Material Witness (18 page)

He didn't say anything. How could he
tell her the truth? After the shooting five years ago, he'd thought sleeping
with a woman was his salvation. Not consciously, of course. That had come out
later after many sessions with the department shrink and a lot of soul
searching on his part. He couldn’t even recall the faces and names of some of
the women he’d been with during that period. He’d been reckless, testing his
boundaries just to feel alive. He’d survived where other officers had not.

It nearly destroyed his peace of mind
and quite literally could have destroyed his life. But he’d gotten over looking
at woman as sexual objects and distanced himself from any romantic attachments
so he could focus on getting himself back to the thing he needed. His job. Jake
wasn’t about to destroy himself again just because the woman he was charged to
protect was sexy as hell.

“Was it the kissing or the idea that
wasn't good?” Cassie asked, her lower lip jutting out. But she valiantly fought
to keep from showing her pain.

“I don't think I have to comment on
how
that
kiss was. You were right there with me. It was…”

Mind blowing? The most incredibly
intense experience he'd ever had with a woman, and it was just a kiss? If just
kissing Cassie was enough to cause a complete meltdown inside him, he could
only imagine how perfect making love to her would be.

Jake didn't have to imagine it. He
knew. Making love to Cassie would be incredible. And that startled him to the
core because despite his past, despite the aggressive need he’d felt after the
shooting, being with Cassie would be making love, not just sex.

But he couldn't say that to her. If
he did, he'd be reaching for her again, scooping her up into his arms. He’d be
carrying her to that tiny bedroom and placing her down on that enormous bed.
He'd be making love to her all night, and then some, until his body finally
quit.

He wanted that as much as he wanted
his next breath. But he couldn't tell her that.

“You don't have to worry about
hurting my feelings,” she said softly, abruptly pushing up from the sofa.

Although they were right in front of
the woodstove, the sudden distance from Cassie left him cold. He already ached
to have her in his arms again.

She chuckled without any humor. “I
never got high marks in the kissing department.”

Jake almost choked on his words.
“Says who?” How could anyone think kissing Cassie was anything but a cosmic
explosion?

She shook her head and wrapped her
arms around herself. Dipping her head, she avoided his probing eyes.

“It doesn't matter.”

“Cassie, if any man ever told you
something like that then he was nothing more than an idiot.”

Her dark eyes lifted to meet his
straight on. The uncertainty in her expression made his chest squeeze so tight
he couldn't breathe.

“Do you mean that?”

“My pulling away from you has nothing
to do with not wanting you. In fact, that's all I've been able to think about.”

“Me, too,” she admitted, her lips
stretching into a coy smile.

“But that's the problem. I can't
protect you if…”

“We make love? That's what you were
going to say, right? You want to make love with me just as much as I want it.”

Good Lord, he was in trouble. It
didn't take much to know how Cassie felt, but hearing her say the words aloud
was torture.

“Yes, Cassie. I want to make love to
you,” he said, his voice just above a whisper. The need inside him kicked so
strong and violently, he couldn't breathe. “But that’s not going to happen.”

He pulled himself up from the sofa
and stood, standing on the opposite side of the throw rug on the floor. It was
much too far away from where he wanted to be, but at the same time it was a
safe enough distance to keep him from reaching out and touching Cassie. To give
in to all that he wanted.

“Trust me. It's better this way,” he
said, realizing as he said the words that he was trying to convince himself
more than her that it was true.

“I don't happen to agree with you,”
she said, lifting her chin just a bit as if to keep him from seeing the hurt
from his rejection by showing her strength. “But I won't beg.”

“Cassie—”

“It's okay, Jake,” she said, cutting
him off. “Really. I appreciate your honesty. I think it helps to keep a line
drawn between us, if that's what you need. And you're right in one way. There's
too much going on right now, and we're liable to get confused about how we
really feel about each other.”

He nodded, the disappointment
striking him like a kick in the stomach. Even worse because he'd been the one
to deliver the pain.

Damn he’d been a colossal jerk
leading Cassie on with that kiss, and then rejecting her when all he wanted to
do was make her smile as she had done so many times before. She wasn't smiling
now. She was trying to be strong. But Jake knew she was hurting.

And so was he. His body still ached
for her.

Cassie wordlessly turned and walked
toward the bedroom door.

“Goodnight,” he called out.

Cassie stopped at the doorway,
placing her hand on the doorjamb. But she didn't turn around.

She was waiting for him to come with
her into the bedroom. To finish what they'd started. To give in to what they
both confessed to wanting.

In his heart, Jake knew that. But the
professional side of him, the one who'd vowed never to use a woman to take away
the pain again, the one that kept screaming for him to detach from his feelings
for Cassie, held him back.

After a few agonizingly long seconds,
when it was clear he hadn't moved and had no intention of following her, Cassie
stepped into the room and quietly closed the door.

Jake pried his clenched fists apart,
feeling pain in his joints from holding them so tight.

He’d survived gun fights on
gang-plagued streets. He'd stared down the barrel of a gun thinking it would be
the very last thing he would see before he left this earth. But not following
Cassie into that bedroom had to be the hardest thing he'd ever done in his
entire life.

* * *

Angel had broken into his own home in
the middle of the night like a damned cat burglar, stalking through the
alleyways and staying hunched in the shadows until he saw the cars change. He'd
been watching them, just as they had been watching his house.
His home.
Damn them.

Fucking police had never been able to
catch him before. What the fuck made them think they could now?

Climbing through the open window,
Angel immediately felt the warm air from the radiator rise up to meet him. At
least his mom had paid the electric bill before hitting the bottle. After two
days of hiding in the cold, he welcomed the warmth. He didn't have time to take
comfort though. He wouldn’t be here long.

He paused when he saw the nearly
empty bottle of vodka on the kitchen table and cursed quietly. Could there be
any more torture?

The blaring of the telephone was only
marginally louder than the noise of the television in the next room. But even
that would be enough to at least rouse his mother from the drunken stupor for
which she'd buried herself. It wasn't enough that they'd buried Debbie. Santos
had to kill them all.

With renewed rage, Angel wrenched the
phone from its cradle before the third ring and waited for the caller to
identify himself before giving his own identity away. The familiar voice had
him taking a sigh in relief.

He glanced down the hallway toward
his mother's bedroom on his way to the kitchen. The door was shut and the
television was on. He could hear the laughter from a sit-com rerun that his
mother always enjoyed. Thinking about the empty bottle he’d found, he figured
she wasn't enjoying much of anything tonight.

“I told you never to call me here.
This line could be tapped,” he growled.

“If you're stupid enough to go back
home where someone can tail you, you deserve to be caught. I'd know if there
was a tap on your damned phone. What the hell are you doing there? You were
supposed to meet me.”

“I needed cash. My picture is all
over the news. I can't show my face anywhere for fear someone will turn on me.
And no one wants to know me right now. You said you had things covered. Is it
done?” he asked, his voice just below normal level. Although the only other
person in the house was his mother and she wasn't likely to hear. Not in her current
state.

The voice on the other end was low
and muffled. “You always did ask too many damned questions.”

“I don't see your face plastered on
the damned television screen.” He slammed his fist on the counter and then
quickly stepped into the hallway to see that his mother's door was still
closed.

His poor, sainted mother. She'd gone
through enough heartache. It was all Santos' fault. All of it. Why didn't he
just die in that bar with that bitch? It would have been sweet. It wouldn't
have brought back Debbie, but at least there wouldn't be a witness, nothing to
connect that shooting to him.

He couldn't hear any movement in the
bedroom. His mother was probably passed out. It didn't take much these days.

“Just tell me if they're dead.”

“Not yet. They escaped the
explosion,” the voice on the line said.

“Dammit. You said you'd take care of
it.”

“And I will. We've got a lead. Seems
a Good Samaritan, a truck driver on his way to upstate New York, called the
hotline. Was going to sell what he knew to the tabloids but then got a stab of
conscience and decided to do the right thing. Don't it give you that warm and
fuzzy feeling all over?”

“Not particularly. If you know where
they are, what are you doing on the phone with me? Waste them already. Those
other suits are probably on their way to pick them up and when they do, I'm
screwed. You, too, for that matter. If I'm going down, so are you.”

Angel darted his eyes to the hallway
again when he realized his voice had boomed.

“Pipe down. The beauty of all this is
that I'm the one who answered the call. I gave only enough information to my
superiors to satisfy them. Seems Santos and Ms. Lang had breakfast this morning
at some truck stop on the highway. That's about as much as the Bureau knows.
They're all chasing a pretty white rabbit that's already gone off to a new
burrow.”

Angel's laugh started slow and then
grew to a full cackle. It was the first time today he actually felt good. “You
know where they are.”

“I've got it covered.”

His voice hardened. “You had it
covered the last time and you blew it.”

“You just meet me where we agreed. It
won't be long before we can put all this behind us.”

Angel dropped the phone with a thud.
So she was on the run again. Cassie Lang. He knew he'd seen her striking face
before he'd seen the headlines. It had taken awhile to figure out where, but
then he remembered the sleek picture on the back of one of his mother's shiny
new paperbacks. His mother always kept a book or two in the living room, a few
in the kitchen and the bedroom. There wasn't much to her life these days but
her reading.

Walking to the living room, he
glanced at the collection of books on the shelf above the television. One had
Cassie Lang's name on it. Her face was there, too.

That face. A pretty thing like that
wasn't something Angel was likely to forget again.

He reached for the new paperback
still sitting neatly on the coffee table. His mother hadn't gotten around to
reading this one yet. He leafed through it and found the picture on the back.
She was wearing a bright white, high-collared shirt and her hair fell against
it in shocking contrast. She was a looker with those big brown eyes and full
red lips.

Cassie Lang
.

“Bitch, you can run all you want. But
with a face like that, there’s no place you can hide that I won’t find you. I
will. And when I do, you'll die.”

For the first time that day, Angel
smiled.

* * *

Jake was outside behind the cabin
when Cassie woke the next morning.

“You deserted me,” she said.

“I thought I'd see if I could get
this Jeep started. I found the keys on the hook in the pantry.”

She planted her fists on her hips.
“How's it going?”

“Battery is dead. But I expected it
might be after sitting so long.”

“There are a whole bunch of storage
batteries in the supply room. Could you switch with one of those?”

“Probably not. They aren't the right
size. But I can use one to juice this battery.”

A slight stab of guilt pierced Cassie
as she thought about Jake sleeping on the sofa last night. She'd wasted a
perfectly good bed as she tossed and turned, thinking about Jake and the kiss
they shared. And because she was awake, she’d heard every bit of his
restlessness as well.