Criminal Deception

She flinched again. She had blamed the shooter, the Mulroneys and Josh-everyone but herself-but Joe was right. They should have been prepared for a murder attempt, however unlikely it seemed. They should have taken precautions to protect Josh’s family, especially the brother who looked just like him. She, her team and her agency had nearly cost Joe his life.

Oh, God.

She drew a shallow breath. “I am sorry about that. We didn’t know…We didn’t think…We screwed up, Joe, and I’m damn sorry.”

“Just not enough to be honest for once.”

His scorn rankled, especially considering that she wasn’t the only one who’d lied. “What if I’d been honest, Joe? What if I’d walked into your shop last week and said, ‘Hi, you know me as Liz Dalton, Josh’s girlfriend, but in reality, I’m Deputy Marshal Liz Dillon, and I’m trying to find your brother because he escaped custody’? Would you have said, ‘Hey, yeah, I have a phone number for him’? Or would you have lied the way you lied to Tom Smith and to Deputy Marshal Ashe and to Daniel Wallace?”

Color crept into his face, and heat shaded his voice. “That’s the only thing I lied to you about.”

“Considering this is a criminal case, that’s a pretty damn big lie.”

“So arrest me.”

“If we didn’t have the information we need, I probably would.” She watched his eyes widen, then narrow again. “As soon as I saw you on the phone, I called my supervisor. By the time you finished leaving your message, we had the number you dialed, and the instant Josh called back, we had his location pinpointed to within 75 feet. The Boulder police were setting up a perimeter before you hung up.”

“You think I didn’t figure that out? You think Josh didn’t? He was moving while we talked. By the time we hung up, he was gone.”

“Which makes you an accomplice in his escape.”

Scowling, he dragged his fingers through his hair, leaving it on end. Liz sympathized with him more than she could say. All he’d wanted was to stay out of his brother’s mess, but he’d wound up right in the middle of it. Again. Josh’s fault. And hers.

When he finally spoke, his tone was quiet and bitter. “So, you got what you wanted, and it didn’t even take much. A little deception, a little dishonesty, a little sex. Now you can get the hell away from me and, please, God, never come back.”

He started walking then, long strides, around the corner and toward the front entrance of the mall. She matched him pace for pace. “Last night wasn’t about the job, and you know it.”

“Why? Because you say so? Hell, Liz, you wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you on the ass.” He directed a sardonic glare her way. “You do go by Liz, don’t you? Or is it Beth or Elizabeth or Sandra or Jane?”

She quick-stepped to reach the bike before him, blocking his access to it. “Last night was about you and me and wanting what we’d believed for two years we couldn’t have.” He might deny it now, but he had wanted it, wanted her. She was positive of that. “It had nothing to do with work. Jeez, I could lose my job for it.”

Her own words stopped her cold. Although it wasn’t likely, she could lose her job. A few years ago, even a few weeks ago, that would have been unthinkable. All she’d ever wanted to be was a marshal. It had been the number one priority in her life. She couldn’t have imagined not being a marshal.

But now she could. Now there were things she wanted more. To be a lover. A wife. A mother. To live a small-town life without weapons and badges. To stay in the same place year after year. To make friends without having to leave them behind with the next case or the next transfer.

And she wanted-oh, God, how she wanted-to see if she could have that life with Joe. Just a chance. Was that too much to ask?

Judging by the scorn with which he regarded her, apparently so.

“Don’t worry. I sure as hell won’t tell anyone. It’ll be our dirty little secret.” He gripped her shoulders and firmly moved her out of the way, then unchained the bike. “Pack your stuff and get out. I’ll say your goodbyes to Miss Abigail and Natalia.”

Every nerve in Liz was quivering as she folded her arms across her middle. She couldn’t force him to stay and listen to her. Well, actually, she could make him stay; he might be bigger and stronger, but she knew moves he didn’t. But he couldn’t hear words that he was too angry and hurt to acknowledge. Later, maybe. Once Josh had been taken into custody, once the initial surprise and the sense of betrayal had passed, once Joe was his reasonable, logical self again, she could explain.

Or maybe he would never be reasonable and logical again where she was concerned.

Without another glance her way, he climbed onto the bike and pedaled away. She stood where she was, ignoring the customers arriving and departing, ignoring for a time the ringing of her cell phone. It stopped after four rings, then immediately began again. She reached into her pocket and muted it, then pulled her keys from her other pocket. She waited for a car to pass, then stepped off the curb.

She’d grabbed the first parking space she found, near the end of the row directly in front of the entrance. There’d been a soccer-mom van in front of her and a candy-apple red Mustang beside her. Both cars were still there, along with a white panel van on the far side.

She would go home, she decided, and try to talk to Joe again. When he refused to listen, she would call Mika; no doubt, that was who had just called her. Then she would…She would…There had to be something she would do, and curling up in bed for a good cry wouldn’t be it. She wasn’t a cryer. Growing up with three brothers had made sure of that. The stinging in her eyes was just from the sun or the humidity, and the lump in her throat just meant it was dry.

But her brothers had never had their hearts broken before, and at that moment, hers felt as if it would never mend.

She was thirty feet from her car when she realized that, next to it, the van’s engine was running. There were no side windows in the back, and the front passenger windows were so heavily tinted she couldn’t tell if it was occupied. There were no markings on the sides either. It was a completely nondescript van, the sort people would look at and forget entirely a minute later.

Goose bumps raised up her spine, and she slowed her steps for a quick scan of the area. It was one of those lulls in mall traffic where the parking lot was pretty much empty of people, and yet…Footsteps, slow and measured, sounded behind her. Sliding her cell phone from her pocket, unfastening the flap of her purse so her pistol was in easy gripping range, she made an abrupt turn at a hot orange Bug, crossed to the next aisle and cut back toward the stores.

Daniel Wallace stepped out from the cover of an SUV to block her way. “Forget something, Ms. Dalton?” he asked silkily.

A plan: Pretend she didn’t know who he was and try to bluff her way past him? If there were people around, that might work; she might get close enough or make enough of a stir to draw attention her way. But he was big; he was fast; like her, he was almost certainly armed; and he wasn’t alone. Someone was waiting for him in that van.

Liz edged to her right, putting the dinged-up rear end of a primer-coated Chevy between them. “What do you want?”

“You know the answer to that. I’m sure that in addition to warning the young girl who works at the coffee shop, Mr. Saldana warned you about me as well.”

He’d called her Dalton, so he likely wasn’t aware of her true identity; he would, like most men, underestimate her. He wouldn’t want to give her a chance to cause a scene-someone could drive into the lot or come out of the mall at any moment-but he wouldn’t expect her to put up a real fight. Grimly, she remembered her oldest brother’s mantra from his high school sports days: Ain’t going down without a fight.

Behind her the van’s engine revved, underscored by the slow, rhythmic rub of tire on pavement. The driver had pulled out of the parking space and was approaching at a snail’s crawl. She eased the GLOCK free of her bag, holding it loosely, comfortably, out of Wallace’s range of vision. “If I knew where Josh was, I’d be there instead of here.”

“If I believed you, I’d be in Chicago instead of Copper Lake.”

She edged a few inches to her right. “Feel free to leave anytime.”

His smile would have been charming if he wasn’t so dangerous. “We think you and/or Mr. Saldana know how to contact the errant Josh. We think if he’s not already in the area, it will take just a small amount of persuasion to bring him here.”

“Me?” She managed a decent chuckle. “News flash. Josh and I aren’t together anymore. He wouldn’t cross the street to talk me. He damn sure isn’t going to risk his life for me.”

Wallace merely continued to smile.

“Come on, this is the guy who didn’t stick around to see if his twin brother who got shot in his place was going to survive. Even if I had a way to get hold of him, he wouldn’t come.”

“You sell yourself short, Ms. Dalton. Ignoring his brother…” He shrugged dismissively. “Ignoring the beautiful woman who shared his bed for more than two years… that’s an entirely different matter.”

Liz scanned the lot again. A car turned in off the street, then drove past to the other side of the mall. An elderly woman came out the main entrance, cane in hand, and started toward a Cadillac in the handicapped spaces. There were no familiar faces, no police cars, no gangs of brawny teenage boys who would consider it fun rescuing a woman in distress.

The van was now about twenty feet away. Had they expected her to go quietly? Was she supposed to be intimidated enough by Wallace that he could just shove her inside? Yeah, right. Flipping the phone open, she blindly dialed 911, took a breath, then lunged to the right, getting her feet under her, interrupting the operator before she could ask, What’s your emergency? “Copper Lake Mall,” she shouted into the phone, not daring to look back at the sound of squealing tires, not willing to estimate the distance separating Wallace’s heavy tread from her. “I’m being kidnapped!”

Grateful for the thick-soled sandals she’d chosen in anticipation of a bike ride, she ran fast, hard, zigzagging around parked cars toward the entrance. They slowed her some, but with the benefit that they also slowed Wallace. She was halfway to the entrance, gaining ground, sirens sounding in the distance and racing closer. Please let them be in time, she prayed as she circled behind a monster SUV.

She caught the hint of movement an instant too late: a bare arm, tattooed beneath the short sleeve, muscular, hand clenched into a fist. She tried to swerve, tried to slow, but momentum pushed her forward, carrying her to meet the fist with its own momentum. The pain was instantaneous, nauseating. Her eyes filled with tears, her vision went blurry, her legs crumpled beneath her, and she fell, everything disappearing into blessed darkness.

Joe had never done any long-distance riding, but he found out that afternoon he could do nearly forty miles, the roundtrip distance between Copper Lake and the next town to the east. His calf muscles were fatigued and burning by the time he pedaled back into town, but he was no more tired than when he’d ridden out of the mall. Not tired, hungry, angry. Just numb. Physically, emotionally, mentally. He wanted to stay that way for a damn long time.

He’d passed the mall, refusing to look at the square building or the parking lot even in his peripheral vision. He kept his gaze narrowly focused on the pavement ahead of him, maintaining a safe, constant distance between his front wheel and the curb, so focused that when a car going the opposite direction spun around, tires