Once they were past the beltway, the country quickly turned to farmland. Isaac waited to give the pastoral scenes a chance to calm his companion. When he finally spoke, it seemed to startle her.
“How’re you doing?”
“Oh!” Her head whipped around. “Sorry. I guess I was daydreaming.”
“That’s better than some of the things you could have been thinking about. We’re almost home.”
“It’s pretty out here. I just have trouble picturing you as a farmer.”
He chuckled. “I’m not. My sister, brother and I inherited the place from an aunt and decided to fix it up to sell. That was five years ago and we’re still there.”
“We? You don’t live alone?”
Isaac could see her relief. He laughed. “Nope. I’m not inviting you home for disreputable reasons. My sister, Becky, will see to it that Jake and I behave. I can guarantee it.”
“Are they older or younger than you?”
“Jake’s older. Becky’s younger, but not by much. Our parents had us close together so we’d get along better, and it apparently worked because they’re my best friends.”
“Except for Abby, you mean.”
“Right. Abs and I are best buds.”
“How long have you worked with her?”
“A little over two years, counting the training. I was recruited for the K-9 unit by General Margaret Meyer after I left my other government job.”
“Which was?”
Her expression was so open and innocent looking he answered without hesitation. “I worked for the CIA.”
“You were a spook?”
Letting his amusement show, he shook his head. “Actually, I spent most of my time training dogs to be sent into the field, until someone decided I belonged in an office, organizing the whole project.”
“No wonder you wanted to get a different job. I couldn’t stand being stuck behind a desk, either.” She took a deep breath and released it with a whoosh. “What am I going to do? I love being a trauma nurse and working ER.”
“So, you tell that to the marshals and insist they find you another similar position.”
“What if they won’t? Suppose they feel it’s too dangerous? I mean, wouldn’t that make it easier to trace me?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Don’t borrow trouble, Daniella. There’s enough of it already around.”
“That sounds biblical.”
“Probably. My folks were pretty religious.”
“Were? Are they gone?”
“Sadly, yes. They were both killed in a traffic accident while all of us were stationed away. Jake was a marine and Becky flew for the air force.”
“Really? That’s impressive. I’m sure you all made your parents proud.” Her smile faded and Isaac could see the light going out of her eyes. “My mother was always proud of me but I could never please my father.”
“That doesn’t mean you weren’t worthy,” Isaac told her. “It just means that he wasn’t a normal dad. You can’t blame yourself for his shortcomings.”
“I don’t, but...”
“No buts about it. I’ve only known you for a little while and I can see you’re an extraordinary person. You’ve overcome adversity to finish college and go on to a rewarding career. You’re well liked at work and best of all, Abby thinks you’re wonderful. I saw her licking your hands back at your place.”
“She’s a sweetheart. I was trying to pet her and she seemed to take to me right away.”
That makes two of us, Isaac thought. There was something about Daniella that had spoken to his heart the moment he’d met her.
Whether or not that was for the best remained to be seen.
* * *
The old farmhouse was far more charming than Daniella had expected. Basically a simplified Victorian, it sported a fresh coat of white paint with red shutters and trim, plus window boxes of early flowers like tulips and pansies.
She grinned. “It’s lovely. No wonder you all decided to stay here.”
“Believe me, it didn’t look half this good when we inherited it,” Isaac replied. “Jake has done wonders with the place.”
“He must be very talented.”
Isaac laughed. “So he claims.”
“Sibling rivalry? I have no experience with brothers or sisters. I’d think you’d be proud of him, though.”
“I am. We just like to needle each other. You’ll see.” He gave a soft chuckle. “Our sister, Becky, is the worst.”
“You’re sure they won’t mind my stopping here for a few days, at least until I have new instructions from the marshals? I mean, I wouldn’t want to make trouble.”
“Believe me, there’s no way you’ll make more trouble than the three of us can stir up. We love to tease each other and pull practical jokes.”
A tall, stalwart man in a T-shirt and jeans appeared at the side of the house, waved and started their way. Daniella could see the family resemblance even though the second man needed a shave. In spite of this one’s rugged image, she judged Isaac to be slightly better-looking.
Jake trotted out to the SUV with a hammer in his hand, peered in at Isaac’s passenger and broke into a face-splitting grin. “Whoa! Good one, bro. You head for the office to work even though you’re stove-in and bring home a pretty lady. That’s what I call a good job.”
Stove-in was right. Moving stiff-legged on his injured side, Isaac climbed from behind the wheel. Daniella had opened her own door at the same time so he introduced her to his brother with a wave. “This is Jake, as you’ve probably guessed. Jake, Daniella Dunne. Becky’s a lot prettier than he is. And more polite.”
Jake wiped his hand on his jeans before shaking hands with her, then looked over at his brother. “Girlfriend or damsel in distress?”
“Damsel, definitely,” Daniella answered for him. “The distress part is true, too.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Jake’s grin faded. “How can we help you?”
“I’ll take care of Ms. Dunne,” Isaac interjected. “I’m going to put her things in Becky’s room for now. Later, the women can work out whatever arrangements suit them.”
“Ooooh-kay. You play cop while I finish nailing up the new cabinets in the washroom.” Jake started away, then stopped and turned. “Don’t run off and forget Abby. I’d hate to see you get so involved with a pretty face that your dog suffers.”
“I’d never do that,” Isaac insisted. Clenching his jaw, he let the little beagle out of the traveling crate he sometimes used and removed her working harness before releasing her and picking up his houseguest’s tote.
Abby’s sharp yaps brought larger dogs running. Daniella ducked behind Isaac, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders.
“Don’t let the dogs scare you,” he told her. “They’re as gentle as Abs. They just look ferocious.”
When she said, “They sound like it, too,” her host laughed.
“Stand still and let them sniff you. After that you’ll be considered one of the family.”
A wiggling brown nose the size of the diaphragm on the business end of a stethoscope touched the knee of her jeans. “I think he smells Puddy.”
“That’s no problem. We have plenty of cats in the barn and the dogs treat them all with respect, even the kittens.”
“You’re sure? This one has teeth as big as a wolf.”
“The better to protect you with, my dear, to paraphrase the old fairy tale. Make friends with these dogs and any one of them will defend you to the death.”
“Interesting choice of words.” She rolled her eyes. “What breeds are they?”
“Those two brown-and-black ones are large mutt crossed with very large mutt,” Isaac said with a smile. “The third is probably shepherd and yellow Lab. We stick to purebreds for K-9 work because their talents are more predictable, but in private life I like to rescue needy animals.”
“Well, I feel like a juicy bone about to be served for supper,” she joked, beginning to relax as her furry new acquaintances lost interest in her and dashed off in pursuit of Abby.
Glancing at the open yard, Daniella wished there were more trees and bushes to hide behind. Then again, the lack of a lot of vegetation near the house also meant no one could jump out to pounce on her. On them.
She eyed the long driveway. “You’re sure nobody followed us?”
“I’m sure. When I called in to tell my boss what I was doing, I asked for a few of my buddies to run interference, just in case. None of them spotted trouble or they’d have radioed me.”
“That’s a relief,” she said. And it was. Except it was also temporary. Everything in her life was. She was out of a job due to having been identified, she had no home because the apartment was known to her worst enemy, and all her efforts at staying in the shadows had been for nothing. She didn’t even have Puddy anymore, and he was the closest thing she had to a real, true friend. One thing was certain. She could not just abandon the cat any more than this K-9 officer would ever give up Abby.
Following Isaac up the wooden front steps to the covered porch, Daniella stopped him with a touch. “Tomorrow, I’m going back to rescue my cat,” she said flatly.
“You couldn’t find him today. What makes you think you’ll succeed tomorrow?”
“Because I’ll be going into my apartment alone.”
“Over my dead body,” Isaac countered.
“Hopefully, it won’t come to that,” she shot back cynically, calmer now that she’d made a decision to act. Anything was better than feeling helpless and vulnerable.
“Not funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. The more I think about it, the more I realize Puddy was scared of you as well as the dog. If you stay outside and I go in by myself, he should come out of hiding.”
“That’s assuming he’s still in the apartment.”
“Yes. It is. I don’t buy your idea that somebody let him out. He’s always been an indoor kitty. Chances are he wouldn’t have run out even if the door was left open.”
“Do you have a death wish?” Isaac asked, frowning.
Daniella shook her head. “Tell me. What would you do if Abby was lost in your house and you were about to move away? Would you leave her with food and water and turn your back on her?”
“That’s different.”
“No, it isn’t.” She blinked to clear her vision and try to regain more control of her turbulent emotions. “That cat has been my sole companion for over five years. I am not abandoning him. Period. Understand?”
When she saw that she had convinced Isaac, she brushed past him and entered the house. If she failed to honor her commitment to a helpless animal, how could she ever hope to be trusted with the kind of love and acceptance for which she yearned? It was the little things in life that formed a person’s character. Sure, traumatic events played a role, but it was small kindnesses and daily thanksgiving that truly shaped people’s lives.
And evil acts that tore them apart, she thought sadly. There was nothing she could do to erase the damage her father had done, nor could she forget his wickedness.
But that didn’t mean she was going to surrender—to him or to her fear. She wasn’t in this alone anymore. Whether he knew it yet or not, Isaac Black was clearly on her side.
Picturing him boldly stepping between her and the news people, despite his injured leg, she let her imagination equip him with armor and weapons and a trusty steed—tricolored, with floppy ears and a wagging tail!
A combination of nerves and a sense of the absurd brought giggles, then snickers and finally tears that rolled down Daniella’s cheeks as she doubled up laughing.
“Would you mind telling me why you find my house so funny?” Isaac asked, sounding a tad miffed.
She could not, would not, tell him, of course. What she did manage to say was, “It’s not you or your house. It’s me. I think I may be wound a little tight.”
He nodded. “Come on. I’ll show you to your room and you can rest. I may not be technically at work but I have plenty to do on my laptop.” He pointed as they passed a ground-floor room. “If you need me, I’ll probably be in there.”
“If you give me your cell number I can just phone you,” she said, feeling quite clever for having thought of it.
He dropped her tote at the foot of the stairs. “You brought your cell phone?”
“Of course.”
“Give it to me.”
“No. I may need it.”
“So your father can call you again or so he can trace your whereabouts through it?”
“What? That’s just TV nonsense, isn’t it?” Nevertheless, she placed her phone in his outstretched hand and watched as he removed the battery and the tiny information-processing card.
“I’ll turn this over to my people and see if they can trace your last incoming call. That would be your father, right?”
Mute and subdued, she nodded. In the space of a few moments she had gone from strong and resolute to scared witless again. Her emotions weren’t merely on a roller coaster, they were taking a ride on a spaceship that had run out of rocket fuel halfway to the moon and was now plummeting to earth, where it would smash to smithereens.
Daniella gritted her teeth. The imaginary rocket hadn’t crashed yet. The ending wasn’t written in stone because she wasn’t done fighting. Not by a long shot.
Straightening and thrusting back her shoulders, she stood firm and faced Isaac. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Surprisingly, his stern features softened as he admitted, “No, but I did. The error is mine. I should have confiscated your phone back at the apartment and turned it over to the authorities.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’d like to blame my injury or the meds I’d been on for the pain but that won’t fly—with my boss or with me.” He made a face. “As much as I hate to even think it, I suspect I was concentrating too much on you.”
“Me?”
She noted the rosy color infusing his cheeks and guessed what he might mean before he said, “Yes, Daniella. You. Only not as a victim or a suspect, as an appealing young woman who interested me. That was my mistake. I promise it won’t happen again.”
All she could think to say was too bad.
Thankfully, good sense kept her from voicing it.
* * *
As far as Isaac was concerned, he was still on the job even if his dog wasn’t. He offered his guest a quick tour of the ground floor of the old farmhouse, then suggested she get some sleep upstairs in his sister’s room while she had the chance.
What he didn’t say was that Daniella might need all her strength and wits in the coming hours and days and should take advantage of any opportunity to recover from the long, trying night before.
Limping to the small room he used as a home office, Isaac was more than ready to get off his feet. He propped his sore leg on a half-open drawer, leaned back in the swivel chair and powered up the laptop he normally carried in his work vehicle. A simple password and he was in.
Most of his emails were inconsequential compared with the files McCord had sent about Daniella. A quick scan told him that the captain hadn’t left out anything. The gaps were evident, and now that he knew she’d been relocated by witness protection he wasn’t surprised.
Getting the old records of her journey from past to present might be hard to do but learning about her father’s crimes and punishment was not going to be tough. Fagan’s arrest and conviction were matters of public record. He’d start there, then see how much more help he needed to complete his own file on Daniella.
He’d hardly begun when Captain McCord telephoned. “Black. How are you feeling?”
“Sore. And halfway mad at myself. But the nurse is safe now. She’s with me.”
“Yeah, so I understand. I thought I warned you to not get personally involved.”
“She’s not staying here long. I just needed someplace to put her while we get in touch with witness protection and they make new plans for her.”
“And when will that be?”
“Very soon. The poor woman’s at the end of her rope and there’s nothing wrong with letting her unwind here. Once she calls the Feds we’ll lose jurisdiction.”
“You mean you’ll lose touch with her, don’t you?”
Isaac took a deep breath before he answered, “That has crossed my mind, yes.”
“Well, I’ll cut you some slack because of your leg. But while you’re home playing babysitter you also need to keep on top of our other cases. General Meyer says the White House wants results on the Michael Jeffries murder, for one. With the congressman back in the news because of the bombing at his press conference, reporters have started asking questions about his late son again.”
Despite working diligently on the murder case—and the attempted murder of the congressman himself—the Capitol K-9 Unit was no closer to solving it. “I copy. Has there been any more news about the child who may have witnessed the attack at the Jeffries estate?”
Isaac thought about the child’s glove that had been found near the crime scene and the subsequent attacks on All Our Kids foster home, which had resulted in the home being moved to a secret location. The Capitol K-9 Unit surmised that the killer had seen a child watching from the tree line of the woods between the congressman’s property and the former foster home, but that the killer didn’t know which child—hence the attacks on the foster home.
“Some. Tommy Benson admitted he snuck out that night and his caretakers report he’s been having nightmares.”
“Are the children safe at the new location?”
“Yes. Nicholas interviewed Tommy after the boy got spooked by something and ran away from the home. We’re positive he’s the kid who witnessed Michael Jeffries’s murder and dropped the blue glove in the woods. He did say he’s afraid of some guy with white hair. That’s about all we’ve managed to get out of him.”
Isaac mentally shook his head at the thought of anyone harming the innocent children at the foster home. He pictured little Juan Gomez, the two-year-old son of Congressman Jeffries’s former housekeeper, who’d been found dead at the bottom of a cliff the night before Michael Jeffries’s murder. Juan had been staying at All Our Kids until a couple of months ago, when his aunt, Lana Gomez, took him in. “What’s going on with Juan Gomez? Is he happy living with his aunt Lana?”
“All reports are very positive,” the captain said.
“Good. Send me updates and I’ll reread the files to refresh my memory, then get back to you if I see anything that gives me new ideas. I still think there may be a connection between Rosa’s death and that of the congressman’s son.”
“Michael Jeffries was an attorney,” McCord said flatly. “They make enemies.”
“Yeah, but they don’t all end up shot and killed.”
McCord was adamant. “There’s no way the Jeffries family is guilty of anything except being involved in Washington politics. I’ve known Harland since I was a kid. If I thought for a minute that they’d actually broken the law, I’d be the first to act.”
Which is probably a big part of the reason this case is stalled, Isaac thought. He decided it would be best to change the subject. “Okay. I’ll call in as soon as we know where Daniella Dunne is going and when.”
“Fair enough. Talk to you later.”
The conversation over, Isaac sat and pondered the facts he already knew, sharing them with Abby, who never offered unasked-for opinions.
He smiled down at her. “One, Harland Jeffries is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg no matter what Gavin thinks. My apologies, girl.” The little beagle wagged her tail and made herself comfortable sprawled on the hardwood floor beside him. Research into the congressman’s activities hinted at corruption, the taking of bribes, but nothing that could be proven—yet.
“Two,” Isaac went on, “Jeffries’s longtime housekeeper took a swan dive off a cliff but left no suicide note.”
“Three, whoever shot the son evidently also tried to kill the father. Jeffries could have bled out before help arrived.”
As he mused, Isaac was absently tickling Abby’s soft, floppy ears with the fingers of one hand.
“Four, Erin Eagleton, another daughter of Senator Eagleton, is believed to have been on the scene during the lethal assault because her jewelry was found there.” He took a deep breath and released it as a sigh. “And five, there’s a scared kid named Tommy who just may have the answers to everything.”
Isaac felt as if someone had put his thoughts in a blender and flipped the switch. Even if they did not yet have all the facts concerning these complicated cases, there was a good chance they had enough clues to at least make some headway.
“Somehow, it all has to hinge on Jeffries. He’s the only common denominator.”
When a feminine voice behind him asked, “What makes you say that?” Isaac jumped and almost fell off his chair.