Liam's Witness Protection

Liam glanced over at her for a second, realizing she was right. She didn’t have her purse with her. She must have dropped it in the courthouse, and of course he hadn’t been worrying about that then. He returned his gaze to the road and said, “I doubt that will be a problem. If I know Cody, everything we need will be at the safe house, including clothes.”

“How will they know my size?”

Liam laughed abruptly, thinking about the ammo clips the agency had provided him with at the same time he’d been given the SUV and new cell phone. Ammo clips that were a perfect match for his SIG SAUER. “You’d be surprised what the agency knows.”

A long silence followed. All of a sudden, Cate said, “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

Liam was instantly on alert. Cody had told him not to mention it. “Who?”

“The other witness.” Her voice was soft, and he caught the faintest trace of an accent that reminded him of Princess Mara of Zakhar, whose bodyguard he’d been for six months in Colorado. But Cate’s English was less formal than the princess’s, more idiomatic. Maybe because she’d spent eight of the past nine years in the US. And despite the softness, there was a layer of steel beneath it, just like the princess. This woman was no pushover, either.

When Liam didn’t answer, she explained, “The woman who was going to back up my testimony. She’s dead. That’s why the trial was delayed. That’s why the prosecutors were so insistent this morning I needed to come in for another prep session with them this afternoon, even though we’d already spent so many hours preparing last week I was sick of it. That’s why your brother said, ‘She dies, this case dies, too.’ So the other witness must be dead.”

It was the longest speech Liam had heard Cate make to date. He made a judgment call, then admitted, “Yeah. Cody told me a little while ago.”

“Vishenko murdered her.” A flat, cold statement.

“Maybe. There’s no proof of that. Not yet.”

“There may never be proof. But I know.” She tapped a hand against her breastbone. “I know it here. Just as I know he’s the one who tried to have me killed. He is ruthless. Amoral. An animal. He’ll do anything to prevent me from testifying.”

“But you’re going to testify anyway. Why?” he asked, curious to understand what drove her to take the risk when so many men had refused to flip on Vishenko in the past.

“Because Alec and Angelina are right. He is evil, and he must be stopped. No matter the cost.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as if she was reciting an oft-repeated mantra, so that Liam had to strain to hear her next words. “‘I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.’”

He recognized the quotation with a sense of shock, mentally adding the last sentence, “And by the grace of God, I will.” The entire thing was carved in wood over the fireplace mantel at home, a maxim his parents had instilled in all their children from an early age. It was the driving force that had led him and all his siblings into the US Marine Corps and then into public service. “Edward Everett Hale,” he said blankly. “How do you know that quotation?”

She drew a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “Your brother said that to me. I was afraid—so terribly afraid I ran and hid for six years. Then Alec found me. He is such a good man, your brother—I could not let him down. He made me realize I have a duty to do whatever I can do to stop Vishenko. ‘I am only one.’ But if all the ones band together, we can defeat him.”

Liam was shaken. Cate had divined the kernel of wisdom out of the quotation, had pinpointed his own raison d’être—his reason for being. Yes, he was only one. But sometimes one person could make a difference.

Right and wrong. Good and evil. He couldn’t remember a time when the differences between these things weren’t important to him, same as they were for Alec. For all his siblings. Maybe it was old-fashioned nowadays. Maybe the dividing lines had become blurred for many. Not for him. But that didn’t mean he saw the world only in black-and-white. It didn’t mean he didn’t recognize and accept that a thing could be both right and wrong.

He’d killed a man today. Some would say that killing was always wrong. Not in his book. There was a higher right—saving lives—that trumped the wrong. Did he regret killing that man? Liam glanced away from the road for a second toward Cate sitting so still and quiet, looking even younger in repose...until one looked in her eyes.

No, Cate was alive now because the men who’d tried to kill her were dead. The only thing he regretted was that he and Alec hadn’t somehow prevented the entire incident from occurring. So that no one had died. So that no one had been wounded. Impossible, of course. But otherwise he didn’t have any regrets.

Except the way Cate had shied away from him. From his touch. That still bothered him. And while you’re at it, might as well admit something else is bothering you, his inner voice nudged into his consciousness.

He so didn’t want to go there. Didn’t want to examine his reaction too closely, but... It is what it is, he admitted to himself. He’d never been jealous of Alec—not since the day he turned eighteen and joined the Marine Corps anyway, which Alec had done the year before him. From that point on their friendship had been untainted by anything as destructive as jealousy on either side. Each was the other’s cheerleader, and the accomplishments of one were a source of pride to the other. Liam had even followed his brother into the DSS. Not because he was jealous of what Alec was doing, but because he believed wholeheartedly the DSS was his true calling, same as it was for Alec.

But that’s exactly what he was feeling right now. Jealousy. Hot, harsh, unreasoning. He didn’t like it one bit, but he couldn’t refuse to acknowledge it. He was jealous—of the admiring way Cate spoke Alec’s name. As if...

“At the end of the road, turn right,” said the GPS. And when Liam had dutifully done so, the GPS said, “You have reached your destination.”

* * *

Twilight covered the earth, and there was a delicious smell of roast chicken wafting through the house. The agents who ran the safe house—a husband and wife team in their fifties, but who continued to instill confidence in their abilities—had told them dinner would be ready in thirty minutes. Lunch had been so delicious Cate was looking forward to dinner with an appetite she hadn’t had since Alec had found her. Since he’d convinced her to testify against Vishenko.

In addition to feeding them, the agents had made sure Cate and Liam had everything they needed—from clothes, to toiletries, to bedrooms, to information. What little information they had, anyway, which wasn’t much. Cate remembered how the first question Liam had asked was the status of the marshals who’d been wounded in the attack on her, and the other prosecutor, too. As if he really cared about men he didn’t know. As if it mattered to him.

She’d wanted to know, too, of course. She hadn’t had a lot to do with the prosecutors other than prepping for trial, but the two marshals were part of a team guarding her for the past month since she’d returned to the US from Zakhar, and she’d gotten to know them. Both men were married. One had two young boys already and his wife was expecting their third child in a couple of months. The other had just become a father for the first time six months ago. If Cate still believed in a just and merciful God, she would have prayed for the men, prayed they would recover completely and their families would get through this terrible time in their lives without too much grief.

But Cate didn’t believe. Not anymore. Vishenko had killed her faith in God as surely as he’d killed her faith in the goodness of mankind. So she no longer prayed. Not for herself. Not for others.

Angelina still believes. And Alec, she told herself wistfully as she sat on the bed in the bedroom assigned to her—a delightfully feminine room she would have loved when she was sixteen. Now it did nothing for her. Cate had spent more than six of the past seven years running. Hiding. Living off the grid. Taking temporary jobs where they’d pay her in cash. Living hand-to-mouth at times, barely able to scrape up enough money to rent a room in a halfway decent boardinghouse. Skipping meals on occasion, when her money wouldn’t stretch to cover a roof over her head and food. Always looking over her shoulder. Always terrified. Always moving on to somewhere new after a few months, somewhere Vishenko’s men couldn’t find her.

No friends. She couldn’t afford friends, and not just because they might accidentally betray her. She couldn’t take the chance—if Vishenko’s men finally ran her to ground—that one of her friends would get caught in the cross fire. She knew Vishenko’s men wouldn’t care who else was killed so long as she was. She was almost more terrified of causing someone else’s death than she was of dying.

Like the prosecutor today. Dead because of her. One minute he’d been alive and she’d been arguing with him, the next minute he was dead at her feet and her bodyguards were plastered over her, taking those bullets meant for her. Vishenko’s revenge for her daring to oppose him. For daring to escape. For daring to testify. The prosecutor wasn’t a friend, but she’d still caused his death. And if anyone else who was shot this morning died, that was her fault, too.

Don’t think that way, the rational part of her brain told her. It’s not your fault, it’s Vishenko’s. But her conscience didn’t want to listen. If she’d stayed in Zakhar all those years ago, if she’d listened to Angelina...none of this would have happened. You would probably be married by now, she thought, to a strong man of good character. A man who would treat her with respect. A man with high moral standards—like the ones she’d had herself when she was sixteen. A man like...

She shied away from that thought, the same way she’d shied away when he’d tried to touch her hair. Liam. He hadn’t meant anything by it. Hadn’t intended to give her cause for alarm. And he certainly hadn’t been going to strike her. Abuse her. Terrify her. She knew that. Her brain knew that. But her body had reacted without thinking. Would it always?

She would never marry. Not now. What respectable man would want her? And even if—miracle of miracles—she found one who did, could she ever bear to be touched...that way? If she couldn’t even let an obviously decent man like Liam brush her hair out of her eyes—an innocent gesture—how was she ever going to let a man touch her in more intimate ways?

She sighed, suddenly so worn-out she could barely sit up. She laid down on top of the bedspread and pulled a corner of it over her. Fifteen minutes, she promised herself as she closed her eyes. Just fifteen minutes. She shivered a little in the air-conditioned room and clutched the bedspread closer, huddling beneath it. She wasn’t used to air-conditioning. And she was too thin.

Does Liam think you’re too thin? The question came at her out of nowhere, and it surprised her. Even more surprising was the answer. No, he doesn’t. Remember the way he looked at you? The way his eyes said he found you attractive?

Such a good man, despite the fact he’d already judged her. She didn’t fault him for that—his opinion of her was no worse than her opinion of herself. It made no difference in the way he treated her, though, and that touched a secret place inside her. Even thinking the worst, Liam was so protective, like Alec. But Alec was Angelina’s, heart and soul.

Hovering between waking and sleeping, Cate’s thoughts winged back to Angelina. Sometimes it seemed as if her memories of long ago, her memories of her cousin were the only things that still belonged to her. Angelina, who’d treated Cate like a little sister...spoiling her a bit, making much of her. Calling her dernya, which meant little treasure in Zakharan. Never making her feel unwanted the way her parents had made her feel unwanted because she wasn’t a boy.

Cate smiled sadly, remembering happier times with her cousin...when they were both determined to succeed in their own way. When they both believed in the power of prayer the way they believed in hard work. Back when she’d idolized Angelina and wanted to be exactly like her—even though she’d known she couldn’t be. She’d known she’d never excel academically, the way her cousin did. She’d been twelve to Angelina’s seventeen, but she’d known even then that if she excelled it would have to be in a different arena.

When had she decided to become a model? Was it when she’d shot up four inches between seventh and eighth grades, adding another three inches in ninth? When the other girls in her school had gazed enviously at Cate’s luxurious golden hair, her face, her slender figure, her graceful walk? The desire to excel at something—to stand out from the crowd—the way Angelina always had and always would?

Cate hadn’t been jealous of Angelina, but she had wanted to impress her—easy to see that now. But Angelina had stayed safely in Zakhar—accepting the limitations staying there placed on her as a woman, yet working within the system to effect change. Cate had been impatient with those limitations, those restrictions, especially the ones placed on her by her parents. Restless to break free, to escape the tedium of school—where even her popularity with her fellow students hadn’t been enough to satisfy her—and seek fame and fortune as a model.

And when her parents had died unexpectedly in a car accident, sixteen-year-old Cate suddenly saw it was possible. She’d thought the promised modeling contract in the US was her one-way ticket out. Had believed the work visa provided by the US embassy—but paid for by the man who’d dangled that modeling contract in front of her starstruck eyes—was her escape from middle-class mediocrity. Who could have known she would escape...into hell.

* * *

Dinner was still twenty minutes away and he’d already meticulously cleaned his SIG SAUER, so Liam called Alec again. He’d spoken with his brother twice since he and Cate arrived at the safe house, but both times had been strictly business. Now he needed to talk to his brother about Cate—and the things Alec knew that Liam knew nothing about. He told himself it was important to the case, and maybe it was. But in his heart he knew that wasn’t why he was asking. There was just something about Cate he couldn’t shake off. Cate...and her relationship with Alec. His brother. His newly married brother.

Come on, he rallied himself. You know Alec inside and out. There’s no way he’s fooling around. Not Alec.

Cate was a different story. He knew almost nothing about her, and what he did know wasn’t...encouraging. So his attraction to her was unexpected, unwanted and totally out of character. He’d always been drawn to sweet young things, ever since the transition from junior high to high school, when he’d first noticed girls were different. Wonderfully different. But he’d always gone for the wholesome girls back then, the girl-next-door type. And when he’d grown up, things hadn’t changed all that much. He was still attracted to women he wouldn’t be ashamed to introduce to his family.

He didn’t know how or why Cate had become a prostitute, but even when he’d been in the Marine Corps stationed overseas he’d never picked up a hooker. Never paid for sex. He had a healthy libido—okay, more than healthy to tell the truth—but he drew the line at paying for sex. It was degrading to both the man and the woman.

Besides, even though he and Alec didn’t have the looks in the family—Shane and Niall had a corner on that—they did have something even better. Charm. Charisma. And a way with the ladies that had become almost legendary in the DSS, though neither brother was the kind to kiss and tell.

So the fact that he was attracted to Cate—and damn it, he couldn’t shake it off—meant he needed some answers from Alec. Fast.

“So tell me about Cate,” he said as soon as his brother answered the phone.

“Cate? You mean Caterina?”

“Yeah. But she says she doesn’t go by that name anymore. Except in court.”

Silence at the other end. Then, “When did she tell you this?”

Liam let out his breath long and slow. “This morning. When she told me she doesn’t use Mateja anymore, either. When she told me about going underground. About picking an alias.”

“Must have been quite the conversation.”

“Not really.” Liam laughed ruefully. “When I asked her why she went underground, she told me that you know, but I don’t have a ‘need to know.’ Right after I explained the concept to her.”

“And do you have a need to know?” Alec asked pointedly.

Liam thought about it for a minute. “Yeah, I think I do.”

Silence hummed between them, and Liam knew his brother was reading between the lines, hearing what he wasn’t saying. Finally Alec said, “Not a good idea, Liam. She needs protection. Not some guy hitting on her.”

“I’m not ‘some guy,’ and I’m not hitting on her.” Liam held on to his temper...barely. It was so unlike him, it gave him pause. “And I know she needs protection. That’s why I’m here.”

“As long as you remember that.”

“You don’t have to tell me how to do my job.” His temper threatened to get away from him again, and Liam knew his brother could hear the edge he couldn’t keep out of his voice. “That’s what she is. A job. That’s all,” he insisted, but an insidious little voice in his head asked, Are you trying to convince Alec? Or yourself? He ignored the little voice and said harshly, “Just tell me what I need to know, damn it.”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“Why did she go underground? What was she running from?”

“Not what. Who. Aleksandrov Vishenko. One of the defendants in the case.”

“She mentioned him. Said he was the one trying to kill her.”

“With good reason. She can put him away for life. Not to mention what her testimony can do to the other defendants.”

“What does she know?”

“It was a three-way conspiracy. A group of Zakharian criminals were luring young, pretty Zakharian women to the US under the guise of modeling contracts. The previous two regional security officers at the embassy—the one I replaced and the one before him—and several Foreign Service officers were fraudulently providing US visas for the women. Many of them underage girls, really. And Aleksandrov Vishenko’s branch of the Russian mob was taking delivery of the women and forcing them into prostitution. Making a fortune selling some of them to gangs across the country, or pimping them out themselves.” Alec paused for a moment. “Caterina saw it all. She lived it. And she had evidence.”

“How’d she get the evidence?”

“If you believe Vishenko, she was his willing mistress for two years.”

Something cold and hard gripped Liam. “And if you don’t believe him?”

“She was his prisoner for two years. His personal sex slave.”

“Oh, Christ!”

“Yeah,” Alec said dryly. “That’s what I said when I first heard about it. Made me sick to my stomach. Literally. Then I wanted to cry. For her.” He didn’t say anything for a minute, letting that sink in. Then he added, “I can’t tell you any more than that. It’s her story. You would have heard all about it in court tomorrow—if Vishenko hadn’t tried to kill her. But for now, you’ll have to get the rest from her. If she wants you to know...she’ll tell you. But let me say this. You really don’t want to know. I wish I didn’t. Because knowing what I know, well...it makes me think vigilante justice might not be such a bad thing after all.”

Guilt slammed into Liam as he realized he’d made assumptions about Cate based only on what little he thought he knew about her...most of it false. He tried to figure out why he’d been so quick to judge her, then shook his head when it dawned on him he’d wanted to think the worst of Cate...to counteract his totally unexpected strong attraction to her. It hadn’t worked. And now he could add guilt to the equation.

Chapter 4

A voice from the bottom of the stairs called Liam and Cate to dinner, and Liam started down the staircase. But when no sound came from Cate’s bedroom he turned around and tapped on her door, thinking maybe she hadn’t heard the call. When she didn’t respond he rapped harder, but still no answer.

He tried the doorknob and it wasn’t locked, so he twisted the knob and opened the door a few inches. “Cate? Dinner.”

The room was shrouded in darkness, and there was no movement, nothing to suggest she was even in there. Suddenly concerned—she wouldn’t just take off, would she?—he pushed the door open all the way. That’s when he saw her huddled in the center of the bed, the bedspread pulled around her slender body. Fast asleep.

He trod quietly over to the bed, hesitated for a second, then touched her arm lightly. “Cate.” She jumped as if he’d shot her, jerking upward so quickly Liam was startled back. “Hey, sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. Just wanted to tell you dinner’s ready.”

She pushed her hair away from her face and blinked at him. Then she rubbed her eyes—tired eyes, he saw now. Sad eyes. Ancient eyes that were the window into a soul in torment. How had he missed it before? “It’s okay,” she said finally. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I was just resting my eyes, and...” She stared at Liam through the shadows in the room. “Thanks for waking me. I wouldn’t want to miss dinner.” She smiled, a slight movement of her lips that came and went so quickly it almost couldn’t even be called a smile. “I’ve been smelling that roasted chicken for hours, it seems.”

Any other woman Liam would have offered a hand to help her off the bed. But Cate wasn’t any other woman. And now that he knew—well, he didn’t know exactly what he knew, but his imagination was working overtime, supplying details he didn’t want to think about. Not about Cate, or any woman. So no way was he going to touch her. It made sense now why she hadn’t wanted him to touch her before. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t Liam Jones she was rejecting—she didn’t want any man touching her. And he didn’t blame her. Not one bit.

* * *

Dinner wasn’t the silent affair Liam had expected. The agents, who went by the last name of Morgan, carried on a conversation between the four of them by sheer will. They refused to let Cate withdraw within herself, and asked a series of innocuous questions designed to put her at her ease. She answered haltingly at first—as if she wasn’t in the habit of carrying on dinner conversation—then with increased confidence. And Liam was convinced that whatever else she was, whatever else she’d been, she was well-read. Self-educated? he wondered. Cate let something slip that made him suspect libraries were her only recreational outlet...in large part because they were free.

Liam answered when questions were addressed to him, but in between he watched Cate. Surreptitiously. He remembered watching her that morning—was it only that morning?—arguing with the prosecutors. Her hand gestures graceful and fluid. Now he watched her hands close up, fascinated by everything she said and did. And that’s when he saw it. It wasn’t obvious—just a slight darkening of the skin. But it shouldn’t have been there. Not twin bands circling both wrists in almost exactly the same location. And suddenly he knew what they were. And how she’d gotten them.

Scars. Scars left by something bound tightly around her wrists, bindings she must have fought against until her skin was raw and bleeding. Repeatedly. Then he heard Alec’s voice saying, “...Made me sick to my stomach. Literally. Then I wanted to cry. For her...”

Bile welled up in his throat as his stomach churned violently and he wanted to cry for her too, despite his deceased father’s long-ago strictures on crying. But more than that he wanted punish the man who’d done this to her. He wanted to pummel him into a bloody pulp, wait a few minutes, then come back and do it again. And again. Until the man had paid for those scars, and what they had to mean. As if he could erase his own mistaken thoughts about Cate by exacting two years’ worth of vengeance. For her.