ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVENGE (5 page)

“Don’t worry. Have you told Jake?”

“Jake?” She glanced at the man in the passenger seat and he sent her a questioning look. “Why would I tell Jake?”

“He’s from New York, isn’t he? He could fly back with you. Then you wouldn’t have to be alone.”

Maggie made it sound so romantic—the old flame comforting her in her time of need. In some ways, having Jake with her
was
comforting; at least he knew the truth about her. But she shouldn’t trust him, and being with him complicated the situation even more. “I haven’t seen Jake. He never knew my father, anyway.” More lies. She hoped her friend would forgive her one day for her deception. Not that Anne would be around to accept that forgiveness. Now that her father had learned her identity, the Marshals office would give her a new one. If she kept this up, she wouldn’t even remember who she was.

“I have to go now,” she said. “I’ll talk to you soon.” She hung up before Maggie could ask more questions.

“Do you think you convinced her?” Jake asked.

“I think so.” She scrolled through her phone directory until she found the number for U.S. Marshal Patrick Thompson.

He answered on the third ring, his voice as crisp and alert as if he’d been expecting her call. “Anne. Is something wrong?”

The concern in his voice brought a knot of tears to her throat. Marshal Thompson had always been kind, gentle even, treating her the way a caring big brother would look after his little sister. He’d done his best to make a horrible situation better, and the memory of that came rushing back at the sound of his voice. She struggled to rein in her emotions. Now was no time to break down. “One of my father’s men, a man named DiCello, broke into my house tonight,” she said. “He’s dead and I’m leaving. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Did he say how he found you? Did he say where your father is now?”

“No. We...we didn’t talk much.”

“You shot him?”

She hesitated, and looked again at Jake. “Yes.” When they found the body, they’d probably figure out she’d lied; DiCello had been shot from behind, with a different gun from the one she owned—the gun Thompson himself had most likely given her. But none of that mattered now. “I’m headed to a place where I think I’ll be safe, at least temporarily.”

“Stay in touch and we’ll send someone to get you. We’ll set you up with a new identity.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“I was going to contact you soon, anyway,” he said. “To warn you that Jacob Westmoreland might try to get in touch.”

“I...why would Jake...Jacob...be in touch? I mean, he’s dead, isn’t he?” She hoped he’d take her surprise at his mention of Jake as confusion.

“He was badly injured the night of the raid, but he didn’t die. Apparently, he’s been asking a lot of questions about you. He’s been in contact with some friends at the Bureau.”

“Why would he be asking questions about me?” She didn’t look at Jake, but she could feel his eyes on her.

“You’re sure the man who came after you tonight was from your father?”

“Yes. I knew him. He worked for my father.” Why was Patrick changing the subject?

“Word is, Westmoreland is pretty upset about what happened. He’s probably blames you for what happened to him and he may come after you, seeking revenge.”

Chapter Six

Anne caught her breath, and almost dropped the phone. Patrick sounded so certain, and his words made sense: Jake had lost everything the night of the raid—his career, his bright future, and almost his life. If he thought she’d betrayed him to her father...

“I’ll be careful,” she said. “And I’ll be in touch.”

She disconnected the call, then switched off the phone and dropped it into her purse.

“Why did he ask you about me?” Jake asked.

She started the car and backed out of their parking spot. She had to remain calm and not let on that Patrick had warned her about him. “He heard you were looking for me. I told him I hadn’t heard from you.”

“Good girl.”

The fact that he was so pleased by her deception made her even more nervous. What if Patrick had been telling the truth? So far, Jake had played the role of the wounded lover, but he’d been a good actor before, hadn’t he? He’d fooled her father into trusting him. His love for her had felt real, but what did she know about love?

She didn’t really know anything about Jake. When they’d been together before she’d only known the man he was pretending to be. Only later had she learned he worked for the FBI. She didn’t know his real background, or what had happened to him during the months of his recovery.

She glanced at him as she turned the car onto the highway once more. He had his back to her, scanning the road for traffic. He was definitely different from the man she’d known before: he was less brash and more intense. Driven—by revenge? But revenge on her father, or on her?

“What have you been doing with yourself since you got out of rehab?” she asked, trying to keep the conversation light. If she kept Jake talking, maybe she could figure out his real motives for being here.

“I’ve spent most of my time looking for you.”

That wasn’t exactly reassuring. “Did you work, or...date?”

“I wasn’t interested in dating, and looking for you was my work. I lived off my savings, and I was on disability pay for a while.”

“You didn’t think about maybe, I don’t know, getting on with your life?”

“Not while I had unfinished business.” She could feel his eyes on her in the dark.

She tightened her fingers around the steering wheel. She didn’t like being afraid of Jake; it felt so wrong, since she’d once trusted him with her life.

“What do you think went wrong that day?” he asked.

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“I didn’t have a clue your father suspected me. He never said anything, and he never tried to hide anything about the business from me.”

“He never said anything to me, either,” she said.

“If you’d known he planned to attack me, would you have warned me?”

“Yes!” She’d loved Jake more than she’d known it was possible to love a man. “I would have done anything for you. I thought you knew that.”

“And now you just think I’m scum for lying to you.”

“I don’t know what to think, Jake. I gave everything to a man who didn’t even exist. Can you understand how that might make me suspicious of your motives now?”

“I can understand. And I’m not asking you to pick up where we left off. But believe me when I say I want to help you and protect you.”

“And you want revenge on my father.”

“Only so he can’t hurt you—and others—again.”

She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that his feelings for her hadn’t been lies. But a lot had happened to change both of them in the last year. Maybe in running away from her father’s thugs, she was running into even worse danger with Jake.

* * *

A
N
HOUR
LATER
, Anne hunched over the wheel of the Subaru wagon, easing it over frozen ruts in the Forest Service road, watching the thick wall of spruce and pine on either side of the narrow path for the gap that would indicate her turn onto an even narrower, less-used route. Clouds obscured the moon and the night was as black as a crow’s wing. They hadn’t passed another car since they’d turned off the main highway half an hour ago.

She’d decided she’d be cautious around Jake, but she wouldn’t let fear get the better of her. She was armed, and McGarrity had taught her how to defend herself with her fists. She didn’t have to be helpless, and that knowledge alone gave her power.

“Where are we, exactly?” Jake frowned at the darkness around them.

“We’re in the Gunnison National Forest. In the summer it’s a popular hiking and camping area.”

“And in the winter?”

“In the winter the campgrounds are closed, the trails are usually covered in snow and the roads don’t get much use.” She pressed down on the gas and the car plowed through a snowdrift. It slid and fishtailed a little, but she steered it back onto firmer ground.

“When my handler from the Marshals office, Patrick Thompson, first showed me this car, I was horrified,” she said. The green Subaru Outback was five years old and had clearly seen better days. Worse, it was a wagon, a vehicle for suburban moms and grandpas, not a fashionable young woman. In New York she’d had a BMW convertible, a silver Roadster she’d driven with the top down on all but the coldest, wettest days.

“This definitely isn’t a car Elizabeth would have driven.” Jake patted the dash. “But it suits Anne.”

She sighed. “It does. Half the women in town, including most of the teachers, drive similar cars.”

“It must have been very strange for you, starting over as someone else.”

“It’s still strange, but it got easier. When I first moved here, I put a coffee mug with my new name, Anne, on the table beside my bed, where I’d see it first thing every morning, to remind me I wasn’t Elizabeth anymore. My name was Anne.” She glanced at his profile in the darkness. His head was turned slightly and she knew he was watching her, but she couldn’t make out his features, only the curve of his skull and the jut of his nose and chin, like one of those silhouette portraits that had been popular in Victorian parlors. “I spent my whole life until coming here trying to stand out, wanting to be noticed. I had to learn to do the opposite, to become invisible.”

“I don’t think you have to be invisible,” he said. “You just have to blend in with your surroundings, to fit in context. You’ve done a good job of that. I might not have recognized you if I hadn’t known what I was looking for.”

“DiCello obviously didn’t have any trouble, either.” She spotted the break in the trees and slowed the car further. “There’s our turn. We’re almost there.”

The steep, narrow drive was choked with snow. Anne gunned the car up the pitch, relaxing only when it leveled out in front of a gate formed by a single length of heavy pipe suspended across the road between two fat lodgepole pines. She set the brake and took a small flashlight from the console between the seats, then climbed out of the car. Jake followed.

“How do you know the combination?” he asked as he watched her dial the numbers into the lock on the chain that fastened one end of the pipe to a tree trunk.

“I came here with my camera to take pictures of the fall colors. You can’t see it now, but there’s a lovely little aspen next to this pine. Back in September it was covered in golden leaves. I took picture after picture of that tree, while the summer visitors packed up and left their cabins. I had a zoom lens focused in on this keypad, though no one ever suspected.” The lock popped open and she unwound the chain. “My father had employees who used the same trick to steal people’s ATM pin numbers. Wait here until I drive through, then replace the lock.”

She drove past the gate, then waited while he swung the pipe over the road once more and refastened the lock. “Are you shocked, that I knew so much about my father’s dirty dealings?” she asked as she drove on once more.

“You mean, would I rather think of you as an unsullied innocent who had no idea her father was a thief and drug dealer and pimp and murderer? I don’t think anyone can live for years in a world of crime and not be touched by it, and that includes me.”

She hadn’t been unsullied or innocent, but she’d perfected the art of looking the other way, and of telling herself the things her father did were none of her business, that they didn’t matter to her. Jake had made her see things differently. She couldn’t be grateful to him for that, not when it had destroyed the only life she’d known, and taken away the only family she had.

The cabins sat in a rough semicircle amid the trees, separated from each other by several hundred yards and piles of boulders that rose almost to the roofs. There were five; she chose the smallest, the farthest from the road. Even in summer it had been closed up tight. Unused.

She parked the car behind a screening stack of boulders and they climbed out. It was after midnight, and the cold was like a slap, hard and stinging. Anne led the way to the door and felt for the key above the lintel. Jake took it from her and unlocked the door and pushed it open.

The cabin smelled of stale ashes and dust. Jake fumbled along the wall by the door and she laughed. “There’s no light switch,” she said. “No electricity.” She scanned the area with her flashlight beam until she spotted a kerosene lantern sitting on a table next to a box of kitchen matches. She lit the lantern and turned down the wick. Its golden glow illuminated the small main room, which consisted of a kitchen area, a table and two chairs and a worn love seat and armchair.

Jake opened the door on the far side of the room and looked in. “Bedroom,” he announced, then checked the second door on an adjacent wall. “Bathroom—or at least a toilet and sink.”

“The water’s probably shut off for the winter so the pipes don’t freeze,” she said. She turned her attention to the empty woodstove that squatted between the front room’s two windows. “There should be some firewood out back,” she said.

He left, and returned with an armload of wood. She laid a fire, building a bed of small sticks and crumpled paper, then adding split pieces of wood. When she touched a match to the paper, it caught, and smoke curled up the chimney. After she was sure the fire was blazing, she closed the stove door. “It will be warmer in a little bit.”

“I’m impressed,” he said. “Were you a Girl Scout?”

“I’ve learned a lot of things since coming here.” The instinct to survive was a powerful teacher. She made sure the curtains were pulled shut over the windows, then checked the contents of the two cupboards in the kitchen. “There’s coffee and hot chocolate, and some canned soup and stews. We won’t starve.”

“Do you know who owns this cabin?” Jake asked. He slid onto a stool at the small breakfast bar.

She filled a kettle from a ten-gallon bottle of water on a stand beside the old-fashioned round-top refrigerator. The refrigerator was propped open by sticks held in place with bungee cords. “According to the county land records, it belongs to a man in Minneapolis. He inherited it from his parents. I don’t think he comes down here very often—the cabin was empty every time I checked this last year.”

“And the other cabins?”

“They belong to summer people. That’s what everyone around here calls them. They live somewhere else and they come here every summer for a few weeks to hang out in nature.”

“But we’re on Forest Service land?”

“That’s right.” She lit a burner on the gas stove. “The cabins were here before the land was taken as National Forest, so the families were allowed to keep them and use them, but they’re not allowed to make any changes without government approval—so no insulation, no electricity, no modernization, except ten years or so ago they made everyone fill in their outhouses and install flush toilets. Water comes from cisterns or a pump dropped in the creek down there.”

“A creek that is frozen this time of year.”

“Right. So we won’t be using the indoor toilet. The cabins weren’t designed for winter use, only as summer retreats.”

“How did you ever find this place?” he asked.

“I came hiking with Maggie and her husband, Ty, not too long after I moved here. She told me all about the cabins. A few weeks later I came back on my own to check them out.”

“And you brought your camera.”

“I thought it would be a good idea to have a plan—someplace to go if I needed to hide. Even in the summer many of the cabins are empty, but if someone had asked, I could have posed as a friend of the guy who owns the cabin, using it for the weekend, or something like that.”

“That was good thinking. But then, I’m not surprised. You were always one of the smartest people I knew.”

She busied herself finding cups and spooning cocoa into them, afraid if she looked at him he would see how pleased she was by the compliment, and how uncomfortable that made her now. It reminded her too much of one of the things she had loved about him, before: he didn’t think that because she was beautiful, she was dumb. The other men in her life—her father and brother and her father’s friends—dismissed women as empty-headed dolls.

“What’s the rest of the plan now that we’ve made it here?” he asked.

She poured boiling water over the cocoa and slid a cup toward him. “I suppose I wait for Patrick—Marshal Thompson—to take me someplace new where I can start over again.”

“Does that bother you?” He looked thoughtful as he stirred the cocoa. “I mean, how many times will you have to start over before you forget who you are? Or before your father stops looking for you?”

“My father will never stop looking.” He could make all the speeches he wanted about her being dead to him, but until she was actually dead, and he had proof of it, her betrayal would eat at him like a cancer. “I’ve heard that hate is another side of love. As much as my father loved me, I think he hates me that much now.” She would be his obsession, as other enemies had been. He had destroyed the others, every one. He wouldn’t let her be his one failure. “The Marshals tell me they can protect me, that they’ve protected thousands of other people.”

“They haven’t done a very good job keeping you hidden so far,” he said.

“No. You found me.”

“I’m not the one you have to worry about.”

Patrick hadn’t been so sure about that. He thought Jake was out for revenge; maybe so, but he seemed willing to keep her safe as long as he thought she might help him find her father. “The problem with the Marshals is that too many people know who I am and where I am. They can talk about how secure their system is, but there are always leaks.”