Secret Agenda

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Secret Agenda Page 13

by Paula Graves


  “You weren’t sure it would still be here but this is where you thought to run?” She spotted a few cars parked in front of some of the closer rooms, so she supposed the motel still took in guests. Though she had to wonder what sort of travelers a place like this might attract.

  Desperate people on the run like her and Evan?

  He parked in front of a square building on the near side of the motel. A faded sign reading “Office” hung askew on the blue door. “Stay here,” he told her. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Megan glanced at her watch as she waited. Almost 6:00 a.m. She wondered doubtfully if a place like the Meade Motor Inn even had a night staff. But Evan came back out in a few minutes, carrying a couple of old-fashioned room keys. “Adjoining rooms,” he said, handing her one of the keys. “I figured we’d want to stay close.”

  His Kentucky drawl was out in full force now, as if he’d decided to drop the pretense. He even looked a little different, she realized as he wheeled the truck around and drove them down to a room at the far end of the motel.

  The room Evan unlocked for her was a little on the shabby side but scrupulously clean, the linens on the double bed freshly laundered and smelling like sunshine and mountain air. The carpet under her feet was worn but spotless, and the small bathroom almost sparkled.

  “This is nice.” She smiled at Evan.

  “You sound relieved.”

  “I am, a little,” she admitted. “Is the place under the same management as when you worked here?”

  “Yeah, more or less.” He picked up his bag and started toward the adjoining doors next to the bathroom.

  She caught his arm, stopping him. “Can you stay in here?”

  “We could both use a little shut-eye—”

  “I know, but could you stay?”

  His brow furrowed as he tried to read the meaning behind her request. “Sleep in here with you?”

  She knew she was being weak and childish, but she didn’t want to be alone right now. She could remember only snippets of her dream about Vince, just enough to leave her feeling scared and unsettled. She had a sick feeling that if she let Evan out of her sight right now, he’d disappear somewhere into the dark hills outside, swallowed whole as his brother had been, and she’d never see him again.

  He seemed to read her fear in her eyes, his expression softening. He dropped his bag next to hers by the bed and crossed to the adjoining door to lock it. Returning to her side, he sat on the bed, glancing up as she sat beside him, watching him with sudden wariness.

  “I’m just talking about sleep,” she said, even though she wasn’t sure that was the entire truth.

  “I know.” He bent and pulled off his dusty boots. “I don’t think I’m capable of anything else at the moment.”

  She pulled off her own tennis shoes and socks. She considered shrugging off her jeans, as well, but decided against it. She stretched out on top of the covers, giving in to the weary ache that seemed to weld her body to the soft mattress.

  She found the strength to move, however, when Evan stretched out beside her. The touch of his body to hers blanketed her with welcome heat. She rolled onto her side, nestling her back against his chest. “Is this okay?”

  He wrapped his arm around her waist, tucking her closer. “It’s just fine,” he murmured, his drawl low and sexy in her ear. And if she hadn’t just spent the last thirty hours running for her life, she might have found the strength to do something about the slow burn his voice had sparked low in her belly. But weariness won out, and she drifted off into a long, dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  THE SUN WAS ALREADY low in the western sky when Evan awoke, feeling sore but rested. His ankle complained mildly when he stretched it, but he didn’t think it would cause him any long-term problems. The empty bed beside him—and the woman who should have been there—posed a much bigger dilemma.

  He’d promised himself, after eighteen years of life with two people entirely unsuited to be married to each other, that he was never going to take a chance on such a disaster. Relationships were generally short-lived, in his experience; only a rare few found long-term happiness, and it was a gamble he had no desire to take. He didn’t have the energy for relationships with more than one woman at a time, but he made it clear, going in, that he wasn’t in it for the long haul. He’d found, with little regret, that relationships based on such shallow foundations usually died quickly enough from starvation.

  He never lied about who he was or what he wanted. He’d never once left a woman behind with any regret.

  But the mere act of waking up to an empty room, in an empty bed that had once held Megan Randall’s sleeping body tucked up close to his own, gnawed a hole of anxiety right through the center of his gut.

  He got out of bed and checked the door to the adjoining room. It was unlocked, and the door on the other side was open. From inside the room, he heard the sound of the shower running.

  Immediately, he pictured her naked under the spray, her body slick with water. He imagined himself in the shower with her, touching the curve of her hip, the sweet swell of her small, firm breasts.

  He forced his mind away from temptation, looking around the room to see if she’d already moved in. Her bag lay open on the bed, but most of her clothes remained inside. And on top of everything sat the rolled-up wad of pages her husband had sent her wrapped up in the belly of a dog toy.

  Glad for the distraction, he picked up the pages and carried them over to the small table near the window. He pulled up a chair and spread the pages out, taking a good long look at Vince Randall’s small, neat writing.

  Megan had already been through the notes thoroughly, and the only thing she’d gleaned of interest was that Evan had seen a State Department official—almost certainly Barton Reid—speaking urgently to a man Vince knew to be a terrorist.

  But when he reached that section of the notes, he spotted a name that made him sit up straight.

  “Preacher was with me. Saw SDBR with aA. He said not to go to the C.O. with info. Bucking for trouble.” Evan read the words aloud, surprised.

  “Surprised me, too.” Megan’s voice made him jump.

  He turned to find her wrapped up in a fluffy white towel, her wet hair falling in curls over her bare shoulders. He almost lost his train of thought.

  “Surprised you?” he echoed.

  “That a chaplain would tell him not to go to his C.O. with that kind of information.”

  He shook his head, forcing his gaze away from her long, toned legs. “Preacher wasn’t the chaplain. He was your husband’s unit captain.”

  “Captain Gantry?” she asked, confused for a second until the name kicked in. “Oh. Elmer Gantry. The preacher.”

  “Picked up the nickname in college,” Evan said. “When your name is Elmore Gantry, there’s not much chance you’ll get away without some sort of moniker like that.”

  “So his own captain told him to keep quiet?” She frowned.

  “I’d like to know that myself.” As far as he knew, Captain Gantry was still in the army. It shouldn’t be hard to figure out where he was stationed now. If they were lucky, he’d be stateside somewhere instead of halfway across the world.

  Megan picked up the borrowed cell phone from the bed. “Uh-oh,” she said, looking at the display. “I missed about a dozen worried phone calls from my family. I’d better call them back before they freak out and call in the FBI.” Megan made a face, but he could tell she was also feeling homesick for her overprotective family.

  This was his chance to retreat before the continued temptation of her clean, damp body destroyed his better intentions. He headed for the door. “I’ll go shower and let you make your calls in peace.”

  As soon as the door closed behind him, he slipped out of his dirty clothes and stepped into the shower, turning the cold tap up to full.

  All the good work the cold shower did in cooling down his slow burn hunger for Megan nearly derailed ten minutes later when she walked into his
room without knocking and caught him shirtless. The smolder in her gray eyes almost destroyed his resolve, but he’d made a plan while in the shower that ought to help them get through the rest of the evening unscathed.

  “Jesse’s going to call back when he gets anything on Gantry,” she told him, not bothering to pretend she wasn’t ogling him. Her gaze went down to his bare feet and back up again, and a smile touched her mouth. “You work out?”

  He made a joke of the question. “Not what you expected from a former Pentagon lawyer?” He pulled on a dark blue polo shirt, well aware it would make him the most overdressed person at the place he was taking Megan for dinner.

  When he told her they were going out, she looked surprised. “We’re on the run and you’re talking about going out to dinner?”

  “Dancing, too,” he added, enjoying her look of confusion.

  “You’re going to order pizza and play tunes on your laptop?” she guessed, eyeing his smile with suspicion.

  “No, ma’am. We’re goin’ out.” There it was again. The accent he’d spent most of his adult life trying to lose. You could take a boy out of the hills of eastern Kentucky, but you couldn’t take those bloody hills out of the boy.

  He found it didn’t bother him so much, hearing it come out of him so naturally, as if he’d never walked out of these hills and hollows in the first place.

  Megan looked down doubtfully at her jeans and blue plaid blouse. “Do I need to change clothes?”

  He shook his head. “You look perfect.”

  Her broad smile was an unexpected reward. But it faded quickly. “We should pack everything back up and take it with us in the truck, in case we have to make a run for it—”

  “We’re not taking the truck,” he said, holding out his hand to her. “Coming?”

  She eyed him with suspicion but took his hand and let him lead her outside the motel room.

  They didn’t go far, just walked the thirty yards from the end of the motel to the office building. By the time they made it halfway, he heard the sound of music coming from inside the office—banjo, fiddle, mandolins and the steely wail of a dobro.

  An answering chord vibrated in the center of his chest.

  “Bluegrass,” Megan murmured, turning shining eyes toward him. “I love bluegrass.”

  He’d had a feeling she would. A maelstrom of memories— emotions—roiled through him as he opened the blue door and followed her inside.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Music hit them like a wall of sound, and Megan found her heart quickening to match the driving beat of the banjo picker’s flying fingers.

  The live band on a circular stage in the middle of the small room consisted of a female fiddler who didn’t look a day over thirteen, an older woman on the mandolin, a gangly young man in his early twenties on the bass, and two older men playing dobro and guitar. The banjo picker was another girl, a few years older than the fiddler. Her small, talented fingers were plucking the fire out of her banjo as she ripped through a hyper speed version of “Flint Hill Special.”

  “I first heard the Meades play when I wasn’t much older than the girl on the banjo,” Evan said into Megan’s ear.

  “You know the band?”

  “The Meades own MeMo. Have for a couple of generations. The whole family pitches in on upkeep, and they play music in the evenings to help supplement the costs.”

  A rawboned man in jeans and a plaid shirt approached them, carrying a straw hat. “Ten dollars cover,” he said in a mountain drawl that Evan reacted to with a faint smile. Megan wondered what he was thinking.

  Evan opened his wallet and withdrew a twenty for the hat, then followed Megan deeper into the crowd milling around the stage, where the band was finishing up the song.

  The older woman on the mandolin caught sight of Evan, a broad smile spreading across her lean face. When the last chord died, she said something to the guitar player, who announced they were taking a break.

  “Evan Pike! Good lord, boy, I thought you was never comin’ back to see us again!” The mandolin player was a tall, lean woman in her late thirties, with honey-brown hair touched with strands of gray and an unvarnished face that was pretty in a vulpine, almost feral way, her beauty more wild than cultured.

  Her accent was pure Kentucky, hard-edged and raw. “Del said he seen you early this morning, but when you didn’t show up later to say hi, I was afraid you’d done run off again without even sayin’ goodbye!” She held him away from her at arm’s length, her mandolin tucked up to her side under her arm. “What on earth have you been doin’ with yourself all this time?”

  “It’s a long story, Nola.” Evan’s accent broadened, apparently feeding off Nola’s hill country twang. “I was going to say it’s great to see nothing much has changed around here, but you have babies now nearly as old as you were the last time I saw you.”

  “Yeah, they grow up too fast sometimes. Tammie Jane’s got her a new boyfriend—it’s lookin’ real serious now. I’m just hopin’ she’ll finish up her college before she settles down and starts makin’ babies—just started in nursing at the community college. I’m hopin’ she’ll be able to transfer up to UK next year, if she doesn’t get all weddin’ crazy.” Nola shook her head. “And Dorrie’s just made the honors class this year. She’s the one on the fiddle.” She looked past him to Megan, her warm brown eyes looking her over thoroughly. “Good lord, listen to me babblin’ on and on in front of your friend!”

  Evan met Megan’s questioning gaze. “Nola, this is Megan Randall. Megan, this is Nola Dalton Meade and her brood. Her husband Del’s family has run this place for years.” Evan looked back at Nola. “Megan’s husband was…a friend of mine.”

  Nola quickly picked up on the past tense. “I see.”

  “Vince was in the army.” Megan left it at that.

  “I’m helping her work through some leftover issues from his combat death,” Evan added. Not the whole truth, but close enough, Megan thought. “It’s a sensitive matter, so we’re trying to keep our presence here low-key.”

  Nola’s eyebrows rose. “Well, you came to the wrong place for low-key, sugar.” She waved around at the noisy room.

  The Meade Motor Inn had apparently turned their check-in office into a bluegrass music hall. There was a bar to one side, though Megan didn’t see any alcohol being served. Harlan County must be dry, like Chickasaw County was. But if anyone in the place felt in need of spirits, they seemed to be getting all they wanted from the bluegrass music the Meades had been playing, as authentic as she’d ever heard.

  She saw Evan’s gaze wander down to the mandolin in Nola’s hands. He gave a small start of surprise. “Is that a Chesterfield?”

  Nola’s dark eyes met his, crinkling with a smile. “It is, indeed.”

  Megan looked closer at the mandolin and saw the Chesterfield mark. “But it looks brand-new.”

  Nola and Evan both looked at Megan with surprise. “You know about Chesterfields?” Nola asked.

  Megan nodded. “I worked at a bluegrass music hall in Nashville when I was in college. Had a friend who swore by Chesterfield mandolins—said she wouldn’t buy any other kind.”

  “I bought it from Evan’s cousin Cecil last year.” Nola turned her gaze to Evan. “Cecil’s picked up where your Uncle Thomas left off. Doin’ a real fine job.” Her expression fell. “We was real sorry to hear about your uncle’s passing. The Chesterfields are like bluegrass royalty around here.”

  “You’re a Chesterfield?” Megan asked Evan.

  He nodded. “On my mama’s side.”

  “His uncle Thomas made some of the finest mandolins you can find anywhere, but you practically had to beg him to do it, no matter how much you offered to pay.” Nola laughed. “They do say the real geniuses are usually odd birds. Your cousin Cecil’s turning out to be the same way, Evan.”

  “May I see it?” Evan asked, an odd light in his eyes, as if his fingers were itching to run across the double strings.

  “Sure.” Nola h
anded the instrument over.

  Megan watched with interest as he settled his fingertips over the steel strings. He was rusty—she wondered if he’d played in years—but it didn’t take long for him to coax a few measures of “Blue Moon of Kentucky” out of the instrument.

  “Should have known a Chesterfield would still know his way around a mandolin,” Nola said, clapping with delight. “Do you play, Mrs. Randall?”

  “Please, call me Megan,” she said quickly, her smile warm. She liked Nola Meade, she decided. “And no, I don’t play mandolin. I can pick a little guitar, and I used to sing—”

  “Then you’ll have to sing for us tonight!” Nola exclaimed, clapping her hands.

  Megan looked up at Evan, alarmed. “Oh, no, I haven’t sung in forever—”

  “You sing?” Evan asked, his fingers still darting over the strings, making up a tune as they went.

  “Not anymore.”

  “You could sing with her,” Nola suggested. She put her hand on Megan’s arm, her voice dipping conspiratorially. “Back when Evan was working for Del’s daddy, the Meades used to have an open mic night on Thursdays and he’d come sing every time. You want to give it a go again, Evan?”

  “It’s not Thursday,” he said with an indulgent smile. “But we sure would like to dance to some of your music.” He slipped his hand into Megan’s. “Something nice and slow would be good.”

  Nola smiled at him. “You ain’t changed a bit, Evan Earl Pike.” But she climbed back up on the stage, murmured something to the man holding the enormous bass fiddle and the Meades started playing a sultry rendition of “The Tennessee Waltz.”

  “I’m a terrible dancer,” Megan warned Evan as he pulled her into his arms. But she couldn’t help smiling as the music lightened her mood better than any happy pill could.

  Evan was a good dancer, moving with a light, easy rhythm that made her feel as if she were moving on air. He pulled her against him more tightly, nuzzling her hair.

 

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