Liam's Witness Protection. Amelia Autin
from the courthouse—she’d already entered that escapist fugue state almost the moment the first shots were fired, the moment the two US Marshals had thrown themselves on top of her to shield her with their bodies. But Liam had carried a gun, she remembered that now. And he would have used it, she remembered that, too. Had he already used it? Was that how the machine guns targeting her had been silenced?
“Did you kill them?” The question popped out before she could stop it.
He obviously knew to whom she was referring. “I killed one of them,” he said quietly. “Alec got the other one. But there could have been others around—backup killers—there was no way to know. So Alec told me to get you out of there.”
She culled her memory, trying to recall the frenzied voices around her during and after the attack. Then she said slowly, “‘She dies, this case dies, too.’ That was Alec, yes?”
“Yeah. I didn’t like leaving him in that situation, but he was right. I had to get you to safety. That was more important.”
“Who are you?” she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
“I told you. I’m Alec’s brother Liam.”
She shook her head impatiently. “No, I mean, what are you? Are you a US marshal like the men who were guarding me?”
“Diplomatic Security Service. DSS. Like Alec. The DSS is responsible for a lot of things, including protecting foreign dignitaries when they visit the US, and I’ve done my share of that. In fact, I was on the detail guarding your Princess Mara when she first came to this country. Alec and I both were. So yeah, I knew what to do when bullets started flying. That’s my job.”
“So what is next? Where do I go?”
“We,” he told her. “Where do we go. I’m not sure. I’ve got to call a man.” He pointed to the dried blood on Cate’s arm, then indicated the restroom a short distance away. “You might want to wash up a little and use the facilities while I do that. My call will take a while.”
When Cate agreed, she was surprised he led the way to the ladies’ room but prevented her from entering until he’d checked it out. “It’s clear,” he told her when he returned. Then he moved away from the doorway a couple of paces, pulled out his cell phone and hit speed dial.
He was still on the phone when Cate came out of the ladies’ room. She’d washed the blood from her arm and done her best with the dress—which was still damp in places, although she’d blotted as much of the water from it as she could—but anyone who looked closely could still see the faint discolorations that would probably never go away completely. She didn’t care. This dress didn’t really belong to her, it was a dress designed to present a certain appearance for the jury. Well-to-do, but not too expensive. Not the Mayflower Madam, but not a street hooker, either. The dress had been picked out by the prosecutors, who wanted her to look young and wholesome. The girl next door.
Cate was young. In years, if nothing else. But she wasn’t wholesome—she was damaged goods. She would never be wholesome again. But the jury didn’t have to know that, and she had no intention of telling them how she felt about the two-year nightmare when she’d been Vishenko’s prisoner. Stick to the facts, the prosecutors had hammered home, don’t volunteer opinions.
Angelina had said the same thing. But she’d also advised Cate to let her emotions show just enough so the jury empathized with her, believed her implicitly. If she was too cold the jury wouldn’t like her. And the jury needed to like her, Angelina had said. Angelina, who had at one time been a prosecutor herself long ago, but who had also been a bodyguard for Zakhar’s Queen Juliana. Angelina, who now headed the queen’s security detail, but who had come over to the States to be there for Cate during the trial.
“Okay,” Liam was saying to the man on the other end of the phone. “Call me back as soon as you can. I’ll be waiting.” He listened for a minute, then laughed and said, “Yeah, you’re right. It’s a hell of a way to start a vacation.” Then he disconnected.
“Who were you talking to?” she asked.
“Let’s sit in the SUV,” he told her. “I don’t want you out in the open if I can help it.”
He held the passenger door for Cate but didn’t touch her at all, as if he knew she couldn’t bear to be touched in a personal way. Then he got into the driver’s seat, saying, “That was Cody Walker. My brother-in-law. At this point he’s about the only person who can help us that I know I can trust. He was already working on it—can you believe it?—he’ll call me back when he has something definite.” He chuckled softly, shaking his head. “Alec called Cody a half hour ago, told him I was in trouble and I’d be in touch. Even before I talked with Alec. Damn! Alec’s always one step ahead of me—he can read my mind.”
“I know him,” she said. “Your brother-in-law. I met him when I first met your brother. You told him where we are?”
Liam shook his head again. “The first thing you have to learn about security, Ms. Mateja, is a concept called ‘need to know.’ At this point Cody doesn’t have a need to know where we are, so I didn’t tell him. When and if he needs to know, I will.”
Cate waited for one heartbeat, then two, before she said, “Cate. Please just call me Cate. I... I don’t like Caterina.” She couldn’t suppress the little shiver as she said the name. “And I don’t use Mateja anymore.” Not for seven years. “Except in court, of course. I must use it there—it’s my legal name.”
“What last name do you go by, then?”
She laughed a little. “Would you believe... Jones?”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not.” She darted a look at his face. “I wanted an American name so common no one would be able to trace it...or me. The only names I could think of like that were Smith and Jones.”
“‘Alias Smith and Jones,’” he murmured under his breath.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Just an old TV western Alec and I used to watch on cable.” He looked as if he were going to explain more, but changed his mind.
She waited, but he didn’t say anything, so she continued. “Cate Smith sounded too much like Kate Smith, the singer—I didn’t want anyone to remember me for any reason.” Her smile faded. “The book I read in the library about going underground advised not changing your first name too much, especially the first letter. Too easy to slip up and say your real name—or at least start to say your real name—if you’re taken unaware. Same thing for signing your name. So I became Cate Jones.”
“Cate Jones.” He tilted his head to one side as he considered it. “Not bad. And most people who heard you say it would think K not C, making it even less likely they’d recognize your name.” Then his soft brown eyes hardened. “So why were you going underground in the first place?”
She wanted to look away from that hard, uncompromising stare, but she couldn’t. “Alec knows,” she said finally. Painfully.
“But you don’t want me to know, is that it?”
Cate shook her head. “You don’t have a ‘need to know,’” she reminded him.
“Touché,” Liam said with a little huff of laughter. “Touché.”
* * *
“Escaped?” roared Aleksandrov Vishenko in Russian to the two men who were the bearers of bad tidings to their boss. “What do you mean, she escaped?”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen,” said one man as he tried to placate his boss. “But there was interference from an unexpected source—Diplomatic Security Service agents who happened to be in the courthouse...armed. Both of our men are dead. At least they cannot talk.”
“They would