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Her voice rose to a wail, and as much as she hated it she didn’t know how to get control of it again. Her hands began to shake, a harsh uncontrollable quivering that moved up her arms and into her body.
“Celeste!” Jonathan’s voice grew urgent. “Focus. Look at me. You’re in shock. It’s totally understandable, but you’ve got to fight through it. Now I don’t know how computers work. I’ve never opened one up and looked inside, and you could definitely say I didn’t exactly grow up in a technologically advanced house. But I’m guessing that in computer code every character or number has a purpose, right? Every part has its own thing it’s doing? Right?”
She blinked and a smile crossed her face, which was so unexpected it shocked her. What an odd way to explain it. He wasn’t right, but kind of close. “Something like that.”
“Okay,” he said. “Well, each of us has a job to do. Rod’s was to watch the perimeter. Karl and Stacy’s job is to hold down the fort and give us a chance to get out of here.” He took another step toward her. His hands rested on her shoulders. “Your job is to testify against the man who’s ultimately responsible for Rod’s death and make sure he faces justice for stealing all those people’s money. And my job is to keep you safe until you do.”
He stood there a moment with his hands on her shoulders, and something inside her wanted to step closer, to lean into his chest and let his strong arms envelop her, in a way no man had since her father had died. Even though she barely knew Jonathan Mast, and he didn’t seem like the type who was into hugs. She closed her eyes and felt her lips move in silent prayer. The she opened her eyes, swallowed hard and stepped back. “Okay, I’m ready to go.”
She grabbed a pair of leather gloves from the pocket of her coat and pulled them on. He did the same from his. He reached for her hand. She took it and he quickly yet carefully led her around the body and out into the cold predawn air. They ran, pressing through the thick trees as their feet pounded down the snow. The ground sloped beneath their feet. Gunfire echoed in the distance. The sun was starting to rise as the faintest pink sliver of light along the gray horizon. The trees parted and she saw the road.
Jonathan dropped her hand and led her along the tree line to where a large and tough-looking truck lay hidden in the trees by a camouflage cover. “Stand way back. I need a minute to uncover the truck, do a quick sweep to make sure no one tampered with it, and get it back on the road. Then we’re good to go.”
She crossed over to the other side of the road and waited as he started the engine and slowly pulled the truck back onto the road. A small battered-looking car flew down the road to her left and fishtailed to a stop. A tall heavyset young man behind the wheel held a cell phone.
“Hey! I think we’ve found her! Start recording!” a shorter and stockier young man called, leaping out of the passenger side. Celeste turned and ran, sprinting in the direction of Jonathan’s truck. A blast sounded in the air behind her. She stopped and turned back. The young man’s shoulders rolled back in a swagger as he pointed a handgun sideways at her. “Yo, you’re Celeste, right? Celeste Alexander? You’re that hacker chick that Poindexter’s got a bounty out on? I’m Miller. That there with the phone recording, this is my buddy, Lee. Get in the car now! Or I’ll kill ya!”
Jonathan shifted into Drive and was about to punch the engine when one word he’d heard the thugs shout a split second earlier finally caught up with his brain. Recording. The brazen thugs now pointing a gun at Celeste weren’t just announcing their crime like a bad online video—they were recording it, too. Just like whoever Celeste had seen in the kitchen they weren’t wearing ski masks. No, these two wanted to be both seen and known.
Thankfully, Jonathan was wearing civilian clothing. He shoved a hat down hard over his head and wrapped a scarf around his face. Then he gunned the engine. The truck shot out of the woods and straight across the road, swerving to a stop behind Celeste so that the driver’s side door was directly behind her.
She spun back, her eyes wide. Her hand rose to her lips.
The gun-wielding showman jumped back in shock with a shout that turned into a nervous laugh. “Whoa! Lee, you getting this? Make sure you’re getting this!”
Jonathan unholstered his weapon. Disgust whelmed up inside him. These criminals were threatening Celeste at gunpoint and treating it as some kind of game, when a good man had just died protecting her. He leaped from the truck and raised his gun high with both hands. “Celeste! Get behind me!”
She ran for him, darting behind him so quickly she nearly slid and fell. Miller turned back.
“Who are you?” Miller shouted. Jonathan didn’t answer. No, he wasn’t about to announce who he was and flash his badge on camera until he found out what exactly they were caught up in. For now, being undercover suited him just fine. Miller jabbed the air with the barrel of his gun. “Look, I don’t want trouble. I just want the hacker girl. Let me take her and go.”
His voice shook. There was a whole lot of nervousness hiding behind the bravado, and desperation, too. Not that it made anyone safer. A determined and reckless amateur was every bit as dangerous as a professional.
“That’s not going to happen,” Jonathan shouted. “Put the gun down.”
Miller waited a long moment, eyeing him as if weighing invisible options. Jonathan stared him down and didn’t blink. The US marshal had no doubt what would happen if it came to a shoot-out, but still he was going to do anything in his power to stop it from happening. He could still remember vividly what it was like to fire a gun for the first time. For a young man coming from an Amish background, there’d been something so foreign about it. Now, as his eyesight narrowed, his shoulders relaxed and his fingers prepared to fire, it was as comfortable as if the weapon was an extension of him. He just prayed that today wouldn’t be the first day he took a life in the line of duty.
“Whatever, man!” Miller threw his hands up like an exaggerated shrug. “You win this round. I don’t care. I’m just in it for the money, and Lee here’s just got us probably a grand’s worth of footage. Poindexter’s got everyone with dark web access and the willingness to step up and make a few bucks out looking for her. So, you can take her now, but someone else is going to take her back from you later. That’s just how the game’s played.”
“What game?” Celeste’s voice came from behind Jonathan. “Tell me! How did you know where I was? Why does Poindexter want me taken alive?”
Miller didn’t answer. Instead, he turned back toward the car, gun still dangling from his fingers as he had a quick word with Lee outside of Jonathan’s earshot.
“Get in the truck,” Jonathan said without turning. “Keep your head low. The keys are in the ignition. If bullets start flying, gun the engine and don’t stop driving until you reach a police station.”
Please, Celeste, don’t argue with me. He heard the scuffle of her footsteps on the snow and the slam of the door closing. Thank You, Gott!
Miller nodded to Lee. Then he swung back. The gun rose in his hands. His finger flicked over the trigger. Jonathan dropped to one knee and fired, hearing Miller’s bullet fly past him into the trees a millisecond before his own bullet ripped through the arm now pointing a gun at him. Miller dropped the gun, grabbing his arm and collapsing to the ground as a scream flew from his lips. Lee turned his camera phone toward his writhing partner.
Jonathan bounded into the driver’s side as Celeste moved over to the passenger side to make room for him. He holstered his weapon, shut the door and slammed his seat belt on in one seamless move.
“Fasten your seat belt and hang on tight!” He glanced at Celeste. “It’s going to get rough.”
FOUR
He heard her seat belt click. Jonathan’s truck surged backward, coming within a foot of hitting Miller before swerving sharply off the road to get around the criminals’ car. For a split second the entire scene played out before him in a glance. A howling and angry young man was down on the ground beside the car. Another bullet ripped from his gun that once again failed to meet its mark. The second young man bounded from the car and ran toward Miller, filming the scene with his phone as he did, and somehow Jonathan’s eyes managed to meet his and hold them for a split second. They were devoid of emotion. This wasn’t personal. It was just a payday for whatever criminal found her first. How was he supposed to protect Celeste against that?
Then he threw the truck into Drive.
“Hold on!” he shouted. “We’re about to spin!”
He hit the gas and yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. The truck spun. Its wheels skimmed over the ice. He waited until the final moment, and tapped the breaks and yanked the wheel back. The truck righted. They sped forward, down the road as trees and the early-dawn sky flew past them in a blur of white, pale purples and grays. Gunshots faded in the distance. The sun crept over the edge of the horizon. He pulled off the scarf and hat, then glanced at Celeste. “Are you okay?”
Her smile was weak, but she seemed to be giving it her best shot. “That was some driving. Guessing you must’ve been tearing up the streets when you were a teenager.”
He shifted his gaze to the windshield ahead. The road spread ahead of him in an endless line of white. “Actually, I didn’t get my license until I was twenty.”
Before then it had just been horses driving the family buggy. It was funny. As a teenager, he couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel of a car and drive. But when he had, he’d been surprised how impersonal it felt. It didn’t listen or respond. It was just a machine, like any other.
“Speaking of vehicles, our first stop is going to be switching this truck out for another one,” he said. “I do use the other truck when I can because it drives better. But the fact Lee was recording all that makes it more important that we do. Then it’s about a five-hour drive to the new safe house, which, as I believe you know, is set in an apartment complex in the suburb of Pittsburgh. We’ll stop for breakfast in about an hour, but there are some granola bars, apples and bottles of water in the cooler behind your seat. I’ve got to call my supervisor and let her know where we’re at.”
He reached for his earpiece, clipped it to his ear and turned on his phone. Celeste’s fingers brushed his arm.
“Wait, aren’t we first going to talk about what happened?” she asked.
He sat back. “I don’t know what went wrong, how those criminals found you or what they’re really after. Clearly, someone’s out to get you and trolling to rope in any criminal element they can find, from people with tactical weapons and smoke bombs, to idiots with cell phones. Hopefully, talking to my supervisor will help.”
He dialed the number.
“Louise Hunter.” His supervisor’s voice came on the line, crisp and clear. He had no idea how old Chief Deputy Hunter was, but both the streaks of gray in her jet-black hair and the stories she told led him to believe she was probably hovering somewhere on either side of sixty. She was the kind of woman who’d been married to the same man for forty years, had fourteen grandchildren and a career that spanned countless escaped convicts, national manhunts and hundreds of lives saved.
Jonathan gave her a heads-up that Celeste was sitting beside him in the truck and then filled her in on Rod Cormac’s death and the ambush at the safe house. As much as he hated briefing his boss in front of the person he was assigned to protect, time was of the essence and there weren’t that many options. Then she confirmed what he’d feared—this was the first update she’d received about the situation at the safe house since he himself had called for backup before going to find Celeste. Communications were still down at the farm. He could only hope Stacy and Karl were okay.
“Rod was a dedicated marshal,” Hunter said. “He’ll be deeply missed.” There was a pause, long enough to let him know she felt the sudden loss every bit as hard as he did. “Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to confirm anything about the situation or the safety of the other marshals on-site. But we have a team currently moving into formation. I will make sure you are updated as soon as we have more information. How is Miss Alexander doing?”
Jonathan glanced over at Celeste. Her head was turned away from him. The morning rays caught her golden hair.
“Miss Alexander is safe and well. She was thankfully unharmed and has come through her ordeal with remarkable resilience,” he said. Was remarkable too strong a word? Perhaps. But it was true. “She’d like to speak to you personally about the man she saw in the safe house. She said he looked like Dexter Thomes.”
“I’d like to speak to her, as well,” said Hunter.
He reached to turn off his earpiece, then paused. “Are we certain that Dexter Thomes is still behind bars?”
“Last I heard,” she said. “But I will be confirming that immediately.”
“Thank you.” He kept one hand on the steering wheel. With the other he switched off the earpiece and then he held out the phone toward his passenger. “Celeste, my supervisor, Chief Deputy Louise Hunter, would like to speak to you. I’ve switched off my earpiece, so her voice should come through the phone’s speaker now. But if not, I’m sure you know how to change that in the settings.”
“Thank you.” Her fingers brushed his, just briefly, as he handed her the phone and he felt something like electricity rush through him.
What was it about this woman that had this strange impact on him? Her file had been thin. Her parents had died when she’d been just nineteen, and had no siblings and no significant romantic entanglements. She’d taught herself programming in elementary school and won several computer, electronic and robotic awards in high school and university. She’d started getting a master’s degree but had to drop out for financial reasons and had made her own way as a self-employed computer programmer after having been turned down for way too many tech jobs that she was clearly overqualified for.
Brilliant and attractive, not to mention tenacious, it was no wonder he was attracted to her. He could rationalize that much at least. But, even if circumstances had been different, she deserved better than a man like him who, when faced with a choice between the career he felt called to and his own family and Amish heritage, had walked away and chosen work because the call on his heart to serve his country had been too loud for him to ignore.
Yes, he’d been eighteen, Mamm had just died, his older bruder and only sibling had told him he had to make a choice, and his pa had never been someone he’d felt like he could talk to. But it had been his choice and one he could never undo. He shuddered to think what a woman who had no family would ever think of a man who’d walked away from his.
He took a deep breath, pushed aside the unwanted thoughts and listened as she talked to Hunter. Truth was, he wasn’t sure what to expect. After all, she’d been pretty stubborn back at the safe house and dug her heels in pretty hard. To his surprise she was crisp, polite and thorough, going through exactly what she’d heard and seen without any embellishments or exaggerations.
“The man I saw looked exactly like Dexter Thomes,” she told Hunter, “even though my vantage point was obscured by smoke and low light. Clearly, if Dexter is still in prison, he must be a doppelgänger, but the similarity was uncanny. I researched everything I could find about Dexter Thomes before I contacted the feds and told them my suspicions he was Poindexter. His mother is deceased, his father is not listed on his birth certificate and he has no known siblings. If he had a secret twin I should’ve uncovered it.”
The women exchanged a few more words, and he noticed Celeste made a point of asking his boss to please let them know when the safe house had been secured and if the other marshals were all right. Then she handed the phone to Jonathan. He switched his earpiece back on.
“I’d like you to take her to the central Pennsylvania safe house outside of Altoona for one night,” Hunter said, “while we do another sweep of the Pittsburgh apartment and also confirm that Dexter Thomes is really still behind bars. Barring any unforeseen difficulties, she can move into the Pittsburgh apartment tomorrow.”
“Understood,” he nodded, feeling the lines of a frown wrinkle his forehead. The plan would add extra travel time and delay the start of her new identity and life. Not to mention the diversion would take them right through Amish country and painfully close to the family farm he’d left behind. He thanked his boss and they ended the call.
“Everything okay?” Celeste asked.
“I hope so,” he said. “She’ll keep us posted. We’re going to take a brief detour to another safe house for one night and then head on to your new apartment in Pittsburgh tomorrow.” He paused. Worry hovered in the depths of her eyes. “I have faith that Stacy and Karl will be okay. They’re very good agents. They know what they’re doing. And don’t worry. We’ll be at the temporary safe house later today, and if all goes well you’ll be in your new life tomorrow.”
They lapsed into silence as the truck drove through the winter morning. The sun rose higher. They passed farms with rolling fields and empty roadside wooden fruit and vegetable stands that reminded him of those his mother had expected him and his brother, Amos, to help out with during the summer.
“Did you grow up in the city or the country?” Celeste asked after a pause so long he wondered if she’d fallen asleep.
He guessed she was trying to change the subject away from Dexter, the fallen marshal and what had happened at the farmhouse. He was thankful for it. He pressed his lips together for a long moment and debated how to answer. He didn’t talk about his past for a very good reason. Most people knew nothing about the Amish, and the last thing he wanted was to listen to someone else’s uninformed opinion about the world he’d grown up in or answer questions about why he’d left. But maybe Celeste wasn’t like most people. “The country.”
“I always wanted to live in the country,” she said. “I don’t know why, but even though I’m a born-and-bred city girl, I always felt like something—God, maybe—was calling me to live in the country. When I was little, my parents used to rent this summer house, surrounded by nothing but trees and fields. I loved it. Then my parents both got cancer and we couldn’t afford it anymore. There were a lot of medical bills. I always told myself that one day I’d save enough to buy my own place outside the city, but Dexter Thomes took all that.” She looked up at him. “You know he stole all my money, too, after I turned him in? Took out multiple loans in my name, stole my identity and utterly destroyed my credit.”
He didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.”
“At least I knew the risk I was taking. I chose to hunt him down and tell the feds what I found. I put myself in his crosshairs. All the other people who had their life savings, college funds and retirement nest eggs stolen didn’t do anything. They just woke up one day to find their lives ruined. I just wish I’d found where he hid the money.” Her hands clenched into tight fists on her lap. “Not to mention it looks like he’s now using his stolen money to pay criminals to come after me.”
Instinctively, his hand reached out and brushed her arm. Her muscles were so tense she might as well have been carved from stone. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe no matter how many criminals he throws at you.”
Something fierce flashed in the depths of her eyes. “And who’s going to stop the next Rod Cormac from dying? Or get those people their money back?”
He didn’t have an answer to that. Then again, he wasn’t sure she was expecting one. After a while, he saw her eyes close and her lips move in silent prayer. He found prayer filing his own core, too.
God, I don’t reckon You and I are on speaking terms. But, please be with Rod’s family and friends right now. Comfort them in their sadness. Please, may no one else die because of Dexter and his crimes. And be there for Celeste, too. Help me keep her safe, protect her from anyone who would want to hurt her and make her dreams for the future still come true.
He’d seen the size of the new apartment he’d be moving her into tomorrow, and it was a long way away from a house in the country. He could still remember the day he’d stopped believing that God called anyone to anything. He’d been eight and had excitedly told his brother, Amos, who was then seventeen, that God had called him to be a cop. And Amos had told him that it wasn’t God—it was his own stubborn willfulness, because he couldn’t be both a cop and Amish.
He turned off the small rural highway onto a larger one. After a while, a large, expansive truck stop came into view. It was teeming with vehicles and several big chain restaurants. He pulled to a stop in a row in the back beside the big blue pickup. He cut the engine. “Now we grab our stuff, switch vehicles and get back on the road.”
They hopped out of the black truck and into the blue one, after he’d done a complete sweep of the vehicle for tracking devices or anything so much as a speck of dust out of place. Thankfully, it was clean. A moment later they were weaving their way back through the crowded parking lot.
The smell of doughnuts and coffee wafted toward them. Normally he’d have taken her in to grab a quick bite before hitting the road again. It was easy to be anonymous in a crowd, and there was no way any criminal organization could have eyes on every single rest stop of the highway, even if they happened to either figure out or guess what direction they were headed. After all, WITSEC expected their marshals to spend just a couple of weeks with witnesses helping them integrate safely into a community and letting them know where to reach help before leaving them to live their new lives. Starting over safely was the goal—not spending the rest of their lives hiding behind a closed door.
Still, something about this particular case and this particular witness gave him pause. If Dexter Thomes had been able to find a WITSEC safe house, was it possible he’d be able to find her in Pittsburgh? It wasn’t like hunkering down behind her computer screen and cutting off all contact with the outside world was going to be an option for Celeste. Hunter had been very clear the plan to ensure her safety involved keeping her off-line. Yes, they’d stop for food, and he’d use that opportunity to introduce her to the idea of watching her own back when he wasn’t going to be there. His gut told him to find somewhere much smaller and more remote. Fortunately, he knew just the place.
Suddenly her fingers grabbed his arm and squeezed so tightly he almost winced.
“We need to go—now.” She pointed with the other hand out the window at what looked like a remote-controlled helicopter hovering behind them. “Because I think we’re being watched by that drone.”
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