Marked By The Marshal

Chapter Four

Kara unlocked the door and stepped away as Ryder turned the knob. He walked back inside unbidden, a sadly appropriate metaphor for their relationship. All he had to do was show up, and she let him in. He dropped a black duffel bag onto her floor, apparently planning to stay awhile. She shook her head, silently scolding herself for the naive flutter of excitement. Ryder Garrett might offer protection from whatever he’d gotten her into, but he was dangerous for her heart. Just seeing his face had quickened her pulse, and the way she’d felt while briefly in his arms tonight had brought an unwelcome rush of nostalgia.

Nice as it was to think things could be different, she couldn’t allow Ryder’s presence to shift her world in unfair ways. And she couldn’t afford to let her foolish heart distract her from the real reason Ryder had shown up at all.

“Well?” she asked, wrapping goose-pimpled arms around her middle and eyeballing the charred matchbook in his hand.

He rubbed the sleeve of his black jacket across his forehead. “Can I borrow a baggie?”

Kara glared at him before marching into the kitchen.

Ryder followed, tapping away at his phone screen with the thumb of one hand, while carrying the ruined matchbook, reverently, in the other. The crazed look on his face tilted her stomach.

“Is that from him?” she asked, as if the answer wasn’t obvious.

“I believe so, yes.”

She swung the pantry door open and tried not to vomit. Kara had been afraid of many things in her life, but never for her life. Certainly not for the life of her daughter. Her gut clenched more tightly at the thought.

“Here.” She thrust an empty sandwich baggie in his direction, half terrified, wholly pissed. “Will this work?”

“It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” she snapped. “Because as far as I know, it’s only meant to hold the innocuous parts of my lunch. Not the charred remains of a serial arsonist’s blatant threat.”

Ryder dropped the matchbook into the baggie and zipped it shut. “Don’t sell him short. He’s also a murderer.”

Kara’s jaw dropped.

Ryder grimaced. “Sorry. I just can’t believe this is happening.”

That makes two of us.

When Kara had woken this morning, her biggest concern was fitting back into her pre-pregnancy wardrobe before school started next month. She’d feared having to buy more clothes on an already tight budget and leaving her baby for the first time since seeing her sweet face in the delivery room.

Now, thanks to some evil twist of fate, she and Casey were on a lunatic’s radar when the man he truly wanted was in her kitchen unpacking what looked like an overnight bag.

Cruel fate had to keep twisting that knife a little deeper. Taking Ryder from her, then returning him only because his criminal obsession had visited. Now, to require that he stay with her, in the home they’d once shared. Kara rubbed the heated skin above her heart, unable to soothe the deep ache.

“Ryder.” She placed a hand on his shoulder as he unearthed a small fingerprint kit and gloves from a compartment beside a change of clothes.

Her hand slid off as he set up a makeshift workstation on her countertop, unhearing, then adjusted a lamp to shine on the area. The efficiency of his quick movements was all too familiar. Kara recognized the stiff posture and focused expression as he entered what she’d grudgingly called “marshal mode.” A chill slithered down her spine, sending a mass of ugly memories to the surface. The gut-churning recollections of watching helplessly while her fiancé became consumed rolled her stomach.

“Ryder,” she repeated, using her teacher voice this time.

His face jerked in her direction, and a look of shock raised his furrowed brows. Had he already forgotten she was there?

“Yeah?” he asked, seeming to return to himself. His ruddy cheeks and clear eyes were an improvement over the last time she’d interrupted him like this.

A bud of hope grew in her heart. Maybe Ryder was telling the truth. Maybe he was better now. Much as she wanted to believe it, she had more than herself to worry about. She had to think of Casey’s best interest and not her own desperate heart.

Kara moved forward, pressing into his personal space and leveling him with her business stare. “Stop.”

He dropped his hands to his sides and turned to face her fully, leaving the project to wait. For a moment, he looked frightened, as if whatever she said next could have the power to break him.

Somewhere deep down, Kara thought that might be true. After all, Ryder had loved her once, just not enough, and never more than his fixation on a man who didn’t know he’d existed.

Kara pushed hurt feelings and pride aside. Everything that had happened between them was in the past. Right now she needed to know why Timothy Sand had approached her and how to keep Casey safe.

Right now, Kara needed a partner.

She lifted her brows at him. Ryder wouldn’t want to answer her next demand, but he had to. The moment his job had put her daughter in danger, Kara earned the right to know exactly what she was dealing with.

She tipped her chin upward and squared her shoulders. “I need to know everything there is to know about Timothy Sand.”

* * *

RYDER TRIED HIS best not to argue. He needed to at least attempt to pull prints from the matchbook, but she was right. He also needed to help Kara understand the things he’d never told her before. When they’d been in love, he’d worked hard to shield her from his work. It didn’t involve her, and Ryder had wanted to protect her. Kara was sweet-natured and kind. The sort of woman everyone loved at first sight. It didn’t make sense to ruin that with stories of fugitive apprehensions or prisoner transports. She didn’t need to know all the awful reasons people lived in witness protection, or why serving federal arrest warrants wasn’t as simple as what was portrayed on TV.

He’d intentionally kept the details of Timothy Sand’s crimes out of their pillow talk and dinnertime conversations because Kara was too good to hear that mess. She was good and true. Timothy Sand was something evil.

Ryder poured two fresh cups of coffee and sent another round of messages to his team in Cincinnati on his way to the table where Kara waited. He’d protected her before. The gruesome details had had nothing to do with her. But things had changed.

He settled into the chair across from her at the small dinette, hating everything he had to say next almost as much as the man it was about. Timothy Sand had given him no choice but to reveal the sequence of events that had nearly driven Ryder insane.

“Just say it,” Kara blurted. “I can take it. I just need to know. No more secrets or you’re not staying.”

Ryder patted the table with one heavy palm. He was staying whether she liked it or not. It might be in a sleeping bag on the porch, but he wasn’t leaving. Not until he could take her with him, which would hopefully be in the morning.

“Timothy Sand is an arsonist,” he said. Kara knew that much, of course. She tipped her head sarcastically, as if to say, “No kidding.” “He set fire to the home of his in-laws after his wife ran there for refuge.”

She sat back then, obviously feeling the weight of his words. Her lips pressed into a thin white line. Domestic violence was a personal villain of Kara’s. An ex-boyfriend in high school had hit her after she didn’t “act right” in his opinion. She didn’t talk about the details often, but she’d made it her mission that day to shed light on people like him and expose abusive men for what they were: criminals.

Ryder had been very careful to make sure she knew he wasn’t like that guy. He’d have gladly stepped in front of a train to protect her. Still would. And anyone who wouldn’t didn’t deserve her time.

“And?” she prompted, coming back to life after the initial jolt.

“He’d been charged with multiple counts of domestic violence over the years. Eventually, his wife had enough and left him. You know the statistics on that.” Leaving an abuser often escalated the abuse. Timothy was no better than the average aggressive asshole. No. He was much worse.

Ryder wrapped his hands around the nearly forgotten mug of coffee. “He followed her to her family’s home where she went to hide. Then he killed her, her parents and her younger siblings with a hunting knife.”

Kara covered her mouth with one small palm.

Ryder’s face heated with residual anger, and he felt the disgust rise inside him. He hadn’t captured Sand when he had the chance and now that monster was after Kara.

The look on Kara’s face was so heartbreaking Ryder considered ending the story there. He hated being the cause of that expression. The one that said, How can you deal with this every day? It’s unthinkable. Vile. Horrific. Disgusting. What kind of person chooses this work? Chooses to expose themselves to these things without end?

All legitimate questions, but what most people didn’t understand was that there were days when everything was golden and the bad guy paid for his crimes because of people like Ryder. Days when a family was released from their personal hell because a fugitive was captured. A killer put in jail. Those days made all the bad ones worthwhile.

“Timothy Sand burned the house down around their bodies, making it harder to identify them and the causes of their deaths, but there will always be a few things that can’t stay hidden.”

“The sun, the moon and the truth,” she said.

Ryder nearly smiled. It was nice to know she remembered his family’s favorite saying. Four brothers and a father, all lawmen. All who believed in justice and vowed to serve as best they could to make it happen.

“Sand was caught, eventually. He had no remorse. Probably blamed his wife for running and the family for giving her shelter. He’s still wanted for the original charges plus multiple counts of murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution when his path crossed mine.”

Kara listened intently. “‘Multiple counts of murder to avoid prosecution,’” she repeated. “Does that mean he killed again, while you were chasing him?”

Ryder nodded.

“And that was when you got hooked. Trying to stop him.”

“Yes.” Hooked. She’d always used that word as if Ryder had been on drugs. Though, in hindsight, it wasn’t the worst analogy. He’d been just as addicted, just as sick.

“That was the beginning,” he admitted. “After a while, I made some progress tracking him, and things got worse. I followed him to a small town in Ohio.”

Kara crossed her legs and leaned closer. “You were gone two weeks. I remember.”

“I had him.” Almost. Ryder swallowed hard, forcing his shameful gaze back to Kara’s sincere one. He’d driven through the night to get there, then followed the leads right to Timothy Sand. Within forty-eight hours, he knew everything he needed to bring him in. “I walked the town. Talked to the locals and uncovered his one mistake. He’d used his real name with a convenience store clerk, Jennifer Sayers.” Ryder’s lids fell shut. When he reopened them, he focused on the details of his old kitchen instead of the beauty before him. “Jennifer was young, happy and pretty enough that he’d forgotten himself, forgotten the alias. That slip was all I’d needed to get my hands on him.”

But he hadn’t.

Instead, Ryder had lurked in the shadows, building his case and waiting for the right time to make his arrest. “Three days after I’d started following him there, about a week after I’d received the notice that someone fitting his description was in that town, I went to the docks where he worked under an alias and waited for him to return from lunch. There were plenty of witnesses on hand, and he had nowhere to run without going for a swim. He took a bus to work, so there was no getaway car. Just a marshal and a fugitive. It should have been a textbook capture, but Timothy never showed. Instead, he went into town during his lunch and burned down the home of Jennifer Sayers.”

Kara gasped.

Ryder pressed on. “Somehow, he’d known I was there. Knew she’d told me about him. And he went to punish her.” Ryder pressed angry fingers to his temples. “She had an infant and three other children with her in the home.”

Shock twisted Kara’s sad expression into something caught between pity and horror.

Ryder couldn’t blame her. He’d felt those things and more when he’d gotten the news, until eventually he’d felt nothing. In fact, the aftermath of that fateful day had nearly killed him. Thankfully, punching his colleague six months later had resulted in him getting some help. All those weeks of Marshals-mandated counseling should have been a joke, but it became his lifeline.

“That was when I began to unravel,” he admitted. He dragged his gaze back to hers, hating what his hesitation had done to the lives of Jenifer Sayers and her family. To Kara’s. To his. “For me, that was the beginning of the end.”

Kara set her fingers over his hand on the table and warmth spread through him. “Hey.”

Ryder raised reluctant eyes to hers. “I’m so sorry.”

Kara nodded once. “I wish I had known.”

“I couldn’t say it out loud,” he whispered. “When I came home to my happy life. My fiancée. Planning our wedding.” He swallowed long and slow. “Everything Jennifer had lost because I didn’t act faster...”

Kara’s fingers curled under Ryder’s palm. “If he’s in Shadow Point, I know you’ll find him. You can get him this time.”

Ryder forced a painful lump of emotion deep into his chest. “I will.”

“Okay,” she said. “Should I guess from the duffel bag that you’ll be staying here while you’re in town?”

He glanced at the couch. “If it’s all right with you, I’d rather not leave you alone. Tomorrow I’ll find a better place for you and your baby until Sand is captured.”

Her panicked gaze jumped to the baggie with the charred matchbook. “You don’t think I’m safe here? You think that guy might burn my house down?” Kara was on her feet then, hands waving helplessly in front of her.

Ryder met her there in an instant, and he wrapped her in his arms. The fear on her face ripped at his already shredded heart, and he did the only thing he could in that moment. Be there for her. Shockingly, she let him. “I’ll protect you, Kara,” he vowed. “You and your baby. We’ll move you someplace safe tomorrow, but right now there’s work to do.”

Kara wriggled free, wiping her eyes and staring anywhere except at Ryder. “Right. I’ll go pack my things and a bag for Casey so we’re ready.”

Ryder nodded, already back to the island and setting up to check the matchbook for fingerprints. “I’ll call and make arrangements for the move.”

The baggie fell from his fingertips then, caught by the counter beneath his hands. He turned to gape at Kara as she hustled toward the steps to the second floor. “What is your daughter’s name?” he asked, projecting his voice so Kara was sure to hear.

Her cheeks went crimson. Her feet slowed on the carpeted stairs. “Casey,” she repeated, a pained look in her eye, before hurrying out of sight.

Ryder Casey Garrett worked to reinflate his lungs.

He’d been gone far too long to be the baby’s father, but maybe Kara hadn’t written him off as completely as he’d imagined. Maybe there was still hope there.

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