Criminal Deception

Liz bet she could come in five times a day for a month and still not get her own mug added to the collection.

She paid no attention to the type of coffee he poured into the cup. It was steaming, fragrant and loaded with caffeine. That was all she needed. He traded the mug for the two bucks she offered without coming close to touching her, and he laid the change on the counter rather than in her outstretched hand.

Maybe some bit of sizzle remained on his part, after all.

She chose a table where her back was to the wall, not out of any sense of security but because it allowed her to see everyone in the shop and afforded a good view through the plate glass windows that lined the two outside walls.

Copper Lake had twenty thousand people or so and was prosperous for a small Southern town. The downtown was well-maintained and occupation of the buildings seemed about a hundred percent. The grass in the square was manicured, the flowerbeds were colorful and weed-free, and the gazebo bore a new coat of white paint. It looked like the small town of fiction: homey, welcoming, safe-a place where people looked out for each other.

Was that what had drawn Joe? Had he needed that sense of refuge?

She’d doctored her coffee with sweetener from a glass bowl in the middle of the table, stirred it with a real spoon and nursed her way through half of it when a presence disturbed the air. Glancing up, she met Joe’s gaze, unsmiling, serious blue. At the moment, he looked as if the only thing he needed refuge from was her. She might feel something about that later. Regret. Disappointment. Maybe even satisfaction, that he felt enough of something to need to keep her at a distance.

He slid into the seat across from her, resting his hands on the table top. Good hands. Strong, tanned, long fingers, neat nails. “You were keeping Josh on a pretty short leash. How did he get away?”

She resented the idea that she was the clingy sort but could see why he thought so. From the time she’d been assigned to Josh’s case, she’d rarely left his side.

Until the day he’d knocked her partner unconscious, handcuffed her to the bed and waltzed out of the San Francisco safe house where they’d been staying. She’d cursed herself hoarse and sworn that she would find him. Getting handcuffed, and to a bed, no less, by her protectee was the lowlight of her career.

“Everyone has to sleep sometime,” she said with a shrug. She had been asleep when Josh had snapped the cuff on. Her partner, on the other hand, had merely been asleep on the job.

“Did you have a fight? Was he seeing someone else?”

She shrugged again, lazily, as if it didn’t matter. “I’d say he just got tired of me.” Being in protective custody wasn’t easy for the most compliant of witnesses, and Josh had been far from that. He hadn’t wanted to testify against the Mulroneys, but it was the only way to keep his own petty-criminal butt out of jail.

For an instant disbelief flitted across Joe’s expression, but it was gone as quickly as she identified it. “What makes you think he’d leave Chicago? He’s lived his whole life there. He likes it there.”

She didn’t just think Josh had left Chicago. She knew it. She sipped her coffee, lukewarm now, before pointing out, “You’d lived your whole life there, but you left.”

Again, something flickered across his face. Guilt? Chagrin? Did he feel as if he’d run away? Getting the hell out of town when someone had tried to kill you, even if it was a case of mistaken identity, seemed perfectly rational to her. Instead of responding to her comment, though, he steered back to the original conversation. “When did he take off?”

“Two months ago.”

“And you’ve been looking for him ever since.”

She ignored the censure in his voice. There was something pathetic about a woman relentlessly tracking down the boyfriend who didn’t want her anymore. But she’d given more than two years of her life to this case, and damned if Josh was going to blow it. He would testify even if she had to force him into court at gunpoint.

“It must be valuable.”

“What?” she asked reflexively, drawing her attention back to Joe.

“Whatever he took.”

Her smile felt thin and strained. “It is to me.” Before he could continue with the questions, she asked one of her own. “Why Copper Lake?”

This time the shrug was his, a sinuous shifting of muscle beneath soft cotton. “The coffee shop was for sale. The price was right, the town was nice, and the name fit.”

Her brows raised. “You didn’t name it A Cuppa Joe?”

His scowl gave him a boyish look. “Do I look like the type who’d go for a name like that? I’d’ve chosen something less cute, like, I don’t know, Not the Same Old Grind.”

“I like A Cuppa Joe,” she said stubbornly.

A raspy voice chimed in, “You and every single woman in town.” Esther laughed, then topped off Liz’s cup. “Are you single?”

“I am. Are you?”

“I am, too. I’d go after him, but that age thing is a problem. He’s just way too old for my taste.” Punctuating the words with a sly wink, Esther moved on with the pot to the next table.

Silence fell over the table, not uncomfortable but not comfortable either. Liz stirred sweetener into her refilled cup, the spoon clanking against the porcelain, casting about for something to say. The sight of an elderly man coming through the door with the assistance of a younger man, clearly his son, provided it. “How are your parents?”

“Considering that they had to leave the home they’d lived in for thirty-some years and move someplace where they knew no one, and they haven’t seen their son in more than two years, not bad.”

Once the Mulroneys had learned of Josh’s family’s existence-had found other targets for their warnings-the U.S. Attorney’s office had deemed it safer for Joe and his parents to leave town and keep a low profile in their new homes. Joe had chosen the security of small-town life, while the elder Saldanas had opted for the anonymity of the city a short distance away. They’d been willing to give up a lot, but not the conveniences they’d taken for granted all their lives.

She had no desire to defend Josh’s actions, but it seemed the sort of thing a girlfriend should do. “He didn’t know how to contact them.”

Not surprisingly, the argument didn’t sit well with Joe. His gaze darkened and his lips thinned. “If he hadn’t screwed up so damn bad, they would have stayed in that house forever, like they’d planned, and he’d have always known where to find them.”

“He was sorry about that.” Truthfully, in a few moments of remorse, Josh had expressed regret for what he’d put his family through. Those moments had been rare, though. More often, he’d blamed the Mulroneys, the marshals service and/or the U.S. Attorney’s office. Sometimes he’d insisted that his parents had merely used Joe’s shooting as an excuse to move to a warmer climate, a smaller city, a more retirement-friendly area-not that they’d ever expressed any dissatisfaction with Chicago.

Maybe, Liz had thought, he just couldn’t face responsibility for the upheaval he’d caused.

Or he was just a self-centered, whiny brat.

Joe gave a sharp laugh. What it lacked in humor, it more than made up for with bitterness. “He’s never been sorry for a damn thing in his life.”

“He was sorry when you got shot. I saw him.” That had been one of the rare occasions. Standing beside Joe’s bed in ICU, not knowing whether he would survive, Josh had been humbled by regret and fear.

Liz had been afraid, too. Afraid that one more good guy would be lost, that once more the bad guys would win. Afraid that the Saldanas would never recover from such a loss. Afraid that she would always wonder what might have been if things had been different.

She had wondered. Nearly two years in different cities and states had added up to a lot of solitary nights. It had been safe to wonder then, because she’d thought she would never see Joe again. Once the Mulroneys went to trial and Josh had testified, she would take on new cases in new places. She would meet other men and probably, eventually, hopefully, fall in love with one of them.

Instead, here she was, sitting across from Joe, trying really hard not to wonder anymore.

She expected another denial from him, but it didn’t come. He stared out the window for a moment, as if the increasing traffic held his interest, before finally dragging his gaze back to her. “Did he know? Did he know they wanted him dead?” he pressed on. “Did he let me go on with life as usual knowing that people wanted to kill him, that they could easily mistake me for him?”

Her fingers tightened around the mug. Were these the first questions he would ask his brother if given the chance? Would a no provide any comfort? Would yes destroy their relationship for all time?

Up to the day Joe was shot, the Mulroneys’ crimes had been nonviolent. Their business had been just that: a routine job moving a product-money-from one place to another, laundering it along the way. They’d been involved in their communities; they’d gone to church with their families; they’d handled disputes diplomatically. Their hit on Josh had been the first and, so far, only sign of violence in their fifteen-year career. It was even possible that someone else Josh had pissed off was behind it instead.

“You know Josh.” Liz’s shrug was awkward. She’d never gotten over the guilt because she had known Josh, too. She should have expected violence. She should have known Joe was in danger. She should have protected him, too. “Nothing he ever does has consequences.”

Yeah, Joe thought grimly. He knew Josh. “When we were five, he sneaked Mom’s keys out and took the car for a drive. He made it two blocks before he ran into two other cars. He wasn’t hurt, but it did a lot of damage to all three vehicles. Mom spanked him. Dad grounded him, gave him extra chores, took his allowance, and three weeks later, Mom caught him behind the wheel again with the keys in the ignition. When we were eight, he tried to fly from our tree house to the ground. He spent the next six weeks with his left arm in a cast, spanked, grounded, extra chores, the whole bit again, and the day the cast came off, he tried again, breaking his right arm. And when we were twelve…” Breaking off, he shook his head. Too bad he couldn’t banish the memory so easily.

“And you were always the good son.”

He raised one hand in the Boy Scout salute. “I made good grades, stayed out of trouble and never gave Mom and Dad a reason to worry.”

“I was the good child, too,” Liz said.

The simple statement stuck him as odd. He’d seen her as only two things: his brother’s girlfriend and therefore the last woman on earth he should be-but was- attracted to. He’d never thought of her as a person: a daughter, a sister, someone with a life, hopes and plans outside of Josh.

Hell, he’d tried his best not to think of her at all.