Paul Calloway killed somebody?” Sherry asked, amazed. “Paul Calloway tried to kill me,” Clint said. The very name made his adrenaline surge, and he could feel his face reddening at the memories. “It’s hard to believe that such a chain reaction could have started from one visit I paid to a mixed-up kid. If I’d only known when I knocked on that door …”
There was no turning back. The knock on the door made it final, sealing the decision to confront Paul with his finding. Clint looked down at the vial in his hand and shook his head. It explained a lot of things. It explained Paul’s sudden bursts of energy during the mission retreats Clint had taken the kids on. It explained the wild look in his eyes when he’d shown up late at special events. It explained his distant preoccupation at times when Clint was praying he’d get through to him. He would probably get angry for Clint’s intrusion. But Clint could live with that.
Because it was his business. He had grown fond of the twenty-year-old kid who reminded him of himself at that age. He didn’t want to see him ruin his chance at a good life before it even got started. Clint wasn’t about to let him throw it away by getting drawn under the spell of cocaine abuse.
The door opened, and Paul caught his breath at the sight of Clint. “I … I thought you were someone else.” Raking a distracted hand through his brown hair, the young man looked past him, his pale blue eyes darting up the street in front of his house.
“Can we talk?” Clint asked.
“No,” Paul said quickly. “I’m expecting some people.”
“Paul,” Clint prodded. “It’s important.”
“Sorry, man. I’ll call you later.” The door started to close in Clint’s face, but undaunted, he stopped it with his foot.
“I found something in the pocket of the coat I loaned to you last week, Paul,” he said, “And I’m not leaving until I talk to you about it.”
“My pocket? Wh—?” The word got caught in his throat as Clint brandished the vial. With a sigh that seemed more impatient than surprised, Paul stepped back and let Clint in. “I appreciate your returning it, but you can’t stay.”
Clint walked into the house that Paul had said he was taking care of while the owners were in Europe. In one look, he could see the disregard for property—clothes strewn over chairs and sprawled across the floor, dirty dishes cluttering the table, glasses with cigarette butts floating in rancid liquid. Briefly, he wondered if the owners had expected this when they’d asked Paul to house-sit. He turned back to Paul, who was at the window now, peering nervously out. “Man, I mean it. You have to leave!”
“Not until we talk,” Clint insisted again. He sat down in a chair and leaned forward. “Paul, you don’t need that stuff. You have a lot going for you, and I don’t want to see you—”
“Okay, fine,” Paul agreed, cutting him off. “I’ll quit.” He took the vial, rushed to the kitchen off the den, and poured it into the sink. Hurriedly, he ran some water down the drain, then came back to Clint. “See? It’s gone. Now will you please go?”
“You expect me to believe that it’s over just like that?”
Paul’s face flushed crimson, and he banged his fist into a wall. “What do you want from me? An affidavit? I told you—” The sound of an approaching car outside stopped his words and he swung back to the window, cursing. “I knew this would happen. They’ll see your car—”
“I’m on my ten-speed,” Clint said. “Who are you expecting—?”
“You have to hide. Hurry up. Get upstairs! Now.”
“What?”
“Hide upstairs, Clint! If these people see you, they’ll kill us both. This is no joke. Get upstairs and hide in the bathroom. And don’t come out under any circumstances.”
“Paul, I’m not hiding anywhere—”
The rage in Paul’s crimson face was urgent, desperate. “Listen to me, man! I’m trying to keep you from winding up just another unexplained stiff. Do what I say!”
The doorbell rang, and Clint began to believe the panic in Paul’s eyes. “Please, Clint!”
Reluctantly, Clint started up the stairs, but he didn’t hide in the bathroom. He got out of sight behind the rail overlooking the lower level. Paul was obviously nervous as he let several men in. Immediately, Clint recognized Tony Givanti, a local businessman, and Steve Anderson, recently named Teacher of the Year at the local high school. He strained to hear as the men filed into the house, arguing among themselves about the price of something for which they were negotiating.
Givanti ordered Paul to show them what they wanted, and as Clint watched from his hiding place, the young man produced several bags of cocaine.
“What’s the street value?” one of the buyers asked.
“Over a million dollars,” Givanti said. “You’re getting a bargain.”
“We can only pay half now,” the buyer said.
Givanti bristled. “No way. We had an agreement.”
“But things didn’t work out like we planned. We had trouble coming up with the cash, but we’ll have the rest by tomorrow.”
Clint watched as Paul’s eyes darted nervously upstairs to make sure he was out of sight, no doubt hoping that Clint hadn’t seen or heard anything. Clint scooted back so the young man wouldn’t see him. So this was how Paul had paid for his sports car. And this house was probably his. And the clothes and trips …
“When you pay the other half, you get the other half,” Givanti said. “I don’t give credit. Tomorrow night, the warehouse on Fourth and Brine Street, you bring the money and we’ll give you the rest of it.”
“But we have buyers tonight, Givanti,” Anderson said. “You know we’ll pay you when we collect.”
“I don’t do business that way, gentlemen. You know that.”
The men were red-faced as they made the exchange. One of them left, but Anderson lingered behind. Clint heard one of the cars drive away, and watched as the argument grew more heated. Givanti got angry and took a swing at him, and Anderson pulled a gun.
Fear coursed through him, and he thought of going into one of the bedrooms and calling the police. He got up quietly, staying in the shadows, and backed toward the bedroom.
The gunshot that cracked through the night stunned him, and he saw Anderson drop to the floor. He stood there, paralyzed, as Givanti ordered Paul to help him with the body. Clint watched as Paul helped the businessman carry Anderson’s lifeless body out into the night. He went to a window and peered out, and saw them dump the body into the trunk of Paul’s car.
He was drenched in sweat and trembling, trying to decide what to do when Paul came back in. Would Paul tell Givanti there had been a witness? If Givanti had so easily killed Anderson, what would he do to Clint?
He went into the bedroom, stepped over clothes and shoes, and tried to find the telephone in the dark. Through the window, he saw them closing the trunk. Paul and Givanti spoke for a moment, and then Paul got into the driver’s seat of the car with the body. Givanti went to his own car and drove away.
That’s it? Clint thought. Paul was going to leave, and allow Clint to get away? It didn’t make sense, but he didn’t take time to question it. When the two cars were out of sight, he rushed out to the ten-speed he had ridden over, hopped on it, and headed as fast as he could to Eric Grayson’s house. This was too big for a phone call to the police, he thought, and he had to get to safety before Paul came to his senses and came back for Clint. Riding as fast as he could on the back roads, he headed to the home of Sherry’s father, the U.S. attorney.
Eric Grayson listened earnestly to the news and contacted the police himself.
Mentally exhausted, Clint slipped out of the house while Eric was on the telephone, making plans for a major drug bust for the following night at the location Clint had given him. Looking back, Clint wasn’t sure if it was simple fatigue or mental numbness in the wake of shock that had caused him to be so careless. But all he had wanted was to go home and sleep, and wake up to find it had all been a bad dream.
It smelled like rain, and the peaceful breeze sweeping through his hair had given him a false sense of security as he’d ridden his ten-speed up the driveway to his house. He pulled into the open carport and parked beside his car. Reaching for the keys in his jeans pocket, he began to see the scene again. Murder, he thought with a shudder. He had witnessed a murder.
He started toward his house, kicking at the pebbles lining the drive, and wondering if he’d handled it wrong. Perhaps it could have been stopped if he hadn’t hidden, if he had let them know he was there. But then maybe he would have been killed instead. And maybe Paul too. How had the kid gotten himself into such a mess?
He flipped through his keys for the right one and stepped onto the dark porch. Feeling for the knob, he tried to insert the key, but a movement in the shadows caught his attention.
Paul was waiting for him, his dark, foreboding eyes angry and vengeful. “They can’t know that you were there,” he said through his teeth. “If he finds out, he’ll kill me, too. No one can know that you were there.”
“Paul, you’ve got to turn yourself—”
But before Clint could get the rest of the words out, Paul closed the distance between them, and a piercing pain jaggedly rending and as hot as scalding metal inside torn flesh coursed through him. He stumbled and clutched at Paul’s jacket, the questions caught in his throat. He heard sirens, heard Paul cursing the fact that he didn’t have time to hide Clint’s body. And then he felt another stab, and darkness closed over him.
He woke sometime later in a trauma unit with Sam as his guard and a doctor at his side, and learned that Paul had left him for dead before he’d fled. Eric Grayson had sent the police to protect him the moment he’d discovered that Clint had left his house. It had been two days before Clint’s mind was clear again … clear enough to know that he was somewhere in south Texas with a battalion of stitches in his side, an IV running sustenance into his veins, and U.S. Attorney Eric Grayson standing over him with the news that everyone involved, except Paul, had been arrested as the drugs were changing hands the night following the murder. Paul was still out there somewhere, a lurking threat to Clint’s life. And for that reason, Grayson said, there could be no communication between Clint and Sherry until after the trial. And that meant there would not be a wedding.
“I want her kept out of this,” the older man told him with pain in his eyes, the only thing that kept Clint from ripping out of his bed and strangling him. “From what you’ve said about the way things happened, I don’t think Paul Calloway is going to want anyone to know that he had anything to do with letting the cat out of the bag.” Eric paced back and forth as he spoke, thinking it all through for what Clint knew was the thousandth time. “He must realize that if Givanti knew he’d allowed a witness to the murder, that Givanti would make sure someone took him out. The fact that he didn’t warn them to change the location of the drug exchange after he knew you’d heard it, tells me that I’m right. He may even think he killed you, and he never confessed things to Givanti, because he’s afraid of him, even in prison. When he hears there’s a witness to the murder, Calloway might figure out that you’re alive. He’ll be interested in finishing the job he started with you, but I don’t think anyone else will be looking for you. We have to keep you hidden until you can testify, or until we apprehend him. Meanwhile, everyone has to think you got cold feet. If everyone thinks you just ran from the wedding, no one will connect you with this, and we’ll have the chance to convict Givanti and catch Paul …”
“But what about Sherry?” Clint demanded. “What will she think?”
Grayson covered the uncertainty on his face with a trembling hand that betrayed his weariness. “We’ll make her think the same thing,” he said quietly.
“That I didn’t love her enough to marry her? That I had to run?”
“It’s better than letting her be used as a go-between. If she knows the truth, it will be obvious. She’ll even try to come after you, or—”
The pain tore at Clint’s side as he tried to sit up. “It won’t work,” he said, as if the simple words could make it true. “She’ll never believe it. She knows how much I love her.”
“Eventually she’ll believe it,” Grayson assured in a soul-sad voice. “And then when the trial is over …”
Clint dropped back onto the thin pillow beneath him, his eyes pleading with the attorney’s. “I was supposed to marry her next Saturday,” he whispered on the deepest note of despair. “How can you take that away from us?”
“It’s simple. If you love her, you’ll see my logic. A heartbreak is easier to heal than a knife wound or a million other dangers. She’s my daughter, and I want her safe.”
“She’ll think I abandoned her just like you did.”
It was a low blow, and it hit its mark. “I know she will. But I’ll be there for her. Maybe I can help her through it. Clint, you have to understand. These men we’re dealing with, they’re ruthless. If they had an inkling that you were involved, they’d go after Sherry just for sport. They’d use her to manipulate you.”
“Then let her come into hiding, too.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not necessary, because they don’t know. But if we tell her, if she even has a clue, someone might figure things out. There are too many wild cards in this thing. The closer she is to you, the more danger she could be in.”
Eventually, he had seen Grayson’s logic and agreed with it. Sherry was safe, if nothing else. But he hadn’t counted on it taking eight months for the case to get to court.