Chapter 35 #2
“We raided a La Mano Negra compound in Collierville yesterday morning and found a laptop that contained some disturbing contents. Not least of which were recent surveillance stills of a woman. When the FBI guy ran facial rec, it turned her up as one of yours. Witness number 11672.”
The lie had rolled off his tongue with surprising ease. But that hadn’t meant she’d bought it. The long pause that had followed felt like the longest in Ryan’s life.
Finally, Sharrow had responded. “Shit.”
Okay, so she was buying it. So far. “The footage was of her at what looked at her house,” he said. “It was time-stamped two days ago.”
An exhalation, and then Sharrow’s voice had come out in a wince. “Shit.”
“Yeah,” he’d lied. “Someone’s found her, somehow.”
There’d been another long pause. “But how?” she’d said, eventually. “It’s impossible. You know the precautions—”
“What I know,” he’d interrupted, “is that we gotta get her the hell outta there. Right now.”
The use of we had been deliberate. It made them sound like they were in this together, that they had each other’s backs. That they were a team. He knew it had worked because he could hear the relief in the woman’s voice. “Yeah. Right. Of course.”
So far, so good. He’d swallowed some of his own relief. “Where are you?”
“In Denver. At my parent’s house. I’m on maternity leave.”
He’d closed his eyes and pressed his palm against his forehead. Finally, something had gone his way. “And where’s the witness?”
Another long pause. Ryan hadn’t even dared to breathe. If Sharrow told him this piece of information that she meant she was all in. It meant she’d bought his entire story. It meant that soon this whole mess would be over.
“Southwest Florida,” she’d said.
If Ryan hadn’t already been sitting, he would have had to find a chair to keep from buckling from relief. But he’d managed to keep his tone cool and collected. “Well, that means I’m a hell of a lot closer to her than you are.”
He’d paused before making his request. It was a request that went against every oath of service and integrity and justice he’d taken when he became a marshal. It was wrong, and he knew the consequences of it would haunt him for the rest of his life.
But it was the only way to save Kylie’s life.
In the end, he’d just blurted it out, knowing there was no way around it. “But I’m gonna need you to send me all her details.”
During the long pause that had followed his question, Ryan had bitten down on his tongue so hard he’d thought he might bite through.
“All her details?”
“Everything you got on her. I can get to her place and get her into protective custody right away. But I gotta know where I’m going and who I’m dealing with here.”
She said nothing for a long moment and Ryan had gripped the phone, thinking that for sure that the jig was up. Then she’d said, a little breathlessly, “Okay. I’ll send you her file.”
He’d heard the anxiety in her voice and realized what had been motivating her long pauses.
Fear. She’d been terrified of being the first U.S.
marshal to wind up with a dead witness on her hands.
The one-hundred-per-cent survival rate of WITSEC participants had been bandied about so often it had become folkloric.
It had entered popular culture, had captured the public’s imagination.
And it was the feather in the cap of the USMS. Unlike every other law enforcement agency in this country, U.S.
marshals got to hold their heads up high and say, we don’t screw things up.
We don’t get people killed under our watch.
Ever.
And it was probably the only reason anyone agreed to join the damn program in the first place.
He’d felt a deep twist of guilt that it would be him at fault if the woman got killed because what he was about to do.
Not Sharrow. And certainly not the Service.
He’d swallowed down his apprehension and said with as much confidence as he could muster, “Inez. I’ll handle this. She’s going to be fine.”
But even as he’d said them, he’d realized they’d sounded like someone’s famous last words.
After he’d ended the call, he’d booked the first flight to Tallahassee. It had departed at thirty-four minutes past noon.
At ten minutes to twelve, he’d been waiting in the departure lounge at Memphis International Airport.
Sharrow had emailed him the witness’s file, and he’d read it as he paced.
The woman’s name was now Jessica Meeks. She lived in some tourist town by the sea and worked as a stripper in some dive bar near the beach.
In her hurry, Sharrow had attached not just Meeks’ file, but a whole sheaf of information about Daniel Castano, too.
Or maybe it hadn’t been a mistake. Maybe she had thought it was relevant. He didn’t know, and at that point, he didn’t care.
At one minute to midday, his phone had buzzed in his hand. Unknown number. Speak of the devil.
He’d put the phone to his ear but had said nothing.
“Time’s up, Mr. Marshal,” the voice had said, in that dry rasp. Then there’d been a muffled sound, like the phone had been handed to someone else. Then a woman’s scream. Kylie’s. Then the unmistakable sound of a power tool.
A buzz saw.
The call had ended.
Ryan’s hands had been shaking so much he’d barely been able to tap the buttons on his screen. They’d just skidded uselessly over the surface. A cold dread, like icy fingers, gripped his stomach.
He’d forced his fingers to work.
To attach the woman’s file.
To hit Send.
And then he’d sunk down into a plastic seat in the middle of the bustling airport. Knowing that eight hundred miles to the south, in a small town called Panama City Beach, Jessica Meeks had just become a dead woman walking.
* * *
If there was such a place as purgatory, Ryan thought it might resemble the departure lounge of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, as he waited to find out which of the two women was dead because of him.
As Ryan had paced back and forth, waiting for his connecting flight to Florida, he’d got a text from the unknown number. He’d had to suck in a breath and steel himself before opening it.
It had been from Kylie.
Ryan, I’m so sorry. For everything. I know I’ve put you through hell. But it’s over now. Everything’s going to be better. You’ll see.
He’d known he should feel relief, and he did. But undercutting it had been a sharp stab of anger. Anger at his wife and her inability to get her shit together. To go get help. To go get therapy. To quit being such a goddamn liability.
The anger had promptly spawned guilt, and the sharp switch had made his head ache. His phone had rung again.
Sharrow.
“I’m on a flight to Florida,” she’d said. “I should be there around six tonight.”
“But you said you’re on maternity leave.”
“As long as I don’t give birth on the plane, I’ll consider it a win.”
Rubbing a hand over his face, he felt even more guilty for making a heavily pregnant woman fly across the country.
She’d said, “A neutral site in Baton Rouge can take her.”
He’d nodded, even though Sharrow hadn’t been able to see him. “Okay. Good. I can get her there.”
“But there’s a hurricane coming in. Big one, they say.”
He’d heard. The news had been full of it. Right then, though, he’d had bigger problems to worry about. “I’ll get her there.”
“Are you sure? There are warnings out for the whole Gulf coast.”
They’d been calling his flight, so he’d stood up. “I’ll be fine. They always say they’re gonna be worse than they are.”
When he’d landed in Tallahassee, he’d contacted Mark Lyman, a deputy marshal he’d worked with on a case in the Caribbean a year ago.
He’d given him the same story he’d given Sharrow, about the phony Collierville raid and the laptop and the subsequent need to get Jessica Meeks into immediate protective custody.
Only this time, the need was genuine. But not because of some fictitious surveillance stills.
Because of him.
He’d borrowed the deputy’s vehicle and driven like hell to Panama City Beach. The view out the window had been monotonous: stands of slash pine and the yellowing grass verge of the interstate, pocked with divots of sand as white as snow.
A little over two hours later, he’d arrived at Meek’s house. Flashing blue lights painted the ransacked building in an eerie glow, and the officers’ grim faces spoke of a horrifying scene.
He’d been too late.
When he’d discovered that the woman hadn’t been home during the invasion, that she’d been at work, he’d nearly dropped to his knees in relief. He’d raced to Femme Fatale in time to find her safe and sound. Albeit scantily clad.
And he’d known the moment he’d laid eyes on her, he couldn’t let anything happen to her. He was going to get her to that neutral site in Baton Rouge if it killed him.
It nearly had. And yet he’d still failed.
Now she was lost and alone and terrified. And it was all his fault.
It occurred to him now, sitting on that log in the middle of nowhere, that it was always going to end this way. That at some point, someone was going to investigate his story. Someone was going to put the pieces together and realize the whole thing was a lie.
Jessica would have figured it all out eventually, too. In his heart of hearts, he’d known that all along, too. Which made all his hopes for some kind of a…thing working out between them seem even more futile.
What on earth had he been thinking? That he’d get to live happily ever after with the woman he’d sold out to the men who were trying to kill her?
He stared down that muddy road in the direction she’d had gone. And was reminded with a sickening jolt that those same men were still out there.