Wanted By The Marshal (American Armor Book 1) Read online

  Panic flooded him as he ran toward the scene. Where the hell was Kiera? Had she been caught in the crossfire? He couldn’t lose her, not now. He was running as if his life depended on it, except he was running toward danger. For Kiera’s life depended on him. And, as the soles of his sneakers hit the pavement, life and death flashed before him as he ran faster than he ever had before.

  Kiera.

  She lay in a heap on the pavement, like a sack of potatoes that had been dropped and left. Whether she was injured or not, he didn’t know. He only bent down long enough to put his fingers on her wrist and feel her pulse. It was steady. There was no more time. She was alive and he had a window of opportunity to end this—to stop the kidnapper.

  But the scene had changed in mere seconds. It was like a kaleidoscope shifting without warning. The attacker was behind the wheel of an old van, which was very like one he remembered as a kid, a camping van. It was at least twenty years old. He was too late to get a clear shot. But he could cripple the van. Maybe slow them down by taking out a tire. And then, that option was taken off the table as the van spun around and took off in a squeal of tires as the sun glinted off the worn paint, the plate smeared with dirt and unreadable, as it sped out of the parking lot.

  He fell to his knees beside Kiera. She was struggling to stand with a hand on the pavement steadying herself.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No.” Her voice broke. “Just scraped.”

  He saw the quiver of her body, realized how traumatized she was and took her in his arms. She was alive and that was all he had prayed for. Still, he had a sinking feeling that he was at war and the battle he’d lost was crucial to the victor’s success. He shoved the thought aside.

  “Damn it,” he muttered, frustrated that her kidnapper had gotten away. They’d been so close. The van was out of sight; he could only call the attack in. Still, he was angry that he couldn’t do more. The anger was muted only by the knowledge that Kiera was safe. He’d succeeded in saving the one thing that was important, the one person who mattered. Her arms were around his neck, her heart was beating against his chest. He held her as if he would hold her forever. And he would, except in this situation they needed to move. Whoever had attacked her had gotten too close. The safe house was compromised.

  “You’re sure?” he asked.

  “Shaken,” she said.

  “Was the van in the parking lot when you arrived?”

  “I’m not sure. I didn’t see it. It was so sudden. I was grabbed from behind.”

  Her body shook even as he held her.

  “I managed to get away from her. I didn’t think I could. She’s unbelievably strong,” Kiera said in a trembling voice against his shoulder.

  Admiration ran deep in him. She had more guts than almost anyone he knew. She was emotionally steady despite escaping possible death for the second time.

  “Did you see them?”

  “Her,” she corrected. “And no. I didn’t. She was behind me.” She shuddered. “I knew that voice.” Her own voice shook. “I remember it the night I was kidnapped.”

  Travis bit off the curse that didn’t come close to tamping his frustration. If Kiera was right and if the theory of a second serial killer held, that meant that the killer had again proved herself far more resourceful and as a result, deadlier, than the one they had in custody. For, she’d not only found Kiera, but she’d flown completely under the authority’s radar. Again.

  “Are you alright?”

  Kiera’s voice was soft and full of concern, yet there was determination, a thread of steel running through it.

  He looked at her with disbelieving admiration. Even now, she was thinking of someone else.

  “I’m fine, Kiera,” he said.

  But, despite the unimaginable trauma she’d been through, it wasn’t over. Whoever had attacked her had gotten too close. He didn’t doubt that they wanted to finish what they’d started so many days ago. It was a more tangled web than they’d thought. And the key to that web had disappeared—again.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Travis held Kiera’s hand as he began to scour the area where the attack had happened, and then where the van had been. In the meantime, he didn’t plan to let her out of his sight. Yet, he needed to make a thorough examination of the area.

  “Travis.”

  He looked at her quizzically.

  “I’m not two,” she said but there was no censure in her tone, only a resigned edge and a half smile.

  “I know,” he squeezed her hand. “Call me overcautious.”

  “I don’t need to,” she said with a shaky laugh. “That quality is pretty clear.”

  There was nothing to say to that. He had other thoughts, bigger thoughts on his mind, like finding out who the woman was who was terrorizing Kiera. How had she tracked them to the safe house?

  He was on the phone to put in a brief report, notifying James and getting a search going on the van.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked as he disconnected. “How she found me?”

  “Yes. I have no answers. But I know one thing. The safe house is compromised. We’ll have to move.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He stopped. He’d expected her to be frightened, angry but not sorry.

  “What do you mean you’re sorry?” The words were quick. He had little time. He thought of cordoning off the area, but he had no time for that. He had a matter of minutes to examine the crime scene before someone arrived to get their car, park their car—who knew what—and contaminated the area. In the process, he also had to make sure that Kiera was safe. He was afraid. Afraid that he might lose her again. He’d never felt this way. In fact, it was like he was far more traumatized than she was—far more concerned. He needed physical contact, the heat of her skin against his to reassure him that she hadn’t been kidnapped or worse. He needed to imprint her skin on his to remind him that she was alive and safe and where she needed to be, at his side. Or, more appropriately, make sure that she was where he needed her to be.

  “Travis, I’m alright,” she assured him. “You can let go of my hand.”

  “Okay,” he agreed for all it took was her voice to make him realize that he was overdoing it. “Stay beside me.”

  “Alright but, Travis. I can identify her.”

  Sweet mother, he thought.

  “This time I saw her face more clearly. The last time wasn’t enough to recognize her in a crowd, except maybe by her hair but that’s easily changed. This time was different.”

  Elation ran through him. They’d get a sketch artist and see what they could come up with. He’d reported the attempted kidnapping only seconds ago and the FBI’s forensic response team would be sent out to gather any evidence. He didn’t want to leave anything to the chance of it disappearing between now and when evidence could be gathered properly. He could see nothing but a dark oil stain where the van had parked. Then, he turned and saw a small white object standing out against the dark pavement.

  He went over, bent down and picked up what appeared to be a keychain tag. He turned it over. And on second glance he knew that he was looking at another kind of tag, similar to his own, a gym fob. He looked at the lettering and saw the name—All Seasons Fitness.

  Kiera was right behind him. He knew that instinctively. And then the warmth of her arm brushed against his.

  “What do you have?” she asked in a voice that was calm despite what she’d just been through.

  “I’m not sure,” he replied as he looked at her and didn’t bother to mask the admiration he felt. Attacked in a parking lot, almost kidnapped and she wasn’t falling apart. Of course, he thought with regret, she’d been through so much worse. Yet it worried him that she seemed so okay now. That wasn’t normal.

  “It could be nothing or it could be everything. What I know for sure it that it’s a gym fob and i
t was dropped very near where the van she escaped in was parked.”

  “You mean it might have belonged to the woman who tried to kidnap me.” Her voice shook as she said the words. “It might be a way to track her?”

  “It’s a long shot but it could be a clue,” he replied, relieved to hear the shake in her voice. Shaking nerves was a normal reaction for what she’d gone through. He put his arm over her shoulder drawing her close, trying to offer her some comfort, some assurance that she was safe. But he’d promised that once before and failed in his promise. He doubted he’d ever forgive himself for that.

  “Are you alright?” Travis asked. He couldn’t believe it had happened again, and on his watch. He’d thought she was safe, that she was secure. And instead, now their cover was blown.

  “Do you really think that it was hers?” Kiera asked as she looked at the key fob. “Somehow, I can’t imagine someone with such a sick bent doing something as normal as going to a gym.”

  “I agree,” he said. “But I can’t discount the possibility. And you’d be surprised. Many violent offenders keep relatively normal lives.”

  “A front,” she said.

  “Exactly.”

  “That could put an interesting aspect to her personality.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, if it’s the case, she’s concerned about her physical health and strength.” She frowned and looked at him. “Am I right?”

  “The hazards of her line of work,” he said.

  “And this might be a clue,” she said looking at the fob.

  There was a determined look in her eyes and he realized that she was never going to roll over and play the victim. She hadn’t from the very beginning. No matter what happened she was willing to fight. He also knew that she wasn’t going to do it alone. He was going to be by her side every step of the way.

  He had to focus on what might be a crucial bit of evidence or nothing at all. The gym fob. It was the standard type used by most gyms to keep a record of their clients. It was used to gain entry, the bar code tracking the number of times a client appeared at the gym.

  Five minutes later they were back at the apartment. She was sitting on the couch with a worried look on her face and he was punching in Serene’s number.

  She answered on the first ring.

  “What’s up?”

  “Can you check a gym called All Seasons Fitness?”

  “Sure. Can I ask why?” she asked.

  At another time he would have found her question amusing. Now he only found it a time-consuming irritant. That aside, the question wasn’t unexpected. Serene had always said that she’d love to do field work. Despite her abrupt, get-it-done manner, questions weren’t unexpected. Her curiosity was boundless and sometimes he thought her talent might be wasted, confined as it was in the office.

  “It’s complicated,” he said. “I found a key fob that may be connected to the case.”

  “Enough said,” she responded in a voice that was still filled with curiosity.

  “If you can, I need the closest gym. Also, can you give me their locations throughout Denver, if any, and if they have a presence in Wyoming. I need the exact location of the gym where this fob belongs and to who. I need that right away.”

  “On it,” she replied. A minute later she had the specification of the gym for that key fob along with a string of other locations for the gym across the country. “One problem, I had a hard time getting any information on the account. The tag is scraped up and that’s all the information I can glean from it. Nothing on the individual it might belong to.”

  With that resource exhausted, he disconnected from Serene and turned to Kiera. She was looking at him with interest. She’d been listening to his end of the conversation and had drawn her own conclusions. “You think there’s a connection between this and the killer, to Cheyenne?”

  “It’s a long shot, Kiera. This might be nothing or...”

  “It might be everything,” she said in a soft voice that he had to strain to hear.

  “I wouldn’t say everything,” he replied putting his arm around her shoulders. “In the meantime, are you up for a little detective work?” It was no question. For if she said no, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do. What he did know was that he couldn’t leave her alone. Whoever was after her, they’d found her here. They knew she was in Denver. They’d been compromised. James was already getting them another safe house. In the meantime, he needed to keep her with him.

  “You think it’s not safe for me to remain alone?”

  “Not here,” he replied. “I’m going to the gym and you’re coming along. I’m not taking any chances.”

  “Then I’m not taking any chances either,” she said.

  He frowned, puzzled at what that might mean until he saw her scoop up Lucy and put her in her carrier.

  “You’re kidding me?”

  But he knew as soon as the words were out of his mouth, that she wasn’t kidding, she was deadly serious. He could see that in the frown and the sparkle in her eye that told him she was determined. That nothing was stopping her.

  “Until it’s safe, she’s coming with us.”

  The way she’d looked at him, the tone of her voice, it was enough for him to know that there was no point arguing, at least for now. He was only going to the gym, whose address Serene had given him, to ask a few questions. There was no way that the cat was a problem, an annoyance but nothing more than that. He could deal with the inconvenience, as long as he knew that Kiera was safe.

  “Alright,” he said as if there’d ever been a choice. And in that moment, he knew. He saw the love that she had to give—the empathy she had; he knew that when this assignment was over, he couldn’t leave her. He was hers, if she’d have him.

  * * *

  SUSAN WAS CURSING under her breath. She’d failed. That was a fact she couldn’t accept. She could accept it no more than she could accept the fact that Eric was in jail waiting to die. She knew that would be the outcome. There was solid evidence against him—she knew, she’d followed the case religiously.

  She missed him. And she was angry that it had to be this way. But she knew that someone had to be held responsible and she’d given the authorities a fall guy for when her luck ran out. It had worked exactly as she’d planned. He’d been set up and there was not a stick of evidence that anyone else existed.

  Until... She fisted one hand. Until they’d taken the last victim. If the victim hadn’t escaped, all of this wouldn’t have happened. Kiera had destroyed her family, destroyed her life. And for that, she deserved to die. Except, once she was dead their evidence wasn’t so solid against Eric.

  That didn’t really matter. She was resigned to the fact that their partnership was over. It was getting stale anyway. She was ready for new blood. She passed a teenager on a bicycle. Someone like him, she thought. Not today. But one day she would go out trolling and find herself another teenager. One who she could raise, turn into a man who would make her not so much proud as satisfied.

  That was all one could ask for in life.

  She turned a corner. It was another mile to the rental house she’d found so recently. Another alias, another strange house. It didn’t matter. What mattered was tying up the loose ends and making sure that Kiera Connell died. But first she needed to take out her bodyguard so she could get to her. She thought of working out—she was always able to think at the gym. She belonged to a franchise where she could exercise pretty much in any city she was in. She scrounged through her bag. Her key fob was gone!

  “Damn,” she muttered. Mentally, she retraced her steps. The key had been in her pocket. Where had she dropped it? She needed to think.

  She pulled into the driveway and stepped out. A ball rolled beside her.

  “Hey, throw it back,” a boy shouted.

  She smiled. Her attention wasn’t on him
but on his companion. He’d be a looker when he grew up and soon she would need another project, another partner. The thought was fleeting as were the earlier ones. She picked up the ball and hurled it, hard and true. The move was unexpected, and it knocked the second boy off balance.

  “Hey, you stupid...”

  The expletive was lost on her. It didn’t matter what he said. One day he would be nobody but somebody’s tramp. It was what this neighborhood raised up. Sadly, he would not be hers. She had more important things to consider—closure first. She couldn’t move forward without that and closure had just become much more difficult.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was an hour before Travis and Kiera left what was no longer a safe house and headed to the location of the closest All Seasons Fitness. The route took them even farther from the city center than they already were. Here, there wasn’t much as far as suburban development. And as they neared the gym, it became even more barren. They passed a tract of land that looked like it might be in the process of being developed. And farther on there were patches of neglected industrial lots. It wasn’t a vibrant area and he wondered why the gym had picked this location. It was definitely on the fringes of Denver. The building that housed the gym was on the edges of a lot full of scrap metal and a run-down warehouse. On the other side he could see the start of a neighborhood of box stores. To the south there were low-cost apartments and assorted housing. It was an area ripe for developers to move in to claim land that was becoming more and more valuable.

  The parking lot held a handful of cars. It looked like a location that might go belly-up soon, Travis thought.

  “I’ll wait here,” Kiera said. “There’s no point in me going in.”

  He wasn’t so sure. Not that there was any danger and not that she wouldn’t wait for him. He wasn’t concerned for her safety, at least not here in this moment. Despite their speculation, the fob and this gym was a long shot. It could have been sitting in the parking lot for days and likely had been, considering its state. And, as far as this parking lot, despite the neglect of the surrounding area, it wasn’t one known for a high crime rate. He still hated to leave her. But he knew that she was shaken by what had happened earlier and was more comfortable sitting in the vehicle than tagging after him. She’d said so. And here, there was nothing to cause concern. Her attacker was long gone. She was safe here and he wouldn’t be gone longer than a few minutes.