Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs (6 page)

“Lie down on this,” she said, and pointed toward a metal table. “And play dead again.”

“We’re out of the morgue,” he reminded her.

“But we’re not done yet.” She picked up a Polaroid camera.

He had trusted her before and she hadn’t betrayed him. Yet. With a sigh, Rowe lay down. “I’m getting a little too good at playing dead.”

“We have to do this right, or you won’t just be playing.”

“We?” There she went with the word Rowe had always made a point of never using. “I just needed your help to get out of the morgue. I don’t need anything else from you.”

“Really?” she asked, her lips curving into a smug smile. “Do you have a cell phone? Someone to call if you did? A ride or a vehicle to take you somewhere Warden James won’t find you? Or the police who will be looking for you when news of your escape from prison gets out?”

He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ground together. She was right. He had none of those things. No one he could trust. But he had made a promise. “I’ll figure it out.”

“I’ll help you.”

“You’re not even convinced I’m telling you the truth,” he said. She was too smart to completely trust him despite his knowing about her childhood accident.

“But if you are telling the truth and I don’t help you, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“What happens to me is not your responsibility,” he said. No one had ever really taken responsibility for him. Not his parents and now not even the handler who should have pulled him out weeks ago when he hadn’t heard from Rowe.

“No, it’s not,” she agreed. “But I would never forgive myself for wasting this opportunity to help Jed, too.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. He suspected she wasn’t talking about just keeping her brother out of trouble with the warden. “What do you want?”

“Close your eyes.”

He, who had always had problems with authority, did as she said. And a light flashed behind his lids.

He sprang up. “What are you doing?”

“Shut up. Dead men don’t talk.”

Chapter Four

Dead men didn’t do a lot of things that Rowe couldn’t help but think of doing with her, especially as her hands pressed against his shoulders, pushing him back onto the table.

“Don’t look so tense,” Macy directed him. “Relax.”

“You’re not the one somebody’s trying to kill.” Not yet anyway. But once the warden figured out Macy had helped Rowe get out of the morgue—and the man was too shrewd not to figure it out—he would retaliate. First by killing her brother and then…

“Macy, I appreciate everything you’re doing,” he sincerely told her, “but you can’t help me. I can’t get you any more involved than you already are. It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m already involved,” she pointed out as she snapped another picture. “So I might as well get something for my trouble.”

Disappointment rose like bile in his throat. Macy Kleyn was certainly no angel; just like everyone else, she had her price.

He asked her again, “What do you want?”

“I will help you get in contact with someone you can trust,” she said, “someone who can get you safely out of Blackwoods County.”

That was easier said than done, and his wish, not hers. “And what do you want in exchange?”

“For you to get Jed safely out of Blackwoods Penitentiary.”

“You want me to break your brother out of prison?” he asked. Apparently she still hadn’t accepted that Rowe was a federal agent, since she expected him to break the law for her.

“I want you to clear his name,” she said. Her hands gripped his shoulders again, squeezing. “He was framed.”

Rowe sat up and swung his legs over the side of the metal table, his thigh bumping against her hip. Unable to help himself, he touched her again, cupping her soft cheek in his palm. His fingers tunneled into her hair, brushing over the ridge of the scar on the back of her head. Her eyes, so full of intelligence, widened as she stared up at him.

Rowe couldn’t lie to her even though Jed probably had, so that he wouldn’t lose her respect and adulation. “Everybody serving time in jail claims that they’ve been framed.”

“Even you,” she said, her chin lifting defensively as she pulled away from him and stepped out of his reach.

“I wasn’t framed,” he clarified. “A jury did not find me guilty of any crime. A judge did not sentence
me
for any crime. I was sent in undercover to investigate Blackwoods.”

“A cover that didn’t last long.”

He didn’t need the reminder. His ribs ached, the wound throbbing. But he welcomed the pain; it confirmed that he was still alive. For now.

“Why was that?” she asked. “Aren’t you very good at what you do?”

“I’m the best,” he said. He wasn’t just bragging, either; he had the commendations to prove it. But more importantly he had the convictions. He had put away so many bad people. After seeing how the prison doctor had been tortured and beaten, he suspected that the warden might prove the worst. Rowe had to put him away, but he couldn’t do that if the warden found him first. “Someone blew my cover.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.” He looked away from her, then back again to her beautiful face. “And that’s why I can trust no one.” Not even her.

“You can trust me, Rowe,” she promised, her big brown eyes earnest.

“No, I can’t.”

She smiled slightly, as if pitying him. “I don’t think you have a choice.”

Rowe was afraid that she was right. Maybe about everything. “You really believe that your brother was framed?”

She studied him a moment before nodding. “Just like I believe that you’re really an undercover DEA agent.”

He closed his eyes, dragged in a deep breath then committed himself. “Okay, we have a deal.”

Her eyes widened and sparkled with hope. “You’ll help Jed?”

“
If
he was really framed, I’ll work to clear his name,” Rowe promised.

But in making this vow to Macy, he was breaking his promise to her brother. The more help Rowe accepted from her, the more danger he put her in.

“He was framed,” Macy insisted with total certainty.

Her brother had to be telling the truth, because if he really was a cop killer, he would have killed Rowe instead of risking his own life to get him out. A killer wouldn’t have hesitated to kill again. Only a good man would put himself in danger to save someone else.

“Then I have to help him.” Because Rowe knew what it felt like to be an innocent man locked up like an animal. He had only been behind bars for weeks; Jed had been sentenced to life, which might not be a bad thing if Rowe wound up getting his sister killed. Because if that happened, Rowe had no doubt that Jed would really become a killer.

“You can’t help anyone if you’re dead, though,” Macy said, as if she’d read his mind. “So I’m going to fire up the incinerator now.”

“The what?”

“The oven,” she said, gesturing toward the big metal box at the end of the metal table. “We have to burn your body.”

God, she really was crazy. And he had actually considered trusting her....

J
EFFERSON
J
AMES SHOVED THE
coroner aside and dragged open those refrigerated steel drawers, himself, until every damn one was pulled completely out of the wall. Only a few held bodies. An old man. A teenage accident victim.

Doc.

He quickly looked away from the battered face of the man he had once considered a friend. Or if not a true friend, at least an ally. For years Doc had had no problem cashing his very generous payroll checks. He’d known why his salary was so much higher than any other prison doctor’s. He had been reimbursed for his discretion. But then he’d taken it too far.

He’d betrayed James. And no one betrayed Jefferson James and lived to brag about it.

“Where is he?” the warden snapped, his anger and frustration spilling over.

Where the hell was Rowe Cusack?

Bernard gazed around the room, as if the body was hiding somewhere in the white-tiled room. He ran a hand over his face, wiping away the last traces of sleep. James had had to wake him up and physically drag him out of bed to bring him back to the morgue.

It was late. But James didn’t care. He wasn’t sleeping himself until he saw Rowe Cusack’s dead body with his own damn eyes.

“Bob brought the prisoner’s body straight here from Blackwoods,” Dr. Bernard said.

“Then where the hell did it go?” the warden asked. “Did he get up and walk out the damn door?” He tensed, goose bumps lifting on his skin as he realized what he’d said and that he’d said it before. His men, the guards who stood in the doorway between the morgue and the outer office, didn’t chuckle this time.

“I don’t know why you’re so worried about this prisoner,” Bernard said. “You’re acting like he’s not dead. But that’s not possible. Doc declared him dead.” He glanced toward his friend’s body. The two physicians had been true friends.

How much did Bernard know about what went on in Blackwoods? With the bodies that came from the prison to the morgue, he had to know…too much.

James followed Bernard’s gaze to Doc’s body. Why would the old man have risked their financially beneficial arrangement and his life? How had Cusack gotten to him?

“And since Doc declared that guy dead, he’s dead,” Bernard insisted.

James’s voice shook with rage now as he shouted, “Then show me his damn body! Now!”

The coroner walked over to the wall of open drawers as if Cusack was hiding somewhere inside it. But the man had been too damn big to just disappear. He would have filled one of those drawers. Or covered a whole damn gurney, like that body the girl had been standing next to earlier. She and that body were gone now.

“The crematorium was coming for this body,” Bernard said, stopping next to the drawer holding the old man. “They must have taken the wrong one.”

“The crematorium?” Warden James asked. “The girl that was here earlier said she was waiting for the funeral home.”

“The crematorium is part of Sutherland’s funeral home,” Bernard explained. “Sutherland’s kid works for him. He would have been the one coming to pick up the body to be cremated.”

“So you’re saying that if his body went there, by mistake, that it’s going to be burned?” Leaving behind no proof that the man had ever existed? That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, if James didn’t doubt that the man was actually dead.

“Yes. But probably not until tomorrow. We will be able to retrieve the prisoner’s body for you, Warden,” Bernard assured him. “Don’t worry.”

But he couldn’t stop worrying…until he knew for sure that DEA Agent Rowe Cusack was dead and not about to destroy James’s entire operation.

M
ACY WAS CRAZY.
She had made a lot of sacrifices for Jed, quitting med school, moving to Blackwoods County, working two jobs…

But this, helping Rowe Cusack, could prove to be her greatest sacrifice yet. Maybe the ultimate sacrifice. Her hands trembling, she tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “You’re sure Elliot didn’t see you?”

“Only the Polaroid you showed him of my body,” Rowe answered from the back of her van. He lay across the seats with his head low so that she couldn’t even catch a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror.

All she spied were the headlamps of another vehicle burning through the thick darkness behind her. Did that vehicle just happen to be on the road leading toward the small cabin she rented? Or had it been following her since she’d left the hospital?

“Good,” she said. “Then if anyone asks about you at Sutherland’s, he will vouch that you were cremated tonight.”

“It was a great idea, Macy.” He praised her with none of the surprise other people had showed in her intelligence.

She felt empowered. She enjoyed actually being able to help someone for once instead of being forced to stand by while he was unjustly imprisoned. Yet still she worried....

What if Rowe Cusack wasn’t really whom he claimed to be? Not only would he be unable to help her brother but she’d have just aided and abetted an escaped convict. But Jed would have never revealed that childhood story unless he had been sending her a message.

“You’ve helped me more than I could have imagined,” he said, as if he’d never met anyone who had helped him without an agenda. He still hadn’t, though. She had an agenda…for Jed. “I can’t ask you to do any more.”

Her breath caught in alarm. “You’re backing out of our arrangement?”

“No. I’ll help Jed,” he promised. Again.

Dare she believe him? She had once been naive enough to believe what people told her, to believe in justice and fairness. She had learned three years ago to trust in no one and nothing. Except her brother.

“But I can’t do anything for anybody until I figure out who blew my cover and why,” Rowe continued, his deep voice vibrating with anger.

“You really have no idea?”

“I don’t know who to trust in the DEA,” he said. “Not anymore. And I know I can’t trust anyone in Blackwoods.”