Read US Marshall 03 - The Rapids for Free Online

time in getting cleaned up and settled in.
    She smiled quickly, hoping there was no sign of even one damn tear in her eyes. “Have a seat, Deputy. We can get started.”
    “Bad day?”
    “What? Oh.” She made herself smile. “No, not yet.”
    He didn’t seem to believe her. “That’s good.”
    Maggie wished she’d indulged in chocolate sprinkles that morning, because it was going to be a very long day.
    Magster.
    She’d figure out what to do about her anonymous caller when she didn’t have Deputy Dunnemore’s gray eyes on her.
     
    Wide awake despite his overnight flight and long day, Rob sat on a wooden chair at a small table in his room on the top floor of his hotel, a renovated eighteenth-century building. It had low, slanted ceilings and no air-conditioning, but it wasn’t a hot night, at least by middle Tennessee standards.
    He heard laughter through his open window and looked down four floors at a young couple standing under a linden tree, its branches carefully trained.
    Rob turned away from the scene.
    His eyes were heavy, scratchy, from fatigue and jet lag.
    Maggie Spencer had walked with him back to his hotel, turning down a quick after-work drink.
    A woman with things on her mind, Special Agent Spencer.
    He’d gone into the dark, quiet bar by himself, but in a few minutes another man joined him, introducing himself as Tom Kopac, an embassy employee. Maggie’s friend.
    They’d had a beer together. It was clear word had gotten out that the wounded marshal from the Janssen mess in May—the marshal who was friends with the president—was in town and Maggie was stuck with him.
    Kopac had decided to check him out.
    Their conversation was cordial but superficial. Rob had smiled at the older man. “Maggie’s a DS agent. She protects you. You don’t protect her.”
    “She’s also a friend.”
    After Kopac left, Rob had a spicy, meat-filled kroket with mustard, then went up to his room.
    Why the hell was Kopac suspicious of him when Spencer was the one who had received the damn anonymous tip about Janssen? Not even an hour afterward, he was under arrest. Tips like that didn’t happen often, even with minor nonviolent fugitives, never mind with violent fugitives with international warrants out on them.
    Was it someone wanting to collect the reward for information leading to Janssen’s arrest?
    No one had come forward.
    Rob put aside his questions and picked up the phone, dialing his future brother-in-law’s office in Arlington.
    “What do we know about the DS agent who got the Janssen tip? Maggie Spencer.” Rob didn’t mention her rich red hair, her turquoise eyes, her creamy skin, and chastised himself for his gut-punched reaction to her. “She’s gritting her teeth, but she’s not complaining about getting saddled with me. At least not to my face.”
    “Her name’s familiar,” Nate said.
    “Because she’s the one who got the Janssen tip—”
    “No, it’s something else.”
    “You want to see what you can find out?”
    “Sure.”
    “She’s fetching me up in the morning and carting me to the town where Janssen was picked up.”
    “Her idea?”
    “She’s finding things to do with me.”
    The alternative meanings of what he said struck him like a junior high student. Jet lag.
    “I’m not touching that,” Nate said with a chuckle. “I’ll check her out, let you know if I find out anything. Has she given you any idea of who she thinks gave her the tip?”
    “She’s not a talker—she’s not easy to read.”
    “All right. I’ll see what I can do. Isn’t it midnight there?”
    “Just about.”
    “Go to bed. Take a sleeping pill.”
    “I don’t want to oversleep and miss my field trip.”
    Then again, Spencer was probably the type to throw a brick through his window to wake him up.
    “I’ll tell Sarah you called,” Nate said.
    “And the president?”
    Silence.
    “He wanted to know how I reacted to Janssen’s arrest, didn’t he?”
    “It’s not that