Читать книгу Unforgettable - Cassie Miles - Страница 9

Jack knew he had killed before. As he stared down the barrel of Caitlyn’s rifle, his vision narrowed to his target. The center seam of Rojas’s tailored jacket. His hands were steady. He was focused. Cool and calm, as always.

He remembered another time, another place, another killing.

He was in the city, the seedy part of town. On the fourth floor of a dirty brick hotel that rented rooms by the hour, he set up his sniper’s nest and assembled his precision rifle with laser scope, silencer and tripod. With high-power, infrared binoculars, he observed the crappy apartment building directly across the street. Fourth floor, corner unit. Nobody home.

He checked into the hotel at sundown. Hours passed. Dusk turned to nightfall when lights flickered on throughout the city. Not that he had a glittering view.

When the lamp in the apartment across the street came on, he eased into position. Though he sat in the dark, the glow from a streetlight reflected dully on the barrel of his rifle and silencer.

He peered through his scope. Through the uncurtained window of the apartment across the street, a man with fiery red hair paced from room to room with his gun in his hand, looking for danger.

“I’m here,” Jack whispered. “Come to the window, you bastard.”

This man deserved to die.

But his target hadn’t been alone. A small woman with brassy blond hair and a child entered Jack’s field of vision. Two witnesses.

The killing had to wait.

From the loft in the barn, Jack watched as Rojas and his companion got into the SUV and drove away from Caitlyn’s cabin. She turned on her heel and rushed back into her house, moving fast, as though she had something burning on the stove.

When the black SUV was out of sight, he rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling in the barn that needed patching.

He knew who he was.

A stone-cold killer.

INSIDE HER CABIN, Caitlyn wasted no time. She dove into the swivel chair behind her small desk in the living room and fired up her laptop. It felt good to see the screen come to life. Back when she was a working journalist—especially in the field—her computer had been an ever-present tool, almost an extension of her arm.

Her hands poised over the keyboard. But I’m not a journalist anymore. Not right now. She had no assignment, no story to investigate, and she wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted to go back into the fray.

Her main reason for moving to this cabin had been to purposely distance herself from the 24-hour-a-day news cycle. During this time of self-imposed seclusion, she hoped to regroup and decide what to do with the rest of her life.

Her parents and nearly everyone else who cared about her had encouraged Caitlyn to seek out a safer occupation. Not that they wanted her to quit writing, but they hoped she would leave the war zones to others. As if she’d be satisfied reporting on garden parties? Writing poetry about sunshine and lollipops?

She wasn’t made that way. She thrived on action.

Jack’s arrival at her doorstep might be fate. She hadn’t gone looking for danger, but here it was. She had armed thugs searching her cabin. If Jack Dalton had a story to tell, she wouldn’t turn away.

She jumped on the internet and started a search on the name of Jack’s supposed “friend,” Mark Santoro. Expertly, she sorted through news stories, mostly from the Chicago Tribune, and put together the basic facts.

As Jack had said, Mark Santoro was dead. He and four other members of the Santoro crime family had been killed in a shootout on a city street five months ago. One of the men had his hands cut off. Mark had been decapitated. A gruesome slaughter; it was intended to send a message.

Allegedly, the Santoro family handled narcotics distribution in the Midwest, and they had angered the powerful Rojas drug cartel—the suppliers of illegal drugs.

Agents from the DEA and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were all over this incident. They arrested and charged several members of the Rojas cartel, including the top man, Tom Rojas. The federal murder trial was due to start on Tuesday, four days from now, at a district court in Chicago.

Reading between the lines, Caitlyn suspected that much of this story never made it to print. She used to date a reporter who worked at the Trib—a sweet guy who had taken her for that romantic sailboat ride on Lake Michigan and begged her to stay in the States. She’d refused to settle down, and he’d moved on. A typical pattern for her relationships. The last she’d heard, her former beau was happily married with an infant daughter. If she needed to find out more about the trial, she could contact him.

Rapid-fire, she typed in the names of the two thugs: Drew Kelso and Greg Reynolds. A quick search showed several people with those names, but nothing stood out. She wasn’t surprised. Drug lords and thugs don’t generally maintain websites.

Next, she searched for Tony Perez. After digging through a lot of worthless information, she tightened her search and linked it to Mark Santoro. In one of the articles about the shootings, Tony Perez was mentioned as a bodyguard for Santoro. Perez had been killed at the scene.

But Jack Dalton was very much alive.

Slowly, she closed her laptop. Though she hadn’t heard him enter the house or walk across the living room floor, she sensed Jack’s nearness. She knew that he was standing close, silently watching her.

A shiver prickled down her spine. She wasn’t afraid that he would physically harm her. There wasn’t a reason, and he was smart enough to avoid unnecessary violence. But she was apprehensive. Jack was pulling her toward a place she didn’t want to go.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.

She swiveled in her desk chair to face him. “You look pretty healthy for a dead man.”

He crossed the room and returned her rifle to the front closet. “I brought your gun back.”

The smart thing would be to send him on his way and forget she ever saw him. But finding the truth was a compulsion for her. “Those men were looking for Tony Perez. Is that your real name?”

“Tony’s dead. Call me Jack.”

“They said you stole a horse, and that you’re dangerous.”

“Half right.”

“Which half?”

“I didn’t steal the horse. I borrowed it.”

He approached her, braced his hands on each of the arms of her swivel chair and leaned down until his face was on a level with hers. “Those men are unpredictable. There’s no telling what they might do. I strongly advise that you stay with a friend for a couple of days.”

“What about you? Where are you going?”

“Not your problem.”

He was so close that she could see the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. She wanted to rest her hand against his black T-shirt, to feel the beating of his heart. Instead, she picked a piece of straw off his shoulder. “You were hiding in the barn. In the loft.”

“I couldn’t leave until I knew you were safe.”

“Who were those guys?” She searched his eyes for a truth he might never tell her. “They said their names were Drew Kelso and Greg Reynolds.”

“Not Reynolds. That was Gregorio Rojas.” He reached toward her desk and flipped her computer open. “You know the name. You were reading all about him and his pals.”

“And his brother, Tom. His murder trial starts in four days.”

He stepped away from her. “I have to go.”

“Not yet. I’m still putting the pieces together.” She left her chair and stood between him and the front door. “I’m asking myself why Rojas is after you. Something to do with his brother’s trial, right?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“But I do, Jack. I’m a reporter.” And she was damn good at her job. He’d thrown out just enough bread crumbs for her to follow this trail. “Let’s suppose that you are this Tony Perez and that you survived the attack on the street. That makes you a witness.”

“I told you before. Tony is—”

“Dead.” Yeah, sure. “I’m just supposing here. I can only think of one reason that an eyewitness to a crime in Chicago would be hiding in the Colorado mountains.

WitSec.”

The Witness Security Program provided protection for those who might be in danger before a trial. There must be a safe house in the area.

“Suppose you’re correct,” he said. “If a protected witness was attacked at a safe house, it must mean that he was betrayed by the marshals who were supposed to be looking out for him. They gave the location of the safe house to Rojas.”

She hated to acknowledge that law enforcement officials—in this case, U.S. Marshals—could be corrupted. But she knew it was possible. While embedded with the troops, she’d run across similar instances. Somebody taking a payoff. Somebody acting on a grudge instead of following orders.

With a shrug, she said, “It happens.”

“If it did happen that way, there’s nobody this witness can trust. Rojas is after him. And the marshals can’t let him report them. He has to go on the run and find his own way to make it to the trial in Chicago.”

“I can help you.”

“I don’t want your help.”

He stepped around her and went out the front door.

JACK STRODE AWAY FROM her house toward the corral fence. Angry at himself for telling too much. Angry at her for wanting to know. How the hell could she help him? And why? Why should she give a damn? As a reporter with the troops, she was accustomed to being surrounded by heroes. Not somebody like him.

At the fence, he paused to settle his mind into a plan. He wasn’t sure how he’d make his way out of this sprawling mountain terrain where a man could disappear and never be seen again. That might be the solution. Drop out of sight and start over.

But he had promised to appear in court. His eyewitness testimony would put Tom Rojas and some of his top men behind bars. Little brother Gregorio didn’t have the guts or the authority to hold the cartel together. Jack’s testimony could make a difference.

He looked toward the road that ran past her house—the only direct route into and out of this area. His enemies would be watching that road. He’d be better off taking a cross-country path, walking until … Until he got to Chicago?

“Jack, wait!” Caitlyn dashed toward him. She thrust a canvas backpack into his hands. “Take this.”

Inside the pack, he saw survival supplies: a couple of bottled waters, some energy bars, a sweatshirt and a cell phone. He’d be a fool to refuse these useful items, but he wasn’t going to admit that she’d been right about him needing her help.

She dug into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a wad of cash. “It’s a hundred and twenty-seven bucks. That’s all I have on hand.”

“Caitlyn, why—”

“And this.” She handed him a cowboy hat. “To protect the wound on your head.”

Jack tried on the battered brown hat with a flat brim. Not a bad fit. “Why are you so determined to help me?”

Her face was as open as a sunflower, deceptively innocent. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“You don’t know me. You don’t know the life I’ve led.”

“You were part of the Santoro crime family,” she said. “I’m assuming that you’ve done a lot of things I wouldn’t condone. You could have been a hit man, an assassin or even a drug pusher.”

“No,” he said, “never a pusher. I hate drugs.”

“That’s the past, Jack. You made a change. You decided to testify against some very bad men.”

“Maybe I didn’t have a choice.”

“I don’t care.”

He was surprised to hear a tremble in her voice, an undercurrent of strong emotion. She was feeling something intense. About him? He didn’t think she was the kind of woman who formed sudden attachments. Over and over, she’d said she was a reporter. In her profession, she couldn’t allow her passions to rule. “What’s going on with you?”

“You’re risking your life to testify, to do the right thing.” She inhaled so deeply that her nostrils flared. As she exhaled, she regained control of herself. “I need to believe that when people fight for the right thing and put their lives on the line, it’s not for nothing. Their sacrifice has significance.”

Spoken like someone who had been to war and had seen real suffering. His irritation faded behind a newfound admiration. She was one hell of a woman. Strong and principled. For the second time, he wished they had met under different circumstances. “Don’t make me into something I’m not.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “As long as you don’t downplay what you’re doing. You’re giving up your former life to do the right thing.”

“I’m no hero.”

She cocked her head to one side. A hank of straight blond hair fell across her forehead. “Neither am I.”

“I have to go.”

“First, let me show you how to use the GPS on the cell phone. It won’t give you a detailed topographical map, but you’ll have an idea where the roads are.”

Instead, he handed the phone back to her. “If the GPS shows me where I am, it’ll show other people my location. They can track me from the signal.”

“Of course. I knew that.” She shoved the phone into her pocket. “You said you didn’t want to use my car, but you could take one of the horses.”

On horseback, he’d make better time than if he was on foot. He nodded, accepting her offer. “I’ll find a way to return the horse to you.”

“You should take the stallion. His name is Fabio because of his blond mane. And he’s a real stud.”

Entering through the corral gate, she motioned to the handsome palomino horse and made a clicking with her tongue. Both animals responded and obediently trotted toward the barn door.

As he followed, he noticed her athletic stride. There was nothing artificial about her. No makeup. No fancy styling to her hair. Her body was well toned, and he suspected that her fitness came from outdoor living rather than a regular workout at a gym. Her jeans fit snugly, tight enough to outline the feminine curve of her ass.

Until now, he hadn’t really taken the time to appreciate how attractive she was. When he first stopped at her cabin, he thought he’d be there for only a couple of minutes. He hadn’t expected to know anything about her.

While she saddled the stallion and rattled off instructions for the care of the horse, he watched. Her energy impressed him. She was unlike any woman he’d known before. He regretted that after he rode away from her cabin, he would never see her again.

He harbored no illusions about coming back to her after the trial. His life wasn’t his own. He’d be stashed away in witness protection, which was probably for the best. Right now, Caitlyn had a high opinion of him. If she knew the reality of his life, she wouldn’t want to be in the same room with him.

She finished with the saddle and came toward him. “Fabio is ready to go.”

“I’m not.”

He placed his hand at the narrowest part of her body and gently pulled her closer.