Blue Ridge Ricochet

by Paula Graves

  Heart pounding, she met him halfway.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dallas fought the urge to scoop her up and carry her straight back to the bedroom, though the temptation was almost beyond his ability to resist. She was warm and soft, the scent of her a heady combination of sweet and tangy, stoking a level of sexual hunger he hadn’t felt in ages.

  And maybe if sex was all he wanted from her, he wouldn’t have tried to slow things down.

  But he needed more than just two bodies coming together to scratch an itch. She was his lifeline, and he had a feeling that, in a lot of ways, he was hers. That level of trust, of need, was a fragile thing.

  He couldn’t break it, no matter how much he wanted her.

  Still, the urge to kiss her was beyond his ability to resist, especially when she rose to her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, drawing him down to her. Her lips glided against his, lightly at first, nipping and teasing him until his head began to spin.

  Then she ran the tip of her tongue against the seam of his lips, urging them apart. He deepened the kiss, relishing the sweet heat of her tongue against his, the intimacy of her hands exploring the contours of his chest.

  Only when she dipped her hands under the hem of his shirt and started to push it upward did he catch her hands and hold her away from him, taking a few deep, harsh breaths to get himself back under control.

  She gazed at him with desire-drunk eyes. “You’re not like any man I’ve ever tried to seduce, Dallas Cole.”

  “Is that good or bad?” he asked.

  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 the soft curve of her belly pressed against his sex. “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.”

  She nodded. “It does.”

  “I’ve just found out someone I’ve worked with for years is dead, and it might be connected to the trouble I’ve gotten myself into.” He took another step back, turning away from her soft gaze before he lost sight of his good sense. “It would be easy to let myself get caught up in you, as a way of forgetting my grief for my friend.”

  “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.

  “I don’t want you to feel used by me,” he clarified firmly.

  An odd light shone in her eyes. “I wouldn’t. But I get it.”

  “And I’m not saying no forever.”

  “Good.” Smiling, she crossed back to the stove and picked up a slotted spatula. “You still up for dinner?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled back at her. “Can I do anything to help?”

  “There are glasses over the sink and a pitcher of iced tea in the fridge.” She gave an apologetic shrug. “I don’t keep wine or beer in the house. Alcoholism runs in the family, so I’ve learned to just steer clear.”

  “Tea is great. Sweet, I hope?”

  She shot him a look. “Is there any other kind?”

  He found the glasses and filled them with ice from the freezer before pouring the tea. “Lemon?”

  “Please.” She pointed to the half a lemon lying on the cutting board near the stove.

  He sliced the lemon into wedges and added one to each of their drinks. By the time he found the flatware drawer, she’d plated up the trout fillets and the green salad and placed them on the table.

  They ate for a few minutes in comfortable silence. The trout was delicious, cooked to a delicate flakiness that rivaled anything Dallas had eaten in any of the fancier restaurants in Washington. “How long have you been cooking?” he asked a few minutes later.

  “Since I was a kid.” A smile played at her lips. “When I was younger, my life was pure chaos. I had to fend for myself a lot, and cooking was something I could control. If we had food in the house, I could make my own meal. I found comfort in being able to feed myself that way. It made me feel less vulnerable, not having to depend on my mother to put food on the table. Because when she was drunk or high, she’d forget to eat for days at a time, and she certainly wasn’t thinking about me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not a good life for a kid, but it made me tough. I don’t regret those life lessons. I’ve survived because of them.”

  He reached across the table. “Survival isn’t enough.”

  “Sometimes it has to be.”

  “I want more than survival.” He held on to her hand, brushed his thumb across her knuckles. “I want more for you.”

  When she looked up at him, her eyes were damp. “Thank you.”

  He knew he should stop while he was ahead, but the anxiety eating away at his insides wouldn’t allow him to remain silent. “Nicki, I know you’ve worked hard to get in a position to go inside the BRI. But what you’re about to do could get you killed.”

  She dropped her fork and put her other hand over his. “Walking out the door can get you killed. Pulling your car onto the road can get you killed.”

  “Don’t be flippant.”

  “I’m not. I’m just being realistic. Life is a risk. All of it. I could play it safe and still die in a senseless accident on any given day. Then what good would my life have been?”

  “So this is your way of living a life of meaning?”

  “I guess it is.”

  He wanted to argue, but he understood her feelings. One of the reasons he’d decided to train for a position in the FBI’s cybersecurity division was to do something more significant with his life than putting together recruiting packets and public relations pamphlets.

  “I’m going into this with my eyes wide-open,” she said when he didn’t respond. “I am. I know the danger I’m getting into. But I’m the right person to do this job. You know I am.”

  As much as he’d like to deny it, she was right. She’d managed to put herself in the right place at the right time to get closer to the top of the Blue Ridge Infantry than anyone had managed before. “How did you manage it? How did Quinn know you’d be the right person?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I think it helps that I come from the hills, just like they do. I know what life here can be like, and I understand the struggles and frustrations that make them feel so powerless that they think the only way to control their lives is to take drastic steps like joining a militia. I get them, way more than I like to admit.” Her voice lowered to a raspy half whisper. “I was them, in a lot of ways for a lot of years.”

  He’d gotten out of Harlan County young enough to escape the worst of that sort of desperation, in large part thanks to a high school teacher who’d seen his potential. He knew he was very fortunate.

  It hurt to think of Nicki having to fight her way out of the poverty and desperation on her own, but it was a powerful testament to her inner decency that she’d managed to find her way back to a sense of purpose.

  Even if that purpose was about to put her life in grave danger.

  “Did you leave a message for Quinn about your breakthrough?” He poked at the remainder of his trout, his appetite long gone.

  “Yes. I’m hoping he’ll be able to get a message back to me before my meeting tomorrow.” She nodded at his food. “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s delicious. I’m just not as hungry as I thought.”

  She smiled, her expression sympathetic. “Worried about me?”

  “Yeah
. Is that allowed?”

  “It’s appreciated.” She reached across the table and brushed her fingers over his. “Want to get out of here later tonight?”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Out in the open?”

  “Up the mountain.” She nodded her head toward the hill rising behind the cabin. “I thought I’d check the drop site before bedtime. I know it might be too early, but I can use the exercise. How about you?”

  He realized what she was offering, the level of trust in him to which she was admitting. “You’re going to let me see your dead drop?”

  “This is about your life now, as much as it’s about mine.” She drew her hand back and rose, picking up her plate. “I’ll put the leftovers up so you’ll have something to eat tomorrow while I’m at my meeting.”

  He followed her with his own plate. “Do you think they’ll want you to go right away? If you end up getting hired to be this guy’s caretaker.”

  “I’d have to come back and pack.”

  He felt a flicker of relief. He’d get one more chance to talk her out of it, then. Not that he thought he’d be successful.

  She was a headstrong woman. It was one of her charms.

  “How’s the computer magic coming?” she asked as she put the leftover food into containers for the refrigerator.

  “Slowly,” he admitted. “I’m trying not to leave any traces of my intrusions.”

  “Have you been successful?”

  “I don’t know. I think so, mostly. It’s not really possible to intrude on a secure network without leaving some traces, but you try to leave them in places where most people wouldn’t think to look. And it’s not like the networks I’m looking through are going to be monitored carefully for a breach in the areas I’m targeting.”

  “What if they are?”

  “They’ll still have to be smart and lucky to catch it.”

  He didn’t tell her where he was looking for clues. Breaching the FBI’s network was dangerous as hell, and she’d probably be about as happy about the risks he was taking as he was about her meeting tomorrow with Del McClintock and his boss.

  But he needed to know Crandall’s secret connections. He needed a way to prove the AD was crooked if he was ever going to be able to clear his good name. If it meant taking big risks, well, Nicki wasn’t the only person who was willing to put her neck on the line for a life of meaning.

  * * *

  JOHN BARTHOLOMEW HAD lived in a modest but comfortable apartment in Abingdon, Virginia, for the past few months while he worked as a security consultant by day and glorified errand boy by night. The money wasn’t great, but if he wanted a job that paid well, he’d have stuck to accounting.

  He’d wanted a job that had meaning. The kind of job he’d had once, the kind of job he’d been forced to leave behind.

  He’d been a good spy, while it lasted. He had the sort of face people didn’t seem to remember once he’d passed from their field of sight. Average height, average build, hair that was neither black nor blond but somewhere in between, darker in the winter and lighter in the summer. He was neither fair-skinned nor olive-skinned, his eyes neither blue nor brown but a sort of murky hazel that shifted with his mood.

  If he had possessed a criminal bent, he probably could have gotten away with any number of crimes, because nobody would have remembered what he looked like when all was said and done.

  Only his speech drew people’s attention, the mountain twang of his eastern Tennessee roots he’d never quite been able to lose. Here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he fit in almost like a native. Being nondescript was an asset in his business.

  Nobody seemed to notice when he left his apartment shortly after sunset and drove to a scenic overlook on Bellwether Road, where he left his truck and started hiking up the mountainside to the drop site.

  He left the note from Alexander Quinn with a minimum of fuss before hurrying down the mountain as quickly as he’d climbed it. On his way back to Abingdon, he stopped at a convenience store for a six-pack of beer and was back in his apartment, sock-clad feet propped on his coffee table, before nine o’clock. If anyone had noticed him leave or arrive, they weren’t likely to be curious about it. Who didn’t go for a beer run now and then?

  Window shades down, TV turned up, he pulled the note Nicki had left him earlier that day from his pocket and read the scrawled message again.

  She had finally set up a meeting with their mark, which meant that the scrappy girl from Ridge County, Tennessee, had managed to disarm the notoriously suspicious Blue Ridge Infantry crew where dozens of men before her had failed.

  Or had she? Was her planned meeting with Del McClintock and his mysterious boss really just another test of her trustworthiness?

  The most dangerous test of all?

  She would check the drop site before tomorrow, which meant she’d find Alexander Quinn’s instructions before her meeting. Like Agent X, Quinn seemed wary of trusting this stroke of fortune, as well.

  He opened one of the beers and took a sip, reminding himself there was only so much of this operation that he could control. It was a fact that he sometimes found very hard to take. For a man who craved action, who longed for an occupation with real meaning, the hardest part of his job was what he was currently doing.

  Sitting and waiting.

  * * *

  THE NIGHT AIR was cold and sharp, but it felt ridiculously good as it filled Dallas’s lungs. The trek up the mountain left him winded and tired, but he made it without collapsing, something he wouldn’t have been able to accomplish only a few days earlier. The physical remnants of his ordeal with the Blue Ridge Infantry had mostly faded from his body over the past few days. Only the psychic scars remained.

  Those, he suspected, might take a while to disappear.

  But reaching the small cave near the top of the mountain ridge felt like a victory, so he enjoyed it as well as he could while gasping for breath.

  “You still hanging in there?” Nicki asked as he leaned against the cold stone wall of the cave’s exterior.

  He nodded, too winded to reply.

  She brushed her hand down his arm as she passed him and entered the dark cave, disappearing from his sight. She emerged a moment later and nodded at him. “You need to rest a little longer?”

  He wanted to say no, but the truth was, he needed to sit for a moment, let his flagging body catch up with his stubborn will. He nodded at the fallen log nearby, which she’d turned onto its side before entering the cave. “I take it that log means something?”

  “It’s our signal. He turns it up. I turn it down. Sit there if you need to.”

  He sat on the fallen tree trunk. “Did you read the note?”

  Nodding, she sat next to him, keeping her voice low. “Quinn is worried this might be another test. He said I shouldn’t assume I’m in yet.”

  “He’s right.”

  “I know.” She scooted over until their bodies touched, leaning her head against his shoulder. He put his arm around her, keeping her close.

  “It’s not too late to back out if you want to.”

  She sighed, her breath condensing in the cold night air, rising in whorls of vapor. “I can’t back out. Not when we’re so close.”

  “What if he wants you to move in with him?”

  “I’m assuming that’s exactly what he’ll want.” She sat up, looking at him. “It’s what we want, too. To get that close, to be right there on the inside, gathering information—it’s why I came here.”

  “How am I going to know if you’re okay?”

  “You won’t. Not right away.” She took his hand and held it. Her fingers were cold but the warmth of her enveloped him, anyway, driving away the chill of the night. “Maybe we should arrange for Quinn to extract you. He can put you in one of our safe houses in Tennessee
.”

  “I don’t know Quinn. I don’t trust him.” He met her gaze, his heart throbbing heavily in his chest. “I trust you.”

  “Then stay in my cabin, the way we planned.” She rose to her feet, tugging him up from the log. “Ready to go home?”

  Home, he thought bleakly as he fell in step with her as they headed back down the mountain.

  The cabin wouldn’t feel like home once she was gone.

  * * *

  THE KNOCK ON the front door came late in the evening, as Philip Crandall was preparing for bed. His wife, Melinda, preferred life on their horse farm in Fairfax County, so he kept an apartment in the city during the week and commuted on weekends.

  He rarely had visitors at the apartment, and never from people at the Bureau, which meant one of two things. Either the person at his door had the wrong apartment—or his trip to the diner in Arlington had produced results sooner than he’d anticipated.

  When he opened the door to a young man dressed in a bright red polo shirt emblazoned with a pizza chain logo, he first assumed it was the former, a pizza delivery to the wrong apartment.

  But when he looked into the familiar blue eyes of the diner barista who’d taken his note with the twenty that afternoon, he realized his error.

  “Pizza delivery,” the young man said. “That’ll be fifteen dollars.”

  “I only have a twenty,” Crandall said.

  The young man smiled. “I can make change.”

  Crandall pulled out his wallet and handed over the twenty. The man returned a folded five to him and gave him the pizza box. “Enjoy, sir.”

  Crandall closed the door and locked it, then carried the pizza box to the coffee table. He sat and looked at the closed pizza box, his heart suddenly pounding.

  Surely the man wouldn’t have come all the way out here if the news wasn’t significant. Would he?

  Remembering the way he’d delivered his request earlier that day at the diner, Crandall unfolded the five-dollar bill. Inside, he found a small square of paper with four words written on it: check under the pizza.

  He stared down at the pizza box, suddenly tense. He hadn’t yet experienced any difficulties in dealing with the men he had chosen to be his unlikely comrades, but he’d always known that aligning himself with them held inherent risks. There could come a time, at any moment, when they decided he was no longer of any use to them.