by Paula Graves
“No.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t nearly enough.”
“If we do this, I don’t want to settle for less than everything.”
“You mean marriage and kids and mortgages?” His expression shuttered, and she felt the first hard flush of dismay.
But before she could answer him, she felt a quiet buzz against her hip. “Damn it.” She pulled her vibrating phone from her pocket. It was Alexander Quinn, of course.
“What, does he have you wired for sound?” Landry muttered as she pushed the answer button.
“Hello?”
“Carver showed up at home, a little scuffed but okay.”
Relief swamped her. “That’s amazing news! Did he escape?”
“Carver?” Landry asked softly. She nodded.
“Yes, but I’m not a hundred percent sure they didn’t let him go.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he came back with a message. And I think maybe it was one they wanted him to deliver.”
“What kind of message?”
Quinn’s voice lowered. “You’re not on speaker, are you?”
Olivia glanced at Landry. “No.”
“Carver said the men who took him told him there’s a reason Cade Landry came out of hiding and sought you out. That the story he told you about being a target is true. But it’s not the Blue Ridge Infantry who’s after you.”
“Then who?”
“It’s Landry.”
* * *
SOMETHING WAS WRONG. Very, very wrong. From the sudden shift in Olivia’s posture to the blank expression on her face, Landry knew that whatever Quinn was telling her had hit her like a brick bat.
Was it something about Carver? Had something bad happened back in Purgatory?
“That’s not possible.” She spoke in a careful tone, still looking at Landry even as her expression remained frozen in neutral.
Whatever Quinn said to her didn’t do anything to improve her demeanor. She finally looked away, her gaze going south toward the guest cabin barely visible through the trees.
“I understand. You don’t have to worry.” She hung up the phone and took a deep breath before she slowly turned to look at him.
“Carver’s okay?”
“He escaped. He was a little beat up, but Quinn says he’s going to be fine.” Something in her voice suggested she wasn’t telling him the whole story, but she turned and started walking toward the cabin before he could ask anything else.
He hurried to catch up. “Wait a minute—what else was Quinn telling you? What’s he worried about?”
“I’ll tell you when we get to the cabin,” she answered, picking up her pace until they were almost jogging through the trees.
The hair on the back of his neck rose as she beat him inside and disappeared almost immediately into her bedroom and closed the door. Adrenaline pumped into his system, feeding his rising alarm.
Get the Kimber, his instincts screamed. Get it now.
He pushed down the rising fear, held it in check. This was Olivia. Whatever had gone down between them, she wouldn’t hurt him. Not without reason. He had to believe that, or he had nothing at all to believe in anymore.
Remaining where he stood in the middle of the front room of the guest cabin, he waited, his ragged breathing slowly subsiding and his pounding heart easing to a slow, steady beat.
When the door of her bedroom opened, the click of the latch sent a little jolt through his nervous system, but he fought against the fight-or-flight instinct and made himself remain still while she slowly emerged from the hallway and walked back into the front room.
She was holding her Glock in her right hand, the barrel facing the floor. Moisture glistened in her eyes but she wasn’t crying. He could see the effort it was taking not to let the tears fall.
She didn’t look at him as she spoke. “Quinn thinks the BRI let Carver escape on purpose. He said that Carver overheard something his captors said, and Quinn thinks they planned it that way. They wanted to give us a message without delivering it directly.”
Landry swallowed with difficulty. “What message?” he asked, though he had a sick feeling he already knew.
“He heard them say they’re not the ones who are after me.”
The cold certainty deepened, rippled like an icy breeze down his limbs, scattering goose bumps. “Then who is?”
Olivia’s gaze lifted and locked with his. “You. They said it’s you.”
He saw pain in her eyes, and his heart contracted. Did she believe Quinn? Was that why she was carrying the Glock?
For her protection against him?
She lifted the Glock and he braced for whatever came next, knowing he couldn’t do anything that might hurt her, no matter what she did next. When she set the Glock on the top of the glass-front cabinet that stood against the wall and dropped her empty hands to her sides, he released his pent-up breath.
“Landry, the one thing I know, the one thing I believe with absolute certainty, is that you didn’t come in from the cold in order to hurt me.”
Relief rolled through him, threatening to make his knees buckle.
She took a step closer, her gaze holding steady with his. “I’m not sure what the BRI is up to by sending a message through Carver the way they did. Maybe it’s an attempt to turn us all against each other. Or maybe whatever operation you overheard them planning that day through the bedroom vent wasn’t a sanctioned BRI operation, and this is their way of letting us know. I honestly don’t know. But I know you. No matter what went wrong, no matter how many problems we overlooked instead of fixed, no matter how much time we’ve spent apart, I know you. You won’t hurt me, because it would kill you. Just like I won’t hurt you.”
He glanced at the Glock she’d laid on the cabinet and forced a smile. “I have to admit, I wasn’t so sure you weren’t going to hurt me the other day when you pulled your shotgun on me.”
She smiled back, the tears welling in her eyes trickling down her cheeks. “I had the safety on. You didn’t notice?”
“I couldn’t see past the barrel stuck in my face.” He took another deep breath and let it out. “So the BRI is spreading the word that I’m the big bad, huh? I guess Quinn was pretty quick to buy into it?”
“Quinn’s not exactly the trusting sort.”
“You don’t say.” He walked back to the front door of the cabin and looked outside, scanning the yard. The sun was already high in the sky, hot enough despite the chilly temperatures to melt away half the snow that had been in the yard that morning when he woke. “Does the BRI have any idea where we are?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think they have every inch of the Appalachians under surveillance.”
“How much do you trust Quinn?”
“Enough,” she said after a moment’s thought. “You asked if he believes this story about you. I think by calling me, he gave us the answer.”
“He believes it.”
“Actually, no. I don’t think he does. He gave me the choice of what to do by calling me. If he truly believed you were the bad guy in this scenario, he and a dozen other agents from The Gates would have shown up without warning and gotten me out of here before calling the FBI to come get you.”
“So that call was about giving you the facts at hand and trusting you to make the right decision?”
“That’s how Quinn works. He says he has to be able to trust his agents to make the right decision in the field.”
“So what’s your decision in the field?”
“I think we’re about as safe here, for the moment, as we’d be anywhere.” She looked around the cabin, her eyes narrowed as if she were assessing the cabin’s utility as a fortress. “I wouldn’t mind shoring up our defenses a bit, though.”
“What do y
ou have in mind?”
“Short of building a moat?” She flashed him a grin that made his heart flip-flop, and for a second, he felt as if he’d been transported to three years earlier, when they had still been together, still partners. Still lovers.
He forced himself back to the present. She had been right earlier, when she’d said it was folly to try to recapture the past. The past, for all its delights, had also been riddled with mistakes and lost opportunities.
They had a chance to start fresh. And that was what he planned to do.
“How much do you think we can trust Rafe and Janeane?” he asked.
“Seth Hammond trusts them. And he’s a pretty good judge of character. He made his living off being able to read people, you know.”
“Interesting choice of hires for The Gates,” he murmured.
“Quinn’s a pretty good judge of character, too.” She crossed to him and took his hand. “We’re going to figure all of this out. You’re not going to spend the rest of your life running. Do you hear me?”
When she said it, he could almost believe it. “I hear you.”
“We’ve just got to figure out a plan. Something more proactive than hunkering down and hoping nobody finds us. Making this place or any other place a fortress is the same as making it a prison. I have no desire to live the rest of my life in a prison.”
She never had been the wait-and-see type, he thought. It didn’t seem that the time they’d spent apart had quelled her propensity to take action.
Waiting had never been one of his strong suits, either. Which was why he’d spent the previous night working out potential plans of action in his head when sleep proved elusive.
Putting his life in the hands of the FBI wasn’t something he was willing to try again, even if it was unfair to the thousands of honest, trustworthy agents and staffers in the Bureau’s employ. He didn’t know who could be trusted, so he had to work on the premise that he could trust none of them.
But Olivia was right. He may have escaped BRI captivity months ago, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still trapped behind the invisible bars of life on the run.
It was time to come out of hiding.
“You have something in mind, don’t you?” Her eyes narrowed a twitch, a faint smile playing with her lips. “Come on, Landry. Spill.”
“I do have something in mind,” he admitted as he crossed to the fireplace and added logs and kindling to the cold hearth. Despite the rising temperatures that continued to melt the blanket of snow outside, the cabin was chilly, sending shivers down his spine.
Or maybe it was the plan he’d been formulating that was giving him the shakes. Because he’d figured out last night, lying in a strange bed in the dark, listening to the moans of the wind in the eaves and the thud of his own pulse in his ears, that there would be no easy solution to his problem.
He was a wanted man, and he had no proof of his contentions about what had happened almost a year ago when he’d tried to do the right thing and had ended up bound and beaten for his efforts.
The only way out was to get the proof.
And the only way to get proof was to bait a trap.
“Are you going to tell me or not?” Olivia’s voice was close behind him, her breath warm against his neck.
“I can’t prove I’m not a traitor. Because I can’t prove I was set up. Especially not while I’m hunkered down and hiding.”
Suddenly, she was standing in front of him, her eyes wide and scared. “What exactly are you suggesting?”
He took her hands in his. “It was my fault that McKenna Rigsby’s plan to trap Darryl Boyle went sideways.”
“Because you followed protocol and contacted Boyle in his capacity as the task-force liaison?” Olivia’s grip on his hands tightened. “How were you supposed to know he was one of the bad guys?”
“I think I did know, deep down,” he said bleakly. “But that’s not what I’m trying to get at.” He tugged her hands up, pressing her knuckles against his chest. “I’m saying that if I hadn’t screwed up and called Boyle, her plan might have worked. Boyle wouldn’t have been forewarned, and he might have walked right into Rigsby’s trap. It was a good plan. It just might be a great plan.”
“You want to set a trap.”
“Yes.”
Her voice rasped. “With you as bait.”
Chapter Sixteen
“This is a crazy idea.”
Stopping in the middle of making notes on the files he was studying, Landry slanted a look Olivia’s way. “Just an hour ago, you agreed it would work.”
She put her hands over his, tugging the pen from his fingers. “I said it could work. Could is not would.”
He closed his eyes. “Livvie.”
“Don’t Livvie me, Cade Landry. You’re already working out the logistics of a plan when we haven’t even considered other options.”
“What other options?” He pushed aside the notepad and turned to face her, his expression tight with exasperation. “There are no other options. I’ve known since I got away that one day, sooner or later, I was going to have to put myself out there as a lure to get the BRI and their friends in the FBI to show their hands. It’s time to stop avoiding the inevitable.”
“I think you’re being reckless.”
“And I think you don’t want to face the fact that there’s no safe way out of this mess. Not for me, anyway.” He took the pen from her grip. “I still think it might be a good idea for you to call Quinn to come get you. Take you back to The Gates until whatever happens to me happens.”
Anger burned lava-hot in the center of her chest. “Who do you think I am? Do I look like the kind of person who would hide behind the walls of The Gates to save myself while you’re out there with your neck on the line? Do you think I could do that to the man I—” She bit off the word, not quite ready to say it aloud, even though the emotion swelled in her chest, threatening to burst forth no matter how hard she tried to keep it bottled up.
He cradled her cheeks between his palms, gentle understanding in his gaze. “No. I know you couldn’t. But I’m not the man who could let you risk your life without trying to talk you out of it.”
She pressed her forehead to his. “We should call Quinn, at least. Get some backup for this operation.”
“Livvie, you’ve told me yourself that you’ve had leaks at the agency.”
“But we stopped the leaker.”
“You stopped a leaker. Are you sure there aren’t other traitors in your midst?”
As much as she wished she could say she was sure, she wasn’t. Not really. There hadn’t been any sign of information leaks since the police had taken Marty Tucker into custody after he’d tried to kill Anson and Ginny Daughtry when they’d figured out his secret. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t another mole in the agency biding his time before he could make a move.
“No,” she admitted. “I don’t think there is. I really don’t. But I can’t be a hundred percent sure.”
“Then we do it my way.”
“How exactly are we going to document what happens when the bad guys spring the trap? We’re not exactly rolling in cash or audiovisual equipment.” She gave him a pointed look.
“There’s a music hall not a hundred yards from here that has its own recording equipment.”
Her brow furrowed with suspicion. “And you know this how?”
“When you went to the ladies’ room last night, I chatted a bit with Rafe. You remember that balcony that goes around the whole music hall, kind of like those old-timey Western saloons?”
“Yeah?”
“I noticed there was a guy up there recording the music sets. I was curious, so I asked Rafe about it. He said he invested in some audio and video equipment a couple of years ago when he started working with talent agents t
o get their clients’ work in front of prospective record labels. They pay him to record the sets live, and those sets go on public video-sharing sites. They can only upload the ones where the artists still retain the rights to the music, but Rafe said it’s gotten several of the bands who debut here a closer look from the record labels looking for fresh talent.”
“And you think Rafe will just hand over his expensive equipment to you for your sting?”
“I hope so.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“I still have some money left over from the funds I took out of our joint bank account the other day. I’d just rather not tap into it if I don’t have to.” He flashed a smile. “Might need it for bail money.”
“If this plan doesn’t work,” she muttered, “you’re not likely to be granted bail.”
He put down the pen, pushed his notes away and pulled her into his lap. She snuggled closer as he wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her neck. “We have to try something, Livvie. This waiting for something to happen is going to kill me.”
She kissed the top of his head, wishing she could argue. But he was right. He’d already spent nearly a year in hiding, and the longer it went on, the more dangerous it would become. He needed his life back.
She needed him back.
“I think you may be right about backup, though.” He leaned his head back to look at her. “We have no idea how many people might be involved in the FBI branch of the Blue Ridge Infantry. If it’s more than two, we’ll be outnumbered.”
“I don’t want to be outnumbered. We don’t have to be.”
“I know you trust the people you work with.”
“I want to trust the people I work with,” she corrected him bleakly. “But after this past year and the leaks—”
“You said you thought you’d caught the only leaker.”
“And you asked me if I was sure, and I said no.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too.” He rubbed his chin against her collarbone, his beard prickling her skin, sending lovely little shivers of sexual awareness skittering down her spine. “Everybody who was in that conference room yesterday knows where we are. You trusted them enough not to change our plans.”