The woman was a damn good driver. Another few inches, and she would have snapped the pylons and rolled down into the ravine that was so steep and heavily wooded that the van might have never been found. And since she would have surely been hurt in the crash, Macy wouldn’t have been able to get help. She could have lain down there, suffering. Or dead and undiscovered.
The driver’s door of the van gaped open, the interior empty of everything but that sad cardboard box of her work belongings. If Macy had gotten out of the vehicle of her own accord, she would still be on the road. He hadn’t been that far behind her that he wouldn’t see her now as he stood on the wide turnout and stared in both directions. Even if she was running through the woods or the ravine, whoever had run her off the road would be chasing her, their vehicle left behind.
But there were no other vehicles besides the van and her car here. Whatever had run her off the road was gone, and so was Macy.
She wouldn’t have gone without a fight. So whoever had taken her had been strong enough or armed enough to overpower her. He stared down at the gravel shoulder. It was loose and scattered onto the asphalt lane of the road. Maybe the tires had kicked up the gravel. Or maybe Macy’s kicking feet had.
Then he noticed something else on the pavement. Droplets of blood, like cast-off, from a wound.
“Dear God…” He closed his eyes on the image in his mind, of her bleeding and in pain. He had to help her and not just because of that promise he’d made her brother.
He ran back to her car and slid behind the wheel again. He had to find her before she wound up like Doc, tortured and dead.
Because of him…
“YOU HAVE HER?” His phone clutched to his ear, Warden James settled into his office chair with a sigh of relief. “You took her where I told you to?”
Where no one would be able to hear her screams…
There would be no more fake tears from Macy Kleyn. He would make her cry for real. And he would make her tell him the damn truth. All of it. Like what the hell she’d really done with that damn DEA agent…
“Yes,” his flunky replied with pride. “She’s unconscious now but starting to come around.”
James was actually surprised the guy had pulled it off. Macy Kleyn was more resourceful than he would have expected a girl who wasn’t much older than his own daughter to be. Emily was smart, smarter than most people realized. But she was also sweet and softhearted and incredibly naive because he had always sheltered her from the real world. She couldn’t find out the truth about him and all the things he’d done.
He would do anything to protect her from the truth of that—even kill again. And again.
“Good,” James said, “I will be there shortly.” While he’d had his guard work over Doc, he wanted to deal with Miss Kleyn personally. He could use her for more than just information on the whereabouts of the missing DEA officer.
But a knock sounded at his door. Without waiting for James to grant admission, his head guard opened the door. “Warden, the situation is getting worse. We need to call the sheriff.”
James snorted. “York? You think that kid could handle a situation like this? He’d get himself killed.” So maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to call him.
“You’re right,” the correction officer agreed. “This is too much for the sheriff’s office. Hell, we may need to call in the National Guard.”
“Not yet,” James snapped. “And make sure the alarms are still disarmed.” It was his damn prison; he would regain control of it on his own. He already had a plan for that.
“Warden?” The question came from the man on the phone James had forgotten he still held. “Is everything all right?”
No. It hadn’t been all right since the day Rowe Cusack had set foot in Blackwoods. If only James’s damn partner could have stopped the DEA from investigating.
“You should get started without me,” he said, with another sigh, this one of resignation. James glanced out the window toward the cement wall and barbed wire fence. The prison was still contained. “I have to deal with a situation here.”
And having Macy Kleyn would make dealing with that “situation” a whole lot easier. Now he had leverage supporting his threats.
But he still needed one more thing. Rowe Cusack. “Get her to talk. Get her to tell you where that damn federal agent is hiding.”
“Warden,” the head guard called for his attention again. “We’ve got to do something to get control.”
“We will,” James maintained. “It’s just a matter of time.” However long it took to break the girl…
She wouldn’t be as brave or stubborn as Doc had been. She wouldn’t be able to hold out long.
“We don’t have much time,” the guard warned him. “There have already been a couple of casualties. On both sides.”
A prisoner and a guard.
Before the day was over, James anticipated a couple more casualties.
Macy Kleyn and Rowe Cusack.
Chapter Seven
A throbbing in her jaw dragged Macy from the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness. She opened her eyes and blinked against the bright sunshine pouring through a high window in what appeared to be a plywood wall.
Where was she?
Damn it! Damn it all to hell that she’d passed out. Now she had no idea where she was or how long it had taken to drive there. Once she got loose, she wouldn’t know where to run. But getting loose might be a problem.
She wriggled but her hands were bound behind her, rope scraping the skin on her wrists. Pain radiated up her arms, echoing that dull ache in her jaw. And her neck was strained, hurt from hanging at an odd angle. She’d been tied to a straight-back chair; her ankles bound like her wrists and tethered to the chair legs.
Squinting against the light, she peered around the room. One quick glance confirmed that she was alone. For now. With pine board walls and floor, it was a cabin, one room like the one she rented, but this space was much smaller. There was no kitchen or bath. Hell, it might have been just a shed. Something scurried in the shadows near the baseboards, little feet scraping over the leather of her purse. It was just an arm’s length away, but she couldn’t reach it.
She couldn’t save herself. And she had sent away the one man who could have helped her. Why had she let the warden and Dr. Bernard make her doubt herself? Make her doubt Jed?
Her brother wouldn’t have told Rowe about that accident in her childhood if he hadn’t wanted to send her the message to trust the man he’d sent to her in a body bag.
It didn’t matter that the Drug Enforcement Administration had denied Rowe Cusack. Hell, that only proved more that he was telling the truth, that someone in his own agency had betrayed him. And he had gone off alone to track down his betrayer. She suspected he might wind up as she was about to—dead.
Unless she figured out how to get free…
She strained her sore arms, tugging at the ropes again, but the fibers bit into her skin, too tight to give her even a little wiggle room. She could not get her hands loose. She could not get loose.
When the door swung open and her attacker stepped inside, she vowed to herself that she wouldn’t betray Rowe, too, no matter what this man did to her. She might not be able to save herself but she wouldn’t be the reason that harm came to Rowe or her brother.
“Where is he?” he asked.
The guy was tall but so skinny that she wondered how he had managed to strike her with such force. His dark hair was long and stringy, hanging well past his thin shoulders. He looked young and vaguely familiar.
Where had she seen him before?
“Where is he?” he asked again, stepping closer. He struck her again, this time with an open hand instead of a closed fist.
Her skin stung from the slap. “Who?”
“You know who—Rowe Cusack.”
Her blood chilled. This guy, whoever he was, wasn’t even bothering with using Rowe’s undercover identity. He knew who Rowe was. Why hadn’t anyone in the DEA
admitted to knowing him?
But now she found herself denying him. “I don’t know who that is.”
“That’s the guy you helped escape from Blackwoods prison,” the kid informed her, as if she would have helped Rowe had she not at least known his name.
She may have doubted him with her head. But deep inside, she’d believed he was really a lawman.
She shook her head. “I didn’t help anyone escape. I haven’t even been up to the prison.”
In a week. It had been a week since she had seen her brother. If only she’d known then that it might have been her last time….
Instead of being a smart-ass and teasing him, she would have been serious. She would have told him how much she appreciated his being her white knight while they were growing up. She would have told him how much she loved him.
“No,” the guy agreed, “your job was to get Cusack out of the morgue.”
How could this man know that? Unless Jed…
What had they done to her brother to get him to give her up? But nothing could have compelled him. Jed would have gone to his grave before he uttered her name. But yet he had mentioned her…to Rowe. Her brother would have only done that if he’d truly trusted that Rowe wouldn’t have hurt her.
Why hadn’t she trusted him?
“I work at the morgue. I assist Dr. Bernard,” she said.
The skinny guy shuddered at the mention of the morgue. How could someone be creeped out by death but have no problem with killing? If he’d forced her off into the ravine, she would have died.
“Assist?” She laughed at herself. “I just clean up after the coroner and do some of his paperwork. That’s all I do.”
“You helped the prisoner last night.”
Was he talking about the sutures? She hadn’t thought Dr. Bernard had told anyone about her suturing Rowe’s wound.
“It was too late for that inmate,” she insisted. “He was already dead when he showed up at the morgue yesterday.”
“We need proof of that.”
“We?” she asked. “Who are you working for? Warden James?” Or whoever had given up Rowe in the DEA? How deep did this corruption run?
The man slapped her again, so hard that the chair teetered and tipped over, knocking her onto the floor. Her shoulder burned, from her arms being bound and from the force with which she hit the boards. But that pain was the least of her worries when the man kicked out and struck her stomach with the hard toe of his work boot.
The breath left her lungs, and a scream slipped through her lips. She gathered enough breath and screamed again, so loud that it echoed in the room and throughout her own skull.
The skeevy guy laughed. “Scream all you want. Nobody will hear you out here, Macy Kleyn. I can do whatever I want to you and nobody will know.”
She shivered at the lascivious look that crossed his gaunt face as he stared down at her. Then she glanced toward her purse. She had fallen away from it. But even if she could reach it now, she would never be able to get the scalpel out of it in time to defend herself.
“I have proof!” she insisted. “They take pictures at the crematorium, of the bodies they burn. His picture was there. Dr. Bernard has a faxed copy of it.”
“That doesn’t prove the guy was really dead when that picture was taken. Anybody can play dead, and I guess this Rowe character is really good at it,” he said. “That picture only proves that you brought him to the crematorium.”
How did he know she had brought him? She’d told the warden that the crematorium was picking up the body. This guy must have followed her from the hospital last night. The warden must have doubted her story from the very beginning and left someone behind to tail her.
“He’s dead!” she yelled as the guy reached for her. She couldn’t even kick out, not with her legs bound to the chair. But then his hands were there, untying her ankles as he pulled her closer.
“If he’s not dead,” the man said, as he slid his hands up her legs to her waist and fumbled with the snap of her jeans, “then by the time I’m through with you, you’re going to wish he was.”
“No, you’re the one who’s going to wish I was really dead,” a deep voice murmured.
THE MAN AND MACY BOTH TURNED toward the open door. It hadn’t even been locked. But it wouldn’t have mattered if it had been. When he’d heard her scream, Rowe would have kicked it down to get to her.
His heart pounded hard, as hard as he wanted to pound the guy who had his filthy hands on her. The weasel had already hurt her, because her face was red and swelling. A small cut on her cheek must have been the source of the blood droplets that had fallen onto the asphalt.
“Get away from her!” he shouted.
A grin spread across the man’s face. “This is great. I’ll be able to give James the proof that you’re finally dead when I hand over your body myself.” He reached behind his back, but he was so skinny that Rowe could see what he reached for—the gun he had tucked into the waistband of his jeans.
Macy screamed again and kicked her legs at the man with such force that she knocked him to the ground. But he didn’t drop the gun.
Instead he swung the barrel toward her and snarled, “You bitch!”
Rowe grabbed for the gun just as it went off. The guy’s grip was tight on the gun and on the trigger. Shot after shot fired. Rowe couldn’t take the risk that a bullet wouldn’t hit her. If one hadn’t already…
So he wrapped his arm around the guy’s neck. And with one quick twist and crunch of bones, he snapped it.
Macy gasped, her dark eyes wide with shock, as wide and shocked as the eyes of her dead attacker.
She had doubted and feared Rowe before. What he’d just had to do—kill a man with his bare hands right in front of her—would only scare her more.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Her eyes still wide, she only nodded.
He expected her to shrink back when he reached for the bindings at her wrists, but she only stared up at him as he tugged at the knot.
“Grab my purse,” she suggested when the knot refused to budge. “The scalpel’s inside it.”
A grin tugged at his lips. “Of course it is.” Using his already bandaged hand, he carefully reached inside the leather bag.
“It’s in my wallet.”
He pulled out the metal handle and sliced the blade neatly through the thick rope. His hand throbbed in remembrance of how sharp her damn weapon was.
If only she’d managed to get hold of it before the man had grabbed her… Then it would have been his blood spattered on the asphalt.
He skimmed his fingertips gently along her swollen jaw and over the short cut. Blood smeared her silky skin. “He hit you.”
And knowing that the man had hurt her expunged whatever regrets Rowe had about having to kill him. Sure, it would have been better to take him alive and find out who had sent him after Macy.
But Rowe was already pretty certain who had done that. The guy didn’t look familiar to him, though. With his long, scraggly hair, he hadn’t been one of the brush-cut prison guards, who were on the warden’s payroll.
So who was this man who’d grabbed and intended to assault Macy?
Her thick lashes fluttered as if she were fighting back tears. “I’m okay.”
He gently probed the bruise, tracing the delicate bone beneath her skin. “Are you sure your jaw’s not dislocated?”
She shook her head, dislodging his hand from her face so that his fingers skimmed down her throat. Her breath audibly caught.
With fear? Now, after seeing him kill her kidnapper, she knew exactly how violent he could be.
She leaned closer and took her weapon from him. She slid it back into her wallet and her wallet into her purse.
“I’m fine,” she stubbornly insisted, even though her entire body trembled now as if in reaction to her ordeal.
What had happened was bad enough. What could have happened even worse.
No wonder she was shaking. They needed
to get the hell out of the cabin, because this guy had definitely not been acting alone. He was working for someone who could show up at any time. But he couldn’t move her until she got over her initial shock.
“You’re not fine,” Rowe argued. He wished he could close his arms around her and offer her comfort. But she didn’t trust him so his holding her would only upset her more.
But then her arms slid around his neck and she pressed her body against his as she clutched him tightly. “I’m fine…because of you.”
He resisted the urge, barely, to press her even more tightly against him so that he could feel her every heartbeat and assure himself she was really all right. When he’d heard her scream with such pain and fear, he’d thought he was too late, that he wouldn’t be able to save her.
Emotion choking him, he could only utter her name, “Macy…”
She eased back in his loose embrace and smiled up at him. “Thank you for coming back.”
“I didn’t really leave.”
“Why not?” She pulled completely out of his arms, her brow furrowing in confusion. “You had my car and that phone….”
But he hadn’t had her. Not that he needed her. He just had to assure himself that she was safe. He’d made a promise to Jed. A promise he intended to keep.
“It’s good I had the car,” he said. “I was able to follow you.”
“You were behind me?”
“Until you lost me.” She was a better driver than the man who’d run her off the road.
Rowe had caught up to the black SUV just as it had slowed for the turnoff to the two-track road that had led through the woods to this small cabin. Since the car didn’t have four-wheel drive like the SUV, he hadn’t even been able to take it all the way down the nearly washed out driveway. But walking up to the cabin had given him the element of surprise, even if it had put Macy in more danger.
And through more pain.
“I’m glad you found me,” she said.
“Me, too.”
She glanced down at the dead man and shuddered. “He was going to…”
Torture her, even more violently than Doc had been tortured.
Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs Page 8