Marilyn Pappano - Criminal Deception

Then the clerk inside the kiosk moved, and Joe’s gaze locked with Liz’s. The look on her face was funny-grim, resigned, guilty-and brought with it a numb realization: She had followed him.

And it wasn’t because she wanted to talk about last night. Oh, she was talking, all right, to whoever was on the cell phone. He was too far away to hear any of her conversation, but he had a sick feeling in his gut that it was about him.

His chest was tight, his skin cold. He’d never had premonitions, but at that moment, he felt the way he had when the stranger in Armani had approached him, when he’d turned and seen the gun and known he was going to die. Liz wasn’t going to kill him-not in public when she’d had plenty of time alone with him-but he suspected it was going to hurt like hell just the same.

She ended her call and started toward him. The pay phone rang when she was twenty feet away. He looked at it, looked back at her, then picked it up on the third ring. His hand was unsteady. So was his voice. “Yeah, this is Joe.”

“It really is you,” Josh said. “What’s up? Is it Mom? Dad? Is something wrong-”

“They’re okay.” Joe watched Liz, stopped in her tracks.

“Thank God.”

An odd phrase coming from Josh. He never worried about anyone but himself.

“I figure I’m the last person you’d want to talk to about anything concerning yourself, so what’s up?”

Joe’s reasons for calling now seemed pointless. To warn Josh? His brother knew people wanted him dead. To ask about Liz? To find out if he was nothing more to her than a substitute for his brother?

To find out. Why she had come to Copper Lake. Why she had followed him today. Anything. Everything.

Grimly he turned his back to her. In the reflective glass that encircled the alcove, he could see her, not hesitant, not uncertain, but simply waiting. Watching.

“Tell me what you know about Liz Dalton.”

There was a moment of silence, then Josh blew out his breath. “Jeez, I should have known she wouldn’t give up, not when I left her handcuffed to the bed. Has she been bugging you? Is she bothering Mom and Dad, too?”

“Not that I know of. She said-” Joe’s brain caught up with his brother’s words. “You left your girlfriend handcuffed to a bed?”

Josh laughed, but there was more scorn to it than humor. “I know we put on a pretty good act, but come on . You know my type, and Liz ain’t it. For one thing, she’s got that whole right-and-wrong, law-and-order thing going on. For another, her IQ is way higher than her bra size, and for another, can you really imagine me-your brother, Josh-introducing her to my buddies-‘Hey, guys, meet my girlfriend, Liz. She’s a deputy U.S. marshal.’ No freakin’ way.”

The rushing in Joe’s ears gave Josh’s next words a distant, hollow quality. “And by the way, her name isn’t Dalton. It’s Dillon. Marshal Dillon. From the old TV show. Get it?”

Joe got it.

All of it.

Liz had just been outed. She could tell by the way Joe went stiff, could feel it in the chill radiating across the distance that separated them. He knew she was a fed. Knew that every single thing she’d said or done since the moment they’d met had been a lie.

Her muscles were knotted, holding her in place. She couldn’t move closer as she should, couldn’t grab the phone and demand that Josh turn himself in-for it had to be Josh. Who else would Joe call only from a pay phone?

She couldn’t do a damn thing but stand there and regret.

She’d known it was going to be a tough day. She should have stayed in bed.

Hell, she should have stayed in Dallas.

His call was short, less than five minutes. He returned the receiver to the cradle, leaving his hand on it for a moment, before stepping away, then walking out the door.

Finally she could move. She jogged to the door and outside, and caught up with him fifty feet away before matching her pace to his. “Joe, we should talk.”

He acted as if he didn’t hear her.

“Joe.” She laid her hand on his arm, and he jerked away as if her touch had seared him. He came to a stop so abruptly that she had to backtrack a few steps to face him.

“Talk?” he repeated softly. “What do you want to talk about, Marshal Dillon?”

She winced at the venom he put into her title and name. “I know you’re angry-”

“Why should I be angry?” The emotion came off him in waves, heavy, relentless, suffocating. “You lied to me about your name, about your job, about your connection to Josh. You came to this town, you lied to Miss Abigail and Natalia and everyone else. You spied on me. You slept with me. And you think I might be angry?”

He wasn’t yelling or gesturing or doing anything that might make a passerby think he was upset. He stood, loose-limbed, his expression blank, and his voice was pitched low and smooth. By all appearances, he was a normal man on a normal day having a normal conversation.

“I won’t apologize for the lies,” she said flatly, though someplace inside she was aching to do just that. “I was assigned to Josh’s protection team undercover. The U.S. Attorney didn’t want the Mulroneys to figure out the identity of the witness against them. I had no choice, for Josh’s safety.”

A muscle twitched in Joe’s jaw, and his skin paled a shade. “So you kept Josh safe. You just let me get shot.”

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.”