by Paula Graves
“There’s more than one man outside,” Scanlon said tersely, leading her across the hall to a small, spare bedroom. He opened the door next to the bed to reveal a tiny closet and nudged her inside. “Just stay here and be quiet, no matter what you hear. Promise me.”
She nodded. “Are you in danger?”
He brushed her cheek with his fingertips. “I’m always in danger these days, Cooper.” He closed the door, plunging the cramped closet into darkness.
* * *
BEN SCANLON RECOVERED HIS CALM as he walked to the front room. Already, Davy McCoy was banging on the door, commencing the visit Scanlon had been expecting since he’d grabbed Isabel Cooper at the Fort Payne hotel and rushed her out to the van the FBI resident agency in Huntsville had supplied. He hadn’t gotten a good look at any of the men, but he knew Davy was involved. Davy was the one he’d overheard making plans for the ambush.
He swept a final glance around the living room, making sure he’d left no signs of Isabel’s presence. She’d slipped on her shoes before she’d gone to the bathroom, and he’d already returned the futon to its sofa position.
He took a deep breath and opened the door.
Davy McCoy was a short, wiry man in his midtwenties, with dark hair thinning prematurely and a sneering smile that was a permanent fixture on his vulpine face. He didn’t wait to be asked in, pushing past Scanlon and entering the living room.
“You cookin’ somethin’?” He sniffed the air.
“Just soup.”
Davy eyed the bowl in the sink. “Been out today?”
The van Scanlon had driven to the hotel was hidden in an abandoned barn a half mile down the mountain, where he’d left his battered old Ford pickup while he was in Fort Payne. But he and Isabel hadn’t been back long. If Davy had touched the hood of the Ford, would it still be warm?
“Drove over to Silorville Pond to see if the bluegills were bedding,” he answered, the lie effortless. Lying came all too easy to him these days. “No luck.”
“Little early yet, I guess.”
Scanlon knew Davy didn’t have a particular reason to suspect he’d been involved in thwarting the attempted abduction. Nobody among Bolen Bluff’s tight-knit community of weed growers and meth mechanics knew what he’d overheard that night at the feed store. He’d made damned sure he wasn’t seen.
But he’d been in Bolen Bluff only a few months. Strangers were automatically suspect. The paranoia among the Swain clan was legendary. One wrong move could get a man killed.
Scanlon knew that better than anyone.
Davy was clearly searching the room with his gaze. He didn’t even bother to hide it. “Mind if I use your bathroom?”
Scanlon nodded toward the hallway, hoping the rapid thump of his pulse wasn’t audible. It swished so loudly in his ears he barely heard Davy’s footsteps as he clomped down the hall.
He went to close the front door that Davy had left open and spotted Bobby Rawlings standing out in the yard, watching him through narrowed eyes. Rawlings was even scarier than McCoy in some ways. He was a Swain by blood, son of one of old Jasper’s cousins. That gave him even more carte blanche for violence around these parts than Davy, who was only a Swain clan member out of criminal loyalty.
He gave Rawlings a wave. Rawlings didn’t wave back. Scanlon hadn’t expected he would.
He closed the door and turned as Davy’s heavy bootfalls heralded his return. “You and Bobby been out hunting coyote this morning?”
“Yeah,” Davy answered flatly.
“Any luck?”
“Got close, once. Just missed the bitch.” Davy shrugged. “We’ll find her again. Next time, ain’t gonna mess around—just put a bullet straight in her brain.”
Scanlon’s blood chilled.
“Thanks for the use of your facilities.” Davy slanted a look at Scanlon. “Reckon you’ll be comin’ to town Saturday?”
“I can,” he said carefully, not sure where Davy was going with the question.
“Addie Tolliver’s throwin’ a barbecue Saturday afternoon for Leamon’s birthday.”
Addie Tolliver was one of the Swain sisters. She and her son Leamon ran the feed shop in town, and he was pretty sure that Addie was the main mover and shaker in the Swain family’s meth and weed business. The family often used the store’s back room as a meeting place. He also suspected that the storage area may have been a temporary holding area for drug shipments going out to other parts of the state, though the one time he’d been able to sneak into the back room, all he’d accomplished was overhearing the plan to go after Isabel.
“The Brubakers are comin’ over from Higdon to play,” Davy continued. “Ever heard ’em?” When Scanlon shook his head, Davy gave him a look that smacked of disappointment. “They’re an old bluegrass family. The young ones are still playing the old stuff. You’d like it.”
Scanlon knew better than to assume he was being invited to the barbecue. He was still too new in town. He waited for Davy to let the punch line drop.
“Addie’s lookin’ for someone to watch the feed store for her while everybody’s at the barbecue. Said she’ll pay six bucks an hour for three hours. Under the table. Won’t be much to it—most everybody else in town will be at the barbecue.”
Everybody but the new guy, Scanlon thought, tamping down a flash of annoyance. He’d known going into this undercover operation that it would be a long-term assignment. He couldn’t expect an insular drug-dealing clan to take him to their bosom after a few months.
“I can do that,” he said aloud.
“Good. I’ll tell Addie you’ll be there. Two o’clock on Saturday.” Davy walked to the door and opened it. “She mentioned you by name, you know. Asked me to check with you specifically.”
Scanlon smiled. “Tell her I said thanks. I sure can use the extra money.”
Davy’s gaze dropped to Scanlon’s scarred hand. “Reckon the government’s not exactly real generous these days.”
“No. You’d think they’d want to do a little more to reward a fellow who took a bullet in their godforsaken wars.”
“Just be at the feed store Saturday. Maybe if you do a good job then, Addie or one of the other Swains will find more jobs for you to do.” Davy headed out the door, pulling it closed behind him.
Scanlon released a long, slow breath. Not quite what he’d expected when he’d spotted Davy McCoy coming out of the woods.
But was his sense of relief premature? The Swains had been plying their criminal trade for a lot of years now. They might not be brain surgeons, but they were as wily and vicious as the coyotes Davy McCoy liked to hunt.
Maybe they really didn’t suspect his involvement in helping Isabel get away. But he couldn’t afford to assume he was safe from scrutiny. He had to figure out a way to get Isabel back to safety as soon as possible.
For his sake as well as hers.
Chapter Three
The closet seemed to grow darker as time passed, despite the thin shaft of light drifting into the cramped space from the bedroom outside. The odor of old cedar tickled her nose, threatening more than once to make her sneeze. She had held the urge in check, hearing heavy footfalls from the hall that she knew didn’t belong to Ben Scanlon.
The ache in her head had eased a little, probably thanks to the food he’d insisted she put in her stomach to dilute the effects of whatever drug her ambushers had injected into her. Her memory was starting to leach back into her brain as well, at least the moments preceding whatever had happened to her.
She’d gone out of her room at some point that morning. She remembered getting ice and then—something. Something had happened after she went to get the ice.
But what?
She pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead. She’d carried the ice bucket out of the room, down the hall—her room wasn’t far from the elevators, but the ice maker was all the way down the hall, near the stairs—
An image flashed into her mind. A reflection of herself in the mirrored ba
ck of an elevator car. She looked tired and bedraggled in the image, dressed in sloppy clothes, with no makeup and her hair in a messy ponytail.
That meant something. Why did it mean something?
Had she gone somewhere on the elevator?
No, not on the elevator. She’d gone to the elevator alcove to get out of sight. Hadn’t she?
But why had she wanted to be out of sight?
Swallowing a growl of frustration, she retraced her steps. Out the hotel room door. Down the hall, ice bucket in hand.
She’d dropped her key card. She could hear it hit softly on the vinyl flooring in front of the ice machine. She’d bent to pick it up—
And looked behind her on purpose. At the man.
Sandy hair. Black T-shirt. Faded jeans. Just like the man she’d spotted in the woods behind Scanlon’s house.
“Isabel?”
Scanlon’s quiet voice made her jump. Heart jackrabbiting, she answered in an equally soft voice, “Yeah?”
“It’s safe to come out now.”
She grabbed the doorknob and hauled herself unsteadily to her feet to let herself out. The dim bedroom seemed unbearably bright, forcing her to squint.
She spotted Scanlon a few feet from the door, studying her with troubled blue eyes. He looked as if he was about to speak again, but she preempted him. “I know where I saw that man outside your house before.”
“I do, too,” Scanlon said bluntly. “I’m pretty sure he’s one of the men who ambushed you this morning at the hotel.” He reached out and brushed a clump of curls out of her eyes. “Cooper, as soon as I can get in touch with Brand, we’re getting you out of here and back home to your family.”
The idea of returning home to the pretty little farmhouse in Gossamer Ridge, Alabama, that she’d bought a couple of months earlier was only partially tempting. She had finally begun to think of Chickasaw County as home again, after so many years away. And she’d loved the stately old house on sight.
But being back with Scanlon again, feeling the crackle of danger filling the air around them with every passing second, she realized how much she’d lost when that warehouse in Virginia had blown up and ripped him out of her life.
Being with him here, both alive, both in trouble, was like taking her first full, sweet breath after drowning in grief for so many long, excruciating months.
No matter what lies he’d told her, what secrets he was keeping now, she knew she couldn’t walk away from him and return to the new life she’d built in Chickasaw County. She was his partner. Lies or no lies, watching his back was her job.
“No,” she said, her voice strong and firm. “Whatever you’ve gotten into here, you need backup. You need me.”
“Cooper—”
“Shut up, Scanlon. I’m not going anywhere.”
* * *
“I’M NOT SURE IT’S A BAD IDEA,” Adam Brand told Scanlon an hour of futile argument later.
“Not a bad idea?” Scanlon gripped the satellite phone more tightly, pressing his lips into a thin line at the sight of Isabel’s look of triumph. He turned his back to her and lowered his voice. “Have you lost your mind?”
“You were a good team once. Who says you can’t be again?” Brand’s voice sounded tinny and faint over the satellite. Non-emergency communications between Scanlon and his SAC were supposed to be rare and carefully scheduled, carried out only over the satellite phone, which Scanlon kept locked in a metal box hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the linen closet.
“If the Swains discover she’s here—”
“Don’t let that happen,” Brand said reasonably. “They don’t make a lot of visits there—”
“They visited today.” Scanlon told Brand about Davy McCoy’s unexpected appearance.
“Sounds like a breakthrough to me,” Brand said. “And the invitation came from Addie Tolliver herself?”
“That’s what Davy said. I think it’s a test.”
“I’d concur.”
“But I can’t have Isabel staying here,” Scanlon added, the extra layer of desperation in his voice having little to do with his worry about her safety.
He was still feeling the effects of the kiss he’d planted on his partner at the Fort Payne Mountain View Inn.
Right now, she was watching him with that excited grin she got when a case started going her way, and it was all he could do to keep from hanging up on Brand and hauling her back to his bedroom to kiss that smile off her smug little face. Six months away from her had done nothing to quench the passion he’d been nurturing for almost as long as he’d known her.
But Brand didn’t know anything about those feelings. Isabel certainly didn’t have a clue. He’d worked hard to keep his attraction to her carefully hidden, staying within the bounds of their professional relationship.
“You’ve been puzzling over those files for months now without being able to figure out if any of the Swains are even involved in last year’s bombings. The bombings were Cooper’s baby in the first place—let her do the profiling work while you’re out in the field. She can give it a fresh eye.”
Any other agent, and Scanlon would have agreed without another argument. He hated pushing around paper, looking for clues, much preferring to be out in the field.
But Cooper wasn’t any other agent. “If they catch her here, we’re both dead.”
“So don’t let them catch her,” Brand responded, reprising his earlier argument.
Scanlon growled with frustration. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you planned this.”
“Good thing you know better,” Brand said.
“She’s going to need clothes. A weapon.”
“Maybe they left my Beretta and my clothes in my hotel room,” Isabel suggested. “Can they look?”
Scanlon passed along the information to Brand.
“We’ve already secured her clothing. The Beretta was there, as well. But there’s going to be the matter of her family. They’ll be looking for her.”
“That’s why we should send her home to them. Let the bad guys think she got to a safe place and contacted her family.”
“My brothers and sisters aren’t going to believe just any old story,” Isabel warned from her position near the stove. “You’ll have to let me talk to one of them.”
“Let her call one of them,” Brand said.
“We can’t take that chance—”
“I’ll have the Huntsville office deliver a new phone with her clothes and her weapon when an agent comes to pick up the van this evening,” Brand said calmly. “Let her call one of her family on the phone you’ve got.” He hung up without warning.
Scanlon swore under his breath.
“Boy, didn’t take long for you to go all lone wolf,” Isabel said, her tone flippant. But he knew her well enough to recognize the hurt in her dark eyes.
“Everything here’s so dangerous,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you in the middle of it.”
“I’m trained to be in the middle of it.” She lifted her chin, trying to look tough, but she wobbled a little, lingering weakness from the drug injection betraying her.
He couldn’t hold back a smile, slipping his hand under her elbow to steady her. His fingers seemed to burn where he touched her. “I know.”
“This investigation has to do with the serial bomber, doesn’t it?” she asked, letting him lead her to the futon sofa.
He dropped beside her, allowing himself the secret pleasure of sitting close enough that their arms brushed when they moved. “It does,” he admitted. “At least, we think it’s connected. Either way, I’ll be happy to bring the bastards down.”
He had his own personal reasons for wanting the Swains to pay for their crimes, reasons that had nothing to do with the serial bomber investigation. Even Adam Brand didn’t know what motivated him, as far as Scanlon knew. Then again, the wily SAC had a way of learning things only God himself could know.
“Well, you have plenty of time now to bring me up to speed.” She nudg
ed him with her shoulder, a light, friendly touch that shouldn’t have sent fire pouring into his gut.
But it had. And now the memory of the kiss outside the hotel—the kiss she didn’t even remember because she was so drugged up she could barely stand—assaulted his mind with a barrage of images designed to make him crazy.
He wanted to kiss her again, this time when she was conscious and would know what it meant when her lips pressed back against his. Her reaction to his kiss had caught him by surprise, a fierce, passionate response that had almost knocked him from his own feet.
Had she known it was him? Or had she been hallucinating some phantom lover, one she saw as more than just a partner and friend? The question had damned near begun to haunt him.
He crossed to the stove, needing distance from her. “At the time of the Virginia bombing, we’d already begun looking at older blasts that might fit the bomber’s MO.”
“Right—the explosion in Rome, Georgia, that killed a judge, and there was a bombing here in north Alabama—” She paused, her brow crinkling. “Are we still in north Alabama?”
“Yeah. A place called Bolen Bluff, about fifteen miles northeast of Fort Payne.”
Her eyebrows notched upwards. “Jasper Swain’s hometown.”
Scanlon nodded. “Exactly.”
“But Swain’s been in jail for over twenty years,” she said. “We talked about the possibility of a copycat, but—”
“But the Swains are concentrating on meth and weed these days,” he finished for her. “I know. But the MO was so close to the Swain bombings. And the bomb in Virginia happened only after we started snooping into the Swains’ business.”
“You think they targeted us specifically?”
“Targeted you,” he said flatly. He’d let her run the investigation into Jasper Swain’s bombings, despite his own personal interest in the case. He’d even let her be the one to go visit Jasper at the jail in St. Clair County, afraid the old man might recognize him even after all these years.
Funny to think about now, considering he was living in the middle of the bloody Swains, trying to worm his way into the family business.
