Читать книгу Secret Hideout - Пола Грейвс - Страница 11

Chapter Two

Consciousness returned in sickening waves, crashing against a wall of agony in her head. Even the small effort of opening her eyes seemed beyond Isabel’s strength, so she suffered awhile longer in a dark cocoon, willing the nausea to subside.

Where was she? Why so much pain? Why had she been asleep?

Movement nearby forced her to open her eyes. Wincing as light needled into her brain, she bit back a moan and focused on a man standing with his back to her as he stirred something in a battered pot on an old gas range.

Scanlon, she thought, even though she knew it couldn’t be so.

Then he turned to grab a spice tin from the counter beside the range, making her gasp. The aquiline nose and stubborn chin definitely belonged to her former FBI partner.

Her dead partner.

He turned around at her gasp, his blue eyes soft. “Hey there, Cooper. Back among the living?”

She shook her head, seized by fear. Had she lost her mind? Was that why she couldn’t remember where she was or why she was here? “You’re dead.”

“Cooper—”

“No, you died! Six months ago! I saw footage of the explosion. I—I read the autopsy report.” She swiped tears from her cheeks with a jerk of her hand. “I held your mama’s hand as we buried you—”

Pain flickered across his expression. “I know.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts!” If she wasn’t dreaming, then she was crazy. Loss could do that, and she’d been hiding her own grief all this time, trying not to worry her family or even admit to herself how important Scanlon had been to her—

“I’m not a ghost.” He crouched beside her, threading his solid fingers between her own. The warmth from his hands worked its way up her arm into her chest. Hot tears burned her eyes and she let them fall, staring at him in disbelief. She reached up to touch his stubbled jaw, wondering if her hand would slide right through him. But he was solid. Warm.

Alive.

He caught her face between his hands and made her look into his eyes. “I know it’s confusing, but I’m here. I didn’t die in the explosion. I was there, but I escaped.”

An ache settled in the center of her chest. “But you let me think you were dead.” The buoyant happiness that had kept her upright for the past few seconds fled as suddenly as it had arrived, supplanted by a rush of anger. She pushed against him. “You were alive and you let me think you were dead!”

“It’s complicated—”

“How could you do that to me? We were partners! You don’t do that to your partner!” Growling, she tried to throw off the patchwork quilt tangled around her legs, but the pain in her head grew excruciating. She jammed the heels of her hands into her temples, certain her head was going to explode.

The bed beneath her shifted, making the world roil around her again. Scanlon’s hands closed around her upper arms, steadying her. “You have to calm down. You’re still suffering the effects of whatever they gave you.”

An image darted through her brain. A flash of light on the point of a needle. A corresponding sting pricked the side of her neck. The alarming memory did more to dispel her escalating rage than anything Scanlon could have said.

“Somebody shot me up with something.”

“I know. There’s a needle mark near your carotid, and you were hallucinating before you passed out.” His voice emerged as hard as steel. “Stupid cretins could have killed you.”

“Who?” Why couldn’t she remember anything more than the needle? It felt as if she’d walked into a solid wall, nothing but blankness wherever she looked. “Who did this to me?”

“I’m not sure.” He dropped his hands from her arms and averted his gaze. She realized he wasn’t telling her the truth.

But why?

She changed tacks. “Any idea what they shot me up with?”

“Not sure about that, either.” He stood and crossed to the saucepan on the stove. “Food will help, whatever it was. Dilute the effects, at least.”

She wasn’t sure her rolling stomach could handle a glass of water, much less whatever it was he was pouring from the saucepan into a bowl. As he pulled a sleeve of plain crackers from a nearby cabinet, he asked, “You want to eat in bed or do you feel like sitting up at the table?”

“I don’t know if I can hold anything down.”

“Give it a try, at least.” He brought the bowl of steaming liquid to the bed, which she now realized was actually a futon sofa that took up half the wall in the small room. The rest of the room was cramped by the furnishings—a stove, a sink and a refrigerator, plus a card table that seemed to serve as a dining table, sat across from her. A door, the futon and a small bookshelf took up the wall behind her. The narrow end wall was just large enough to accommodate a low table with a television set that looked decades old.

“Where are we?” she asked.

He placed the bowl of soup on a portable tray table pulled from the narrow space between the stove and the refrigerator. “Soup first. I’ll tell you everything in a minute, I promise.”

She eyed the bowl, a little freaked out at being suspicious of Ben Scanlon. “What is that?”

“Chicken noodle soup.” He set the tray table in front of her. Up close, she noticed for the first time a wicked-looking scar on the back of his left hand.

He saw her reaction. “I didn’t escape the bomb entirely.” He turned his hand over, palm up, and she saw that the scar extended to his palm as well. “A piece of bomb shrapnel went straight through my hand. Hurt like hell.”

Any hint of appetite fled. “Any other injuries?”

“Scrapes and cuts. I got knocked into the river by the blast. Lost consciousness and damned near drowned before I came to and coughed up the water I’d inhaled.”

“They said they identified your body—” She shuddered, the memory of that day flooding back with fresh sharpness.

“Brand arranged it.”

She stared at him. “Adam Brand knew you were alive the whole time?” The SAC—Special Agent in Charge—had been one of the few people who’d seemed to understand her difficulty in dealing with Scanlon’s murder. Brand knew she’d felt guilty when she learned her partner had intercepted a note meant for her and gotten killed trying to protect her. He’d even understood her choice to leave the FBI.

So he wouldn’t have to lie to her face every day?

“We couldn’t let anyone connect me to what I’m doing here.” Scanlon slanted a guilty look at her. “Even you.”

Especially me, she thought blackly. “Where is here?”

“First, let’s get a little chicken noodle soup into you before you keel over on me.”

“Not until you tell me what the hell’s going on.” She pressed her lips together.

Scanlon sighed. “Where do you want me to start?”

“The explosion,” she said flatly. “That message was left on my desk. Morelli told me that much. You took my message from Morelli and met with my informant. Why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you call me, at least?”

Scanlon’s scarred hand stretched toward her for a second before dropping back to his lap. “I thought it was a setup.”

“So you went in my place? Without any backup?”

“Brand was with me, watching in case anything went hinky.”

She tamped down her simmering anger, trying to be dispassionate. “Did you trigger a booby trap?” That was the finding after an exhaustive postmortem of the explosion. But now she wondered if anything Brand had told her was the truth.

“It was on a delay—meant to give me time to get all the way inside before it blew. But I saw—something—” He frowned, as if making a mental effort to return to that moment in time. “I had a concussion from the blast. It seems to have erased my memories of what happened when I stepped inside the warehouse.”

“Then how do you know you spotted something?”

Scanlon’s mouth curved slightly. “I was wired for sound, at least until I ended up in the river. Brand told me I said something about a trap and then all of a sudden I was hauling butt away from the place.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees as Isabel pictured, not for the first time, what those last few seconds before the blast must have felt like for him. At least, this time, she could add a happier ending.

If he’s telling the truth, a bleak voice in the back of her head added.

She needed to talk to Brand. She had trouble believing he’d known this whole time. He had been so supportive—

“I quit the FBI within two weeks, you know,” she said aloud. “It was hard enough to go into that office every day and see your empty desk. When they brought in a new agent—”

“I know. Brand told me.” Scanlon leaned toward her, his expression troubled. “Go back to the Bureau. Brand will take you back—I know he will. As soon as we get you out of here.”

The last thing she wanted was to go back to the FBI, especially if Scanlon was telling her the truth. The idea that people she believed she could trust would lie to her this way…

She felt completely betrayed.

“I’m working with my brother now,” she said aloud. “At the security company. We’re doing good things there.”

“I thought you weren’t happy about your brother’s security company when he first came up with the idea.”

She hadn’t been thrilled. Her experiences with private security firms while working for the FBI had been more negative than positive. But Jesse’s concept for the security firm appealed to her. The big jobs they undertook financed the low-cost and pro bono cases Cooper Security chose on an individual, need-by-need basis.

“Things have changed,” she admitted.

Scanlon’s eyes narrowed. “I guess they have.” He waved at the bowl of soup. “At least have a bite or two. It’ll help your body fight off the effects of what they gave you.”

She forced herself to eat a few bites of the soup, knowing Scanlon had a stubborn streak that was nearly impossible to thwart. If she wanted answers, she’d have to play along with his rules, even if a bowl of chicken noodle soup was the last thing she wanted at the moment.

But she managed to finish half the bowl and even nibble on a couple of crackers by the time Scanlon had poured the rest of the soup into a plastic container and put it in the small refrigerator next to the stove.

She had so many questions racing through her mind, she felt overwhelmed, especially since the food had done nothing to ease her raging headache. She couldn’t think with her pulse pounding in her ears. The lights inside were dimmed, and heavy curtains shut out whatever light might be coming from outside the windows, but her eyes still ached from the glare.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said. To her alarm, the words came out slurred.

Scanlon crossed quickly to the futon and helped her up. Tugging her hand away from his when he showed every sign of walking with her to the bathroom, she said, “I can handle this myself. Just point me in the right direction.”

He stared back at her, his expression hard to read.

Unease fluttered in her stomach. “Please don’t tell me the bathroom’s outdoors.”

His expression cleared. “No. Through that door, take a right down the hall and it’s the first door on the left.”

She followed his directions and entered the tiny bathroom. It had a toilet and an ancient pedestal sink on one side of the room, and an even more ancient claw-foot tub on the other. She looked longingly at the tub, tempted by the thought of a nice, hot bath, but settled for running cold water in the sink and splashing it on her hot face.

As she was about to head back to the front room, her gaze caught on the window next to the toilet. It was closed off by thick green curtains. She eased the curtains open and took a peek outside, squinting as bright daylight assaulted her eyes.

There were woods outside, dense with new growth. The house seemed to have very little in the way of a yard.

Movement outside caught her eye. A man, she realized. His dark green baseball cap came into view first, dipped forward as the wearer looked down, watching his footing.

Instinctively, she narrowed the opening in the curtains to a crack. As he emerged into the clearing behind the house, the man in the cap looked up, directly toward the window.

Her heart gave a little flop.

She’d seen him before.

He wore a black T-shirt under a faded denim jacket. His jeans were equally faded. His sandy hair curled lightly around the edge of the cap.

Where had she seen him before? She could picture him in her mind, sandy hair, black T-shirt, faded jeans—

No cap. He hadn’t been wearing a cap. Not then.

The door behind her opened, making her whirl around in alarm. The sudden movement made her vision swim, and she had to grab the sink to keep from toppling over.

Scanlon rushed in, cupping her elbow to steady her. “Go to my bedroom. Now. Hide in the closet. No time to explain—”

“There’s a man outside. I know I’ve seen him before—”

“There’s more than one man outside,” Scanlon said tersely, leading her across the hall to a small, spare bedroom. He opened the door next to the bed to reveal a tiny closet and nudged her inside. “Just stay here and be quiet, no matter what you hear. Promise me.”

She nodded. “Are you in danger?”

He brushed her cheek with his fingertips. “I’m always in danger these days, Cooper.” He closed the door, plunging the cramped closet into darkness.

* * *

BEN SCANLON RECOVERED HIS CALM as he walked to the front room. Already, Davy McCoy was banging on the door, commencing the visit Scanlon had been expecting since he’d grabbed Isabel Cooper at the Fort Payne hotel and rushed her out to the van the FBI resident agency in Huntsville had supplied. He hadn’t gotten a good look at any of the men, but he knew Davy was involved. Davy was the one he’d overheard making plans for the ambush.

He swept a final glance around the living room, making sure he’d left no signs of Isabel’s presence. She’d slipped on her shoes before she’d gone to the bathroom, and he’d already returned the futon to its sofa position.

He took a deep breath and opened the door.

Davy McCoy was a short, wiry man in his midtwenties, with dark hair thinning prematurely and a sneering smile that was a permanent fixture on his vulpine face. He didn’t wait to be asked in, pushing past Scanlon and entering the living room.

“You cookin’ somethin’?” He sniffed the air.

“Just soup.”

Davy eyed the bowl in the sink. “Been out today?”

The van Scanlon had driven to the hotel was hidden in an abandoned barn a half mile down the mountain, where he’d left his battered old Ford pickup while he was in Fort Payne. But he and Isabel hadn’t been back long. If Davy had touched the hood of the Ford, would it still be warm?

“Drove over to Silorville Pond to see if the bluegills were bedding,” he answered, the lie effortless. Lying came all too easy to him these days. “No luck.”

“Little early yet, I guess.”

Scanlon knew Davy didn’t have a particular reason to suspect he’d been involved in thwarting the attempted abduction. Nobody among Bolen Bluff’s tight-knit community of weed growers and meth mechanics knew what he’d overheard that night at the feed store. He’d made damned sure he wasn’t seen.

But he’d been in Bolen Bluff only a few months. Strangers were automatically suspect. The paranoia among the Swain clan was legendary. One wrong move could get a man killed.

Scanlon knew that better than anyone.

Davy was clearly searching the room with his gaze. He didn’t even bother to hide it. “Mind if I use your bathroom?”

Scanlon nodded toward the hallway, hoping the rapid thump of his pulse wasn’t audible. It swished so loudly in his ears he barely heard Davy’s footsteps as he clomped down the hall.

He went to close the front door that Davy had left open and spotted Bobby Rawlings standing out in the yard, watching him through narrowed eyes. Rawlings was even scarier than McCoy in some ways. He was a Swain by blood, son of one of old Jasper’s cousins. That gave him even more carte blanche for violence around these parts than Davy, who was only a Swain clan member out of criminal loyalty.

He gave Rawlings a wave. Rawlings didn’t wave back. Scanlon hadn’t expected he would.

He closed the door and turned as Davy’s heavy bootfalls heralded his return. “You and Bobby been out hunting coyote this morning?”

“Yeah,” Davy answered flatly.

“Any luck?”

“Got close, once. Just missed the bitch.” Davy shrugged. “We’ll find her again. Next time, ain’t gonna mess around—just put a bullet straight in her brain.”

Scanlon’s blood chilled.

“Thanks for the use of your facilities.” Davy slanted a look at Scanlon. “Reckon you’ll be comin’ to town Saturday?”

“I can,” he said carefully, not sure where Davy was going with the question.

“Addie Tolliver’s throwin’ a barbecue Saturday afternoon for Leamon’s birthday.”

Addie Tolliver was one of the Swain sisters. She and her son Leamon ran the feed shop in town, and he was pretty sure that Addie was the main mover and shaker in the Swain family’s meth and weed business. The family often used the store’s back room as a meeting place. He also suspected that the storage area may have been a temporary holding area for drug shipments going out to other parts of the state, though the one time he’d been able to sneak into the back room, all he’d accomplished was overhearing the plan to go after Isabel.

“The Brubakers are comin’ over from Higdon to play,” Davy continued. “Ever heard ’em?” When Scanlon shook his head, Davy gave him a look that smacked of disappointment. “They’re an old bluegrass family. The young ones are still playing the old stuff. You’d like it.”

Scanlon knew better than to assume he was being invited to the barbecue. He was still too new in town. He waited for Davy to let the punch line drop.

“Addie’s lookin’ for someone to watch the feed store for her while everybody’s at the barbecue. Said she’ll pay six bucks an hour for three hours. Under the table. Won’t be much to it—most everybody else in town will be at the barbecue.”

Everybody but the new guy, Scanlon thought, tamping down a flash of annoyance. He’d known going into this undercover operation that it would be a long-term assignment. He couldn’t expect an insular drug-dealing clan to take him to their bosom after a few months.

“I can do that,” he said aloud.

“Good. I’ll tell Addie you’ll be there. Two o’clock on Saturday.” Davy walked to the door and opened it. “She mentioned you by name, you know. Asked me to check with you specifically.”

Scanlon smiled. “Tell her I said thanks. I sure can use the extra money.”

Davy’s gaze dropped to Scanlon’s scarred hand. “Reckon the government’s not exactly real generous these days.”

“No. You’d think they’d want to do a little more to reward a fellow who took a bullet in their godforsaken wars.”

“Just be at the feed store Saturday. Maybe if you do a good job then, Addie or one of the other Swains will find more jobs for you to do.” Davy headed out the door, pulling it closed behind him.

Scanlon released a long, slow breath. Not quite what he’d expected when he’d spotted Davy McCoy coming out of the woods.

But was his sense of relief premature? The Swains had been plying their criminal trade for a lot of years now. They might not be brain surgeons, but they were as wily and vicious as the coyotes Davy McCoy liked to hunt.

Maybe they really didn’t suspect his involvement in helping Isabel get away. But he couldn’t afford to assume he was safe from scrutiny. He had to figure out a way to get Isabel back to safety as soon as possible.

For his sake as well as hers.