No One to Trust (Hidden Identity Book #1): A Novel (10 page)

“Should have put a tracker on him,” Mike muttered as he paced from one end of the hotel room to the other. The bullet had grazed his forehead. He’d slapped a Band-Aid on it and taken four ibuprofen to combat the monster headache now pounding in his skull. But at least he was alive and able to track down his wayward witness.

“He’ll call,” Chase said.

“He’s not going to call,” Mike countered.

“Why wouldn’t he call?” Adam asked.

“Because he’s gonna go off on his own.” Mike wore another layer off the carpet.

Chase looked at Mike. “That’s crazy. He doesn’t stand a chance. Just him and Summer? He’ll get them both killed.”

Mike shook his head. “He’s a former Ranger. He’s got contacts he can call and places he can hide.”

Adam frowned. “Then why did he consent to WITSEC?”

Mike rubbed a hand down his face. “Because I talked him into it.”

Chase walked to the sink and filled a glass with water. “Why did he need talking into it?”

“Because he’s a former Ranger with contacts he can call and places he can hide,” Adam muttered.

Mike shot Adam a dark look. “I assured him any time he felt
like the marshals weren’t doing their job, he was free to take off and take care of himself.”

Chase slammed the glass onto the counter. Mike winced and was surprised the thing was still in one piece.

“You told him what?” Chase said.

Mike shrugged. “I would have told him anything to keep him nearby.” At Chase and Adam’s censoring looks, Mike ran a hand over his head, hating the need to defend his actions to his peers. “Look, he was ready to ditch me after he gave me the video of Sam Gilroy committing murder, even though he knew Raimondi would be coming for him. I wanted him where I could keep an eye on him. I wanted him alive for the trial. I didn’t want him found in a back alley somewhere.”

“So you told him what he wanted to hear.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t a lie. No one forces anyone into the WITSEC program. He knew that and I knew that, but I wanted to convince him of the benefits of staying. I did and he stayed. Reluctantly.” He paused. “Meeting Summer was the clincher. The day he met her he quit fighting me on it, quit pacing like a caged lion and settled down into becoming Kyle Abernathy and enjoying domestic bliss.”

Mike let Chase and Adam digest this. Chase finally asked, “So who would he call for help?”

“The guys in his former unit probably,” Mike said.

The three fell silent.

Chase paced to the door and back. He always reminded Mike of a sleek panther ready to strike at any given moment. When he unleashed that strength, it was an amazing—and scary—thing to see. Mike had seen it once. He’d rather not see it again.

Chase spun on his heel. “All right. So who are the guys in his unit?”

Mike shot him a perturbed glance. “That’s confidential.”

“And you knew who they were ten minutes after you had him
in custody.” Adam snorted. “We’ve seen you use your own connections.”

With a lifted brow, Mike kept quiet. What Adam said was true. He was well connected and used those connections to ferret out any info that would benefit him as a handler.

“Why’d he leave the unit?” Adam asked.

Mike pursed his lips. “Not sure. He refused to tell me.” And he truly didn’t know.

More silence as they thought.

Mike sat and leaned forward, his head in his hands. Responsibility sat heavy on his shoulders. If he didn’t get David back and the man missed the trial, his career was over. Done. He might as well put his gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. Anger surged. Why hadn’t David called? He looked up. “Summer’s still got her phone with her. Let’s see if we can get a location on her.”

Adam pulled the laptop around to face him. “She had it turned off.”

“Maybe she’ll turn it on.” Mike kept his temper under control. Going ballistic wouldn’t help anything.

Except maybe make him feel better.

“What about David? Does he have a phone?”

“He didn’t when he got out of the car.”

“I’ve got Marlee Chastain’s phone up,” Chase said. “So far she’s received two calls since Summer and David took off. The first one traced back to Summer and Marlee’s mother. It lasted just over an hour. The second one was from a woman by the name of Kristen Lee.”

“That’s a co-worker of Marlee’s,” Mike said.

“That call lasted fifteen minutes.”

“So no calls from strange numbers.”

“Nope.”

“Then keep tracking. It’ll happen.”

“How’d Raimondi know we were there, Mike?” Chase asked.
“They were right behind us on the interstate. Mere minutes. Like they were following us.”

Mike frowned. “I don’t know how they found us.”

Adam leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “Three times they’ve found us without any trouble. They’re tracking us somehow.”

Chase stared at Mike. “Or someone’s telling them where we are.”

Mike stiffened. “What are you saying?”

Chase didn’t look away. Neither did Adam.

Mike’s heart sank. “Really?” Wounded, he stood and paced to the window, then whirled to face them. “How long have we worked together? You honestly believe I would work for Raimondi?”

Indecision flashed across Adam’s face. Chase simply watched him. Then said, “I sure don’t want to, but I know it’s not me or Adam.”

“So it’s me by default.”

“Okay, Mike, it’s not you,” Adam said. “Then who is it?”

“Who says it has to be anyone?” he asked slowly. “What if it’s David?”

Chase lifted a brow. “David?” He let out a humorless laugh. “Why would he sic Raimondi on his own tail?”

“And besides,” Adam said, “he’d never put Summer in danger. He loves her.”

Mike shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for it. All I know is they’re tracking us somehow or someone higher up is letting Raimondi in on our locations.”

“Then maybe we need to go off grid,” Chase said.

Mike rubbed his chin. “You mean once we get Summer and David back, don’t tell anyone where we take them?”

“Yeah. Not even the boss. Just us.”

Mike nodded. “That might be an option to think about.”

David reached up and helped Summer down off the ladder while watching the street, his nerves taut and expecting action.

“Where are we going?” Summer gasped.

He gripped her hand and pulled her after him. “To the hotel.”

“That’s crazy, David. We have to get as far away from those guys as we can.”

“That’s what I’m praying they’re thinking too.”

“What if they’re thinking what you’re thinking?”

Together, they crossed the street, David looking both ways. And not just for cars. They ducked into the hotel and he stood to the side of the glass doors, Summer tucked behind him. “If they’re thinking what I’m thinking, then . . .”

“Then what?”

“We’ll need to think of a new plan.”

“What’s the old plan?”

David heard the exasperation mixed with fear in her voice. “There.” He pointed. “They’re coming out of the shops.”

Summer gasped and pulled back. “You don’t think they hurt Casey, do you?”

“Casey?”

“The woman who helped me hide from Raimondi’s men. The one who helped us escape to the roof.”

“I wouldn’t think so, but we’ll put a call in to the cops to go check on her. Will that make you feel better?”

She nodded.

He stayed put, watching. The men consulted an iPad and David wondered what they were looking at. Then Agostino stomped to the black sedan and motioned for his partner to get in. The partner argued, but finally acquiesced. They drove off and David let out a slow breath. “Okay, let’s get up to our room and start planning.”

She jerked to a stop. “Our room? As in one singular room? Don’t you mean rooms?” She emphasized the
s
.

David sighed. “Summer, you can’t be alone. I know you hate my guts right now, but I won’t leave you to the mercies of the Raimondis.”

She bit her lip and stared at him.

David ran a hand through his hair. “Look, it’s a suite. You can have the bed and I’ll stay on the couch if it’ll make you happy.”

“Happy?” She scoffed and her eyes went sad. “Yeah,” she said, her voice so soft he had to strain to hear it. “That’ll make me happy.”

“Okay then.”

They rode the elevator to the second floor and David motioned for her to stay put. “Let me check the room.”

She frowned but didn’t argue. It took him less than ten seconds to clear it.

Summer strode to the bathroom and stopped. Without turning around, she said, “I don’t hate your guts.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Where are they?” Raimondi growled into the phone. He eyed the cages of his pets. Snakes. They were very therapeutic for him.
The red boa had quickly become his favorite and he kept the snake nearby so he could run a hand over it during these stressful times.

“I don’t know.” Impatience tinged Hayes’s voice. “Their trail stops at the shop. Either they’re hiding really well or they found the tracker.”

“Tear that shop up and find them.”

“That’s what I told Agostino and Gianni to do. They’re not there, but the tracker says they are.”

“So they found it and ditched it.”

“It looks like it.”

Curses ripped from Raimondi’s throat. “Why is it so hard to grab two people? Agostino and Gianni are
your
responsibility. They report to
you
. This is what you
do
! This is your
job
. You’re an assassin, for the love of—” He felt the vein in his temple begin to throb and took a deep breath. In a low, quiet, lethal voice, he said, “I want them in my custody. Now. What’s the next step? What do we have to do to get them?”

“First of all we have to find them.”

“Then do it. Or you’ll pay for your incompetence.”

“I have an idea on how to do that. To lure them out of hiding in order to get at them.”

“I don’t even need to know what the plan is. Just do it.”

He hung up and reached for the boa, lifting the snake with a gentle touch. Raimondi placed a cheek against the scaly skin. Instantly, the pounding of his heart eased. “Ah yes, my friend, you know how to turn a bad day into a better one.”

When he calmed down, he set the snake aside and watched it slither to curl under the sunlamp Raimondi kept for the reptile. He eyed the glass aquarium cages and smiled at his collection. A diamondback rattlesnake. A rare red coral kukri, found in India—he’d paid well over a million dollars for that one.

A knock on the door pulled his attention from his obsession. “Come in.”

The door opened and his sister entered. Her swollen eyes attested to her grief. His heart ached for her and yet he didn’t have time to deal with her hysterics. Not now. But he rose and walked to her. He took her hands in his and kissed her cheek. As he led her to the brown leather sofa, he said, “What brings you by here today?”

“Revenge,” she whispered. “I want revenge for Pauli’s death, Alessandro. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t function.”

“You will have your revenge. David Hackett will pay for what he’s done to this family.”

“First Georgina, now Pauli . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t understand. What did we do to make him hate us?”

He squeezed her hands. “Some people don’t need an excuse to hate. They just do.”

She sighed. “Is Georgina here?”

“I haven’t seen her today.”

The red boa slithered close and she jumped to her feet with a shriek. “Why do you insist on having those awful creatures? In a cage is one thing, but roaming free?” With a shudder, she backed toward the door. “What about Rosalinda? Is she here?”

“Yes, in the kitchen, I believe.” The last time he’d seen his wife, she was baking cookies to tempt Georgina from her room.

“Fine.” With one more glance toward the snakes lining his wall, and one last shudder, she left.

Raimondi chuckled as he leaned over to pick up the boa and place a kiss on its head. “You, my scaly friend, have great timing.”

Summer headed straight for the shower. She needed to be alone. Totally and completely alone. David didn’t say anything, just let her be. He knew her well enough to stay away right now. She lathered her hair and thought.

She really didn’t hate his guts. In fact it bothered her that she was having a hard time holding on to her anger.

And that made her mad.

She should be furious. She should be giving him the cold shoulder and doing everything in her power to make him squirm by reminding him of his guilt, his incredible gall to lie and think he would get away with it without suffering any consequences.

So why wasn’t she?

Because she was hurt. Hurt once again. Someone who’d professed to love her the rest of her life had uttered those words as though they held all the meaning of ordering lunch at the drive-thru. It hurt.

Maybe the anger would come back, but right now, she just ached with a sense of loss so deep she wasn’t sure how to even begin processing it.

When she finished the shower, she wrapped the towel around her and sat on the toilet to stare at the wall.
What am I going to
do, God? How could
you let this happen? I thought he was the one
you wanted for me and now this? I don’t
understand what you’re doing, why you’re allowing this
to happen. And I really don’t like it.

Summer wasn’t terribly religious. She’d grown up going to church because her mother needed some free day care a few times a week. But the lessons had sunk in and she’d become a Christian at the age of sixteen at a church youth retreat. She thought maybe it had been because she’d desperately wanted a father to love her and, lacking one in her home, the thought of having one with her all the time, in the spiritual sense, really appealed to her.

Well, of course that was part of it, but there was more to it than that. She’d really thought God had a plan for her life and had tried to live accordingly.

And now this. She hadn’t foreseen anything like this.

“I must have messed up somewhere, God, because I don’t see how marrying a man who wasn’t who he said he was and now running from someone who wants us dead was a part of your plan.” Nausea and exhaustion swept over her. She had to get some rest or she was going to simply pass out.

A knock sounded on the door. “Summer? You all right?”

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

“I’ve got some clean clothes for you. May I come in?”

“Yes.”

He opened the door and passed her a backpack. She took it without looking at him and rummaged through it. It had all of the essentials. “Where’d you get this?”

“A friend. Dress before you come out, okay?”

“He’s here?”

“Yeah.”

Lovely. David was having friends over while all she wanted to do was sleep and shut out the world if only for a brief time. She sighed. “I won’t be long.”

Within minutes she was dressed in her favorite brand jeans and
a purple short-sleeved shirt. She pushed the sweatshirt aside for later. Even the undergarments were her size and the brand she favored. She had to admit it felt wonderful to slip on clean clothes. She left the towel wrapped around her wet head and stepped into the living area of the suite. David and another man who looked to be in his early fifties sat on the couch. An arsenal of weapons graced the dark wood coffee table.

The sinking sensation in Summer’s stomach took over again. She swallowed hard. So. This was her life now.

David motioned her over and the man with him stood. “Summer,” David said, “I want you to meet a friend of mine. This is Ron.”

Summer shook Ron’s hand. Salt-and-pepper hair, dark eyes, and a five o’clock shadow made him seem menacing somehow, dark. Then Ron crinkled a smile at her and she saw a light in his eyes that overshadowed the darkness. “Good to finally meet you, Summer.”

“Thanks for the clothes.”

“My pleasure.”

Her nose twitched. She smelled food and her stomach rumbled in anticipation. She nodded to the weapons. “What’s going on?”

David pulled a black backpack from under the table. “Making sure we have what we need to survive.”

She flicked a glance at Ron, then back to David. “Shouldn’t we be leaving? They’re probably tracking your phone.”

Her husband shot her a gentle smile. “I didn’t use my phone. I used the hotel phone to call a number they don’t have in their system. They can’t track us. Yet.”

“But they’ll be checking hotels, right?”

“Yes. They may or may not check this one since it’s so close to where we disappeared. They’ll figure we ran for a while.”

“You hope.”

“Yeah.”

Summer sighed and walked to the mini fridge and pulled out a bottle of water.

Ron asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

Ron pushed a brown sack toward her. “Tomato soup and a roast beef sandwich on toasted whole wheat bread. Plus an apple.”

She stared at the bag as though it would bite her. David had married her without loving her and yet he’d managed to find the kind of clothes she liked and had Ron bring her favorite meal. Something he hadn’t had to do. They were running from killers and he thought about small details that would matter to her.

Summer took the bag and moved to the small round table. “Thank you.” She sat in the chair and began eating while the guys muttered back and forth. When the conversation lulled, she asked, “How do you two know each other?”

David paused, exchanged a glance with Ron. “Ron saved my life.”

“Tell me.”

Two simple words that demanded a great deal. He rubbed a hand down his cheek. “Ron was hitchhiking and I picked him up.”

Summer lifted a brow at him. “When was this?”

“About a year ago.”

“November sixteenth,” Ron said.

Summer’s gaze shot to his. “What? That was the week after we got back from our honeymoon. The week you were on that business trip to New York. The one that came up at the last minute and couldn’t be put off.” She laid her spoon on the table. “You didn’t have any business in New York, did you?”

“Oh I had business all right. It just wasn’t what I told you.”

“Of course it wasn’t,” she muttered. She sighed. “So why did you go to New York?”

“I had to get that laptop.”

“But why? You already gave the video to the cops and Sam was in jail.”

“I went to get the laptop. About thirty minutes after I walked out of Sam’s office with the laptop, someone tried to kill me. I knew I had to act fast, so I hid the laptop and flash drive. I was worried Sam would figure out where I’d hidden them and tell Raimondi. I got paranoid. I had more than myself to think of now.” He shot her a meaningful glance. “I got to New York, got the laptop and the flash drive, but I was attacked and,” he shrugged, “the rest of the week I was in the hospital recuperating from a car wreck—”

“You were in a wreck and you didn’t call me?” Summer glared at him.

“I couldn’t. If they found out where I was and you’d come to the hospital, that would have put you in danger.”

The anger faded from Summer’s eyes.

“I had a lot of time to think about my life. That’s when I asked God to make me into the kind of man who deserved to have a wife like you.”

She blinked. “A wife like me?”

“Good, kind, innocent . . .” He swallowed hard. “Everything I wasn’t, but at that point, wanted to be.” He shook his head and glanced at Ron. “I couldn’t let Raimondi find that laptop. That computer was the key to getting the guys at the top of the food chain.” He clenched his fingers into a fist. “And I wanted those guys. Carl Hyatt was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die. At the time of his death, there was nothing I could do about it. But now that I had the laptop and the flash drive, I couldn’t lose it. That information meant justice for a lot of people. Sam was just a low man on the totem pole.” He narrowed his eyes. “I wanted the guy at the top and so did the FBI.”

“Oh, David,” she whispered. He could see the horror in her eyes. “But how could you let Carl Hyatt’s death go, how could you not report it?”

He ducked his head and prayed for guidance, for patience for Summer to let him finish telling the story. “I know how it sounds,
but you have to understand, that’s the way it works sometimes.” He sighed and shook his head. “So anyway, with Sam in jail, things should have calmed down.”

“But they didn’t,” she said.

“No. They escalated. Sam was connected to the Raimondi family. The mob or organized crime.”

“And they were mad at you because you had Sam arrested.”

“Yes. That was one thing.”

“What was the other?”

“They didn’t care so much about Sam, mostly they were upset because I had Sam’s laptop.” He stood and paced to the table where she sat, then to the bedroom, then back to the couch. “But Sam was one of theirs. He worked for them and made a lot of money for them. They were using our business to launder money, hide weapons at some of the construction sites. You name it, they’re into it. With Sam’s arrest, a full investigation of the company would ensue.”

“I remember seeing something about that on the news.”

“It made the national networks,” David said. “They knew I was the reason Sam was arrested, Sam’s laptop was missing. They put two and two together and came up with the right answer. If they found me, they’d find the laptop.”

“Why would the marshals agree to protect you if you didn’t have anything to give them?”

“Because I agreed to testify at Sam’s trial and I also agreed to get the laptop and flash drive and turn it over to them. Eventually. In turn, Mike convinced me to stay in the WITSEC program for a limited time. But I knew they wouldn’t stop coming for me as long as that laptop was still out there.”

“So you left after our honeymoon to get it. That still doesn’t tell me how you and Ron met.”

Ron stood. “I’ll let David finish his story. I’ve got to be going.” He looked at David. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Will do.”

The men shook hands. Ron gathered the leftover weapons and was gone almost as fast as he’d appeared.

David picked up the Smith & Wesson Model 60 and hefted it. Small, lightweight at twenty-four and a half ounces, it would slide nicely into the ankle holster Ron had also provided. The little gun wouldn’t do much in a long drawn-out gunfight, but the extra five rounds were an extra five chances of escape should they need them.

“Pick your weapon.”

She stared at him, her lips tight. “This was why you taught me to shoot, wasn’t it?”

David sighed. “Part of it.”

“And the self-defense training?”

“Yes.” He gave her a slow smile. “But the self-defense training was mostly because I liked the way the sessions ended.” With her in his arms.

She didn’t even blush. Or return his smile. “You can finish your story later. I’m exhausted.”

“Summer—”

“And I still need to call Marlee. Did Ron leave you a phone that can’t be traced, by any chance?”

He fished in his pocket and held it out to her.