Midnight Run
Midnight Run
Linda Castillo
Jack LaCroix was the most unsettling human being she’d ever met.
“What do you want?” She looked into the disturbing depths of his eyes.
“I know you don’t trust me.” He stepped toward her. “But I need your help.”
She’d forgotten how tall he was. A year ago, she’d been taken in by his muscular physique and that reckless glint in his eye. Tonight, the cold reality of what he’d done blurred the sweet memory of how good things had once been between them. Landis raised her chin and met his gaze. “You should have considered the consequences before you committed murder.”
“I’m sure this is going to throw a wrench into your undying faith in the criminal justice system, but I didn’t kill Evan. Someone set me up.”
“I’ve heard this before. I didn’t believe it then. I don’t believe it now. Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed,” he said quietly. “I can prove it now.”
Dear Reader,
This year may be winding down, but the excitement’s as high as ever here at Silhouette Intimate Moments. National bestselling author Merline Lovelace starts the month off with a bang with A Question of Intent, the first of a wonderful new miniseries called TO PROTECT AND DEFEND. Look for the next book, Full Throttle, in Silhouette Desire in January 2004.
Because you’ve told us you like miniseries, we’ve got three more for you this month. Marie Ferrarella continues her family-based CAVANAUGH JUSTICE miniseries with Crime and Passion. Then we have two military options: Strategic Engagement features another of Catherine Mann’s WINGMEN WARRIORS, while Ingrid Weaver shows she can Aim for the Heart with her newest EAGLE SQUADRON tale. We’ve got a couple of superb stand-alone novels for you, too: Midnight Run, in which a wrongly accused cop has only one option—the heroine!—to save his freedom, by reader favorite Linda Castillo, and Laura Gale’s deeply moving debut, The Tie That Binds, about a reunited couple’s fight to save their daughter’s life.
Enjoy them all—and we’ll see you again next month, for six more of the best and most exciting romances around.
Yours,
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Editor
Midnight Run
Linda Castillo
LINDA CASTILLO
knew at a very young age that she wanted to be a writer—and penned her first novel at the age of thirteen. She is the winner of numerous writing awards, including a nomination for the prestigious RITA
Award, the Holt Medallion and Golden Heart. She loves writing edgy stories that push the envelope and take her readers on a roller-coaster ride of breathtaking romance and thrilling suspense.
Linda spins her tales of love and intrigue from her home in Texas, where she lives with her husband and four lovable dogs. Check out her Web site at www.lindacastillo.com (http://www.lindacastillo.com). Or you can contact her at P.O. Box 670501, Dallas, Texas 75367-0501.
To my editor, Kim Nadelson, for seeing the magic
and helping to make this story a reality.
You have my admiration and heartfelt thanks.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Prologue
Fate had a twisted sense of humor, Jack LaCroix decided when the first shot rang out. Branches slashed at his clothes and face as he sprinted through the dense brush and low-growing trees. His prison-issue boots pounded through the mud in a rhythm that had pushed his body to the limit for what seemed like eternity. Behind him, the hounds were so close he could hear their frustrated baying over the sound of his own labored breathing.
He’d always considered himself a lucky man. At least up until a year ago when Lady Luck turned on him and bared her fangs. Damn, he wished he’d remembered how capricious she could be before trying a crazy stunt like breaking out of prison. If only he could charm her into keeping the dogs off him long enough for him to reach the river.
Desperation hammered through him as he calculated how far he had yet to go. Two hundred miles separated him from freedom. From justice. From the truth. A bitter laugh escaped him as the odds of his getting away struck him. Even if he made it to the river, he still faced his biggest obstacle yet. The only person who could help him believed he was a murderer.
Panic reared inside him at the thought. Everything he’d ever worked for or believed in—his very life in fact—hinged on whether he could convince her to help him. If she refused, or if they caught him before he reached her, he would be sent back to prison. He couldn’t let that happen. Not now. Not when he’d already ventured beyond the point of no return.
Plummeting down a steep embankment, he reached the flood plain of the river. Hope curled through him when he heard the sound of rushing water. He picked up speed and ran blindly in the darkness, stumbling over rocks and stumps, no longer feeling the branches cutting his face or the rain that pelted him.
He stopped at the edge of the clearing, listening, his breaths rushing out in great white puffs. Behind him, the dogs howled in an eerie bloodlust symphony. The rain-swollen river loomed beyond the trees, the black, swirling water teasing him with the seductive promise of escape.
Every muscle in his body tensed as he stepped into the clearing. He could barely hear the dogs over the frenzied beating of his heart. He was in plain sight now, an easy mark for any government-paid sharpshooter looking to cut a notch in the butt of his rifle. Crouching, he started for the river, knowing fully if fate decided to dupe him again, she would win for good.
White-hot pain streaked through his left shoulder. An instant later the clap of a rifle shattered the air. He heard himself cry out as the impact of the bullet spun him around. Clutching his shoulder, he lost his footing and tumbled down the muddy bank. Shock tore through him when he realized he’d been shot, then again as the icy water enveloped him.
Damn, he didn’t want to bleed to death in this godforsaken river. Not like this. He didn’t want to die like a criminal.
An eerie calm descended. Instinctively, he began to swim. The dogs couldn’t scent him here, he thought as the current tugged at him. He wouldn’t leave any footprints. The trackers would find blood on the bank. Hopefully, they’d think he succumbed to the cold and drowned. With a little help from Lady Luck, he might just live long enough to see daybreak.
Chapter 1
With the thrill of victory still humming through her veins, the last thing Landis McAllister wanted to deal with was the weather. She could handle a few snow flurries. Even an inch or two on the roads didn’t bother her. It was when Mother Nature went overboard and dumped two feet of the stuff that she questioned the wisdom of mountain living.
Determined not to let something like a little snowstorm dampen her spirits, Landis flipped on the radio and sang along with an old Christmas tune, her voice carrying over the din of the windshield wipers and the sound of tires crunching through ice. She didn’t care that she sang a little off-key as she steered the Jeep up the driveway. She didn’t care that it was snowing so hard she could barely see as she parked in her usual spot and shut down the engine.
Landis had just won the first major case of her career. Twelve weeks of dealing with a team of egocentric defense attorneys, a temperamental jury and a judge with a grudge against female prosecutors had finally paid off. Not only had she put the worst kind of criminal behind bars, but she’d ended a child’s suffering. That, she knew, was the biggest reward of all.
But despite her efforts to convince herself otherwise, Landis hadn’t walked away from the case unscathed. This one had taken something out of her. The child abuse cases always did. She felt spent, as if all the energy she’d thrown into the past twelve weeks had been sucked out of her. She’d tried not to let the ugliness affect her, but the testimony, the witnesses—and most of all the little victim herself—had hit home with the force of a sledgehammer.
Laying the memories of her own childhood aside, Landis focused instead on what the victory meant to her professionally. She’d taken a giant leap toward building the reputation she’d dreamed of her entire life. Her win today had opened doors for her, and she had every intention of breezing through those doors all the way to the district attorney’s office.
She poured her heart and soul into the cases she prosecuted, and she was damn good at what she did. Justice was important to her, especially since her older brother had been killed in the line of duty.
Refusing to let the past tarnish her mood, she hefted the bag of groceries and got out of the Jeep. Tonight was reserved for celebration, she told herself. It didn’t matter that her guest list consisted of a cat, a mystery novel and a fire—if she could manage to dig some wood out of the snow.
The tang of chimney smoke hung pleasantly in the frigid air as she made her way to the cabin. Snow blanketed the ground, reminding her that Christmas was less than a month away, and she had yet to begin her shopping. Struggling with the groceries and her perpetually overstuffed briefcase, she unlocked the door and stepped inside.
Pleasure fluttered through her as the familiar smells of home engulfed her. Vanilla. Old pine. The lingering aroma of this morning’s coffee. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted BJ, her three-legged alley cat, as he darted from behind the Indian-print sofa. Knowing the crafty tom was angling for a field mouse before dinner, she used her foot to close the door and lugged the grocery bag into the kitchen.
The cabin had been a gift to herself on her thirtieth birthday last year. It was the first home she’d owned, and she loved every square inch of it right down to the squeaky floors and drafty upstairs bedrooms. The isolated location satisfied her need for privacy while the view of the mountains to the west never ceased to take her breath away.
As Landis stacked the last of the cat food in the pantry, thoughts of the cabin gave way to an uncharacteristic bout of uneasiness. The hairs at her nape prickled. If she didn’t know better, she might have thought she was being watched. But that was crazy. She was alone.
Closing the pantry door, she turned, expecting to see her cantankerous tom stalking her. “BJ?” she called and froze. Her heart slammed against her ribs when the silhouette of a man moved out of the laundry room. Shock riveted her in place. She stared in stunned disbelief as his dark, familiar eyes latched on to hers.
“Jack,” she gasped, telling herself it was an absolute impossibility for Jack LaCroix to be standing in her kitchen dripping water all over the floor. “My God, how did you—”
“We need to talk.”
She smelled the desperation on him as clearly as she saw the dangerous light in his eyes. Melting snow clung to his black hair and dripped on to his face. On his temple, a cut stood out stark and red against the prison pallor of his complexion. A heavy five o’clock shadow darkened his jaw.
For a moment, Landis couldn’t speak. Her mind grappled for logical explanations, but she knew there was only one that explained his presence. “You escaped.”
“You always were a quick study.”
It wasn’t really fear that speared through her, but it was close. Something volatile and powerful she couldn’t put a name to. Adrenaline danced through her midsection, but she didn’t move. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. “How did you get in?”
“Through the back door.” He regarded her through piercing eyes. “Sorry about the pane.”
She choked back a hysterical laugh as the irony of his words struck her. A murderer with a conscience, she thought bitterly. But she knew his gentle voice and polite words didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. After all, tigers were wild and beautiful, but they were killers at heart. Just like Jack LaCroix.
“I don’t want you here,” she said with a calm she didn’t feel.
“I don’t care. I need your help.”
She didn’t think he would harm her, but she’d been wrong about him before. Dead wrong. In the back of her mind, she wondered if she could reach the phone before he stopped her.
Why had he come to her when a sane man would have fled to another country where the police weren’t looking for him? When surely he knew she was the last person on earth who would help him?
Her gaze flicked to the telephone on the wall. “I’m calling the police.”
“I’d tell you not to waste your time, but I know you won’t listen. You never were much good at listening.” His lips twisted into a wry smile. “That’s one of the things I always liked about you.”
With forced calm she strode to the phone, her every sense honed on the man behind her. She felt his gaze on her as she moved, vaguely aware that he didn’t follow. Snatching up the receiver, she punched 9-1-1 only to be met with silence.
Her heart thrumming in anger, she turned to him. “You had no right—”
“Don’t talk to me about rights,” he cut in. “Mine were taken away from me, and I damn well want them back.”
She watched him stride to the sofa, pick up her purse and dig out her cell phone. “What are you doing?” she asked.
Without looking at her, he dropped the phone to the floor and crushed it with his boot. “Trying to stay out of jail.”
Landis stared at her broken phone. “Destroying my phone isn’t going to help.”
“Maybe not, but it will buy me some time.” His expression was inscrutable, but then she’d never been able to read him. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to. To know what was going on behind that enigmatic expression was a frightening notion. Jack LaCroix was the most unsettling human being she’d ever met.
“What do you want?” She looked into the disturbing depths of his eyes. The intensity burning there nearly sent her back a step. But she held her ground, telling herself she was still in control, knowing deep down inside she’d never been in control when it came to Jack.
He looked like he’d been to hell and back. Mud streaked his face and clung to his clothes. The elegant hands she remembered so well were grimy, bruised and scratched. A red stain darkened his shirt from shoulder to waist. Landis stared at it, praying the hole in the fabric wasn’t from a bullet. She tried to ignore that he was shivering with cold, telling herself he didn’t deserve compassion, least of all hers.
“I know you don’t trust me.” He stepped toward her. “But I need your help.”
She took a reflexive step back, knowing immediately it was a tactical error. Never show weakness. Never give up ground. Not in the courtroom. Not in any situation. They were the rules of her trade, and she followed them unerringly. Too bad she hadn’t been as successful in assimilating them into her personal life.
But she’d forgotten how tall he was. Thinner than she remembered, but it wasn’t for lack of muscle. He looked hard-as-rock and lean as a marathon runner. A year ago, she might have been taken in by his muscular physique and that reckless glint in his eyes. Tonight, the cold reality of what he’d done blurred the sweet memory of how good things had once been between them.
Forcing back the memories, Landis raised her chin and met his gaze. “You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t be—”
“I shouldn’t be a lot of things.” Bitterness laced his voice. He’d never been a bitter man, but she supposed there were worse fates for a convicted murderer. “I shouldn’t be in prison for starters.”
Her temper stirred. She didn’t like mind games. She didn’t like being frightened. Or lied to. Especially when it came to the man who murdered her brother. “In my business I hear that so often it makes me sick.”
“Still putting them away, are you?”
“I happen to believe people like you belong in prison.”
“That’s my girl. A lawyer first—a human being second. Your daddy did a real number on you, didn’t he?”
Her heart kicked with another jab of anger. She didn’t want to discuss her father or what he’d done. Not with a man whose betrayal had cut her even deeper than her old man’s.
“Have you lost your mind or merely your sense of decency?”
“I lost any decency I might have had the day they put me in a cage.”
“Maybe you should have considered the consequences before you committed murder.”
He raked a shaking hand through his hair. “I’m sure this is going to throw a wrench into your undying faith in the criminal justice system, but I didn’t kill Evan. Someone set me up. The money. The gun. The bogus witnesses. I tried to tell you—”
“I’ve heard this before. I didn’t believe it then—I don’t believe it now. Nothing has changed since your trial.”
“Everything has changed,” he said quietly. “I can prove it now, but I need some time to do it.”
The night of the murder skittered through her mind. She winced with pain, then fury rumbled through her with such force she felt it all the way to her belly. She wasn’t a violent person, but she wanted to hurt him. He’d caused her so much pain. He’d taken so much away from her. First her heart. Then her brother.
“You were his partner, for God’s sake. He trusted you. I trusted you.” The need to strike out nearly overpowered her, but she maintained control if only by a thread. “I’d have to be insane to believe anything you say now.”
“I thought you might want to hear the truth,” he said. “I never had you pegged as a hypocrite, but Lord knows I’ve been wrong about you in the past. You claim to love the law so much. Maybe you believe in your beloved laws when it’s convenient. When they suit your needs. When it’s easy. Or maybe you hide behind justice when you’re not brave enough to face the truth.”
The words sliced her like a blade. It outraged her that he would take the one thing she truly believed in and use it to manipulate her. “It was your revolver that killed Evan. You took money from a known criminal. Two witnesses placed you at the murder scene. What am I supposed to believe with such overwhelming evidence staring me in the face?”
“You of all people should know the truth isn’t always handed over on a platter,” he said. “Reality isn’t that neat.”
“Don’t preach to me about reality. Of the two of us I’d say I’m a hell of a lot more grounded in reality than you. Damn it, Jack, what were you thinking breaking out of prison?”
As if the weight of the world suddenly settled on his shoulders, he sagged against the wall. The unpredictable light went out of his eyes, and Landis felt a new kind of tension tighten in her chest. For an instant he looked incredibly vulnerable, as if the odds stacked against him had finally worn him down and crushed him.
An alarm trilled in her head when she saw fresh blood coming through his shirt. He looked pale and shaken, but far too dangerous to touch. Like a snarling, wounded animal.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
“I’ve got worse problems than that.”
For a fleeting instant she wanted to reach out and offer comfort. Just as quickly, she shoved the notion away, telling herself that caring for him would not only be self-destructive, but dangerous. He was no longer a detective with the Salt Lake City Police Department. He was no longer a free man. And he was certainly no longer the man who’d stolen her heart.
Jack LaCroix was a cold-blooded murderer.
“Don’t shut me out, Landis.” He reached out with his uninjured arm and traced the line of her jaw with his thumb. “At least listen to me. Hear me out. That’s all I’m asking.”
Angered by the contact, she slapped his hand away. She knew better than to trust him. He’d lied to her, taken her heart and torn it to shreds, then proceeded to turn her life upside down. She refused to put herself on the line again. Certainly not for a man who wouldn’t hesitate to do it all over again.
“You could have left the country, Jack. What could you possibly want from me?” The instant the words were out she regretted them, realized she didn’t want to know.
“You’re the only person I know who gives a damn about the truth,” he said. “At least you used to.”
He stood so close she could smell the sweat and dirt and the lingering redolence of panic. His gaze pierced her so that she couldn’t look away. If she hadn’t known better, Landis might have been taken in. His bedroom eyes and whiskey-smooth voice could be very convincing. But she’d learned the hard way that he was a capable liar and master manipulator. She wasn’t foolish enough to fall into the same trap a second time.
“I can’t help you,” she said. “I won’t.”
Jack flinched, closed his eyes briefly. He looked miserable. Cold. Dirty. She watched, stunned, as a single drop of blood rolled off his fingertips and splattered on the floor. That he didn’t notice told her a lot about his frame of mind.
“You’ve got to turn yourself in,” she said.
Something dark flickered behind his eyes. “I’m a dead man if I go back.”
“By the looks of you, you’re not far from that now. For God’s sake, you were under appeal. How could you be so stupid—”
“Duke put a contract on me.”
The words stopped her cold. Cyrus Duke was Salt Lake City’s most infamous drug kingpin. With roots running from Miami’s seedy underworld to his hierarchy in Los Angeles, he was powerful, ruthless and completely untouchable.
“Why would Duke put a hit on you?” she asked.
“He knows I’m going to take him down.”
“You’re not a cop anymore. You weren’t a threat to him in prison. You’re certainly not a threat now.”
“As long as I’m alive, I’m a threat. He knows I’m close to getting the goods to nail him.”
Landis didn’t buy it. She wouldn’t even consider it. The repercussions were too far-reaching. Jack had every reason in the world to lie; she had every reason in the world not to believe him. “I’m not going to let you do this to me,” she said.
“I’m going to nail him, Landis. I’m on to something big. I’m so close I can taste it. I just need a few hours to pull myself together. I need some dry clothes. Food. Money.”
A hundred questions rushed through her mind, but they were jumbled by emotions and memories and the cold, hard fact that she didn’t want to get involved. “As an attorney, the only advice I can give you is to turn yourself in.”
One side of his mouth curved. “Not my style, Red.”
The endearment affected her, reached into her and touched a part of her heart she’d carelessly left unguarded. A heart that had once belonged to him—no holds barred. She cursed him for having that ability. She cursed herself for responding, wondering what kind of a person that made her. How could she feel anything but disdain for the man who killed her brother?
“You’ll only make things worse if you don’t go back,” she said.
“Things can’t get any worse.”
“Things can always get worse. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“Worried about me?”
She stared at him, aware that her pulse was racing, that she didn’t have an answer.
Jack sighed. “Look, I can give you Cyrus Duke, but I need some help.”
Landis stomped the quick flare of interest. “I’m not naive enough to risk everything I’ve ever worked for on the word of a convicted murderer.”
“You don’t have to be naive to listen to the facts.”
“You murdered my brother. I won’t help you. And I’ll never forgive you. My loyalty runs deeper than that.”
“What do you know about loyalty?” Though his voice remained calm, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “If I recall, you were pretty quick to turn tail and run when the going got rough.”
“Loyalty to my family—not you! You don’t deserve loyalty. You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
“What about loyalty to Evan? Don’t you want to know what really happened? Don’t you want to know who really murdered him? Or do you prefer sweeping the entire mess under the rug so you don’t have to get those pretty hands of yours dirty? So you can get on with playing Lady Justice? Isn’t that what they call you these days?”
“I believe in what I do, but that isn’t the issue, is it?” She hated the defensive ring in her voice. She didn’t have to defend her choices to anyone, especially Jack.
“What is the issue, Landis?” He offered a cynical smile. “Justice?”
“Justice is real—”
“Justice is an illusion!” He stepped closer. So close she felt the searing heat of his stare, the warmth of his breath, the startling power of his presence. “I’m living proof of that. So, Counselor,” he snarled, “if you believe in your precious justice so much, I suggest you come look for it, starting with me.” He rapped his fist against his chest with the last word. “Somewhere out there, Evan’s murderer is a free man, while I’ve spent the last year in prison for a crime I didn’t commit!”
The words pounded through her. Simultaneously, her emotions clashed with the logical part of her brain. She’d always prided herself on her ability to keep her feelings removed from her judgment. That was one of the things that made her a good prosecutor. But when it came to Jack, her logic and emotions tangled and melded into a big, confusing ball.
Was it possible he was telling the truth? Or was he a desperate man willing to do anything to avoid going back to prison? It took every ounce of courage she could muster to meet his gaze. “I want you to leave. Now.”
He choked out a humorless laugh. “I don’t have anywhere else to go. To hell perhaps, but I’ve been there, and I can tell you it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
She wasn’t sure why the words hurt. But they did, and the pain was so sharp she had to turn away. She couldn’t face him with uncertainty etched into her every feature. Jack was a perceptive man, and he’d always been able to read her. She didn’t want him to get inside her head. In the year he’d been away, she’d simplified her life, focusing solely on her career and her future with the D.A.’s office. She refused to let him destroy what she’d worked so hard to achieve. She wouldn’t jeopardize her professional reputation or risk hurting her mother and younger brother.
With her professional mask in place, she turned to face him. “I’ll turn you in,” she said. “You know I will.”
His eyes flicked over her. He looked into her, through her. She sensed the appraisal, and her knees went weak with the power of it. Her heart banged against her ribs with such ferocity she felt certain it might pound its way right out of her chest.
“Sit down,” he said.
“You’re not staying.”
“I can’t force you to help me. But I can make you listen. It’s up to you whether or not you care enough about the truth to get involved.” Raising his arm, he wiped the blood from his fingers on to his shirt, then stared at the crimson smear as if its presence stunned him. “If you still don’t want to help me after you’ve heard me out, I’ll find another way to do this.”
Landis watched him walk to the kitchen table. He moved with the grace of a wild, hunted animal. One that was tired and injured and anxious for the hunt to end. If it hadn’t been for his eyes, she might have thought he’d given up. But that would have been as out of character for him as if he’d thrown in the towel and gone to prison without a fight.
No, she thought, Jack was definitely a fighter. He fought hard, long and dirty for what he wanted. If she didn’t get him out of her house; if she didn’t get to a phone and call the police, she was in for the battle of her life.
Jack had known she would affect him. What he hadn’t realized was just how profoundly. Seeing Landis McAllister after a year was like taking a sledgehammer to the solar plexus. The ache was so sharp that he questioned the wisdom of coming here tonight. He’d been foolish to believe his feelings for her had dulled with time. Funny how much a man forgot in a year.
He watched her walk to the pantry, trying in vain not to notice the way those slacks skimmed over her hips or wonder if she still painted her toenails the color of cherry bubblegum. Even from a distance he could smell her hair, that exotic mix of coconut and musk that made him want to reach out and run his fingers through it one more time. She looked very much the part of tough prosecuting attorney in her black suit and leather boots. A year ago he’d known a part of her that was soft and kind and compassionate. He wondered if that part of her still existed, or if she’d managed to eradicate it along with the feelings she once had for him.
Her movements were controlled and deliberate as she walked to the counter and started a pot of coffee. He knew the gesture had nothing to do with the fact that he was shivering with cold, but because her nerves were strung tight and she needed to do something.
Once upon a time she’d loved him. She’d seen him as decent and kind and honorable. Jack had loved her more than his own life. He’d needed her more than his next breath, would have died a thousand deaths for her. What a fool he’d been to believe any of those things would matter now.
It tore him up inside knowing she thought he was a cold-blooded killer. That knowledge had tortured him every second of every day he’d been locked away. He knew if he gave her the chance, she’d go straight to the police. He didn’t plan on giving her the chance.
Every muscle in his body protested as he lowered himself into the chair. He’d covered over one hundred cold, rugged miles in the past two days, some on foot, some in a filthy cattle car courtesy of Burlington Northern. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d stopped moving. Or eaten. Or slept. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a civilized place that spoke of warmth and comfort and home. Most of all, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in the company of a woman. Especially a woman he’d spent the better part of a year trying to get out of his system.
He watched her scoop coffee and wondered if there was a man in her life, if she was seeing anyone, but quickly thwarted that line of thinking. Her personal life was no longer his concern, he reminded himself darkly. Wanting was a dangerous thing for a convict. A man could drive himself crazy if he wasn’t careful.
Jack had promised himself he wouldn’t let his feelings for her interfere with his mission of clearing his name. She’d deemed him guilty based on circumstantial evidence, paid witnesses and manufactured proof. How could he still want her when he felt so bitter? How could he be attracted to a woman he hadn’t been able to forgive? He couldn’t let it matter. Damn it, he couldn’t let her matter.
Survival had dictated his jailbreak. It had taken months of planning and physical conditioning. Every evening the inmates were herded into either the gymnasium or exercise yard to work off steam. It had been raining the night of his escape. The gymnasium was crowded. While one of the inmates he’d befriended created a diversion for the corrections officers, Jack had shimmied twenty feet up a water pipe mounted to the wall and climbed out the window. Once outside, he’d used the wire cutters he’d gotten from another inmate to traverse the concertina wire. He’d almost made it to the river when the dogs began to bay….
Shaking the memory from his head, he folded his hands in front of him, realizing for the first time how battered they were. The last two days were a blur of pain and cold, and he felt mildly shocked he’d survived at all. The bullet had put a deep graze in his shoulder, sparing the bone and joint, but leaving him weak from blood loss. He’d survived on little more than adrenaline and desperation. When those two things had waned, his memories of Landis sustained him the rest of the way.
She carried a cup of coffee to the table and set it in front of him. “You’ve never been stupid, Jack. You know the police will find you. You’re only making things worse by running.”
“There’s not a whole hell of a lot they can do to me that they haven’t already done. I’m a lifer, Landis.”
“They could kill you, for God’s sake.”
Jack looked down at his coffee, wondering if she realized there were times when he considered death a better alternative than spending his life behind bars.
Shaking her head, she took the chair across from him. “How can you possibly believe you’re going to get away?”
He returned her gaze, pulling back just in time to keep himself from tumbling into its emerald depths. He’d been in the cabin less than an hour and already she was getting to him. He’d thought he was over her. He’d thought the bitterness would keep him from wanting her. It galled him that he was wrong on both counts.
“Maybe getting away isn’t my goal,” he said.
Landis remained silent, looking at him like a cat that had been kicked by a cruel child.
“On the night Evan died,” Jack began, “he left a voice message, asking me to meet him at the warehouse where Duke’s people had been operating. Allegedly, there was a shipment of cocaine coming in from L.A. Sixty kilos of Peruvian flake. Uncut. Evan was supposed to keep his mouth shut. But this stuff was pure. White death for anyone who didn’t know what they were getting into. He was afraid it was going to hit the street and start killing people. So he told me about it.” Jack remembered his partner’s voice as if it were yesterday. The memory still wielded the power to make his hands shake.
“I know the story, Jack. All this information came out during your trial. There was no shipment of cocaine.” Tucking a shock of flame-colored hair behind her ear, Landis sighed wearily. “I’ve gone over it in my head a hundred times. I even reviewed the transcripts.”
“Things have changed since the trial,” Jack said. “You hear things in prison, Landis. Bad things. Things I suspected all along, but couldn’t prove.”
“Like what?”
“Like Evan wasn’t the only cop who knew about the shipment.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“There are cops on the take. Salt Lake City cops. Sheriff’s office. DEA. Customs—”
“Even if you can prove corruption, that doesn’t exonerate you.”
“It will if I can prove someone inside the department set me up to take the fall.”
“Who, Jack? What proof?”
He sighed in frustration. “I don’t have anything solid yet. Just a few pieces of the puzzle. I need some time to work it. I’ve got to talk to some of my old snitches.”
“Nothing you’ve told me disputes the fact that your revolver was the gun that killed Evan or that over fifty thousand dollars somehow found its way into your bank account. It doesn’t dispute the two witnesses who put you at the scene the night Evan was killed.”
His temper flared with the accusation. “Two witnesses I’ve since tied to Duke. That reeks of setup and you know it.”
“You haven’t given me a single fact I wasn’t already aware of,” she shot back. “Your story sounds desperate and pathetic, and I don’t believe a word of it.”
Reining in anger, Jack looked down at his coffee and concentrated on the warmth radiating into his hands. Frustration hammered through him that he didn’t have any solid evidence. All he could offer was his own gut instinct and the word of a dead convict who’d talked too many times to the wrong person. Unfortunately, Landis had never been big on gut instinct.
“Evan was dying when I reached him that night,” he said. “He’d taken two slugs. He was bleeding. Scared. In shock. He kept trying to talk. I tried to quiet him, but he wouldn’t listen. Damn hardheaded cop—”
Shaken, he broke off. The room felt overly warm. Chills wracked his body, but sweat streamed down his back. A curse escaped his lips when he realized he’d reached the end of his physical endurance. His concentration was shot. He wasn’t sure why he was talking, dredging up the past. He could barely speak. But there was so much to say. So many emotions tangled inside him.
So much at stake.
Jack raised his eyes to hers. It tore at his heart to see the shimmer of tears. She still mourned her brother. He wondered if there was any grief left over for him. For the part of him that died that night.
“Evan had seen enough shootings to know he was dying,” he continued. “I guess the cop in me expected him to use those last minutes to name his killer, but he didn’t. Instead he used the last of his strength to make sure I knew about that telephone call he’d made to you.”
Across from him, Landis went perfectly still, as if knowing something terrible was about to be flung her way. “Evan and I were close,” she said. “He called to tell me he loved me. I testified—”
“Did he often call at midnight to tell you he loved you?”
She blinked at him. “Well, no.”
“He knew he was a marked man. He called to tell you something.”
“Why didn’t he? For God’s sake, why didn’t he tell me he was in trouble? Why didn’t he tell you he was in trouble and ask for your help?”
The latter question hit a nerve. It always did. But Jack didn’t let himself react. He would spend the rest of his life wondering if Evan might still be alive if the trust between them had been stronger. “I can’t speak for Evan. Maybe he didn’t trust me enough. Maybe he didn’t want to drag me into it. But, Landis, he knew they were going to kill him. That’s the only scenario that fits.”
“Who?”
“Cyrus Duke.” He clenched his jaw against the pain spreading down his arm like hot lava. He ached to get out of his wet clothes and fall into a warm bed for a few hours to recoup. He needed to eat to regain his strength. But he couldn’t stop now. She was listening. If only he could make her believe.
“Evan tried to play both sides of the coin,” he said. “He wanted the money. But he also wanted out.”
“Out of what?”
“Evan was taking money from Duke.”
“No!”
“But he wanted out, Landis. He feared for his family’s safety. But he knew if he rolled over on Duke, the scumbag would go after Casey and the girls.”
Landis lurched to her feet. “I don’t want to have this conversation.”
Jack rose with her. He didn’t give a damn that she didn’t want to hear the truth about her brother. Six months ago, when he’d been stuck in a jail cell for a crime he didn’t commit, Jack hadn’t wanted to hear it, either. But he had. From a reliable source who’d just happened to get himself murdered in the shower room a few days later. “Evan was a dirty cop, Landis.”
She looked at him, her eyes large and dark against her pale complexion. “I don’t believe you. And I won’t stand by and let you defile my brother’s name or shame his widow with lies you fabricated to save yourself.”
The anger struck him with such ferocity that for a moment he was dizzy. Whoever framed him had taken everything from him. His career had been destroyed. His reputation dragged through the mud. His partner was dead. The passionate and intense love affair he’d once shared with Landis had been reduced to a bitter memory steeped in resentment and lies.
“Evan knew he couldn’t talk to Casey, and he couldn’t tell me because he knew I’d bust him.” Jack nearly laughed at the absurdity. Evan had always been the straight arrow while Jack had always skated that thin, dark line. The irony of how things had worked out in the end burned.
He looked at Landis. “So he chose you. His sister. Someone he could trust. A prosecutor. He wanted you to know, but for whatever reason never got the chance to tell you. He wanted you to go after Duke because Evan knew he was a dead man. He knew you’d protect his family and get to the bottom of it.”
Her eyes flashed. “I don’t believe any of it.”
A cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and Jack knew with dead certainty the last two days had finally caught up with him. His shoulder throbbed with every beat of his heart. His head felt like the business end of a jackhammer.
“I knew Evan better than anyone,” he said. “I knew how he operated. I knew his weak points, his many strengths. I knew him like a brother, Landis. I knew he was in to something.”
“He wasn’t dirty!”
“He fed Duke inside information. Warned him of impending busts. Kept his competition off the street. Damn it, he got in over his head.” Jack blinked at her when the room tilted abruptly. Heat infused his face. Nausea see-sawed in his gut. He cursed, knowing he was going to pass out. Grabbing the back of the chair, he steadied himself, determined to continue.
Landis started to speak, but he cut her off. “Duke bought and paid for your brother, then he killed him. The bastard knew I’d come after him so he framed me for his murder. He had help from the inside.” His voice echoed inside his head, and for a moment he wondered if he’d actually spoken at all.
Words flowed out of her, but Jack no longer understood. It was as if he’d stepped out of his body and watched with detachment as Jack LaCroix went through the motions without him. He fought the dizziness but knew the darkness was going to win.
One by one his senses shut down. Desperation clawed at him. He didn’t want it to end this way. He knew the moment he went down, she’d leave and call the police. He expected no less, and he hated her for it.
Knowing he had to stop her, he reached out, stumbled and went down on one knee. Pain ripped through his shoulder. He groaned deep in his chest. Around him, the room shifted, darkened. He heard himself utter her name, then the floor rushed up and slammed into him.
Chapter 2
Landis stared in horror as Jack collapsed onto her kitchen floor. It was the last thing she expected to happen, but she’d learned long ago to expect the unexpected when it came to Jack LaCroix. Tonight, it seemed, he was just chock-full of surprises. Dark, unpleasant ones, she thought wildly. Leave it to him to toss her into a compromising position, then bail out.
Heart racing in perfect cadence with her mind, she fell to her knees next to him at a complete loss as to what to do next. She didn’t want to touch him, but quickly realized there was no way to avoid it. He’d fallen on his side with his left arm pinned beneath him; she couldn’t leave him twisted like that. What if he were seriously injured and stopped breathing? What if he died right there on her floor?
Frustrated and scared, Landis placed her hand gently on his shoulder. “Jack?” His clothes were wet and cold beneath her palm. Good Lord, he was soaked to the skin. Cautiously, she rolled him on to his back.
His body was long and lean and looked as out of place on her kitchen floor as a bearskin rug might have. Even unconscious, his muscles were as hard as steel. But he didn’t seem quite as dangerous with his eyes closed. Oddly, Landis felt relieved that she didn’t have to look into those eyes. The last thing she needed was to get ensnared in that compelling gaze of his.
“Damn you, LaCroix,” she muttered.
His breaths came slow and regular. She pressed a finger to his throat and found his pulse steady and strong. She didn’t see much fresh blood, but he was wet and muddy, so it was difficult to tell how badly he was bleeding.
Crossing to the counter, she opened a drawer, yanked out a clean dish towel and wet it beneath the faucet. She didn’t possess a shred of medical expertise but knew enough about first aid to know he should be kept warm and comfortable.
At least until the police arrived.
The thought wasn’t a pleasant one. Why had he come to her for help? Why not one of his cop friends? Surely one of them had kept in touch throughout the pandemonium of the last year, hadn’t they? But Landis knew how cops felt about cop killers. Jack might have been one of their own for the better part of twelve years, but they’d branded him a traitor. He was smart enough to know there wasn’t a soul on the force he could trust.
So he’d come to her.
Dismayed by the implications, she folded the towel and pressed it against his forehead, trying not to notice how pale he was. “How could you do something so incredibly stupid?” she murmured.
He couldn’t have put her in a worse situation. His very presence threatened everything that was important to her, everything she believed in. She refused to compromise her reputation, her career, or her family for the likes of a man who didn’t deserve her compassion.
Pulling in a calming breath, she rose. The only thing she could do was drive down to her neighbor’s cabin and call the sheriff. Dread swirled through her as she imagined a swarm of cops converging on her tidy cabin. Jack would be taken into custody. She would be asked to come down to the sheriff’s office to make a statement. Eventually, the media would catch wind of Jack’s capture.
Then all hell would break loose.
Shuddering at the scenario her overactive mind had drawn, Landis considered her options—all of which boiled down to one. She had to call the sheriff. Jack was a murderer. An escaped convict. He belonged in prison. As the saying went, he’d made his bed and now he must lie in it. She refused to accept responsibility for his woes.
A brightly colored afghan lay folded across the back of the sofa. Landis dashed to it and snapped it open. Kneeling beside Jack, she draped it over him, tucking the ends beneath his arms and legs. As she straightened, he thrashed and called out her name with such clarity that for an instant she thought he’d regained consciousness.
She stared at him, the memories pounding through her like fists. Ironically, it had been Evan who’d introduced them. In spite of her self-imposed rule never to date cops, she’d fallen for the strikingly handsome vice detective with the magnetic eyes and captivating smile. He’d swept her off her feet and into a breathtaking relationship. Level-headed Landis had been so caught up in the intensity, she didn’t even realize it when she lost her heart. Jack wouldn’t have it any other way. He was all or nothing, and she had definitely given him her all.
But even back then she’d known he skirted that dark edge. He’d always unnerved her with his rule breaking and disdain for authority. Jack LaCroix wasn’t for the faint of heart. He existed in a world of gray. A world where he could stretch the rules and turn wrong into right if it suited him. Landis’s world was black and white. She followed the rules, embraced them. Still, for a year she’d loved him with every fiber of her being…
Shaken by the memories twisting through her, she turned away, aware that her heart was beating too fast. How could she have been so wrong about him?
Knowing there was nothing she could do for him except, perhaps, keep him from self-destructing, she reached for her coat. Just as her fingers closed around it, Jack’s voice rang out. She froze at the sound of her name and turned, half-expecting to see him sitting up, hitting her with that devastating smile. But he wasn’t sitting up. He wasn’t smiling. His eyes were closed. A sheen of sweat coated his forehead. His face was contorted in pain.
Alarmed, she walked over to him, straining to hear as he mumbled something unintelligible. His voice was soft and deep and achingly familiar. Her heart stuttered as she recognized a single, profound word—innocent.
In all her years of working in the court system, she’d never heard such despair. It wrenched painfully at her conscience. Was it the voice of a desperate killer? she wondered. Or was she hearing the voice of an innocent man wrongly accused of a horrific crime? The questions haunted her, the implications taunting her with terrible possibilities. Telling herself she could sort out her feelings later, Landis threw on her coat and headed for the door.
Twenty minutes later, Landis sat in the Jeep in her driveway and waited for the sheriff’s department deputy to arrive. She told herself it was the cold that had her shaking uncontrollably, but the heater wasn’t helping. Relief billowed through her when she saw the flashing lights of the sheriff’s Tahoe. By the time the deputy climbed out, she’d already reached his vehicle.
“Evenin’.” The man was the size of a grizzly, wore cowboy boots and a Stetson the size of a Volkswagen. “You called about a prowler?”
“He was here when I got home from work about an hour ago. It looks like he broke a pane and came in through the back door. He’s either injured or suffering from exposure because he fainted on my kitchen floor.”
The deputy cocked his head. “Fainted?”
Realizing she was talking too fast, she took a deep breath and silently counted to three. “I think he’s been—” Landis broke off when the deputy withdrew a pistol the size of a cannon.
“Is he still inside?” he asked.
She stared at the gun, not wanting to imagine what a bullet would do to human flesh. “Yes,” she answered, steeling herself against the sense of foreboding that welled up inside her. If the deputy knew he was going in to arrest infamous cop killer Jack LaCroix, would he be more apt to use deadly force?
“Is he armed?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.” She prayed Jack gave himself up easily. She didn’t want to see him hurt. She didn’t want to see anyone hurt.
“Have a seat in your vehicle, Ms. McAllister, while I take a look.” Pistol in hand, the deputy jogged toward the cabin.
Landis watched him disappear inside, then walked back to the Jeep and climbed inside. It only took a couple of minutes for her to realize she couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. She was too keyed up, and the deputy was taking too long. Oh, dear God, she’d never be able to live with herself if either of them got hurt….
Cursing Jack, she climbed out of the Jeep and began to pace, keeping her eyes trained on the front door of the cabin. Were they negotiating the terms of Jack’s surrender? Or were they in the midst of a standoff?
The path she was wearing in the snow grew as she paced—much like the doubts swirling in her head. Did Jack’s story warrant consideration? Was it possible Cyrus Duke was involved in her brother’s death? The questions pummeled her, but Landis knew that aside from offering legal advice there was little she could do to help Jack. Not that she felt compelled to do so, she reminded herself. She was an officer of the court and saw clearly the line between right and wrong. If Jack believed he’d been wrongly convicted, the only way he could help himself was to operate through the proper legal channels.
But as she rationalized and reasoned through everything that had been said and done, something nagged at her. Something obscure and uncomfortable that had lodged like a fist in her chest. Landis had never been overly intuitive. She preferred dealing with facts. Tangibles. Gut instinct never entered the picture when it came to drawing conclusions or making decisions. But even as she denied the possibility of Jack’s innocence, she knew something wasn’t right. He was one of the most intelligent people she’d ever known. If all he’d wanted was his freedom, he would have fled to Mexico or Canada. He wouldn’t have come to her knowing she blamed him for Evan’s death. It didn’t make sense for him to risk his life in a daring prison escape only to jeopardize it by coming to her.
Landis stopped pacing and looked toward the cabin, aware that her heart was beating too fast, that her palms were wet despite the cold. What was taking the deputy so blasted long?
Too impatient to wait any longer, she changed direction and started for the door. Jack might be desperate, but he wasn’t crazy enough to get into a physical confrontation with a cop. Surely the deputy had the situation under control, didn’t he?
Her pulse kicked when she stepped on to the porch. The front door stood open. Shadows ebbed and flowed within. As familiar as the cabin was to her, it now seemed menacing. Moving closer, she stopped and peered inside.
“He must have run out the back.”
Barely suppressing a scream, Landis spun. The deputy stood a few feet behind her. She was about to give him a piece of her mind for scaring the daylights out of her when his words registered.
“Gone?” she cried. “That can’t be. He was right there on the kitchen floor.” Jack had to be there. He’d been unconscious when she left. He was in no condition to get up and walk away.
Not bothering to wait for a response, she whirled and darted through the door. Her boots cracked sharply against the pine floorboards as she ran to the kitchen. The room was just as she’d left it, less one unconscious man. She stared dumbly at the floor where a single drop of blood was the only sign he’d ever been there.
“A set of footprints leads to the road,” the deputy said. “Looks like he cut his hand on that pane. I found blood in the snow.”
Landis watched the deputy saunter to the French door where the pane had been broken. Shards of glass sparkled like broken diamonds on the floor.
“Did you get a look at him, ma’am?”
She met his gaze, her mind speeding through the ramifications of the question. He was a large man with sandy hair and a handlebar mustache. He appeared capable and professional in his sheriff’s department jacket and ostrich boots. But she’d noticed the aggressive glint in his eyes. She’d seen that glint before and knew well the difference between a lawman who enjoyed his work and a cop with an ego to sate and an itchy trigger finger to boot.
“No,” she answered, thinking she knew how Pandora must have felt after opening that blasted box.
She answered the rest of his questions truthfully, but without the kind of details that would have made his job easy. No, the intruder hadn’t stolen anything. She hadn’t seen a gun. No, he hadn’t harmed or threatened her in any way. Even her description of him came out vague.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want the police to find Jack. She did. He’d murdered her brother and deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison. Landis just didn’t want this deputy going after Jack half-cocked. She believed in justice, not vengeance.
Discomfort washed over her when she realized her other motives weren’t quite as noble. If she identified Jack, her name would be plastered on the front page of every newspaper in Utah. Their past relationship would be sensationalized. The first major victory of her career would be overshadowed by scandal. Regardless of the fact that she was an innocent party and had acted properly and lawfully, she knew the gossip and speculation would affect her career. Perceptions were everything when you were a public servant. She’d sacrificed enough for Jack LaCroix. She’d be damned if she sacrificed anything more.
The most important thing was that he was gone, she told herself as the deputy drove away. She could get on with her life and try to forget he’d ever shown up. She wouldn’t even have to admit to herself that as she’d listened to his declarations of innocence, a small, gullible part of her had been tempted to believe him.
She knew there was a possibility of Jack returning, but she didn’t think he would. She’d made her position clear. He was a lot of things, but a fool wasn’t one of them. Tomorrow, she would call his lawyer, Aaron Chandler, and fill him in on the situation. If Jack got in touch with him, perhaps Chandler would be able to persuade him to turn himself in.
Turning away from the door, Landis walked to the living room. She was still shaking, and her hands were ice-cold. Guilt sat like a rock in the pit of her stomach. The knowledge that she’d protected her brother’s murderer weighed heavily on her shoulders. As she stared at the drop of blood on the kitchen floor, she realized with dismay that her hard-won victory earlier in the day was overshadowed by what she’d done. She felt like a charlatan.
Shaking off thoughts she didn’t want to deal with, she stripped off her coat and tossed it on the sofa. BJ brushed against her leg and mewed. She scooped the cat into her arms and hugged him tightly, wondering why she suddenly needed the comfort of his warmth, why she suddenly felt so alone.
“How about that fire?” she said aloud.
The woodpile was in the backyard. Not bothering with her coat, Landis crossed through the kitchen. The deputy had taped a piece of cardboard over the broken pane to keep out the cold. She’d have to go to the hardware store tomorrow and pick up a new pane. Unlocking the French door, she opened it and started for the cord of wood stacked against the fence a few yards away.
The snow was still coming down, but not as hard. Such a serene picture, she thought as she pulled two logs and some kindling from the stack. If only she felt as serene. Seeing Jack had been a tremendous shock. It galled her that she still felt something for him. Not love or anything so profound. But a connection that ran a lot deeper than she wanted to admit.
Movement off to her right sent her heart hard against her ribs. Gasping, she dropped the wood and spun. Before she’d taken two steps toward the cabin, strong arms closed around her from behind, trapping her against a solid wall of muscle. A hand clamped over her mouth, cutting off her scream.
“Easy, Landis, it’s me.” Jack’s voice sliced through the fog of fear. “Don’t scream. You know I won’t hurt you.”
She berated herself for being foolish enough to believe he’d gone. Cursing him, she tried to break his grip on her and wriggle free, but he held her tightly against him. Angry and afraid, she did the only thing she could think of and bit his palm.
He jerked his hand away. “Ouch! Damn it!”
“Let go of me!”
“Hold still!”
Furious, Landis spun to face him. “How dare you come at me like that!” Bending, she scooped up a piece of kindling and swung it as hard as she could. Air whooshed.
Jack lunged sideways, stumbled and went down on his knees. The kindling missed him by an inch. Scrambling to his feet, he moved toward her. “You could have taken my head off with that!”
“You don’t use it anyway.” She swung again.
He ducked, then lunged for her. His arms went around her waist. The momentum knocked her off balance, but she didn’t fall. She raised the stick, prepared to defend herself. But his hand snaked out and braceleted her wrist. “Don’t even think about hitting me with that,” he growled.
Jack had forgotten how small she was. How delicately she was built. How good she smelled when he got this close—a subtle mix of coconut and musk and woman flesh. He’d forgotten how soft her body was when she was pressed up against him. How her eyes flashed like cut emeralds when he ticked her off. He’d forgotten a lot of things about her in the past year. Or tried to, anyway. Holding her against him, they all came rushing back….
“Damn you, Jack!” She struggled to free herself from his grasp. “Let go of me!”
She was surprisingly strong for her size. “Let go of the stick,” he said between clenched teeth.
She lashed out with her right foot. The heel of her boot connected solidly with his shin. He felt pain on top of pain, but he didn’t let go. “Stop fighting me.”
“You’re hurting me!”
“Yeah, well your heel grinding into my shin didn’t exactly feel good.”
He squeezed her wrist. Her hand opened; the kindling fell to the snow. Growling in annoyance, he shoved her away. For several long seconds, they faced each other, breathing hard, their breaths mingling between them in a white cloud of vapor.
Despite the fatigue and pain fogging his brain, Jack couldn’t help but notice the rise and fall of her breasts. That her cheeks were blushed with cold. Or that she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. He steeled himself against those observations, knowing it was crazy to think of her in those terms now.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he said.
“In the scope of things, I’m sure a bruised wrist is the least of my worries,” she said dryly. “Why sweat the little things when you’re determined to ruin my life?”
“I’m not going to ruin your life. Nobody has to know I was here.”
“I hate to remind you of something so obvious, but that deputy sheriff was just here looking for you.”
“Yeah? So then why the hell did you send him away?”
She blinked. “I…didn’t. I mean, he went back to the sheriff’s office to put together a search party.”
The realization that she hadn’t identified him staggered him. Something that felt vaguely like hope fluttered in his chest. “You know, Red, for a lawyer you’re not a very good liar.”
“He’s coming back. I swear he’s coming right back.”
He contemplated her, feeling more for her than was prudent. But then, he’d never been a prudent man when it came to Landis. “If I understood your motives a little better, I might thank you.”
“Don’t bother.” She met his gaze levelly. “I’m not going to let you drag me down with you. I’m not going to let you ruin my life.”
A sudden shiver wracked his body. Another wave of dizziness followed with such force that for an instant he thought he was going down again. Fighting nausea, he leaned against the trunk of a pine tree for support. “Damn it…”
“Jack—”
“I need to call Aaron Chandler,” he ground out.
“You’re turning yourself in?”
“Don’t count on it.” He’d hoped she would be able to put her hatred for him aside in the name of justice, but it didn’t look like she wasn’t going to help him. Chandler probably wouldn’t, either. But calling his lawyer might buy him some time. Under the circumstances, Jack figured it was the best he could hope for.
“I’ll have to drive down to Mrs. Worthington’s to use the phone,” she said.
“Like I’m going to let you drive away,” he snapped. “Get me a knife. I’ll splice the line together.”
Landis glowered at him a moment before picking up the fallen firewood. Following her cue, Jack gathered the remaining kindling and trailed her to the cabin.
The heat inside made him feel feverish, but it wasn’t enough to warm him. He felt cold all the way to his bones. He prayed he could function long enough to repair the phone line and make the call to his attorney.
Setting the kindling on the hearth, he watched Landis approach him with a small utility knife. Her cheeks were flushed with cold. Her hair was damp and clung to her face in wisps. That she appealed to him even now annoyed the hell out of him. He couldn’t count the times he’d thought of her when he’d been locked away, lying on his cot, staring at the ceiling, trying to block out his surroundings. She would never know how many endless nights he’d dreamed of her, of touching her. She would never know that those dreams had sustained him, given him a reason to live.
He’d known she wouldn’t welcome him back. In the months he’d spent in prison, he’d tried desperately to convince himself it didn’t matter, that he didn’t care. But the truth had eaten at him, like an acid gnawing at his heart until there was nothing left but an empty shell.
Shaking off the memories, Jack took the knife and walked back outside to splice the telephone line. A few minutes later, he returned to find Landis at the hearth, building a fire. Without speaking, he went directly to the phone. A sigh of relief slipped between his lips when he got a dial tone. He dialed Aaron Chandler’s number from memory.
He looked at Landis. “Come here.”
Wariness flashed across her features. “Why?”
Ignoring the question, Jack thrust the phone at her. “Tell him to meet you here. Tell him you’ve got a mutual friend who needs clothes and money. Don’t mention my name in case there’s a tap. He’ll know it’s me. Tell him it’s an emergency. Make sure he drives up here now.”
Protest registered in her eyes, but Chandler must have answered, because she turned her attention to the phone. Jack watched her shift into lawyer mode, listened as the cool, detached professionalism slipped into her voice. Quickly and without emotion she informed Chandler of the situation. If Jack hadn’t been watching her, he wouldn’t have known her hands were trembling. Or that the pulse point just above the mole on her throat was thrumming.
Hanging up the phone, she turned to him. “He’ll be here in a couple of hours.”
“That’ll give me time to eat and shower.”
“You realize Aaron’s going to insist you turn yourself in, don’t you?” she asked.
“He can insist all he wants. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.”
“As an attorney—”
“Cut the lawyer crap. Nothing personal, but I’m not too keen on lawyers these days.”
“Maybe you should have gone somewhere else.”
Jack bit back an angry retort. He was cold and hungry and ached all the way to his fingernails. The last thing he wanted to do was argue with Landis. “It’s been a rough couple of days.” Argument leaped into her eyes, but he raised a hand to silence her. “I’ve got a bullet wound in my left shoulder.”
Her mouth opened slightly and her gaze flicked to the bloodstained shirt. But she didn’t speak. She didn’t offer help. Maybe she wasn’t as compassionate as he’d thought. “You need to go to the hospital,” she said.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I’m a lawyer, Jack. I don’t do bullet wounds.”
“Yeah, well, you’re going to make an exception tonight.” Never taking his eyes from hers, he began unbuttoning his shirt.
Landis stared at him as if he’d slashed her with a machete. Her gaze flicked from his eyes to his hands as he worked the buttons. At least that cool, detached mask was gone he mused, vaguely satisfied.
Easing one side of the shirt off his shoulder, he stole a look at the wound. His stomach flip-flopped as his eyes took in the mass of jagged flesh. The skin was the color of eggplant, swollen and hot to the touch. No wonder it hurt like hell.
Landis gasped and covered her mouth with an unsteady hand. “My God, Jack, I had no idea you were… You need to go to the hospital. A doctor. Stitches…” She stepped back, as if distancing herself would make him go away.
He knew she wasn’t necessarily worried about his well-being, but it was good to know she was concerned. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had worried about him. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time someone had cared whether he lived or died.
The feeling was bitterly familiar. Orphaned at the age of eight, Jack had grown up in a series of foster homes, some good, some not so good. He’d been moved around so often, the constant shuffling from home to home had become a way of life. He’d dealt with it by convincing himself he didn’t care. If that didn’t work, he went looking for trouble—something he’d always had a knack for finding.
He thought about the man who’d helped him turn his life around and wondered how Mike Morgan would feel about what was happening now. The prospect of Mike’s disappointment left a bitter taste at the back of his throat.
“Why don’t you let me drive you over to the clinic in Provo?” Landis said.
Taking in her wide eyes and pale skin, he almost smiled, realizing that even after everything that had happened between them, he was still hungry for her attention. Hungry for a hell of a lot more than her attention if he wanted to be honest about it. God, he was a fool…
“Because by law all bullet wounds are reported to the police,” he snapped.
“I’m not equipped to treat a wound like that, Jack.”
“It’s only a graze. You can handle a bandage.” He looked down at his muddy clothes. “Right now I’d like a shower and some dry clothes. I need something to eat. Some aspirin and a bed. I need to have a clear head when Aaron gets here.”
He gazed through the French door, gauging the snow. Not exactly a snowstorm, but it was coming down again. In another hour the roads would be treacherous. Hopefully, Chandler kept a set of tire chains in the trunk of his Mercedes.
Surprising him, Landis stepped closer, until she was standing a mere foot away. He knew it was a tactic she’d learned at some point in her education. Some nonsense about invading personal space. Too bad she hadn’t yet learned the tactic didn’t work on him.
“All right, Jack. You can take a shower. I’ll fix you something to eat. I’ll even do my best to get your shoulder taken care of. But the moment Chandler gets here, you become his property, and he’ll damn well take you with him when he leaves.”
Jack tried to be amused, but his sense of humor had all but vanished in the last hours. “And if he doesn’t?”
Narrowing her eyes the way a cat might an instant before it pounced on an unsuspecting mouse, she moved even closer. “Then you can add another twenty years to your sentence for holding me hostage.”
Chapter 3
Landis’s every sense was honed on the man standing at the hearth as she made her way toward the linen closet for a towel and an extra bar of soap. She told herself the only reason she was helping him was because she wanted him gone. The sight of him shivering with cold and pain had nothing to do with it. Damn it, it didn’t. She was immune to his suffering. She might have cared for Jack once, but those days were over for good—for too many reasons to count.
As long as she kept her interaction with him to a minimum, she would get through this. Of course, maintaining a safe distance was going to be difficult considering the size of her cabin. For the first time since owning the place, she wished she’d gone for square footage instead of privacy.
She looked down at the bar of soap in her hand and willed her hand to stop shaking. The last thing she wanted to think about was Jack taking a shower in her bathroom. The image of him lathering that large male body with her perfumed soap disturbed her more than she wanted to admit. Maybe because she remembered every detail of that body with startling clarity. A wide, muscular chest that tapered to a washboard belly. Narrow hips that connected to long, powerful legs. She remembered running her fingers through the dusting of black hair on his chest and thinking she’d found heaven in his arms. She remembered kisses hot enough to melt steel. Lovemaking so intense it had left coolheaded Landis in tears…
With those disturbing memories came the darker memories of their last terrible night together. The night Evan died, it had been Jack who broke the news. It was a night of disbelief, of rage, of wrenching grief. But even as her heart had cried out with the pain of losing her brother, she’d reached out to Jack. He was Evan’s best friend, and it had seemed so right that he would be the one to share her anguish. A man and a woman, lovers bound by sorrow, seeking comfort in each other’s arms. Landis had slept with him one final, earth-shattering time before the investigation and trial tore them apart.
But she’d never been able to erase the memory of his words of solace, the tormenting sight of his tears or the outrage burning in his eyes. Nor had she been able to forget his gentle kisses, his steady, elegant hands, or the way his eyes glittered with passion when he was inside her.
Shaken by the memory, appalled by the thoughts streaking through her traitorous brain, she opened the closet door and yanked a towel from the shelf, vowing not to let the past cloud her judgment. Granted, Jack was an attractive man and they had once been lovers, but she respected herself too much to fall victim to his charms knowing what she did.
“Where do you want me to put my clothes?”
Landis jumped at the nearness of his voice. Realizing he’d come up behind her, she spun and thrust the towel into his midsection hard enough to elicit a grunt. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
Jack studied her carefully for a moment. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were blushing.”
“I’m not blushing,” she snapped, hating it that he’d noticed. The curse of being a redhead, she supposed. Unable to meet his eyes, she focused on the towel between them—only to notice how large and strong his hands looked wrapped around it. She remembered seeing those same hands on her body, touching her, his palms warm and slightly roughened against her most sensitive flesh….
Disgusted with herself, she stepped back. “Take a shower.” She sniffed. “You need it.”
“You’ll come check on me if I pass out, won’t you, Red?”
Her heart did a weird little roll when his hands went to the remaining buttons of his shirt. Jack had never been shy. He was a boldly sexual creature, and Landis had always felt a little overwhelmed by his intensity. She wanted to snap at him to stay dressed until he was locked in the bathroom, but she knew that was silly. She was a grown woman and had seen plenty of male chests. This particular chest shouldn’t be any different. Especially since she didn’t even like the man it belonged to.
“Unless you want to spend the night in jail, I suggest you refrain from passing out,” she said.
“It’d be hell explaining to the police how an escaped con got in your bathtub.”
She didn’t want to think about that. “Toss me your clothes from inside. I’ll throw them in the washing machine.”
Abruptly, he reached out. Landis tried to avoid the contact, but he was too quick. He brushed his knuckles along her jaw, but she felt the contact like an arc of electricity that snapped through her body and went all the way to her toes. Her intellect told her to pull away, but her body refused the order. Instead she found herself melting and softening, and she had to resist the impulse to lean closer….
“Thank you,” he said.
She swatted his hand away from her face. “Don’t read too much into it. You’re not in jail right now because you’ve led me to believe you’re going to turn yourself in.”
A smile traced the corners of his mouth. “You still have a weakness for strays, don’t you, Red?”
“You’re not a stray, Jack. You’re a wolf, and I only hope you don’t turn on me.” She raised her chin and looked him in the eye. A year of bottled-up pain and anger burgeoned in her chest and began to flow. It was as if he’d reached into her and wrested the plug from her damaged heart. “Don’t assume you’re going to flash that smile, hand me a few tidbits on Cyrus Duke and expect me to help you.”
“The thought never crossed my mind,” he said dryly.
“Don’t insult my intelligence by thanking me for something I would never do for you.”
“I’m going to enjoy proving you wrong.”
“For your sake, I hope you can. Personally, I don’t care as long as you stay out of my life.”
“A couple of hours,” he said. “Until Chandler gets here. That’s all I’m asking.”
“You have no idea what you’re asking.”
“Listen to your heart, Landis.”
“My heart has been wrong about you every time it got involved.”
“Not this time.” His voice was like a caress, so soft and gentle that for a moment, she wanted to believe him….
Never taking his eyes from hers, Jack worked off the shirt and handed it to her. It took all of her discipline not to let her eyes drop, to explore what she knew was a magnificent chest. But she didn’t; control was too important to her. And Jack had always been a threat to that control. He’d always wreaked havoc on her in one way or another. Mentally. Physically. Emotionally. Landis only hoped she could keep a handle on her emotions long enough to get him out of her life once and for all.
Needing to get out from under his discerning gaze, she turned and started down the hall. She could feel his eyes on her as she walked, but she didn’t stop, didn’t even look back. And for the first time since his arrival, she knew she was much more vulnerable to him than she’d thought.
Leaning forward with his hands against the tile, Jack let the hot spray pound away the dirt, the aches and the bone-deep chill. The water felt like a hot branding iron against his shoulder wound, but there was no getting around a shower so he simply endured. He gladly put up with the pain to get clean. The water ran brown with grime and dirt and blood. He’d never wanted a shower so badly in his entire life. Prison had a way of making a man feel dirty right down to his soul.
He closed his eyes against a bout of dizziness, and for a moment the darkness transported him back to the penitentiary. He heard the steel doors banging shut, the locks turning with the kind of finality that could drive a man insane. He heard the crude shouts, listened to the words of hatred and bitterness and felt his humanity slip a little bit more.
Jack had always considered himself a strong, resilient man. But the year he’d spent in prison had come very close to destroying him. He’d tried to adjust to the routine of prison life; he’d tried to accept the reality that he would be spending the rest of his life behind bars. But something inside him refused to acquiesce no matter how impossible the situation.
Back when he’d been a troubled teen, he’d been unable to fight the injustices inflicted upon him by a system that wasn’t perfect. But Jack was a man now. Deep down inside, he was still a cop. And even if that title had been stripped from him, he would draw his last breath fighting for what was right.
Or die trying.
Using a heart-shaped soap, he lathered his body twice, marveling at the feel of being warm and clean. He washed his hair with shampoo that smelled startlingly like Landis. For a moment, he lost himself in her scent and wished for the hundredth time he could turn back the hands of time.
But Jack was through lamenting the past. For the first time in over a year, his fate was in his own hands. He didn’t intend to squander it. He wouldn’t waste one second of that time wishing for things he couldn’t have. The relationship he’d once shared with Landis was over. She’d turned her back on him when he’d needed her desperately. She would do it again if he gave her the chance. The sooner he accepted that, the better off he’d be.
He didn’t have much time. Twenty-four hours. Thirty-six hours tops. He had no idea when the police or the department of corrections would catch up with him. The way his luck was running, capture seemed imminent. He hated to waste time on sleep, but he hadn’t slept for two days. His brain was barely functioning. His body was operating on sheer will alone. He needed food and a few hours in a bed. He needed a clear head for his meeting with Chandler because it wasn’t going to be easy convincing his attorney to look the other way while his client became a fugitive from justice.
He switched off the water and opened the glass door. A fluffy pink towel hung neatly on the rack. Jack stared at it, realizing with mild amusement that he had nothing to wear while his clothes were being laundered. Cursing mildly, he stepped out of the tub and reached for the towel. The fabric felt soft against his fingers. Even before bringing it to his nose, he knew it smelled like Landis.
Pleasure jumped through him as her scent wrapped around his brain. Despite the fatigue, and the pain of his injury, his body responded. Closing his eyes against the hard tug of longing, he whispered her name. “Landis…”
Landis’s hands shook as she tossed sliced mushrooms into the omelet. Cooking usually calmed her, but tonight her battered nerves refused to cooperate. She couldn’t stop thinking about Jack. The way he’d looked at her when he’d proclaimed his innocence. The sound of his voice when he’d whispered her name. The way he’d touched her. Oh dear God, why had she allowed herself to get sucked into this maelstrom?
“Don’t tell me you finally learned to cook.”
She jolted at the sound of his voice. The slice of toast she’d been buttering slipped from her hand and landed butter-side down on the floor. She was about to utter a very unlady-like curse when the sight of him wearing nothing but a towel froze her in place.
Her eyes swept over him. Shock and a jolt of something that felt vaguely electrical ran the length of her body. Water from his shower glistened on broad shoulders. She saw a chest that was rounded with muscle and covered with thick black hair. The towel was wrapped snugly around an abdomen that was flat and rippled with muscle. Even as she told herself she wasn’t going to let the sight of all that hard male flesh get to her, she felt the burn of a blush on her cheeks.
Appalled by her reaction, she quickly turned away, telling herself it was stress that had her blushing and speechless when she should have been doling out ultimatums.
Plucking a paper towel from the roll, he stooped to retrieve the fallen toast. “The omelet’s singeing,” he said easily.
Landis reached for the spatula and proceeded to mangle the omelet.
With the self-assurance of a man who knew his way around the kitchen, Jack moved in beside her and usurped the spatula. “Let me do that.”
She watched him expertly fold the eggs and shovel them on to waiting plates. “Where did you learn to do that?” she asked, determined to get a grip before he got the wrong idea. Just because he’d flustered her didn’t mean she was going to change her mind and help him.
“I cooked for cellblock C six days a week,” he said. “Breakfast shift, mostly.”
When he looked at her she knew instinctively the smile was there only to hide something he didn’t want her to see. Sadness. Humiliation, perhaps. The thought put an uncomfortable twinge in her chest.
“I make a pretty mean beef stew, too,” he said. “Baby carrots. Turnips. You ever had turnips with beef stew?”
He was the only person she’d ever known who could make her smile when she didn’t want to. None of what had happened in the past year was even remotely funny. It was sad more than anything, she realized. So many lives ruined. Others irrevocably changed.
“Ian left a flannel shirt behind the last time he was here.” Unable to look at him, she dropped her gaze to the skillet in front of her. “I’ll get it for you.”
“Why won’t you look at me?”
“Because I’m trying to fix you something to eat,” she said, her voice filled with exasperation.
“It doesn’t bother you to see me in a towel, does it?”
“Don’t be an idiot.” She glared at him, refusing to acknowledge that her heart was pinging hard against her ribs.
One side of his mouth curved. “Red, you’re refreshing as hell.”
“I’m glad at least one of us is finding the situation amusing.” Turning away from him, she stalked into the living room, swung open the closet door and jerked the blue flannel shirt off a hanger. Back in the kitchen she thrust it at him. Because she couldn’t quite meet his gaze, she found herself staring at the sterile gauze he’d taped haphazardly to his shoulder. She could see that the surrounding flesh was swollen and discolored, and hoped to God it wasn’t as serious as it looked. “That’s a pathetic excuse for a bandage.”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t do a very good job with one hand.” He gazed steadily at her. “I’m going to need you to butterfly me.”
She didn’t want to get anywhere near him, let alone administer first aid. “Look, Jack, the only stuff I know about first aid comes from the occasional episode of E.R.”
“That’s good enough for me.” Wincing a little, he eased into the shirt, then looked down at the pink towel wrapped around his hips. “How long until my pants are dry? I want to be out of all this pink by the time Chandler arrives. It doesn’t do much for my credibility.”
“I hate to tell you this, Jack, but you don’t have any credibility.”
His smile was cold. “I’d almost forgotten how cutting you can be.”
“I don’t want you here. What do you expect?”
“The benefit of a doubt.”
“Maybe we should just concentrate on getting through the next couple of hours without coming to blows.” She carried their plates to the dining room table. Though she didn’t look at him, she felt his gaze on her as she pulled out a chair and sat.
Momentarily, he followed and sat next to her. Without looking up or speaking, he ate like a man possessed, making her wonder how long it had been since he’d had any food.
As she watched him, a sudden jolt of despair wrenched at her. She told herself it was the feelings she’d once had for him fueling the doubts inside her. Damn it, she trusted the criminal justice system. He’d had a fair trial. Justice had been served. She’d seen the evidence. She’d heard the witnesses testify against him. Yet buried in the recesses of her mind, a shadow of doubt had taken root. Was it possible Evan had gotten himself into trouble and been killed for it? Was Cyrus Duke involved? Could Jack be innocent?
She tried not to imagine what he’d been through. As an assistant prosecutor, she’d been inside prisons before. She knew how the inmates were treated. She knew the humiliations, the violence and the lack of humanity that was an integral part of prison life. She knew what being locked in a cage did to a man. She knew what it had done to her own father. The parallels between the two men made her shiver.
Jack had lost everything in the past year. His best friend. His career. His freedom. Yet he’d endured, never sacrificing his dignity. What kind of a man did that make him? A murderer who wanted freedom at any cost? Or a survivor who was willing to risk it all to prove his innocence?
“Do you have a first aid kit?”
The sound of his voice startled her, and Landis realized with some embarrassment that she’d been staring. “Everything I have is in the medicine cabinet. Gauze and tape.”
“Antibiotic cream?”
“Yes.” His politeness was beginning to annoy her. It would be easier to hate him if he were rude.
“What you need is a doctor,” she said, praying that for once in his life he would agree with her. “Not me to play nursemaid.”
Rising, she gathered his dishes, her own untouched food, and took them to the sink. Even without looking at him, she knew he was assessing her, trying to read her body language. Mercy, she knew him too well. It was disconcerting to know he knew her just as well.
“It might be a few days before I get to the doc,” he said.
Landis closed her eyes, dread gathering in her chest. It was crazy, but a small part of her wanted to help him. She wanted to ease his pain. She wanted to do this one, compassionate thing for him because she knew it would be the last kindness she would ever show him. After tonight he would be gone, and she would never see him again. Oddly, the notion wasn’t as comforting as she wanted it to be.
Taking a calming breath, she faced him. “The cut above your eye looks bad, too.”
“Pretty careless of the prison system to string barbed wire where the inmates could get hurt. Think my lawyer could get a settlement out of them?”
“That’s not funny.”
Irked by his flippant tone, Landis left the kitchen. In the bathroom, she found the gauze, tape, peroxide, aspirin and a crinkled tube of antibiotic cream. Dreading the job ahead, she entered the living room to find Jack slumped on the sofa, watching her through heavy-lidded eyes.
“You got anything stronger than aspirin?” he asked.
Despite the intrepid facade, she could tell he was tense about the wound. He should be, considering what he expected her to do. “I guess you’re not going to let me talk you out of this,” she said.
“Think revenge, Counselor. That should get you through it.”
Frowning, she went to the bar and found the old bottle of brandy she’d gotten for Christmas last year. Working off the cork, she snagged a good-size tumbler from the cabinet, and walked back to the living room.
“Ah, a little brandy for the soul,” he said. “That ought to do nicely.”
She set the bottle and glass on the coffee table and looked down at him. “That wound is serious, Jack. If it gets infected you could find yourself seriously ill.”
“Careful Landis, or I might think you still care about me.”
“Like you said, Jack, I’ve always had a weakness for strays—even when I know they’re likely to bite.” She poured two fingers of the amber liquid into the glass.
“More,” he said.
“You just want to kill the pain, not put yourself into a coma.” But she filled the glass to the halfway mark and handed it to him.
“I hate to waste the expensive stuff on a gunshot wound.”
“Go ahead. I haven’t exactly been celebrating much lately.” She tapped out three aspirins. “These will help.”
Never taking his eyes from hers, he tossed back the aspirin, brought the glass to his lips and drained it in three gulps. Landis watched, fascinated as he shuddered, then set the glass back on the table.
Leaning against the sofa back, he closed his eyes. “Give this a minute to kick in, will you?”
She looked down at her scant first aid supplies, praying she could get through this without making the wound worse than it already was.
“Okay. Let’s get this over with.” Grimacing, he unbuttoned the shirt, wincing as it came down over his shoulder.
Careful not to get too close, Landis peeled back the bandage he’d applied after his shower. The moment the wound came into view her stomach did a slow-motion somersault. She wasn’t squeamish, but the sight of the bruised flesh and gaping wound made her feel light-headed. “I’m sure this isn’t what you want to hear, but I flunked basic first aid.”
“You’re not going to pass out on me, are you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
A chuckle rumbled in his throat. “From the looks of you, I’d say the jury’s still out on that. Maybe you ought to sit down. That floor’s hard as hell, and I don’t have the strength to pick you up.”
“I’m not going to pass out.”
He didn’t move as she rounded the sofa and set the peroxide and antibiotic cream on the end table. “Hold this.” She handed him the gauze. “And be quiet. I need to concentrate.”
Unable to avoid it any longer, she looked closely at the wound. It was no longer bleeding, but the gash was deep, the flesh jaggedly cut. She could only imagine how painful it was. “Hand me a section of gauze,” she said.
He opened the wrapper and held it out for her. “Am I going to live?”
“That depends on how much pain you can take.”
“On a scale of one to ten, it’s already a nine.”
“So we’ve got some room to work with.” Saturating the square of gauze with peroxide, Landis drizzled it over the wound. His quick intake of breath told her it stung, but he didn’t flinch. She repeated the procedure several times until the peroxide stopped foaming. As gently as possible, she applied some of the antibiotic ointment.
“Hurt?” she asked.
“No worse than the day you walked out of my cell for the last time.” A fine sheet of sweat coated his forehead. “On a scale of one to ten, that was definitely a ten.”
Her hands stilled, but she didn’t look at him. A day didn’t go by that she didn’t remember the look on his face when she’d left him standing in his cell, looking like the ground had just caved in beneath him. Aside from burying her brother, it was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do.
“This isn’t a good time to dredge up the past, Jack.”
“Another hour and I’ll be gone. We won’t get another chance.”
She felt his gaze burning into her, but she focused on the bullet wound, realizing with dismay the mass of damaged flesh was easier to look at than those accusing eyes of his. “Maybe that’s best for both of us.”
“Maybe it’s time you looked a little deeper. Maybe it’s time somebody put Duke in prison for what he did to Evan. For what he did to us. For God’s sake, Landis, what we had…”
The tube of antibiotic cream slipped from her hand and fell to the floor. Exasperated, she cursed and dropped her hands to her sides. Her heart pounded, and she couldn’t keep her mind from racing with the possibilities of what he was saying. “Damn it, Jack, if you want me to get your shoulder bandaged, you’re going to have to shut up.”
Turning his head slightly, he glanced down at the wound. Landis didn’t miss the slight paling of his face. “I’m going to need some more of those aspirin.”
She hesitated, knowing she was going to cause him real pain when she tried to join the jagged edges of the wound. “You need stitches, Jack. I’m not sure I can butterfly this. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Ah, come on, Red. You’ve already ripped my heart out. This ought to be a breeze.”
She glanced sharply at him, but his eyes were closed. He had an incredibly sensuous mouth for a male, and she suddenly remembered how many times that mouth had kissed her, how good he was at it….
He shifted slightly, and the shirt fell open the rest of the way. Her eyes did a slow, dangerous sweep, skimming over his magnificent chest, the dark sprinkling of hair, and the rounded pectoral muscles. The towel was knotted just below his navel and she could see the flat stretch of his belly, the thickening of hair…
“Your hands don’t look too steady, Red.”
She jolted, jerked her gaze back to his. “Bullet wounds make me nervous.”
“Maybe it’s the convict making you nervous.”
“I don’t think so.”
He stared at her, making no move to close the shirt, one side of his mouth curved into a knowing smile.
Struggling to keep her hands from shaking, she withdrew three long sections of first aid tape from the dispenser. She then placed a sterile gauze pad over the wound. Sweat moistened her forehead as she stretched the first piece of tape tightly over the gauze, effectively pulling the edges of the wound together.
Jack winced and cut loose with a curse. “Jesus…”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hurry up,” he ground out between clenched teeth.
Holding her breath, she secured the second length of tape, trying in vain to ignore his groan of pain. Oh, dear God, when was Aaron Chandler going to arrive?
By the time the bandage was in place Landis was shaking all over. A dime-size stain of fresh blood marred the gauze. The injury would leave a tremendous scar, but at least it wouldn’t get infected. Sighing with relief, she stepped away, aware that her legs were rubbery.
Jack slumped against the back of the sofa with his eyes closed. He cradled his left arm as if it were broken. His face was pale and drawn and his strong jaw had finally stopped clenching. She watched him for several minutes. Slowly, his breathing returned to normal. His hands, which had been fisted in pain, relaxed. The furrow at his brow smoothed out. At least he wasn’t hurting anymore.
Surprising herself, she raised her hand and touched his lean cheek the way she’d done a hundred times in the months they’d been involved. The stubble of his beard felt rough and unfamiliar beneath her fingertips. She could smell his clean, masculine scent. Memories stirred uncomfortably inside her. She stared at him, remembering, hurting, regretting and wishing things could have turned out differently.
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Linda Castillo
Jack LaCroix was the most unsettling human being she’d ever met.
“What do you want?” She looked into the disturbing depths of his eyes.
“I know you don’t trust me.” He stepped toward her. “But I need your help.”
She’d forgotten how tall he was. A year ago, she’d been taken in by his muscular physique and that reckless glint in his eye. Tonight, the cold reality of what he’d done blurred the sweet memory of how good things had once been between them. Landis raised her chin and met his gaze. “You should have considered the consequences before you committed murder.”
“I’m sure this is going to throw a wrench into your undying faith in the criminal justice system, but I didn’t kill Evan. Someone set me up.”
“I’ve heard this before. I didn’t believe it then. I don’t believe it now. Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed,” he said quietly. “I can prove it now.”
Dear Reader,
This year may be winding down, but the excitement’s as high as ever here at Silhouette Intimate Moments. National bestselling author Merline Lovelace starts the month off with a bang with A Question of Intent, the first of a wonderful new miniseries called TO PROTECT AND DEFEND. Look for the next book, Full Throttle, in Silhouette Desire in January 2004.
Because you’ve told us you like miniseries, we’ve got three more for you this month. Marie Ferrarella continues her family-based CAVANAUGH JUSTICE miniseries with Crime and Passion. Then we have two military options: Strategic Engagement features another of Catherine Mann’s WINGMEN WARRIORS, while Ingrid Weaver shows she can Aim for the Heart with her newest EAGLE SQUADRON tale. We’ve got a couple of superb stand-alone novels for you, too: Midnight Run, in which a wrongly accused cop has only one option—the heroine!—to save his freedom, by reader favorite Linda Castillo, and Laura Gale’s deeply moving debut, The Tie That Binds, about a reunited couple’s fight to save their daughter’s life.
Enjoy them all—and we’ll see you again next month, for six more of the best and most exciting romances around.
Yours,
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Editor
Midnight Run
Linda Castillo
LINDA CASTILLO
knew at a very young age that she wanted to be a writer—and penned her first novel at the age of thirteen. She is the winner of numerous writing awards, including a nomination for the prestigious RITA
Award, the Holt Medallion and Golden Heart. She loves writing edgy stories that push the envelope and take her readers on a roller-coaster ride of breathtaking romance and thrilling suspense.
Linda spins her tales of love and intrigue from her home in Texas, where she lives with her husband and four lovable dogs. Check out her Web site at www.lindacastillo.com (http://www.lindacastillo.com). Or you can contact her at P.O. Box 670501, Dallas, Texas 75367-0501.
To my editor, Kim Nadelson, for seeing the magic
and helping to make this story a reality.
You have my admiration and heartfelt thanks.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Prologue
Fate had a twisted sense of humor, Jack LaCroix decided when the first shot rang out. Branches slashed at his clothes and face as he sprinted through the dense brush and low-growing trees. His prison-issue boots pounded through the mud in a rhythm that had pushed his body to the limit for what seemed like eternity. Behind him, the hounds were so close he could hear their frustrated baying over the sound of his own labored breathing.
He’d always considered himself a lucky man. At least up until a year ago when Lady Luck turned on him and bared her fangs. Damn, he wished he’d remembered how capricious she could be before trying a crazy stunt like breaking out of prison. If only he could charm her into keeping the dogs off him long enough for him to reach the river.
Desperation hammered through him as he calculated how far he had yet to go. Two hundred miles separated him from freedom. From justice. From the truth. A bitter laugh escaped him as the odds of his getting away struck him. Even if he made it to the river, he still faced his biggest obstacle yet. The only person who could help him believed he was a murderer.
Panic reared inside him at the thought. Everything he’d ever worked for or believed in—his very life in fact—hinged on whether he could convince her to help him. If she refused, or if they caught him before he reached her, he would be sent back to prison. He couldn’t let that happen. Not now. Not when he’d already ventured beyond the point of no return.
Plummeting down a steep embankment, he reached the flood plain of the river. Hope curled through him when he heard the sound of rushing water. He picked up speed and ran blindly in the darkness, stumbling over rocks and stumps, no longer feeling the branches cutting his face or the rain that pelted him.
He stopped at the edge of the clearing, listening, his breaths rushing out in great white puffs. Behind him, the dogs howled in an eerie bloodlust symphony. The rain-swollen river loomed beyond the trees, the black, swirling water teasing him with the seductive promise of escape.
Every muscle in his body tensed as he stepped into the clearing. He could barely hear the dogs over the frenzied beating of his heart. He was in plain sight now, an easy mark for any government-paid sharpshooter looking to cut a notch in the butt of his rifle. Crouching, he started for the river, knowing fully if fate decided to dupe him again, she would win for good.
White-hot pain streaked through his left shoulder. An instant later the clap of a rifle shattered the air. He heard himself cry out as the impact of the bullet spun him around. Clutching his shoulder, he lost his footing and tumbled down the muddy bank. Shock tore through him when he realized he’d been shot, then again as the icy water enveloped him.
Damn, he didn’t want to bleed to death in this godforsaken river. Not like this. He didn’t want to die like a criminal.
An eerie calm descended. Instinctively, he began to swim. The dogs couldn’t scent him here, he thought as the current tugged at him. He wouldn’t leave any footprints. The trackers would find blood on the bank. Hopefully, they’d think he succumbed to the cold and drowned. With a little help from Lady Luck, he might just live long enough to see daybreak.
Chapter 1
With the thrill of victory still humming through her veins, the last thing Landis McAllister wanted to deal with was the weather. She could handle a few snow flurries. Even an inch or two on the roads didn’t bother her. It was when Mother Nature went overboard and dumped two feet of the stuff that she questioned the wisdom of mountain living.
Determined not to let something like a little snowstorm dampen her spirits, Landis flipped on the radio and sang along with an old Christmas tune, her voice carrying over the din of the windshield wipers and the sound of tires crunching through ice. She didn’t care that she sang a little off-key as she steered the Jeep up the driveway. She didn’t care that it was snowing so hard she could barely see as she parked in her usual spot and shut down the engine.
Landis had just won the first major case of her career. Twelve weeks of dealing with a team of egocentric defense attorneys, a temperamental jury and a judge with a grudge against female prosecutors had finally paid off. Not only had she put the worst kind of criminal behind bars, but she’d ended a child’s suffering. That, she knew, was the biggest reward of all.
But despite her efforts to convince herself otherwise, Landis hadn’t walked away from the case unscathed. This one had taken something out of her. The child abuse cases always did. She felt spent, as if all the energy she’d thrown into the past twelve weeks had been sucked out of her. She’d tried not to let the ugliness affect her, but the testimony, the witnesses—and most of all the little victim herself—had hit home with the force of a sledgehammer.
Laying the memories of her own childhood aside, Landis focused instead on what the victory meant to her professionally. She’d taken a giant leap toward building the reputation she’d dreamed of her entire life. Her win today had opened doors for her, and she had every intention of breezing through those doors all the way to the district attorney’s office.
She poured her heart and soul into the cases she prosecuted, and she was damn good at what she did. Justice was important to her, especially since her older brother had been killed in the line of duty.
Refusing to let the past tarnish her mood, she hefted the bag of groceries and got out of the Jeep. Tonight was reserved for celebration, she told herself. It didn’t matter that her guest list consisted of a cat, a mystery novel and a fire—if she could manage to dig some wood out of the snow.
The tang of chimney smoke hung pleasantly in the frigid air as she made her way to the cabin. Snow blanketed the ground, reminding her that Christmas was less than a month away, and she had yet to begin her shopping. Struggling with the groceries and her perpetually overstuffed briefcase, she unlocked the door and stepped inside.
Pleasure fluttered through her as the familiar smells of home engulfed her. Vanilla. Old pine. The lingering aroma of this morning’s coffee. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted BJ, her three-legged alley cat, as he darted from behind the Indian-print sofa. Knowing the crafty tom was angling for a field mouse before dinner, she used her foot to close the door and lugged the grocery bag into the kitchen.
The cabin had been a gift to herself on her thirtieth birthday last year. It was the first home she’d owned, and she loved every square inch of it right down to the squeaky floors and drafty upstairs bedrooms. The isolated location satisfied her need for privacy while the view of the mountains to the west never ceased to take her breath away.
As Landis stacked the last of the cat food in the pantry, thoughts of the cabin gave way to an uncharacteristic bout of uneasiness. The hairs at her nape prickled. If she didn’t know better, she might have thought she was being watched. But that was crazy. She was alone.
Closing the pantry door, she turned, expecting to see her cantankerous tom stalking her. “BJ?” she called and froze. Her heart slammed against her ribs when the silhouette of a man moved out of the laundry room. Shock riveted her in place. She stared in stunned disbelief as his dark, familiar eyes latched on to hers.
“Jack,” she gasped, telling herself it was an absolute impossibility for Jack LaCroix to be standing in her kitchen dripping water all over the floor. “My God, how did you—”
“We need to talk.”
She smelled the desperation on him as clearly as she saw the dangerous light in his eyes. Melting snow clung to his black hair and dripped on to his face. On his temple, a cut stood out stark and red against the prison pallor of his complexion. A heavy five o’clock shadow darkened his jaw.
For a moment, Landis couldn’t speak. Her mind grappled for logical explanations, but she knew there was only one that explained his presence. “You escaped.”
“You always were a quick study.”
It wasn’t really fear that speared through her, but it was close. Something volatile and powerful she couldn’t put a name to. Adrenaline danced through her midsection, but she didn’t move. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. “How did you get in?”
“Through the back door.” He regarded her through piercing eyes. “Sorry about the pane.”
She choked back a hysterical laugh as the irony of his words struck her. A murderer with a conscience, she thought bitterly. But she knew his gentle voice and polite words didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. After all, tigers were wild and beautiful, but they were killers at heart. Just like Jack LaCroix.
“I don’t want you here,” she said with a calm she didn’t feel.
“I don’t care. I need your help.”
She didn’t think he would harm her, but she’d been wrong about him before. Dead wrong. In the back of her mind, she wondered if she could reach the phone before he stopped her.
Why had he come to her when a sane man would have fled to another country where the police weren’t looking for him? When surely he knew she was the last person on earth who would help him?
Her gaze flicked to the telephone on the wall. “I’m calling the police.”
“I’d tell you not to waste your time, but I know you won’t listen. You never were much good at listening.” His lips twisted into a wry smile. “That’s one of the things I always liked about you.”
With forced calm she strode to the phone, her every sense honed on the man behind her. She felt his gaze on her as she moved, vaguely aware that he didn’t follow. Snatching up the receiver, she punched 9-1-1 only to be met with silence.
Her heart thrumming in anger, she turned to him. “You had no right—”
“Don’t talk to me about rights,” he cut in. “Mine were taken away from me, and I damn well want them back.”
She watched him stride to the sofa, pick up her purse and dig out her cell phone. “What are you doing?” she asked.
Without looking at her, he dropped the phone to the floor and crushed it with his boot. “Trying to stay out of jail.”
Landis stared at her broken phone. “Destroying my phone isn’t going to help.”
“Maybe not, but it will buy me some time.” His expression was inscrutable, but then she’d never been able to read him. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to. To know what was going on behind that enigmatic expression was a frightening notion. Jack LaCroix was the most unsettling human being she’d ever met.
“What do you want?” She looked into the disturbing depths of his eyes. The intensity burning there nearly sent her back a step. But she held her ground, telling herself she was still in control, knowing deep down inside she’d never been in control when it came to Jack.
He looked like he’d been to hell and back. Mud streaked his face and clung to his clothes. The elegant hands she remembered so well were grimy, bruised and scratched. A red stain darkened his shirt from shoulder to waist. Landis stared at it, praying the hole in the fabric wasn’t from a bullet. She tried to ignore that he was shivering with cold, telling herself he didn’t deserve compassion, least of all hers.
“I know you don’t trust me.” He stepped toward her. “But I need your help.”
She took a reflexive step back, knowing immediately it was a tactical error. Never show weakness. Never give up ground. Not in the courtroom. Not in any situation. They were the rules of her trade, and she followed them unerringly. Too bad she hadn’t been as successful in assimilating them into her personal life.
But she’d forgotten how tall he was. Thinner than she remembered, but it wasn’t for lack of muscle. He looked hard-as-rock and lean as a marathon runner. A year ago, she might have been taken in by his muscular physique and that reckless glint in his eyes. Tonight, the cold reality of what he’d done blurred the sweet memory of how good things had once been between them.
Forcing back the memories, Landis raised her chin and met his gaze. “You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t be—”
“I shouldn’t be a lot of things.” Bitterness laced his voice. He’d never been a bitter man, but she supposed there were worse fates for a convicted murderer. “I shouldn’t be in prison for starters.”
Her temper stirred. She didn’t like mind games. She didn’t like being frightened. Or lied to. Especially when it came to the man who murdered her brother. “In my business I hear that so often it makes me sick.”
“Still putting them away, are you?”
“I happen to believe people like you belong in prison.”
“That’s my girl. A lawyer first—a human being second. Your daddy did a real number on you, didn’t he?”
Her heart kicked with another jab of anger. She didn’t want to discuss her father or what he’d done. Not with a man whose betrayal had cut her even deeper than her old man’s.
“Have you lost your mind or merely your sense of decency?”
“I lost any decency I might have had the day they put me in a cage.”
“Maybe you should have considered the consequences before you committed murder.”
He raked a shaking hand through his hair. “I’m sure this is going to throw a wrench into your undying faith in the criminal justice system, but I didn’t kill Evan. Someone set me up. The money. The gun. The bogus witnesses. I tried to tell you—”
“I’ve heard this before. I didn’t believe it then—I don’t believe it now. Nothing has changed since your trial.”
“Everything has changed,” he said quietly. “I can prove it now, but I need some time to do it.”
The night of the murder skittered through her mind. She winced with pain, then fury rumbled through her with such force she felt it all the way to her belly. She wasn’t a violent person, but she wanted to hurt him. He’d caused her so much pain. He’d taken so much away from her. First her heart. Then her brother.
“You were his partner, for God’s sake. He trusted you. I trusted you.” The need to strike out nearly overpowered her, but she maintained control if only by a thread. “I’d have to be insane to believe anything you say now.”
“I thought you might want to hear the truth,” he said. “I never had you pegged as a hypocrite, but Lord knows I’ve been wrong about you in the past. You claim to love the law so much. Maybe you believe in your beloved laws when it’s convenient. When they suit your needs. When it’s easy. Or maybe you hide behind justice when you’re not brave enough to face the truth.”
The words sliced her like a blade. It outraged her that he would take the one thing she truly believed in and use it to manipulate her. “It was your revolver that killed Evan. You took money from a known criminal. Two witnesses placed you at the murder scene. What am I supposed to believe with such overwhelming evidence staring me in the face?”
“You of all people should know the truth isn’t always handed over on a platter,” he said. “Reality isn’t that neat.”
“Don’t preach to me about reality. Of the two of us I’d say I’m a hell of a lot more grounded in reality than you. Damn it, Jack, what were you thinking breaking out of prison?”
As if the weight of the world suddenly settled on his shoulders, he sagged against the wall. The unpredictable light went out of his eyes, and Landis felt a new kind of tension tighten in her chest. For an instant he looked incredibly vulnerable, as if the odds stacked against him had finally worn him down and crushed him.
An alarm trilled in her head when she saw fresh blood coming through his shirt. He looked pale and shaken, but far too dangerous to touch. Like a snarling, wounded animal.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
“I’ve got worse problems than that.”
For a fleeting instant she wanted to reach out and offer comfort. Just as quickly, she shoved the notion away, telling herself that caring for him would not only be self-destructive, but dangerous. He was no longer a detective with the Salt Lake City Police Department. He was no longer a free man. And he was certainly no longer the man who’d stolen her heart.
Jack LaCroix was a cold-blooded murderer.
“Don’t shut me out, Landis.” He reached out with his uninjured arm and traced the line of her jaw with his thumb. “At least listen to me. Hear me out. That’s all I’m asking.”
Angered by the contact, she slapped his hand away. She knew better than to trust him. He’d lied to her, taken her heart and torn it to shreds, then proceeded to turn her life upside down. She refused to put herself on the line again. Certainly not for a man who wouldn’t hesitate to do it all over again.
“You could have left the country, Jack. What could you possibly want from me?” The instant the words were out she regretted them, realized she didn’t want to know.
“You’re the only person I know who gives a damn about the truth,” he said. “At least you used to.”
He stood so close she could smell the sweat and dirt and the lingering redolence of panic. His gaze pierced her so that she couldn’t look away. If she hadn’t known better, Landis might have been taken in. His bedroom eyes and whiskey-smooth voice could be very convincing. But she’d learned the hard way that he was a capable liar and master manipulator. She wasn’t foolish enough to fall into the same trap a second time.
“I can’t help you,” she said. “I won’t.”
Jack flinched, closed his eyes briefly. He looked miserable. Cold. Dirty. She watched, stunned, as a single drop of blood rolled off his fingertips and splattered on the floor. That he didn’t notice told her a lot about his frame of mind.
“You’ve got to turn yourself in,” she said.
Something dark flickered behind his eyes. “I’m a dead man if I go back.”
“By the looks of you, you’re not far from that now. For God’s sake, you were under appeal. How could you be so stupid—”
“Duke put a contract on me.”
The words stopped her cold. Cyrus Duke was Salt Lake City’s most infamous drug kingpin. With roots running from Miami’s seedy underworld to his hierarchy in Los Angeles, he was powerful, ruthless and completely untouchable.
“Why would Duke put a hit on you?” she asked.
“He knows I’m going to take him down.”
“You’re not a cop anymore. You weren’t a threat to him in prison. You’re certainly not a threat now.”
“As long as I’m alive, I’m a threat. He knows I’m close to getting the goods to nail him.”
Landis didn’t buy it. She wouldn’t even consider it. The repercussions were too far-reaching. Jack had every reason in the world to lie; she had every reason in the world not to believe him. “I’m not going to let you do this to me,” she said.
“I’m going to nail him, Landis. I’m on to something big. I’m so close I can taste it. I just need a few hours to pull myself together. I need some dry clothes. Food. Money.”
A hundred questions rushed through her mind, but they were jumbled by emotions and memories and the cold, hard fact that she didn’t want to get involved. “As an attorney, the only advice I can give you is to turn yourself in.”
One side of his mouth curved. “Not my style, Red.”
The endearment affected her, reached into her and touched a part of her heart she’d carelessly left unguarded. A heart that had once belonged to him—no holds barred. She cursed him for having that ability. She cursed herself for responding, wondering what kind of a person that made her. How could she feel anything but disdain for the man who killed her brother?
“You’ll only make things worse if you don’t go back,” she said.
“Things can’t get any worse.”
“Things can always get worse. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“Worried about me?”
She stared at him, aware that her pulse was racing, that she didn’t have an answer.
Jack sighed. “Look, I can give you Cyrus Duke, but I need some help.”
Landis stomped the quick flare of interest. “I’m not naive enough to risk everything I’ve ever worked for on the word of a convicted murderer.”
“You don’t have to be naive to listen to the facts.”
“You murdered my brother. I won’t help you. And I’ll never forgive you. My loyalty runs deeper than that.”
“What do you know about loyalty?” Though his voice remained calm, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “If I recall, you were pretty quick to turn tail and run when the going got rough.”
“Loyalty to my family—not you! You don’t deserve loyalty. You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
“What about loyalty to Evan? Don’t you want to know what really happened? Don’t you want to know who really murdered him? Or do you prefer sweeping the entire mess under the rug so you don’t have to get those pretty hands of yours dirty? So you can get on with playing Lady Justice? Isn’t that what they call you these days?”
“I believe in what I do, but that isn’t the issue, is it?” She hated the defensive ring in her voice. She didn’t have to defend her choices to anyone, especially Jack.
“What is the issue, Landis?” He offered a cynical smile. “Justice?”
“Justice is real—”
“Justice is an illusion!” He stepped closer. So close she felt the searing heat of his stare, the warmth of his breath, the startling power of his presence. “I’m living proof of that. So, Counselor,” he snarled, “if you believe in your precious justice so much, I suggest you come look for it, starting with me.” He rapped his fist against his chest with the last word. “Somewhere out there, Evan’s murderer is a free man, while I’ve spent the last year in prison for a crime I didn’t commit!”
The words pounded through her. Simultaneously, her emotions clashed with the logical part of her brain. She’d always prided herself on her ability to keep her feelings removed from her judgment. That was one of the things that made her a good prosecutor. But when it came to Jack, her logic and emotions tangled and melded into a big, confusing ball.
Was it possible he was telling the truth? Or was he a desperate man willing to do anything to avoid going back to prison? It took every ounce of courage she could muster to meet his gaze. “I want you to leave. Now.”
He choked out a humorless laugh. “I don’t have anywhere else to go. To hell perhaps, but I’ve been there, and I can tell you it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
She wasn’t sure why the words hurt. But they did, and the pain was so sharp she had to turn away. She couldn’t face him with uncertainty etched into her every feature. Jack was a perceptive man, and he’d always been able to read her. She didn’t want him to get inside her head. In the year he’d been away, she’d simplified her life, focusing solely on her career and her future with the D.A.’s office. She refused to let him destroy what she’d worked so hard to achieve. She wouldn’t jeopardize her professional reputation or risk hurting her mother and younger brother.
With her professional mask in place, she turned to face him. “I’ll turn you in,” she said. “You know I will.”
His eyes flicked over her. He looked into her, through her. She sensed the appraisal, and her knees went weak with the power of it. Her heart banged against her ribs with such ferocity she felt certain it might pound its way right out of her chest.
“Sit down,” he said.
“You’re not staying.”
“I can’t force you to help me. But I can make you listen. It’s up to you whether or not you care enough about the truth to get involved.” Raising his arm, he wiped the blood from his fingers on to his shirt, then stared at the crimson smear as if its presence stunned him. “If you still don’t want to help me after you’ve heard me out, I’ll find another way to do this.”
Landis watched him walk to the kitchen table. He moved with the grace of a wild, hunted animal. One that was tired and injured and anxious for the hunt to end. If it hadn’t been for his eyes, she might have thought he’d given up. But that would have been as out of character for him as if he’d thrown in the towel and gone to prison without a fight.
No, she thought, Jack was definitely a fighter. He fought hard, long and dirty for what he wanted. If she didn’t get him out of her house; if she didn’t get to a phone and call the police, she was in for the battle of her life.
Jack had known she would affect him. What he hadn’t realized was just how profoundly. Seeing Landis McAllister after a year was like taking a sledgehammer to the solar plexus. The ache was so sharp that he questioned the wisdom of coming here tonight. He’d been foolish to believe his feelings for her had dulled with time. Funny how much a man forgot in a year.
He watched her walk to the pantry, trying in vain not to notice the way those slacks skimmed over her hips or wonder if she still painted her toenails the color of cherry bubblegum. Even from a distance he could smell her hair, that exotic mix of coconut and musk that made him want to reach out and run his fingers through it one more time. She looked very much the part of tough prosecuting attorney in her black suit and leather boots. A year ago he’d known a part of her that was soft and kind and compassionate. He wondered if that part of her still existed, or if she’d managed to eradicate it along with the feelings she once had for him.
Her movements were controlled and deliberate as she walked to the counter and started a pot of coffee. He knew the gesture had nothing to do with the fact that he was shivering with cold, but because her nerves were strung tight and she needed to do something.
Once upon a time she’d loved him. She’d seen him as decent and kind and honorable. Jack had loved her more than his own life. He’d needed her more than his next breath, would have died a thousand deaths for her. What a fool he’d been to believe any of those things would matter now.
It tore him up inside knowing she thought he was a cold-blooded killer. That knowledge had tortured him every second of every day he’d been locked away. He knew if he gave her the chance, she’d go straight to the police. He didn’t plan on giving her the chance.
Every muscle in his body protested as he lowered himself into the chair. He’d covered over one hundred cold, rugged miles in the past two days, some on foot, some in a filthy cattle car courtesy of Burlington Northern. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d stopped moving. Or eaten. Or slept. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a civilized place that spoke of warmth and comfort and home. Most of all, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in the company of a woman. Especially a woman he’d spent the better part of a year trying to get out of his system.
He watched her scoop coffee and wondered if there was a man in her life, if she was seeing anyone, but quickly thwarted that line of thinking. Her personal life was no longer his concern, he reminded himself darkly. Wanting was a dangerous thing for a convict. A man could drive himself crazy if he wasn’t careful.
Jack had promised himself he wouldn’t let his feelings for her interfere with his mission of clearing his name. She’d deemed him guilty based on circumstantial evidence, paid witnesses and manufactured proof. How could he still want her when he felt so bitter? How could he be attracted to a woman he hadn’t been able to forgive? He couldn’t let it matter. Damn it, he couldn’t let her matter.
Survival had dictated his jailbreak. It had taken months of planning and physical conditioning. Every evening the inmates were herded into either the gymnasium or exercise yard to work off steam. It had been raining the night of his escape. The gymnasium was crowded. While one of the inmates he’d befriended created a diversion for the corrections officers, Jack had shimmied twenty feet up a water pipe mounted to the wall and climbed out the window. Once outside, he’d used the wire cutters he’d gotten from another inmate to traverse the concertina wire. He’d almost made it to the river when the dogs began to bay….
Shaking the memory from his head, he folded his hands in front of him, realizing for the first time how battered they were. The last two days were a blur of pain and cold, and he felt mildly shocked he’d survived at all. The bullet had put a deep graze in his shoulder, sparing the bone and joint, but leaving him weak from blood loss. He’d survived on little more than adrenaline and desperation. When those two things had waned, his memories of Landis sustained him the rest of the way.
She carried a cup of coffee to the table and set it in front of him. “You’ve never been stupid, Jack. You know the police will find you. You’re only making things worse by running.”
“There’s not a whole hell of a lot they can do to me that they haven’t already done. I’m a lifer, Landis.”
“They could kill you, for God’s sake.”
Jack looked down at his coffee, wondering if she realized there were times when he considered death a better alternative than spending his life behind bars.
Shaking her head, she took the chair across from him. “How can you possibly believe you’re going to get away?”
He returned her gaze, pulling back just in time to keep himself from tumbling into its emerald depths. He’d been in the cabin less than an hour and already she was getting to him. He’d thought he was over her. He’d thought the bitterness would keep him from wanting her. It galled him that he was wrong on both counts.
“Maybe getting away isn’t my goal,” he said.
Landis remained silent, looking at him like a cat that had been kicked by a cruel child.
“On the night Evan died,” Jack began, “he left a voice message, asking me to meet him at the warehouse where Duke’s people had been operating. Allegedly, there was a shipment of cocaine coming in from L.A. Sixty kilos of Peruvian flake. Uncut. Evan was supposed to keep his mouth shut. But this stuff was pure. White death for anyone who didn’t know what they were getting into. He was afraid it was going to hit the street and start killing people. So he told me about it.” Jack remembered his partner’s voice as if it were yesterday. The memory still wielded the power to make his hands shake.
“I know the story, Jack. All this information came out during your trial. There was no shipment of cocaine.” Tucking a shock of flame-colored hair behind her ear, Landis sighed wearily. “I’ve gone over it in my head a hundred times. I even reviewed the transcripts.”
“Things have changed since the trial,” Jack said. “You hear things in prison, Landis. Bad things. Things I suspected all along, but couldn’t prove.”
“Like what?”
“Like Evan wasn’t the only cop who knew about the shipment.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“There are cops on the take. Salt Lake City cops. Sheriff’s office. DEA. Customs—”
“Even if you can prove corruption, that doesn’t exonerate you.”
“It will if I can prove someone inside the department set me up to take the fall.”
“Who, Jack? What proof?”
He sighed in frustration. “I don’t have anything solid yet. Just a few pieces of the puzzle. I need some time to work it. I’ve got to talk to some of my old snitches.”
“Nothing you’ve told me disputes the fact that your revolver was the gun that killed Evan or that over fifty thousand dollars somehow found its way into your bank account. It doesn’t dispute the two witnesses who put you at the scene the night Evan was killed.”
His temper flared with the accusation. “Two witnesses I’ve since tied to Duke. That reeks of setup and you know it.”
“You haven’t given me a single fact I wasn’t already aware of,” she shot back. “Your story sounds desperate and pathetic, and I don’t believe a word of it.”
Reining in anger, Jack looked down at his coffee and concentrated on the warmth radiating into his hands. Frustration hammered through him that he didn’t have any solid evidence. All he could offer was his own gut instinct and the word of a dead convict who’d talked too many times to the wrong person. Unfortunately, Landis had never been big on gut instinct.
“Evan was dying when I reached him that night,” he said. “He’d taken two slugs. He was bleeding. Scared. In shock. He kept trying to talk. I tried to quiet him, but he wouldn’t listen. Damn hardheaded cop—”
Shaken, he broke off. The room felt overly warm. Chills wracked his body, but sweat streamed down his back. A curse escaped his lips when he realized he’d reached the end of his physical endurance. His concentration was shot. He wasn’t sure why he was talking, dredging up the past. He could barely speak. But there was so much to say. So many emotions tangled inside him.
So much at stake.
Jack raised his eyes to hers. It tore at his heart to see the shimmer of tears. She still mourned her brother. He wondered if there was any grief left over for him. For the part of him that died that night.
“Evan had seen enough shootings to know he was dying,” he continued. “I guess the cop in me expected him to use those last minutes to name his killer, but he didn’t. Instead he used the last of his strength to make sure I knew about that telephone call he’d made to you.”
Across from him, Landis went perfectly still, as if knowing something terrible was about to be flung her way. “Evan and I were close,” she said. “He called to tell me he loved me. I testified—”
“Did he often call at midnight to tell you he loved you?”
She blinked at him. “Well, no.”
“He knew he was a marked man. He called to tell you something.”
“Why didn’t he? For God’s sake, why didn’t he tell me he was in trouble? Why didn’t he tell you he was in trouble and ask for your help?”
The latter question hit a nerve. It always did. But Jack didn’t let himself react. He would spend the rest of his life wondering if Evan might still be alive if the trust between them had been stronger. “I can’t speak for Evan. Maybe he didn’t trust me enough. Maybe he didn’t want to drag me into it. But, Landis, he knew they were going to kill him. That’s the only scenario that fits.”
“Who?”
“Cyrus Duke.” He clenched his jaw against the pain spreading down his arm like hot lava. He ached to get out of his wet clothes and fall into a warm bed for a few hours to recoup. He needed to eat to regain his strength. But he couldn’t stop now. She was listening. If only he could make her believe.
“Evan tried to play both sides of the coin,” he said. “He wanted the money. But he also wanted out.”
“Out of what?”
“Evan was taking money from Duke.”
“No!”
“But he wanted out, Landis. He feared for his family’s safety. But he knew if he rolled over on Duke, the scumbag would go after Casey and the girls.”
Landis lurched to her feet. “I don’t want to have this conversation.”
Jack rose with her. He didn’t give a damn that she didn’t want to hear the truth about her brother. Six months ago, when he’d been stuck in a jail cell for a crime he didn’t commit, Jack hadn’t wanted to hear it, either. But he had. From a reliable source who’d just happened to get himself murdered in the shower room a few days later. “Evan was a dirty cop, Landis.”
She looked at him, her eyes large and dark against her pale complexion. “I don’t believe you. And I won’t stand by and let you defile my brother’s name or shame his widow with lies you fabricated to save yourself.”
The anger struck him with such ferocity that for a moment he was dizzy. Whoever framed him had taken everything from him. His career had been destroyed. His reputation dragged through the mud. His partner was dead. The passionate and intense love affair he’d once shared with Landis had been reduced to a bitter memory steeped in resentment and lies.
“Evan knew he couldn’t talk to Casey, and he couldn’t tell me because he knew I’d bust him.” Jack nearly laughed at the absurdity. Evan had always been the straight arrow while Jack had always skated that thin, dark line. The irony of how things had worked out in the end burned.
He looked at Landis. “So he chose you. His sister. Someone he could trust. A prosecutor. He wanted you to know, but for whatever reason never got the chance to tell you. He wanted you to go after Duke because Evan knew he was a dead man. He knew you’d protect his family and get to the bottom of it.”
Her eyes flashed. “I don’t believe any of it.”
A cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and Jack knew with dead certainty the last two days had finally caught up with him. His shoulder throbbed with every beat of his heart. His head felt like the business end of a jackhammer.
“I knew Evan better than anyone,” he said. “I knew how he operated. I knew his weak points, his many strengths. I knew him like a brother, Landis. I knew he was in to something.”
“He wasn’t dirty!”
“He fed Duke inside information. Warned him of impending busts. Kept his competition off the street. Damn it, he got in over his head.” Jack blinked at her when the room tilted abruptly. Heat infused his face. Nausea see-sawed in his gut. He cursed, knowing he was going to pass out. Grabbing the back of the chair, he steadied himself, determined to continue.
Landis started to speak, but he cut her off. “Duke bought and paid for your brother, then he killed him. The bastard knew I’d come after him so he framed me for his murder. He had help from the inside.” His voice echoed inside his head, and for a moment he wondered if he’d actually spoken at all.
Words flowed out of her, but Jack no longer understood. It was as if he’d stepped out of his body and watched with detachment as Jack LaCroix went through the motions without him. He fought the dizziness but knew the darkness was going to win.
One by one his senses shut down. Desperation clawed at him. He didn’t want it to end this way. He knew the moment he went down, she’d leave and call the police. He expected no less, and he hated her for it.
Knowing he had to stop her, he reached out, stumbled and went down on one knee. Pain ripped through his shoulder. He groaned deep in his chest. Around him, the room shifted, darkened. He heard himself utter her name, then the floor rushed up and slammed into him.
Chapter 2
Landis stared in horror as Jack collapsed onto her kitchen floor. It was the last thing she expected to happen, but she’d learned long ago to expect the unexpected when it came to Jack LaCroix. Tonight, it seemed, he was just chock-full of surprises. Dark, unpleasant ones, she thought wildly. Leave it to him to toss her into a compromising position, then bail out.
Heart racing in perfect cadence with her mind, she fell to her knees next to him at a complete loss as to what to do next. She didn’t want to touch him, but quickly realized there was no way to avoid it. He’d fallen on his side with his left arm pinned beneath him; she couldn’t leave him twisted like that. What if he were seriously injured and stopped breathing? What if he died right there on her floor?
Frustrated and scared, Landis placed her hand gently on his shoulder. “Jack?” His clothes were wet and cold beneath her palm. Good Lord, he was soaked to the skin. Cautiously, she rolled him on to his back.
His body was long and lean and looked as out of place on her kitchen floor as a bearskin rug might have. Even unconscious, his muscles were as hard as steel. But he didn’t seem quite as dangerous with his eyes closed. Oddly, Landis felt relieved that she didn’t have to look into those eyes. The last thing she needed was to get ensnared in that compelling gaze of his.
“Damn you, LaCroix,” she muttered.
His breaths came slow and regular. She pressed a finger to his throat and found his pulse steady and strong. She didn’t see much fresh blood, but he was wet and muddy, so it was difficult to tell how badly he was bleeding.
Crossing to the counter, she opened a drawer, yanked out a clean dish towel and wet it beneath the faucet. She didn’t possess a shred of medical expertise but knew enough about first aid to know he should be kept warm and comfortable.
At least until the police arrived.
The thought wasn’t a pleasant one. Why had he come to her for help? Why not one of his cop friends? Surely one of them had kept in touch throughout the pandemonium of the last year, hadn’t they? But Landis knew how cops felt about cop killers. Jack might have been one of their own for the better part of twelve years, but they’d branded him a traitor. He was smart enough to know there wasn’t a soul on the force he could trust.
So he’d come to her.
Dismayed by the implications, she folded the towel and pressed it against his forehead, trying not to notice how pale he was. “How could you do something so incredibly stupid?” she murmured.
He couldn’t have put her in a worse situation. His very presence threatened everything that was important to her, everything she believed in. She refused to compromise her reputation, her career, or her family for the likes of a man who didn’t deserve her compassion.
Pulling in a calming breath, she rose. The only thing she could do was drive down to her neighbor’s cabin and call the sheriff. Dread swirled through her as she imagined a swarm of cops converging on her tidy cabin. Jack would be taken into custody. She would be asked to come down to the sheriff’s office to make a statement. Eventually, the media would catch wind of Jack’s capture.
Then all hell would break loose.
Shuddering at the scenario her overactive mind had drawn, Landis considered her options—all of which boiled down to one. She had to call the sheriff. Jack was a murderer. An escaped convict. He belonged in prison. As the saying went, he’d made his bed and now he must lie in it. She refused to accept responsibility for his woes.
A brightly colored afghan lay folded across the back of the sofa. Landis dashed to it and snapped it open. Kneeling beside Jack, she draped it over him, tucking the ends beneath his arms and legs. As she straightened, he thrashed and called out her name with such clarity that for an instant she thought he’d regained consciousness.
She stared at him, the memories pounding through her like fists. Ironically, it had been Evan who’d introduced them. In spite of her self-imposed rule never to date cops, she’d fallen for the strikingly handsome vice detective with the magnetic eyes and captivating smile. He’d swept her off her feet and into a breathtaking relationship. Level-headed Landis had been so caught up in the intensity, she didn’t even realize it when she lost her heart. Jack wouldn’t have it any other way. He was all or nothing, and she had definitely given him her all.
But even back then she’d known he skirted that dark edge. He’d always unnerved her with his rule breaking and disdain for authority. Jack LaCroix wasn’t for the faint of heart. He existed in a world of gray. A world where he could stretch the rules and turn wrong into right if it suited him. Landis’s world was black and white. She followed the rules, embraced them. Still, for a year she’d loved him with every fiber of her being…
Shaken by the memories twisting through her, she turned away, aware that her heart was beating too fast. How could she have been so wrong about him?
Knowing there was nothing she could do for him except, perhaps, keep him from self-destructing, she reached for her coat. Just as her fingers closed around it, Jack’s voice rang out. She froze at the sound of her name and turned, half-expecting to see him sitting up, hitting her with that devastating smile. But he wasn’t sitting up. He wasn’t smiling. His eyes were closed. A sheen of sweat coated his forehead. His face was contorted in pain.
Alarmed, she walked over to him, straining to hear as he mumbled something unintelligible. His voice was soft and deep and achingly familiar. Her heart stuttered as she recognized a single, profound word—innocent.
In all her years of working in the court system, she’d never heard such despair. It wrenched painfully at her conscience. Was it the voice of a desperate killer? she wondered. Or was she hearing the voice of an innocent man wrongly accused of a horrific crime? The questions haunted her, the implications taunting her with terrible possibilities. Telling herself she could sort out her feelings later, Landis threw on her coat and headed for the door.
Twenty minutes later, Landis sat in the Jeep in her driveway and waited for the sheriff’s department deputy to arrive. She told herself it was the cold that had her shaking uncontrollably, but the heater wasn’t helping. Relief billowed through her when she saw the flashing lights of the sheriff’s Tahoe. By the time the deputy climbed out, she’d already reached his vehicle.
“Evenin’.” The man was the size of a grizzly, wore cowboy boots and a Stetson the size of a Volkswagen. “You called about a prowler?”
“He was here when I got home from work about an hour ago. It looks like he broke a pane and came in through the back door. He’s either injured or suffering from exposure because he fainted on my kitchen floor.”
The deputy cocked his head. “Fainted?”
Realizing she was talking too fast, she took a deep breath and silently counted to three. “I think he’s been—” Landis broke off when the deputy withdrew a pistol the size of a cannon.
“Is he still inside?” he asked.
She stared at the gun, not wanting to imagine what a bullet would do to human flesh. “Yes,” she answered, steeling herself against the sense of foreboding that welled up inside her. If the deputy knew he was going in to arrest infamous cop killer Jack LaCroix, would he be more apt to use deadly force?
“Is he armed?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.” She prayed Jack gave himself up easily. She didn’t want to see him hurt. She didn’t want to see anyone hurt.
“Have a seat in your vehicle, Ms. McAllister, while I take a look.” Pistol in hand, the deputy jogged toward the cabin.
Landis watched him disappear inside, then walked back to the Jeep and climbed inside. It only took a couple of minutes for her to realize she couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. She was too keyed up, and the deputy was taking too long. Oh, dear God, she’d never be able to live with herself if either of them got hurt….
Cursing Jack, she climbed out of the Jeep and began to pace, keeping her eyes trained on the front door of the cabin. Were they negotiating the terms of Jack’s surrender? Or were they in the midst of a standoff?
The path she was wearing in the snow grew as she paced—much like the doubts swirling in her head. Did Jack’s story warrant consideration? Was it possible Cyrus Duke was involved in her brother’s death? The questions pummeled her, but Landis knew that aside from offering legal advice there was little she could do to help Jack. Not that she felt compelled to do so, she reminded herself. She was an officer of the court and saw clearly the line between right and wrong. If Jack believed he’d been wrongly convicted, the only way he could help himself was to operate through the proper legal channels.
But as she rationalized and reasoned through everything that had been said and done, something nagged at her. Something obscure and uncomfortable that had lodged like a fist in her chest. Landis had never been overly intuitive. She preferred dealing with facts. Tangibles. Gut instinct never entered the picture when it came to drawing conclusions or making decisions. But even as she denied the possibility of Jack’s innocence, she knew something wasn’t right. He was one of the most intelligent people she’d ever known. If all he’d wanted was his freedom, he would have fled to Mexico or Canada. He wouldn’t have come to her knowing she blamed him for Evan’s death. It didn’t make sense for him to risk his life in a daring prison escape only to jeopardize it by coming to her.
Landis stopped pacing and looked toward the cabin, aware that her heart was beating too fast, that her palms were wet despite the cold. What was taking the deputy so blasted long?
Too impatient to wait any longer, she changed direction and started for the door. Jack might be desperate, but he wasn’t crazy enough to get into a physical confrontation with a cop. Surely the deputy had the situation under control, didn’t he?
Her pulse kicked when she stepped on to the porch. The front door stood open. Shadows ebbed and flowed within. As familiar as the cabin was to her, it now seemed menacing. Moving closer, she stopped and peered inside.
“He must have run out the back.”
Barely suppressing a scream, Landis spun. The deputy stood a few feet behind her. She was about to give him a piece of her mind for scaring the daylights out of her when his words registered.
“Gone?” she cried. “That can’t be. He was right there on the kitchen floor.” Jack had to be there. He’d been unconscious when she left. He was in no condition to get up and walk away.
Not bothering to wait for a response, she whirled and darted through the door. Her boots cracked sharply against the pine floorboards as she ran to the kitchen. The room was just as she’d left it, less one unconscious man. She stared dumbly at the floor where a single drop of blood was the only sign he’d ever been there.
“A set of footprints leads to the road,” the deputy said. “Looks like he cut his hand on that pane. I found blood in the snow.”
Landis watched the deputy saunter to the French door where the pane had been broken. Shards of glass sparkled like broken diamonds on the floor.
“Did you get a look at him, ma’am?”
She met his gaze, her mind speeding through the ramifications of the question. He was a large man with sandy hair and a handlebar mustache. He appeared capable and professional in his sheriff’s department jacket and ostrich boots. But she’d noticed the aggressive glint in his eyes. She’d seen that glint before and knew well the difference between a lawman who enjoyed his work and a cop with an ego to sate and an itchy trigger finger to boot.
“No,” she answered, thinking she knew how Pandora must have felt after opening that blasted box.
She answered the rest of his questions truthfully, but without the kind of details that would have made his job easy. No, the intruder hadn’t stolen anything. She hadn’t seen a gun. No, he hadn’t harmed or threatened her in any way. Even her description of him came out vague.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want the police to find Jack. She did. He’d murdered her brother and deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison. Landis just didn’t want this deputy going after Jack half-cocked. She believed in justice, not vengeance.
Discomfort washed over her when she realized her other motives weren’t quite as noble. If she identified Jack, her name would be plastered on the front page of every newspaper in Utah. Their past relationship would be sensationalized. The first major victory of her career would be overshadowed by scandal. Regardless of the fact that she was an innocent party and had acted properly and lawfully, she knew the gossip and speculation would affect her career. Perceptions were everything when you were a public servant. She’d sacrificed enough for Jack LaCroix. She’d be damned if she sacrificed anything more.
The most important thing was that he was gone, she told herself as the deputy drove away. She could get on with her life and try to forget he’d ever shown up. She wouldn’t even have to admit to herself that as she’d listened to his declarations of innocence, a small, gullible part of her had been tempted to believe him.
She knew there was a possibility of Jack returning, but she didn’t think he would. She’d made her position clear. He was a lot of things, but a fool wasn’t one of them. Tomorrow, she would call his lawyer, Aaron Chandler, and fill him in on the situation. If Jack got in touch with him, perhaps Chandler would be able to persuade him to turn himself in.
Turning away from the door, Landis walked to the living room. She was still shaking, and her hands were ice-cold. Guilt sat like a rock in the pit of her stomach. The knowledge that she’d protected her brother’s murderer weighed heavily on her shoulders. As she stared at the drop of blood on the kitchen floor, she realized with dismay that her hard-won victory earlier in the day was overshadowed by what she’d done. She felt like a charlatan.
Shaking off thoughts she didn’t want to deal with, she stripped off her coat and tossed it on the sofa. BJ brushed against her leg and mewed. She scooped the cat into her arms and hugged him tightly, wondering why she suddenly needed the comfort of his warmth, why she suddenly felt so alone.
“How about that fire?” she said aloud.
The woodpile was in the backyard. Not bothering with her coat, Landis crossed through the kitchen. The deputy had taped a piece of cardboard over the broken pane to keep out the cold. She’d have to go to the hardware store tomorrow and pick up a new pane. Unlocking the French door, she opened it and started for the cord of wood stacked against the fence a few yards away.
The snow was still coming down, but not as hard. Such a serene picture, she thought as she pulled two logs and some kindling from the stack. If only she felt as serene. Seeing Jack had been a tremendous shock. It galled her that she still felt something for him. Not love or anything so profound. But a connection that ran a lot deeper than she wanted to admit.
Movement off to her right sent her heart hard against her ribs. Gasping, she dropped the wood and spun. Before she’d taken two steps toward the cabin, strong arms closed around her from behind, trapping her against a solid wall of muscle. A hand clamped over her mouth, cutting off her scream.
“Easy, Landis, it’s me.” Jack’s voice sliced through the fog of fear. “Don’t scream. You know I won’t hurt you.”
She berated herself for being foolish enough to believe he’d gone. Cursing him, she tried to break his grip on her and wriggle free, but he held her tightly against him. Angry and afraid, she did the only thing she could think of and bit his palm.
He jerked his hand away. “Ouch! Damn it!”
“Let go of me!”
“Hold still!”
Furious, Landis spun to face him. “How dare you come at me like that!” Bending, she scooped up a piece of kindling and swung it as hard as she could. Air whooshed.
Jack lunged sideways, stumbled and went down on his knees. The kindling missed him by an inch. Scrambling to his feet, he moved toward her. “You could have taken my head off with that!”
“You don’t use it anyway.” She swung again.
He ducked, then lunged for her. His arms went around her waist. The momentum knocked her off balance, but she didn’t fall. She raised the stick, prepared to defend herself. But his hand snaked out and braceleted her wrist. “Don’t even think about hitting me with that,” he growled.
Jack had forgotten how small she was. How delicately she was built. How good she smelled when he got this close—a subtle mix of coconut and musk and woman flesh. He’d forgotten how soft her body was when she was pressed up against him. How her eyes flashed like cut emeralds when he ticked her off. He’d forgotten a lot of things about her in the past year. Or tried to, anyway. Holding her against him, they all came rushing back….
“Damn you, Jack!” She struggled to free herself from his grasp. “Let go of me!”
She was surprisingly strong for her size. “Let go of the stick,” he said between clenched teeth.
She lashed out with her right foot. The heel of her boot connected solidly with his shin. He felt pain on top of pain, but he didn’t let go. “Stop fighting me.”
“You’re hurting me!”
“Yeah, well your heel grinding into my shin didn’t exactly feel good.”
He squeezed her wrist. Her hand opened; the kindling fell to the snow. Growling in annoyance, he shoved her away. For several long seconds, they faced each other, breathing hard, their breaths mingling between them in a white cloud of vapor.
Despite the fatigue and pain fogging his brain, Jack couldn’t help but notice the rise and fall of her breasts. That her cheeks were blushed with cold. Or that she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. He steeled himself against those observations, knowing it was crazy to think of her in those terms now.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he said.
“In the scope of things, I’m sure a bruised wrist is the least of my worries,” she said dryly. “Why sweat the little things when you’re determined to ruin my life?”
“I’m not going to ruin your life. Nobody has to know I was here.”
“I hate to remind you of something so obvious, but that deputy sheriff was just here looking for you.”
“Yeah? So then why the hell did you send him away?”
She blinked. “I…didn’t. I mean, he went back to the sheriff’s office to put together a search party.”
The realization that she hadn’t identified him staggered him. Something that felt vaguely like hope fluttered in his chest. “You know, Red, for a lawyer you’re not a very good liar.”
“He’s coming back. I swear he’s coming right back.”
He contemplated her, feeling more for her than was prudent. But then, he’d never been a prudent man when it came to Landis. “If I understood your motives a little better, I might thank you.”
“Don’t bother.” She met his gaze levelly. “I’m not going to let you drag me down with you. I’m not going to let you ruin my life.”
A sudden shiver wracked his body. Another wave of dizziness followed with such force that for an instant he thought he was going down again. Fighting nausea, he leaned against the trunk of a pine tree for support. “Damn it…”
“Jack—”
“I need to call Aaron Chandler,” he ground out.
“You’re turning yourself in?”
“Don’t count on it.” He’d hoped she would be able to put her hatred for him aside in the name of justice, but it didn’t look like she wasn’t going to help him. Chandler probably wouldn’t, either. But calling his lawyer might buy him some time. Under the circumstances, Jack figured it was the best he could hope for.
“I’ll have to drive down to Mrs. Worthington’s to use the phone,” she said.
“Like I’m going to let you drive away,” he snapped. “Get me a knife. I’ll splice the line together.”
Landis glowered at him a moment before picking up the fallen firewood. Following her cue, Jack gathered the remaining kindling and trailed her to the cabin.
The heat inside made him feel feverish, but it wasn’t enough to warm him. He felt cold all the way to his bones. He prayed he could function long enough to repair the phone line and make the call to his attorney.
Setting the kindling on the hearth, he watched Landis approach him with a small utility knife. Her cheeks were flushed with cold. Her hair was damp and clung to her face in wisps. That she appealed to him even now annoyed the hell out of him. He couldn’t count the times he’d thought of her when he’d been locked away, lying on his cot, staring at the ceiling, trying to block out his surroundings. She would never know how many endless nights he’d dreamed of her, of touching her. She would never know that those dreams had sustained him, given him a reason to live.
He’d known she wouldn’t welcome him back. In the months he’d spent in prison, he’d tried desperately to convince himself it didn’t matter, that he didn’t care. But the truth had eaten at him, like an acid gnawing at his heart until there was nothing left but an empty shell.
Shaking off the memories, Jack took the knife and walked back outside to splice the telephone line. A few minutes later, he returned to find Landis at the hearth, building a fire. Without speaking, he went directly to the phone. A sigh of relief slipped between his lips when he got a dial tone. He dialed Aaron Chandler’s number from memory.
He looked at Landis. “Come here.”
Wariness flashed across her features. “Why?”
Ignoring the question, Jack thrust the phone at her. “Tell him to meet you here. Tell him you’ve got a mutual friend who needs clothes and money. Don’t mention my name in case there’s a tap. He’ll know it’s me. Tell him it’s an emergency. Make sure he drives up here now.”
Protest registered in her eyes, but Chandler must have answered, because she turned her attention to the phone. Jack watched her shift into lawyer mode, listened as the cool, detached professionalism slipped into her voice. Quickly and without emotion she informed Chandler of the situation. If Jack hadn’t been watching her, he wouldn’t have known her hands were trembling. Or that the pulse point just above the mole on her throat was thrumming.
Hanging up the phone, she turned to him. “He’ll be here in a couple of hours.”
“That’ll give me time to eat and shower.”
“You realize Aaron’s going to insist you turn yourself in, don’t you?” she asked.
“He can insist all he wants. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.”
“As an attorney—”
“Cut the lawyer crap. Nothing personal, but I’m not too keen on lawyers these days.”
“Maybe you should have gone somewhere else.”
Jack bit back an angry retort. He was cold and hungry and ached all the way to his fingernails. The last thing he wanted to do was argue with Landis. “It’s been a rough couple of days.” Argument leaped into her eyes, but he raised a hand to silence her. “I’ve got a bullet wound in my left shoulder.”
Her mouth opened slightly and her gaze flicked to the bloodstained shirt. But she didn’t speak. She didn’t offer help. Maybe she wasn’t as compassionate as he’d thought. “You need to go to the hospital,” she said.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I’m a lawyer, Jack. I don’t do bullet wounds.”
“Yeah, well, you’re going to make an exception tonight.” Never taking his eyes from hers, he began unbuttoning his shirt.
Landis stared at him as if he’d slashed her with a machete. Her gaze flicked from his eyes to his hands as he worked the buttons. At least that cool, detached mask was gone he mused, vaguely satisfied.
Easing one side of the shirt off his shoulder, he stole a look at the wound. His stomach flip-flopped as his eyes took in the mass of jagged flesh. The skin was the color of eggplant, swollen and hot to the touch. No wonder it hurt like hell.
Landis gasped and covered her mouth with an unsteady hand. “My God, Jack, I had no idea you were… You need to go to the hospital. A doctor. Stitches…” She stepped back, as if distancing herself would make him go away.
He knew she wasn’t necessarily worried about his well-being, but it was good to know she was concerned. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had worried about him. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time someone had cared whether he lived or died.
The feeling was bitterly familiar. Orphaned at the age of eight, Jack had grown up in a series of foster homes, some good, some not so good. He’d been moved around so often, the constant shuffling from home to home had become a way of life. He’d dealt with it by convincing himself he didn’t care. If that didn’t work, he went looking for trouble—something he’d always had a knack for finding.
He thought about the man who’d helped him turn his life around and wondered how Mike Morgan would feel about what was happening now. The prospect of Mike’s disappointment left a bitter taste at the back of his throat.
“Why don’t you let me drive you over to the clinic in Provo?” Landis said.
Taking in her wide eyes and pale skin, he almost smiled, realizing that even after everything that had happened between them, he was still hungry for her attention. Hungry for a hell of a lot more than her attention if he wanted to be honest about it. God, he was a fool…
“Because by law all bullet wounds are reported to the police,” he snapped.
“I’m not equipped to treat a wound like that, Jack.”
“It’s only a graze. You can handle a bandage.” He looked down at his muddy clothes. “Right now I’d like a shower and some dry clothes. I need something to eat. Some aspirin and a bed. I need to have a clear head when Aaron gets here.”
He gazed through the French door, gauging the snow. Not exactly a snowstorm, but it was coming down again. In another hour the roads would be treacherous. Hopefully, Chandler kept a set of tire chains in the trunk of his Mercedes.
Surprising him, Landis stepped closer, until she was standing a mere foot away. He knew it was a tactic she’d learned at some point in her education. Some nonsense about invading personal space. Too bad she hadn’t yet learned the tactic didn’t work on him.
“All right, Jack. You can take a shower. I’ll fix you something to eat. I’ll even do my best to get your shoulder taken care of. But the moment Chandler gets here, you become his property, and he’ll damn well take you with him when he leaves.”
Jack tried to be amused, but his sense of humor had all but vanished in the last hours. “And if he doesn’t?”
Narrowing her eyes the way a cat might an instant before it pounced on an unsuspecting mouse, she moved even closer. “Then you can add another twenty years to your sentence for holding me hostage.”
Chapter 3
Landis’s every sense was honed on the man standing at the hearth as she made her way toward the linen closet for a towel and an extra bar of soap. She told herself the only reason she was helping him was because she wanted him gone. The sight of him shivering with cold and pain had nothing to do with it. Damn it, it didn’t. She was immune to his suffering. She might have cared for Jack once, but those days were over for good—for too many reasons to count.
As long as she kept her interaction with him to a minimum, she would get through this. Of course, maintaining a safe distance was going to be difficult considering the size of her cabin. For the first time since owning the place, she wished she’d gone for square footage instead of privacy.
She looked down at the bar of soap in her hand and willed her hand to stop shaking. The last thing she wanted to think about was Jack taking a shower in her bathroom. The image of him lathering that large male body with her perfumed soap disturbed her more than she wanted to admit. Maybe because she remembered every detail of that body with startling clarity. A wide, muscular chest that tapered to a washboard belly. Narrow hips that connected to long, powerful legs. She remembered running her fingers through the dusting of black hair on his chest and thinking she’d found heaven in his arms. She remembered kisses hot enough to melt steel. Lovemaking so intense it had left coolheaded Landis in tears…
With those disturbing memories came the darker memories of their last terrible night together. The night Evan died, it had been Jack who broke the news. It was a night of disbelief, of rage, of wrenching grief. But even as her heart had cried out with the pain of losing her brother, she’d reached out to Jack. He was Evan’s best friend, and it had seemed so right that he would be the one to share her anguish. A man and a woman, lovers bound by sorrow, seeking comfort in each other’s arms. Landis had slept with him one final, earth-shattering time before the investigation and trial tore them apart.
But she’d never been able to erase the memory of his words of solace, the tormenting sight of his tears or the outrage burning in his eyes. Nor had she been able to forget his gentle kisses, his steady, elegant hands, or the way his eyes glittered with passion when he was inside her.
Shaken by the memory, appalled by the thoughts streaking through her traitorous brain, she opened the closet door and yanked a towel from the shelf, vowing not to let the past cloud her judgment. Granted, Jack was an attractive man and they had once been lovers, but she respected herself too much to fall victim to his charms knowing what she did.
“Where do you want me to put my clothes?”
Landis jumped at the nearness of his voice. Realizing he’d come up behind her, she spun and thrust the towel into his midsection hard enough to elicit a grunt. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
Jack studied her carefully for a moment. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were blushing.”
“I’m not blushing,” she snapped, hating it that he’d noticed. The curse of being a redhead, she supposed. Unable to meet his eyes, she focused on the towel between them—only to notice how large and strong his hands looked wrapped around it. She remembered seeing those same hands on her body, touching her, his palms warm and slightly roughened against her most sensitive flesh….
Disgusted with herself, she stepped back. “Take a shower.” She sniffed. “You need it.”
“You’ll come check on me if I pass out, won’t you, Red?”
Her heart did a weird little roll when his hands went to the remaining buttons of his shirt. Jack had never been shy. He was a boldly sexual creature, and Landis had always felt a little overwhelmed by his intensity. She wanted to snap at him to stay dressed until he was locked in the bathroom, but she knew that was silly. She was a grown woman and had seen plenty of male chests. This particular chest shouldn’t be any different. Especially since she didn’t even like the man it belonged to.
“Unless you want to spend the night in jail, I suggest you refrain from passing out,” she said.
“It’d be hell explaining to the police how an escaped con got in your bathtub.”
She didn’t want to think about that. “Toss me your clothes from inside. I’ll throw them in the washing machine.”
Abruptly, he reached out. Landis tried to avoid the contact, but he was too quick. He brushed his knuckles along her jaw, but she felt the contact like an arc of electricity that snapped through her body and went all the way to her toes. Her intellect told her to pull away, but her body refused the order. Instead she found herself melting and softening, and she had to resist the impulse to lean closer….
“Thank you,” he said.
She swatted his hand away from her face. “Don’t read too much into it. You’re not in jail right now because you’ve led me to believe you’re going to turn yourself in.”
A smile traced the corners of his mouth. “You still have a weakness for strays, don’t you, Red?”
“You’re not a stray, Jack. You’re a wolf, and I only hope you don’t turn on me.” She raised her chin and looked him in the eye. A year of bottled-up pain and anger burgeoned in her chest and began to flow. It was as if he’d reached into her and wrested the plug from her damaged heart. “Don’t assume you’re going to flash that smile, hand me a few tidbits on Cyrus Duke and expect me to help you.”
“The thought never crossed my mind,” he said dryly.
“Don’t insult my intelligence by thanking me for something I would never do for you.”
“I’m going to enjoy proving you wrong.”
“For your sake, I hope you can. Personally, I don’t care as long as you stay out of my life.”
“A couple of hours,” he said. “Until Chandler gets here. That’s all I’m asking.”
“You have no idea what you’re asking.”
“Listen to your heart, Landis.”
“My heart has been wrong about you every time it got involved.”
“Not this time.” His voice was like a caress, so soft and gentle that for a moment, she wanted to believe him….
Never taking his eyes from hers, Jack worked off the shirt and handed it to her. It took all of her discipline not to let her eyes drop, to explore what she knew was a magnificent chest. But she didn’t; control was too important to her. And Jack had always been a threat to that control. He’d always wreaked havoc on her in one way or another. Mentally. Physically. Emotionally. Landis only hoped she could keep a handle on her emotions long enough to get him out of her life once and for all.
Needing to get out from under his discerning gaze, she turned and started down the hall. She could feel his eyes on her as she walked, but she didn’t stop, didn’t even look back. And for the first time since his arrival, she knew she was much more vulnerable to him than she’d thought.
Leaning forward with his hands against the tile, Jack let the hot spray pound away the dirt, the aches and the bone-deep chill. The water felt like a hot branding iron against his shoulder wound, but there was no getting around a shower so he simply endured. He gladly put up with the pain to get clean. The water ran brown with grime and dirt and blood. He’d never wanted a shower so badly in his entire life. Prison had a way of making a man feel dirty right down to his soul.
He closed his eyes against a bout of dizziness, and for a moment the darkness transported him back to the penitentiary. He heard the steel doors banging shut, the locks turning with the kind of finality that could drive a man insane. He heard the crude shouts, listened to the words of hatred and bitterness and felt his humanity slip a little bit more.
Jack had always considered himself a strong, resilient man. But the year he’d spent in prison had come very close to destroying him. He’d tried to adjust to the routine of prison life; he’d tried to accept the reality that he would be spending the rest of his life behind bars. But something inside him refused to acquiesce no matter how impossible the situation.
Back when he’d been a troubled teen, he’d been unable to fight the injustices inflicted upon him by a system that wasn’t perfect. But Jack was a man now. Deep down inside, he was still a cop. And even if that title had been stripped from him, he would draw his last breath fighting for what was right.
Or die trying.
Using a heart-shaped soap, he lathered his body twice, marveling at the feel of being warm and clean. He washed his hair with shampoo that smelled startlingly like Landis. For a moment, he lost himself in her scent and wished for the hundredth time he could turn back the hands of time.
But Jack was through lamenting the past. For the first time in over a year, his fate was in his own hands. He didn’t intend to squander it. He wouldn’t waste one second of that time wishing for things he couldn’t have. The relationship he’d once shared with Landis was over. She’d turned her back on him when he’d needed her desperately. She would do it again if he gave her the chance. The sooner he accepted that, the better off he’d be.
He didn’t have much time. Twenty-four hours. Thirty-six hours tops. He had no idea when the police or the department of corrections would catch up with him. The way his luck was running, capture seemed imminent. He hated to waste time on sleep, but he hadn’t slept for two days. His brain was barely functioning. His body was operating on sheer will alone. He needed food and a few hours in a bed. He needed a clear head for his meeting with Chandler because it wasn’t going to be easy convincing his attorney to look the other way while his client became a fugitive from justice.
He switched off the water and opened the glass door. A fluffy pink towel hung neatly on the rack. Jack stared at it, realizing with mild amusement that he had nothing to wear while his clothes were being laundered. Cursing mildly, he stepped out of the tub and reached for the towel. The fabric felt soft against his fingers. Even before bringing it to his nose, he knew it smelled like Landis.
Pleasure jumped through him as her scent wrapped around his brain. Despite the fatigue, and the pain of his injury, his body responded. Closing his eyes against the hard tug of longing, he whispered her name. “Landis…”
Landis’s hands shook as she tossed sliced mushrooms into the omelet. Cooking usually calmed her, but tonight her battered nerves refused to cooperate. She couldn’t stop thinking about Jack. The way he’d looked at her when he’d proclaimed his innocence. The sound of his voice when he’d whispered her name. The way he’d touched her. Oh dear God, why had she allowed herself to get sucked into this maelstrom?
“Don’t tell me you finally learned to cook.”
She jolted at the sound of his voice. The slice of toast she’d been buttering slipped from her hand and landed butter-side down on the floor. She was about to utter a very unlady-like curse when the sight of him wearing nothing but a towel froze her in place.
Her eyes swept over him. Shock and a jolt of something that felt vaguely electrical ran the length of her body. Water from his shower glistened on broad shoulders. She saw a chest that was rounded with muscle and covered with thick black hair. The towel was wrapped snugly around an abdomen that was flat and rippled with muscle. Even as she told herself she wasn’t going to let the sight of all that hard male flesh get to her, she felt the burn of a blush on her cheeks.
Appalled by her reaction, she quickly turned away, telling herself it was stress that had her blushing and speechless when she should have been doling out ultimatums.
Plucking a paper towel from the roll, he stooped to retrieve the fallen toast. “The omelet’s singeing,” he said easily.
Landis reached for the spatula and proceeded to mangle the omelet.
With the self-assurance of a man who knew his way around the kitchen, Jack moved in beside her and usurped the spatula. “Let me do that.”
She watched him expertly fold the eggs and shovel them on to waiting plates. “Where did you learn to do that?” she asked, determined to get a grip before he got the wrong idea. Just because he’d flustered her didn’t mean she was going to change her mind and help him.
“I cooked for cellblock C six days a week,” he said. “Breakfast shift, mostly.”
When he looked at her she knew instinctively the smile was there only to hide something he didn’t want her to see. Sadness. Humiliation, perhaps. The thought put an uncomfortable twinge in her chest.
“I make a pretty mean beef stew, too,” he said. “Baby carrots. Turnips. You ever had turnips with beef stew?”
He was the only person she’d ever known who could make her smile when she didn’t want to. None of what had happened in the past year was even remotely funny. It was sad more than anything, she realized. So many lives ruined. Others irrevocably changed.
“Ian left a flannel shirt behind the last time he was here.” Unable to look at him, she dropped her gaze to the skillet in front of her. “I’ll get it for you.”
“Why won’t you look at me?”
“Because I’m trying to fix you something to eat,” she said, her voice filled with exasperation.
“It doesn’t bother you to see me in a towel, does it?”
“Don’t be an idiot.” She glared at him, refusing to acknowledge that her heart was pinging hard against her ribs.
One side of his mouth curved. “Red, you’re refreshing as hell.”
“I’m glad at least one of us is finding the situation amusing.” Turning away from him, she stalked into the living room, swung open the closet door and jerked the blue flannel shirt off a hanger. Back in the kitchen she thrust it at him. Because she couldn’t quite meet his gaze, she found herself staring at the sterile gauze he’d taped haphazardly to his shoulder. She could see that the surrounding flesh was swollen and discolored, and hoped to God it wasn’t as serious as it looked. “That’s a pathetic excuse for a bandage.”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t do a very good job with one hand.” He gazed steadily at her. “I’m going to need you to butterfly me.”
She didn’t want to get anywhere near him, let alone administer first aid. “Look, Jack, the only stuff I know about first aid comes from the occasional episode of E.R.”
“That’s good enough for me.” Wincing a little, he eased into the shirt, then looked down at the pink towel wrapped around his hips. “How long until my pants are dry? I want to be out of all this pink by the time Chandler arrives. It doesn’t do much for my credibility.”
“I hate to tell you this, Jack, but you don’t have any credibility.”
His smile was cold. “I’d almost forgotten how cutting you can be.”
“I don’t want you here. What do you expect?”
“The benefit of a doubt.”
“Maybe we should just concentrate on getting through the next couple of hours without coming to blows.” She carried their plates to the dining room table. Though she didn’t look at him, she felt his gaze on her as she pulled out a chair and sat.
Momentarily, he followed and sat next to her. Without looking up or speaking, he ate like a man possessed, making her wonder how long it had been since he’d had any food.
As she watched him, a sudden jolt of despair wrenched at her. She told herself it was the feelings she’d once had for him fueling the doubts inside her. Damn it, she trusted the criminal justice system. He’d had a fair trial. Justice had been served. She’d seen the evidence. She’d heard the witnesses testify against him. Yet buried in the recesses of her mind, a shadow of doubt had taken root. Was it possible Evan had gotten himself into trouble and been killed for it? Was Cyrus Duke involved? Could Jack be innocent?
She tried not to imagine what he’d been through. As an assistant prosecutor, she’d been inside prisons before. She knew how the inmates were treated. She knew the humiliations, the violence and the lack of humanity that was an integral part of prison life. She knew what being locked in a cage did to a man. She knew what it had done to her own father. The parallels between the two men made her shiver.
Jack had lost everything in the past year. His best friend. His career. His freedom. Yet he’d endured, never sacrificing his dignity. What kind of a man did that make him? A murderer who wanted freedom at any cost? Or a survivor who was willing to risk it all to prove his innocence?
“Do you have a first aid kit?”
The sound of his voice startled her, and Landis realized with some embarrassment that she’d been staring. “Everything I have is in the medicine cabinet. Gauze and tape.”
“Antibiotic cream?”
“Yes.” His politeness was beginning to annoy her. It would be easier to hate him if he were rude.
“What you need is a doctor,” she said, praying that for once in his life he would agree with her. “Not me to play nursemaid.”
Rising, she gathered his dishes, her own untouched food, and took them to the sink. Even without looking at him, she knew he was assessing her, trying to read her body language. Mercy, she knew him too well. It was disconcerting to know he knew her just as well.
“It might be a few days before I get to the doc,” he said.
Landis closed her eyes, dread gathering in her chest. It was crazy, but a small part of her wanted to help him. She wanted to ease his pain. She wanted to do this one, compassionate thing for him because she knew it would be the last kindness she would ever show him. After tonight he would be gone, and she would never see him again. Oddly, the notion wasn’t as comforting as she wanted it to be.
Taking a calming breath, she faced him. “The cut above your eye looks bad, too.”
“Pretty careless of the prison system to string barbed wire where the inmates could get hurt. Think my lawyer could get a settlement out of them?”
“That’s not funny.”
Irked by his flippant tone, Landis left the kitchen. In the bathroom, she found the gauze, tape, peroxide, aspirin and a crinkled tube of antibiotic cream. Dreading the job ahead, she entered the living room to find Jack slumped on the sofa, watching her through heavy-lidded eyes.
“You got anything stronger than aspirin?” he asked.
Despite the intrepid facade, she could tell he was tense about the wound. He should be, considering what he expected her to do. “I guess you’re not going to let me talk you out of this,” she said.
“Think revenge, Counselor. That should get you through it.”
Frowning, she went to the bar and found the old bottle of brandy she’d gotten for Christmas last year. Working off the cork, she snagged a good-size tumbler from the cabinet, and walked back to the living room.
“Ah, a little brandy for the soul,” he said. “That ought to do nicely.”
She set the bottle and glass on the coffee table and looked down at him. “That wound is serious, Jack. If it gets infected you could find yourself seriously ill.”
“Careful Landis, or I might think you still care about me.”
“Like you said, Jack, I’ve always had a weakness for strays—even when I know they’re likely to bite.” She poured two fingers of the amber liquid into the glass.
“More,” he said.
“You just want to kill the pain, not put yourself into a coma.” But she filled the glass to the halfway mark and handed it to him.
“I hate to waste the expensive stuff on a gunshot wound.”
“Go ahead. I haven’t exactly been celebrating much lately.” She tapped out three aspirins. “These will help.”
Never taking his eyes from hers, he tossed back the aspirin, brought the glass to his lips and drained it in three gulps. Landis watched, fascinated as he shuddered, then set the glass back on the table.
Leaning against the sofa back, he closed his eyes. “Give this a minute to kick in, will you?”
She looked down at her scant first aid supplies, praying she could get through this without making the wound worse than it already was.
“Okay. Let’s get this over with.” Grimacing, he unbuttoned the shirt, wincing as it came down over his shoulder.
Careful not to get too close, Landis peeled back the bandage he’d applied after his shower. The moment the wound came into view her stomach did a slow-motion somersault. She wasn’t squeamish, but the sight of the bruised flesh and gaping wound made her feel light-headed. “I’m sure this isn’t what you want to hear, but I flunked basic first aid.”
“You’re not going to pass out on me, are you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
A chuckle rumbled in his throat. “From the looks of you, I’d say the jury’s still out on that. Maybe you ought to sit down. That floor’s hard as hell, and I don’t have the strength to pick you up.”
“I’m not going to pass out.”
He didn’t move as she rounded the sofa and set the peroxide and antibiotic cream on the end table. “Hold this.” She handed him the gauze. “And be quiet. I need to concentrate.”
Unable to avoid it any longer, she looked closely at the wound. It was no longer bleeding, but the gash was deep, the flesh jaggedly cut. She could only imagine how painful it was. “Hand me a section of gauze,” she said.
He opened the wrapper and held it out for her. “Am I going to live?”
“That depends on how much pain you can take.”
“On a scale of one to ten, it’s already a nine.”
“So we’ve got some room to work with.” Saturating the square of gauze with peroxide, Landis drizzled it over the wound. His quick intake of breath told her it stung, but he didn’t flinch. She repeated the procedure several times until the peroxide stopped foaming. As gently as possible, she applied some of the antibiotic ointment.
“Hurt?” she asked.
“No worse than the day you walked out of my cell for the last time.” A fine sheet of sweat coated his forehead. “On a scale of one to ten, that was definitely a ten.”
Her hands stilled, but she didn’t look at him. A day didn’t go by that she didn’t remember the look on his face when she’d left him standing in his cell, looking like the ground had just caved in beneath him. Aside from burying her brother, it was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do.
“This isn’t a good time to dredge up the past, Jack.”
“Another hour and I’ll be gone. We won’t get another chance.”
She felt his gaze burning into her, but she focused on the bullet wound, realizing with dismay the mass of damaged flesh was easier to look at than those accusing eyes of his. “Maybe that’s best for both of us.”
“Maybe it’s time you looked a little deeper. Maybe it’s time somebody put Duke in prison for what he did to Evan. For what he did to us. For God’s sake, Landis, what we had…”
The tube of antibiotic cream slipped from her hand and fell to the floor. Exasperated, she cursed and dropped her hands to her sides. Her heart pounded, and she couldn’t keep her mind from racing with the possibilities of what he was saying. “Damn it, Jack, if you want me to get your shoulder bandaged, you’re going to have to shut up.”
Turning his head slightly, he glanced down at the wound. Landis didn’t miss the slight paling of his face. “I’m going to need some more of those aspirin.”
She hesitated, knowing she was going to cause him real pain when she tried to join the jagged edges of the wound. “You need stitches, Jack. I’m not sure I can butterfly this. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Ah, come on, Red. You’ve already ripped my heart out. This ought to be a breeze.”
She glanced sharply at him, but his eyes were closed. He had an incredibly sensuous mouth for a male, and she suddenly remembered how many times that mouth had kissed her, how good he was at it….
He shifted slightly, and the shirt fell open the rest of the way. Her eyes did a slow, dangerous sweep, skimming over his magnificent chest, the dark sprinkling of hair, and the rounded pectoral muscles. The towel was knotted just below his navel and she could see the flat stretch of his belly, the thickening of hair…
“Your hands don’t look too steady, Red.”
She jolted, jerked her gaze back to his. “Bullet wounds make me nervous.”
“Maybe it’s the convict making you nervous.”
“I don’t think so.”
He stared at her, making no move to close the shirt, one side of his mouth curved into a knowing smile.
Struggling to keep her hands from shaking, she withdrew three long sections of first aid tape from the dispenser. She then placed a sterile gauze pad over the wound. Sweat moistened her forehead as she stretched the first piece of tape tightly over the gauze, effectively pulling the edges of the wound together.
Jack winced and cut loose with a curse. “Jesus…”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hurry up,” he ground out between clenched teeth.
Holding her breath, she secured the second length of tape, trying in vain to ignore his groan of pain. Oh, dear God, when was Aaron Chandler going to arrive?
By the time the bandage was in place Landis was shaking all over. A dime-size stain of fresh blood marred the gauze. The injury would leave a tremendous scar, but at least it wouldn’t get infected. Sighing with relief, she stepped away, aware that her legs were rubbery.
Jack slumped against the back of the sofa with his eyes closed. He cradled his left arm as if it were broken. His face was pale and drawn and his strong jaw had finally stopped clenching. She watched him for several minutes. Slowly, his breathing returned to normal. His hands, which had been fisted in pain, relaxed. The furrow at his brow smoothed out. At least he wasn’t hurting anymore.
Surprising herself, she raised her hand and touched his lean cheek the way she’d done a hundred times in the months they’d been involved. The stubble of his beard felt rough and unfamiliar beneath her fingertips. She could smell his clean, masculine scent. Memories stirred uncomfortably inside her. She stared at him, remembering, hurting, regretting and wishing things could have turned out differently.
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Linda Castillo
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Midnight Run, электронная книга автора Linda Castillo на английском языке, в жанре современная зарубежная литература