In fact, he preferred it over noise. But there was nothing comfortable or peaceful about the bubble of silence that surrounded Celeste. She was on edge and uneasy. It was like her mind was a whirling machine, spinning and turning so quickly her entire body radiated tension. His hand twitched with the desire to brush his fingers reassuringly across her shoulder blades and tell her that she had nothing to worry about, because he was here and he would keep her safe.
Faint and pale light trickled through from the end of the tunnel.
“Stay here,” he said. “As close to the wall as you can get. I mean it. Don’t move. Don’t go anywhere.”
“Got it! I’ll stay right here with my back against the wall.” Her voice was almost defiant, then suddenly her tone dropped and he felt a hand brush his arm. “I’m sorry about what happened earlier. I didn’t mean to make your job any harder that it already is.”
He swallowed. “It’s okay. It can’t be easy to go from being a folk hero to thousands of people to taking orders from someone like me. Now, wait here. I’ll be back in a second.”
He pulled away from her and walked slowly and carefully down to the end of the tunnel. Something lay across the doorway. His heart stopped.
It was the body of a US marshal.
“Stand back!” Jonathan’s voice echoed down the tunnel ahead of her. Celeste’s heart pounded hard in her chest as she heard the worry moving through his deep voice.
Dear Lord, was I wrong to stay up above in the kitchen and listen? Did I really see who I thought I saw? What can I do? How can I help? I feel so helpless.
She’d felt almost fearless days ago when she was sitting in her living room, alone with her laptop searching for Poindexter. She’d never expected to be able to find him. Not really. She’d just started pulling one thread that led to another thread and then another, until they reached deeper and deeper into Poindexter’s online web to the man in the center of it all. But no, she hadn’t felt like a hero. She hadn’t even figured out where he’d hid the money. Besides, all she’d been doing was using her talent to the best of her ability and counting on God to guide her.
“What’s going on?” she called.
At first there was no sound except the beat of her own heart. Then she heard a deep, long sigh moving through the darkness.
“Hang on one second,” Jonathan said. “There’s a body here. It’s another marshal by the look of it. I need a moment to check it out and also do a visual sweep for any hostiles. I need you to stay there and don’t move until I give you the all clear. Please confirm that you’ve heard me.”
“I’ve heard you,” she said. She pressed her back against the wall, feeling the cold of the bricks seep into her limbs. She wasn’t cut out for this. She didn’t hide in dark tunnels. In fact, she rarely even left her little rented apartment in the city, not that she didn’t love the thought of country living. In fact, thanks to the internet she’d been able to shop for handmade clothes and blankets from self-employed seamstresses, handmade soaps from home-based artisans and order everything imaginable—from fresh vegetables grown on farms outside the city to homemade soups to cheeses, breads and even pies. Before someone working for Dexter had emptied her bank account and wrecked her credit, she’d been saving up for years to buy an actual house of her own, somewhere outside the city, where grass and trees would fill her view from the window beside her desk instead of buildings and buses. She’d lost all of that; she was trapped. She pressed her hands to her eyes to keep sudden tears at bay.
Lord, I know I should trust You have a plan in all this. I’ve trusted You to guide me this far. I need to believe You won’t abandon me now.
Then she heard Jonathan’s voice again, deep, comforting and as solid as steel.
“Celeste? A US marshal has been shot and killed. His name was Rod Cormac. He was a good man. My guess is he was shot at a distance and tried to make it to the safe house to warn the rest of the team before he died. He didn’t look like he was followed. Now I need you to come to me, nice and slow.”
She took a step forward and saw them. Jonathan was crouched down on the ground beside the body of a man, lit by the soft gray light of the approaching dawn. The man’s hair was blond and his limbs were curled up like he’d just lain down to have a nap in the snow. Her body froze. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t cut out for any of it.
“Look at me, Celeste,” Jonathan said firmly. “Don’t look at him. Look at me.”
His voice was a soft-spoken command, snapping her eyes back to his face, and if she was honest with herself, there was something almost kind of comforting about it. He held her gaze every bit as firmly as if it was her hand inside his. “It’s going to be okay, and I will keep you safe. Just trust me and do what I say. Okay?”
She nodded. He broke her gaze and reached for something in the shadows by the wall. It was a large black bag. He pulled out a gray wool blanket and laid it carefully over the body. Then he knelt for one long moment beside the fallen marshal. Jonathan’s head bowed, his eyes closed and his lips moved in what she could only guess was silent prayer. A shudder moved through his limbs. Then he stood and wiped his hand over his eyes.
He pulled out a thick coat and tossed it to her as he stood. “Put this on. There should be gloves and a hat in the pockets. We’ll find you winter boots as soon as we can. We need to hurry. It’s only a matter of time before someone finds the blood trail and follows him here.”
Celeste looked down at the coat in her hands but somehow couldn’t get her arms to move. Then her gaze rose to the snow-covered trees beyond the doorway. What if the person who’d shot Rod was still out there? What if they got shot the moment they stepped through the door? A man she’d never met was dead. And why? Because she’d hacked some lines of computer code and was going to be a witness at the criminal’s trial? Right now, Stacy, Karl and several other marshals were fighting for their lives because of her. Someone had already died because of her, and there was no way of knowing how many more would before this was all done. The horror of that welled up inside her.
Jonathan stepped forward, gently took the coat from her hands and held it out for her to slide her arms into. Her eyes met his for one long moment, and her breath caught to see the depth of sorrow echoed there.
“What was he like?” she asked. She let him ease her hands into the sleeves.
“Rod was a good marshal and a good man.” Something in the tone of his voice made her think this wasn’t the first colleague he’d lost in the line of duty. “He had a wacky sense of humor. I liked working with him.”
She felt him slide the coat up over her shoulders. She didn’t know why she was so frozen or why her body didn’t want to move, only that asking questions somehow helped. “Did he have a family?”
“He had a very large black dog and a very nice long-term girlfriend who he never tied the knot with because this line of work involves a lot of travel and doesn’t lend itself to relationships.”
He nudged her shoulder. She looked up into his face.
“How exactly did he die? Don’t just say he was shot. I want to understand.”
