Secret Hideout

by Paula Graves

  What she wasn’t sure about, however, was whether or not their bomb-throwing days had ended when the patriarch, Jasper Swain, had been sent up for life a quarter century ago.

  “All the research suggests the bombings stopped cold when old Jasper went to prison,” she said a little later, when Scanlon came into the kitchen where she sat at the small card table, going over the files. “If the serial bomber is connected to the Swains, he didn’t start striking until a couple of years ago.”

  Scanlon stopped by the table and bent over her shoulder, looking over her notes. He smelled good. It was the same familiar, masculine scent she’d always noticed when he was around, one she’d attributed to whatever aftershave he used before arriving at work crisp, clean-shaven and ready to work. But the beard stubble that brushed against her temple as he pulled back ruled out the idea that he’d shaved.

  She guessed it was just how he always smelled.

  Even if he hadn’t shaved, he’d changed clothes, she noticed as she turned to look at him. He had donned a pair of black trousers and a long-sleeved black T-shirt tight enough to emphasize how lean and muscular he’d become over the past six months. He’d never been a slouch in the physical department, but he was damned near ripped now, and she didn’t think he was sneaking trips to the gym out here.

  “How do people around here think you support yourself?” she asked, curiosity overcoming her desire to focus on the case.

  “I do some carpentry work here and there, under the table. Supposedly I’m on disability because of my ‘war injury.’” He made a face as he said it. “War injury. As if it compares to what real soldiers go through.”

  “I think real soldiers figure we’re all on the same side in the same war. We all protect this country the best we can.”

  His hand moved toward her, as if he wanted to brush his knuckles against her cheek. She braced herself for the touch, but it never came. He dropped his hand back to his side and cleared his throat. “I’m heading down to the drop point to pick up the new sat phone and leave the other one there for the agents to pick up on their next trip out. Your stuff should be there by now, too.”

  She wished she could go with him. She didn’t like the idea of him out there with nobody watching his back. But he’d been handling this case on his own for six months, and so far he was still standing. And if the people who’d tried to grab her from the hotel in Fort Payne spotted her out in the woods with Scanlon, they’d both be dead before they could run for cover.

  “Be careful,” she said as he opened the door.

  He turned and looked at her. “You hear anything—anything at all—you know where to hide. I have a Glock hidden in the top drawer of the bedside table. Use it if you need it.”

  He closed the door behind him, leaving her alone in the silence of the empty cabin. She sat for a minute, feeling the quiet sink down around her like a blanket of heavy fog, cold and oppressive. She forced her attention back to the files, but not before she lifted a quick, silent prayer for Scanlon’s safety.

  * * *

  SPRING WAS IN FULL BLOOM in north Alabama, but the nights remained chilly and, on this particular evening, damp as well. Clouds scudding across the night sky blocked the moonlight, making for a treacherous hike down the mountain to the battered old pine barn where he’d left the borrowed van earlier that day.

  The van was gone, he saw with relief, feeling a weight slough off his shoulders. In its place, tucked nonchalantly against the side of the rickety structure, was a large olive-drab knapsack that had seen better days.

  He took a quick look inside the main compartment and the pockets. The outer pockets contained the new satellite phone and a compact Beretta—Isabel’s weapon. So Rawlings and whichever Swain clan thugs went with him had left Isabel’s weapon behind at the hotel. He didn’t know whether to consider that choice odd or not.

  He picked up the knapsack and laid the old satellite phone where it had sat, hiding the device beneath some rotted hay and windblown leaves. Looking deeper inside the knapsack’s main compartment, he found that the Huntsville resident agents had rolled Isabel’s clothes into compact coils, the better to fit them into the knapsack. On top of the clothes sat a folded sheet of paper with Isabel’s name written on the outside.

  He debated whether or not to read the note for about two seconds before he took the risk of flicking on the small penlight attached to his key ring. He unfolded the note and ran the light over the contents, reading quickly.

  It was from Rick—one of Isabel’s brothers. The one who’d just gotten married to the former CIA agent, he recalled. The note was terse but informative—Rick had known a MacLear operative named J. T. Swain when they’d both worked for the security company. Swain had left MacLear shortly before the company was caught up in the SSU scandal, but rumor had it Swain was one of the SSU operatives. He’d had a reputation of being dangerous and reckless—which certainly fit the Swains whom Scanlon had met in the past six months.

  It was possible, even likely, that J. T. Swain had nothing to do with Halloran County’s Swains at all. But it was definitely worth looking into.

  He shoved the note back into the knapsack and zipped the bag up. Checking carefully before leaving the dilapidated barn, he headed out into the night, the knapsack over his shoulder.

  Still mulling the possibility that the Swains might have connections to the MacLear Special Services Unit, Scanlon almost stumbled into Davy McCoy and Bobby Rawlings trudging through the woods ahead of him. His heart jumping into his throat, he hunkered down behind a clump of wild hydrangea and waited in silence for them to pass.

  Their voices carried a little in the cool night air, although Scanlon caught only snippets of their conversation until they were just a few yards away. From what he could make out, Davy was blasting Bobby for letting Isabel get away.

  As they got closer, Bobby lashed back in words so profane it made even Scanlon’s eyebrows raise, accusing Davy and someone else, someone he called “Jay,” of not being able to take an elbow to the groin, though in far more colorful terms. Davy snapped back that Bobby ran like a turtle and let a drugged-out girl outpace him.

  Knowing Bobby and his deadly anger, Scanlon expected the man’s answer to be a right hook, but Bobby just spat out the most interesting—and terrifying—thing Scanlon had heard in hours. “Don’t matter why she got away. We better find her, and fast. If we don’t find out where she’s keepin’ it, we’re as good as dead.”

  Keeping what? Scanlon listened even more attentively.

  “Jay should have given her a bigger dose of Special K,” Davy argued.

  Special K, Scanlon thought. Ketamine. Now he knew what they’d injected into her.

  “Carmela at the hotel said somebody picked up her stuff to take home to her. So why don’t we just head on down to Gossamer Ridge and take care of her there? That’s probably where she’s hidin’ the damned thing anyway.” Davy sounded peeved. He had a chip on his shoulder anyway, his lack of blood ties putting him firmly on the outer edges of the Swain clan. Having Bobby lord it over him only made him feel more aggrieved.

  So, they were looking for something they thought Isabel had. But what? Did she know about it? Was that one of the things she’d forgotten about the attack?

  “God, would you quit with the whinin’?” Bobby growled. A thwacking sound followed—had he hit Davy?

  Apparently so, for suddenly the underbrush ahead of Scanlon’s hiding place erupted with furious scuffling. Scanlon froze in place, terrified their fisticuffs would inadvertently reveal his hiding place.

  Suddenly, a shotgun boomed, the noise splitting the night air. Scanlon ducked on instinct, his heart slamming against his sternum, but at least the scuffling came to a halt.

  A low female voice followed in the wake of the shotgun reverberation. “What the hell do you boys think you’re doing?”

  Elusive memory niggled at the back of Scanlon’s mind. The woman’s voice seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place it. It was an older
voice, deep and authoritative. Her distinctive hill-country accent pegged her as a local, probably from a long line of people who’d inhabited this area since the days of the early settlers. She almost certainly had to be a Swain, or someone connected to them, and yet he couldn’t quite place the voice.

  He wished he dared to peek around the edge of the bush that gave him camouflage, but that was a sure way to end up dead.

  “Get your sorry hides back home ’fore I set the others on you, you hear? You got things you left undone, and rollin’ around in the dirt like a couple of snot-nosed babies ain’t gettin’ it done.”

  Scanlon heard Davy and Bobby scramble to their feet and head off in the woods. But had the woman moved? He heard a soft rustle, as if someone was still out there, just a few feet away, walking through the underbrush.

  He found he was holding his breath and let it go silently.

  Finally the soft swishing noises moved slowly away, and he dared a quick look from behind the sheltering bush.

  Davy and Bobby were already out of sight, but the woman, whoever she was, remained in sight, about twenty yards away. She had her back to him, but he could make out a thickset figure, dressed in dark colors, moving up the hill toward the main Swain conclave that lay on the other side of the crest.

  He waited until she was out of sight before he moved, edging through the woods like a soldier on a reconnaissance mission, using trees, bushes and rock outcroppings as cover until he reached the edge of the clearing around his house.

  All the way, his mind worried with the new piece of information he’d gleaned from the conversation he’d overheard. He’d assumed their attack on Isabel was motivated by revenge for her work trying to tie them to the serial bombings. But he should have known that was far too weak a motive to draw the Swains from their Halloran County comfort zone.

  They believed Isabel had something they wanted. Believed it enough to risk kidnapping her from her very public hotel and carrying her off to—what? Torture her until she gave them the information they wanted? So whatever it was they thought she had, it was significant. Something they considered a threat.

  Something they’d kill for.

  Chapter Six

  “J. T. Swain.” Isabel frowned. “What’s the likelihood a Swain would bother leaving here to work for a living when they can stay, cook all the crank and grow all the weed they want, and bully people around for the rest of their lives?”

  “Worth looking into.” Scanlon looked troubled, and she didn’t think Rick’s note was the source of his concern.

  “Is there something else?” she asked.

  He pulled up a folding chair and sat. “I almost ran into Davy McCoy and Bobby Rawlings in the woods.”

  “They didn’t see you, did they?”

  “No. I hid before they could. But they came pretty close.” His frown deepened. “They were talking about screwing up what happened this morning at the hotel.”

  This morning? It seemed as if she’d been here with Scanlon for days, not hours. “Did you find out what happened?”

  “You still don’t remember anything?”

  “Only images, like from dreams.” Elusive ones, making her edgy with frustration. “What did you hear?”

  “Davy and someone named Jay were on either side of you while you were drugged, trying to take you out by the stairs. Bobby was behind, watching their backs and flanks. You must have dropped and elbowed them in the groins to get away, and Bobby didn’t move fast enough to catch up with you.”

  Another image flashed in her mind—a twisty tunnel. “I ran down a hallway. It was like being underground—so strange—”

  “That was the ketamine talking.”

  “They gave me ketamine?” She shuddered. “No wonder I was hallucinating. I’m lucky they didn’t overdose me.”

  “Davy thinks they didn’t dose you enough. Apparently you were a handful, even drugged out of your skull.” He flashed her a smile, but his expression faded to worry quickly.

  “What else aren’t you telling me?” she prodded.

  “Why they ambushed you in the first place.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Why?”

  He looked reluctant to tell her. “According to Davy and Bobby, you have something they want.”

  She frowned. “Like what?”

  “They never said. But Davy suggested heading to Gossamer Ridge to get it, which means it must be something pretty damned big to risk a move like that.”

  No wonder he looked worried. “That’s crazy.”

  “You don’t have any idea what it could be?”

  “Not a clue.” Her eyes felt gritty, and her head ached. Ketamine had a pretty long recovery period, if she remembered her drug facts. No wonder she’d felt awful all day.

  Scanlon seemed to read her thoughts. “Take a shower and change into something clean.” He picked up the knapsack he’d brought with him from the drop site. “I’m afraid whatever needs washing will have to be cleaned by hand. Can’t risk taking a load of women’s clothes to the coin laundry in town. You can dry what you wash in front of the hearth in the bedroom.”

  A shower and clean clothes sounded like a wonderful idea. She took the knapsack from him, her fingers brushing his in the exchange. She darted a quick look at him and found herself the object of his intense gaze.

  Her stomach coiling into a fiery knot, she glanced at the futon. “If you’ll get the futon folded out, I’m going to try to get some sleep when I’m finished showering.”

  “Take my bed. I’ll sleep out here.”

  She shot a skeptical look at the futon. It was barely big enough for her, much less a man who had five inches and seventy pounds on her. “I’ll take the futon,” she said firmly. “You’re the one who has to go out and move around town. Don’t want to have to explain why you’re all hunched up like Quasimodo.”

  “But there’s a door to the outside here. There’s not one in the bedroom, which will give you time to get in the closet if someone breaks in.”

  “If someone breaks in, won’t they wonder why you’re sleeping on the futon and not the bed?”

  “I could say I just fell asleep watching TV.” He shot her a grim smile. “And then I could just ask them what they’re doing breaking into my house in the first place.”

  He had a point. But the futon was going to be hell on his back. “We could share the bed.”

  His eyebrow darted up a notch.

  “We shared a hotel room once, remember?”

  “With two beds, not one.”

  And it had been hard not to crawl into bed with him even then, at a time long before she’d admitted to herself that she was starting to have not-so-partner-like feelings for Scanlon. Now that she’d gotten a taste of his passion, she knew sleeping in the same bed without consequences was damned near impossible.

  “We could take turns,” she suggested. “I sleep a few hours, then I spell you—”

  “I’ve slept on the futon before. I lived. I’ll live again. Just go take your shower and stop worrying about me.”

  She retreated to the bathroom and dug through the knapsack to see what the FBI had managed to pack for her while she waited for the water to run hot in the tub. There was a set of dirty clothes in a plastic bag. She set that aside. She also found the gold locket that had once belonged to her childhood friend, Annie. Curling the chain around her wrist, she reached back into the knapsack and pulled out clean underwear, a soft pair of sweats and a University of Alabama T-shirt.

  That ought to cool the ardor of any would-be lover, she thought with a grimace, laying the locket atop the pile of clothes and getting into the shower.

  The hot water beating down on her body felt like heaven. She scrubbed and shampooed quickly, a little worried her still-wobbly legs wouldn’t hold her up for long. Rinsing off, she found her mind wandering to the files she’d been going over while she waited for Scanlon to return from the drop site.

  The key was finding the connection between the bombings. The problem,
however, was that there was no connection at all that anyone had been able to establish. The Georgia judge hadn’t known the Mississippi movie theater owner, and neither had known the Alabama junkyard operator or the warehouse owner. None of the businesses were connected even tangentially. No common parent company or any common vendors or suppliers.

  The only connection seemed to be the bomber himself.

  She went still in the shower. What if the bomber was the only connection? What did that do to their profile?

  A bomber would have to have a reason to kill a judge or bomb a movie theater, even if he was just a sociopath who liked to wreak havoc. He’d have a reason that meant something to him. That was the premise on which they’d built their profile.

  But what if the motivation was money?

  That small detail would change everything.

  Stepping out of the tub, she grabbed a couple of well-worn towels from the linen shelf, too excited by her new theory to stop and dress. She wrapped one towel around her wet hair and the larger around her body, shoved her clothes back into the knapsack and dashed out in search of Scanlon.

  Hearing noise in the bedroom, she burst in, sliding to a stop at the sight of Scanlon standing by the bed, stripped to a pair of black boxers. He turned at the sound of her arrival, his eyes widening.

  Looking down, she saw the towel barely covered her body and was peeking open to reveal most of her left leg.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, looking alarmed.

  “No. Sorry.” Her whole body grew warm, and not just from embarrassment. She’d seen Scanlon nearly naked before—they often swam together at the gym—but she almost felt as if she were ogling a stranger. He’d always looked good, with a lean swimmer’s body. But his muscles were now rock hard and defined, as if he’d spent time working on getting them into shape.