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Chapter 9
She yanked her wrist away from him. But instead of scrambling to escape, she stared at him, fire in her eyes. “I was right all along. You are the hit man.”
She leapt to her feet, and he knew exactly where she was going -- to her purse. For her gun.
He grabbed her wrist once more. Tightened his fingers when she tried to jerk away. “Stop, Alex,” he said, making sure his voice was unthreatening. “Do you think someone who’d been sent to kill you would announce it ahead of time? Hell, no. He’d wait until your back was turned. Until you were vulnerable. Then he’d strike.”
He sighed. Shook his head. “Without a little trust between us, this isn’t going to work.”
“What’s not going to work?” She took another step away from him.
“Staying in this room together. Trying to stay safe.” He glanced at his hands. He wasn’t about to tell all of his secrets, but she needed to understand the basics.
Drawing a deep breath, he held her gaze. Patted the bed next to him. “Sit down and I’ll explain.”
She stared at him for a long time. Then she sat on her bed, across from him, and peeled his fingers from her wrist. Rubbed it for a moment, as if he’d bruised her.
Hell, he probably had. He wanted to ask her to show him her wrist, but he’d wait to do that. “I’m going to tell you the absolute truth, Alex. I promise.”
* * *
Alex stared at the stranger on the other bed. He’d lied to her. Many times. Would he tell her the truth now? How would she know?
If he was lying, would she survive?
He was so close their knees were practically touching. She couldn’t run. He’d stop her immediately. Even if she made it out of the room, where would she go? Her car? Running through deep snow with no shoes?
Without her car keys or her money or Jerry’s files?
No. She was stuck in this room, for now, with a man who’d admitted he was the hit man Jerry’d hired.
He reached for her hand and she jerked it away from him. “Don’t touch me.”
“Okay. I won’t. I’ll just tell you what happened.” He took a deep breath. Swallowed once. “I’m the guy your husband Jerry hired. But I never planned to kill you.” He hesitated, and she wondered what he wasn’t saying.
“Just tell me everything,” she ordered, her voice harsh with fear and anger. “You think you have to sanitize it? Make it more palatable?” She stared at him, daring him to lie. To hold back information. “I heard my husband hiring you that night. Heard he’d been planning to kill me for a while. You have something worse than that?”
His expression hardened for a moment. “There’s a lot worse than that, Alex. A lot you don’t know.”
“So tell me.”
He glanced away. Was that regret in his expression? Or merely calculation? Wondering what he could get away with?
He drew a deep breath. Blew it out. “That night, I needed to convince him I’d kill you. And I wanted him afraid of me. Terrified of double-crossing me. He paid me a lot of money. In cash. I asked for a ridiculous amount, hoping I’d get all he had in the house. I didn’t want him to hire someone else. Someone who might really kill you.”
Gideon squared his shoulders, as if bracing himself. “Trotter made it clear this wasn’t a new idea. He’d said he’d been working on your murder for a while. I put a bug in his office when he left to get the money. I’ve been listening to it, but haven’t heard much. He hasn’t been in his office.” He scowled. “Maybe he’s in the wind. Which would be smart, considering who his enemies are.
“That’s why I put a tracker in your bag at the restaurant, and another one on your Subaru. I needed to be able to find you. So I could stick close and protect you.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. So far, she was pretty sure he was telling the truth. She’d heard most of that conversation. “Did the FBI tell you to guard me?”
He stared at her for a long moment, as if wondering if he could lie to her. Finally he sighed. “No. I don’t work for them anymore.”
He pressed his lips together, but she caught the flash of anger. “I suspected my boss was dirty. Was pretty sure his boss was, too. So instead of reporting it to my boss’s boss, as I should have, I investigated on my own. Found the proof that got my boss fired, but his boss forced me to resign. Because I hadn’t gone through ‘proper channels’ to report my suspicions. ‘Lone wolves’,” he told me, “have no place in the FBI. Which just made me more suspicious of him. I continued to investigate him after I left. Tony Conklin, who I mentioned back at the last hotel, is investigating, too. You can call the Bureau in Washington tomorrow and ask to speak to Tony. He’ll confirm my story.
“Right now, I’m working for Blackhawk Security. It’s a small company based in Helena, Montana. It was started by Mel Melbourne, who used to work for the CIA, and Devlin Smith, a former Navy Seal. They have a handful of operatives working for them, all of them either former SEALs, Delta Force operatives or ex-CIA.” He smiled. “I’m their first FBI agent.”
She frowned. Follow the money was a mantra in her work. “Who’s paying you to protect me? I’m sure a security company wouldn’t eat the costs of an operation like this.”
