The Marshal's Witness (16 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Ryan turned and left the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Jessica didn’t know what had made Ryan change his mind, but from the empty, hollow look in his eyes, she suspected he was beginning to have doubts about Stuart. She hoped her fears were wrong, and that Stuart wasn’t the one working with DeGaullo to kill her. Ryan had already suffered a terrible
betrayal once, and had a hard time trusting anyone, especially her. If Stuart betrayed him, he’d probably never trust anyone else again.

She yanked a comb through her hair, wincing at the tangles. After throwing on her usual ensemble of uninspired jeans and a T-shirt, she rushed through the bedroom to the hotel suite’s living area. She paused in the doorway, thinking at first that the suite
was empty. Then she noticed the curtains had been pulled back from the sliding glass doors. Ryan was standing on the balcony, his hands shoved into his pockets as he stared out across the parking lot below.

A laptop computer sat on the end table beside the couch, bearing a sticker with the hotel’s name. She left the computer sitting there and padded across the carpet to the open sliding glass
doors.

“Don’t.” Ryan’s deep voice stopped her just as she was about to cross the threshold onto the balcony. He turned around and leaned back against the railing. “Stay inside, away from the windows. You shouldn’t take any chances.”

“Neither should you. If you’re with me, you’re in danger, too.” She crossed her arms and stood in the doorway, challenging him.

His jaw tightened and
he stepped inside, firmly pushing her back as he closed the doors and the curtains. Ryan might be reckless with his own life, but he would never be reckless with hers.

“I called room service while you were taking a bath.” He went into the tiny kitchenette. “The food arrived a few minutes ago.” He turned with a tray of covered dishes and carried it to the coffee table in front of the couch.
As he raised the covers, Jessica’s mouth began to water at the delicious aroma. When she saw exactly what he’d ordered for them, her eyes began to water, too.

For an entirely different reason.

Ryan had ordered steak, asparagus and French fries. Her favorite meal, right down to the side of barbecue sauce. She’d told him that was her favorite meal once when they were hiking through the
mountains. She didn’t think he’d even been listening. Obviously, he had.

“You remembered,” she whispered.

He shrugged and arranged her plate in front of her on the table before sitting back on the couch with his own plate of steak and a baked potato. He grabbed the remote control and flipped the TV to a twenty-four-hour news station.

Jessica ate in silence, casting occasional glances
at him. He only pretended interest in the broadcast, because every time she looked at him, he frowned. Then the news reporter gave an update on the story about the courthouse bombing, explaining that unnamed sources had linked the bombing to a house fire in Tennessee earlier in the week. Based on the newspaper found on the lawn, with DeGaullo’s picture on the front page, speculation was that
Jessica Delaney was the target.

Based on police activity in the area and the teams of trackers in the Smoky Mountains National Park, the reporter theorized that DeGaullo was after Jessica Delaney, and that she might have fled into the mountains with her U.S. Marshal protector. Rumors were the marshal used to be an army ranger.

Ryan cursed and turned off the TV. “So much for government
secrecy.”

The steak began to sit like a cold hard knot in Jessica’s belly. She set her plate back on the tray and pitched the napkin onto the table. “How do reporters get this stuff?”

“I have no idea.” He looked over at her. “You didn’t eat much.”

Jessica glanced at his half-full plate. “Neither did you.”

He shrugged and picked up the complimentary newspaper the desk clerk
had given them.

Jessica let out a frustrated breath and reached for the computer. She crossed her legs under her on the couch and powered up the laptop. Hacking into the FBI database was just as easy as the first time, even though they’d installed additional safeguards since she’d first contacted them this way.

They really needed better programmers.

“I’m in.” Her fingers flew across
the keyboard as she circumvented the normal screens and hacked her way into a backdoor. A few minutes later, she’d linked into the server that housed the WitSec files.

An hour later she was still hacking her way through fire walls and encryption schemas, searching for any files that had her name in them.

Ryan set their tray outside in the hallway so room service could retrieve it. He
paced back and forth across the suite, occasionally peeking through the curtains to the parking lot as if searching for any threats.

Another hour in, he stopped in front of her, his frustration evident on his taut face. “How much longer?”

“Hard to say. WitSec’s security is a lot better than the FBI’s security. Depends on how many more layers I have to hack through to get to anything
useful.”

“Minutes? Hours? Days?”

Minutes, probably. But Jessica didn’t want to tell Ryan that, because he’d be hovering over her shoulder the whole time. “Another hour or so.”

Ryan tapped his thigh in agitation. “I’m going to grab a shower.” He crossed into the bedroom to the bathroom beyond, leaving both doors open. Jessica assumed he wanted to make sure he could hear her if she
needed him, but she didn’t want the distraction of hearing the water running and knowing he was naked just a few feet away.

Thinking back to the shower they’d shared together had her hands shaking and her mouth watering again. She set the laptop aside and quietly eased the bedroom door shut. Then she went to work on the set of files she’d found that she suspected were the ones she was looking
for.

Sure enough, once she broke through the last layer of security she had exactly what she needed. She compiled a list of all the users who’d accessed her files, a surprisingly large list. But most of the accesses were
after
she and Ryan had fled into the mountains, so she eliminated those names. The person who’d set her up would have gotten the information long before the fire that had
burned her house to the ground.

Cross-referencing the list of names against the employment database allowed her to remove a few more names. She was banking on her theory that the mole wasn’t one of the employees, because Ryan’s boss should have had time to investigate all of them thoroughly by now—unless Ryan’s boss was the mole. But she’d already eliminated him as a suspect when she’d cross-checked
some of the other files.

What she was left with were four names. She didn’t recognize any of them. She saved the names to a file on the computer’s hard drive and carefully backed out of the Federal database, careful to wipe out any traces that she’d ever been there.

Starting with the first name, she surfed the net to get his bio and current address. This part didn’t require anything
illegal whatsoever. It was pathetically easy to get the most intimate details about people online. Social networks were the fastest, easiest path to the information she needed. Again she was amazed at what people put out there for anyone to see, never realizing how vulnerable that kind of information made them.

The bedroom door opened. Ryan crossed to the couch and plopped down beside her.
His dark hair was damp, slightly curling at the ends. He’d shaved and he was wearing a tight, dark blue shirt tucked into his jeans. Jessica swallowed hard and forced herself to look back at her laptop.

“Find anything yet?” Ryan scooted up next to her to look at the screen.

“Four people accessed my files in WitSec that I couldn’t find on the employee database.” She punched up the Word
document she’d created that contained the information she’d gathered. “I put together short bios and last known addresses on each of them.” She paged through slowly so Ryan could see the information. “I couldn’t find much about these first three, no more than you can on the average person, anyway. Nothing jumped out at me about any of them.”

Ryan read the screen. “Yeah, nothing jumps out
at me, either. Who’s the fourth person?”

She paged down. “His name is Dominic Ward. He’s the—”

“Director of the CIA.”

“You know him?”

Ryan’s mouth tightened into a hard line. “I know
of
him, but I’ve never met him. He worked with my C.O. to give us intel for special-ops missions.”

“C.O.?”

“Commanding Officer, my boss in the army.”

Jessica frowned and studied
the picture of Ward, a black and white photo she’d pulled from a newspaper search. “Why would the director of the CIA have access to the Witness Protection database?”

“He wouldn’t, not for legitimate reasons, anyway. Search on another name—Alan Rivers.”

“Who?”

“Alan Rivers. Alex said he’s some higher-up who passed down orders about your case.”

Jessica frowned and entered the
name into a search engine. Her screen immediately filled with hundreds of hits. “Oh, my gosh. He’s the deputy director.” Her hands started to shake. “Why is the CIA trying to kill me?”

“Come on. We’re leaving.” He jumped up from the couch and headed into the bedroom.

Jessica shut the laptop and hurried after him. He already had their backpack sitting on the bed and he was throwing their
belongings into it.

“Where are we going?” She stepped into the bathroom to pack their toiletries.

“D.C., FBI headquarters. That’s where all the hotshots are that are looking into the WitSec leak, including my boss. This is way above my pay grade. We’re going to show the FBI what you’ve found.”

Jessica’s stomach sank. She left their bag of toiletries on the counter and faced Ryan
at the foot of the bed. “Show them what I found? Are you crazy? They’ll know you let me hack into their database. You could lose your job, or worse. They might arrest you. We can’t tell them anything.”

He put his hands on her waist and lifted her out of his way.

Jessica sputtered in frustration and followed him into the bathroom. “You can’t just walk up to the FBI and say, ‘Hey, I hacked
into your system and found something interesting.’”

He threw his razor into the bag and zipped it closed. “We don’t have a choice.”

He brushed past her and put the bag into the backpack. He tossed it over his shoulder and went into the main room.

Jessica followed, clenching her fists. “Stop for a minute. We need to discuss this. There has to be another way to let the Feds know about
this without jeopardizing your career.”

“Like what?”

“Not telling the Feds we hacked into their database, for one thing,” she snapped.

“Then how do I tell them the director, and deputy director, of the CIA might be involved? We have no proof.”

She threw her hands up. “I don’t know. You’re the covert operations guy. Can’t you think of some way to steer them without telling them
everything?”

“That’s your plan? Lie to the FBI to save my butt? Nope, sorry. I’m not built that way. I don’t choose the easy way out to avoid facing the consequences of my own actions.”

She stiffened. “Is that what you think about me? That I lie to save myself? That I don’t take responsibility for what I’ve done?”

He shrugged. “If the shoe fits.”

She gasped and jerked back.
“Well, I guess that says it all, doesn’t it? You’ve never made it a secret how you feel about me.”

He swore. “I didn’t mean—”

She waved her hand in the air. “Save it. What we need to decide right now is what we’re going to do. Some incredibly powerful people, way more powerful than Richard DeGaullo, are trying to kill me.”

“What we are going to do is go to the FBI.”

“I don’t
agree.”

He leaned forward, towering over her. “I didn’t ask your opinion.”

She stomped her foot, enjoying the comical look of surprise on Ryan’s face when he straightened.

“I’m sick of you ordering me around,” she said. “This is my life we’re talking about, not to mention your career, and your life, too. I know your family wouldn’t want you to throw your career away, and possibly
your freedom if you’re arrested, because you were too stubborn to listen to someone else. We have to come up with a better plan.”

His nostrils flared and his entire body went rigid. “Leave my family out of this.”

“I’m not suggesting we
not
tell the FBI what we found. I’d just like a different way of giving them the information. How do we even know we’ll be safe if we walk in there? The
CIA could have people everywhere looking for us. How do you know they don’t have someone on the inside of the FBI too? How do we know who we can trust?”

Something flickered in his eyes, as if he might be considering what she’d said, as if he might be really listening for a change. “Go on,” he said.

Encouraged, she continued. “The only people we can trust right now are standing in this
room—you and me. Until we know for sure who else is involved, we need to handle this on our own.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?”

“Actually, I was kind of hoping
you
could come up with a plan for that part.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “You mean, I get to be the boss again? Now that I listened for a change?”

“Ha, ha.”

He sobered and stood deep in thought for
several minutes. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, where are we going?”

He grabbed the backpack and led the way to the door. “Washington, D.C.”

Jessica stopped and glared up at him. “I thought you had opened your mind. I thought you were going to consider alternatives?”

He raised a brow. “I did. I am. We aren’t going to the FBI.”

Chapter Twenty

Ryan flattened himself against the wall of Dominic Ward’s spacious, second-floor home office. Getting past Ward’s elaborate security system had taken all of Ryan’s concentration and nearly an hour of painstaking work. But he’d finally managed to disable the alarm without setting it off. His efforts were about to be rewarded. Footsteps sounded down the hall, coming
closer. Ward opened the door and stepped inside. Even though it was well past normal working hours and the sun had set a long time ago, Ward was dressed in a business suit—a suit that probably cost more than Ryan earned in a month. Ward crossed the plush carpet toward his desk, his head down as he studied the papers in his hands.

Ryan clicked the door shut. Ward spun around in surprise. His
brows rose when he saw the gun in Ryan’s hand.

“Is this a robbery?” His voice sounded more curious than afraid.

“I’m here to talk.”

“With a gun?”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Fair enough.” Ward gestured toward his desk. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

“Not there.” Ryan waved the gun toward one of two leather chairs facing the desk.

Ward pitched his papers on a side table
and sat in the chair facing Ryan. He raised his hand, but froze when Ryan’s gun followed the movement.

“I’m just unbuttoning my jacket.”

“Slowly,” Ryan warned. He sat in the chair across from Ward and rested the pistol on his thigh, pointing it toward the door.

“I’m Dominic Ward, but you probably know that already. Who are you?”

“Ryan Jackson. I’m the marshal protecting Jessica
Delaney.” He watched for a reaction and wasn’t disappointed.

Ward’s eyes widened and he leaned slightly forward, a look of interest flashing in his eyes. “The army ranger turned U.S. Marshal, the one who was on the run in Tennessee?”

“I’ve never heard it put quite that way before. How does the director of the CIA know all that?” he pressed.

“Oh, please, that story is all over the
news.”

Ryan studied the other man. He didn’t look the type to make deals with men like DeGaullo. But then again, what did that type of man look like? Ryan reached into his jacket for the WitSec file-access dates and times that he and Jessica had printed at the business center in their D.C. hotel. He tossed them onto the coffee table.

Ward leaned forward, seemingly unconcerned with the
gun Ryan had trained on him. “Is this supposed to mean something to me?”

“Those are the dates and times when you accessed information about Jessica Delaney in the WitSec database.” He tapped his finger on the pages. “You and your deputy director are in collusion with Richard DeGaullo. He’s got something on you, and in return for his silence, you’re helping him try to eliminate the only person
who ever had the guts to stand up to him in court.”

Ward’s eyes widened. The look on his face was one of total amazement. “Please, tell me what proof you think you have. Because, I guarantee, there isn’t any.”

“I would think the printout is proof enough. If you aren’t working with DeGaullo, why would you abuse your access to look at WitSec files?”

Ward picked up the papers and carefully
studied them. A look of dawning crossed his face and he turned pale. He started to rise from his seat, but Ryan waved him back down.

Ward gave Ryan a frustrated look. “I need to check my date book. It’s over there, on my desk.”

“Why do you want it?”

“To defend myself, of course. I assure you I’ve never even met DeGaullo and I have nothing to do with any of this. I can prove it.
My date book, please.” He held out his hand as if he expected Ryan to fetch his book for him.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ll get it.” Jessica crawled out from her hiding place beneath the cherrywood desk and grabbed the planner.

Ryan looked at her incredulously. “You were supposed to stay hidden. That was our deal.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But I couldn’t sit under there any longer.
My neck was killing me all twisted up like a pretzel.”

“Couldn’t you have stayed a pretzel for just a few more minutes?
Sugar
?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you making fun of me? Again?”

He gritted his teeth. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Ward smiled as Jessica handed the date book to Ryan.

“Can I presume you are the infamous Jessica Delaney?” he asked.

“Infamous.
I kind of like that. I—” She squeaked as Ryan shoved her behind his chair and tossed the date book onto the table.

“May I?” Ward paused with his hand over the book. At Ryan’s curt nod, he picked it up and thumbed through the pages. He turned the book around and pointed to one of the entries.

“This is when my chemotherapy treatments began. Each of these red lines marks the days when I
began a new course of treatment. I was quite ill for several days after each one. As the Director of the CIA, I have a few perks. One of which is the use of a full-time nurse when I’m sick. My nurse will swear that I never went near my computer while I was going through chemo.”

Jessica tugged on Ryan’s shirt but he shook her off. He grabbed the date book and checked the entries against the
dates on the computer printout. The entries corroborated what Dominic Ward had just said.

“How do you explain the computer log?”

“There’s only one other person who could have used my access that way.”

Jessica leaned down next to Ryan’s ear. “Ryan, you need to see something.”

“Just a minute,” he told her, staring at Ward. “Who takes care of the day-to-day operations when you’re
out sick?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan saw that Jessica had crossed the room to a bookshelf. He tried to keep track of what she was doing while keeping a close watch on Ward.

Ward nodded. “Now you’re catching up. That’s where my deputy director comes into play. I believe you mentioned him earlier. Alan Rivers has been running most everything while I’ve been out. I’ve only recently
started working from my home while I regain my strength. He had his own log-in ID, so he must have used mine to protect himself if anything like this ever came out.” He pursed his lips, his eyes flashing with anger.

Ryan studied him more closely, only now noting the pallor of his skin that suggested a recent illness. His hair was shaved close to his head, like it might be if he’d been undergoing
chemotherapy treatments.

Jessica crossed back to Ryan and held a picture frame in the air between him and Ward. Ryan frowned, then stilled as he realized the significance of what he was seeing.

“Show him,” he told her.

Jessica turned the picture around to face Ward.

“Who are the men in that photograph?” Ryan asked.

Ward raised an eyebrow. “That’s me, of course, on the
left. Alan Rivers, the deputy director, is standing next to me.”

“That man, Rivers, is the same man who attacked Jessica up in the mountains. She stabbed him with a knife for his efforts.”

“Well,” Ward said. “I believe you have what you came for, then. Rivers is the one who colluded with DeGaullo. Not me.”

“One of the other men in that photograph was in the mountains, too.” Ryan
pointed to a man on the right side of the group photograph, the rifleman he’d killed. “Do you remember his name?”

Ward squinted at the picture. “No, I can’t say that I do. I’m afraid I don’t recall any of the other men’s names in that picture, but they all work for the same company, a security company that helps us with logistics overseas.”

A feeling of foreboding crept through Ryan.
He held his breath, praying the terrible suspicion in his mind was wrong. “What’s the name of the company?”

“Security Services International.”

Stuart’s company.

Jessica sucked in a sharp breath.

Ryan shoved his gun into his waistband and clenched his hands together. Everything he’d believed when he began the confrontation with Dominic Ward had just turned upside down. His gut
clenched and all he could think about was betrayal; that a man who’d been his friend from the time he was in grade school had betrayed not only him, but his fellow soldiers.

And the marshals.

And Jessica.

He looked up at her. “You were right about Stuart all along.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

He grabbed her hand and held on tight. “You said the company helps you with
overseas logistics?”

“Yes,” Ward said. “Pretty much anywhere top-secret missions are involved that require covert support. It’s a fairly new company. Rivers recommended them. He said he met the owner while in Afghanistan a few months ago, before the company was launched, and knew he could do some great work for us.”

Jessica set the picture frame down on the table. “I don’t understand
where I fit in here. What does DeGaullo have to do with Stuart’s company? Why is Rivers trying to kill me?”

Ryan sighed heavily and stood. He put his hands on her shoulders. “You’re not the target. You never were. I am.”

Her eyes widened. “What?”

“When the government’s investigation into my team’s deaths on our last mission stalled, I hired Stuart’s company to look into it. He knew
I wouldn’t let this go. He must have been behind the ambushes all along. He must have met Rivers when we were in Afghanistan and cooked up a scheme to skim money off defense contracts. Someone on my team saw him, or somehow figured out what he was planning.”

He squeezed her shoulders. “The only tie-in to DeGaullo, that I see, is you. Which means, Stuart and Rivers used you as a pawn. They
wanted to kill me to keep me from exposing them. So they framed DeGaullo, making it look like he was trying to kill you, so my death would just look like collateral damage and no one would make the connection back to Stuart or Rivers.”

She blinked several times, as if she was trying to soak everything in. “Then the explosion at the courthouse—”

“Was probably meant for me. Rivers had
my boss assign me to your case at the last minute. But he didn’t know how WitSec worked. He didn’t realize your security detail was all set, and that my boss was just having me bring over the final paperwork. He probably assumed I’d be in that van with you. I’m so sorry, Jessica. I blamed you for the deaths of those marshals, when it was my fault all along. I should have trusted you. I didn’t realize...”

She pressed her fingers against his lips. “None of this is your fault. Stuart and Rivers are the ones to blame.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Ward said, looking back and forth between them.

Ryan’s mouth flattened. “Stuart Lanier is the one who owns that company you mentioned. His men are the ones in that picture who came after Jessica and me in the mountains. Based on what you said,
I think he and Rivers are skimming money on defense contracts. It makes more sense than them working with DeGaullo. They can make a lot more money off the government than an organized crime boss.”

Ward nodded. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

Ryan put his arm around Jessica’s shoulders. “When you asked Stuart where you two might have met, I started to suspect he was somehow involved.
But I didn’t want to believe it. After you mentioned your own suspicions, it made me angry, mainly because I was thinking the same thing, and I didn’t want to believe that someone I’d trusted for years could do something like this.”

She put her arm around his waist and leaned against him. “I remember where I saw him now, and why he looked so familiar. He was at the courthouse. He passed right
by us when the marshals were leading me down the hallway. It struck me as odd, because they usually didn’t let anyone get that close to me.”

Ryan hugged her harder against his side. “All of them knew Stuart. They knew he was a friend of mine.”

Ward crossed to his desk. “I’ll call my office and have them contact the Justice Department. Based on your eyewitness accounts, I imagine there’s
enough justification to issue a warrant for Rivers and this Stuart fellow, to bring them in for questioning.”

He picked up the phone and frowned. He punched the buttons several times. Then he glanced sharply at Ryan. “The phone is dead.”

The lights went out, plunging the room into darkness.