by Paula Graves
Thinking back, she remembered the loose floorboard in the hall closet. He’d hidden files underneath—was the phone there, too?
She checked under the board and discovered a rectangular lock box with something inside that rattled when she moved the box. The phone? The lock didn’t budge when she tried to open the box, so she headed into the kitchen for something she could use to pick it open, walking into the room just as the front door opened.
The urge to flee propelled her backward into the hallway before her brain registered that the newcomer was just Scanlon, coming in with a couple of firewood logs under one arm.
She sagged against the hallway wall. “You need one of those bells around your neck so I’ll know you’re coming.”
His gaze dipped to the box in her hands. “What are you doing with that?”
His tone made her blink. “Calling home. Isn’t that what we agreed I should do, before my family gets wind of my disappearance and makes a stink?”
His expression relaxed a little. “I thought you were going to take a nap first.”
She returned to the kitchen, handing him the box. “Thought I’d better get on this before it gets too much later. I usually call one of my brothers or sisters at least once a day. They’ll start worrying if I don’t check in.”
He punched in a code on the box’s digital lock, slanting a look at her, a faint smile on his face. The box clicked open, revealing the satellite phone, and he handed it to her. “What are you going to tell them?”
“To tell people I escaped and got to a safe place, called my family and one of them came and got me. No police involved.”
“Why wouldn’t you call the police?”
“Because I had drugs in my system when they found me, and my family didn’t want me to get arrested.”
He looked skeptical, so she added, “I was talking crazy about being kidnapped and shot up with drugs.” Meeting his gaze directly, she added a pointed elaboration. “I’ve been acting odd lately anyway—see, my partner just got killed a few months ago by a bomb meant for me, and I’ve been eaten up with guilt and all, blaming myself for his horrible death—”
His stricken look pricked her conscience with remorse for getting in a dig at his expense.
“Okay, I get it. Can they sell that story?”
“It only has to be sold if someone asks any questions, right? One of them will go to the hotel and check me out. Hopefully Brand’s already sent my stuff—”
“I talked to Brand a few minutes ago—the stuff should be here tonight around nine. They try to make their deliveries during night hours when they can.”
“Where is the drop site?”
“An abandoned barn down the road. It’s on my property, so I can’t let stuff stay there for long. The van’s already been sitting in that barn a lot longer than I’m comfortable with.”
He looked older than the last time she’d seen him, she realized. She supposed living a constant lie under threat of death would do that to anyone.
And Scanlon was a man who let things eat at him, even in the best of times. He always seemed to be nursing secret troubles. It took a long time after their first case together for him to start letting her in on some of the secrets.
Of the two of them, she was by far the more stoic and rational, the one who found ways to distance herself from some of the horrors they saw in their line of work. She had to be able to do that, or she didn’t think she could cope. Her inability to distance herself from Scanlon’s death had led her to leave the Bureau.
But Scanlon always felt things. Everything. At times, she’d wondered how he survived it without going insane.
“You want some privacy?” he asked, nodding at the phone.
Afraid she’d fall apart the second she heard a familiar voice, she nodded. Scanlon smiled and carried the firewood into the hallway. She heard his footsteps recede as he entered the bedroom and closed the door behind him.
She took a deep breath and dialed her sister’s phone number at the office. Megan answered on the second ring. “Cooper Security, Megan Randall speaking.”
“Hey, Meggie, it’s Isabel.”
“Izzy! Thank God—I’ve been trying to call your cell phone all day. Where have you been?”
“Is something wrong? Why’ve you been trying to reach me?”
“Luke called a little before lunch—the U.S. attorney has decided not to indict Barton Reid at the moment.” Megan was talking about their cousin, Luke Cooper, who’d suffered a few harrowing days on the run from the MacLear SSU operatives Barton Reid had sent after him and his wife, Abby.
Isabel’s gut tightened with outrage. “How can they not indict the guy? He sent a bunch of goons to kidnap a two-year-old to get his mother to cooperate with their cover-up!”
“The evidence just isn’t there, or so the U.S. attorney says. Luke’s furious, Sam’s threatening to air all the dirty laundry of the U.S. attorney’s office—”
Sam was Luke’s brother and a former U.S. attorney himself. “Is there anything we can do?”
“Just prove the connection between Reid and the SSU, but everybody who could testify to that fact is either in hiding or dead.” Megan’s answer came out in a low growl. “Sorry to spring that on you. By the way, where are you calling from? I don’t recognize the number.”
Isabel settled on the futon sofa before her wobbling knees gave out. “Are you sitting down?”
Megan’s voice grew wary. “Yeah.”
“I’m in a cabin in the woods. I can’t tell you exactly where. But I’m with Ben Scanlon.”
There was utter silence on the other end of the line.
“I’m not crazy,” Isabel added quickly. “Although I was hallucinating as recently as a few hours ago—”
“What?” Megan asked.
As succinctly as she could, Isabel summed up the last few hours, from the abduction she knew must have happened—but couldn’t quite remember—to waking up on a futon sofa, staring across the kitchen at a man she’d thought she’d buried only six months earlier. “He’s alive and he’s fine. And I’m a little freaked out by it all, but I’m okay.”
“Oh, sweetie, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!” Of all of Isabel’s siblings, Megan was the only one who knew just how hard she’d been taking the loss of her partner. A widow herself, Megan was still dealing with the grief of her husband’s death during what was supposed to be a low-threat peacekeeping tour of duty in Kaziristan.
“I’m okay now. The shock has worn off.”
“You’re going to stay there?” Megan sounded worried.
“I can help him.” She told Megan the cover story she had come up with. “Nobody can know where I am except the family.”
“But there are people who are willing to grab you out of a hotel in broad daylight and spirit you to God knows where—”
“Even more reason to stick around and find out what’s going on, don’t you think?” Isabel glanced up to find Scanlon in the doorway, looking at her. He tapped his watch. “I need to get off the phone now. I love you. Be sure everyone in the family knows the cover story so they’ll know what to say if anyone comes around asking questions.”
“I will. Love you, too, Izzy. Bye!”
Isabel held out the phone to Scanlon, blinking back the tears burning in her eyes. He took the phone, stuck it in the back pocket of his jeans and crouched in front of her, his thumb brushing across a tear that had slipped out of her steely control to trickle down her cheek.
“You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to,” he said quietly, his thumb sliding over the curve of her cheek, settling in front of her ear as he threaded his fingers through her curls. His other hand rose to cradle her face. “You’ve been through a hell of a lot in just a few hours, and there’s no shame in taking yourself out of the game.”
She shook her head, fighting her emotions. “I’m in this. I need to know who ambushed me. I don’t know what they want, but they clearly wanted something. We should find out what
it is. It might be exactly what you need to bring this investigation to a close and get your life back.”
His eyes darkened as his gaze leveled with hers. “I just want you safe. It’s what I’ve wanted from the beginning of this whole mess.”
Her heart contracted. “Scanlon—”
His head dipped. For a second, she was certain he was going to kiss her. But he froze in place, his gaze falling to rest on her parted lips. “Damn it, Cooper—”
It was a familiar point in time, she realized. A point of no return, when the tension buzzing between them could take on a new and dangerous tenor. They’d reached this point before, during long and harrowing cases when the whole world seemed to be spinning out of control. Moments when a little human connection provided a temptation almost too exquisite to resist.
But one of them always moved. Always backed away before they did something that couldn’t be undone. She waited for the inevitable retreat, for Scanlon to pull away and rise to his feet, putting distance and cold air between them.
That moment never came.
Scanlon lowered his head slowly, until his lips brushed against hers. Just a light touch. A question.
She stood on the precipice of change, terrified and exhilarated. One step forward and the world would drop from beneath her feet, plunging her into freefall. It could be amazing—or disastrous.
But if there was one thing she’d learned from the last six months, it was the price of regret. The haunting specter of things left unsaid.
She laid her hand on his chest, curling her fingers in the soft fabric of his flannel shirt. Slowly, deliberately, she slanted her mouth over his, brushing her tongue against his lower lip. He growled low in his throat and snaked one arm around her waist, pulling her flush to his body.
In a heartbeat, the world dropped away, and she fell.
Chapter Five
At some point, they shifted positions, though Scanlon couldn’t remember when or how. He only knew that when his brain caught up with his body, he was seated on the futon with Isabel straddling his lap, her dark curls falling like a curtain around them. She drew back for a second, her tea-colored eyes drunk with desire, and ran her forefinger across his bottom lip.
“Are we crazy to be doing this?” she asked, breathless.
“Yes,” he said, because anything else would be a lie. Of all the times they could have chosen to take this step, now had to be the worst option possible. He was undercover in the middle of a deadly clan of rural crank cookers, and Isabel was on their hit list for reasons neither of them could fathom.
Why were they taking this chance?
As if she could read the cold dose of reality beginning to overwhelm his thoughts, she cradled his face between her slender hands and kissed him again, with more tenderness than raw passion. He gave in, disarmed by her bravery, by his own wretched loneliness for her.
He’d missed her desperately, the way she grounded him when he started to go too far off the mark in their investigations. He’d found himself talking to her so many times, in the dark solitude of his bedroom at night, looking to the still, small voice of her memory to keep him on the right track.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered against her lips.
She drew back, arching her dark eyebrows.
“All this time alone here, I knew you were okay. And I still missed the hell out of you.” He threaded his fingers through the dark tangle of curls that had always fascinated and tempted him. “If you missed me even half as much, and you thought I was dead and you’d never see me again—”
“I missed you more.” Her voice vibrated with pain, and he pulled her to him, pressing his lips against her forehead.
“I’m sorry. Brand and I were wrong not to tell you.”
She eased off his lap and onto the futon cushion beside him. “Yeah, you were. And what we just did—I thought it would change everything, but it doesn’t really. Does it?”
“Because I lied about being dead?” He wasn’t sure he was following her train of thought, which scared him a little, because by the end of their days as partners, they’d gotten pretty good at reading each other’s minds.
“Because of the lie. Because you’re someone named Mark Shipley now, and you have a girlfriend who sure as hell doesn’t need to smell another woman on you at the wrong time—” She pushed her hair away from her face with a small growl of frustration. “And, frankly, because I don’t think romantic relationships ever really work, no matter how I pretend they do. Something always happens to screw things up.”
“Your mom screwed up, Cooper. She couldn’t handle being a housewife with six kids and a husband who risked his life for a living. That doesn’t mean you’ll make the same mistakes.” He gave her a nudge with his shoulder, making her smile.
“Based on the last twenty-four hours, I’m not exactly looking mistake-proof.”
“You got away from the bad guys, even hopped up on something that was making you see pink elephants.”
She grimaced. “Melting eyeballs, but close enough.”
“Besides, sometimes relationships do work out. My mom’s still married to my dad.” He hesitated slightly over the last word. Technically, Bill Scanlon wasn’t his father. But he’d adopted his new wife’s son when Scanlon had been a young boy, gave him a new name and a good life.
“The exception that proves the rule.”
“Now you’re just being stubborn.”
She slanted a skeptical look at him. “The guy who believes three dates and out is a viable rule of romantic relationships, arguing for happily ever after? Give me a break.”
Fair enough, he supposed. He hadn’t been one for long-term relationships, not because he didn’t believe they were possible but because he knew they were. He knew that falling in love, trying to build a life with a woman was an all-or-nothing proposition. He couldn’t give anything only half of himself. He wasn’t wired that way.
And all he’d had room for since he was a young boy was his search for answers. Even his work at the FBI had been undertaken in service of his real goal, a goal neither Isabel nor Adam Brand knew anything about.
He was determined to find out who had murdered his father twenty-five years ago.
When Scanlon had been a boy of eight, his biological father, Sheriff Bennett Allen of Halloran County, Alabama, had been murdered outside their family home right here in Bolen Bluff. Scanlon had witnessed it, but he’d never been able to remember the actual moment of the shooting.
He’d heard a car engine but could remember seeing nothing after that until he looked down at his feet to see his father bleeding out on the driveway, three large holes in his chest.
“No answer for that?” Isabel asked in a deceptively light tone, though her eyes darkened with dread at his answer.
She might think she was cynical about romance, but she wanted to believe it could happen. That forever could be real and attainable. Hopeless little romantic.
But as tempting as the thought might be, he couldn’t be her prince. Not until he had his answers. And he sure as hell had no right to ask her to put her life on hold while he chased those dragons around the woods and valleys of Bolen Bluff.
“You’re right,” he said bluntly, hating the way she seemed to shrink from him, as if preparing herself for a body blow. “I’m not in any position to argue for true love. And you’re right that this is really bad timing. I don’t even know why I agreed with Brand that you should stick around here a couple of days. You should be home with your family, where it’s safe.”
“I can help you.”
“That doesn’t mean you should.”
“It’s my choice.”
He wanted to kiss her again. Or throttle her. He wasn’t sure which emotion had the upper hand at the moment. “We should rustle up something for dinner. You barely ate any soup.”
“I’m still not that hungry.”
“What is it you’re always telling me—food is fuel?”
Her lips curved slightly at his rec
itation of one of her favorite bromides. “Dad always says that.”
“Your dad’s a wise man.” He clapped his hand lightly on her knee and pushed to his feet. “You want another go at the soup or would you like to try something a little heartier?”
“I’ll have whatever you were planning to eat for dinner,” she said, angling her chin upward as if she had just agreed to take on the lions in the Roman Coliseum.
“I went fishing last weekend and lucked into a school of hungry crappie.” He pulled the wrapped fillets from the freezer and started running hot water over them.
She crossed to the refrigerator and tugged it open, frowning as she took in the mostly bare interior. “Where do you keep your vegetables?”
“In cans, where the good Lord intended.” He waved at the cabinet next to the sink.
She rolled her eyes at him, as he’d known she would. At the familiar reaction, a feeling of well-being flooded his system, threatening to overwhelm all good sense.
This was right, no matter the arguments against her staying. This was where she belonged. At his side, his partner, always.
But deep down, he knew the whole situation was anything but right, and the last—the worst—place Isabel Cooper should be was anywhere near him or Halloran County.
* * *
AFTER A DINNER OF FISH and canned turnip greens, Scanlon spent the next couple of hours trying to talk Isabel into an early bedtime while she ignored him and started scanning the files he’d kept hidden under the closet floorboard.
She didn’t know how long it would be smart or safe for either of them to remain in Halloran County, and if she could speed up the process of getting Scanlon out of here and back to the safety of the D.C. field office, she was going to do it, even if it meant yawning through a few dry reports about the southern Appalachian drug trade.
She already knew that Halloran County, along with the other counties encompassing the Alabama Piedmont area, had a drug problem. Most places with pockets of poverty and clannish insularity did. She also knew the Swain family appeared to be a notch above the usual toothless, brainless idiot who cooked his crank in the kitchen of his own house with a dirty-diapered baby or three playing on the floor at his feet. The Swains had organized into an actual crime family, formed their own little redneck Mafia in the hills of Halloran County.
