Leigh Riker - Double Take

“Look, I’m sorry, Cameron. I don’t know how to tell you this except to just say it.” He stepped closer to her and she tilted her head to look up at him. “You know Destina was released from federal prison last week?”

“Yes. I did read the papers.” To be honest, she’d stayed glued to CNN for days, hoping for any scrap of information, any statement from Destina that would allay the last of her fears. She’d seen a glimpse of his son at the prison gates, but only the briefest flash of the camera’s eye on Destina himself, and then later, outside his rural Connecticut compound. “There wasn’t much reported. What they didn’t tell me was why.”

“Supposedly he earned an early parole for health reasons. Compassionate release.” Scoffing at the very label, Ransom took a seat across from her on the folding chair she kept for rare guests in her sparsely furnished living room. “Nobody believes that,” he said, “but it’s the official word.”

“That means he’s ill?”

“Usually means it’s terminal.”

“My father is already dead. Destina killed him.” He’d always said he would.

Ransom lifted his eyebrows. “There’s no physical evidence, but I agree with you. Destina may have been in prison at the time, but he has a long reach. His organization employed any number of assassins when James testified against him.”

She couldn’t keep the reminder to herself. Her voice shook. “And Destina vowed revenge because my father spoke the truth.”

“That truth—if it was the whole truth—put Destina behind bars.”

She sighed. “Now he’s out. And presumably sick.”

“Either that or his lawyers are more clever than they were years ago. The assassins, too. All I know is, your father died in Denver and you’re in New York.” He hesitated, as if he had decided to keep something more to himself. “That’s why I’m here.”

Her mouth thinned with disapproval. “The U.S. Marshals to the rescue?”

“I know you don’t like that—or me—but it’s necessary. Just as you know James was in WITSEC when he died.” It was the official name for the more familiar Witness Protection program. “That made him our responsibility.”

“Looks like you did a lousy job.”

He flinched and Cameron cautioned herself to hold her temper. Ransom knew how she felt, but he was no longer her keeper. Twenty-two years in WP had been that many years too long. Now he had no jurisdiction over her.

Cameron tried to forget looking over her shoulder on the way home.

His mouth tightened. “James was secure in Denver for—”

“Three years. Since you brought me the happy news in Phoenix that my family would have to relocate again.”

“Because you had decided to leave. When your brother left WP, we couldn’t risk him inadvertently leading someone else—Destina—to James, your mother, or you.”

“How many times did we relocate, Ransom? Five? Fifteen?” A flash of guilt about Phoenix went through her, but she knew, of course. They were all losses, engraved on her heart like her father’s murder. “I left in Phoenix because what was the point, after all? Maybe my brother was right to leave, too. He just realized it first.” She didn’t know where Kyle—at least, that had been his WP name the last time she saw him—was living now, and the knowledge pained Cameron, but she felt too angry to stop. “If you people were doing what the taxpayers of this country hired you to do, my father wouldn’t be dead!”

The edges of his mouth had turned white. “I admit that we—”

“What kind of ‘protection’ did you really provide?”

This time he said nothing. His whole face had turned pale.

“News flash, Ransom. We lived in fear for my father’s life every day, of his being found and killed. And for what? Because he testified in a federal trial to get you a conviction.”

“Not my conviction,” he said. “The government’s.”

“You are the government.” She rose from the chair, still shaking. “It wasn’t you who spent all those years hiding behind closed blinds, afraid of every slam of a car door or backfire in the street! Afraid of telling something—anything—to a neighbor or a friend that would indicate another life.”

Ransom stood up, too. “I know that wasn’t easy. But putting that bastard behind bars, making a serious dent in Venuto Destina’s multicrime organization, had to seem worth it.”

“Spoken like a man who’s never lived behind closed doors.”

Ransom ran a not-quite-steady hand through his sun-streaked hair.

“Look,” he said again. “I could have sent another agent here. Instead, I came to see you because I thought familiarity—”

“Breeds contempt?”

He held up both hands. “I guess so.”

Cameron walked toward the door. “Thank you for coming, Deputy Marshal Ransom. If there’s nothing else—”

“I’m not finished. Sit down,” he said again.

“Why?” Cameron waved a hand in dismissal. “I have lived all over this country, in a dozen or more ratty little houses. Under a dozen or more different names, which, I might add, is why I now prefer the name I was born with. It’s my father’s name too—”

“The name he took back when he died,” Ransom said.

“And that’s why I gave the marshals my real name as their contact—your contact—when I left the program.” She dragged in a breath. “I learned very young, when I lost that name, to be careful what I did and said and who I said it to, and at this point when I no longer have to watch my tongue or hide who I really am I am extremely tempted to tell you to go to hell.” She took a breath. “However, my mother managed to instill in me a few manners. So instead of throwing you out right now, I’ll listen. For two minutes.” She paused. “Then I’ll toss you out into the hall.”

Cameron knew she was close to losing the last of her control. She didn’t want Ransom to know how shaken she’d felt tonight. Didn’t want to hear what else he’d come to say…

“Destina.” The name again shot fear along her nerve ends, as it had on the darkened street earlier. “I think you’re in danger,” Ransom said, holding her gaze. “I think you’re next.”

Cameron thought she’d heard him wrong. She hoped she had. “I’m in danger? But the only reason I lived in Witness Protection was because of my father. He’s dead now.” Saying the words still hurt. “Destina’s already had his threatened revenge.”

“Has he?” Ransom cleared his throat. “It would help if you could tell me about the money that’s still missing. Since Destina’s release, someone has been sniffing around. I’m sure James knew where it is.”

“The money?” To Cameron, it was just a shadowy mention, in hushed tones, between her parents long ago when she was a child. What did the still-missing funds in the case have to do with her? Or even her father now? The government didn’t pay its witnesses well. James, her mother, Kyle and Cameron had lived in near poverty. Surely Ransom didn’t think… “Why would my father know anything about that?” Unless he thought James was a crook, too. Which he seemed to. “Why would I?”

“Because the one thing that kept you all sane in WP was family. Maybe that didn’t mean as much to Kyle, or whatever he calls himself now, or maybe he got restless and left the program to stay sane himself. But you stayed. A lot longer.”

“I had to. I was still a kid—and then my mother was ill.”

“But after she died…?” he pressed.

“My father was all alone. He needed me while he adjusted to her loss.”

“See what I mean?” Ransom looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Family,” he repeated. “If James knew about that money, then you know about it, too.”