Material Witness (25 page)

Through the cloudy window, Cassie
watched him drop the phone into the cradle and make his way back to the Jeep
with long quick strides. A rush of cold air swept into the vehicle when he
opened the door.

“How'd it go?”

“I talked to Ty. I knew Kevin would
call him first to see if I’d called him too. I was counting on it. Kevin
contacted Ty about an hour ago with an update.”

Jake’s expression was grim, his lips
drew into a thin line as he buckled his seatbelt.

“What did Tyler say?”

“They have him,” Jake said, punching
the key into the ignition and firing the engine.

Confused and a little taken aback by
Jake’s reaction, she asked, “This is good news then. When did they catch him?”

“Sometime last night. Charley set up
some kind of sting thinking she could ferret out the mole in the Bureau. Agent
Bellows took the bait with Fagnelio by his side. They caught Fagnelio, but
Bellows was killed during the raid.”

Cassie closed her eyes, a slow breath
of air seeping through her lips. So much bloodshed and death.

As the Jeep began to move, she looked
over at Jake. “Angel must have found out the person he sent to the cabin hadn’t
succeeded in killing us.”

“Apparently.”

Cassie's pulse thrummed strong
against her temple. She placed her fingers against the ache to steady it.
Control.
“What kind of raid?”

“At your place.”

“My apartment?” She heard the shock
in her own voice and took a quick breath to calm down before continuing. “They
killed Bellows in my home?”

 Jake’s expression was sympathetic.
“You won’t be going back there for a few days anyway and since the crime scene
is now secured—”

Goosebumps raised on her arm and
quickly raced crawled all over her body.
He’d come after her in her own
home.

“After sending someone to kill me
yesterday, I can’t imagine why Fagnelio would think I’d feel safe enough to
just go back to my own apartment.”

“My thoughts exactly. But it wouldn’t
be the first time a rat sniffed out a piece of cheese only to get caught in his
own trap. Tyler only gave me the basics. He said Kevin would fill me in on the
rest when we get back. But the FBI is insisting Bellows set up the explosion at
the safe house and tipped off the papers about you being their material
witness.”

She eyed him skeptically. “And you
believe it?”

“They caught him with Fagnelio. He
was in the city the night of the shooting at Rory's. He was there at the safe
house when it exploded.”

She sank against the back of the seat
and slipped her seat belt on as if on autopilot. “What if this is all a ruse to
get me back to the city?”

Jake shook his head, shifting the
Jeep into gear as it accelerated along the road. “This is the real thing.”

Once they were out on the road, Jake
switched on the wipers, then reached over and grasped Cassie's hand. He
squeezed it with just the right amount of pressure to help steady her trembling
hand and give her some comfort.

 “At least we can feel safe knowing
that Fagnelio is behind bars where he belongs,” he said easy enough, but
something was still turning around in Jake's mind. She heard it in his voice.
In what he was saying and what he
wasn’t
saying. Cassie glanced at his
face, saw the tightness in his jaw and the faint crimp in his brow that
remained as he spoke the words.

“So now that they're sure the leak
was Agent Bellows and Fagnelio is behind bars, it's all over, right? There's no
more threat to my life?”
Please, God, she hoped so.

Jake gave his answer in the gentle
squeeze of her hand. Cassie knew he was trying to comfort her and to some
extent, it did. But in the end, she got none of the peace she craved. She
swallowed back the bile in her mouth and closed her eyes before snatching her
hand from Jake's grasp.

“Don't do that,” she said,
straightening her posture.

Jake glanced at her, startled. “You
don't want me to touch you?”

“Not like that. I don't want you to
lie to me.”

Jake took his eyes off the road for a
fraction of moment to look at her. He cursed under his breath. “Dammit, Cassie.
I haven't lied to you yet, have I?”

She shook her head slowly.

“And I never will. Especially about
Fagnelio.”

“I'm not talking about Fagnelio. He
may be behind bars, but there's no guarantee he'll stay there. That is what
you're thinking, right? That’s what you’re afraid of. And even if he does stay
in jail, someone might still come after me before the trial.”

Jake gripped the wheel tighter.
“Charley sent Bellows down to the safe house ahead of us. He'd worked in
Virginia for years, knew the layout of safe house and the staff. That's why
Charley put him on the team with Agent Radcowski. Bellows could easily have
rigged the gas line in the house. Now Bellows is dead and Fagnelio is in
custody. I just don't know. It all seems so…neat, too clean to have fallen into
place so nicely.”

A chill shot up Cassie’s spine.
“Shooting someone in cold blood in my apartment doesn’t sound very neat to me.”

“No, it’s not.”

“But now that Fagnelio is behind bars
this will all be over as soon as I testify, right?”

 Jake glanced at Cassie and sighed.
“I know it's been hard on you.”

“Yeah, I want my life back. Don't
you? I don't want to have to worry about strange packages coming in the mail or
looking over my shoulder when you're not around.”

A smile tipped the corners of his
mouth and made her pulse quicken. She remembered that smile looking down at her
last night as they made love. “You still want me around when all this is over?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
It felt good to make that affirmation. “But not like this. Not if it means
always being afraid.”

She turned in her seat and plunged
her hands deep into the pocket of the leather jacket. Her heart ached with the
emptiness of not having Jake's hand firmly clasping hers. She wanted his
comfort, but the sudden weight of leaving the safety of what they'd shared last
night left her feeling utterly exposed.

Jake pulled over to the shoulder of
the road and parked the Jeep, keeping it idling.

“I'm sorry. I keep forgetting you're
not just the normal average citizen who swallows every line that's fed to
them.”

“Is that what you do to people? You
tell them things they want to hear, feed them some fairy tale and take them to
bed?”

She'd gone too far and instantly
regretted her words. A dark shadow clouded Jake's features, making the lines on
his face deepen.

“You really think I made love to you
as some way to trick you into believing you weren't in any danger?”

“No,” she said, regret filling her.
“I don’t believe that at all. The fact is, I’m having a hard time believing
much of anything lately.”

“Cassie, I have to bring you in to
testify in front of a grand jury in just two days. Over these next two days,
the federal prosecutor is going to hold you and occupy every waking moment of
your time to shape your testimony so their case against Angel Fagnelio is
ironclad. In the meantime, I'll be sitting back at the station taking it for
all it's worth from Captain Russo for not bringing you in sooner. Not to
mention how Charley will rip me to shreds and I
still
don't know who to
trust.”

Jake slammed his palm against the
steering wheel and they sat silently for an agonizingly long time. Her fear
made her lash out at Jake when she knew damn well this whole situation was
eating him up inside the same way it was destroying her.

An eighteen-wheel truck whizzed past
them, rocking the Jeep with its momentum and spraying it with a mass of dirt
and slush from the road.

“I don't know if the threat is gone,”
Jake said, staring at the truck as it sped down the road ahead of them. “I
don't know if Bellows was working alone, or if there is someone else. With all
this upset in Ritchie Trumbella's organization, someone could still be worried
about Fagnelio running his mouth. They might just hang him out to dry and rot
in a federal prison. There’s so much spinning around in my head and so much has
happened I don't know what to think.

“The only thing I know for sure is
how I feel, Cassie. The idea of bringing you back is eating at me.” He reached
across the seat and brushed his fingers against her cheek. “I just want to hold
you and make love to you again. Not because I'm trying to feed you a line of
bull. But because I need it, Cassie. I need to have you close to me. I don't
like what we're going back to face. But we have no choice. We're out of time.”

“No,” she said softly, reaching up
and holding his hand to her cheek. “We at least have time for this.”

She reached over and wrapped her arms
around him. Lacing her fingers behind his neck, she kissed him. He pulled her
hard against him, kissing her back with all the raging fear that threatened to
eat at every bit of control they had.

“If nothing else, we have time for
this,” she whispered against his lips.

Jake jammed the car back into gear
and punched the gas. Skidding back onto the highway, the Jeep left a spray of
mud and gravel in its wake.

 They stayed in the motel longer than
Cassie knew they should. Daylight was slipping away when they finally headed
back on the road toward the city.

Jake held her hand as they drove in
silence, the pad of his thumb rubbing against her skin. The rumbling of the
tires on the pavement invaded the quiet compartment, chipping into Cassie’s
thoughts. But she didn't want to think about what was ahead of them.

Along the way Jake periodically
reassured her that everything would be okay. It would be—as long as she was
with Jake. How could she have come to depend on his strength in such a short
period of time?

It had only been a few days since
they'd met and this whole nightmare began. They'd come a long way since then.
She wasn't just an ordinary citizen that Jake was assigned to protect. And Jake
was no ordinary man.

Three years ago, she'd broken her
engagement because she couldn't feel anything for her fiancé. Dennis had tried
to be patient but in the end, his frustration had him lashing out at her,
calling her bitter names that still brought pain in remembrance.

She thought she had loved Dennis, but
now she wasn't so sure. She'd genuinely cared for him, but she never felt about
Dennis the way she did for Jake. She never melted in his arms with his touch.

Maybe Jake was right. It wasn't that
she was all wrong for romance. She just hadn't been with the right man.

The short time they’d been together
felt like a lifetime, but the circumstances were unusual. Outside the little
world she and Jake had been thrust into, they hardly knew anything about each
other.

When this was all over, things would
be different. They’d have time. She could only hope that she wouldn’t wake up
the morning after and find out all these powerful emotions pulling her and Jake
together like a magnet were just an illusion.

She couldn’t let her fear of the past
destroy what could be between her and Jake. Dennis and his bitter names were no
longer part of her life. Jake was here and now, and as soon as they got through
the trial and Angel Fagnelio was locked away for life, she and Jake would have
all the time in the world to discover all there was to know about each other.

It was only a few more days of
waiting. If what Jake said was true, the federal prosecutor was not going to
let her out of his sight for the next forty-eight hours. She'd go over and over
her statement to the police. They'd drill her on how to answer, what to reveal,
so that Angel Fagnelio's lawyer didn't stand a chance.

Cassie had been through this before
when she testified in her cousin’s murder. It would be no different this time.
And when it was over, her life would be her own again.

Until then she’d just have to accept
the fact that she was the FBI’s one and only witness to place Angel Fagnelio at
the scene of the crime. The only one who'd seen him lean out the car window and
blast the life out of Rory's and all the people inside. He didn't care who he'd
hit. He didn't care that he'd taken another person's life. Just like with the
man who sneered at her after killing Emilio’s, Cassie would do her part and
make sure Angel Fagnelio cared each and every day he sat in prison.

As they drew closer to the city,
Cassie noticed the deep lines etched at the corners of Jake’s mouth.
Serious
and intense.
She knew that well. Kevin claimed Jake was born serious and
intense. But Jake was much more. Cassie had seen firsthand the tender side of
him when he touched her, the vulnerable side when he spoke of his sisters,
right alongside the rough-edged exterior he held out for the rest of the world
to see.

She'd seen it all and wanted it,
wanted Jake Santos in her life. It was the only thing about this nightmare that
was bearable.