“Who told you I quit?” he asked, his temper flaring at the lie. His handler would have been the one to concoct and claim the lie as truth. Ostensibly that would have been the only person he could have contacted when he was undercover at Blackwoods. “Agent Jackson?”
“No, he quit, too,” Brennan replied, “or at least I think he did since I haven’t seen him around here in a while.”
“Jackson quit?” His handler had gotten older, but like Brennan, he had never seemed ready to retire. And if he’d quit…
Was it because he had come into a sudden windfall of money? Maybe from the warden…
“Are you going up to the office?” Brennan asked, gesturing toward a break in the line for the security screeners.
Rowe shook his head. “No. I have somewhere else I need to go first.”
“But you’ll be back, right?” the security guard asked hopefully. “You didn’t really quit?”
“Yeah, I’ll be back,” Rowe promised, and then leaned closer to his old training officer. Pitching his voice low, he added, “But please, do me a favor and don’t tell anyone that you saw me today.”
“You want them to work to get you back on the job, huh? You’re playing hard to get.” Brennan chuckled.
“That’s the idea.” Hard to get and harder to kill.
Brennan slapped Rowe’s back. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away, and that all those people around here acting like you’d be gone forever were crazy.”
Rowe clenched his jaw and nodded before turning Macy back toward the outside door.
“They acted like you’d be gone forever because they thought you were dead,” she murmured as they walked out to the parking lot.
“Yeah, the reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated,” he replied, using humor to calm his rising temper.
“If you’re going where I think you’re headed, those reports may not be exaggerated at all,” she warned him. “If this Agent Jackson told the warden to kill you, he won’t hesitate to finish the job himself.”
That was why Rowe had to drop Macy at the safe house and confront Jackson alone. So that she wouldn’t be caught in the cross fire.
ROWE HAD BEEN GONE so long that Macy’s heart beat furiously with fear. Something must have happened to him. She was glad that she hadn’t let him drop her off wherever he’d been determined to leave her for her safety. If he hadn’t come back to her at his safe house, she would have had no idea where to look for him. She didn’t even know this Agent Jackson’s first name or gender let alone where the person lived.
If he or she lived…
And what about Rowe?
But Macy had heard no shots. And she sat in her car, which was parked in the alley behind Jackson’s apartment building. She had watched as Rowe had broken into the place. He’d climbed the fire escape and jimmied open a window, keeping watch over her in the alley even more than he had whoever might have been waiting for him in the apartment.
Was that why she’d been able to talk him into letting her come along? Because, after what had happened last time, he didn’t want to let her out of his sight. She hadn’t wanted him out of her sight either, but she hadn’t been able to see him since he had slipped through the open window.
It had been too long.
With trembling fingers, she fumbled the handle and opened the passenger door. Rowe had pulled down the fire escape ladder, but she still had to jump up to reach the bottom rung. Her purse thumped against her side and slipped from her shoulder. She couldn’t lose it, not when the only weapon she had was stashed inside the leather bag.
While the alley was empty now, it was strewn with trash that overflowed the Dumpsters. If she hadn’t been used to the smells of the morgue, she might have gagged over the stench that hung in the cold spring air. The building was not in the safest area of the city, for sure. But she was less worried about what she might encounter outside than what she would meet up with inside. Her legs shook, with nerves and adrenaline, as she climbed the ladder and then the metal stairs to the fourth-floor apartment.
She had insisted that Rowe bring the gun with him. But if he hadn’t had a chance to use it…
Then his betrayer had Rowe’s gun and probably at least one of his own.
One with a silencer? Was that why she’d heard no gunshots?
Rowe wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. One glance through the window confirmed that there had been a hell of a one. Broken furniture littered the floor. The dining room table and chairs had been smashed. The living room couch was tipped over onto the scarred hardwood. But it was the rug in front of the couch that drew Macy’s attention and a gasp from her lips.
A thick, wide pool of blood stained the rug and overflowed onto the hardwood floor. Even if she hadn’t had a premed degree, she would know that nobody could have lost that much blood and lived.
Someone had died in this apartment.
Chapter Nine
“I told you to stay in the car,” Rowe said, anger bubbling inside him that she hadn’t stayed put.
But he was actually angry with himself for not watching over her more closely, so that he had noticed what she was doing before she’d made it up the fire escape to the apartment. While he had been distracted, someone could have pulled her out of the vehicle and driven off with her, just as the guy who had forced her off the road had abducted her. If he hadn’t been certain he could keep her safe, he never should have brought her along.
“What happened here?” she asked, as she stepped over the windowsill and joined him inside Donald Jackson’s ransacked apartment.
It was bad enough that his prints were going to be all over the place. Now so were hers. “Don’t touch anything,” he advised.
But she was already kneeling on the floor, dipping her finger into the blood pool. “I thought this was yours,” she murmured, her voice shaking with fear. She skimmed her gaze over him, as if checking for injuries. “Whose is it?”
She probably thought that he had killed again and that he’d been stashing the victim’s body somewhere. He had actually been looking for it.
Rowe shrugged. “I don’t know for sure if it’s Jackson’s or someone else’s.” After his cover had been blown, Rowe had no idea what Donald Jackson was capable of.
“There’s no body?” she asked.
He shook his head, but she was already looking away as if afraid to meet his gaze. Rowe studied her face as she examined the blood. Yeah, she probably did think that he had spilled it. He had been inside the apartment long enough to have killed someone. And if Jackson had given him up, he certainly had motive for killing the man.
Revenge.
“This blood is mostly dry, except where it’s really deep.” Her throat moved as she swallowed hard, as if choking down revulsion. But given that she worked in a morgue, she had to be used to this. Maybe it was fear that was choking her. Fear of him. “It’s been here a few days, maybe longer.”
“A few days ago I was in prison,” he reminded her, hoping to assure her that she was safe with him. He would never hurt her himself. But he wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping her safe from harm.
She glanced up at him again and whatever doubts she might have entertained were gone, her brown eyes warm with sympathy. She wasn’t just smart, she was intuitive, too, and had picked up on how much it had been bothering Rowe to think that Donald Jackson might have betrayed him.
“Maybe he didn’t give you up willingly,” she said. “Maybe he was tortured, like Doc….”
By now her brother had probably been tortured, too, since Doc must have talked for the warden to be so convinced that Rowe was still alive.
He shook his head. “I think my cover was blown a while ago. Or maybe it was never really in place. The warden might have known who I was the first day I stepped inside Blackwoods Penitentiary.”
If Warden James had a friend or business associate in the DEA, he might have been notified of the administration’s investigation into Blackwoods before Rowe
had even been assigned to the case. It was a wonder he had survived as long as he had behind bars.
“If the warden knew who you were all that time, you’re lucky to be alive,” Macy murmured, glancing down at the blood on the floor.
Rowe nodded, wondering how long his luck would hold. He’d spilled some of his blood inside the prison from the wound Jed had inflicted on him. But he hadn’t lost nearly this much, only enough to make it look like he could have died.
Was someone playing the same game here? Was someone just pretending to be dead in order to cover up his disappearance—probably heading for a country with no extradition?
“Special Agent Jackson could have given me up,” he said, hoping like hell the man he’d considered a friend and a mentor hadn’t been bought. “Hell, he could still be alive, too.”
Her eyes dark with regret, Macy shook her head. “There are pints of blood here. Nobody could lose this amount of blood and live.”
She didn’t have her medical degree, but Rowe respected her opinion. If she thought someone had died here, someone had died.
“But we don’t know that it’s Jackson’s blood,” he pointed out. “Since there’s no body, we don’t know who the hell died here.”
“But we know someone died,” she insisted.
“This is a crime scene,” he said, cupping her elbow to help her to her feet. “And we need to get the hell out. Now.”
“You were in here awhile,” she said. “Looking for the body?”
He nodded. Still holding on to her arm, he led her back to the window. “I was looking for bank statements, too.”
“You obviously didn’t find the body,” she remarked. “What about the bank statements?”
“I only found old ones, not the most recent one.” Not the one that would have had the warden’s deposit on it if James had paid off Rowe’s handler to give up the undercover agent the DEA had sent inside Blackwoods Penitentiary.
“It could be in the mailbox,” she suggested. “We could find his key for it and check the box in the building lobby.”
Hearing a creaking noise from the hall outside the door, Rowe shook his head. “We can’t risk it. We have to go back down the fire escape.”
He didn’t need to be witnessed leaving a crime scene, especially with Macy. It didn’t matter that the blood was old—he and Macy could still be held for questioning. They could even be turned over to the person in the Drug Enforcement Administration who wanted him dead.
After one last glance back at the blood pool, Macy turned toward the window and stepped over the sill onto the metal landing.
Rowe followed her out, peering down into the alley to make sure no one waited below for them. That was when he noticed the Dumpster overflowing with trash. Probably nearly a week or more of garbage topped the Dumpster and fell over the sides. As they descended the steps and then the rungs to the street, he heard the flies buzzing around the metal bin.
“I think I know where the body is,” he murmured. He’d noticed the stench earlier but considering the amount of garbage in the alley, he hadn’t given it more than a passing thought…until now.
Her attention already on the Dumpster, Macy nodded. “I’ll check inside it.”
“No, I’ll check it out,” he said, the muscles in his stomach clenching and tightening with foreboding. He wasn’t going to like what he found inside that metal bin. “You get in the car.”
“But I have the medical education—”
“You already said nobody could have lost that much blood and survived,” he reminded her. It wasn’t like she was going to be able to save whoever he found, and he was pretty damn sure that he was going to find someone. At least whatever was left of him or her…
“I also have experience in the coroner’s office, remember?” she argued. “I can check out the body and determine cause of death.”
“I don’t know what’s in that Dumpster.” And he wasn’t really crazy about digging through all that trash himself, but he certainly wasn’t going to let her do it. “There are probably dirty needles in there.” He’d learned young how to avoid those. “And God knows what else.”
And all his instincts were warning him that something bad was about to happen. So he waited until she opened the car door before he stepped closer to the Dumpster.
Holding his breath, he leaned over the rusted metal side and began to dig through the mess. He had to toss out boxes and garbage bags before he found the body.
Jackson’s skin was pale with just a bluish tinge except for the gaping wound in his chest that had turned from red to black from dried blood and flies.
He gagged and turned away to find Macy next to him. “It’s him,” he told her. “It’s Donald Jackson. My handler.”
His mentor, too. Guilt twisted his guts more than the god-awful smell. Why had he been so quick to suspect Jackson of betraying him? Sure, around the same age he’d learned to avoid used needles he had learned to trust no one, but Jackson had cared about the job. Like Rowe, he had been dedicated to getting drugs off the streets.
Donald Jackson hadn’t betrayed Rowe. He had been betrayed…and murdered.
“HE’S BEEN DEAD FOR A FEW days,” Macy said, from what she could observe of the body by rising on her tiptoes and peering inside the Dumpster. “Looks like he was shot in the chest.” With a cannon. At least more than one shot had been fired into this man. Decomposition had caused the rest of the damage to the wound.
“Looks like,” Rowe agreed, his already deep voice husky with emotion.
He had obviously cared about this man. He had been more than just a coworker to Rowe. He had been his lifeline to the outside when he’d gone undercover. She couldn’t imagine how he must have felt believing this man had given him up to the warden.
Rowe moved more garbage off him, as if in respect. “He was also beaten.”
Like Doc. Tortured.
“He’s holding something,” Macy remarked, as she noticed the wallet clutched in the man’s hand. Had he taken a bribe? Had it been the last thing he had ever done?
Rowe reached in and tugged the leather bifold free of the dead man’s grasp. Then he flipped it open to a photo and a badge smeared with blood. The face in the picture didn’t belong to the man in the alley. The agent in the photo was young and blond and handsome: Special Agent Rowe Cusack. “It’s my credentials.”
“He had them?”
“He’s my handler. He held on to them when I went undercover.” A muscle twitched beneath the dark blond stubble on Rowe’s tightly clenched jaw. “He had my gun, too. Hell, he was probably shot with it.”
“You were in prison,” she reminded him. “You’re not responsible for this. And whatever gun the killer used must have had a silencer on it since no one called the police.”
He glanced around the empty alley and sighed wearily. “Nobody calls the police around here.”
She peered up at him, puzzled by how certain he sounded. Had this been his beat when he was Detroit P.D. with the security guard back at the federal building? Or, like his handler, did he live around here?
Or had he grown up around here? Was that what the security guard meant when he’d mentioned that how Rowe had grown up had made him so determined to be an agent with the DEA?
“You know this area?” she asked.
He nodded. “Grew up here.” He pointed toward some of the apartment buildings backed up to the alley. “And there. And there. And there…”
“You moved around a lot?” she asked, wondering about the childhood that had made Rowe’s job so important to him.
“Got tossed out of a lot of apartments and crashed in a lot of them after getting tossed out.”
“How old were you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”
She hated the thought of Rowe living in such a neighborhood now, but especially as a kid, nearly as much as she hated the thought of Jed locked up. In a way growing up here would have been like serving life in prison because so
many kids never made it out of rough neighborhoods like this. Like the inmates in Blackwoods Penitentiary, so many died inside.
“But I still know how life is around here,” he continued. “No one calls the police.”
“Nobody calls even when guns are being fired?” she asked, realizing now how sheltered her life had been, how sheltered it still was even after her brother’s unjust arrest.
Rowe chuckled, albeit with no amusement. “Guns are always being fired around here.”
And as if to prove his point, gunshots echoed within the alley and pinged off the metal next to her head. A cry of surprise and fear slipped through her lips.
MACY’S CRY STRUCK ROWE’S HEART like the bullets nearly struck her head. He grabbed her, pulling her tight against him as he leaned over her to shield her. The gunshots came from above, probably from the fire escape outside Jackson’s apartment. The creaking he’d heard in the hall hadn’t been someone on their way to their own apartment but the killer returning to the scene of his crime.
Since the shooter had the vantage point of being several floors above them, Rowe and Macy were sitting ducks in the alley. He hunched down over Macy as he pushed her toward the car. Bullets glanced off the Dumpster and ground into the asphalt near their feet as they ran. Rowe pulled open the driver’s door and shoved her inside, across the driver’s seat and over the console.
Glass shattered, the windshield exploding as bullets struck it. The rear window went next, shards of glass spreading like confetti across the asphalt. More bullets dented the roof.
He pushed her onto the floorboards beneath the dash. “Stay down!”
His hand shaking, he jammed the key in the ignition. If it had been just him, he would have returned fire. He would have brought down the son of a bitch firing at them. But now, with Macy in danger, all he could think about was getting her to safety. And it had nothing to do with his promise to Jed and everything to do with his own feelings for her.
After a sputter, the car started. He jerked the shifter into Reverse and started backing out of the alley. But the gunman was coming down the escape, the shots getting closer. Rowe slowed for a quick glance, but before he could get a good look at the shooter, the side window exploded.
Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs Page 10