Читать книгу Blue Ridge Ricochet - Paula Graves - Страница 9

Chapter Three

Frost painted the cabin windows with delicate fronds of ice, lit by the morning sunlight angling through the glass. Outside, snow blanketed the ground and glistened in the trees, catching every drop of dayglow and refracting it into diamond sparkles.

Nicki pressed her forehead against the icy glass, remembering her six-year-old self doing much the same thing on a snowy morning in the Smoky Mountains, before everything went so awfully, irrevocably wrong.

Footsteps behind her drew her back to jaded reality, and she turned to see Dallas Cole enter the kitchen. He moved with a painful hitch that made her own back ache in sympathy, and the night’s sleep had done little to return color to his cheeks or vigor to his demeanor.

“You look like you could use another week’s sleep,” she murmured, reaching for the empty cup she’d set out for him earlier. “Coffee?”

“Please.” He groped for the back of the nearest chair and settled down at the small table in the window nook.

“Creamer? Sugar?”

“Just black.” He looked at the frosty window. “How much snow did we get?”

“Just a couple of inches.”

His dark eyes narrowed as she set a cup of steaming coffee in front of him and took the chair across from him. “Did you sleep okay on the sofa?”

There was a strange tone to his voice that she couldn’t quite read. “Yeah, it was fine.”

“Thanks for letting me have the bed. Very comfortable.” He took a sip of coffee, grimacing. She’d made it strong.

“Sure you don’t want some creamer?”

“It’s perfect.” His gaze flicked up to meet hers. “Did I miss anything while I was dead to the world?”

There was that odd tone again. “Just the snow.”

“Right.” He looked down at the coffee in his cup.

“Is something wrong?”

He shook his head, not looking at her. “No.”

Now she knew something was wrong. But he clearly didn’t intend to tell her what it was, so she let it go for the moment. “That bump on your jaw went down overnight.”

He lifted his fingers to the abraded spot where his face had grazed the pavement when he fell, wincing at the touch. “Should’ve seen the other guy.”

“What other guy, exactly?”

His gaze flicked up to hers again. “Other guy? You know I got this when I hit the pavement.”

“You didn’t get in that condition by yourself.” She had a pretty good idea how he’d ended up wandering in the woods, but she couldn’t exactly reveal what she knew to Dallas Cole or anyone else.

Her life depended on folks in River’s End believing she was an ordinary fry cook with some medical skills that might come in handy for a group of people who didn’t want the authorities looking too closely at their activities.

“Doesn’t matter now.” He took a long drink of coffee.

“You still don’t want to call the police?”

“No.” He set the coffee cup on the table. “I should probably get out of your hair, though. If you can just point me toward the nearest town.”

“Southeast,” she said, keeping her tone light. “If you were in any condition to walk across the room, much less three miles over the mountain.”

“I’m tougher than I look.”

She couldn’t stop a smile. “Right.”

“You could say that with a little more conviction.” With a sigh, he rose from his seat and turned to look out the frosty window.

Nicki sucked in a gasp at the sight of a streak of blood staining the back of the borrowed jersey. “You’re bleeding.”

He turned his head to look at her. “Where?”

“Your back.” She got up and started to tug up the hem of the jersey.

He turned quickly, putting his hands out to stop her. “It’s nothing.”

“Let me look.”

He closed his hands around her wrists, his grip unexpectedly strong. Tension rose swiftly between them, electrified by Nicki’s sudden, sharp awareness that beneath the facade of weakness, Dallas Cole was a large, imposing male with chiseled features and deep, intense eyes that made her insides liquefy with appalling speed.

Desire flickered in her core, and she tugged her wrists free of his grasp. She took a step back, swallowing the lump that had risen in her throat. “I’m pretty good with a first-aid kit.”

He probed behind his back with one hand, his fingers returning bloodstained. He looked at the red wetness with dismay. “Damn it.”

“I should treat that. Don’t need you bleeding all over everything.”

“No,” he agreed, reaching for the back of the chair as if his legs were ready to give out beneath him. “Can you do it here?”

“Of course. I’ll be right back.”

When she returned with the first-aid kit she kept in the hall closet, she found him shirtless. He’d turned his chair around and sat hunched over the curved back, his arms folded under his head. An alarming Technicolor map of scrapes and bruises crisscrossed his back, including an oozing arch of abraded skin just across his left kidney.

She kept her horror to herself as she unpacked the supplies she needed to treat the wounds. “This is going to hurt.”

“What’s new?” he muttered against his arms.

She pulled up a chair and sat beside him. “I’m going to clean everything first, then put antiseptic in any open areas.”

“Are you going to do a play-by-play of your torture?” he muttered.

“Only if you keep up the surly attitude,” she retorted, pressing a disinfecting cleansing pad to his back.

He sucked in a sharp breath at the sting.

“Sorry,” she murmured, wincing in sympathy. There’d been a time when she had considered a career in medicine. Well, of sorts. She’d been a licensed first responder when she was living in Nashville a few years back. But she’d found herself ill-suited for the job. Other people’s pain bothered her too much, making it hard to stay objective and focused.

Even now, acutely aware that the battered man sitting before her might be a very bad man indeed, she couldn’t help but feel twinges of empathetic pain as she cleaned the abrasions that marred the skin of his back.

“You seem to know what you’re doing.” He turned his head toward her, peering at her through one narrowed eye. “You a nurse?”

She shook her head. “Used to be an EMT, though.”

“Used to be?”

“I gave it up for a career in the hospitality business.” She smiled at his arched eyebrow. “I’m a fry cook at a place called Dugan’s in town.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t. Nobody ever does.” She probed gently at his rib cage, feeling for any sign of a fracture.

He sucked in another sharp breath. “Couldn’t stand the sight of blood?”

“Too many whiny patients,” she said lightly. “Gave me headaches.”

“And restaurant customers are a step up?”

“Fry cook, not waitress. I only deal with whiny servers.” She blotted the oozing scrape over his kidney. “Any idea what made this wound?”

He didn’t answer, and her imagination supplied a few answers she would have given anything not to visualize. But she’d already seen some of the brutality members of the Blue Ridge Infantry could mete out. Some of them enjoyed inflicting pain a little too much, as a matter of fact.

“You must’ve really pissed somebody off,” she murmured as she covered the raw scrape with sterile pads and taped them into place.

His back arched in pain as she pressed another sterile pad into place. “I have a bad habit of doing that.”

“What are you, a tax collector?” she joked.

Before he could respond, she heard the trill of the telephone coming down the hall. For a moment, she considered just letting it ring, but it might be the call she’d been waiting for.

“Wait right here,” she said and headed to the bedroom.

It was Trevor Colley on the phone. He was the manager at Dugan’s. “Can you work the morning shift?” he asked. “Bella’s stuck over in Abingdon looking in on her mama because of the snow.”

She paused, torn. Normally, she jumped at working as many hours at the diner as she could, both for the money and for the opportunity to rub elbows with the militia members and their wives and girlfriends who frequented the diner on a regular basis. She’d made friends with some of the women already, and an incident a few weeks ago had even earned her the respect of a couple of the men.

“Del McClintock is here.”

She straightened. “Yeah?”

“He asked if you were coming in.” Trevor kept his voice light, but she heard a hint of disapproval in his voice. The militia men might be good-paying customers, but the manager had never seemed particularly happy about their patronage. He took their money, of course. He’d be a fool not to, given that in this impoverished part of the county, paying customers could be hard to come by.

But he wasn’t exactly happy about his best fry cook befriending members of the Blue Ridge Infantry.

Nicki did her best to straddle the line between her manager’s feelings and her own need to make inroads into the BRI’s inner circle. It could be a delicate dance at the best of times.

But even Trevor, as much as he disliked the hard-eyed men who ate daily at the diner, wasn’t above using her interest in them to get his way. “Should I tell him you’re coming in?”

She pressed her lips together as she considered her options. Del McClintock’s sexual interest in her presented a very tempting opportunity to get a little closer to her target.

But what was she going to do with Dallas Cole while she was working a shift at the diner? The last thing she wanted to do was leave him here on his own while she worked a few hours at the diner.

No telling what kind of trouble he could get into.

* * *

THE MURMUR OF Nicki’s voice drifting down the hall was like a lure dangling in front of a hungry bass. Dallas couldn’t have resisted the temptation to hear what she was saying any more than he’d have turned down a juicy steak after three weeks of near starvation.

Urging his aching body into motion, he moved as quietly as he could down the hallway until he could hear Nicki’s end of the conversation.

“And Davey can’t come in?” There was a brief silence, then she sighed. “No, I get it. Everybody else has family to see after, except me. I’ll be there in a few.”

She must be talking to someone at the diner where she worked, he realized. He eased away from the door and turned to go back to the kitchen. But his foot caught in the carpet runner in the hall, tripping him up. He landed against the wall with a thud, the impact eliciting a grunt.

Before he could tamp down the pain in his bruised ribs enough to breathe again, Nicki emerged from the bedroom, her blue eyes flashing.

“What the hell are you doing?” she challenged. “Eavesdropping?”

His pain-fogged brain tried sluggishly to catch up. “Bathroom.”

Her dark eyebrows arched. “You passed it to get here.”

Damn.

“What did you expect to overhear?” she asked.

Ah, hell. Maybe he should just tell her the truth. “How about why you left the cabin for an hour last night in the middle of a snowstorm?”

Her eyes narrowing, she took a step away from him until her back flattened against the wall. “What are you talking about?”

“You left the cabin shortly before midnight and disappeared into the woods for over an hour. Then you snuck back in here, real quiet, and settled down for the night. Want to tell me where you went?”

“You were asleep at midnight. I checked on you.”

“You thought I was asleep. I wasn’t.”

A scowl creased her forehead. “You were spying on me?”

“You woke me when you started to leave. I got curious. You’re not the only one who spent the night with a stranger, you know.”

“You’re still alive, so I guess I’m not a serial killer.” She folded her arms across her chest, angling her chin at him. In her defiance, she seemed to glow like a jewel, all glittering blue eyes and ruby-stained cheeks.

A flush of desire spread heat through his body, making his knees tremble. He flattened his back against the opposite wall of the hallway and struggled to stay upright beneath the electric intensity of her gaze.

She was dangerous to him, he realized.

In all sorts of unexpected ways.

He pushed himself upright, willing his legs to hold his weight. “You know, I think I should call someone.”

Her suspicious gaze was as sharp as a blow. “Who’re you going to call?”

“You’ve got a sheriff’s department around here, right?”

Her scowl deepened. “They’re probably a little busy today. With the snow and all.”

“Not like it was a blizzard.” His legs were starting to ache, from his hips to his toes. He fought the urge to slide down the wall to the floor.

“No, but in this part of the state, people aren’t used to driving in snow.”

“But you’re going to, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re going in to work aren’t you?” He nodded toward her bedroom. “That’s who you were talking to on the phone.”

“So you were eavesdropping.”

No point in denying it. “You can drive me into town with you. I’ll take it from there.”

Alarm darkened her eyes. “No. I can’t do that.”

The first flicker of fear sparked through him. “Why not?”

“You don’t want to go into River’s End.”

He urged his legs into motion, edging back from her. He hadn’t seen any sort of weapon in his limited exploration of the cabin, but he hadn’t exactly looked in every nook and cranny while she was gone last night. In fact, there were parts of the cabin that were still a complete mystery to him. She had already told him she had a shotgun. For all he knew, she could have a whole armory stashed somewhere in the back.

“Why don’t I want to go into River’s End?”

She moved with him as he stepped backward, maintaining the distance between them without letting him get out of reach. “Don’t be coy, Dallas.”

There it was again. He’d heard that same tone in her voice the night before, when she’d spoken his name while trying to help him into her Jeep. A flicker of knowing that hadn’t really registered in the midst of his stress the previous evening came through loud and clear this morning.

“You know who I am,” he said before he could stop himself.

Her expression shuttered. “Who you are?”

“Now who’s being coy?” A surge of anger eclipsed his earlier fear. She was lying to his face. Had been lying this whole time. “If you know who I am, then you know there are people who are looking for me.”

She dropped any pretense. “That’s abundantly clear from the bruises and scrapes all over your body. Which is why I don’t think you really want to go into River’s End this morning.”

His legs began to tremble again, aching with fatigue. “They’re in town, aren’t they?”

She didn’t ask who he was talking about. Clearly, she already knew. “Yes. And not just in town. They’re all over the place, Dallas. Everywhere you could possibly go.”

Damn it. Fear returned in cold, sickening waves, but he fought not to let it show. Those bastards who took him captive had worked damn hard to break him, but they hadn’t. He’d escaped before they could.

He wouldn’t break in front of this woman, either.

“Then let me call someone to come get me.”

The look she gave him was almost pitying. “I can’t let you do that, either.”

He forced a laugh, pretending a bravado he didn’t feel. “And you’re going to stop me how?”

Her response was a laugh in return. “You say that as if you think it would be difficult. I told you last night, in your condition, I’m pretty sure I can take you.”

He didn’t really want to test her theory, considering how shaky his limbs felt at the moment. “Okay, fine. I’ll stay put.”

Her eyes narrowed a notch. “I don’t think you will.”

Before he could move, she closed the space between them, grabbing both arms and shoving him face-first into the wall. Pain exploded where his bruised jaw hit the hard Sheetrock.

He struggled against her hold, but she was much stronger than he was at the moment, shoving him down the hall and into the kitchen. When he tried to turn around to fight back, she slammed her knee into the back of one of his, making his leg buckle under him. She released his arms just long enough to let him catch himself before he lunged face-first into the floor, but he still hit hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs.

The world went black around him for a moment, then started to return in flecks of light as he gasped for air. He felt movement, pressure and then a big gulp of sweet air filled his lungs. His vision cleared and all his aches and pains came into sharp, agonizing focus.

He was facedown on the floor, his hands twisted behind his back. He felt the weight of his captor settle over the backs of his thighs as she held him in place. The unmistakable sound of duct tape being ripped from its roll reached his ears a split second before he felt her wind the sticky tape around his wrists, binding his hands together behind him.

Nicki moved off his legs and grabbed him by his upper arms, her grip like steel. She might be small, he thought, but she was a lot stronger than she looked. “Sorry to do this, but you leave me no choice.”

The fear returned, beating at the back of his throat like a wave of nausea. He swallowed it down, refused to give in. “And here you promised you weren’t a serial killer.”

“Believe it or not, this is all about keeping you alive.” She got him to his feet and pushed him toward a door he hadn’t noticed before. “Watch your step.”

She opened the door and reached inside, flicking a switch. He saw he was standing at the top of a steep set of stairs descending into a dim basement. “You’re not going to chain me to your dungeon wall, are you?” He tried to keep his voice light, make it into a joke. Anything to keep the fear at bay.

She helped him down the steps, grabbing the wood railing on one side of the descent when he stumbled and nearly pulled her down the stairs with him. “Sadly, I haven’t had time to put in the shackles yet.”

They reached the bottom of the steps and she gave him a little shove. He stumbled forward into the shadows, wincing in anticipation of the impact.

His upper body hit something soft. Opening his eyes, he saw he’d landed face-first on an old, overstuffed sofa braced against the cinder block wall of the basement.

Cellar, he amended mentally, his eyes beginning to adjust to the low light. There was a shelf against the opposite wall full of Mason jars full of home-canned fruits and vegetables.

“Stay put. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” Nicki’s voice drifted down toward him from the top of the stairs. He looked up at her, squinting at the bright daylight backlighting her through the cellar door, rendering her little more than a curvy silhouette.

“Don’t go,” he called, fear hammering past his last defenses.

She paused in the doorway. When she spoke, she sounded genuinely distressed. “I’m so sorry. But I have to go.”

Then the door closed behind her, shutting out the blessed daylight. He heard the soft thuds of her footfalls drift into a thick, deafening silence.

Once again, he was alone. Trapped and helpless, just like before, with nothing but darkness and fear to keep him company.