Secret Hideout

by Paula Graves

  “What if the guy who was just in here is J. T. Swain?” she asked, pushing aside her futile wish. “He could be a distant cousin with the same name or something like that.”

  Scanlon’s fingers played in her hair. “I guess it’s possible. I’d feel a lot better if I could figure out where J. T. Swain figured into the family.”

  “I know. I went through the ‘who’s who’ portion of the files this morning before I started working out. There are photographs of every Swain and Swain clan operative we know about in that file, and this guy definitely wasn’t one of them.”

  Scanlon turned toward her, cradling her face between his big palms. His gaze was electric, sending an answering shock through her system, flooding her body with heat. Could he hear the way her pulse roared in her ears? Did he have any idea what he could do to her with a mere touch?

  She knew he wanted to kiss her. Saw it in the way his gaze dipped to her lips, his own mouth parting on a shaky breath.

  But whatever he might have wanted, what he said was, “It’s time for you to go.”

  She stared at him for a moment, certain she had misunderstood. But the stubborn set of his jaw and the way he slanted his gaze away from her told her she was hearing things just fine.

  She pulled away from his grasp, turning her back on him. She clutched the portfolio more tightly to her chest. “No.”

  “You can take the files with you. Brand can get me a second set. You can do everything at home that you’re doing here, and you’ll be a hell of a lot safer doing it.”

  She whipped around to face him. “I’m getting in your way? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “People come here. Invited and uninvited. Having you here complicates things.” He kept his voice low and hard, but she saw a telltale tremble in his jaw.

  The worst part was, she didn’t really have an argument in favor of her continued presence here, did she? There wasn’t one good reason to stick around and make things harder for either one of them. She should just pack her things and get out of here the second Scanlon could arrange it.

  “Fine,” she said aloud.

  His gaze flickered as if he were surprised by her easy acquiescence. He pressed his lips to a thin line and frowned. “Just like that?”

  She sank onto the end of the bed. “You’re right. My being here is a problem for you, and I don’t want you to get killed because I’m being a big baby about being your partner again. You and Brand have something set up here, and the longer I stay, the more I’m screwing it up for you.”

  He sat next to her. “If they weren’t after you, I’d bring you in on this in a heartbeat. I’d tell everyone you were my girl from back home in Texas.” He gave her a nudge with his shoulder and smiled. “You can fake a twang, can’t you?”

  “With the best of them,” she answered in a decent Texas accent. “How would you break it to Dahlia?” she added, even though she knew she was being pathetic now.

  “I’d tell her you were my girl first,” he said in a low, growly voice that scattered goose bumps across her back and arms. “I don’t want you to go, Cooper. But you have to.”

  She leaned her head on his shoulder. “How long do you think you’ll have to play this part?”

  “Could be years.”

  She blinked back hot tears and rubbed her cheek against his arm. “Try to make it months. Okay?”

  “Okay—”

  A phone rang nearby, loud and jarring. There was a landline hooked up next to the bed. Isabel had figured it was there only for show, since most of the phone calls Scanlon would need to make were done on the satellite phone.

  Scanlon eyed the phone as if it had morphed into some sort of alien creature. “Only the Swains know that number.” He crossed to answer the ringing phone. “Hello?”

  He listened for a second, then slanted a quick look at her. “Yeah, okay. That’d be cool.” His voice came out easy and unguarded, but his expression was tense and troubled.

  Isabel edged closer, trying to figure out what was going on at the other end of the line. She could hear only the faintest buzz of a voice. A male voice, she thought.

  “I’ll be there,” Scanlon said. “Thanks for asking.” He hung up the phone and looked at Isabel. “We’ll have to postpone any attempt to spirit you out of here at least another day,” he said, still frowning.

  “Who was on the phone?”

  “Davy McCoy. He and a couple of the Swains are going coyote hunting tonight around six and want me to go with them.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that idea at all. “You’re going out with Swains carrying guns? Have you lost your mind?”

  “That’s why I’m here in Bolen Bluff, Cooper. I’m trying to get in good with the Swains so they’ll let me in on what they’re really up to around here.”

  “They’re up to cooking crack and growing weed,” she shot back, shaking her head.

  “And blowing things up.”

  “If they’re even connected to those bombings.”

  “Those bombs are Jasper Swain specials, right down to the shrapnel they pack in there.”

  “Needles and nails,” she murmured. She knew the files backward and forward by now.

  “And gasoline-soaked cotton packing,” Scanlon added. “They’re connected. And if you’re right about their going into the ‘bomb for hire’ business, they could take a new job at any minute. I have to make sure that doesn’t happen. It was only fool luck that kept that fire at the movie theater in Mississippi from spreading to the homes nearby. A lot of innocent people could have been killed.”

  He was right. She knew he was right. It just didn’t make it any easier for her to let him walk out that door in a few hours with a bunch of animals a lot more deadly than the coyotes they’d be hunting.

  He caught her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Let’s forget about it for a few hours. Come on.” He tugged her hand. “I bought you a surprise.”

  She dropped the folder on the end of the bed and followed him into the kitchen, where a large sack of groceries sat on the rickety card table.

  “Dig in,” he said, standing back.

  She rifled through the bag, excited to find fresh fruits and vegetables inside, along with a small box of cream cheese Danish pastries. She gave him a look. “You thought you’d be able to coax me into a better mood with Danishes?”

  “It was worth a try.”

  She grinned. “You know me too well.”

  “You’re going to have to do the cooking,” he warned. “My culinary skills are equivalent to those of a college kid who’s really good at dialing the pizza place for takeout.”

  “What have you been eating for six months?” she asked, as she picked out a bunch of asparagus and some green onions from the bag.

  “Soup. Sandwiches. Sometimes together.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Some things never change.”

  “There’s a nice piece of salmon at the bottom of that bag. The lady at the grocery store—Deanie Floyd—thinks I’m planning a special dinner for Dahlia.”

  Isabel’s excitement waned a little. She set the wrapped piece of salmon on the kitchen table. “Maybe you should save this for her, then. If Deanie says anything to her—”

  “Deanie doesn’t talk to the Swains,” Scanlon said flatly. “Or anyone connected to them. She just keeps her head down and tries to keep them from deciding she and her store aren’t wanted in Bolen Bluff anymore.”

  “That’s horrible. How can things like this still happen in this country?”

  “Law enforcement has to pick their battles. The Halloran County sheriff is a cousin of the Swains, so things fall between the cracks.”

  “There was a time they didn’t,” Isabel said. “The sheriff who arrested Jasper Swain all those years ago had guts. He didn’t let the Swains cow him.”

  “Fat lot of good it did him. He ended up shot down in his own driveway.” Scanlon’s reminder was blunt and strained. She darted a curious look at him and saw that he looked angry.


  “But he got his man first,” she replied. “That’s something, isn’t it?”

  “It is.” Scanlon’s expression cleared, and he picked up the salmon. “And I bought this for you, not Dahlia. I know you love grilled salmon.”

  “No grill,” she said quietly, trying to hide the rush of pleasure his words had given her. “I can broil it instead.”

  He opened one of the cabinets beneath the stove and pulled out a broiler pan. “I’ll be your helper—there’s a cooking word for that, isn’t there?”

  “Sous-chef?”

  “Exactly. I’ll be your sous-chef. Order me around.”

  She grinned at him. “You’re just asking for trouble now, Agent Scanlon.” His wicked look in reply made her laugh. “Okay, first thing you can do is unwrap the fish while I start preparing the vegetables.” She slid the wrapped fish across the table to him.

  While they worked, she stole a quick glance at the clock on the wall above the table. Ten minutes after noon. In just under six hours, he’d be going hunting with the Swains.

  It felt like minutes, not hours. Not nearly long enough.

  How was she going to get through tonight, waiting for him to come home?

  * * *

  SCANLON WASN’T A BIG FISH EATER, but he had to admit his partner could flat out cook a salmon. “Who taught you to cook?” he asked her over their late lunch of salmon, steamed asparagus and garlic toast.

  “My dad,” she said with a faint smile. “Mom left not long after my eighth birthday, so Dad had to do it all.”

  “You don’t talk about your mom.” He’d never pushed her to tell him any of the particulars of her family back home in Maybridge, mostly because he had his own family secrets he was keeping and didn’t think it was fair to know hers when he didn’t intend to share his own.

  “I don’t see her much anymore. She made the choice to leave us behind, and we’ve all dealt with that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” As she often did when talking about something emotional, Isabel lifted her hand to touch the large gold locket that hung around her neck on a narrow chain. It was one of her favorite pieces of jewelry, he knew. She wore it most days, though she hadn’t been wearing it when he rescued her the previous day. She must have found it in the knapsack the FBI agents dropped off at the barn.

  “Your lucky charm,” he murmured, nodding toward the necklace. “Was it in the stuff they retrieved from the hotel?”

  She nodded, dropping her hand back to her lap. “In all the chaos, I almost forgot I’d left it there.”

  “Did your mom give it to you?”

  She seemed startled by the question, her brow furrowing. “No. It was something that belonged to a friend. Her name was Annie. She and her family moved to Gossamer Ridge when we were both in high school. We clicked immediately and became best friends.”

  He could tell by her expression that this story wouldn’t have a happy ending. “What happened to her?”

  She met his sympathetic gaze not with sadness, as he expected, but a roiling rage that turned her brown eyes coal black. “Her house was bombed by some racist degenerates who couldn’t deal with the fact that a white woman had married a black man. Annie’s stepfather was black, and that’s what got her killed. How sick and twisted is that?”

  He reached across the table to touch her hand and found it trembling. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s one reason I started focusing on the serial bomber, you know?” She eased her hand away from him, raising it back to the locket. “I never told you that because I was afraid you’d think I was caught up in my own agenda rather than following the FBI’s agenda.”

  He had no room to question her motives, given his own reasons for joining the FBI. “How’d you get the locket?”

  “Her brother gave it to me. He said it was a favorite piece of hers, given to her by her grandmother. He said she loved it so much she never wore it because she was afraid the chain might slip and she’d lose it.”

  He nodded at the clasp. “What’s inside it?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “The clasp is stuck, and I didn’t want to risk breaking it by trying to pry it open.”

  “It must have been hard, losing people you loved so young.” He knew what that kind of loss felt like, too. He’d seen his father murdered right before his eyes.

  If only he could remember how it happened.

  “I can’t arrange for your extraction before tomorrow now,” he said.

  She licked her lips, but her only other response was to poke at her half-eaten salmon fillet with her fork.

  “You know why it’s important that you go, right?”

  She nodded, but her thinned lips weren’t a good sign.

  “I want you to be safe.”

  She looked up at him then, her dark eyes blazing. “You want me off your mind so you can go on with your operation. I get that. Having me around complicates everything.”

  “I want you to stay,” he said baldly, unable to stop the words from coming out of his mouth.

  “What we want doesn’t matter.” She put her fork down, giving up any pretense of eating. “I just don’t—” She closed her eyes, as if she were in pain. “I don’t know why it had to be you. You’re not an undercover specialist.”

  He couldn’t explain it to her without telling her everything he’d kept carefully hidden for decades. Even Adam Brand didn’t know how deeply personal this assignment was to him. And maybe that was a bad thing—maybe he was too close to this whole mess to be objective and smart.

  But this undercover operation might be the best chance he’d ever get to find out exactly which one of the Swains had killed his father over twenty-five years ago. He’d risk anything, sacrifice anything, to find the answer.

  Anything but Isabel Cooper’s life.

  Chapter Eight

  Scanlon had long suspected the coyote hunts the Swains liked to talk about rarely resulted in any dead coyotes. The wily creatures remained plentiful, roaming freely at night, as Scanlon had discovered on many of his furtive trips to the FBI drop site after dark. So far, Davy McCoy and the two Swain cousins had done little more than drink home brew from plastic water bottles, smoke a few joints and try to one-up each other on what badasses they were.

  “You ever killed anyone?” Leamon Tolliver asked Scanlon as they crept through the woods with about as much stealth as a drunk trying to navigate a room full of wind chimes.

  “Yeah.” Scanlon knew his answer would ring true because it was. He’d killed a rapist who’d drawn down on him and Isabel while they were tracking him inside an abandoned office building in D.C. It had been a lucky shot—he’d never been much of a marksman. Isabel was a much better shot, but she’d had her back to the guy when he’d made his move.

  She’d been directly in the man’s line of fire, so Scanlon had aimed for the man’s center mass. He’d hit him in his neck, but the bullet had done its job. “Shot the son of a bitch for lookin’ at my girl the wrong way,” he elaborated tersely.

  “And got away with it?” Davy asked.

  “Cops didn’t care—guy I shot wasn’t no Boy Scout, either.”

  “Let’s go on down this way,” suggested the third man, a Swain cousin named Dillon Creavey, son of Jasper Swain’s cousin Del. After six months of getting to know the Swain clan, Scanlon practically had a family tree etched in his brain.

  Which was why J. T. Swain’s sudden appearance on the scene came as a surprise—and a worry.

  They were heading toward the river, a good place for coyotes. Watering holes drew the small mammals coyotes preyed on. Scanlon clutched his borrowed rifle more tightly, hoping the coyotes would hear them coming. As far as he knew, the coyotes in these woods weren’t making a nuisance of themselves with the local livestock, so he was in no hurry to shoot one.

  Not that he’d be likely to hit it, he thought with a secret smile. He was even worse with a rifle than with a pistol.

  “Well, look
there,” Leamon Tolliver said, as they came within sight of the river. “We have visitors.”

  Scanlon peered through the gloom ahead and spotted a tent set up about ten yards from the river’s edge, glowing from some source of light within. He glanced at his companions and noticed that all three of them were looking at the campsite with slight smiles on their faces.

  His stomach tightened. Was this a test? Was that why Leamon had asked him if he’d ever killed anyone?

  Were they going to order him to kill these campers?

  * * *

  “RECKON THEY’VE REACHED THE CAMPSITE.” J.T.’s voice was a low drawl that reminded Opal of her brother Jasper in his prime.

  J.T. looked like her side of the family, too, which was a blessing, because her late husband, Earl, hadn’t been much in the looks department. Of course, she hadn’t been a knockout herself, but what looked coarse and mannish on her looked manly in her son. “What do you think it’ll prove about Mark Shipley?”

  “Don’t know,” J.T. admitted. “If he’s a fed, I reckon those fellows will be able to tell.”

  “What makes you leery of him in the first place?” Opal kept the question casual, not wanting to pique her son’s curiosity too much. As proud of him as she was, she knew he wouldn’t care to see her as a rival for power in the family.

  She’d have to handle J.T. carefully.

  “Ain’t sure.” J.T. looked out the kitchen window at the inky night. “Feels like I ought to know who he is.”

  “You think you’ve seen him before?”

  “I don’t know.” J.T. turned back to look at her. “Jasper’s not gonna last forever. Jail’s takin’ a toll already, and he ain’t that young to begin with.”

  “You want to head the family.”

  “I’m the only choice. Jasper Junior’s in the ground, and Tammy don’t want nothing to do with the family.”