LITMIR.BIZ

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yanked open the lopsided venetian blinds on the trailer’s window. Sunlight strafed the cluttered interior and fell across the letter he had pulled from the manila envelope. The United States Marshals Service emblem was embossed so thick it almost cast a shadow on the page. So did the name on the letterhead. Robert Hayes, regional director. The message below it was handwritten. A familiar scrawl.

      Our files are screwed, amigo. Got you a low-priority witness (see attached) living in seized property in Moonglow. Easy duty. She doesn’t even have to know why you’re there. The quieter we keep this, the better, if you catch my drift. Just hang around her awhile, then get your bad self back to the real world.

      Bobby

      P.S. Didn’t you used to live in Moonglow?

      Chapter 1

      Molly Hansen had been in Witness Security for nearly a year, but she still woke up every morning as Kathryn Claiborn and had to remind herself that she didn’t exist anymore.

      This morning was no exception, except what woke her wasn’t her alarm clock, but rather the clattering of trash cans and a jolt to the side of her house that nearly pitched her out of bed. While she scrambled for her robe, she scrolled through a mental checklist of natural disasters, eliminating each one as soon as it came to mind.

      An earthquake didn’t happen on just one side of a house. It couldn’t have been a landslide or a mud slide because this part of Texas was so dry and flat that things didn’t slide; they just sat still and baked. It wasn’t a thunderstorm because the sun was shining. That left only a rampaging bull or a five-hundred-pound armadillo.

      Or, now that she was peering out the window into the driveway, a big Airstream trailer about to crash into the side of her house. Again. She grabbed for the windowsill just as the trailer hit. This time the impact brought the curtain rod crashing down on her head.

      “You idiot,” she screamed, battling her way out of yards of gathered fabric. “Jerk!” Molly stomped over the fallen drapes, down the hall to the kitchen, and out the back door where the big aluminum behemoth was apparently making a third run at her defenseless little residence.

      She reached for the nearest weapon, which turned out to be a hoe, and swung it with all her might at the blundering vehicle, half expecting the hoe to clang on impact like an enormous bell, but instead there was a sickening thunk as the gardening tool sank deep into the metal skin. It worked, though. The trailer stopped, and none too soon, mere inches from the house.

      Molly was trying to extract the blade of the hoe when a man stalked down the driveway, yelling at her.

      “What the hell were you trying to do?”

      “I was trying,” she huffed, still tugging at the hoe, “to keep you from ruining my house, you idiot.”

      He stopped a few feet away from her, turned toward the little clapboard bungalow with its warped shutters and peeling paint, studied it a moment, and then said, “Hell, lady. In case you haven’t noticed, somebody’s already ruined it.”

      The grin that followed didn’t prompt one from Molly. She was hardly amused. She thought if she could wrest the blade of the hoe from the trailer, she’d like to sink it into this good ol’ boy’s skull. That would wipe the stupid smirk right off his handsome face.

      “Jerk,” she muttered, glaring at the hoe again and twisting its handle to no avail.

      “Here.” A tan, muscled forearm slid against hers and his fingers curved around the handle just beneath her grip. “Let go.”

      “I will not.”

      “Let the hell go.” He gave her a shot with his hip that sent Molly careening sideways, then using only one hand, he popped the hoe from the back of the trailer as if it were no more than a butter knife and tossed the implement away.

      “That’s some dent,” he mused, crossing his arms and contemplating the damage.

      “Well, it matches the rest of them.” Molly snatched up the hoe and held it like a shotgun. “Now, I’ll thank you to get this junkyard special out of my driveway.”

      He turned to look at her, his green eyes lazily taking her in from head to toe. “You’re Molly Hansen.”

      It wasn’t a question, really. Just a flat statement. But Molly found herself nodding, anyway, as she once again reminded herself that she wasn’t Kathryn Claiborn. At the same time a little kernel of suspicion was forming in her brain. After all, she was Molly Hansen and in Witness Security because her life was in danger. Kathryn’s, anyway. “And you are?”

      “Dan Shackelford. I’ve been hired to make repairs on your ruined house, Miss Hansen,” he drawled. “Where do you want me to start?”

      He seemed to be studying the roofline now with the same degree of intensity that he had studied her a moment before.

      “I don’t want you to start,” Molly said, then increased not only the volume but the adamance. “Do you hear me?”

      “Half those shingles look rotten. I’ll bet this place leaks like a son of a gun.”

      It did, but that was none of his damned business. The house, as Molly understood it, had been seized from a Honduran drug dealer who only used it to establish a permanent address. The government owned the house. Molly just paid nominal rent, mailed to a post office box in Houston.

      “Who sent you?” she demanded. “Who hired you?”

      He sauntered to the wall, reached out to flick some paint chips from a board. “When’s the last time this was painted?” he asked over his shoulder.

      “How should I know?”

      “Been here long?”

      “No. Only about…”

      Molly’s mouth snapped shut. When she entered the program, they had warned her not to answer even the most innocent of questions. Be skeptical, they had said, especially of strangers too eager to strike up a conversation. If you have any suspicions, don’t hesitate to call.

      “I need to make a phone call,” she said, clutching the trusty hoe and locking the back door once she was safely inside.

      “So, what you’re saying then, Deputy, is that I don’t have to worry about this Shackelford character? That he really was hired to make repairs?”

      Molly was whispering into the phone, her lips practically brushing the mouthpiece. She’d been peeking out the kitchen window at the character in question, but at some point he’d disappeared around the back of the house.

      The U.S. marshal on the other end of the line once again confirmed that Dan Shackelford was working in their employ.

      “Well, that’s a relief,” she said. “Thank you, Deputy. Oh, and tell Uncle Sam thanks for fixing up my house.”

      She put the receiver back in its cradle and let out a long, audible sigh before peering out the window again. The trailer was still hulking diagonally in the drive, but she didn’t see hide nor hair of its owner.

      “You need a new lock on the front door.”

      The sudden voice behind her had Molly reaching for the hoe again as she whirled around. “How did you get in here?”

      “You need a new lock on the front door.” His gaze cut away from her face to take in the rest of the room. “What a pit.”

      Molly was less frightened than irritated. “Well, it’s my pit.”

      Except it wasn’t, and she was sorely tempted to tell him that her little stone cottage in upstate New York might someday be on the National Register of Historic Places, and that her kitchen—her sweet, cozy kitchen with its big brick fireplace—had already been featured in Early American Homes and Hearth and Home. Only that had been Kathryn Claiborn’s house, and Kathryn was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

      Molly

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