“You could have just told him the truth,” he said. But she hadn’t. Of course, she wouldn’t have been giving up just him—she would have been giving up her brother, too.
“I don’t think it matters,” she said. “My plan didn’t work. They’re convinced you’re alive.”
“Doc must have talked before he died.” If only he and Jed hadn’t had to involve the prison doctor.
But they’d had few options…besides Rowe really dying. “Were you on your way to Blackwoods when this guy ran you off the road?”
She nodded. “I wanted to see Jed.”
“You need to stay away from there.” He touched the bruise on her face again, skimming his fingertips gently across the swollen skin. “You have to get the hell out of Blackwoods.”
There was nothing left for her in this county any longer. She’d lost her job. And Rowe suspected that she’d lost her reason for moving here in the first place. She’d lost her brother.
If Doc had admitted that Rowe was alive, then Jed was already dead.
“Come with me,” he urged, leaning closer to her. Close enough that he could almost taste her breath again.
She tilted her head, her messy ponytail swishing over her shoulder. “Do you hear that?”
A motor revved as a vehicle headed down the driveway toward the cabin.
“We need to get going,” he said, helping her to her feet as he stood up himself. Her legs didn’t fold beneath her; she was already over her slight bout of shock.
The woman impressed the hell out of him. But then she stubbornly shook her head. “We can’t leave yet,” she said.
“You’re right.” He reached down and grabbed the gun from the dead man’s hand. From now on, Rowe would be armed. When he tugged on her hand to pull her toward the door, she planted her feet and resisted.
“We have to hide the body,” she insisted.
“There’s no time.” The engine noise grew louder as the vehicle closed in on the cabin.
“If someone finds him like this, they’ll have their proof that you’re alive. They’ll know that there’s no way I—” her breath caught “—could have broken his neck.”
“You know that I had no choice.”
Her head jerked in a nod. “He had the gun. And I think he was high on something. He was superhumanly strong.”
So if he hadn’t been one of the warden’s employees at the prison, he had been one of his customers. And loyal or indebted enough to willingly do the warden’s dirty work for him.
“You had no choice,” she said, exonerating him of any guilt over the killing.
“And we have no choice now,” he said. “We have to get out of here.” He reached for the dead man again, but for his keys this time. If they had any chance of outrunning whoever was coming, they would have to take his SUV and leave Macy’s car.
“Sounds echo in the woods,” she said. “Like those gunshots you heard this morning.”
The shots had awakened him from a sound sleep and dreams about her. But the dream hadn’t compared to the reality of her body beneath his, of her breath teasing his lips as he’d lowered his head.
“That vehicle could be a ways off,” she assured him.
Or it could be driving up right behind the dead man’s SUV, trapping them at the cabin.
Her abductor had fired off most of the shots in the magazine. If Rowe couldn’t find more ammunition, the weapon was useless. And if there was more than one person in the vehicle approaching the cabin, he might not be able to fight off all of them.
Chapter Eight
“Son of a bitch!” James slammed the door of the small, empty shed.
But before he headed back to the SUV and his waiting driver, he reached for the untraceable cell and punched in that damn speed dial number he had begun to dread calling.
“Tell me Cusack is dead,” was the greeting with which the phone was answered.
“I can’t,” James said, his head pounding with frustration and stress.
“What the hell do you mean?” was the incredulous question. “You can’t track down his damn body?”
“I thought I had a lead on him.” He glanced back to the empty cabin. Had the kid really had her or had he, like so many other people had lately, lied to James? “But she’s gone.”
“She?”
“There’s a young woman who may have helped him escape.” And she was just as resourceful and resilient as James had worried she was. She was too much like her damn brother. That was another reason the warden needed to get a hold of that girl.
A snort rattled the phone. “Given what Rowe Cusack looks like, it makes sense that a woman would have helped him. Usually Cusack’s all business though. He doesn’t get involved with anyone on the job, or as far as I know, off it either. He’s always been a real loner. I can’t imagine him partnering up with anyone.”
But then James’s partner hadn’t seen the girl. She was as pretty as she was deceitful.
“I’ve had my men search everywhere for him.” The morgue. The crematorium. Her cabin. He really hadn’t had the manpower to spare for a thorough search, though; that was why he’d enlisted that damn kid.
“You’re going to have to search harder,” his partner said, stating the obvious.
“If he’s as good as you think he is, then he really is alive and as far from Blackwoods County—” and the warden’s reach “—as he can get.” And even though there would be repercussions for James if the man was alive, he would be happy as hell if Rowe Cusack was out of his jurisdiction.
“Cusack isn’t going to just go into hiding and let you get away with trying to have him killed.”
James sighed. “No, he won’t. But he’ll also know there’s no one in Blackwoods that he can trust.” Except for that damn girl. “And he’ll want to find out who in the DEA blew his cover.” He hadn’t had many dealings with Cusack, but the warden understood wanting to know who had betrayed him. And getting vengeance for that betrayal…
Another gasp whistled through the phone. “So you think he’s on his way here?”
“Don’t you?”
Curses rattled the phone.
“Cusack’s your problem now,” James said, with relief, before breaking the connection. He had big enough troubles of his own.
“I’M SURPRISED YOU’RE NOT gloating,” Rowe remarked with a glance over at Macy in the passenger seat of her small coupe.
Jed had bought her the car when she’d graduated premed with an MCAT score that would have had med schools fighting over her had she had time to apply before he’d been arrested. She had given up so much for him, but she had a horrible feeling that he had given up more for her.
His life. He would have died before he’d told the warden anything that would have caused his little sister harm.
If only Macy could have asked Rowe to go to the prison, so that she would know for certain if her brother lived or if he was already gone….
But then she would have been asking Rowe to give up his life, too. Instead he was trying to take it back, driving southeast to Detroit and the field office of the Drug Enforcement Administration from which he worked.
“What?” she asked, not following his remark. “Why would I be gloating?”
“You were right about that vehicle we heard. It was farther off than it sounded,” he explained. “Hell, it hadn’t even been coming from the road.”
The noise had been coming from farther down the two-track, which Macy suspected led to a back entrance to Blackwoods Penitentiary.
“Do you think we hid his body well enough to buy ourselves—” and Jed “—some time?”
“Putting him in the SUV and sending it down into that ravine was genius,” he praised her.
“Then when he is found—” and that could take quite a while in Blackwoods County “—Dr. Bernard will think his neck was broken in the crash since he wasn’t belted into the vehicle.”
“Just wish we knew who he was…” And why he had looked vaguely familiar to her.
“The vehicle was registered to the prison.” The registration was all they had found inside the glove box. The guy hadn’t had his wallet on him, so they hadn’t found his driver’s license.
“But he was no guard,” Rowe insisted, “not looking like that.”
“And not with his being on drugs,” Macy agreed.
Rowe snorted. “A drug addiction wouldn’t disqualify him from being a guard at Blackwoods.”
“They’re users?”
“And dealers.”
“You learned a lot during the little while you were undercover,” she said. He really was good at his job; he hadn’t been just bragging when he’d told her he was.
“I learned enough to get myself killed.” He sighed. “But nobody tries all that hard to hide anything at Blackwoods. They’re not very worried about getting caught.”
“It’s like they think they’re above the law?”
“Or they’ve just bought it off,” he bitterly remarked.
She suspected that Rowe wasn’t only talking about the sheriff of Blackwoods County. The former one had definitely been on the warden’s payroll. And if the new sheriff wasn’t yet, he probably would be soon. As Dr. Bernard had proved, everyone in Blackwoods was aware of how dangerous and corrupt the warden was but yet no one did anything to stop him.
Until now. Until Rowe Cusack.
A muscle twitched along his jaw as the freeway widened to several lanes. They were nearing the city and his betrayer, which was whoever the warden had bought off inside the Drug Enforcement Administration.
“Didn’t anyone try to bribe you while you were inside?” she wondered.
He snorted again. “It would have been easier to kill me than pay me. I was a sitting duck in prison.”
Like Jed was now.
“I’m sorry,” he said, as if he had read her mind and had known that she would immediately think of her brother.
“You’re not the one who put Jed in there.” She forced a smile to assure him that she was all right. She wasn’t about to dissolve into hysterical sobs. Crying wouldn’t help either Rowe or Jed, if it was still possible for her brother to be helped.
“I’ll find out who did,” he promised.
Even if her brother was already dead? But even posthumously Jed would appreciate having his name cleared. So would she.
“First you need to find out who betrayed you.” She had to focus on that now. She could still help Rowe. “What’s your plan?”
He shrugged, his broad shoulders rippling beneath the thin knit shirt of her brother’s he’d borrowed. “It probably has to be my handler.” A muscle twitched along his tightly clenched jaw, as if that betrayal was hard for him to accept.
“You don’t want to believe it’s him?”
“No. We’ve worked together for years. I trusted Donald Jackson. I thought we both cared…” His throat moved as he swallowed hard. “But it has to be him. Or it doesn’t make sense that he didn’t pull me out when I was denied privileges and didn’t contact him.”
“But you think it could go higher than your handler?” she realized.
“It went higher in Blackwoods than the few prison guards the DEA initially thought were involved.”
“It went all the way to the warden. So how far could the corruption in the DEA go?”
“Far enough to put you in serious danger. I know a place that’s safe,” he said, “that no one else knows about. I’ll take you there.”
“And go off alone?” She shook her head.
“I have the gun now,” he reminded her.
“I don’t have a gun,” she pointed out. And after what had just happened with the guy running her off the road and abducting her, she didn’t trust that the scalpel was enough protection anymore. But even with a gun, she wasn’t sure she would feel safe. She wasn’t sure she’d feel safe with anyone but Rowe. “You would leave me alone in the city?”
“You went to U of M,” he said, which was something else Jed must have told him about her. “You probably spent some time hanging out in Detroit. You know it, and you probably have friends close enough to call. Should I leave you with one of them?”
“You shouldn’t leave me at all,” she argued, and not just because she was scared but also because she believed he needed her for backup as much as she needed him. “I’m going with you. No matter how far this corruption goes, no one’s going to shoot you in the middle of a federal building.”
Rowe sighed wearily. “You still haven’t accepted that I’m telling you the truth about myself. You don’t trust me.”
Even though he had saved her life, she couldn’t completely trust him because she couldn’t completely trust anyone. But that wasn’t why she wanted to go along with him. She was scared but not just for herself. She couldn’t share all her fears for Jed, and now for him. Somehow, in a very short while, she had begun to care about Rowe. And she didn’t want to lose him, too.
DAMN HER. MACY HAD TALKED him into bringing her along to the office. It hadn’t been so much what she’d said, though, as it had been the fear and vulnerability in her dark gaze that had compelled him to change his mind. As she’d said, even his betrayer was unlikely to open fire in a federal building. She might be safer here than in his safe house.
He turned off the car and reached for the door handle. But she clutched at his arm. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”
“You changed your mind about coming inside?” Relief shuddered through him.
Her fingers tightened on his arm, squeezing. “I changed my mind about your going inside.”
He turned to her, confused by her admission. “I have to. It’s the fastest way to figure out who blew my cover—when I see how damn surprised they are that I’m still alive.”
“But the minute this person knows you’re alive, they’ll have their proof that Jed lied to the warden and helped you escape. And then they’ll kill him.”
If they hadn’t already…
But she didn’t seem willing to confront that possibility yet. He didn’t want to push her and risk hurting her even worse than her attacker had. But he had to be truthful with her.
“I can’t stay in hiding the rest of my life,” he said. “That would be no kind of life for me. And while it might keep Jed alive, it won’t get him out of prison.”
And after having spent some time in Blackwoods Penitentiary himself, he suspected that Jed would prefer death to prison. Maybe that—more than his professed innocence—was why the inmate hadn’t killed Rowe. Maybe it had been his version of death by cop, only the “cop” was Warden James and was crooked as hell.
“You still don’t entirely believe he was framed,” she said, the warmth of her brown eyes dimming with disappointment.
He wanted to believe, for her sake. “I have to keep an open mind.”
“To his guilt as well as his innocence?”
He nodded. “I can’t have my mind already made up or I might miss something when I look over his case files.”
She offered him a small smile of appreciation. “But you won’t be able to look at his case files unless you go inside your office.”
He reached for the door again, and this time she didn’t stop him. She just opened her own. “You should stay here,” he said.
She shook her head, rejecting his suggestion. “I’m not staying here. Alone.”
“You would have the gun,” he said, reminding her that he’d put it in the glove box. Since it wasn’t registered to him, he wouldn’t have gotten the weapon past security. Hell, he would be lucky if he made it past security.
Macy met him at the rear of the car and caught his arm, holding tight as if afraid that someone else might try to grab her. Even though he took no pleasure in killing someone, Rowe felt a brief flash of satisfaction that the man who had hurt her would never be able to hurt her again.
“I’d rather have you than the gun,” she said.
He met her gaze and something shifted in his chest, his heart clutching in reaction to her
words. But she was just scared, for herself and her brother. Once she was safe again, she would forget all about Rowe if she ever forgave him for the pain she had endured because he had caught her up in the danger that was his life.
“Stick close,” he said, worried about what would greet them when they walked through the glass doors of the brick federal building. “And keep your head down.”
He wore the knit hat, pulled down low over his face. Stubble shadowed his jaw, too, but it was hardly a disguise. As an undercover DEA agent, he looked this way most of the time. So, as he’d feared, he was immediately recognized.
“Hey, Rowe!” one of the guards called out. His old partner at Detroit P.D. greeted him with a grin as he stepped away from the security monitors. “I heard you quit.”
“Quit?” Rowe kept his arm around Macy’s shoulders, turning her away from the cameras in the corners of the foyer. He should have left her in the car instead of risking someone getting a hold of security footage and being able to ID her.
“Yeah, I thought your quitting was crazy seeing how you got me this job after Detroit P.D. retired me,” the gray-haired former cop replied with a flash of bitterness for his old employer. “The rookie I trained all those years ago would have never left law enforcement. And growing up like you did, the DEA was always your dream job. I didn’t think you would ever quit.”
Macy glanced up at Rowe, her brow slightly furrowed with a question. With her inquisitive mind, she would want to know exactly how he had grown up. His childhood, or lack thereof, was something Rowe had shared with few people. Donald Jackson had been one of them. Chuck Brennan the other.
The old man chuckled. “I figured the only way you would ever leave this job was in a body bag.”
Macy gasped, her eyes sparkling with irony.
Rowe turned back to Chuck. But his old training officer wasn’t looking at him; he was looking at Macy. “But then maybe you had a special reason for quitting.” The old flirt winked at Macy. “About damn time you got a personal life, Cusack.”
Rowe skipped introductions. He didn’t want anyone to know who Macy really was; it was bad enough that he had brought her inside where one of the security cameras might have picked up her image.
Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs Page 9