Читать книгу Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs, Lisa Childs, Livia Reasoner - Страница 9

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….

JEFFERSON JAMES 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?