Secret Hideout

by Paula Graves

  One of the Swains killed his father. Even if he remembered what happened, all these years later, a halfway decent lawyer would probably get the perpetrator off.

  Was that worth dying for?

  And what about Isabel? She’d already mourned him once, only to have him return to her life like a walking, talking miracle. Was he supposed to be okay with her having to mourn him all over again, this time for real?

  He was an idiot. A selfish, cruel bastard to put her through any of this. If he got out of this mess alive, he was going to find her and tell her the truth. All of it.

  Including how damned much he loved her.

  Something cold and hard brushed against the skin of his collarbone, making him flinch.

  “Don’t move now. This blade is sharp.” The voice was male and almost musical. Very rural Southern, like the Swains, McCoys and Creaveys, but while there was something familiar about the voice, Scanlon knew he hadn’t heard it before.

  The blade sliced through the duct tape holding the burlap bag over his face. What had been a blur of lights and shapes through the cotton mask became a small front room, decorated with a surprisingly feminine touch. Chintz throw pillows on a dark green camelback sofa near the window. A fading Persian-style rug softened the footsteps of Scanlon’s captor as he stepped back, looking down at Scanlon with a quizzical half smile. He was a tall, rawboned man about Scanlon’s age, with wavy auburn hair and sharp blue eyes. For a moment, a memory played at the edge of Scanlon’s mind before disappearing when the man spoke again.

  “I’d never have known it was you,” he said.

  Scanlon followed his gut and went on offense himself. “J.T. Swain, I presume.”

  “I reckon I answer to that,” the man said with a soft chuckle. “For the last twenty years or so, anyway.”

  Footsteps clacked lightly against the hardwood floor beyond the rug. Scanlon turned his head to see the newcomer and found himself looking at a face that had once been nearly as familiar to him as his own mother’s. “Mrs. Butler,” he whispered.

  Opal Butler sat on the sofa facing him, her face softening slightly. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember me. There’s so much else you don’t remember.”

  “What am I doing here?” he asked, his brain growing fuzzy with a sudden onslaught of conflicting information. Opal Butler had been his best friend’s mother. He and Jamie had played at the Butler house all the time. Opal Butler had made the best pecan cookies he’d ever tasted.

  Yet here he was, trussed like a turkey in her parlor. A rogue MacLear SSU mercenary played idly with the deadly curved blade of a hunting knife while smiling at Scanlon, as if he knew a secret Scanlon didn’t.

  Then he took a closer look at Swain and saw the obvious. The freckles, the coloring, the brilliant blue eyes might be old Jasper Swain to the core, but the shape of the nose, the curve of the jaw—he was Earl Butler’s son. Jamie Butler.

  Scanlon’s best boyhood friend.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “How long have you known?” Scanlon asked, his voice coming out faint and hoarse.

  “Since Dahlia McCoy came by with a recording she thought we might want to listen to.” Opal Butler was the one who answered. “I’ve got to hand it to the girl—she’s got more brains than any McCoy I’ve ever known. Real drive. I think we might be able to use her in this operation.”

  “If she doesn’t try to stab you in the back first,” Jamie said with a hard laugh. He crouched so that he was eye to eye with Scanlon. “I guess you followed in your daddy’s footsteps after all, huh, Benny?”

  “I guess you didn’t.”

  “Oh, I did. At first.” Jamie stood up. “But nobody decent was gonna give a Swain a chance.”

  “MacLear did.”

  “They figured they could control me with what they knew about the Swain family. They put me in SSU right away. Figured I’d have flexible ethics.” His voice lowered a notch. “I guess I lived down to that expectation.”

  There, Scanlon thought. A hint of vulnerability. The Jamie Butler he’d known had idolized Scanlon’s father. He seemed to regret the choices he’d made.

  Maybe Scanlon could use that.

  “I reckon Dahlia’s got her hands on that key now,” Opal said, pushing to her feet.

  Scanlon’s gaze whipped up. “What key?”

  Opal shrugged a cardigan over her dark green blouse. “The key girlfriend number one is taking off girlfriend number two as we speak, sugar.” She flashed him a quick smile. “I always knew you’d be a real heartbreaker, Benny Allen.” She headed out the door, closing it behind her.

  “What is she talking about?” Scanlon asked Jamie, his pulse hammering hard in his throat.

  “Dahlia lured your pretty FBI partner up here. Pretended to be you and told her to come alone and bring the key.”

  So they knew everything. About the key, about his FBI connection, about his real identity—

  So why hadn’t they killed him yet? Was there something they needed from him?

  The key, he thought. They needed the key first, in case Dahlia’s trick didn’t get Isabel up here as planned.

  Please, Cooper, please be smart enough to see through it.

  But if there was one thing he knew about Isabel Cooper, it was that she didn’t turn her back on her partner. If she thought there was the slightest chance the message had come from him, she’d be here.

  He just hoped she’d come prepared.

  * * *

  “YOU DON’T HAVE A THING ON ME,” Dahlia taunted, as Isabel headed for the barn door. “I could have you arrested for unlawful detention. Maybe even kidnapping.”

  Isabel turned in the doorway. “You tried to brain me with a shovel, and I didn’t even have my gun out.”

  “Your word against mine.”

  “And who will they believe—the former FBI agent with all sorts of commendations, or the sister of a meth mechanic? Let’s see—what could the answer be?” Isabel headed out of the barn where she’d left Dahlia trussed up and headed up the road to the cabin in hopes that Scanlon had left some indication of where he was going.

  Meanwhile, she got on the phone and put in a call to her brother Rick, swiftly explaining where she was and what she was up to. He was appalled, as she’d known he would be, but he promised backup was on the way.

  Next, she tried the last number she’d had for Adam Brand. To her surprise, he answered on the first ring. “Brand.”

  “It’s Isabel Cooper. Where is Scanlon?”

  “I can’t tell you that—you know that—”

  Anger flooded her chest. “You can and you’d better. Because the Swain family knows who he is—”

  “I know. He found the bug in his bedroom. He thinks J. T. Swain planted it—”

  “He’s wrong. Dahlia McCoy did.”

  “So the Swains may not even know about him?” Brand sounded suddenly alarmed.

  “Oh, they know—but if you know he was made, why the hell haven’t you pulled him out of here already?”

  “We were going to use it.” As Brand outlined his outrageous plan to have Scanlon pretend to offer himself as a double agent, Isabel’s rage grew.

  “Are you both crazy?”

  “He has his reasons—”

  “Are you talking about his father’s murder?” she asked, no longer caring what secrets Scanlon wanted to keep. His obsessions weren’t hers. Her only compulsion, at this moment, was to keep the man she loved alive, even if he was willing to kill himself to get the answers he needed.

  “You know?” Brand sounded surprised.

  “Everybody knows now, including the Swains. None of them is going to believe he’d go double agent for the family that killed his father.”

  Brand swore softly. “I’m sending in backup.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “He was going into town to find Addie—he seemed to think she’d be at the feed store, even though it’s Sunday.” Brand’s voice lowered. “He should have been there an hour ago.”<
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  Fear squirming in her belly, Isabel stopped in the middle of the dirt track, wondering if she should go back, get her car and drive into town. “They wouldn’t keep him there, would they?” she asked aloud, not sure she could trust her instincts, which were telling her to stay in the woods.

  “No,” Brand agreed.

  “I’m going to his cabin,” she said, moving forward again. “I left my set of the files at home, but I know there’s a map of Swain territory in his files. I’m going to start with Davy McCoy—see if he gives a damn about his sister and what happens to her.”

  “I can’t sanction your actions,” Brand warned.

  “Lucky for you, I don’t work for you anymore.” Isabel hung up the phone and moved off the track and into the cover of the trees. As long as she stayed where she could see the road now and then, she knew she’d eventually reach the clearing where Scanlon’s cabin was located.

  But she didn’t count on coming across another person there in the woods.

  The woman was tall and large-framed, with graying red hair that curled wildly in the prestorm humidity. Her sharp blue eyes caught sight of Isabel before Isabel had a chance to hide, so Isabel lifted her chin and moved forward, pasting a smile on her face.

  “Hi, there!” she called out, hoping her open greeting would disarm the woman enough to ease any suspicions she might have.

  The woman tucked her cardigan more tightly around her and stepped forward, her freckled face creasing with a smile so predatory it made Isabel’s skin crawl. “Well, hello yourself, Miss. You sure are out here wanderin’ around at a bad time. There’s a storm comin’.”

  “I know. I heard the hiking was good up here on the mountain, but I got turned around and my compass is a piece of garbage—don’t suppose you could point me to the nearest road?”

  “You’re not far off—there’s a dirt road just over that way that leads down to the highway into Bolen Bluff.” The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Is that where you’re stayin’?”

  “No, ma’am,” Isabel answered, knowing that the one place she didn’t want to go was back down the road to Bolen Bluff, especially if the woman decided to tag along. She’d tied up Dahlia McCoy pretty tightly, but she hadn’t gagged her. “I came over the mountain from east of here—over in Silorville. My friends and I have been camping down by the lake.”

  “Good grief, girl, you’re a long way off.” The woman’s eyes narrowed. “I could show you the path over the mountain if you like.”

  “Come into my parlor,” said the spider to the fly… .

  “Okay,” Isabel blurted before she lost her nerve. “That’d be great.” She fell into step with the larger woman, taking care to keep the Beretta holstered at her hip from showing beneath the hem of her camouflage jacket. All it had taken was the woman’s mirthless smile to realize whoever she might be, she knew exactly who Isabel was.

  Was she a Swain? Almost had to be—she didn’t look exactly like Jasper Swain, whose mug shot Isabel had memorized, but they shared enough features in common—the freckled complexion, the red hair and rangy build—to make her feel certain this woman was, if not one of Jasper’s sisters, at least a cousin.

  Dillon Creavey’s mother, perhaps? She definitely wasn’t Addie Tolliver. Scanlon had a candid shot of Addie in his notes, and Addie was leaner and older than this woman. Addie also wore her hair in a short, wavy bob considerably shorter than her companion’s shoulder-length frizz of curls.

  Whoever she was, she seemed to know where she wanted to take Isabel. And it wasn’t over the mountain to Silorville, which lay well west of wherever this woman was leading her.

  “I’m Izzy,” she introduced herself, using the annoying nickname her brothers and sisters sometimes used if they were in the mood to pester.

  “Opal,” the woman answered briskly, moving up the incline at a remarkably fast pace for a woman her size and age. “Nice to meet you,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

  Opal Butler. Old Jasper Swain’s sister. Scanlon thought she and her sister Melinda never dabbled in the family business, but Isabel’s instincts said otherwise. This woman was up to no good. Probably taking her wherever Scanlon was being held so the Swains could deal with both of them at the same time.

  At least, that was what Isabel was counting on.

  * * *

  “WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU, man?” Scanlon kept a watchful eye on Jamie Butler as his old friend paced silently in front of the windows.

  Jamie stopped and turned to look at him, anger and regret twisting in his sharp gaze. “You still don’t remember, do you?”

  Scanlon was beginning to. Pieces at a time. He remembered the sound of the truck engine as it chugged up the road by his house. It was blue—like Jamie’s father’s truck. Had Earl Butler killed Scanlon’s father? Was that what he couldn’t remember?

  “It was cold that night. Damned cold. My fingers felt like they would freeze off, even under the gloves.” Jamie resumed his pacing.

  “You were there?”

  “Of course I was there.” He shot Scanlon a black look. “You know I was there.”

  A memory flashed through Scanlon’s mind. Jamie’s face, freckled and tearstained. Soft sobs audible in the crisp night air, even over the growl of the truck’s engine.

  The glint of moonlight on a rifle barrel as it settled over the frame of the open window.

  No, Mama, please—

  Bile burned in Scanlon’s gut as he heard the words he’d forgotten twenty-five years ago. His friend, his best friend, hands trembling on the rifle as he tried to do what she asked of him. Tried to please his mama—

  “Oh, Jamie.”

  “She said it was the only way. With Jasper gone and the family jockeying for control, it was the only way to secure my place in the peckin’ order.” Bitterness edged Jamie’s voice. “I was a good son, wasn’t I? That’s what she told me.”

  “You never wanted this.”

  “Yeah, well, I got it now, don’t I?”

  “You didn’t want to kill him.” Scanlon meant the words as a statement of fact, but there was still just enough doubt left inside him, doubt about his memories, that it sounded more like a question.

  Jamie stopped and stood in front of the door, his chin up as if he’d made a decision. “No, I did not. I didn’t want to do any of it. Not then.” He closed his hand around the doorknob and opened the door. “And not now.”

  To Scanlon’s surprise, Jamie walked out the door and closed it behind him, leaving Scanlon alone in the parlor. There was a rattle of keys in the dead bolt—locking him in?—and footsteps retreating across the porch steps before they went silent.

  Maybe it was a trick. Some sort of trap. But Scanlon couldn’t afford to waste the chance to free himself.

  He’d been working at the duct tape on his right hand while Jamie paced, loosening it enough that he was able to pull his hand free. He retrieved the penknife from the hidden pouch in his waistband and cut the rest of his restraints free.

  He tried the doorknob and found it turned uselessly in his hand. The dead bolt was locked.

  He went through the house to the back and found the back door also locked. Worse, the backyard was fenced in, and three large pit bull mix dogs paced the yard, looking mean and hungry.

  The front it is, he thought, hurrying back to the front parlor. But as he started to test one of the front windows, movement in the yard outside caught his eye.

  It was Opal, returning. And she wasn’t alone.

  Walking along a step behind her was Isabel, dressed in a camouflage jacket, olive-drab jeans and a pair of hiking boots. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her wary gaze was pinned to the back of Opal Butler’s head.

  She knows, he realized. She knows who Opal is. She may even know I’m waiting here inside.

  Which meant she probably had a plan. And as much as he wanted to charge out there right this very moment and make Opal Butler pay for what she forced her young son to do, he wasn’t going to put
Isabel in greater danger to do it.

  She thought he was a captive. So did Opal.

  So he sat back down in the chair, wrapped the torn duct tape loosely around his ankles, tucked his hands behind his back and settled down to wait for his partner’s next move.

  He heard footsteps on the porch. A rattle of the doorknob and a soft sound of surprise from Opal’s lips. After a couple of seconds, he heard a key slide into the lock and set himself for whatever came next.

  The door opened, and it was Isabel who appeared in the doorway, smiling back at Opal as she entered. “Thanks for the offer of something to drink,” she said. “It’s hotter out there than I anticipated.”

  The second she cleared the door, Isabel whipped to the side, putting the door between her and Opal, catching the woman off guard. Opal started to backpedal, calling out, “Jamie!”

  Scanlon pushed from his chair and lunged for her, surprised to find she was quicker than her age would have suggested. Before he reached her, she had pulled a long-bladed knife from the pocket of her jeans and slashed it at him, nearly catching him in the neck.

  He stumbled back, and Opal started running down the steps and out into the woods, her steps fast and sure.

  “Tell me you’re armed,” Scanlon growled, as Isabel ran to his side.

  She handed him her Beretta and pulled the Smith & Wesson .38 from her ankle holster, following him out into the woods.

  They hadn’t made it a hundred yards before a rifle shot cracked through the woods, stirring birds into flight from their perches in the trees overhead.

  Ahead, Opal Butler’s legs churned twice more in the underbrush, then she pitched forward onto her face.

  Scanlon and Isabel both hit the ground. “Where did that come from?” Isabel asked.

  Scanlon peered toward a ridge above the house, which lay in a shallow hamlet in the mountain. At the top of the ridge, moving among the trees, he saw a male figure silhouetted against the watery afternoon sun. He stood for a long moment, as if gazing down on the scene, then walked away, out of sight over the ridge.

  Jamie, Scanlon thought, his gaze moving back to Opal Butler’s prone figure. He watched for any sign of movement, but she was deathly still.