Reluctant Witness (40 page)

“Gee, kid...that doesn’t mean you can’t get
regular exercise! It’s just a matter of knowing how to shake things
up. You pick five or six different workout routines for the week
and you roll the dice to decide which one gets done. Monday, you
roll a one, so you go for a bike ride. Tuesday, you roll a five, so
you go for a gym workout. You change your list every week,
rearranging the activities numerically, adding or subtracting. That
way, your choice is random. Didn’t anyone teach you these things in
witness protection?”

“No.”

“Pity. You’ve definitely got the grace of a
natural athlete. And it would be helpful for your security if you
were to maintain it. Exercise isn’t just for weight management, you
know. It’s also a matter of keeping your reflexes sharp and your
brain trained to react quickly.”

While Nancy and Terry schooled me on
security, Rocky and Tom contacted a couple of retired law
enforcement buddies, inviting them to bring their wives down to
Palm Coast for a working vacation. Rocky arranged for the use of
four condos within the same building at a resort down the coast.
That way, we would always have people around us, in case there was
an emergency. Nancy knew the two wives already, so she was thrilled
they would be joining us.

“It’s going to be like old home week, kid.
Boy, are we going to have fun!”

Three days later, I found out where we were
going when we checked out of the hotel and into a three-bedroom
condo at Cinnamon Beach, a gated community within the Ocean Hammock
Resort about twenty miles south of St. Augustine. Terry and Nancy
were excited at the prospect of playing golf at the course called
“The Pebble Beach of the East”.

Our unit was in a quiet area of the complex.
Nancy parked the car in a spot in front of the building. We took
the elevator up to the top floor and crossed the open air corridor
to our assigned penthouse condo.

“This looks promising,” Terry decided as the
door swung open.

“Not too shabby,” Nancy agreed as we peered
inside, our curiosity rising. There were two guest rooms, one on
either side of the tiled foyer. The larger one had a queen-size bed
and an attached bath; the smaller of the two had bunk beds, an
attached bath, and a window that faced the exterior corridor of the
building. Nancy shook her head when she saw that.

“Security-wise, I’d rather not put you in
either of these, Marigold. We’ll have to alarm that window, Terry.
Let’s see what the third bedroom looks like.”

We walked on, passing an open kitchen and a
dining area, and into a living room with a wall of windows that
gave direct access to a long, oceanfront balcony with a
breathtaking view. We checked out the master bedroom, popping in
from the living room. Not only did it have a large window facing
the ocean, it had a set of sliding glass doors that opened onto
that glorious balcony. Terry inspected the walk-in closet, while
Nancy and I opened the remaining door and poked our heads in. The
master bath was sumptuous, with a large tub and a separate
shower.

“Perfect,” Nancy decided. “You should be fine
in here.”

“More than fine,” I replied, smiling. I was
utterly charmed by our accommodation, with its rich West Indian
tropical decor. It felt like home. For the first time in weeks, I
could walk from room to room, coming and going whenever I wanted,
without needing a bodyguard to follow me. For the first time since
leaving Atlanta, I felt like I could finally breathe.

“Definitely no complaints from me,” she
laughed, returning to the living room, where she flopped down on
the sofa. “This is great.”

We had a real kitchen, where I could cook to
my heart’s content. Nancy and I made a trip to the local Publix for
groceries, loading up on food and sundries.

“Terry and I are leaving tomorrow,” she
reminded me on our way back to the resort. “Tom’s coming down with
Jojo, and Rocky said the rest of the gang will be arriving tomorrow
night. Let’s stop and grab some wine.”

It took us an hour to shop and three trips
back and forth to the car to carry all the groceries into the
building vestibule. Once she had parked the car, Nancy and I loaded
the bags onto the elevator and rode it to the top floor. Terry
helped us from there.

“You ladies leave any groceries for other
customers?” he wanted to know, as he lugged the last sack into the
kitchen and plunked it on the counter.

We grilled up a steak, baked some potatoes,
and tossed a salad for dinner, popping open a pinot noir to share.
It was such a lovely change from eating in restaurants every night.
We lingered over strawberry shortcake at the dining table under the
covered balcony. There was no reason to rush. And when the dishes
were loaded into the dishwasher and the pots and pans were cleaned
and put away, it was a pleasure to lounge on the pair of sofas and
watch TV together. We left the sliding glass door open, and I could
hear the ocean waves rolling in, soothing my spirit.

“I love having a normal life again,” I
sighed, sinking onto the seat cushion.

“Gee, it’s going to be hard to leave here
tomorrow.” Nancy said wistfully.

“Yeah,” Terry agreed. “We haven’t played this
course yet, and I hear it’s a beauty.”

“I’ll miss you two,” I told them as we
watched the news. “I hope it all goes well back in Atlanta.”

“Don’t you worry, kid. We’ll be back with
bells on in no time at all. Besides, you’re about to have a
familiar little visitor, one with four legs.” Terry announced.

“Tom and Jojo are bringing Kary?”

“Indeed they are, Marigold.”

The next few days seemed to fly by. Ocean
Hammock turned out to be a perfect place to hide out. The retired
agents and their spouses showed up with the enthusiasm of kids
going to summer camp. Karen and Al came down from Washington with
Tom and Jojo. Karen was an experienced counterintelligence analyst
at the FBI, used to tracking spies and patterns of suspicious
behavior. Tom wanted her assessment of the information we
developed. Al had been involved in national security cases, so he
still had a lot of useful contacts he could reach out to for
information, both in the United States and overseas.

Tessa and Mark flew to Charleston from
Minnesota, so that Lorena and Dan could pick them up at the airport
and drive them down from South Carolina. Rocky and Tom thought it
would give the foursome a little more cover that way. The two men
had worked together in the Los Angeles FBI field office, Dan as
assistant special agent-in-charge and Mark as a supervisory agent.
Tessa was a real estate agent in and Lorena was a kitchen designer
for a well-known real estate developer, so I picked their brains
about trends in house renovations. We had several discussions about
what kinds of changes actually increased a property’s value.

Of the three couples joining Tom, Jojo, and
me, Mark and Tessa were the closest to my age. Having the chance to
hang out with them made me realize how much I missed having friends
my own age.

I followed Nancy’s suggestion and set up a
routine for getting exercise every day. I went for bike rides and
took walks along the beach. I was invited to play tennis with the
group of ladies, and occasionally the men joined us for mixed
doubles. The sunrises over the ocean were spectacular, and I could
often be found having breakfast on the balcony. Jojo usually joined
me, relishing the glorious views.

It was lovely to see the little dog again.
Kary often accompanied Jojo and me on our excursions. We even got a
basket for one of the bikes, so he could come along when we rode on
the bike paths.

Tom commandeered the third bedroom in the
condo as an office. He pushed the beds to the far wall and put
together a desk he bought at Staples, so he could work.

The week passed quickly. When Nancy and Terry
returned, Tessa and Mark went back to Minnesota, and Tom and Jojo
moved to the condo down the hall, taking little Kary with them. I
missed his presence enormously. The condo seemed so silent without
the tap-tap-tap of his toenails on the tile floors.

We got back to our daily routine right away.
Terry had been a firearms instructor in the Marines before becoming
a federal agent. Now retired, he was more than content to handle
security assignments for Roaring Kill Productions. As he put it,
the pay was great, the risks low, and the chance to play golf made
it all worthwhile, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to do
whatever it took to keep me safe. He wanted me to know that both he
and his wife were champion marksmen. In fact, that’s what brought
them together as a couple.

“I’ll be honest with you. Nance has actually
bested me in a couple of competitions -- three, to be exact. I aim
to make sure she doesn’t do it in a fourth,” he confided, giving me
a wink. “I love my wife, but my eyes are always on the prize.”

Terry and Nancy spent several hours each day
training me in the art of self-defense and evasive maneuvers. They
also utilized the other retired agents as instructors because, as
Nancy said, it helped to get as much training from as many people
as possible. She told me everyone developed a style of fighting
over time, and if I only practiced with the two of them, I might
think I could anticipate my attacker’s moves, and that could prove
dangerous for me.

They also fully debriefed me about my life in
Rhode Island, both before and after I met Jared. We went over the
events leading up to Jared’s murder. They grilled me on every
little detail, sometimes going over the same points again and
again, until I felt like screaming. Nancy sent Jeff and Rocky the
results in encrypted emails, which they shared with Tom and
Lincoln.

By the third week of March, Karen and Al gave
Jojo a ride back to Washington, because she was due back at work,
but Tom stayed on. The biggest surprise of all was the news that
Jeff was coming down with Rocky.

Every time I found myself growing excited at
the prospect of seeing him again, imagining that spark between us
catching fire, I remembered Rocky’s warning about Jeff. Maybe it
was best to just go on acting like a friend and leave the romance
out of our relationship, especially if there was no chance we could
ever be together.

Nancy and I were going over defensive moves
in the living room the following day, just before noon. She had me
in a choke hold, showing me little mercy, and as I tried to
untangle myself, there was a knock at the front door.

“Hold that thought,” she instructed me,
releasing me before she headed down the hallway to answer it. A
moment later, I heard her giggling. “What the dickens is this?”

Chapter Thirty
Six

Curiosity got the better of me. I hurried to
the foyer to see what was so amusing.

“Don’t you mean who in the dickens is this?”
Jefferson appeared in the doorway just as I rounded the corner. As
our eyes met, I felt a tingle go through me that was as
electrifying as it was delicious. He was here at last. Stop it, I
cautioned my romantic self, as my hopes soared. He’s just a nice
guy, an author in search of a good storyline. And yet, I had to
admit that just to be close to Jeff was delightful, like being home
again with family.

Family...it had been a long time since I had
seen mine...too long. Ever since Jared died, I had been in limbo.
My sisters lived their lives without me, as did my father. As far
as I knew, none of them had any idea of what I had been through, or
even that I was in danger now. That was just the luck of the draw
as a protected witness separated from family. Maybe it was the
strong bonds shared by the Cornwall brothers that triggered this
reaction in me, I decided. I hadn’t had a real home since I was
sixteen. I always felt like I was living on borrowed time and
eventually someone would come to reclaim it. The wonderful sense of
camaraderie the brothers shared drew me to them. I wished to be
inside that Cornwall circle because they had what I had missed all
these years. They had roots of love that went deep into the earth
and made them strong.

But now...here...seeing Jeff, I couldn’t
ignore the reality that I longed for more. Perhaps the magnetic
pull that drew me to him was just my mind’s way of trying to tap
into that elusive sense of security, of permanence that home
provided. I wanted what normal people had, a sense of belonging.
The ache to be in those strong arms of his, to be wrapped up in
their confident embrace, hit me head on, like a rip current,
threatening to pull me under, to drown me in emotions that tossed
me around on a sea of despair until I felt light-headed. I felt
more vulnerable than ever. As I stood there, rationalizing every
emotion that flowed through my heart in just those few brief
seconds in the foyer, there was one thing I couldn’t deny. I had
never felt this strongly about any one man before and I wasn’t sure
I liked it.

I tried again to fight it with reason, but it
just made things worse. I knew I was only fooling myself. There was
no evidence to prove that he felt even a smidgen of the yearning I
did. So, why did I go on hoping this tiny, burning ember inside me
would ignite in him? Who was I to imagine I could matter to him? I
was just suffering from the normal angst of a woman too long on the
run. What else could it be?

“Well?” Jeff stepped into the foyer, followed
by Rocky. “What do you think of him?”

“Of him?” I couldn’t take my eyes off the man
standing before me. He wore a green golf shirt and a pair of
khakis, with boat shoes on his feet and sunglasses still perched on
the bridge of his nose. I couldn’t read the emotions in his eyes
and that just seemed to rattle me even more.

“The little guy!” He pointed to the foyer
floor, where a bundle of nervous energy twirled around on a
leash.

Nancy bent over and picked up a small tan and
silver creature, cuddling him in her arms. When his little head
popped up, I spied a slightly timid Yorkshire terrier. Had Jeff
gotten a dog? He had made no mention of the pup in any of our
conversations or emails.