by Paula Graves
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
F
rost 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 co
nsidered 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.
