The Legend of Smuggler's Cave

by Paula Graves

  She looked away from the road briefly, tightening her grip on the steering wheel. “Letting Logan and me stay at your place?”

  “I could have put you in a safe house if I wanted to. I have access to those, you know.”

  She hadn’t realized. “Do you want us to go to one? It’s okay if you do. It would probably be better.”

  “You’d rather go to a safe house?”

  Her mind rebelled at the notion of taking her son to some strange place, surrounded by people they didn’t know. But wasn’t that what she’d done anyway? Dalton Hale was little more than a stranger to them. And his house was like no place she or Logan had ever lived before.

  But she felt safe there, she realized. She had no particular reason to feel that way, but she did regardless.

  “No,” she said, not intending to say so aloud but not really regretting it when she heard the word slip over her tongue.

  She felt his gaze on her again, a caress of scrutiny that sent a little shiver of awareness darting down her spine. He released a soft breath, as if he’d been holding it.

  “I don’t regret asking you to stay with me.”

  “I don’t regret staying.” She slanted a quick look toward him. “We’ll have to take pains to keep it that way, won’t we?”

  His only answer was a steady, thoughtful stare.

  She turned her attention back to the road, blowing out a tense little breath of her own.

  * * *

  SHE LEFT LOGAN with Dalton around four, explaining that she had an errand to run before she reported for her evening shift at the police station. What she didn’t tell him, because she knew he’d object, was that her errand involved returning to her cabin to have a look around.

  Nix, who’d driven past her place that morning before he went to the station, had assured her the place had looked untouched. But she couldn’t believe intruders who’d invaded her home two nights in a row would give up simply because she’d packed up her son and escaped to a well-secured house in a gated community.

  Whatever they’d been looking for, they clearly believed it was located at her house. The attempted kidnapping of her son, she’d come to believe, was to give them leverage against her in case she found what they were hunting before they did.

  But what were they looking for? And how could it be so important that they’d rip a child from his mother in order to get their hands on it?

  The cabin looked undisturbed as she pulled the Jeep into the gravel drive. She parked and stepped from behind the steering wheel, listening carefully for any unexpected sounds.

  A light breeze flowed through the trees, rustling the new leaves and rattling the desiccated limbs of the dead Fraser firs dotting the mountainside. Sunset was still a couple of hours away, but here at the foot of Smoky Ridge, shadows had already begun to creep across the landscape, creating an early, false twilight. Though the temperature was mild even in the shade, Briar tugged the collar of her lightweight jacket closer to her neck and wrestled back a shiver.

  You’re armed and you’re resourceful, she reminded herself as she started a slow circuit of the cabin, her watchful gaze taking in each window, looking for anything out of place.

  As she neared the back corner of the cabin, she heard a soft keening noise that stood out from the whisper of the wind through the trees. The low animalistic tone set the hairs on her neck prickling with alarm.

  Reaching behind her, she tugged the Glock from its holster and edged toward the corner. She took a fast peek and sucked in a silent breath.

  Tommy Barnett, her neighbor down the hollow, lay in her backyard in a sticky pool of his own blood, his pale face staring up at the cloudless sky.

  She scanned the area quickly, looking for any sign of movement that might indicate someone had set a trap for her. She saw nothing but the flutter of leaves in the wind.

  Tightening her grip on the Glock, she hurried to Tommy’s side, taking a quick assessing look at his injuries. Blood had drenched his blue plaid shirt in the front, pouring from five puncture wounds in his chest and abdomen. By the sheer volume of blood seeping out beneath him, she suspected there might be other wounds she couldn’t see.

  She pulled out her cell phone and called 911, reporting the situation with the terse, detailed skill of someone who’d once made her living on the other end of the line. “I have to try to stop the bleeding,” she told Karen Allen, the dispatcher. “I’m going to have to hang up.”

  “EMT and police are on the way,” Karen assured her.

  Briar shoved the phone back into her pocket and assessed the wounds more closely, her heart sinking as she took in the full measure of damage done to her neighbor. There was little she could do at this point, but she tried direct pressure on the wounds in hopes that she could stanch the bleeding long enough for the EMTs to arrive and take over. “Tommy? It’s Briar. Can you hear me?”

  Tommy’s face had turned to a ghastly gray that Briar could barely make herself look at, since she knew what it meant. Death was coming, sure and swift, and she feared there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  “Tommy, please hang on. The ambulance is on the way.”

  His lips moved faintly, a soft gurgling noise spilling from his bloodstained lips. She leaned closer, trying to make out words in the rattle of sound escaping his throat.

  “He won’t stop,” Tommy rasped.

  “Who won’t stop?” she asked, pressing her fingers to his throat, seeking a pulse that was already growing too weak to discern.

  “Blake,” he said. “Blake won’t stop.”

  She closed her eyes, not surprised to hear her cousin’s name on a dying man’s lips. But pained nevertheless, as if she carried the poison of his crimes in her own blood. “Did Blake do this to you?”

  Tommy’s hand, sticky with blood, closed over her wrist, his grip surprisingly strong. “You can’t run far enough.”

  His grip loosened. His fingers slid away, leaving a streak of blood across her skin. She heard the guttural growl of death laying claim to his prey, then still, hollow silence, as if the man’s departing soul had taken with it all the music of life.

  She sat back on her heels, tears burning her eyes. A prickling sensation raced through her body, raising the hairs on her arms and legs and setting off tremors low in her belly. She rose slowly to her feet and turned a slow circle, her breath quick and shallow as the woods closed in around her like a tomb.

  You can’t run far enough.

  She was beginning to fear those words were true.

  Chapter Seven

  “You should have called.” Dalton’s heart was still racing from the surprise of finding a pale, bloodstained Briar Blackwood standing at his door when he opened it shortly after dinner. She’d calmed his initial fear by assuring him the blood wasn’t her own, but the story she’d relayed as he’d helped her out of her jacket had done little to steady his rattling nerves.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to worry you, and then the chief ordered me home.”

  He felt a rippling sensation shoot through his chest at her use of the word home to describe his house. She seemed to realize her mistake, flashing him a brief humorless smile. “Here, I mean.”

  “Go get cleaned up,” he said gently. “Do you want a drink?” He didn’t have much in the house; he hadn’t entertained in weeks, thanks to the turmoil in his family, and he wasn’t much of a drinker himself. But he could probably find some brandy or something stronger if she needed it.

  “Do you have any hot chocolate?” she asked.

  He smiled. “Going for the strong stuff, are you?”

  She smiled then, a genuine one, not that bleak flash of teeth she’d sent his way earlier. “I like to live on the edge.”

  He couldn’t smile back, realizing how close she’d come to walking into an ambush th
at evening. Her cousin and his minions couldn’t have been gone long if Tommy Barnett had still been alive when she’d found him. From her description of his wounds, the blood loss would have been massive and death quick. “Use my bathroom. Logan’s asleep in your room. I don’t think he should see you like that.”

  Her smile faded. “No, you’re right. Thank you for thinking of him.”

  He watched her climb the stairs to her room, feeling the weight of her grief in each weary step she took. When she’d disappeared from view, he turned to the phone to call his office. But it rang before he reached it.

  “Dalton Hale,” he answered.

  “It’s Doyle.”

  The sound of the chief’s voice in his ear was, unexpectedly, a relief. “She’s here. She’s safe.”

  “I know. I had Nix follow her there.”

  Of course, Dalton thought. The Bitterwood P.D. took care of their own. Depending on the circumstances, it could be a very good thing. Or a very bad one. He’d seen both situations during his tenure at the Ridge County prosecutor’s office. “She’s upstairs cleaning up. Do you want to leave a message for her?”

  “No, I just wanted to make sure you knew what was going on.”

  “She told me.”

  “Did she tell you what Tommy told her before he died?”

  “She mentioned he’d implicated her cousin Blake.”

  “He told her Blake wouldn’t stop until he got what he wanted. That she couldn’t run far enough.”

  Dalton felt a flutter of unease run through him. “You think they’ll come after her here?”

  “I think it’s possible. Maybe even likely. Maybe we should rethink the situation. Put her and Logan under guard.”

  “I already told her I could put her and Logan in a safe house.”

  “Really?” Doyle sounded surprised.

  “I want her safe.”

  “Yes, I believe we’ve established that.” Doyle’s tone was dry as dust.

  “She said she doesn’t want to go to a safe house. I haven’t asked her tonight, though.”

  “We mentioned it to her earlier. Maybe you should back out of this setup, Hale.”

  “Give her no other option?” He recoiled at the idea of abandoning her. “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t really figure you could.” Doyle’s sigh sounded like a roar through the phone. “I don’t suppose you have the funds to hire security?”

  “I have the funds,” he said.

  “Then I’d suggest you contact Sutton Calhoun at The Gates, that new detective agency over in Purgatory. He’s married to one of my detectives. He’ll set something up for you.”

  “I know Calhoun,” Dalton said quietly. He’d heard of The Gates, as well. They were starting to make waves in the area, mostly for the good. However, some of the people the detective agency was hiring seemed, to Dalton, at least, to be questionable risks. Calhoun was one. The son of Ridge County’s most infamous grifter, Calhoun had only recently returned to Bitterwood after years away. He seemed decent enough, Dalton supposed, though it was hard to imagine how Cleve Calhoun’s son could be so very far removed from his incorrigible father’s criminal ways.

  And he’d also heard the agency had recently hired Seth Hammond, Cleve Calhoun’s longtime apprentice at the confidence game. Admittedly, the man seemed to have cleaned up his act, even marrying Rachel Davenport, a woman from a well-respected Bitterwood family. But risk was risk, and The Gates seemed a bit reckless about taking more than its share.

  “I’ll give you his number,” Doyle added as the silence between them stretched across the phone line.

  “I have it,” Dalton answered. “I’ll talk to Briar and see what she says.”

  “Tell her to call if she needs anything.”

  “Will do.” He hung up the phone, leaving his hand on the receiver as he considered whether there was any point in calling his office at this late hour. Some of the other lawyers worked late, but it was nearly eight o’clock now. It wasn’t likely that anyone was still around.

  And what could anyone do at this point? There was no suspect in custody, and Blake Culpepper was already on the BOLO list; every lawman in the state of Tennessee was already on the lookout for the man.

  He dropped his hand away from the phone and went into the kitchen to start making the hot chocolate.

  From the floor above, he heard the muted sounds of the shower running, and the image of Briar’s body, naked and slick from the soap and water, filled his head so thoroughly he nearly dropped the cocoa mix. He set the can on the counter, his heart pounding like a timpani.

  What the hell was he doing? She had just escaped death by moments, had fought and failed to save a friend from death and was even now upstairs washing the man’s blood from her skin, and he was thinking of naked breasts and the soap-slick curve of her hips and thighs?

  Get a grip, Hale.

  He concentrated on the hot chocolate, bypassing the ease of the microwave for the old-fashioned but longer task of boiling water on the stove. By the time he stirred steaming water into two mugs of cocoa mix, the sound of the shower had subsided. In fact, everything upstairs seemed silent and still. He waited several minutes for her to return from upstairs, but she remained wherever she was.

  Crossing to the stairs, he gazed upward and listened for sounds of movement from the second floor. But all he heard was the soft hum of electricity coursing through the walls. He had a sudden throat-gripping notion that Blake Culpepper had crept through a window upstairs and spirited Briar and her son away while Dalton remained downstairs, oblivious to the danger.

  Before he realized he meant to do it, he had ascended the stairs two at a time and burst into the second-floor hallway.

  He strode to the guest room, not bothering to knock on the door before throwing it open to look inside, his pulse throbbing in his ears. Logan lay asleep in the bed, his face cherubic in slumber. Relief swamping him, Dalton crossed to the bed and crouched beside the sleeping child. He touched the little boy’s soft hair, pulling back as Logan snuffled softly in his sleep.

  As he rose to go, he stopped short at the sight of Briar standing in the open doorway, watching him.

  Her eyes were the murky gray of a storm-tossed ocean, hinting at endless depths beneath the reflective surface. Her damp curls framed her scrubbed-clean face, dark against fair. Water drips had left darkened streaks on the heather-gray tank top skimming her curves, including a blotch on her left breast that seemed to cling to the small peak of her nipple, a blatant if inadvertent announcement that she wore no bra beneath the thin cotton.

  Below the hem of the tank top peeked a pair of black running shorts that bared the toned perfection of her thighs, the rounded muscles of her calves, a pair of shapely ankles and small slender feet. Her neat toenails, he saw, were painted a bright neon blue.

  Heat like a furnace blasted through him and settled, languid and heavy, in his groin. “I thought—” He stopped short, unsure what he’d meant to say.

  She stepped back, her head giving a little backward nod, a silent invitation to join her outside. He closed the door behind him, his heart still racing in his chest like a rabbit chased by a fox.

  She gazed at him, her lips slightly parted, her breath coming in soft, rapid respirations. In a little blue vein in her temple, her pulse throbbed visibly. Rapidly.

  He didn’t know how to breathe anymore. His lungs burned for air, but he couldn’t draw in enough oxygen to fill them.

  Her fathomless gaze drew him closer. He lifted one hand to her face, his fingers brushing aside a tangle of curls to bare the curve of her cheek to his gaze. “I couldn’t hear any sounds from up here, and for a minute I thought—”

  Her eyes fluttered closed as his fingers skimmed the edge of her jaw.

  She was, in so many w
ays, a hard woman. Tough as the hills that had shaped her from infancy, hard as the rocky soil she tilled to grow the food that fed her and her son. But her skin was silky soft, as if spun from the gossamer mists that shrouded the mountains at sunrise.

  The crisp scent of his own shower gel heated by her clean skin filled his lungs, transformed into a heady feminine essence.

  Curling his hands into fists, he forced himself to step back from her. One step, then another, until his back flattened against the opposite wall. “I was worried.”

  Slowly, she slid down the wall and ended up sitting on the hallway floor, her knees tucked up to her chest. He lowered himself to the floor across from her, grimacing a little as his knees creaked, reminding him he wasn’t getting any younger.

  “I didn’t find Johnny’s body when he died.” Her gaze settled somewhere around the middle of his chest. “But I made them let me see him afterward. In the morgue.”

  He knew. He’d read the case file already. More than once. He’d read transcripts of interviews, the autopsy report, the detective’s report, the coroner’s inquest. “Did tonight bring it back?”

  She rubbed her chin with her thumb, her gaze slowly lifting to his. “I won’t be surprised if they prove the same knife that killed Johnny killed Tommy, as well.”

  He wouldn’t be, either.

  “Why did they kill Tommy, though? Did he surprise them in the middle of something?”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I think maybe I’m afraid to know.”

  A thought occurred to him suddenly. “You don’t blame yourself for this, do you?”

  She looked down at her feet.

  “Don’t. You’re not to blame here.”

  She looked up slowly. “They want something they think I have. But I don’t know what it is. Or why it’s worth killing for.”

  Dalton wasn’t sure, either. “It would have to be big. Dangerous to more than just one person.”

  “Why dangerous to more than just one person?”