by Paula Graves
“How are they coming?”
“Panel van, just like the one I used to bring you here in the first place.”
A flash of memory shot through her brain. A kiss, hot and fierce, impossible to forget despite the fuzzing effects of the drug coursing through her system at the time.
“You kissed me, outside the van,” she murmured aloud.
“I was afraid they’d see us, so I pretended we were lovers necking in the parking lot,” he admitted, smiling slightly.
She crooked her mouth. “There wasn’t a whole lot of pretending going on, as I recall.”
His smile expanded. “You were a little out of it.”
“Not that much.” She edged closer to him, not only for the warmth radiating from his body but for the sense of intimacy she felt slipping further and further away from them. “I wish we could go back to last night.”
He laid his forehead against hers. “Me, too.”
She lifted her hands to his face, stroking his scruffy beard. “Know what I’m going to hope?”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to hope the key in my locket opens a bus locker full of evidence against the Swains. Then you can get the hell out of this godforsaken town and we can start all over again.”
“You really think it’s possible to start over after seven years?” he asked softly, his tone melancholy.
“If necessary.”
He mimicked her earlier caress, his hands warm and strong where they cupped her jaw. “Is it necessary?”
“Maybe not,” she admitted, finding herself a lot more forgiving of his secret-keeping now that time between them was running out so rapidly. “Maybe we could start back at the beginning of last night instead.”
“That sounds a lot better to me,” he admitted.
“But no more secrets.”
He didn’t answer, and she felt a twinge of unease. Were there more secrets he hadn’t yet shared? The one thing she knew about Scanlon was that he didn’t make promises if he didn’t think he could keep them.
And had she really told him all her secrets? She hadn’t told him that she had spent the last seven years falling head over heels for him.
What would he say to that secret revealed? Had he been doing likewise? Or was last night an aberration, an oasis in a desert of death and danger? A memory to pack away for later when they were both alone again?
The chance to ask that question slipped through her hands as the sound of a vehicle approaching sent them behind the truck for cover. Only when a panel van—dark blue this time instead of green—entered the narrow opening of the barn and parked did they ease out from hiding to greet the two FBI agents who emerged from the van.
To her surprise, one of the two agents was her cousin Will Cooper. The last she’d heard, he was working out of the Rome, Georgia, resident agency. He also seemed to have packed on twenty pounds since the last time she’d seen him, all muscle. She greeted him with a hug. “Will, what on earth are you doing here?”
“Got transferred to Huntsville last week,” he said with a grin. “Got wind of this operation and talked my way into it. I figured there’s nobody better to watch a Cooper’s back than another Cooper.”
Isabel waved Scanlon over. “Scanlon, this is my cousin Will Cooper. Will, this is Ben Scanlon.”
“Nice to finally meet you, Agent Scanlon.” Will shook Scanlon’s hand. “Thanks for watching Isabel’s back. There are a whole lot of Coopers who’re real grateful.”
“Cooper knows I’ll always have her back.” Scanlon shot her a look that made her bones melt.
“We’ve got to head out.” The other agent, an older man with a thick head full of salt-and-pepper hair, spoke in an urgent tone and tapped his watch.
Isabel turned back to Scanlon, overwhelmed by a rush of panic. She wasn’t ready to leave. God only knew how dangerous the next few months, even years, were going to be for him, and he didn’t have anyone to watch his back but Adam Brand, who was hundreds of miles away.
“I’ll be fine, Cooper. You know I’m a survivor. Cheated death, didn’t I?”
“Death always comes back for another round,” she warned, clutching his hands tightly in her own. “Don’t let the old bastard sneak up on you.”
“I don’t know if I’ll risk emailing you, so I’ve told Brand to keep you updated every week, so you don’t worry about me too much.”
She didn’t think even an update every hour would keep her from worrying, but she wasn’t going to burden Scanlon with her fears. He had enough on his plate.
He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her close. She was surprised when he ignored the presence of the other agents and bent his head for a long, slow kiss. “I can’t ask you to wait for me, Cooper. I can’t even promise I won’t have to do things that’ll break your heart—”
She put her fingers over his mouth. “If you sleep with Dahlia McCoy, you won’t have to worry about the Swains killing you. I’ll do it for them.”
He grinned at her. “Duly noted.”
She closed her eyes, her heart breaking. “I don’t suppose you’d consider telling Brand you’re done, quitting the FBI and coming home with me right now?”
Even in the dim interior of the darkened barn, she could see the pain glittering in his eyes. “You know I can’t.”
She knew. And now that she knew the truth about his relationship to Bennett Allen, she knew why. She had a feeling his obsession with finding his father’s killer would always trump every other passion in his life.
Even his passion for her.
Maybe he was right. Maybe it didn’t make sense for her to wait around for a man who might never love her enough to let go of his past.
He kissed her again, lightly this time. It felt final. A goodbye. “Be safe, Cooper.” As she turned toward the van, he added softly, “Be happy.”
She faltered for a second, overwhelmed with the temptation to run back to his arms and beg him one more time to come with her. But she knew he would say no again. And she had enough pride left to keep walking.
The panel van had no windows in the cargo area, just a bench seat with a lap belt to keep her from being bounced around the interior. She threaded the belt through the strap of her knapsack to keep it in place, as well, and buckled herself in, trying to ignore the worried looks her cousin Will was shooting her way from the front passenger seat.
It was over. No harm done, right? Somehow, she’d figure out a way to be okay again.
However long it took.
* * *
TIME WAS HER ENEMY. She knew the man calling himself Mark Shipley was on his way down to the old abandoned barn to hand his pretty little bed buddy off to his FBI handlers.
She’d known there was more to the man than he’d let on, hadn’t she? An FBI agent, snooping around the hills and valleys of Halloran County. Wasn’t that a kick in the teeth for Addie and the boys? Once they knew what she knew now, all sorts of hell would break loose, and there was no telling how all the pieces would eventually fall.
She planned to be there to pick up the pieces.
She was intrigued by what she’d overheard the woman say about her locket. Now she knew why the boys had been after her in the first place—they’d learned about the key. It must have been Trey Pritchard who’d left that mess of blood and hair on the floor of Dillon Creavey’s hunting cabin up on Thunder Ridge.
Though an outsider, Trey had been eager to make money and hadn’t seemed to care much how he made it, so the boys had been happy enough to let the boy play mule on some of the more dangerous runs, especially since Pritchard had been just as happy to be paid in drugs as money most of the time.
She could have warned them about the folly of trusting a meth head with their secrets.
So what had Trey had on the Swains? Files? Addie handwrote all the illegal transactions in her books—could Pritchard have made copies of the ledger? Something like that could easily be kept in a bus locker or small storage area.
Sh
e used her key to get inside the cabin, taking care to ease aside the filament Mr. FBI used to alert him to visitors while he was away. From what she’d overheard, he kept important items hidden under a loose board in the hall closet.
She found the board and moved it aside, wrinkling her nose as she stuck her arm into the musty hole beneath the floor.
She didn’t find the satellite phone they’d talked about, but the laptop computer and smartphone were there.
She pulled them out and didn’t bother taking them elsewhere to set them up—what she was looking for she could find in just a few seconds. A glance at her watch revealed that seven-thirty had come and gone, meaning she was working on borrowed time now.
“Robert Frost,” she muttered aloud, remembering how they’d spoken the words together. So cute.
So nauseating.
She entered the password—one word, lowercase—and found the information she needed. After jotting it on a notepad she’d brought with her, she shut off the computer, slipped it and the phone back into the crawlspace, and dropped the board back in place, wincing as it made a loud thump.
She heard the sound of a truck coming up the gravel track. Hurrying, she slipped out, replacing the filament where she’d found it. She scooted around the back of the cabin and out of sight just before the old Ford lumbered into the yard.
She waited, breathless, as the truck engine rattled to a stop and the door creaked open. She felt the adrenaline rush of a close call and couldn’t hold back a smile.
She was good at this. Better than any of the other hicks and degenerates trying to play their redneck mafia games.
She was tempted to stick around, listen to the man Isabel Cooper called Scanlon. Reminding herself to do a little digging into who Scanlon really was, she slipped silently into the woods, sliding her hand into the pocket of her jacket to reassure herself that the notepad with the information she’d jotted was still there.
She had plans to finalize. Preparations to make.
She’d gloat later, when everything finally went her way.
* * *
THE DRIVE FROM BOLEN BLUFF to the Cooper Security office in Maybridge took about an hour and ended in the familial equivalent of a gang tackle in the conference room, where all five of her siblings were waiting for her arrival.
Rick reached her first, wrapping her in a bear hug that might have crushed the rib cage of a smaller, more fragile woman. His wife, Amanda, pulled him away, giving Isabel a quick smile and a heartfelt welcome home. Then her sisters, Megan and Shannon, took their turns, followed by Wade and her oldest brother, Jesse, whose outward calm couldn’t mask the look of relief and affection in his dark eyes.
“Catch us up,” he said tersely, showing her to the chair at the head of the conference table. “Anything you can tell us.”
She related everything she could remember since spotting the man she now knew was Bobby Rawlings lurking at the end of the hall of the Fort Payne hotel, skimming over information that might put Scanlon in danger if it ever got out, even inadvertently. She trusted her brothers and sisters with every fiber of her being, but some secrets weren’t hers to tell.
“So you think this key Trey Pritchard left you in the locket is going to uncover evidence against the Swain family?” Jesse asked, his tone guarded. But she could see the skepticism lurking behind his watchful eyes.
“I know it sounds crazy and random,” she admitted, as usual finding the coincidences and happenstances of the theory a little harder to sell without Scanlon and his uncanny knack for finding patterns in chaos.
But he’d seen the same connections she had, making her doubly sure she was right. Trey Pritchard had somehow found incriminating evidence against the Swain family and hidden it away—whether for insurance or in angry response to the murder of his sister, Isabel didn’t know. And she was pretty sure Trey was no longer alive to fill in the blanks.
But as soon as she could extract herself from the family powwow, she promised herself, she was going on a treasure hunt, armed with a key and the certainty that if she could find the hiding place, and reveal its secrets, she just might be able to bring Scanlon home safely.
She didn’t know what would happen after that. All the same pressures that had kept them from acting on their attraction hadn’t gone away just because they’d given in to their desires. Even Scanlon’s confession about his real identity had only raised new conflicts to deal with, hadn’t it?
But at least if he was safely home, away from the constant dangers surrounding him in Bolen Bluff, they’d have time to work through all the questions that still stood between them.
It was up to her to give them both that chance.
* * *
THE FILAMENT ON THE DOOR WAS STILL IN PLACE, and the cabin was still and silent. Scanlon dropped the truck keys on the card table in the kitchen and sank into the chair. The place seemed large and cold now that Isabel was gone.
Empty.
The clock over the stove read eight-forty-five. Too early for bed, despite his exhaustion. He should be feeling hungry, given that he’d eaten almost nothing of the food he’d brought home from the barbecue, but the thought of food made him queasy.
Isabel would be back home by now. He’d spent the last hour driving around Bolen Bluff just to keep himself from chasing her down and begging her to stay. Even now, he wished he dared to call her. But the last thing he could risk was staying in contact with her. On the contrary, he had to pretend the last few days had never happened.
Erase his time with her from his memories.
Impossible, he knew. What they’d shared here in this shabby little cabin was something he’d never forget.
But at least he could erase her from this place.
Room by room, he searched for signs of her—unfolding the futon to make sure nothing had fallen through the cracks, checking the bathroom to see if she’d left any toiletries, looking under the bed for any sign of a forgotten sock or a stray pair of underwear. He found none of those things.
But what he did find was infinitely more disturbing.
As he was rising from his crouch to look beneath the bed, his gaze glanced across something small and round attached to the side rail of the bed.
With a tug, he pulled the object free, his gut tightening to a knot. Pinched between his thumb and forefinger was a small listening device about the size of a dime.
Someone had bugged his cabin.
* * *
“HOW LONG COULD IT HAVE BEEN THERE?” Adam Brand’s deep voice was wary but not unduly alarmed. Scanlon wanted to throttle him for his unnatural calm.
“I did an electronic sweep the day I brought Isabel here—three days ago?” He scraped his hand through his hair, trying not to lose his cool. He hadn’t destroyed the bug yet—not without talking to Brand—but he knew he couldn’t risk making the call to his boss from inside the cabin. He was out in his truck, ducked low in case anyone was watching. “It was all clear then, so it had to have been inserted since then.”
“Could Cooper have done it?” Brand asked.
“No!” He forced himself to lower his voice. “No. Of course not. Unless you think she somehow faked her abduction—”
“No, but maybe once she knew the danger you were in—”
Would she have put electronic surveillance on him? Maybe if she’d had the opportunity, he had to concede. He’d probably have done something very like that in her place, just to know if she needed his help. Hell, he wished he’d thought to put a listening device in her purse or something, just so he could hear her voice and know she was okay.
But when would she have had a chance to obtain a bug? She was stuck at his place with no ride out, and besides, there certainly was nowhere any closer than Fort Payne where she could find a listening device to purchase.
“She wouldn’t have had a chance to go get a bug anywhere. I never left her alone that long.”
“And she’s been there in your house the whole time, right? So when would anyone else h
ave had a chance to plant a bug?”
“Well, there was the time that guy broke in and she had to hide in the closet,” he said, remembering the sight of the tall, lean stranger moving silently through the woods outside his bedroom window. “It wouldn’t have taken long to slip a bug under the bed rail.”
“What about the McCoy woman—didn’t you tell me she broke in looking for the woman you supposedly had holed up in your cabin?” Brand asked.
“Possible, I guess.” And if she’d been the culprit, he thought bleakly, she’d heard an earful the night he and Isabel had finally relieved seven years’ worth of sexual tension.
He knew he should probably hope it was Dahlia who’d planted the bug, but he thought he’d have a better chance surviving the wrath of the mysterious J. T. Swain.
“What could they have heard?” Brand asked.
Besides a few rounds of hot, pent-up sexual release? “Enough to put me in serious danger,” he admitted. He told Brand about the discovery of the key inside the locket. “And we talked about my undercover assignment, more than once.”
“Did you talk about your father’s murder?”
For a second, Scanlon wasn’t sure he’d understood the SAC correctly. Then a cold chill washed over him. “You know about my father?”
Brand sounded amused. “I know everything about my agents. Even things they try to hide from me.”
Scanlon felt naked. “We did talk about my father, but not in a lot of detail.” Not in the bedroom, anyway, which was the only place he’d found a listening device. “Not sure anyone who didn’t already know who I am could have figured out the context of the conversation.”
Brand was silent a moment. “Interesting that you’re still kicking after all that.”
“Interesting isn’t the word I’d have chosen.”
“Well, it may mean that whoever planted the bug hasn’t been monitoring it in real time. It may just be recording somewhere.” Brand sounded thoughtful. “Perhaps we can use that to our advantage.”
“How?”
Brand’s voice held a hint of wry humor. “Maybe it’s time you go to Addie Tolliver and come clean about what you’ve been doing in Bolen Bluff all this time.”
