by Paula Graves
“You do that,” Quinn said. “Call if you need anything.”
“Will do.” She hung up, set the phone on the bedside table and stared up at the darkened ceiling, wondering if she was going to be able to keep her word. Carver was missing; she and Landry were both hunted. She’d chosen the work she did willingly, knowing the dangers, but she was nearly thirty-five now. Her window of opportunity for having a child of her own was closing quickly, if having a child was even what she wanted.
Was it? She and Landry had been partners and lovers, but one thing they’d never seriously talked about was getting married and starting a family. In fact, in retrospect, she could see that they’d gone out of their way to avoid talking about marriage and kids.
Why? What had they been afraid of? That they wanted different things out of life? In some ways, she knew Landry as well as she knew anyone in the world, but in others, she didn’t think she knew him at all.
Because he’d wanted it that way? Because she had?
Maybe they were crazy to think they could make their relationship work this time.
Maybe they were crazy to try.
* * *
OLIVIA WAS ALREADY up the next morning, scrambling eggs, when he wandered into the kitchen. She turned around to flash him a quick smile. “Good morning.”
Her face was freshly scrubbed and free of makeup, and her hair was damp and tousled from the shower, but she was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, especially in that Alabama T-shirt and houndstooth-patterned running shorts, her long, tanned legs stretching for miles beneath the hem.
“Good morning,” he replied, looking over her shoulder. “Need any help?”
“The toaster is over there on the counter. There’s bread in the pantry—the Hunters stocked the place with some essentials for us, it seems. Janeane left a note so we’d know everything’s fresh.”
The kind gesture touched him more than it probably should have. “That was nice of her.”
Olivia must have heard something odd in his tone, for she turned away from the stove to look at him. “It was.”
He smiled. “I guess it’s been a while since I’ve experienced much human kindness.”
Olivia reached out and touched his arm briefly. “Give yourself a little time to get used to it again.” She turned back to the eggs.
He hoped he’d have reason to get used to it. The thought of returning to a life of running and hiding was deeply disheartening. He’d grown accustomed to living a mostly solitary life, his only relationships shallow and transient.
But he’d never grown to like it.
The toaster took four slices at once. He put bread in the slots and pushed down the lever. “If we can’t figure out a way to prove someone in the FBI set me up, I’ll have to go back under the radar.”
“We’ll figure it out,” she said, her voice firm.
“You can’t know that.”
She moved the skillet from the stove eye and turned to look at him. “I will not rest until we figure it out.”
God, he loved her when she stuck out her chin and made declarations of intent. She was fierce and formidable and as sexy as hell.
He lifted his own chin in response. “Then neither will I.”
She flashed him a big, toothy grin. “There’s the Cade Landry I remember.”
He hoped she was right. He hoped he was the man he used to be, because the man he’d become didn’t seem to be a damned bit of good to anyone.
As they were cleaning up after breakfast, Olivia outlined her plan for the morning. “I brought files with me that I want you to go through. They’re dossiers we’ve gathered on the bigger players in the Blue Ridge Infantry, and I was hoping maybe you could tell us if any of them were involved in your abduction.”
“I didn’t see faces. They wore masks.”
“Maybe there will be something else that you’ll be able to identify about them. Or maybe something in their files will spark a memory.” She put the last cup in the dishwasher and straightened. “I set up everything for us in the front room.”
He followed her into the living area and saw that she’d stacked fifteen manila folders in a neat line on the long coffee table in front of the sofa. “How long have you been awake?”
“A couple of hours.” She slanted a sheepish smile at him as she took a seat on one end of the sofa. “Early riser, remember?”
“I remember.” He sat beside her and picked up the first dossier. “Calvin Hopkins.”
“Head of the Tennessee branch of the Blue Ridge Infantry. Anything familiar about him?” Olivia asked as he flipped open the folder.
The photos in the dossier appeared to be candid shots taken with a telephoto lens. “Who took these shots?”
“Grant Carver, among others,” she answered soberly. “One of the benefits of his living near the Fowler Ridge enclave.”
“If you know where they’re living, why hasn’t someone gone in and staged a raid?”
“Because they learned a little something from the meth cookers with whom they’ve aligned themselves. They don’t bring their drug business home. We think they’ve set up meth labs in other places in the hills. Abandoned cabins up high in the hills, maybe. Or even some of the old, abandoned marble quarries north of here. A few of those places are still private property, with absentee owners. All kinds of activity could be going on there without anybody but a few locals knowing it.”
Landry rubbed his jaw, realizing he was already falling back into the habit of not shaving. Reentering civilization after nearly a year of living on the fringes was proving to be more difficult than he’d expected.
“Take a close look at some of the people with Hopkins,” Olivia suggested as he flipped to a photo of Hopkins talking to a clean-shaven man wearing khakis and a light blue golf shirt. “That guy isn’t in the BRI, we’re pretty sure.”
“Maybe he’s just some tourist asking for directions.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s one of those other FBI agents Darryl Boyle spoke about before he disappeared.”
He looked up at her, frowning. “What other FBI agents?”
“You said you thought there was someone in the FBI who had contacted the BRI when you tried to report Boyle’s treachery to your superiors. I just figured you knew that Boyle wasn’t the only one.”
“I did but I didn’t realize Boyle had actually admitted it.” Landry looked at the photo of the man in the khakis. “I don’t recognize him. Do you?”
She shook her head. “But I left the FBI before you did. I was hoping maybe he was someone in one of the local field offices. Probably not an agent, but maybe one of the support staff?”
“He might be with the Knoxville office, I guess,” Landry said doubtfully. “Though you’d think Rigsby would have recognized him.”
“She didn’t.”
“If he was with the Johnson City RA, he was either there before I came aboard or after I left.”
Olivia sighed. “I guess it was too much to hope for.”
“Sorry.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be. We have a lot more files to go.”
They continued working their way through the files, concentrating on photographs first. Then when none of those pictures triggered any memories, they started to go through the written reports The Gates had gathered from their agents as well as civilians who lived or worked in areas influenced by the Blue Ridge Infantry.
“Your files are amazingly thorough,” Landry commented a couple of hours later when they stopped for a break. She had coaxed him into his jacket and boots for a walk in the woods behind the guesthouse, where the evergreens had sheltered much of the remaining snow from the melting rays of the sun.
“Unfortunately, we’ve had a lot of run-ins with members of the Blue Ridge Infantry. And a few of the
ir drug-dealer and anarchist buddies.”
“I’m not sure the FBI’s files on these groups are as detailed.”
“The BRI has become really savvy about covering their tracks. We can outline how we think they’re committing crimes, but producing evidence of their involvement is another thing altogether.”
“I know. I was part of a task force trying to round some of them up, remember?”
“Right.” She gave him a sidelong look. “You never told me how you were working with the BRI. I know you weren’t sanctioned to get involved with the BRI undercover while you were on that task force. When Quinn got us involved in trying to keep McKenna Rigsby safe, we did a lot of digging with our FBI sources and we found out that much. But you ended up working with them anyway. How did it happen?”
“The contact fell into my lap. A guy who lived in the apartment next door was doing some jobs for them. Transporting contraband, that kind of thing. They made a mistake with him—he wasn’t a meth head, but he was a drinker, and when he got drunk, he liked to talk. I figured out that I could pick his brains easily enough if I made sure to be his designated driver. So I ended up spending my nights at his favorite bars, looking for a chance to scrape him up off his bar stool and take him home.”
“What kind of information did he give you?”
“Upcoming runs for the BRI. When they’d be moving drugs from one place to another. I went to Chang and told him what was up. I figured we could interdict the next run, if that’s the way they wanted to go, but they didn’t think there was sufficient evidence to warrant a raid.” He frowned at the memory.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said, sounding confused. “What was their reasoning?”
“They didn’t say. And I wasn’t in any position to push them on it, given my shaky status with the Bureau.” He shook his head, angry with himself. “I should have pushed anyway. I knew there was something hinky going on. But I just—I just didn’t much care at the time.”
“You must have started caring at some point, if you ended up working with the BRI anyway.”
He nodded. “I did.”
“What happened?”
“Rigsby disappeared.”
The curious look she sent his way was tinged with suspicion. “I knew you were part of the team running her undercover op, but I wasn’t aware you’d become close.”
He almost laughed at the thought. “We weren’t close. But I knew she was a good agent. She certainly didn’t go rogue for the hell of it, so I knew something had gone really wrong. And I might not have been running on all cylinders as an agent, but my gut told me that whatever had gone wrong had gone wrong on the FBI end of the operation.”
“What did you do?”
“I tried to get Chang to let me go undercover and see what had gone wrong. I had a ready way in, through my neighbor, and I was still pretty new to Tennessee, so it wasn’t like anyone in the BRI would know my face. At least, that’s what I figured. I didn’t know about Boyle at that time.”
“Chang said no?”
“He ran it up the Bureau chain of command and came back with a no,” Landry corrected her. “I think he might have contacted the Knoxville field office and got the no-go from Boyle. He was the Knoxville liaison person.”
“So he would have known you were trying to go undercover. He must have tipped off the BRI.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t think he told them anything. At least, not at first.” Snow crunched beneath their boots as they hiked through the woods, stretching their limbs. Landry’s legs were still a little sore from their long hike over the mountain, but the exercise helped loosen the aching muscles and tendons.
“It must have suited his purposes for you to go undercover,” Olivia mused. “Do you know why?”
Landry shook his head. “When Rigsby called me to meet her at the Econo-Tel, I had a gut feeling I shouldn’t follow protocol. But I just didn’t trust my instincts. Instead, I went through proper FBI channels. I called our task-force liaison to report the contact.”
“Darryl Boyle.”
“I knew when he told me not to contact anyone else, something was wrong. I even tried reaching Chang, but I never got through.”
“So you called the number Rigsby had used to contact you, trying to warn her about Boyle.”
He nodded. “I got Nick Darcy instead. By then, Boyle was already on his way to the other meet site Rigsby set up, along with some of his BRI buddies.”
“So you knew then that whatever contacts you’d made in the BRI were compromised.”
“I knew I couldn’t trust Boyle. So I went home to pack some things. I knew I couldn’t stay there anymore. I went to the bank and got a few thousand dollars out. Stashed it somewhere safe where I could access it if I needed to. I contacted my landlord and broke my lease. Told him to keep the deposit for his trouble.”
“That made you look like you were on the run.”
“I was.” He looked at her. “I had no idea who to trust. Or if there was anybody left at all who could help me.”
“You could have contacted me.” The look she gave him was half fury, half dismay, as if she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to give him a whack upside the head or burst into tears.
“I wanted to. I knew you were working for The Gates, so I knew where to find you. But I made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“I gave the FBI another chance.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Who did you contact?” Olivia asked, dread settling in the pit of her belly. Since leaving the FBI, she’d taken her share of emotional blows where the people she’d worked with were concerned. First Boyle. Then for a while, she’d come to fear that Landry was a traitor, too.
“I went over Chang’s head,” Landry answered. “Called someone at FBI headquarters instead. Dallas Cole.”
Her eyebrows lifted a notch at the name. Dallas Cole? “The visual-information specialist at headquarters?”
Landry smiled at her surprise. “Yeah. Exactly. I figured, who would bother to corrupt a guy who designs brochures?”
She tried to picture upright Dallas Cole taking a bribe. “You’re not telling me someone did.”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I haven’t tried to contact him again to see what happened, for obvious reasons. He was always a pretty straight arrow—maybe he didn’t listen when I told him to skip the chain of command and go straight to Assistant Director Crandall to tell him where to contact me.”
“Actually, the Dallas Cole I remember wouldn’t break chain-of-command protocol for anyone,” Olivia said. “And if Boyle had thought ahead and made a few calls...”
Landry sighed. “Cole would have reported my contact and they’d know where to find me. Which must be exactly what he did. Because it wasn’t twenty minutes later, while I was waiting for a call back from Crandall, that a bunch of big, bearded guys ambushed me and hauled me off for interrogation.”
Olivia touched his arm, horrified by the pictures his words painted in her mind. “No wonder you didn’t think there was anyone in the FBI you could trust.”
“Now you know why I didn’t turn myself in to the authorities when I got away from my captors.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you felt so alone. That you didn’t feel there was anyone you could trust.”
He touched her hand then gently removed it from his arm and took a few steps away. “We should probably get back.”
“Wait.” She tugged him around to face her, not ready to let him leave. Not before she told him what she’d spent most of the night before thinking about. “You know what we said last night, about the wisdom of trying to recapture what we had together?”
He met her gaze with wary eyes. “Yeah?”
She took a deep breath. “I don’t think we should try.”
&
nbsp; His eyes flickered, as if she’d caught him flat-footed. “Oh.”
She realized he didn’t get what she was saying. “I’m sorry. I didn’t say that well. What I mean is, we aren’t the same people. I know I’m not, and I think you’d agree that you’re not, either. Right?”
His expression shuttered. “Right.”
He started to turn away from her, but she was still holding his hand.
“So let’s not try to recapture our relationship.” She caught his other hand in hers and stepped closer until her heat enveloped him. “Let’s make something new.”
She let go of his hands and rose to kiss him, her arms wrapping around his shoulders to pull him closer. As Landry tightened his arms around her waist and pulled her flush to his body, the cold dissipated. The rustle of wind in the trees disappeared, swallowed by the thunderous pounding of Olivia’s pulse in her ears.
It was so easy to let herself be swept up in the memories of their time together, the whirlwind of crazy hours, high-octane SWAT missions and stolen moments of pleasure in a world sometimes gone insane. They’d lived on passion and adrenaline, glossing over the missing pieces of their relationship as if they didn’t matter. Things like trust and commitment, the building blocks of a relationship that had lasting power.
No wonder it had all fallen apart.
As if he sensed her sudden doubts, Landry’s grip on her loosened, and he drew back to meet her gaze, his green eyes troubled. “What’s wrong?”
“We made so many mistakes before.”
His lips pressed flat as he nodded. “I know.”
“I don’t want to make those mistakes again.”
He let her go, turning so that his profile was to her. “Okay. I get that. We should probably go back to the cabin and get back to work anyway.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She moved closer to him, missing the heat of his body. “I want it to work this time. Don’t you?”
He turned slowly to look at her. “Of course.”
“We never thought past the next day.” She shook her head. “Hell, most of the time we never thought past the next hour. We lived in the here and now, and we thought it was enough. But it wasn’t. Was it?”
