“Thanks.”
“No problem. Good luck,” the agent added sincerely.
* * *
They’d driven for ten minutes, following the automated voice of the GPS, when Cate suddenly said, “I have nothing with me. No clothes other than the ones I’m wearing. No purse. I don’t even have a toothbrush.”
Liam glanced over at her for a second, realizing she was right. She didn’t have her purse with her. She must have dropped it in the courthouse, and of course he hadn’t been worrying about that then. He returned his gaze to the road and said, “I doubt that will be a problem. If I know Cody, everything we need will be at the safe house, including clothes.”
“How will they know my size?”
Liam laughed abruptly, thinking about the ammo clips the agency had provided him with at the same time he’d been given the SUV and new cell phone. Ammo clips that were a perfect match for his SIG SAUER. “You’d be surprised what the agency knows.”
A long silence followed. All of a sudden, Cate said, “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Liam was instantly on alert. Cody had told him not to mention it. “Who?”
“The other witness.” Her voice was soft, and he caught the faintest trace of an accent that reminded him of Princess Mara of Zakhar, whose bodyguard he’d been for six months in Colorado. But Cate’s English was less formal than the princess’s, more idiomatic. Maybe because she’d spent eight of the past nine years in the US. And despite the softness, there was a layer of steel beneath it, just like the princess. This woman was no pushover, either.
When Liam didn’t answer, she explained, “The woman who was going to back up my testimony. She’s dead. That’s why the trial was delayed. That’s why the prosecutors were so insistent this morning I needed to come in for another prep session with them this afternoon, even though we’d already spent so many hours preparing last week I was sick of it. That’s why your brother said, ‘She dies, this case dies, too.’ So the other witness must be dead.”
It was the longest speech Liam had heard Cate make to date. He made a judgment call, then admitted, “Yeah. Cody told me a little while ago.”
“Vishenko murdered her.” A flat, cold statement.
“Maybe. There’s no proof of that. Not yet.”
“There may never be proof. But I know.” She tapped a hand against her breastbone. “I know it here. Just as I know he’s the one who tried to have me killed. He is ruthless. Amoral. An animal. He’ll do anything to prevent me from testifying.”
“But you’re going to testify anyway. Why?” he asked, curious to understand what drove her to take the risk when so many men had refused to flip on Vishenko in the past.
“Because Alec and Angelina are right. He is evil, and he must be stopped. No matter the cost.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as if she was reciting an oft-repeated mantra, so that Liam had to strain to hear her next words. “‘I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.’”
He recognized the quotation with a sense of shock, mentally adding the last sentence, “And by the grace of God, I will.” The entire thing was carved in wood over the fireplace mantel at home, a maxim his parents had instilled in all their children from an early age. It was the driving force that had led him and all his siblings into the US Marine Corps and then into public service. “Edward Everett Hale,” he said blankly. “How do you know that quotation?”
She drew a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “Your brother said that to me. I was afraid—so terribly afraid I ran and hid for six years. Then Alec found me. He is such a good man, your brother—I could not let him down. He made me realize I have a duty to do whatever I can do to stop Vishenko. ‘I am only one.’ But if all the ones band together, we can defeat him.”
Liam was shaken. Cate had divined the kernel of wisdom out of the quotation, had pinpointed his own raison d’être—his reason for being. Yes, he was only one. But sometimes one person could make a difference.
Right and wrong. Good and evil. He couldn’t remember a time when the differences between these things weren’t important to him, same as they were for Alec. For all his siblings. Maybe it was old-fashioned nowadays. Maybe the dividing lines had become blurred for many. Not for him. But that didn’t mean he saw the world only in black-and-white. It didn’t mean he didn’t recognize and accept that a thing could be both right and wrong.
He’d killed a man today. Some would say that killing was always wrong. Not in his book. There was a higher right—saving lives—that trumped the wrong. Did he regret killing that man? Liam glanced away from the road for a second toward Cate sitting so still and quiet, looking even younger in repose...until one looked in her eyes.
No, Cate was alive now because the men who’d tried to kill her were dead. The only thing he regretted was that he and Alec hadn’t somehow prevented the entire incident from occurring. So that no one had died. So that no one had been wounded. Impossible, of course. But otherwise he didn’t have any regrets.
Except the way Cate had shied away from him. From his touch. That still bothered him. And while you’re at it, might as well admit something else is bothering you, his inner voice nudged into his consciousness.
He so didn’t want to go there. Didn’t want to examine his reaction too closely, but... It is what it is, he admitted to himself. He’d never been jealous of Alec—not since the day he turned eighteen and joined the Marine Corps anyway, which Alec had done the year before him. From that point on their friendship had been untainted by anything as destructive as jealousy on either side. Each was the other’s cheerleader, and the accomplishments of one were a source of pride to the other. Liam had even followed his brother into the DSS. Not because he was jealous of what Alec was doing, but because he believed wholeheartedly the DSS was his true calling, same as it was for Alec.
But that’s exactly what he was feeling right now. Jealousy. Hot, harsh, unreasoning. He didn’t like it one bit, but he couldn’t refuse to acknowledge it. He was jealous—of the admiring way Cate spoke Alec’s name. As if...
“At the end of the road, turn right,” said the GPS. And when Liam had dutifully done so, the GPS said, “You have reached your destination.”
* * *
Twilight covered the earth, and there was a delicious smell of roast chicken wafting through the house. The agents who ran the safe house—a husband and wife team in their fifties, but who continued to instill confidence in their abilities—had told them dinner would be ready in thirty minutes. Lunch had been so delicious Cate was looking forward to dinner with an appetite she hadn’t had since Alec had found her. Since he’d convinced her to testify against Vishenko.
In addition to feeding them, the agents had made sure Cate and Liam had everything they needed—from clothes, to toiletries, to bedrooms, to information. What little information they had, anyway, which wasn’t much. Cate remembered how the first question Liam had asked was the status of the marshals who’d been wounded in the attack on her, and the other prosecutor, too. As if he really cared about men he didn’t know. As if it mattered to him.
She’d wanted to know, too, of course. She hadn’t had a lot to do with the
