Chapter Nine

Mikayla stared at the menu, not seeing the words. Dead. Peter was dead. It didn’t feel real. Maybe, despite Linc’s conviction that he had the facts, there’d been a mistake. There must be more than one Peter Wellington in the world. In fact, she’d bet in a city the size of Los Angeles there’d be multiple Peter Wellingtons. She peered out the window next to the table. Linc had stepped outside to take a phone call. She spotted him with his phone to his ear, standing on a little strip of grass. He wore a shirt tucked into jeans belted low at his lean waist. His eyes were hidden behind the mirrored sunglasses. She didn’t think it was an accident that he stood where he could monitor anyone who walked through the entrance.

Mikayla felt like her world had spiraled out of control and nothing was how it should be. The attack the day before had seemed random, completely out of the blue, but now it appeared to be connected to the men who’d been at Peter’s house. And Peter – beautiful, charming, unfailingly optimistic Peter – was dead. Someone she’d laughed with, had been frustrated with, and had made love with had been killed by a stranger who’d pulled the trigger on a gun and killed him. And overlaying everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours was the disquieting appearance of Lincoln Jameson. If she was honest, she could attribute a good portion of her confusion and emotional upheaval to his presence.

She’d felt attracted to a few men over the years but had always managed to keep them from getting too close. The sad truth was that despite their engagement, she’d kept Peter at an emotional distance. It had been easy because he hadn’t wanted to look below the surface either, which probably explained a lot. She’d gone along with marrying him because he didn’t make her feel too much. Even if she hadn’t really understood her motives, at least she’d finally realized that their marriage would never last if there wasn’t more to it than friendship and affection.

But Linc was different. He had a way of getting to her that didn’t allow her to keep things at a superficial level. Attentive, caring, he made her feel like she actually meant something to him. He probably acted that way with everyone. Part of his job description. No way would she let him know that her response to him scared her. She reacted to him on an elemental level that made her feel vulnerable, like her emotions were laid bare.

Still on the phone, Linc stared at her through the window, expression grim. Why did she have the feeling he knew what she was thinking? He spoke a few more words, then stuck the phone in his pocket and strode to the door. It felt like she had to brace herself for the force of his presence when he neared the table. She set down the menu as he slid into the booth to sit opposite her, his gaze traveling over her features.

“You okay?”

She nodded jerkily. “I’ve been thinking, there’s got to be more than one Peter Wellington in Los Angeles. Your brother could have found some other Peter Wellington who was murdered.” The words tumbled out and she could see Linc’s expression change, his eyes soften. There was compassion behind the tough exterior. He probably knew she was grasping at anything that would change reality and didn’t want to quash her hopes.

“How many Peter Wellingtons live on Sea Cliff Drive off the Pacific Coast Highway?” He reached for her hand, tightening his grip when she would have pulled away. “He’s dead, Mikayla.”

She bore down on the terrible ball of misery that threatened to break loose. She pulled her hand from his grasp and crossed her arms in front of her. What she really needed was a quiet place where she could be alone and find her control. Breaking down in front of Linc, in front of anyone, was never an option.

“Anything look good on the menu? Some soup and a cup of tea and you might feel steadier.”

Comfort foods. She wondered if Linc tended to everyone. She had the feeling he didn’t, but for whatever reason was making an exception for her. She gave him a brief nod. “That sounds fine.”

They didn’t talk during the meal, and she thought Linc was giving her space. She pushed the half-finished bowl of potato-corn chowder back and watched him demolish the last of a thick pastrami sandwich. His phone buzzed. Linc looked at the screen and let it go to voicemail. At her raised eyebrow he gave a half-smile. “Sheriff Deadeye. He won’t be happy we took off.”

He nodded to the waitress when she came around to refill his coffee mug and leaned back in his seat. “I spoke to my brother again. He talked to a contact in the LAPD.” He gave her an assessing look. “Were you aware Wellington had security cameras in and around his home?” At her nod, he continued. “The system has been accessed and all data for the day Wellington was killed was erased.” He paused. “Do you know how to access Wellington’s security system?”

“No. I knew he had one, and Peter told me the alarm passcode to disarm it, but I’ve never gotten into the system.”

“Those men must have examined the video before they erased it, and that’s how they know you were there. It wouldn’t take much digging to find out who you are.” He studied her features. “Mikayla, do you know anything about Wellington being connected to a Mexican drug cartel?”

“Drug cartel? No way.” She shook her head emphatically. “He couldn’t be.”

“It’s looking like he might have been laundering money for the cartel through commercial real estate deals.”

“I can’t believe this. First you tell me Peter’s dead, and now that he was involved with a drug cartel. That Peter was a criminal.”

“Sorry, but yes. Think carefully. Had he ever said or done anything to make you think he was involved in illegal activities of any sort?”

“No.” She rubbed at her forehead, trying to ease a dull ache that signaled the start of a tension headache. If she’d been told Peter wanted to give up his Mercedes and go on a spiritual pilgrimage to Tibet, she couldn’t have been any more surprised. She lowered her hand and locked her gaze on Linc’s. “The cartel sent Lopez after me.” The words came out slowly, each carefully enunciated as the full reality of her situation dawned. “Those men he was arguing with were with the cartel. It’s not run-of-the-mill bad guys who are after me, but a Mexican cartel. They know I saw them there Sunday night.” She fisted her hands to hide their trembling.

“That’s my bet. My brother is starting the ball rolling on getting you into WITSEC.”

“You have got to be kidding.”

“WITSEC is the Witness Security Program run by the Marshals Service.”

“I know what WITSEC is. I don’t want to do that. Go arrest that Paco guy and his minion and there won’t be any reason to put me in witness protection.”

“Look, you’re scared and you want this whole thing to go away. I get that. But it won’t go away and I need to keep you safe until the cartel can be dealt with.” He glanced around and pitched his voice low. “Paco Zecena is in charge of the cartel’s Southern California operations. The FBI and the Marshals Service have been working to build a case against him for the past year. Zecena is slick. He’s been careful to keep his hands clean, let others do the dirty work. But if he’s the same Paco you saw at Wellington’s house, and I think he is, then he’s finally made a mistake.”

“His mistake being leaving a witness alive.”

“Yeah. You’re the only person who can link Zecena directly to murder. And if we can prove Wellington was laundering money for the cartel, then we’ve got a case not just for murder, but one that can bring down the California Zecena operation.”

“Good, so if you can do that you won’t need me to assume a new identity or give up my job.”

“You can be under witness protection without changing your name. We’ll keep you in a safe house until you give your testimony.”

“What about after? How do you know whether the threat will be gone? These guys are only one part of the cartel, right?”

“True, so we reassess at that point.”

Mikayla felt her head spinning. What had happened to her life? Three days ago she was a college professor and was engaged to a charming man. Now that man was dead and she was being told she’d need to give up her life so she wouldn’t end up dead. Like Peter. “What about my family? I won’t be able to see them?”

“If we consider them in danger, they can be put into WITSEC as well. We’ll work it out.” Her expression must have given away what she was feeling because he reached out to take her hand again, this time holding firmly. “You’ve had a lot to absorb, Mikayla. Don’t try to figure it all out at once. My primary goal is keeping you safe. To do that, I need to know everything you know. I want you to go over again what you saw Sunday night.” He glanced around the mostly empty restaurant. “We’re good to talk here. You okay?” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles then released her hand.

At her slow nod, he continued. “Take me through that evening again, but this time think back to any additional details you remember. Tell me anything that was different or seemed off, no matter how insignificant you think it is.”

When she sat numbly, he prompted her. “You said you drove to Peter’s house Sunday evening. You hadn’t called him and he wasn’t expecting you?”

“No.”

“Had you talked to him that day?”

“Kind of. We’d texted that morning.”

“About what?”

“Nothing really, it was just chitchat. He asked when I was leaving on my trip, said he wished I wasn’t going so far away. I knew he didn’t want me to go. In Peter’s world, women don’t go on trips without their men. Who would carry their bags? And women certainly don’t do anything as uncivilized as camping, much less go camping alone. He and my mother were relentless in trying to get me to change my mind.”

“What about when you got to his house. Think details.”

“There was a strange car parked in the driveway next to Peter’s Mercedes. An Audi sports car that still had paper dealer plates so it must have been new. And it was unusual for Peter not to have parked his car in the garage.”

“Do you remember what dealership the Audi was from?”

Mikayla tilted her head back in thought. “No, but I remember the logo on the license frame was in italics lettering and the color scheme was red letters on a yellow background. That’s probably not much help.”

“It might be.” He made a rolling motion with his hand. “Walking up to the house, in the house, did anything else strike you as odd or different?”

She shook her head. “Not until I heard them yelling at each other.” He continued to grill her, asking follow-up questions to his follow-up questions, until Mikayla finally held up her hands in surrender. “Linc, there’s nothing else I can tell you.”

He picked up his coffee mug and sipped, hazel eyes studying her over the rim. “Bottom line, Mikayla, those two men know you can place them at the scene of Peter’s murder. They sent Lopez to kill you, and they’ll try again. And not with a novice this time. We need to keep you safe, and the Marshals Service is developing a plan to do that. Until then, you stay glued to me.”

***

When they left Concord, dark clouds building in the western sky shifted the colors of the landscape to monochrome. Gray sky, granite mountains, black trees. Mikayla sat silently in the passenger seat, arms folded against her stomach. Her tension was obvious, but she was holding it together.

Linc pulled his cell from his pocket, glancing from the road and back as he tapped the screen until he found the number he was looking for. He needed to touch base with the sheriff. The guy may be an ass, but as local law enforcement, Linc had to work with him. Bland picked up, and Linc shared his theory about Lopez’s connection to the cartel. He also let the sheriff know he and Mikayla wouldn’t be back in. Bland blustered about needing a statement from Mikayla. Linc held the phone away from his ear at the stream of profanities when he told the sheriff that he would take her statement and send it to him. It took every ounce of his short supply of diplomacy not to tell Bland to pull his head out of his ass. Finishing the call, Linc handed his phone to Mikayla. “Plug this in for me.”

She performed the task silently. Linc cast a glance at her and couldn’t help his growing concern. Knife attack, ex murdered, either one would shake up the steadiest of individuals. She’d gotten past the initial shock of learning of the ex’s death, and they’d talked at the diner, but now she’d withdrawn behind a wall of reserve that worried him.

A gust of wind buffeted the Jeep and Linc tightened his grip on the steering wheel. They drove out of the valley that sheltered the town of Concord, the highway taking them deeper into the mountains. Lightning forked across the sky and the leading edge of a rainstorm formed a dark wall heading their direction.

Miles later they finally crossed the bridge over the river where water rushed in a wild torrent. They took the turnoff to the campground just as the clouds let loose with a deluge. There were only a few other campers and the empty sites made the place look deserted. He wondered if the others had heard the forecast and taken off to avoid the inclement weather. He parked the Jeep at his site and sat back in his seat. “Might as well sit tight until the rain stops.”

Mikayla nodded her agreement, looking silently out into the rain.

“You okay?”

“Yep, doing fine.”

He turned to study her profile. Last night after the attack she hadn’t reacted like he’d expected her to. No crying or hysterics for Mikayla O’Kane then, and there weren’t any now.

Everyone needed to yell or cry at some point. Punching something was his go-to, if for nothing else than to vent some of the emotion. But she looked like she had her feelings locked tight.

Before the news about the ex there’d been a spark, an irresistible vitality about her he found incredibly appealing. Now that spark was gone. He had the urge to gather her up in his arms to comfort her, to hold her until she understood she was safe, that he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Christ, he had it bad.

Same as the day before, the rain pounded on the roof of the Jeep, but this time he felt more content with the Celtic goddess in the car with him. She stared out the window as the storm raged across the sky. Lightning streaked in an arc followed almost immediately by booming thunder that echoed down the canyon. As a nature show this one was spectacular, but he sure wasn’t looking forward to crawling into his tent to spend the night in the mud. Once the storm passed, they might be more comfortable if they packed up and drove until they found a motel. And he’d feel safer with Mikayla under lock and key in a room he could defend.

“How were you shot?”

He looked over, startled. The furrow was back between her brows and she was staring at him with fierce concentration. How had she known? Then he remembered. That morning he’d come out of his tent without a shirt. Or pants.

After he’d all but grilled her over the past twenty-four hours, this was the first personal question she’d asked. She was probably looking for a distraction. He didn’t want to talk about getting shot, but he thought he owed her something.

“My partner. He shot me.”

“By accident?”

“No, he was definitely trying to kill me.”

The furrow deepened. “That’s really, really horrible.”

“And yet that’s an understatement. But I’m alive. The nurses kept saying I was lucky.”

“Getting shot isn’t lucky.”

“That’s what I told them. But I guess surviving is.”

She nodded. After a long moment, she spoke again. “Why did he shoot you?”

“I’m still working that out.” But after his conversation with Seth, he had more information. “My brother gave me an update. There was a woman involved, and Donny was always stupid about women.”

“He shot you over a woman?”

“Not like you mean. The woman was apparently the catalyst and managed to lure him into a deal with some bad actors. He had gambling debts and they paid them. But that put Donny into a different kind of debt, a debt he thought he could pay by killing a witness we were protecting. Kill me and he could get away clean.”

“But he didn’t kill you.”

“No, but only due to good timing from the Marshals Service.”

“How bad was it?”

“Bad enough.”

She studied him quietly. “I’ll bet you’re supposed to be taking it easy. Recuperating. And instead you ended up in a fight against a guy armed with a knife.”

In the half-light of the storm, her eyes looked impossibly dark. He looked away before he did something stupid, something like pulling her into his arms. Finding out if kissing her would be as good as he thought it would be.

“Linc.” His name said in that husky tone made him think she also felt the attraction.

“I’m recovered. Don’t worry about me.”

He couldn’t deny that something had shifted. That somehow in twenty-four short hours she’d come uncomfortably close to becoming the focus of his world. Even arresting Donny had retreated in importance behind the need to protect the woman sitting next to him.

When she’d first arrived at the campground, she’d captivated him on all sorts of levels. The Celtic goddess looks were a hook, no doubt about that. Then he’d found the competence with which she’d set up her camp somehow sexy. Go figure on that one. But there had been something more elemental that had snagged his attention, and had sent him out on that trail looking for her when his gut told him she could be in trouble. He reminded himself she’d had a shitty day, and didn’t need him adding to the upset, but he couldn’t ignore the attraction, even if he couldn’t act on it.

“Right now, my primary goal is keeping you safe.” And he wouldn’t compromise that goal by letting his emotions tangle him up.

She was quiet for a long moment, staring out the window. When she finally spoke, her voice gave nothing away. “The rain is letting up.”

Like a faucet turning off, the rain stopped. A gusty wind scattered droplets of water from the tree branches and even as he watched, clouds scuttled across the sky to reveal patches of blue.

“Was your partner caught? Was he arrested?”

It was like that moment that had passed between them had never existed. He tried to convince himself it was for the best. “No. He’s on the run.”

“I can’t see you not going after him.”

“Got that right, but my boss said he’d kick my ass if I didn’t give myself time to recuperate.” He shrugged. “Got some thinking to do so I came out here to do it.”

“And ended up neck deep in my mess.”

He sighed, deciding she had the right to the information. “Our messes are connected. The witness I was protecting? He was in WITSEC because the Zecena cartel was after him.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not kidding. Your friend Paco? Joey was there when Paco Zecena ordered a rival tortured. When he ordered certain body parts men are very sensitive about carved up.”

“Okay, that’s disturbing. What about the other guy at Peter’s house that night?”

“Haven’t identified him, but likely one of his lieutenants.”

They should get out of the Jeep before they lost all the daylight, but he sat there beside her, looking out through windows beginning to fog up. He gave himself a mental shake. “Look, if I’m right, this campground is the last location the cartel can tie you to. I want to pack up our gear and get out of here. We’ll find a motel where we can spend the night and get an early start first thing in the morning. We’ll head to the Marshals office in Salt Lake City. I’d feel safer if you were under Marshals’ protection, and keeping you out of Southern California seems prudent right now.”

He wondered what it said about his awareness of her that he sensed her opposition before she spoke.

“I don’t want to go to Salt Lake City. What about Peter? His parents are dead. He only had a brother who lives in New Jersey and they weren’t close. Who’s going to make the arrangements to bury him? And my family is in California. They might have heard about Peter’s death and they’ll be worried about me.” She clenched her fists tightly in her lap. “God, my mom. I hadn’t even thought about what Peter being murdered will do to her. She’s got…issues. This will be upsetting to her.”

He’d reached for her hands, enfolding them in his, and found her fingers chilled. “Mikayla, your safety is more important than dealing with Wellington’s burial arrangements. And your mother won’t want you to risk going back to California if you could be in danger. You can call her using my cell when we get someplace where there’s service and let her know you’re safe.” He brought her hands to his mouth, blowing softly to warm them. He paused when he realized what he was doing, his lips resting on her knuckles, his eyes looking straight into hers. Awareness zinged between them.

She hitched a breath. “Linc, I can’t—”

“—do this. I know.” He held onto her hands a moment longer before brushing a kiss over her knuckles and releasing her.