Blue Ridge Ricochet
Paula Graves
The mountains are dangerous–but not as dangerous as what's building between them…Missing and presumed dead, wanted FBI staffer Dallas Cole is running for his life…until undercover agent Nicki Jamison finds him lying crumpled in the road. To his relief, his rescuer doesn't ask questions, doesn't call the cops. Who is she? What secret is she hiding? Not trusting Nicki any more than she trusts him, Dallas joins the headstrong agent's mission to take down a ruthless militia group. But when she falls into their brutal trap, Dallas will do whatever it takes to be reunited with Nicki and her irresistible tough-as-nails charms.
“You’re not like any man I’ve ever tried to seduce, Dallas Cole.”
“Is that good or bad?”
She cocked her head, a smile flirting with her kiss-stung lips. “Both.”
“In case it’s not clear, I do want you.”
She stepped closer until she pressed against him. “I know.”
She was damn near impossible to resist, but he made himself ease her away. “We have to trust each other.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“And sex complicates things.”
“It does.”
“It would be easy to let myself get caught up in you, as a way of forgetting…”
“Comfort sex.”
“Yes.” He stole a look at her. “I don’t want there to be any doubts between us. I don’t want you to ever feel used.”
“A little late for that,” she said in a wry tone, and he realized she was revealing more about her past than perhaps she meant to.
Blue Ridge Ricochet
Paula Graves
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
PAULA GRAVES, an Alabama native, wrote her first book at the age of six. A voracious reader, Paula loves books that pair tantalizing mystery with compelling romance. When she’s not reading or writing, she works as a creative director for a Birmingham advertising agency and spends time with her family and friends. Paula invites readers to visit her website www.paulagraves.com (http://www.paulagraves.com).
For my readers. Thank you for all your support.
I couldn’t live this dream without you.
Contents
Cover (#uafb124f6-2cd4-50f6-8809-d1ffbfd48b81)
Introduction (#u9a832d1c-cdc1-58e5-b424-0c43742fe6e0)
Title Page (#u8b2be226-0dea-5941-b07c-4cb2033b6857)
About the Author (#uace6f693-cad5-55de-bf04-0a2a8017963f)
Dedication (#u82be40b9-892c-513f-91c4-9afd0da945d0)
Chapter One (#uedfdba38-36d0-50ba-8d7e-aee018e1bb9f)
Chapter Two (#u6608c16d-f556-5739-93e5-3593f6475326)
Chapter Three (#u3a89737e-5520-5cc0-9c8c-bc83decbcae3)
Chapter Four (#ue45c2ccb-9c67-5c67-9968-66c6a940c6c0)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_96e259af-ca04-52f4-a3c3-19b22a7082bd)
Sleet rattled against the windshield, a staccato counterpoint to the rhythmic swish-swish of the windshield wipers. Outside, night had fallen in inky finality, as if it planned to stay awhile, the Jeep’s headlights the only illumination as far as the eye could see.
Nicolette Jamison forced herself out of a weary slouch behind the steering wheel and concentrated on the curving mountain road revealed in her headlights, well aware of the treachery that lay ahead for a careless driver. The switchbacks and drop-offs in the Blue Ridge Mountains could be deadly if you weren’t paying attention. Not to mention the occasional reckless deer or coyote—
“Son of a—!”
The man loomed in the Jeep’s headlights as suddenly as if the swirling mist had conjured him up, a tall, lean phantom of a man who turned slowly to face the headlights as she hit the brakes and prayed she wouldn’t go into a skid this dangerously close to a steep drop-off.
The Jeep’s wheels grabbed the blacktop and hung on, the vehicle shimmying to a stop just a yard away from the apparition gazing back at her through the windshield. For a second, she had a strange sense of recognition, as if she knew him, though she was pretty sure she didn’t.
Then his eyes fluttered closed and he dropped out of sight.
Nicki’s heart stuttered like a snare drum against her rib cage as she stared at the misty void where, seconds earlier, she’d seen the staring man.
Ghost, her inner twelve-year-old intoned, sending her heart rate soaring steeply for a few seconds before her grown-up side took charge. She checked the rearview mirror for coming traffic, saw only the faint red glow of her own taillights, and put the car in Reverse, backing up carefully until she could see what the front of the Jeep had concealed—a man lying in a crumpled heap in the center of the narrow two-lane road.
She pulled the Jeep to the shoulder on the mountain side of the road and parked, engaging her hazard lights and trying to calm her rattled nerves. The man could be hurt.
Or it could be a trick. Maybe she should call the sheriff’s department and let them handle things.
Except...
Buck up, Nicki. This is the life you chose.
Her weapons of choice these days were pepper spray and sheer nerve, and so far, she’d survived on their one-two punch. But something about the man lying crumpled on the road in front of her made her nerve waver. There was still something eerily familiar about him, a memory tugging at the back of her mind, trying to make itself known.
Holding the pepper-spray canister out in front of her, she approached the man, easing into a crouch just beyond reach. She shifted position so that the glow from the Jeep’s headlights fell across the man’s face.
He was younger than she’d thought, in his midthirties at most. His pallor, combined with the sunken cheeks and shadowed eyes that came with illness, had made him look older. He was still breathing, she saw with relief.
“Mister?”
He stirred at the sound of her voice, his eyelids flickering open to half-mast, then drifting shut again. He muttered something that sounded like a string of numbers, but she couldn’t quite make them out.
Gingerly, she reached out to check his pulse. Fast but steady and stronger than she’d anticipated. “Where are you hurt?”
He murmured numbers again. She made out a two and a four before he stopped.
She pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her jeans and tried to dial 911, then realized she didn’t have any reception. “Damn it.” She pocketed the phone and stared at him for a second, considering her options. Leaving him here in the road wasn’t an option. And without cell phone reception, calling for help wasn’t an option, either. The temperature was right at the freezing mark, and his skin was cold to the touch, which suggested he might already be suffering from exposure.
He was breathing. He was at least semiconscious. His heart rate was a little fast but steady as a rock, so he didn’t seem likely to go into cardiac arrest anytime soon. And he’d definitely been mobile before he collapsed in front of her vehicle, so he didn’t seem to have any spinal issues.
She had to get him warm, and the Jeep was the best bet. The old Wrangler had seen better days, but its heater still worked.
But how was she supposed to haul this man into her Jeep?
“Mister, think you can stay with me long enough for me to get you to my car?”
He opened his eyes, looking straight at her, and that niggle of recognition returned. “Who’re you?”
“My name’s Nicki. What’s yours?”
“Dallas.”
For a brief second, she wondered if he’d misunderstood her question. Then the memory that had been flickering in and out of the back of her mind popped to the front, and she sat back on her heels, almost toppling over.
Dallas. As in Dallas Cole, missing for almost three weeks now and presumed by most people as either dead and buried somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains or wintering somewhere on the coast of Mexico, a cerveza in hand and a pretty girl by his side.
The last place she’d figured on running into the missing FBI employee was on Bellwether Road in the middle of Dudley County, Virginia.
Now she could see the resemblance between the man lying in the road in front of her and the missing man whose disappearance had caused a stir all the way from Washington, DC, to the little town of Purgatory, Tennessee, where a man named Alexander Quinn ran a security agency called The Gates.
“Oh, hell,” she murmured.
A frown furrowed his brow. “Where am I?”
“Ever heard of River’s End, Virginia?”
His voice rasped as he answered. “No.”
“Not surprising.”
He struggled to sit up. Not quite sure she could trust him yet, she let him do so without her help, her gaze sweeping over him in search of injuries. She spotted healing bruises dotting his jawline and the evidence of old blood spotting the front of his grimy gray shirt, but no sign of recent injuries.
Mostly, he looked exhausted and cold, and while she was no doctor, she could help him out with those two ailments. “Think you can stand?”
He pulled his legs up and gave a push with his arms, wincing as his left arm gave out and he landed on his backside. “Something’s wrong with my shoulder.”
Could be a trick, her wary mind warned, but she ignored it, following the demands of her compassionate heart. He couldn’t fake the unmistakable look of ill health. Something had happened to this man, no matter what crimes had led him to this place, and the least she could do was get him somewhere warm and dry before feds came swarming into River’s End.
She started to reach for him, planning to help him to his feet, when her last thought finally penetrated her brain.
She pulled back, staring at him with alarm.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, slanting her a suspicious look.
“Nothing,” she lied, even as her mind started scrambling for a solution to her unexpected dilemma. There was no way she could leave him to fend for himself out here in the sleet. There was supposed to be snow before midnight, and the temps were going to plunge into the midtwenties before morning. Dressed as he was, without even a coat to ward off the chill, he’d never survive the night.
But if she took him to the hospital in Bristol...
She couldn’t. They’d call the FBI, who’d want to talk to her. There’d be a lot of terribly inconvenient questions and all her work for the past few months would be out the window.
Or worse.
But how to explain that to the hypothermic, battered man sitting in the road in front of her? “Look, I tried calling 911—”
“No.” His gaze snapped up sharply, catching her off guard.
“No?”
“I don’t need medical help.” His lips pressed to a thin line. “I’m okay. I just need to get warm.”
Well, she thought, that wasn’t exactly a comforting reaction.
“Are you sure?” Not that she wanted to contact authorities any more than he did, but his reluctance didn’t exactly fit the picture of a man wrongly accused, did it?
Maybe that was good, though, considering the dangerous game she was playing herself. Dealing with bad guys was less complicated than dealing with good ones, she’d discovered. Their motives were easier to glean and usually involved one sin or another. Greed, gluttony, lust, hate—oh, yeah, she definitely knew how to deal with sinners.
Saints, on the other hand, were a cipher.
“Let’s get you out of the cold, Dallas.” She pushed aside questions of his particular motives. There’d be time to figure him out once she got him back to her cabin, where she could provide the basic comforts anyone in his condition needed, whether sinner or saint.
Avoiding his bad shoulder, she pulled his right arm around her shoulder and helped him to his feet. He stumbled a little as they made their way across the slickening blacktop to the Jeep, but she settled him in the passenger seat with little fuss and watched with bemusement as he fumbled the seat belt into place. Sinner or not, he apparently took seat belt safety seriously.
She circled around, slid behind the Jeep’s steering wheel and cranked the engine. Next to her, Dallas sighed audibly as heat blasted from the Jeep’s vents.
“Good?” she asked, easing back onto the road.
“Heaven,” he murmured through chattering teeth.
He couldn’t have been out in the elements for long, she realized as his shivering began to ease before they’d gone more than a mile down the road. So where the hell had he come from?
“Should I be worrying about pursuit?” she asked.
His gaze slanted toward her. “Pursuit?”
“Anybody after you?”
He didn’t answer at first. She didn’t push, too busy dealing with the steady buildup of icy precipitation forming on the mountain road. Thank God she didn’t have much farther to travel. The little cabin she called home was only a quarter mile down the road. They’d be there before the snow started.
“There might be,” he answered finally as she slowed into the turn down the gravel road that ended at her cabin.
“Are they nearby?”
“Probably,” he answered.
Great. Just great.
“What did you do?” She glanced his way.
His mouth crooked in the corner. “Because people in trouble usually got there under their own steam?”
She shrugged. “Usually.”
“I broke a rule. I thought it was for a good reason, but as usual, the rules are there for a reason.”
He was beginning to sound more like a saint than a sinner. “What kind of rule?”
“I skipped steps I should have taken,” he said obliquely.
But she knew enough about his situation to know exactly what he was talking about, even if she didn’t let on. “That’s cryptic.”
He smiled. “Yes.”
So. He didn’t trust her any more than she trusted him. Fair enough. She was in no position to quibble.
“Well, how about we don’t worry about rules and secrets, and just get you somewhere warm and dry. Think you could handle something to eat?”
“Yes,” he said with an eagerness that made her glance his way again. He met her gaze with a quick glance, his lips quirking again. “Sorry. I’ve missed a meal or three.”
When he smiled, he was almost good-looking even with his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, something she hadn’t expected. The only photo she’d seen of him had been his driver’s license photo. Nobody ever looked good in their driver’s license photos.
Dallas Cole, she suspected, would clean up nicely.
Down, girl. He’s not date material, and you’ve sworn off men, remember? Saints or sinners, they’re nothing but trouble.
She pulled the Jeep under the carport connected to her cabin and cut the engine. “Sure you don’t want me to call paramedics?”
His eyes were closed, his head resting against the back of the seat. When he turned his face toward her, his eyes opened slowly to meet hers in the gloom. “I just need to rest a little while. Then I’ll get out of your hair.”
The full impact of what she was doing hit her as she got out of the Jeep and locked the door behind her. Had she lost her mind, taking in a stranger wanted by the FBI? Even Alexander Quinn, a man who prided himself on his ability to read people, wasn’t sure what side Dallas Cole had chosen. For all she knew, this might be a test of her loyalty to the Blue Ridge Infantry.
She had to tread carefully. Everything she’d worked for over the past few months was at stake.
Dallas stumbled on his way to the door, flashing her a grimace of a smile as she grabbed his arm and kept him from face-planting in the gravel between the Jeep and her kitchen door. “I’m usually steadier on my feet.”
“How long has it been since you ate anything?”
“Not counting roots and berries?” he asked with a lopsided smile, leaning against the side of her house while she unlocked the door.
“Yeah, not counting those.” She opened the door and helped him up the two shallow steps into the kitchen.
Inside, the cabin was blessedly warm and familiar, driving away some of Nicki’s tension. Dallas Cole didn’t seem to be faking his weakness, and she was finally back in her own comfort zone. She knew where the knives were kept and where to find her Remington 870 pump-action shotgun and ammo.
And there was the satellite phone hidden under the mattress of her bed that would get Alexander Quinn on the line in a second. He might be two and a half hours away in Purgatory, Tennessee, but he had eyes and ears all over the hills. She knew from experience.
“How much snow do you think we’ll get?” Dallas asked as she flicked the switch on the wall, flooding the kitchen with light. He squinted at her, as if it had been a while since his eyes had been accustomed to so much light.
“I guess you haven’t heard a forecast in a few days?” She crossed to the stove and grabbed one of the saucepans hanging over the range. “We’ll get an inch or two, maybe. It’ll probably be melted off by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Glad to be out of it.” He nodded toward the small kitchen nook table. “May I?”
Polite, she thought. Though she’d met a few well-mannered devils in her day who’d give you the shaft and thank you for it. “Sit. I’ll see what’s in the pantry.”
He groaned a little as he sat, and she wondered how many injuries he had hidden beneath his grimy clothes. “Thank you. I’m not sure how I’ll be able to repay you for your kindness.”
His accent was subtle but there, the hint of a mountain twang not unlike her own Tennessee accent. She’d done little more than glance over the information Quinn’s mystery operative had left for her at the dead drop a few weeks earlier before she’d destroyed it, not exactly expecting Dallas Cole to show up in the middle of River’s End. But there’d been something about a hometown in eastern Kentucky—
“No repayment necessary.” She looked through the cans in her pantry. “Chicken and vegetable sound okay?”
“Sounds like heaven.”
As she heated the soup, she searched her brain for any other details she could remember from the dossier on Dallas Cole. His job at the FBI wasn’t exactly what she might have expected—that much she remembered. She wasn’t dealing with a special agent or a forensic science whiz.
No, he was a graphic designer with the Bureau’s public affairs office.
How on earth had an artist gotten himself crossways with the Blue Ridge Infantry?
* * *
HE HAD NO idea what to do next, so he did nothing. Nothing but sit and bask in the warmth of this tiny kitchen and watch a blue-eyed brunette with killer curves heating a can of chicken soup on an ancient gas range.
Nicki, she’d said. Short for Nicole?
“This is a nice place,” he said, mostly to end the silence. Over the past three weeks, silence had become his enemy, an auditory void in which his deepest fears had held sway.
She glanced toward him. “Compared to what?”
Her blunt tone made his lips twitch with unaccustomed humor. He hadn’t had a lot to laugh about recently. “I’ve been worse places.”
“Haven’t we all?” She pulled a couple of stoneware bowls from a nearby cabinet and put them on the counter by the stove. “You in the mood for a little or a lot?”
His stomach seemed to be turning eager flips, but his brain kicked in with a stern warning. The last thing he wanted to do in front of a pretty girl like Nicki was throw up. “Let’s start with a little.”
She slanted a curious look his way but put a bowl half-full of steaming soup on the table in front of him. “Careful. It’s hot.” She fetched a spoon and put it by the bowl.
He blew on a spoonful of the soup and took a sip. The savory broth tasted like heaven in a spoon.
Nicki took the seat across from him, not looking at him as she started eating her own bowl of soup.
Prickles of suspicion played at the back of his neck. Why wasn’t she looking at him?
“Just you here?” he asked.
Her gaze snapped up to meet his, and he realized how shady the question probably seemed.
Her green-eyed gaze leveled with his. “Me and my Remington 870.”
He smiled at that. “Message received.”
“Sorry. That was a tad rude, wasn’t it?” One corner of her lips tilted upward.
“Probably earned it with that badly phrased question.” He fell silent and concentrated on eating his soup as slowly as his ravening hunger would allow. His stomach felt unsettled but the food was staying down, at least for the time being.
He needed food and rest, in that order. Because once he left this cabin, he wasn’t sure when he’d get much of either again.
“How did you end up out there in the woods?”
The question he’d been waiting for ever since she’d stopped to help. “It’s a long story.”
“And you don’t want to tell it?” In her voice, he heard a surprising thread of sympathy. He looked up and saw her sharp eyes watching him with understanding.
“Not at the present,” he admitted.
“Okay.” She turned her attention back to her soup.
That was easy.
Too easy.
He didn’t know how to deal with someone who didn’t seem to want—or need—one damn thing from him. Especially after the ordeal of the past few weeks. He didn’t know how to relax anymore, how to sit quietly and eat a bowl of soup without waiting for the next blow, the next trick.
He knew his name was Dallas Logan Cole. He was thirty-three years old and had spent the first eighteen years of his life in Kentucky coal country, trying like hell to get out before he was stuck there for the rest of his sorry life. He was a good artist and an even better designer, and he’d spent the bulk of his college years trying to leave behind the last vestiges of his mountain upbringing so he could start a whole new life.
And here he was, back in the hills, running for his life again. How the hell had he let this happen?
“I guess those are the only clothes you have?”
He looked down at his grimy shirt and jeans. They weren’t the clothes he’d been wearing when a group of men in pickup trucks had run his car off the road a few miles north of Ruckersville, Virginia. The wreck had left him a little woozy and helpless to fight the four burly mountain men who’d hauled him into one of the trucks and driven him into the hills. They’d stripped him out of his suit and made him dress in the middle of the woods in the frigid cold while they watched with hawk-sharp eyes for any sign of rebellion.
Rebellion, he’d later learned, was the quickest way to earn a little extra pain.
“It’s all I have,” he said, swallowing enough humiliating memories to last a lifetime. “Don’t suppose you have anything my size?”
Her lips quirked again, triggering a pair of dimples in her cheeks. “Not on purpose. I can wash those for you, though.”
“I’d appreciate that.” He was finally warm, he realized with some surprise. Not a shiver in sight. He’d begun to wonder if he’d ever feel truly warm again.
She picked up his empty bowl and took it to the sink. “The bathroom’s down the hall to the right. Leave your clothes in the hall and I’ll put them on to wash.”
“And then what?”
She turned as if surprised by the question. “And then we go to bed.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_38e1189a-1f20-5141-8abd-0d0b680839f2)
Dallas gave Nicki an odd look. “To bed?”
She looked up quickly, realizing what she’d just said, and couldn’t hold back a grin. “Not together, big guy.”
He smiled back. “Yeah, I didn’t figure you meant it that way. But this cabin’s not very big. Do you even have a second bedroom?”
“No,” she admitted. “But I have a sofa. And extra blankets. So go on and take a shower. Or a bath, if you like. The tub’s pretty big.” She bit back a smile at the thought of Dallas Cole folding his lanky body into her tub.
“Still the problem of clothes. Or the lack thereof.”
“I probably have some sweats around here somewhere. I borrowed them from my cousin the last time I stayed at his place.” Anson was only a couple of inches taller than Dallas, so surely his old sweatpants would fit him well enough. “Go get cleaned up. And let me know if you find any wounds you need treated.”
The wary look he shot her way sent a prickle of unease racing up her neck. He was one more person who didn’t quite trust her version of the truth.
And why should he? Why should anyone? She was lying through her teeth about what she was doing in River’s End, wasn’t she?
There’d been a time, not so long ago, when lying came as naturally to her as breathing. Life was one big story to be told the way she wanted it to happen, and inconvenient truths were discarded like yesterday’s trash.
But she’d learned the hard way that the truth always came out, and usually at the worst possible time. She just hoped the truth about her assignment here in River’s End didn’t come out until she was somewhere safe and far, far away.
* * *
DALLAS LET THE SHOWER run as hot as he dared and stood under the needling spray until he couldn’t stand on his trembling legs another minute.
Wrapping a towel around his hips, he sat on the closed commode and willed his strength to return. The last thing he wanted to do was face-plant in front of Nicki again. She pitied him enough already.
As the steamy heat of the bathroom dissipated, cooler air washed over his damp skin, raising goose bumps again. He grabbed a second towel from the nearby rack and dried off before he pushed to his feet.
Standing in front of the mirror over the sink, he wiped away the condensation to take his first good look at his physical condition after nearly three weeks of captivity.
He’d lost weight. At least fifteen pounds. Maybe more. The people who’d imprisoned him in the cellar of their mountain cabin had used deprivation to try to break him. Sleep, light, food—all had been withheld in an attempt to get him to tell everything he knew about a man named Cade Landry.
He wondered if Landry was still alive. From what little he’d learned from the men who’d held him captive, getting their hands on Landry was a big damn deal.
But they hadn’t gotten any information from him. Maybe they’d thought he was soft because he was nothing but a support staffer at the FBI, working a job that didn’t require him to carry a weapon or stay in fighting shape.
They’d been wrong.
Not that he felt anywhere close to fighting shape at the moment. The mirror was merciless, revealing not only his prominent ribs but also the rainbow of bruises and scrapes he’d acquired during his time with the Blue Ridge Infantry.
He made himself turn away from his self-scrutiny and opened the bathroom door. Cold air from the hall assaulted him, and he wrapped the second towel around his shoulders.
“There are clothes on the end of the bed, across the hall.” Nicki’s voice drifted into the hall from the front room.
“Thanks.” He entered the bedroom and found a small stack of clothes at the end of the bed. There was a pair of black sweatpants that wouldn’t have fit him three weeks ago but now snugged over his hips as if they’d been made for him. She’d also laid out a couple of oversize football jerseys. He grabbed the darker of the two and shrugged it on. It fit only marginally better.
He dropped to the edge of the bed, tempted to lie down and sleep for a few days. But there was the matter of the pretty brunette down the hall. All the way through his shower, he couldn’t stop thinking about what a stroke of fortune it had been to walk into the path of a woman who hadn’t asked any inconvenient questions. Who hadn’t insisted on calling the police when he asked her not to. What absolute luck.
Problem was, he’d never put much faith in the notion of luck.
Why hadn’t she asked him more about who he was and how he’d found himself facedown on a mountain road in the middle of a sleet storm?
He looked around until he found the scuffed oxfords he’d been wearing since he’d been run off the road somewhere north of Ruckersville. The dress shoes looked incongruous with the sweats and jersey, but he didn’t like the vulnerability of bare feet at the moment.
Nicki looked up as he entered the living room. She offered a gentle smile that made her look like a goddess, her skin gleaming in the glow of the fire she’d just turned from stoking.
“Thanks for the clothes.”
“They fit. Sort of.” She stood and dusted her hands on her jeans. They hugged her curves like a lover, sending a rush of desire darting through his belly. He ignored his body’s inconvenient reaction, determined to stay focused and on alert.
“I think I’ve lost weight,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed slightly as she moved closer to him. “You seemed pretty hungry earlier.”
“You haven’t asked me how I got in this condition.”
For a second, her faint smile faltered, and he realized he’d struck a nerve. But her smile recovered quickly and she gave an artful shrug. “I didn’t want to pry until you were warm and fed. Maybe got some rest, you know? You’ve clearly been through a lot. I figured you might want to wait to tell me about it until you felt better.”
He took a step closer to her, taking advantage of the difference in their height. “I could be a serial killer for all you know.”
She didn’t flinch, her smile expanding as his legs began to wobble under him. “I think I could take you. In this condition, anyway.”
He reached for the nearest armchair and sat, his legs trembling. The heat of the fire nearby was too tempting to resist; he turned toward the flames, stretching out his hands while slanting a look at his pretty hostess. “You’re one of those women who’s not afraid of anything?”
“Oh, you’ve never seen me with a spider,” she answered lightly as she pulled her own armchair next to him.
One corner of his mouth lifted. “Now I know how to pay you back for your hospitality. Arachnicide is my specialty. Just give me a rolled-up piece of paper and stand back.”
The smile she darted his way made his gut twist unexpectedly. Damn, but she was a good-looking woman, all wavy dark hair and eyes the color of a summer sky. And those jeans and that snug-fitting T-shirt showed off a slim but deliciously curvy body that he hoped would haunt his dreams tonight.
Anything to drive away the nightmares that had tormented him since the truck full of bearded thugs had run him off the road nearly a month ago.
“Is there someone I should call?” She stretched her own small hands toward the fire.
How could he answer that? The truth was, he wasn’t sure what to do. The FBI employee he’d been for over a decade demanded that he call the authorities, turn himself in and tell his story. The truth would out.
But the boy from eastern Kentucky knew that sometimes, the truth wasn’t enough to keep a man alive. Some of the most evil people in the world could hide behind a badge and the veil of authority. He knew that from experience, including his most recent brush with corruption in the guise of justice.
“I’m not sure,” he said finally. “I think maybe sleeping on it is a good idea, if that’s okay with you.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly at his words, but she just gave a nod and laid her head back against the chair. They sat in silence for a while, tension sharpening the warm air wafting around them.
Did she think his hesitation meant he had something to hide from the authorities? Was she considering calling the cops herself as soon as he went to bed?
It was a chance he’d have to take, because he was almost asleep as it was. If he stayed here much longer, he wasn’t sure he could drag himself out of this chair. And no matter how tough or strong she thought she was, he doubted she could haul his weary butt over to the sofa by herself.
“I’ll take the sofa,” he offered. “No need to run you out of your bed.”
She shook her head. “Take the bed. You’re the one in bad condition. The sofa sleeps fine, and I’m short enough not to be uncomfortable sleeping on it.” She waved her hand toward the pillows and blankets piled up at the end of the sofa. “I’m set for the night.”
He looked at her, taking in the guileless expression on her face. He wanted desperately to trust someone, especially someone as pretty as the woman who’d introduced herself as Nicki. But trust didn’t come easily to someone like him on the best of days. And good days had been thin on the ground for him for a while now.
“You’re remarkably easygoing for someone who just had a stranger crash her life,” he said as he pushed to his feet.
She rose with him. “That’ll probably change when you’re stronger.”
“Glad to know you plan to keep me on my toes.”
“I’ve seen you flat on your face. On your toes is definitely the way to go.” She nodded toward the hallway. “Go to bed. I’ll lock up and we’ll see how you feel in the morning.”
The walk to the bedroom felt as if he was hiking uphill all the way, but he finally made it to the edge of the bed and sank on the soft mattress, facedown. He would move in just a minute. Crawl under the covers and settle down like a real human being.
It was the last lucid thought he had for a long while.
* * *
WHEN SHE CHECKED on Dallas Cole, she found him lying facedown on the bed, angled diagonally across the mattress as if he’d fallen asleep as soon as his body hit the bed.
Good. She needed him to be dead to the world for a little while.
She had somewhere to go.
Bundling up against the dropping temperature outside, she headed east through the woods that butted up to her cabin, going uphill for almost a mile until she reached the small creek that snaked its way down the mountain to join with Bowden Fork south of River’s End. At this particular curve of the stream, there was a small natural cave that was only a few feet deep and barely tall enough for Nicki to enter hunched over.
Just inside, a loose stone hid a cavity about eight inches deep into the cave wall. About the size of the mail cubbyhole at the motel where she’d worked a few years ago, the cavity was just big enough to hold a folded-up letter like the one tucked in the pocket of her jeans.
She took a deep breath and tucked the letter into the cavity, then replaced the stone.
Outside the cave, she scanned the woods around her to be certain she was alone. But there was nobody else out there. Only idiots and people with something to hide would be out in this weather.
Next to the cave was a fallen log. She turned the log onto its side until a broken limb about the length of her forearm revealed itself. She propped up the log with a stone to keep it from rolling back over and headed back down the mountain toward her cabin.
She didn’t know how often the man she thought of as Agent X passed this way. Sometimes two or more days would go by before she’d see the log back in its original position, her signal that something was waiting for her inside the cave cubbyhole.
But she had a feeling he passed this way daily, just in case she needed his help. At least, she liked to think he did.
It made her feel a little less alone in this dangerous world in which she now operated.
The people she worked with at the diner in town called her a dinosaur because she eschewed so much of the technology they couldn’t live without. She owned no computer, though she knew more about how to use them than any of her coworkers and customers would believe. She had a cell phone out of necessity, since power on the mountain could go down so easily, leaving her without phone service, as well. But she turned on the phone only when her landline wasn’t working. She had no desire to be instantly reachable, especially when she was on what she’d come to think of as her secret missions.
How on earth had her life come to this? There’d been a time, not very long ago, when nobody who knew her would believe she’d take on a dangerous undercover mission on the side of the good guys.
Not Nicolette Jamison, the wild girl from the Smoky Mountains who’d never met a bad situation she couldn’t make worse. Somehow, by the grace of God and a generous utilization of her good looks and native charm, she’d managed to skirt the edge of the law without quite crossing the point of no return, keeping her record clean enough to pass cursory scrutiny.
She’d never pretended to be a saint. Hell, she wasn’t one now.
But she knew the difference between trouble and evil. Trouble could lose you a few nights of sleep. Evil would rob you of your life without blinking. And the men she was tangling with these days were about as evil as they came in these parts.
Snow had begun to fall by the time she reached the clearing where her cabin slumbered quietly in the dark. Fat, fluffy flakes started to pile up on her shoulders and dampen the ski cap she’d tugged down to cover her ears. She hurried up the porch steps as quickly as she dared, dodging the spot on the second step that creaked whenever it took any weight, and hurried to the front door, automatically checking the lock to make sure it was still secure.
Still locked up, nice and tight.
She slipped her key into the lock and turned it carefully. The door opened with only the faintest of creaks and closed behind her with an almost imperceptible snick. She engaged the lock and sat in the nearest chair to remove her hiking boots before she padded silently in socked feet down the hallway toward her bedroom.
The door was still open a crack, just as she’d left it. She could just make out Dallas Cole’s lean form, still lying diagonally across the bed. She waited a moment until she could make out the steady rise and fall of his breathing before she tiptoed back to the living room and finished undressing for the night.
She slipped on a pair of flannel pajamas she’d found tucked in the bottom of her drawer, a gag gift from her cousin last Christmas inspired by her past visit, when he’d found her sleeping in his bed, dressed in his Atlanta Braves T-shirt and nothing else. The timing had been particularly bad, given that he’d promised his bed to the pretty blonde he had brought home for the night.
Flannel pajamas were about as far from her normal nighttime attire as it got, but she was trying out the straight and narrow these days. Well, straighter and narrower, anyway. No more wandering around in skimpy nighties when strange men were staying the night.
No more strange men staying the night anymore, for that matter. Some undesirable habits deserved to be broken, and her addiction to bad boys was one of them.
She wondered what kind of boy Dallas Cole was. If all she had to go on was the FBI record her boss, Alexander Quinn, had gotten his hands on, she’d say Dallas Cole was about as good a boy as they got. Hardworking, well liked by his colleagues, a go-getter who was looking to move up the ladder at the FBI even though he wasn’t a special agent.
What had happened that night three weeks ago when he’d headed south out of Washington, DC, and disappeared without a trace until now?
Did he have a hidden bad-boy side nobody had ever seen?
She had to find out before he was strong enough to give her real trouble.
* * *
DALLAS EASED HIS eyes open when he heard Nicki’s soft footfalls retreat down the hall. Damn. That had been close.
He’d barely made it back to the bedroom before he heard her key in the front door lock, a tiny clink of metal on metal that he probably wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been listening for it. If he’d still been asleep, he wouldn’t have heard it at all.
But the sound of her leaving had roused him from a deep sleep, leaving his nerves jangling and his mind reeling. He’d dragged himself from bed in time to see her disappear into the woods on the right side of the house, bundled up against the cold.
He’d waited by the window until his legs had given out, then sat in the chair near the fire for almost an hour, going by the clock on the mantel that ticked away the minutes with sharp little clicks of the second hand.
Where the hell had she gone? Did she go to meet someone?
Had she told anyone where to find him?
It didn’t matter, he realized as his vigil ticked over to a new hour. He was too tired and weak to make his escape. He had nowhere to go.
Her footsteps on the porch had jolted him from a light doze a few minutes ago. He’d peeked through the narrow gap in the curtains in time to see her easing her way up the wooden porch steps.
He’d made it back to the bed with only seconds to spare, forcing his respiration to a slow, even tempo even though his heart was racing like a rabbit chased by a fox.
He eased over to his back, wincing a little as the bed creaked. He held his breath, waiting for her to return, but after a few minutes, he realized she must have settled down for the night.
He stared at the dark ceiling over his head, his heart still pounding from the rush of adrenaline that had driven him back to bed.
Where had she gone tonight? Who had she seen? What had she said?
Would he live to regret stumbling into her path tonight?
Chapter Three (#ulink_7315534e-5383-56f6-94aa-9e42de13224c)
Frost painted the cabin windows with delicate fronds of ice, lit by the morning sunlight angling through the glass. Outside, snow blanketed the ground and glistened in the trees, catching every drop of dayglow and refracting it into diamond sparkles.
Nicki pressed her forehead against the icy glass, remembering her six-year-old self doing much the same thing on a snowy morning in the Smoky Mountains, before everything went so awfully, irrevocably wrong.
Footsteps behind her drew her back to jaded reality, and she turned to see Dallas Cole enter the kitchen. He moved with a painful hitch that made her own back ache in sympathy, and the night’s sleep had done little to return color to his cheeks or vigor to his demeanor.
“You look like you could use another week’s sleep,” she murmured, reaching for the empty cup she’d set out for him earlier. “Coffee?”
“Please.” He groped for the back of the nearest chair and settled down at the small table in the window nook.
“Creamer? Sugar?”
“Just black.” He looked at the frosty window. “How much snow did we get?”
“Just a couple of inches.”
His dark eyes narrowed as she set a cup of steaming coffee in front of him and took the chair across from him. “Did you sleep okay on the sofa?”
There was a strange tone to his voice that she couldn’t quite read. “Yeah, it was fine.”
“Thanks for letting me have the bed. Very comfortable.” He took a sip of coffee, grimacing. She’d made it strong.
“Sure you don’t want some creamer?”
“It’s perfect.” His gaze flicked up to meet hers. “Did I miss anything while I was dead to the world?”
There was that odd tone again. “Just the snow.”
“Right.” He looked down at the coffee in his cup.
“Is something wrong?”
He shook his head, not looking at her. “No.”
Now she knew something was wrong. But he clearly didn’t intend to tell her what it was, so she let it go for the moment. “That bump on your jaw went down overnight.”
He lifted his fingers to the abraded spot where his face had grazed the pavement when he fell, wincing at the touch. “Should’ve seen the other guy.”
“What other guy, exactly?”
His gaze flicked up to hers again. “Other guy? You know I got this when I hit the pavement.”
“You didn’t get in that condition by yourself.” She had a pretty good idea how he’d ended up wandering in the woods, but she couldn’t exactly reveal what she knew to Dallas Cole or anyone else.
Her life depended on folks in River’s End believing she was an ordinary fry cook with some medical skills that might come in handy for a group of people who didn’t want the authorities looking too closely at their activities.
“Doesn’t matter now.” He took a long drink of coffee.
“You still don’t want to call the police?”
“No.” He set the coffee cup on the table. “I should probably get out of your hair, though. If you can just point me toward the nearest town.”
“Southeast,” she said, keeping her tone light. “If you were in any condition to walk across the room, much less three miles over the mountain.”
“I’m tougher than I look.”
She couldn’t stop a smile. “Right.”
“You could say that with a little more conviction.” With a sigh, he rose from his seat and turned to look out the frosty window.
Nicki sucked in a gasp at the sight of a streak of blood staining the back of the borrowed jersey. “You’re bleeding.”
He turned his head to look at her. “Where?”
“Your back.” She got up and started to tug up the hem of the jersey.
He turned quickly, putting his hands out to stop her. “It’s nothing.”
“Let me look.”
He closed his hands around her wrists, his grip unexpectedly strong. Tension rose swiftly between them, electrified by Nicki’s sudden, sharp awareness that beneath the facade of weakness, Dallas Cole was a large, imposing male with chiseled features and deep, intense eyes that made her insides liquefy with appalling speed.
Desire flickered in her core, and she tugged her wrists free of his grasp. She took a step back, swallowing the lump that had risen in her throat. “I’m pretty good with a first-aid kit.”
He probed behind his back with one hand, his fingers returning bloodstained. He looked at the red wetness with dismay. “Damn it.”
“I should treat that. Don’t need you bleeding all over everything.”
“No,” he agreed, reaching for the back of the chair as if his legs were ready to give out beneath him. “Can you do it here?”
“Of course. I’ll be right back.”
When she returned with the first-aid kit she kept in the hall closet, she found him shirtless. He’d turned his chair around and sat hunched over the curved back, his arms folded under his head. An alarming Technicolor map of scrapes and bruises crisscrossed his back, including an oozing arch of abraded skin just across his left kidney.
She kept her horror to herself as she unpacked the supplies she needed to treat the wounds. “This is going to hurt.”
“What’s new?” he muttered against his arms.
She pulled up a chair and sat beside him. “I’m going to clean everything first, then put antiseptic in any open areas.”
“Are you going to do a play-by-play of your torture?” he muttered.
“Only if you keep up the surly attitude,” she retorted, pressing a disinfecting cleansing pad to his back.
He sucked in a sharp breath at the sting.
“Sorry,” she murmured, wincing in sympathy. There’d been a time when she had considered a career in medicine. Well, of sorts. She’d been a licensed first responder when she was living in Nashville a few years back. But she’d found herself ill-suited for the job. Other people’s pain bothered her too much, making it hard to stay objective and focused.
Even now, acutely aware that the battered man sitting before her might be a very bad man indeed, she couldn’t help but feel twinges of empathetic pain as she cleaned the abrasions that marred the skin of his back.
“You seem to know what you’re doing.” He turned his head toward her, peering at her through one narrowed eye. “You a nurse?”
She shook her head. “Used to be an EMT, though.”
“Used to be?”
“I gave it up for a career in the hospitality business.” She smiled at his arched eyebrow. “I’m a fry cook at a place called Dugan’s in town.”
“I see.”
“No you don’t. Nobody ever does.” She probed gently at his rib cage, feeling for any sign of a fracture.
He sucked in another sharp breath. “Couldn’t stand the sight of blood?”
“Too many whiny patients,” she said lightly. “Gave me headaches.”
“And restaurant customers are a step up?”
“Fry cook, not waitress. I only deal with whiny servers.” She blotted the oozing scrape over his kidney. “Any idea what made this wound?”
He didn’t answer, and her imagination supplied a few answers she would have given anything not to visualize. But she’d already seen some of the brutality members of the Blue Ridge Infantry could mete out. Some of them enjoyed inflicting pain a little too much, as a matter of fact.
“You must’ve really pissed somebody off,” she murmured as she covered the raw scrape with sterile pads and taped them into place.
His back arched in pain as she pressed another sterile pad into place. “I have a bad habit of doing that.”
“What are you, a tax collector?” she joked.
Before he could respond, she heard the trill of the telephone coming down the hall. For a moment, she considered just letting it ring, but it might be the call she’d been waiting for.
“Wait right here,” she said and headed to the bedroom.
It was Trevor Colley on the phone. He was the manager at Dugan’s. “Can you work the morning shift?” he asked. “Bella’s stuck over in Abingdon looking in on her mama because of the snow.”
She paused, torn. Normally, she jumped at working as many hours at the diner as she could, both for the money and for the opportunity to rub elbows with the militia members and their wives and girlfriends who frequented the diner on a regular basis. She’d made friends with some of the women already, and an incident a few weeks ago had even earned her the respect of a couple of the men.
“Del McClintock is here.”
She straightened. “Yeah?”
“He asked if you were coming in.” Trevor kept his voice light, but she heard a hint of disapproval in his voice. The militia men might be good-paying customers, but the manager had never seemed particularly happy about their patronage. He took their money, of course. He’d be a fool not to, given that in this impoverished part of the county, paying customers could be hard to come by.
But he wasn’t exactly happy about his best fry cook befriending members of the Blue Ridge Infantry.
Nicki did her best to straddle the line between her manager’s feelings and her own need to make inroads into the BRI’s inner circle. It could be a delicate dance at the best of times.
But even Trevor, as much as he disliked the hard-eyed men who ate daily at the diner, wasn’t above using her interest in them to get his way. “Should I tell him you’re coming in?”
She pressed her lips together as she considered her options. Del McClintock’s sexual interest in her presented a very tempting opportunity to get a little closer to her target.
But what was she going to do with Dallas Cole while she was working a shift at the diner? The last thing she wanted to do was leave him here on his own while she worked a few hours at the diner.
No telling what kind of trouble he could get into.
* * *
THE MURMUR OF Nicki’s voice drifting down the hall was like a lure dangling in front of a hungry bass. Dallas couldn’t have resisted the temptation to hear what she was saying any more than he’d have turned down a juicy steak after three weeks of near starvation.
Urging his aching body into motion, he moved as quietly as he could down the hallway until he could hear Nicki’s end of the conversation.
“And Davey can’t come in?” There was a brief silence, then she sighed. “No, I get it. Everybody else has family to see after, except me. I’ll be there in a few.”
She must be talking to someone at the diner where she worked, he realized. He eased away from the door and turned to go back to the kitchen. But his foot caught in the carpet runner in the hall, tripping him up. He landed against the wall with a thud, the impact eliciting a grunt.
Before he could tamp down the pain in his bruised ribs enough to breathe again, Nicki emerged from the bedroom, her blue eyes flashing.
“What the hell are you doing?” she challenged. “Eavesdropping?”
His pain-fogged brain tried sluggishly to catch up. “Bathroom.”
Her dark eyebrows arched. “You passed it to get here.”
Damn.
“What did you expect to overhear?” she asked.
Ah, hell. Maybe he should just tell her the truth. “How about why you left the cabin for an hour last night in the middle of a snowstorm?”
Her eyes narrowing, she took a step away from him until her back flattened against the wall. “What are you talking about?”
“You left the cabin shortly before midnight and disappeared into the woods for over an hour. Then you snuck back in here, real quiet, and settled down for the night. Want to tell me where you went?”
“You were asleep at midnight. I checked on you.”
“You thought I was asleep. I wasn’t.”
A scowl creased her forehead. “You were spying on me?”
“You woke me when you started to leave. I got curious. You’re not the only one who spent the night with a stranger, you know.”
“You’re still alive, so I guess I’m not a serial killer.” She folded her arms across her chest, angling her chin at him. In her defiance, she seemed to glow like a jewel, all glittering blue eyes and ruby-stained cheeks.
A flush of desire spread heat through his body, making his knees tremble. He flattened his back against the opposite wall of the hallway and struggled to stay upright beneath the electric intensity of her gaze.
She was dangerous to him, he realized.
In all sorts of unexpected ways.
He pushed himself upright, willing his legs to hold his weight. “You know, I think I should call someone.”
Her suspicious gaze was as sharp as a blow. “Who’re you going to call?”
“You’ve got a sheriff’s department around here, right?”
Her scowl deepened. “They’re probably a little busy today. With the snow and all.”
“Not like it was a blizzard.” His legs were starting to ache, from his hips to his toes. He fought the urge to slide down the wall to the floor.
“No, but in this part of the state, people aren’t used to driving in snow.”
“But you’re going to, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re going in to work aren’t you?” He nodded toward her bedroom. “That’s who you were talking to on the phone.”
“So you were eavesdropping.”
No point in denying it. “You can drive me into town with you. I’ll take it from there.”
Alarm darkened her eyes. “No. I can’t do that.”
The first flicker of fear sparked through him. “Why not?”
“You don’t want to go into River’s End.”
He urged his legs into motion, edging back from her. He hadn’t seen any sort of weapon in his limited exploration of the cabin, but he hadn’t exactly looked in every nook and cranny while she was gone last night. In fact, there were parts of the cabin that were still a complete mystery to him. She had already told him she had a shotgun. For all he knew, she could have a whole armory stashed somewhere in the back.
“Why don’t I want to go into River’s End?”
She moved with him as he stepped backward, maintaining the distance between them without letting him get out of reach. “Don’t be coy, Dallas.”
There it was again. He’d heard that same tone in her voice the night before, when she’d spoken his name while trying to help him into her Jeep. A flicker of knowing that hadn’t really registered in the midst of his stress the previous evening came through loud and clear this morning.
“You know who I am,” he said before he could stop himself.
Her expression shuttered. “Who you are?”
“Now who’s being coy?” A surge of anger eclipsed his earlier fear. She was lying to his face. Had been lying this whole time. “If you know who I am, then you know there are people who are looking for me.”
She dropped any pretense. “That’s abundantly clear from the bruises and scrapes all over your body. Which is why I don’t think you really want to go into River’s End this morning.”
His legs began to tremble again, aching with fatigue. “They’re in town, aren’t they?”
She didn’t ask who he was talking about. Clearly, she already knew. “Yes. And not just in town. They’re all over the place, Dallas. Everywhere you could possibly go.”
Damn it. Fear returned in cold, sickening waves, but he fought not to let it show. Those bastards who took him captive had worked damn hard to break him, but they hadn’t. He’d escaped before they could.
He wouldn’t break in front of this woman, either.
“Then let me call someone to come get me.”
The look she gave him was almost pitying. “I can’t let you do that, either.”
He forced a laugh, pretending a bravado he didn’t feel. “And you’re going to stop me how?”
Her response was a laugh in return. “You say that as if you think it would be difficult. I told you last night, in your condition, I’m pretty sure I can take you.”
He didn’t really want to test her theory, considering how shaky his limbs felt at the moment. “Okay, fine. I’ll stay put.”
Her eyes narrowed a notch. “I don’t think you will.”
Before he could move, she closed the space between them, grabbing both arms and shoving him face-first into the wall. Pain exploded where his bruised jaw hit the hard Sheetrock.
He struggled against her hold, but she was much stronger than he was at the moment, shoving him down the hall and into the kitchen. When he tried to turn around to fight back, she slammed her knee into the back of one of his, making his leg buckle under him. She released his arms just long enough to let him catch himself before he lunged face-first into the floor, but he still hit hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs.
The world went black around him for a moment, then started to return in flecks of light as he gasped for air. He felt movement, pressure and then a big gulp of sweet air filled his lungs. His vision cleared and all his aches and pains came into sharp, agonizing focus.
He was facedown on the floor, his hands twisted behind his back. He felt the weight of his captor settle over the backs of his thighs as she held him in place. The unmistakable sound of duct tape being ripped from its roll reached his ears a split second before he felt her wind the sticky tape around his wrists, binding his hands together behind him.
Nicki moved off his legs and grabbed him by his upper arms, her grip like steel. She might be small, he thought, but she was a lot stronger than she looked. “Sorry to do this, but you leave me no choice.”
The fear returned, beating at the back of his throat like a wave of nausea. He swallowed it down, refused to give in. “And here you promised you weren’t a serial killer.”
“Believe it or not, this is all about keeping you alive.” She got him to his feet and pushed him toward a door he hadn’t noticed before. “Watch your step.”
She opened the door and reached inside, flicking a switch. He saw he was standing at the top of a steep set of stairs descending into a dim basement. “You’re not going to chain me to your dungeon wall, are you?” He tried to keep his voice light, make it into a joke. Anything to keep the fear at bay.
She helped him down the steps, grabbing the wood railing on one side of the descent when he stumbled and nearly pulled her down the stairs with him. “Sadly, I haven’t had time to put in the shackles yet.”
They reached the bottom of the steps and she gave him a little shove. He stumbled forward into the shadows, wincing in anticipation of the impact.
His upper body hit something soft. Opening his eyes, he saw he’d landed face-first on an old, overstuffed sofa braced against the cinder block wall of the basement.
Cellar, he amended mentally, his eyes beginning to adjust to the low light. There was a shelf against the opposite wall full of Mason jars full of home-canned fruits and vegetables.
“Stay put. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” Nicki’s voice drifted down toward him from the top of the stairs. He looked up at her, squinting at the bright daylight backlighting her through the cellar door, rendering her little more than a curvy silhouette.
“Don’t go,” he called, fear hammering past his last defenses.
She paused in the doorway. When she spoke, she sounded genuinely distressed. “I’m so sorry. But I have to go.”
Then the door closed behind her, shutting out the blessed daylight. He heard the soft thuds of her footfalls drift into a thick, deafening silence.
Once again, he was alone. Trapped and helpless, just like before, with nothing but darkness and fear to keep him company.
Chapter Four (#ulink_28d56409-e324-5179-9c10-0008c64c499d)
What have I done?
The question rang in her head, over and over in rhythm with her pounding heart, as she muscled the Jeep down the mountain to the main road that led into town.
She’d tied a man up and locked him in her cellar. Had she lost her bloody mind?
The cell phone peeking out of her purse presented a powerful temptation. She had never felt this great a need to talk to another human being in her life. Calling Alexander Quinn was out of the question—he’d never answer a call from her cell phone and risk blowing her cover.
But her cousin Anson might answer. She could shoot the breeze with him, avoid anything incriminating. Just hearing a friendly, familiar voice might be enough to knock the edge off her nerves, right?
She dragged her gaze back to the road as her wheels slipped a little on the slick surface. No. No calling anyone from her past, no matter how freaked-out she felt at the moment.
She’d agreed to this job. She knew what was at stake.
Hell, that was why she’d just imprisoned a man in her cellar, wasn’t it?
Despite the weather, the parking lot of Dugan’s Diner was half-full when she pulled her Jeep into one of the employee parking spots and entered the kitchen through the employees’ side door.
The only other person in the kitchen was Tollie Barber, one of the kitchen assistants who helped out with food prep and handled some of the easier cooking duties. She was busy at the counter, processing potatoes for hash browns, her frizzy blond curls tamed by a hairnet. She darted a quick gaze at Nicki. “So much for a snow day, huh?”
Nicki tucked her own dark hair under a protective cap and headed to the sink to wash her trembling hands. She kept her tone calm and light, hoping her agitation didn’t show. “Gotta snow a lot more than this to keep people away from breakfast at Dugan’s.”
Trevor Colley entered the kitchen from the front area, moving at a quick pace for a man his size. His barrel chest and linebacker shoulders seemed to take up half the kitchen when he stopped next to where Nicki was preparing the griddle. “You’re a good ’un to come in so fast, Nicki,” he said in a gruff voice that rumbled like thunder. It was all the thanks he’d give her. Trevor wasn’t one to gush.
“Quite a crowd for a snow day,” she commented, cracking a couple of eggs for the first order clipped to the order wheel. Two eggs, sunny-side up, hash browns and bacon. “Something up?”
Trevor gave her an odd look. “You tell me. Del McClintock brought four of his boys with him. They brought their girls, too. Should I worry?”
Nicki supposed it was a good thing that Trevor believed she might know the answer to his question. It suggested that people were starting to connect her with the Blue Ridge Infantry. Which meant, hopefully, that the BRI members themselves were starting to think of her as one of them.
That was her goal, wasn’t it?
“No, don’t worry. If you have any trouble with them, come get me.”
Trevor frowned at her but went back out to the front of the diner, leaving her and Tollie to get the orders filled.
As she laid out the strips of bacon on the griddle to fry, the image of Dallas Cole’s rainbow-hued collection of scrapes and bruises filled her head. Her whole body went cold and numb, and for a second, she thought she was going to be sick.
Oh, God. She’d taped a sick, injured man’s hands behind his back and locked him in her cellar without even feeding him breakfast first. She hadn’t even left him a bucket if he needed to go to the bathroom. Which he couldn’t do with his hands duct-taped, anyway.
What the hell had she been thinking? Had she lost her ever-lovin’ mind?
But what else could she have done? Dallas had insisted on calling the FBI. Maybe it had been a trick—maybe the whole thing was a setup to prove she wasn’t who she said she was. Maybe it had been a test. But if that was the case, she had no idea whether she’d passed or failed.
But what if he was legit? She certainly couldn’t let him bring the FBI swarming into River’s End at this point. Even if it didn’t end up blowing her cover, every BRI member in town would crawl back in the holes where they’d come from, and it’d be months, even years, before she could get this close to the group’s inner circle.
She was doing what she had to do. She was. She just had to get through this morning and she could hurry back home and let him out before anything bad happened.
Assuming something bad hadn’t already happened.
* * *
THERE WASN’T AN inch of his body that didn’t hurt in some way, including the new scrape on his inner wrist from the nail protruding from the wooden shelf where the beautiful but treacherous Nicki kept her canned goods. But Dallas was damned if he was going to be bound and locked in by the time she got back from her shift at the diner.
Who the hell was she? Was she connected to the militia members who’d taken him captive a few weeks earlier? If so, why had it taken her all night to decide he was safer behind a lock and key?
Everything had changed when he told her he wanted to call the authorities. That had been the catalyst. He’d seen fear in her eyes, not unlike his own reaction when she’d pinned him down and taped up his hands. His mention of the authorities had made her feel just as trapped as he felt now.
But why? What was she hiding?
The tape around his wrists snapped apart as the sharp edge of the nail head finally broke through the last of the fibers. He pulled his arms apart, groaning as the stretched muscles of his chest and shoulders put up a painful protest. He worked them slowly for a moment, taking care not to make his condition any worse than it already was.
He had to find the strength to get past that locked door and get the hell out of this crazy woman’s cabin.
There were no windows in the cellar, no doors visible besides the one at the top of the stairs. As much as his wobbly legs protested the idea, he had to go upstairs and try to figure a way to get through the locked cellar door. Ramming it open was no option, given his weakened state.
But maybe he could pick the lock.
He’d already spent nearly an hour searching the cellar for something to cut himself free of the duct-tape bonds. He’d found a small, rickety cabinet in the corner that held a box of tools. He’d had no luck using the garden shears he’d found inside to cut himself free because he couldn’t get the blades turned to the right angle behind his back to cut the tape. But there had been other tools in the box that might work to unlock the door, hadn’t there?
He crossed to the box lying on the top of the rough-hewn cabinet and started to pick through the contents, looking for something—
There. A jumble of old paper clips, some of them hooked together, some twisted apart. If he was very lucky, the lock on the door at the top of the stairs would be a simple spring-driven lock, and he could use the paper clip to push it open.
But if it wasn’t...
He grabbed a pair of pliers and twisted one of the bigger paper clips until he’d fashioned a crude tension wrench, then curled the tip of one of the smaller clips into a modified hook, hoping they’d work well enough to get the job done.
“Picking a lock isn’t as hard as you’d think,” an FBI special agent had told Dallas once, and then he’d proceeded to explain just how to beat a pin-and-tumbler lock. “It’s all about the pins. That’s how a key works—getting the pins in the right position to turn the cylinder.”
He carried his tools up the steps and slid his makeshift tension wrench into the keyhole, turning it one way, then the other, until he was satisfied which way the cylinder had to turn to open. Applying a little pressure to move the cylinder just out of position, he inserted the second paper clip into the keyhole.
His hands shook and his legs began to ache, feeling as if they’d suddenly lost the ability to hold him upright, but he kept at his probing examination of the lock’s internal workings. One by one, he painstakingly pushed the pins up until they caught on the ledge, clearing the cylinder. Finally, the last pin clicked into place, and he used the larger paper clip to turn the lock.
The dead bolt slid back into the door with a soft click, and he gave the door a push open.
He eased into the kitchen and looked around, squinting as bright daylight assaulted his eyes. Around him, the cabin was quiet and still.
He looked around the house to make sure he was still alone, then checked out the front door to assure himself Nicki and the Jeep were still gone. Then he went into the bedroom to find the phone.
But it was gone, no longer sitting on the bedside table where it had been the night before.
He checked the floor on either side of the table and even crouched to check under the bed. No phone.
A room-to-room search of the cabin revealed no sign of the missing phone. Nor did he find a computer or any sort of modem or router with which to access the internet if he wanted to reach the authorities that way instead.
He sank into one of the kitchen chairs and willed his wobbly legs to stop shaking. He clearly wasn’t going to be able to call in the cavalry, so he was going to have to get the hell out of this cabin on his own somehow.
But first, he needed something to eat. Some of his unsteadiness might be from sheer hunger. He pushed himself to his feet and crossed to the refrigerator, bracing himself to find it as empty as the bedside table had been. But the refrigerator was well stocked, and he grabbed a couple of eggs from the carton for his breakfast.
She had plenty of cookware in her cabinets, too. Made sense, he supposed—she’d said she worked as a diner cook, hadn’t she? As he heated a pat of butter in one of the pans on the stove, he grabbed a couple of slices of bread from the bread box and stuck them in the toaster.
The smell of toasting bread and frying eggs made him almost light-headed with hunger, but once he’d wolfed down his breakfast, he felt considerably better.
But did he feel well enough to walk out of these woods to seek help?
He left the pans for Nicki to wash—the least she could do, considering she’d locked him in her cellar—and took another look around the house, this time for some sign of who Nicki really was and what had compelled her to lock him up rather than let him call the authorities for help.
She’d admitted to knowing who he was. Which meant she had to know that he’d disappeared somewhere between Washington, DC, and wherever he was now. That foul play was suspected.
Or was it? Did people think he’d disappeared on his own? He’d been on the phone with a man named Cade Landry when those BRI thugs had run him off the road and dragged him out of his banged-up car. But Landry had been a fugitive. For all Dallas knew, he still was. He might not have had the opportunity to tell anyone what he’d heard over the phone.
So what, exactly, did Nicki think she knew about him?
There were no personal items anywhere around the cabin, he realized after another search of the place. She probably had her driver’s license and other ID with her, since she’d taken the Jeep into town, but most people had other personal records scattered around the house, didn’t they?
Back at his apartment in Georgetown, he had a whole four-drawer filing cabinet full of tax information, personal records, vehicle papers and more. He even had a box in his closet filled with things he’d kept from his high school and college days.
As far as he could tell from his search, Nicki had nothing like that stashed anywhere around the cabin.
He sat on the bed and looked around the small bedroom. Simple gray curtains on the window. Plain pine dresser that matched the bedside table. The bed was little more than a mattress and box set on a metal frame. No headboard or footboard. Plain gray sheets and pillowcases, plus a couple of matching waffle-weave blankets that acted as the bedspread.
A large woven rag rug stretched over the hardwood floor next to the bed, the hodgepodge of blues, grays, black and white offering only a little more color than the rest of the decor.
Drab surroundings for a woman as vibrantly beautiful as his hostess-turned-captor.
He pushed himself up from the bed and looked around, trying to make sense of all that had happened to him over the past twelve hours. And no matter which way he looked, it all came back to the same thing.
Nicki.
Who the hell was she? And what did she want from him?
* * *
BY NINE THIRTY, the breakfast crowd began to thin out, but Del McClintock and part of his posse lingered, nursing cups of coffee and chatting quietly in one corner of the diner. Nicki wasn’t sure he was actually waiting for her to end her shift, but Trevor kept shooting troubled looks between her and the corner whenever he popped into the kitchen to check on things.
Nicki ignored her boss, taking advantage of the lull in customers to clean the griddle in preparation for the next crowd of hungry diners. She also tried hard not to think about the man locked in her cellar, without much luck.
People didn’t starve to death in two hours. And if worse came to worst on the bathroom end of things, she could run to the thrift store in Abingdon to pick up some clean clothes for him.
Everything would work out. She’d figure it out somehow.
Trevor stuck his head in the kitchen door. “Bella’s here. Her mama’s neighbor’s takin’ good care of her, looks like, so she told Bella to come on in for the lunch and dinner crowds. That is, if you’re ready to leave.” Trevor shot another look toward the dining room, where Del and his friends were still lingering at a couple of the tables near the window.
“Yeah, I’m ready. I know Bella wanted the hours, and I have some things to do today.” Like release a man from her locked cellar and somehow figure out a way to convince him she wasn’t some sort of psychopath.
But what about Del McClintock? The whole point of agreeing to come in for the morning shift was Trevor’s comment about Del and some of the other guys from the BRI being there.
And now she was going to slip out the back and not even talk to him?
Damn you, Alexander Quinn.
One minute. She could take one minute to go say hi to Del.
She grabbed her purse and her coat, and headed out through the door leading to the front of the diner, ignoring Trevor’s troubled look. Several of the people with Del had left while she was cleaning up, but he was still there, along with Ray Battle and Ray’s girlfriend, Tonya. Ray sent Del a smirking look as Nicki approached.
“Hey there, Del.” She pasted on a friendly smile. “Can’t get enough of my cooking?”
“Never.” Del smiled back at her, his straight white teeth flashing. He was a good-looking man, tall and hard-muscled, which couldn’t be said of all the BRI members she’d met over the past couple of months. He was also better educated than most, which made her wonder why he’d hooked up with a group like the Blue Ridge Infantry.
Then again, there were lots of people in the world blessed with good genes and good fortune who didn’t have the moral fiber to make anything of themselves despite the raw material.
Del had been in the army, or so he claimed. Nicki had no reason to doubt him. But he had left the service as soon as he could manage, coming back home to join his father at Cortland Lumber in a town a few miles east of River’s End, working in the sawmill.
As in, the business owned by Wayne Cortland, one of the most ruthless—and efficient—criminals to operate in southern Virginia until his death almost three years earlier.
According to the files Alexander Quinn had given Nicki to study, Wayne Cortland had pulled together a disparate group of black hat hackers, mountain meth cookers and members of the Blue Ridge Infantry to fill his organization. The hackers were the brains, the BRI served as the muscle and the meth cookers were the source of money.
But ever since Cortland’s murder at the hands of his own son, those three groups had been struggling to take over the remains of the organization and keep it going on their own.
Nicki was pretty sure Del McClintock was part of the BRI’s attempt to take over the drug business for themselves. And at least two or three of the guys in his entourage were hackers.
But what she hadn’t yet discovered was who had taken over as head of the Virginia branch of the BRI. Quinn believed that the unknown leader might be the key to toppling the whole organization, from the group in Virginia to the branch in Tennessee.
What they needed was someone inside, close to the top man, who could funnel information to Quinn and, through him, to the authorities.
Nicki planned to be that someone. And thanks to a little tidbit Del had let drop a week ago, she had an idea how to make it happen.
“Were you serious about what you said last week?” she asked, lowering her voice so that only the people at Del’s table could hear. “About me picking up some work for you? You know, medical work?”
Del’s eyes narrowed, and she was afraid she’d overplayed her hand. But his expression cleared. “If you think you’re up to it. It’s not exactly legal.”
“It’s just me doing a little first aid as needed, right?” She flashed him a grin. “And if you and your friends want to show me a little gratitude with gifts of cash, who’s to say there’s anything wrong with that?”
“Exactly.” Del’s smile was deceptively attractive, making him look genial and harmless when she knew he was anything but.
Nicki hid a little shiver and brightened her smile. “So you’ll let me know if you need anything, right?”
“Absolutely.” He winked at her. “Can you stick around?”
“I wish,” she lied. “But last night I picked up a stray cat, and I’m afraid he’s making a mess on my floors as we speak.”
“We shoot strays at our place,” Ray said with a grin.
You would, she thought. She forced a laugh. “I guess I have a soft heart. Or a soft head. Whichever. See y’all later.” She gave a little wave and headed out the front door, keeping a smile on her face until she was certain she was safely out of sight.
She blew out a pent-up breath and allowed herself a little tremble. She had to figure out a way to get over her revulsion, especially if Del required her to be a little more than just friendly and flirtatious in order to give her the breaks she was looking for.
But the thought made her sick. Which was silly, really—there’d been a time in her life when a guy like Del McClintock had been her particular brand of temptation. Dangerous, shady and handsome as sin.
Sort of like the injured man tied up in her cellar at home.
Damn it. What had she been thinking?
* * *
THE SOUND OF a vehicle engine drifted into the cabin, stirring Dallas from a light doze. He pushed himself up to a sitting position on the sofa, his nerves jangling, and tried to reorient himself as the engine noise grew closer. The nap on the sofa hadn’t done much for his aches and pains, but he felt a little stronger than he had even this morning. Food and activity to work out the kinks from his weeks of captivity had gone a long way to restoring some of his earlier vigor.
But would it be enough to give him the edge over his feisty captor?
He glanced through the narrow gap between the curtains of the front window and spotted Nicki’s Jeep pulling into the gravel driveway outside the cabin. She pulled to a stop and cut the engine, but she didn’t get out right away.
What was she doing?
A minute ticked by. Then two. Dallas’s legs began to ache again from the stillness of waiting.
When the Jeep door opened and she got out and turned toward the cabin, he pulled back from the window and took up a position against the wall by the door. When she entered, the door would hide him until it was too late to prepare herself for his ambush.
At least, that’s what he hoped.
Her footsteps ascended the wooden steps of the porch slowly. Deliberately. Inside Dallas’s chest, his heart took a couple of hard leaps into a higher gear. He braced himself with a deep breath, preparing his limbs for action. He was still weaker than he liked, but his size and the factor of surprise would give him an edge.
He heard the rattle of keys in the door and pressed himself flat against the wall.
The door swung open with a creak of the hinges, and her boots hit the landing with a thud. He heard a soft huff of air escape her lungs as she stepped into the cabin and started to close the door behind her.
He hit her hard and fast, shoving her to the floor beneath him. Her soft cry of shock gave him the briefest moment of triumph, before his body landed flush against hers, his hips driving hers into the hard floor.
She started to struggle, her thighs opening as she kicked her legs toward him. The movement settled his hips more firmly into the cradle between her thighs, and, for a moment, he couldn’t think. Couldn’t come up with a single rational thought. All he could do was feel. The heat of her body under his. The softness of her curves, how perfectly they seemed to mold to his own lean hardness, welcoming him as if their bodies had been fashioned by a master craftsman to fit together in seamless perfection.
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