Moving Target (26 page)

When they finally reached the safe house, the other two vehicles parked in the front, while the two Deputies driving Daniel and Ani took the back alley. Daniel waited a while to see if they'd been tagged. After about ten minutes of intense scrutiny up and down the alleyway, he was certain no vehicles had followed them.

Still he held his gun ready when the other two Deputies joined him and they rushed Ani into the back entrance of the safe house.

As the three Deputy Marshals, including Daniel, escorted Ani into the safe house, she scrubbed her sweating palms on her jeans. She wore body armor and a black T-shirt as usual.

The Deputies took her through the back door of a plain white carriage house. She found herself trembling so hard that when Daniel put a hand on her shoulder, as if trying to reassure her, she didn't jerk away. He guided her through a kitchen and into a living room where a few men and women were posted at the stairs, exits, and entrances.

They went to the right and then up the stairs. Every step seemed so slow and it felt surreal, like a dream. Like none of this was real.

On the top floor they reached a door with two men stationed to either side of the doorway. They acknowledged Daniel and the other two Deputies with her, obviously knowing them.

Daniel stepped forward and knocked on the door. It sounded loud in the quietness of the hallway that smelled of new carpet and disinfectant.

For a moment nothing happened. Then she heard the scrape of a chain and the click of a bolt lock just before the door opened. Another man greeted them with a nod.

Ani followed Daniel into a sitting room. It had French doors leading to bedrooms on either side of the room. She moved in front of the men and held her breath.

No Jenn.

The handle of the French door to the right clicked and the door slowly swung open.

Jenn stepped through the doorway, her eyes fixed on Ani.

"Ani?" she said, and took a step forward, her eyes wide.

Ani cleared her throat and nodded. No words came to her.

"Is it really you?" Jenn took another tentative step toward her. "You look so
different
. Skinny."

Ani's eyes filled with tears. "It's me, Jenn."

There was only a moment's pause before Jenn ran and flung her arms around Ani.

Ani sobbed against her sister's neck. "You're alive. I can't believe you're alive."

Jenn was crying so hard, too, that she shook in Ani's arms. "They—the Marshals—said you were in the Witness Security Program and that you weren't allowed to have anything to do with your past. Not until after the trial, at least."

Tears still streaming down her face, Ani stomped her foot. "They had no right to tell me you died. For two years I thought I'd lost you. They had no right!"

Jenn hugged Ani tight again. "What matters now is that we're together."

"Yes." Ani kissed Jenn's cheek that was wet from tears, too. She drew away and they held one another at arm's length.

"You look good," Ani said as she reached up and stroked a scar at the side of Jenn's head, pushing her sister's dark hair away from her face with the movement. "We have a lot to talk about."

Ani heard the click of the door and started. She looked around to see that all the Deputy Marshals had left the sitting room, giving Ani and Jenn privacy for their reunion.

Ani took Jenn's hand and walked with her to a love seat where they sat and faced one another.

"You're here." Jenn pushed tears from her cheeks with her fingers. "You're really here."

For a moment neither of them said anything. They just held each other's hands and squeezed them tight.

"I missed you." Jenn broke the silence and released Ani's hand to hold her palm over her heart. "I was so glad you were safe, but I wanted to see you so badly it hurt."

"Even though I signed those papers, I still can't believe they let me think you were dead." Ani released Jenn's other hand and clenched her fists in her lap. "The jerks let me think I lost all of you that night."

Jenn covered Ani's fist with her hand. "They told me it would have endangered us both to break your contract with the program. Borenko's Mob is just too dangerous."

Ani grimaced. "After these past few days, I know that more than you can imagine."

"I'm so glad you're safe. Alive." Jenn's chest rose and fell as she audibly sucked in a breath.

Ani swallowed. "Tell me what happened. The Marshals said that they were informed you weren't going to make it. Then you died on the operating table right before I signed those papers."

"I got shot in the head." Jenn touched the scar. "I was lucky. Really lucky. The bullet angled upward and lodged in the top of my skull. It was touch and go for a while with the swelling, but it didn't cause any permanent damage." She gave a quirky little smile. "Well, there's a lot about that time after the injury that I don't remember, but I don't know if it's caused by the trauma or the damage the bullet did."

In Ani's mind she saw the blood coming from Jenn's head that night, and then the bullet hole in her father's skull. She blinked, trying to force the images from her mind. "I can't believe you survived that," Ani said quietly.

"Hey, you were nearly shot in the heart," Jenn said.

"I was fortunate, too." Ani's healed shoulder wound ached just thinking about the moment the bullet entered her body.

"How did you make it through everything?"

"The hospital I was taken to had an extraordinary team of doctors." Jenn rubbed at the scar on the side of her head again.

"They had to put me in a medically induced coma for a while, until the swelling of my brain went down. And then I basically died on the operating room table.

"When I came back, they were uncertain I would live. Once they moved me to the burn center in Rochester, they treated my burns. Eight weeks later, I went into rehab, and since then I've gone through extensive physical therapy."

Ani's heart twisted at the thought of what her sister had gone through. For the first time, she looked at what her sister was wearing. Jenn had on a pair of pink sweatpants and a pink T-shirt.

Despite the heaviness in her gut, Ani smiled. "You always did like pink."

"I don't remember you being partial to black." Jenn reached up and slid her fingers over Ani's Kevlar vest. "Or body armor."

Ani sighed. "It gets annoying, sometimes, but it beats the heck out of getting shot."

"What happened?" Jenn let her hand fall away from Ani's vest and rubbed her palm on one of her thighs as if she had an itch.

Ani grimaced. "Other than being chased, shot at, almost blown up, and chased and shot at some more . . . not much."

Jenn looked horrified, her eyes and mouth wide. "You're kidding."

As she shook her head, Ani's thoughts immediately went to Daniel and how many times he'd saved her life. "The Marshals have gone above and beyond duty to keep the Borenkos from killing me."

"Wow." Jenn glanced at the door. "No wonder there are so many of them hanging around."

"Yeah." Ani closed her eyes for a moment before opening them again. "Now that the Russian Mafia knows about you, you're in as much danger as I am. They'll want to get to you so they can get to me." Tears threatened to fall again. "They had to move me anyway, so they brought me to your safe house. I needed to see you. To touch you. To know that you're really here. Alive."

Jenn leaned forward and took Ani into her arms. "I'm so glad we're together." Jenn kissed Ani's cheek before drawing away. "I was so happy when they said you'll be staying with me here."

Ani smiled. "You couldn't tear me away. Even if I have to sleep on the floor!"

With a gesture to each French door, one on either side of the sitting room, Jenn said, "Each room has two double beds.

So our ever-present guards have a place to sleep, too."

That mention made Ani think of Daniel and her heart hurt all over again.

"What's wrong?" Jenn touched Ani's shoulder.

Ani shook her head and she didn't have to force a smile when she looked at her very much alive sister. "I'm just happy you're here. I still can't believe it." Her smile faded. "But your burns." Ani swallowed. "They must have been pretty bad."

Jenn said softly, "If you hadn't pulled me from the house I wouldn't have survived." She looked down at her sweatpants and back up to Ani. "It's a small price to pay for one's life."

Ani wiped away a tear. "And here I've been self-conscious about my burn scars and you went through so much worse."

"Hey." Jenn grinned. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Ani smiled at the teasing look on her sister's face. "Mine is nothing compared to what you went through."

Jenn kicked off her jogging shoes and stood. "Brian taught me that there's beauty in everything."

"Who's Brian?" Ani asked as she got to her feet and started unfastening her body armor.

A beautiful smile crossed Jenn's face. "My physical therapist, Brian Derrida. And he's my fiancé."

Ani had just tossed her vest aside. She turned to her sister. "You're getting married?"

"Eventually." Jenn grinned again. "He's wanted to for the past six months, but I thought we should wait for just the right moment." Her face softened. "Like now, now that you're here."

Ani hugged her sister. "I'm so happy for you."

"Me, too." Jenn laughed and stepped back.

She tugged down her sweatpants—she was wearing pink jogging shorts beneath—but when Ani saw her sister's legs her heart nearly wrenched in two. Jenn stepped completely out of her sweatpants. Her once beautiful long legs were completely scarred, the skin twisted and lumpy. Because of her own experience in a burn center, and all the other victims she'd seen there, Ani recognized skin grafts and realized how much pain her sister had faced.

At Ani's shocked expression, Jenn said softly, "Fifty percent of my body. Waist down. It's better than being dead. And you're the reason I'm alive."

Ani hugged Jenn and clung to her for a long time. She didn't want to let her sister go. "I love you, Jenn," she said as the tears flowed. "I love you so much."

"And you know how much I love you back, sis," Jenn whispered. She smiled as she stepped away and drew her sweatpants back on.

After Jenn was dressed again, Ani took off her Kevlar vest and tossed it on the floor. She turned her back to her sister and held her shirt up. Embarrassment made her cheeks hot—not from her scars, but from the fact that she'd been so self-conscious about them. How could she have been afraid to let anyone see hers?

Look how brave Jenn was. She hadn't even hesitated to show Ani her burn scars—and she had a fiancé. Ani shivered as she felt Jenn's fingers lightly touch her skin and trace the scar to the highest point at one of her shoulder blades.

Jenn said in a thoughtful voice, "It almost looks like a phoenix, rising from flames. Just like you did. Almost mortally wounded and yet you still got us both out of there."

Ani took a deep breath, dropped the hem of her T-shirt, and faced her sister. "Now I understand. I won't be embarrassed about my scars anymore."

"Good." Jenn smiled. "We have lots of stuff to catch up on."

Over turkey sandwiches and sodas one of the Deputies brought up for lunch, Ani and Jenn talked about their lives over the past two years. It had taken Jenn a long time to accept her appearance, and she gave credit to her fiancé, who had taught her that what was inside was more important than physical appearance.

"You look like you need to eat a little more," Jenn said to Ani when they finished lunch. "I didn't recognize you. But your eyes and your voice cut through that. And my gut instinct. So why haven't you been eating?"

Now that Ani was so slender, she was about the same size as her sister and she could see herself mirrored in Jenn. They looked so much alike now, it was amazing.

Ani shrugged in response to Jenn's question. "When you all were gone, I just couldn't eat much."

"You're not anorexic, are you?" There was genuine concern in Jenn's voice.

With a smile, Ani shook her head. "Up until these past few days, I've been telling myself I need to eat more. I never lost weight intentionally. It just happened, you know?"

Jenn nodded. "Yeah, I think I do." She cocked her head to the side. "So—did you move on at all? Did you find someone special?"

Ani's skin flushed with heat and she glanced at the door before returning her gaze to her sister's. "There used to be."

"Something tells me I need to hear this." Jenn folded her arms across her chest. "So get on with it."

Heat burned even hotter in Ani's cheeks. "I—I don't know if I can."

"Hey, it's me you're talking to. Your sister, remember?" Jenn leaned forward. "Maybe you've had to keep a lot of secrets these past two years, but now you don't. Right here, right now, it's just the two of us."

"Okay." Ani told her own story about the burn center and being taken to a couple of different safe houses by Daniel before she settled in Bisbee. About how they had talked on the phone so many times and how she slowly fell in love with him.

Jenn frowned. "What do you mean, then, that 'there used to be' a relationship when he's standing right outside that door?

Did he do something to you?"

"Daniel kept the fact that you were alive a secret. He knew, but never told me. I didn't find out until I was in court and it was such a shock. Finding out like that—it was horrible." She flexed her hand—her knuckles were still a little sore from punching him. "When we were alone I let him have it by telling him off, then sort of slammed my fist into his nose."

Jenn snorted then burst out laughing. "You
sort of
hit him? Was there blood?"

Ani's mouth quirked into a smile. "Yeah. Hit him pretty hard."

Jenn sobered. "You know that he was just obeying orders, don't you? He couldn't tell you without endangering his job, or you. You signed the papers and they stick to their rules."

"I'm slowly realizing that," Ani admitted. "A part of me doesn't want to forgive him because it feels like a betrayal. But the other part of me knows he didn't have a choice."