Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs (10 page)

She hadn’t acted repulsed just a short time ago when he’d covered her body with his and kissed her lips. In fact she had seemed to want more. More of a kiss. More than a kiss…

He had wanted more, too. That brief taste of her sweet lips had made him hungry for her. He’d wanted to take her mouth and then her sweet body. But he had already used her enough.

“Are you all right?” he asked, worried that the warden had hurt or had threatened her.

She shook her head again. But her face was deathly pale, as if she’d suddenly gotten sick. “No. I think I made a terrible mistake.”

“I haven’t lied to you, Macy.” But he suspected she was lying, at least by omission. Something else had happened besides her being fired.

“You won’t be able to help Jed,” she said with a weary sigh of resignation, as if she’d already accepted that he wasn’t going to keep his promise. “You don’t even know how to help yourself.”

“I know how,” he insisted, pride smarting. “I have a plan.”

He had to go to Detroit, to the office, and confront all of his possible betrayers. Only a few people knew the details of his undercover assignment. “But I’m worried about you.”

His promise to Jed, to keep her safe, had become the most important of all the promises he had ever made. Not that he’d made many; he knew better than to make promises he might not be able to keep given the danger of his profession.

“Haven’t I proved that I can take care of myself?” she asked. “I don’t need you. And you don’t need me. You have your plan.”

“What do you have?” he wondered. “You just lost your job.” And maybe her brother. Since the warden was convinced that Rowe wasn’t dead, he must know that Jed had disobeyed his order to kill. The egomaniacal control freak would not tolerate disobedience.

She shrugged again, as if it didn’t matter to her that she had nothing anymore. But he knew better. “Right now, I just want some space,” she insisted. “Some time to think.”

“You want me gone.” He didn’t blame her. Since turning up in the morgue in that body bag, he had turned her life upside down.

She didn’t deny that she wanted him to go away. “You can go to the sheriff,” she suggested. “The warden doesn’t own him. Yet.”

“How do you know that?”

She lifted her arms, extending her wrists beyond the sleeves of her jacket. “He hasn’t slapped the cuffs on me yet.”

“The warden wanted you arrested?”

“The warden wants you,” she said. “And he’ll use whatever and whoever he needs to in order to get you.”

“So Doc must have given up that I’m not dead.” He couldn’t blame him either. The old man had taken a beating. He probably would have given up his own mother to stop the pain.

Damn it.
Then Macy Kleyn’s brother was probably already dead.

She sighed. “I don’t know. Warden James suspects you’re alive, but he doesn’t know for sure, especially since your body’s gone missing.”

He chuckled in remembrance of exactly how his body went missing. “You bought me some time with your ruse at the crematorium.”

She nodded. “So stop wasting that time.”

She reached into the box and lifted out a ring of keys. “Take this and get the hell out of Blackwoods County.”

He studied the keys; one was clearly for an ignition. “There was a car in someone’s personal effects, too?”

“It’s mine.”

“But you have this van....” And he doubted she made enough even at both of her jobs to afford payments, license and insurance on two vehicles.

“This van is Elliot’s,” she explained. “He bought it and put it in my name, so that his dad wouldn’t know he uses it for gigs. We switch, and I drive the hearse to the crematorium on the nights his band plays.”

She and this Elliot were close. She had friends in Blackwoods, people she could trust. He didn’t have to worry about her. He took the car keys from her hand but closed his fingers around hers.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “If there had been any other way, I wouldn’t have gotten your brother and you involved in this.”

“I just wish I knew, without a doubt, what
this
was,” she said wistfully, and then she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, though. Goodbye.”

He wanted to kiss her. But he just squeezed her fingers once before releasing her. Then he opened the sliding side door and slipped out of the van. And out of her life. Despite his promise to her brother, it was the right thing to do. She would be safer without him in it.

H
E THOUGHT HER BROTHER
was dead; she had seen the regret in his blue eyes when he’d squeezed her hand. Rowe believed it was too late for Jed.

Macy couldn’t believe it until she saw for herself that her brother was really gone. So the minute the door slid closed behind the man whose body bag she’d unzipped less than twenty-four hours ago, she started the van and headed toward the prison on the heavily wooded outskirts of Blackwoods County.

Even during the day the winding roads were treacherous, but in her emotional state with her heart pumping slowly and heavily with dread and with tears of grief filling her eyes, Macy struggled to keep the van in her lane.

If she crossed the solid yellow lines, she could be struck by another vehicle coming fast around a sharp curve. Or if she went off the shoulder, she could roll the van into one of the deep ditches. Usually those ditches were filled with water that had drowned more than one hapless driver in the three years she had been working at Blackwoods County morgue.

Despite her emotional state, she wasn’t hapless. But the driver behind her was. Just like the night before, the vehicle came up fast and struck her rear bumper. But the impact was harder, so hard that the van spun out. Macy gripped the wheel hard, fighting to keep it from the ditch. And the only way to do that was to go across that yellow line.

With a sharp curve ahead she couldn’t see what was coming up. Logging trucks frequented these northern Michigan roads. And with the weight of their loads, they were unable to stop quickly. She stomped on the brakes, her tires squealing.

She had avoided the ditch on her right, but a horn blew as the van careened around the corner, straight into the path of an oncoming car. The sedan’s tires squealed as it swerved around her.

But Macy couldn’t breathe yet or let go of the wheel, because now the van slid toward the ditch on the left. But the gravel shoulder widened for a scenic turnout overlooking a steep ravine. She managed to steer the van for that wider stretch of gravel and stop at the pylons that separated the shoulder from the tree-filled ravine below.

Finally she released the cry of terror she had been holding inside. But her relief was short-lived. The van creaked as someone yanked open her driver’s door. She caught only a glimpse of a tall, dark shadow as strong hands grabbed at her shoulder, pulling her from the van.

She kicked out and clawed with her hands, fighting for her life. But her attacker was undeterred, his foot only slipping a bit on the gravel as he wrapped his arms around her from behind.

She reached back into the van, managing to grab the strap of her purse and drag it with her as he lifted her off her feet. She tried to twist around, trying to see his face, trying to fight.

But he was too strong, his arms wound too tightly around her for her to wriggle free. He carried her toward the black SUV he had left running behind the van, blocking the road. When he let go of her with one arm to open the back door, Macy wrenched loose from his grasp.

She ran, and as she ran, she reached inside her purse for the weapon she’d stashed inside, the one that had already wounded one man. But before her fingers could close around the scalpel, a hand grasped her hair, jerking her ponytail with such force that tears trickled from the corners of her eyes.

Another strong hand, on her arm, swung her around. But before she could focus on the face of her attacker, a fist came toward her, catching her off guard.

She couldn’t duck. She could do nothing to avoid the blow. Pain exploded in her face, staggering her so that her legs gave way, folding beneath her.

And as she fell to the ground, her vision blurred, blackness overwhelming her as she lost consciousness and the fight for her life.

I
NSTINCTS—THE SAME ONES
that had warned him that his cover had been blown—had compelled Rowe to follow Macy instead of the signs that would have led him out of Blackwoods County. When he’d noticed the black SUV also following her, Rowe had known he was right to trust the instincts that had clenched his stomach muscles into tight knots of dread.

But he didn’t know the back roads as well as Macy and her stalker, so he couldn’t drive as fast and he lost sight of them around the hairpin turns. While he couldn’t anticipate the sharp curves, he recognized the road as the one that would lead him straight back to hell.

Blackwoods Penitentiary.

He should have known she was going to check on her brother. If the warden had discovered her relationship to Blackwoods’ notorious inmate, he would have exploited it for her cooperation. James had probably threatened Jed’s life.

But instead of giving up Rowe to save her brother, Macy had given up herself if she was going to Blackwoods. Just because she was visiting didn’t mean she couldn’t be held at the prison until she told the warden what he wanted to know. Since the heartless bastard had had no problem beating an old man to death, he would have no problem torturing Macy into telling him everything. Except that Macy was stubborn and loyal and smart. She would die before she gave up any information that would put her brother in danger.

The next curve brought Rowe around to her van, where it was parked precariously on the shoulder of the wrong side of the road. The rear bumper wasn’t just dented now but smashed up into the back quarter panels.

With his heart hammering, he pulled up behind the van and vaulted out of the car Macy had loaned him. Had she been driving that instead, whatever vehicle had struck her would have pushed her right over the edge into the ravine. As he rushed around to the driver’s side of her borrowed van, he nearly slipped in the loose gravel and fell off the road into the ravine below. Hell, she’d nearly gone over in the van.

The woman was a damn good driver. Another few inches, and she would have snapped the pylons and rolled down into the ravine that was so steep and heavily wooded that the van might have never been found. And since she would have surely been hurt in the crash, Macy wouldn’t have been able to get help. She could have lain down there, suffering. Or dead and undiscovered.

The driver’s door of the van gaped open, the interior empty of everything but that sad cardboard box of her work belongings. If Macy had gotten out of the vehicle of her own accord, she would still be on the road. He hadn’t been that far behind her that he wouldn’t see her now as he stood on the wide turnout and stared in both directions. Even if she was running through the woods or the ravine, whoever had run her off the road would be chasing her, their vehicle left behind.

But there were no other vehicles besides the van and her car here. Whatever had run her off the road was gone, and so was Macy.

She wouldn’t have gone without a fight. So whoever had taken her had been strong enough or armed enough to overpower her. He stared down at the gravel shoulder. It was loose and scattered onto the asphalt lane of the road. Maybe the tires had kicked up the gravel. Or maybe Macy’s kicking feet had.

Then he noticed something else on the pavement. Droplets of blood, like cast-off, from a wound.

“Dear God…” He closed his eyes on the image in his mind, of her bleeding and in pain. He had to help her and not just because of that promise he’d made her brother.

He ran back to her car and slid behind the wheel again. He had to find her before she wound up like Doc, tortured and dead.

Because of him…

“
Y
OU HAVE HER?”
His phone clutched to his ear, Warden James settled into his office chair with a sigh of relief. “You took her where I told you to?”

Where no one would be able to hear her screams…

There would be no more fake tears from Macy Kleyn. He would make her cry for real. And he would make her tell him the damn truth. All of it. Like what the hell she’d really done with that damn DEA agent…

“Yes,” his flunky replied with pride. “She’s unconscious now but starting to come around.”

James was actually surprised the guy had pulled it off. Macy Kleyn was more resourceful than he would have expected a girl who wasn’t much older than his own daughter to be. Emily was smart, smarter than most people realized. But she was also sweet and softhearted and incredibly naive because he had always sheltered her from the real world. She couldn’t find out the truth about him and all the things he’d done.

He would do anything to protect her from the truth of that—even kill again. And again.

“Good,” James said, “I will be there shortly.” While he’d had his guard work over Doc, he wanted to deal with Miss Kleyn personally. He could use her for more than just information on the whereabouts of the missing DEA officer.