by Cassie Miles
With the gun, he gestured toward the bedroom. “In there.”
Rachel wasted no time closing the front door. Frank had broken the latch, and she had to pull a chair in front of it to keep it shut.
In the bedroom, Cole ordered, “Take off the parka.”
Frank peeled off his jacket. A swath of gore stained the left side of his plaid flannel shirt and the left arm. It looked like he’d been shot twice. It was a miracle that he’d made it this far.
The question was whether or not to treat his wounds. They didn’t have medical supplies, but Rachel could probably do something for him. Cole hated the idea of her getting close to this dangerous criminal.
Frank groaned. “You had me fooled, man. I thought you were just some punk from Compton. But you’ve got the feds on your tail. You must have pulled something big-time.”
Cole was aware of Rachel standing behind him, listening. He glanced toward her. “Find something to tie his hands and feet.”
“We need to clean those wounds,” she said. “He could still be losing blood.”
“Listen to her,” Frank said. “I don’t want to die.”
“Why should I help you? You crashed through the door with a gun.”
“But I didn’t shoot.”
A valid point. Frank had caught them unawares but hadn’t opened fire. What did he want from them?
Cole asked Rachel, “How would you treat him?”
“He needs to go into the bathroom, strip down and get out of his wet clothes. Then he should clean his wounds with soap. Once I can see the extent of the damage, I’ll tell you what else is necessary.”
“I still want you to find something to tie him up.” He turned back to Frank. “Here’s the deal. Do exactly as she says, and I won’t kill you.”
He nodded. This willingness to cooperate was out of character. Maybe he was intimidated by his new idea of Cole’s reputation. Maybe the loss of blood had weakened him.
Cole stood in the bathroom door and watched as the big man sat on the toilet seat and pulled off his boots, socks and wet jeans. His skin was raw. His feet had white streaks, indicating the start of frostbite, but the more serious physical problem became evident when he removed his shirt. Blood caked and congealed on his upper chest and left arm. When he turned his back, Cole didn’t see an exit wound.
“You need treatment in a hospital,” Cole said. “The bullet is still in your chest.”
“I’m not going back to prison.”
“Jail is better than a coffin.”
“Not for me.”
After Frank had pulled on a pair of sweatpants and dry socks, he washed the wounds. His left arm wasn’t too bad, but the hole in his upper chest was ragged at the edges and slowly bleeding. It had to hurt like hellfire. Cole had never been shot, but he’d nursed a knife wound for three hours without treatment.
Still holding his gun, he tossed Frank a towel. “Press this against your chest, and come into the kitchen.”
Frank shuffled forward obediently. His heavy shoulders slouched. His head drooped forward, and his long hair hung around his face in strings. He reminded Cole of an injured grizzly, willing to accept help but still capable of lethal violence.
After he was seated in a straight-back chair, Rachel went into the bathroom to look for first-aid supplies.
“How did you get away?” Cole asked.
“I lay still, played possum. They thought I was dead. When they all went inside, I got up and ran. Two of them went after you and Rachel. They had flashlights.”
“You were following them?”
“I was going parallel up the slope behind the house. I thought for sure they’d hear me.”
The wind and the fury of the oncoming blizzard had masked the sounds from desperate people climbing through the forest. “You had a gun.”
“Nothing like the kind of heat they were packing. Damn feds. They’ve got the primo weapons.”
Not always. “When did they turn back?”
“Didn’t even make it to the top of the hill.” Frank grimaced. “I kept going. Picked up your trail. Then I got to an open field. The snow was coming down hard. Couldn’t see a damn thing. Man, I thought I was going to die out there in the field. Frozen stiff.” He barked a laugh. “A stiff. Frozen. Get it?”
Rachel returned with an armful of supplies, which she placed on the table. “I found antiseptic, gauze and surgical tape. I think I can make this work.”
When she approached Frank and touched his shoulder, Cole’s gut clenched. Though she showed no sign of fear, he knew how dangerous Frank could be. If the big man took it into his head to attack her, Cole couldn’t risk shooting him. Not while Rachel was so close. He holstered his gun and took a position behind Frank’s right shoulder, preparing himself to react to any threatening move.
Focused on first aid, Rachel lightly probed the wound on Frank’s chest.
He inhaled sharply. The muscles in his chest twitched. “What are you doing?”
“Feeling for the bullet,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s deeply embedded.”
“Cut it out of me.”
“That’s a painful process, and we’ve got no anesthetic. Not even booze. Plus, you’ve already lost a lot of blood. If I open that wound wider, you could bleed to death.”
“I can take the pain,” Frank said.
“But I can’t give you a transfusion. For now, I’m going to patch you up and get the bleeding stopped. Later, you can deal with surgical procedures.”
“Just do it.”
Quickly and efficiently, she dressed the wound on his arm and wrapped it with strips of cotton from a T-shirt she’d shredded. “We’re going to owe the people who own this cabin a whole new wardrobe,” she said. “All this stuff is saving our lives.”
“But no booze,” Frank muttered.
She peeled the wrapper off a tampon and removed it from the casing. “I’m going to use this to plug the hole in your chest. It’s sterile. And the absorbency will stop the bleeding.”
Cole had heard of using feminine products to staunch blood flow but had never seen it done. Frank would owe his life to a tampon. Cole kept himself from smirking.
Frank turned his head away as she packed the wound. “You got to be pretty good friends with Penny,” he said.
“We talked.” A frown pulled Rachel’s mouth.
“What did you talk about?”
“Anything that would take her mind off the labor pains,” Rachel said. “Her childhood. Her dreams.”
“Her baby’s daddy? Baron?”
“I know you guys work for him and think he’s a big deal, but I think he’s a jerk. Sending his pregnant girlfriend to rob a casino?” She finished taping and wrapping the wound. “What kind of man does something like that?”
Frank’s right hand shot forward. He held Rachel’s jaw in his grip and pulled her face close to his. “Where did Penny hide the money?”
Cole reacted. He broke Frank’s grasp and yanked his arm behind his back. The damage had already been done.
When he looked at Rachel, he saw fear written all over her face. Frank had achieved his objective. He’d showed her that he was someone who would hurt her if she didn’t do as he said. Cole hadn’t protected her; she’d never trust him now.
Chapter Seven
After checking one more time to make sure Goldie was sleeping peacefully, Rachel sat at the end of the long table in the cabin. She slouched, head bent forward. With her fingernail, she traced the grain of the wood on the tabletop. The unidentifiable aroma of something Cole was cooking on the stove assaulted her nostrils.
Though she tried to focus on simple things, Rachel couldn’t dismiss her rising fears. When Frank grabbed her, she hadn’t been bruised. But she could still feel the imprint of his fingers. His grip had been ferocious—strong as a vise squeezing her jawbone. He could have killed her. With a flick of his wrist, he could have broken her neck. He’d forced her to look into his dark, soulless eyes. His split lip had sneered when he as
ked where Penny hid the money.
She hadn’t expected the big man to lash out. Not while she was helping him by dressing his wounds. Her mistake had been letting down her guard and getting too close to him. The warmth of the cabin had imbued her with false feelings of security.
She wasn’t safe. Not by a long shot.
Trusting Cole was out of the question. His subtle charm was more potentially devastating than a blatant assault. She’d heard Frank say that the FBI was chasing Cole. Those men with guns who came to the house had been after Cole.
He placed a bowl of the canned chili he’d been heating in front of her. Though she should have been starving, Rachel didn’t have an appetite. As she picked a kidney bean from the chili with her spoon, she felt Cole watching her.
“You don’t have to worry about Frank,” he said. “I’ve got him tied down in the bedroom.”
Though Frank scared the hell out of her, she didn’t want to mistreat him. “He should eat something.”
“I’m not going to feed him. He’d probably bite my hand off. Besides, he’s fallen asleep.”
“Or gone into a coma,” she said.
“I don’t want him to die,” Cole said. “I wouldn’t wish death on anyone. But I’ve done all I intend to do for Frank Loeb.”
At least he was being honest. She dared to lift her gaze from the chili and look into his face. His cognac-colored eyes gleamed. The color had returned to his roughly stubbled cheeks. It wasn’t fair for him to be so handsome. The evil he might have done wasn’t apparent in his features.
She shoveled a bite of chili into her mouth. The taste was bland and the texture gooey, but she swallowed and took another bite. If she was going to survive, she needed her strength.
Cole said, “Not the world’s best dinner. Would you like a stale cracker to go with it?”
She shook her head, not wanting to get into a conversation with him. Given half a chance, he’d seduce her with his smooth-talking lies.
“You might be wondering,” he said, “about some of the things Frank said.”
“Not at all.” She forced herself to swallow more chili.
“There are a couple of things you need to know, starting with—”
“Stop.” She held up her hand. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Five words,” he said. “Give me five words to explain myself.”
“All right. And I’m counting.”
“I’m. An. Undercover. FBI. Agent.” He shrugged. “Maybe FBI ought to count as more than one word. But you get the idea.”
She dropped her spoon. I didn’t see this coming. “Why should I believe you?”
He grinned. “Are you willing to hear more?”
Not if he was lying. “I want the truth.”
“Until tomorrow when we talk to the police, I can’t prove my identity,” he said. “The mere fact that I’m willing to turn myself in to the cops ought to tell you something. My handler works out of the Denver field office. I contacted him after the shoot-out at the casino, and he told me to stick with the gang.”
“Even though Penny was wounded and pregnant?”
“I thought the gang would make a clean getaway. She seemed okay. And I didn’t expect her to go into labor.”
“But she did. Wasn’t it your duty to protect her and her baby?”
“That’s why I got you.”
“And put me in danger.” If he really was an undercover agent, he was utterly irresponsible. “A real FBI agent wouldn’t put a civilian in harm’s way.”
“Think back,” he said. “I was doing my best to keep you safe. I kept you from seeing the other members of the gang so they wouldn’t think you could identify them. Damn it, Rachel. Before the shoot-out started, I was taking you to your van, helping you escape.”
Some of what he was saying backed up his claim to be an undercover lawman, but all she could see when she looked back was Penny, lying dead on the floor after delivering her baby. “She didn’t deserve to die.”
“I never thought Penny would be harmed. She was the mother of Baron’s child. That should have been a guarantee of safety.” His smile had disappeared. “But you’re right, Rachel. Her death—her murder—was my fault. I failed. I can tell myself that there was nothing I could have done to save her, but it doesn’t change what happened. Somehow, I’ll have to find a way to live with that.”
His regret seemed real. Did she dare to believe him? From the start, she’d sensed that he was a dangerous man. As an undercover agent, that was true. Even if he was on the right side of the law, he had that renegade edge. “Why didn’t you tell me before? We were alone in my van when you kidnapped me. You could have told me then.”
“If you’d known I was undercover, you would have been in even more danger.”
Again, his reasoning made sense. But she couldn’t allow herself to be drawn in to this improbable story. “Frank said the FBI was after you. Not the other way around.”
“And that could be a big problem.” He glanced toward the closed door to the bedroom where Frank lay unconscious. “Usually, I’d dismiss anything Frank said as a lie, but he came up with a name that makes me think twice.”
“I’m listening.”
“Let me start at the beginning.” Ignoring his chili, he leaned back in his chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “It was a month ago, give or take a couple of days. The FBI had an opportunity to infiltrate Baron’s operation. They recruited me from L.A. because they suspected there was an FBI agent working with Baron. None of the agents in the Rocky Mountain area know me.”
“Except for your handler.”
“His name is Wayne Prescott. That’s the name Frank heard. One of the shooters at the house mentioned Prescott.”
“The shooters were from the FBI?”
“I don’t think so. Attacking the house with guns blazing isn’t the way we do things, especially not when the shooters knew they had an agent on the inside. Before they opened fire, they would have negotiated and offered a chance to surrender.”
“Is that always the way they work?”
“In my experience, yes.”
His gaze was steadfast and unguarded. His posture, relaxed. He didn’t seem to be lying, but an expert liar wouldn’t show that he was nervous. “Well, then. How do you explain what happened at the house?”
“The shooters know Prescott, but they have to be Baron’s men. Penny told us that he owned the cabin and knew the location. Baron has a reputation for cruelty. During the casino robbery, our gang screwed up by getting into a shoot-out and attracting attention. My guess is that he wanted us all dead rather than in custody.”
“All of you? Even the mother of his child?”
“I’ve been undercover a lot, and I still don’t understand the criminal mind. A lot of these guys seem perfectly normal. They have wives and kids. They live in houses in the suburbs and drive hybrids. But they don’t think the same way that we do. They don’t follow the same ideas of morality. Baron might have a moment of sadness about Penny and Goldie, but he won’t let their death stop his master plan.”
“Even if he loved her?”
“A guy like that?” Cole leaned forward, picked up his spoon and dug into the chili. “He’s not capable of love.”
Penny had certainly thought differently. During the time she was in labor, she’d talked about her relationship with Goldie’s father. They’d known each other since she was a teenager. Not that they were the typical hand-holding high school sweethearts. Baron was older than she was—much older. The way they’d met wasn’t clear to Rachel, but he was somehow connected to her high school.
Penny had talked about the way he swept her off her feet. He drove an expensive car and gave her presents and took her to classy restaurants.
The thought of this older man taking advantage of Penny disgusted Rachel, but she’d kept her opinion to herself. When a woman was in the midst of labor, she didn’t need to have a serious relationship discussion.
She
asked, “Why did Frank think I knew where Penny hid the money?”
“Do you?”
“She mentioned the hidden cash. It was her insurance policy to make sure the gang wouldn’t kill her. But she never said where it was, and I didn’t really know what she was talking about.”
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“Explain it.” She leaned back in her chair. “We’ve got time.”
Cole took one more bite of chili before he responded. “Baron runs five gangs—maybe more—throughout the Rocky Mountain region. He does the prep work—figures out the site of each robbery and the timing. The gang goes in, makes the grab and gets away fast.”
“Always at casinos?”
“Usually not. Casinos generally have better security than banks. The typical target is a small bank. The heists are nothing clever. Just get in and get out. Then comes the genius part of Baron’s scheme.”
In spite of her skepticism, she found herself being drawn into his story. “How is it genius?”
“A lot of robbers get caught when they start to spend the money. Sometimes, it’s marked. Passing off hundred-dollar bills isn’t easy. And the robbers can’t exactly take their haul and deposit it in a regular bank account.”
“Why not?”
“Think about it,” he said. “If somebody like Frank strolls into a bank and wants to open an account with hundred-dollar bills, a bank teller is going to get suspicious.”
She nodded. “I see what you mean.”
“Baron has a designated person—in our gang, it was Penny—who puts the cash into a package and mails it to a secure location.”
“What do you mean by secure location?” she asked. “It seems like Baron would want the money sent directly to him.”
“But that would mean that his location could be traced.”
“Okay, I get it,” she said. “Then what?”
“After a couple of weeks when the heat is off, the designated person either picks up the money and hand delivers it. Or they give Baron the location and he arranges for a pickup. He launders the cash and keeps half. The gang gets paid a monthly stipend, just like a real job.”
She could see why the FBI wanted to shut down Baron’s operation. “How much money are we talking about?”