“No one’s coming,” he told her. “No one heard you scream.”
Oh, God, now this man—this escaped convict—knew that he could do whatever he wanted to her. He held her in a tight grasp that she couldn’t break despite how she struggled to free her wrists. Her weapon lay beyond her reach. She couldn’t protect herself from him and she couldn’t summon help.
Bob and Dr. Bernard would be returning. But would they come back from the prison in time to save her? This man hadn’t gone to the trouble of escaping Blackwoods so he could hang around the county morgue. And if he was desperate enough to risk a prison escape, he was capable of anything.
Even murder…
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. She couldn’t afford to lose it…not now. If she couldn’t help herself, she wouldn’t be able to help Jed.
She would be of no use to her brother…if she were dead.
HIS HAND SHAKING WITH RAGE, Warden Jefferson James slammed the door to his private office. The force rattled the pictures on his wall, knocking his daughter’s graduation portrait askew. He couldn’t straighten it now; he couldn’t even look at Emily. Her pale blond hair and big blue eyes reminded him so much of her mother. He hadn’t been able to protect his wife from the real world. How had he thought he would be able to protect his daughter?
He turned his back on the wall of photos and stared out the window. The view of a cement wall topped with barbed wire rattled him, so he closed his eyes against it. He could leave here any time he wanted. Now. But he had to damn well keep it that way.
He dragged an untraceable cell phone out of his inside suit pocket and punched in a speed-dial number. “We have a problem.”
“We?” his partner scoffed.
“Yeah, we,” James snapped. “How the hell did you let an undercover DEA agent into Blackwoods?”
“You’re the warden,” he was needlessly reminded.
He knew, and at other times had relished, that he was the man in charge of one of the state’s biggest penitentiaries.
“I can’t turn prisoners away,” he replied, not without raising more suspicions than Blackwoods apparently already had since it had become the target of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation.
“You can’t turn them away,” his partner agreed, “but you can get rid of them. We agreed you were going to get rid of Rowe Cusack.”
James ran his hand down his face, feeling the stubble and the lines and wrinkles of age and stress. “He left here in a body bag this morning.”
A breath of surprise came over the phone. “I can’t believe it was that easy for you to get rid of him,” his partner admitted. “Cusack’s one of the DEA’s best agents.”
“I’m not sure how easy it actually was,” James admitted, bile rising in his throat along with fear and regret over what making sure Cusack was really dead had forced him to do. If only there had been another way…
“But you said he left in a body bag.”
“Yeah, I’m just not sure he was really dead.” Doc had declared him dead, but then the old physician had acted so strangely. So suspiciously…
Another breath rattled the phone, this time a gasp of fear. “You better make sure he’s dead, or you have a problem.”
“We have a problem.”
“He doesn’t know about my involvement, but he knows what’s been going on in Blackwoods.”
James glanced out the window again, at that damn cement wall and barbed-wire fence. “How—how do you know that he figured anything out?”
“Because he’s a good agent and you just tried to kill him. He knows.”
“He might be dead.” That had been the plan, but had the plan really been carried out? James had seen all the blood on the floor of Cusack’s cell, but that didn’t mean the man had died from his wound.
“You better make damn sure he’s really dead. Or…”
“Or what?”
“He won’t be the only one dying,” James’s partner threatened.
A ragged sigh slipped through James’s lips. How had everything gone so wrong? “He already isn’t.”
“You killed someone else?”
“I didn’t kill anyone.” His phone number was untraceable but he didn’t trust that his partner wasn’t recording the call. James had just learned how far he would go to cover his own ass; he suspected his partner would go just as far.
“You had someone else killed?”
He choked on the bile of his self-disgust. “I had to clean up the loose ends around here.”
“You better concentrate on the biggest loose end. Cusack.” His partner’s voice rose with panic. “Make damn sure he’s dead!”
The call disconnected, leaving Warden James with a dial tone and a pounding pulse. From the moment he had learned who the new inmate was, he’d known the DEA agent would prove dangerous. He just hadn’t realized how dangerous Rowe Cusack was.
Chapter Two
Macy closed her eyes. Maybe this was just another nightmare. It couldn’t be real. A dead body couldn’t come to life. She had imagined the whole thing.
Dreamed it.
But when she opened her eyes, the prisoner was still there, his blue gaze trained on her face. “I’m going to take my hand away,” he told her, his deep voice pitched low, “but I need you to stay calm.”
He wasn’t the only one. She needed to stay calm for herself, so she could figure out how to get the hell away from him and call authorities to apprehend him.
“Can you do that for me?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Not that you’ve been irrational,” he admitted. “In fact you’ve been quite resourceful.” His blue eyes narrowed as he studied her. Then he slid his hand down from her lips to cup her jaw, his palm warm against her skin. “You’re smart.”
She nodded again but remained silent. No one had heard her scream, so when she opened her mouth next, she needed to speak calmly and rationally and engage him in conversation without arousing his anger or distrust. She had to stall him until someone came—either Bob or Dr. Bernard.
After clearing the fear from her voice, she praised him. “You’re smart, too. Very smart.”
His lips curved into a slight grin, as if he were totally aware and amused by her tactic. “How do you know that?”
“No one has ever escaped Blackwoods before.” She hadn’t believed it possible or she might have considered using this ploy to help Jed escape.
“I didn’t do it alone.”
She glanced down at the empty body bag. “Someone else escaped with you?”
“Not with me. But he helped me.”
“How?” she asked. “Tell me every detail.” And in the time it would take him to brag about his successful plan, Dr. Bernard or Bob might return…if she were lucky.
And if she were very lucky, she might figure out a way to help her brother as well as herself. Maybe her helping apprehend an escaped convict would award Jed more privileges in prison, like more meetings with his lawyer in order to work on his appeal.
“You would like that,” the man said, his grin widening, “you’d like to stall me until someone else shows up, someone who actually might hear you scream this time.”
Was he going to give her a reason to scream? Did he intend to hurt her? Fear rushed back, choking her so that she couldn’t deny the truth he spoke.
He nodded as if agreeing to something. “You are as smart as your brother said you are, Macy Kleyn.”
Her pulse leaping at her name on his lips, she gasped. “Jed? You’ve talked to Jed?”
His handsome face twisted into a grimace, and he touched the bloodied bandage on his ribs. “Who do you think did this to me?”
She shook her head in denial, knocking his hand from her face. “Jed would not have done that to you. He would never hurt anyone.”
She didn’t care what a jury and a judge had decided; she knew her brother better than anyone else. He was not a killer.
“He had no choice,” the man said
, almost as if he were defending the guy he just claimed had stabbed him. “It was the only way to get me out of Blackwoods alive.”
“By trying to kill you?” she asked.
“He didn’t really try,” he said. But besides the bandage, he had bruises on his ribs and one along his jaw. “He just made it look like he did. If your brother had really wanted me dead, I have a feeling that I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. I’m lucky he came up with an alternative plan.”
She reached for the bandage, her fingers tingling as they connected with his bare skin. She steadied her hand and tore off the gauze.
He grimaced as the stitches stuck to the dried blood, pulling loose. And a curse slipped through his clenched teeth.
“Who treated this?” she asked. “This needs more stitches.” And antiseptic. The wound was too red, and as she touched it, too hot. He was going to develop an infection for certain.
“Doc just put in a couple quick stitches,” he said, referring to the elderly prison doctor. “He couldn’t do more without raising suspicions. It would have made no sense for him to treat a dead man.”
“He declared you dead?”
He nodded. “And zipped me into that damn plastic bag before the coroner got to the prison.”
“So the prison doctor and my brother both helped you escape Blackwoods?” she asked, careful to keep her doubts from her voice so that she wouldn’t anger him. She had no idea how dangerous this man was. Given how delusional he was, she suspected that he was very dangerous.
“Yes,” he replied, as if he actually expected her to believe him.
“It needs more stitches,” she said, examining the wound, “it’s too deep.”
“Jed had to make it look believable, so I had to lose a lot of blood,” he explained with a wince.
Just how much blood had he lost? Enough that he might be weak enough for Macy to be able to overpower him? But then she remembered how quickly he’d knocked the scalpel from her grasp. Muscles rippled in his arms and chest; he hadn’t lost that much blood.
“None of this makes any sense.” Jed would have never helped a convict escape prison. Dear sweet Doc, the prison doctor, wouldn’t have helped either. This guy—whoever he was—was definitely lying.
She gestured toward the empty body bag. “I was supposed to toe tag you,” she said. “What name would I have put on that?”
If he’d really been dead…
She would have looked at the records Dr. Bernard had sent with the body, but she couldn’t reach for the file without his probably thinking she was reaching for a weapon again.
Although he didn’t touch her now, she could still feel his hands on her wrists and her face. Her skin tingled where he had touched her and where she had touched him. She shouldn’t have taken off his bandage, but she’d wanted to see the wound.
“Prison records will show my name is Andrew ‘Ice’ Johansen,” he replied. After drawing in a deep breath, he continued, “But my real name is Rowe Cusack. I work for the DEA. I’m a drug enforcement agent.”
She bit her bottom lip to hold in a snort of derision at this claim; it was nearly as wild as his claiming that Jed had stabbed him.
As close as they were standing, he didn’t miss her reaction and surmised, “You don’t believe me. Jed warned me that you wouldn’t, that you’re too smart and too suspicious to blindly accept my story.”
“Can you prove it?” she challenged.
“I was undercover at Blackwoods Penitentiary. I couldn’t exactly bring my badge and gun.” He took in an agitated breath. “But my cover still got blown. Your brother knows who I am.”
“How?”
“The warden told him…when he ordered Jed to kill me.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You’re lying.”
“Jed said you’d say that, too.”
“Stop that!” she yelled, her patience snapping so that she could no longer humor him no matter how dangerous he was. “Stop quoting my brother to me. You don’t know him.”
“Not really,” he agreed. “But I know about him like I know about you. I know that you were about to start med school when he got arrested, and you put off school for the trial. Then, after his sentencing to Blackwoods Penitentiary, you moved up here to be close to your brother. You believe in his innocence. But you’re the only one.”
She swallowed hard, choking on her doubts about this man’s truthfulness. “I am the only one.” Her ex-fiancé hadn’t. Not even their parents had believed in Jed. But Macy had no doubt that her brother had been framed. “You haven’t told me anything that you couldn’t have found out from old newspaper articles.”
During Jed’s trial, the press had taken a special interest in her. Some had admired her sisterly devotion while others, including her ex-fiancé, had called her a fool for not accepting that her brother was a cold-blooded killer.
“How about this?” he challenged her. “You have a scar on the back of your head from when you fell out of Jed’s tree house when you were seven.”
She shivered, unnerved by the memory and more by the fact that this man knew it.
He continued, “There was so much blood that Jed thought for sure you were dead when he found you. But then you opened your eyes.”
Like he had when she had unzipped the body bag. Now she understood how Jed had felt when she had done that all those years ago. He’d been kneeling by her side and when she’d opened her eyes, he had actually gasped. “Oh, my God…”
“That’s not in any old newspapers,” he pointed out. “Your brother told me that so you would believe me, Macy. He and I need you to believe me.”
“You’re really a DEA agent?” she asked, struggling to accept his words.
He leaned close to her, his forehead nearly brushing hers as he dipped his head. His gaze held hers. “I’m telling the truth. About everything.”
Her world shifted, reduced to just the two of them—to his blue eyes, full of truth and something darker. Fear? Vengeance? She should have immediately recognized the emotion; she’d seen it before, in Jed’s eyes, the day he had been sentenced to life—to two life sentences—in a maximum-security prison.
“Why does my brother want—need—me to believe you?”
“So you’ll help me.”
She drew in a shaky breath. “I’ll help you,” she agreed. “But only with your wound.”
No matter what he was, she couldn’t let him lose any more blood than he must have already lost. She reached for the tray of tools again.
He didn’t stop her this time, not even when she began to add more stitches to the deep gash along his ribs. He just clenched his jaw and sucked up the pain, which had to be intense. She hadn’t put even a local anesthesia on his skin, and she suspected the wound was getting infected. But he barely grimaced. The man had an extremely high threshold for pain.
“You need to call the Blackwoods county sheriff,” she said. “Griffin York will be able to verify your story with the Drug Enforcement Agency.”
“Administration,” he automatically corrected her. Most people were probably not aware that the A actually stood for Administration and not Agency. But he would know—if he were truly a DEA agent. “Are you sure the sheriff’s not on the warden’s payroll?”
“No. I can’t be sure,” she admitted. “There are rumors that the warden made some pretty significant donations to the new sheriff’s election campaign.”
He groaned, probably not in pain but in frustration.
“You need to contact the Drug Enforcement Administration,” she pointed out. And if he were really an agent, wouldn’t he have already done that?
“I know for sure that someone with the DEA is on the warden’s payroll,” he said. “That’s why I can’t trust anyone. Nobody else can find out I’m still alive, or I’m a target.”
She shrugged, feigning indifference. Even though she didn’t know him and didn’t trust him, she didn’t want him to be killed. But helping a fugitive would land her in prison like her br
other. And, unlike Jed, she wouldn’t be innocent of the charges brought against her.
She probably shouldn’t have treated this man’s injury, but she had nearly become a doctor and as such, she would have taken an oath to do no harm. In Macy’s opinion that included providing medically necessary treatment no matter the circumstances. After putting in the last stitch, she swabbed antiseptic on the wound. He sucked in a breath, and when she affixed the bandage, he covered her fingers with his.
“And if Warden James finds out I’m alive,” Rowe continued, “then Jed’s a dead man, too.”
“Wh-why?” she sputtered as her greatest fear gripped her. She tugged on her fingers, pulling them out from under his.
“Jed disobeyed the warden’s order to kill me, and instead he helped me escape.”
If Warden James had ordered Jed to kill another inmate, then her brother had become a liability to the man. Not that anyone would believe a convicted cop killer over a respected prison warden. But the warden might not be willing to take that chance. Nor would he want other prisoners believing they could get away with disobeying him.
The grinding of the descending elevator drew their attention to the open door of the morgue. “Is there another way out?” Rowe asked in an urgent whisper.
Macy shook her head. “There is no other way out of here.”
“If I’m discovered and sent back to Blackwoods, I will be killed,” he insisted, his blue eyes intense with certainty and desperation.
Damn it. She believed him and not just because of what he knew about her and her brother, but because he seemed too sincere to be lying. “And if you’re killed, so will Jed…”
A door creaked open and a male voice called out, “Macy? You still here?”
“Y-y-yes, Dr. Bernard. I’ll be out in a minute,” she said. Then she rushed toward the wall and pulled open a drawer.
Rowe’s dark gold brows drew together as he grimaced in revulsion. But he climbed inside the metal compartment. Macy threw a sheet over him. As she drew it up his bare chest, the backs of her fingers skimmed over skin and muscle. Her face heated, her blood pumping hard.
Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs Page 2
