Since no one started yelling at them for being in the bank after hours, Tate kept looking around. “What, Lib?”
He couldn’t believe he’d actually kissed Liberty. Apparently he’d checked his brain at the door of the camp trailer when he’d gone inside. But she’d been hurt, and she was so valiantly braving her way through the pain. When he’d realized she was a little loopy from it, Tate had left her to rest.
If the Secret Service or FBI had found her there, she’d have been able to answer their questions. Or simply tell them he’d coerced her into going with him to the mine. He’d have had “kidnapping of a federal agent” added to the list of charges they wanted to slap him with. It wouldn’t have added but a few years onto his sentence if they were successful.
If Tate couldn’t prove their entire assumption about his involvement was wrong.
And now he was almost sure Braden was involved. He couldn’t prove much past the smarm on his brother’s face, or the look in his eye, but Tate wouldn’t put it past him. Ever since Braden had tried out for football and not made the team Tate had been the star of in high school, things had gone downhill. Their parents’ deaths had only been part of it; he knew as much from what his brother had said. Braden had always looked up to him, but somewhere along the line, wanting to be like his big brother had twisted into this vengeance.
Braden’s apartment hadn’t been anything but a sad reminder of the life of an addict. Despite the fact that Tate had managed to find a checkbook from the bank manager’s personal account, there hadn’t been much else. No family photos, or reminders of their parents. Nothing more than a few DVDs, grimy furniture and a kitchen that desperately needed cleaning.
Tate sighed and continued his sweep of the main area of the bank, then behind the counter where the tellers sat. No one was here.
“Tate?”
He almost didn’t look at her, as he knew exactly what he’d see. Pale face, tired eyes. Lines around her mouth to indicate how much pain she was in. He probably shouldn’t have brought her here, but he just hadn’t been able to bear the idea of doing this alone. As much as Liberty had hurt him, it was clear those feelings hadn’t died. Would they ever? Maybe the two of them were tied together.
Still, it didn’t change the fact that their relationship hadn’t worked. Liberty had broken it off because Tate just wasn’t the kind of man she’d been able to see herself with long-term. An answer he’d be given by any woman, not just her. Tate wasn’t “future” material, or he’d be married with a family by now. And their lives were even less compatible these days. They lived in different parts of the country, which meant it would be even harder to have a relationship.
If he was even looking for one.
“Tate.” She sounded aggravated now.
He spun around, lifted his arms. “What?” Liberty’s gun hung loose in her good hand. She could probably still shoot straight. She’d always been an excellent shot. But he’d been doing a lousy job of protecting her. “What is it?”
“The bank manager.” She stood by the open office door in the corner. “I found him.”
Tate strode to her. “I can talk to him. You wait in the truck—you look like you’re dead on your feet, Lib.”
She looked like she was going to be sick. “Dead?” She also looked like she was going to slap him.
“You know what I mean.” He touched her shoulders, not worrying about whether the bank manager could hear them. He needed to say this. “I don’t want you to get hurt.” Although that didn’t make sense because she was hurt. “It’s more than that,” he continued. “All this is my problem, and it’s sweet you came here.” Now he knew she’d done it because she cared about what happened to him enough to brave his ire over her actions. He lived every day like his life was in ruins. Like the aftermath of a great explosion, leaving devastation in its wake.
Tate moved his hand from her shoulder to her neck, feeling the warmth of her skin beneath his fingertips. He needed to feel it, because Liberty was real. Maybe the only real thing in his life.
Which was why he had to do this.
Liberty’s gaze searched his, her brow furrowed.
“You should go back to the Secret Service.” When she started to argue, he said, “I don’t want you in the line of fire anymore. Not when I know Braden doesn’t care at all about what happens to me. This is serious business, and you should make sure you’re good to go home and get back to your job. Your life is important and so is your job.” He took a breath. “Because I care about you too much to let you stay here with me.”
He moved closer to touch his mouth to hers in one last goodbye. It would probably be a source of pain later, but Tate didn’t care. He needed the memory of her sweetness to accompany all the anguish.
Liberty’s breath touched his lips. “The bank manager is dead.”
Tate halted, his mouth almost on hers. He looked over her shoulder into the office. The bank manager—at least, he assumed the suited man in the chair was him—had a distinct wound under his chin. His hand hung down by his side and a pistol lay on the carpet, as though it had fallen there.
“Oh.” His brain struggled to switch from what he’d been thinking about—Liberty—to the dead man. He moved her aside and stepped into the tiny office.
“Don’t touch anything.”
Tate turned back, one eyebrow raised. He hadn’t forgotten that much. Deputy sheriffs of small Montana counties didn’t investigate suspicious deaths often, but he’d done the training.
“They can’t pin this on you as well if you haven’t left any evidence you were ever in the room.”
She had a good point. Tate stepped back. “How about you go in while I call Dane?”
Relief washed over her face. As she moved past him, Liberty touched his elbow. “Thank you for what you said, and for caring about me.” She was quiet for a second, and he gave her the space to think through the pain to figure out what she wanted to say. “I’m not leaving you. I’ve come this far, and I’m not a quitter.”
She went into the bank manager’s office while Tate stared at the back of her head. She had quit. She’d quit on them when she gave up their relationship…and for what? Certainly not anything better for either of them.
* * *
Tate’s words rang in her ears as she moved toward the dead man. Liberty understood why he’d told her it was okay to go, but at every turn so far it had seemed like he wanted to get rid of her and then brought her anyway. She was getting sick of his back-and-forth. Or she would be if it wasn’t for the fact that he now seemed to want to kiss her to accompany his goodbye. Liberty would have rather had kisses that meant they were staying together, but she had to face the truth—this was all she would get.
Gerald Turing, branch manager of Mountain Freedom Credit Union, had been killed at close range. A gunshot from farther away wouldn’t have left a burn mark on the skin under his chin. Classic suicide, shooting oneself in the head. Liberty didn’t want to assume it wasn’t murder since that was always a possibility until it was ruled out. Still, at face value, suicide seemed the most likely cause of death.
The man was older. He wore a nice suit, a string tie and a huge belt buckle with an elk on it. He was clearly no stranger to mashed potatoes and pancakes. His mustache looked to have been gelled, and his cowboy boots had been shined.
“Yeah, Dane,” Tate said into his phone.
Liberty glanced at the man who had once been her partner in everything. He frowned, his gaze found hers and he mouthed, They’re listening. How he knew from less than a minute of conversation was interesting. Was the Secret Service going to trace the call? It had been less than a day, but Liberty had expected them to descend en masse at any point, and yet they hadn’t. Tate was their prime suspect. Why hadn’t he been caught and brought in for questioning yet?
Tate paced the credit union lobby and explained to Dane how they’d found the bank manager dead in his office.
They wouldn’t need to trace the call now. Liberty continued her observation of the body, wondering exactly how many minutes she had until the feds and sheriff’s department showed up here with their guns drawn.
Likely not long at all.
The computer screen was dark. Liberty used her sleeve to wiggle the mouse, and the display woke up. Gerald’s email was open, a message on-screen in huge letters. It was written in a weird font that looked like a fourth-grade girl’s handwriting.
The deal goes down. There is no backing out.
“Tate?”
He moved the phone from his mouth. “Dane said they cleared debris from the mine explosion.” He paused, as though he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “They found the plane but no people inside. The feds think I knew where it was and blew it up to slow down their search. They still think I’m behind it, and that I know where those people are.”
Liberty couldn’t believe they refused to see things from another angle. “We just have to keep working this to prove you aren’t.” She pointed at the computer. “The bank manager, however, was completely involved.”
Liberty told him what the email said. “Wait, there’s a reply.” She scrolled down and read it aloud. “‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be part of this.’ That’s all he sent back, and the email address is about as generic as you can get. The feds should look into it even though I doubt they’ll get anything back.”
Tate relayed the information to Dane while Liberty thought it through. Could Gerald and whoever he was corresponding with about this “deal” be referring to the plane’s disappearance? If so, where were the people who had been traveling on it? There was no sign of the senator or the two White House staffers. And what about the pilot? No one had even mentioned him.
Tate was being set up, but was this all that was going on? The plane and possibly the kidnapping of three people could be a simple case of a demand for ransom money, or way more than that. Perhaps all this business with the Russians, and the bank manager’s problems, were nothing but a smoke screen hiding what was really going on.
She wandered to the doorway, and pain tore through her shoulder. She wanted to sit down, but she could hardly do that when it would contaminate the crime scene.
Tate took her elbow. “Hey,” he said. “Come over here.” He tugged her into the center of the lobby.
Liberty concentrated on her steps as Tate led her to a waiting area chair, and she leaned her head back with a wince. “It looks like suicide, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the investigators say it was murder.”
Tate’s dark gaze bore down on her.
“What?”
He shook his head, but the intensity of it didn’t lessen. “If you’re okay, we should leave. It won’t be long before—”
Vehicle engines roared. Liberty looked out the glass front door where a stream of cars and SUVs pulled up outside the building. Red-and-blue lights flashed as men and women in bulletproof vests and waterproof jackets with ball caps with their agency lettered on the front jumped out, guns drawn.
Tate stepped toward her, covering her, but they didn’t stop.
The feds poured through every door. A tall man with slick dark hair strode to the front as they were surrounded, at least a dozen guns trained on them.
Secret Service. FBI. State police. Even the DEA was here.
Liberty stood and moved close to Tate’s back.
“Drop your guns!”
She hooked her lousy arm around his waist and rested it against his flat stomach. With her other hand, she held out her gun so the closest fed could take it. Tate hooked his arm under hers and took the weight off her injury. Liberty relaxed into him, thankful he was here and hopeful he could say the same about her. It just seemed right to move closer at a time like this, to close ranks, as it were, and stand together against what faced them. It was what she’d always wanted from their relationship, that mutual support.
The guy motioned to Tate. “And you.” The Secret Service agent must be a local, because she’d never seen him before.
Where was Locke? They needed his support if they were going to get out of this without Tate getting life in federal prison.
Tate handed over his weapon. “Where’s the sheriff?”
“Don’t worry about your friend,” the agent said. “Worry about what’s going to happen to you.”
An agent stepped forward and zip-tied Tate’s hands. She winced when the weight transferred back to her shoulder. He glanced at her. “You need a sling for your arm.”
All Liberty could think of was the last time they’d been tied up, and how easily Tate had gotten out of the same kind of bindings. He was making the choice to submit to them, and she respected him all the more for it. He could fight, though he wouldn’t get far. He could refuse to help, but she knew he was garnering information that would help him.
When the agent grabbed her arm to tug her away from Tate, she cried out and clutched her shoulder with a hiss.
“Hey!” Tate moved toward her and guns were raised again.
The agent let go of Liberty, and she moved in front of Tate. “No one shoots him.” She turned to Tate, her back to all those armed agents. “He didn’t know I got shot.”
“He hurt you.”
She touched his bound hands with hers. “Sit down, Tate.” Okay, so that wasn’t what he’d thought she would say, given his reaction. He sat, but he didn’t like it. A man like Tate, who was all man, wouldn’t willingly take the lower seat when it was necessary to stand up for himself. But he did it because she asked.
Later, when there wasn’t a crowd of people here, she would say what she had actually wanted to say to him.
“Good.” She heard the agent step toward them. “I’m Agent Francis Bearn from the Bozeman office of the Secret Service. We found the plane. Now you need to tell us where the two of you have hidden those people.”
Liberty spun around. Agent Bearn had his phone raised. On-screen were three people.
Scared and tied up, but very much alive.