A PROTECTED WITNESS
by
Mallory Kane

November 2004

Excerpt

PROLOGUE

     The man in the black topcoat rang the doorbell of the Georgetown home and smoothed his fingers over his fine leather driving gloves.  The breath mint dissolving on his tongue sent a chill sharpness through his senses as he waited.
    The gun in his pocket ruined the balanced custom fit of his topcoat, but that couldn't be helped.  He needed the weapon instantly available, and he wasn't planning to stay long enough to take off his coat and hat.  Pulling his hat further down over his brow, he lowered his chin into the warmth of his black cashmere scarf. 
     This wouldn't take long. 
     Allison Barnes opened the door.  He was surprised.  Wednesday was her usual meeting with the FBI's Community Outreach Program staff.  His brain raced to revise his timeline by a couple of extra seconds. 
     Joe Barnes' wife was over a decade younger than Joe, and striking, with high cheekbones and dark red hair.  She wore a casually elegant lounging robe and held a wine glass in her hand. For an instant she stared at him, until he lifted his chin from the scarf.  He saw belated recognition dawn in her eyes.
     "Hello, Allie.  Is Joe home?"
     "Yes.  Yes he is.  Come in."  She was surprised to see him, but gracious.  With her sharp green gaze and her elegant assurance, she was certainly her father's daughter.  It was a shame. She was lovely.
     As he stepped around her, Joe appeared at the other end of the hall, looking less tense than he had in a long while. He walked straight up to him and shook his hand without removing his gloves. 
     "Hello, Joe."  He felt another faint stab of regret.  He had been valuable, in his way.  Still, it couldn't be helped.  "Surprised to see me?"
     The Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Division of Unsolved Mysteries looked at his visitor with a mixture of resolve and fear in his eyes.  He knew exactly why he'd come.
     "I'm not changing my mind," he said, lifting his chin and casting a worried glance toward his wife.  "Can't we talk about this tomorrow?"
     "This will just take a minute."  The man reached into his pocket and closed his hand around his gun.  Behind him, Allison started toward them, her shoes clicking on the Italian tiles.
     "May I take your hat and coat--" she started as he lifted the gun from his pocket and shot Joe between the eyes.
     His wife screamed.
     He turned to put a bullet into her temple as she pushed past him, but she fooled him.  She didn't rush toward her fallen husband.  Instead, he barely caught a glimpse of her ashen face as she whirled and ran in the opposite direction. In front of her on the hall table was a telephone.  She reached for it.  Cursing, he pulled the trigger. Twice.
     Her body arched as the bullets slammed into her slender back.  She fell to her knees, then crumpled forward on the tile floor, her dark red hair floating down like a dropped silken scarf.
     He started toward her, his gun aimed at the back of her head.  The piercing sound of a siren split the silence of the night, and somewhere close, dogs barked.
     The man in the black topcoat couldn't afford to stop even for an instant.  He knew exactly how much time had passed.  Impeccable timing and flawless planning had gotten him where he was today.  Allison's unexpected presence had cost him three seconds. He had to leave now. 
     Stepping around her body, avoiding the fast-spreading pool of blood, he walked out the door.  He pulled his hat down and tucking his chin into his scarf.  He slipped into the sleek dark car and drove away.

* * * * *

  Seventeen months later, early summer

        IT WAS AFTER two o'clock in the morning when Mitchell Decker unlocked the door of his apartment overlooking Woodley Park.  He'd stopped by the office first.  As he'd expected, Eric was still there.  Eric Baldwyn, profiler for the Division of Unsolved Mysteries, was working with the Montgomery County Police Department on a series of rapes and attempted rapes that appeared to be connected.  When Eric was in the middle of a profile, he didn't eat or sleep. Often he didn't even talk. 
     Mitch had given him the usual lecture about taking care of himself, and Eric had given Mitch his usual promise that he'd do better.
     Then Mitch had looked in on the other member of his staff who was burning the midnight oil.  Natasha Rudolph.  The Division's computer wizard was asleep at her keyboard, her blonde head propped against one fist.  Her signature black turtleneck and slacks blended into the shadows cast by the pale light of her computer monitor.  He tried to exit without waking her but he'd never seen anyone who could come within forty feet of the young Russian immigrant without her knowing it.
     "Morning, Mitch," she said, sitting up and stretching.  "Welcome back.  I found our guy."
     "The Davidson kidnapping?  Is it the father?"
     "Yep.  Rumors of his untimely death three years ago were greatly exaggerated."
     Decker had nodded in satisfaction.  "You called Storm?"
     She nodded.  "I left a message.  You know he's in bed.  Maybe asleep, maybe not," she said wryly.  "I'm waiting to hear back so I can fax him the intel."  She squinted at him.  "How about you?  How are you doing?"
     Mitch had smiled tiredly and assured Natasha that he was fine. 
     He was.  And glad to be home.  He nudged his front door closed and dropped his bags on the floor of the foyer.  He considered D.C. his home.  His first and only home. 
     His childhood had been a constant series of apartments and hotel rooms as his father swooped in on companies in trouble, did his thing and then moved on.
     Mitch grabbed a bottle of water from his refrigerator, thinking about the past week and his father's unexpected death. 
     His sister Elizabeth had taken care of the arrangements before Mitch had even arrived in San Francisco.  All he'd had to do was be there. Liz was just like their father, driven, ruthless, obsessed.  So naturally every last detail about the funeral was flawless. 
     Mitch had had nothing to do, which had given him plenty of time to reflect on why, although he and his father had been estranged for years, the old man's death left such a big hole inside him.  A hole almost as big as the hole left by the death of his boss and mentor, Joe Barnes.  He hadn't come up with a good answer.
     He'd never admired their father the way Liz had. To Mitch, John Decker was an emotional wasteland and an entrepreneurial piranha.  He attacked failing companies using ruthless tactics and his legendary instinct.
     As Mitch finished the water, his eye was caught by the message light on his telephone.  He was surprised to see it blinking.  He didn't get many messages on his home phone, and he'd checked them from San Francisco a day or so ago.
     He pressed PLAY and jotted down the originating number of the first message.
     There was nothing there.  A fraction of a second of silence, then a hang-up.  Mitch looked back at the number.  He didn't recognize the area code.
     He played the message again, concentrating on the silence.  Could he hear anything?  Nope.  Just dead air, then the sound of the receiver being cradled.  So it wasn't a cell phone.  Nor had he heard the familiar click of a computer switch that signaled a cold call from a telemarketer.
     He went on to the second message, writing down another unfamiliar number.  This time the caller stayed on the line a heartbeat longer, but Mitch still couldn't distinguish any sounds.  He thought he'd heard a car horn and maybe the echo of traffic whizzing past.  Was the caller in a phone booth?
     He pulled out his cell phone and punched speed dial.  "Nat, good.  You're still there.  Run a couple of phone numbers for me."
     He gave her the numbers and waited.  After a few seconds, Natasha made a satisfied sound.
     "Here we go.  The first one is a phone booth outside of Grand Junction, Colorado. The second . . . " she paused and he heard the keyboard clicking.  "The second came from a phone booth in St. Louis, Missouri.  Everything okay?"
     "Fine," he said distractedly. Two phone booths in two different states, twenty hours apart.  "Thanks, Nat." 
     "Any time, boss."
     "Now go home. Don't show up again until Monday."
     "I'm still trying to trace that hacker--"
     "That's not a top priority.  Go."
     "Yes, Dad!"  She made fun of his fatherly concern for his staff, but Mitch knew she appreciated it.  She had no family that he was aware of.
     He pulled up an atlas program on his computer and traced a line between the two towns Natasha had mentioned.  They were both along I-70.  He queried the quickest route between Grand Junction, Colorado, and D.C.  The blue line traced I-70 through St. Louis and all the way through Pennsylvania to where it joined I-270 toward D.C.  And it confirmed what he was thinking.  Whoever had called him was headed this way.
     He touched the little circle on the computer screen that represented Grand Junction with his fingertip, trying to dismiss the first thought that popped into his head.  But it wouldn't stay dismissed. 
     He took a deep breath, imagining the subtle scent of lavender.  Shaking his head, he tried unsuccessfully to stop the vision of dark red hair and deep seafoam green eyes that not even seventeen months' distance had banished.
     The calls were wrong numbers, he told himself.  But that wasn't likely.  Two wrong numbers, twenty hours apart, on a direct route to D.C.?  It was too much of a coincidence.  Mitch didn't believe in coincidences.
     But neither did what he was thinking.
     He knew that protected witnesses were usually relocated to landlocked states.  Since most of them were criminals themselves, it served the U.S. Marshall's Service to keep them in places that didn't offer a quick escape route to a border.      
     "Damn, Allie.  Is it you?"  His whole body tensed with worry, his heart clenching like a fist in his chest.  All this time, and not a day had passed that she hadn't been on his mind.
     Was she in trouble?  Every instinct told him it was her, but he didn't like to depend on instinct.  He never had.  Instinct was like his father.  Unreliable.
     After she'd been whisked away in the middle of the night and her obituary had appeared in the Washington Post, Mitch had experienced a staggering moment of belief that she'd really died.
     Rationally, he'd known she'd been put in the Witness Security Program to guard her safety until she regained her lost memories of that night.  But he'd been there, he'd seen her lying on the floor in a dark spreading pool of her own blood, watched as she was rolled into the operating room with a ventilator breathing for her and a thoracic specialist shouting at the nurses to hurry.
     She was safe now.  Safe and far away from D.C.  There was no logical reason for her to call him. 
     Unless she was in trouble, he argued with himself.  But that wasn't logical either.  He wasn't authorized to help her. 
     If she needed help, she'd do what she'd been instructed to do--call her Witness Security Program contact.  The U.S. Marshal's Service would immediately move her to a safe place and give her a new identity. 
     And Mitch still wouldn't know where she was. 
     He showered and climbed into bed, but when he closed his eyes, all he saw was Allie's pale, lovely face against the brilliant white of the intensive care unit sheets.  All he heard was the pinging of the heart monitor that measured out her life beat by beat.
     He tossed back the covers and got up, brushing his hand over his short damp hair.  There was no way in hell he was going to sleep this night.
     Standing at the window overlooking the park, he let the memories and guilt wash over him like a summer storm, unwelcome and uncomfortable but unavoidable.  Joe Barnes had been more of a father to Mitch than his own father ever had.  Joe had been a true friend and mentor. 
     He'd trusted his instincts that awful night, and the results had been tragic.  If he'd gotten to their home just a few minutes sooner, maybe Joe wouldn't be dead, and Allie wouldn't have been sent away.
     He wondered if she was happy, making a new life for herself, getting past the tragedy.  Maybe she'd met someone new.
     Mitch swore and wiped his face, rubbing his palm across the stubble that roughened his chin.
     He abruptly turned away from the window and the feelings he had never and now would never let himself explore, because Allie had been his boss’s wife.  His gaze settled on the phone and her face rose again in his mind in haunting detail.
     Mitch frowned, fighting to banish the vision.  But the instinct he tried to temper with logic reared, sharpening the classically beautiful lines of her face in his memory.  Her green eyes pleaded with him.  That little worried frown marred her forehead. 
     If Allie was reaching out from behind the fortress of the Witness Security Program to contact him, then something horrible had happened.  Something beyond horrible.  Something that made her feel the WSP couldn't protect her.
     The skin of his scalp tightened and his shoulders cramped with tension.
     Allie's life was in danger.

* * * * *

     THE PHONE HADN'T RUNG during the night.  Mitch hadn’t slept. He'd lain in the dark, heart pounding, thoughts racing.  Why hadn't she called again?  Where was she?  Had something happened to her?
     He tried to work the next day, but his mind wasn't on his job.  By the end of the day, he'd only made it through the top four items in the stack his super-efficient secretary had collected for him while he was in San Francisco.
     The day was typical, punctuated by phone calls, discussions with various members of his staff, a luncheon with the Special Agents in Charge of the other Divisions under Deputy Assistant Director Frank Conover, and paperwork.
     Mitch stopped halfway through a stack of forms that needed his signature, laid down his pen and flexed his cramped fingers. One of the most frustrating parts of any government job was the paperwork.  Today it was torturous.  He couldn't sit here any longer.  He wanted to go home, to be there when Allie called again. 
     If it was her, his logical brain reminded him.  He glanced at the clock, a little surprised to see how late it was.  After seven.  He was alone in the suite.  He stood and arched his neck.
     As he shrugged into his jacket, his desk phone rang.
     He reached for it, his heart leaping in his chest.  It might be Allie.

* * * * *

ALLIE TRIED TO ignore the mixture of disgusting smells that swirled around the inside of the glass phone booth as she listened to the ringing.  She'd heard that ring many times.  It was the office number of the Special Agent in Charge of the Division of Unsolved Mysteries.  Joe's number.  Now Mitch Decker's.
     When she'd jumped into her car forty-eight hours ago, she hadn't known what she was going to do.  She'd just known she couldn't stay in Grand Junction and answer questions about why her apartment had blown up.
     She'd tried to call her WSP contact again, but her cell phone still sounded strange.  Had the people who wanted her dead somehow tampered with her phone, or with her contact number?
     She'd turned off the Government Issue phone and headed east, toward the only person alive she knew she could trust. Mitch Decker.
     It was ironic that he worked for the same organization that had destroyed her life.  She'd never wanted to be associated with the FBI again.  The one good thing about the Witness Security Program was that it had separated her from the agency that had caused her father's death, her husband's death, and nearly her own.
     So why at the first sign of trouble had she run toward them? She knew the answer.  She hadn't run toward the FBI.  She was running to Mitch.
     Mitch was an honorable man, and he'd been a good friend to both Joe and her.  The night before the shooting the three of them had met for dinner at her favorite restaurant, as they did every few weeks or so.  When Joe had received a call and had to leave, Mitch had seen Allie home and waited with her for hours, until it was obvious that Joe wasn't going to show up.
     Then after the shooting, he'd been there beside her in the hospital every time she'd opened her eyes, until they'd taken her away.  His soothing voice had eased her pain.  His presence had made her feel safe.
     And right now she prayed that the last thing he'd said to her was the truth.
     If you ever need me, I'll be here, Allie.  I promise.
     The phone rang again.  He was probably gone for the day.  Panic scalded her throat like bile.
     She glanced around the deserted parking lot, debating whether to try his home phone again or just get back in her car and keep driving.
     Her limbs felt paralyzed with terror.  If she couldn't find Mitch, she had nowhere else to go.
     "Decker."
     She jumped.  His dark sure voice echoed through the phone line like the reverberation of a big deep bell.
     Her hand tightened around the dirty pay phone receiver.  Her pulse beat like a snare drum in her temple.  She hadn't realized how afraid she'd been that she wouldn't find him. Her breath escaped in a sigh. 
     "Allie?"  The whisper came over the phone line, no longer bell-like, oddly breathless, but so familiar, so reassuring.
     It had been seventeen months since she'd heard his voice, but it was just as she remembered.  Strong.  Solid.   Relief fluttered through her chest, lifting the suffocating terror that had weighed her down for two days.
     She tried to speak, but her throat closed up.  Finally, she managed to say, "M-Mitch?"
     "Allie, where are you?"
     "Oh Mitch.  I tried to call.  I didn't want to leave a message on your machine.  I need help."
     "God, Allie.  What's wrong?"
     She took a deep breath.  "They found me."