Moonglow, Texas. Mary Mcbride

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      “WITSEC’s been compromised,” Keifer blurted out.

      “What?”

      “I said WITSEC’s been compromised,” he repeated. “You know. Witness Security?”

      “I know what the hell it is.” Shackelford’s expression hovered somewhere between a bleary-eyed Who gives a rip? and a grim-lipped Go on. Tell me more.

      “Unidentified hackers broke into the system over the weekend. There’s no telling who or what they were looking for, if anything, and no way to know if they found it. But the Marshals Service has put nearly seven thousand people under protection since the seventies, and they’re all in jeopardy now.”

      The man in the doorway let out a low whistle, blinked inscrutably, then took another long pull from his bottle.

      “So, headquarters is bringing in every available deputy,” Keifer continued, “in addition to postponing vacations and retirements, and they’re terminating all medical and personal leaves as of today.” He stiffened his shoulders. “Yours included.”

      Shackelford hissed an expletive.

      “Here.” Keifer shoved a manila envelope through the opening of the trailer’s screen door. “All the information you need is in there.”

      Having performed his assignment, the young deputy was eager to leave, to get away from this obvious loser and get on with his own future heroics in the line of duty. He had only contempt for a burned-out, washed-up rummy like Shackelford. The guy had probably never been any good at the job, anyway.

      “Any questions?”

      “Just one,” Shackelford drawled.

      “Yes?”

      “Did you say yes, you did want a beer, or no, you didn’t?”

      Dan yanked open the lopsided venetian blinds on the trailer’s window. Sunlight strafed the cluttered interior and fell across the letter he had pulled from the manila envelope. The United States Marshals Service emblem was embossed so thick it almost cast a shadow on the page. So did the name on the letterhead. Robert Hayes, regional director. The message below it was handwritten. A familiar scrawl.

      Our files are screwed, amigo. Got you a low-priority witness (see attached) living in seized property in Moonglow. Easy duty. She doesn’t even have to know why you’re there. The quieter we keep this, the better, if you catch my drift. Just hang around her awhile, then get your bad self back to the real world.

      Bobby

      P.S. Didn’t you used to live in Moonglow?

      Chapter 1

      Molly Hansen had been in Witness Security for nearly a year, but she still woke up every morning as Kathryn Claiborn and had to remind herself that she didn’t exist anymore.

      This morning was no exception, except what woke her wasn’t her alarm clock, but rather the clattering of trash cans and a jolt to the side of her house that nearly pitched her out of bed. While she scrambled for her robe, she scrolled through a mental checklist of natural disasters, eliminating each one as soon as it came to mind.

      An earthquake didn’t happen on just one side of a house. It couldn’t have been a landslide or a mud slide because this part of Texas was so dry and flat that things didn’t slide; they just sat still and baked. It wasn’t a thunderstorm because the sun was shining. That left only a rampaging bull or a five-hundred-pound armadillo.

      Or, now that she was peering out the window into the driveway, a big Airstream trailer about to crash into the side of her house. Again. She grabbed for the windowsill just as the trailer hit. This time the impact brought the curtain rod crashing down on her head.

      “You idiot,” she screamed, battling her way out of yards of gathered fabric. “Jerk!” Molly stomped over the fallen drapes, down the hall to the kitchen, and out the back door where the big aluminum behemoth was apparently making a third run at her defenseless little residence.

      She reached for the nearest weapon, which turned out to be a hoe, and swung it with all her might at the blundering vehicle, half expecting the hoe to clang on impact like an enormous bell, but instead there was a sickening thunk as the gardening tool sank deep into the metal skin. It worked, though. The trailer stopped, and none too soon, mere inches from the house.

      Molly was trying to extract the blade of the hoe when a man stalked down the driveway, yelling at her.

      “What the hell were you trying to do?”

      “I was trying,” she huffed, still tugging at the hoe, “to keep you from ruining my house, you idiot.”

      He stopped a few feet away from her, turned toward the little clapboard bungalow with its warped shutters and peeling paint, studied it a moment, and then said, “Hell, lady. In case you haven’t noticed, somebody’s already ruined it.”

      The grin that followed didn’t prompt one from Molly. She was hardly amused. She thought if she could wrest the blade of the hoe from the trailer, she’d like to sink it into this good ol’ boy’s skull. That would wipe the stupid smirk right off his handsome face.

      “Jerk,” she muttered, glaring at the hoe again and twisting its handle to no avail.

      “Here.” A tan, muscled forearm slid against hers and his fingers curved around the handle just beneath her grip. “Let go.”

      “I will not.”

      “Let the hell go.” He gave her a shot with his hip that sent Molly careening sideways, then using only one hand, he popped the hoe from the back of the trailer as if it were no more than a butter knife and tossed the implement away.

      “That’s some dent,” he mused, crossing his arms and contemplating the damage.

      “Well, it matches the rest of them.” Molly snatched up the hoe and held it like a shotgun. “Now, I’ll thank you to get this junkyard special out of my driveway.”

      He turned to look at her, his green eyes lazily taking her in from head to toe. “You’re Molly Hansen.”

      It wasn’t a question, really. Just a flat statement. But Molly found herself nodding, anyway, as she once again reminded herself that she wasn’t Kathryn Claiborn. At the same time a little kernel of suspicion was forming in her brain. After all, she was Molly Hansen and in Witness Security because her life was in danger. Kathryn’s, anyway. “And you are?”

      “Dan Shackelford. I’ve been hired to make repairs on your ruined house, Miss Hansen,” he drawled. “Where do you want me to start?”

      He seemed to be studying the roofline now with the same degree of intensity that he had studied her a moment before.

      “I don’t want you to start,” Molly said, then increased not only the volume but the adamance. “Do you hear me?”

      “Half those shingles look rotten. I’ll bet this place leaks like a son of a gun.”

      It did, but that was none of his damned business. The house, as Molly understood СКАЧАТЬ