Page 24 of Witness Security Breach

Charlie slipped her hair behind her ear, her expression giving away nothing.

The bombshell unnerved her, too, although no one else would’ve been able to tell. Her Rock-of-Gibraltar demeanor appeared unflappable to the untrained eye, but Aiden knew better. Knew her well. The little hair tuck, a seemingly insignificant gesture, betrayed her emotions.

In that moment, she was feeling just as vulnerable as he was, even though she wanted the world to believe she kept her heart frozen in a block of ice. But when Charlie Killinger felt threatened, watch out. She became dangerous with a capital D. Went into take-no-prisoners attack mode, illustrating why a person should never corner a feral beast.

“That’s impossible,” Aiden said. His vision tunneled. “There were no witnesses.”

“I guess you two weren’t as careful about covering your tracks as you thought.” The bitter accusation in Draper’s tone was thick as ipecac syrup.

Aiden wanted to vomit. “Other than the police officer who stopped to help us, there was only a group of four guys who attacked us. There were no other cars on the road. No one else around.” A strange numbness seeped through him.

Even if there had been someone, how could they have seen anything clearly through all the smoke from the grenades?

“Unfortunately for you two, that’s not the case. Yazzie, you and Killinger disgust me. You should be ashamed of yourselves. As if this office didn’t have a big enough mess to deal with, now you dump this in my lap. There’s no way I can clean up this kind of nuclear fallout.”

A tide of fury rose in Aiden, washing out his anxiety over being railroaded. Only someone as self-absorbed as Draper could turn this around and make it about himself.

“We called the police when we were tracking the men who abducted Albatross,” Aiden said, “before they threw his wife out of a moving vehicle. Have the cops located the two black vans we reported?”

“There’s no sign of those supposed vans. The chief of police is ticked that you had them spinning their wheels on a wild-goose chase when they should’ve been looking for you the entire time. Listen to me. Stay put at Mission Medical. Surrender your weapons to security. Cooperate with the police and go with them willingly. Don’t endanger any more civilians.”

The GPS trackers in their phones pinpointed their exact location. There was no doubt in Aiden’s mind that as soon as Draper had been notified by the police, their boss had given them up without hesitation.

Not as if they’d been trying to hide. They’d taken the police cruiser of the dead cop to the medical center.

Charlie’s gaze pinned him. Her cool, stony expression didn’t waver, but he caught the flicker of fear in her piercing blue eyes as she took out her cell phone, removed the battery and smashed the screen against the wall.

A second later, she’d chucked it in the trash.

She was preparing to run.

There has to be another way out of this.

Charlie pointed to her watch, reminding him not to waste precious time if they wanted to avoid incarceration, and peeked around the corner. Whatever she saw, she must not have liked. Her index finger went up behind her back and she twirled it vigorously. The signal to wrap up, now, end the call.

“Draper, this doesn’t add up.” It didn’t make any sense why anyone would falsely accuse them. “We’re not guilty of this, and the real shame here is your utter lack of support.”

There has to be another way out of this.

“I got an update right before you called. The eyewitness just arrived at the police station. He’s seen pictures of you that I emailed after the chief of police notified me what was happening. The witness is swearing out an affidavit as we speak, identifying you and Killinger as cold-blooded murderers.”

If there was another way out, Aiden couldn’t think of it.

Chapter Seven

Two police officers entered the medical center through the main entrance and looked around the waiting room.

Charlie stepped back out of sight around the corner. “We have to get out of here.”

Aiden hung up. “The dead cop was wearing a body camera on his torso. The footage should exonerate us. It’ll show that we didn’t kill him.”

“We don’t know what it’ll show. There was a lot of smoke and he was hunched down behind his door. But they will have clear footage of me checking to see if he was dead. On the remote chance that it did clear us of his murder, it doesn’t help us with Torres. Any time we spend in handcuffs, answering questions, is time lost to find Albatross before it’s too late.”

Aiden popped out the battery on his cell and tossed the phone in the trash bin. “We won’t get far.” He gestured to their vests and rifles.

They stood out like sore thumbs.

“Yes, we will.” Determination fired through her veins. Surrender was not an option.