Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs (11 page)

But a knock sounded at his door. Without waiting for James to grant admission, his head guard opened the door. “Warden, the situation is getting worse. We need to call the sheriff.”

James snorted. “York? You think that kid could handle a situation like this? He’d get himself killed.” So maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to call him.

“You’re right,” the correction officer agreed. “This is too much for the sheriff’s office. Hell, we may need to call in the National Guard.”

“Not yet,” James snapped. “And make sure the alarms are still disarmed.” It was
his
damn prison; he would regain control of it on his own. He already had a plan for that.

“Warden?” The question came from the man on the phone James had forgotten he still held. “Is everything all right?”

No. It hadn’t been all right since the day Rowe Cusack had set foot in Blackwoods. If only James’s damn partner could have stopped the DEA from investigating.

“You should get started without me,” he said, with another sigh, this one of resignation. James glanced out the window toward the cement wall and barbed wire fence. The prison was still contained. “I have to deal with a situation here.”

And having Macy Kleyn would make dealing with that “situation” a whole lot easier. Now he had leverage supporting his threats.

But he still needed one more thing. Rowe Cusack. “Get her to talk. Get her to tell you where that damn federal agent is hiding.”

“Warden,” the head guard called for his attention again. “We’ve got to do something to get control.”

“We will,” James maintained. “It’s just a matter of time.” However long it took to break the girl…

She wouldn’t be as brave or stubborn as Doc had been. She wouldn’t be able to hold out long.

“We don’t have much time,” the guard warned him. “There have already been a couple of casualties. On both sides.”

A prisoner and a guard.

Before the day was over, James anticipated a couple more casualties.

Macy Kleyn and Rowe Cusack.

Chapter Seven

A throbbing in her jaw dragged Macy from the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness. She opened her eyes and blinked against the bright sunshine pouring through a high window in what appeared to be a plywood wall.

Where was she?

Damn it! Damn it all to hell that she’d passed out. Now she had no idea where she was or how long it had taken to drive there. Once she got loose, she wouldn’t know where to run. But getting loose might be a problem.

She wriggled but her hands were bound behind her, rope scraping the skin on her wrists. Pain radiated up her arms, echoing that dull ache in her jaw. And her neck was strained, hurt from hanging at an odd angle. She’d been tied to a straight-back chair; her ankles bound like her wrists and tethered to the chair legs.

Squinting against the light, she peered around the room. One quick glance confirmed that she was alone. For now. With pine board walls and floor, it was a cabin, one room like the one she rented, but this space was much smaller. There was no kitchen or bath. Hell, it might have been just a shed. Something scurried in the shadows near the baseboards, little feet scraping over the leather of her purse. It was just an arm’s length away, but she couldn’t reach it.

She couldn’t save herself. And she had sent away the one man who could have helped her. Why had she let the warden and Dr. Bernard make her doubt herself? Make her doubt Jed?

Her brother wouldn’t have told Rowe about that accident in her childhood if he hadn’t wanted to send her the message to trust the man he’d sent to her in a body bag.

It didn’t matter that the Drug Enforcement Administration had denied Rowe Cusack. Hell, that only proved more that he was telling the truth, that someone in his own agency had betrayed him. And he had gone off alone to track down his betrayer. She suspected he might wind up as she was about to—dead.

Unless she figured out how to get free…

She strained her sore arms, tugging at the ropes again, but the fibers bit into her skin, too tight to give her even a little wiggle room. She could not get her hands loose. She could not get loose.

When the door swung open and her attacker stepped inside, she vowed to herself that she wouldn’t betray Rowe, too, no matter what this man did to her. She might not be able to save herself but she wouldn’t be the reason that harm came to Rowe or her brother.

“Where is he?” he asked.

The guy was tall but so skinny that she wondered how he had managed to strike her with such force. His dark hair was long and stringy, hanging well past his thin shoulders. He looked young and vaguely familiar.

Where had she seen him before?

“Where is he?” he asked again, stepping closer. He struck her again, this time with an open hand instead of a closed fist.

Her skin stung from the slap. “Who?”

“You know who—Rowe Cusack.”

Her blood chilled. This guy, whoever he was, wasn’t even bothering with using Rowe’s undercover identity. He knew who Rowe was. Why hadn’t anyone in the DEA admitted to knowing him?

But now she found herself denying him. “I don’t know who that is.”

“That’s the guy you helped escape from Blackwoods prison,” the kid informed her, as if she would have helped Rowe had she not at least known his name.

She may have doubted him with her head. But deep inside, she’d believed he was really a lawman.

She shook her head. “I didn’t help anyone escape. I haven’t even been up to the prison.”

In a week. It had been a week since she had seen her brother. If only she’d known then that it might have been her last time....

Instead of being a smart-ass and teasing him, she would have been serious. She would have told him how much she appreciated his being her white knight while they were growing up. She would have told him how much she loved him.

“No,” the guy agreed, “your job was to get Cusack out of the morgue.”

How could this man know that? Unless Jed…

What had they done to her brother to get him to give her up? But nothing could have compelled him. Jed would have gone to his grave before he uttered her name. But yet he had mentioned her…to Rowe. Her brother would have only done that if he’d truly trusted that Rowe wouldn’t have hurt her.

Why hadn’t she trusted him?

“I work at the morgue. I assist Dr. Bernard,” she said.

The skinny guy shuddered at the mention of the morgue. How could someone be creeped out by death but have no problem with killing? If he’d forced her off into the ravine, she would have died.

“Assist?” She laughed at herself. “I just clean up after the coroner and do some of his paperwork. That’s all I do.”

“You helped the prisoner last night.”

Was he talking about the sutures? She hadn’t thought Dr. Bernard had told anyone about her suturing Rowe’s wound.

“It was too late for that inmate,” she insisted. “He was already dead when he showed up at the morgue yesterday.”

“We need proof of that.”

“We?” she asked. “Who are you working for? Warden James?” Or whoever had given up Rowe in the DEA? How deep did this corruption run?

The man slapped her again, so hard that the chair teetered and tipped over, knocking her onto the floor. Her shoulder burned, from her arms being bound and from the force with which she hit the boards. But that pain was the least of her worries when the man kicked out and struck her stomach with the hard toe of his work boot.

The breath left her lungs, and a scream slipped through her lips. She gathered enough breath and screamed again, so loud that it echoed in the room and throughout her own skull.

The skeevy guy laughed. “Scream all you want. Nobody will hear you out here, Macy Kleyn. I can do whatever I want to you and nobody will know.”

She shivered at the lascivious look that crossed his gaunt face as he stared down at her. Then she glanced toward her purse. She had fallen away from it. But even if she could reach it now, she would never be able to get the scalpel out of it in time to defend herself.

“I have proof!” she insisted. “They take pictures at the crematorium, of the bodies they burn. His picture was there. Dr. Bernard has a faxed copy of it.”

“That doesn’t prove the guy was really dead when that picture was taken. Anybody can play dead, and I guess this Rowe character is really good at it,” he said. “That picture only proves that you brought him to the crematorium.”

How did he know
she
had brought him? She’d told the warden that the crematorium was picking up the body. This guy must have followed her from the hospital last night. The warden must have doubted her story from the very beginning and left someone behind to tail her.

“He’s dead!” she yelled as the guy reached for her. She couldn’t even kick out, not with her legs bound to the chair. But then his hands were there, untying her ankles as he pulled her closer.

“If he’s not dead,” the man said, as he slid his hands up her legs to her waist and fumbled with the snap of her jeans, “then by the time I’m through with you, you’re going to wish he was.”

“No, you’re the one who’s going to wish I was really dead,” a deep voice murmured.

T
HE MAN AND
M
ACY BOTH TURNED
toward the open door. It hadn’t even been locked. But it wouldn’t have mattered if it had been. When he’d heard her scream, Rowe would have kicked it down to get to her.

His heart pounded hard, as hard as he wanted to pound the guy who had his filthy hands on her. The weasel had already hurt her, because her face was red and swelling. A small cut on her cheek must have been the source of the blood droplets that had fallen onto the asphalt.

“Get away from her!” he shouted.

A grin spread across the man’s face. “This is great. I’ll be able to give James the proof that you’re finally dead when I hand over your body myself.” He reached behind his back, but he was so skinny that Rowe could see what he reached for—the gun he had tucked into the waistband of his jeans.

Macy screamed again and kicked her legs at the man with such force that she knocked him to the ground. But he didn’t drop the gun.

Instead he swung the barrel toward her and snarled, “You bitch!”

Rowe grabbed for the gun just as it went off. The guy’s grip was tight on the gun and on the trigger. Shot after shot fired. Rowe couldn’t take the risk that a bullet wouldn’t hit her. If one hadn’t already…

So he wrapped his arm around the guy’s neck. And with one quick twist and crunch of bones, he snapped it.

Macy gasped, her dark eyes wide with shock, as wide and shocked as the eyes of her dead attacker.

She had doubted and feared Rowe before. What he’d just had to do—kill a man with his bare hands right in front of her—would only scare her more.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Her eyes still wide, she only nodded.

He expected her to shrink back when he reached for the bindings at her wrists, but she only stared up at him as he tugged at the knot.

“Grab my purse,” she suggested when the knot refused to budge. “The scalpel’s inside it.”

A grin tugged at his lips. “Of course it is.” Using his already bandaged hand, he carefully reached inside the leather bag.

“It’s in my wallet.”

He pulled out the metal handle and sliced the blade neatly through the thick rope. His hand throbbed in remembrance of how sharp her damn weapon was.

If only she’d managed to get hold of it before the man had grabbed her… Then it would have been his blood spattered on the asphalt.

He skimmed his fingertips gently along her swollen jaw and over the short cut. Blood smeared her silky skin. “He hit you.”

And knowing that the man had hurt her expunged whatever regrets Rowe had about having to kill him. Sure, it would have been better to take him alive and find out who had sent him after Macy.

But Rowe was already pretty certain who had done that. The guy didn’t look familiar to him, though. With his long, scraggly hair, he hadn’t been one of the brush-cut prison guards, who were on the warden’s payroll.

So who was this man who’d grabbed and intended to assault Macy?

Her thick lashes fluttered as if she were fighting back tears. “I’m okay.”

He gently probed the bruise, tracing the delicate bone beneath her skin. “Are you sure your jaw’s not dislocated?”

She shook her head, dislodging his hand from her face so that his fingers skimmed down her throat. Her breath audibly caught.

With fear? Now, after seeing him kill her kidnapper, she knew exactly how violent he could be.

She leaned closer and took her weapon from him. She slid it back into her wallet and her wallet into her purse.

“I’m fine,” she stubbornly insisted, even though her entire body trembled now as if in reaction to her ordeal.

What had happened was bad enough. What could have happened even worse.