the way. He wined and
dined me like there was no tomorrow, took me on business trips to
Curaçao and other exotic places, and he even bought me a membership
in his country club, so we could mingle with his business clients
and social contacts. It never occurred to me that a man with his
background would be interested in someone like me.”

“Meaning he was well-connected and you were a
working girl with bills to pay?”

“Oh, it was more than that.
He invested heavily in new companies, and he was very successful at
helping start-ups, even in this depressed economy. I was really
surprised when
Today’s Entrepreneur
named him the business angel of the
year.”

“Where did his money come from?” Lincoln
asked me. “Was it inherited wealth?”

“No, Jared always said he was a self-made
man. He developed a pair of small tech companies for Helmut Gruen
80 Group, an investment firm in Boston, when he was an intern in
his last year at Bentley. Mercury Industries not only bought his
two tech companies within a year, the corporation offered him a
job. He worked his way up through the ranks and by the time he was
thirty, he was part owner of Quicksilver Limited down in Delaware.
Just before he died, a group of overseas investors formed Cinnabar
Capital in Curaçao and bought a controlling interest.”

“In other words, Jared had the Midas
touch?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “It seemed like everything
he touched turned to gold.”

Chapter Nine

“
Until he was murdered,”
Lincoln reminded me. “I’m guessing you’re not a chemistry
wizard.”

“
No. Why?”

“
Well, off the top of my
head, I’d say Jared’s businesses were probably not all on the up
and up. At the very least, they probably operated as shell
corporations, avoiding taxes, but it’s possible they were created
to launder money.”

“
What?” I felt like someone
had slugged me in the solar plexus.

“
Marigold, mercury is also
known as quicksilver, Hg 80, and even cinnabar. To have so many
business entities with these names hardly seems like a
fluke.”

“
But why would he do that?”
I demanded to know. “I don’t understand.”

“
Well, maybe now we know
why the FBI pulled you out of the WitSec program and why they’re
not planning to prosecute anyone for Jared Spears’
murder.”

“
We do?”

“
Jared might have been
killed to draw you out into the open. If this had gone to trial,
Marigold, and you had testified under an alias, the killer could
have gone free because you would have committed
perjury.”

“
I would have committed
perjury?” I asked. That thought had never occurred to me. And yet,
maybe it went a long way towards explaining some of the changes at
the United States Marshals Service over the last few months. Did
that explain all the delays, the hedging over details?

“
The Department of Justice
must have realized how complicated this all was, and it needed a
way to extricate itself. By backing away from prosecution, it
signaled that you weren’t going to be exposed as being in the
WitSec program. Someone didn’t like that response. Maybe that’s why
Tovar and the others were attacked. Someone’s trying to create a
case that forces you into the public eye as a witness.”

“
But that’s crazy!” I cried
out in response.

“
Absolutely,” he agreed.
One word said it all. The pieces of the puzzle that were the last
two years of my life suddenly began to fall into place. “Maybe this
is about putting your family in the spotlight, the family no one is
supposed to know about because it’s a closely guarded secret. There
might be more to this than meets the eye. It might also be why the
FBI assistant director in New York gave her approval to let me take
this case,” Lincoln said, more to himself than to me, but I
followed the logic behind it. “It’s not like I normally handle
these kinds of domestic cases. I just happened to be visiting my
family at the time.”

“
What do you mean?” Was it
possible that my nightmare was finally coming to an end? Could it
be that it would soon be over? Each piece that fit into the puzzle
brought me that much closer to a solution. The truth was my
salvation. “You think I ended up in Windham on purpose because
someone wanted me there?”