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“Will that matter?” Her shoulders fell. “If these men know who I am, they can track me down.”
He hated that truth but liked that she kept thinking it through, thinking about the angles. That caution would keep her safe. “You’ll stay in a hotel and use cash.”
“For how long?”
He wanted to tell her a day or two, but that could be a lie, and he refused to get her hopes up. “However long it takes to make sure you’re okay.”
She glanced off to the side. Stared at the trash cans without talking for almost a minute. “It’s not my house.”
Whatever he’d expected her to say, that wasn’t it. “What?”
“The house was my father’s.” She drummed those fingers against the table again.
The steady rhythm started a ticking in the nerve in the back of his neck. He reached over and put a hand over hers. “Okay, back up. Where is your dad?”
“Dead.” She delivered the information in a flat voice.
He wasn’t sure what to say or how to read her mood, so he went with the obvious response. “I’m sorry.”
This was not his area of expertise. His birth mother had lost custody before he hit kindergarten. She’d held on just long enough to make him too old and unadoptable, according to state officials. He’d spent the rest of his youth passed around from one foster home to another until he aged out of the system and turned to the military for a more permanent home.
“I was cleaning the house out for sale, though I’m thinking that might not be happening now.” She sighed as she opened her hand and let his fingers fall between hers. “My point is, anyone who looks up the deed will trace my father to me, and me to Seattle.”
He was still trying to process the news and what it meant in terms of keeping her safe. “You don’t live on Calapan.”
“Not since I was smart enough to run away at eighteen and not look back.”
“Very smart,” a familiar male voice called out from around the corner of the market just before he came into view. “I hate this place.”
Shane Baker. The Corcoran traveling team member who was the most likely to make a joke to get through a tough situation.
Julia snatched back her hand and spun around. Looked ready to jump to her feet, which was the last thing Cam wanted her to do with that ankle.
Shane and Holt Kingston, the head of the traveling team, stepped into view. Cam hated to admit they’d gotten the jump on him. Hated more the idea they might have seen the whole hand-holding thing.
“Whoa there.” Cam put a reassuring hand on her arm. “They’re with me.”
She sat down hard on the bench again and glanced at him. “Huh, you really all do look like that.”
He had no idea what she was talking about. “What?”
“Nothing.”
Cam decided to keep the focus on the problem instead of whatever might be running through her head, though he did wonder. “Holt Kingston and Shane Baker, this is Julia White.”
Holt shook her hand, then moved in beside her on the bench. “Your hostage.”
That was the last thing Cam needed to hear. If they thought he’d messed up, they’d never let him forget it. “It wasn’t like that.”
She looked at Holt. “It sort of was.”
Shane joined the group at the table. He sat across from Julia and looked her over with a frown on his face. “You okay?”
“She sprained her ankle.” He’d also scared the crap out of her and killed a man in front of her, which had to have her mind blinking, but the team knew that from his check-in, so Cam didn’t repeat it now.
This time she aimed her sigh at Cam. “She twisted her ankle and she can speak.”
Shane barked out a laugh. “I like her.”
“She’s a talker.” Cam figured they might as well get that out of the way because Holt operated on the say-as-few-words-as-possible theory.
Shane’s smile faded. “Oh.”
With that done, Cam turned back to the case. “What do we have?”
“No identification on the deceased. Connor and Joel are working on it from the photos and fingerprints we sent.”
She put a palm on the table. “Who are they?”
Something about the way she held her hand out had them all quieting down. Cam had never seen anything like it. The team members tended to talk over each other when it came to handling assignments. Connor and to a lesser extent Holt and Davis, the leader of the Annapolis home team, could demand the floor with absolute certainty.
Before Cam could give a personnel rundown, Holt jumped in. “Connor runs the Corcoran Team. It’s his baby. Joel is our tech guy. Both are back in the Annapolis main office.”
She held up one finger. “Okay, one more question—”
Shane whistled. “I see what you mean about the talking.”
“—who or what is the Corcoran Team?” She ended the comment by glaring at Shane.
There was a long-winded answer about undercover, off-the-books work. Cam went with the easier response. “We are.”
“That doesn’t really clear anything up.” Her last word cut off before she looked at Holt. “And did you say you checked the deceased? I’m guessing that means you went back to the house, though I have no idea why you’d want to see that scene.”
Holt nodded. “Yes.”
“Have we figured out why these guys tracked Cam and kept shooting at him?” she asked as she leaned in.
“Not yet.”
Cam could have listened to her rapid-fire questions and Holt barely answering all day. It summed up their respective personalities. But he knew from experience Holt’s patience would expire, and that was reason alone to end this.
“We came here to talk to a witness who reported some concerns. Raised some questions about illegal drug running on Calapan,” Cam explained, trying to keep the intel as neutral as possible.
“Who?” she asked.
Shane shook his head. “I don’t think—”
“Rudy Bleesher.” Cam ignored the stunned stares from his teammates. He was surprised he’d shared that information, too, but nothing made sense on this job. They’d come here for an interview and ended up in a shoot-out. Not the usual assignment. “She’s from here. We aren’t.”
She snorted. “If it’s about drugs, Rudy will know.”
Holt’s eyebrows lifted. “Because?”
“We went to school together, and the guy knew all about drug dealing.”
Finally a piece of the puzzle that fit for Cam. If Rudy had started out using and maybe dealing and now wanted to turn in evidence to cut a deal or get out of trouble or whatever, that made sense. And they were talking about drugs in serious amounts.
Cam had been with the team for three years and had never gone after a run-of-the-mill drug user. But word was the operation on Calapan was serious business and served as a source for moving drugs up and down the coast and into Canada, which made it Corcoran business.
“You’re sure this is the same guy?” Shane asked.