Harry couldn’t decide if the caller made a request or sent a warning. For two days, Harry watched. He quickly determined that more than one set of eyes followed his burly roommate around.
“How you doing, Harry?” one of the block guards asked in passing.
“Fine, fine.” Harry’s gaze found its way across the communal area to where Sanchez stood alongside his friends.
“You let me know if you have any trouble.”
As if. The code of prison conduct was to take care of trouble on your own. Telling the guards would land you in the hospital ward or worse. Eventually the inmates who put you there would return from solitary.
Harry swallowed hard and realized he was staring at Sanchez when the man turned his way and scowled back.
Thoughts circled in Harry’s mind. Sadly, everyone of them had him bloody and broken.
****
“Come with me.”
They’d been over this before. “You have work to do. And I’m meeting with Agent Anderson tomorrow.” Agent Anderson was the FBI liaison working with marshals and occasional detective like Dean and Jim in regards to the witness protection program in the state of California. Fewer and fewer people were coming forward to turn in hardened criminals because of the reach so many criminals had from prison. Eliza found sanity in her cause to make the system better. To keep witnesses protected while giving them their lives back became her mantra.
Carter had been at Eliza’s side every night since Zod’s little scare session in the yard. The fact that he wanted to force her to go on his trip to Northern California proved he wasn’t ready to let loose his hold. The attention was nice at first. But his constant surveillance was interfering with his campaign.
“Postpone it.”
Eliza cocked her head to the side and sent him a wry look. “No. Please, Carter, this has to stop.”
“What has to stop?” He forged innocence with his sad eyes and tousled hair, but she wasn’t fooled.
“Please. You know what I’m talking about. You’re neglecting your campaign. People depend on you. You can’t let them down because you’re worried about me.”
“But—”
“No buts. We got married to provide me with protection. You’ve done that. If I thought for a minute you were going to neglect your own life for mine, I wouldn’t have said yes.”
Although she knew her words were true about her past, she neglected to tell Carter how much she loved her life with him. How much she loved him. Even with his concern and suffocating hold, she wouldn’t change their marriage for the world. Telling him her feelings now might make him hold tighter. And if there was one thing Eliza didn’t want to be responsible for, it was Carter’s career taking a dive. He was a born ruler and she very much wanted him to achieve his goals. Even if that meant keeping some of her deeper feelings to herself. At least for now. Besides, it wasn’t as if Carter was free with words of love and forever. Perhaps she’d feel differently if he were.
“Are you saying you only married me for my protection?” Oh, damn…he actually looked hurt.
“Your skills in bed don’t suck,” she teased, attempting to bring a smile to his lips.
“You didn’t know about those skills when you said I do.”
“Your lip-locks made my knees buckle, Hollywood. I knew.”
He smiled then, reached out, and grabbed her around the waist. She settled between his thighs as he leaned against the counter in the kitchen. “Buckle, huh?”
Eliza rolled her eyes with as much drama as she could. “I knew you’d run with that.”
He kissed her then, until her heart sped and her knees went weak.
They drew apart, breathless. “Are you sure?” he asked one more time.
“I’m sure.”
Later that night, although Eliza decided she’d never admit it, sleeping in their big bed all alone was impossible. Apparently, her husband wasn’t the only needy one in their relationship.
****
Agent Anderson was a petite woman in her mid-forties. She talked a hundred miles an hour, but when she listened you knew everything was being downloaded and stored for later use.
Eliza felt a genuine compassion from the woman when they spoke on the phone. Face to face, that feeling grew. Thirty minutes into their meeting, Eliza stopped talking about her case and about the letters, and pushed forward with solutions. “We agree things need to change.”
“Yes. With government funding, or the lack of funds driving many of the decisions we make, I’m not sure how to work toward making the system better.”
“Sometimes the easiest answers are right in front of us. If the criminals have committed a crime so heinous that they’re a threat to those who testify, why not sever their ability to contact the outside world entirely? Why segregate the good guy and let the bad guy hold all the rights?”
Anderson shook her head. “There are more inmate rights groups than witness protection rights groups.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. It costs the state, the feds, a hell of a lot of money setting up long term protection.”
“Actually the short term is where the money is spent. If your parents had survived, they would have been dropped from the system within a few years. You stayed in the system because of your parents. That and I think Dean has a soft spot for you. But you’re right, the criminals hold too many rights in these cases. The only way to change that is to rally witnesses, their families. Changing the law takes time.”
“Time well spent if you ask me.”
“You have a friend in me, Mrs. Billings. You have people talking in Washington, and that’s a start. It doesn’t hurt that you’re now family to a senator.”
Eliza lifted her eyebrows. “I’m not sure how much help he’ll be.”
Agent Anderson waved a hand in the air. “I find that the power behind movements of people lie in the wives and husbands. Most political wives don’t hold down day jobs which affords them the time to lobby for change.”
Where had she heard that before? Maybe a phone call to Sally, Max’s wife, was in order. Sally had to have connections. Years of them.
“If you were me, Agent Anderson, where would you start?”
“You have a gaggle of letters. Those people will be your army. Find your leaders among them and put them to work. The ultimate goal of law enforcement is to encourage witnesses to come forward. Good Samaritans don’t want to be victims, however. Placing a proverbial red target on one’s back is the number one reason people stay silent. We need to remove that threat.”