by Paula Graves
Then she cleaned up quickly, mentally calculated how long she thought Hunter might be gone on his morning trip to Bitterwood, and got to work.
If she was right, he’d be gone no less than an hour, no more than two and a half. He’d taken his rucksack with him, she found as she looked around the front room, checking the small closet close to the fireplace as well as the big footlocker chest that doubled as a coffee table.
The closet was empty. The footlocker, on the other hand, was full. On top of the pile were a couple of spare pillows and a thermal blanket he’d probably used last night to ward off the chill while he slept on the sofa.
Below that, however, she hit pay dirt.
The first item she encountered was a set of dog tags. Bragg, Hunter M. His blood type—A positive—and a nine-digit Social Security number, no spaces or dashes. U.S. Army. Sounded right.
An Army soldier named Hunter Bragg. Why did that seem so familiar?
When the memory hit, it hit hard, spreading a hard chill through her limbs. She sank to the sofa in front of the open footlocker, clutching the dog tags so tightly they dug into her palms.
He’d been kidnapped by elements of the BRI a little over a year ago, taken captive as leverage against his sister. They’d used Hunter to blackmail the woman into drugging her boss, a prosecutor, so that the BRI could kidnap a little boy the prosecutor had been keeping under his protection.
The pictures in the newspaper had been gut-wrenching—the wounded warrior, home after a harrowing near-death experience overseas, now brutalized by homegrown thugs who’d left him battered beyond recognition. The photo of his bloodied, swollen face had won regional photography awards, if she remembered correctly, but it hadn’t been the injuries that had caught the judges’ imaginations.
It had been the expression on Hunter Bragg’s face that had elevated the snapshot to journalistic art. The photo had shown the expected pain and rage in the man’s face, of course, but beneath those obvious emotions had roiled a vortex of humiliation and disillusion. So much raw human suffering captured in the blink of a camera lens—Susannah hadn’t been able to look at the photo for long before she averted her eyes.
A creak on the wooden porch outside gave her no time to react, but as the front door opened, she reached into the footlocker and grabbed the scabbard that lay half-hidden beneath an olive-drab canteen. In a heartbeat, she’d closed her hand around the knife handle and swept it neatly from the scabbard. Light pouring through the opening door glittered on the shiny steel edge, bouncing a splash of light across Hunter’s scowling face as he slammed the door behind him.
“What the hell are you doing?”
With shaking hands, she eased the knife back into the scabbard and dropped it atop the spare blanket. “Snooping,” she admitted.
His expression hardening, he crossed to where she sat and closed the footlocker firmly. “There are people out in the woods not too far from here. Looks like they’re gathering for a search party.”
“You’re Hunter Bragg.”
He didn’t look at her, but in his darkened expression, she saw a hint of that same humiliation and disillusion that had so struck her in his photo. “There’s a place to hide in the cellar. In case anyone stumbles on this place and wants a look around.”
“Did you infiltrate the BRI for revenge?”
His eyes closed briefly, then opened slowly. He finally looked up, meeting her gaze. “Revenge rarely works the way you think it will. I prefer to think of what I’m doing as seeking justice.”
She nodded, understanding the distinction even though she wasn’t really sure there was much difference between a thirst for revenge and the willing assumption of dangerous risk Hunter was taking with the BRI.
“How did you ever talk them into letting you join? They took you hostage—”
“That’s how,” he answered. “I went to Billy Dawson and told him they could have saved themselves the trouble if they’d just come to me first. I would have gladly contributed my services to the group if they’d just let me know what they were up to.”
“And they believed you?”
“People believe what they want to. I convinced them I could be an asset. The group has been reeling ever since their leader got captured. They’re looking for a resurgence. I made them see I could be a vital part of it.”
“As a disgruntled ex-soldier?”
“Why not? They like to fashion themselves as patriots.” He shrugged. “I don’t think those searchers out there will find this place right away. They’ll probably stick to the beaten path, at least at first, and there’s supposed to be rain this afternoon, which will probably cut the search short.”
“But they’ll be back.”
“They will,” he agreed. “Somebody probably found your car in the lot at the hotel. There may have been bullet holes.”
“They’ll think someone took me and dragged me into the woods.” She couldn’t quite stop a wry smile from quirking her lips, since that was pretty much what had happened.
“I know.” He dropped onto the sofa beside her, resting his elbows on his knees. His head dipped until his chin almost reached his chest. “We need a plan.”
“You don’t have one?” she asked, alarmed. As crazy as the past several hours of her life had been, she’d assumed that Hunter had taken her here to this cabin for some purpose. But he was apparently no more certain as to what to do next than she was. “Did you think you’d just snatch me from the parking lot and wing it?”
He turned his head, slanting a dark look her way. “My goal was to get you out of there without any bullet holes in you. Get you somewhere we could hunker down for a little while and figure out the next part.”
“So this is where it’s time to figure out the next part?” She clamped down firmly on the urge to have a rip-roaring panic attack, clenching her hands together so tightly in her lap that her fingers began to tingle.
“I can’t reach my boss.”
That’s it. She was over this cryptic garbage. “And who, pray tell, is your boss?”
“The guy who runs that new private investigations agency over in Purgatory. Alexander Quinn.” He eyed her, as if he thought she might know the man he was talking about.
But the name meant nothing to her. “Is that unusual? Not being able to reach him?”
“He told me if I ever tried to contact him and couldn’t reach him, I had to assume our line of communication had been compromised.”
“What does that mean?”
He worried his lower lip with his teeth for a minute, his brow furrowed with thought. “I think we have to assume we’re on our own here, at least until Quinn finds a way to contact me.”
“And what if he doesn’t?”
“Then I have to find some way to get us to Purgatory without being caught. If I can get you to The Gates, we can figure out a plan of attack with a hell of a lot more resources than I have here.”
“What about the law-enforcement conference?” she asked, thinking about the two hundred–plus men and women who were supposed to be meeting at the hotel’s conference center wing in just about forty-eight hours. Including her cousin. “Getting me out of there, even if I’m alive, served their purposes, didn’t it? Someone will have to take my place.”
“Who would that be?” he asked.
“I guess Marcus.”
“Marcus Lemonde.”
She looked up at him. “You already knew the answer to that question before you asked it, didn’t you?”
“Call it an educated guess. I knew they were trying to remove you in order to put someone of their own inside the plans for conference security. Apparently they couldn’t get anyone inside security itself, so—”
“So they focused on the Events and Conferences office.” And Marcus Lemonde had been working with her for a little over a month—had he been in the Blue Ridge Infantry’s pocket the whole time? Or had they offered him enough money to make treachery worthwhile?
“I ran into Lemonde in t
he hall outside the meeting rooms, not long after you went in there for your meeting with security. I’d seen him around the hotel, but he’d never spoken to me before then.”
“What did he say?”
“That they’d moved up their plans. He didn’t like that I was up there on the same floor as you. I guess he thought it might make you suspicious, and since they’d decided to make their move last night—”
“I can’t believe Marcus of all people—” She wasn’t naive; life had taught her some pretty pointed lessons about just how treacherous people could be, even people who seemed as if they could be trusted.
But Marcus Lemonde seemed wholly innocuous, incapable of posing a threat. If he’d met her in that parking lot one on one, even armed, she would have bet she’d have a better-than-even chance of coming out the winner.
“Looks can be deceiving,” Hunter said quietly.
She glanced his way, taking in the shaggy, tangled hair, the day’s growth of dark beard, the sharp green eyes, and realized that less than twenty-four hours earlier, she’d actually felt pity for him, with his hangdog demeanor and limping gait.
“They can,” she agreed. “And now he’s going to be completely on the inside of the security plans for the conference.”
“Looks that way.”
She shook her head, frustration and anger swelling like a runaway tide in the center of her chest. “No way. No way in hell am I letting that slimy little turncoat weasel screw up my conference.”
Pushing to her feet, she started toward the front door of the cabin.
He caught her at the door, his grip as strong as steel. She snapped her gaze up to meet his as his grasp tightened enough to hurt. “Get your hands off me.”
He loosened his hold but didn’t let go completely. “You can’t just barge back into the hotel, Susannah. The people who want you out of the way haven’t gone away.”
“I show up, we thwart the plan. We tell the world what’s going on and not even the BRI mole on the Barrowville police force can keep us from stopping the attack on the conference.”
As she started to pull away from his grasp, he tightened his grip again. “You can’t just rush out there. If that helicopter we heard is the good guys, the bad guys will damn well be out there trying to get to you first. We’re a good three miles from anything that resembles civilization.”
“Are you suggesting I save myself at the risk of hundreds of cops who have no idea their conference is about to be blown to smithereens or whatever the hell it is your BRI idiots are planning?” she snapped, trying to jerk her arm away from his tight hold.
He cupped her chin with his free hand, forcing her to look at him. His green eyes glittered with a curious mix of determination and fear. “I’m suggesting you stop for a minute and think about your next move. If you go out there now, without a plan or any idea of what you’re up against, all you’ll be doing is making damn sure that the BRI gets rid of you as planned. And that’s not going to help anyone at that conference, is it?”
He was right. She knew he was right, and maybe if the Tri-State Law Enforcement Society gathering was any other conference, attended by any random set of cops, she wouldn’t have led with her heart instead of her head.
But it wasn’t just any conference. And at least one of the cops who’d be there in forty-eight hours wasn’t random at all.
McKenna Rigsby and her parents had taken Susannah under their protection after everything had gone wrong in Boneyard Ridge, hiding her from the Bradburys until she was able to change her name, her appearance and almost everything about her that would tie her to the tow-headed tomboy she’d been when she fled the mountains.
“My cousin is one of the cops who’ll be at the conference,” she said. “I owe her more than I could ever explain.”
The sharp look of sympathy in his evergreen eyes stung. She looked down at his hand on her arm, watched his fingers loosen and fall away.
“Okay,” he said after a stretch of silence filled only by the thud of her pulse in her ears. “We’ll figure out a way to stop this thing. But we have to have a plan. Agreed?”
She made herself open her eyes, taking in the determined set of his square jaw and the fire of conviction in his gaze. The heat of that fire swept over her, driving away the morning chill and sparking delicious blazes low in her belly.
Joining forces with a man like Hunter Bragg might be the most dangerous thing she’d ever done. And she’d done some very dangerous things in her life.
But she took a deep breath, sketched a quick nod and said, “Agreed.”
Chapter Eight
“Wow. You got all of this put together in the short time you worked at the hotel?”
Hunter looked up from the spread of papers and maps on the kitchen table and found Susannah looking at him through narrowed eyes, as if she was already regretting her decision to play this thing his way. But somewhere in the glittering gray depth of those hazel-tipped eyes, he also saw a hint of grudging admiration that sent an alarming amount of pleasure zinging along his nerve endings.
Once her initial agitation had settled down to a simmer, she’d taken a quick shower and changed into a fresh pair of jeans and another one of the sweaters he’d purchased in Barrowville, this time a jewel green, snug-fitting V-neck that hugged her curves like a Ferrari on a mountain switchback and brought out hints of misty green in her soft gray eyes.
Everything about her was softer today, as if she’d shrugged off a coat of armor when she’d tossed the bedraggled remains of her business suit into the trash can in the bedroom. Her hair, free of whatever products she used to achieve that perfect, unshakable updo she wore when she was working, hung in soft, still-damp waves around her face and shoulders. Without makeup, she was a different sort of beautiful than he was used to, all dewy pink skin and a hint of tiny freckles across the bridge of her straight nose. She’d shed nearly a decade in the process, looking not much older than some of the fresh-faced baby recruits he’d known in the Army.
“It was a little longer than that,” he answered her question, dragging his gaze from her with way too much reluctance. Clearly, he should have given some thought to the logistics of holing up in a cabin with a beautiful woman. Between combat, his injuries and his sister’s legal troubles, his sexual needs hadn’t exactly been a priority.
As soon as he could get through this mission, he would take time to think about what came next, including his sex life. But he couldn’t let himself be derailed by lust when so much was on the line.
Besides, so what if Susannah Marsh had a soft side? It didn’t make her any less trouble, and the last thing he needed was more trouble.
“How long has— What’s your agency? The Gates?”
He nodded.
“How long has The Gates been looking into the Blue Ridge Infantry?”
“For a while, though not in conjunction with the conference.” The conference connection information had dropped into their laps by way of a confidential informant Quinn worked with. Hunter didn’t know who the C.I. was, but Quinn thought his source was reliable, and Hunter supposed he would know. “They were part of a multistate crime organization that several of the local law enforcement agencies have been trying to roll up and put away for a couple of years now.”
“The last I heard, they’d accomplished that goal. Something about a bunch of files that was practically a road map of the entire organization?” She sent him a sidelong look, and the wariness he saw in those sharp eyes made him wonder if she was just humoring him with her cooperation, looking for a chance to make her break. “I’ve never read or heard anything different.”
“They’re like cockroaches. No matter how many you step on, there are always more.”
“Didn’t your boss inform the cops that there might be a problem with the conference?”
“He did. Nothing came of it. That’s how we became pretty sure that there’s someone in the Barrowville PD. who’s on the take. Or hell, maybe even a true believer.”
“What, exactly, would constitute a true believer in the BRI?” She sounded genuinely curious. “You said earlier they think of themselves as patriots.”
“They’d like to believe that. Mostly, though, their idea of patriotism is a loathing for authority, I guess.” At least, that was how he’d played it when he’d wormed his way into the local cell after Quinn had given him the name of someone The Gates suspected might be a BRI member. “All I had to do was make some noise about how the Pentagon had screwed me over after my injury, and now the government was railroading my sister, and it didn’t take long for someone to buy my load of garbage.”
“You must have sold it well.”
He shrugged. “Wasn’t that hard. There have been days when I half believed it myself. There’s a fine line between authority and despotism. Gets crossed a little too often for my taste, you know?”
She nodded. “I do, actually. And it’s not always the government.”
“Oh, I know. I’ve seen how Billy Dawson runs the local BRI cell. Tin-pot dictators have nothing on him.”
“Nobody at the Barrowville PD even checked on what you were saying about the conference?” A hint of her previous skepticism seeped into her question.
“Police forces in this neck of the woods have a serious corruption problem. But even if they didn’t, there’s the issue of how these local cops see The Gates.”
“As interlopers?”
“Something like that. See, Quinn has this thing about hiring people who maybe don’t have the best of track records.” He couldn’t keep the wry tone from his voice.
“Does that include you?”
“Maybe. I was a wild kid, and if you were to go by the way I’ve been behaving over the past year or so, you wouldn’t think I’d changed that much.” He’d gotten into his share of bar fights since returning home from overseas. He couldn’t even blame it on booze, since he’d been stone-cold sober every time. Drinking hadn’t done a thing to stem the pain and anger.
Of course, the fights hadn’t done much to make him feel better, either. He’d supposed, at the time, that pure luck had brought Alexander Quinn into Smoky Joe’s Saloon a few months ago in time to stop a brewing fight and hand his business card to Hunter with an offer of a job interview.
