Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs (17 page)

Inside another house, back in the city, Rowe stepped out of the shadows. Then, with his target in sight, he cocked his gun.

Brennan jerked awake, in the recliner where he’d fallen asleep in front of the TV. A beer clutched in his hand, he fumbled with the can, spilling it over his T-shirt before reaching for the weapon he’d left on the end table. But Rowe already had that in his hand.

“What the hell—” his old partner and training officer grumbled, brushing his hand over his face as if he couldn’t believe he was really seeing Rowe in his living room.

Had he thought he would be dead by now? That some of those bullets in the alley had struck him?

“You seem surprised to see me,” Rowe remarked bitterly.

Brennan shuddered. “What the hell is the matter with you that you’d break into my place like this, pointing a gun at me!”

“You know,” Rowe challenged him to admit to his duplicity.

The retired cop shook his head. “I have no idea what’s going on with you. First you quit the job you’ve always wanted—”

“I didn’t quit,” Rowe vehemently denied. “And you already know that.”

The older man sighed. “Damn. Damn it. I knew it wasn’t right, that something was going on…”

“You knew that I would never quit the DEA.” Not when it was all he’d talked about when he’d been a naive rookie with Detroit P.D.

“At first, I figured that your
quitting
must have been part of a cover for a new assignment,” Brennan said. “And I don’t have the clearance to know what’s going on inside the DEA. I don’t even
want
to know.”

“But you know that something’s going on,” Rowe reminded him of what he’d just admitted. “What the hell is it?”

Brennan shrugged. “I don’t know. A lot of people just seem really anxious about you. Someone must have spotted you in the lobby today…” He glanced to the light streaking through his living room blinds. “Yesterday…”

“You know about the shots fired at me.” And Macy. He flinched as he remembered the blood trickling down her pale face. For a moment he thought she’d been killed. “In the alley behind Jackson’s apartment.”

Brennan gasped. “Hell, no, I didn’t know about that! Was that little gal with you then?”

Rowe nodded.

“Is she all right?”

“She’s safe.” In spite of him, not
because
of him. “If you didn’t know about the shots, how do
you
know that someone spotted me?”

“After what you said, about keeping quiet about seeing you,” Brennan reminded him, “I intended to erase the security footage from when you were there.”

“That could have gotten you fired,” Rowe warned him with a flash of guilt that he’d doubted his former law enforcement teacher.

The older man shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now. It got pulled and sent up to your old department before I could erase it.”

“Do you know who ordered it?”

He shook his gray-haired head. “Only a few agents had cleared security and were up on your floor when it was ordered.”

“Who?”

Brennan sighed. “This could get me fired, too, sharing classified information with an ex-agent.” But he didn’t hesitate before adding, “Tillman, Hernandez and O’Neil.”

Rowe cursed. “They’re all good agents.”

Damn good agents with more years of experience than he had, and a lot more connections in the hierarchy of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Rowe couldn’t accuse any one of them of corruption without some damn compelling evidence.

“What’s going on, kid?” Brennan asked, weariness spreading more lines across his face.

“The less you know the better…” Or his old training officer might wind up like Jackson and Doc. And probably Jed Kleyn…

Brennan gestured toward the gun Rowe clutched yet in one hand. “So I wasn’t wrong to think I might need that tonight?”

“No, you weren’t wrong,” Rowe said, confirming that the older man’s instincts were as sharp as they had ever been. “If someone saw you talking to me, you could be in danger.”

“That’s what I thought,” Brennan agreed. His hand shaking and sloshing what was left of his beer, he set the can on the table next to his chair. “That’s why I was sitting up, trying to stay awake, so I’d be ready if anyone came after me.” He wearily shook his head in self-disgust over his failure. “Maybe Detroit P.D. was right to retire me.”

Rowe wanted to make sure that his friend’s retirement didn’t become permanent. “You need to get out of here,” he said. “Get yourself someplace safe until I tell you it’s all over.”

He didn’t want to lose anyone else who mattered to him. He didn’t want anyone else losing his life because of him....

“You got that girl stashed someplace like that?” Brennan asked. “Someplace none of those agents can find her?”

He had thought he had…until he’d learned which agents might have betrayed him.

Tillman had military experience in addition to all his years with DEA. He had carried out countless special ops, bringing back intel that had saved many lives.

Hernandez had gone deeper undercover than any other agent, spending years with drug cartels that had cut off heads and cut out hearts of people they’d only suspected were informants. He was brilliant and slick.

O’Neil worked twice as hard as every other agent, determined to prove herself smarter and stronger than any male agent. And she had proved herself over and over again with arrests that no one else could have pulled off.

If he’d been considered a potential threat, any one of them could have been tracking his prior movements and found his private safe house.

And Rowe had left Macy locked up inside. She was alone and defenseless. Sure, she was tough and smart and resilient. But that had been against a warden of a backwater prison and a drug addict—not against a trained and experienced DEA agent.

F
OR THE SECOND TIME
in less than twenty-four hours, pain awakened Macy. It throbbed along her swollen jaw and ached in her stomach where she’d been kicked. Twinges of pain even pulled at her back and her neck and shoulders from the impact her body had absorbed when the SUV had rear-ended her van.

But then she had other aches, delicious aches in places she hadn’t been touched in so long and never as deeply as Rowe had touched her. She stretched, spreading her arms wide across the mattress, reaching for him so that he could make her hurt in another way. In a wicked, wonderful way…

But her hands patted only tangled blankets and sheets. He was gone.

She opened her eyes and looked around the cavernous room. Sunlight streaked through a narrow window that was at least twenty feet above the cement floor. The light was bright enough to illuminate the wide-open space and the bed that was empty of anyone but her.

She glanced toward the bathroom that was tucked into a corner of the hangar; the door stood fully open. Nobody was inside shaving at the sink or standing in the glass-walled shower.

“Rowe?” Her voice echoed off the open rafters and metal ceiling. “Rowe!”

He’d left her. He had made love to her and then he’d just left her alone?

Had it been a trick, a way to distract her so that he could get away from her?

“Damn you!” She threw back the covers and grabbed up the clothes she had dropped onto the cold cement floor next to the bed.

She had undressed for him. She had begged him to stay with her, to make love with her. Heat rushed to her face, adding to the pain in her jaw, as embarrassment consumed her. She’d thrown herself at the man.

Did he know why, that it was because she was beginning to have feelings for him? Or did he think it was just another thing, that
he
was just another thing she’d done to get her brother out of prison?

He had been curiously quiet after she’d told him about the warden’s accusation that Jed had killed Doc. Had he changed his mind about helping her brother? Had he changed his mind about her?

She glanced out the window to the unfinished half of the metal hangar and noticed her car, with its broken windows, was the only vehicle left in the space. The truck, she’d noticed when he’d brought her to the hangar, was gone.

She hurriedly dressed and headed toward the door. But when she tried the knob, it refused to budge. The lock was the kind that could only be opened with a key. He had locked her inside?

She turned toward the window, but the one to the outside was up too high on the wall for her to reach even if she piled furniture up beneath it. And the window that opened onto the other half of the hangar was reinforced with a steel grid and what was probably bulletproof glass. She wouldn’t be able to break it to free herself.

“Son of a bitch…”

What kind of safe house was this?

The kind that kept a witness in as well as the criminals out. No wonder he hadn’t lost the witness; the guy hadn’t been able to run. And neither could Macy. Why would Rowe do this to her?

Didn’t he trust her? Probably not. He didn’t seem to trust anyone but then he had good reason not to. And so did she, after her brother had been framed.

She should have known better than to trust Rowe Cusack, let alone fall asleep in his arms. Heat rushed back to her face, warming her despite the chill in the air. She headed toward the wall unit furnace and cranked up the blowers. What if she were to shove some paper in where the pilot light glowed? What would happen if the place caught fire?

She glanced up at the smoke detectors. They weren’t just plastic, a battery and wires. There was a digital panel on them, something programmed into them. So if she caught the place on fire, maybe the door would automatically open…

But what if it didn’t? Was burning to death a risk she was willing to take? The alternative was waiting and trusting that Rowe would come back for her. She wasn’t sure that was a risk she was willing to take either. Before she could make her decision, a phone jangled. It couldn’t have been hers. Rowe had had her leave that back in the van just in case someone traced the GPS on it. But the ringing emanated from her purse. She reached inside, shoving aside her wallet with the scalpel tucked inside it, for the phone that lit up beneath it.

Mr. Mortimer’s cell phone. Rowe had left it for her instead of taking it with him. She didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID, but she suspected she knew who it was. “You damn well better be coming back,” she warned her missing lover.

“No, Miss Kleyn,” a man said, his voice bone-chillingly cold, “
you
better be coming back.”

“Who is this?” she asked.

“I think you know,” the warden replied, too smart to identify himself.

How had he realized that she’d taken the phone from Mr. Mortimer’s personal effects?

Dr. Bernard must have discovered the cell missing. But instead of reporting her theft to the sheriff, he had reported it to the warden. Was her former employer part of the corruption and cover-up at Blackwoods Penitentiary?

Betrayal clutched her heart. She had felt horrible for the secrets she’d kept from her boss. But now she suspected she hadn’t been the only one keeping secrets.

Dr. Bernard must not have reported all the deaths at Blackwoods Penitentiary, or there would have been an investigator before Rowe sent to the prison. Had he kept quiet because he was afraid of the warden or because he was being reimbursed to keep his silence? How much money had he received to give up the information about her? Enough to make it worth her life?

“What do you want with me?” she asked. “I already told you everything I know.”

“It’s not so much
what
you know as
who
you know,” the warden replied.

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about…”

“Your brother, for one, Miss Kleyn,” he replied. “We need to talk about your brother.”

“What about Jed?”

“Come to Blackwoods Penitentiary,” he ordered her, “and we’ll discuss your brother.”

“Is he all right?” Or was it already too late for him?

“He won’t be
anything
much longer, Miss Kleyn,” he warned her. “You need to hurry back. No matter how badly you’re hurt, your brother will be hurt worse if you don’t show up.”

How did he know that she had left Blackwoods County? Whoever had been shooting at her and Rowe in the alley must have called the warden. And like Rowe had for a brief time, they thought one of all those flying bullets had struck her.

Despite how close she stood to the furnace, she shivered. “I’m not hurt. Your lackey wasn’t a very good shot.”

“That’s good,” he said, a breath rattling the phone almost as if he’d breathed a sigh of relief that she was unharmed. Probably just because
he
wanted to be the one who hurt her. “Then you have no excuse not to hurry back here.”

“Before I go anywhere, I need proof that Jed is alive,” she said even though she knew her efforts to negotiate with the warden were futile.