by Paula Graves
“After I proved myself with Blake, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation approached me. They’d heard about me from the Nashville police and thought I was the perfect person for this particular job they had in mind.”
“What kind of job?”
She met his gaze. “You’re in the FBI. You know what a honey trap is, don’t you?”
He nodded, feeling a little queasy.
“The TBI had been investigating reports of a militia group, originally from Virginia, that had begun to spread into eastern Tennessee.”
“The Blue Ridge Infantry.”
“Yes.” She pushed up from her chair and paced to the coffeemaker, pressing both hands on the counter and gazing at the half-full carafe. After a moment, she opened a cabinet and pulled out a mug. She remained quiet as she poured herself a cup of coffee and added cream and sugar.
Dallas stayed quiet, too, giving her time to gather her thoughts, though growing anxiety had begun to fray his patience. Whatever she’d been through seemed to have her thoroughly rattled, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know how bad a situation had to get to throw a woman like Nicki off her game.
She brought her cup of coffee to the table and sat again, cradling the warm mug between her palms. “It seemed an easy enough assignment. They hadn’t had any luck getting anyone inside the militia, but there were people on the margins they thought could be exploited. One of those people was a farmer who lived in a tiny place called Thurlow Gap. He wasn’t a member of the militia, but he had two brothers the TBI believed were members, and the farmer was known to be sympathetic to their cause.”
“Your job was to get close to the farmer?”
She nodded. “He was recently widowed. His wife had died of breast cancer the previous winter, and he was left to take care of three kids. He needed a live-in housekeeper and nanny, I guess you’d call it. The TBI had done a lot of research on the guy, down to the kind of woman his wife had been. And they coached me how to be as much like her as possible.”
“Oh.” He was beginning to get an idea just how this story was going to end. No wonder she looked sick.
“It wasn’t supposed to get personal. Not really. I wasn’t sent there to seduce him. It wasn’t supposed to cross any lines that way.”
“But it did?”
“Kind of.” Her grip on the coffee mug tightened, though she still hadn’t taken a drink. “He wasn’t what I expected. He was nice. Decent. Still hurting from the loss of his wife. And those kids...”
He didn’t miss the glitter of tears in her eyes. “What happened?”
“He wasn’t as sympathetic to the militia as the TBI thought. He just loved his brothers. So he tried to protect them. And it ended up costing him everything.”
“How?”
“I found out his brothers and their friends were planning an attack on some conservation officers who were doing license checks at a nearby reservoir. He’d been trying to talk them out of it, make them see the stupidity of doing something so destructive.” She shook her head. “He sympathized with the idea of less governmental interference in the lives of its citizens. Hell, who doesn’t? I know I do. But hurting or even killing people who are just doing their jobs—”
“You reported the plan to the TBI?”
“I did.” She closed her eyes, tears squeezing through her eyelids and trickling down her cheeks. “But his brothers thought the information had come from him. So they made him pay.”
“How?”
“They burned his fields. All his crops that would have paid the bills once it was time to harvest. But they didn’t stop there.” She dashed away the tears with quick, angry flicks of her fingertips. “Then they burned him out of his house. We almost didn’t get the kids out in time.”
“My God.”
“He lost everything. His house. His living. Almost lost his children.”
He reached across the table and took her hands. “You know it wasn’t your fault.”
“In my head I know it.”
“You’re not the one who set the fires. You’re not the one who was planning murders.”
“I told the TBI I was out. There wasn’t anything more I could get for them, once that poor man’s life was torn apart. And it wouldn’t have done any good for them if I stuck around living a lie. So I said my goodbyes and I ran.” She turned her hands palm up beneath his. “I ran home.”
“Like I did.”
She looked up at him. “Yeah. I guess exactly like that.” Her grip on his hands tightened a notch. “Though I didn’t get ambushed on the way.”
“You sound as if you finally believe me.”
“You didn’t give yourself those scrapes and bruises.” She dropped her gaze to their entwined hands. “There was always a question in Quinn’s mind whether you were a good guy or a bad guy.”
“You might want to ask a guy named Cade Landry his opinion.” He tugged his hands, trying to pull them away from hers, but her grip tightened, holding him in place. “If he’s even alive anymore.”
“He’s alive. And well.”
Relief washed over him in a wave. He’d been almost certain Landry would be dead by now, thanks to his own stupidity. “Crandall didn’t get to him?”
“Crandall?” She frowned at him. “Who’s Crandall?”
She didn’t know, he realized. But shortly before those thugs in trucks had ambushed him on the highway south, he’d talked to Cade Landry on the phone to warn him about Crandall.
Maybe Landry hadn’t believed him.
“You’re in contact with Quinn, right? You should ask him. Landry surely told Quinn what I told him about Philip Crandall.”
“Maybe,” she conceded, looking uneasy. “Quinn’s pretty big on the whole concept of ‘need to know.’ But why don’t you tell me what you told Landry? Because I think I need to know, and I don’t think I can wait for Quinn to get around to agreeing with me.”
“Philip Crandall is an assistant director at the FBI. And I’m pretty sure he’s the one who sicced the BRI on me.”
Nicki’s eyes widened with alarm. “Assistant director at the FBI? The BRI has infiltrated the Bureau that high up?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just know that when I told AD Crandall what Cade Landry asked me to tell him, I got a very strong sense that I’d made a huge mistake.”
“What did Landry ask you to tell him?”
“I think now it might have been a setup. Only problem is, I think I’m the one who got caught. And if I’m ever going to be able to get my life back, I have to prove that Crandall is dirty.”
“How are you going to be able to do that?”
He met her worried gaze. “I have a few thoughts. But first, I’m going to need a few things. And I think maybe you can help me out with that.”
* * *
ALMOST ALL THE SNOW had melted off during the afternoon hours, but the dead leaves underfoot had remained damp enough to form ice crystals when the temperatures dropped after nightfall. They crunched far too audibly beneath Nicki’s feet as she hiked up the mountain, making her nerves rattle.
There’s nobody watching, she told herself, even as she scanned the woods for any sign someone might be following her. She was coming up from the town side of the mountain this time, on her way home from an evening shift at the diner, leaving her Jeep parked behind the hardware store in hopes she’d escape notice.
She’d left Dallas behind in the cabin earlier with a warning to let her handle this part of the plan alone, but he hadn’t exactly followed any of her orders to date, had he? What if he’d changed his mind about striking out on his own?
He wasn’t what she’d expected. Quinn had described him as a worker bee, one of the nameless, faceless drones who kept the bureaucracy functioning. A graphic designer working in the public informat
ion office, putting out flyers and brochures describing the wonders of working for the FBI or touting their most recent successes.
But the Dallas Cole who’d picked the cellar lock and hunted down all her secrets was anything but a drone.
And while she wasn’t exactly a technophile, she knew enough about computers to realize that the list of supplies he was requesting from Quinn suggested a computer savviness she hadn’t expected.
By the time she reached the dead drop, she was shivering beneath her layers of warm clothing, but she knew it wasn’t a reaction to the cold. Her life had been complicated enough before Dallas Cole stumbled in front of her Jeep in the middle of a winter storm.
Now it was becoming downright dangerous.
Her signal was gone, replaced by Agent X’s downturned log. She had a message from Quinn waiting for her already.
What was she going to do if Quinn wanted her to abandon the case? There was a part of her that was scared senseless now that she was so close to getting the information she’d come here to find. If she continued to play her cards right, Del would introduce her to the head of the militia group, the man who was looking for someone to be his personal medic. And Nicki could make her own case for being that medic.
They’d have his identity. They’d have her on the inside where she could see and hear things another woman wouldn’t get close enough to see or hear. And in the Blue Ridge Infantry’s world, women weren’t good for much of anything but sex, housekeeping and the occasional object of a man’s anger. She’d be little more than a piece of furniture, ignored or forgotten most of the time, a fact she intended to use against the bastards.
But so much could go wrong so easily. One misstep could cost her everything she’d been working for.
And Dallas Cole was a misstep waiting to happen.
Nicki found a small packet of papers stashed in the small alcove inside the cave. She normally waited until she got back to the cabin to read the messages Quinn left her, but this time, curiosity got the better of her and she pulled a small penlight from her pocket and scanned the notes.
The first two papers contained a concise but thorough outline of what The Gates knew about Dallas Cole. To Nicki’s relief, Quinn’s assessment seemed to track precisely with what Dallas had told her himself.
Before she could check the rest of the notes, she heard the murmur of voices somewhere outside the cave.
Nerves jangling, she extinguished the penlight and pressed herself flat against the cold stone wall of the cave, holding her breath to listen.
The voices were male, but she couldn’t make out words. They seemed to be some distance away but moving closer. She might have time to leave the cave and get out of sight before they could spot her.
But what if she was wrong? If someone saw her sneaking around this cave, they’d become curious. If word got to the wrong person—
She edged toward the cave mouth but stayed inside, straining to hear the voices of the men headed her way.
Definitely two of them, she decided as they came close enough for her to make out their words. From their conversation she quickly discerned they were night-hunting for opossum. And one of the voices belonged to Del McClintock.
“I don’t know why he wants possum, but I’ve learned not to ask questions.” That was Del, his drawl spreading like warm molasses.
“He still doin’ poorly?” the other man asked. Nicki tried to place the voice but couldn’t. Might be one of the crew she hadn’t met yet.
“Yeah, but we’re working on that. Seems like what he needs most is someone to monitor him, make sure he’s gettin’ his meds like he’s supposed to. You know he doesn’t want to involve a doctor, so we’re trying to work out a different deal.”
“You mean that girl, don’t you? The cook at the diner?”
Nicki held her breath.
“Yeah, turns out she has some paramedic experience or somethin’, but I don’t think that’s really why he’s interested.” Del laughed. “Can’t really blame him for wanting a nice piece of scenery like Nicki around. I wouldn’t mind exploring a little of that scenery myself.”
Nicki grimaced. She might be laying a honey trap with Del, but she didn’t have to like it. On the upside, Del seemed to think the mysterious head of the Virginia BRI was interested in her services as a caregiver. He’d played pretty coy and noncommittal with her so far, so this was good news.
Wasn’t it?
She waited for the two of them to move on, but their footsteps stopped just a few yards away from the cave. The urge to take a peek to see if she could spot Del and his companion was almost more than she could resist, but she plastered herself to the cave wall and tried to calm her rapid respirations.
“Is that a cave?” That was Del’s voice, terrifyingly close. Nicki swallowed a moan.
“Don’t look like much of one,” the other man drawled.
Del’s footsteps crackled the frozen leaves underfoot as he moved closer to the cave. “Might be a possum nesting in there. Why don’t we go take a look?”
Nicki’s heart skipped a beat.
Chapter Eight
She’d been gone awhile, hadn’t she?
Dallas glanced at the clock on the wall over the fireplace. Only nine thirty. She’d wanted to wait until after her shift at the diner to check the drop site, preferring the cover of darkness to make her trip through the woods. She’d told him the hike up the mountain would probably delay her by about thirty minutes, so she’d be home around ten.
Which meant there was still half an hour to wait before he could panic.
He had to do something to get his mind off Nicki’s trip into the woods. Surely there was something constructive he could be doing while he waited? He could certainly use more sleep, but he didn’t think his nerves would let him settle down for a nap. He’d already walked three circuits of the cabin’s small interior, trying to build up his stamina, but the repetition was about to drive him crazy, as well.
He could always study the notes from Quinn. He’d had time to glance through them before Nicki returned home, but she’d stashed them back in the space between the refrigerator and the counter soon after.
But she hadn’t actually told him not to touch them again, had she?
No, he decided. A glare was not an actual warning.
He pulled the envelope from the niche and started to untie the envelope closure when he heard the front doorknob rattle. The door creaked open slowly, and Dallas held his breath, waiting for the all clear signal Nicki had promised before she left on her hike.
But it didn’t come.
The footfalls on the hardwood floors of the front room sounded heavy and, well, male. The door closed with a soft click, there was a brief rattle of keys and Dallas heard a male voice quietly ask, “The lights are on. You sure she’s not here?”
With his pulse pounding like a whole drum line in his ears, Dallas gathered up the papers as quietly as he could and looked at the dead bolt lock on the back door.
Please be a quiet lock. He edged over to the door and gave the dead bolt knob a slow twist. It glided open with only the tiniest of clicks.
“She’s still at the diner, best I know. She never gets out of there early. You know how Trevor works those girls. We’ll have to work fast, but we should have time.”
Dallas waited, listening. Listening to the little voice in his head as his grandmother used to call it. “Trust that little voice. It knows what’s what.”
In the front room, a scraping noise gave him the opening he needed. He turned the knob and opened the door, the slight creak hidden by the sound of chair legs sliding across the floor. He slipped through the narrow opening and pushed the door closed, turning and running for the woods behind the cabin.
He didn’t stop until he was several yards deep in the woods, his lungs
aching from the cold air. He hadn’t had time to grab his jacket, and the borrowed sweats felt inadequate to combat the frigid temperatures for long.
He tugged the papers tightly to his chest and looked for anything he could use for shelter, but all he saw was trees, trees and more trees. He tamped down his dismay and just breathed, in and out, filling his aching lungs with clean mountain air until the rushing sound in his ears subsided.
Think, Dallas. You used to know the hills and woods like a friend.
He looked around again, this time without the rush of panic and despair. There were plenty of broken limbs on the ground, victims of past storms. Some of them were pine boughs—he could use them to construct a simple shelter to at least block out the wind.
He secured the papers back in the manila envelope and tucked them inside his sweatshirt for safekeeping while he went to work constructing his shelter.
Hunkering down in his cramped little pine bough fort a few minutes later, he finally had time to breathe and think about the intruders and what they might want. Nicki had told him she was trying to get on the inside of the BRI, so it made sense that they’d want to check her out a little more thoroughly. But entering her cabin to do a search when she was due home in under an hour suggested a brazenness that gave Dallas a very bad feeling about Nicki’s infiltration plan.
What the hell was Alexander Quinn thinking, putting her into such a dangerous situation?
The cold was a living thing, with icy fingers that crept beneath his clothing and traced a shivery path down his spine. He tucked his knees up and curled into a ball, wishing he’d had time to grab a jacket. Not that it would have been much protection against the frigid night air. Nothing would protect him from the cold if he had to stay out here much longer.
He tried to calculate the time that had passed since he’d checked the clock over Nicki’s mantel. Ten minutes? Twenty? His watch had been one of the casualties of his abduction—his captors had stripped him of anything that could ground him in the world he’d left behind. He’d lost track of time, of day and night, even of who he was from time to time.