Читать книгу Smoky Ridge Curse - Пола Грейвс - Страница 8

Pain gutted him, ripping its way around his wounded side and settling like liquid fire in the center of his stomach. He tried to keep his hold on her, tried to bite back the cry that tore from his throat as she slammed her elbow back into his side again.

“Delilah, stop.” Adam Brand stumbled backward, struggling to keep his feet as his body instinctively sought relief from her lethal limbs.

A second later, he was staring down the barrel of her Sig Sauer P229 backlit by the beam of a flashlight.

“Son of a bitch!” Delilah hit the last word hard and dropped the weapon and flashlight to her side, bending nearly double as if she’d been the one to take the blow to the gut. “You scared the hell out of me, Brand.”

“I think you reopened my wound,” Brand shot back, his voice hoarse with pain. He pressed his hand to his side and found that the wound, which had finally started to clot, was weeping blood again.

“Your wound?” Delilah straightened quickly, swinging the beam of her flashlight over him, searching for his injury.

He turned his side toward her helpfully. “I think it was a thirty-two. I got lucky.”

In the low light of the flashlight beam, her pretty face twisted with a grimace. “Lucky, huh?” She plucked at his shirt, making him wince as the cotton clung to the drying blood around the bullet furrow. “Where the hell have you been? The police are looking for you.”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t knock on the door.”

“What did you do with my soup?”

“Ate it,” Brand admitted. “I haven’t had anything to eat besides what I could forage for a couple of days.”

Delilah’s sharp brown eyes lifted to meet his. “The FBI says you’re a traitor.”

“You know better.” At least, he hoped she did. A lot of time had passed since they’d last seen each other.

People changed.

“What happened? How did it get to this point?” Her eyes narrowed. “Does it have anything to do with the Davenport case?”

“It’s connected,” he said. “But it’s a lot more complicated than that.” He tried to hold back a shiver, but the wind at his back was too damned icy for him to stop shaking.

Delilah’s brow furrowed. “We need to get you inside and warmed up.”

“I can’t go in there. Your mother’s there.”

“You don’t have a choice. If you stay out here much longer, you’ll go into hypothermia. Here.” She took off her jacket and handed it to him.

Brand looked at the thick denim jacket, built to hug her smaller frame. “That’s not going to fit me.”

She gave him an exasperated look, one he’d seen a thousand times before and had feared he might never see again. Cold, hungry and hurting, he still felt a crushing need to pull her close and say all the things he’d never said, to hell with his reasons for choosing the path he had. But now was no better time than the other times he’d stayed silent and let the moment pass.

“Wrap it around your neck to block the wind,” she said flatly. “I take it you don’t want to be found?”

The pragmatism of her question made him smile. It felt as if his face cracked into a million pieces at the effort. “That would be best.”

“I’ll make an excuse to my mother about why I have to go. Here.” She dug in the pocket of her jeans and handed him a set of keys. “Get in my car and lie down in the backseat. It should still be fairly warm. But don’t start the engine. I don’t want my mother suspicious.”

She started toward the small cabin with the cheery golden light in the windows and fragrant wood smoke wafting from the chimney, moving with long, kinetic strides that reminded him of those days, so many years ago, when she’d brought energy and life to his little section of the federal government.

He couldn’t say she hadn’t changed since that time—eight years of life had chiseled away the softness of her features, honing them to a mature, womanly beauty. And her eyes seemed, if anything, darker and more mysterious than he remembered, as if in leaving the FBI behind she’d also abandoned the openness of youth.

Brand trudged over the frozen ground to the low-slung black Camaro he’d seen her park just a little while earlier. At least she hadn’t lost her sense of style, he thought with a weak grin as he opened the car and bent to push up the bucket seat so he could crawl into the back. Stretching out on the narrow backseat, with its console hump in the middle, he changed his mind, wishing she’d grown staid enough to drive a roomy four-door sedan with a bench seat in the back.

At least inside the car he was sheltered from the biting wind and sleet, and the stinging numbness in his fingers and toes eased. For the first time in days, he closed his eyes and relaxed, enjoying the relative comfort of civilization while he could.

Sometime later, the crunch of footsteps on the ground outside jerked him out of a light doze. He tensed until the driver’s-side door opened and Delilah slid into the car. “Still alive?” she drawled as she buckled her seat belt. Her Appalachian accent had gotten stronger during her time away, he noticed.

“Barely.”

“You’re not bleedin’ on my seat, are you?”

Brand grinned. “No.”

“Who shot you?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.”

She was silent for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to believe him. “Okay, who ordered you shot?”

Not much got past her. “I can’t prove it, but the only person I’ve made an enemy of lately is a man named Wayne Cortland.”

“Cortland.” She rolled the name around in her mouth the way only a mountain girl could do. “Never heard of him.”

“Believe me, that’s by design.”

She cranked the car and set the heat up to high. Warm air wafted almost immediately into the back, and he sighed with relief.

“I’m renting a place just down the mountain,” she told him. “It’s a nice place, but it’s not far from the home of one of Bitterwood P.D.’s finest.”

“Aren’t you one of Bitterwood P.D.’s finest?” He winced as she started down the winding mountain road, seeming to hit every bump and pothole along the way. The car fishtailed for a moment on the slick road, flinging him off the narrow seat onto the floorboard. He growled a couple of heartfelt profanities as pain knifed through his injured side.

“Damn, we got really close to a drop-off that time.” Delilah’s voice had a jittery, amped-up quality he remembered well. Brushes with death had always left her a little giddy, as if the mere act of surviving was a wellspring of joy. He’d wondered, more than once, if she carried that same reckless abandon with her into the bedroom.

And then, one snowy night in West Virginia, he’d learned the answer.

“How did you know I joined the Bitterwood P.D.?” she asked curiously. “I just made the decision a couple of weeks ago.”

He didn’t try to lie on the seat again, settling for a low slump against the back of the bucket seat on the driver’s side. “Called Cooper Security and asked for you. Got a talkative receptionist.”

“I’ll have to mention that to Jesse,” she murmured drily. But she didn’t sound angry that he’d found her.

“Why’d you leave? I thought you were happy there.”

Her eyes met his in the rearview mirror. “How would you know?”

“I assume you know by now that I’ve been in touch with Seth.”

“Yeah, I know.” In the mirror, her eyes narrowed. “Why’s that?”

Because I wanted a connection to you, he thought. Aloud, he said, “I thought he’d be useful to the bureau. He had connections we could exploit. And when he went straight, he turned out to be a valuable asset.”

“He said you put him in some dangerous situations, like in Bolen’s Bluff. The Swains could have killed him if they’d ever found out he was working for the FBI.”

“I didn’t expect them to kidnap Isabel Cooper and put the whole damned mountain on red alert when she got away.” Brand grimaced as they hit another pothole. “I haven’t talked to him since I had to run. Did he figure out who was targeting Rachel Davenport?”

“It was her stepbrother,” Delilah answered after a long pause. “The police arrested him a couple of weeks ago, but he died in his cell. The autopsy was inconclusive.”

“Cortland got to him.”

“You make him sound like the bogeyman.”

“He is, in all the ways that matter.” Brand shifted position and regretted it immediately. “How much farther?”

“Almost there.” Was that a hint of sympathy in her tone? He was beginning to wonder if she had any left for him. So far she’d seemed more cautious than worried.

“I didn’t want to drag you into this mess.”

“I was already in it.”

They were off the mountain now, and the sleet had turned to rain, angling down from the sky in silver streaks reflecting the Camaro’s headlights. The steady swish of the windshield wipers and the comforting warmth of the car’s heater conspired to lull him to sleep, but he struggled to keep his eyes open.

They weren’t safe yet.

She parked the Camaro in front of a small bungalow nestled in the woods on a dead-end road. The houses they’d passed moments earlier were no longer in view, leaving her house isolated from the rest of the world, surrounded by woods and mountains as far as the eye could see.

“Long way from Georgetown,” he murmured.

She turned in the seat to look at him. “You have no idea.”

He let her help him out of the car, forced to lean on her more than he’d anticipated. She wrapped her arm around his waist, careful not to touch his gunshot wound, and eased him up the shallow set of stairs to the wraparound porch.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured when she settled him on a brown leather sofa in the front room.

“Don’t apologize unless you draw blood,” she muttered, parroting back a saying he’d taught her a long time ago. She grimaced as she took a closer look at his bullet wound. “Gonna have an ugly scar.”

“Won’t be my first.” He gritted his teeth as she plucked the fabric of his shirt away from the wound. “Got any painkillers?”

“Just the over-the-counter type. Want a bullet to bite?”

“I see your bedside manner hasn’t changed.”

Her dark brows arched, and he realized with dismay the double-edged nature of his quip.

“This is going to hurt like hell.” After digging in a nearby drawer, she returned with a soft-sided first-aid kit. “Be right back—I need more supplies.”

She detoured long enough to lock the front door and disappeared into another room. Brand let his gaze drift across the front room, curious whether he’d be able to find anything he recognized of the woman he’d once believed could rise all the way to the top of the FBI.

There were few decorations—an empty umbrella stand near the door, an old Smoky Mountains tourist poster in a cheap metal frame hanging over the fireplace mantel. The sofa and a pair of matching leather armchairs looked comfortably broken in, but the plain oak coffee table between them looked new, chosen for utility over beauty. The floors were hardwood, softened by a brown woven rug that matched the sofas. The built-in bookcases on either side of the fireplace were only half-filled, mostly with thrillers, classics and nonfiction.

Delilah came back into the living room carrying a bucket full of soapy water and a handful of washcloths. “Sure you don’t want that bullet to bite?”

“How long have you been living here?”

“Counting today? Two days.”

That explained the scarcity of personal effects, he supposed. At least he hoped it did. Because right now, if he had to profile her based on her home environment, he’d be leaning toward a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. And that definitely wasn’t the Delilah Hammond he remembered.

“You look good,” he ventured as she sat on the coffee table and dipped one of the washcloths into the bucket of suds.

One side of her mouth quirked. “Flattery won’t make me hurt you any less.”

“I was just commenting.”

She slanted a look at him. “You look like hell.”

He laughed, stopping immediately when his injured muscles protested. “I still clean up pretty well, I promise.”

Ten minutes of agony later, she smoothed down the last strip of tape over his fresh bandage and sat back, looking at him with dark, unfathomable eyes. “I hate to tell you this, but I’ll have to change that bandage first thing in the morning. But it won’t take as long or hurt as much, I don’t think.”

“Why weren’t you surprised?” He sounded weaker than he expected, his voice thready and strained.

“By you showing up in the woods behind my mama’s house?”

He nodded.

“I’ve been waiting for you to show up here in Bitterwood ever since I heard you went AWOL.”

“How’d you know I’d come here?”

“The last case you were working started here. Where else would you go?” She shrugged as if the answer was too obvious to require explanation. “I am a little curious about why you went to my mama’s house, though.”

“That was the number the receptionist at Cooper Security gave me. She said you didn’t have a home phone yet, but you’d given them that number if anyone needed to contact you. I got the address through the phone number.”

“I see.” A fleeting emotion glimmered in her eyes.

“You knew I’d call looking for you. Didn’t you?”

She looked down at the bucket. “I’d better go get this cleaned up. You still hungry?”

The thought of food made him queasy. “I’m good for now. But you didn’t get to eat, so you go ahead.”

She disappeared from the living room for a few minutes, returning with a blanket and a pillow. “I have just the one bedroom, so it’s up to you. You want to stay here on the sofa or try getting up and going to the bedroom?”

He was tempted to come back with a little teasing innuendo but quelled the urge. “I’m good here. Not in the mood for moving around at the moment.”

“You didn’t get a look at the person who shot you?”

“Blind ambush. I was too busy running for my life.”

“So it might not have been this Cortland person.”

“Oh, he wouldn’t do his own dirty work. That’s not his style.”

She sat on the coffee table and leaned toward him, her elbows resting on her knees. She wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup, and she smelled like soapy water and disinfectant, but if he hadn’t been laid up with a gunshot wound, he’d have done his damnedest to get back into her bed. Because she was still the most beautiful, exciting, interesting woman he knew.

Time apart hadn’t done a damned thing to change that fact.

“Where did the shooting happen?” she asked.

“In Virginia. I’d stopped for coffee at a doughnut shop in Bristol. I came out of the shop heading for my car and got hit out of nowhere.”

“You were in a car? Where is it now?”

“Parked it in a junkyard near Maryville. I’ve been on foot ever since.”

She winced. “That’s a long walk for an injured man.”

“Tell me about it.” Grimacing, he shifted on the sofa, trying to find a less painful position. She reached across and helped him fluff up the pillow under his head, her cool hand brushing across his face.

“You need antibiotics. We should get you to a real doctor.”

“You know I can’t go to a doctor.”

“You were running around the woods with an open wound—”

“Guess we have to hope you cleaned it out sufficiently.”

She fell silent for a moment. Then her gaze rose to meet his, her dark eyes troubled. “Why does the FBI think you’re a traitor?”

“Because they have all sorts of damning evidence that suggests I am.”

“Are you?”

Her flatly stated question felt like a punch in the gut. “I thought you said you already knew the answer to that question.”

“Eight years is a long time. I’m not the same person. Maybe you’re not, either.”

He sat up to face her, ignoring the fire in his side. He caught her face between his palms, finding fierce satisfaction in the way her eyes dilated and her lips trembled apart. “You know me, Delilah. Better than anyone else in the world. That hasn’t changed. It never will.”

Her eyes fluttered closed, as if she couldn’t bear what she saw in his gaze. He let her go, slumping back against the sofa cushions.

She stood and picked up the blanket she’d laid on the coffee table beside her. “Why don’t you get some sleep? That’ll do more to help you heal than anything.”

He stretched out on his good side, watching her unfold the blanket with quick, efficient hands. “I’m sorry.”

She shot him an exasperated look.

“I didn’t know who else to come to.”

Placing the blanket over him, she shook her head. “I needed a spot of trouble in my life again,” she murmured. “Things were threatening to get a little too tame around here, and you know how I hate that.”

He closed his fingers over her wrist, holding her in place as she started to straighten. “I’m sorry about more than landing on your doorstep.”

Her eyes darkened. “Yeah, me, too.”

He let her go, and she gave the blanket a tug at the bottom, covering his feet.

“Hey, Brand?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“You could really use a bath and some deodorant.”

He grinned at her as she started out of the room. “Duly noted.”

She stopped in the doorway, turning back to face him. “Do you think Cortland knows where you are now?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “There’s a lot I don’t know.”

She nodded, her jaw squaring, making her look more like the woman he remembered. “We’ll have to assume he does.”

“Then maybe I should go.”

A familiar look of determination came over her face, sending a thrill through his aching body. Here was the Delilah Hammond he knew, he thought. Here was the woman who’d made his life an endless adventure. He hadn’t realized until that very moment just how bloody empty his life had been without her.

“You’re not going anywhere,” she said firmly.

“He’s not going to stop looking for me,” Brand warned her.

Her chin lifted. “Let him come. We’ll be ready.”