Secret Hideout

by Paula Graves

  Maybe he never had been.

  “Are you sorry?” she asked, hating herself for the display of insecurity but unable to remain silent.

  He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “No.”

  “I thought it would somehow make things easier if we just stopped trying to fight it—”

  “I don’t think it’s supposed to be easy,” he murmured, sliding his finger along the chain of the locket around her neck. He gave it a light tug. “It’s only easy if it doesn’t really matter. If there aren’t consequences.”

  “I’m still going to be leaving tomorrow. You’re still going to be staying.” The bald statement of reality escaped her throat in a sigh.

  “That’s right.” His mouth tightened a little. “But I can’t be sorry about having this memory to keep me company when you’re gone.”

  “You’re such a girl, Scanlon.” Tears burned her eyes, tempering her teasing smile.

  He turned his blistering gaze to her, sending a jolt of pure need rattling through her. “You looking to provoke me into proving otherwise?”

  She kissed his collarbone. “I take it back. You’re all man.” And then some.

  “If I didn’t have to go work at the feed store tomorrow, we could spend the rest of our time together in bed,” he murmured, regret darkening his voice.

  “Instead, you should get a good night’s sleep so you’ll be on top of your game.” She started to roll away from him, but he tugged her closer.

  “No. I’ll sleep better if you’re here.” He spooned her close, his chin resting against the top of her head. His fingers found the locket around her neck and started playing with it again. Finally, his fingers went still.

  She fell silent for a while, fighting against a fierce tide of dread rising in her chest until she felt as if she were drowning. She had experienced the same sensation twice before. Once the day Adam Brand told her that Scanlon had died in the explosion. And, even earlier, the day her father told her that her mother had left and was going to live somewhere else now.

  The flood of memories from her childhood battered her heart until she couldn’t stay quiet. “Are you asleep?”

  “No,” he answered, his breath warm on her cheek.

  “Did I ever tell you about what it was like for me when my mother went away?”

  He was silent a moment. “You told me she left when you were young and that you don’t see that much of her anymore.”

  She nodded. “All true. But what I never told you was how many weeks I spent haunting our front door, absolutely positive that Mama would come walking through it again and tell us that it was just a silly joke she’d been playing on us all.”

  “Oh, baby.” Scanlon brushed his lips across her temple.

  “Mamas aren’t supposed to go away forever.” Blinking back tears, she added, “Not on purpose.”

  “How often do you see her now?”

  “Once or twice a year, if she’s in the area. I actually ran into her once, in D.C. She was in town for a symposium on surgical advances—she’s a surgical nurse. Travels the world teaching other nurses.”

  “Oh. Was that when we were working that child abduction case and you nearly bit my head off when I suggested listening to one of the psychics who’d crawled out of the woodworks?”

  She rolled over to look at him, chuckling. “I always snap at you when you suggest stupid things like that.”

  “But that time, I think you broke the skin.” His lips curved. “I could tell something was eating at you—was that it? Seeing your mom?”

  “At the time, I just thought I reacted that way because you were suggesting something crazy and completely unscientific, but, yeah. Probably.”

  “It didn’t go well?”

  “It went fine. She was pleased to see me.” Her chest tightened. “As if I were some college roommate she hadn’t seen in a while. Not her daughter.”

  “I’m sorry. That must have hurt.”

  “I’m okay. So much luckier than most. My dad’s brothers have wonderful wives who took up the slack. Aunt Beth and Aunt Sandy took turns making sure we had a mother figure around all the time. Aunt Beth was a nurse, and she taught us all we know about first aid. Uncle Mike and Dad took us all out fishing on Gossamer Lake. And Aunt Sandy is an artist—she tried to teach us all about art and the finer things.” She made a face. “It didn’t really take with me.”

  “No, you’re not really the artsy sort,” he agreed. “If I recall correctly, the extent of your art appreciation is your inexplicable fascination with Wedgwood jasperware.”

  “It looks like a frosted blue cake,” she defended. “I like blue. And cake.”

  He hugged her closer, his laughter warm against her cheek. “How the hell am I going to let you leave me tomorrow?”

  “Maybe I could dye my hair and cut it off. Wear colored contacts—they might not even be able to recognize me. I could come back as your cousin with the abusive husband—”

  He groaned. “As tempting as that idea is, it’s entirely too dangerous. I’m already skating the edge here. They don’t trust me yet, and one wrong move could get us both killed before Brand or the FBI could do a damned thing about it.”

  She knew he was right, no matter how much she longed to believe there was a way she could stay here with him. “I want to stay involved in the case, somehow.”

  “You’re not even an FBI agent anymore—”

  “Brand owes me. And I can help. He can treat me like a consultant. I wouldn’t even charge him for my time.”

  “This case could go for years. You know that.”

  “I don’t care—”

  “I do,” he said bluntly, cradling her face to make her look up at him. “I don’t want you to spend the prime of your life worrying about me. You need to have your own life.”

  She flinched a little at the hard determination in his smoky blue eyes. “You want me to walk away? Not look back?”

  She saw the answer in his expression, the pain her words evoked. But his words were simple. “Yes. That’s what I want.”

  Isabel pulled away from him, turning to look at the wall. She didn’t know whether to fume or ache. “I don’t believe you.”

  “This case isn’t the only thing standing between us. We went seven years together without acting on our desires.”

  “Everything was complicated. Our jobs—”

  “It’s not against the rules to sleep with your coworker. We both know married FBI agents who work together.”

  She couldn’t argue. “I didn’t want to upset the balance.”

  “And you don’t really believe in love.”

  She turned to look at him. “Oh, I believe in love. I just don’t believe it lasts forever. Not for most people.”

  “And you’d rather have nothing at all than something that can be taken away from you in a heartbeat.”

  She couldn’t argue with that observation, either.

  He plucked at her locket, his gaze lowered. “I can’t commit myself to anything but the work I’m doing. I’m in it for the long haul. I don’t have room for anything else.”

  “Does it have to be for the FBI? Couldn’t you work for someone else?”

  He looked up. “Work for your brother, you mean?”

  “You’re the kind of person he hires. Hard-working, smart, resourceful, FBI trained—”

  “I’m not leaving the FBI, Cooper.”

  Not for me, you mean. Rolling over, she gazed up at the shadows cast by the bedside lamp on the ceiling.

  “Don’t do this,” he pleaded softly. “Don’t overanalyze things. I don’t regret being with you, even if it never happens again. I’m glad you’re here with me right now. I’m grateful I got to see you one more time before we have to part again.”

  “And I’m glad you’re alive,” she whispered, slanting her gaze in his direction. Hot tears trickled from her eyes and down her cheeks to wet the pillow.

  He slid his arm around her, pulling her to him. Laying her head on hi
s chest, she listened to the now-familiar percussion of his heartbeat against her ear. He kissed her temple and whispered in her ear, “Remember what you told me you wanted? When I won that last game of Smackpop?”

  She chuckled. “Popsmack. And yeah. I remember.”

  “I want the same thing you did.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Now? You’re really ready for that, sport?”

  He nibbled lightly at the side of her neck, one hand sliding down to cup the curve of her breast. “Oh, I’m ready.” He shifted toward her, revealing just how ready he was.

  Curling her fingers in his hair to draw him closer, she kissed him, tasting his dark, rich flavor. She wanted to memorize it, memorize him. The sound of his voice, the rasp of his hands on her skin. The naked desire in his eyes as he gazed at her. Burned for her.

  He snaked his arms around her waist and rolled her on top of him, his hands trembling on her hips, a testament to just how much he wanted her—and how willing he was to let her take control. “Your turn,” he growled.

  Her heart stuttered into higher gear.

  He had been quiet, intense the first time they made love, but even as he let her take the lead this time, he talked to her, telling her what he liked. What she was doing to him. What he wanted for her.

  By the time she collapsed in his arms, shaking and beyond spent, all he whispered was her name, over and over, as if trying to imprint it on his brain.

  A thought hit her as she listened to his soft recitation, an idea so melancholy it made her heart hurt.

  Maybe he was memorizing her, too.

  * * *

  The night air was cold, his breath visible in the pale moonlight. He wasn’t supposed to be outside—Daddy had told him to go find Mama and stay inside. But he wasn’t a baby anymore, and he could tell Daddy was worried.

  He might need backup.

  His jacket seemed thin and useless, the February chill seeping through the thin cotton weave. Daffodils lining the driveway seemed to shiver in the westerly breeze, as if deeply regretting their decision to make an early appearance.

  He stumbled on a crack in the concrete, pitching forward before catching himself. But the stumble had foiled his attempt at stealth, and Daddy turned around at the sound.

  “Benny, I told you to find your Mama and stay inside.”

  “You can’t go out without backup.”

  The exasperated love in his father’s eyes eclipsed the anxious expression for a brief moment. “I appreciate that, chief, but you don’t have your badge yet—”

  The hum of a vehicle engine drifted toward them on the breeze. His father broke off and turned his attention toward the sound.

  There was a vehicle coming up the road.

  Old Mentone Highway saw a moderate amount of traffic during the daylight hours, but after dark, the number of vehicles that passed down the winding mountain road greatly decreased.

  “Get back inside, Benny,” his father ordered. He cocked the rifle he carried.

  But Ben couldn’t move. He froze in place, watching his father set himself like one of those rangy Western heroes Ben and his dad liked to watch on television—Marshal Dillon, or the Rifleman, maybe.

  The sound of the truck grew louder, muffler rattling. The engine gunned and suddenly there it was—

  Ben tried to see the truck more clearly, but it was a blur. A big black blur.

  He tried to see the faces behind the windshield, but moonlight cast a glare.

  The truck window lowered. A face appeared in the window.

  But it was blank and featureless. A pale spot in the middle of a void.

  The crack of a gunshot split the air.

  His father fell. Down, down, down. The ground seemed to shake beneath Ben’s feet as his father hit the driveway, already spilling blood onto the concrete.

  He looked at the truck again. Tried to memorize everything.

  But there was nothing to see. It had disappeared into the ether. Everything around him had faded into gray nothingness. No house. No trees. No daffodils shivering in the cold.

  Just his father’s body, crumpled and blood-stained, and the rapid-fire percussion of his own racing heart.

  Scanlon woke with a start, sitting upright. He was in his bedroom in the cabin. The air was warm, heated by the gas unit just outside in the hallway. He was naked.

  And Isabel Cooper sat curled up in a chair near the window, dressed in his blue plaid shirt and a pair of his white cotton socks. She looked up from the file she was reading and smiled at him, setting his whole body ablaze with the memory of their night together.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “What are you doing way over there?”

  “Reading your files.”

  “Workaholic,” he grumbled. “Come back over here.”

  She got up and walked over to the bed, her bare legs stretching for miles beneath the hem of his shirt. He felt himself growing harder by the second. “I found something odd.”

  “You’re not seriously going to try to talk business, are you?” he asked, reaching his hand out to her.

  She ignored his hand and sat on the edge of the bed, facing him. “This is important.”

  He pushed aside the quilt covering his lap. “So’s this.”

  She arched an eyebrow at him. “Can I at least tell you what I found?”

  He grimaced. “Okay, fine. What did you find?”

  “This.” She showed him one of the reports stored in the file, a missing persons report for someone named Trey Pritchard.

  Scanlon searched his memory until he placed the name. “Right. Pritchard was a guy who’d approached the DEA about twelve years ago. Claimed to have some inside information about the Swain family. But he never showed for the meeting, according to the DEA agent he’d contacted. The agent tracked down his family, learned Pritchard hadn’t been in touch with them for weeks, and so they filed a missing persons report.”

  “Trey Pritchard was the brother of my friend Annie,” Isabel said. She picked up the locket hanging around her neck. “This Annie.”

  Scanlon’s brow rose in surprise. “Small world.”

  “Annie was killed in a bombing at their home. The same home Trey shared with her and their parents—”

  Scanlon realized where she was going. “You think the bomb could have been meant for Trey?”

  “If he was trying to narc on the Swains, yeah.” She reached back to unfasten the catch of the necklace chain.

  “I wonder why that information wasn’t included in the missing persons report.”

  “There’s a mention that he’d lost his sister to murder a couple of months earlier. Doesn’t specify how she was killed.”

  His earlier ardor cooled by Isabel’s troubling discovery, Scanlon rolled off the bed and started getting dressed. When he was clad in jeans and another plaid shirt, he turned around and saw that Isabel had pulled on a pair of slim-fitting yoga pants. She still wore his shirt, looking better in it than he could have ever hoped to. She sat cross-legged in the middle of the messy bed, atop the quilt, and studied the locket she’d unfastened from around her neck.

  “Trey gave me this locket almost a month after Annie’s death,” she said, as he crossed to where she sat. “I wondered at the time why he was the one who gave it to me and not Annie’s mom.”

  He held out his hand for the locket, and she handed it over. He pried at the latch that should have opened the locket to reveal whatever lay inside. But it didn’t budge.

  He took a closer look. “I think this locket has been soldered together.”

  She took it from him and peered more closely at it. “You’re right. I can see the little drops of solder.”

  “It should be easy to pry open.” He had a multipurpose utility knife in his belt pack. He dug it from the drawer where he kept it stored and pulled out the knife.

  “Why would he give it to me?”

  “Maybe because he knew where he could find you, and he didn’t figure anyone from the Swain family w
ould know to look for you.” He took the locket back from her, studying the way it was soldered together. There were actually two drops of solder, carefully placed so that the simple pressure of tugging at the latch wouldn’t exert enough force to break through the solder.

  He slid the narrow blade of the utility knife into the tiny seam between the locket wings and gave it a twist. One piece of solder cracked open. A second twist took care of the other. The locket sprang open.

  Isabel scooted closer to see what he’d uncovered. Her eyebrows arching, she looked up at Scanlon, confusion in her dark eyes. “What the hell?”

  Scanlon dragged his gaze away from Isabel’s puzzled expression and again looked down at the opened locket. There were no photos framed in either wing of the locket, as he might have expected.

  Instead, nestled in the otherwise empty frame on the right wing lay a small gold key.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Isabel picked up the key. It was barely small enough to fit in the locket. Turning it over, she saw a strip of tape adhered to the key head, with a number in fading blue ink—112.

  “A locker key?” Scanlon guessed. “Could be the number.”

  “But what kind of locker?”

  “How well did you know Trey Pritchard?”

  “Not well. He was older than Annie. Didn’t get along with the new stepfather. Drug use kept him from holding on to a job, and Mr. Lewis rode him pretty hard about it. The family was having enough trouble dealing with racist freaks as it was—they didn’t need Trey bringing problems home to add to the nightmare.”

  “Nobody thought his drug connections might have been behind the attack on the family home?”

  Isabel shook her head. “Trey hadn’t lived there for months, and the family had been dealing with harassment because Mr. Lewis was black.” She tamped down the anger that rose in her gut when she remembered what her friend had gone through in the months before her death. “Everyone thought it was the Klan or some other white supremacist group.”

  “Did they look for the bomb signature, at least?”