The Guardian

  He wanted to protect Shari from what was coming and could only ensure he was there when she had to deal with it.

  He hesitated for a moment, and reached over to his suit jacket. From the inside pocket he removed the slim book—a New Testament plus Psalms and Proverbs—that Jennifer had given him. He’d read the passage she had marked in Luke on the flight to Chicago, gone on to thumb through the text and read words that were familiar to him from his childhood.

  He could remember his mother reading him the stories from Luke.

  This was the last moment of quiet he would have for several chaotic days. He owed Shari a decision; he owed himself a decision about Jesus, about prayer. The turmoil he felt didn’t set well. And while this issue remained between them, he and Shari would remain at best cautious friends.

  He couldn’t afford to make the wrong decision. He knew how profound his life would change no matter what he decided. If he chose to again believe, to lay aside the doubts, it might give him a future with Shari, but it would create a sense of turmoil within the family. It would make it very hard for Rachel, Lisa, Jack, and Stephen not to feel a sense of discomfort over the fact they didn’t believe.

  He had been the leader of the O’Malleys for over two decades. He knew what it meant to look out for the family—be there to comfort, provide for them, support, solve problems, see trouble coming and head it off, bail them out after a mistake, keep the peace, love them. He couldn’t afford to make the wrong decision. He couldn’t walk them down a road to being hurt. He wouldn’t shake that sense of family unity without being absolutely certain it was the right decision to make.

  Jesus said He wanted to be Lord. He said, ‘Follow Me.’ Marcus could feel the clarion call of that order and its absoluteness. It was one of the unfortunate realities with religion, there was no middle ground. He believed and followed or he didn’t.

  Marcus had no practice with prayer since he was a child, and it felt awkward.

  Jesus, You’re asking a lot of me. It would mean trusting the O’Malleys to You. Not to mention Shari.

  He could admit to himself he was worried. Who would look out for the O’Malleys if something happened to him? He had no illusions about the coming danger. When Connor knew they were after him, when Titus did—arrests would not be made without risk.

  If something happened to him, who would keep Lisa out of trouble?

  Who would give Rachel a hug?

  Who would talk to Kate in the middle of the night when she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders?

  Who would ensure Jennifer got everything possible to help her get well?

  Who would be the older brother Stephen and Jack needed behind them?

  Jesus, I need You to value what I value. Is it wrong to want that? This family needs a good strong leader. Trusting You for me is one thing, for them is something larger and deeper.

  From his childhood came the memories of intense tears, and the unexpected rush of emotions had him clenching his jaw. The pain crashed back with a furor.

  Jesus, I’ve got only one question really. How do You reconcile a child being abandoned by a loving God? I believed in You once, and I got crushed when Mom died. That’s the pain You have to deal with if I am to accept again Your statement that You love me. If I’m to trust You.

  He wanted to be optimistic. But he wasn’t walking into a land mine of disappointment again. The last words his mom had told him from her hospital bed as she held his hand in hers, in a grip so soft his hold on hers had been the stronger one, her last words had been the whispered ones: “Jesus loves you.” His mom had died that night. Shari said a child couldn’t have the same perspective as an adult. Maybe not. But a child was not as easily fooled by words. They saw actions.

  He closed the New Testament and slipped it back into his pocket.

  He wasn’t sure what he expected, what he wanted to know or see happen to settle his questions. There was an honest willingness to consider believing in God again. But he didn’t know what he sought, what the reassurance was he needed to have.

  Circumstances demanded that the issue slide to the background for the next several days. He was almost grateful.

  The plane touched down in the darkness.

  * * *

  It was a silent drive to the lake house. Marcus saw lights on in the den as the car curved around the drive. Had Shari waited up for them to arrive? It wouldn’t surprise him. Marcus retrieved his suit jacket and briefcase but left the one piece of carry-on luggage in the trunk. They would not be here for long, regardless of the outcome of the photograph lineup; the only question was their destination. He didn’t want to be away, but Luke could manage security here.

  Marcus followed Dave and Quinn around the driveway to the porch and walked into the house as Shari came from the den. It was so good to see her, and her smile . . . it was like coming home. She didn’t hide the fact she was glad to see him, and in another situation, he would have reached out his arm to gather her into a hug. He wished he wasn’t going to be erasing that smile with his words.

  “I didn’t think you would be back tonight. Dave, Quinn—it’s great to see you.” She looked back at him. “How’s Jennifer?”

  Her words threw him back a day to the reason he had originally left. It didn’t feel like it had been only a day since he had seen Jennifer. “She’s doing pretty good, all things considered. She’s picked out her wedding dress,” he offered with a smile, then turned serious. “Shari, would you wake up your brother?”

  She looked from Marcus to the others, her expression growing still. “What is it?”

  “After your brother is here.”

  She hesitated, then nodded and moved upstairs to wake Joshua.

  Her brother and mom joined them in the den five minutes later. Shari didn’t sit down, stopping instead just inside the door.

  “What is it?” Her voice was steady, but she was twisting her fingers together.

  “We’ve got a photo spread for you to look at,” Marcus replied, watching her accept the news. He nodded to Dave, who opened the folder he carried and set down the prepared photograph spread on the desk. There were eight pictures in it, all chosen to look similar. Two of them were Frank and Connor.

  Shari stepped toward the desk.

  Marcus watched her face for a reaction as she looked down; he saw the shock hit. “That’s him.” She looked up at him, her gaze startled. “How did you—”

  “Who, Shari?” Dave prompted.

  Without hesitation she put her finger down on Connor. “He lost the hair and mustache.”

  Quinn looked over at Marcus.

  “Call the pilot and tell him we’re flying out tonight,” Marcus told Quinn. “I want to be in New York by dawn.”

  Shari turned toward him, and he could see the fire in her eyes. “Who is he?”

  “He’s just a suspect at this point. It’s best you don’t know until we investigate further.”

  “Marcus, I know this is him. Why did he kill Carl? Why did he kill my father?”

  Marcus looked at Joshua, at Beth, and then told Shari the basics. “It may have something to do with the Daniel Gray case.”

  That news rocked her. “The death penalty case. Over a decade ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not the Supreme Court short list. Not my brief.”

  He should have realized the relief that would be. He crossed to her side, reached for her hands. “No.”

  “You’re going after him.”

  She wasn’t saying she was afraid for him, but it was written all over her face. “Yes, we are. I don’t know how long we will be gone.”

  Her hands came up to grasp his. “Marcus, be careful.”

  There were moments where caution didn’t fit. He leaned down and kissed her. “I’ll be careful. That’s a promise.”

  She leaned against him, hugging him tight, and then she stepped back and looked over at Quinn. “Make him keep his word.”

  Quinn laughed. “Yes, ma’am.”


  * * *

  “We need ideas; that place is a fortress,” Marcus observed. Connor’s home had full security, roving guards, and driveways leaving from three different sides of the grounds. By the time they served the search warrant, got access, and secured the grounds, Connor could destroy a lot of evidence and possibly even slip the grounds. And that was assuming they were not met with violence. They couldn’t predict how the man would react when confronted. He had killed a judge; he didn’t have anything to lose.

  “We can serve him at his office.”

  “Walking into a law firm and arresting one of their partners will be like waving a red flag at their profession.”

  Dave pushed back his chair from the table where Connor’s estate blueprints were spread out. “We need to arrest Connor and serve warrants on his home, business, and vehicle at the same time.”

  “Agreed.” Marcus looked at the marshal from the local office. “Gage, any ideas?”

  “What about a street stop? Catch him between home and work. He drives himself; we should be able to establish surprise. And we can act with a small enough team we could limit any chance of a leak getting back to him once the warrant has been issued.”

  Marcus thought about it and nodded. “Have teams ready to move into his office and home as soon as he’s been stopped?”

  Gage nodded. “We should be able to prevent him from getting word out to anyone.”

  “Get it set up. Rick, is your team ready to serve on Frank’s home?”

  In five days they still had not been able to locate Frank. The decision had been made to arrest Connor, serve the search warrants, and hope to pressure Frank out of hiding.

  “We’re ready,” Rick confirmed. “Those watching his house have seen three men present. We’ll go in with four teams. There’s an officer ready to shut down the security system when we move.”

  Marcus looked at his watch. “Let’s get all the teams in place. We’ll act when Connor leaves work.”

  The group separated to implement the details.

  The waiting was over, and Marcus felt the change in focus inside. Five hours, and it would be over one way or another.

  He considered calling Shari but didn’t want to add to the stress she was carrying. Better to tell her after it was over.

  At 4 P.M., Marcus walked with Dave and Quinn to the waiting vehicles, having gone through the plans in detail with Gage.

  A street stop was a three vehicle maneuver. They were using an SUV, a blue sedan, and a white delivery van; nothing about them suggesting they were law enforcement vehicles. The nine officers assembled to assist them wore street clothes over the bulletproof vests. They would act somewhere on the drive between Connor’s office and home, choosing the location that was most advantageous based on traffic.

  They assembled across from Connor’s office building where they could see his vehicle. When Connor left the office driving his Lexus, they slipped into traffic behind him.

  The SUV, serving as the lead vehicle, eventually passed Connor’s car and moved up in front of him. The delivery van and the sedan trailed Connor through town, eventually moving to be the vehicles immediately behind him. Connor’s car turned east on Thirty-second street.

  Marcus saw the streetlight changing to yellow up ahead. He keyed his radio. “We’ll act here. Get ready.”

  The light turned red. Greg in the lead SUV came to a stop. Connor’s Lexus stopped behind him.

  “Do it,” Marcus ordered.

  The SUV suddenly backed up right to Connor’s bumper. Connor saw it happening and went to his car horn. Gage whipped the sedan around the van and crowded Connor’s driver’s door at the same time Bill pulled the delivery van forward to touch the back bumper of the Lexus.

  Officers were out with guns drawn at all sides of his car before Connor realized it was more than just someone backing into him. “Keep your hands on the wheel.”

  Surprise had him obeying.

  Marcus let Gage take him from the car, formally making the arrest.

  “I’m surprised at the timing of your arrest.” Connor smiled as his hands were handcuffed. “You would have been welcome to walk into my office and serve your warrants.” He looked around at the slowing traffic, then back at Marcus. “All this street stop buys you is some bad press that you have to explain when I’m eventually released. You don’t have enough to hold me. You’ve got what? That I was in the hotel? It took you long enough to figure that out.”

  Connor shouldn’t be talking, but there was truth to the saying a lawyer who has himself as a client was a fool.

  “We’ve got Frank and an eyewitness,” Marcus replied, making a deliberate move to shake the man up.

  Connor blinked. His smile disappeared. And then he smiled again. A cold smile, thin, but a smile. “You don’t have Frank, and your eyewitness will never testify.”

  It was a soft, distinct threat.

  Marcus slammed Connor back against the car. “Who did you hire?”

  Quinn and Dave leaped forward to pull him back. Marcus ignored them. He was looking into the eyes of the man who had killed Carl and Shari’s father. Any doubt of that had disappeared.

  “I didn’t hire anyone.”

  Marcus heard the emphasis. Titus had made the hire.

  “And if he doesn’t get paid until a year and a day after your witness is dead, you are going to have a hard time linking the two.”

  Even Quinn paled.

  “Dave, get him out of here.” Marcus shoved Connor toward the waiting car.

  “Marcus.”

  “I know, Quinn.”

  Only one man had that unique signature of payment. Lucas Saracelli. He didn’t miss at two hundred yards. He didn’t miss at four hundred yards. Dark. Wet. City. Country. It didn’t matter. He had been on the international law enforcement agencies most wanted lists for the last twelve years.

  “We’ve got to get her out of there. Fast. It’s a cover that will never hold. And he’s got a big head start.”

  Marcus could feel the fear; three teams on the ground would never hold. “Agreed. But where?”

  “My ranch,” Quinn recommended. “We want to avoid a fight with this guy, but if it happens, we had better have every advantage.”

  * * *

  Lucas was sharing a beer with a flight attendant from Jamaica when the phone call came. The Washington, D.C., bar was noisy and packed, but he chose to take the call where he was. “They just picked up Connor in New York. The team was led by U.S. Marshal Marcus O’Malley. They flew in on a private jet.”

  Lucas smiled at the flight attendant. “Fine. Thank you for the call.” He hung up and reached for another pretzel. Shari was somewhere in Kentucky, and her escort was now in New York. Interesting.

  “Business?”

  “Maybe. When’s your return flight?”

  “Seven.”

  “Then business can definitely wait until 7:15 P.M.. I promised you an escort back to the airport.”

  She giggled. He liked the giggle. He set down the beer. “Come on. Let’s dance.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Marcus took the call on the plane. They were on a private flight back to the house by the lake, having pulled together as many men as they could within an hour. “Yes, Dave.”

  “The search warrants have been served on Connor’s office and home. We got some interference from the staff on duty at his home but it’s been dealt with. We managed to get the surprise we hoped for, but I’m afraid that is all we’ve got going in our favor. The crime lab technicians are taking the place apart but so far there is nothing that can be directly linked to the crime. The two house safes are empty; the three weapons registered to him are accounted for and don’t match.”

  “We need something, anything.”

  “We’re working it. Just focus on Shari. I promise you, now that we’ve got Connor, we are going to turn his life inside out. If there is evidence here we will find it.”

  “Frank?”

  “No sign of him.
I’ve got a bad feeling about him, Marcus.”

  The reality that he might have already skipped town was very real. “Put the warrant out on the wires so if he is traveling in the U.S. we’ll have a chance of learning about it.”

  “It will be out within the hour,” Dave assured. “Stay in touch and let me know when you get in.”

  “I’ll call as soon as we land,” Marcus confirmed, and said good-bye. He closed the phone and looked back at Quinn. The lack of evidence was a serious problem he would wrestle with later, they had an even more serious one to deal with. “How do we stop someone who has no stop button? Once a hit is accepted, it can’t be withdrawn with this man.”

  “Do you think Connor could have hired him?”

  “No, he doesn’t have that kind of money. It had to be his father, Titus.”

  “Can we crimp Titus to the point he won’t be able to pay so the guy will make the decision on his own to back off?”

  “We’d have to seize the entire operation. To do that we need inside information. If convicted of the murder of Judge Whitmore, the only way Connor could avoid the death penalty, avoid dying like his brother, would be to cut a deal and talk about his father’s business. But he won’t talk unless he thinks he will be found guilty, and he’s confident Shari will never testify.”

  “A vicious circle.”

  “We’ve got no choice. We’ll have to stop Lucas.”

  Marcus rarely felt fear such as he did now. Lucas could have been in the States looking for Shari for as long as a month. The lake house wasn’t safe; nowhere truly would be until Connor, Frank, and Titus were convicted and sentenced. The escalation this represented was horrific.

  In all his years as a marshal protecting witnesses he had never faced a challenge like this. That it was affecting the woman he loved . . . he forced aside the emotion lest it paralyze him. “He could have entered the country anytime since July 8.”

  “Titus had to get in touch with Lucas somehow in order to establish the terms of the contract. Maybe we can get a lead on him through that.”

  “If Titus went through his contacts in Europe to make the arrangements we may never find it. We might have a better chance locating Lucas from the sniper rifle he’s going to need to acquire once he is here in the States. The one thing we can be certain of is that it will be custom made.”