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Chapter Three

“Do you have anyone I can call?” Mara’s husky voice drew Jack’s attention away from the medical forms he was busy filling out one-handed. His other hand was still pressing her bloody towel to the back of his head, where the jagged tear in his scalp continued spilling fresh blood. The clinic was busy, and a nurse had already come out to examine the wound and check his pupils before she deemed him in no great rush for treatment. A receptionist had then traded his insurance card and copay for a clipboard with three pages of medical forms to fill out.

He hadn’t made it to the third page of the forms yet, but if the first two were anything to go by, he’d be spilling his sexual history, cataloging every freckle, mole or scar he possessed and outlining at least three generations of genealogy before he was done.

He looked away from the paperwork to answer Mara’s question, relieved at a chance to stop writing. “My brother-in-law and his wife are with me here in town, but I don’t want to worry them—”

“It’s just—I have things to do.”

He slanted his gaze toward her. “You’re planning to leave here alone?”

Her brow furrowed. “Yes.”

“Someone tried to kidnap you, Mara. Hell, we should have gone straight to the cops instead of coming here.”

She frowned. “Keep your voice down.”

He glanced around the full waiting room. Nobody was paying them any attention. “You’re not planning to ignore this, are you?”

She looked away, not answering.

“Have you lost your mind?”

“No.” Her voice remained soft and controlled. “You don’t know anything about my life or my options. Don’t pretend you do.”

“What makes you think whoever attacked you this afternoon isn’t waiting for you at your cabin right now?”

“I’m not your concern.”

She was right. She wasn’t his concern, or shouldn’t have been. But the thought of letting her leave the clinic by herself was enough to make his chest tighten with alarm. “If you don’t call the police, I will.”

Her glare was lethal. “I’ll tell them the intruder was you.”

“What?” He stared back at her, certain he’d misunderstood.

“If you call the police,” she said in a calm tone, “I’ll tell them you were the intruder who trashed my place. That you’re an ex-boyfriend who stalked me here all the way from Texas and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Anger built in his gut, hot and painful. “You’d lie about me to the police?”

Her gaze snapped toward him. “Only if you force me to.”

“What the hell happened to you?” He lowered his voice, matching her tone. “I get that you probably hate me for the way I treated you, but you were never a liar.”

“How would you know?” She looked down at her clasped hands. “You never really knew me at all, did you? You only ever saw what you wanted.”

“I know you were kind.” He watched her fingers twisting around each other, noticed the short, unpainted nails and wondered when she’d stopped getting manicures. It had been one of her few indulgences, her biweekly manicures. She’d been nearly obsessive about nail polish, eager to try all the newest colors and styles. “You were sweet and honest.”

“Kind, sweet and honest gets you kicked in the teeth,” she murmured.

“You mean, by drunk and stupid cowboys.”

She angled her gaze up at him briefly but didn’t answer.

“I guess I deserve that.”

Her gaze dropped to the clipboard in his lap. “If you don’t finish filling those out, the doctor will never get to you.”

With a sigh, he turned his attention back to the papers and answered the rest of the questions. He half expected her to bolt the second he turned his back on her to bring the forms to the reception desk, but she was still sitting there in the corner of the waiting room when he returned.

“You said your brother-in-law and his wife. She’s not your sister?”

“No. You know she’s not.” He stared at her, wondering how she could have forgotten the things he’d told her about Emily. She’d held his hand late into the night when he first shared the story of his sister’s murder and how it had ripped away what was left of his family.

How could she even ask such a question?

“Mr. Drummond?” A pretty blonde nurse stuck her head through the door leading back to the examination area.

Jack turned to Mara. “Please stay until I’m finished with the doctor. Let me ride home with you and make sure the cabin’s secure.”

She just gave a brief nod toward the waiting nurse. “Don’t lose your place in line.”

With one more backward glance at Mara to make sure she wasn’t already making her escape, he followed the nurse back to the exam room.

* * *

HE THOUGHT SHE was going to bug out on him. She could tell by the wary look in his eyes as he glanced her way before following the nurse through the door.

He was right. She was.

She waited another minute to make sure he wasn’t going to dart right back out to the waiting room to check on her, then grabbed her purse and headed out the clinic door. Her heart pounding frantically against her breastbone, she looked up and down the street, trying to figure out where to go next.

Rain clouds gathered in the west, swallowing the setting sun. A few fat raindrops splattered her car’s windshield as she slid inside and sat for a second, willing her nerves to stop jangling.

She hadn’t even had a chance to think about the man at the cabin, or what he’d wanted, thanks to Jack Drummond and his damn inconvenient head wound.

How had Jack found her cabin? Did he follow her from the office?

Why hadn’t she noticed him following her?

She was losing her edge. Letting Alexander Quinn’s calm competence and promises of protection lull her into a sense of security as false as everything else about her life. The woman she used to be would never have put her trust in an ex-spook with his own agenda.

She’d have trusted no one.

She had to go back to the cabin. She had to make sure the intruder hadn’t had a chance to come back and breach the security of the safe room where all her work was hidden, and then, if everything was still there, she had to store it safely until she could get out of Purgatory and find her next bolt-hole.

She parked her car on a shallow turnaround just off the gravel road leading to her rental cabin, going the rest of the way on foot so she wouldn’t announce her arrival, in case the intruder had come back. She kept her Smith & Wesson pistol in her shooting hand, her finger on the index point above the trigger the way Quinn had trained her to carry a loaded weapon. She supposed she owed him that much gratitude—over the course of the six years since she first met the man in a Colombian hellhole, he’d equipped her to handle the trouble she always managed to find.

Her cell phone vibrated in the front pocket of her jeans. After an initial jarring rattle of nerves, she ignored the hum and it finally subsided. Probably Quinn checking on her. She’d call him back so he didn’t worry.

But not before she was packed and ready to get the hell out of Tennessee.

The cabin lay silent about thirty yards ahead of her, just visible through the thicket of trees. She went very still, watching and listening. The gathering storm was rolling in on a gusty northeastern wind, the mostly bare limbs of hardwood trees rattling like bones amid the whisper of evergreen boughs swishing back and forth.

But she heard nothing coming from the cabin. Pausing a moment longer, she tried to tap into the old instincts that had kept her alive so far. But she didn’t feel any threat coming from the place she’d called home for the past five months.

She walked toward the cabin, scanning the woods around her for any unseen threat. She’d made it within fifteen yards of the cabin when a flash of sunlight on chrome snagged her gaze, and she stared with dismay at the big black Ford pickup truck tucked just off the road near her house.

Jack Drummond’s truck. Of course. In her stupid haste to hurry home and get packed up for her move, she’d forgotten all about Jack Drummond’s damn pickup truck.

She looked away resolutely. Not her problem. He could get his brother-in-law to bring him to pick it up when he was through at the clinic. Surely she’d be out of here by then. At that point, it wouldn’t matter what Jack Drummond thought.

She’d locked the front door to the cabin when she left earlier to take Jack into town to the clinic. It was still locked, and after a quick look around the cabin, she reassured herself that she was alone this time.

Shoving the pistol into the compact concealed-carry holster snapped to the waistband of her jeans, she stopped in the middle of the front room and surveyed the mess. Thanks to Jack’s bleeding head wound, she hadn’t even had a chance to pick up the ruined cushions or shattered lamp stand.

She wondered how he was doing, and the fact that she was sparing even a second of thought to the irritating man just pissed her off even more. Shoving her concerns aside, she crossed to the mahogany armoire that took up most of the back wall of the dining area and opened the door.

Inside, where most visitors might assume she kept her dinnerware and linens, was a second door, fitted with an electronic keypad. The perks of renting a cabin from a former spook, she thought with a grimace as she punched in the code and the door lock disengaged.

Beyond the steel-reinforced door lay a small room about the size of a walk-in pantry, which was apparently what it had been at one time. There had been shelves lining the walls when Quinn bought the place, he’d told her, but he’d removed them to make room for her computer equipment.

Equipment she was about to have to destroy, just as soon as she finished loading her files to the secure flash drives she’d purchased.

And the sooner she got to work, the sooner she could leave the dust of Purgatory, Tennessee, behind her.

* * *

“SHE DITCHED YOU at an urgent-care clinic without even waiting to see if you had a head injury?” Riley’s eyebrows nearly reached his hairline as he walked with Jack out to the clinic’s parking lot. “Good Lord, son, what did you do to the woman?”

“Besides steal seven grand, gamble it away and humiliate her in an Amarillo honky-tonk?” Jack grimaced as he climbed into the passenger seat. The wound in the back of his head had required six stitches and still hurt like hell, despite the local anesthetic. Or maybe that was just his conscience.

“And now you have to go retrieve your truck from her backyard.”

“Well, technically, it’s just down the road.”

“Any chance she’ll key the paint job and slash your tires?”

Before seeing Mara again, Jack would have said no. But she had changed in the past four years. Drastically. “Let’s just hope she got her revenge by leaving me wounded to fend for myself.”

Riley’s side-eye glance was a thing of sarcastic beauty. “Poor you.”

“Seriously, Riley, a big man dressed in camo attacked her right there at her cabin and she didn’t want to call the cops.” Jack shook his head and immediately regretted it as the stitches pulled, sending a stinging pain through his scalp. “What the hell is going on?”

“Maybe you should call the local cops and make a report,” Riley suggested. “The guy assaulted you.”

“Technically, I attacked him first.”

“Because he was attacking your friend.”

“Who hates me and doesn’t want the police involved. What if she lies and says I assaulted someone?”

“Wow, you really don’t trust her, do you?”

“I broke her trust. She owes me nothing.”

“Then maybe you should just get your truck, follow me back to town and let’s get on with our fishing trip.”

Jack could tell by Riley’s tone that he didn’t like what he was saying any more than Jack did. But he was right. Mara Jennings didn’t want him anywhere near her life, and he sure as hell couldn’t fix what he’d broken.

Still, the idea of leaving her out here to fend for herself went against every instinct he had.

He’d half expected to find his truck had been towed away, but the Ford F-150 was still sitting there on the side of the narrow gravel road, about thirty yards from the cabin’s driveway. Mara’s little blue Mazda car wasn’t anywhere around, however.

Had she gone back to work?

As Jack opened the passenger door of the Bronco, Riley asked, “Should we expect you at dinner?”

Jack turned to look at his brother-in-law. “I don’t think so.”

Riley’s mouth flattened to a thin line, but he didn’t look surprised. “Be careful, Jack.”

Jack nodded and closed the door, walking slowly across the crunchy gravel to his truck. He settled in the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition. But he didn’t start the truck.

Instead he settled down to wait.

* * *

HER CELL PHONE rang while she was loading the data sanitization programs on the computers she had to leave behind. She glanced at the display. Alexander Quinn.

She ignored the call and shoved the lone laptop computer she was keeping into her backpack. She’d packed light for the bugout. She wasn’t exactly a clotheshorse to begin with, and the less she had to carry with her, the better to make a complete escape.

It might be a relief, really, to go underground again. No more pretending to be someone she wasn’t.

Someone she never had been.

The phone rang once more. Quinn again. With a grimace, she answered the phone. “What’s up, boss?”

“What happened to Jack Drummond?”

“What happened?” She should have known he’d already heard about the visit to the urgent-care clinic. Purgatory was a small town, and not much went on there that Quinn didn’t know about. “He fell down the porch stairs and split his skull on the gravel. He’s fine.”

Although she couldn’t say that for sure, could she? She’d left him at the clinic to fend for himself.

“Fell down the steps?”

A flutter of alarm twitched through her gut as she realized maybe Quinn knew something she didn’t. “Yes. Why? How do you know about what happened?”

“Someone saw you with Drummond at the clinic.”

She bit back a sigh. Damn small towns. “I didn’t want him to sue me. Or, more to the point, you, since this is your property.”

“And he just fell down the stairs. Unaided?”

“You think I pushed him?”

“Did you?”

“No. I didn’t.” It was a grizzly of a camouflage-clad intruder who did the pushing, she added silently. “And I made it clear to Drummond that I don’t care to see him again.”

“I’ve looked into Jack Drummond’s past,” Quinn said.

That fast? She glanced at her watch. Nearly seven. There were no windows in the secret room, but the day had already been waning before she finished packing. She would be out of daylight when she finally hit the road.

Maybe that was better. Easier to disappear in the dark.

“Not curious?” Quinn asked when she didn’t respond.

“Not particularly.” A lie, of course. Curiosity was one of her most enduring traits. And one that often got her into considerable trouble.

And Jack Drummond was, if nothing else, an intriguing creature in all the wrong ways.

“He’s been off the rodeo circuit for two years,” Quinn said. “Retired after a bull ride gone wrong crushed his pelvis. He’s lucky he can walk.”

She hadn’t noticed any sign of infirmity. But she supposed she wouldn’t have. She’d been trying very hard not to pay any attention to Jack Drummond at all.

“Is there a point to telling me this?” she asked.

“He used to have quite the reputation as a hard-drinking, hard-loving, hard-riding cowboy.”

She knew his reputation had been well earned. She knew that better than most people did. “Used to have?”

“Four years ago, he stopped drinking. I don’t know if he stopped womanizing, but the stories about his bedroom exploits subsided around that time. The only thing he kept doing was riding, and from what I hear, he became increasingly reckless about it, which led to the accident that ended his career.”

Four years ago, Mara had walked into an Amarillo honky-tonk to meet Jack for a date and found him wrapped around a pretty blonde barrel racer he’d met while waiting for Mara to arrive. He’d been three sheets to the wind already, and when he spotted Mara, he’d just smiled a drunken smile and shrugged.

Just shrugged, as if to say, what’s a cowboy to do?

God, she hated him for that.

She’d never believed for a second that he’d change. Not for a second. Men like Jack Drummond barreled their careless ways through the world, leaving destruction in their wake, and almost never suffered the consequences.

“Maybe he just hides it better now,” she said.

“Maybe,” Quinn conceded. “Or maybe something happened to change his behavior.”

She knew what he was suggesting. She’d never told him about what had happened in Amarillo, but Quinn was smart enough to guess.

“I don’t care,” she said flatly, looking at the duffel bag lying at her feet. She didn’t intend to stick around Purgatory for another hour, so what Jack Drummond had or hadn’t done four years ago meant nothing to her.

Nothing at all.

“Why do I think there’s something you’re not telling me?” Quinn asked.

“Because you’re a suspicious old spook,” she snapped back. “Go bother someone else.” She ended the call, her hands shaking.

Stop, she thought, forcing her hands to go still. She took a couple of long, deep breaths, tried to clear her mind of the clutter that Jack Drummond’s unexpected invasion of her life had wrought.

The data-shredding programs she’d fed into her remaining computers were nearly finished. Anyone, Quinn included, who tried to figure out what she’d been working on would fail.

The information she needed to continue her work was saved on three portable flash drives sewn into the padding of her backpack, safe enough for the moment. Once she reached her next bolt-hole, she’d try to find a safer place to keep them.

It was time to leave Mara Jennings behind for good.