Smoky Mountains Ranger

by LENA DIAZ,

  “Yeah, yeah.” He set the tablet on the table and stood. “I’ll give you both a few minutes. But then I really need that statement.”

  “Make it ten.”

  Duncan nodded. “Ten it is. I’ll bring back some coffee. Miss Ingram—”

  “Jody.”

  He smiled broadly, pouring on the charm. “Jody. Lovely name for a fine, Irish-looking lass. Your red hair and green eyes are a perfect foil to black Irish here, with those blue eyes and black hair.”

  “You have the same blue eyes and black hair,” Adam growled. “And stop with the fake accent. You’ve never even been to Ireland.”

  Duncan’s grin widened as he continued to stare at Jody. “How do you take your coffee, sweet colleen?”

  Adam wanted to strangle him.

  Jody smiled. “Cream and sugar, please.”

  “My pleasure.” He headed out of the room.

  “Is he always that cheeky?” she asked.

  Adam blinked. “Cheeky? Are you going to start talking in a British accent now?”

  “I bloody well might,” she teased, her inflections a perfect imitation of an English lady’s, even if the language she used wasn’t.

  “Don’t fall for his cheekiness,” he said. “He’s married to his job.”

  “And you aren’t?”

  He shook his head. “Haven’t been on the job long enough to be married to it yet. I transferred from Memphis a few months ago.” He held his right hand out, unable to resist the need to touch her, to remind himself there was still some good left in this world. There were many dark times, like now, when he wasn’t so sure.

  There was no hesitation on her part. She slid her hand through the large opening in the railing. She entwined her fingers with his and rested their joined hands on the mattress.

  He squeezed reassuringly and searched her face. She was dressed in clothes a policewoman had brought from her apartment, another white blouse—that unfortunately had all its buttons—and a pair of faded jeans that hugged the curves of her hips and offered a tempting view of her backside whenever she walked across the room. He had availed himself of that view far too often since waking up from recovery to find her in his room this afternoon.

  He cleared his throat, forcing himself to focus on the case, not his ridiculous fascination with the beautiful woman just a few feet away. “I’m sorry you heard that, about Tracy. No one has given up hope. They’re still searching for her.”

  She nodded, looking sad but resigned. “You don’t think she’s alive any more than I do. Even from the beginning, as soon as you heard about her and knew that Damien had confronted me on the trail. You put the pieces together pretty fast, figured out that Damien would have killed me to eliminate witnesses if Tracy was still alive and could tell him what he needed.”

  He wanted to lie. But she deserved better than that, and she was too smart to fall for it anyway. “You’re right. I figured he was eliminating witnesses to whatever he was trying to hide right from the get-go. He didn’t strike me as the ruminating type. Act first, regret later. That seems to be his motto.” He squeezed her fingers again. “But miracles do happen. Maybe instead of...well, maybe Tracy escaped after all. Damien may have gone after you because you were his last lead and he was desperate to make sure the pictures don’t fall into someone else’s hands. Your friend may be hiding somewhere this very minute, not sure where to go or what to do. I guarantee she’s got the very best possible men and women out trying to find her, both in the mountains and in town. No one’s giving up.”

  She nodded her thanks and pulled her hand free to tug the blanket up higher around her where it had started to fall. The loss of her touch sent a sharp pang of longing through him. He had to force himself not to reach for her again. She was too good for him. There was no chance of a future between them, in spite of the attraction that seemed to simmer every time she was in the same room—a mutual attraction, judging by the hungry looks she’d been casting his way all afternoon as he’d endured exams and bandage changes and listened to long lectures from his doctor on what to do and what not to do.

  He frowned and waved at her clothing. “Your hospital gown is gone. I’m assuming they discharged you after keeping you for observation last night. Where do you plan on going when you leave?”

  “One of the police officers brought me a key to my apartment that she got from the manager. I guess I’ll go there—home. And before you say it, I’m sure I’ll be okay. My Glock is locked up there. If Damien or Ned or any other thugs he wants to send after me show up, they won’t find a defenseless woman waiting for them. And I’ve got a phone again if I needed to call for help. A victim’s advocate that one of your people called gave me some cash and a pay-as-you-go cell phone from the hospital gift shop to replace mine.”

  “None of that sounds especially comforting. What about transportation?”

  “I can call a cab. You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be okay.”

  “You need protection. Have you asked the police—”

  She laughed, without humor. “They’re great and all. But they have a limited budget and can’t afford to assign officers to watch over witnesses who may or may not be in danger. Especially when half the Park Service is out searching for the guys I’m allegedly in danger from. Apparently, the odds of them being able to get to me are extremely low.”

  “Is that a direct quote from some jerk police officer?”

  “Pretty much. But to be fair, Gatlinburg PD and the Park Service have been great. It was only one jerk. And it’s not anyone’s fault that they have a limited budget. If I need protection, I’ve been told to hire my own.”

  He stared at his bum leg, hating himself for that one unguarded moment when he hadn’t been careful enough and had stepped into a hole. “Will you? Hire someone?”

  “I have a limited budget, too.”

  “When Duncan gets back, I’ll tell him to withdraw some money from my account. I can hire someone to guard you for a few days.”

  She was already shaking her head before he finished. “No. Thank you very much, Adam. But you don’t owe me anything. There’s no reason for you to spend your money on me.”

  “I could make it a loan. With a really long payback time frame. Like forever.”

  She smiled. “You’re amazing, you know that? But, like I said. I’ll be fine. Now that I know to be careful, I’ll be on my guard. And I’ll keep my gun beside me tonight, ready to grab. Plus my phone. My apartment’s just five minutes from the police station. Seriously, there’s nothing to worry about. But thanks, just the same, for being concerned.”

  “I know you aren’t close with your adoptive family. But surely they’d let you stay with them for a while. Wouldn’t they?”

  She stiffened, but before she could answer, the door clicked open and Duncan stepped inside. As soon as Adam saw the look on his brother’s face, he reached for Jody’s hand. She clutched it like a lifeline, her face pale as she waited for Duncan to speak.

  “I’m so sorry, Jody. They found your friend Tracy Larson. She’s dead.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jody dried her face with a washcloth and stared at her reflection above the sink in Adam’s hospital bathroom.

  They found your friend Tracy Larson. She’s dead.

  Even though she’d been expecting those words, her heart didn’t want to accept the truth.

  She could see Tracy in her mind’s eye, hear her voice, feel her arms around her whenever she’d needed a hug. Which was a whole lot more often than her strong, beautiful friend had ever needed. Tracy was a rock, always had been. Jody had been her weak, needy friend. During the most difficult years of Jody’s life, Tracy and her family had been her comfort, her solace, her refuge from the storm. Jody would never have survived if it weren’t for their love and support.

  She swiped at her tears and straightened her shoulders
. Hiding in this bathroom wasn’t helping anyone. It was time to pull herself together and tell Adam and his brother everything she could remember about Damien and his thugs. Hopefully some of the details that were coming back to her now that she had finally gotten some sleep would provide the clues necessary to bring justice to her friend, and to Sam, if he too was dead, as Damien had taunted.

  She opened the door and stepped out. Two very similar pairs of deep blue eyes looked at her with concern. She forced a smile and stepped around Duncan to take her seat beside Adam’s bed.

  “I want to help you catch Damien,” she told Duncan. “I know that my earlier statement wasn’t all that useful. I was exhausted and wasn’t thinking straight. But I’m remembering more details now. Like that Damien and Owen are brothers.”

  Adam and Duncan exchanged a surprised look. “Brothers?” they echoed each other.

  “I think so. In the buggy, Damien called Owen his little brother. He only said it once. It could have been a nickname. But if it wasn’t, that could help you figure out more about Damien. Right?”

  “Absolutely.” Duncan pulled out his cell phone and started texting someone. A few moments later, he gave Jody a big smile. “Bingo. My guy brought up Owen Flint’s bio. We knew he had a brother, Raymond D. Flint. But hadn’t made the connection yet. The D stands for Damien.” He held up his phone and turned it around. “Mugshot look familiar?”

  “That’s him,” they both said.

  “That’s Damien,” Jody confirmed. “He’s the one who sent those men to kill Adam.”

  “And you,” Adam said, frowning.

  “Do you remember any other details you didn’t mention before?” Duncan asked.

  “Three days,” she said. “It was part of that same conversation in the buggy. Damien said Sam’s PI business had been causing him problems for three days. He had plans, big plans, and Owen wouldn’t get his cut if Adam made it out of the mountains and connected the dots.”

  Adam and Duncan exchanged another look.

  “Big plans?” Duncan asked.

  “Connected the dots?” Adam asked.

  She nodded. “They didn’t talk about his plans or what he meant, other than that Adam was a cop and knew he was an ex-con—”

  “Because of the tattoos,” Adam said.

  “I think so, yes. He was worried you’d figure out who he was before he could do whatever it is that he’s planning.”

  “Are you looking at all of Sam Campbell’s active cases?” Adam asked his brother.

  “His office was crammed with hundreds of case files. We’re using his planner to reconstruct a timeline for last week to start, so we can determine which cases he was actively working. So far we’re up to twenty.”

  “He was meticulous with that planner,” Jody said. “If he worked a case last week, it’s definitely written down.”

  “Good to know. On the chopper when we were flying you and Adam to the hospital, you said that Damien insisted there were some pictures missing from Sam’s office. Any idea why he thought any were missing? And where Sam might have put them?”

  “I don’t know where Sam would have put them other than the office. But as for thinking some were missing, I imagine Damien was referring to time stamps. I’m not sure if he meant actual dates and times printed on the photos, like I put on most of the pictures that I take for brochures before processing them through an editing program. He might have been referring to the metadata on SD cards that tell you when each picture was taken.”

  “Photography?” Adam asked. “Is that the second job you mentioned in the mountains? You work for a studio?”

  “I work for myself, as far as the pictures are concerned. Sam couldn’t afford to hire me full-time. So I run my own photography business on the side. Actually, calling it a business is probably stretching it. I get my clients through word of mouth. I don’t have an office or anything like that.”

  “What do you do, exactly?” Adam asked.

  “Work with hotels and cabin rental companies mainly, taking pictures and creating ads and brochures they can use to target tourists.” She glanced back and forth between them. “If you’re thinking some of Sam’s photos could be mixed with mine, I assure you, the chances of that happening are zero.”

  “How can you be that positive?” Duncan asked.

  “Because my photography work is run out of my apartment and a storage unit outside town. And Sam would never allow someone to bring work home. He likes to keep everything under lock and key at the office.”

  “Assuming you’re right—”

  “I am.” She arched a brow at Duncan.

  He smiled. “Okay. Then does Sam have a habit of losing pictures at the office? Maybe putting them in the wrong files?”

  She shook her head. “Not in the six months that I’ve been working there. He’s extremely detail oriented, and careful. He’d keep all of the pictures for one case together. It doesn’t make sense that any could have been misplaced.”

  Adam rubbed his left leg as if to try to ease the ache. “It makes sense if Sam purposely put the pictures somewhere else for safekeeping. Maybe he realized he had something important and was checking on some details before going to the police.”

  Duncan picked his computer tablet up from the table beside the bed. “Looks like it’s going to be a long night for us investigators. We should have a preliminary timeline put together by morning. If you don’t mind reviewing it, to make sure it looks right, I can bring it to you tomorrow. Does that work for you, Jody?”

  “Of course. They’ve already discharged me from the hospital. I’ll take a cab to my apartment in a little while. The address is—”

  “No way are you going home,” Adam interrupted. “It’s not safe.”

  “I agree,” Duncan said. “Damien and his men are likely looking for you. It’s too dangerous. You should go to a hotel until we have him locked up.”

  She laughed. “Seriously? Did you miss the part where I work two jobs to make ends meet? I live paycheck to paycheck. If I have to pay for a hotel, I don’t eat for a week.”

  “Not a problem,” Adam said. “The doctor is discharging me later today. You can stay at my place.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Adam had expected Jody’s apartment to be small. He hadn’t expected it to be the size of one of those tiny houses that were all the rage on TV these days. Jody’s apartment wasn’t even a one-bedroom. It was an efficiency. She didn’t have a bed. She had a day bed. If she’d had a couch, there wouldn’t have been room for it. She had a lawn chair pulled up to a cardboard box, which apparently acted as her desk.

  “Well,” he said. “This is...cozy.”

  “I think you mean minuscule. Now you can see why I keep my cameras and equipment in a storage unit. My goal is to eventually get a full-time job as an investigator with the prosecutor’s office. But until that miraculous day happens, I’m stuck in an efficiency.”

  She opened a door on the far wall, revealing a tiny closet. “I’ll pack a bag and grab my Glock from the gun safe. Then we can take that fancy limo you rented and go to your place. Where do you live?”

  He was about to answer when he realized she was pulling articles of clothing out of open boxes neatly lined up beneath her hanging clothes and shoving them into what amounted to a large book bag. She didn’t even have a chest of drawers or a suitcase.

  Thinking about his own home, he suddenly felt self-conscious. He worked hard because he wanted to, not because he had to. He’d never had to struggle financially.

  He cleared his throat.

  Jody glanced up. “Almost done.” She stood and took all of three steps to reach the sink in the bathroom beside the closet. “You never answered me. Where do you live?” She grabbed a few items out of a drawer and snagged her toothbrush from a cup by the sink. “Well?”

  “It’s, ah, a bit larger than thi
s place.”

  “I hope your house is huge. We’d be like sardines if we both had to stay here together.”

  Some of the tension went out of his shoulders. “Then it wouldn’t bother you if I had a really big house with a few acres of land?”

  “Tell me you have a million dollars in the bank and I’m yours forever.”

  “I have a million dollars in the bank. I guess we’re getting married now.”

  She laughed and brushed past him to grab her bag. He reached to take it from her, and she rolled her eyes, moving it out of his reach. “You’re on crutches. I can carry my own bag. Come on, Mr. Millionaire. I hope you have some New York strip or filet mignon in your freezer and a giant grill to cook them on.”

  He followed her to the front door, struggling to keep up since he wasn’t used to crutches. When she reached to open the door, he said, “Hold it.”

  She glanced up at him expectantly.

  “I do have steaks in the freezer.”

  She smiled. “Great.”

  “And a grill.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  “And an outdoor kitchen.”

  “Okay.”

  “And a heated pool.”

  Her smile began to dim. “Any other deep confessions you want to make?”

  “I really do have a million dollars in the bank. And then some.”

  She blinked, all signs of amusement gone. “That wasn’t a joke?”

  He slowly shook his head. “That wasn’t a joke. Do you hate me now?”

  She shoved her hair back from her face. “Look, I’m not prejudiced against rich people. Well, not all rich people. Just Amelia, Peter, Patricia, Patience, Patrick and Paul. I never mentioned that my estranged adoptive family is wealthy, did I?”

  “No. You didn’t. Your family has money but they don’t share it with you?”

  Shadows seemed to darken her eyes, just like they’d done up in the mountains when she’d mentioned her adoptive father.

  “Jody?”