Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (56 page)

But Jonas had seen it, too. And by the time the next fist sailed toward him, he shook his head and met the attack halfway. He caught the oncoming fist in his meaty grip and squeezed.

“Uh! Damn.” The man in the suit tried to resist without breaking his hand, but sheer strength won out.

Jonas drove him to his knees. Then in one swift motion, he reached inside the man’s coat and pulled his gun from his holster. Jonas stood up straight and released his fist, but trained the gun at the middle of the other man’s chest.

“Jonas, don’t!” She didn’t think she could handle another dead body on her conscience.

“Who are you?” Jonas demanded, his hand and the gun never wavering their aim.

The downed man rubbed his bruised fist. “Damn, you two are hard to track.”

“Don’t cuss in front of the lady,” Jonas snapped. “Who are you?”

“You’re right not to take any chances with her safety.” The man raised both hands in reluctant surrender. He tilted his head back and exhaled a long, steadying breath, arrogantly ignoring the gun pointed at him. “I have identification in the front inside pocket of my jacket.”

But Faith already recognized him. “You’re the man on TV.”

She snatched at Jonas’s arm to pull him away from the fight. “He’s the FBI, Jonas. Agent Carmichael.” But the fact that she’d moved was motivation enough. The instant she stepped closer, Jonas dashed to her side, angling his body to keep her out of the agent’s direct line of sight. She leaned around his shoulder. “You are, aren’t you?”

Jonas’s voice bristled through the air. “Pull your badge and nothing else.”

He grabbed Faith by the arm and shoved her back behind him while the man slowly began to lift open his jacket. A shuffling sound drew everyone’s attention to the rest room’s open door. An anxious traveler, not more than college age most likely, stood in openmouthed shock in the doorway. A woman in the men’s room was nothing compared to one man holding another on his knees at gunpoint. Jonas and the agent turned as one.

“Get out.”

“It’s occupied.”

“Sorry,” Faith added as the young man hurried back out the way he came.

The two men seemed to eye each other with a bit of surprise and grudging respect. The cautious male bonding of like minds might be unexpected, but it was hardly Faith’s biggest concern at the moment. “Don’t you think he might report this?”

Her reminder was enough to speed the conversation along. “I’m Special Agent Rory Carmichael.” The man on his knees held up his badge in his left hand.

While Jonas scanned the ID, Faith peeked around to study him. Tall. Lanky. Chestnut-colored hair. Impeccable suit. Well, an impeccable suit that was a little worse for wear right now.

“All right, you can stand,” Jonas conceded. But he made no effort to return the gun. “A friend of mine says you’ve been recalled from your investigation into Miss Monroe. What made you follow us here from Denver?”

Agent Carmichael pocketed his badge and frowned in clear disbelief. “You saw me?”

“I knew you were there.” He didn’t stop Faith this time from moving around to his side. “What do you want?”

He straightened his sleeves and lapels as he stood. “I need to ask her some questions.”

“Ask them. But make it fast,” warned Jonas.

Agent Carmichael’s warm brown gaze settled on Faith. “The red car you were driving in Wyoming—it had a bug planted in it.”

Bug? As in tracking device? In Liza’s car? She looked up at Jonas. “What does that mean?”

He answered without taking his gaze, or the gun, off Carmichael. “It means someone could have tracked you all the way from Saint Louis.”

Carmichael had a different idea. “Or someone in Elk Point wanted to track you to your next destination. Not knowing you were going to pick up your sidekick here.”

“Did Sheriff Prince know about the tracking device?” she asked.

The agent shrugged. “I never got a chance to ask. He was dead before I could talk to him. And the deputies—”

He didn’t have to finish describing the deputies’ incompetence. Faith nodded. “We know the deputies.”

Rory Carmichael smiled. “At any rate, the bug is what changed you from my prime murder suspect to a key witness and probable target.”

She couldn’t say her change in status with the FBI felt like an improvement.

“Whose murder are you investigating?” she asked, more consumed with a perverse need to know how many deaths she might be responsible for rather than worrying about becoming the next victim herself.

“William Rutherford. We’re familiar with his work at the Bureau. We know he worked with your father several years ago. I’ve filed a request to reopen that case, investigating it as a homicide instead of an accident.” Faith hugged herself, trying not to react to the life-altering information he ticked off with such businesslike detachment on his fingers. “Also Daniel Novotny. A security guard at Eclipse Labs who tried to stop the killer from escaping.”

Faith nodded, sadly picturing Danny’s teasing smile. “I talked to him every morning.”

“Liza Shelton—though right now her death is being treated as a local homicide. I looked into it when I found out the two of you had been roommates in college. Their lead investigator said it looked like the neighbor might have done it. A crime of passion or—”

Jonas interrupted. “You have a name for the cop who’s running that case?”

Faith answered for him. “Jermaine Collier.” She met Agent Carmichael’s surprised gaze. “Tall guy with a shaved head and a goatee?”

“Yeah.” He shook his head, waiting for more information. “You know Detective Collier?”

She latched on to Jonas’s arm before her knees give way. “He killed Liza, too.” She had known he was most likely responsible, but to actually hear someone place Copperhead at her friend’s apartment…

Jonas’s big hand suddenly covered hers, infusing her with his strength. “He hasn’t gotten to you yet. And he won’t. I promise.”

“If Collier’s a fake, that would fit in with the lead I’m pursuing.” Like Jonas, Agent Carmichael didn’t mince words. “There are two people on your tail, masquerading as FBI agents. One of them talked to the deputies in Elk Point. He showed up again at the university in Laramie with his partner. I take it you helped yourself to something in the computer lab?”

Jonas nodded. But Faith could feel the tension thrumming through the corded muscles of his arm. “You said he had a partner? Let me guess—a man closing in on retirement who looks like he has more money than he can count.”

“No. He was with a woman.”

“A woman?” Jonas seemed taken aback by the answer, as if he’d been certain he was right.

“What is it, Jonas?”

Another half beat of silence passed before he answered. “It’s nothing. We have a plane to catch.” He turned the gun around in his hand and offered it, grip first, to Agent Carmichael. “You. I’m calling a friend of mine for a physical description of Rory Carmichael. If the two of you don’t match up, I will hunt you down and you will pay for wasting my time and endangering this woman.”

The agent didn’t back down from the threat. “And if I’m who I say I am?”

Jonas changed his mind and tossed the gun into the nearest toilet. “Put some ice on that hand and get me a rundown on the agents who are doing guard duty on the Monroe family in Columbia. I want pictures so I can recognize them.” He took her hand and started to leave. He pulled her close to his side, then stopped for one last directive to the man who’d followed them. “And find out who screwed up and let her grandmother get a call out.”

“It’s not your job to police us. We’ll handle disciplining an agent.”

“It wasn’t any agent who let that call go through.”

Chapter Eleven

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Faith asked.

I’m not sure of a damn thing,
thought Jonas. He hunkered down in the wheelchair that Faith was pushing toward the bank of elevators at Columbia’s University Medical Center. Beneath the blanket she’d draped across him, he unsnapped the sheath of his knife and made sure his gun was within easy reach beneath his left arm. “The only thing I’m sure of is that coming here was a lousy idea.”

She touched the juncture of his neck and shoulder and gave him a subtle squeeze. “I know this isn’t what you wanted. But thank you for listening to what I needed. I’ll always be grateful to you for that.”

Another damn debt she’d feel obligated to repay.

For one brief, selfish moment, Jonas considered asking her to stay with him. For as long as she could stand him. He could bargain with the money and time and emotional support she thought she owed him. Surely a few days and dollars out of his life were worth some kind of temporary commitment.

But the moment passed. He’d never looked at his future through rose-colored glasses. If he forced Faith to stay, he was smart enough to know it wouldn’t be the same. He could never trust the smiles or the touches. He’d become more of a beast than ever, taking—blackmailing—in order to get what he wanted so badly. Love. Acceptance. Salvation.

But a relationship tainted by fear or by force or obligation was no salvation at all.

A man of honor would let her go once she was safe. He’d walk away and demand nothing of her in return. Nothing that would taint the memory of feisty words and fiery kisses, of gentle nights of sleep and sunny mornings of making love.

“If the elevator isn’t empty, we’ll take the next one,” he warned Faith as she parked the wheelchair and pushed the call button for their ride to the third floor. It was easier to concentrate on work than to pay any attention to the impending sense of loss that tightened its grip around his newly awakened heart.

“Okay.” He could hear the nervous shifting of her feet in the thick-soled nurse’s shoes she’d borrowed from the employee lounge to complete their disguise as nurse and patient. “What if we can’t get into room 3116?”

Jonas slipped his hand from beneath the blanket and reached for her hand. “I’ll get you in.” He squeezed her fingers in a gentle reminder. “But we won’t be able to stay long. Five, ten minutes, tops.”

He watched the muscles in her throat contract with a hard swallow. “But what if they need—”

“That’s the deal, Faith.” Her green eyes were clear with reluctant understanding of the plan he’d mapped out on the plane and drive to the hospital. “Whether you like it or not, I intend to keep you safe. And that means getting you out of here ASAP.”

Her crooked mouth eased into a beautiful smile and she tightened her grip around his hand. “I like it. Ten minutes, tops.”

Every tough instinct inside him melted beneath the warmth of that smile. He had to release her and turn away in order to think straight. “We’ll leave even sooner if I think it’s a trap.”

“Let’s hope it’s not.”

Hope.
Now there was something he hadn’t believed in for a long, long time. But maybe she could believe in it enough for the both of them.

Without raising his chin from the tuck of blanket at his chest, Jonas swept the waiting area for anyone—anything—that struck him as a little too interested in them or out of place. Carmichael had copied him the names and schedule of the round-the-clock guards who would be watching Wes and Florence Monroe. One was always stationed in each of their rooms—the other two patrolled the floor. Beyond that, there would be doctors and nurses and orderlies and visitors and even other patients who might be something other than what they appeared.

A killer, perhaps. Or Darien Frye himself. Or any of a number of criminal representatives who might want Faith and the contents of that disk for themselves.

The elevator dinged its arrival on the main floor and Jonas urged Faith back behind the wheelchair as it opened. “Empty,” he quickly pronounced. “Let’s go.”

The first two floors passed in wary silence. But by the time they slowed for the third floor, Faith had leaned over the back of the chair and was hugging him from behind. “Thank you for everything, Jonas.” To his surprise, she pressed a kiss to his craggy cheek. “The world’s a less scary place knowing you’re here with me.”

Before he could think of an appropriate response to that kind of trust in him, the door had opened and she pulled away.

The third-floor nurses’ station was a beehive of activity. The day and evening shifts were changing, and the men and women in various designs of medical uniforms were reviewing charts and trading gossip. Jonas had timed their arrival for the busy turnover when the majority of the staff would be preoccupied with their work and less attentive to the unfamiliar attendant rolling a patient down the hallway toward room 3116.

The two patrol agents were easy to spot. Green hospital scrubs and white lab coats did little to mask the bulge of a weapon or the communication wires in their ears. If he and Faith slipped in and out quietly enough, they’d never even know their two charges had received visitors.

The guard at the door would be a trickier challenge. Slowly and steadily, Faith wheeled them toward their destination. Jonas checked his watch. Right on cue, the guard’s cell phone rang and he reached into his pocket to answer.

Rory Carmichael had checked out. And in exchange for the opportunity to arrest Copperhead and his accomplice, and maybe Darien Frye himself, the federal agent had agreed to help get Faith in to see her uncle.

“Yeah? Yes, sir.” The guard at the door acknowledged Carmichael’s call and immediately relayed the information to the undercover guards. “We’ll check it out.”

In the instant the two guards left the floor to investigate the
suspicious activity
in the stairwell, Jonas rose from his chair and walked right up to the guard. The gun that he pressed into the startled agent’s ribs was masked by the drape of the blanket.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Jonas stated, keeping the agent’s hands in clear sight as he reached around him and pushed open the door. “I don’t want to hurt anybody.” Faith slipped in behind them and closed the door as he backed the man into a corner. “This won’t hurt a bit.” He smiled, keeping his gun in the agent’s gut while he pressed the weight of his forearm against the man’s neck.

“Faith?” He heard a woman’s breathy voice behind him.