Smoky Mountain Setup
Smoky Mountain Setup
Paula Graves
Coming in from the cold had never been so heated by an old attractionOn the run for two years, ex-FBI agent Cade Landry has only one person he can turn to: Olivia Sharp, his former partner—and lover. But after all this time, trusting the beauty is sure to put both their lives on the line. Taking that risk, Cade braves a raging storm to seek her help. The moment they're reunited, and with no time to explore their reignited passion or the case that tore them apart, they must focus on bringing a band of domestic terrorists to justice. Hurtling them through snow-choked mountains into harrowing danger, Cade feels the pressure of what's at stake: his future, Olivia's life…and a love that never died.
“Are you really here?” she asked, feeling immediately foolish.
“Feels a little unreal, doesn’t it?”
She nodded. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” He lifted her hand to his mouth, brushing his lips.
“I used to have dreams of you. That you were beside me again … sitting close enough that I could feel the warmth of your body by mine. Hear your breathing. And then I’d wake up and—” He let go of her hand and dropped his own hands to his knees. “Doesn’t matter. Here you are. Warm and breathing.”
She caught his hand, holding him in place. “Don’t go.”
He looked down at her hand on his. When he spoke, his voice was a low rasp. “Are you sure you want me to stay?”
She knew what he was asking.
“Know what I missed?” His voice deepened. Roughened.
Her heartbeat sped up immediately in response. When she spoke, her own voice sounded breathless. “What?”
“This.” He leaned forward, closing the space between them, and touched his mouth to hers.
Smoky Mountain Setup
Paula Graves
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
PAULA GRAVES, an Alabama native, wrote her first book at the age of six. A voracious reader, Paula loves books that pair tantalizing mystery with compelling romance. When she’s not reading or writing, she works as a creative director for a Birmingham advertising agency and spends time with her family and friends. Paula invites readers to visit her website, www.paulagraves.com (http://www.paulagraves.com).
For my chat pals, Kelly, Jenn and Donna.
Thanks for keeping me laughing.
Contents
Cover (#uaba6334c-8f2b-522d-bf98-ac3f01e9cc3d)
Introduction (#u8c37c0a2-b9df-5363-9a32-ff1a9f2d8375)
Title Page (#ud96b9796-cbfe-52b3-9ab1-379f052d8852)
About the Author (#u8f6cd933-74c0-5fa3-bfb5-81cf5d022a94)
Dedication (#u2b363489-263d-5844-b731-4dfaa6b740ca)
Chapter One (#u7b7fb0f0-08a7-58c0-a3b6-cdb2f7995db0)
Chapter Two (#u58173cb9-8e07-5a71-bb07-6e209a9a77cf)
Chapter Three (#u699ddb6d-4b13-5cd0-957a-c338e70b480f)
Chapter Four (#u547310df-b4f7-52e2-999a-dd5b4268288f)
Chapter Five (#u067c6f8a-2c67-518c-9ec6-4ef8fcf96483)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_9d9d2dc7-6b05-557b-ae3e-d28b1ed65ea6)
The ligature marks on his wrists had long since healed, but the stinging phantom pain of the raw spots the shackles had chafed into his skin sometimes caught him by surprise. Odd, he thought, given the other injuries he’d sustained during his month of captivity, that those superficial wounds were the ones to continue tormenting him.
He’d had cracked ribs, for sure. A dislocated shoulder he’d been forced to reduce himself, since the rough men who’d taken him captive hadn’t cared much about his comfort.
Cade Landry had escaped on the thirty-first day of his captivity, and he’d been running ever since.
Given the icy chill in the air and the heavy clouds overhead threatening snow, he should have headed south to Mexico instead of wandering around the Southern Appalachians while he tried to figure out what to do next. He could be sipping cerveza on a beach somewhere, flirting with pretty cantina waitresses and soaking up the tropical sun.
It wasn’t as if he had any kind of life to get back to now.
And still, somehow, he’d never completely given up on the idea of clearing his name, though he’d spent the past several months avoiding the issue altogether.
No more. It was time to see if there was anything left of his life to reclaim.
Clouds overhead obscured the sun he’d been using as his compass, but he was pretty sure he was still headed west, which would take him out of these mountains sooner or later. Sooner if he was on the Tennessee side, later if he was in North Carolina.
Either way, he was heading for Purgatory.
Where she was.
You don’t know if you can trust her anymore.
Maybe not, he conceded to the mean little voice in the back of his head. But she was the best shot he had.
He squinted up at the gray sky overhead, enough sunlight still filtering through the clouds to make his pupils contract. Definitely still headed west, he decided, but he hoped he’d reach civilization sooner rather than later. He had to make a stop in Barrowville first. He’d made a point to shave that morning, to clean up and look his most presentable. Maybe he’d get lucky and somebody would give him a ride into town.
The money he’d hidden away before his abduction had still been there when he’d escaped, thank God, but months of living under the radar had taken a toll on his cash reserves. He needed to see if the money they’d put away a couple of years ago was still in the bank. It was a risk, but one he had to take if he wanted to get through the long, cold winter.
Technically, the account was in her name, but he was on the account, as well, and as far as he knew, she’d never closed it out.
Maybe it had been as hard for her to let go as it had been for him.
Landry could tell from the color of the sky and the chill in the air that snow was coming, and he’d lived in eastern Tennessee long enough to know that snowstorms in the Smokies could rise up fast, like a rattlesnake, and strike with power and fury.
Just like the men he’d escaped.
* * *
OLIVIA SHARP POKED at the fire behind the grate and wrapped her sweater more tightly around her shoulders. Winter in the Smoky Mountains had so far proved to be a cold, damp affair, but tonight they were supposed to get the first snow of the season for the lower elevations.
Growing up on Sand Mountain in Alabama, she’d seen snow now and then, but rarely enough to blanket everything and shut a person in for more than a day or two. But the TV weathermen out of Knoxville were calling for as much as a foot and a half in the higher elevations, and the lower elevations could expect five or six inches by morning.
She was safe and snug, tucked in with about a week’s worth of background checks to read through. In a company like The Gates, which specialized in high-stakes security cases, everything lived or died on the quality of personnel who worked the cases and kept the company running at peak performance, and the CEO, Alexander Quinn, had put her in charge of profiling prospective hires.
She was lucky to still have a job at all, she knew. Her first big job at The Gates had been a spectacular failure. Tasked with finding a traitor in their midst, she’d failed to smoke him out until it was nearly too late. Quinn would have been well within his rights to terminate her employment on the spot, but he’d given her another chance.
She had no intention of screwing up again.
She had made it through three files and was starting a fourth when her cell phone rang. No information on the display, which usually meant her caller was Quinn or another agent who didn’t want his identity revealed. “Sharp,” she answered.
“Hey, Olivia, it’s me.” The distinctive mountain drawl on the other end of the line belonged to Anson Daughtry, the company’s IT director and one of the people who’d saved her bacon during the investigation into the mole at The Gates, mostly by putting his own ass on the line.
Of course, he’d had a good incentive—the pretty payroll accountant he’d fallen hard for had been right in the middle of the danger.
“I thought you were on your honeymoon.”
“I am.” She could almost hear him grinning. “Ginny says hi.”
“Hi, Ginny.” She couldn’t stop her own smile. She might like to play the role of a tough woman of action, but two good people crazy in love still had the capacity to make her go all squishy inside. “Seriously, Daughtry, why are you calling me on your honeymoon?”
“You remember that bank account you asked me to start monitoring for activity a few months ago?”
She sat up straighter, the muscles of her stomach tightening. “Of course.”
“I got an alert in my email. Someone accessed the account a little after one. Withdrew five thousand dollars.”
Olivia glanced at the clock over the mantel. About an hour ago. “Any idea what branch?”
“That’s the interesting thing,” Daughtry said. “It was the one in Barrowville.”
“Oh.” A cool tingle washed over Olivia’s body, sprinkling goose bumps along her arms and legs. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”
“Is there anything else you need me to do?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I just needed the information.”
She could tell from Daughtry’s thick silence that he had questions about her request and what the information he’d just imparted to her meant. But she simply said, “Thanks. Go enjoy your honeymoon,” and hung up the phone before he could ask anything else.
She could be in Barrowville in fifteen minutes. Ten if she drove fast, although the first flurries had already begun to fall outside her cabin window.
No. He wouldn’t still be there an hour later. And the information she needed from whichever bank teller had handled the transaction, she could get over the phone.
She looked up the phone number for the bank and made the call, finally reaching the teller in question after a long wait. “How can I help you?”
“My name is Olivia Sharp. I have an account at your bank.” She rattled off the account number she’d memorized ages ago. “I just received an alert that some of the money has been accessed and you were the teller who handled the transaction.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the teller answered. She sounded young and worried.
“He gave his name as Cade Landry?”
“Yes, ma’am. He had the right identification and he knew the account number. He’s on the account.”
“I’m sure you handled things by the numbers. I just need to know if you remember what he looked like.”
The teller was silent for a moment, long enough for Olivia to fear the connection had been lost. But as she was opening her mouth to speak, the teller answered her question. “He was tall. Dark hair. Nice eyes. I don’t remember what color, just that they were nice. Friendly, you know?”
Olivia knew about Landry’s nice eyes. She knew their color, as well, a soft hue somewhere between hazel and green. “What about his build?”
“His build?”
“You know—heavy, slim—”
“Oh, right. It was...nice. You know, he looked good.” There was a nervous vibration in the teller’s voice. “Built nice.”
“Athletic?”
“Yes, definitely. He looked athletic.”
Olivia closed her eyes. “What about his voice? Low? Medium? Did he have an accent?”
“It was deep, I’m pretty sure. And he didn’t have an accent, exactly. I mean, he was from down here somewhere.”
“Down here” meaning the South, Olivia assumed. If it was really Cade Landry, he’d have spoken with a Georgia drawl. “I see.”
“Is there a problem? Our files show Mr. Landry is still authorized to withdraw funds from the account.” The teller was starting to sound worried. “Should I put the bank manager on the phone?”
“No,” Olivia said quickly. “Mr. Landry is authorized to withdraw funds. I just wasn’t aware he was planning to. Thank you for the information.” She hung up the phone and tugged her sweater more tightly around her, trying to control a sudden case of the shakes.
So, someone claiming to be Cade Landry, someone who fit his description and spoke with a Southern accent, had withdrawn $5,000 out of a savings account she’d set up almost two years ago, back when the relationship between her and her FBI partner had been going strong.
Before the disaster in Richmond.
But if it really was Landry who’d withdrawn the money from the account, where the hell had he been for the past year?
* * *
THE CHILL IN the air had grown bitter as the cold front rolled in, sending the temperature plunging. Overhead, clouds hung low and heavy, threatening snow.
The bank in Barrowville hadn’t given him any trouble with the withdrawal, so clearly Olivia hadn’t removed his name from the account.
Maybe that was a good sign.
He pedaled harder as the newly purchased thrift-store bike started uphill on Deception Lake Road. Getting her new address had been easy enough—he’d asked for and received the latest copy of the bank statement, which included her home address in Purgatory, Tennessee.
It had been a little too easy, really. What if he’d been an ex-boyfriend stalking her?
Isn’t that sort of what you are? The mean voice in his head was back.
Fine, he thought. I’m her ex-boyfriend. And I’m about to drop by her place unannounced. And I’m armed.
But the last thing he’d ever do was hurt Olivia, no matter how badly she’d hurt him. He just needed to talk to her. He might not be sure he could trust her, but he knew there was nobody else he could trust.
He’d learned that painful truth the hard way.
By the time he reached the turnoff to Perdition Gap, sleet had begun to fall, making crackling noises where the icy pellets hit the fallen leaves blanketing the roadside. He picked up speed as the road dipped downhill toward the narrow gorge cut into the mountains by Ketoowee River, hurried along by the bitter westerly wind that drove sleet like needle pricks into his bare cheeks.
He’d made his choice. Set himself on a course it was too late to alter, at least for today. Snow was coming, and he had to find shelter soon.
And the cabin looming out of the curling fog ahead was his only choice, for good or for bad.
There was a car parked on the gravel driveway, the same sleek black Mazda she’d driven when they had been together. It gave him pause, the sight of something so achingly familiar in a world that had turned alien on him almost two years ago.
He dismounted the bicycle and walked it slowly up the driveway, still staring at the Mazda, noting a tiny ding in the right front panel that hadn’t been there the last time he’d seen it. And there was a small parking decal on the front windshield, as well.
The sound of a door opening drew his gaze back to the house.
She stood there in the doorway, dressed in jeans and a snug blue sweater that hugged her curves like a lover. In one hand she held a Mossberg shotgun at her side. He knew from experience that she could whip that thing up and fire before he could reach for the pistol tucked in his ankle holster, so he froze in place.
He realized he could see her better than she could see him. He was bundled up against the cold and damp, a scarf wrapped around the lower part of his face and a bike helmet perched atop his head.
“Hey there, Sharp.”
She stopped short.
“Sorry to drop by without calling,” he added, moving slowly toward her again, pushing his bike closer to the cabin.
She took a few steps closer to the porch steps, a tall, fierce warrior of a woman blocking the entry. “So it was you at the bank.”
He stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up at her. God, she was beautiful, he thought, taking in the perfect cheekbones, the snapping blue eyes and the windblown blond waves framing her face. She’d cut her hair since they’d worked together. The short style suited her.
“It was,” he admitted. “I was afraid you’d closed the account, but I thought I’d take a chance.”
“Is that how you found me? Through the bank?”
“Your address was on the account.”
“And you found a way to get the teller to show it to you.” The faintest hint of a smile made the corners of her mouth twitch.
“I did.”
She took a deep breath and released it. “But now you’ve left a paper trail. You have to know it won’t take long for people to connect you to me and come looking for you.”
“It was a calculated risk.” He was beginning to feel a potent sense of unreality, standing here in the cold, gazing at a woman he’d once loved more than anyone or anything in his life.
Sometimes, he thought he still did.
“You should turn yourself in.”
“Already tried that,” he said bluntly, the heat of old anger driving away some of the cold. “Ended up chained in a backwoods cabin for a month. You’ll forgive me if I’m not eager to try it again.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”
“No. Believe me, there was nothing funny about it.” The phantom sting in his wrists returned. He tried to ignore the sensation, hating the frisson of dread that jolted through him each time he experienced the burning pain.
“You look cold.”
He couldn’t stop a wry laugh, looking around him at the light snowfall. “You think?”
She made a huffing noise but stepped back, opening a path to her door. “Get inside before you freeze.”
He grabbed the used duffel full of thrift-store clothes and climbed the stairs slowly, keeping an eye on her and her Mossberg. She didn’t look as if she was inclined to shoot him where he stood, but a lot had changed between them since Richmond.
She entered the cabin, leaving the door open for him. A wave of delicious warmth washed over him when he entered, and he quickly closed the door to shut out the cold.
As he started to turn around, he felt cold steel against his neck.
“Put your hands on the door where I can see them.” Olivia’s voice was calm and cool. “And spread your legs.”
“I’m armed,” he warned her as he dropped the duffel bag and complied.
“I figured as much.” She started to pat him down, her hands moving quickly over his arms, then slowing as she reached his waist. He couldn’t quell a shiver of pure sensual awareness as she slid her hands over his hips. “You’ve lost weight.”
“Meals have been hard to come by recently.”
She discovered the pistol stashed in his ankle holster and relieved him of it. “Where have you been?”
“Here and there.” He felt her retreat, cool air replacing the warmth of her body. “Can I turn around now?”
“Knock yourself out.”
He turned to find her emptying the magazine of his Kel-Tec P-11 onto a rolltop desk by the wall. His duffel bag was on the floor by her feet. “Is that really necessary?” he asked with a nod toward the pile of ammunition.
“For now.” She removed the round in the chamber and added it to the pile of ammo on the desk before she set the pistol down and turned her cool blue gaze on Landry. “Why did you come here?”
“Nice seeing you again, too, Sharp. It’s been such a long time.”
She shook her head, her eyes narrowing. “You disappeared nearly a year ago after McKenna Rigsby’s undercover mission went very wrong. At least one corrupt FBI agent has gone missing, and the Bureau is scrambling like crazy to find out what other agents might be compromised. You are on the top of their list.”
“I know.”
“And yet, here you are. Did you think I would just turn a blind eye to the fact that you’re wanted by the FBI for questioning?”
She was magnificent when she was angry. Always had been. Her blue eyes took on an amazing electric hue, and the atmosphere around her crackled with energy. He felt drawn to her, despite himself, and took a helpless step forward. “Livvie—”
“Don’t.” She held up her hand, a pained look replacing the fire in her eyes. “Please don’t call me that.”
“I know you have questions. But I’ve spent the last two hours riding a bicycle in the bitter cold. I’m tired. I’m freezing. I haven’t eaten since yesterday. It’s snowing out, and I need shelter. Food, if you can spare any. In exchange, I’ll tell you everything I’ve been doing for the past two years, and if you still want to turn me in to the FBI after that, then fine. I’ll accept that. Because I’m sick to death of running.”
Her forehead creased as she considered what he’d just said. “You’ll turn yourself in if I say so?”
He nodded, meaning it. He hadn’t realized it until he saw her again, but he really was through running. He’d trusted the wrong person once and lost his freedom for a month—and damned near lost his life in the process.
But he had to trust someone, or what was the point of going on? He couldn’t keep living under the radar forever.
And he’d already gone nearly two years without seeing Olivia Sharp. There had been a time when he couldn’t have imagined such a thing, couldn’t have considered even a week without her, much less a lifetime without her spreading out in front of him as far as the eye could see.
“Were you working with the Blue Ridge Infantry?” she asked, breaking the tense silence between them.
He met her gaze, took a deep breath and answered the question with the truth.
“Yes,” he said.
Chapter Two (#ulink_ec49a9c7-6071-5a58-9267-18013dc703cd)
Hearing Cade Landry admit what she’d spent the past year trying not to believe shouldn’t have felt like a kick in the teeth. But somehow, it did. It hit her hard enough that she took an involuntary step backward, her foot catching on the braided rug in the cabin’s entry.
As she started to lose her balance, Landry lurched forward and caught her before she could fall, his arms wrapping around her waist. His hands were cold—she could feel the chill through her sweater—but his touch sent fire singing through her blood.
He’d always had that effect on her. Even when he shouldn’t.
She pulled free of his grasp, steadying herself by clutching the edge of the desk. “How long?”
He stared at her, a puzzled expression on his face.
“How long did you work for the Blue Ridge Infantry?” When he didn’t answer right away, she added, “Are you still working for them? Is that why you came here?”
He took a deep breath and let it out in a soft whoosh. “I was never working for them.”
She shook her head, shock starting to give way to a fury that burned like acid in her gut. “Don’t play semantics games with me, Landry.”
His dark eyebrows arched, creasing his forehead. “Are you going to listen to what I have to say or should we just cut to the part where you call the cops to come haul my ass out of here?”
“The latter, I think.” She went for her shotgun.
He beat her there, jerking it out of her grasp. “Don’t,” he said sharply as she changed course, going for the P-11 she’d just emptied.
She froze in place, turning slowly to look at him. Something hot and painful throbbed just under her breastbone as she met his hard gaze. “Just get it over with.”
“I’m not what you think I am,” he said, lowering the Mossberg to his side. “That’s what I was trying to tell you.”
“You’ll forgive me if I have a little trouble believing you.”
His lips pressed to a thin line. “I was really hoping you, of all people, would look beyond the obvious.”
She pushed down a sudden flutter of guilt. “You don’t get to play the victim card. You’re the one who disappeared almost a year ago without telling anyone where you were going.”
“I did tell someone,” he said quietly, lowering the shotgun to the floor, still within his reach. “I told my SAC at the Johnson City RA that I had information the FBI needed to know about the Blue Ridge Infantry. And the next thing I knew, I was being bludgeoned and hauled to some backwoods hellhole and beaten to within an inch of my life.”
For a second she pictured what he was saying, imagined him tied up and pummeled by the vicious hillbillies who comprised the mountain militia known as the Blue Ridge Infantry, and nausea burned in her gut. She knew from her own investigations that the hard-eyed men who ran the so-called militia as a criminal organization were capable of great cruelty. If they’d ever lived by a code of honor, those days were long past.
Money and power drove them. In these hills these days, money and power too often came from drugs, guns and extortion.
“You told your SAC?” She repeated his earlier statement, trying to remember the name of the Johnson City resident agency’s Special Agent in Charge. “Pete Chang, right?”
He nodded. “I didn’t think he was corrupt. He’s a brownnoser, yeah, so maybe he told the wrong person the wrong thing. I don’t know.”
“You’ve been a prisoner all this time?” she asked, looking him over with a critical eye. “Take off your coat.”
He looked down at the heavy wool coat he was still wearing, a frown carving lines in his cheeks. “I wasn’t a prisoner the whole time,” he said gruffly as he unbuttoned the coat and shrugged it off. Beneath, he still wore a couple of layers of clothes—a long-sleeved shirt beneath a thick sweater—but while he looked leaner than she remembered, he definitely didn’t look as if he’d been starved for nearly a year.
“Then why didn’t you go to the FBI once you were free?”
“I just told you that the last time I told anyone with the FBI what I was doing, I ended up a prisoner of the Blue Ridge Infantry.” He pushed the sleeves of his shirt and sweater up to his elbows, revealing what they’d hidden until now—white ligature scars around both wrists.
Olivia swallowed a gasp. It was stupid to react so sharply to the scars—in the pantheon of injuries she’d seen inflicted in this ongoing war between the Blue Ridge Infantry and the good guys, the marks on Landry’s wrists barely registered.
It was what they represented—the loss of freedom, the indignity of captivity—that made her heart pound with sudden dread.
Or they could be a trick, she reminded herself sternly as she felt her resistance begin to falter. He could have inflicted the marks on himself to fool people into believing his story.
The fact remained, he’d just stood here minutes ago and admitted he’d been working with the Blue Ridge Infantry. And nobody who worked with the Blue Ridge Infantry was ever up to any good.
“What are you thinking?” Landry spoke in a low, silky voice so familiar it seemed to burrow into her head and take up residence, like a traveler finally reaching home after a long absence.
She fought against that sensation and gripped the edge of the desk more tightly. “That’s really none of your business.”
“You’re not curious?” he asked, his eyes narrowing as he took a step closer to her. “You don’t want to hear all the details?”
She held his gaze but didn’t speak.
“Or maybe you really don’t give a damn anymore.” He spoke the words casually, but she’d known him long enough to recognize the thread of hurt that underlay his comment.
“You’re the one who left,” she said.
“Are you sure I was the one?” He took another step toward her, and she tried to back away. But the wall stopped her.
“You packed your things and left.”
“You’d already left. Maybe not your body, but the rest of you—the part of you that really mattered—” He stopped his forward advancement, looking down at the rough planks of the cabin floor beneath his damp boots. “Doesn’t change the outcome, does it? We both walked away and didn’t look back, right?”
“Why did you come here?” she asked again, not because she believed he’d answer her any more truthfully than before, but because it was better than thinking about just how many times over the past two years, with how much regret, she’d looked back on the life she and Landry had once shared.
“Because I thought—” He looked up at her, pinning her to the wall with the intensity of his green-eyed gaze. “It doesn’t matter what I thought, does it? You’ve made up your mind about me. I get it.” He turned away, heading for the door.
She hurried forward and picked up the shotgun. “I didn’t say you could leave.”
He turned to look at her. “You’re going to shoot me to stop me?”
“If I have to.” She sounded sincere enough, even to her own skeptical ears. But her heart wasn’t nearly as sure.
She’d loved him once, as much as she’d ever loved anyone in her whole life. Hell, maybe she still did.
If he tried to leave, would she really pull the trigger to stop him from fleeing?
“You won’t shoot me,” he said softly. “At least, that’s what I want to keep believing. So I won’t put you in that position.”
“You’ll turn yourself in?”
He frowned. “I’d rather not. At least, not yet. There’s a lot I still need to tell you before you’ll understand exactly what we’re up against and why.”
“What we’re up against?”
He nodded. “I have to assume someone at that bank in Barrowville will remember the name Cade Landry. And why it’s so memorable. They’ll call the authorities to report my visit to the bank. And like you said, it won’t take long for them to connect us. We were partners, Olivia.” He moved toward her, walking with slow, sure deliberation. “Lovers.”
His voice lowered to a sensual rumble, bringing back a flood of memories she’d spent two years trying to excise from her brain. “Don’t.”
“It’s too late to undo it, Livvie. I took a risk coming here, and maybe I shouldn’t have.” He came to a stop just a few inches from where she stood, and she made herself remain in place, though the pounding pulse in her ears seemed to plead for her to run as far and as fast as she could.
Losing him once had nearly unraveled her. If she let him back into her heart—into her bed—again...
“I said I was working with the Blue Ridge Infantry, and that’s the truth. But it’s only part of it.” His hand came up slowly until his fingertips brushed her jawline, sending a shiver of sexual awareness jolting through her. “Did you know they were targeting The Gates?”
She swallowed with difficulty. “Of course. We’ve been trying to bring them down since Quinn first opened the doors of The Gates.”
“I’m not on their side, Olivia. That’s not what I meant by working with them—” He stopped midsentence, his head coming up suddenly. It took a moment for Olivia to hear what he’d obviously heard—a car engine moving up the road toward her cabin.
Landry moved away from her and crossed to her front window, sliding the curtains open an inch.
“Could be a neighbor,” she said quietly, suddenly afraid he was going to bolt, even though a few minutes earlier, she’d been hoping he’d leave and not look back.
It was just curiosity, she told herself, the need to know what he’d been starting to tell her about his connection to the BRI. It certainly had nothing to do with the way her jaw still tingled where he’d touched her or the quickened pace of her heart whenever she looked his way.
“They’re stopping here,” he said bluntly, turning back to look at her. She saw fear in his eyes, raw and wild, and realized she had only a few seconds to keep him from doing something reckless.
She pushed past him and looked through the curtains. The truck that had stopped outside her house was a familiar but, under the circumstances, not exactly welcome sight. “It’s Alexander Quinn.”
Landry groaned. “Your boss.”
She looked at him, wondering how much he knew about Quinn. “You said you’re not on the BRI’s side. Neither is Quinn. If you know anything about The Gates, you have to know that.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s going to turn a blind eye to the warrants out for my arrest.”
“You might be surprised.”
He shook his head and picked up his duffel bag. “I’m going out the back. Just give me a head start.”
She caught his arm as he started past her, not letting go even when he tried to tug free of her grasp. “Don’t run. Not yet. My bedroom is through that doorway. First room on the right. Let me find out what Quinn wants.”
Landry stared at her as if he were trying to read all the way through to her soul. Finally, the sound of footsteps on the front porch spurred him into action. He went through the doorway and veered right into her bedroom, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
Olivia took a deep breath just as Quinn knocked.
Showtime.
* * *
HER ROOM SMELLED like Olivia, that half-sweet, half-tart scent he’d never been able to identify as anything other than her own unique essence. For a few seconds all he could do was breathe, fill his lungs with that scent, store it away for another drought like the two years they’d been apart since he’d left Richmond—and Olivia—behind.
The bedroom was small and sparsely furnished—a bed, a chest of drawers and a small trunk at the foot of the bed. The bedding was simple and neat—two pillows in pale blue cotton cases, sheets that matched and a thick quilt that looked handmade.
Despite the tension running through him like currents of electricity, despite the muted sound of the door knock just a room away, Landry couldn’t stop himself from smiling. It faded quickly, but the flicker of sentiment remained—she hadn’t really changed in the past two years if she was still decorating with handmade quilts.
She made the quilts herself, a secret she’d kept from her fellow FBI agents with the ferocity of a mother bear guarding her den. “If you ever tell anyone about this,” she’d sworn when she’d finally let him in on her secret, “I will hunt you down and kill you.”
The sound of voices drifted down the hallway. The rumble of a male voice, barely discernible, followed by Olivia’s alto drawl.
“New bike?” the male voice asked.
“Picked it up at a yard sale,” Olivia answered.
Landry pressed his ear to the door, trying to hear the conversation more clearly.
“It’s a man’s bike,” Quinn said in a tone that was deliberately nonchalant.
“I bought it from a man,” she answered, a shrug in her voice. “Women’s bikes are usually too small for a woman my height.”
Good save, Landry thought.
“I got a call from Daughtry,” Quinn said, still sounding like someone making small talk. “He said you got a hit on some bank account you’d asked him to monitor.”
“That man doesn’t know the meaning of honeymoon, does he?” Olivia laughed softly, but Landry heard the faint strain of tension behind her words.
Did Quinn hear it, too?
“One of the reasons I hired him,” Quinn answered. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t ask a question.”
Still as smart-mouthed as ever, Landry thought.
“Whose account did you ask him to monitor?”
“Mine,” she replied. “I’ve been noticing some discrepancies in my bank statement, so I thought maybe someone had hacked my password for that account. It’s not a lot of money, but still.”
“So there’s someone tapping into your account? Why didn’t you just change the password?”
“That would only stop them from accessing the account. I wanted to catch someone in the act.”
“Did you?”
“Maybe. I have some feelers out.”
Landry didn’t hear anything else for several long seconds, not even an unintelligible murmur that would suggest they’d merely lowered their voices. The silence was unnerving. If he couldn’t hear them, he had no way of knowing where they were.
Or how close they were getting to his hiding place.
Come on, he thought. Start talking again.
“As much as I relish the screwball comedy potential of being snowed in with you, Quinn, you’re not going to be able to get that truck back down the mountain if you don’t make tracks in the next few minutes.”
“Now you’re just tempting me, Olivia.” There was a warmth to Quinn’s voice that made Landry’s gut tighten.
What the hell?
“Funny,” Olivia said, but there was no censure in her voice, only a soft amusement that made Landry want to kick down the door.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay here alone? A few of the agents are bunking down at the office for the duration. It’s a little college dorm for my tastes, but I think you can handle the frat-boy atmosphere if you’d rather tough it out in a crowd.”
“No, thanks,” she said with a laugh that was too friendly for Landry’s peace of mind. “I’ll be fine here. I have a load of résumés to go through and some housework I’ve put off for the past couple of months. But thanks for the concern.”
“Are you sure everything’s okay?” Quinn asked in a tone so quiet and intimate Landry had to strain to make out the words.
“Everything’s fine.”
“Olivia, I know you’re blaming yourself for how close Daughtry and Ginny came to losing their lives, but you’re not infallible. Nobody in this business is. We all make mistakes.”
Olivia’s response was spoken too quietly for Landry to hear. But Quinn’s next words gave him a pretty good idea what she’d said.
“There are a lot of ways to pay for mistakes. Sometimes your own conscience is the harshest judge of all. I think you’ve already given yourself more penance than I’d have ever suggested. That’s why I let you come up with your own punishment.”
“I would have fired me.”
“That’s why you’re not the boss.”
There was another long silence. Landry clenched his fists to keep from reaching for the door handle.
“Call if you need anything. I might know how to get my hands on a snowmobile.” Quinn’s voice, tinged with amusement, broke the silence, and Landry started breathing again.
He heard the door close and waited until he heard Olivia’s footsteps outside the door.
“Still in there?” she asked quietly.
He opened the door to face her. “I was contemplating escape.”
“He’s gone.”
“I heard.”
One sandy eyebrow arched over a sky blue eye. “You were eavesdropping?”
“Was there something you didn’t want me to hear?”
The other eyebrow joined the first, creasing her forehead. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He meant to change the subject, talk about what a bad idea it was for him to stick around the cabin with her in case her boss decided to come back to check on her in that snowmobile he’d mentioned. But those weren’t the words that came out of his mouth.
Instead, to his dismay, he asked, “What the hell is going on between you and your boss?”
Chapter Three (#ulink_ec94af0b-66d9-5c48-be12-15223915e6b2)
“You were right,” Quinn said. “He’s there.”
Anson Daughtry’s voice over the phone picked up a little static as Quinn eased his Ford F-150 pickup around a mountain curve. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Right now? Nothing. She’s going to be snowed in with him for a couple of days, and maybe she’ll get some information out of him.”
“Did you bug the place?” Daughtry’s question was delivered bone dry, but Quinn knew his IT director’s unfavorable opinion about eavesdropping, especially on employees at The Gates.
“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you,” Quinn answered just as drily.
“So, you’re just leaving her alone with him, without any way of knowing whether or not she might be in trouble?”
“She knows how to call for help if she needs it.”
Daughtry made a sound of pure frustration. “Don’t you think he’s dangerous?”
“I’m sure he’s dangerous. To someone. The question is, to whom?”
“So you’re just letting Sharp find out for you? In a snowbound cabin?”
“If I can’t trust my agents to handle themselves in dangerous situations with dangerous people, what the hell am I doing running a security firm?” Quinn had hired Olivia Sharp because everything he’d ever heard about her told him she was perfectly capable of holding her own in a high-risk situation. She’d been a member of an elite FBI SWAT team for six years, and in every dangerous situation he’d put her in since hiring her, she’d proved her mettle. “Sharp is every bit as dangerous as Cade Landry ever thought of being, and she doesn’t have any illusions where he’s concerned.”
“She was involved with him before.”
“What makes you think that?” Quinn asked carefully.
“I hear things.”
“Then maybe you heard that they’re no longer together. And that it ended badly. Which means she’s not going to assume his motives for showing up at her cabin in the middle of a snowstorm are entirely pure.”
“Love’s not that straightforward,” Daughtry said bluntly, in the tone of a man on his honeymoon.
“Let me worry about my agents, Daughtry. You worry about your wife. I’m sure she’s shooting you glaring looks by now, considering how long we’ve been on this call.” He pressed the end-call button on his phone and stifled a smile. One of his still-single agents had recently groused that the marriage bug was spreading like a contagion at the office, and Quinn couldn’t really deny it.
Take a pair of single, physically fit, energetic and bright people, toss them in the middle of a high-risk, high-stakes situation and step back, because sparks were going to fly. A lot of the time, those sparks fizzled out to nothing once the danger was over, but in some cases, his agents had made real connections with each other, the kind that had a chance to last a lifetime.
Quinn was about as far as a man got from being a romantic, but he’d learned a long time ago not to interfere when a man and a woman wanted to be together.
Very bad things could happen.
* * *
OLIVIA STARED AT Cade Landry, certain she’d misunderstood his question. Because there was no way in the world he’d just stood there and asked her what was going on between her and Alexander Quinn, as if it was any business of his. He wasn’t a fool or an idiot, and only one of those would stand here in her bedroom doorway, two years after walking out of her life without even a goodbye, and question anything at all about her personal life. Especially in that particular tone of outrage.
But here he was, gazing at her with green eyes blazing with fury, his jaw muscles tight and his nostrils flaring.
“We’re going to pretend you didn’t just ask me that question,” she said in a deceptively soft voice. But she could tell from the troubled look in Landry’s eyes that he heard the undertones of danger.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m in no position to question anything about your life.” He looked down and started to move around her, heading toward the front room.
“Where are you going?” She caught up with him as he was reaching for the unloaded pistol still lying on her rolltop desk.
“I shouldn’t have come here.”
She caught his hand, stopping him as he started to pick up the pistol. “Why did you come here? Why now?”
He looked down at her hand covering his, and she felt the muscles in his wrist twitch as he slowly turned to look at her. “Because I don’t know what to do next. And you were always my go-to.”
Her heart squeezed into a painful knot. “Even now?”
“Maybe especially now.” He eased his hand from her grasp. She made herself let go as he took a step past her, back toward the center of the room. “Maybe it’s better we’re more like strangers to each other these days. You can be objective about what I should do next.”
She couldn’t be objective about him, but she didn’t bother saying so. She needed to hear where he’d been and what he’d been doing for the past seven months.
“Look, why don’t you sit down in front of the fire? You still look cold.” She picked up the knit throw blanket draped over the back of the sofa and handed it to him. “Get warm. I’m going to heat you up a bowl of soup. You want a sandwich, too?”
He took the blanket but shook his head. “I didn’t come here for you to take care of me.” A look of frustration creased his face.
“Then why did you come here?” she asked softly when he didn’t continue.
“I needed to see you.” The words seemed to escape his mouth against his will. The look of consternation in his green eyes might have been comical under other circumstances.
But Olivia couldn’t laugh. She knew exactly what that raw ache of need felt like. She knew what it was like to wake in the middle of the night and feel compelled to reach out for someone who was no longer there beside her. For almost two years, she and Landry had been a unit. Inseparable.
She should have known it would never last. Forever was the exception in most relationships, not the rule. And with her family history, she should never have allowed herself to think she might be able to beat the odds.
“I wish you’d wanted to see me two years ago when I tried to reach you.”
Landry looked down, one hand circling his other wrist as if to soothe the scars that formed a circle there. “I should have listened to you when you tried to explain.”
“You were too angry.”
“I felt betrayed.”
Her heart ached at the pain in his voice, but she didn’t let herself fall into that morass again. She’d spent too much time blaming herself for Landry’s anger when there had been nothing else she could do but exactly what she’d done. “I’m sorry you felt betrayed. But short of lying about what I remembered, I couldn’t help you.”
His gaze snapped up. “I know. I expected too much.”
“You expected me to lie?”
He shook his head. “I expected you to believe me, without question. I thought you would know I was telling the truth, even if you didn’t remember.”
She stared back at him, guilt niggling at the back of her mind. “I do believe that you remember hearing an order to go into the warehouse instead of holding our position. But that’s not what you were asking me to say.”
He let out a gusty sigh. “I don’t know that I was really asking anything of you except your trust and belief in me. But you never could really give me that, could you? Not wholeheartedly.”
Guilt throbbed even harder, settling in the center of her chest. “You know blind trust is a problem for me. You knew that going in.” She looked up at him. “I warned you, Landry. And you said you could deal with it.”
“Because I thought you could.” He looked away from her, his gaze angling toward the window beside the fireplace. After a second she followed his gaze and saw that the snowfall was starting to reach blizzard proportion, whiting out everything around the cabin.
“The power probably won’t hold out much longer,” she warned him, moving toward the hall. “If you want something hot for dinner, we should heat it up while we still have electricity.”
He followed her down the short hallway to the kitchen at the back of the cabin. “I don’t want to put you out.”
“It’s soup from a can. I’ll heat it in the microwave. You’re not putting me out.” She pulled a large can of beef stew from the pantry and showed it to him. “How’s this?”
“It’s fine. Thank you. Can I help with anything?”
“Again, soup from a can, heated in the microwave.” She shot him a look of amusement. “Sit down, Landry. You look as if you rode a bicycle here all the way from Bitterwood.”
“Barrowville,” he corrected her with a wry grimace. “Which was a breeze compared to hoofing it here on foot from North Carolina.”
Olivia set the can on the counter and turned to look at him. “North Carolina?”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now, okay?” As he met her gaze, waning daylight cast his face in light and shadows, emphasizing how much older he looked now than the last time she’d seen him. The past two years had been hard on him. Aged him, left fine lines around his eyes and mouth.
“Okay,” she said quietly and returned to the task of preparing soup for their dinner.
He ate as if he hadn’t eaten in days, though, as she’d noticed before, he didn’t appear thin enough to have skipped too many meals over the months he’d been missing. Without being asked, she opened another can of soup and heated it up for him.
“Thank you,” he told her after he’d finished the second can of soup. “I haven’t had anything but protein bars and water for the past two days.”
She wanted to ask him what had happened to him, but there was a warning light in his eyes when she leaned toward him, as if he’d read her mind.
She sat back and finished her own soup slowly as he took his bowl and spoon to the sink and washed them. When he was done, he walked past the table and went to stand by the kitchen window to watch it snow.
“How long is the snow supposed to last?” he asked.
“It should snow all night. We should get about six or seven inches, and the temperature isn’t going to get above freezing for a couple of days after that. There’s a slight chance for more snow day after tomorrow, but the weather guys aren’t as sure about that.” So he hadn’t been near a television or radio in the past few days, either, she noted silently.
Just where the hell had he been all this time?
* * *
OLIVIA’S CABIN WAS large and tastefully rustic, but Landry had a feeling the place had come fully furnished. Outside of her bedroom, there was little in the cabin that reminded him of her apartment back in Richmond, a small loft apartment that she’d decorated in cool colors and clean lines. Even her beloved quilts had been stitched together in straight patterns, using fabrics in blues, greens and whites. Uncluttered and organized—that had been the Olivia Sharp he’d known and loved.
But he could tell she’d changed, just as he had. She’d left the FBI first, left him and his anger behind. He’d been both furious and hurt at first, but after what he’d gone through over the past few months, hanging on to resentment seemed pointless.
“I don’t have a spare bed.”
He looked up to find her standing in the living room doorway, holding another thick quilt like the one he’d seen on her bed. “You have a sofa. That’ll do.”
She handed him the quilt. It was another of her creations; he could tell by the geometric precision of the pattern.
“Still quilting?” he asked as she started to leave the room.
She stopped and turned to face him. “When I have time. Which isn’t often these days.”
He set the quilt on the sofa next to him and waved toward one of the armchairs across from where he sat. “You like working at The Gates?”
She sat and folded her hands in her lap. “I do.”
“Your boss seems very interested in your welfare.”
The look she sent slicing his way was sharp enough to cut.
“Sorry. Too soon?”
“Quinn takes an interest in all of his employees,” she said flatly.
“He’s trying to take down the Blue Ridge Infantry.”
She didn’t answer, her eyes narrowing.
“I’m not a traitor, Olivia.”
“You never told me how you got mixed up with the BRI.” She crossed her long legs and sat back, pinning him with a challenging stare. “I know you tried to help McKenna Rigsby when she was targeted by the Blue Ridge Infantry. You talked to one of our agents, tried to warn him about Darryl Boyle’s involvement with the BRI. But one question never really got answered, once you disappeared—”
“How did I know about Boyle?”
“Exactly.”
He tried to relax, as well, even though he suspected that some of Olivia’s placid composure was an act. He knew his unexpected arrival on her doorstep that afternoon had been a shock to her system, but as usual, she was trying not to let it show.
“I suspected, when Rigsby supposedly went rogue, that something very bad had driven her there. She struck me as a good agent. She sure as hell hadn’t joined the Blue Ridge Infantry—she hated them with a passion, hated everything they were doing and how they were twisting things like honor and patriotism for their own purposes.” He couldn’t hold back a smile remembering Rigsby’s tirades. “She vented to me. A lot. She was undercover, trying to get close to some of the female militia groupies, so she had to pretend she thought they hung the moon when she was with them.”
Olivia’s lips curved with amusement. “She’s so not groupie material.”
“So you know her.”
“I do.” She didn’t elaborate.
“Is she okay?”
Her smile faded. “She’s fine.”
“I didn’t get to find out what happened to her after she was taken.”
“Because you were grabbed by the BRI guys.”
God, he hated the skepticism in her voice, the hint of disbelief, as if he’d have disappeared for a year just for the hell of it. “You don’t believe me.”
“I never said that.”
He pushed to his feet. “You didn’t have to.”
She stood, as well, and caught his arm. “Don’t do this. I’m trying to understand what’s happened to you.”
“You’re looking at me as if I’m crazy. Is that what you think?”
“Of course not.” Her grip softened, her fingers sliding slowly down his arm to his wrist, where they settled against his scars. “I just need to know why you stayed away so long. Where have you been?”
“After I got away from the guys who took me, I headed east into North Carolina.” He gave a little tug of his arm and she let go of his wrist.
“Why east?” she asked.
“Because when I got out of that hovel where they were keeping me, that’s the way I was facing. So I ran and didn’t look back.” He looked down at his scarred wrists.
“Until now. Why did you come back now?”
He looked at her, saw the curiosity in those summer-sky eyes and blurted the truth. “Because you’re a target. And you needed to know.”
Chapter Four (#ulink_17b749ce-ba90-56fb-b8d5-989599f2be30)
“That’s why you’re here? You thought we didn’t know we were on the BRI’s hit list?” Olivia shook her head, not buying it. “I told you already. We know—”
“I don’t mean The Gates is the target,” Landry said in a quiet tone that made her chest ache. “I mean you, Olivia. The BRI is trying to get their hands on you.”
She stared at him, trying to read past the mirrorlike calm of his green eyes. “How would you know this? You said you hadn’t had anything to do with the BRI since your escape.”
“I didn’t say that.”
She thought for a moment and realized he hadn’t. She’d assumed it, given that the BRI had taken him hostage and, according to what he had told her, beaten him terribly to get information out of him.
“Maybe you should sit down and tell me what you know.” She waved at the sofa and sat facing him on the coffee table, crossing her long legs under her. “How do you know I’ve been targeted?”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The action brought him close to her, close enough to touch. All she’d have to do is reach her hand toward him and—
“I got away from the BRI. But I still know some people who lurk around the edges of that group. People who aren’t on the inside but are close to men who are.”
A cold tingle rippled through her. “Women, you mean. The groupies.”
“A couple. Also a few guys who sympathize with the stated goals of the group but don’t like their methods or trust that they’re what they say they are. There are a lot of people in these parts who’ve seen the mess government interference has made among their kinfolk and neighbors. You have multiple generations who’ve known nothing but life on welfare.”
“The draw,” Olivia murmured. At his quizzical look, she added, “That’s what people here call it. ‘The draw.’”
“They can’t live without it, but some of them hate what it’s turned them into, too.” He stood up and paced toward the fireplace, leaning toward the heat as if he’d felt a chill. “It makes it very tempting to hook up with people like the BRI.”
“I know.” She’d grown up poor herself. Had struggled to escape the cycle of poverty and bad choices that had haunted her family for a couple of generations. “People don’t want to feel victimized. Being part of the BRI gives them a sense of power.”
“There’s a young man I got to know over the past couple of months. Little more than a kid, really. We worked a few day labor jobs together over near Cherokee. His uncle is part of the Blue Ridge Infantry, but this kid is smarter than that. They keep trying to recruit him, but he resists. He’s saving up all his money, planning to go to a technical college over in Asheville.”
“He’s the one who told you the BRI is targeting me?”
“Not exactly.” Landry crossed to the coffee table and sat on the edge, facing her. He leaned closer, his gaze intense.
Once again, the desire to reach across the narrow space between them hit her like a physical ache. She curled her hands into fists and kept them in her lap. “Then what, exactly?”
“He got me into a meeting where they were planning their next move in the war against The Gates.”
She stared at him. “You were in a meeting with the BRI and they didn’t shoot you on sight?”
“Well, they didn’t know I was there,” he said with a grin that carved dimples in both cheeks, sending her heart into a flip. “The meeting was at his uncle’s place, and there’s a big vent in the den where they met. My friend lived with his uncle’s family for a while when his mama was in rehab a few years ago, and he found out that if you listen through the vent in his old bedroom, you can hear what they’re saying in that den clear as day.”
“He let you listen in? Does he know who you are?”
Landry shook his head. “I told him I was thinking of joining the BRI because I was tired of how the federal government was taking over every aspect of our lives. He sympathized, but he told me the BRI wasn’t the way to go. They were nothing but trouble and he could prove it.”
“By letting you listen in on a meeting.”
“Yes.”
“And you overheard them making a threat against me?”
“Not by name.”
“Then how do you know?”
“They called you Bombshell Barbie.”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “And that told you it was me?”
“No. What told me it was you was that one of them said you were dangerous as hell and wouldn’t go down without a fight. The combination of the two—the nickname and the statement about your fighting spirit—that’s what told me it was you.”
She stifled a smile, not sure she should feel quite as complimented as she did. “Bombshell Barbie, huh?”
He held up his hands. “I didn’t come up with it.”
“I know. I’m pretty sure a guy named Marty Tucker did. He was up to his nasty eyeballs in the BRI until he shot himself trying to escape a colony of bats.”
“Bats?”
“Long story. He lived. Now he’s in state prison, serving time for kidnapping and other assorted crimes. Sadly, he’s chosen to keep all his secrets about the BRI to himself, so we’re not any closer to bringing them down than we were before.” She frowned. “Matter of fact, they’ve been really quiet recently. No chatter coming out of there at all that we’ve heard.”
“Until now.”
“Until now.” She cocked her head. “How long have you known about this target on my back?”
“Two days.”
“And you didn’t think to call and warn me?”
He slanted a look at her. “You’d have believed it was me on the other line?”
“Probably not,” she admitted.
“I knew you’d need proof.”
“What kind of proof?”
“An audio recording of the BRI’s plans.”
An electric pulse of excitement zinged through her. “You have that?”
He shook his head. “Not on me. I didn’t want to risk getting caught with it. I put it in a safe place.”
“Where?”
“I can’t tell you that. Not yet.”
Her spine stiffened, and angry heat warmed her face. “You can’t tell me? I’m the one in danger and you can’t tell me?”
His gaze flicked around the cozy room. “How do you know this place isn’t wired for sound?”
“I check it periodically for bugs,” she said flatly, trying to control her frustration.
“Using what equipment? Something you got from work?”
“Yes.” She met his questioning look without flinching, even though she knew where he was going with the question. “And yes, I realize Quinn probably has a way to get around a bug detector he himself supplied. But I trust him with my life.”
Landry’s eyes narrowed and he pulled back. “Really? Well, I don’t.”
She bit back a protest and counted to ten. Landry had no reason to trust Quinn, after all. Or anyone else, she supposed, considering what he claimed he’d been through over the past few months. “Fair enough.”
“It’s safe for now.”
“But the BRI is still after me?”
He nodded, easing forward again. “I don’t know the timing of what they have in the works. I know only what they’re planning to do. What you need to look for.”
Another chill washed through her, raising goose bumps on her arms and legs. “Do you mean to keep that a secret, too?”
A small flicker in the corner of his eye was his only reaction to her blunt question. “No, of course not.”
“So what do I look for?”
“First, it’s not going to be your standard hit. No sniper shot, nothing like that.”
She had an unsettling sense of unreality, listening to Landry speak of her impending death as if it was just another case to be investigated. “Is that good news or bad news?”
His gaze snapped up to meet hers. “None of this is good news.”
“Right.”
He suddenly reached across the space between them, closing his hand over hers. As if he’d read her earlier thoughts, in an urgent tone he added, “This is not just another case for me, Livvie. No matter what happened between us two years ago, you will never, ever be just another case for me.”
As she stared at him, heat spreading through her from the point where his fingers had closed around hers, he let go and sat back, clearly struggling to regain his cool composure.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Go on.”
“They’re going to take you when you’re alone. So you need to make sure you’re never alone.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Look, I know your boss offered you the chance to stay at the office with some of the other agents. Maybe you should do that.”
She looked at the whiteout conditions outside the cabin window. “Too late for that.”
He followed her gaze. “I’m sure your boss could come up with some way to get you out of here.”
She shook her head quickly. “Landry, I’m safe enough here. For now, anyway. I’m armed and it’s not easy to get here in the snow. And you’re here, right?”
He nodded toward the rolltop desk. “But I’m unarmed.”
She met his warm gaze, trying to be objective, to put everything from their past, good or bad, out of her mind and just assess the situation as an agent.
He’d shown up unannounced, after having disappeared for nearly a year, and told her that he’d been working with the same dangerous militia group he now said had made her a target for assassination. But he’d come alone and warned her of the danger against her. He’d had the opportunity to hurt her earlier, when he’d got the drop on her with her Mossberg shotgun, but he’d done nothing to hurt her.
Was he trying to pull some sort of scam? Was this story about hillbilly assassins part of some bigger plan the BRI had hatched?
Or was he telling her the truth?
“Why?” she asked finally.
His eyebrows twitched upward. “Why did I come? I told you—”
She shook her head. “No—why has BRI targeted me specifically? Do you know?”
“They didn’t say. At least, not the part of their discussion I was able to overhear.”
“What about your friend? The kid whose uncle is a BRI member. Would he be able to find out why they’ve targeted me?”
“If I could get in touch with him, yes. But that’s very dangerous. Even more so for him than for me. He took a big chance letting me sneak in to eavesdrop on the meeting. If either of us had been caught...”
She quelled a shudder as her mind finished the sentence for him, in vivid, brutal images. She’d seen the lengths to which the BRI would go to carry out a plan. “I get it.”
“After the snow thaws, I’ll see if I can reach him. But I’ll have to be very careful.”
She pushed to her feet, nervous energy getting the better of her. “There has to be something I can do while we’re waiting. Research or something—”
He stood and crossed to her, closing his hands around her arms and pulling her to face him. His expression was fierce at first, but it softened when she met his gaze.
“I’ll tell you everything I can remember from what I overheard,” he said in a tone so earnest, so familiar, it made her heart ache. “This all has to be confusing and disturbing—”
“Don’t do that,” she murmured. “Don’t handle me.”
Slowly, he dropped his hands away from her arms, but the sensation of his touch lingered, making her feel jittery and unsettled. “Let’s sit down, okay? Take a second and breathe.”
He was still handling her, but at least he wasn’t touching her. She returned to the armchair, and he sat on the coffee table in front of her.
So close. So palpable a temptation.
“They managed to get someone inside The Gates—Marty Tucker, I presume—but he was inside before you got there. They don’t assume their limited success with Tucker can be repeated, especially since you’re still there, sniffing out any possible traitors in your midst.”
“How do they know that?”
“They said Quinn’s not trying to hide that information. In fact, he made sure it got out through some of the information channels the BRI already knows are compromised.”
Olivia straightened, alarmed. “Quinn put information about me and my role at The Gates out there for the BRI to hear? Deliberately?”
“You didn’t know?”
She shook her head.
“See why I’m not sure we can trust your boss?” he asked softly.
She pressed her lips to a thin line, not ready to speak ill of Quinn to anyone, especially Cade Landry. But Quinn should have warned her, damn it! He’d deliberately made her a target by putting the information out there about her role at The Gates.
Was her life a bargaining chip in his plan to take down the BRI?
“He set you up as bait.” Landry’s voice was a soft growl.
“If you’re telling me the truth.”
“I am.”
She wished she could say she didn’t believe him. But the truth was, setting her up as bait without warning her was exactly the kind of thing Alexander Quinn would do. He was always, always about the bottom line. Get the job done whatever it took.
Even if what it took was putting one of his employees in the line of fire to set a trap.
“So they’re targeting me? Do they think he won’t find someone else to do what I’m doing?”
“They’re not going to kill you.”
“But you said I was a target.”
“You are. But remember when I said they were going to take you? I really meant take you. They’re looking to take you captive.”
“Why?”
“They seem to think they can use you to break someone.”
She frowned. “Someone? Who?”
Landry dropped his gaze, his expression enigmatic as he silently studied his hands for a long moment. When he finally looked up again, an unspoken question darkened his green eyes. “After listening in to Quinn’s conversation with you this afternoon, I think they’re planning to use you to get to him.”
“Why? Why do they think that would get them anything?”
He held her gaze, the questions in his eyes multiplying. “You tell me. I asked you this before, but you didn’t really answer. Is something going on between you and Quinn? Are you lovers?”
“No,” she answered bluntly. “I mean—”
His eyebrows quirked. “You mean?”
“We’re not lovers. But there have been times—” She swallowed with difficulty, suddenly overcome by the acute awareness that Alexander Quinn might have her cabin wired for sound. She took a bracing breath and continued. “There have been times I thought he wanted to be.”
“He’s in love with you?”
“I don’t think Quinn has ever loved anyone that way,” she said with a soft laugh. “But he’s a man.”
“And you’re a beautiful woman. Who seems very alone.”
She looked up at him. “I choose to be alone.”
“Why?” He shook his head. “You’re not a loner, Livvie. You enjoy being around other people. You like companionship.”
“That was two years ago. My life is very different now. For one thing, I’m too busy for relationships. My job is dangerous and thankless, and I don’t want to inflict that kind of stress on someone else.”
“Even one of your fellow agents at The Gates? They’re working the same stressful job. They understand the long hours, being on call—”
“Why are you pressing this issue? Do you want me to tell you I’ve moved on from you? I have. It was two years ago.” Her voice rose with emotion. “When I left the FBI, I didn’t look back. Are you happy?”
“No.” He stared back at her, his nostrils flaring. “No, I’m not happy.”
She snapped her mouth shut and looked away.
“I know I drove you away. To this day, I don’t know how to trust you again, but I have missed you every single moment. The smell of you haunts my dreams. I can close my eyes and conjure up a vivid memory of the sun glinting off your hair that long weekend we spent on Assateague Island. I can feel the thunder of horse hooves beneath my feet when that wild herd ran past us on the beach. I can remember the way your laugh rang in my ears like music.”
He hadn’t moved an inch closer, hadn’t reached out across the distance between them, but his voice caressed her, seduced her, until she felt a throb of desire pulsing low in her belly.
“I didn’t come here to get you back. Or ask for another chance,” he said in a deep growl that made her think of long, hot summer nights naked in his arms. “But I don’t know if I could keep on living if you weren’t.”
He moved then, rising to his feet and pacing across the room to the window. Outside, the snowfall continued, barely visible in the deepening dusk. Soon night would fall, silent and deep in the snowbound woods.
And she would be alone with the only man she’d ever let herself love.
She couldn’t stop herself from rising to join him at the window. He turned slowly to face her, his face half in shadow.
“They’re wrong,” she said. “The BRI, I mean.”
“About what?”
“Alexander Quinn might very well want to sleep with me. He might even feel some level of affection for me. But he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice my life if he believed it would serve justice in some way. That’s the sort of man he is. So if your friends in the Blue Ridge Infantry believe they can use me to control him in any way, they are sadly mistaken.”
“That won’t stop them from trying.”
She lifted her chin. “Let them try.”
His eyes narrowed as he held her gaze, studying her as if he’d never seen her before. “You’re different,” he murmured finally, reaching up to brush a piece of hair away from her cheek. His fingers lingered a moment, and she felt how work-roughened they’d become since the last time he’d touched her that way.
He dropped his hand to his side. “Do you trust me enough to give me back my weapon?”
Trust might not be the right word, she thought, but she was willing to take the risk. “Yes.”
He moved away from her to the rolltop desk and retrieved his pistol, reloading it with both speed and skill. “Any chance you have more 9 mm ammo around?”
“Of course.”
His gaze lifted to meet hers, a slow smile spreading over his face, carving dimples into his cheeks and taking a decade off his appearance. “Should’ve known.”
As she started toward the hall closet where she kept her extra weapons and ammunition, the lights went off, plunging the cabin into gloom relieved only by the dying fireplace embers.
“There goes the power,” she said with a sigh, detouring toward the hearth to coax the fire back to life.
“Wait,” he murmured as she reached for the poker. He was much closer than she’d expected; she hadn’t heard his approach.
“What?” she asked, her voice dropping to a near whisper.
“How sure are you that the snow caused the power to go out?”
“It’s not unusual during a snowstorm—”
He tugged her away from the window. “Or during a siege.”
Chapter Five (#ulink_98ab50f8-2a12-58c8-8001-818e2719b155)
Only the soft crackle of the smoldering fire and the quiet hiss of their respirations relieved the sudden blanket of silence that fell over the cabin. Outside, snow continued to fall quietly as Landry listened for any out-of-place noises.
Olivia moved away from the fireplace and picked up the Mossberg shotgun leaning against the wall by the desk. She slanted a quick look at Landry before she started toward the front door and grabbed the thick leather jacket that hung on a hook by the entry.
He caught up with her, closing his hand around her wrist. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She shook off his grasp and turned to look at him, her blue eyes glimmering in the low light. “I’m going outside to see if I can tell what knocked the power out.”
“Didn’t you hear a single word I said about a siege?”
“If there are people out there who want to take me captive, I’d rather get the fight over now than hide like a coward in the cabin.”
“Well, you’re not going out there alone.” He chambered a round in the P-11. “I’ll go first.”
“Why? Because you’re the guy?”
He angled a quick look at her. “Because you’re the target, and the target should never be the first person out the door.”
She frowned but stepped back. “You need a jacket.”
He backtracked and shrugged on the thick fleece coat he’d picked up earlier that day at the thrift store in Barrowville, hurrying in case she changed her mind about allowing him to join her.
But she waited for him at the door, her gaze drawing him all the way in as he closed the distance between them. She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as he was, and if anything, she looked even stronger and fitter than she’d been when they’d worked together in the FBI.
They’d always been a good team, right until the case that had broken them. He hoped the old instincts would kick back in for them now, despite all that had passed between them, because if there really were people out there lying in wait for Olivia, it would take all their skills and a whole lot of luck to make it out of the situation unscathed.
An icy blast of air greeted them as they stepped out onto the cabin porch. Wind had swirled snow beneath the porch roof, depositing about two inches halfway onto the porch’s weathered wooden floor.
Landry paused at the top of the porch steps and surveyed the cold white expanse in front of him. If there had been anyone moving around out here in the past little while, they hadn’t come close to the porch. The snowfield was pristine and undisturbed.
“The snow probably knocked a branch on a wire somewhere between here and the nearest transformer.” Olivia’s low voice, only inches from his ear, sent a ripple of pure sexual awareness darting down his spine.
He turned to look at her. “We should check all the way around the house before we let down our guard.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t protest as he led her down the steps into the thickening snow. Almost five inches covered the ground, even more gathering at the edges of the porch where the wind had blown the snow into rising drifts. It was a soft, wet snow, flattening under his boots as they slowly circled the cabin, looking for any signs of intruders.
But nothing had disturbed the snow around the cabin, save for a small set of tracks belonging to what he guessed was probably a foraging raccoon, looking for a meal.
“It was just the snow,” Olivia murmured, giving him a nudge toward the front of the cabin.
He trudged back through the tracks they’d left in the snow and nodded for her to precede him up the porch steps. She climbed the steps with a soft sigh he recognized as a sign of impatience and turned to face him when he joined her in front of the door.
“Fine,” he said. “It was just the snow. This time.”
Olivia shook the slush from her boots and opened the cabin door to head inside. He knocked the snow from his own boots before he followed her in.
She closed and locked the door behind him, shrugging out of her damp coat. “Are we going to do this every time you hear a noise you can’t identify?”
He tamped down a flood of annoyance. “If I think it’s necessary.”
She released another sigh as she hung the coat back on its hook. “Okay, fair enough. Let’s get the fire cranked up. I’m freezing.”
He took off his coat and hung it on the hook beside hers. “How can I help? Need more wood?”
“It’s in a bin by the back door. Straight down the hall.”
He found the wood bin and grabbed a couple of pieces for the fire then returned to the front room. He found Olivia kneeling in front of the hearth, adding newspaper as kindling to the charred logs still glowing faintly red. He added the wood to the fire and looked around for matches.
Olivia reached into a small steel canister on the mantel and withdrew a narrow fireplace lighter. “Here.”
He touched the butane flame to the kindling. It ignited with a soft whoosh, and the logs soon caught fire, emitting a delicious wave of heat into the room.
“Nice,” Olivia murmured, extending her hands toward the flames.
He pulled the room’s two armchairs close to the fire. “Sit.”
She did as he said, leaning toward the warmth. “Thanks.”
He sat in the chair next to her, holding his icy fingers toward the fire until some of the numbness subsided. “No, thank you.”
“For what?”
“For extending a little Southern hospitality to a poor, weary traveler?” he suggested with a smile.
Her lips curved in response. “You didn’t give me a lot of choice.”
“Maybe not. But I am grateful to be here in front of this fire instead of out there in all that cold white stuff.”
Olivia fell silent, her gaze directed at the flickering fire. Settling back in the chair, Landry allowed himself to study her profile, take in the lean lines of her body only partially hidden by her sweater and jeans. His earlier observation was correct; she was in excellent shape. She’d always been a curvy woman, and that hadn’t changed, but the curves were matched with toned muscles and an overall look of vibrant health.
Leaving the FBI and going to work for The Gates seemed to have been good for her, at least physically.
But what about her spirit? The Olivia Sharp he’d known and loved had been a firecracker, full of explosive energy and a fierce inquisitiveness that had taken her very far very fast in the FBI.
But not this woman in front of him. She was quiet, contemplative and remarkably still.
She stirred as he watched her, turning her gaze to him. “I could heat up some milk over the fire for hot chocolate. Or even water for coffee, if you’d prefer that—”
“You’ve changed.” He hadn’t meant to blurt the words aloud, but he couldn’t take them back.
Her eyelids flickered and she looked away. “So have you.”
Now that he’d started down this conversational path, he decided, he might as well go all in. “Are you happy?”
“I’m...content.”
He felt an ache settle in his chest at the hint of melancholy in her tone. “Is contentment enough?”
“For now.”
“Do you anticipate finding more than contentment at some point in the future?”
She slanted a look his way. “Why don’t you just come out and ask whatever it is you want to know?”
“Do you miss me?” He clamped his mouth shut as soon as the words escaped his lips. He hadn’t intended to ask such a blunt, self-serving question.
“Yes.” Her answer, equally blunt, caught him by surprise.
They fell quiet, letting the crackle of the fire fill the lingering silence. Landry wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she spoke again, but the flames in the hearth had already begun to die down.
“I loved you. Like I’d never loved anyone in my life.” Her gaze remained directed forward, toward the fireplace, the flickering light from the flames bathing her face in a warm glow. “When things fell apart, I had to keep going. Keep working the job, not let the loss derail me. But I just couldn’t keep going, day in and day out, working alone when I’d gotten so used to you being there.”
The ache in his chest intensified. “I’m sorry.”
“You’d been transferred by then. It’s not like we’d have been working together anyway.”
“I was a mess,” he admitted. “It was hard to care about anything for a long time. I worked the job, but it just didn’t mean anything to me anymore.”
“I heard you’d started going through the motions.”
Guilt flooded him, hot and sour. “I did. Much to my shame. I don’t really have an excuse. I just knew I wasn’t ever going to get any further up the ladder than I already was, and any screwup would probably be the end of the line for me.”
“Easier to keep your nose clean if you’re not rocking the boat.”
“Yeah. I guess. I’m not sure I gave it that much thought. It’s just—nothing meant anything. Every time I cleared a case, three more would pop up to take their place. Bureaucratic crap kept creeping further and further down the line into the field offices. We were dealing with federal-level politics in the Johnson City RA, for Pete’s sake.”
“Why didn’t you just leave the FBI, then?”
“And do what? I spent over a decade solving crimes and protecting lives. It’s all I really know how to do at this point.”
“You could have come to work for Quinn at The Gates, for one thing.” She picked up the fire poker and gave the logs a nudge.
“I wasn’t ready.” He stopped short as she snapped her gaze up to meet his.
“You weren’t ready to work with me again.”
“That’s not it, exactly.”
She turned back to the fire. “Then what is it?”
“I know Ava Trent probably didn’t have anything good to say about me. Or McKenna Rigsby, either. But my job was to watch their backs, and I didn’t want to leave them in the lurch.”
“So you stayed for your partners?” She arched an eyebrow but still didn’t look at him.
“I wanted my job to mean something again. I thought if I stuck around, if I did what it took to get through the day, I’d feel that fire again.” He shook his head. “As if that fire came from outside of me.”
She remained silent for a long time, her singular focus on the flickering fire beginning to make him squirm inside. The Olivia Sharp who’d been his partner, in his work life and his personal life, had been a vibrant force of nature. Quiet contemplation had never been her style.
Maybe that woman really was gone. Maybe he’d lost her in the aftermath of the Richmond debacle just as surely as he’d lost himself.
“I never understood why you couldn’t forgive me for not remembering what happened.” Her low murmur seemed loud in the snowbound hush of the cabin, yet he was certain he’d misunderstood her.
“What?”
She slowly turned her gaze to meet his, her blue eyes blazing with a mixture of anger and pain. “I had a head injury. I couldn’t remember anything that happened right before or right after the explosion. But you seemed to think I should be able to pull those memories out of nothing to prove you weren’t lying. That wasn’t fair.”
“It wasn’t what you couldn’t remember that was the problem. It’s what you told the investigators.”
Her brow furrowed. “I didn’t tell them anything. I couldn’t. I didn’t remember anything.”
“Yet you somehow managed to remember me pushing you and the other team members to disobey the hold order.” His voice sharpened.
“I did no such thing.”
He shook his head. Why was she denying it? Did she think he hadn’t learned what she’d said in her official statement?
The agents who’d interrogated him had shown him a transcript of her testimony, signed off by Olivia, that had laid the whole mess on his shoulders.
Surely she remembered what she’d told the investigators. The words were certainly burned in his mind— “Agent Landry believed that waiting would allow the hostage-takers to escape, so he decided to countermand the official orders and go into the building.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.” He was starting to feel sick, his dinner roiling in queasy waves in his gut. “It doesn’t matter.”
Her lips flattened with anger. “You’re right—it doesn’t. The real problem is that you never trusted me. Not really.”
How could he argue with her? His lack of faith—in anyone and anything—had long preceded Olivia’s presence in his life.
He closed his eyes. “You, of all people, know why I didn’t trust anyone easily.”
Her fingers closed around his jaw, tugging his face around, forcing him to open his eyes and look into her pain-filled gaze. “I am not her. I never was. I never will be.”
He didn’t know what to say in response. She was right. Of course she was right. And yet...
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Paula Graves
Coming in from the cold had never been so heated by an old attractionOn the run for two years, ex-FBI agent Cade Landry has only one person he can turn to: Olivia Sharp, his former partner—and lover. But after all this time, trusting the beauty is sure to put both their lives on the line. Taking that risk, Cade braves a raging storm to seek her help. The moment they're reunited, and with no time to explore their reignited passion or the case that tore them apart, they must focus on bringing a band of domestic terrorists to justice. Hurtling them through snow-choked mountains into harrowing danger, Cade feels the pressure of what's at stake: his future, Olivia's life…and a love that never died.
“Are you really here?” she asked, feeling immediately foolish.
“Feels a little unreal, doesn’t it?”
She nodded. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” He lifted her hand to his mouth, brushing his lips.
“I used to have dreams of you. That you were beside me again … sitting close enough that I could feel the warmth of your body by mine. Hear your breathing. And then I’d wake up and—” He let go of her hand and dropped his own hands to his knees. “Doesn’t matter. Here you are. Warm and breathing.”
She caught his hand, holding him in place. “Don’t go.”
He looked down at her hand on his. When he spoke, his voice was a low rasp. “Are you sure you want me to stay?”
She knew what he was asking.
“Know what I missed?” His voice deepened. Roughened.
Her heartbeat sped up immediately in response. When she spoke, her own voice sounded breathless. “What?”
“This.” He leaned forward, closing the space between them, and touched his mouth to hers.
Smoky Mountain Setup
Paula Graves
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
PAULA GRAVES, an Alabama native, wrote her first book at the age of six. A voracious reader, Paula loves books that pair tantalizing mystery with compelling romance. When she’s not reading or writing, she works as a creative director for a Birmingham advertising agency and spends time with her family and friends. Paula invites readers to visit her website, www.paulagraves.com (http://www.paulagraves.com).
For my chat pals, Kelly, Jenn and Donna.
Thanks for keeping me laughing.
Contents
Cover (#uaba6334c-8f2b-522d-bf98-ac3f01e9cc3d)
Introduction (#u8c37c0a2-b9df-5363-9a32-ff1a9f2d8375)
Title Page (#ud96b9796-cbfe-52b3-9ab1-379f052d8852)
About the Author (#u8f6cd933-74c0-5fa3-bfb5-81cf5d022a94)
Dedication (#u2b363489-263d-5844-b731-4dfaa6b740ca)
Chapter One (#u7b7fb0f0-08a7-58c0-a3b6-cdb2f7995db0)
Chapter Two (#u58173cb9-8e07-5a71-bb07-6e209a9a77cf)
Chapter Three (#u699ddb6d-4b13-5cd0-957a-c338e70b480f)
Chapter Four (#u547310df-b4f7-52e2-999a-dd5b4268288f)
Chapter Five (#u067c6f8a-2c67-518c-9ec6-4ef8fcf96483)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_9d9d2dc7-6b05-557b-ae3e-d28b1ed65ea6)
The ligature marks on his wrists had long since healed, but the stinging phantom pain of the raw spots the shackles had chafed into his skin sometimes caught him by surprise. Odd, he thought, given the other injuries he’d sustained during his month of captivity, that those superficial wounds were the ones to continue tormenting him.
He’d had cracked ribs, for sure. A dislocated shoulder he’d been forced to reduce himself, since the rough men who’d taken him captive hadn’t cared much about his comfort.
Cade Landry had escaped on the thirty-first day of his captivity, and he’d been running ever since.
Given the icy chill in the air and the heavy clouds overhead threatening snow, he should have headed south to Mexico instead of wandering around the Southern Appalachians while he tried to figure out what to do next. He could be sipping cerveza on a beach somewhere, flirting with pretty cantina waitresses and soaking up the tropical sun.
It wasn’t as if he had any kind of life to get back to now.
And still, somehow, he’d never completely given up on the idea of clearing his name, though he’d spent the past several months avoiding the issue altogether.
No more. It was time to see if there was anything left of his life to reclaim.
Clouds overhead obscured the sun he’d been using as his compass, but he was pretty sure he was still headed west, which would take him out of these mountains sooner or later. Sooner if he was on the Tennessee side, later if he was in North Carolina.
Either way, he was heading for Purgatory.
Where she was.
You don’t know if you can trust her anymore.
Maybe not, he conceded to the mean little voice in the back of his head. But she was the best shot he had.
He squinted up at the gray sky overhead, enough sunlight still filtering through the clouds to make his pupils contract. Definitely still headed west, he decided, but he hoped he’d reach civilization sooner rather than later. He had to make a stop in Barrowville first. He’d made a point to shave that morning, to clean up and look his most presentable. Maybe he’d get lucky and somebody would give him a ride into town.
The money he’d hidden away before his abduction had still been there when he’d escaped, thank God, but months of living under the radar had taken a toll on his cash reserves. He needed to see if the money they’d put away a couple of years ago was still in the bank. It was a risk, but one he had to take if he wanted to get through the long, cold winter.
Technically, the account was in her name, but he was on the account, as well, and as far as he knew, she’d never closed it out.
Maybe it had been as hard for her to let go as it had been for him.
Landry could tell from the color of the sky and the chill in the air that snow was coming, and he’d lived in eastern Tennessee long enough to know that snowstorms in the Smokies could rise up fast, like a rattlesnake, and strike with power and fury.
Just like the men he’d escaped.
* * *
OLIVIA SHARP POKED at the fire behind the grate and wrapped her sweater more tightly around her shoulders. Winter in the Smoky Mountains had so far proved to be a cold, damp affair, but tonight they were supposed to get the first snow of the season for the lower elevations.
Growing up on Sand Mountain in Alabama, she’d seen snow now and then, but rarely enough to blanket everything and shut a person in for more than a day or two. But the TV weathermen out of Knoxville were calling for as much as a foot and a half in the higher elevations, and the lower elevations could expect five or six inches by morning.
She was safe and snug, tucked in with about a week’s worth of background checks to read through. In a company like The Gates, which specialized in high-stakes security cases, everything lived or died on the quality of personnel who worked the cases and kept the company running at peak performance, and the CEO, Alexander Quinn, had put her in charge of profiling prospective hires.
She was lucky to still have a job at all, she knew. Her first big job at The Gates had been a spectacular failure. Tasked with finding a traitor in their midst, she’d failed to smoke him out until it was nearly too late. Quinn would have been well within his rights to terminate her employment on the spot, but he’d given her another chance.
She had no intention of screwing up again.
She had made it through three files and was starting a fourth when her cell phone rang. No information on the display, which usually meant her caller was Quinn or another agent who didn’t want his identity revealed. “Sharp,” she answered.
“Hey, Olivia, it’s me.” The distinctive mountain drawl on the other end of the line belonged to Anson Daughtry, the company’s IT director and one of the people who’d saved her bacon during the investigation into the mole at The Gates, mostly by putting his own ass on the line.
Of course, he’d had a good incentive—the pretty payroll accountant he’d fallen hard for had been right in the middle of the danger.
“I thought you were on your honeymoon.”
“I am.” She could almost hear him grinning. “Ginny says hi.”
“Hi, Ginny.” She couldn’t stop her own smile. She might like to play the role of a tough woman of action, but two good people crazy in love still had the capacity to make her go all squishy inside. “Seriously, Daughtry, why are you calling me on your honeymoon?”
“You remember that bank account you asked me to start monitoring for activity a few months ago?”
She sat up straighter, the muscles of her stomach tightening. “Of course.”
“I got an alert in my email. Someone accessed the account a little after one. Withdrew five thousand dollars.”
Olivia glanced at the clock over the mantel. About an hour ago. “Any idea what branch?”
“That’s the interesting thing,” Daughtry said. “It was the one in Barrowville.”
“Oh.” A cool tingle washed over Olivia’s body, sprinkling goose bumps along her arms and legs. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”
“Is there anything else you need me to do?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I just needed the information.”
She could tell from Daughtry’s thick silence that he had questions about her request and what the information he’d just imparted to her meant. But she simply said, “Thanks. Go enjoy your honeymoon,” and hung up the phone before he could ask anything else.
She could be in Barrowville in fifteen minutes. Ten if she drove fast, although the first flurries had already begun to fall outside her cabin window.
No. He wouldn’t still be there an hour later. And the information she needed from whichever bank teller had handled the transaction, she could get over the phone.
She looked up the phone number for the bank and made the call, finally reaching the teller in question after a long wait. “How can I help you?”
“My name is Olivia Sharp. I have an account at your bank.” She rattled off the account number she’d memorized ages ago. “I just received an alert that some of the money has been accessed and you were the teller who handled the transaction.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the teller answered. She sounded young and worried.
“He gave his name as Cade Landry?”
“Yes, ma’am. He had the right identification and he knew the account number. He’s on the account.”
“I’m sure you handled things by the numbers. I just need to know if you remember what he looked like.”
The teller was silent for a moment, long enough for Olivia to fear the connection had been lost. But as she was opening her mouth to speak, the teller answered her question. “He was tall. Dark hair. Nice eyes. I don’t remember what color, just that they were nice. Friendly, you know?”
Olivia knew about Landry’s nice eyes. She knew their color, as well, a soft hue somewhere between hazel and green. “What about his build?”
“His build?”
“You know—heavy, slim—”
“Oh, right. It was...nice. You know, he looked good.” There was a nervous vibration in the teller’s voice. “Built nice.”
“Athletic?”
“Yes, definitely. He looked athletic.”
Olivia closed her eyes. “What about his voice? Low? Medium? Did he have an accent?”
“It was deep, I’m pretty sure. And he didn’t have an accent, exactly. I mean, he was from down here somewhere.”
“Down here” meaning the South, Olivia assumed. If it was really Cade Landry, he’d have spoken with a Georgia drawl. “I see.”
“Is there a problem? Our files show Mr. Landry is still authorized to withdraw funds from the account.” The teller was starting to sound worried. “Should I put the bank manager on the phone?”
“No,” Olivia said quickly. “Mr. Landry is authorized to withdraw funds. I just wasn’t aware he was planning to. Thank you for the information.” She hung up the phone and tugged her sweater more tightly around her, trying to control a sudden case of the shakes.
So, someone claiming to be Cade Landry, someone who fit his description and spoke with a Southern accent, had withdrawn $5,000 out of a savings account she’d set up almost two years ago, back when the relationship between her and her FBI partner had been going strong.
Before the disaster in Richmond.
But if it really was Landry who’d withdrawn the money from the account, where the hell had he been for the past year?
* * *
THE CHILL IN the air had grown bitter as the cold front rolled in, sending the temperature plunging. Overhead, clouds hung low and heavy, threatening snow.
The bank in Barrowville hadn’t given him any trouble with the withdrawal, so clearly Olivia hadn’t removed his name from the account.
Maybe that was a good sign.
He pedaled harder as the newly purchased thrift-store bike started uphill on Deception Lake Road. Getting her new address had been easy enough—he’d asked for and received the latest copy of the bank statement, which included her home address in Purgatory, Tennessee.
It had been a little too easy, really. What if he’d been an ex-boyfriend stalking her?
Isn’t that sort of what you are? The mean voice in his head was back.
Fine, he thought. I’m her ex-boyfriend. And I’m about to drop by her place unannounced. And I’m armed.
But the last thing he’d ever do was hurt Olivia, no matter how badly she’d hurt him. He just needed to talk to her. He might not be sure he could trust her, but he knew there was nobody else he could trust.
He’d learned that painful truth the hard way.
By the time he reached the turnoff to Perdition Gap, sleet had begun to fall, making crackling noises where the icy pellets hit the fallen leaves blanketing the roadside. He picked up speed as the road dipped downhill toward the narrow gorge cut into the mountains by Ketoowee River, hurried along by the bitter westerly wind that drove sleet like needle pricks into his bare cheeks.
He’d made his choice. Set himself on a course it was too late to alter, at least for today. Snow was coming, and he had to find shelter soon.
And the cabin looming out of the curling fog ahead was his only choice, for good or for bad.
There was a car parked on the gravel driveway, the same sleek black Mazda she’d driven when they had been together. It gave him pause, the sight of something so achingly familiar in a world that had turned alien on him almost two years ago.
He dismounted the bicycle and walked it slowly up the driveway, still staring at the Mazda, noting a tiny ding in the right front panel that hadn’t been there the last time he’d seen it. And there was a small parking decal on the front windshield, as well.
The sound of a door opening drew his gaze back to the house.
She stood there in the doorway, dressed in jeans and a snug blue sweater that hugged her curves like a lover. In one hand she held a Mossberg shotgun at her side. He knew from experience that she could whip that thing up and fire before he could reach for the pistol tucked in his ankle holster, so he froze in place.
He realized he could see her better than she could see him. He was bundled up against the cold and damp, a scarf wrapped around the lower part of his face and a bike helmet perched atop his head.
“Hey there, Sharp.”
She stopped short.
“Sorry to drop by without calling,” he added, moving slowly toward her again, pushing his bike closer to the cabin.
She took a few steps closer to the porch steps, a tall, fierce warrior of a woman blocking the entry. “So it was you at the bank.”
He stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up at her. God, she was beautiful, he thought, taking in the perfect cheekbones, the snapping blue eyes and the windblown blond waves framing her face. She’d cut her hair since they’d worked together. The short style suited her.
“It was,” he admitted. “I was afraid you’d closed the account, but I thought I’d take a chance.”
“Is that how you found me? Through the bank?”
“Your address was on the account.”
“And you found a way to get the teller to show it to you.” The faintest hint of a smile made the corners of her mouth twitch.
“I did.”
She took a deep breath and released it. “But now you’ve left a paper trail. You have to know it won’t take long for people to connect you to me and come looking for you.”
“It was a calculated risk.” He was beginning to feel a potent sense of unreality, standing here in the cold, gazing at a woman he’d once loved more than anyone or anything in his life.
Sometimes, he thought he still did.
“You should turn yourself in.”
“Already tried that,” he said bluntly, the heat of old anger driving away some of the cold. “Ended up chained in a backwoods cabin for a month. You’ll forgive me if I’m not eager to try it again.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”
“No. Believe me, there was nothing funny about it.” The phantom sting in his wrists returned. He tried to ignore the sensation, hating the frisson of dread that jolted through him each time he experienced the burning pain.
“You look cold.”
He couldn’t stop a wry laugh, looking around him at the light snowfall. “You think?”
She made a huffing noise but stepped back, opening a path to her door. “Get inside before you freeze.”
He grabbed the used duffel full of thrift-store clothes and climbed the stairs slowly, keeping an eye on her and her Mossberg. She didn’t look as if she was inclined to shoot him where he stood, but a lot had changed between them since Richmond.
She entered the cabin, leaving the door open for him. A wave of delicious warmth washed over him when he entered, and he quickly closed the door to shut out the cold.
As he started to turn around, he felt cold steel against his neck.
“Put your hands on the door where I can see them.” Olivia’s voice was calm and cool. “And spread your legs.”
“I’m armed,” he warned her as he dropped the duffel bag and complied.
“I figured as much.” She started to pat him down, her hands moving quickly over his arms, then slowing as she reached his waist. He couldn’t quell a shiver of pure sensual awareness as she slid her hands over his hips. “You’ve lost weight.”
“Meals have been hard to come by recently.”
She discovered the pistol stashed in his ankle holster and relieved him of it. “Where have you been?”
“Here and there.” He felt her retreat, cool air replacing the warmth of her body. “Can I turn around now?”
“Knock yourself out.”
He turned to find her emptying the magazine of his Kel-Tec P-11 onto a rolltop desk by the wall. His duffel bag was on the floor by her feet. “Is that really necessary?” he asked with a nod toward the pile of ammunition.
“For now.” She removed the round in the chamber and added it to the pile of ammo on the desk before she set the pistol down and turned her cool blue gaze on Landry. “Why did you come here?”
“Nice seeing you again, too, Sharp. It’s been such a long time.”
She shook her head, her eyes narrowing. “You disappeared nearly a year ago after McKenna Rigsby’s undercover mission went very wrong. At least one corrupt FBI agent has gone missing, and the Bureau is scrambling like crazy to find out what other agents might be compromised. You are on the top of their list.”
“I know.”
“And yet, here you are. Did you think I would just turn a blind eye to the fact that you’re wanted by the FBI for questioning?”
She was magnificent when she was angry. Always had been. Her blue eyes took on an amazing electric hue, and the atmosphere around her crackled with energy. He felt drawn to her, despite himself, and took a helpless step forward. “Livvie—”
“Don’t.” She held up her hand, a pained look replacing the fire in her eyes. “Please don’t call me that.”
“I know you have questions. But I’ve spent the last two hours riding a bicycle in the bitter cold. I’m tired. I’m freezing. I haven’t eaten since yesterday. It’s snowing out, and I need shelter. Food, if you can spare any. In exchange, I’ll tell you everything I’ve been doing for the past two years, and if you still want to turn me in to the FBI after that, then fine. I’ll accept that. Because I’m sick to death of running.”
Her forehead creased as she considered what he’d just said. “You’ll turn yourself in if I say so?”
He nodded, meaning it. He hadn’t realized it until he saw her again, but he really was through running. He’d trusted the wrong person once and lost his freedom for a month—and damned near lost his life in the process.
But he had to trust someone, or what was the point of going on? He couldn’t keep living under the radar forever.
And he’d already gone nearly two years without seeing Olivia Sharp. There had been a time when he couldn’t have imagined such a thing, couldn’t have considered even a week without her, much less a lifetime without her spreading out in front of him as far as the eye could see.
“Were you working with the Blue Ridge Infantry?” she asked, breaking the tense silence between them.
He met her gaze, took a deep breath and answered the question with the truth.
“Yes,” he said.
Chapter Two (#ulink_ec49a9c7-6071-5a58-9267-18013dc703cd)
Hearing Cade Landry admit what she’d spent the past year trying not to believe shouldn’t have felt like a kick in the teeth. But somehow, it did. It hit her hard enough that she took an involuntary step backward, her foot catching on the braided rug in the cabin’s entry.
As she started to lose her balance, Landry lurched forward and caught her before she could fall, his arms wrapping around her waist. His hands were cold—she could feel the chill through her sweater—but his touch sent fire singing through her blood.
He’d always had that effect on her. Even when he shouldn’t.
She pulled free of his grasp, steadying herself by clutching the edge of the desk. “How long?”
He stared at her, a puzzled expression on his face.
“How long did you work for the Blue Ridge Infantry?” When he didn’t answer right away, she added, “Are you still working for them? Is that why you came here?”
He took a deep breath and let it out in a soft whoosh. “I was never working for them.”
She shook her head, shock starting to give way to a fury that burned like acid in her gut. “Don’t play semantics games with me, Landry.”
His dark eyebrows arched, creasing his forehead. “Are you going to listen to what I have to say or should we just cut to the part where you call the cops to come haul my ass out of here?”
“The latter, I think.” She went for her shotgun.
He beat her there, jerking it out of her grasp. “Don’t,” he said sharply as she changed course, going for the P-11 she’d just emptied.
She froze in place, turning slowly to look at him. Something hot and painful throbbed just under her breastbone as she met his hard gaze. “Just get it over with.”
“I’m not what you think I am,” he said, lowering the Mossberg to his side. “That’s what I was trying to tell you.”
“You’ll forgive me if I have a little trouble believing you.”
His lips pressed to a thin line. “I was really hoping you, of all people, would look beyond the obvious.”
She pushed down a sudden flutter of guilt. “You don’t get to play the victim card. You’re the one who disappeared almost a year ago without telling anyone where you were going.”
“I did tell someone,” he said quietly, lowering the shotgun to the floor, still within his reach. “I told my SAC at the Johnson City RA that I had information the FBI needed to know about the Blue Ridge Infantry. And the next thing I knew, I was being bludgeoned and hauled to some backwoods hellhole and beaten to within an inch of my life.”
For a second she pictured what he was saying, imagined him tied up and pummeled by the vicious hillbillies who comprised the mountain militia known as the Blue Ridge Infantry, and nausea burned in her gut. She knew from her own investigations that the hard-eyed men who ran the so-called militia as a criminal organization were capable of great cruelty. If they’d ever lived by a code of honor, those days were long past.
Money and power drove them. In these hills these days, money and power too often came from drugs, guns and extortion.
“You told your SAC?” She repeated his earlier statement, trying to remember the name of the Johnson City resident agency’s Special Agent in Charge. “Pete Chang, right?”
He nodded. “I didn’t think he was corrupt. He’s a brownnoser, yeah, so maybe he told the wrong person the wrong thing. I don’t know.”
“You’ve been a prisoner all this time?” she asked, looking him over with a critical eye. “Take off your coat.”
He looked down at the heavy wool coat he was still wearing, a frown carving lines in his cheeks. “I wasn’t a prisoner the whole time,” he said gruffly as he unbuttoned the coat and shrugged it off. Beneath, he still wore a couple of layers of clothes—a long-sleeved shirt beneath a thick sweater—but while he looked leaner than she remembered, he definitely didn’t look as if he’d been starved for nearly a year.
“Then why didn’t you go to the FBI once you were free?”
“I just told you that the last time I told anyone with the FBI what I was doing, I ended up a prisoner of the Blue Ridge Infantry.” He pushed the sleeves of his shirt and sweater up to his elbows, revealing what they’d hidden until now—white ligature scars around both wrists.
Olivia swallowed a gasp. It was stupid to react so sharply to the scars—in the pantheon of injuries she’d seen inflicted in this ongoing war between the Blue Ridge Infantry and the good guys, the marks on Landry’s wrists barely registered.
It was what they represented—the loss of freedom, the indignity of captivity—that made her heart pound with sudden dread.
Or they could be a trick, she reminded herself sternly as she felt her resistance begin to falter. He could have inflicted the marks on himself to fool people into believing his story.
The fact remained, he’d just stood here minutes ago and admitted he’d been working with the Blue Ridge Infantry. And nobody who worked with the Blue Ridge Infantry was ever up to any good.
“What are you thinking?” Landry spoke in a low, silky voice so familiar it seemed to burrow into her head and take up residence, like a traveler finally reaching home after a long absence.
She fought against that sensation and gripped the edge of the desk more tightly. “That’s really none of your business.”
“You’re not curious?” he asked, his eyes narrowing as he took a step closer to her. “You don’t want to hear all the details?”
She held his gaze but didn’t speak.
“Or maybe you really don’t give a damn anymore.” He spoke the words casually, but she’d known him long enough to recognize the thread of hurt that underlay his comment.
“You’re the one who left,” she said.
“Are you sure I was the one?” He took another step toward her, and she tried to back away. But the wall stopped her.
“You packed your things and left.”
“You’d already left. Maybe not your body, but the rest of you—the part of you that really mattered—” He stopped his forward advancement, looking down at the rough planks of the cabin floor beneath his damp boots. “Doesn’t change the outcome, does it? We both walked away and didn’t look back, right?”
“Why did you come here?” she asked again, not because she believed he’d answer her any more truthfully than before, but because it was better than thinking about just how many times over the past two years, with how much regret, she’d looked back on the life she and Landry had once shared.
“Because I thought—” He looked up at her, pinning her to the wall with the intensity of his green-eyed gaze. “It doesn’t matter what I thought, does it? You’ve made up your mind about me. I get it.” He turned away, heading for the door.
She hurried forward and picked up the shotgun. “I didn’t say you could leave.”
He turned to look at her. “You’re going to shoot me to stop me?”
“If I have to.” She sounded sincere enough, even to her own skeptical ears. But her heart wasn’t nearly as sure.
She’d loved him once, as much as she’d ever loved anyone in her whole life. Hell, maybe she still did.
If he tried to leave, would she really pull the trigger to stop him from fleeing?
“You won’t shoot me,” he said softly. “At least, that’s what I want to keep believing. So I won’t put you in that position.”
“You’ll turn yourself in?”
He frowned. “I’d rather not. At least, not yet. There’s a lot I still need to tell you before you’ll understand exactly what we’re up against and why.”
“What we’re up against?”
He nodded. “I have to assume someone at that bank in Barrowville will remember the name Cade Landry. And why it’s so memorable. They’ll call the authorities to report my visit to the bank. And like you said, it won’t take long for them to connect us. We were partners, Olivia.” He moved toward her, walking with slow, sure deliberation. “Lovers.”
His voice lowered to a sensual rumble, bringing back a flood of memories she’d spent two years trying to excise from her brain. “Don’t.”
“It’s too late to undo it, Livvie. I took a risk coming here, and maybe I shouldn’t have.” He came to a stop just a few inches from where she stood, and she made herself remain in place, though the pounding pulse in her ears seemed to plead for her to run as far and as fast as she could.
Losing him once had nearly unraveled her. If she let him back into her heart—into her bed—again...
“I said I was working with the Blue Ridge Infantry, and that’s the truth. But it’s only part of it.” His hand came up slowly until his fingertips brushed her jawline, sending a shiver of sexual awareness jolting through her. “Did you know they were targeting The Gates?”
She swallowed with difficulty. “Of course. We’ve been trying to bring them down since Quinn first opened the doors of The Gates.”
“I’m not on their side, Olivia. That’s not what I meant by working with them—” He stopped midsentence, his head coming up suddenly. It took a moment for Olivia to hear what he’d obviously heard—a car engine moving up the road toward her cabin.
Landry moved away from her and crossed to her front window, sliding the curtains open an inch.
“Could be a neighbor,” she said quietly, suddenly afraid he was going to bolt, even though a few minutes earlier, she’d been hoping he’d leave and not look back.
It was just curiosity, she told herself, the need to know what he’d been starting to tell her about his connection to the BRI. It certainly had nothing to do with the way her jaw still tingled where he’d touched her or the quickened pace of her heart whenever she looked his way.
“They’re stopping here,” he said bluntly, turning back to look at her. She saw fear in his eyes, raw and wild, and realized she had only a few seconds to keep him from doing something reckless.
She pushed past him and looked through the curtains. The truck that had stopped outside her house was a familiar but, under the circumstances, not exactly welcome sight. “It’s Alexander Quinn.”
Landry groaned. “Your boss.”
She looked at him, wondering how much he knew about Quinn. “You said you’re not on the BRI’s side. Neither is Quinn. If you know anything about The Gates, you have to know that.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s going to turn a blind eye to the warrants out for my arrest.”
“You might be surprised.”
He shook his head and picked up his duffel bag. “I’m going out the back. Just give me a head start.”
She caught his arm as he started past her, not letting go even when he tried to tug free of her grasp. “Don’t run. Not yet. My bedroom is through that doorway. First room on the right. Let me find out what Quinn wants.”
Landry stared at her as if he were trying to read all the way through to her soul. Finally, the sound of footsteps on the front porch spurred him into action. He went through the doorway and veered right into her bedroom, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
Olivia took a deep breath just as Quinn knocked.
Showtime.
* * *
HER ROOM SMELLED like Olivia, that half-sweet, half-tart scent he’d never been able to identify as anything other than her own unique essence. For a few seconds all he could do was breathe, fill his lungs with that scent, store it away for another drought like the two years they’d been apart since he’d left Richmond—and Olivia—behind.
The bedroom was small and sparsely furnished—a bed, a chest of drawers and a small trunk at the foot of the bed. The bedding was simple and neat—two pillows in pale blue cotton cases, sheets that matched and a thick quilt that looked handmade.
Despite the tension running through him like currents of electricity, despite the muted sound of the door knock just a room away, Landry couldn’t stop himself from smiling. It faded quickly, but the flicker of sentiment remained—she hadn’t really changed in the past two years if she was still decorating with handmade quilts.
She made the quilts herself, a secret she’d kept from her fellow FBI agents with the ferocity of a mother bear guarding her den. “If you ever tell anyone about this,” she’d sworn when she’d finally let him in on her secret, “I will hunt you down and kill you.”
The sound of voices drifted down the hallway. The rumble of a male voice, barely discernible, followed by Olivia’s alto drawl.
“New bike?” the male voice asked.
“Picked it up at a yard sale,” Olivia answered.
Landry pressed his ear to the door, trying to hear the conversation more clearly.
“It’s a man’s bike,” Quinn said in a tone that was deliberately nonchalant.
“I bought it from a man,” she answered, a shrug in her voice. “Women’s bikes are usually too small for a woman my height.”
Good save, Landry thought.
“I got a call from Daughtry,” Quinn said, still sounding like someone making small talk. “He said you got a hit on some bank account you’d asked him to monitor.”
“That man doesn’t know the meaning of honeymoon, does he?” Olivia laughed softly, but Landry heard the faint strain of tension behind her words.
Did Quinn hear it, too?
“One of the reasons I hired him,” Quinn answered. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t ask a question.”
Still as smart-mouthed as ever, Landry thought.
“Whose account did you ask him to monitor?”
“Mine,” she replied. “I’ve been noticing some discrepancies in my bank statement, so I thought maybe someone had hacked my password for that account. It’s not a lot of money, but still.”
“So there’s someone tapping into your account? Why didn’t you just change the password?”
“That would only stop them from accessing the account. I wanted to catch someone in the act.”
“Did you?”
“Maybe. I have some feelers out.”
Landry didn’t hear anything else for several long seconds, not even an unintelligible murmur that would suggest they’d merely lowered their voices. The silence was unnerving. If he couldn’t hear them, he had no way of knowing where they were.
Or how close they were getting to his hiding place.
Come on, he thought. Start talking again.
“As much as I relish the screwball comedy potential of being snowed in with you, Quinn, you’re not going to be able to get that truck back down the mountain if you don’t make tracks in the next few minutes.”
“Now you’re just tempting me, Olivia.” There was a warmth to Quinn’s voice that made Landry’s gut tighten.
What the hell?
“Funny,” Olivia said, but there was no censure in her voice, only a soft amusement that made Landry want to kick down the door.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay here alone? A few of the agents are bunking down at the office for the duration. It’s a little college dorm for my tastes, but I think you can handle the frat-boy atmosphere if you’d rather tough it out in a crowd.”
“No, thanks,” she said with a laugh that was too friendly for Landry’s peace of mind. “I’ll be fine here. I have a load of résumés to go through and some housework I’ve put off for the past couple of months. But thanks for the concern.”
“Are you sure everything’s okay?” Quinn asked in a tone so quiet and intimate Landry had to strain to make out the words.
“Everything’s fine.”
“Olivia, I know you’re blaming yourself for how close Daughtry and Ginny came to losing their lives, but you’re not infallible. Nobody in this business is. We all make mistakes.”
Olivia’s response was spoken too quietly for Landry to hear. But Quinn’s next words gave him a pretty good idea what she’d said.
“There are a lot of ways to pay for mistakes. Sometimes your own conscience is the harshest judge of all. I think you’ve already given yourself more penance than I’d have ever suggested. That’s why I let you come up with your own punishment.”
“I would have fired me.”
“That’s why you’re not the boss.”
There was another long silence. Landry clenched his fists to keep from reaching for the door handle.
“Call if you need anything. I might know how to get my hands on a snowmobile.” Quinn’s voice, tinged with amusement, broke the silence, and Landry started breathing again.
He heard the door close and waited until he heard Olivia’s footsteps outside the door.
“Still in there?” she asked quietly.
He opened the door to face her. “I was contemplating escape.”
“He’s gone.”
“I heard.”
One sandy eyebrow arched over a sky blue eye. “You were eavesdropping?”
“Was there something you didn’t want me to hear?”
The other eyebrow joined the first, creasing her forehead. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He meant to change the subject, talk about what a bad idea it was for him to stick around the cabin with her in case her boss decided to come back to check on her in that snowmobile he’d mentioned. But those weren’t the words that came out of his mouth.
Instead, to his dismay, he asked, “What the hell is going on between you and your boss?”
Chapter Three (#ulink_ec94af0b-66d9-5c48-be12-15223915e6b2)
“You were right,” Quinn said. “He’s there.”
Anson Daughtry’s voice over the phone picked up a little static as Quinn eased his Ford F-150 pickup around a mountain curve. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Right now? Nothing. She’s going to be snowed in with him for a couple of days, and maybe she’ll get some information out of him.”
“Did you bug the place?” Daughtry’s question was delivered bone dry, but Quinn knew his IT director’s unfavorable opinion about eavesdropping, especially on employees at The Gates.
“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you,” Quinn answered just as drily.
“So, you’re just leaving her alone with him, without any way of knowing whether or not she might be in trouble?”
“She knows how to call for help if she needs it.”
Daughtry made a sound of pure frustration. “Don’t you think he’s dangerous?”
“I’m sure he’s dangerous. To someone. The question is, to whom?”
“So you’re just letting Sharp find out for you? In a snowbound cabin?”
“If I can’t trust my agents to handle themselves in dangerous situations with dangerous people, what the hell am I doing running a security firm?” Quinn had hired Olivia Sharp because everything he’d ever heard about her told him she was perfectly capable of holding her own in a high-risk situation. She’d been a member of an elite FBI SWAT team for six years, and in every dangerous situation he’d put her in since hiring her, she’d proved her mettle. “Sharp is every bit as dangerous as Cade Landry ever thought of being, and she doesn’t have any illusions where he’s concerned.”
“She was involved with him before.”
“What makes you think that?” Quinn asked carefully.
“I hear things.”
“Then maybe you heard that they’re no longer together. And that it ended badly. Which means she’s not going to assume his motives for showing up at her cabin in the middle of a snowstorm are entirely pure.”
“Love’s not that straightforward,” Daughtry said bluntly, in the tone of a man on his honeymoon.
“Let me worry about my agents, Daughtry. You worry about your wife. I’m sure she’s shooting you glaring looks by now, considering how long we’ve been on this call.” He pressed the end-call button on his phone and stifled a smile. One of his still-single agents had recently groused that the marriage bug was spreading like a contagion at the office, and Quinn couldn’t really deny it.
Take a pair of single, physically fit, energetic and bright people, toss them in the middle of a high-risk, high-stakes situation and step back, because sparks were going to fly. A lot of the time, those sparks fizzled out to nothing once the danger was over, but in some cases, his agents had made real connections with each other, the kind that had a chance to last a lifetime.
Quinn was about as far as a man got from being a romantic, but he’d learned a long time ago not to interfere when a man and a woman wanted to be together.
Very bad things could happen.
* * *
OLIVIA STARED AT Cade Landry, certain she’d misunderstood his question. Because there was no way in the world he’d just stood there and asked her what was going on between her and Alexander Quinn, as if it was any business of his. He wasn’t a fool or an idiot, and only one of those would stand here in her bedroom doorway, two years after walking out of her life without even a goodbye, and question anything at all about her personal life. Especially in that particular tone of outrage.
But here he was, gazing at her with green eyes blazing with fury, his jaw muscles tight and his nostrils flaring.
“We’re going to pretend you didn’t just ask me that question,” she said in a deceptively soft voice. But she could tell from the troubled look in Landry’s eyes that he heard the undertones of danger.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m in no position to question anything about your life.” He looked down and started to move around her, heading toward the front room.
“Where are you going?” She caught up with him as he was reaching for the unloaded pistol still lying on her rolltop desk.
“I shouldn’t have come here.”
She caught his hand, stopping him as he started to pick up the pistol. “Why did you come here? Why now?”
He looked down at her hand covering his, and she felt the muscles in his wrist twitch as he slowly turned to look at her. “Because I don’t know what to do next. And you were always my go-to.”
Her heart squeezed into a painful knot. “Even now?”
“Maybe especially now.” He eased his hand from her grasp. She made herself let go as he took a step past her, back toward the center of the room. “Maybe it’s better we’re more like strangers to each other these days. You can be objective about what I should do next.”
She couldn’t be objective about him, but she didn’t bother saying so. She needed to hear where he’d been and what he’d been doing for the past seven months.
“Look, why don’t you sit down in front of the fire? You still look cold.” She picked up the knit throw blanket draped over the back of the sofa and handed it to him. “Get warm. I’m going to heat you up a bowl of soup. You want a sandwich, too?”
He took the blanket but shook his head. “I didn’t come here for you to take care of me.” A look of frustration creased his face.
“Then why did you come here?” she asked softly when he didn’t continue.
“I needed to see you.” The words seemed to escape his mouth against his will. The look of consternation in his green eyes might have been comical under other circumstances.
But Olivia couldn’t laugh. She knew exactly what that raw ache of need felt like. She knew what it was like to wake in the middle of the night and feel compelled to reach out for someone who was no longer there beside her. For almost two years, she and Landry had been a unit. Inseparable.
She should have known it would never last. Forever was the exception in most relationships, not the rule. And with her family history, she should never have allowed herself to think she might be able to beat the odds.
“I wish you’d wanted to see me two years ago when I tried to reach you.”
Landry looked down, one hand circling his other wrist as if to soothe the scars that formed a circle there. “I should have listened to you when you tried to explain.”
“You were too angry.”
“I felt betrayed.”
Her heart ached at the pain in his voice, but she didn’t let herself fall into that morass again. She’d spent too much time blaming herself for Landry’s anger when there had been nothing else she could do but exactly what she’d done. “I’m sorry you felt betrayed. But short of lying about what I remembered, I couldn’t help you.”
His gaze snapped up. “I know. I expected too much.”
“You expected me to lie?”
He shook his head. “I expected you to believe me, without question. I thought you would know I was telling the truth, even if you didn’t remember.”
She stared back at him, guilt niggling at the back of her mind. “I do believe that you remember hearing an order to go into the warehouse instead of holding our position. But that’s not what you were asking me to say.”
He let out a gusty sigh. “I don’t know that I was really asking anything of you except your trust and belief in me. But you never could really give me that, could you? Not wholeheartedly.”
Guilt throbbed even harder, settling in the center of her chest. “You know blind trust is a problem for me. You knew that going in.” She looked up at him. “I warned you, Landry. And you said you could deal with it.”
“Because I thought you could.” He looked away from her, his gaze angling toward the window beside the fireplace. After a second she followed his gaze and saw that the snowfall was starting to reach blizzard proportion, whiting out everything around the cabin.
“The power probably won’t hold out much longer,” she warned him, moving toward the hall. “If you want something hot for dinner, we should heat it up while we still have electricity.”
He followed her down the short hallway to the kitchen at the back of the cabin. “I don’t want to put you out.”
“It’s soup from a can. I’ll heat it in the microwave. You’re not putting me out.” She pulled a large can of beef stew from the pantry and showed it to him. “How’s this?”
“It’s fine. Thank you. Can I help with anything?”
“Again, soup from a can, heated in the microwave.” She shot him a look of amusement. “Sit down, Landry. You look as if you rode a bicycle here all the way from Bitterwood.”
“Barrowville,” he corrected her with a wry grimace. “Which was a breeze compared to hoofing it here on foot from North Carolina.”
Olivia set the can on the counter and turned to look at him. “North Carolina?”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now, okay?” As he met her gaze, waning daylight cast his face in light and shadows, emphasizing how much older he looked now than the last time she’d seen him. The past two years had been hard on him. Aged him, left fine lines around his eyes and mouth.
“Okay,” she said quietly and returned to the task of preparing soup for their dinner.
He ate as if he hadn’t eaten in days, though, as she’d noticed before, he didn’t appear thin enough to have skipped too many meals over the months he’d been missing. Without being asked, she opened another can of soup and heated it up for him.
“Thank you,” he told her after he’d finished the second can of soup. “I haven’t had anything but protein bars and water for the past two days.”
She wanted to ask him what had happened to him, but there was a warning light in his eyes when she leaned toward him, as if he’d read her mind.
She sat back and finished her own soup slowly as he took his bowl and spoon to the sink and washed them. When he was done, he walked past the table and went to stand by the kitchen window to watch it snow.
“How long is the snow supposed to last?” he asked.
“It should snow all night. We should get about six or seven inches, and the temperature isn’t going to get above freezing for a couple of days after that. There’s a slight chance for more snow day after tomorrow, but the weather guys aren’t as sure about that.” So he hadn’t been near a television or radio in the past few days, either, she noted silently.
Just where the hell had he been all this time?
* * *
OLIVIA’S CABIN WAS large and tastefully rustic, but Landry had a feeling the place had come fully furnished. Outside of her bedroom, there was little in the cabin that reminded him of her apartment back in Richmond, a small loft apartment that she’d decorated in cool colors and clean lines. Even her beloved quilts had been stitched together in straight patterns, using fabrics in blues, greens and whites. Uncluttered and organized—that had been the Olivia Sharp he’d known and loved.
But he could tell she’d changed, just as he had. She’d left the FBI first, left him and his anger behind. He’d been both furious and hurt at first, but after what he’d gone through over the past few months, hanging on to resentment seemed pointless.
“I don’t have a spare bed.”
He looked up to find her standing in the living room doorway, holding another thick quilt like the one he’d seen on her bed. “You have a sofa. That’ll do.”
She handed him the quilt. It was another of her creations; he could tell by the geometric precision of the pattern.
“Still quilting?” he asked as she started to leave the room.
She stopped and turned to face him. “When I have time. Which isn’t often these days.”
He set the quilt on the sofa next to him and waved toward one of the armchairs across from where he sat. “You like working at The Gates?”
She sat and folded her hands in her lap. “I do.”
“Your boss seems very interested in your welfare.”
The look she sent slicing his way was sharp enough to cut.
“Sorry. Too soon?”
“Quinn takes an interest in all of his employees,” she said flatly.
“He’s trying to take down the Blue Ridge Infantry.”
She didn’t answer, her eyes narrowing.
“I’m not a traitor, Olivia.”
“You never told me how you got mixed up with the BRI.” She crossed her long legs and sat back, pinning him with a challenging stare. “I know you tried to help McKenna Rigsby when she was targeted by the Blue Ridge Infantry. You talked to one of our agents, tried to warn him about Darryl Boyle’s involvement with the BRI. But one question never really got answered, once you disappeared—”
“How did I know about Boyle?”
“Exactly.”
He tried to relax, as well, even though he suspected that some of Olivia’s placid composure was an act. He knew his unexpected arrival on her doorstep that afternoon had been a shock to her system, but as usual, she was trying not to let it show.
“I suspected, when Rigsby supposedly went rogue, that something very bad had driven her there. She struck me as a good agent. She sure as hell hadn’t joined the Blue Ridge Infantry—she hated them with a passion, hated everything they were doing and how they were twisting things like honor and patriotism for their own purposes.” He couldn’t hold back a smile remembering Rigsby’s tirades. “She vented to me. A lot. She was undercover, trying to get close to some of the female militia groupies, so she had to pretend she thought they hung the moon when she was with them.”
Olivia’s lips curved with amusement. “She’s so not groupie material.”
“So you know her.”
“I do.” She didn’t elaborate.
“Is she okay?”
Her smile faded. “She’s fine.”
“I didn’t get to find out what happened to her after she was taken.”
“Because you were grabbed by the BRI guys.”
God, he hated the skepticism in her voice, the hint of disbelief, as if he’d have disappeared for a year just for the hell of it. “You don’t believe me.”
“I never said that.”
He pushed to his feet. “You didn’t have to.”
She stood, as well, and caught his arm. “Don’t do this. I’m trying to understand what’s happened to you.”
“You’re looking at me as if I’m crazy. Is that what you think?”
“Of course not.” Her grip softened, her fingers sliding slowly down his arm to his wrist, where they settled against his scars. “I just need to know why you stayed away so long. Where have you been?”
“After I got away from the guys who took me, I headed east into North Carolina.” He gave a little tug of his arm and she let go of his wrist.
“Why east?” she asked.
“Because when I got out of that hovel where they were keeping me, that’s the way I was facing. So I ran and didn’t look back.” He looked down at his scarred wrists.
“Until now. Why did you come back now?”
He looked at her, saw the curiosity in those summer-sky eyes and blurted the truth. “Because you’re a target. And you needed to know.”
Chapter Four (#ulink_17b749ce-ba90-56fb-b8d5-989599f2be30)
“That’s why you’re here? You thought we didn’t know we were on the BRI’s hit list?” Olivia shook her head, not buying it. “I told you already. We know—”
“I don’t mean The Gates is the target,” Landry said in a quiet tone that made her chest ache. “I mean you, Olivia. The BRI is trying to get their hands on you.”
She stared at him, trying to read past the mirrorlike calm of his green eyes. “How would you know this? You said you hadn’t had anything to do with the BRI since your escape.”
“I didn’t say that.”
She thought for a moment and realized he hadn’t. She’d assumed it, given that the BRI had taken him hostage and, according to what he had told her, beaten him terribly to get information out of him.
“Maybe you should sit down and tell me what you know.” She waved at the sofa and sat facing him on the coffee table, crossing her long legs under her. “How do you know I’ve been targeted?”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The action brought him close to her, close enough to touch. All she’d have to do is reach her hand toward him and—
“I got away from the BRI. But I still know some people who lurk around the edges of that group. People who aren’t on the inside but are close to men who are.”
A cold tingle rippled through her. “Women, you mean. The groupies.”
“A couple. Also a few guys who sympathize with the stated goals of the group but don’t like their methods or trust that they’re what they say they are. There are a lot of people in these parts who’ve seen the mess government interference has made among their kinfolk and neighbors. You have multiple generations who’ve known nothing but life on welfare.”
“The draw,” Olivia murmured. At his quizzical look, she added, “That’s what people here call it. ‘The draw.’”
“They can’t live without it, but some of them hate what it’s turned them into, too.” He stood up and paced toward the fireplace, leaning toward the heat as if he’d felt a chill. “It makes it very tempting to hook up with people like the BRI.”
“I know.” She’d grown up poor herself. Had struggled to escape the cycle of poverty and bad choices that had haunted her family for a couple of generations. “People don’t want to feel victimized. Being part of the BRI gives them a sense of power.”
“There’s a young man I got to know over the past couple of months. Little more than a kid, really. We worked a few day labor jobs together over near Cherokee. His uncle is part of the Blue Ridge Infantry, but this kid is smarter than that. They keep trying to recruit him, but he resists. He’s saving up all his money, planning to go to a technical college over in Asheville.”
“He’s the one who told you the BRI is targeting me?”
“Not exactly.” Landry crossed to the coffee table and sat on the edge, facing her. He leaned closer, his gaze intense.
Once again, the desire to reach across the narrow space between them hit her like a physical ache. She curled her hands into fists and kept them in her lap. “Then what, exactly?”
“He got me into a meeting where they were planning their next move in the war against The Gates.”
She stared at him. “You were in a meeting with the BRI and they didn’t shoot you on sight?”
“Well, they didn’t know I was there,” he said with a grin that carved dimples in both cheeks, sending her heart into a flip. “The meeting was at his uncle’s place, and there’s a big vent in the den where they met. My friend lived with his uncle’s family for a while when his mama was in rehab a few years ago, and he found out that if you listen through the vent in his old bedroom, you can hear what they’re saying in that den clear as day.”
“He let you listen in? Does he know who you are?”
Landry shook his head. “I told him I was thinking of joining the BRI because I was tired of how the federal government was taking over every aspect of our lives. He sympathized, but he told me the BRI wasn’t the way to go. They were nothing but trouble and he could prove it.”
“By letting you listen in on a meeting.”
“Yes.”
“And you overheard them making a threat against me?”
“Not by name.”
“Then how do you know?”
“They called you Bombshell Barbie.”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “And that told you it was me?”
“No. What told me it was you was that one of them said you were dangerous as hell and wouldn’t go down without a fight. The combination of the two—the nickname and the statement about your fighting spirit—that’s what told me it was you.”
She stifled a smile, not sure she should feel quite as complimented as she did. “Bombshell Barbie, huh?”
He held up his hands. “I didn’t come up with it.”
“I know. I’m pretty sure a guy named Marty Tucker did. He was up to his nasty eyeballs in the BRI until he shot himself trying to escape a colony of bats.”
“Bats?”
“Long story. He lived. Now he’s in state prison, serving time for kidnapping and other assorted crimes. Sadly, he’s chosen to keep all his secrets about the BRI to himself, so we’re not any closer to bringing them down than we were before.” She frowned. “Matter of fact, they’ve been really quiet recently. No chatter coming out of there at all that we’ve heard.”
“Until now.”
“Until now.” She cocked her head. “How long have you known about this target on my back?”
“Two days.”
“And you didn’t think to call and warn me?”
He slanted a look at her. “You’d have believed it was me on the other line?”
“Probably not,” she admitted.
“I knew you’d need proof.”
“What kind of proof?”
“An audio recording of the BRI’s plans.”
An electric pulse of excitement zinged through her. “You have that?”
He shook his head. “Not on me. I didn’t want to risk getting caught with it. I put it in a safe place.”
“Where?”
“I can’t tell you that. Not yet.”
Her spine stiffened, and angry heat warmed her face. “You can’t tell me? I’m the one in danger and you can’t tell me?”
His gaze flicked around the cozy room. “How do you know this place isn’t wired for sound?”
“I check it periodically for bugs,” she said flatly, trying to control her frustration.
“Using what equipment? Something you got from work?”
“Yes.” She met his questioning look without flinching, even though she knew where he was going with the question. “And yes, I realize Quinn probably has a way to get around a bug detector he himself supplied. But I trust him with my life.”
Landry’s eyes narrowed and he pulled back. “Really? Well, I don’t.”
She bit back a protest and counted to ten. Landry had no reason to trust Quinn, after all. Or anyone else, she supposed, considering what he claimed he’d been through over the past few months. “Fair enough.”
“It’s safe for now.”
“But the BRI is still after me?”
He nodded, easing forward again. “I don’t know the timing of what they have in the works. I know only what they’re planning to do. What you need to look for.”
Another chill washed through her, raising goose bumps on her arms and legs. “Do you mean to keep that a secret, too?”
A small flicker in the corner of his eye was his only reaction to her blunt question. “No, of course not.”
“So what do I look for?”
“First, it’s not going to be your standard hit. No sniper shot, nothing like that.”
She had an unsettling sense of unreality, listening to Landry speak of her impending death as if it was just another case to be investigated. “Is that good news or bad news?”
His gaze snapped up to meet hers. “None of this is good news.”
“Right.”
He suddenly reached across the space between them, closing his hand over hers. As if he’d read her earlier thoughts, in an urgent tone he added, “This is not just another case for me, Livvie. No matter what happened between us two years ago, you will never, ever be just another case for me.”
As she stared at him, heat spreading through her from the point where his fingers had closed around hers, he let go and sat back, clearly struggling to regain his cool composure.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Go on.”
“They’re going to take you when you’re alone. So you need to make sure you’re never alone.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Look, I know your boss offered you the chance to stay at the office with some of the other agents. Maybe you should do that.”
She looked at the whiteout conditions outside the cabin window. “Too late for that.”
He followed her gaze. “I’m sure your boss could come up with some way to get you out of here.”
She shook her head quickly. “Landry, I’m safe enough here. For now, anyway. I’m armed and it’s not easy to get here in the snow. And you’re here, right?”
He nodded toward the rolltop desk. “But I’m unarmed.”
She met his warm gaze, trying to be objective, to put everything from their past, good or bad, out of her mind and just assess the situation as an agent.
He’d shown up unannounced, after having disappeared for nearly a year, and told her that he’d been working with the same dangerous militia group he now said had made her a target for assassination. But he’d come alone and warned her of the danger against her. He’d had the opportunity to hurt her earlier, when he’d got the drop on her with her Mossberg shotgun, but he’d done nothing to hurt her.
Was he trying to pull some sort of scam? Was this story about hillbilly assassins part of some bigger plan the BRI had hatched?
Or was he telling her the truth?
“Why?” she asked finally.
His eyebrows twitched upward. “Why did I come? I told you—”
She shook her head. “No—why has BRI targeted me specifically? Do you know?”
“They didn’t say. At least, not the part of their discussion I was able to overhear.”
“What about your friend? The kid whose uncle is a BRI member. Would he be able to find out why they’ve targeted me?”
“If I could get in touch with him, yes. But that’s very dangerous. Even more so for him than for me. He took a big chance letting me sneak in to eavesdrop on the meeting. If either of us had been caught...”
She quelled a shudder as her mind finished the sentence for him, in vivid, brutal images. She’d seen the lengths to which the BRI would go to carry out a plan. “I get it.”
“After the snow thaws, I’ll see if I can reach him. But I’ll have to be very careful.”
She pushed to her feet, nervous energy getting the better of her. “There has to be something I can do while we’re waiting. Research or something—”
He stood and crossed to her, closing his hands around her arms and pulling her to face him. His expression was fierce at first, but it softened when she met his gaze.
“I’ll tell you everything I can remember from what I overheard,” he said in a tone so earnest, so familiar, it made her heart ache. “This all has to be confusing and disturbing—”
“Don’t do that,” she murmured. “Don’t handle me.”
Slowly, he dropped his hands away from her arms, but the sensation of his touch lingered, making her feel jittery and unsettled. “Let’s sit down, okay? Take a second and breathe.”
He was still handling her, but at least he wasn’t touching her. She returned to the armchair, and he sat on the coffee table in front of her.
So close. So palpable a temptation.
“They managed to get someone inside The Gates—Marty Tucker, I presume—but he was inside before you got there. They don’t assume their limited success with Tucker can be repeated, especially since you’re still there, sniffing out any possible traitors in your midst.”
“How do they know that?”
“They said Quinn’s not trying to hide that information. In fact, he made sure it got out through some of the information channels the BRI already knows are compromised.”
Olivia straightened, alarmed. “Quinn put information about me and my role at The Gates out there for the BRI to hear? Deliberately?”
“You didn’t know?”
She shook her head.
“See why I’m not sure we can trust your boss?” he asked softly.
She pressed her lips to a thin line, not ready to speak ill of Quinn to anyone, especially Cade Landry. But Quinn should have warned her, damn it! He’d deliberately made her a target by putting the information out there about her role at The Gates.
Was her life a bargaining chip in his plan to take down the BRI?
“He set you up as bait.” Landry’s voice was a soft growl.
“If you’re telling me the truth.”
“I am.”
She wished she could say she didn’t believe him. But the truth was, setting her up as bait without warning her was exactly the kind of thing Alexander Quinn would do. He was always, always about the bottom line. Get the job done whatever it took.
Even if what it took was putting one of his employees in the line of fire to set a trap.
“So they’re targeting me? Do they think he won’t find someone else to do what I’m doing?”
“They’re not going to kill you.”
“But you said I was a target.”
“You are. But remember when I said they were going to take you? I really meant take you. They’re looking to take you captive.”
“Why?”
“They seem to think they can use you to break someone.”
She frowned. “Someone? Who?”
Landry dropped his gaze, his expression enigmatic as he silently studied his hands for a long moment. When he finally looked up again, an unspoken question darkened his green eyes. “After listening in to Quinn’s conversation with you this afternoon, I think they’re planning to use you to get to him.”
“Why? Why do they think that would get them anything?”
He held her gaze, the questions in his eyes multiplying. “You tell me. I asked you this before, but you didn’t really answer. Is something going on between you and Quinn? Are you lovers?”
“No,” she answered bluntly. “I mean—”
His eyebrows quirked. “You mean?”
“We’re not lovers. But there have been times—” She swallowed with difficulty, suddenly overcome by the acute awareness that Alexander Quinn might have her cabin wired for sound. She took a bracing breath and continued. “There have been times I thought he wanted to be.”
“He’s in love with you?”
“I don’t think Quinn has ever loved anyone that way,” she said with a soft laugh. “But he’s a man.”
“And you’re a beautiful woman. Who seems very alone.”
She looked up at him. “I choose to be alone.”
“Why?” He shook his head. “You’re not a loner, Livvie. You enjoy being around other people. You like companionship.”
“That was two years ago. My life is very different now. For one thing, I’m too busy for relationships. My job is dangerous and thankless, and I don’t want to inflict that kind of stress on someone else.”
“Even one of your fellow agents at The Gates? They’re working the same stressful job. They understand the long hours, being on call—”
“Why are you pressing this issue? Do you want me to tell you I’ve moved on from you? I have. It was two years ago.” Her voice rose with emotion. “When I left the FBI, I didn’t look back. Are you happy?”
“No.” He stared back at her, his nostrils flaring. “No, I’m not happy.”
She snapped her mouth shut and looked away.
“I know I drove you away. To this day, I don’t know how to trust you again, but I have missed you every single moment. The smell of you haunts my dreams. I can close my eyes and conjure up a vivid memory of the sun glinting off your hair that long weekend we spent on Assateague Island. I can feel the thunder of horse hooves beneath my feet when that wild herd ran past us on the beach. I can remember the way your laugh rang in my ears like music.”
He hadn’t moved an inch closer, hadn’t reached out across the distance between them, but his voice caressed her, seduced her, until she felt a throb of desire pulsing low in her belly.
“I didn’t come here to get you back. Or ask for another chance,” he said in a deep growl that made her think of long, hot summer nights naked in his arms. “But I don’t know if I could keep on living if you weren’t.”
He moved then, rising to his feet and pacing across the room to the window. Outside, the snowfall continued, barely visible in the deepening dusk. Soon night would fall, silent and deep in the snowbound woods.
And she would be alone with the only man she’d ever let herself love.
She couldn’t stop herself from rising to join him at the window. He turned slowly to face her, his face half in shadow.
“They’re wrong,” she said. “The BRI, I mean.”
“About what?”
“Alexander Quinn might very well want to sleep with me. He might even feel some level of affection for me. But he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice my life if he believed it would serve justice in some way. That’s the sort of man he is. So if your friends in the Blue Ridge Infantry believe they can use me to control him in any way, they are sadly mistaken.”
“That won’t stop them from trying.”
She lifted her chin. “Let them try.”
His eyes narrowed as he held her gaze, studying her as if he’d never seen her before. “You’re different,” he murmured finally, reaching up to brush a piece of hair away from her cheek. His fingers lingered a moment, and she felt how work-roughened they’d become since the last time he’d touched her that way.
He dropped his hand to his side. “Do you trust me enough to give me back my weapon?”
Trust might not be the right word, she thought, but she was willing to take the risk. “Yes.”
He moved away from her to the rolltop desk and retrieved his pistol, reloading it with both speed and skill. “Any chance you have more 9 mm ammo around?”
“Of course.”
His gaze lifted to meet hers, a slow smile spreading over his face, carving dimples into his cheeks and taking a decade off his appearance. “Should’ve known.”
As she started toward the hall closet where she kept her extra weapons and ammunition, the lights went off, plunging the cabin into gloom relieved only by the dying fireplace embers.
“There goes the power,” she said with a sigh, detouring toward the hearth to coax the fire back to life.
“Wait,” he murmured as she reached for the poker. He was much closer than she’d expected; she hadn’t heard his approach.
“What?” she asked, her voice dropping to a near whisper.
“How sure are you that the snow caused the power to go out?”
“It’s not unusual during a snowstorm—”
He tugged her away from the window. “Or during a siege.”
Chapter Five (#ulink_98ab50f8-2a12-58c8-8001-818e2719b155)
Only the soft crackle of the smoldering fire and the quiet hiss of their respirations relieved the sudden blanket of silence that fell over the cabin. Outside, snow continued to fall quietly as Landry listened for any out-of-place noises.
Olivia moved away from the fireplace and picked up the Mossberg shotgun leaning against the wall by the desk. She slanted a quick look at Landry before she started toward the front door and grabbed the thick leather jacket that hung on a hook by the entry.
He caught up with her, closing his hand around her wrist. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She shook off his grasp and turned to look at him, her blue eyes glimmering in the low light. “I’m going outside to see if I can tell what knocked the power out.”
“Didn’t you hear a single word I said about a siege?”
“If there are people out there who want to take me captive, I’d rather get the fight over now than hide like a coward in the cabin.”
“Well, you’re not going out there alone.” He chambered a round in the P-11. “I’ll go first.”
“Why? Because you’re the guy?”
He angled a quick look at her. “Because you’re the target, and the target should never be the first person out the door.”
She frowned but stepped back. “You need a jacket.”
He backtracked and shrugged on the thick fleece coat he’d picked up earlier that day at the thrift store in Barrowville, hurrying in case she changed her mind about allowing him to join her.
But she waited for him at the door, her gaze drawing him all the way in as he closed the distance between them. She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as he was, and if anything, she looked even stronger and fitter than she’d been when they’d worked together in the FBI.
They’d always been a good team, right until the case that had broken them. He hoped the old instincts would kick back in for them now, despite all that had passed between them, because if there really were people out there lying in wait for Olivia, it would take all their skills and a whole lot of luck to make it out of the situation unscathed.
An icy blast of air greeted them as they stepped out onto the cabin porch. Wind had swirled snow beneath the porch roof, depositing about two inches halfway onto the porch’s weathered wooden floor.
Landry paused at the top of the porch steps and surveyed the cold white expanse in front of him. If there had been anyone moving around out here in the past little while, they hadn’t come close to the porch. The snowfield was pristine and undisturbed.
“The snow probably knocked a branch on a wire somewhere between here and the nearest transformer.” Olivia’s low voice, only inches from his ear, sent a ripple of pure sexual awareness darting down his spine.
He turned to look at her. “We should check all the way around the house before we let down our guard.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t protest as he led her down the steps into the thickening snow. Almost five inches covered the ground, even more gathering at the edges of the porch where the wind had blown the snow into rising drifts. It was a soft, wet snow, flattening under his boots as they slowly circled the cabin, looking for any signs of intruders.
But nothing had disturbed the snow around the cabin, save for a small set of tracks belonging to what he guessed was probably a foraging raccoon, looking for a meal.
“It was just the snow,” Olivia murmured, giving him a nudge toward the front of the cabin.
He trudged back through the tracks they’d left in the snow and nodded for her to precede him up the porch steps. She climbed the steps with a soft sigh he recognized as a sign of impatience and turned to face him when he joined her in front of the door.
“Fine,” he said. “It was just the snow. This time.”
Olivia shook the slush from her boots and opened the cabin door to head inside. He knocked the snow from his own boots before he followed her in.
She closed and locked the door behind him, shrugging out of her damp coat. “Are we going to do this every time you hear a noise you can’t identify?”
He tamped down a flood of annoyance. “If I think it’s necessary.”
She released another sigh as she hung the coat back on its hook. “Okay, fair enough. Let’s get the fire cranked up. I’m freezing.”
He took off his coat and hung it on the hook beside hers. “How can I help? Need more wood?”
“It’s in a bin by the back door. Straight down the hall.”
He found the wood bin and grabbed a couple of pieces for the fire then returned to the front room. He found Olivia kneeling in front of the hearth, adding newspaper as kindling to the charred logs still glowing faintly red. He added the wood to the fire and looked around for matches.
Olivia reached into a small steel canister on the mantel and withdrew a narrow fireplace lighter. “Here.”
He touched the butane flame to the kindling. It ignited with a soft whoosh, and the logs soon caught fire, emitting a delicious wave of heat into the room.
“Nice,” Olivia murmured, extending her hands toward the flames.
He pulled the room’s two armchairs close to the fire. “Sit.”
She did as he said, leaning toward the warmth. “Thanks.”
He sat in the chair next to her, holding his icy fingers toward the fire until some of the numbness subsided. “No, thank you.”
“For what?”
“For extending a little Southern hospitality to a poor, weary traveler?” he suggested with a smile.
Her lips curved in response. “You didn’t give me a lot of choice.”
“Maybe not. But I am grateful to be here in front of this fire instead of out there in all that cold white stuff.”
Olivia fell silent, her gaze directed at the flickering fire. Settling back in the chair, Landry allowed himself to study her profile, take in the lean lines of her body only partially hidden by her sweater and jeans. His earlier observation was correct; she was in excellent shape. She’d always been a curvy woman, and that hadn’t changed, but the curves were matched with toned muscles and an overall look of vibrant health.
Leaving the FBI and going to work for The Gates seemed to have been good for her, at least physically.
But what about her spirit? The Olivia Sharp he’d known and loved had been a firecracker, full of explosive energy and a fierce inquisitiveness that had taken her very far very fast in the FBI.
But not this woman in front of him. She was quiet, contemplative and remarkably still.
She stirred as he watched her, turning her gaze to him. “I could heat up some milk over the fire for hot chocolate. Or even water for coffee, if you’d prefer that—”
“You’ve changed.” He hadn’t meant to blurt the words aloud, but he couldn’t take them back.
Her eyelids flickered and she looked away. “So have you.”
Now that he’d started down this conversational path, he decided, he might as well go all in. “Are you happy?”
“I’m...content.”
He felt an ache settle in his chest at the hint of melancholy in her tone. “Is contentment enough?”
“For now.”
“Do you anticipate finding more than contentment at some point in the future?”
She slanted a look his way. “Why don’t you just come out and ask whatever it is you want to know?”
“Do you miss me?” He clamped his mouth shut as soon as the words escaped his lips. He hadn’t intended to ask such a blunt, self-serving question.
“Yes.” Her answer, equally blunt, caught him by surprise.
They fell quiet, letting the crackle of the fire fill the lingering silence. Landry wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she spoke again, but the flames in the hearth had already begun to die down.
“I loved you. Like I’d never loved anyone in my life.” Her gaze remained directed forward, toward the fireplace, the flickering light from the flames bathing her face in a warm glow. “When things fell apart, I had to keep going. Keep working the job, not let the loss derail me. But I just couldn’t keep going, day in and day out, working alone when I’d gotten so used to you being there.”
The ache in his chest intensified. “I’m sorry.”
“You’d been transferred by then. It’s not like we’d have been working together anyway.”
“I was a mess,” he admitted. “It was hard to care about anything for a long time. I worked the job, but it just didn’t mean anything to me anymore.”
“I heard you’d started going through the motions.”
Guilt flooded him, hot and sour. “I did. Much to my shame. I don’t really have an excuse. I just knew I wasn’t ever going to get any further up the ladder than I already was, and any screwup would probably be the end of the line for me.”
“Easier to keep your nose clean if you’re not rocking the boat.”
“Yeah. I guess. I’m not sure I gave it that much thought. It’s just—nothing meant anything. Every time I cleared a case, three more would pop up to take their place. Bureaucratic crap kept creeping further and further down the line into the field offices. We were dealing with federal-level politics in the Johnson City RA, for Pete’s sake.”
“Why didn’t you just leave the FBI, then?”
“And do what? I spent over a decade solving crimes and protecting lives. It’s all I really know how to do at this point.”
“You could have come to work for Quinn at The Gates, for one thing.” She picked up the fire poker and gave the logs a nudge.
“I wasn’t ready.” He stopped short as she snapped her gaze up to meet his.
“You weren’t ready to work with me again.”
“That’s not it, exactly.”
She turned back to the fire. “Then what is it?”
“I know Ava Trent probably didn’t have anything good to say about me. Or McKenna Rigsby, either. But my job was to watch their backs, and I didn’t want to leave them in the lurch.”
“So you stayed for your partners?” She arched an eyebrow but still didn’t look at him.
“I wanted my job to mean something again. I thought if I stuck around, if I did what it took to get through the day, I’d feel that fire again.” He shook his head. “As if that fire came from outside of me.”
She remained silent for a long time, her singular focus on the flickering fire beginning to make him squirm inside. The Olivia Sharp who’d been his partner, in his work life and his personal life, had been a vibrant force of nature. Quiet contemplation had never been her style.
Maybe that woman really was gone. Maybe he’d lost her in the aftermath of the Richmond debacle just as surely as he’d lost himself.
“I never understood why you couldn’t forgive me for not remembering what happened.” Her low murmur seemed loud in the snowbound hush of the cabin, yet he was certain he’d misunderstood her.
“What?”
She slowly turned her gaze to meet his, her blue eyes blazing with a mixture of anger and pain. “I had a head injury. I couldn’t remember anything that happened right before or right after the explosion. But you seemed to think I should be able to pull those memories out of nothing to prove you weren’t lying. That wasn’t fair.”
“It wasn’t what you couldn’t remember that was the problem. It’s what you told the investigators.”
Her brow furrowed. “I didn’t tell them anything. I couldn’t. I didn’t remember anything.”
“Yet you somehow managed to remember me pushing you and the other team members to disobey the hold order.” His voice sharpened.
“I did no such thing.”
He shook his head. Why was she denying it? Did she think he hadn’t learned what she’d said in her official statement?
The agents who’d interrogated him had shown him a transcript of her testimony, signed off by Olivia, that had laid the whole mess on his shoulders.
Surely she remembered what she’d told the investigators. The words were certainly burned in his mind— “Agent Landry believed that waiting would allow the hostage-takers to escape, so he decided to countermand the official orders and go into the building.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.” He was starting to feel sick, his dinner roiling in queasy waves in his gut. “It doesn’t matter.”
Her lips flattened with anger. “You’re right—it doesn’t. The real problem is that you never trusted me. Not really.”
How could he argue with her? His lack of faith—in anyone and anything—had long preceded Olivia’s presence in his life.
He closed his eyes. “You, of all people, know why I didn’t trust anyone easily.”
Her fingers closed around his jaw, tugging his face around, forcing him to open his eyes and look into her pain-filled gaze. “I am not her. I never was. I never will be.”
He didn’t know what to say in response. She was right. Of course she was right. And yet...
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Paula Graves
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Coming in from the cold had never been so heated by an old attractionOn the run for two years, ex-FBI agent Cade Landry has only one person he can turn to: Olivia Sharp, his former partner—and lover. But after all this time, trusting the beauty is sure to put both their lives on the line. Taking that risk, Cade braves a raging storm to seek her help. The moment they′re reunited, and with no time to explore their reignited passion or the case that tore them apart, they must focus on bringing a band of domestic terrorists to justice. Hurtling them through snow-choked mountains into harrowing danger, Cade feels the pressure of what′s at stake: his future, Olivia′s life…and a love that never died.