by Paula Graves
Quinn sat back in his chair, regarded the closed door and unsuccessfully tried to stifle a smile.
His intercom buzzed. Line four—Dennison. He felt a flutter of anticipation as he picked up the phone. “Tell me you’ve got something.”
Cain Dennison’s gravelly voice held a hint of irritation. Quinn knew the agent didn’t care for spying on one of his own, even in an attempt to clear his name. “He called two minutes ago.”
“What did he want?”
“He wants a few minutes alone with my grandmother.”
* * *
“SHE’S A WHAT?” McKenna stared at Darcy, certain she’d misunderstood.
“A sort of mountain healer, if the stories are true.” Darcy checked the magazine of his SIG Sauer and slid the pistol into the pancake holster behind his back. He shrugged a thin plaid shirt over his T-shirt and jeans, leaving the buttons open in the front. “Do I look like a local?”
She took in his day’s growth of beard and broad, muscular shoulders, the casual clothing and the baseball cap he pulled low over his forehead. “As long as you keep your mouth shut.”
“I shouldn’t have to speak to anyone but Lila Birdsong.”
“Pretty name.”
“She’s an interesting lady, if her grandson’s stories are anything to go by.” He checked his watch. “I have to go soon.”
“Are you sure you can trust this Dennison guy you called?”
“As much as I trust anyone.” She could tell from his tone that he wasn’t as certain about Dennison’s motives for helping him as she’d hoped.
“You know the protocol for internal investigation is to use an agent’s closest friends against him.”
He nodded. “I’m pretty sure Dennison’s the agent Quinn has assigned to keep an eye on me. So might as well let him. I have nothing to hide.”
“Except me.”
“Quinn already knows about you. He’s already made his choice which side he’s on—yours.”
“How does he know I haven’t gone to the dark side since we all last worked together?” she asked curiously, resting her head against the sofa cushions as she watched him pace a tight circle next to the coffee table.
“I suspect he knows more about your career than almost anyone but your supervisor.” Darcy stopped in front of her, his brown eyes narrowing. “He knows more than I do, certainly.”
“Do you think I’ve gone to the dark side?” she asked, curious.
His smile made his eyes sparkle. “I always thought you were on the dark side, Rigsby.” His smile faded. “Are you certain you’re going to be all right here alone?”
She patted the holstered Glock 27 sitting on the sofa next to her. “Mr. Glock and I will be just fine.”
He took the portable phone off its cradle and set it in front of her on the footlocker coffee table. “You have my cell number memorized?”
“You’ve spent the last hour drilling it into my brain.” Her achy, tired brain. “Just go see what the witch woman has for us. And if you don’t like what she has to say, you have my permission to rob a pharmacy.”
“Duly noted.” He opened the front door and turned to look back at her. “You sure you’re okay to stay here alone?”
“I’m fine. Go. Hurry back.”
She forced herself to remain upright until he was out the door. But as soon as the lock clicked shut, she slumped back against the sofa cushions, gazing at the holstered Glock by her side. It looked far away and heavy.
She hoped the next time the door opened, it would be Darcy returning. Because she was anything but fine—and in no shape to fight for her life.
* * *
LILA BIRDSONG LIVED near the top of Mulberry Rise, below the craggy face of Miller’s Knob, in a small cabin surrounded by dense evergreen woods. Darcy had been there once, with Cain Dennison and a few of the other Gates agents, for a cookout in the brick barbecue pit behind Dennison’s old silver Airstream trailer. From Darcy’s cabin, the drive had taken five minutes.
From Hunter Bragg’s cabin in the middle of nowhere, however, the winding mountain roads and sharp switchbacks took almost twenty minutes to navigate.
Twenty long minutes for something to go terribly wrong back at the cabin where McKenna waited for him to return.
Her temperature had been elevated when Darcy checked it before he left, but not high enough for immediate concern. McKenna had downed a couple of ibuprofen and told him to go meet with Lila Birdsong, although he could tell she was skeptical that Cain Dennison’s grandmother could provide anything useful to stop her wounds from becoming any more infected.
He would normally be as skeptical, but Quinn himself had consulted with Lila Birdsong about herbal remedies that could work as stopgaps in the field, when prescription medications weren’t readily available.
Maybe she wouldn’t be able to come up with anything to help him. But the alternative was getting antibiotics by deception or outright theft.
The road up the mountain topped off suddenly, giving Darcy a good look at the small clearing where Lila’s cabin sat. The Airstream trailer that had been home to Cain Dennison was gone.
But in its place sat a Ridge County Sheriff’s Department cruiser.
Chapter Four
The FBI legal attaché in Tablis, Kaziristan, had been a cramped office located at the back of the slightly shabby embassy building. Only one small window, set high in the back wall, let any natural light into the room, but the men and women who’d crowded into the tight space hadn’t had much time for gazing out windows.
Eight years ago, Tablis had simmered in the harsh summer heat, close to boiling.
McKenna had been twenty-four years old, law school and twenty weeks of FBI Academy training behind her and a whole new career ahead of her. She’d been shocked and happily surprised by the assignment to the embassy legat. Even though it was largely grunt work, an embassy placement was a plum assignment for a green agent. Her superiors had assured her it was a sign that the bureau had high hopes for her career advancement.
Then everything had gone to hell in a firestorm of rocket-propelled grenades and brutal al Adar terrorists on a mission of death and chaos. She’d been lucky to get out of the embassy alive. Several other Americans hadn’t fared as well, including three of her legat office associates.
She pushed herself up from the sofa, not liking the trembling weakness in her knees as she crossed to the front window to look out at the woods beyond the small cabin clearing. Morning was giving way to midday, the light moving inexorably toward the west.
Darcy had been gone almost twenty minutes.
Letting the curtains swing closed, she leaned against the windowsill, feeling achy all over. She felt hot and grimy, in desperate need of a shower and about a week of sleep, but she didn’t trust her shaky limbs to hold her weight long enough to take a shower. Plus, the hot water might reopen her wounds and start the bleeding again.
Damn it.
She stumbled her way back to the sofa and sank into the cushions, hating how weak she felt. She’d worked so hard to stay fit, stay strong, keep up with the men in her FBI unit, and one stupid bullet—one that hadn’t even hit any vital organs—had her as wobbly and weak as a newborn calf.
The last time she’d felt this shaky, she’d been huddled with several other embassy employees in a curtained alcove, watching an al Adar rebel named Tahir Mahmood slit the throat of one of the embassy’s translators, helpless to do anything in case it alerted the other armed terrorists swarming the embassy to their hiding place.
She’d grown up just over the state line in North Carolina, until her family had moved to Raleigh when she was a teenager. Life in the Appalachian Mountains could be both beautiful and hard, and she’d experienced both sides of that life. But nothing she’d seen or heard in the hills, during
her FBI training or during the first ten months of work at the US Embassy in Tablis had prepared her for the raw brutality and utter disregard for human life she’d witnessed during the embassy siege.
It had changed her. Her outlook on life. Her career goals.
Her hopes.
We have to go back for him!
Her own voice rang in her mind—younger somehow, more naive and trusting than now. She’d thought they could save Michael Cameron, one of her fellow legat agents, when rockets had set their section of the damaged embassy ablaze. She’d wanted to dig through the rubble a little longer, try to reach him before the flames could, but the back section of the embassy had been crumbling around them.
Darcy had grabbed her arms and forcibly removed her from the area, hustling her, even dragging her to other parts of the embassy that had remained structurally stable during the onslaught of rocket fire.
They’d eventually met up with several other embassy employees being herded to safety by one of the embassy’s Marine Security Guards, a Georgia boy named Maddox Heller. Heller had sneaked them into the alcove in the formal dining room to hide when al Adar rebels had stormed that section of the embassy.
Teresa Miles, a pretty young interpreter in her first Foreign Service assignment, hadn’t been so fortunate.
A trilling sound made her nerves jangle. The phone was ringing.
She picked up the receiver and glanced at the digital display window. Darcy’s cell-phone number.
Should she answer? What if something had gone wrong? What if it was a trick?
Quelling a surge of fear, she pushed the answer button and lifted the phone to her ear. But she didn’t speak.
“Rigsby?” Darcy’s voice was low and soft on the other end.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Are you okay?”
“For the moment.” Even over the phone, she could hear the tension in his voice. “When I arrived at Lila Birdsong’s cabin, there was a sheriff’s cruiser there. I think I know who it is, but she knows me. I can’t risk going inside yet until she comes out.”
“Won’t she see the Land Rover?”
“Not unless she’s looking. I’ve hidden in the woods off the road.”
“Darcy, this is crazy. Just get back here. We’ll figure out something else. I’m feeling better already,” she added, wondering if he could discern the lie on his end of the line.
“No, you’re not,” he growled, answering her question. “I’ve been searching the internet on my phone while waiting, and I encountered some options for us to try before we start breaking into pharmacies.”
“Don’t take any stupid risks, Darcy.”
She could almost hear his smile. “I never take stupid risks, Rigsby. Only smart ones. I’ll be in touch.” He hung up before she could respond.
She hung up and set the phone on the coffee table, her hand trembling and her pulse pounding in her ears.
* * *
THE SHERIFF’S CRUISER passed slowly on its way down the mountain road, the midday sun glinting off the chrome and briefly obscuring the driver as the vehicle approached Darcy’s hiding place in the woods. He’d left the SUV behind and walked closer to the road for a better view.
The glint faded as the cruiser rolled past, giving Darcy a good view of the driver’s shoulder-length bob of dark hair and pretty profile. Sara Lindsey. Cain Dennison’s girlfriend.
Darcy knew that Sara and Cain’s grandmother had become close a few months earlier, when Sara had returned home to Ridge County after several years as a Birmingham, Alabama, police officer. Maybe her visit to Lila Birdsong had been entirely unrelated to the call he’d made to Cain Dennison.
Or maybe it had everything to do with it.
He pulled out his phone and punched in Dennison’s phone number. The Gates agent answered on the third ring. “Darcy?”
“Did you tell anyone besides your grandmother that I was going to visit her?”
“No.” Cain sounded curious. “Did something happen?”
“Your girlfriend was at your grandmother’s place when I arrived.”
“So?”
“So, I didn’t expect to see a Ridge County sheriff’s deputy as part of the welcoming committee.”
Cain sounded confused. “It’s not like you don’t know Sara, Darcy. You’re a friend, not a suspect.”
On the contrary, Darcy realized with a gut-twisting wrench. He didn’t have any friends. He couldn’t afford them.
Not with McKenna Rigsby’s life hanging in the balance.
* * *
THE RATTLE OF the doorknob sent a hard shudder down McKenna’s back. Groping for the Glock, she knocked the pistol and holster to the floor.
Damn it!
The thought of bending down to pick up the fallen weapon was almost more than she could contemplate, but she forced herself into motion, retrieving the holster, grabbing the grip of the pistol and sliding it out smoothly just as the cabin door swung open.
Darcy froze in the doorway, raising his hands, one of which held a large plastic sack. “It’s me. Don’t shoot.”
She lowered the pistol, her hands shaking. “You could have called to warn me.”
“I thought you might be sleeping. You need rest, and I didn’t want to risk waking you.” He locked the door behind him and looked around the room. “Have you been here the whole time I was gone?”
“I took a bathroom break about thirty minutes ago.” She didn’t tell him that walking down the short hallway to the bathroom had sapped most of her strength. Nodding at the plastic bag, she asked, “What’s that?”
“Some things I found at the compounding pharmacy in town.”
“So you didn’t make it to see the witch woman.”
“Nope. Didn’t think the risk was worth it.” He sat in the armchair across from her and emptied the bag onto the footlocker between them. “This is something called Dragon’s Blood. Tree sap of some sort. Said to have strong antibiotic, antiviral and antifungal properties. Plus, anti-inflammatory and analgesic.”
“Overachiever,” she muttered, eyeing the dark red liquid in the small bottle with skepticism. “Does it do windows, too?”
Darcy’s lips quirked as he pushed another small bottle toward her. “Eucalyptus oil. Also supposed to be antibiotic, if the articles on the internet are anything to go by.”
“Because everything you read on the internet is true.”
He slanted another amused look at her. “This is good old fashioned aloe vera gel. I figure it can’t hurt.”
“And that?” she asked, pointing at the bottle that sat behind the rest.
“Betadine. If hospitals use it, it must be effective, yes?”
“Works for me.” She leaned forward to pick up the bottle of Betadine and gasped at the burning ache in her side. “Ow.”
Darcy was up from the chair and by her side in a second. “Sit back. You’re doing too much.”
To her horror, hot tears stung her eyes. She blinked them back. “I’m fine.”
“You’re far from fine. You’re injured and probably haven’t had a good night’s sleep in days. Have you?”
“What I’d really like is a shower,” she blurted before she could think better of it.
“That can be arranged.” Darcy’s dark eyes met hers.
Despite the pain in her side, despite the weakness in her limbs, she felt a flood of pure sexual heat flow between them, and her breath stilled in her lungs. The intensity of his regard overwhelmed her, but she couldn’t drag her gaze away.
He broke the connection first, moving away and turning his attention to the bottles sitting on the coffee table. “A bath might be the better option.”
He was right about that. Her legs would never hold her upright long enough to finish a shower. “That would be lovely.�
��
“Stay right here.” As he passed her on the way to the bathroom, he brushed the back of his hand briefly against her cheek. As much as she might have wanted to believe it was a simple show of affection, she had a feeling he’d been surreptitiously checking her for fever.
“Am I burning up?” she called after him.
“Didn’t even singe my fingers,” he called back, his tone light. But she heard worry lurking just beneath the surface.
She’d been running around in the woods for six hours, forced to ignore her pain and weakness. The wounds had remained untreated, open to any sort of airborne pathogens that might have found their way to the bloody holes in her side.
She’d spent a lot of time zigzagging to throw off her pursuers, and for what? They’d still spotted her less than a mile from Nick Darcy’s cabin. She’d still had to run for her life.
Darcy came back a few minutes later. “Your bath is ready,” he intoned in his plummiest accent.
He watched with hawk-like intensity as she gingerly inched her way toward him, though he kept his hands to himself, letting her pull her own weight, as if he sensed that she needed to make that small, unconvincing show of strength.
In the warm, cozy bathroom, the fragrant air smelled like crisp green apples. She turned in the doorway to look at Darcy. “Green apple is Susie’s favorite.”
He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Explains why Bragg always smells so nice.”
Steam rose from the foamy bathwater. “I think I can take it from here.”
“Call out if you need me.” With a long, narrow-eyed gaze that sent a shiver skittering down her back, Darcy backed out of the bathroom and closed the door behind him.
She stripped off the borrowed T-shirt and, gritting her teeth, tugged the bandages away from her bullet wounds. Using the small oval mirror over the pedestal sink, she took a look at the injury. There was distinct redness and inflammation around the entry and exit wounds, but she didn’t see signs that infection had spread. That was good, wasn’t it?
After she finished undressing, she headed over to the tub. She had to grip the sides of the tub to keep from falling over as she stepped into the bubble bath. The water was deliciously hot against her skin, and for a second, she thought the bath might turn out to be more enjoyable than she expected.
