LITMIR.BIZ

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Elizabeth Giardino had been the target of his investigations, but she was close enough to her father to raise questions about Jake’s integrity and his ability to perform his job. “Tell me what happened after I was shot,” he said.

      “My father’s goons did try to drag me away, but they didn’t know you had the place surrounded. When the cops broke in, everyone was too focused on keeping my father safe to worry about me. Someone hustled me into a car and took me downtown.”

      He tried to imagine the scene. She’d been covered in his blood, wild with fear. They’d have put her in an interrogation room and turned up the pressure, grilling her for hours, trying to break her. At one time he would have said she wasn’t a woman who could be broken, but now he wasn’t so sure. “They wanted you to provide evidence against your father.”

      “They didn’t have to persuade me. After I saw what he did to you...I wanted to make him pay.”

      Was it because of him, really? Or because her father had destroyed her trust? In one blast of gunfire she’d gone from pampered daddy’s girl to enemy number one. It must have made her question everything.

      “I laid all the family’s dirty secrets out in public and he swore he’d kill me,” she continued. “He stood there in court and cursed me and said I was dead to him already.” She swallowed, and he sensed the effort it took for her to rein in her emotions.

      “After that it was too dangerous for you to remain in New York,” he said.

      She nodded. “It was too dangerous for me to be me. Within a month my father had escaped prison and disappeared, but we all know he’s still out there somewhere, and he hasn’t forgotten anything. The feds gave me a new identity. Elizabeth Giardino died in a tragic boating accident in the Caribbean and Anne Gardener came to Rogers, Colorado, to teach school.”

      “I never imagined you as a schoolteacher.”

      “I had a degree in English from Barnard. The Marshals Service pulled a few strings to get me my teaching certificate. They found this job for me, and this house.” She looked around the room. The plain, old-fashioned furniture was as unlike her hip Manhattan apartment as he could have imagined. “I suppose they thought this place was as anonymous as a town could be.” Her gaze shifted back to him. “Yet you found me.”

      “I had inside information.”

      “Other people can pay for information.”

      Other people being her father and his goons. “I knew about this place. That it was on a list of possible hideouts. I persuaded a former colleague to let me take a look at the accounting records for the period after you disappeared and I found payment to a Colorado bank. I was able to trace that to this house.”

      “But you still didn’t know I was here.”

      “I looked online, through the archives of the local paper. I saw the announcement last summer about the new teacher. The timing was right, and I thought it might be you.”

      “You make it sound easy.”

      “Not so easy. There are a lot of layers between you and the feds. Layers I helped design.”

      “I forgot you started out as an accountant.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Not the picture most people have of the rough-and-tough federal agent.”

      He’d been hired straight out of university to work as a forensic accountant for the Bureau. Following the money put away more criminals than shootouts. But then they’d needed someone to go undercover in the Giardino family and he’d volunteered, wanting a change from sitting behind a desk. He hadn’t counted on getting in so deep. He hadn’t counted on Elizabeth.

      “How are you doing?” he asked. “Do you like it here?”

      “I don’t dislike it. The people are friendly. I love the children.”

      He tried to imagine her surrounded by first graders. He’d never thought of her as the mothering type, yet the image seemed to suit this new, quieter side of her. “It’s very different from the life you lived before,” he said.

      “I’m very different.”

      “Yeah.” A person didn’t go through the kinds of things they’d been through without some change. “How are you doing, really?” he asked.

      “How do you think?” Her voice was hard, the accusation in her eyes like acid poured on his wounds. “It’s hard. And exhausting, being afraid all the time.”

      “You don’t feel safe?”

      “You of all people should know the answer to that. You know my father—he’ll do anything to get his way. And he meant it when he said he would see that I was dead. If you found me, he can too. Why did you come here?”

      “I wanted to see you.”

      “Well, you’ve seen me. Now you can leave.” She stood, and cinched the robe tighter around her waist.

      He rose also. “Eli—Anne. Listen to me. I need your help.”

      “For what?”

      “I need you to help me find your father.”

      “Why? You said you’re no longer with the Bureau.”

      “No. But if we find him he’ll go back to prison—and they won’t let him escape this time.”

      “I can’t help you. All I want is to stay as far away from him as possible.”

      “Don’t you want to put an end to this? Don’t you want to be safe again?”

      “What are you talking about?”

      “I’m talking about finding your father and making sure he’s punished the way he deserves.”

      “Revenge?” She spat the word, like a curse. “You want revenge?”

      “Call it that if you want. Or call it justice. He’s killed too many people. Someone has to stop him.”

      “Well, that someone won’t be me.”

      “I’m not asking you to risk anything. I just want you to talk to me. To tell me where he might be hiding.”

      “I already gave you everything I could. Why do you want more?”

      She had given him everything—her body and her beauty and a willingness to risk that had made his own bravery seem a sham in comparison. “I need your help,” he said again.

      “You’re as bad as he is—you only want to use people to get what you want.” Without another glance at him she left the room, the door to the bedroom clicking softly shut behind her.

      He stared after her, feeling sick. Maybe her words hurt so much because they were too close to the truth. He did want to use her. She was the only link he had to Sam Giardino. The only way he could do what he had to do.

      Chapter Two

      Anne leaned against the closed bedroom door, her ear pressed to the wood, listening. The silence in the house was so absolute she imagined she could hear Jake’s heart beating—though of course it was only the frantic pounding in her own chest. Footsteps crossed the room, moving away from her, the heavy, deliberate echo of each step moving through her like the aftershock of an earthquake. She bit her lip to keep from shouting at him not to leave. Of course she wanted him to leave. She didn’t want any part of the kind of danger he represented.

      The front door closed with a solid click. She held her breath, and heard the muffled roar of a car engine coming to life. The sound faded and she was alone. She moved away from the door and sagged onto the bed, waiting for the tears that wouldn’t come. She’d cried them all out that night at the hotel, believing he was dead, knowing her life had ended.

      Jake. One of the other agents at the Bureau had laughed when she’d called him that. “You mean Jacob? No one ever calls him

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