Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs (9 page)

“Jed was framed,” she insisted.

“He was convicted by a jury of his peers. He’s a killer, Miss Kleyn. And since he’s convinced you otherwise, it makes me question your judgment,” he said. “Could someone else have convinced you of his innocence and enlisted your help?”

She resisted the heat of embarrassment from surging into her face. “Your prisoner was very dead when he arrived here. If the stab wound didn’t kill him, then being zipped up in that body bag must have. He was definitely dead.”

“You better hope he was, miss,” Warden James warned her. “Because if you’re in any contact with him, you’re in grave danger.”

“I’d have to be in the grave to be in contact with him,” she persisted, refusing to be intimidated into backing down or confessing all. It was easier to believe the warden was a cold-blooded killer than Rowe Cusack.

Warden James shook his head in disgust. “For your sake—and your brother’s—I hope you’re telling the truth.”

“Her brother,” Dr. Bernard said with disgust, “he will be brought up on charges for Doc’s murder, won’t he?”

The warden shrugged. “The sheriff has to finish his investigation. He’s young and inexperienced and overly cautious. He’s not convinced that there’s enough evidence to bring to our new district attorney. We all know that damn lawyer’s more concerned about his career than justice.”

If the warden contributed to his reelection campaign, the D.A. might get interested in carrying out the man’s idea of justice. Murder.

“Doc deserves better,” his friend said, his eyes wet with grief.

“I’ll take care of it,” Warden James promised.

Macy shivered, chilled by his not-so-subtle threat against Jed. But giving up Rowe, if he was even still around to give up, wouldn’t protect Jed. It would only put him in more danger.

“I’ll do the sheriff’s job for him since he seems unwilling to do it himself,” the warden continued. He squeezed the coroner’s shoulder then glared at Macy before leaving the office.

Jed was definitely in trouble. Even if Rowe kept his promise to help him, it would probably be too late to save her brother. Pain and fear clutched her heart, so that it ached. Soon she might be grieving like her boss was grieving for his friend, Doc.

“Macy, I can’t express how disappointed I am in you.” Dr. Bernard leaned back in his chair and ran his hands over his weary face. “I knew there was more to your story of giving up med school and moving here. I even thought it was because of a guy, because some boyfriend had broken your heart.”

“That was part of it,” she admitted. Her fiancé had thought she was an idiot for believing and defending Jed. And she had been heartbroken that she’d been stupid enough to actually fall for a guy who hadn’t really respected her, let alone loved her.

“Your brother was the biggest part of it,” the coroner assumed, “and you didn’t tell me anything about him. It makes me wonder what else you’re keeping from me, Macy.”

She couldn’t deny that she had other secrets. But to tell him would only put him in danger, too. Unless he was part of it....

He had been close to the prison doctor. How close was he to the prison warden? Was that why he hadn’t requested any authorities to look into all the deaths at Blackwoods?

“I thought you were so smart,” he said, shaking his head now in disappointment.

“I’m no fool, Dr. Bernard,” she defended herself as she had had to too many times before.

“Then how could you have made the mistake of sending the wrong body to the crematorium?” He shook his head in denial of her claim. “You wouldn’t have made a mistake like that.”

“I was tired and upset. So were you last night,” she reminded him.

He nodded. “So tired that it didn’t immediately dawn on me what I saw in the morgue last night.”

Too scared to ask, she just waited.

“I saw a bloody bandage.”

“It must have fallen off the body when I unzipped the bag,” she explained even as she mentally kicked herself for not cleaning up. But there hadn’t been time with Dr. Bernard coming back, and Bob, and then the warden and his henchmen....

“Why the needle and sutures, Macy?” he persisted. “Why would you be stitching up the wound on a dead man?”

Coming up with a quick lie, she replied, “Practice. I don’t want to lose the skills I learned in my premed labs.”

“I didn’t hire you so that you could practice on the bodies in my morgue.”

“Maybe that’s why I made that mistake with the crematorium,” she said, as if admitting to one of the secrets he’d accused her of keeping, “because I wanted to cover up my handiwork.”

“I’m worried that you’re covering up more than a few stitches,” her employer said. “I can’t trust you. You’ve already been keeping too much from me. I have to let you go.”

“Dr. Bernard,” she said, protesting her firing. “I worked for you for three years, and this is my first mistake. Please give me another chance.”

There were few employment opportunities in Blackwoods unless one wanted to work at the prison, and even openings there were rare. People—employees and inmates—only left Blackwoods Penitentiary in body bags.

“I can’t do that, Macy,” Dr. Bernard said. “I can’t trust you. I don’t know if you’ve ever really told me the truth about anything.”

She sucked in a breath at the harsh accusation. Until her brother’s trial, she had never kept anything from anyone. But she’d learned then that the world wasn’t really the place she’d believed it was and that she had to protect herself. “Sir—”

“For your sake, I hope you’re not lying about this prisoner,” he said. “Because if you helped him escape, you’re in danger—not just from him but from Warden James, too. No one crosses that man and lives.”

Oh, God, Jed…

“You know the warden’s a killer but you haven’t done anything about it?” she asked, as horrified and disappointed in him as he seemed to be in her.

His face flushed, mottled with either embarrassment or anger. “You’re a naive girl, Macy. You have no idea what the real world is like.”

She chuckled bitterly. “I know exactly what the real world is like.” Regrettably. “And I don’t like it. I don’t like it that people stand by and do nothing—”

“And some people get involved when they shouldn’t,” he interrupted. “And they get hurt. Or worse.”

“You’re scared of the warden?” She almost hoped that was the only reason he hadn’t gotten involved. Fear was better than complicity.

“You should be scared of Warden James, too,” the coroner warned her. “If he finds out that you helped this inmate escape…” He shuddered, as if he was imagining all the horrible things that he would discover had been done to her when he examined her dead body in his morgue.

“There’s nothing for him to find out,” she said, refusing to drop her bluff even though those knots of fear tightened in her stomach.

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “And neither did Warden James.”

No. She doubted that he had, too. But he had no proof that she was lying until he found Rowe. He couldn’t find Rowe. Hopefully the man, whatever he really was, was long gone.

“The warden is paranoid,” she said. “That corpse didn’t walk out of here.”

The older man nodded in agreement. “No. He had help getting out of here. He had you.”

She couldn’t keep lying to a man she had once respected, so she just shook her head.

“Like you, this prisoner can’t be trusted either,” Dr. Bernard said. “Whatever he told you to enlist your aid could be just as many lies as you’ve told me.”

“Dr. Bernard—”

“Just clear out all of your things and leave,” her boss said, covering his eyes as if unable to look at her anymore. “I don’t want to see you again.”

Tears—real tears—stung her eyes, and she blinked them back. “I’m sorry…”

“I don’t want to see you in my morgue either,” he added. “I don’t want to unzip a body bag and find you inside it, Macy.”

“You won’t—”

“I will. It’s inevitable,” he said with a fatalistic sigh, “because you have put your trust in the wrong people. You’re a smart girl, Macy. Start using your head before you wind up losing your life.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe she shouldn’t have trusted Rowe Cusack; that might not even be his real name. She had only his word for who he really was. She had only his word that he wasn’t the dangerous, murderous convict the warden claimed he was.

And if the warden was right, there was a very good chance that Macy would wind up back in the morgue—in that body bag, just as Dr. Bernard feared.

Chapter Six

Rowe had been right to trust her to handle the meeting on her own. Not that he would have been able to accompany her, since his presence would have only put her in more danger. And he didn’t know of anyone he could have trusted to go along with her to the meeting either. But he had also doubted that her boss would have let the warden hurt her. As it had played out, though, Dr. Bernard had been the one who’d hurt her.

“The coroner fired you?” he asked, as she settled her box of belongings onto the passenger’s seat beside her. Once again, he was crouched down in the back of the van.

She shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but pain darkened her brown eyes to nearly black when she glanced back at him. “I expected consequences for what I did last night. I knew I would get in trouble for helping you.”

“But you still helped me.” He didn’t know anyone else who would have.

“I only helped you for Jed,” she clarified, as if she was worried that he would misconstrue her involvement with him. After the kiss, he didn’t blame her for worrying. That kiss worried him, too. “I have to protect Jed and get you to help him. Can you even help him, though?”

“I won’t know for sure until I get a chance to go over all of the evidence the prosecutor had against him,” he admitted. And he suspected it must have been substantial for a jury to have convicted him.

She gave an eager nod. “We can get the files from his lawyer.”

“Not yet,” Rowe reminded her. “I can’t do anything as a dead man, or as an escaped convict. First, I have to find out who blew my cover to the warden.”

She reached into the box in the passenger’s seat, pulled out a cell phone and handed it back to him. “So find out.”

“I can’t use your phone,” he protested, keeping his hand at his side. “The call can be traced back to you.”

“This call will be traced back to Mr. Mortimer. I took the cell from his personal effects.” She thrust the phone at him until he finally closed his fingers around it.

He had no idea who to call. No idea who to trust.

She must have sensed his hesitation because she said, “There must be someone who can help you.”

“You’ve worked so hard to prove me dead,” he pointed out. “With one call, I can undo all your work once someone hears and recognizes my voice.”

“True.” She took the phone back. “So I’ll make the call. What’s the number?”

His head pounded with frustration for his inability to do anything for himself right now without risking her life and his. “What number?”

“For the DEA,” she replied matter-of-factly.

Dr. Bernard hadn’t just hurt her. He and the warden had unnerved her. Whatever they’d said to her had brought back all her doubts about him. Gone was the woman who had teased and kissed him just hours ago.

So he gave her the direct number to his office and watched her face as she listened to his message. “That extension is no longer working,” she informed him.

“That’s my direct line.” And the call should have gone to his voice mail. Even though he spent most of his time in the field, he still had an office in the Drug Enforcement Administration building in Detroit.

Maybe word had gotten back to the administration about his “death.” He grabbed the phone from her and punched in another number for the department secretary. He handed the phone back to her while it rang.

“Hello,” she said. “I’d like to speak to someone about Agent Rowe Cusack.” She listened for a moment then clicked off the cell.

“Nobody would talk to you about me,” he surmised.

“No.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Because nobody knows who you are.”

“I’m deep undercover,” he reminded her. “It’s protocol not to risk it.”

“Your cover’s been blown,” she said. “As far as they know, you’re dead. Why deny you exist?”

Why? He damn well wondered himself. “You could be anyone calling. A reporter. My killer.”

“Who are you?” she asked, her dark eyes narrowed with suspicion as she stared back at him. “Really. Who are you?”

“I told you.”

“And I was a fool to believe your story just because you know about some old scar on my head.”

He suspected that she had more scars than the one on her head. She had some on her heart, too. He wasn’t the only one who had been betrayed and now struggled to trust anyone.

“What happened in there?” he asked, the concern that had tortured him during her meeting rushed back over him, quickening his pulse. He reached between the seats and tried to grasp her hand.

But she shrank away from him, as if afraid or repulsed.