Smoky Mountain Setup

by Paula Graves

  “He was one of your captors?” Olivia asked quietly.

  His gaze snapped up to meet hers, full of anger and no small measure of humiliation. “One of them. The worst of them.”

  “I realize you probably would prefer not to remember what happened during your time in captivity—” Quinn began.

  Landry cut him off. “If you’re thinking of hooking me up with a shrink or hypnotist or whatever you spook types like to use to poke around in a person’s brain, forget it. I don’t remember anything that could help you find your missing man. When I got away, I just ran as far and as fast as I could. I’m sure they’ve already moved operations somewhere else. They moved me around a lot before I got away, so I don’t think they have a permanent base for their snatch-and-grab operations.”

  “Fair enough. Meeting adjourned.” Quinn stood, the look he gave the other men sitting around the table serving as a silent warning—Cade Landry was off-limits, for the time being, anyway.

  Olivia could tell most of the other agents weren’t happy about their boss playing softball with Landry, but they knew better than to voice their dissent at the conference table. They could take it up with him privately later—and from the displeasure in their expressions, Olivia was pretty sure that at least two or three of them would.

  But for now, she and Landry were free to go.

  “I need to get out of here,” Landry murmured as he caught up with her down the hall. “I should never have tried to play this straight. Those bastards don’t know the meaning of playing it straight.”

  She caught his arm as he started toward the stairs. “You’re not leaving.”

  “I’m not staying.”

  “You know what the conditions out there are like. It’s only going to get colder now that the sun has set.”

  “How cold do you think Grant Carver is right now?” His voice lowered to a deep growl. “Do you have a clue what they might be doing to him?”

  “Yes,” she answered tightly. “I do have an idea. Maybe you should go compare notes with one of our agents, Hunter Bragg. The BRI took him hostage last year. He has the scars to prove it.”

  Landry looked away from her, his expression queasy. “They’re relentless. They’re not really any good at interrogations. They don’t know how to play the game, how to get any real information. They just do it because they’re sadistic bastards who get off on the feeling of power it gives them to make a grown man scream.” He tugged his arm away from her grasp and started down the stairs.

  She ran down the steps after him, tripping in her hurry to keep up. He caught her before she tumbled, pulling her tightly against him. A jolt of pure animal awareness bolted through her from the point where her hips met his, and she dug her fingers into the muscles of his upper arms.

  “Don’t go,” she whispered.

  “I can’t stay.”

  “You can. At least tonight. Stay tonight.”

  He looked away from her, his gaze scanning the room before it returned to lock with hers. “You know we can’t pick up where we left off.”

  “You mean you don’t want to.”

  For a second his expression softened, and he looked like the man she used to know, the man who had loved her and made her as happy as she could ever remember being.

  “You know I do.”

  “Then stay. We don’t have to pick up where we left off, but please, don’t go away again. Not yet, not while you’re in trouble. Let me help you.”

  He brushed her hair back from her cheek, his touch so impossibly tender it made tears sting her eyes. She blinked them back, not willing to let them fall. “I don’t know if you can. I don’t know if it’s fixable.”

  “Then you can just get some rest. Most of the guys will be up all night trying to piece together what happened to Carver and how we proceed at daylight. We should get some sleep so we can spell them in the morning.”

  “We?” He tugged lightly at her hair.

  “You used to be a damn good FBI agent. I don’t think you’ve forgotten everything you learned at the academy, have you?”

  “Trying to bend me to your will by dangling a mystery in front of me?”

  “Is it working?”

  “Maybe.” He bent toward her until his forehead touched hers. “You win. I’ll stay. For now.”

  She gave his arms a squeeze. “Come on. Let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

  He didn’t resist as she led him back down to the basement dormitory rooms, stopping outside the door of her room. “As tempting as it is to go back in there with you...”

  She smiled. “The goal is sleep?”

  He nodded toward the room across from hers, where he’d stashed his own things. “I’ll be there in the morning. I promise.”

  She pressed her hand to the front of his shirt, feeling the reassuring thud of his heartbeat against her palm. “If you aren’t, I’m hunting you down.”

  He sneaked a quick look around, as if reassuring himself they were alone, then bent and gave her a quick kiss. “Get some sleep.”

  She waited in her doorway until he entered his own room and closed the door behind him, then turned and entered her own dorm room, flicking on the light.

  The bed was the way she’d left it, slightly rumpled and full of recent memories of Landry—the way he smelled, the sensation of his hands on her bare skin, the electric thrill of their bodies pressed close and straining for more. She closed her eyes and sank on the edge of the bed, swamped by memories. Of their first meeting, the literal electric shock that passed between them as they shook hands, making them laugh and snatch their hands away.

  The more visceral shock of desire the first time they’d taken a step past the slow burn of attraction and kissed at the end of a long day at work.

  She lay back on the bed, opening her eyes to stare at the ceiling. They hadn’t planned to start a relationship. For weeks, even months, they pretended what was happening between them was just chemical. Two people enjoying each other, no strings attached.

  But there had been strings. Probably from the beginning. Despite her tumultuous childhood with a promiscuous and reckless mother, despite his parents’ distant, businesslike marriage, somehow, they’d been foolish enough to believe in the possibility of forever.

  And then the bombing at the warehouse in Richmond had blown everything apart.

  The tears she’d been fighting earlier leaked from her eyes and slid down her cheeks. She brushed them away, angry at the sign of weakness and glad that Landry wasn’t here to see it.

  She couldn’t start thinking about forever again. She just had to focus on getting through one day at a time. She had to figure out a way to get Landry out of the mess he was in. Give him back the life that the BRI had stolen from him when he’d ended up their captive.

  Then maybe she’d figure out how to say a proper goodbye this time.

  * * *

  HE’D ARRIVED AT his apartment after midnight, the metallic taste of fear in his mouth and his mind reeling with questions he didn’t know how to answer. He’d tried to help Agent Rigsby, hadn’t he? It had been a risk to try to call her and warn her that someone else from the FBI was coming after her.

  But before he’d hung up the phone with Darryl Boyle, supervisory special agent with the FBI’s Knoxville field office, he’d known McKenna Rigsby was in big trouble.

  Boyle was railroading her. The man had said nothing incriminating, but Landry had heard the flicker of eagerness in his voice when he told Landry Rigsby had called him, as well.

  He was going after her. And he had no intention of bringing her back alive.

  Landry had tried to help her, but he couldn’t reach her before Boyle did. He wasn’t even sure where she’d be—she’d set a trap, hoping to ensnare the person who had tried to kill her before, and sh
e might not have been in either of the two locations where she’d told him and Boyle she’d be.

  He’d just hoped she’d got away. He’d done all he dared. He had his own trouble with the FBI, with a career that was already on life support. He couldn’t risk sticking his neck out, in case he was wrong about Boyle.

  What a coward he’d been.

  When the four men materialized out of the shadows of his living room, he’d been unprepared for a fight. They took him down with ease, binding him with duct tape and hustling him out to a van he hadn’t noticed parked outside his unit.

  That had been the beginning of his trip to hell.

  Chapter Eleven

  Olivia woke to darkness and a gnawing sense of unease she couldn’t place. She knew she was in one of the dorm rooms in the basement of the old Buckley Mansion that Alexander Quinn had transformed into The Gates. She hadn’t been awakened by a sudden noise or an unexpected touch in the night. She’d just gone from sleep to animal awareness in one fluid motion, without any idea why all of her senses were suddenly tingling.

  She listened to the darkness, waiting for some noise, some sensation to remind her what had summoned her from sleep, but there was nothing but the languid silence of a mostly unoccupied space. Down here, in the rooms built out of the mansion’s stone foundation, even the creaks and groans of the old house settling rarely penetrated this quiet sanctuary.

  Maybe one of the other agents had come down to catch some sleep before morning, she thought, pushing off the covers and swinging her feet down to the cold floor. Shivering, she felt around for the slip-on shoes she’d retrieved from her desk in the agents’ bull pen and slid them on her feet.

  She padded to the door, stopping to listen before she opened it and stepped outside into the dimly lit main room. The basement dormitory consisted of one long, wide corridor with six small bedrooms branching off on either side, three to the right and three to the left. There was a large bathroom at the end of the hall. That door was open, as were four of the other doors in the dorm.

  Only Landry’s door remained closed. Apparently, all of the other agents remaining on the premises were still upstairs with Quinn.

  She crossed the hallway and pressed her ear to the closed door, wondering if she’d heard noises coming from the room across the hall. But she could hear nothing from inside, except a faint creaking noise that might have been the bedsprings shifting under Landry’s weight.

  Or was she simply imagining that she could hear sounds of occupation, because the alternative—the possibility that what had jarred her awake had been Landry sneaking out of the dorm—was something she didn’t want to believe?

  Just open the door, her anxiety whispered in her ear. Open it and you’ll know if he bugged out on you.

  She turned the door handle, half expecting it to be locked. But it moved easily in her grasp, the door swinging quietly inward.

  Landry was there, still in the bed. The creaking noise she’d heard repeated twice, louder now.

  He was moving in his sleep, jerky twitches rather than thrashing that might hint at a violent nightmare. But the light angling through the open doorway fell on his face, revealing an expression that was nothing short of terror.

  Landry jerked up to a sitting position so suddenly, she couldn’t hold back a gasp of surprise. Her hand flexed, rattling the doorknob, and his gaze whipped up to meet hers.

  “I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I didn’t mean—”

  He pulled his knees up under the twisted sheets and rested his elbows on them, pressing his face into his hands for a long moment. The muscles in his back flexed, revealing pale streaks she hadn’t seen before.

  She reached for the switch on the wall and flooded the room with light.

  Landry squinted up at her. “What the hell?”

  “What are those?” she asked, crossing to the bed to get a better look at the pale scars marring his back. “Oh, my God. What happened to you?”

  He looked away from her. “The Blue Ridge Infantry happened.”

  She touched one of the pale scars. He flinched and she pulled her hand back quickly. “They beat you.”

  “You didn’t think it was a trip to the beach, did you?”

  “What did they hit you with?” She tried to school her expression, to approach the question without emotion. She’d seen terrible things as an FBI agent and also working at The Gates. She’d seen some of the worst things people could do to their fellow human beings, and she’d always thought herself to be stoic and controlled.

  But the thought of someone wielding a whip or a stick or whatever had made these scars—

  “They’re healed. They don’t matter.” He reached over and picked up his discarded T-shirt, pulling it over his head. “You should be trying to get some sleep.”

  “I was. Something woke me.”

  He frowned. “You think you heard something?”

  “I’m not sure.” She sank onto the side of his bed. “I guess maybe I’m still on edge.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” he murmured in a dry tone.

  She managed a smile. “Are you sure you’re okay? You were tossing and turning when I came in.”

  “Unfamiliar bed.”

  “Yeah.” She plucked at the bedsheets. “You haven’t really had a chance to talk to anybody about what the BRI put you through, have you?”

  “Couldn’t exactly go into therapy while I was running for my life.”

  “You know it’s not healthy to try to bury a traumatic experience.”

  He laughed softly. “I seem to remember a beautiful, hardheaded FBI agent who chafed at the idea of post-operation counseling.”

  “And that same agent didn’t cope very well after Richmond, remember? I lost so much after what happened at the warehouse. I lost myself.” She blinked back the rush of hot tears burning her eyes. “I lost you.”

  He looked up at her, his green eyes glistening with pain. “You really think post-trauma counseling would have saved us?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head, feeling suddenly helpless. “I just wish we’d fought harder. I wish we’d valued our relationship more.”

  “You think I threw it away, don’t you?” His lips thinned to a hard line. “You think I pushed you away.”

  “I used to.” She rubbed away a tear that trickled from the corner of her eye. “But I pushed you away, too. I knew you were angry with me. I should have worked harder to be certain I understood why. Maybe if I’d tried, you’d have confronted me after what the debriefing team told you about my statement, and I could have assured you they were lying.”

  “I’m not sure I’d have believed you,” he admitted, looking away.

  “I’d have made you believe me.”

  “You shouldn’t have had to make me believe you. I should have believed you because of who you were. What you were to me.”

  His use of the past tense made her stomach ache. “You never could. Could you?”

  The sadness in his eyes hurt her heart. “I wanted to.” He shook his head. “I guess I was so used to lies spoken as casually as small talk. There were so many things I wanted desperately as a kid to believe. Promises my parents made that they never kept.” He laughed bleakly. “You’d think all those years later, I could have just let it go. They never really wanted kids, and when they had one by accident, they figured out a way to go on with their lives as if I had never happened. It had nothing to do with me. Not really. I didn’t matter enough for it to be about me.”

  Growing up poor with a flighty, promiscuous mother, Olivia had pictured the lives of wealthy people as a utopian promised land, where every child had two parents, all they wanted to eat, all the clothes they wanted to wear and every luxury she could imagine.

  She’d never realized there were privations that money couldn
’t alleviate, until she’d met Cade Landry.

  “I guess you haven’t spoken with your parents since you went missing?” she asked.

  “I don’t imagine they care.”

  She shook her head. His parents had done one hell of a number on him with their casual, thoughtless neglect. “What about Mary? Does she know you’re still alive?”

  He shook his head. “Mary’s safer thinking I’m dead.”

  “You don’t think the BRI’s reach goes all the way to Savannah, do you?”

  “No point in risking it.” He shrugged. “Mary’s got a new batch of kids to raise. Did you know that? Last time I talked to her, she was working for a lawyer and his wife. Seem like nice people, from what she said. And the kids are stinking cute. She emailed me photos from Christmas a year ago.”

  His nanny, Mary Allen, had been the closest thing he’d had to a parent growing up. She’d been only twenty years old when his parents had hired her, shortly after Landry’s birth, and she’d given him the attention his parents had withheld.

  But even she had kept a certain distance, emotionally. Or tried to, Olivia supposed, thinking of a few things Landry had let slip about his relationship with his nanny. Mary had seemed determined to give Landry’s parents every chance to be what he needed them to be. She hadn’t wanted him to replace his parents with her.

  Olivia had met Mary once, on a weekend trip to Savannah early in her relationship with Landry. She’d been a trim, pretty woman with curly brown hair liberally streaked with gray and kind blue eyes that had made Olivia instantly wish she’d had a Mary Allen in her own life growing up.

  “I’ve had a lot of time to think. To navel-gaze, I think was how you used to put it.” Landry slanted a lopsided smile at her. “I do wish you’d come to me and told me the truth. I don’t know if I’d have believed you right away, but in time, I think I would have.”

  An ache of regret throbbed in her chest. “You think so, do you?”

  “You probably wouldn’t have forgiven me for doubting you, so I’m not sure it would have solved anything,” he admitted. “But it would have been comforting anyway. Knowing you didn’t think I was lying about the order to go into the warehouse.”