No Time to Hide (3 page)

He didn’t have time for worrying about that. He was about to retire. All he wanted was to get completely out of the whole business. Soon it wouldn’t matter to him if corruption in the Buffalo office of the United States Marshals Service ran from the top of the food chain all the way to the lowliest housekeeping employee. Soon he’d be strictly a civilian. Every time he thought about the chance at a new beginning, he almost rubbed his hands together in glee.

But ever since he’d been assigned this case, he’d had a feeling. Helen, had always laughed about those feelings. Remembering one such conversation when they’d first been partnered brought a smile, along with a twinge of pain.

Helen had been part warrior, part vixen, and all woman. She’d worked hard and played even harder. Since he did the same thing, they had been a match made in heaven. Or perhaps, a match made in hell.

Their love, their life had been like a hot, all-consuming wildfire racing through a large forest. They had been young, idealistic, and crazy in love.

Cutter smiled as he remembered. Helen had been right about his instincts. Over the years, those feelings had probably saved both their lives more times than they could count. Too bad the feeling had been absent the moment they had needed it most.

Cutter wished he could lay the fault for that disaster squarely at Helen’s feet. It wasn’t possible. He was one hundred percent to blame for that fatal screwup. That was another reason it was time to get out of the business. He’d already lost his partner, his wife, and the best part of his life because his instincts were screwed to hell and back. In this business, if you couldn’t trust your instincts, there was nothing left. He knew that now.

Cutter deleted the message. This was no time to try to re-win battles long lost. He had to stay focused on today and the job at hand. He figured all it would take was forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours and he was done. He was finished being a United States Marshal. Now and forever more he was just going to be a coach and hopefully a teacher. Maybe he’d take some time and head up to the reservation. See if it was possible to rebuild the friendship bridge between him and Stan.

A little fishing, a little hunting, a lot of drinking was just the ticket. But first things first.

Cutter continued working his way through the Justice Department’s secure Internet connection, forgetting about the future as he focused on finding the edge he needed to make it through the present. In his experience, there was always an edge. Sometimes it was just hard to find.

He accessed files that had been left for him by his supervisor and his new partner to help him get up to speed. Then he delved a little deeper and accessed the files of the agents who’d handled Kerry’s first two relocations. He frowned slightly as he scanned report after report after report. They painted a picture that was almost a caricature of a daughter of the mob. This woman was about money, materials, the good life. He settled heavier and deeper into the chair, going through a day-by-day chronicle of the lives and loves of the Giancarlo family. Gradually, the reports went from day-by-day to hour-by hour, culminating on the day Kerry turned herself over to the program. Then he read about the ongoing nightmare protecting her new identities had become.

About two hours later, he stretched, feeling the kinks in his upper back, shoulders and neck from his computer time. He shifted and felt the crack of bones shifting back into place. He’d been in too many fights over the years and sometimes he felt like a poster boy for one of those geriatric ointment and aid ads. Except when he fell, there was no one to help him up. Shrugging away the nagging pain of a hundred small injuries, he refocused on his current problem.

There was still something missing from the puzzle of the woman now known as Kerry Simpson. Cutter hated puzzles with a passion. Well, okay, so some puzzles he loved. He loved the puzzle of figuring out a crime, the whodunit action. But this kind of puzzle was nothing more than a pain in the proverbial ass. On the surface, there was no puzzle. It was the underneath nagging at him now.

The woman in the files was the Kerry he had expected to be working to protect. He tried to square that picture with the way her hand had felt in his. Her light laugh when she’d shyly flirted with him. The very real fear that had been in her eyes when she’d realized they were being followed.

He ignored the crawl of icy fingers up his spine. He had to focus on the facts, not on his gut. His gut couldn’t be trusted anymore. But the facts didn’t lie.

Cutter replayed the conversation he’d had with the top man in the Buffalo office, Josh Denver, again.

***

“We don’t know how they found out she was here,” Denver said, “but we don’t like it. This is the third time they’ve found her out and that’s highly irregular.”

“What do we know?” Cutter asked, trying to keep the slur off the royal “we” Denver had used.

He didn’t have a specific problem with Denver. Once, lifetimes ago, he had Denver had been pals of a sort. Things change. People change. He sure as hell had and, best he could tell, so had Denver. Once a squared-away cop who was just about the best damn investigator Cutter had ever known, Denver had become a paper-pushing bureaucrat worried more about budgets and PR than solving crimes. Well, that, too, wasn’t going to be Cutter’s problem much longer.

“We know there are flyers everywhere and a home page on the web. It gives her original description, along with known disguises. It says, ‘Wanted, dead or alive, ten-million-dollar reward.’”

Cutter whistled softly.

“Exactly. Ten million dollars is enough to cause a lot of headaches for us.”

“Do we know who’s footing the bill?”

“Yes, it appears the mother, but there’s little question the son is really pulling the purse strings—Dominic Giancarlo. Word on the street is the old man had been grooming him to take over the business when he got a little more experience.”

“Any idea if or when Treasury is going to be able to tie the money back to the father? Or are they going to stay with just the son being involved in the tax fraud?”

Dom Giancarlo was currently in Fort Dix Federal Prison, but not for ordering the death of Kerry’s father. It seemed Dom was a little careless with his income tax returns—to the tune of ten million dollars in unreported income, along with proof of getting insider information on stocks in public companies. The United States Treasury didn’t take too kindly to that kind of action.

Cutter heard volumes in Denver’s long pause.

“Treasury is always looking at the numbers. But so far, they’ve got squat.”

Cutter sighed. “So, Dominic is doing playground time in a federal country club, pulling all these strings, and no one can do anything? Sometimes the system sucks.”

Denver’s chuckle wasn’t one of amusement. “Only sometimes? Buddy, I think you’re mellowing in your old age.”

Cutter didn’t bothered to reply to that suggestion.

“I still don’t understand why Dom has taken such an interest in our girl. Surely it can’t be for the sex.”

Denver snorted. “Not bloody likely. Dom has always had more women than he could shake a stick at. So did, or should I say does, his old man. These Giancarlos are a randy lot.”

“Well, then what’s the attraction? I can’t believe they would go to all this trouble just because she named a few of her daddy’s contacts in the city. They weren’t worth that much, especially since all they could build against Dominic was a tax fraud case.”

“That’s the party line coming out of the U.S. Attorney’s office.”

Cutter chewed on his bottom lip with his incisors. “I don’t like it, Denver.”

“Join the club. But you know the routine.”

“Yeah. Follow orders and I’ll get answers on a need-to-know basis.”

“That’s right, man. But don’t worry, pretty soon the only need to know you’re going to have to think about is which teenager is falling asleep in freshman history.”

Cutter laughed. “Right, it’s easy to see with your bachelor lifestyle you haven’t been following what’s going on in public education these days. By the way, thanks for making my last two weeks on the job a piece-of-cake. Nothing like knowing you’ve got a friend watching out for you.”

Denver laughed. “Hey, what do you want? You’ve got guard duty on the prettiest lady currently in WitSec. Believe me, there are a lot of guys in the office right now wishing they were in your shoes, old man.”

“Right. Well, tell anyone who thinks he’s able, come on out. I’m willing to trade duties any time. This girl is one piece of work.”

Denver laughed and ended the call.

***

Cutter scratched at a nonexistent itch on his shoulder blade. He couldn’t shake the feeling something wasn’t right. He wished he could figure out what it was. He thought again about the e-mail from Stan. It was weird that things would be getting stirred up again on the reservation. It had been so quiet lately, with everyone’s attention focused on getting the casino up and running. It had been an unprecedented time with no major skirmishes among any of the different factions. So, why were things heating up now?

He shrugged and told himself he was just adding fat to the fire. He had enough to worry about getting through this last assignment. He didn’t need to be seeing ghosts where they didn’t exist.

Going back to the computer, he continued his research, hoping to find something that would stop the itch or ease his gut. Right now, he’d take either.

***

Saturday, 2 P.M.

It took the rumbling of his stomach to interrupt Cutter’s concentration. Then it was another moment or two until the total silence of the cabin registered. It was almost like he was in the cabin alone. His adrenaline kicked up a notch and his senses went on high alert. He reached for his gun, lying on the jacket he’d flung over the arm of the couch. He checked his ammo clip, held it at the ready at his side, and went hunting.

Where the hell was Kerry? How had a woman he knew to be high maintenance, needing attention like most women needed cosmetics, managed to remain quiet and out of his hair for the two-plus hours he’d been working?

He searched through the house in quadrants, looking for her and any signs of a security breach. Cutter wasn’t worried. This house was wired tighter than Fort Knox. If anyone had left or come in, there’d have been enough alarms and lights flashing to wake the dead. Even asleep, Cutter wasn’t that out of it. Still, no use taking chances at this stage. It was better to be anal than dead.

He found her in the back bedroom. It was the one with no windows, no way in or out except the one door. Maybe she was smarter than he’d figured.

He started to speak, then noticed that she held a large artist sketchbook and was working feverishly on something.

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” she murmured, giving him an indication she had heard his arrival.

Now more interested than perturbed, he moved in a little closer, careful to stay out of her personal space, but also wanting a look at what she was doing on the pad.

Her wrist and hand moved like lightning across the page. Was she writing? No, it looked like she was drawing. He tried not to notice the fine blue veins of her hand and arm or the pure white skin on the inside of her wrist. It looked soft. For a dizzying second, he felt an overwhelming need to pull that hand to him and caress the wrist with his lips and tongue. Would she taste floral or earthy? Trying to take his mind off those thoughts, he focused on what her hand was doing.

Intrigued, he drew closer. He couldn’t see the page, but he could see the tracings on one she had finished and left on the bed. It looked like caricatures or cartoons. It looked like a dinosaur or dragon, so maybe it something for a paleontologist.

Or a kindergarten teacher? The way she looked, the teacher part was a good fit. Except her background certainly was a school board’s nightmare. He returned his focus on the drawings themselves.

What or whoever the drawings were for, they were excellent. This woman had artistic talent. Great, all he had to do was keep a ditzy artistic daughter and fiancée of the mob safe. Could he have gotten a case with more potential problems?

“Did I hear you on the phone a while ago?”

Kerry’s soft question made him realize his mind had been wandering again. The scent of wildflowers reached his nose, making it twitch uncontrollably. Her hair was still damp from her shower and swirled in a soft-looking riot of curls. He scratched his nose, hoping the scent would stop bothering him. It’d been a long time since he’d done straight protection work, but the last job he’d done, there sure hadn’t been flower-scented shampoo left in the safe house. Surely that wasn’t her natural body odor. Nah, maybe she was so used to being on the run she carried some of her toiletries with her. He’d have to warn her about that. Smells, just like looks, were often dead giveaways.

“Was there any news in the call?” she asked.

He shook off the thought, though her scent lingered in his nostrils and drew pictures on its own. Trying to forget everything, he took in her appearance. She’d paired an oversized white T-shirt with off-white shorts, leaving her deliciously long legs and sexy feet, with their pink-painted toenails, bare. Her toes were curling into a faded area rug that covered the hardwood flooring. His itch drifted lower and he frowned at the thoughts running through his mind. He’d never had a foot fetish before, but then he hadn’t seen toes that turned him on quite so much. They were perfect—except the littlest one, which seemed to be just a touch smaller than normal. It made him want to pull her foot to him and play “this little piggy” all night long.