Shooting Starr (8 page)

Images crowded into her mind, people and places and events—mostly people. One after another they clicked by, too quickly, like a slide show on fast-forward—her past in reverse order, beginning with the last image she remembered: the landscaped mall in front of the courthouse; a sea of reporters and video cameras; the sun glinting on their lenses and the windows of TV trucks; a brilliant blue September sky.

Back inside the courtroom a few minutes before that: the judge's face, fleshy Southern jowls, soft, smooth-shaven and unsmiling; Mary Kelly's face, gaunt and pasty, with blue smudges under her eyes and freckles standing out like blotches, trying hard to smile.

In the days and weeks before: Mom visiting her in the jail, her hair like sunshine in that drab and dismal room…frightened eyes looking out at her from the serene and lovely mask of her face; and Dad, calm and reassuring as always, but swiping at a tear as he turned to leave her.

Further back: a sultry April night; a big blue truck, powerful diesel engine idling away behind her; a man with a face like a Norman Rockwell painting, hair soft and thick, sun-streaked blond…eyes dark as chocolate and just as seductive…a sweet and dimpled smile; big hands gentle on her shoulders…lips moving, saying words hard and heavy as hammer blows.
I can't do it—I'm sorry.

The same face in a rapid montage of swirling, overlapping images, like a kaleidoscope: eyes twinkling, smiling and flirtatious with her, nodding with good-ol'-Southern-boy courtesy to Mary Kelly; gentle and kind with a traumatized child; angry, hard as pewter in the bluish light of a yard lamp on an empty concrete apron; anguished, drawn and shadowed in the dimness of the truck cab as she'd seen them the last time. As he'd watched them walk away.

Mary Kelly again…then back through the faces of all
the fearful and damaged women she'd known, all the way back to the first and most beloved—her own mother's face…so young, so beautiful…so haunted.

There were children's faces, too, and even a few men among the victims—her cousin Eric and his precious baby, Emily, in their desperate dash for safety, bundled against the Iowa winter cold…could that only have been last Christmas?

She saw Eric in happier times, along with his sister Rose Ellen, saw them as the children she'd played with on Aunt Lucy and Uncle Mike's farm. There were Uncle Rhett's children, too, though she'd seen them less frequently. They were so much older than she: Lauren, who loved horses, older by eleven years; and shy Ethan, who'd grown up to be a doctor, older by seven. And they'd lived so far away.

She saw herself, a nervous teenager in a long slinky gown, dancing with Uncle Rhett, newly elected president of the United States, amid the dazzle and excitement of his first inaugural ball, and Dixie, the new first lady, radiant and laughing, dancing with a red-faced but determined Eric. She saw herself as a gawky child in overalls, riding on one fender of Aunt Lucy's green John Deere tractor, while Eric laughed at her from his perch on the other side.

And she saw an even smaller child, thrilled and scared witless, arms in a death grip around her daddy's waist for one exhilarating turn around the block on his Harley. Much later she'd learned to ride motorcycles by herself, and had even had her own Harley for a while, but it was that first terrifying trip she remembered most vividly.

Her parents' faces—her earliest memories. Their home in Sioux City. Her room. Pictures and more pictures…seasons and colors, places and faces…images upon images.

And now…nothing.

I'm blind now. What if I never see again? What if it's forever, and all I will ever have are these memories?

Chilled and sweating, she jerked herself awake. Her heart was pounding; nearby, a monitor was going off. A familiar hand was holding hers, stroking her arm. Touching her face. Her mother's voice crooned, as if to a very small child, “Hush, sweetie, it's okay…it's okay.”

“Mom?” Caitlyn croaked. At least the pain was better; she didn't feel quite so nauseated.

“We're both here, honey,” her dad said. His fingers felt warm on her wrist. She sighed, and the monitor went silent.

“Can I have some water?” A moment later she felt the top half of the bed rise beneath her, forcing her upright, and fought a momentary stab of panic. She fought the urge to put out her hand, to try to hold away the nothingness that hovered just above her like a solid ceiling. She felt the smooth, slightly crisp touch of the straw on her lips, tipped her head cautiously forward and drank. “Thanks,” she said, and settled back, shifting to find a comfortable position.

“How are you doing? Can we get you anything?” Her mom's voice was unsteady, and that unnerved her. As a physical therapist, her mother was used to hospitals and hurt people; it took a lot to shake her.

She squeezed her mother's hand. “No, I'm okay.”

Her dad, from closer by, said, “Honey, if you're up to it, there are some people here that would like to talk to you.”

“I've already spoken to the police—”

“Not the police. It's…” He hesitated, which wasn't like her dad, either. “Honey, it's the truck driver you, uh… He has—”

Caitlyn's heartbeat stumbled, then quickened. She croaked irritably, “Is he still here?” She didn't feel up to soothing his guilty conscience.

“He is, and he has, uh, some people he wants—” the sigh of escaping breath interrupted the flow of words “—Caty, I think you should hear what he has to say.”

Before she could answer, she was distracted by pain and pressure in her fingers; her mother was squeezing them so tightly they hurt. She resisted gently and murmured, “Mom…”

The pressure ceased instantly. She felt the cool press of her mother's cheek against hers, heard a quick, husky “I think I should go. I'll be outside.”

There was a stirring, then an emptiness beside her. Caitlyn broke a brief and awkward silence. “Dad? What's wrong with Mom?”

“Bear with her,” her father said softly. “This has been hard on her—” again, that whisper of breath “—on us all.”

Silence came once more. This time the memories that filled it were gentle and comforting: the sturdy strength of a finger clutched in her chubby hand; the crunch of footsteps and huff of breath and a tall man running beside her wobbling bicycle on a hot summer day; a hug and a goodnight kiss that smelled of a brand of aftershave she'd never learned the name of.

“Daddy,” she said as the easy and unbidden tears came, “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…”

“Hey…” The empty space beside her was taken up by that familiar warmth…familiar smell.

“I didn't tell you…I couldn't—”

“Tell me what, punkin?”

“What I was doing. I couldn't—I still can't. It's so important—do you understand?” Her eyes stabbed futilely at the darkness; she'd have given anything to see his face. Anything.
Please let me see his face again. Please…

She heard a gusty sigh. The hands that held hers tightened, then let go. “No, I can't say I do understand, Caty.” There was a pause, and then her father added in a dry voice, “You're not helping, you know.”

“I'm sorry.” Weighted with a helpless sadness, she used her orphaned hands to wipe her face and heard a grunted “Here—” as a wad of tissues was tucked into her hand.
Drier-eyed and quieter inside, she said tightly, “I can't risk giving away the others. What we do is so important. The people we help have nowhere else to turn. It has to go on. Even if I can't…”

“So,” her dad said, and she could hear him struggling to understand, “I guess it's like the old Underground Railroad, huh? During the Civil War. Only you help people escape…what? Domestic violence? Sexual abuse?”

“Abusers. Those the law can't—or won't—touch. Sometimes…the law and justice aren't the same thing.” She sniffed and, feeling tremulous and exposed, fought to smile. “I guess it is a little like the Underground Railroad. With some witness protection thrown in. Sometimes it's not enough to just escape,” she added somberly. “Sometimes people need to…disappear.”

“Ah, Caty. I understand that. I do. But why you?” Her dad was silent again, but only for a moment. Then he gave a short, wondering laugh. “I guess I know the answer to that. But how in the world did you get into—”

“The Internet, of course.” Her lips hadn't forgotten how to smile, after all, though it only lasted for a moment. “It was my first year away at college. I was lonely, homesick. And I'd get to thinking about how lucky I am…you and Mom…the way you two met…” The sentimentality embarrassed her; she shrugged it away with a sniff. “I wanted to find out more about it, that's all—domestic violence, abusers, stalkers, all that stuff. And, well, that's how it began. I'm sorry.”

“Caty, honey. I'm the one who's sorry…” To her dismay, her father's voice was choked…thickened. Unable to think of words that would comfort him, she groped for his hand and patted it awkwardly.

From behind the glass partition nearby, C.J. watched the emotions play across Caitlyn's face, graphic and revealing as those lines of closed-captioning dialogue on the televi
sion screen. He watched her father bow his head to hide the anguish in his face from eyes that couldn't see it.

He'd been eavesdropping unabashedly, with arms folded and jaw tight…knots in his stomach he couldn't get rid of no matter how many times he told himself he wasn't responsible for those people being here, and this way. She'd made her choices, Caitlyn had, long before she'd ever met him, and she'd made him part of her crusade without ever asking him if he wanted to be. No sir, legally he wasn't to blame—probably not ethically, either.

He had a fairly clear understanding of all that. He also had a clear understanding, deep down amongst those knots in his belly, that there was another standard of measurement, one he didn't know the name of or where he'd learned it—the one that says when it comes to helping out another human being in dire need, a man doesn't stop to count the cost to himself. By that standard he'd fallen miserably short, and he was having a hard time living with that.

Furthermore, he knew he wasn't going to be able to live with himself until he'd figured out a way to make it right.

Right now, watching the two of them together, the father and his daughter, Wood and Caitlyn Brown, watching their faces—the grief in his, the fear in hers—what was giving him those knots in his belly was the realization that there maybe wasn't going to be a way to make this right. Ever.

Though C.J.'s eavesdropping hadn't given him much with which to console himself—and quite a lot that didn't make a lot of sense to him—he'd heard enough to be pretty sure the subject matter wasn't something either party to the conversation would want the FBI to know about. So when he saw his in-law-once-removed, Special Agent Jake Redfield, and his lawyer, Charly, approaching, he stepped around the partition and announced himself and them with a warning cough and a gruff “Hey.”

“C.J.—” Looking relieved, Wood rose and motioned
him over. “I was just telling Caty—” ingrained honesty won out and he amended it to “—was
about
to, anyway. Here, why don't you…” He sidestepped hastily around the chair he'd been sitting in and offered it to C.J. instead. To his daughter he said unnecessarily, “Honey, C.J.'s here. I told you he has something he wants to talk to you about. Some people—ah.” His eyes shifted to focus beyond C.J. as Jake Redfield and Charly filed into the room, filling it to its standing-room-only capacity. “Here they are. Well. Okay, C.J., I'll leave the introductions to you.”

Though Wood backed out of the way of the gathering crowd around his daughter's bed, C.J. noticed he didn't leave the room. Finding himself a corner, he settled into it and stood erect with his arms folded on his chest in classic military style, like a sentinel. Like a bodyguard, C.J. thought, vigilant and ever ready. Determined to keep watch over his little girl but maintaining a low profile about it.

With so many pairs of observant eyes in the room, C.J. tried his best to avoid looking too long or too hard at the woman lying in the bed, lest he give away more of what he was feeling than he wanted to. But a glance gave him an image that lingered, of those delicate, fairylike features set in an expression both guarded and intent, and at the same time faintly annoyed. He focused on her hands, lying curled and slightly overlapping on the blanket that covered her to her waist, and a different kind of memory, sensual memories of their featherlight touch on his folded arms made his voice gruff as he introduced Charly, then Special Agent Redfield of the FBI.

The hands on the blanket jerked and clenched into fists. “I won't answer any more questions,” Caitlyn said in a thin, remote voice. A voice beyond caring, C.J. thought; a voice that said to the world, “What more can you do to me?”

Unperturbed, Jake Redfield arched his eyebrows at Caitlyn as if she could see him. He'd taken the position at her
elbow across from C.J., with Charly back a little and toward the foot of the bed. “That's okay,” he said quietly, “I don't plan on asking you any. Not right now. What I'd like you to do, though, is listen to what I have to say. Can you do that?”

T
he silence in the room was intense. By contrast, the world outside seemed cluttered with sound: the rhythmic shushing of a ventilator in a nearby cubicle; the muted chirp of a telephone; a mutter of voices; the sandy slap of footsteps. C.J. found himself becoming aware of silences and sounds as if he were experiencing the world from the perspective of the woman lying in the hospital bed. A woman without sight.

The FBI man's long face and downward tilted eyes gave him a perpetually doleful expression that reminded C.J. of a hound dog he'd once known. He knew enough about Jake Redfield, though, to be pretty certain that behind those eyes lurked a keen intelligence—maybe even a sense of humor. Also a single-minded determination when in pursuit of bad guys that bordered on obsession. Which was not unlike a hound dog, come to think of it.

Now that keen and melancholy gaze was focused on the woman in the bed as intently as if she could actually meet it.

And almost as if she felt that gaze, Caitlyn's hands slowly uncurled, then brushed at the blanket in a self-conscious sort of way. Stabbing a sullen look in Redfield's direction, she uttered a quiet but firm, “All right.”

When the FBI man seated himself on the edge of the bed and half turned so he was facing the woman lying in it, again as if she were capable of seeing him, as if she were someone he wanted to maintain eye contact with, a strange and unfamiliar disquiet stirred in C.J.'s belly. He hated to think it might be jealousy. He sure hoped it wasn't—he'd never been subject to such a thing before.

Nevertheless, he found himself squirming inside as Jake said in a soft, almost intimate voice, “Good for you…glad to hear it.”

Then he paused, long enough for Caitlyn to stir restively and mutter, “So,
talk,
then.”

When he continued, the FBI man's voice was brisk, all business. “Okay. Here's the deal. The man whose daughter you took—Ari Vasily—is a dangerous man.”

Caitlyn interrupted with a faint snort. “Tell me something I
don't
know.”

“We—the Bureau, that is—are very interested in Mr. Vasily,” he went on, as if she hadn't spoken. “We have been for some time.” Caitlyn had grown still and was listening intently, and though she couldn't see it, Jake nodded his approval. “We've been keeping a close eye on some of Mr. Vasily's business dealings since before the 9-11 terrorist attacks—we've always believed him to be a major player in the illegal drug and arms trade, possibly
the
kingpin in Miami and almost certainly a critical link between the Colombians and the Middle-Eastern dealers. Since the attacks, in following the terrorists' money trail, we've been turning up leads that suggest Vasily's links to the Middle East may involve a lot more than illegal drugs.” He paused, creating a stillness nobody cared to break. “We believe that
Ari Vasily may be responsible for channeling hundreds of millions of dollars into terrorists' bank accounts.”

To C.J. the atmosphere in the room felt thick, as if there weren't enough oxygen to go around, and when Caitlyn finally spoke, her voice sounded starved for it. “If you believed that, why haven't you stopped him?”

C.J. jerked his eyes from her hands to her face, then wished he hadn't. Her voice had been so thin, so frail—he wasn't prepared for the silvery flash of accusation in her eyes; the swollen, shiny look of her face, as if from the pressure of too much held-back pain, and the words unspoken:
Then none of this would have had to happen.
Seeing it, the disquiet in his belly became a building pressure that made him want to jump up and pace, punch something—
do
something,
anything
to make that look go away.

Again Redfield acknowledged her anger calmly, with a nod she couldn't see. He spoke with so much control his voice sounded gentle. “We know the links are there, but so far we haven't been able to find the ones that lead back to Vasily. The man is clever and he's careful. And he has almost unlimited resources. He insulates himself inside so many layers of organization, it's been impossible up to now to follow a trail directly to him. We've been able to find and close off a lot of his—I guess you could call them fingers. Tributaries. Channels. What we haven't been able to do is connect any of them to the man at the top—we believe that's Vasily.” C.J. wondered if he was the only one to see the FBI man's hand curl into a fist. For the first time Jake's voice betrayed tight-jawed, frustrated rage. “We know it, but we can't
prove
it.”

Caitlyn spoke, not sullen or accusing, but quietly alert. “What does this have to do with me?”

“I think you may be his first mistake.” Jake's smile wasn't pleasant to see. “We'd like to see that it's a fatal one.”

“A mistake?” Caitlyn whispered. And then, referring to
the second part of the statement, a rather pugnacious, “How?”

Redfield shifted, in the manner of somebody getting down to the nitty-gritty. “This is the first hint we've had that Vasily might be human.” He smiled wryly. “It's obvious that his daughter is important to him. So important that when faced with losing her, he's apparently willing to go to extreme lengths to get her back, even at unprecedented risk of personal exposure.” He leaned forward and his voice hardened. “Spelling it out, I believe Vasily ordered the hit on his wife. I think that's obvious, even if there's no way in hell anybody'd ever make it stick in a court of law. Why would he do such a thing, effectively turning the spotlight of law enforcement on himself, when he's been so successful in avoiding it for so long?” He paused, then answered himself.

“Because he was driven to it by sheer frustration. All those months waiting for you to crack, not able to get to you, not able to do a damn thing to get his daughter back—it finally pushed him into doing something stupid. Now all we have to do is take advantage of that mistake.”

“How can you?” Caitlyn whispered. “If you can't prove he did it—had Mary Kelly killed.”

The FBI man leaned closer, and his voice grew softer still. “He had Mary Kelly killed for one reason, Caitlyn—to send a message to you. Look,” he said, putting up a hand as if to block her gasp of rejection, “you were the one who had his daughter spirited away. He knows his wife didn't have the resources to do that. So, obviously, you're the one who knows where she is.”

“But I don't—” He made a sound to cut off the denial.

“Vasily probably figured you'd be so shook up by the shooting you'd give in and spill what you know to the judge and he'd get the kid back and that would be that. He didn't count on you getting in the way of a bullet.”

“How can you be so sure of that?” Caitlyn protested
faintly, voicing the same arguments C.J. and the others in the room had put forth when Jake had first laid out his theory for them. “There were bullets flying everywhere! Other people were hit—injured. Killed.” Her eyes darted desperately around the room; she had that lost child look again. “Couldn't it have been…I don't know…
random?
”

“Anything's possible,” Jake said solemnly, without an ounce of conviction. “But consider this—the first shots took out the guards, but only wounded them. Then one bullet got Mrs. Vasily square in the heart. The only reason it creased your skull first was because when you heard those first shots you got some crazy notion in your head that you'd protect her. Vasily must have just about had a heart attack when he saw that.” His lips curved in his chilling smile. “It took a real pro and one helluva sharpshooter to do that, but I wouldn't give a bent nickel for the hit man's life right now. Vasily wants you, and he wants you
alive.
”

Vasily wants you.

This must be what drowning feels like, Caitlyn thought, as the wave of fear washed over her. To be engulfed in blackness…suffocating and cold.

And yet her mind was astonishingly clear. “I think I know where this is going,” she heard her own calm voice saying. “You want to set a trap for Vasily, and you want me to be the bait.”

There was a flurry of sounds and stirrings. Her mind's eye struggled to sort them out: a choked protest from Dad, hastily stifled; C.J.'s voice—an angry, growled “No. No way. You said that wasn't…” Background mutterings of protest from someone—that would be C.J.'s sister-in-law, the lawyer, probably; closer by, the FBI man's restless shifting and the barely audible hiss of a breath, exhaled through someone's nose.

The lawyer—Charly—said in a thick Southern drawl, “For Lord's sake, Jake, after you almost lost Evie—”

The FBI man cut her off, speaking directly to Caitlyn in a quiet but curiously vibrant voice. As if, she thought, he was trying to cover up some powerful emotion and not doing a very good job of it. “We do want to set a trap for Vasily, of course. Because if there's one thing in this world Ari Vasily would take care of in person rather than leaving to his loyal—not to mention untraceable—soldiers, it's picking up his little girl, once he finds out where she is. But the last thing we'd want to do is use you
or
the child as bait. Too many things can go wrong.” He paused to clear his throat against a background of more shiftings and stirrings.

Undercurrents, thought Caitlyn, intrigued in spite of everything.

“What we want to do,” the FBI man—Jake?—went on after a moment, raising his voice in a struggle to reclaim his self-control, “is get you under wraps and keep you there until we've got Vasily in custody. To do that—”

“You'll have to use me,” Caitlyn said calmly. “You said yourself—he wants me alive.”

“He wants his
daughter,
” Jake corrected, his voice now hard and flat. “You're the means to an end, as far as he's concerned, nothing more. We'll set up the situation, and it'll be one that isn't going to put you or Emma Vasily in harm's way—leave that to us. Right now we're more concerned about getting you to a safe place without Vasily knowing about it.”

A safe place… Her mind filled with achingly brilliant images of her room in her parents' house on its shaded street in Sioux City—soft-green walls and borders of pink tulips clashing intriguingly with the dark and brooding posters of Middle Earth from the Tolkien phase she'd dwelt in during most of her high school years.

I want to go home.

She couldn't go home, and knew it. So did everybody else in the room, judging from the silence and tension that
had followed Jake's words. Caitlyn's sunny visions of home took on the grainy, shadowy shadings of an old film noir movie as she imagined Ari Vasily tracking her down…finding her there. She couldn't let him find out where her family lived.
Ever.

She shivered, and felt isolated…alone.

A gruff and froggy sound reached for her in her cave of loneliness and yanked her back to the room filled with people. C.J., clearing his throat. C.J., sitting close to her, on the other side of the bed from the FBI man who'd demanded her focused attention so that she'd all but forgotten anyone else was there. C.J., the cute Southern trucker with the melting-chocolate eyes, sweet smile and wicked dimples, who she'd asked for help and who had let her down so badly and who she had expected never to see again, and yet—who was now so inexplicably and constantly
here.

C.J. cleared his throat and said, “How 'bout this? How 'bout she comes home with me—to my folks' place in Georgia?”

Silence again—and Caitlyn thought she'd never known before how many different shades of silence there were. This one shimmered around the edges, balanced on the verge of sound, like that suspenseful moment of emptiness in a symphony just before the strings come in at triple
pianissimo.

Then everyone spoke at once, a murmur and chatter of sound that blew past her ears like a capricious gust of wind.

In its wake, C.J. said, with what she thought was a touch of belligerence, “Look, it's the perfect place. Where we live it's way out in the country—”

“It is that,” said Charly dryly. “C.J.'s right. Out there, the only neighbors are friends and family, and they all know one another. It'd be just about impossible for any stranger to get close enough to Caitlyn to do her harm, and anybody dumb enough to try would have to go through all the brothers and in-laws first—” she interjected a rich,
warm chuckle “—not to mention Momma Betty. Personally, I'd bet on Betty Starr up against a hit man any day of the week.”

Jake said, thoughtful and somber, “Actually, it's got possibilities. There's no way to connect any of you with Caitlyn….” She could tell by the clarity of his voice that he was looking at her, waiting for her reaction.

“Honey?” Her dad's voice, cautious and distant. “What do you think?”

What did she think? She couldn't think. The silence was all around her…vibrant…waiting. Where was C.J.? Was he watching her? Were they
all
looking at her, watching for her response? Searching her face for revelations? Unable to see them, she felt exposed…vulnerable…naked. In self-defense, she fought to make her expression unreadable.

“In case she needs lookin' after, my sister Jess is a nurse, lives right there with my mother,” C.J. put in, rather like a punctuation mark—as if that should settle it.

C.J., who'd let her down and turned her in to the police and got Mary Kelly killed. Now he expected her to go home with him? Let him and his Southern relatives take care of her?

Caitlyn's head felt as if it might explode. Through the hum of sound inside it, like the conversation of angry bees, she heard a chorus of agreement:

“It's not a bad idea….”

“Actually, it's a
great
idea.”

“It'd be the ideal place….”