Identity Withheld Read online

  “Kara?” Jake’s voice drifted through the door.

  “Uh, I’ll be a few minutes,” she called and could hear his mother say something to him, but couldn’t make out the words. Terrific—paper-thin walls. At least the washroom door was at the end of the hall, not exactly a convenient place for him to hover while he waited.

  She dialed zero and, in as quiet a voice as she could use and still be heard, asked the operator to connect her to the marshal’s office in Seattle. “Yes, hello, may I speak with Deputy Marshal Ray Boyd, please?”

  “I’m sorry, he’s unavailable.”

  So whoever answered his phone yesterday might not have been lying. Kara tightened her grip on the phone. “Is there another way I can reach him? It’s very important.”

  “Were you talking to me?” Jake asked through the door, causing Kara to miss whatever the receptionist said in response.

  “Uh—” Kara covered the mouthpiece with her hand “—no, I was just talking to myself. I...um...could be a few minutes.”

  When she heard the sound of his footsteps fade, she pulled a towel over her head, uncovered the mouthpiece and whispered, “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?”

  “Hello, this is Deputy Marshal Peter Towns,” a male voice responded. “How may I help you?”

  “I need to talk to Ray Boyd.”

  “I’m afraid he’s had a medical emergency and will be out of the office for an indefinite time.”

  “Did— Was—” Her heart pounded so hard she couldn’t form a coherent question. “What happened?”

  “A traffic accident.”

  “You’re sure? It was an accident, I mean?”

  “Who am I speaking with?”

  Kara’s heart ratcheted up another gazillion beats a second. “Uh, who will be handling Ray’s cases?”

  “I am, ma’am. If you’d give me your name, I’d be happy to answer any other questions I’m able to.”

  “Ray was supposed to meet me last night,” she said without giving her name. “He was going to get me out of here.”

  “Out of Stalwart?”

  Her breath caught in her throat. He knew where she was. She wrestled in a breath. Of course he knew. She didn’t block the phone number. But if this guy was handling Ray’s cases, she needed to tell him where she was anyway.

  “Ma’am? What’s your name? Why was Ray coming to get you?”

  “They torched my house.” Her fingers clenched the phone so tight, the plastic cracked. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Who torched your house?”

  “How did they find me? He said they wouldn’t find me. I didn’t break any rules.”

  “You’re right,” he soothed in the same tone she’d use on a child in the throes of a temper tantrum. “This isn’t your fault. I’m afraid some of our cell phones were recently compromised.”

  “Compromised?” She pressed the towel to her mouth and forced her voice down an octave. “What do you mean compromised?”

  “Someone hacked into the phones. We discovered the breach about an hour ago.”

  “Breach? You mean someone’s listening in on this call, right now?”

  “No, I assure you this line is secure. If you’ll give me your name and location, I will personally come get you.”

  Didn’t he already know where she was? He’d mentioned Stalwart. Except for all she knew, he was the hacker, and he’d just said all that to win her trust.

  Outside, it sounded as if someone was leaving. She glanced out the window and spotted Sam heading toward the driveway. What if he told the wrong cop about her? The leaked story in the Boston paper had proved that they couldn’t all be trusted to keep her safe. Maybe none of them could. They just wanted to catch their criminals.

  She was nothing more than a means to an end.

  “Ma’am, are you okay? Is someone threatening you right now?”

  Her breath came in short gasps. She leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor. “Do you like fiddle music?” she blurted, suddenly remembering the code phrase Ray had given her to vet imposters.

  “Sure, doesn’t everyone?”

  She clicked off the phone, pressed it to her pounding chest. If he’d truly been Ray’s partner, he’d have said, “Only if a cat’s playing it.” Oh, God, what have I done? He didn’t know. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say. And she’d been on the line so long, he’d probably traced her call or reverse looked up the number or whatever bad guys did.

  He knew where she was!

  A loud knock startled her into dropping the phone. “Kara? Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” Only her voice sounded anything but, as she scrambled to grab the phone that had slid across the floor. Standing, she set it on the counter, pressed a towel over top of it so he wouldn’t know until after she left that she’d been on it. Except...she couldn’t leave without warning him that someone bad might come here looking for her. Might not believe them when they told him she wasn’t here.

  Or he could be a deputy marshal as he’d said, someone she could trust. The operator had made the connection after all.

  How do I know, Lord?

  “Kara?” Serious concern laced Jake’s voice.

  She straightened her hair, drew a deep breath and then opened the door. “Sorry I took so long. I thought there was another bathroo—” Her words faltered at the intense disappointment in his gaze.

  “Did you get hold of your friend?” he asked quietly.

  “My—?”

  “I know you were on the phone, Kara. It’s not a crime. I wouldn’t even expect you to ask to use it. But don’t lie to me, okay?” He turned away, strode to the living room.

  Dragging her feet, she trailed after him. “You’re right. I was trying to call my friend. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

  He pivoted on his heel and closed the distance between them, clasped her upper arms. “You don’t have to apologize for needing to talk to a friend.” His touch, his words grounded her spiraling fears.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to face the compassion blazing in his. “You don’t understand. Someone else answered. I don’t know if he can be trusted. And I didn’t block your parents’ number. He’ll know where I am. He’ll come—” She choked on the thought. “I need to go.”

  Jake tugged her against his chest and folded her in his arms. He rested his cheek against the top of her head. “It’s okay.” His whiskers rasped against her hair as his rumbly voice reverberated through her. He tightened his hold, and the steady beat of his heart against her ear momentarily blocked the warnings screaming through her mind. “Kara, my dad was a cop for forty years. His number is unlisted. Whoever answered your friend’s phone isn’t going to track you through it, not without some sophisticated hardware to trace the call.”

  “The operator must have told him. He knew I was in Stalwart.”

  “Just from the exchange. He’s not going to get the address.”

  She swallowed the panic that had balled in her throat. “Really?”

  “Really.” He relaxed his hold and, gripping her shoulders, put an arm’s-length distance between them and waited until she met his gaze. “You’re safe here.”

  She blinked back the tears that pressed at her eyes. “I wish I could believe that.”

  Jake guided her to the sofa and urged her to sit, then pulled over a side chair. The graze of his knees against hers filled her with a comfort she didn’t deserve. Not when she’d endangered his family by foolishly using their phone. “Kara, as I’m sure you figured out by his sudden appearance, Sam knows who you are.”

  “He does?” Her voice squeaked. Jake’s mom had said Sam only recently moved from Boston. She should’ve known that seeing her picture in this morning’s paper would tweak his memory of her appearance in the Bost
on papers.

  “He thinks we should talk to the sheriff.”

  “The sheriff?” she repeated dumbly.

  “Yes, before this gets any worse for you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The sheriff thinks you’re connected to the fire, and to the gunman in the coffee shop, and not in an innocent-victim kind of way.”

  She pressed a hand to her burning chest. “He thinks I’m a criminal? But you said Sam—” She pursed her lips. Apparently his brother didn’t know who she really was.

  “Sam hasn’t said anything to anyone, because he didn’t want the family to get in trouble for harboring a fugitive.”

  “But I’m not a fugitive!”

  “Your disappearance and that P.I.’s asking after you have the sheriff suspecting otherwise. He learned where you work and intends to take you into custody the next time you show up.”

  Good thing she didn’t plan to return, then.

  Jake reached for her hand. “If you tell me what’s going on, who you’re afraid of, I think together we can convince the sheriff that you’re the victim here, not to mention have a better chance of helping him stop the guy. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Of course, but...” She stared at Jake’s large, strong hand dwarfing hers.

  “I know you’re worried that somehow this guy will hear that you snitched and track you through whatever deputies you talk to. Believe me, I understand. But what other options are there?” He squeezed her hand. “I don’t want the creep I saw after you today to ever get a chance to get that close again.”

  Kara closed her eyes, absorbing the comfort of Jake’s fierce protectiveness for just a moment. Her reticence must make no sense to him at all. And truthfully, it was beginning to feel pretty fruitless to her, too. Except she could see now that while hunkered down in the bathroom, trying not to be overheard, she’d overreacted to the deputy marshal’s wrong response to her coded question. She hadn’t even given him her name. And he obviously hadn’t realized the significance of the question.

  “Do you think the guy who found you today is the same one who hired the P.I.?” Jake asked, jolting her from her thoughts. He did genuinely seem to care what happened to her. She supposed that kind of caring was in the genes of a firefighter like him, and not really personal, but that didn’t stop her heart from somersaulting at his gentle persistence.

  “I imagine so, yes.”

  Sam stormed into the room and Jake shot back in his chair, dropping her hand as if it was on fire.

  She tried not to let that hurt as he sprang to his feet.

  Sam held up a cell phone and wiggled it. “We need to go.”

  “Go where?” Jake snatched the phone. “And what are you doing with my phone?”

  “You left it in your jacket. Davis called from the station. Some guy came in looking for you. Said if you can’t come talk to him, he’ll come to you.” Sam slanted an and-you-don’t-want-him-coming-here look in Kara’s direction.

  “Right.” Jake touched Kara’s hand to regain her attention. “Promise me you’ll stay put until we get back.”

  Her heart stuttered at the concern in his vivid blue eyes. But how could she make such a promise? Sam clearly thought this guy was looking for her and, if he had so much as an inkling that Sam or Jake might know where she was, he’d follow them right back here.

  NINE

  Davis intercepted Jake and Sam outside the fire station before they got out of Sam’s car. “He’s in the back room. Says he’s a deputy marshal.”

  Jake exchanged a vehement look with Sam and fitted on his ball cap. A federal marshal. If this was about Kara, it was shaping into a sickeningly familiar scenario. “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “No. You in some kind of trouble?”

  Jake slammed his car door. “Not that I know of.”

  As Sam joined them, Davis added, “The guy’s kind of shifty. That’s why I didn’t want to give out your home address. I’m not even working today, just dropped by to pick up my coat. Figured I’d stick around until you got here.”

  Jake nodded. “Appreciate it.”

  “Did he show you a badge?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Not that I’d know a real one from a fake one these days. If you know what I mean.”

  Jake strode through the open bay door and, as Davis veered off to one of the trucks, Jake slanted a glance at Sam. “How do you want to handle this?”

  “Just ask him what he wants. I’ll hang back and try to read his reactions as best I can.”

  Catching a glimpse of the burly guy through the window that looked into the truck bay, Jake swiped his suddenly sweaty palms on the legs of his jeans. The guy had a good eighty pounds on him and, from the look of the bulge under his gray blazer, he was packing heat.

  Jake entered the small break room and, extending his hand, rounded the table dominating the middle of the room. “Jake Steele.” He hitched his thumb over his shoulder. “And my brother, Deputy Sheriff Sam Steele. You wanted to see me?”

  The guy clasped Jake’s hand in a weak grip, his gaze flicking to Sam. “Deputy Marshal Clay Rogers.”

  Sam remained near the door and, crossing his arms, leaned back with his shoulders and one foot braced casually against the wall.

  “How can I help you, Deputy Marshal?” Jake asked.

  “I’m looking for Kara Grant. I was told that you might know where she is.”

  Jake frowned. “The victim I found at last night’s fire? Why would anyone think I’d know where she is?”

  The marshal’s eyes narrowed. “The paramedic who drove her to the hospital said you took a special interest in her.”

  Gritting his teeth against a few choice words for his too-talkative cousin, Jake willed himself not to break eye contact. He couldn’t believe Sherri would be so stupid.

  “His partner—your cousin, I understand—didn’t think so.”

  Jake mentally apologized for blaming Sherri as the marshal presented a printout of the online version of the front page of Hadyn’s morning paper.

  “But the two of you do look cozy in this picture.”

  Jake snorted. “I never met Miss Grant before last night. She turned toward me because she didn’t want the reporter snapping her picture. That’s all.”

  The man nodded, his perusal uncomfortably intense. The air in the too-small room seemed to grow scarcer by the second as the marshal took his sweet time refolding the paper and inserting it into his blazer’s inside pocket. “You haven’t seen her since you put her in the ambulance?”

  Jack backed up a step, bumped into a chair. He glanced at his brother. If he outright lied, the marshal was bound to read some giveaway tell in his face. His brother always could. He shook his head. “When I saw deputies swarming the coffee shop that she’d mentioned needing to get to, I stopped to see what was going on. They’d taken down a gunman, but she was gone.” Satisfied with his evasion, Jake crossed his arms and searched the marshal’s face for any telltale signs he had a connection to the gunman. At half a foot taller and half a ton heftier, he couldn’t be mistaken for the gunman, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t hired the hood to pick Kara up, or worse.

  “A guy came after her in the coffee shop?”

  Jake shrugged. “I thought it was just a robbery.” He tipped back his ball cap and, scratching his head, threw his brother a help-me-out-here glare.

  Sam pushed off the wall. “Why are you looking for her? Is she in some kind of trouble?”

  “Nothing you need to concern yourself with.” The deputy marshal swaggered toward the door. “Sorry to have taken up your time.”

  The instant the marshal stepped into the truck bay, Sam whipped out his cell phone and scrolled through screens.

  “That was the best you could do?” Jake mut
tered, and edged closer to the window overlooking the bay to see if the guy stopped to question anyone else on his way out. He supposed he should be grateful Sam wasn’t laying into him for withholding information from a federal agent, considering. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to find out if this guy is who he says he is.”

  “You think he’s an imposter?”

  “I don’t know. He was cagey.”

  “Yeah, kind of reminds me of my father-in-law. Don’t you think?”

  Sam glanced past Jake then strode to the small window facing the side street. “Yeah, you might be right.”

  Jake’s insides burned with the sudden compulsion to stalk after the guy and plant a fist in his face.

  Sam pointed out the window. “Looks as if he’s waiting for us to leave.”

  “What?” Jake lurched across the room, sending a couple of chairs flying from his path. The guy sat in a black Marquis, his attention fixed on the fire station. “You think he didn’t believe me?”

  Sam pocketed his phone. “Not sure. He probably has no other leads and figures following you home will confirm this one, one way or the other.”

  Jake’s pulse skyrocketed. “We can’t let that happen.”

  “See if Davis is still here.”

  Davis appeared at the door. “Did I hear my name?”

  “Yeah.” Sam snatched Jake’s ball cap off his head and told him to take off his jacket. “Want to go for a ride with me?”

  Davis arched an eyebrow.

  Sam jutted his chin toward the window. “Lead the marshal on a wild-goose chase.”

  Davis laughed. “Love to.”

  “Good.” He handed him Jake’s cap and jacket. “Put these on. Can Jake borrow your car?”

  Davis dug out his keys and tossed them to Jake. “Baby her.”

  “What am I supposed to do with his car?” Jake asked.

  “Wait until you’re sure the marshal’s following us in the opposite direction, then get yourself home and find out from that woman what’s really going on.”

  Jake grinned. “Good plan. I’ll park the car at Davis’s sister’s and jog the rest of the way. That way you won’t have to bring him back to the house to get his car.”