ROCKY MOUNTAIN RESCUE Read Free

covered her mouth with her hand. Thompson’s hand rested heavy on her shoulder. “Can you identify this man for me, please?” he asked.
    “That’s my husband,” she whispered. In death, he looked older than she remembered, his skin waxy and slack, the cruelty gone from his expression. “That’s Sammy,” she breathed, and staggered back into the marshal’s arms.

Chapter Two
    Marshal Patrick Thompson considered himself a good judge of character, but he wasn’t sure what to make of Stacy Franklin Giardino. When he’d stepped into the basement of that backcountry mansion, the last person he’d expected to encounter was this woman who looked like a college girl or a rock star, not a mobster’s wife. She was all of five foot two and probably weighed ninety pounds soaking wet. She had fine, sharp features and huge gray eyes, and her short, platinum blond hair only made her look more elfin and vulnerable.
    Dressed in leggings, an oversize sweater and short leather boots, she looked more like the little boy’s big sister or babysitter than his mother, but a double-check of the background files on the Giardino family confirmed she was indeed the wife—or make that, the widow—of the late Sam Giardino Junior, and the boy, Carlo, was the heir apparent of the Giardino mob family.
    Patrick stood in a darkened office at the police station the feds were using as their temporary base in Telluride and studied Stacy and her son through a one-way mirror. The boy was eating cookies, painstakingly separating each cookie into two halves, licking all the filling out and then nibbling away the cookie portions. Stacy watched her son, scarcely moving except to occasionally cross and uncross her legs.
    Nice legs, he thought, though he told himself he wasn’t supposed to notice them. He wasn’t supposed to think of the women he was assigned to protect that way. They were victims or suspects or witnesses. But he was a healthy, single man and sometimes...
    “What do you think?”
    Patrick flinched, and looked over his shoulder at the man who spoke, FBI special agent Tim Sullivan. Though his first impulse was to say that Stacy was a very appealing woman, he knew that wasn’t what Sullivan wanted to know. “She says she doesn’t know anything about the Giardinos’ crimes—that the women were kept in the dark.”
    “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”
    “Maybe.” Patrick turned to look at Stacy again. Beneath the carefully applied makeup he detected dark circles of fatigue beneath her eyes. Earlier, she’d been so fierce, like a mother bear protecting her cub. Now she looked more vulnerable. “What makes a woman align herself with a criminal like Sammy Giardino?” he asked.
    Sullivan moved to stand beside him. “Maybe she didn’t know he was a crook until it was too late.”
    “Then why not leave? Why stay in a marriage with a man like that?”
    “That answer’s easy. You don’t divorce a mobster. You know enough about them to be dangerous, and as long as you’re married, you can’t be compelled to testify against them.”
    Had Stacy been trapped like that? The thought made his stomach twist. “She had to have known what he was like before they married,” he said. “The background report on her says her father is a shipping merchant who’s suspected of having some shady dealings with the Giardino family.”
    As if sensing someone watching, she turned and looked directly into the mirror. Her eyes were hard and cold. So much for thinking she was vulnerable. He’d seen women like her before. They were hostile to law enforcement, uncooperative and difficult. But it was his job to protect her, so he would.
    “You want me to talk to her?” Sullivan asked.
    “No, I’ll do it.” Patrick picked up a file folder from the corner of the desk and stepped out into the hall.
    Stacy looked up when he entered the room. Carlo had finished his cookies and lay stretched across two chairs, his head in his mother’s lap.