Smoky Mountain Setup

by Paula Graves

  “Do you ever wish—” She stopped herself.

  “Do I ever wish what?” he prodded when she didn’t continue.

  “It’s stupid. Never mind.”

  He leaned back to look at her, his green eyes warm and soft in the mellow light of the dance hall. “No, tell me.”

  She took a deep breath. “Do you ever wish you could go back to the day of the warehouse explosion and do things differently?”

  “Of course. All the time.”

  “What would you have done differently?”

  “I would have questioned the order to go in, for one thing. I should have questioned it then, but I thought maybe someone had seen something inside the warehouse, some move by the bombers to take out hostages—”

  “I know. I mean, I don’t know what that moment was like, because I can’t remember it. But I can imagine it. I think my reaction would have been the same as yours. Maybe it was. I wish I remembered.”

  “I’m glad you don’t.” His plaintive murmur made her heart hurt. “I’m glad you don’t remember any of that moment. I wish I didn’t.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” She touched his cheek, enjoying the sensual scrape of his beard stubble against her palm. “You did what you were told.”

  “How many people’s lives have been ended at the hands of someone who was just doing what he was told?” His eyes darkened to a murky forest green, his expression etched with regret. “I should’ve made a better choice without being told.”

  She dropped her hands to his shoulders and squeezed, trying to contain a sudden rush of anger for the hell he’d clearly gone through since that horrible day in Richmond. The lives lost, the careers damaged, the nightmares, the second-guessing and the ravening sense of guilt—none of it ever should have happened.

  But it had. Neither of them could change a damn thing about that fact.

  She kept her voice low, well aware of the crowd around them, but what she was going to say needed to be said. For her sake as well as Landry’s. “Look, I know what it’s like to have regrets. I get trying to figure out what you could have done differently—God knows I’ve pored through the notes on that case for two years now, trying to figure out what could have been done to stop any of it from happening. That’s natural. But you didn’t strap a bomb to your body and take innocent people hostage. I didn’t hit the detonator in a room full of civilians and FBI agents. That’s on those BRI bastards, not us.”

  “Can we get out of here?” he asked, his gaze sliding away from her face to take in the crowded music hall.

  “Of course.”

  They called for the check, paid and tipped the server and headed out into the cold night after saying a quick good-night to Rafe on their way out.

  After the doors of the music hall closed on the noise behind them, only the hiss of their frosty breaths in the night air and the thump of their shoes on the flagstones broke the frigid silence until they reached the guest cabin. Olivia unlocked the door, let them in and locked up behind them.

  “Thanks,” Landry said as he shrugged off his coat.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you to go out.”

  He turned quickly toward her. “No. I enjoyed it. I did. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to sit in a crowded restaurant with a beautiful woman, eating good food and listening to good music.”

  “I shouldn’t have brought up Richmond.”

  He touched her cheek, his fingers cold against her skin. “It won’t go away if we don’t talk about it. It might be worse if we don’t.”

  Taking his hand, she led him over to the sofa. She pulled him down beside her, turning to face him. “You want to talk about Richmond?”

  “No. But I think I need to.”

  * * *

  IT HAD BEEN a pretty day, he remembered. Bright blue sky and mild temperatures as fall edged toward winter. The scene was so clear in his head—the sprawling warehouse south of Richmond, gleaming a creamy bone white in the midday sun, the black-clad SWAT team surrounding all the exits while the negotiation team held a tense standoff with the bombers.

  “I go over and over that day in my mind. We’d been there less than two hours.” He met Olivia’s gentle, direct gaze. “That’s nowhere near the longest we’ve waited for a hostage negotiation to produce results. I don’t remember being tired or impatient. I just remember worrying that nothing we were doing that day was going to stop someone from dying.”

  Her expression was so serious, so intense, her brow furrowed as if she was trying to wring a memory from somewhere deep inside her forgetful brain. “Was there any indication that the bombers were about to make a move? I’ve read the incident-report files, but maybe you’ve remembered something since then you didn’t remember at the time?”

  “There was nothing. It was quiet. Eerily so. When we first got there, I could hear hostages talking and crying. But after a while, even that stopped. It was like they were resting. Holding their breaths for something to happen.” He managed a faint smile. “You know that feeling.”

  She nodded. “The incident report said we got the order to move by radio, but the other teams said they heard no such order.”

  “I know. I’m not sure how it happened. Believe me, I’ve relived those moments a thousand times, trying to figure out how it could have happened.”

  “Do you remember changing the frequency at any point?”

  He shook his head. “Definitely not.”

  “Were you in possession of your radio the whole time?”

  Frowning, he replayed the moments before the radio order. He and Olivia had been on the east side of the warehouse, along with the other two agents on their team, Len Davis and Kevin Darnell. Both Davis and Darnell had died in the bomb blast. Olivia had suffered a concussion when debris had knocked her backward into a wall.

  Landry’s injuries had been minor scratches from shrapnel. Even though he’d been in the lead, by some fluke of fortune, he and Olivia had just moved behind a large air-conditioning unit, which took the brunt of the blast, sparing them more serious injury.

  Davis and Darnell, who’d gone in the opposite direction as they started to spread out, had been hit with a blast of metal shrapnel that had killed them instantly.

  Landry would never be free of those images, watching the split-second, senseless deaths of two good men. But he was damn glad Olivia had been spared that particular memory.

  “Any chance someone else could have changed the radio frequency?” Olivia prodded.

  He dragged his mind back to the present, meeting her curious gaze. “Yes. There was. I don’t know why I didn’t consider that possibility.”

  She licked her lips. “When?”

  “Just about fifteen minutes before all hell broke loose, Agent Boyle came by with water. Remember?” He kicked himself when she ruefully shook her head. “I’m sorry. Of course you don’t. It was the first time we’d seen him all morning. I guess I must have assumed he was back at the staging area, conferring with the negotiators. He gave us each pep talks.”

  She frowned. “Boyle gave us pep talks?”

  “I know that wasn’t his way, but we both know the way he felt about domestic terrorists. He was rabid, and that’s kind of what the pep talks were about. He told me, and I guess he told the rest of you, too, that whatever happened, we were patriots for trying to stop the bombers.”

  She shook her head. “Patriots. Interesting choice of words, now that we know he was working with the BRI to stage a big incident.”

  “In retrospect, I have to wonder if he didn’t stage the incident in Richmond.”

  “Or maybe it was just a target of opportunity. Maybe he let his zealotry get the better of him and took advantage of the situation to create an incident.”

  “We weren’t supposed to live, were we?”


  She met his gaze solemnly. “I don’t think we were. When we did, and you told the debriefers about the radio call, it sounded like a lie.”

  “A bad agent covering his ass.” Landry shook his head. “And suddenly the story became about FBI malpractice instead of a domestic terror attack. No wonder Boyle sabotaged me. He must have been so furious.”

  “You said it was the main negotiator, Williams, you heard on the radio. Are you sure it wasn’t Boyle?”

  “As sure as you can be about a voice over a radio. I didn’t know Williams that well, but he has that distinctive Brooklyn accent. Definitely not a Baltimore accent like Boyle had.”

  “Their voices are around the same depth, though,” Olivia murmured. “A Brooklyn accent is so distinctive, it’s easy to mimic, especially over a radio. And none of us on the team were from Brooklyn, so it’s not like we’d have been able to distinguish a real accent from a fake one.”

  He followed her unspoken logic. “Fifteen minutes before the radio call, Boyle came by and took us one by one to talk to us. I remember he put his hands on my shoulders because at one point, he made my shoulder radio squawk with static, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.”

  “He was changing the radio frequency.” Olivia let out a soft curse. “The bastard set us all up to be killed for his obsession.”

  A shivery sense of relief washed over Landry, spreading goose bumps along his arms and legs. In the rush of excitement, he reached up and cradled Olivia’s face between his palms. “That’s it. Oh, baby, that’s exactly how it happened. You have no idea how much that question has haunted me. How did I not see it before?”

  She closed her hands over his. “You just needed your partner to help you talk it out.”

  Emotion swelled in his chest, choking him. A flurry of thoughts, of images and pent-up feelings, swirled through his brain, but the lump in his throat wouldn’t let them come out in words.

  But he could see those unspoken thoughts shining in Olivia’s eyes.

  Two words finally escaped his tight throat. “I forgot.”

  Her lips trembled in a whisper of a smile. “Forgot what?”

  “Us. I forgot us.” Swept up in an irresistible whirlwind of emotion, he curled his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her closer, fitting his mouth to hers.

  The first time he’d kissed her after so long apart, it had seemed like kissing a beautiful stranger. The desire had been there, but not the familiarity. Not the sense of knowing.

  The second kiss, initiated by Olivia, had been an explosion of fiery desire, almost faceless and nameless in its intensity. Two mouths, two bodies, looking for pleasure and completion.

  But this kiss, this melding of lips and tangling of tongues, this symphony of touches and breaths and long, deep sighs—

  This kiss felt like home.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Us, she thought. This is us.

  Landry’s hands moved in a slow, sweet exploration of her face before sliding down to her shoulders and sweeping lightly down her arms. His fingers clasped hers. Entwined with them. And it felt so familiar, so perfect, that she wondered how they ever could have let go of this sense of completeness.

  She let go of his hands and lifted her fingers to his face, tracing the little nicks and contours she’d once known as intimately as she knew her own face. That scar on his chin was a high school baseball injury, when he’d taken a cleat to the face diving to tag out a runner stealing base. The dimples that creased his cheeks when he laughed had come from his grandfather on his mother’s side, he’d once told her, though his mother didn’t have dimples.

  “At least, I don’t think she did,” he’d said when she’d asked about the dimples that still had the power to make her heart skip a beat. “I never saw that much of her, and when I did, she wasn’t smiling.”

  The image of his distant, unsmiling mother made her heart break a little each time she thought of it.

  She drew back from the kiss, opening her eyes. Landry stared back at her, his gaze soft but intense. Slowly, he smiled, triggering the dimples, and she couldn’t stop a soft laugh.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Those dimples.”

  His smile widened, the dimples deepening. “Missed ’em, did you?”

  “I did.”

  “I missed you. Every single inch of you.”

  “All seventy of them?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. And even more when you’re wearing heels.”

  She pressed her forehead against his. “How did we let it fall apart? One day we were fine, and the next—”

  “I don’t think we were fine.” He leaned back, putting a little distance between them. Cool air seeped in between them, giving her a chill.

  She rubbed her arms. “You’re right. We weren’t.”

  “This is such a bad time to be considering this.” He rubbed his jaw, his palm rasping against his beard stubble. “I have no idea what’s going to happen next. I’m wanted by the FBI, and you’ve been targeted by the BRI, and in case it’s not clear, those bastards aren’t going to just let me go unscathed if I run into one of them in the woods one day and they figure out who I am.”

  “All the more reason we should stick together.” She lifted her chin and pinned him with her more determined gaze. “Maybe it’ll all go wrong again. Hell, maybe it’s inevitable. But right now we need each other, as partners if nothing else. We just work better together than apart, and you know it. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “You’re not wrong.” He bent toward her and pressed his lips against her forehead. She snuggled closer and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. “I just don’t think we need to get ourselves all tangled up in plans and promises when we’re not sure what tomorrow’s going to hold.”

  She sighed, wishing she could argue with his logic. But he was right. Rushing into things never worked out well, in her experience. “Okay. We’ll slow it down and just concentrate on the work for now. Agents Landry and Sharp, back on the job.”

  “That sounds good.” He gave her a quick kiss on the temple then let her go. “In the morning, that is. It’s late and we’ve had a few long, stressful days. Let’s get some sleep and we’ll get started first thing in the morning. Deal?”

  “Deal.” She extended her hand toward him.

  He shook her hand, his grip lasting a little longer than necessary. In his green eyes she saw a sweet, intense longing that echoed in her own chest. Finally, he let go and smiled. “I really did miss the hell out of you.”

  “Back at ya.” She made herself turn around and head for the bedroom she’d staked out earlier in the evening, closing the door behind her. By the time she’d snuggled under the warm blankets, she heard Landry’s footsteps enter the hall outside her room.

  His footsteps faltered as he neared her door. Olivia waited, breathless, for him to make another move.

  When his footsteps moved on, and the door to his bedroom opened and closed, she let out a pent-up breath, well aware he’d made the smart decision.

  But she didn’t have to like it.

  Her cell phone hummed on the bedside table where she’d left it. It wasn’t her normal phone; she’d left that back at The Gates locked in her desk. Instead, Quinn had provided both her and Landry with untraceable burner phones for their trip to Bryson City. Her late-night caller could be only one person.

  “It’s nearly midnight, Quinn,” she said into the phone.

  “You didn’t check in when you arrived.”

  He was right. She hadn’t. “Sorry.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine,” she assured him, tucking her knees up to her chest. “No problems on the road, got here in time to have some good food and listen to some good music and now we’re safely tucked in our beds for the night
.”

  Quinn was silent for a long moment.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked when he didn’t speak.

  “Are you alone in that bed?”

  Her spine straightened. “Is that any business of yours?”

  “No. Not the way you mean.”

  “Then in what way is it your business?”

  “I remember the Olivia Sharp who walked into my office looking for a job. She was— I’m not sure I even know the right word for it. Broken, I guess. Not in a way that was obvious. But there were pieces missing, and I could see it.”

  “Thank you for the analysis, Dr. Phil.”

  “I’m not trying to psychoanalyze you, Olivia. I’m not sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. If you’re going to continue to be a vital member of my team, you have to be smart and focused and emotionally centered.”

  “I am all of those things.”

  “Good. Keep it that way.” Quinn’s voice lowered. “I take it from your answers that you really are alone in your room?”

  “Quinn—”

  He laughed softly. “That time, I was sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, realizing he’d thrown in the last question just to break the tension. “And I know what I’m doing. I promise.”

  “I hope whatever happens with Landry is a good thing for you. I really do. But I need you to put your own safety first. Carver’s missing, and for all we know, he’s already dead. I don’t want to have to call up your mother and tell her that you’re gone, too.”

  She tamped down a flush of guilt. She hadn’t talked to her mother in over a week, she realized. Carla Sharp hadn’t exactly been a great role model, but Olivia had never once doubted her mother loved her. And she loved her mother, too, even when Carla exasperated her beyond words. Maybe especially then.

  “I don’t want you to have to do that, either,” she said. “I’ll be careful.”