Ozarks Witness Protection
Autore
Maggie Wells
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Chapter One
Kayla Powers never imagined there would be a day when she’d consider a half-mile walk down her driveway to be meditative, but then again, her life was full of surprises these days. Some good, some horrifically bad. Some simply...surprising. She pressed her hand to her stomach and drew in a deep breath of fresh air.
Sobriety made a person look at things in a different light.
Before now, she would have never labeled herself an alcoholic. She’d been a rebellious drinker in high school, a party girl in her undergrad days and an I-earned-this tippler all through law school. After she’d entered the workforce, she’d slid effortlessly into the postwork-drinks crowd, and later into the wives-gathered-in-the-kitchen-swilling-wine set. But until she’d watched the footage captured by the security cameras the weekend her husband and his son were murdered, she’d never considered her drinking an issue.
Talk about a wake-up call. And only the first of many.
She bent to pick up a particularly vivid leaf from a red maple and twirled it by its stem. Nearly two months had come and gone. Time was flying and moving at a snail’s pace all at once. Due to the nature of Tyrone’s murder and the subsequent ongoing investigation, she hadn’t been able to submerge herself in the details of death—the suitable black dress, the music selections for the memorial service, what food they’d provide for her fellow mourners. Looking back on it now, it felt like she’d gone from the discovery of their bodies into the deep end of the ocean.
Only the presence of her right-hand woman and newly minted best friend, Michelle Fraser, kept her grounded. But the thought that woke her early in the morning wasn’t one she’d dared speak aloud. Not even to Michelle, who was not only her friend, but also Kayla’s personal attorney and therefore bound by attorney-client privilege to keep her secrets. She couldn’t. Not until she was certain.
Michelle was an undercover federal agent and attorney who’d embedded herself in the fabric of Powers, Powers & Walton. Even after her investigation had revealed the financial crime of the law firm’s elder statesman, Harold Dennis, and cast dark shadows over the Powers name, she’d stayed on to help.
Michelle took over the running of the firm Tyrone had left to Kayla, allowing her the quiet month she’d spent “processing” his death at a treatment facility known for their discretion. In truth, her friend had driven her right to the front door of the facility and left her there with a promise to return in thirty days.
Like clockwork, Michelle showed up at Briarwood when the month was over and greeted Kayla with an anger-meltingly warm hug and an enormous peanut-butter-cup, ice-cream blender from the nearest dairy bar.
Kayla had been forced to admit her friend had been right on a number of levels before Michelle agreed to hand over the treat. And nothing had ever felt—or tasted—so good to her.
Since she’d found her husband murdered, Kayla had taken to eating her feelings. Her sweet tooth had been nearly insatiable. She’d put on ten pounds and was reduced to selecting the day’s outfit from the section of her closet comprised of Lycra-enhanced ensembles, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to care too much about her appearance.
She felt good.
Healthy.
Grounded.
Her newfound peace of mind also came with a side order of survivor’s guilt, but she had a therapist to help her work through those issues.
She was alive and well, working herself up to taking over the empire the man she’d loved had entrusted to her. She didn’t have time to worry about a few extra pounds.
Michelle even had the nerve to tell her she looked better with the extra weight. But she didn’t have her friend’s beautifully rounded curves, nor had she been so fashionably thin the gains weren’t noticeable.
Therefore, she walked the half-mile to the end of the drive and back again each day. Pumping her arms slightly faster, she vowed to make the mostly uphill trek back at the same pace. The house had a home gym, but she liked being outdoors. Walking the driveway and wandering the sprawling house counted as cardio as far as Kayla was concerned. And, since she was never going back to the house where her husband was killed, the lake house would be her home base until she got her legs under her.
Continuing to twirl the stem of the leaf between her thumb and middle finger, she rounded the bend in the road leading to the gate. The heavy old wrought iron stood stalwart between her and the outside world. The mailbox was built into one of the brick pillars that supported the ostentatious gate with its stylized P worked into its curlicues.
The walk was an exercise in futility on top of being exercise for the body. There was rarely anything but junk mail in the box. The need to have mail delivered to their remote lake house was a relic from the days when Tyrone’s father refused to leave town without every available means of communication.
In the years since she’d married Ty, Kayla never thought to check the box. The caretaker who came by once a week to do routine maintenance gathered anything of importance and forwarded it all to the PP&W offices. But the day Michelle had driven her back here, she’d spotted the mailbox as they waited for the gate to open and decided the walk down the drive and back daily would do her some good.
A few yards from the gate, she stopped, reached into a neatly trimmed boxwood hedge and lifted the cover on a concealed keypad. When Tyrone first showed her the hidden control panel, she’d laughed. It seemed like one of those ridiculous, rich-people things to do—hiding an unsightly keypad in a hedge. Now each time she reached into the shrub, she heard his voice reciting the code and repeating it over and over.
“Eight-six-three-seven,” she whispered to his memory.
Kayla had never considered herself a particularly spiritual person. She didn’t get all woo-woo about being in touch with her late husband. She missed talking to him. The scent of him. Sharing her thoughts with a man who appreciated her mind as well as her body.
But he was gone, and in the past month she’d done her best to come to terms with that distasteful fact. If her stint in rehab had taught her anything, it was how to live in the here and now.
Stepping back, she smirked as the iron gate began its slow swing on creaking hinges. This was all part of the routine. And routines were important these days. Routines kept her tethered.
With the gate standing wide open, she walked around to the other side of the column and pulled the latch on the metal box. She stuck her hand in to be sure she’d gathered everything. An office-supply company was pushing a special on copy paper and there was a notice from the marina where Tyrone had the family’s boats serviced and stored for the winter.
She hadn’t thought much about boats lately. She certainly hadn’t thought about going out on the lake. Tyrone’s son, Trey, had been under indictment when they were killed. He’d been awaiting trial in the death of a young woman who’d either fallen or been pushed overboard while riding on Trey’s boat.
Another unsolved death.
Michelle had been defending Trey on behalf of Powers, Powers & Walton, the firm Ty’s father had founded. Kayla was relieved Michelle had agreed to act as her counselor after the murders, and grateful when she agreed to take leave from the FBI in order to stay on and keep the firm on an even keel until Kayla could come back at full strength.
The time had come.
Kayla expected to step into the role of managing partner at Powers, Powers & Walton. She also planned to do her level best to convince Michelle to give up her work with the Bureau and stay on at PP&W.
She was fairly certain she might be able to recruit Lieutenant Ethan Scott, the detective assigned to investigate the deaths of her husband and stepson, as an ally in her campaign to convince Michelle to stay. There was something going on between them, even if her friend had remained frustratingly reticent about the relationship under her cross-examination.
Kayla stooped to check the box one last time to make sure she’d gathered every last circular. As she straightened, she heard a loud pop behind her. She spun around as a hot gust of wind whooshed by her and a sharp searing pain ripped through her left arm.
“What the—”
She looked down and saw the sleeve of her shirt was torn. Blood seeped through the fabric. Pressing the hand holding the sale flyers over the hole, she scanned the area on the opposite side of the lake road.
But she saw no movement.
Not surprising. The whole area was heavily wooded. A good chunk of the land was owned by the Powers Family Trust, but a number of acres were leased out to hunting clubs. It wouldn’t be unheard of for a bullet to go astray in these woods, but she was fairly sure the noise she heard had not come from a rifle. No. A handgun. Someone had fired a handgun out here. At her.
She dropped the junk mail, then held her injured arm as she ran back through the gate.
She grimaced as she poked at the control panel concealed in the hedge with fingers trembling and smeared with her own blood.
“Come on,” she whispered, her voice shaking nearly as much as her hand.
She felt a trickle of blood run down her arm, and she jabbed at the button again.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she repeated through clenched teeth as the ancient gate finally swung into motion. Then, realizing the rusty iron bars would provide no cover, she wedged herself into the neatly trimmed boxwood hedge, hoping it might conceal her as well as it did the control panel for the gate.
Her mind whirred while she waited to hear the solid ka-thunk of the gate latch falling into place.
She’d been foolish to refuse the offer of having a police officer on scene. With Tyrone and Trey’s murderer still at large, both the Arkansas State Police and the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department had offered protection. But she’d turned them down, thinking she’d be safe at the lake house. Who would come all the way out here to take a shot at her?
“Someone who doesn’t want me coming back to Bentonville,” she muttered under her breath.
She leaned out of the hedge, impervious to the sharp pokes and jabs from the shrub.
She heard a motor start and prayed the damn gate would latch already.
Tempted to run out and shove it closed, she froze when an engine revved. She hadn’t even had time to sink back into the shrub when a pickup truck roared up the road, slowing as it passed the gate.
Biting her lip to keep from making a noise, she stared hard at the vehicle and tried to take in as much as she could. New. An import. No rusted-out Chevy or Ford for this hunter. She squinted, trying to get a look at the driver. But the sun glinted off the windshield, and all she could make out was the shadow of a man.
Something about him was breathtakingly familiar. This was a man she knew. But from where?
And why would he shoot at her?
Try as she might, Kayla couldn’t get her brain to engage.
The gate finally clanged to a close, and the sound seemed to startle the driver into action. He cut the wheel hard to the left and peeled away from the driveway, sending up a spray of loose gravel when he caught the shoulder of the county road. She ran back to the gate and craned her neck but could not get a clear view of the license plate.
The vehicle was either a dusty black or dark gray. Dual rear tires. These details might help make it easier to spot here, where the locals would disparage anything not made by an American car company.
The moment the sound of the truck’s engine faded away she took off and started up the drive. She kept her head low and stuck close to the tree line until she knew she was around the bend. The gate would stop a car, but it would prove no deterrent if her assailant decided to pull over and hoof it through the woods. She needed to get to the house.
Who was he?
Recognition niggled at her, but she didn’t take time to puzzle it out. The parcel of the lakefront real estate the first Tyrone Powers had snatched up not long after the US Army Corps of Engineers dammed the White River was massive and largely unfenced. And the waterfront was entirely unprotected. Table Rock Lake’s many inlets and hidden coves could provide the perfect access point for anyone who wanted to get to the house.
The house she’d left completely unlocked.
What had she been thinking?
Kayla trotted along the edge of the drive, thankful the property sloped down toward the waterfront. She slowed to a fast walk when she caught sight of the turreted roofline of the pseudo castle Tyrone Powers Senior had built as a testament to his wealth. Feeling slightly safer away from the road, she patted the side pocket of her yoga pants, then grimaced.
No phone.
A glance down at the bloody streaks she’d left on the fabric added insult to injury. She gritted her teeth and allowed herself a soft hiss as she covered the wound with her hand again. Steeling herself against the pain, she flexed the fingers of her left hand to confirm the arm was still in working order despite the fire radiating from her bicep.
When she entered treatment, she’d willingly handed over her cell phone, knowing Michelle or Lieutenant Scott could get ahold of her whenever necessary. In the three days since she checked herself out, Kayla had almost forgotten what it was like to check her phone constantly, and now made a conscious effort to move about in the world without it.
In the weeks she’d been away, she’d become accustomed to going without her phone. Life without a constant source of communication proved to be refreshing,
Following the arrest of Harold Dennis they’d been inundated by both local and national media. Harold was believed to be the mastermind behind a Ponzi scheme dedicated to funneling money into a political-action committee used to fund Senator William Powers’s campaigns. With charges of fraud and money laundering pending, and proof Harold had a private jet at his disposal, the attorney who’d once been her husband’s mentor was being held in the Benton County Correctional Facility while various government agencies battled it out to see which one would get to charge him first.
The ties to Senator William Powers and allegations of possible campaign-finance violations were chum to the media frenzy. The arrest compounded the notoriety gained by an unsolved double homicide and the possible murder—or at best negligent homicide—of a local young woman, Mallory Murray.
All in all, the Powers family had become lightning rods for news stories guaranteed to make readers say “No way!” as they gobbled up the details.
The stress of being left in charge of the family firm, her grief over the loss of her husband and the trauma of being the one to find his body had nearly broken her. Nearly, but not quite, thanks to her best friend. Within a week, she was downing more than a bottle of wine a night. Barely ten days after Harold’s arrest, Michelle and the ever-present Ethan Scott staged a sort of intervention.
Thank goodness.
But she regretted her insistence on staying isolated and disconnected at the moment.
Hustling up the lane, she focused on the front door. She couldn’t think too hard about the pain in her arm or possible blood loss.
“Fool, fool, fool,” she murmured.
What made her think she was safe here when Tyrone hadn’t been safe in their own home in the middle of town? Someone could have walked right in while she was out strolling along picking up leaves. She might as well have left a pie baking on the windowsill and rolled out a red carpet for a welcome mat.
Still, instinct told her inside was better than outside. Besides, she needed to call for help.
“Get inside, get inside,” she whispered to herself.
Kayla stumbled over the threshold and made a beeline for the back of the house. Her cell would be in her purse, but she wouldn’t bother trying to locate it now. Instead, she headed for the ancient phone mounted on the kitchen wall.
She’d teased Tyrone for insisting on keeping a landline connected, but cellular service could be sporadic in the area. Aside from the wall-mounted handset in the kitchen, there was a multiline speakerphone in Ty’s former office. It was another relic of his father’s days at the helm, but Ty could never bring himself to cut the cord.
Chest heaving, she snatched the kitchen phone from its cradle and fumbled it with fingers sticky with drying blood. She managed to press the numbers 911, then raised the receiver to her ear. The call didn’t go through right away and the silence on the other end shot a fresh burst of panic through her. What if the person who’d shot her had cut the phone lines?
Gripping the receiver, she lunged for her handbag. But to her relief, the call connected at last and the line began to ring.
“Carroll County emergency,” a woman with a thick drawl answered. “Police, fire or medical emergency?”
“Uh...” Kayla hesitated, her brain freezing. The only thing she could rule out for certain was fire. “Not fire,” she blurted.
“Police or medical?” the dispatcher repeated.
“Both,” Kayla said, her voice a hoarse whisper.
She gritted her teeth as her breaths came short and fast. Her vision blurred around the edges. She blinked and tried to lock in on something solid. Immovable. But everything was getting fuzzy, and she couldn’t force her gaze to light on any one item.
“I need help,” she said weakly “I’ve been—”
Her knees turned to jelly, and she grabbed the side of the kitchen island in a vain attempt to stay upright. But it was no good. She’d reached out with her left arm and a fresh lightning bolt of pain brought her to her knees.
“What kind of help, ma’am?” the dispatcher replied. “Ma’am?”
Kayla tried to form words, but the only ones that sprang to mind were so incomprehensible to her she couldn’t make them come out.
“Ma’am?” the dispatcher said sharply, and Kayla let out a soft moan. “Ma’am? Stay with me,” the dispatcher implored. “What can I do for you?”
“I’ve been—” Kayla tried to take a deep breath, but her chest felt like a cartoon coyote had dropped an anvil on it and blackness narrowed her blurry vision to pinpoints.
“Shot,” she said at last. “I’ve been shot.”
As the darkness closed in, she thought of the pregnancy tests she’d planned to purchase when she went into Eureka Springs. “Please, please,” she whispered, her hand moving to cover her stomach as consciousness slipped out of her grasp.
