US Marshall 03 - The Rapids (13 page)

Not that she was worried, Rob noticed. He watched her walk along the edge of the driveway, swinging her running shoes by their laces.

She was wobbly.

But, he thought, probably she wouldn’t want him pointing that out right now.

L
ibby arranged fresh-cut asters in pottery vases at a long wooden counter in the inn’s kitchen and tried to keep her hands from shaking with that familiar mix of fear, exertion and exhilaration.

If he wasn’t such a damn bull of a man, Ethan Brooker would be dead.

Although he was on Janssen’s target list, it was just as well the army officer was still alive. She’d be able to collect her hundred thousand dollars for his death, but there’d be a body to explain. That he’d survived his fall into the creek meant that she’d still have to deal with bereaved, out-of-control Major Brooker—and the DS agent and her marshal friend would want to know what Brooker was doing in Ravenkill.

Libby stabbed a particularly tall red aster into the middle of a vase, pushing back her irritation with Star, who was sniffling and muttering to herself at the sink. “Star, please. What’s wrong?”

“Maggie Spencer.” Star gulped in a breath, her skinny shoulders hunched against her distress. “Did you see her? She came in just a little while ago. Something happened—”

“It looked to me as if she slipped and fell in the river.”

“Why was she armed?”

“Because she’s a federal law enforcement agent.”

“But diplomatic security—”

“I know, I know.” Yanking out the too-tall aster, Libby snipped another inch off its stem and tried to smile through her own tension. “It’d be easier if she were a florist. Which I clearly am not. Do these flowers look okay to you?”

Star sniffled again—it was maddening to Libby—and nodded. “They’re lovely. It’s hard to go wrong with asters. Aren’t they so cheerful?”

Cheerful. Libby hadn’t thought of them that way. She’d picked them upon her return from the creek, as a reason for her to have been outside, out of view. It wasn’t as if she’d thought through any kind of alibi or even had anticipated needing one. As with Tom Kopac on Saturday, she’d had to think on her feet and take action.

Ethan Brooker was a problem. He’d been since his wife’s death last fall.

A pity, Libby thought, that Nick Janssen hadn’t hired her for that job.
And
the one in May. She’d have
done far better than the men Janssen had sent. The fools had ended up dead themselves.

How had Brooker ended up in Ravenkill?

Why?

He could be trailing Maggie Spencer, or he could have come here for the same reasons she had.

Whatever those reasons were.

This time when Libby jabbed the red aster into the vase, its stem bent. She tossed it aside, feeling her tension clawing at her. Star’s whining didn’t help.

Libby had prepared herself as best she could for the inevitable questions she’d be asked if Brooker turned up dead. But how would she explain herself if the police checked into her whereabouts for the past week and discovered she’d been in the Netherlands? In particular, in ’s-Hertogenbosch?

Again, she thought, just as well Brooker wasn’t lying dead in Ravenkill Creek.

Star sniffled again, loudly, and heaved a dramatic sigh.
“Oh, God.”

“Star, it’s okay. Honestly. Nothing’s happened on inn property.”

Libby tried not to indulge in unnecessary emotion. She was confident, at least, that Brooker hadn’t seen her. She’d spotted Maggie Spencer in the apple orchard and had followed her, then taken a different, faster route down to the river. She’d planned to get to a spot that intersected with the path the DS agent was on and wait for her, try to gauge what she was up to.

Instead, Libby had come upon Ethan Brooker, recognizing him instantly from the photos of him she had stored on her laptop.

The rush of water, even in late summer when the river was at its shallowest, must have prevented him from hearing her on the path above him. If he’d caught her, she’d have claimed she was picking wildflowers or off to dip her feet in the Ravenkill on a warm August morning. He’d have no idea who she was.

She didn’t know whether she’d panicked or had simply attempted to seize the moment. She’d wanted Brooker dead. She knew that much.

She didn’t have her Beretta and silencer with her, but she wouldn’t have used it—if Ethan Brooker was going to die in Ravenkill, it had to look like an accident. She had to take her chances and at least disable him, impede him from doing whatever he was in Ravenkill to do.

She’d dismissed jumping him. He’d pick her off him like a bug.

Given her limited options, she’d tossed a pebble into the river in front of him, distracting him for a split second, and pelted him on the back of the head with a baseball-size rock.

He’d had the grace to fall, hitting another rock and landing in the shallow river. As beat up as he was, he’d managed to stagger to his feet, stumble around for a few seconds, then fall on his back in the water, halfway to the other bank.

Libby quickly recovered the rock she’d used to hit him, but before she could finish off Brooker, Maggie Spencer arrived.

Libby managed to slip away without being seen. She’d stayed within the woods and avoided open ground, then walked boldly through the cornfield back up to the asters.

Brooker must have also spotted the DS agent on her walk and planned to intercept her, find out what she was doing in Ravenkill, share notes. Something.

Should have left well enough alone, Libby thought.

“I’ll put these out on the tables,” she said, collecting up her half-dozen vases of brightly colored asters.

“Maggie Spencer’s upstairs changing,” Star said, her voice slightly stronger. “The marshal who was with her yesterday is out on the porch waiting for her.”

“Does that make you nervous?”

“It all makes me nervous. Where’s Andrew? Have you seen him?”

Libby shook her head. “Not this morning.”

“I hope he—” Star pulled her upper and lower lips between her teeth, fighting back tears. Finally, she let out a breath and waved a hand. “Never mind.”

God.
Libby almost dropped the vases. Star thought that
Andrew
had done something?

Warning herself not to read too much into Star’s dramatics, Libby exited to the porch, where, indeed, Deputy Dunnemore was sitting at an empty table. He
really was even more good-looking than he was in all the pictures of him in the paper and on TV last spring.

Libby set five of the small vases on one table, then started distributing them one by one to other tables.

“You picked those flowers just now?” Dunnemore asked.

“Mmm. Pretty, aren’t they?” She set another vase in the middle of a table, pretending to admire the splashes of pink, orange and red against the pale green and white decor. “I understand Agent Spencer had a mishap in the river. Do you know what happened?”

“More or less.”

He left it at that. Did he know about Brooker? Had Spencer told him? Of course—why wouldn’t she? But why hadn’t she called the police, or at least an ambulance? The only explanation Libby could think of was that Brooker wasn’t seriously injured and had told her not to.

Where the hell was the army major now?

“The riverbank can be deceptive,” Libby said. “I grew up here and I’ve made a few wrong steps myself.”

Maggie Spencer came downstairs and breezed out onto the porch. She smelled faintly of the lilac soap Star had in all the rooms. Her hair was still damp from her shower, and she’d changed into long pants and a denim jacket.

Libby placed the final vase.

Too bad Spencer hadn’t hit
her
head when
Brooker pounced on her. Maybe he blamed her for how he’d ended up in the river?

My life’s not that simple, Libby thought.

Dunnemore turned to her, his Southern charm, she thought, less in evidence than his marshal demeanor. “Nice talking with you, Ms. Smith.”

“Same here, Deputy.”

The two federal agents left, and Libby returned to the kitchen, realizing she wasn’t shaking or nervous.

If anything, she was exhilarated.

With William Raleigh humming to himself two steps behind him, Ethan staggered out of the woods onto a gravel turnaround that marked the end of the road that led from the village to the inn. The creek, shallower and wider than farther downstream where Maggie Spencer had found him, sounded almost like the wind.

His entire body ached. His head felt like it might blow into a million pieces.

Fine with him, he decided. Maybe it’d end his misery.

“You can’t remember anything?” Raleigh asked for at least the third time. “Are you sure?”

“No, I can’t. Yes, I’m sure. I can’t remember anything after I got to the river.” He turned to the older man, pushing back a wave of pain and nausea, trying not to let Raleigh see just how injured he was. “Relax, okay? You look worse on a good day than I do on a bad one.”

Raleigh didn’t smile. “Do you need a doctor?”

“I just need some time for my head to clear.”

He’d made off with Juliet’s cell phone that morning before she woke up. It’d seemed like a good idea at the time. He’d headed to Grand Central Station and boarded a train north to Ravenkill. When he got off in the village, he followed the directions he’d memorized from the inn’s Web site and walked the mile to the Old Stone Hollow Inn.

Something had distracted him before he got to the inn, but he couldn’t remember what. Had he spotted Agent Spencer taking a jaunt through the woods? It was all a blur.

He’d dumped his backpack out of sight under a tree. For some reason, he could remember that. Next thing he knew, he was looking into Maggie Spencer’s eyes and thinking she was trying to kill him.

He’d been out of his head, belligerent, paranoid. His reaction to her had been instinctive and defensive, but he’d known he hadn’t wanted to hurt her. Some reptilian part of his brain must have recognized she wasn’t a threat, because he remembered checking the water behind her to make sure it was deep enough to take her fall, that she wouldn’t hit her head on rocks.

But he’d taken a risk, attacking a federal agent.

He hadn’t gotten far before she’d caught up with him. That annoyed him. But if his fall wasn’t an accident, he figured Spencer’s arrival may have spooked his attacker and saved his life.

That didn’t sit well with him, either.

“You have a car?” he asked.

Raleigh shrugged. “Not really.”

“What do you mean, ‘not really’? That was a yes or no question.”

“It means no.”

“So we have to walk? Are you up to it? Do you want me to use your cell phone to call a taxi?”

Ethan’s head was spinning. “Then what? Even if I could get a taxi to take me, they’d kick me off the train. I stink now, and I’ll stink worse when my clothes dry. Hell. I’ve got dead mosquitoes in my hair. Blood on my shirt.” He didn’t think he sounded all that coherent but kept going. “And you—you’re not much better. You look like you should be sleeping under a bridge.”

“Then it’s just as well I arranged a ride for you.”

“What?” Ethan felt fogged in, as if his vision were being pinched. “What ride?”

“Deputy Longstreet. She was on her way up here, anyway.” A flicker of a smile. “On your case, I’d say.”

“Fuck. I’m going to barf.”

“Sit down. Try to relax.” Raleigh half shoved him to the pavement and sighed. “You’re a wreck. She can take you to the ER.”

“I’ll be fine.” It was his mantra, Ethan decided.
I’ll be fine.
He closed his eyes, hoping the nausea passed. “It wasn’t you who dumped me in the river?”

“We’re on the same side, Major.”

“Right.” Ethan didn’t know if he sounded sarcastic and dubious or just half-dead. His stomach rolled over again, but he shut his eyes and went still, managing to keep the contents where they belonged. “Raleigh—”

But when he opened his eyes, the old man had disappeared, and a battered pickup with Vermont plates rattled to a stop in the turnaround.

Juliet Longstreet climbed out, armed and not real happy. “Oh, man. Look at you, Brooker. Your friend, whoever he was, should have called an ambulance.”

“I’ll be fine.”

The mantra again. He got on all fours, then onto his knees, then got one foot flat on the gravel ground. The river water and the New York bagel he’d picked up in Grand Central Station bubbled in his stomach, and his head throbbed. He heaved himself up, staggering toward the blond marshal with the blue eyes and the scowl.

She slipped a shoulder against him and took his weight, easing an arm around his middle. “What are you doing?” she asked, the softness of her voice catching him by surprise. “When are you going to give it up and get your life back?”

“Char…” He could see his wife’s face, hear her voice, even as he leaned into Juliet and let her take more of his weight. She wasn’t a small woman. He wouldn’t crush her.

“I know. Come on. Let me help you.”

“I don’t need help.”

“No, you hate needing help. There’s a difference.”

She tugged open the passenger door of her truck and maneuvered him up onto the seat. “Don’t throw up in my truck. Understood?”

As weak as he was, he grinned at her. “How come I keep seeing you after I’ve ended up in a river?”

“Karma. Watch your foot, I’m shutting the door.”

She locked him in, as if he might fall out or jump out on the interstate, and came around to the driver’s seat. Her movements were stiff, and he could see she was, on the one hand, irritated with her situation and on the other hand, resigned to doing something she knew she shouldn’t do.

She stuck the key in the ignition. “I want my phone back.”

“Why’d you let me borrow it?”

“You didn’t borrow it. You stole it. That’s what I told Mike Rivera.”

Ethan felt his eyes starting to close against his will. “You’re full of shit, Longstreet. You were awake.”

She made a face. “Look at you. Damn, Brooker. Are you done bleeding? I shouldn’t get you to the E.R. and get that head looked at? Head injuries can be tricky.”

“I just need clean clothes and a cigarette.”

“There’s no smoking in my truck.”

“I only smoke when I’m in pain.”

She shifted the truck into Reverse, checking her rearview mirror. “Why Ravenkill? Did you know Maggie Spencer was here? You must have.”