Blue Ridge Ricochet

by Paula Graves

  John spoke up, his expression alarmed. “Why’s that?”

  “Because,” Quinn answered in a voice as sharp as shattered glass, “the Blue Ridge Infantry has somehow figured out Nicki is an undercover operative.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The radio in Del’s Silverado was cranked up high, tuned to a satellite station playing headbanging metal so loudly that Nicki couldn’t think. She stole a look at Del, who was drumming the frenetic bass line on the steering wheel as he drove about twenty miles an hour over the speed limit.

  She supposed once a man decided to get involved with domestic terrorism, speed laws posed no particular impediment to his whims.

  “How much farther?” she asked, having to raise her voice over the radio. They’d been driving for nearly twenty minutes, moving deeper into the mountains as they left River’s End behind. She hadn’t ventured this far into the mountains in her time in River’s End, so she wasn’t really sure exactly where they were going.

  “Not far,” he answered, flashing her a smile that made the skin on the back of her neck prickle.

  Something wasn’t right. She couldn’t point to any one thing that raised her suspicions, but all of her instincts were telling her that she needed to proceed with extreme caution.

  She couldn’t demand that Del turn the truck around and head back to River’s End, not without throwing away everything she’d worked for. But she intended to move forward on high alert. The first minute anything started to go sideways, she had to have a plan of escape.

  She wasn’t armed. She’d grown up with an aversion to firearms, given her mother’s steady stream of well-armed boyfriends who thought nothing of scaring the hell out of a little girl who got in their way. Alexander Quinn had insisted on training her how to use a weapon in case she ever had to, but she always hoped like hell she’d never have to.

  She was beginning to rethink her position on guns, however, the deeper into the woods Del drove her.

  “Is this where your friend lives?” she asked, peering through the windshield at the thickening woods. In this part of the mountains, what houses and buildings existed sparsely dotted a landscape of untamed acres of dense woodlands where evergreens outnumbered hardwoods.

  It would be easy to get lost in these woods, she thought, her skin prickling madly. Lost and gone forever.

  A dirt road crossed the road ahead, and finally the Silverado slowed, preparing to turn. Nicki eyed the narrow dirt road with apprehension. Just how far back in the woods did Del’s boss live?

  Once on the dirt road, Del was forced to drive with considerably more care, the ruts and bumps putting the truck’s shocks to a grueling test. The jouncing and bucking didn’t do much to calm Nicki’s suddenly jangling nerves, but she tried to remain steady, at least outwardly.

  Del was taking her to meet the man she’d been trying to meet since she first showed up in River’s End. It was happening faster than anybody had hoped. That was good news, right?

  So why didn’t it feel like good news?

  “Almost there,” Del said, his mouth curving in a broad smile.

  Something about that smile set Nicki’s teeth on edge. Maybe because it looked feral and hungry.

  Like a predator with his eyes on the prize.

  * * *

  “THEY’VE STOPPED.” Dallas darted a quick look at John Bartholomew. The other man drove with an enviable combination of skill and speed, eating up the distance between their location and the blinking red dot on the GPS locator map.

  “Address?” John asked.

  “It’s not really an address. It’s not even a road, as far as I can tell.” Dallas peered at the tablet, trying to zoom in for a better look. “The last road they were on seems to be Partlow Road. Heading east in the general direction of Saltville.”

  John released a quiet sigh. “I should have anticipated this.”

  “Yeah,” Dallas agreed in a tight growl. “You should’ve.”

  “She wanted to do this work,” John added, glancing toward Dallas. “She asked Quinn for the chance. Did you know that?”

  “I know she was involved in an incident where the BRI attacked someone she was working for.”

  “Someone she was informing on,” John corrected. “Burned him out of house and home. Nearly killed his kids.”

  “She said that guy wasn’t really involved with the BRI.”

  “He wasn’t. But she didn’t know that when she signed up to inform on him.”

  Dallas glared at the other man. “Your point?”

  “My point is, this ain’t her first rodeo.” John’s tone flattened into a drawl. “She knew what she agreed to when she took this job. No point in arguing about whether she should have been undercover in the first place. She chose to do it and now she’s in serious trouble. Quinn can’t get backup here for another few hours, so it’s up to the two of us to get her out of there alive. Are you with me or not?”

  “Of course, I’m with you.” He turned his attention to the GPS tracking program on the tablet. “My guess is, they turned off on a drive or road that’s not marked on the GPS map.”

  John waved his hand toward the GPS navigation system built into the dashboard of his truck. “Can you feed the last four coordinates into that?”

  “Sure.” Dallas entered the coordinates. “Once we get to number three, we need to start looking for a turnoff on the left.”

  They fell silent as the GPS intoned the directions for the first set of coordinates. After a few moments, John asked, “What sort of physical condition are you in?”

  Dallas looked up, surprised. “Not top form, but I’m in a hell of a lot better shape than I was a few days ago.”

  “You were their captive.” It wasn’t a question.

  “For about three weeks.”

  “Any idea where?”

  Dallas gave it some thought. “Couldn’t have been too far from here, actually. As soon as I escaped, I headed west. I ended up falling flat on my face somewhere in the mountains.”

  “On Bellwether Road,” John murmured, his tone thoughtful.

  Dallas looked down at the tablet, scanning the GPS tracker map. Looking a little closer, he located Bellwether Road.

  Due west of the spot where the red dot indicated Nicki’s current position.

  Panic tightened his gut. “Do you think they’ve taken her to the place where they were holding me?”

  “Not sure,” John admitted. “It’s just interesting. Don’t you think?”

  Interesting wasn’t the word Dallas would have used. Terrifying seemed more appropriate. “We can’t just drive in there, you know. If that really is the place where they were keeping me, there are armed thugs everywhere.”

  “We’ll have to go on foot. Figure something out when we get closer and have some idea what we’re up against.”

  As Dallas started to respond, the GPS navigation program announced their arrival at their first set of coordinates and gave directions to the next spot on the map.

  “What can you remember about the place where you were held captive?” John asked.

  “It’s in the woods. Up in the hills. There was a cabin, but that’s not where they kept me. Not far from the cabin, they had a root cellar built into the ground. They stuck me down there. They had shackles screwed into the cinder block walls. Like a damn dungeon.” He shuddered at the memory. “I wonder how many men they’ve kept in that place over the years.”

  “They have other places like that,” John said. “Not just here in Virginia.”

  “I know. Nicki told me Cade Landry spent some time chained up in a basement in some cabin down in Tennessee.”

  “That’s what I hear,” John said quietly. “Is this going to be too much for you? If we get there and it’s the same place?”

  It wa
s a fair question, Dallas had to admit. Even now, his gut ached with apprehension at the thought of being back in that place. He could still feel the dank chill, the smell of mold and sweat and fear. The darkness, at times, had been a living thing, every bit as threatening as the gun-toting men with beards who’d enforced his captivity.

  No, he didn’t want to go back there ever again. He didn’t want to relive a single one of those memories.

  But if that’s where they were taking Nicki, he’d do it. Because the only thing that scared him more than what he’d already been through was the thought of never seeing her again.

  * * *

  ONCE UPON A TIME, in what seemed a lifetime ago, Nicolette Destiny Jamison had thought the world was a place full of infinite possibilities. She’d always had a flair for the dramatic, and at the age of seven, the inescapable facts of a foolish, alcoholic mother who made bad choices and the total absence of a father in her life had seemed little more than the melodramatic trappings of her life story.

  She was going to be somebody. Someone important. Someone beautiful and elegant, a secret princess who would emerge from her chrysalis—a word she’d learned that very day at school—and wow the world with her shiny, rainbow-colored wings.

  Then she’d stumbled on the body in the woods. It was a man, or at least, she thought it must have been, from the grimy, tattered remains of his clothing. There were hands, bloated and discolored. Shoes that could barely contain the gas-swollen girth of his feet. And his face—what the insects and wildlife had done to his face had fueled nightmares for months.

  And in those nightmares, she’d come to the grim realization that princesses didn’t come from the hills and hollows of Ridge County, Tennessee. Drug addicts and alcoholics did. People who killed other people over women or money or just a bad mood and left them to rot in the woods.

  Nothing she could do, or dream, or scheme, was ever going to change that fact.

  Nicki Jamison had given up her dreams for a long, long time. Until she met Jeff Burwell and his three little kids.

  It wasn’t that she’d fallen in love with him. She hadn’t. Not in any romantic way. But in Jeff she’d found someone who’d come from the hills, just as she had. Someone who’d made the life he loved, tilling the soil, tending it with the same sort of love and patience with which he reared his three motherless children. He wasn’t a storybook prince, but he was living a life of meaning and joy, even in the face of his lingering grief.

  She’d started to believe again that she could have that kind of life for herself. Maybe she wouldn’t be a princess with iridescent wings. Maybe she wouldn’t charm a prince into undying love and devotion.

  But her life could mean something. It didn’t have to be an endless series of misadventures and mistakes. She could be happy if she could just find something she loved as much as Jeff loved his family and his farm.

  When the Blue Ridge Infantry had burned his dream to the ground, she had taken it personally. She’d grieved his loss deeply because in a way, it had been her loss, as well.

  The loss of hope for that future of happiness.

  She hadn’t heard from Jeff since the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation had hurried her out of Thurlow Gap, safely away from the men who’d taken their devastating revenge on the man they considered a traitor. The TBI wouldn’t give her any updates, even when she’d asked. Her TBI handler, Martin, had stopped taking her calls finally, leaving an underling to tell her to stop calling and move on with her life.

  She just hadn’t known how to do that. Not until she’d met Alexander Quinn and talked him into giving her a job.

  A purpose.

  Beside her in the Silverado, Del McClintock had begun humming off-key along with the radio, but his lips were still curled in a half smile that gave her the creeps.

  Wait it out, she told herself, even as she started taking furtive looks around the truck cab for something she could turn into a weapon if she started to lose control of the situation.

  But the cab was clutter-free. There wasn’t even an ice scraper in sight.

  Through the trees ahead, she saw what looked like the corner edge of a cabin. Thirty yards later, the entire cabin came into view.

  Four men stood in front of the cabin, armed with rifles. They weren’t aiming at the approaching truck, at least, Nicki thought, swallowing a nervous giggle. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

  “Expecting trouble?” she asked Del, turning to look at him.

  Her gaze never made it to his face, locking instead on the barrel of the big black pistol he held pointed at her heart. “Sugar, you’ve got trouble written all over your pretty face.”

  “I don’t understand.” Nicki stared at the pistol and tried not to let her brain get too far ahead of her fear. If she was the innocent woman she was pretending to be, she’d be freaking out entirely.

  Sort of exactly the way she was freaking out.

  “Did you think we wouldn’t figure it out, Nicki?” Del’s predatory smile widened. “Do you think you’re dealing with a bunch of stupid hicks?”

  “Figure out what?” She couldn’t even make a run for it, surrounded as they were by men with rifles. And it wasn’t as if she could get out of the truck before Del shot her dead, anyway. He was too close to miss.

  “You’re working for the cops, aren’t you?”

  She stared at him, genuinely dumbfounded. He thought she was working for the cops? What the hell? “What are you talking about?”

  “One of our guys dropped by the diner the other day during your shift. He kept thinking he recognized you, and it finally came to him. You were Nicki Geralds, the woman who worked for his cousin down in Thurlow Gap, Tennessee.”

  Nicki Geralds had been the pseudonym she’d used when she was working for Jeff Burwell. “Are you talking about Jeff?”

  Del looked surprised. “You’re admitting it?”

  “I worked as a housekeeper and nanny for a guy named Jeff Burwell after his wife died. I wasn’t there long—there was a fire—”

  “Nicki Geralds?”

  “My married name,” she lied. “I was still using it then, even though the divorce was almost final.”

  For a moment, Del looked uncertain. “You were married before?”

  “Yes.”

  “You never mentioned that.”

  She frowned. “It wasn’t a happy marriage. He was a serial cheater. And he treated me like garbage. I don’t like talking about that time in my life. It’s embarrassing and painful.” She frowned at the pistol still pointing at her chest. “Please put that down. You’re really st-starting to scare me.”

  He didn’t lower the pistol, but he shifted it to his left, the barrel now pointing toward the dashboard instead. “Darby said the boys in Tennessee were all sure you were just playing Jeff. Trying to get him to turn his back on his kin and inform on them to the FBI.”

  She tried not to react, but this was the first she’d heard that anyone had even suspected her time with Jeff Burwell had been anything but aboveboard. “That’s crazy. My God, Del, the FBI? Do you know what kind of thugs work for the FBI? We’ve talked about this, haven’t we?”

  “Was it just talk?” His look of uncertainty shifted to suspicion, and she realized she was starting to lose him again. “What did you and your FBI buddies do, profile me? One of those militia nuts, right? Bitch about the government, flash him a pretty smile, wear a tight-cut blouse and painted-on jeans, and the stupid backwoods hick’ll buy anything you’re tryin’ to sell.” His voice rose to a roar. “Right?”

  The pistol barrel whipped back toward her heart.

  “No! God, Del!” She shrank back, not pretending the rush of paralyzing fear. He was furious with her now. His rage blazed in his eyes, reminding her of the inferno that had whipped across the fields that night in Thurlow Gap, whipped by the night
wind. It had spread wildly, eating up everything in its path.

  The door behind her opened, and she would have tumbled out if not for the seat belt holding her in place. A pair of arms caught her as her torso pitched backward when the door behind her back fell away.

  Del’s eyes widened, and he lowered the pistol.

  Whoever held her from behind smelled like...bacon and toast.

  She pulled away from the arms grasping her and turned to see who had caught her.

  Trevor Colley stood in the open door, a faint smile curving his lips. “Surprised to see me?”

  She stared at him, her mind reeling. What was the diner manager doing out here in the middle of this mess? “I don’t understand.”

  He shook his head. “Your problem, Nicki, is that you think you know how to read people. You’re not bad at it, really. I mean, you read Del here in a heartbeat. Saw he was the one you’d have to deal with if you wanted to get anywhere around these parts, right? ’Cause he’s a little bit smarter, a little more powerful than the others. A born leader, right?”

  Her pulse thundered in her head as she stared at the man she’d worked with for months now without ever suspecting a thing. “You hate the BRI.”

  “Do I?” His smile widened. “Or is that just what I wanted you to believe?”

  “Why?” she asked. “Were you trying to set me up or something? Why would you do that? What do you want from me?” She looked from Trevor back to Del. “Is there even a friend of yours who needs medical help?”

  “There is,” Trevor answered, drawing her attention back to him. “But it’s not the leader of the BRI, sweetheart.”

  “Then who?”

  Trevor nodded toward the cabin. Following his gaze, Nicki saw the front door open and a woman exit, holding the hand of a small boy of four or five. The child was pale and thin, too thin for his gangly height, and dark circles shadowed the skin beneath his eyes.

  The woman eyed the men with rifles as she led the child to the edge of the porch. She was a tall, thin woman in her early thirties, but she looked nearly as pale and haggard as her little boy. Her red-rimmed eyes rose and locked with Nicki’s, wide with desperation.