by Paula Graves
“For a new job. Medical caretaker for a man with uncontrolled diabetes.” She managed a bleak smile. “It’s what I’ve been waiting to hear.”
He laid his hands on her knees. “Then why do you look terrified?”
“Because I am?” She pushed his hands away and got up, walking to the window, then back to the mantel. “I don’t know why Quinn thought I was the person to do this. Or, hell, maybe I do. Once an accomplished liar, always an accomplished liar, right?”
He caught her hand, stopping her nervous pacing. “If you don’t want to do this, tell Quinn to find someone else.”
“And throw away three months of setup right when it’s about to pay off?” She shook her head firmly. “I’ve got a case of the nerves. That’s all. It just came by surprise tonight and I wasn’t prepared.”
Just like that, her chin came up and her trembling subsided. A fierce light shone in her eyes, and he felt something turn flips in the center of his chest.
Damn, she was beautiful.
She nodded toward the backpack. “How quickly can you get that stuff set up?”
“Give me half an hour,” he said, realizing he’d just been given marching orders. Tamping down the urge to argue her out of her plan of action, he gathered the items Quinn had provided for him to set up his own server and wireless connection, and got to work.
Within thirty minutes, the sea of gadgets and wires inside the pockets of the backpack combined with the high-powered smartphone Quinn supplied had transformed into a working internet system under his hands. He showed Nicki the search engine browser page with a smile of triumph. “We’re in business.”
“Yay?”
“Technophobe,” he muttered with a laugh. “I don’t know how you lived here three days without the internet, much less three months.”
“You do know that Quinn has probably set up something that’ll monitor whatever you do on that server, don’t you?”
He looked up, surprised by her serious tone. “Is that how he does business?”
“Former CIA,” she said, as if that explained everything.
Probably did, he conceded. “I’ll check everything out.” There were a few ways Quinn could have set up tracking software and a few other tricks that the average computer user would never find.
But Dallas wasn’t the average computer user.
“I might be up a few more hours.” He looked at her, noting the faint shadows of weariness beneath her eyes. “Go to bed. Get some sleep. Don’t you have a morning shift?”
“I do,” she agreed with a slight smile. “You sure you don’t want to save this until morning?”
“Positive. Take the bed again. I’ll bunk down here once I’m done.”
She didn’t move right away, her blue eyes holding his gaze for a long, heated moment. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For making me feel less alone.” She flashed him a twitch of a smile, then turned and left the room quickly.
He released a long, slow breath, quelling the powerful urge to put the computer aside and follow her back to the bedroom.
Focus, Cole.
He examined some of the more obvious places Quinn and his computer people might have hidden a keystroke logger in the system and found nothing. Digging deeper, however, he discovered a program he was pretty sure had been designed to track anything he did on the computer.
Removing it would be easy enough, but he’d never been one to do the easy thing.
Instead, he recoded the program slightly, ensuring that anything sent to Quinn would be gibberish.
Ought to make his point, he thought.
After another hour examining the ins and outs of the system, he’d found one more tracking program, quickly dispatched, then settled down to work.
Before leaving for work that afternoon, Nicki had given him a list of names she’d gleaned during her time in River’s End. Del McClintock was the first on the list, and he began there.
A simple internet search came up with nothing of interest, but internet searches were child’s play. Everybody had a footprint. The key was figuring out where to look. And one of the most useful things he’d learned in the cybersecurity classes he’d taken over the past couple of years with the FBI was exactly where to look.
* * *
GUILT TASTED LIKE ASHES, smoky and bitter. The flavor burned her nose and brought stinging tears to her eyes that spilled down her cheeks in hot streaks.
She’d done her job. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation had acted on the tip she’d given them, the tip she’d gotten from Jeff Burwell.
Now she had to figure out how to say goodbye to Jeff and the kids without telling them the truth—she’d never been just their housekeeper.
She’d been a spy, taking advantage of the family’s vulnerability to find out what the Blue Ridge Infantry was up to in the little town of Thurlow Gap, Tennessee.
“They’re not going to know who gave us the information,” her handler, Martin Friedman, had assured her earlier that day when they’d met at a truck stop out of town. “You can stick around the farm another two or three weeks, just so nobody gets suspicious, then turn in your notice.”
“Then what?” she’d asked, feeling strangely empty.
“Then we’ll find a new assignment for you. You’ve been a big asset. The higher-ups won’t forget it.”
She should have felt pleased with herself. The TBI certainly seemed to be pleased with her.
But all she’d felt was sick.
The farmhouse was quiet. Jeff was in town visiting his mother, who’d been feeling poorly for the past few days. The kids were asleep upstairs in their bedrooms. Nicki had been trying to read for an hour, but her mind kept wandering back to the choices she’d made in the past few months.
She could almost smell the ashes of regret.
She sat up straighter, opening her eyes.
That wasn’t regret.
That was fire.
The darkness outside had taken on an eerie glow. She hurried to the closest window and pushed aside the curtain, her heart skipping a beat as she saw flames edging close to the house, the edges blurred by a miasma of thick smoke.
The winter had been dry. Too dry.
As she started toward the stairs, the front door opened and Jeff Burwell rushed inside, his dark eyes wild and his face and clothes smudged with soot.
“The house is on fire!” he shouted, pushing past her up the stairs.
Her knees buckled beneath her, and she grabbed for the back of the rocker, her heart pounding with dread.
“Nicki!” Jeff called from the top of the stairs.
But flames rose up, surrounding her.
Scorching her.
It took a moment to realize the fire came from inside her own body.
“Nicki?”
Nicki woke with a cry, bolting upright in the bed, her galloping pulse thundering in her head.
The bed shifted beside her, and strong arms wrapped around her body, pulling her close. “It’s okay,” Dallas’s voice rumbled in her ear. “It’s just a dream.”
She pressed her forehead in the curve of his neck, gulping deep breaths until her heart rate settled down to a canter. “It wasn’t a dream.”
“Yes, it was. Everything’s okay.” He threaded his fingers through her hair, drawing her head back until she was gazing up at him in the dim half-light of the bedroom. Light filtered in from the front of the house, obscuring half of his face in shadow, but the determined look in his dark eyes was unmistakable.
Her knight in shining armor, she thought, swallowing a smile.
Who said they didn’t exist?
“I’m okay,” she assured him, but he didn’t let her go, his thumbs drawing soothing circles on either side of her chin.
&n
bsp; “You were moaning. I heard you all the way down the hall.”
“Like you said, just a dream.” His touch felt like a brand, burning all the way to her soul, the intensity of sensation reminding her strangely of her dream and the feeling that the fire that effectively destroyed Jeff Burwell’s life had started somewhere inside her.
She pulled away, rising from the bed and crossing to the window. For a moment, the world outside seemed to be on fire, as if an afterimage of her dream lingered. But the mirage of hazy flames subsided, leaving behind only the moonlit winter woods.
“You said it wasn’t a dream. What did you mean?”
She sighed. “Nothing. I guess I wasn’t quite awake yet.”
“Come on, Nicki. It wasn’t nothing.”
“I was just dreaming about the fire.” She turned to look at him. “The one in Tennessee.”
“When you were working for the TBI?”
She nodded. “I’d just met with my handler and he’d told me the job was done. They’d thwarted the plot against the conservation officers and I could leave the Burwell farm soon.”
“You’d saved lives.”
“I’d betrayed people who trusted me.” She turned back to the window, remembering her encounter with Del McClintock. “It seems to be what I’m good at.”
“Are you regretting your choice to come here?”
She shook her head. “No. Del McClintock isn’t Jeff Burwell. He’s a very bad guy with very bad intentions. All of those men I’m dealing with these days deserve everything they get.”
“But there’s something still troubling you.”
She pressed her forehead against the cold windowpane. “They have families. Wives and women. Kids. Most of those women depend entirely on their men for their sustenance. Some of them can barely read and write. Not many of them have job skills that would give them a chance to get the hell out of this place and make a better life for themselves and their kids.”
“So you’re supposed to just let their men get away with murder?”
“Of course not.” Her breath had made a foggy patch of condensation on the window. She lifted her fingers and wiped it away. “There just aren’t any winners here.”
She felt him walk up behind her, his body a comforting wall of heat against her back. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his cheek against her temple. “No, I guess there aren’t.”
She leaned back against him, taking comfort in his closeness. The sense of vulnerability should have scared her, but it didn’t. It felt...right.
Now that scared her. But not enough to compel her to move away.
“How’s Operation Computer Geek going out there?”
“All set up.”
She glanced at her watch. It was only a little after midnight. She’d figure he’d be up for hours getting the system going. “That’s fast.”
“Not really. Want to see it at work?”
Part of her did. But the other part wanted to stay right where she was, safely wrapped in his warm embrace. She went with that part. “Maybe in the morning.”
“Just so you know, I’ve set it up so that it’s easily hidden in a matter of seconds. I can show you tomorrow, in case you ever have to stash it away quickly.”
That was good thinking, she realized, considering their recent home invasion. “Are you sure it’s something a techno-troglodyte like me can handle?”
He laughed in her ear. “Yes.”
They fell silent as they gazed out the window at the woods, their breathing settling into harmony until she had the strangest feeling that she couldn’t tell where her body ended and his began.
When a sharp pounding noise from the front of the house shattered the silent communion, it rattled her all the way to her bones.
Her heart instantly racing again, she jerked free of his grasp and turned to look at him. “That’s someone at the door. You need to hide. Now.”
“I’ve got to get the computer equipment.”
Damn it. “Fine. Then you hide.”
The banging noise continued as she led him into the front room. “Make it quick,” she whispered, but he was already disengaging cords and packing equipment into the backpack from which it had come.
“Hide where?” he whispered as he zipped the bag.
“The cellar.”
He shot her an odd look, drawing heat to her cheeks as she remembered his last visit to her cellar. But he slung the backpack over his shoulder and disappeared down the hall.
The pounding on the door grew louder. “Nicki!” The voice on the other side belonged to Keith Pickett. He sounded drunk and scared.
“Coming!” she called, listening for the sound of the cellar door shutting. When she heard the soft click, she hurried to the door and turned the key in the lock.
Keith stood outside, looking pale and sick. His eyes were bloodshot and there was blood on his jeans.
A lot of blood.
“I think I’ve killed her,” he said, his voice slurred and pitiful.
Nicki’s heart skipped a beat. “Kaylie?”
“She’s bleedin’ all over the place. I didn’t even hit her that hard.”
“Where is she?” Her sluggish brain tried to catch up, tried to gather up all the scattered pieces of her thoughts into something coherent. She needed supplies, to start with. The first-aid kit in her bathroom would have to do.
“She’s out in the truck!”
She stared at him in horror. “You drove her here?”
“She’s dyin’ and she kept sayin’ you’d know what to do.”
It was a miracle they’d made it up the mountain road alive, as drunk as Keith was. “Stay right here—let me get my kit.”
She hurried back to the bathroom, taking a quick look around as she went to make sure she and Dallas hadn’t left anything incriminating in the den. Her heart skipped a beat when she realized the extra pillow and blankets were out on the sofa, but she shoved the worry aside. He was drunk and probably wouldn’t remember much of this night at all by morning.
She grabbed her kit and followed Keith’s weaving path out to his battered Chevy Tahoe. The passenger door was open and Kaylie was bent forward, vomiting on the gravel.
Keith hadn’t been lying. There was a lot of blood, staining the lap of her cotton housedress and spilling down her legs onto the truck’s running board.
Her face was bruised, her lip bloodied. The son of a bitch had been hitting her.
“Did you hit her in the stomach?” she growled at Keith.
“No, I swear I didn’t.”
“He didn’t,” Kaylie growled between heaves. Nothing was coming out now but she couldn’t seem to stop retching.
There was no choice. She pulled out her phone and dialed 911.
Keith grabbed her arm, trying to pull the phone away. “What the hell are you doin’?”
She jerked her arm free. “Saving her life. And keeping your ass off death row.” She heard the dispatcher answer and quickly gave her address. “I have an injured, pregnant woman in trouble,” she said, her gaze drawn to the puddle of blood pooling on the gravel beneath Kaylie’s feet. Her heart sank to the pit of her stomach as she opened her kit and pulled out a pair of surgical gloves. “Get an ambulance here, stat!”
Chapter Eleven
The sirens had come and gone, and above Dallas’s hiding place in the cellar, the house had grown silent. Without a watch or any way to gauge the passage of time, he was beginning to grow restless and panicked.
The frantic sound of a man’s voice had carried all the way down to the cellar, but whoever had been banging on the front door had retreated moments later, and all had been silent for a long while.
Then came the sirens. They’d died away for a few minutes, then fired up again and beg
an to fade into the distance.
And still, he waited.
He was certain more than an hour had passed before he finally heard the sound of footsteps on the floorboards overhead. Slow, deliberate steps moving closer until he heard the cellar door rattle open.
“You can come up.” Nicki’s voice sounded hoarse and tired.
He climbed the steps, meeting her at the top. She leaned against the wall across from him, purple shadows bruising the skin under her eyes. There was blood streaked on her jeans and the hem of her sweater, and her arms from the wrists up were similarly stained.
He looked her over, trying to find the source of the blood, but she didn’t seem to be injured. “Are you okay?” he asked, his heart thumping painfully against his sternum.
She looked down at her red-stained arms. “I need a shower.”
“Whose blood is that?”
“A woman I know. She was pregnant.”
“Was?”
“I don’t know if she still is. I don’t see how she could be.” She walked down the hall to the bathroom and entered, leaving the door open.
He followed, standing in the doorway as she turned on the tap and washed her arms in the sink. “Miscarriage?”
“Of a sort.”
“What does that mean?”
She soaped her skin up to her elbows liberally, the suds turning pink as they dripped into the sink. “Her man hits her. He didn’t admit it, but I think he hit her in the abdomen tonight.”
“Bastard.”
She nodded solemnly. “That’s the sheriff’s problem now.”
“I heard sirens.”
“That was the ambulance. The deputies came in lights on but siren off.” She rinsed off the soap and examined her arms closely, frowning. She grabbed the soap and lathered up again.
“The last thing you needed, huh? The cops nosing around?”
She rinsed off the soap again. “I’m hoping they won’t hold it against me. It’s not like I asked to be involved in this mess.”
“Why’d they come to you?”
“I told you, I took pains to build myself a reputation as the go-to person when someone in the BRI had a medical issue.”
