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Well. How interesting.
Kate studied the paper she’d coaxed open. It was wrinkled and damp, and the blue ink was smeared, but the phone number was still legible. And it wasn’t a local one.
She shot a glance at the kitchen door, then crossed the room and picked up the phone's receiver from its wall cradle again. Given Jonas's reticence the night before, she wasn’t expecting much in the way of cooperation from him this morning, either. If she could find out who was at the other end of this number before she spoke to him, however, it might shake a few answers loose.
She jabbed the star button followed by the code needed to block her caller ID, then punched in the phone number from the paper.
A clipped male voice answered on the second ring. "Yeah."
Hardly an informative beginning.
"Can you tell me if I've reached the right number?" Kate rattled off the number she'd just dialed. She walked across the room to the windows overlooking the driveway, phone cord stretched taut.
"That's it. Who's this?"
Give her name to a possible murderer? Not.
"I'd like to know who I've reached first, please." She toyed with the damp paper, not really expecting an answer, debating how she could officially-slash-unofficially have the number traced. If only her parents had believed in the Internet. Or computers. Or technology of any—
"How did you get this number?" the voice at the other end demanded. A flurry of activity sounded in the background, followed a click as someone else came on the line.
"Who—" Kate broke off as the kitchen door crashed open behind her.
Furious blue eyes glittered from a face stark with pain. Clad only in a towel wrapped around his waist and swaying on his feet, Jonas ground out, "Hang up."
Kate dropped the paper and reached behind her. Her fingers closed over the pistol grip. Then she gaped at the phone—at what the voice at the other end had just said. Or what she thought it had said.
"What?" she asked. "Could you repeat that, please?"
"I said you've reached the ATF, lady, and this is no time for goddamn games. I want to know how you got this number."
"ATF," she echoed. "As in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and—"
"Hang up, damn it!" Jonas roared. "Now!"
He lurched toward her, staggered against the edge of the table, almost fell. Reflexively, Kate took her hand from the pistol and leapt forward to steady him, but Jonas shoved her aside and levered himself upright again. He ripped the telephone away from her and put the receiver to his ear, muffling the unintelligible shouting emanating from it. His flint-like gaze didn’t so much as flicker when Kate leveled her gun at him.
"Go to hell, Lewis," he snarled into the receiver, and then he slammed the receiver into its cradle.
Kate's heartbeat hammered in her ears and the pistol grip bit into her hand as she stared at him. Breathing harshly, he stared back. The yellow, teapot-shaped clock on the ivy wall ticked off the seconds.
What the hell had that been?
Her guest’s face paled to a ghastly shade of gray, verging on linen-white. He put a hand out to the wall for support. Kate hardened herself against the sympathy that threatened once more to overcome her good sense. She had to draw the line somewhere, and her parents’ kitchen seemed a good place to start.
Jonas pointed at the paper she'd dropped. The towel wrapped around his waist slipped a fraction. "You found that in my clothes?"
She nodded.
"Figures. They'd want to know when my body surfaced."
She shook her head, trying to make sense of his words. Failing. "That number is for the ATF."
"I know."
"You said you weren't a criminal."
"I'm not."
"An informant, then?" she hazarded.
"No." He reached to pull a chair out from the table, nodding at the gun trained on him. "You may as well put that away. I think I've used up my quota of fast moves for a while."
He sank with a grimace onto the sturdy maple, letting out a soft hiss of air. Kate hesitated, then lowered her weapon, accepting the truth of his words. The man looked like he might pass out any second. Size and conditioning aside, he posed no immediate threat, and they both knew it. But she kept the gun out anyway, setting it on the table and resting her hand atop it as she sat across from him.
She regarded him in silence, rolling her shoulder to ease the ache in it. Jonas wasn’t the only one who’d used up his quota of fast moves for a while. The object of her thoughts jutted his chin toward her.
"You do that a lot," he said. "Injury?"
Kate stiffened, disinclined to reveal any weakness to this man. "It's nothing," she said. "I pulled it getting you into the car last night, that's all.” Abruptly, she changed the subject. “So if you're not a criminal, and you're not an informant, who are you? And what the hell is your connection to the ATF?"
"You're not going to let this go, are you?" he growled. "No matter how dangerous I tell you it is."
"Not a chance."
Jonas rested his elbows on the polished wood surface and dropped his head into his hands. Fingers raked through thick, dark hair. Bare, muscled shoulders sagged.
"Bloody hell," he muttered.
She waited.
"Bloody, bloody hell." He lifted his face from his hands. Haggard eyes met hers. "My name is Agent Jonas Burke, Kate, and that was my office you just called."
Kate blinked at him, uncomprehending. She hadn't known what to expect, but this? This was so far from the realm of any possibility she might have imagined that she couldn't even wrap her head around it.
"Did you hear me?"
She tightened her grip on the gun, giving herself a mental shake. He was lying. Of course he was lying.
"I heard you. I just don't believe you. If you're with the ATF, then why would those guys"—she nodded toward the phone on the wall behind him—"want to know when your body surfaced?"
The blue gaze turned flat. "You know why."
She shook her head. "You’ve got to be kidding. You really expect me to believe—"
The crunch of tires on gravel sounded outside the kitchen window. Jonas went the color of the bandage taped below his ribs, and Kate's heart took up residence in her throat. Gun in hand, she thrust back from the table and hurried to the window. Holding aside the flowered curtain panel, she looked out into the yard as an OPP cruiser pulled up between her sedan and the family station wagon.
Everything in her froze.
From behind her came the scrape of a chair against the floor.
"Who is it?" Jonas demanded.
She watched the cruiser without answering. No one had stepped out yet. Why? Were they here for Jonas? Her? Had they traced the call she'd made already? No. They couldn't have. Then how—
Laura. It had to have been Laura. Hell.
"Damn it, Kate, who is it?"
She hesitated, torn. Jonas was lying. He had to be lying. But what if he wasn't? She dropped the curtain into place and tucked the gun into the back of her waistband again.
"It's the OPP," she said curtly, striding across the room toward the door to the hallway. "I'll be back in a minute."
Jonas let her pass, but his voice stopped her halfway into the hall. "Kate."
She didn't look back.
"I'm telling the truth," he said.
The damp chill of the post-storm morning crawled under her shirt as she stepped out onto the front porch and closed the front door behind her. She shivered and crossed her arms. Hesitated. Should she wait for whoever was in the cruiser to get out and come to her, or was it better to go to him/her? The pistol in the small of her back felt conspicuously huge. If it was noticed, there would be raised eyebrows. Questions.
But better that than leaving it in the house with the man who’d just made those outrageous claims.
Surreptitiously, she wiped sweaty palms against her jeans.
Pull it together, Dexter.
Relaxing her face into what, with luck, would pass for something resembling a smile, she walked down the stairs and crossed the drive to the police car. Was Jonas watching from the kitchen window? If whoever was in the cruiser looked that way, would they see him? Did she want them to?
A gust of wind lifted the back of her shirt, snagging it on the grip of her pistol. She tugged it back into place. A sandy-haired, square-jawed man watched her from behind the steering wheel of the police car as she approached, grinning through the open passenger window. Recognition sparked in Kate.
"Well, I’ll be. Scott Dunham," Kate said. “It's been what, ten years? What are you doing way out here? I thought you were posted on the other side of Whitehaven.” She braced her hands against the car door and leaned down as if she hadn't a care in the world.
Or a possible felon in the house behind her.
"I'm filling in for someone for a couple of weeks. Heard you were in the area, so I thought I'd swing by and say hello." Her high school classmate reached over to place his hand over hers, squeezing gently. "I was sorry to hear about your folks, Kate. I know you weren’t close, but I’m sure it’s still tough."
"Thanks." Kate patted his hand in return, trying to appear suitably solemn even as relief gusted through her. Laura hadn't given her away after all. Thank heaven. "I think it's harder on Laura because she used to see them almost every day."
"I can imagine. Anything I can do to help?"
Leave! Kate’s inner voice screamed at him. She shook her head. “Not really, but thank you for the offer.”
To her relief, Scott changed the topic. "You going to be staying much longer? We should get together for dinner one night. Get caught up. Swap war stories."
Kate chuckled. "As tempting as that sounds, I'm heading back to Ottawa tomorrow. But Laura and I are nowhere near done clearing up the house, so I'll probably be back down in a couple of weeks. Can I take a rain check?"
"Of course. Give me a shout when you're back, and we'll set something up." He turned down the volume on his police radio as another car called in a traffic stop to dispatch. "I’d invite myself in for coffee, but I need to get back on the road. Just so you know, we're looking for a guy in the area right now, possibly armed and dangerous. Keep an eye out and be careful, all right?"
"Oh? Who is he?" Kate kept her voice casual, no small feat given her racing heart and constricted breathing.
"Jonas Burke. Six-two, two-twenty, thirty-four years old, dark hair, blue eyes."
"What's he wanted for?"
"Get this, the guy's a rogue agent from the ATF. He killed one of their targets and made off with one point five million a few days ago. We had a ‘be on lookout’ issued in the region yesterday, and I just got word that he called one of their offices from our area code this morning. They're running a trace, but he blocked the number, so it could take a while."
Shock held Kate's mind immobile for an instant as Scott rambled on to comment first about the nerve of the guy, then about dirty cops in general. Then the questions started forming, coming at her as fast as her brain could jump from one possibility to another.
Jonas had told the truth. He really was with the ATF. But theft...and murder? As jaded as her cop brain was, he didn't seem the type. And how had he gotten shot? His colleagues, as he claimed? By why? Unless he really had gone rogue. Maybe they'd caught him in the act...but no, Scott would have said something about him being wounded.
Maybe Jonas had a partner in crime and there had been a falling out. But if he had so much to hide, why give her his real name?
And why hadn’t the ATF told the locals about the female who had made that call in the first place?
Suddenly, her brain zeroed back in on Scott's words.
"—agents up to help with the search," he said.
"Pardon?" Her voice was sharper than intended, and Scott raised a brow. She gave him an apologetic smile. "Sorry, I didn't hear that last bit."
"I said the ATF's sending a couple of agents up to help with the search." He rolled his eyes. "Even with all the roadblocks we've got going, apparently they don't trust us rural types to do our job."
Kate’s blood chilled in her veins, and she flicked a glance down the drive, half expecting to see another cruiser—or, worse yet, a nondescript sedan—turning in from the road. Any relief at finding the driveway empty was tempered by a nagging urgency.
Something wasn't right. U.S. agents to help with a search in Canada? No. That didn't happen. Not unless Jonas had told her more of the truth than she'd wanted to hear.
She dropped her hands and stepped back from Scott's cruiser. "I won't keep you," she said. The sensation of being watched prickled over the back of her neck. Don't look at the house. Don't give him away. "Take care of yourself, and I'll call you a couple of days before I head back down this way."
"Sounds good." Scott put his vehicle into gear. "Safe drive home tomorrow."