Reluctant Witness (26 page)

“I didn’t mean to imply....”

“Forget it.” I hugged Kary to me, wondering
what would happen to the dog. He was such a nice companion.

Jeff walked over to me and sat down on the
ottoman. I could feel his eyes boring through me, as if he could
summon the truth from my soul. “Tell me what it was about my
mother’s book that had you so upset.”

“What’s the point? Why does it matter now?
You all think I’m involved in what happened to....”

“Tell me!” The sharp edge to his voice caught
me unaware and I flinched. When I looked up, Jeff was leaning
forward and his hands were clenched.

“The plot...Alain Beaumont...he...he reminds
me of my fiancé,” I stuttered.

“In what way?”

I couldn’t take my eyes off of Jeff. His face
seemed to be contorted by a rage I didn’t understand.

“In what way?” he said again, this time even
more urgently.

“Jared...took me to Curaçao on business,” I
sniffed. “He made me sign papers. He said he wanted to give me
something of my own, an investment account.”

“Did the WitSec people know you went to
Curaçao?”

“Of course! I would never have left the
country without their permission. Tovar approved it.”

“Was that all?” Jeff’s tone was steadier now,
but his eyes still studied me carefully.

“In the book, Inspector Noiret spoke of
Chartier choosing women who have no families.”

“So?”

“I...I have no one.”

“At all?”

“Well, I have my father, but I don’t have
him. It’s...complicated.”

“Hold on.” He got up and crossed to the
bathroom. A moment later, he was back with a box of tissues. He
handed me one. “Here. Blow your nose and dry your eyes. Explain
yourself.”

“My father is a botanist. He, um...he works
for the government.”

“So? Why didn’t he go into witness protection
with you? Didn’t they offer it to him?”

“He was already in the program, just like I
was.”

Jeff had a puzzled look on his face. Sitting
back, he rubbed his thighs, scratched his chin, and then rubbed his
brow. “Are you telling me that you were already in the witness
protection program before Jared was killed?”

“Yes.”

“For a different crime?” he wanted to know.
As I nodded, he gave a stunned sigh. “Whoa!”

“My grandparents were murdered when I was
sixteen. They killed my grandmother at the house and then kidnapped
my grandfather. My father chased after them.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said softly. I didn’t have
to look up to know he was watching me.

“My father and my grandfather had been
working on a special project involving poppies and that made them
targets.”

“Hmm....” Jeff looked off into the distance,
lost in thought. I waited, not really knowing what to say. “Tell me
something, Marigold. This program, did it have anything to do with
genetic modification of plants? Any chance your father is an expert
on poppies?”

Chapter Twenty
Four

“Well, of course he is. He’s been hybridizing
them for the last two decades. He and my grandfather....”

“Marigold, opium comes from poppies. The
government has spent decades trying to halt opium production.
Researchers developed an opium poppy that can’t produce the drug.
Maybe the drug cartel is trying to figure out a way to undo what
the government did.”

“Reversing the hybridization?” I suggested.
Jeff nodded in response. “Oh. This isn’t good, is it?”

“Maybe it’s better than we think. They cut
you loose because they thought you were the leak for the WitSec
program, but if you didn’t know about your father’s work, is there
any chance that your fiancé found out?”

“I don’t know. After we sat down to discuss
my situation with the team, Jared told me that I didn’t need to
worry about security. He wanted me to leave the program.”

“That’s rather suspicious,” Jeff decided,
“very suspicious indeed. Tell me something. How long after your
trip to Curaçao did you and Jared meet with the team?”

“It’s hard to remember,” I confessed. “There
are a lot of details that are jumbled, because everything suddenly
went wrong so quickly. It might have been three or four weeks.”

“These papers you signed in Curaçao, do you
still have copies?”

“No. Jared said he would put them in a safety
deposit box in the bank in Willemstad and send copies to his
lawyer.”

“Do you have a key?”

“He said I didn’t need one, that he would
handle everything, and if anything happened to him, his lawyer
would be in touch.”

“Did the lawyer contact you?”

“I was moved immediately, so I never found
out.”

It was true. Right after the police were
called, I summoned the courage to call Tovar, who rushed to the
scene just as the cops were beginning to unwind a big roll of
yellow tape to block off the entrance to the building. The police
never asked me a single question. Tovar made sure of that. He and
the rest of the new team pulled me into the federal building and
kept me out of sight for hours. Later that night, I was moved to a
hotel just outside Boston until the new boss could figure out what
to do with me.

“Do you have the contact information for the
lawyer?” His eyes narrowed as I shrugged.

“I...I believed what he told me. It never
occurred to me to ask him for the name of his lawyer. Why would I
think someone would murder him?”

“Maybe it’s time to find out who represents
his estate,” Jeff replied.

“You think you can?”

“No,” he smiled, patting my hand. “But I do
have people for that. I’ll have Rocky get the ball rolling. Now,
why don’t we have some dinner?”

Jeff stood up and started for the door. I
knew I should follow, but I hesitated.

“Marigold?” He turned at the doorway,
surprised I wasn’t behind him. “What’s the matter?”

“Does this mean you believe me, that I didn’t
do what the Marshals Service claims?”

He took a few steps back towards me. Those
brown eyes, so intent, latched on to mine and refused to let
go.

“Yes, it does,” he replied, and I knew as he
spoke he was sincere.

“Oh.”

“Why? Is that a bad thing?” he demanded,
sounding slightly exasperated with me. “What’s the problem
now?”

“Doesn’t that mean I’m in more trouble, not
less?”

“How so?”

“Twice people tried to kidnap me.” I dried my
eyes with another tissue. “Not kill me, kidnap me.”

“So?”

“If Jared found out about my family and
shared it with the drug cartel, maybe someone is trying to
manipulate my father through me. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t killed.
They need me alive, as a hostage.”

Arms folded across his
chest, Jefferson Cornwall stood like some impenetrable wall, ready
to repel my feeble attempts to uncover the truth. I thought about
Nikolas Skerba’s book about heroin on the table in his bedroom,
about the work Jeff had done for his mother when she wrote
Vanilla Orchid Magic
. Was
I imagining something that just wasn’t there? Surely, if anyone
would know whether we should be worried, it would be Jeff.
Suddenly, his arms dropped as a stunned expression took over his
face. That’s when I knew I was right.

“Shoot!” he groaned. “Shoot, shoot, shoot!
Oh, why didn’t I see that coming?”

“What?”

“We’ve got to get you the hell out of
here!”

“You do?”

That’s how quickly my dreams of a future were
shattered. One moment I was happily imagining a new career in
interior decorating and the next I was a victim of unfortunate
circumstances once more.

“You’ve got to pack,” he urged me. “Make sure
you have everything you need.”

Even as I prepared to flee, I could feel that
old, familiar numbness creeping into my heart, the harbinger of
trouble yet to come. In the few hours I had been in Atlanta, I had
begun to feel hope. I liked it here in Jeff’s condo. I felt safe
wandering from room to room, exploring the promise of a new future.
In a single second, it was forever lost to me, all because I asked
that question of my host. What was so important about me that
people wanted to kidnap, rather than kill me? We didn’t know all
the details, but at least we knew I was in danger.

The news that Jared might have played a role
in his own killing made it even more important to get me out of
town as quickly as possible. If the drug cartel had people looking
into the shooting in Windham, they might be able to trace me to the
Cornwall family. We had to put down some distance between us. It
took almost three hours to make all the arrangements.

It was necessary to send Kary back to Reston
with Tom. Jojo called Deirdre with the news. She made a point of
letting Lincoln’s ex-wife know that I was out of the picture,
claiming I was just a stranger he picked up at an Atlanta casino
during a weekend getaway. Deirdre seemed satisfied, and Rocky was
confident that Kary would no longer be a pawn in her game.

But I was miserable. It was bad enough losing
my furry companion, but the idea of having nothing to fill my hours
on the run left me totally bereft. Would I die of boredom before
the killer could succeed?

“It’s only temporary,” Jeff told me. “Once we
get a handle on this, life as you know it will go back to
normal.”

“Normal? I don’t think so,” I sighed. “This
kind of life is never going to be normal for me, not by any stretch
of the imagination.”

As I stood at the door, ready to say goodbye,
Jeff took my tote bag from my hand and excused himself for a brief
moment, disappearing into the den. Upon returning, he thrust the
tote bag at me. “Take these with you. They’ll keep you occupied
during the long hours.”

“Thanks.” I looked inside. He had added
several paperbacks. “At least I’ve got plenty of reading
material.”

“You do. Good luck, Marigold.” He took my
hand in his and patted it. “Be safe.”

“You too.”

I was hustled down to the underground garage
of the Park Place on Peachtree and shoved into the backseat of a
Lincoln Navigator for the trip to Smyrna to rendezvous with my new
security team. Tom confiscated the Smartphone and laptop Jojo had
given me and handed them off to the director of security for
Roaring Kill Productions.

“We’ll have to start fresh, Marigold. We
can’t afford to let your safety be compromised,” he told me. “You
have to trust me on this.”

Rocky placed them in a small metal suitcase,
which he put in the back of his SUV. “I’ll have my guy remove the
batteries when he gets to Louisville, so if they’re following you,
they’ll concentrate their efforts in Kentucky.”

It had been decided that I would keep the
alias of Marigold Flowers, at least a little while longer. Jojo
suggested that since I flew into Atlanta under the name of Susan
Langforth, it was best to just let the name die there. With no
further activity, anyone seeking information would likely come to
the conclusion that Susan Langforth was just a temporary alias,
abandoned as soon as the plane landed at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson
Airport. Tom and Rocky hoped that meant the bad guys wasted time
and resources trying to find a ghost.

Tom made plans to hand me off to the new team
in the parking lot at an Atlanta Bread Company restaurant on South
Cobb. While we waited for them to arrive, he tried to reassure me
that everything would work out. I wanted to believe him, but I had
my doubts, borne of too many disappointments over too many years in
WitSec.

“Marigold, I worked with these two for more
years than I care to remember. They’ll take good care of you and
get you to your next stop.”

“Sure.” I nodded forlornly. What else could I
say? I was on the run again and I had no idea where I was going,
what would happen, or if I would even survive it. I was going to
miss the little dog most of all. He filled a void in my heart I
didn’t even know I had.

“I promise you it’s going to be fine. Trust
me, Marigold. We’re going to figure this thing out. In all my years
as an FBI agent, I never lost anyone on my team.”

“Thanks,” I smiled, half-heartedly, trying to
be hopeful for his sake. How I wished I could go home with him to
Reston. Jojo would mother me and I could be with the dog.

“We haven’t eaten yet,” he reminded me.
“Let’s go grab some grub for the road.”

He put the little dog into his travel carrier
and zipped him in, placing the nylon bag on the back seat before we
got out of the SUV. The warmth of the day had slipped away, leaving
a chill in the air. I zipped up the red fleece Atlanta Hawks jacket
Jeff had lent me and tucked my hands into the pockets as I stood
waiting. “Will he be okay in there?”

“Don’t worry about Kary. He’ll be fine,” Tom
promised. “We aren’t going to be very long. It takes a while for
the SUV to cool down.”

Crossing the pavement, we entered a nearly
empty restaurant and placed our order with the only attendant at
the counter. While the young man prepared our sandwiches, Tom made
conversation.

“One thing I learned a long time ago is
always make sure you eat when you can, because sometimes you just
don’t get the chance. I once had a case where I was stuck doing
surveillance without relief for twelve hours straight.” He shook
his head, remembering. “We had a couple of suspects holed up in a
mountain cabin. My partner went for reinforcements while I kept
watch. I chewed the same piece of gum for what seemed like a
lifetime, trying not to think about how hungry I was, or how I
could have stopped for a couple of burgers on my way to my
assignment.”

“That’s your way of telling me to force
myself to eat?”

“You never know what might happen, Marigold,
so live in the moment.”

“Sounds like what I’ve been doing all these
years, just taking it one step at a time. I just wish I could live
a normal life and make plans for the future, like other people do.
It’s hard to never feel like I can put down roots, Tom.”