How much did Bernard know about what went on in Blackwoods? With the bodies that came from the prison to the morgue, he had to know…too much.
James followed Bernard’s gaze to Doc’s body. Why would the old man have risked their financially beneficial arrangement and his life? How had Cusack gotten to him?
“And since Doc declared that guy dead, he’s dead,” Bernard insisted.
James’s voice shook with rage now as he shouted, “Then show me his damn body! Now!”
The coroner walked over to the wall of open drawers as if Cusack was hiding somewhere inside it. But the man had been too damn big to just disappear. He would have filled one of those drawers. Or covered a whole damn gurney, like that body the girl had been standing next to earlier. She and that body were gone now.
“The crematorium was coming for this body,” Bernard said, stopping next to the drawer holding the old man. “They must have taken the wrong one.”
“The crematorium?” Warden James asked. “The girl that was here earlier said she was waiting for the funeral home.”
“The crematorium is part of Sutherland’s funeral home,” Bernard explained. “Sutherland’s kid works for him. He would have been the one coming to pick up the body to be cremated.”
“So you’re saying that if his body went there, by mistake, that it’s going to be burned?” Leaving behind no proof that the man had ever existed? That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, if James didn’t doubt that the man was actually dead.
“Yes. But probably not until tomorrow. We will be able to retrieve the prisoner’s body for you, Warden,” Bernard assured him. “Don’t worry.”
But he couldn’t stop worrying…until he knew for sure that DEA Agent Rowe Cusack was dead and not about to destroy James’s entire operation.
MACY WAS CRAZY. She had made a lot of sacrifices for Jed, quitting med school, moving to Blackwoods County, working two jobs…
But this, helping Rowe Cusack, could prove to be her greatest sacrifice yet. Maybe the ultimate sacrifice. Her hands trembling, she tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “You’re sure Elliot didn’t see you?”
“Only the Polaroid you showed him of my body,” Rowe answered from the back of her van. He lay across the seats with his head low so that she couldn’t even catch a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror.
All she spied were the headlamps of another vehicle burning through the thick darkness behind her. Did that vehicle just happen to be on the road leading toward the small cabin she rented? Or had it been following her since she’d left the hospital?
“Good,” she said. “Then if anyone asks about you at Sutherland’s, he will vouch that you were cremated tonight.”
“It was a great idea, Macy.” He praised her with none of the surprise other people had showed in her intelligence.
She felt empowered. She enjoyed actually being able to help someone for once instead of being forced to stand by while he was unjustly imprisoned. Yet still she worried….
What if Rowe Cusack wasn’t really whom he claimed to be? Not only would he be unable to help her brother but she’d have just aided and abetted an escaped convict. But Jed would have never revealed that childhood story unless he had been sending her a message.
“You’ve helped me more than I could have imagined,” he said, as if he’d never met anyone who had helped him without an agenda. He still hadn’t, though. She had an agenda…for Jed. “I can’t ask you to do any more.”
Her breath caught in alarm. “You’re backing out of our arrangement?”
“No. I’ll help Jed,” he promised. Again.
Dare she believe him? She had once been naive enough to believe what people told her, to believe in justice and fairness. She had learned three years ago to trust in no one and nothing. Except her brother.
“But I can’t do anything for anybody until I figure out who blew my cover and why,” Rowe continued, his deep voice vibrating with anger.
“You really have no idea?”
“I don’t know who to trust in the DEA,” he said. “Not anymore. And I know I can’t trust anyone in Blackwoods.”
“Except Jed.” But was Jed still in prison, or was he headed to the morgue for disobeying the order to kill the DEA agent? Hopefully Macy had done enough to cover Rowe’s and Jed’s tracks.
A short chuckle emanated from the backseat. “Jedidiah Kleyn is the last person I would have thought I could trust in that hellhole.”
“Why?”
“That whole cop killer thing,” he reminded her.
She grimaced at the horrific charges against her brother. Being accused of killing a police officer—being convicted of it—had nearly destroyed Jed, who’d just returned from a tour in Afghanistan where he’d been training Afghanis to become police officers.
“It’s why the warden ordered Jed to carry out the hit on me,” Rowe continued.
“But he’s innocent.” Frustration that she was the only one who believed it had tears stinging her eyes. She blinked them back, having learned long ago that crying accomplished nothing.
“Innocent or not, he’s still as intimidating as hell,” Rowe informed her. “Nobody messes with your brother. Nobody dares.”
“Jed doesn’t tell me much.” And she hated that; she had moved close to him so that he would have someone he could count on, someone he could talk to. Yet he wouldn’t talk to her except to urge her to go back to her home and life. Back to school. And she always assured him that she would, as soon as he was able to go back to his home and his life. “He doesn’t want to worry me, but I know Blackwoods is hell.”
“And the warden is the devil,” Rowe said. Unlike Jed, he didn’t coddle her.
She appreciated his honesty. God, she hoped he was telling the truth about helping Jed. “Yours wasn’t the first body to come to the morgue from the prison.”
And every time Bob had wheeled a body bag into the morgue, she had lived a waking nightmare of worry that it was Jed.
“Mine wasn’t even the only body today,” Rowe said, his deep voice thick with regret as he obviously thought of the torture Doc had endured. Over him.
“It’s not your fault,” she tried to convince him. He had appeared as horrified unzipping Doc’s body bag as she must have looked unzipping his. “You can’t blame yourself for Doc dying.”
“No. But I’m going to find out whose fault it is,” he vowed. “Warden James isn’t acting alone. I want to know who else is to blame.”
“The warden has to be stopped,” she said, her heart aching with concern for Jed. “Too many inmates die in Blackwoods. They’ve been shivved. Or beaten to death. Or they’ve overdosed on drugs they never should have been able to get.”
“I was put undercover in Blackwoods because of the number of ODs,” he explained. “It’s obvious there’s a big problem. Someone’s been bringing drugs into the prison.”
With her old naïveté, she wouldn’t have believed they’d be able to get them inside, but now she knew anything was possible. Especially horrible things. “They shouldn’t be getting them past the guards.”
“No, they shouldn’t,” Rowe agreed, his voice sharp with anger.
“How long have you been inside?” she asked.
“Just a few weeks.”
“Jed’s been in for three years.” And while she knew her brother had it so much worse, sometimes she felt like she was in prison, too. Her life—the one she had planned since she’d been a little girl—had ended with his sentence. He had been furious with her for not going to medical school, and he hadn’t wanted her to move either. But he’d had no one else.
Their parents had turned their backs on him, just as they had once turned their backs on her. They hadn’t understood her learning disability and had written her off as stupid. But Jed had never doubted her intelligence, and as a teenager, he had researched on his own to figure out his baby sister was dyslexic. He had believed in her when no one else had.
“Three years is a long time
in Blackwoods,” Rowe remarked with a soft whistle.
“I’ve been trying to get him out,” she said. “But I can’t do it on my own. And you can’t figure out who betrayed you on your own. You need my help.”
“No, Macy,” Rowe insisted. “You’ve already done too much. You’ve gotten too involved. I can handle it from here.”
She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. The helplessness she’d felt when her brother was sentenced to life flashed through her. She hadn’t been able to help him, but she could help Rowe, if he would let her. “You need me. I—”
Bright lights, glinting off the rearview mirror, blinded her. The vehicle behind them had sped up and closed the distance between them. No brakes squealed. It didn’t try to stop or pass. Instead it plowed right into the back of the van, which jumped forward from the impact.
Rowe’s body thumped against the back of her seat and a string of curses slipped from his lips. “I was right. We were followed from the hospital.”
“They’re not just following anymore,” she said, shifting forward on the old bucket seat so that she could press her foot down harder on the accelerator. The van’s tires squealed as she careened around a sharp curve.
Rowe moved between the seats as if to climb into the front, but she pried one trembling hand from the steering wheel to shove him back.
“Stay down!” she yelled. “They might see you.”
“You don’t think they already know I’m in here?” he asked, his voice rough with irony and frustration.
A lawman would be used to protecting others, not relying on others to protect him. If he really was the DEA agent she was pretty certain that he was, then this had to be killing him almost as much as the warden wanted him killed.
But she couldn’t let him carry all the guilt, not when this might have nothing to do with him at all.
“We don’t know if these people are after you,” she said, grasping the wheel with both hands as she maneuvered around another corner. The van shifted, as if the wheels left the asphalt. She couldn’t lose control, not now when she was gaining distance between them and whatever vehicle pursued them.
“If they’re not after me, then who are they after?” Rowe asked.
She swallowed hard and then choked out the admission. “Me.”
“WHY WOULD ANYONE be after you?” Rowe asked. Finally. He had saved the question until she’d lost whatever vehicle had been chasing them. Had she really learned to drive like that from an EMT course, or because she’d once been a wheelman—wheel person? She drove more like a get-away driver than an ambulance driver. Rowe suspected there was more to Macy Kleyn than her big brother knew.
She tugged on the ropes of the blinds, dropping them down over the night-darkened windows of the small cabin to which she’d driven him once she had lost their tail.
The impenetrable blackness of a moonless night enveloped the cabin and the woods surrounding it. Anyone could have been out there, hiding in the dark, watching them. So even with the blinds closed, he caught her hand when she reached for the lights.
“Why would anyone be after you?” he asked again, tightening his grasp when she tried to tug free. “What are you involved in?”
Was she part of the corruption at Blackwoods? She had a man on the inside, and she could have been using her autonomy at the morgue to cover up prison breaks like his as well as other crimes. Like all those inmates who’d died of overdoses…
Self-disgust filled him that he had begun to trust her. But just like with her brother, he hadn’t had any other option. Until now. He had no reason to stay with her…except the promise he’d made to her brother to keep her safe.
“Despite his innocence, my brother’s been labeled a cop killer,” she said. “Some people aren’t too happy that I’m trying to help him appeal those charges and overturn his sentence.”
“You’ve been threatened before?”
She sighed, her breath whispering across his skin as they stood close. “Yes. Stupid things like my tires getting slashed or my windows broken.”
“Has anyone tried running you off the road before?”
She nodded, or at least the dim shadow of her nodded. “Yes. Not here in Blackwoods, but it happened a couple of times back home.”
“Did you file a report?”
“It was a police car.”
He cursed.
“That’s why we can’t be certain that the vehicle that bumped into the van tonight had anything to do with you,” she finally explained.
“We can’t be certain that it didn’t.” And that was why he couldn’t leave. He had made a promise to her brother that he intended to keep; Macy Kleyn would not be hurt because of him.
“Then it’s even more important to find out who gave you up,” she said, “so that we can be certain.”
“You understand that I can’t help Jed until I find that out?” he asked. If he couldn’t help himself, he wouldn’t be able to help anyone else.
She stepped closer, her eyes shining in the dark as she stared up at him. “That’s why you need me.”
His muscles tightened, reacting to her words and her proximity. She stood so close that her thighs nearly brushed against his. Heat emanated from her, chasing the chill from his body. What the hell was wrong with him that he wanted this woman—this stranger—so badly?
He had only been inside for three weeks, not three years like her brother. And damn, knowing her brother, he’d have to be crazy to give in to his attraction to Macy Kleyn. He finally released her wrist and stepped back, needing some distance between them.
“I’ve been with the DEA for six years, Detroit P.D. four years before that,” he informed her. “I know how to handle an investigation. I don’t want you involved in this.”
“It’s too late.”
That was what he was afraid of.
“We’ll talk about this in the morning,” she said, as if she were his handler and not Agent Jackson.
He probably wouldn’t be in this mess if she had been his handler. Would Donald Jackson really have betrayed him though? Rowe had known the man so long and had always believed he could trust him explicitly. They had the same background, the same reasons for caring so damn much about their jobs.
But maybe that had burned Jackson out, that no matter how hard they worked it wasn’t ever enough to get all the drugs off the streets. Maybe that was why he’d turned…
“We’ll figure out our next step then,” she said.
If Rowe were smart, he would be gone before morning. He would steal her keys, her van and her cell phone. And never see her again.
“I’ll make up the couch for you and find you something to wear,” she offered. “I brought Jed’s stuff along when I moved up here.” Her brother’s sentence was life for each life he’d taken: two consecutive life sentences. He wouldn’t need his things anymore. But Macy was that determined to free him, despite the threats to her own safety.
“You live here year-round?” he asked.
The cabin was small and had probably been intended for short hunting trips only. He doubted that it had a furnace, since the place was so cold he could nearly see her breath when she replied.
“Yes. It has indoor plumbing and a fireplace that I need to light so that the plumbing won’t freeze. The blinds are room darkening and very private. No one will be able to see inside.” She didn’t wait for his permission now. She turned on a lamp and then struck a match to the kindling in the old fieldstone fireplace.
“How does that heat the whole place?” Rowe asked, but then he saw that except for one door leading to the bathroom, the place was only one room. Her bed was against one wall, the couch at the foot of it. He was to sleep there? Within feet of her?
She followed his gaze to the old brass bed. “Don’t worry. I won’t take advantage of you.”
He chuckled. “I’m used to sleeping with one eye open.” Even more so since his last undercover assignment had sent him to Blackwoods Penitentiary.
“I�
��m used to sleeping with a gun under my pillow,” she said, obviously putting him on notice not to try anything. “And I know how to shoot.”
She opened a cabinet, pulled out a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a thermal shirt and tossed them at him.
He caught the clothes and dropped them onto the old leather couch. Even if it wasn’t so close to where she would be sleeping, he doubted he would be able to get any rest on the worn leather stretched over lumpy cushions. She picked up the clothes and handed them back to him as she laid flannel sheets and a flannel comforter over the couch.
“You can use the bathroom first,” she said. “The water heater works really well, so the shower’s hot.”
A shower, without having to watch his back, sounded like heaven. But it didn’t matter that he was out of prison; he still needed to watch his back, maybe especially around Macy Kleyn. Was she really armed? “They didn’t teach you how to shoot in EMT class.”
“No,” she replied. “Jed taught me.”
“Of course.”
Remembering how protective and how damn big her brother was reined in Rowe’s desire when later that night she stepped from the bathroom wearing only a short flannel nightgown. She wasn’t that tall, but her legs were long and slender. Her hair was down and loose around her shoulders, firelight reflecting in the dark silky waves. Why did she have to be as beautiful as she was smart?
He closed his eyes, but her image was still there, behind his lids, taunting him just as the bed springs did when she crawled beneath her blankets. At least he hoped she was beneath them, every tempting inch of her covered up.
He’d kicked off his blankets. He’d blamed the proximity of the fireplace for making him too hot. But it had been the shower running and knowing that Macy stood naked beneath the water that had overheated him. If he’d been smart, he would have taken her keys then and snuck out while she’d been in the bathroom.
But after having to stay low and out of sight in the van, he had no idea what streets she’d taken from the crematorium to her cabin or from the hospital to the crematorium. And he would never figure it out at night. He would wait until morning and then he’d leave.
Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs Page 5