Silent Run - Barbara Freethy [104]
Sarah glanced out the window as a dozen emotions ran through her. It felt good to let it all out. She’d never told anyone the whole story of her foolish affair with one of the most dangerous men in the world, a man who now wanted her dead. Not even Andy had known everything. He’d known just enough to get him killed. She couldn’t let the same thing happen to Jake. He had to know exactly the kind of people they were up against.
“So what happened?” Jake asked. “How did you find out what was going on? How did you end up on Victor’s hit list?”
She turned to face him. “Two agents from the DEA approached me and told me that Victor was smuggling drugs. They presented the facts to me in such a way that they convinced me I could either be charged as an accessory and go to prison for a very long time, or I could help them set up a sting operation. They scared the hell out of me. They made it sound as if I had no choice. It was jail or turning on Victor. They said Victor was going down either way, but their way I could protect myself by helping them, and in return they would put me into the Witness Protection Program. They would give me a new identity, and I would be safe from any repercussions.”
She thought about those terrible moments of shock and fear when she’d learned the truth about Victor. “I wasn’t going to do it at first. I told them I didn’t know anything. That I couldn’t help. But they kept pushing me. They showed me a photo of a woman who’d been strangled. It was the woman I’d seen in bed with Victor. The agents told me that Victor had killed her when she found out too much. I didn’t know if they were lying or not, but I couldn’t get the image of her dead body out of my mind, and I knew they’d been together.”
Her voice caught, but she cleared her throat and kept going. “I had a date with Victor that night. I was earlier than I was supposed to be. I overheard Victor on the phone making a deal. Suddenly all the mysterious phone conversations, the people who came to the door in the middle of the night, the odd times when Victor would have to go down to the gallery to check out a shipment began to make sense. I knew deep in my heart that I’d been so caught up in my fairy tale that I’d denied what I’d seen with my own eyes. I was so afraid that night that I was going to make a mistake and Victor would know that I was considering turning against him. I thought I might just run away, not work with anyone, but then I remembered the woman and figured she’d probably tried to run, too.
“So the next day I went back to the agents and I agreed to help. I still wasn’t sure that what I was doing was right or smart, and the next two days were really tense as I waited for them to set up the sting. They wanted to raid the art gallery just after a shipment was received. In the end they arrested Victor and his partner, Rick Adams, for drug smuggling and murder. After Victor was arrested, the U.S. Marshals whisked me away, keeping me in a safe house until I could testify. They convinced me that since Victor was in jail, I would be safe. After the trial I would be given a new identity and moved to a new location.”
“But something went wrong. Didn’t it?”
She nodded, meeting his gaze. “Victor had a lot of connections. He was very rich. He found out where I was. Somebody leaked the information. The man I saw in my dream with the tiger tattoo on his wrist was Shane Hollis. He shot one of the guards. But there was another guard in the back room. He got into a fight with Shane, and while they were battling it out, I ran like hell. I climbed out the bedroom window and I never looked back. I knew I was on my own from then on. I couldn’t trust the police or the government or anyone. I later read in the paper that both agents had been killed. Shane had gotten away.”
“You didn’t go back to testify?” Jake asked, glancing over at her. “You didn’t tell them what you’d seen at the safe house?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I was too scared to go near anyone in a uniform. In the end they didn’t need