Hunted, A Romantic Suspence Novel (3 page)

“No one could be shooting at me.” Shaking her head, she took another step backward. “Maybe it was just a hunter.”

Matt scanned the surrounding area. It used to be nothing but farmland and trees. But with Columbus bursting at its seams, new housing developments had crept into the area. Somehow he doubted a stray bullet from a hunter had hit this tire. At least not from someone hunting with a license.

He watched Katie for a minute. Her eyes swept from one side of the road to another. He felt her anxiety despite the distance between them. Her choice of words rang in his ears.
No one could be shooting at me.

“Katie, are you in some sort of trouble?”

She shook her head, but edged further away from him and around the back of her car. “No. If you’ll just put the tire back in the trunk. I need to get out of...I need to get home.”

“We need to report this.”

“No. It’s just an accident.” As she spoke she stepped around the truck’s rear to the driver’s side. “I don’t want to get some innocent farmer in trouble.”

Matt followed her. Grabbing her by the elbow, he stopped her from climbing back in the vehicle. “You can’t ignore this. At least let me file a statement.”

“No!” She jerked her arm out of his grasp. “I’m not going to, and I don’t want you to, either.”

Matt fought the sudden urge to shake her. If Katie didn’t want to file a complaint, there was little he could do for her. He swallowed his questions and replaced her tire and jack in the jeep.

The woman was spooked. His instincts told him she wasn’t just in trouble, but that she knew who had shot her tire out…and why.

Finished, he walked to the driver’s side window and took out his wallet. He pulled out a business card and handed it to her. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Katie. I can’t force you to tell me, either. Here’s my card. My cell phone number is on it. If you decide you want my help, or you want to talk about whatever has you so scared, then give me a call.”

She didn’t look at him as her trembling hand accepted the card. “Thank you, Officer.”

Didn’t the woman get it? Someone wanted her to die. He ought to shake some sense into her. “Katie.”

She turned huge frightened eyes to him.

“Don’t wait too long to call me.”

She blinked, then nodded, pulling onto the highway.

For a moment, he stood watching her disappear once more. This “accident” had all the earmarks of an ambush. Who would want her dead? And why didn’t she want to tell him what she knew?

He walked a path from where her car had stopped back to where the skid marks started. The chances of him actually finding the bullet were next to nil, but he needed to look anyway. He stood for a minute and studied the area. Nothing.

Walking back through the light, Matt scanned both sides of the road. To the right was a new housing development. Cars sat in the driveways, and new swingsets dotted the backyards. To his left stood a grove of old oak and evergreen trees. A perfect spot for picking off a moving target. He’d guess the distance to be about two hundred and fifty yards. Far enough for a marksman with a high-powered rifle to shoot out her tire.

Matt hurried to his truck then drove back to the crossroad. The vision of the white van with the Pennsylvania plates flashed in his mind. The hairs on his neck tingled. He didn’t believe in coincidences. Not when it might involve attempted murder.

He turned left and headed up the road in the direction the van had come. Less than a hundred yards from the light, a dirt road led into the trees. That nagging sense of unease now gripped him by the nape of the neck. Approaching the trees with caution, he stopped just on the grove’s edge.

For several minutes he sat there, watching. No movement came from the trees. No cars or trucks hid in the area. Without a doubt this was where Katie’s assailant had hidden in wait for her. The knot in his gut told him so.

He withdrew his service weapon from the truck’s glove compartment. Nothing stirred in the area, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He stepped carefully into the trees. Broken branches and smeared muddy tracks headed in and out of the underbrush. He followed them about twenty feet.

This was the spot. Matt hunkered down on his heels. Someone stood here for quite a while. The area was trampled down almost in a circle. Several cigarette butts littered the area. He lifted a leaf.

A spent cartridge lay at his feet.

Katie rushed into her room, slammed the door and locked all four dead bolts. For a moment she pressed her back against the wood and tried to calm her racing heart.

“Oh God, oh God,” she whispered.

What to do now? Think. Must think.

For years she’d believed the Marshals were paranoid when they moved her from safe house to safe house on a whim. Now she knew better. The Family had found her.

“I’ve got to get out of here. It isn’t safe anymore.”

Still trembling, she pushed herself away from the door and grabbed her second backpack. She threw her clothes in it. During the past ten years she’d learned to exist on less than ten articles of clothes, not including her scrub suits, of which she had all of three sets. She needed to be mobile and ready to move on a second’s notice. If the highway patrolman, Matt, was right, and her tire had been shot out, this just became one more of those seconds in her life.

She forced herself to take a deep breath.

Panic won’t solve anything.

Glancing at the door once more, she checked all the locks, then hurried into the bathroom and grabbed her makeup kit, toothbrush, and shampoo. All of which she tossed in the backpack’s side compartment. Finally she pushed her father’s framed picture into the pack with as much care as her nervous hands could manage. Even though he’d died twenty years ago, his gentle eyes still offered her peace and protection throughout this long ordeal.

One last thing to pack.

She reached into the bedside table and pulled out her Glock 9mm pistol and its case. Checking the clip to be sure it was full, she shoved it into place.

God, I hate these things.
The Family never understood her aversion to firearms. They considered them an extension of themselves.

With a quick glance around the dreary room she’d called home for six months, she assured herself she’d left little evidence of her presence here. No mail lay anywhere in the place since she always used a post office box. She scribbled a quick note to let her landlord know she was leaving.

Peeking out the door to make sure no one watched, she slipped out and hurried down the metal stairs that ran along the antique store’s side beneath the apartment. At the bottom of the steps Katie stood between the two buildings and observed the street. The only car parked on it was hers. No one moved. The small town of Sunbury hadn’t awakened to start its day, yet.

She wrapped the note around her door key and dropped it in the antique store’s mailbox. By the time the owner opened the shop for business, Katie planned to be long gone.

As she sprinted around her car, the spare tire on her left rear wheel caught her attention. A shudder ran through her, but she shook it off and climbed in the driver’s side. She didn’t have time to waste on fear, panic and what-ifs. She needed to find a safe place to spend the day until nightfall. Then she could hide in the safety of the hospital’s nursery.

Normally this would be the last place she’d want to hide, however last year the hospital decided to update their security after a disgruntled boyfriend entered the hospital brandishing a gun. With its bulletproof windows and locked doors only accessible by key-pass badges, it was the most secure place for her tonight.

She drove toward Columbus, thinking about her shot-out tire. She glanced at the card on the passenger seat. If Matthew Edgars was right, then the Family had found her again. The question was, how?

The tense beep of his phone sounded in Frank Castello’s office. He glanced at the clock. Almost six. He nodded to his secretary who was taking dictation for him. “That will be all, Leslie. Arrange the necessary paperwork for the prisoner’s transfer by the time our agents leave tomorrow then you’re through for the day.”

Trusting her to follow his instructions, he watched her leave as he picked up the phone before it finished the third ring. “U. S. Marshals, Castello.”

“This is Katie Myers.”

The name of one of his witnesses in the Witness Protection Program had Castello sitting ramrod straight in his chair. The hesitant catch in the voice put him on high alert. “What’s wrong, Katie?”

“My identity’s been discovered.”

“How do you know that?” Castello asked, even as he opened the file containing his list of safe houses. Katie wasn’t a witness prone to panic. If she felt her identity had been compromised, the likelihood existed it had.

“Someone shot out my tire this morning.”

“What?” Castello stood, the phone clenched in his hand. He closed his door then sat again, willing himself to think rationally. “Where are you?”

“Somewhere safe.”

“You know the rules. I need to come get you. Let me know where.”

“No. I don’t want to come in yet.” She took a deep breath. “It’s Christmas Eve, Castello. I want to work my evening shift. It’s only four hours and I’ll be safe there, behind the security doors. People are counting on me.”

The plea in her voice shook him. “Your life isn’t worth a job, Katie.”

“I know, but...I promised. You can pick me up at midnight. At the hospital.”

“Katie, let me come get you now. Katie?”

The phone line disconnected.

“Dammit!” Even if he’d had a tap on his phone, the conversation hadn’t lasted long enough to trace. Besides, Katie always used a pre-paid cell phone when she contacted him.

Man, she had him over a barrel. If her cover identity was compromised, he didn’t want to alert anyone she was on the run by issuing a search for her. If he wanted to get her to a safe house, he’d have to wait to get her at the hospital.

Fighting a surge of anger, he ground his teeth. Just out of sheer prudence, he ought to grab her on her way
into
the hospital.

He unlocked the bottom desk drawer, and pulled out the Katie Myers file. For a few minutes he stared at the girl’s picture. He remembered how frightened the young woman had been the day he and his partner picked her up at the airport.

She’d put her life in jeopardy and her future in limbo when she’d provided evidence against the right-wing extremist group’s leader behind the bombing. Fifty people, including ten FBI agents died in that blast.

Her only stipulation for testifying had been that the Marshals provide some way for her to finish her nursing studies. They’d locked her in a series of safe houses for several years while she pursued her dream of becoming a nurse. When the trial date arrived they’d dragged her back to Pennsylvania to testify then returned her to her isolated hiding place once more. Over a period of three years her only outside contact had been with her protectors.

He glanced at the picture again. Katie never panicked, even when cult members issued a public death sentence for her. Every time she’d been moved from safe house to safe house, she hadn’t whined or complained as some of Castello’s other protected witnesses did. Katie never asked for more than the right to live her life with anonymity.

If Katie wanted one more shift with her babies, then he’d give it to her. Besides, it would give him time to set up the safe house’s security.

Castello started to lock the file in the drawer again, then stopped. Most witnesses’ identities became known through some slip-up on their part, not the Marshals. Katie was the exception, she always followed the rules. They’d moved her at random intervals to new locations just as a precaution. Never once had her identity been blown.

Until today.

Could someone in the system have betrayed her? A little caution now might save both Katie’s life and his career.

He pulled on his overcoat and slid the file inside under his arm, then grabbed his cell phone and left his office. He needed to arrange a special safe house and extraction team for tonight. He felt the file under his arm. Until he discovered how Katie’s cover had been compromised, he needed to keep her file safe as well.

Matt stood outside the church with his brothers and brother-in-law before the Christmas Eve church services started. He handed a plastic bag to Dave, his oldest brother. It contained the spent cartridge he’d retrieved from the woods earlier.

“And she refused to report it?” Dave examined the bullet casing through the plastic, then handed it to their brother-in-law, Jake Carlisle.

Matt nodded. “She’s spooked, Dave. There’s no question about it. The lady denied knowing anything, but I’ll bet she knows exactly who shot out her tire today.”

“Whoever it is, they’re very familiar with sniper rifles.” Jake handed the bag to Luke. “And she must be one hell of a driver, not to have flipped from the impact with the tire.”

Matt agreed. “Judging by the skid marks, she handled the car like a pro. Another few feet and the shooter might have gotten the results he wanted. I dusted the cartridge for latent prints and there wasn’t one. The cartridge is clean.” He took a second plastic bag out of his pocket and handed it to Jake. “Could you have the FBI lab run the DNA off this cigarette butt?”

“Sure. I can find a way to make it an unofficial test.” He put the plastic bag into his pocket. “You know it’ll take weeks to get results since this isn’t even an official case, don’t you?”

Matt nodded. “If someone in the system pops up, then maybe I can convince the lady to let me investigate.”

“If the lady doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it, why are you? Seems like there’s no case to me.” Luke stopped studying the piece of evidence to grin at Matt. “Or is it the
lady
you’re interested in?”

“At least my face won’t scare a woman away, unlike your ugly mug.” Matt resisted the urge to punch his younger brother and held out his hand for the bag containing the shell. “Besides, the woman needs help whether she knows it or not. There’s nothing more to it.”