down, emptying the refrigeration units, significantly dropping prices) and then relocking the place. Beating Peter was nearly impossible, but the attempts sharpened our skills.
Once I’d selected the vacant room I’d be utilizing for practice, I glanced at the door for a minute, shook my head in amazement that the Marshals Service would use old motels for hiding a witness; a large hotel with doormen and security cameras seemed brighter.
I pushed my weight against the door and could tell I’d be able to open it with a good shove, but force of any degree would not be the solution; when the time came, kicking Melody’s door in would mean a pistol pressed to the back of my neck within seconds. I pulled out my debit card and slid it down three times, each time catching on the lock and jamming. On my fourth attempt my card slid right in—and right behind the door, with it still locked. I whispered a rant of profanity I’ll refrain from repeating; I pressed my knee hard against the door until it snapped open with a metallic clang. I quickly grabbed my card and slid into the crevice of the stairwell, waited five minutes: nothing.
I returned to the practice room, relocked it, and started again. It took me six minutes to finally break in using my card.
The second time it took me one.
By my fifth try, I was getting inside within seconds.
I returned to my car and waited, tried to formulate a plan of action. No script came to mind to acquire her trust. I planned to enter, explain why I was there—then the hard part—explain why she would be safer with me, why my intentions were noble. And then… I would set her free. I would give her the option to run toward me or turn away. I would be the first one, the only one, ever to put her in control of her destiny, and I hoped the taste of freedom would linger and have her longing for a bigger drink. I wasn’t about to throw her in my car and insist the direction I was headed was the safest. It wasn’t. But I wanted her to want to come with me, not be dragged somewhere under duress, the modus operandi of the feds.
The risks on my end, though secondary, remained huge. Should I be captured I would take an enormous fall; tampering with a federal witness is a dark corner. I could only hope my father and our crew would understand my motives, that it might make them rethink things, and that I wouldn’t spend my life in prison mired in regret. But I was willing to take this risk if it meant finally freeing Melody.
I stared through the windshield of my car for a half hour, waiting for the heart of the night to come before taking action, watching the vehicles—mostly eighteen-wheelers at that hour—cross the bridge and pay their tolls, when an unexpected motion caught my attention. I glanced over to the long line of rooms and the marshal appeared, stepped out of his room, pulled out a cell phone, studied it like he was searching for a signal.
I slid down in my seat and watched as he walked toward the beach, his eyes on his phone instead of the ground. He must have connected, because he put the phone to his ear and held it in place by pressing his shoulder to the side of his head, propped his leg up on the bench of a broken picnic table under a cluster of large pine trees, took off his shoes and socks, and rolled up the bottoms of his pants.
He stood there for a few moments, talking, staring at the water of the Chesapeake, taking a few more steps toward it with each passing minute.
Ten minutes later, he’d reached the beach, a few hundred feet from the motel. I sat back up, pulled out my binoculars, and watched him chat, the occasional smile and chuckle denoting a personal conversation, which I interpreted as a call that would last longer than anything Justice-related.
Without realizing my actions I’d slipped the gloves over my hands again, put on my leather jacket—despite that warm May evening—to darken my body; I knew the moment would soon be upon me.
And as the marshal slowly sat down in the sand and gazed upon the moonlit water, phone still pressed to his ear, I tossed the binoculars aside. I slipped out of my car and quietly clasped the