Free Fatal Judgment by Irene Hannon Page A

night?”
    Jake frowned. Shelter?
    “I’ll take care of it. And I’ll water all your plants too.”
    Surveying the porch, Jake noted the pots brimming with colorful blossoms that hadn’t yet succumbed to the cooling fall nights. There’d also been a bouquet on her kitchen table. Doug had never mentioned that Liz liked flowers.
    An elbow in his ribs clued him in that the meeting behind him was over, and he shifted aside to allow Delores to squeeze through.
    “Thank you, young man.” She dropped her voice. “And you take good care of her. She’s our special angel.”
    Angel?
    Based on Delores’s speculative appraisal, he hadn’t done a very good job hiding his surprise. “Do you know Liz very well, Marshal?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    She lowered her voice. “We didn’t either, until she moved here four months ago. A week after we came over to welcome her to the neighborhood, Harold fell off a ladder and broke his wrist. Had to have surgery and couldn’t drive for three weeks. A few days after his accident, I sprained my ankle and couldn’t drive, either. Liz stepped right up to help us out, picking up our groceries and prescriptions, busy as she was.” Delores shook her head. “She is an amazing young woman. You keep her safe.”
    “We intend to, ma’am.”
    As Delores headed back down the driveway, Jake angled toward Liz. Buffered as she was by metal and bodies, he doubted she’d heard much, if any, of his low-pitched conversation with her neighbor. She was focused on the disposable container Delores had delivered, running her finger along the edge.
    “We’re ready to move out, Liz.”
    She lifted her head, and he caught the glimmer of tears in her eyes. “Sorry for the delay. But Delores is a treasure. I couldn’t not talk to her.”
    “No problem. I’ll see you when we get to the condo.”
    Closing the door, he turned to Spence. “Same formation?”
    “Unless you see a reason to change it.”
    “No. That works for me.” He shook hands with the two marshals who’d come to the house ahead of them to reinforce security. “Thanks, guys.”
    With a wave they headed toward their own vehicles.
    As the little motorcade once again got under way, Jake ignored the media vans and glanced at the house across the street. Delores was standing on her porch. Looking worried.
    About her angel.
    Back in the early days of Doug’s romance with Liz, Jake vaguely recalled him using that term once in reference to her. Jake had passed it off as the delirium of a man in love. And as time went by, Doug had viewed his wife in a far less angelic light. Self-centered, coldhearted, focused on her career to the exclusion of everything . . . and everyone . . . else—those were the qualities Jake had begun to assign to her after his conversations with his friend during the last few years of his life. Before he died in a tragic accident.
    Or took his own life.
    As far as he knew, no determination had ever been made about the cause of the one-car crash on that cold winter night. But Doug had been despondent after being passed over for a long-awaited promotion. And all these years, Jake had assumed that if Liz had given her husband the kind of emotional support he’d needed, if she’d had her priorities straight, if she’d been there for him instead of spending twelve hours a day at her job, things might not have ended in tragedy.
    Now, she was busier than ever as one of the youngest federal judges in the nation. Yet she found time to help out her neighbors. To buy thoughtful gifts for the wife of a marshal assigned to protect her. And what was that business about a shelter?
    It didn’t compute.
    Jake checked his rearview mirror, his professional skills kicking into autopilot as he watched for tails even as his mind continued to wrestle with the conundrum of the judge in his charge.
    Had Liz changed . . . or had he been operating on faulty assumptions all these years?
    And instead of putting the blame for Doug’s demise