Material Witness (10 page)

Cassie wanted to believe Jake was
just concentrating on what was ahead. But as time wore on, she got the distinct
impression he was forcing himself not to look at her.

Was he angry with her for insisting
he come? It wasn’t that she'd blame him. In one fell swoop, she'd turned not only
her life around, but Jake’s as well.

She had the whole Federal Bureau of
Investigation ready and willing to put out the red carpet for her if it meant
she'd cooperate as their material witness. Once she was in the room giving her
demands to them, she knew they would have granted her anything to get Angel
Fagnelio convicted for his crimes.

Charlotte Tate was another story, and
even Cassie had to admit she was surprised when the special agent came into the
conference room and agreed to Cassie's request.

While they were at her apartment,
Jake had promised it was going to be all right. And she believed him. Maybe now
that they were alone together, he'd changed his mind?

“You look tired. I’m surprised you’re
not still sleeping,” she finally said, wishing she could close the gap between
them and ease the tension plaguing him. She wanted to place her hand in his,
touch his cheek, now shadowed with dark stubble. Anything to bring the
connection back she felt earlier when they were alone at the police station.

Jake answered quietly. “I’ll sleep
more when we get where we’re going.”

Cassie glanced at the driver to make
sure he wasn’t paying attention, then back to Jake. “You're angry with me.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You've been cool all afternoon.”

He hesitated a fraction of a second.
“Have I?”

She nodded. “You haven't said much,
but when you do, you look…well, angry.”

His sigh echoed defeat. “I guess I
am. Seeing Charley brought back a lot of memories I'd just as soon forget.”

He turned to look at her then, and
she saw his smoky eyes were filled with warmth. He wasn't completely plagued
with the tightness she'd seen all day. Some of it had subsided.

“I'm sorry if you mistook my…coolness
for being angry with you. I'm not. Kevin always says I was born with an intense
stare. He got used to it.”

“Then I guess I'll have to get used
to it, too.”

Jake went back to watching the road
with his intense look. She went back to watching the strong lines of his
profile.

He glanced at her then, and she knew
her fears were true. His eyes were haunted.

She leaned forward in her seat to
talk to the driver. “I’m sorry. I forgot your name.”

The driver glanced in the rear view
mirror. “Agent Hogan.”

“That’s right. Can you at least tell
me how much longer it’s going to take for us to get to this safe house?”

Cassie had long since brushed aside
her annoyance that the exact location of the safe house couldn't, or
wouldn't
be disclosed to them. She’d been given strict orders to call Maureen and her
parents to tell them she was going out of town and wasn’t sure when she’d be
back. But she was safe and she would get in touch with them. She was also given
strict orders not to use her cell phone or email.

As much as she hated the idea of
being locked up for Lord only knew how long, she was looking forward to getting
there and having a nice hot bubble bath before crawling beneath the sheets.

“A few hours still. If you're tired,
why don't you nod off for a bit. It’ll make the drive go quicker.”

Cassie leaned back in the seat. “I
can’t sleep,” she muttered.

“You’re too wound up,” Jake said.

She cocked her head to one side and
tossed him a wry grin. “No kidding, Sherlock. You’re just as bad. I've seen
more relaxed stiffs in the city morgue.”

“Do you have to do that?”

His question, as much as the stark
look on his face, startled her, filling her with a sense of foreboding. She
felt herself shrink down in the seat.

“I was just teasing.”

“I meant, go to the morgue. Do you
have to do that in your research?”

Eight-year-old memories Cassie wished
she could will away stormed her mind at an alarming speed.

“Just once,” she said quietly. “It
wasn’t for research.”

When she paused, choking on her own
reaction to the memory, she saw that he was waiting.

“My cousin was murdered eight years
ago. Even though she witnessed it, my grandmother couldn't believe he was
really gone, so my aunt and I took her to the morgue. It was horrible.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Me, too,” Cassie said shakily as the
memory of her grandmother falling to the floor and weeping uncontrollably
flooded her mind.

“I thought because you write about
it…”

She tilted an eyebrow. “What? That I
get off on blood and gore?”

He lifted his shoulder in an idle
shrug.

“Guess again. I hope I never have to
see someone I love like that again. Not in this lifetime. Seeing Emilio that
way…was quite enough.”

Jake heaved a sigh, and she heard him
mutter an oath under his breath.

“Were you close to him?”

Cassie shook her head, swallowed a
bit of emotion that bubbled up her throat. “That's what makes it more horrible
to me. Before he died, I remember seeing him exactly three times in my life.”

Jake’s eyes widened as he glanced at
her.

“I was visiting my family in Miami
when it happened. My cousin and I were the same age, but I never got a chance
to get to know Emilio when I was growing up because we lived so far apart. I’d
gone down for a visit during spring break at college and spent a few days with
my grandmother. Emilio and I really hit it off. I was hoping to finally get the
chance to get to know him more during that visit.”

A blanket of sadness covered her as
she turned away, twisting her attention away from the memories to the relative
safety of the scenery. Dark roads, barren hills, trees that had yet to produce
buds that would pop out in spring. And they would. It was only with absolute
death that spring didn’t come.

The sun was now long gone. The
headlights shone bright on the dry road ahead of them. They drove in silence
for a few minutes. Every once in a while Cassie's mind would wander to that day
on her grandmother's porch.

The sight of an animal's illuminated
eyes at the side of the road brought her back to the present. She was in a car
with Jake Santos and an agent she’d met three seconds before climbing into the
car. She wasn't eighteen anymore, but she
was
once again on the run.

“How'd it happen?” Jake ask.

“Emilio?”

He nodded.

“Well, like I said, it was spring
break. My father was livid I’d gone to Miami.”

“He was angry you went to visit your
family?”

“Yes, well, no, not really for
visiting my family. It was because I went to Miami without telling him. I
didn’t tell anyone. I just showed up on my grandmother’s doorstep one day. She
was so thrilled.”

Cassie laughed just thinking about
how her grandmother had called all her neighbors from the front porch to tell
them her little Juanita had come home.

“My father didn’t want me to travel
to Miami. He'd said if I wanted family around, he would have paid for them to
come visit us in Stamford. He just didn't understand.”

“I'm afraid I don't, either.”

She laughed quietly, without the
bitterness she'd felt her whole life about her father's reasons for not wanting
to return to Miami.

“My dad didn't have an easy
childhood. Things were rough for his family when they first came over from
Cuba. That's something I was spared because I grew up in a nice middle class
Connecticut neighborhood, well away from the prejudice he'd encountered in his
life. He worked hard, not only building his business up in Stamford, but
building his self-esteem.”

“Something to be proud of.”

“Yes, and I am. Unfortunately, it
built a wide gap between me and my only other family here. It wasn’t just the
cultural differences either. He tried hard to blend into the mainstream,
leaving his culture behind. He wanted to be American in all ways that counted.
I doubt I'll ever know everything that caused him to leave Miami. He doesn't
speak much of that time. But I got a good glimpse of it the day Emilio died.”

“You mean, you were there…when it
happened?”

Cassie swallowed hard. She'd always
wondered if things would have been different if she hadn't gone to Miami. Maybe
Emilio would still be alive.

“I remember it was this gloriously
perfect sunny day, and Emilio and I had just come home from the beach. I loved
the beach and the warm water.

“Anyway, we were just sitting on the
porch with my grandmother, dumping the sand from my beach bag.”

She paused for a minute, running her
hand over her cheek as if to wipe away the image. But it remained.

“A man started yelling in Spanish.
He’d apparently followed us up from the beach. I didn't understand any of it
because I don't speak it fluently. My parents only spoke English, even in the
house. The next thing I knew my grandmother was screaming and the man had
grabbed me by the hair. He'd pulled a gun, was waving it around like a flag and
laughing. Emilio was shouting in Spanish. I had no idea what he was saying.
Then I was thrown aside and Emilio was lying on the ground bleeding.”

Cassie swallowed down the acrid taste
of bile. The sound of the gunshot, the smell of gunpowder still seemed to choke
the air around her with startling clarity, even after all these years.

“The man who shot him didn't even
run. He wasn’t scared at all. He just stood there laughing as Emilio bled on
the dirt, like taking my cousin's life was nothing. Then he looked at me and my
grandmother—I'll never forget his face—he said we were next.”

Jake swore then. It didn't shock her,
like the plethora of expletives she'd heard that day during the shooting. Or
the look in the eyes of her cousin's killer.

“So this is nothing but a reoccurring
nightmare,” Jake said almost to himself.

Sighing, she said, “That's putting it
mildly. I testified then. My grandmother didn't. Even though she witnessed the
murder, she refused to believe it happened. She was too frightened. I don't
blame her. It was pretty horrible.

“My father was furious at me, both
for going to Miami and for doing what I thought was right.”

Jake reached across the seat and
covered his hand over hers. She ignored the immediate zing of energy that shot
through her and gladly accepted the comfort he offered.

“Fear makes people do funny things,
Cassie. I see it all the time. Your father must be feeling it all over again
now.”

“I couldn't tell my parents,” she
said quietly, gazing out at the darkness. Although by now, they probably knew.

Cassie hadn’t told anyone, except for
Maureen. She knew her parents would worry, so she’d asked Maureen to tell them
she was going away for a few days. It would be surprisingly easy for Cassie to
keep her whereabouts from her parents, at least in the short term. Cassie lived
such a solitary life while she was working on a book. She'd hardly leave the
house except to go to the library and pick up some food at the grocery store.
Even then, Chinese take-out and pizza were her best friends. There was no one
at home to fret about her or wonder when she came home. She didn't even have a
cat to worry about feeding.

There were times when a deadline
loomed and she would drop out of sight for months, communicating with her mother
only via email or a quick phone call. She could do both at the safe house and
reassure her parents that she was fine without having to deal with her father
directly.

Jake squeezed her hand gently. “At a
time like this you could use your parents' support.”

“How much support can I get from them
if they're in Stamford and I'm tucked away in a safe house? Besides, my father
would only blame me again.”

“They're going to find out, Cassie.
It was in the papers.”

“I’m sure they read about it. But I
asked Maureen to call them. They’re going to worry. At least this time I wasn't
to blame.”

Jake frowned. “It wasn't your fault
then, either.”

 She smiled weakly. “Thanks. I did
blame myself for a while though. I figured if I hadn't gone… Dad said it was
better to forget it ever happened. Forget we'd lost Emilio like we had. After
it was all over, he insisted my grandmother and my aunt come live with us. He
didn't want any of us to talk about the shooting ever again. And no one did. We
never forgot Emilio, but it was as if he'd died some other way. He was just
gone. I know my father blamed me, even if he didn't put it into words.”

The vacant sound of the tires
crushing the pavement beneath them mocked her, surrounding her like the tide of
blinding fog now rolling over the hills.