Stranger in Cold Creek

by Paula Graves

  “It’s been a possibility from the beginning, hasn’t it?”

  “A possibility, yes. But she’s gone off before.”

  “You said this was the longest time she’s been away.”

  Miranda sighed and paced over to the fire, gazing into the flames. The firelight seemed to deepen the sadness in her expression, giving her a tragic sort of beauty. “I wanted this case to have a happy ending. I wanted to see Delta come wandering back to town, surprised by all the fuss.”

  “It might still happen.”

  She turned her back to the fire and looked at him. “I don’t think it will this time. I can’t shake the feeling that something bad has happened to her.”

  “Did Delta have any enemies?”

  “I don’t know. I was probably the closest thing she had to a friend, but even I didn’t know much about her life beyond what little bit she decided to share with me.” She crossed to the sofa and sat beside him again, a little closer this time, her warmth washing over him. She smelled good, he thought, a fresh earthy scent like garden herbs warming in the sunshine.

  “Could Delta be the one who broke in?”

  She shook her head. “I thought about that, but why would she? She knows I’d let her in. And she’d know there’s nothing hidden in this house that she’d have to rip things apart to find.”

  “So maybe it’s someone looking for something Delta left here.”

  “I don’t think she left anything, though.”

  Garrett came out of the kitchen again, carrying his tool bag. “All done, Mandy. You paying with cash or credit today?”

  “I’ll give you a check.” Miranda pushed to her feet and grabbed her purse from the shelf by the door. She followed Garrett outside.

  John pulled his phone from the pocket of his jeans and called Quinn to catch him up on the events of the past day.

  “So, you’ve moved in with this woman?” Quinn couldn’t quite keep the amusement out of his voice.

  “Just for a while, until we can figure out what’s going on and who might be gunning for her.”

  “Well, I have an update on someone who might be gunning for you,” Quinn said. “The FBI thinks Del McClintock may have headed west to hide out with family in Oklahoma.”

  Too close, John thought. “What part of Oklahoma?”

  “His cousins live in Altus. Not that far from Cold Creek, really. A little over two hours by car.”

  Damn it. “You think that’s a coincidence? Or do you think he has a bead on my location?”

  “It’s hard to say. The FBI isn’t a hundred percent sure he’s in Oklahoma at all. It’s just a place to look. But I think it’s best if you keep your eyes open. Have you told anyone there why you’re in Texas?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Do you trust the deputy?”

  He thought about it. “I think so. I think she’s one of the good guys. But I’m not sure I want to tell anyone about John Bartholomew and what he was doing for the past year in Virginia.” He heard footsteps on the porch outside. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be in touch.”

  He pocketed the phone just before the door opened and Miranda came back in, holding a yellow receipt, looking exasperated. “Whoever made this mess in my place has cost me an arm and a leg. Most of the damage isn’t going to be covered by my homeowner’s policy, and now I have to worry about getting new furniture and canisters and—” She flung her hands wide. “I don’t even know how much I’m going to have to replace.”

  “Well, your sink is working again, at least. Maybe we can make a grocery run and replace some of the stuff that got dumped down the drain.”

  “Probably going to have to wait until I get paid again now.” She waved the yellow receipt at him. “Know what I need? Something to take my mind off my troubles. Why don’t we go take a look at the back room and see what needs to be done next?”

  John followed Miranda to the unfinished room and listened to her description of what she wanted to accomplish. “This was originally a second bedroom, and I don’t want to lose that function, but I’d also like for it to be a little more versatile than just another bedroom. It’s large enough that I think I could fit a desk in here as well, and maybe build in some shelves for books and file boxes. The sheriff’s department is willing to pay my tuition for some continuing education courses and seminars in law enforcement, and I want to have a place to keep my books and notes from those courses.”

  He could picture it. The room was situated in the back corner of the house, with four windows offering a vista of the plains that seemed to stretch into infinity. A different sort of beauty than the hills and valleys of his Tennessee home, but beautiful nonetheless. She could work here, surrounded by the place she loved, improving her skills at protecting the community she served. It was a very Miranda thing to want.

  At least, he thought it was. How much could he really know about a woman he’d met only three days before?

  “I love this room. It’s a little smaller than my bedroom, but I was considering changing rooms just for this view. And then the tornado hit and practically demolished it.” Her eyes darkened with remembered pain. “It took out half of each corner wall and the rain ruined the floor and the other walls. We had to strip up the floors and take down all the drywall and the ceiling.”

  He looked up at the exposed wood of the frame. “You and your dad did the reframing?”

  “Yeah, and we got the siding put up on the outside to protect it from the elements. But I haven’t had a ton of time to get the interior fixed up the way I want it. I’ve had to do it a little at a time during my off-hours.”

  “I can help speed that up while you’re at work. Looks like you’re ready to put the walls in next.”

  She nodded at the sheets of drywall lined up on one side of the room. “I thought I’d try to tackle that when I got home from work tomorrow.”

  “I can get it started for you first thing in the morning. Do you have a basic floor plan for the room? Where you want the various elements to go?”

  “Do I ever.” With a grin, she motioned for him to follow her.

  They made a quick stop in her bedroom for her to grab a notebook from the bedside table, then settled on the sofa in the living room, spreading the notebook open on the coffee table in front of them.

  “I’m looking at a couple of different plans. I just can’t decide which way I want to go.” She pointed to the first page, where in neat pen strokes, she’d sketched out a simple floor plan featuring a bed, a single piece of furniture she’d labeled “highboy” and a desk against one wall between two windows. “This is the more traditional route,” she said. “The bed is against one wall, the desk at its foot. Shelves would go on the wall opposite the bed, ending at the closet door.”

  He pointed to the opposite page. “And this?”

  “I’d have to go with a daybed in this scenario, because more focus is on the corner desk and the shelves. This layout makes the room more of a study with a sleeping area. The other one is more a bedroom with a desk and bookshelves.”

  “What do you anticipate using the room for?”

  “A study,” she said.

  “I think you’ve made your choice, then.”

  The smile she flashed at him made his whole body go hot. “My dad thinks it’s crazy. He thinks I should be adding bedrooms to the house, not converting one to a study.”

  “Adding bedrooms?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You know, for when I get married and start having babies. He keeps sending me clippings from the newspaper whenever one of my friends from high school gets married or has a baby.”

  “And, of course, this being a small town, those events all get big write-ups in the local weekly.”

  “Exactly.” She laughed. “I make it sound like he’s a terrible nag. He’s not. I t
hink he just worries that I’m alone here with no husband or babies in sight.”

  “Wants to get you settled so he can stop worrying.”

  She shot him a narrow-eyed look. “This sound familiar to you, too?”

  “A little. My father wanted me to join the family business from the time I graduated college. I just—” He shook his head. “I wanted something more than a corner office in a Johnson City accounting firm.”

  “So you joined the Foreign Legion?”

  What would it hurt to tell her about his work with the CIA? He hadn’t lasted long, and everything he’d been dealing with had ended up being declassified or scrapped in the end. “I worked as a CIA liaison in Athens, Greece, for a year after college.”

  Her eyes widened. “I know I joked about that, but—”

  “It wasn’t nearly as interesting as it sounds. And I sort of blew my one and only assignment, so—”

  “How’d you blow it? Or is that classified information?”

  “Not classified. Just embarrassing.” He rose and crossed to the fireplace, gazing into the flickering flames. “Athens was always volatile politically. Lots of protests—antiglobalization, anarchists, black bloc, you name it. About a week earlier, Athens cops had killed an unarmed teenager and things were really hot in the city. I was living in a hotel that offered long-term rentals, and that morning, I apparently walked right out of the hotel into the middle of a violent protest. I took a chunk of concrete to the head and woke up three weeks later in an Athens hospital with no memory of the event.”

  “My God.”

  “Needless to say, everything I had on me that might be considered sensitive information was gone. My hotel room had been searched and cleaned out. My cover was more or less blown and I wasn’t any use to the CIA any longer.”

  “So they fired you? Because you got hurt?”

  “Because I was compromised. It wasn’t personal.” He shrugged. He’d known the stakes, known how easily a career in the CIA could end. “At least I’m still alive. I’ve been told it was touch and go for several days.”

  “So then you went back to Johnson City and spent some time in that corner office?”

  He laughed. “Not exactly. By then, my cousin Pete had earned the corner office. I had to start at the bottom. I figure I got maybe midway in ten years, at which point I realized being a decent accountant wasn’t the same as wanting to be an accountant.”

  “So what did you do between the time you left the accounting firm and the time you showed up on the Blanchard Building payroll?”

  “I worked for a company called The Gates. Ever heard of it?”

  She shook her head. “No. Strange name.”

  “It’s a security agency. Based in a little town called Purgatory, Tennessee, down in the Smokies. The boss is a guy named Alexander Quinn. Former CIA—legendary at the company, but most of what he’s done in his life is so classified I’m not sure even the presidents he served knew some of it.” John poked at the waning fire, stirring up embers. “Seems that Quinn came from money, and when he came in to a big inheritance, he left the CIA and started his own agency.”

  “What kind of security work?”

  “All kinds, really. Some investigation, some bodyguard work, some security analysis and threat assessment.”

  “In an agency working out of a little town in the Smokies?”

  “That’s the base. But he has people working for him all over the place. If you talked to the agents currently working for Quinn at the main office in Purgatory, they probably wouldn’t recognize my name. I was working for him out of Abingdon, Virginia.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Well, I was officially a freelance security consultant. I did some jobs consulting with companies in Abingdon that were looking to improve all areas of their security. But what I was really doing was helping an undercover agent Quinn had in place in a little town called River’s End, in the Blue Ridge Mountains not far from Abingdon. She was trying to infiltrate a militia group—”

  “The Blue Ridge Infantry,” Miranda interrupted, her brow furrowed. “I’ve heard of them. But didn’t I read that the FBI had finally had a big break in the case that’s allowing them to round up everyone involved?”

  “It wasn’t the FBI who made that break happen. It was a tough lady named Nicki Jamison. I might have helped a little, too.”

  Miranda crossed to where he stood, meeting his gaze. “You weren’t hurt in a hunting accident, were you?”

  “No. I mean, I was being hunted, but—”

  She closed her eyes. “Is that why you’re here? Recuperating?”

  “That, and lying low.”

  “So John Blake isn’t really your name.”

  “No, it really is my name. But nobody in Abingdon—or River’s End—ever knew it. I was known as John Bartholomew there.”

  “But you said you’re lying low.”

  “I am. Just because John Blake isn’t the name I used doesn’t mean that someone with some computer savvy couldn’t eventually figure it out. And the BRI had some pretty nasty hackers working for them.”

  “So maybe I need to be watching your back.”

  “Maybe you should. Because the FBI believes one of the guys who might be looking for me is somewhere in Altus, Oklahoma.”

  Her eyes widened even more. “That close?”

  “They’re not sure he’s there. But he has family in Altus.”

  Before Miranda could respond, her cell phone trilled. “Hold that thought,” she said before she answered. “Duncan.”

  As she listened, her gaze snapped up to his, her eyes looking huge and dark in her suddenly pale face. “When?”

  Whatever she was hearing on the other end of the call, it was bad news, he saw. Her free hand rose to her mouth as she listened with increasing distress. “And she’s sure?”

  The other caller must have answered in the affirmative, for Miranda gave a brief nod and said, “I’m on my way.”

  “What is it?” he asked as she put her phone away and looked around for her jacket, spotting it on the back of the chair by the door.

  She shrugged the jacket on. “A woman who lives off Route 7 had some chickens escape their coop this afternoon. When she chased them down, she stumbled on the body of a woman.” She lifted her troubled gaze to John. “They think it’s Delta McGraw.”

  Chapter Ten

  The dead woman lying in the shallow arroyo behind Lizzie Dillard’s chicken coop was definitely Delta McGraw. And she’d been dead for at least a couple of days.

  The sight of her friend’s body, cold and mottled with cyanosis and in the early stages of decomposition, seemed unreal somehow. She knew the full emotional impact would hit her soon enough. But right now, she had to be a cop first.

  “She definitely wasn’t out here the day of my wreck,” Miranda told Sheriff Randall as they stood looking down at Delta’s cold body. “I was out here and I had a pretty good look around.”

  “She’s been dead longer than that,” Randall said. He looked toward the road, where John Blake sat in his truck, watching them work. “I see you brought your new friend.”

  “He’s watching my back.”

  “You think we don’t?” The sheriff’s voice held an oddly defensive tone she hadn’t expected.

  “No, of course not. But we’re a small agency. If John Blake has the time and wants to watch my back—”

  “Didn’t you say he’s a carpenter or something?”

  “He has some law enforcement training in his past.”

  “A wannabe.” His tone was dismissive.

  “No, more like a once was.” She glanced at the truck, not wanting to reveal too much to the sheriff, even though she’d trust Randall with her life. If John was telling the truth, and she had no reason at this poi
nt to believe he wasn’t, his life was in as much danger as hers. She was watching his back, as well. “He’s nice and he saved me the other day. If he wants to use his off time to make sure I don’t get ambushed alone again, I’m not going to complain.”

  “Fair enough.” He looked down at Delta’s body. “Poor girl. She had one hell of a rough life.”

  “I had such a sick feeling this time when she disappeared. She was finally starting to put down roots, I thought.” Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away. Not now. She couldn’t fall apart now.

  Randall caught Miranda’s arm and pulled her back as two more deputies arrived, armed with crime scene kits to gather trace evidence and secure the scene. “Putting down roots?”

  Miranda nodded. “I put it in my first report on the case. When we asked people around town if anyone had seen her, Luis Gomez from High Plains Realty contacted me, said that he’d been talking to Delta about looking for a house to buy.”

  “She had that kind of money?”

  “I didn’t think so, but honestly, there’s a lot about Delta I didn’t know.”

  The sheriff was silent for a moment, then tilted his head toward the house. “You need to talk to Lizzie, see if she saw or heard anything. She was too rattled earlier for Jenkins to get anything out of her.”

  With a nod, Miranda headed across the yard to where Lizzie sat on the top step of her front porch, her head down and her shoulders hunched. When she looked up at Miranda’s approach, her normally ruddy face was sickly pale, and her eyes were red rimmed and puffy.

  “I gave up smokin’ ten years ago. I’ve never regretted it until now.” Lizzie held her shaking hands out in front of her. “I’d sell this whole damn farm for a cigarette right about now.”

  Miranda sat on the step next to her. “It must’ve been a real shock to find her out there like that.”

  “I’m a farm girl. I see death all the time. It’s part of raisin’ animals for the market, you know? But that poor girl—” Lizzie buried her face in her hands. “I know she wasn’t here yesterday evening when I went out to feed the chickens, because I walked out to the road to talk to Coy when he drove by on his way home and I went right by that arroyo.”