Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs (15 page)

T
HE WARDEN NEARLY IGNORED
the ringing phone. But it was that damn untraceable cell and only one person had that number—his suddenly not-so-silent silent partner.

He grabbed the phone and shouted, “I don’t have time for this.”

“You’re going to have to make time, or you’re going to lose everything.”

James glanced at the pictures on the wall, specifically at the one of his daughter’s smiling face. Her blue eyes brimmed with happiness and love as if she’d known he would look at it as often as he did. Would she look at him like that if she knew everything about her daddy? The frame was still hanging crooked; he had yet to straighten it.

He was afraid he was already losing everything; he could feel it all slipping away. “I told you that I can’t find Cusack’s body.”

“That’s because he’s not dead.”

He cursed even though he wasn’t surprised. After Doc had declared the undercover inmate dead, the head guard had stopped the old physician at the gates with all his personal stuff and records packed to leave. He’d known too much to just let him go—all about James’s operation. He had also known what had really happened to the DEA agent. But he had taken that information to his grave.

“You’re sure?” James asked. The guy had definitely been hurt, maybe bad enough that he hadn’t survived his injuries.

“I saw him myself,” his partner verified. “He’s here in Detroit.”

He breathed a sigh of relief that the DEA agent was no longer his problem. “That’s good. Then you can take care of him.”

“I tried,” was the sharp reply. “I emptied a couple of clips, but I don’t think I even hit the son of a bitch once.”

“You said he was good,” Warden recalled. “But I thought you were better.”

“I
am
better,” the agent insisted. “But Rowe Cusack is a survivor. I warned you that he wouldn’t be easy to kill.”

“It may not be easy, but it’s not impossible.” No one was as strong and indestructible as they thought they were; not even James.

“At least I think I hit the girl.”

“Damn, I need that girl alive.” Macy Kleyn might have been the only way to end the situation at the prison before it escalated even further, beyond the warden’s control.

“I’ve been monitoring all the hospitals and clinics for gunshot wounds,” the special agent said, “and he hasn’t brought her in for medical treatment.”

“So she’s dead.”
Damn it
!

“If she is, that’s a good thing. She’s been helping Cusack,” the agent reminded him, “so she knows too much.”

“True,” the warden agreed. “But I still need her here.”

“She may only be injured. He got away fast,” James’s partner said with respect for the other agent, “too fast for me to follow him.”

“You have to figure out where he is,” James said. He already had a situation inside the prison; he didn’t need to worry about trouble brewing outside of it, too.

“You need to get Cusack back up there before he talks,” the special agent ordered.

And James was getting damn sick of taking orders and taking the blame for what hadn’t been entirely his idea.

“Right now he doesn’t know who to trust.”

James could relate to the DEA agent’s predicament. He didn’t know who to trust either. “Cusack trusted the girl.”

“If she’s gone, he’s going to have to turn to someone else.”

“You?”

“Let’s hope,” the agent said.

Hope was all Jefferson could do. He used to pray too, but when those prayers had gone unanswered, he’d given up on asking anyone else for help. And he’d started taking care of everything himself.

“But he might turn to the other inmate who helped him get out of Blackwoods,” the DEA agent suggested.

Despite his offices being on the other end of the building from the cell blocks and common areas, noise echoed out in the hall. Shouts. Gunshots. “That won’t be possible.”

“James, what’s going on?”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” he assured his partner.

“You couldn’t handle Rowe Cusack,” he was taunted for his failure.

“Neither could you.”

“That’s why we need to work together to eliminate him as a threat once and for all.”

Warden James sighed but agreed, “Rowe Cusack is a dead man.”

“Not yet, but like his girlfriend, he will soon be dead.”

Chapter Ten

“I’m fine,” Macy assured Rowe. And she actually was fine now that he’d gotten them away from the alley and the gunfire and to that safe location he had been wanting to bring her to since they had arrived in the city.

Concern dimmed the brightness of his light blue eyes as he studied her face. “You need to go to the emergency room.”

“We can’t risk it,” she reminded him. “And it’s totally unnecessary. It’s only a shallow scratch. Some broken glass grazed me.”

“But you lost consciousness,” he reminded her, brushing hair from her face. “You could have a concussion.”

She smiled at his overblown reaction. “I did not lose consciousness. I just closed my eyes for a minute to catch my breath. I heard you.” His voice had sounded as if he were a long distance away, though, instead of just a couple of feet. But she’d pulled it together, maybe even a little faster than he had.

His fingers shook slightly as he cupped her face and studied the scratches on her forehead. “You’re really all right?”

“As long as no one shoots at me again for a while, I’ll be fine.” She was shaking, too, in reaction to all she had gone through…and survived.

“You’ll be safe here,” he assured her. “This is where I wanted to bring you the minute we got close to Detroit.”

They weren’t that near Detroit, though. After he’d pulled off the street to make sure she was okay, he’d driven awhile before they had reached this abandoned airfield and the airplane hangar in which he’d parked her car.

He had lost her with the circuitous route he’d taken, so he had undoubtedly lost whoever might have tried to follow them.

“What is this place?” she asked. Half of the hangar had been converted to a loftlike apartment with high metal ceilings and cement floors. A kitchenette took up part of one wall while a bed stood in the middle of the cavernous room.

“It was a mobster’s private airfield and personal airplane hangar.”

“That makes me feel safe,” she quipped.

“It is a safe house,” he assured her. “Now.”

She shivered, chilled despite the wall unit furnace that blew heat into the open space. “That depends on how many people know about it.”

“Just me.”

“You’ve never used it to keep anyone safe?” she asked.

That muscle twitched along his jaw now. “Once,” he admitted. “I brought a witness here.”

“So the witness would know about it,” she pointed out, and then someone in the DEA might have learned about it, too. Suddenly she felt a whole lot less safe.

“The witness didn’t make it.”

She glanced around, looking for bullet holes in the walls. But the light was fading outside and Rowe had yet to turn on the fluorescent lights that hung from the rafters. “How safe is it then?”

“I got the witness to court,” he said. But he spoke with no pride, only regret.

“And someone killed her there?”

“Him. Yeah. A bailiff killed him.”

She had a feeling that the bailiff hadn’t made it out of court either that day. Rowe would have done whatever necessary to try to save his witness, like he had put himself directly into the line of fire to protect her. The thought of him taking a bullet for her chilled her to the bone, and she shivered.

He moved away from her and turned up the blower on the wall unit furnace. “It’ll warm up in here soon,” he assured her. “I stay here every once in a while when I want to get away from the congestion of the city.”

She glanced at the things spread around the room and suspected he stayed here more than once in a while. “How far from the city are we?”

He expelled a weary sigh. “Not far enough.”

“How did someone know we were there?” she wondered then gasped as she realized how. “Your friend—that security guard—he must have told someone that we stopped by the DEA building.”

Rowe gave a grim nod. “I need to find out who he talked to after we left. You’ll be safe here.” He headed toward the steel door that opened onto the other half of the hangar where he’d parked her battered car next to a newer pickup truck. “I’ll be back.”

She grabbed his arm and held tightly on to the hard muscles beneath her fingers. “No.”

“You don’t think I’ll come back?”

Her heart pounded fast and furiously with fear as she remembered those incessant shots. “Someone’s trying to kill you.”

“They haven’t succeeded yet,” he said with a flash of pride and sheer stubbornness glinting in his blue eyes.

She understood stubbornness since she was so often accused of being it herself. But there was stubbornness and then there was stubbornness. “They will succeed if you keep giving them opportunities.”

“I already told you that I can’t stay in hiding the rest of my life,” he reminded her.

“Not the rest of your life,” she agreed. “Just the rest of tonight. Stay here—” she stepped closer to the long, hard length of his body “—with me.”

Tears stung her eyes as emotion and exhaustion overwhelmed her. It had been a hell of a day; she didn’t want to spend the night alone. She wanted to spend it with Rowe. In his arms.

R
OWE’S GUTS TWISTED.
He wanted to stay. Hell, he just wanted her. But he couldn’t take advantage of her fear and vulnerability. “You’ll be safe here,” he promised.

“You’re so concerned with keeping me safe,” she murmured, “at the risk of your own life. Is that just because it’s your job?”

He had taken his shield from the crime scene; it was in his pocket now, smeared with Jackson’s blood. But that wasn’t the reason for his concern for her safety. It was because he cared about her, more than he had a right to care. He couldn’t burden her with his feelings, not when he was a man with a price on his head. So he told her, “I made your brother a promise.”

“You promised Jed to keep me safe?” She stepped back from him, and the color fled from her face, leaving her skin pale but for the cut and the bruise on her jaw and the dried blood on her forehead.

“I made him the promise,” he clarified, “but I haven’t been carrying it out very damn well.”

“Jed shouldn’t have been worried about me. He should have been worried about himself.” Her breath caught, and her eyes welled with tears she was too strong to shed. “Do you think he’s okay?”

Rowe had his doubts, but he couldn’t share those with her; she was too vulnerable right now. “Your brother is smart. Nearly as smart as you are.”

She smiled. “Jed’s smarter than I am. He figured out that I was dyslexic before anyone else did. I just thought I was stupid.” Her smile faded. “So did our parents.”

His heart clutched at the pain she must have endured as a misunderstood kid. “Jed is smart,” he agreed. “So he had to know that eventually it would come out that he helped me instead of killed me.”

“So what are you saying?” she asked, her bruised chin lifting in stubborn pride. “Are you saying that he didn’t care about his own life? That helping you was his way of committing suicide?”

The thought had crossed Rowe’s mind. But if Jedidiah Kleyn had half the guts his sister did, he wasn’t a quitter. “Your brother doesn’t strike me as the type who’d give up that easily. He’s a fighter.”

His ribs still ached where Jed Kleyn’s big fists had struck him, and the stitches itched where his knife wound had already began to heal, the burning pain reduced to only a dull throb now.

“Jed is a fighter,” she agreed. “Hell, he’s a decorated war hero. But he’s one man against the entire prison. He’s alone in there.”

Rowe shook his head. “No,
I
was alone in there. Jedidiah Kleyn is a legend. The other inmates respect him. They’ll have his back.”

“What happened to there being no honor among thieves?” She snorted in derision of his claim. “Convicted killers and drug dealers will go against the warden to help my brother? You’re lying to me.”

She didn’t understand what it was like in Blackwoods. Hell, neither had he really. But Jed had been there for three years, lasting longer than a lot of other inmates had inside the notorious penitentiary. “Macy—”

She pressed her fingers over his lips, stemming his argument. “Save your breath. I know you’re just trying to ease my fears.”

“I do want to ease your fears,” he admitted. He wanted to wrap her up in his arms and protect her from pain. “But I’m not lying to you.”

“Thank you.” She replaced her fingers with her lips, rising up on tiptoe to kiss him. “Thank you....”

His breath catching in his lungs as his heart slammed against his ribs, he fought for control and pulled back. He didn’t deserve her gratitude. He didn’t deserve her. “What the hell are you thanking me for? I’ve nearly gotten you killed more than once.” And he had probably already gotten her brother killed.