Briggs didn’t say anything.
“Okay, listen, I couldn’t have left there on my own if I’d wanted to. I was completely out of it. Someone had to have called 911 and I was picked up and taken to the nearest hospital before anyone could finish me off.”
“All I know is the courier never showed up. You vanished. The information was gone. There were no bodies at all—no one stabbed, no one shot.”
Stryker was shaking his head. Dan was rubbing her back, but Addie didn’t act in the least bit flustered.
“Dirk and Paris didn’t tell you what happened? Dirk yelled at me to wait for backup, but he didn’t leave Paris with the dead courier to provide backup either.”
“I’ll talk to both of them and check out the hospital where you were staying.”
“Don’t bother. Two faux security officers and a pretend nurse tried to kill me there, but I’m sure you won’t find them either. Or any record of my stay there. I never saw any of it on the news, so I imagine cleaners came and scrubbed the place. Oh, and I suppose you didn’t have an agent named Leipheimer guarding my room.”
“I’ve never heard of him and I couldn’t assign anyone to your room for your protection when I didn’t know that you’d been taken to a hospital, now could I?”
“Either we’ve got a mole on the team, or you’re the one orchestrating this,” she said, still fully in control, holding her temper.
“Or you need long-term psychiatric care.”
“Well, since I’ve found witnesses who can testify to what they’ve witnessed, that theory won’t fly.”
“Where are you now? I’ll have someone pick you up and bring you in. If what you say is true, I’ll put you in a safe house.”
“Thanks.” She hung up on him and handed the phone to Stryker. “I told you it wouldn’t help. He didn’t believe me the last time either.”
“Because he’s involved? Or because these people are covering their tracks so well?” Dan asked.
“Notice how he asked where she was?” Travis said. “If he already knew, he wouldn’t be asking.”
“Unless he’s pretending he doesn’t know,” Stryker said.
“I don’t think he knew,” Bridget said. “I think he was furious with Addie for not bringing in the information, maybe even fearing she had other plans for it. I got the impression he really hadn’t thought she’d been in trouble.”
“I agree with you,” Addie said. “I still can’t completely put my trust in him, but I think the business with the hospital and that he didn’t know the agent who was guarding my room, said a lot. And though he sounds like he’s in denial about the existence of a mole, or that I’d been hurt, I’d bet a year’s worth of wages he’s going to check out the park and see if he can find any evidence of foul play.”
“Will he send someone else out to look for clues?” Dan asked. “If he does, and he sends the wrong person out, they’re liable to find no evidence at all.”
“No. He’s pretty hands on, and in a situation like this, when it’s possible we really have a mole, I suspect he’ll investigate it himself. And check out the hospital too.”
“What if he’s in danger for investigating this on his own?” Bridget asked.
Addie motioned for Stryker to give her the phone and called her boss again. “When you look for evidence that I’m telling you the truth, watch your step. They followed me here, and we had a shootout. None of them lived, that we know of. They’re professional hitmen. These guys mean business and if you’re not the mole, I don’t want to learn you vanished too.” Then she hung up on Briggs again and handed the phone back to Stryker.
Stryker smiled. “If she’s done being your pseudo-wife, Dan, she can be mine.”
“Wow, between all the job offers, and now pseudo-marital offers, I seem to be a hot commodity. You all must not get a lot of excitement around here.”
“You have no idea,” Bridget said.
“You’re hot, all right,” Dan said. “And not on the marital mart. We have a contract.”
Someone knocked on the door and Travis and Bridget headed for it together. Stryker, Dan, and Addie pulled their guns out.
“Just Yvonne and Rick,” Travis said.
Dan waited to holster his gun until they were inside the house and Travis had locked the door.
“Any news?” Dan asked.
“Have we ever,” Yvonne said.
Bridget got everyone fresh coffee as they settled in the living room.
“I talked to my boss,” Addie said, updating them on that front. “He didn’t know I’d been stabbed or taken to the hospital. Only that I’d vanished and the courier had too. He’s going to investigate it.”
“Sounds like there’s really a breakdown in your department,” Rick said.
“Yeah, and we have some shocking news. Your mother, Alicia Shields, is your boss’s boss,” Yvonne said.
Addie’s jaw dropped and tears sprang into her eyes. She couldn’t believe her mother had been so close to her as far as the job situation went, yet had never reached out to her.
“Then we need to get hold of her and tell her what’s going on. If Briggs didn’t have anything to do with your injuries, then surely, Alicia hasn’t either,” Dan said.
“I wonder if that’s why I was selected for this task force,” Addie said. “Maybe that’s why I was even hired on at the Bureau. Both my father and mother were agents.”
“And because she trusts you,” Yvonne said, then sipped her coffee.
“Why not get hold of you then and let you know that she knows you’re working on the task force?” Stryker asked. “And, hell, why wouldn’t she know what’s going on with you? You’d think she’d have an eye on you.”
“Briggs said contracting out to a ‘civilian’ to serve as my husband wasn’t his idea.”
“Then it was your mother’s idea?” Dan asked. “Who all did she have on the list of names for possible candidates?”
“They were all former military—Special Forces. I turned down the first dozen because I was looking for—“
“Me,” Dan said, sitting up taller.
Everyone laughed.
“You were number thirteen on the list. Then Hal, Stryker, and Chase were listed after that. Even Leyton was on the list.”
“I can’t believe I was on the list and you didn’t reject him first. Or that my brother was on the list too. Though back then I didn’t even know he was my brother. Were the others cougars?” Stryker asked.
“No. Dan was the first on the list who was a cougar.”
“She still would have chosen me over the rest of you guys,” Dan said, looking as serious as could be.
“I wasn’t on the list?” Travis asked.
Bridget punched him in the shoulder.
He laughed.
“What I want to know is why your mother would have set this up for you to have a pseudo husband who wasn’t an agent,” Yvonne said.
“I think we have our answer already. Either your mother, or someone else higher up, suspected there was trouble in the Bureau and wanted to get someone who was highly combat-trained, but also who wasn’t part of the Bureau, to watch over Addie in the event there is a mole,” Dan said.
“We have a number for Alicia Shields. It’s a private number, so she might not answer it, if she doesn’t know who’s calling,” Rick said.
“She might not take the call even if she does know who is calling,” Addie said, annoyed with her mother for dropping out of her life, even if she thought she was protecting Addie and her father. If she pulled Addie in to do this job and now Addie’s life was in danger, that didn’t make any sense.
“Why would she pick potential pretend husbands for you who weren’t cougars?” Yvonne asked.
“She knew I wouldn’t accept any of them, probably, but no one else would know that.”
“Once they knew who it was, he would be in as much danger as you,” Travis said.
“Only when I was injured and dropped into his life again.” She s
queezed Dan’s hand, loving him for being so patient with her.
Dan got a call from Ricky Jones, one of the boys Hal had taken in to work on his ranch, who was a fairly newly turned cougar and former informant for his wife while she was working to locate animal traffickers.
“Yeah, Ricky, what’s up?”
“Hey, Sheriff, Kolby and I were looking over the crime scene. Yeah, yeah, I know we’re not supposed to be over at your house, but no one’s paying any attention to it while they clean up the mess the shooters made of it and replace your back door and—”
“Did you find something?” The kid was a great kid, and he wanted to be in the same business as Tracey and now Hal were. When he was older, Dan was sure he’d do a super job. Getting to the point of the matter was always an ordeal with Ricky.
“Yeah, you know, there isn’t any yellow tape showing a crime scene, but my brother and I used our noses to search all over the place and we found a piece of paper half buried by leaves. You know, people just tromped all over the place, removing bodies, and just made a mess of everything and so it’s no wonder no one found it.”
“The piece of paper? What did it say?”
“It had a name on it. The grass and leaves were damp and so you know, the note was damp and the ink is blurred but I could still make it out and all that was on it was a name: Alicia Shields.”
8
“It doesn’t mean your mother was involved in hiring the men to take you out,” Dan said to Addie, feeling terrible for her and ready to take out her mother, if she was responsible for the attempted hits on Addie.
Addie shook her head. “I know she didn’t. Why would the piece of paper be found lying on the ground? Why wouldn’t the assassin have it in his pocket? And why have it at all? The name isn’t hard to remember. He wouldn’t need to carry it with him. I doubt assassins carry information with them that would identify who hired them. At least, none that I’ve ever dealt with have.”
“Then it’s a setup to put us on her trail. Maybe so we’d go after her next,” Dan said. “Give me her number. I’ll call her. I was on her list. She must have seen something in me that told her I could keep you safe.”
Addie snorted.
Dan raised a brow and smiled a little.
“I don’t mean that you couldn’t keep me safe. You did. But that my mother wished it?”
“That’s what we need to find out.” Dan took the phone number for Addie’s mother and called it. He got an answering machine. Naturally. “Hello, I’m Sheriff Dan Steinacker of Yuma Town, Colorado, and I’m working with your daughter, Addie. For now, I’m keeping her—” The message machine cut off. “Hell.”
“Message machine?” Addie said.
“Yeah. She’s sure to know my number so if she doesn’t return the call by tonight, I’ll call her back. Did you learn anything else?” Dan asked Yvonne and Rick.
“Still working on leads. We’ve got a couple of people checking into several queries we had. The men were known assassins. Why they would want Addie dead is a mystery. Why not just kill her anytime?”
“After I was targeted the first time, I disappeared for good. I had only been back at the job for two days, had another courier meeting, and the same result—an assassination attempt on my life. I never had any trouble before this, not for the last ten and a half years.”
“Then it has to be something to do with the last two assignments you had,” Rick said. “That’s when everything changed for you. Not when you began working with Dan. Unless the person who arranged for that to happen knew it would come to this and so set the plans in motion early on to have a protector for you.”
“Did anyone ever try to convince you to leave the Bureau?” Yvonne asked.
“No, and I’ve enjoyed working for it. It’s just been the last six months, and really just these two cases, that have made me reconsider working for the Bureau. If every assignment you get, someone’s targeting you, there’s no fun in that.”
“These are the only two cases you’ve had when you were targeted,” Dan said.
“True. In the past, I always had the upper hand. I was targeting the perp, and getting my man, or woman, as the case might be.”
Someone unlocked the front door and everyone pulled guns.
Leyton smiled, walked inside the house, and locked the door. “Glad to know everyone’s on high alert. How are you feeling, Addie?”
“Much better,” she said. “Thank you. How’s Kate?”
“Good. She went in late to work today. No emergencies.” Leyton took a seat on one of the chairs and they filled him in about Addie’s mother and the note Ricky had found.
Chase called Dan from the sheriff’s office after that and he put it on speaker. “We’ve got a problem. That pesky reporter from Denver, Carl Nelson, was snooping around, heard gunshots fired, and was looking for a story.”
“Just tell him we were hunting on my property. Was he on my property? Arrest him for trespassing if he’s still around.”
“Will do if I see him around your place again. He left after I spoke with him. He was eyeing the work being done on your place to repair things. No one was talking to him about anything. Not that anyone working on the repairs really knew what had gone down.”
“Hell, I thought he wouldn’t ever show his face around here again after all the trouble we had with protecting Shannon from being his front-page news story.”
“Don’t I know it. I thought we’d run him out of town for good, but he just happened to be driving through town when he heard all the gunfire.”
“Wait, you know him. If he heard the gunfire, he would have hunkered down to watch what was going on.”
“Okay. I’ll check it out. If he left his scent in the area, then what?”
“He could have been video recording the whole thing.”
“Not without a camera equipped with night-vision ability.” Chase paused. “Hell. He could have taken video of us fighting the men as cougars.”
“Removing the bodies. Not reporting it. Find out where he is now!”
“And arrest him?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ve also got a single car wreck out by Dottie’s place. Do you want me to take care of it too?”
“I’ll get on it,” Stryker said.
“Thanks, Chase, Stryker, for helping to hold down the fort on the sheriffing business.” Dan’s thoughts were so tied up in the business with Addie, it was hard to think of anything else.
“That would be great. If Stryker has a minute, there’s a cat in a tree he can rescue too,” Chase said.
Dan smiled.
Stryker shook his head. “Chase is doing some real deputy sheriff business and I’m stuck getting a cat out of a tree.” Stryker rose from his chair. “I’ll look for Carl Nelson while I’m at it.”
Dan swore Stryker liked how a couple of their older cougar widows always asked for him, even if he pretended not to want to waste his time over it, knowing perfectly well the cats would get down on their own.
“Keep me posted, and while I’m rescuing a cat, if I see anything suspicious with regard to Addie, I’ll call it in.” Stryker left then.
“We’ll keep looking into the Bureau situation,” Yvonne said and Rick agreed. They left then too.
Leyton leaned back in his chair. “If anyone needs to do anything else, run errands, or whatever, feel free to. Kate’s working at the clinic now, and I’m free to do guard duty. Unless you need to take down a reporter.”
“Chase will call up everyone to make them aware we’ve got a potential ticking time bomb running loose. Unless Carl tore off for Denver, my bet is he’s still here looking for more details. I’ll give him credit for that, at least. He’s a good investigative reporter. Only we sure as hell don’t need him reporting on anything here.”
“Agreed,” Leyton said.
“I need some more groceries,” Bridget said. “Is there anything you’d like, Addie?”
She shook her head. “We’ll probably be returning
to Dan’s house soon, won’t we?”
“Only if we have some extra firepower,” Dan said. “I think for now, even after we get the house repaired, we should stay here. The likelihood that someone else would come for you at my house would be greater.”
“I can’t believe you’re a brunette, after Mrs. Fitz said she saw a blond enter your house,” Leyton said.
“A wig. I was incognito. I’m glad she was fooled then.”
“She has an eagle eye. I’m surprised she didn’t realize it wasn’t natural,” Bridget said. “I really expected a blond too.” She grabbed up her purse and headed for the front door when someone knocked. She pulled out her gun and continued to the door. When she looked out the peephole, she shook her head. “Speak of the devil, it’s Mrs. Fitz, Florence Fitzgerald, bringing pastries from her shop, no doubt, to learn more about what’s going on.” She opened the door. “Why, Mrs. Fitz, how lovely to see you again.”
“After last night’s escapade, and knowing you’d all be here, and with so many dropping in and out, I thought I’d bring by some cupcakes, cookies, and other pastries to celebrate having a new cougar in town.”
“Thank you,” Bridget said.
Dan knew Mrs. Fitz wanted to come in and meet the mystery woman, since she left last night before she could do so. He should have said no to it, but she always knew the gossip of what was going on in town even before they knew it. She could be a valuable resource.
“Bridget was on her way out to do some grocery shopping. Come on in, Mrs. Fitz, and have some coffee with us,” Dan said.
“Oh, my, certainly, thank you.” Silver-haired, and always smiling, Mrs. Fitz hurried to join them while Bridget grabbed a couple of chocolate-chip cookies, thanked her, and left.