Rocky Mountain Revenge

“I just got out of a yoga class. Marcie Evanston teaches one every afternoon at this time. You should join us sometime.”

Anne had tried yoga once. While everyone else lay still in savasana, her mind had raced, unable to grow quiet. She needed physical activity—punching the heavy bag or an opponent in the ring—to shut off the voices in her head and drown out the fear.

“Can I talk you into a break for a smoothie or some juice?” Maggie asked.

“Sure.”

Anne stashed her gloves in the cubby marked with her name and the two women made their way to the juice bar next door to the gym—McGarrity’s latest effort to squeeze more profit out of the facility. The idea seemed to be working—the juice bar was usually busy, favored by tourists and local office people as well as gym members.

They sat at the counter and ordered banana-berry smoothies.

“Look what Ty gave me for Valentine’s.” Maggie extended her pinky, showing a gold ring with a row of tiny diamonds.

“It’s beautiful,” Anne said. “Was it a surprise?”

Maggie nodded. “We saw it in the window of a store over in Grand Junction last month and I remarked how I’ve always wanted a pinkie ring. When I saw the ring box on my plate this morning, I squealed loud enough to wake the next door neighbors.” She smiled at the ring. “Did I get lucky or what?”

“You got very lucky.” Anne ignored the pinching pain at her heart. In her party-girl days she’d dismissed love as some fanciful notion from novels and movies. She’d liked being with men, but she hadn’t needed one to make her happy. And the thought of wanting to spend the rest of her life with one had seemed ludicrous.

And then Jacob Westmoreland—she’d known him as Jake West—had walked up to her at one of her father’s clubs and asked her to dance. She’d thought he was handsome and a decent dancer, but then she’d looked into his eyes and her world had shifted. A flood of lust and longing and locked-in connection had rocked her like a tidal wave. Nothing had ever been the same after that.

And now he was back. She didn’t have the strength to go through that heartache again.

“Did you see your picture in the paper? Great promo for the carnival.”

Anne realized Maggie had been talking for several minutes about something. “My picture?”

“In the Telluride paper today. You made the front page.”

She fought back the nervous flutter in her stomach. “I don’t remember anyone taking my picture.”

“You remember that reporter who came around Saturday, when we were working on our carnival booth? He must have taken some candid shots after he talked to us. He got a perfect picture of you framed by the heart cutout in the side of the booth. I think you leaned out to say something to Ty.”

“He should have asked me before publishing it.”

“Oh, come on! I know you don’t like having your picture taken, but it was a great shot, I promise. I’ll save my copy for you. And maybe it will pull in a few more people to our booth at the carnival.”

“That’s great.” Anne managed a weak smile. The first and second grades were teaming up to sell hot chocolate and cider at the Winter Carnival in the town park next weekend, an annual fundraiser for local charities. She wanted to do her part to help, but the thought of her picture circulating in the public made her uneasy. What if someone from her old life saw?

She shrugged off the thought. After all, it was just a small-town paper, a very long way from New York.

“Hey, ladies, how you doing?” A stocky man with broad shoulders and a shaved head came to stand beside their bar stools. Evan McGarrity was rumored to be in his sixties, but he looked two decades younger, and had the energy of a man half his age. “Annie, did your friend find you?” he asked.

Anne went cold. “What friend?”

“There was a guy in here earlier, asking about you. Said he was a friend of yours from New York.”

Aware of Maggie’s eyes on her, Anne kept her expression noncommittal. McGarrity must mean Jake. “What did he look like?”

“Not too tall. About my height, maybe. Good set of shoulders on him. Looked like he might have played football. Dark hair. Expensive suit.”

Jake was tall, with sandy hair and a slim build. This wasn’t Jake. She stood, knocking the half-empty smoothie glass onto its side as she groped blindly for her purse.

“Anne, are you all right?” Maggie asked. “You’ve gone all gray.”

“I’m sorry about the mess.” She stared numbly at the purple liquid spreading across the countertop. “I really have to go.”

She ran to her car, still dressed in her workout clothes, not feeling the icy evening breeze against her bare legs, ignoring the shouts of her friends behind her.

Someone had found her—someone who wasn’t Jake. Someone who might mean her harm.

* * *

ANNE’SFIRSTINSTINCTwas to go to Jake for help. But she had no idea where he was staying. And maybe he’d led them here. She could call Patrick Thompson, the marshal who’d been assigned to her, but he was hours away in Denver. By the time he got here, it might be too late.

She drove home and raced into the house, locking the door behind her. In the bedroom, she dragged her suitcase from the top shelf of the closet and began throwing things in it. She’d wait until after dark, then she’d leave. She’d drive as far as she could toward Denver. It was easier to get lost in the city. She’d ditch the car there, maybe buy a new one or take a bus. She couldn’t travel out of the country. The feds wouldn’t let her get a passport—letting her leave would be too risky, they said.

But she had to leave. The last time she’d seen him, her father had vowed to erase her. That was the word he’d used—erase. As if she were a mistake he needed to blot out. She’d never seen such coldness in his eyes before. His daughter was dead to him already—disposing of her body was of no consequence.

Never mind that she still had plenty of use for that body.

A knock on the door made her freeze. She tried to think. Would the man who was looking for her knock and announce himself?

Yes, she decided, he would. He’d want her to open the door. To let him inside where he could dispose of her quietly, without the neighbors seeing. He’d slip away without anyone noticing and tomorrow, when she didn’t show up at class, someone would find her. Someone else would discover her true identity, and the newspapers and gossip magazines would print the news in bold headlines. Mob King Takes Revenge on Daughter Who Betrayed Him or Mafia Princess Gets Hers.

She waited, but no second knock came. No friendly voice called out in concern. She forced herself to breathe, ragged, metallic-tinged breaths that tasted of terror.

When she could stand the tension no more, she tiptoed into the front room and peered out a gap in the blinds. The street in front of her house was empty. Dark. After another half hour of stillness, she decided no one was there. But maybe they were waiting across the street, waiting for her to open the door.

She pulled on her coat and gloves, then took the loaded pistol from her bedside table and slipped it into the pocket of her coat. When she’d asked for the gun the Marshals had dismissed her, saying she had no need to be armed. She was merely an innocent schoolteacher. Patrick Thompson had assured her the U.S. Marshals Service would provide all the protection she needed. She’d argued with him to no avail.

But three days after her arrival here she’d received a package in the mail. The handgun, ammunition and an unsigned note. I hope you never need this, the note read. But just in case...

One hand on the pistol, she slipped out the back door. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees with the setting sun. The air was brittle with cold, the ground crisp beneath her feet. Staying close to the side of the house, she moved toward the street. She took a step, then waited, listening. She repeated this process all the way down the side of the house, so that twenty minutes passed before she reached the corner. She craned her head around to look toward her front door.

The small porch was empty, the light shining down on the doormat and a rectangle of white that lay on the mat.

Chapter Three

Anne studied the rectangle of white that gleamed on the doormat. It looked like an envelope, and a simple envelope shouldn’t be so ominous. But this one was out of place. The mail carrier delivered letters through the slot in the door. Other people who had messages for her telephoned, or contacted her at school. Did this envelope contain an explosive to injure her, or a poison?

Neither of those things were her father’s style. He believed in personal retribution—not necessarily from him, but from his goons. His representatives, he called them. She remembered overhearing him on the phone with a contractor he suspected of double-crossing him. His words had been so calm, in sharp contrast to the menace in his voice. “I’m sending a couple of my representatives over to discuss this with you.”

When the police found the man, he was floating in the sound, his face gone. Cut off, she’d heard later, while he was still alive.

Shivering with cold and fear, she turned and raced back around the side of the house and through the back door. She ran to the front, opened the door just wide enough to snatch the envelope from the mat, then sat on the sofa, shaking.

She turned the envelope over and read the childish printing. Miss Gardener was rendered in uneven printing. Below that, a more adult hand had penned Happy Valentine’s Day.