City lights stretched into the distance, blurring the late-night sky into black nothingness, too bright for the stars to shine. Christmas trees glimmered in apartment windows, and festive lights lined parks and streets. From below, the muffled sounds of traffic and music floated up in an indistinguishable chorus.
Dana slid deeper into the Adirondack chair her mother had given to her when she moved into the apartment. She pulled her knees against her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and held on tight.
Her mother.
Karen Santiago was shorter than Dana, heavier. A secretary for a trucking company in Oswego, she wore her jet-black hair in a chin-length bob and had an affinity for spaghetti and meatballs. Dana allowed a small smile. It always shocked everyone that the Argentinean lady would rather eat Italian food than her native fare.
The smile faded in a slight whimper. She would not cry.
Her native country. Argentina. Where elegant, murderous Rachel Marquez and her husband, Jairo, held large-caliber pistols to men’s skulls and pulled the trigger.
Dana jerked, winced. The DNA results had to be wrong.
But if they were, how had she conjured the image of a coldhearted killer into her nightmares? How had she heard a name no one should know? How could she have the same eyes, nose and chin as the killer in that photograph?
Behind her, the glass door slid along its track, bringing with it the smell of coffee and the presence of a man she was almost glad had stuck around when everyone else had left.
Rich appeared at her right, holding out a mug. “It’s black. The way you like it.”
Tilting her head to look up at him, Dana reached for it. The ceramic warmed her palms. She was cold from the inside out, but this helped a little. Likely it was more the gesture than the beverage. “Is coffee your answer to everything?”
Rich settled on the concrete floor with his back against the railing. He bent his legs, rested his elbows on his blue-jeaned knees, then screwed up his lip in a way that was probably meant to be comical. “Tired? Coffee. Sluggish? Coffee. Sad? Coffee works for everything else. Why not try?” He took a sip from the mug cradled in his hands and met her eye over the rim. “How’re you doing?”
“I don’t know.” It was an honest answer. She bounced from numb to angry to shocked back to numb in a nauseating cycle that made her insides quiver. Probably caffeine wasn’t the answer, but it seemed nothing was. Not even prayer. The words wouldn’t form. “The DNA has to be wrong.”
Rich took another sip and waited for her to choose reality over denial.
He didn’t have to speak. Dana knew the truth. She was a high-percentage match to both Jairo and Rachel. Too high for coincidence.
“Have you talked to your mom yet?”
“Which one? The liar or the murderer?” The words snapped brittle in the winter air. No, she hadn’t called Karen Santiago. This was a conversation best had in person, where Dana could watch see her reactions. Where there wouldn’t be time for her to calculate another lie.
Her bitterness was an emotion Rich didn’t deserve. He could be cozied up at his mountain cabin right now, with football on the TV and Christmas lights on the tree, but he was here with her.
This mess wasn’t his fault. If anything, he was doing his best to stand as a buffer between Dana and a nightmare she couldn’t leave behind. “I’m sorry. I...” She waved a hand as though she could swipe the words away before they reached his ears. “This hasn’t been my best day.”
“Can’t say I blame you.” He set the coffee mug beside him and rested his hands on his thighs. “Pretty sure your life was put into a blender last night and someone kicked it up to high.”
His understanding pricked something behind her eyes, but she swallowed the accompanying lump in her throat. Nope. No matter what life threw at her, she wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t that kind of girl. “What else could possibly happen?”
Rich stopped moving and tilted his head to look at her, one eyebrow raised. “In my experience, you don’t ask if you don’t want to find out the answer.”
He could say that all he wanted, but as far as she was concerned, it really couldn’t get much worse. In the space from one sunset to another, she’d lost everything.
She couldn’t even talk to God.
Thoughts and words jumbled into a nameless emotion that pressed her from the inside out. Without release, she’d explode. “When I woke up this morning, there was no question who I was, you know? I mean, twenty-four hours ago I was beside you and fighting for my life, but I was still... I was still me.” Digging her fingers into the coffee mug, she stared across the city lights, envying every window where Christmas lights twinkled and people prepared for their holidays with friends and family. All of them were content with their identities, knowing what they were going to do tomorrow and the next day... “If I’m not Deputy Marshal Dana Santiago, born in Oswego to Ramon and Karen Santiago, and a tech-geek rock star, then—”
The words cracked, fell to the floor and shattered along with her emotions. The tears wouldn’t be swallowed, wouldn’t be beaten into submission. They flowed freely down her face.
She couldn’t even be the strong woman who never cried. Even that was gone. If I’m not me, then who am I?
Dana leaned forward and pressed her leaking eyes against her knees, vaguely aware she might shatter the coffee mug in her ever-tightening grip. She would not sob. She would not break, not alone and certainly not in front of this man who probably thought she was weak after rescuing her three different times.
The only sound was her ragged breathing until a soft shuffle came from the right. If Rich was smart, he’d go inside, shut the door and leave the disintegrating woman on the porch to blow away like dust in the wind.
“Hey.” The word was a soft whisper, a gentle tug back to reality. “Dana, hey.” Gentle hands wrapped around her ankles and eased her feet to the floor.
Dana wanted to curl into a ball and shield herself from his concern and understanding, but her muscles wouldn’t let her. Over the years, she’d comforted witnesses and their families, but when was the last time someone had made her a priority? While her mind wanted her to stay fearless and strong, her heart wanted another human being to understand.
She kept her eyes closed. Pity would undo her once and for all.
Rich eased the cup from her fingers, then tapped her forehead. “Look at me.”
It took a second, but she finally convinced herself to peel her eyes open.
Rich knelt in front of her, hands resting on the arms of her chair. When she made eye contact, he offered a ghost of a smile, almost triumphant but not gloating. No, it was more like he was glad she’d actually responded. “You are still Dana Santiago, tech-geek rock star.” He punctuated the last four words by tapping his index finger against her knee. “Nobody can take that away from you.”
But they had. How was she going to prove she hadn’t known all along? That she hadn’t lied her way into this position? Above all, the government officials who handed out security clearances hated a liar. It was the quickest way to ensure being blackballed at the federal level. How could she convince them the lies were to her, not from her?
Watching the dawn raise light over a city was nothing like watching the sun lift itself over the mountains, that was for sure. But while Rich’s heart longed to be home, his head agreed with Isaiah and Wyatt that he needed to be with Dana.
Right now, he was all she had.
He shoved his phone into his hip pocket. His conversation with Isaiah had honestly gotten them nowhere. While everyone else’s focus had shifted to Dana’s parentage and the threat to her job, Rich’s stayed lasered on the most pressing matter. Someone was trying to kill Dana, and she needed to go into hiding. The threat might or might not be connected to her blood family. No one seemed to know.
A large problem loomed over the entire situation. Until her name was cleared and she was reinstated, there was nothing Isaiah or the other members of her team could do to help. They had another agency investigating the attacks, but she was cut off from her team and their vast network of secure locations. As long as she was suspended, she couldn’t communicate with them. Worse, because she wasn’t a witness in need of protection, they couldn’t even offer her shelter.
Rich stretched his feet until they bumped the balcony railing and tried to ease some of the stiffness out of his joints. He’d spent the night sitting in an armchair, facing the door to her apartment, and had only stepped out on the balcony this morning to make phone calls to Wyatt and Isaiah. While Dana couldn’t have contact with her team, no rule said Rich couldn’t.
It would be nice if he could say it had been a long time since he pulled an all-nighter on guard duty. But it had only been about a year and some change since he’d helped Sam hide Amy.
Only they’d failed. Rich had been the one patrolling the perimeter when the bad guys struck. Amy had nearly died.
His fault. Just like his fiancée.
Well, this time was different. This time he wasn’t going to leave someone who was targeted out in the open, arrogantly thinking he could keep them safe from any threat. He’d find Dana a place to hide. Oh, he’d stay close, but he wasn’t having her run around in the open while there was a target between her shoulders.
The shoulders that had quaked in his arms.
What had he been thinking? He hadn’t held a woman since Amber died.
Until Dana’s utter despair floored him. He didn’t have the right to hold her, but he’d had to do something. The need to shield and protect had felt right in a way that hadn’t felt right since Amber died.
That terrified him more than armed assassins.
He scratched his cheek and itched two days’ worth of stubble. It reminded him of being outside the wire overseas, hunting down bad guys.
Felt kind of like now. Dana couldn’t stay in her apartment. Someone knew where she lived. Even though they were seventeen stories up and the crew after Dana had more of an affinity for knives than rifles, the balconies and the floor-to-ceiling windows made him more than a little uneasy. He had to get her out of here. Soon.
Isaiah had agreed.
Soft sounds floated through the open glass door. Dana was up, although if she was anything like him, she hadn’t slept at all.
Rich shoved out of the chair and walked into the apartment to find her wearing track pants and a sweatshirt, staring into the refrigerator. It was doubtful she saw what was in front of her.
She looked up when he walked in. “I was thinking eggs, but now I’m not.” She slammed the door and leaned against the fridge. “You flying home today?”
Only if she was going with him. “We’ll see.” He held up a hand to stop her as she straightened to argue. “Neither of us is staying here, though. They’ve come at you in your apartment once. You aren’t sitting around here and waiting for them to ambush you again.”
“Hadn’t planned to.” She crossed her arms over her chest, defiant to the core. “I’m going to Oswego.”
She was...what? The woman made him understand why his mom had often pinched the bridge of her nose when he’d declared his intentions to do something completely idiotic as a kid. “Oswego?”
“I want to talk to my...to the woman who raised me. To my mother.” She swallowed the word, mumbling it instead of giving it the force it deserved. “I want to see her face-to-face. I need answers, and she’s the only one who has them.”
“Have you lost every one of your senses?” His voice kicked up, driven by hot fear that ran all over him at the thought of her not only out in the open, but far away from protection, too. “That’s the most dangerous thing you can do. You may be cut off from WitSec, but I can still get you somewhere safe and out of the way.”
“How long should I run?” Dana banged a fist on the refrigerator door behind her and straightened, squaring off as though she was ready for war. “A week? A year? A decade? What if we never find out who’s behind this? Do you want me to hide forever? What am I supposed to do? Knit? Collect stamps? Or, better yet...” She pulled herself even taller. “I can build a cabin in the woods and isolate myself from everybody. Won’t you teach me all you know, oh wise one?”
Wow. The venom in her words burned his skin, but he didn’t back down. Too much was at stake. “It’s safer if you’re not in the open.”
“You think I don’t know? You know who I work for, right? I’ve said the same thing a thousand times to dozens of scared witnesses. I know it’s true, but I also know there’s no way to clear my name if I’m locked away in some remote location or in some soulless corporate apartment in the middle of some random city.”
“Like this one?” He didn’t even know why he’d said it. It was ugly, but he was scared for her.
Dana flinched, then glanced around the apartment. Her shoulders visibly sagged, almost as though his comment had dragged her back into reality. “At your place, I actually wondered if you’d let me pay you to decorate mine.” She shook her head and stared at something behind him in the living room. “I hear everything you’re saying. Common sense and every ounce of my training says hiding is the best choice. I’ve preached that to witnesses for years.” She sighed, and the lines on her forehead deepened. “But it’s not who I am.”
The words were soft, but they slammed into his chest, the vocal reminder of her fear the night before, of her pain. Of his inability to fix any of this.
“Rich, I may not know a lot of things, including my own name, but I do know not seeking answers will kill me.”
It was his turn to flinch. Allowing Amber to remain in the open had killed her, but Dana wasn’t Amber. She was trained for this. As much as it chilled him from the inside out, she was right. Dana was like a shark. If she wasn’t moving, wasn’t working to figure this out, she might survive physically, but the emotional and mental toll could take her to a place from which she might never return.
“I need answers.”
“Well, you aren’t going alone.” She needed eyes behind her as well as in front of her. If she thought he was going to let her waltz down to her car and take off on a twenty-hour drive by herself, she had better think again.
“You have a job to do, Rich. A life in Mountain Springs. I’m sure Wyatt needs you back on patrol. The department—”
“Wyatt’s the one who sent me here with you. You’re my job.”
“Your job.” The words were flat, her forehead tight. “I’m outside the Mountain Springs PD’s jurisdiction, aren’t I?” She shoved away from the fridge and walked to the cabinet, pulling it open with a jerk that should have torn the door off the hinges. Her back was to him, her shoulders a tense line. “Tell him you need a new assignment. This one’s over.”
“No.”
Those straight shoulders grew tighter. “No?”
“No.” He was messing this up in two hundred ways. Digging his fingernails into his palms, Rich walked to the bar that separated the small kitchen from the rest of the apartment and rested his fists on the cool granite. “It’s not just the job. I mean, technically, it can’t really be my job, but... We share the same friends. That makes us... I don’t know.”
“Distant relatives?” Her voice inched up a notch, maybe with a bit of amusement.
At least she heard what he was trying to say. “In a weird sort of way.” Before, he’d felt a sense of duty in watching over her, but now that they’d broken down a barrier and he’d held her, he felt a different sort of protectiveness kick in. This was more than keeping someone safe. It had somehow turned into keeping someone he cared about safe.
Keeping a friend out of harm’s way.
A friend.
Nothing more.
He rapped his knuckles on the counter. “I’m guessing you have a grand plan to make your way to Oswego without being intercepted by your entourage?”
Dana pulled a box of cereal and two bowls from the cabinet, stopped at the fridge for a carton of milk, then slid a bowl and spoon to him. She opened the box then handed it to him. “Let’s just say I have friends in high places.” She held her hand flat and swooped it through the air.
“A pilot?” Guess she’d accepted his presence, since she was sharing her plans. Or she’d decided to drug him and sneak off while he was lights out.
She nodded and took the cereal box after he finished pouring his. “She has a small jet and a need for some flight hours. If you insist on going, then she’ll fly both of us into Watertown, where she’s visiting family. We can rent a car from there. It’s about an hour’s drive. The big issue will be getting from here to the airport.”
Actually, that might be the easy part. He’d plotted several ways to get her out of the building during his long night on guard duty. Rich pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed. “I’ll handle that. Just let me know what time you want to leave.”
Dana swallowed a bite of cereal and arched an eyebrow. “Who are you calling?”
“The cavalry.”