Undercover Groom

by Lovelace, Merline

  Charlie Thomas? Doc Johnson? Mayor Dobbins? Everyone in town loved Hannah. They should, considering that she supplied their needs at prices that barely covered her costs. They could help. They’d have to help. Chloe was working out a schedule of volunteers in her mind when the sound of footsteps coming toward the storeroom thudded through the stillness. Her heart jumped.

  Mase! Maybe it was Mase! She hadn’t heard the bell jangle. She flew across the storeroom and through the door to the store...only to almost smack into the man rounding the end of the counter.

  Hard hands reached out to steady her. She caught a waft of cigarette-tainted breath and knew even before she looked up that the man who held her wasn’t Mase. She pulled out of his hold, recognizing him immediately. The lone diner from the café. Last night’s late customer. His smoke-yellowed eyes identified him as surely as his scraggly hair. Shaking free of his hold, she stepped back.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I didn’t mean to plow into you.”

  He flicked a quick glance over her shoulder into the storeroom before answering in a slow drawl. “No harm done, ma’am.”

  His brown eyes came back to her, assessing, almost calculating in their intentness. The uneasiness that had pinged at Chloe last night in this man’s presence came swooping back. This time, it carried the added kick of Mase’s startling revelations.

  Someone was stalking him.

  Someone dangerous.

  She darted a look past the man’s red hunting vest, searching the store for Dave Jackson. All she saw were dust motes dancing on the late-afternoon sunbeams and the empty area around the stove. Her uneasiness spiked into sudden, sweaty fear. Some latent survival instinct made her strive to keep her fear hidden.

  “Did you...?”

  Despite her best efforts, her voice wobbled. She swallowed and moved as casually as she could toward the counter. She wanted to put that solid expanse of wood between them.

  “Did you come in for more cigarette fixings?”

  “No, ma’am. I came for you.”

  The words held such total lack of inflection that it took a few seconds for their message to sink in. When it did, Chloe spun around to confront him. Incredulous, she saw that he’d followed hard on her heels. Instead of separating them, the counter now trapped her in the enclosed space. He didn’t smile, didn’t display any outward emotion at all. But Chloe saw his intent in his eyes.

  She opened her mouth to scream.

  Before she could get out much more than a strangled squawk, his fist smashed into her jaw. Her knees gave out, and she felt herself toppling backward. A second later, the world pitched into darkness.

  Ten

  “Tell me how you know Dexter Greene was in Rapid City two days ago.”

  Tense and wired tight, Mase fired the curt order at Pam. She answered with the cool professionalism that had saved both her skin and his more than once.

  “The FBI intercepted a call from Greene’s daughter-in-law to a friend. Sharon Greene let drop that her father-in-law had contacted her Wednesday morning. Once the Bureau passed on that interesting tidbit, it took only a few hours for us to check the record of her incoming calls. One of those calls traced to a phone booth in Rapid City.”

  Mase paced his rented room, where Pam and her small team had gathered to brief him. He felt as caged and constrained as the trophies Mayor Dobbins had mounted on the wall.

  Small to begin with, the room now overflowed with Pam and two additional team members, plus their assorted pursuit and tracking equipment. The specially designed and fitted boxes were stacked against the walls. Each case contained the latest in high-tech gadgetry, including compact satellite dishes and transceivers, night vision equipment, weapons fitted with infrared scopes and laser beam sights, and lightweight Kevlar protective gear. The team had come prepared to take down a potential killer.

  Mase studied the cases, his heart pumping pure adrenaline as it always did during a mission. This time, though, it also pumped a worry that ate like battery acid at his gut. Despite the doctor’s orders not to rush Chloe or force her to face her past before she was ready, Mase knew they’d both just run out of time. He had to get her out of Crockett, out of the line of fire.

  Then he’d go after Dexter Greene.

  “Call in a helo,” he instructed Pam tersely. “As soon as we finish here, I’ll drive Chloe to the landing site. I want to get her away from here before any shooting starts.”

  “I’ve already set up an extraction,” his partner replied with a small smile. “The bird will be waiting when you and Chloe get there.”

  “Good. What else have you got?”

  A thirty-year-old with a roly-poly chubbiness that made her look more like a slightly overweight coed than the highly skilled agent she was flipped open her laptop computer.

  “We know Greene’s using one or more aliases. He’s also disguised himself. The clerk at the rental car agency in Minneapolis couldn’t remember him very well—evidently he hit the counter at a peak period—but she gave me a few vague descriptive details to run through the composite database. According to the rental car agent, he’s dyed his hair gray.” The pudgy operative hit the keys. Greene’s face as Mase had first seen it materialized on the screen. With a click of a key, Greene’s hair turned white. “He let it grow longer and grew a beard.”

  “Hold it!”

  Mase barked the order so sharply the operative jumped half out of her chair. Her fingers skittered on the keys, jumbling the picture.

  “Back up an image,” he snapped. “One more. There! Hold it there!”

  He leaned over her shoulder, his blood congealing in his veins. He’d seen that face. Those yellowish-tinted eyes. Recently. As recently as...

  Last night!

  This man was one of the diners who’d turned out for. Mayor Dobbins’s rib-eye special. A loner. Hunched over a table in the far corner. Mase was sure of it!

  The solitary diner was thinner than the individual in this computer-enhanced photo. Far thinner. His cheeks had caved in, giving him the appearance of a much older man, and his hair scraggled down his neck. Those yellowish-tinted eyes had lifted for just a second when he and Chloe passed, but...

  Chloe! Greene had seen him with Chloe!

  Mase bolted for the door.

  “He’s here, in Crockett,” he snarled at the startled crew. “He saw me last night with Chloe. I’ve got to get her out of here.”

  “I’ll back you up.” Pam scrambled to her feet, spitting orders to the other two as she charged out the door hard on Mase’s heels. “Get into position. Give us a cross-quadrant cover of the general store and main street. Move, dammit, move!”

  The instant Pam threw herself into the passenger seat, Mase shoved the Blazer into gear and took off, tires squealing. Alternately cursing and praying, he laid a strip of rubber all the way up the street. The Blazer almost climbed up the front steps of the store before it screeched to a stop.

  Mase raced up the remaining steps. The door flew open. The bell crashed and jangled. A white-haired, white-faced Hannah spun awkwardly on her crutches and leveled her double-barreled shotgun square at his midsection.

  “Damn, boy!” she growled. “You just about got yourself air-conditioned.”

  “Where’s Chloe?”

  “And Dave Jackson?” Pam snapped, pushing in behind him.

  “I don’t know.” Hannah lowered the shotgun, her weathered face folding into sharp creases. “I heard a funny noise. A squeak or a squawk or something. I called out, but no one answered, so I hauled my carcass out of bed to investigate.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Nothing so far, but I can’t maneuver these damned crutches enough to get through the aisles.” Her blue eyes telegraphed a worry she didn’t try to hide. “I thought...I hoped maybe Chloe was with you.”

  “She’s not. Check the store, Pam. I’ll take the back room and the upstairs.”

  Mase was halfway to the storeroom when Pam’s shout stopped him in his t
racks.

  “Mase! Here!”

  Spinning, he sprinted to a dusty corner at the back of the store. Dave Jackson lay in a crumpled heap, his body hidden behind fifty-pound bags of rock salt. Enough blood had flowed from the gaping wound at the back of his skull to stain the floorboards beneath him a dark crimson.

  “He’s alive,” Pam reported, her fingers on the pulse point under his jaw.

  Mase dropped to one knee to examine the wound. Fear for Chloe clawed at his chest, but the rules he’d set for himself in dozens of desperate missions couldn’t be ignored. Rule one, never leave a buddy in the field. Rule two, see that the injured got priority attention. Rule three, haul ass when the air filled with too many flying bullets to dodge.

  Rule three didn’t apply in this case, Mase thought grimly. He wasn’t hauling anything anywhere until he found Chloe.

  To his intense relief, Dave stirred and gave a small groan. The wound at the back of his skull showed broken skin and bruising, but no bits of bone or brain matter. He’d make it.

  “Call in a medical team,” Mase instructed, surging to his feet. “Stay with him until someone gets here.”

  He left Pam fumbling for her radio and raced for the storeroom. He found what he was looking for mere seconds later. An unlocked back door. A set of man’s boot prints in the dirt outside the door. But no blood. Thank God, no blood.

  The prints had sunk deep in the dirt, as though their owner carried a heavy burden. They trailed across the open area behind the store, then disappeared into the pines. His heart pounding, Mase stared at the dense screen of pines. A chilling image formed of an unconscious Chloe slung across Dexter Greene’s shoulder. Of Chloe helpless, maybe traumatized from a blow to her head.

  His chin jerked up as a new fear jolted through him. What had the neurologist said? That another shock or trauma could cause amnesia victims to retreat even further? That her memory loss could become permanent?

  Ruthlessly Mase shoved the bleak possibility aside. He couldn’t worry about that now. Right now he had to deal with the more distinct possibility that Dexter Greene had carried Chloe into the Black Hills....

  Did he intend to use her as bait to draw Mase into a net? Or to make him suffer the same agony of loss he had suffered?

  The cold sweat prickling Mase’s skin turned to ice. Savagely, he shook off his suffocating fear for Chloe. He needed to focus, do what he’d been trained to do. A few swift strides took him back inside the store.

  “I found his footprints. I’m going after him.”

  Pam glanced up from where she knelt beside Dave, a swift frown forming. One look at Mase killed whatever protest she’d been about to make. Instead, she simply nodded.

  “I’ll follow with the others. We’ll be right behind you.”

  “Here,” Hannah said gruffly, passing him the shotgun. “Take this with you.”

  She juggled her crutch and reached into her pocket. A moment later, a box of shells sailed through the air. Mase caught them one-handed.

  “If that bastard’s hurt Chloe,” she said fiercely, “you tote his hide back here for Harold Dobbins to cure.”

  “If he’s hurt Chloe, there won’t be enough left of his hide to cure.”

  Chloe came awake to the oddest sensations. The left side of her jaw felt like a swinging door had smacked into it. Her shoulder joints were on fire. Her wrists burned where they were bound together behind her back. She ached all the way across her middle, as though she’d pulled a belt too tight or bent over an iron bar. Even worse, her skin prickled all over with goose bumps.

  It took only a moment to locate the source of the goose bumps. They sprang from the long shadows cast by the pines, which hid the slowly sinking sun and sucked the warmth from the granite cliffs that surrounded her.

  It took only a moment longer to locate the source of Chloe’s other discomforts. He was crouched on one knee a few yards away, shielded behind a granite outcropping. His ball cap rode low on his forehead. His eyes were locked on a faint path that wound through the trees below the cliffs. A high-powered hunting rifle rested on the flat surface of a boulder.

  Suddenly and completely wide-awake, Chloe felt the icy drench of terror. Desperately she fought to free herself of its grip.

  She wouldn’t panic! she swore on a silent sob. She wouldn’t! She’d breathe deeply. Choke down her swamping fear. Pray that Mase came soon. Push herself away from her captor, inch by—

  “Aaah!”

  Her first, tentative movement brought a cry ripping from her throat. White-hot needles shot from her shoulder sockets, raced down her arms, centered on her bound wrists. She fell back, gasping, as her captor swiveled a few degrees on his heel.

  “Awake, are you?”

  He didn’t leave his post or abandon his weapon. The path through the trees remained in his line of vision. With senses heightened by sheer terror, Chloe absorbed the details she hadn’t picked up on the night before.

  The drawling accent, so different from that of the South Dakotans. The sunken cheeks. The utter implacability in his eyes.

  “Sorry I had to hurt you, ma’am. I don’t hold with hurting women as a rule, but I knew that taking you was the surest way to get your man in my gun sights.”

  In his sights. Oh, God! He was waiting for Mase. He planned to shoot him!

  Chloe’s silent prayer that Mase would come charging to her rescue suddenly became a fervent, fervid plea for him to stay away, to keep safe. Ignoring the agony in her tightly bound arms, she hitched onto her hip, then up on one elbow. Panting and on fire from her neck to her wrists, she finally rolled upright. A moment later she sagged against the granite wall behind her.

  “Why...” She fought to get the words through a throat dry with fear. “Why are you after him? What did he do to you?”

  “He killed my son.”

  The stark reply staggered Chloe. For a stunned moment she could only gape at him.

  “No!” she burst out. “No, you’re wrong! Mase wouldn’t kill anyone! He couldn’t!”

  The brown irises swimming in the yellowish whites grew flatter, colder. “He could. He did.”

  “You’re after the wrong man!” She got a leg under her, steadying herself. “I don’t know how your son died or why you think Mase killed him, but I know he wouldn’t—”

  “My boy died in a cell, gutted like a pig. Your man tracked him down and put him there. He and that bitch he works with. He’s worse than the bounty hunters who used to roam these hills, even if he does work for the U.S. government.”

  “Mase?” Chloe said faintly. “Are you talking about Mason Chandler?”

  Her captor spit a brownish stream at the ground. “He didn’t call himself Mason Chandler when he snaked his way into our compound. He didn’t look all smooth and polished like he does now, either. They drugged my boy and carried him off to die in that cell. It took me two years to learn his real name. Two years to find him.”

  Chloe stared at him, incredulous. Surely he had the wrong man! Surely he couldn’t be talking about Mase! Solid, steady Mase! Yet he seemed so absolutely convinced. And... She swallowed. And Mase traveled so much.

  Memories sliced through her disbelief and mind-numbing fear. Of her fiancé just back from one of. his extended business trips, his cheeks haggard and the skin under his eyes bluish with a fatigue that couldn’t have come from boardroom meetings. Of the tune she called him on what she considered a matter of some urgency, only to be put on hold while her call was transferred with a series of discreet clicks to some distant location.

  Suddenly Chloe conjured up another image, this one of a blue sky and a tiny lake and a small, puckered scar in Mase’s naked shoulder. He’d laughed it off. She’d gotten so lost in the magic of his hands and mouth on her body that she’d let him. Only now did it occur to her that the hole in his shoulder had come from a bullet.

  For a crazy moment the earth seemed to tremor under her. The universe she’d just begun piecing together again shifted, then fell apart once mo
re. The memories that had come rushing back to her such a short time ago had centered around the Mase Chandler she thought she knew. Now she realized in stunned disbelief, she didn’t know him at all. She’d never really known him.

  Her shock showed plainly to her captor. His lips pulled back in a small, satisfied smile.

  “You had no idea what Chandler did when he left his fancy office, did you, missy? You ought to thank me. I’m saving you from marrying a killer.”

  Chloe stared at him, aghast. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. “No! I don’t—I can’t—Oh, God, I just can’t believe that Mase...my Mase...”

  Ever afterward she would give regular and fervent thanks for her stuttering incoherence. It seemed to amuse her captor. It certainly deepened the intensity of his satisfaction. Even more important, it diverted his attention for a second or two...just long enough for Chloe to catch the sudden movement of the shadow thrown against the cliff face behind him.

  Her babbling became more desperate, more strident.

  “You’ve followed the wrong man. Mase isn’t a killer. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  She used the leg bent under her to push herself up on one knee. The shadow painted on the cliff behind her captor shifted again.

  “I know Mase,” she cried. “I love him. He’s not a killer.”

  Then, in a few split seconds, the world around her erupted into violence.

  A boot scraped on rock.

  Her captor swore, snatched up his rifle, swung around.

  A shot exploded at the exact instant Chloe threw herself across the rocks.

  She crashed into her kidnapper, taking him down with her just as Mase dropped from the cliff above. Blinded by a cloud of stinging cordite, deafened by the crack of the rifle, she used her forehead and her shoulder and her knee to inflict what damage she could on her captor before she was thrust violently against the rocks.

  By the time a wash of tears had cleared the burning cordite, her kidnapper lay sprawled across the rocks. Mase crouched over him, his chest heaving. For a second, just a second, Chloe saw murder in his eyes.