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Chapter Three

“We have to move his body.” Amanda kept her voice low and calm, even though an endless shriek of terror played in a constant loop in her mind, echoing the memories that would never leave her as long as she lived.

But she had to focus on what needed to be done now. She could fall apart later, when she was finally alone again.

Rick’s eyes narrowed. “Move his body where?”

“I don’t care,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. We have about five minutes before the police get here. My neighbors will call in the gunfire. We’ve got to move now.”

“Why don’t we stick around and talk to the cops.” Rick spoke to her in a careful voice, as if he realized how close she was to snapping. “We’ll tell them what happened. I have the wound to prove we were under fire.”

She stared at him. “The Thurlow Gap cops aren’t cut out for a mess like this. Do you honestly think this will be the only attempt on my life?” She checked the Smith & Wesson’s clip to make sure she’d fired only four shots in the chaos. God knew how many more rounds she might need before this nightmare was over. “We’re wasting time talking about this.”

Rick stared at her. She saw the moment he realized she was right, that they couldn’t stay here and wait for the cops. But it was clear from his expression that he didn’t want to bug out. He wanted to handle this mess the normal way—call the cops, make a report, then forget about it and go on with life.

Good for him. She was glad he’d found his own little dose of normal in the world.

But she never would.

Sliding the pistol into the waistband of her jeans, she headed up the porch steps. “If you want to talk to the locals, fine. Stay here and chat it out with them. I have to go.” She went into the house, picked up the duffel bag Rick had left just inside and carried it out to the porch.

“How are you getting out of here? You think they won’t put out an APB for your car?” Rick asked from the bottom of the steps as she descended.

“I’ll walk.” She slung the heavy duffel bag over her shoulder, looping her arm through the canvas strap.

“And get picked up before you reach the next county.” Rick shook his head, falling in step with her as she headed toward the woods. “I’ll drive you wherever you want to go.”

She stopped at the edge of the clearing, taking a good look at him. The past three years had been kinder to him than her. He’d always been good-looking, but the intervening years had added lines of maturity to his face that suited him. His dark eyes looked older, too. Wiser, maybe. A lot more jaded.

She could sympathize with that.

“I don’t know where I want to go,” she admitted. “I just want to get out of here before the people around here end up getting hurt. They don’t deserve this kind of mess. And I’m not ready to offer myself up as a sacrificial lamb.”

“There’s going to be a mess, no matter what we do,” Rick warned. “If you disappear, no warning, no goodbyes, and the cops come here and find bullet holes riddling your carport—”

“All right! You’re right. There’s going to be a mess.” A manic energy bubbled in her chest, driving her relentlessly toward desperation. “So let’s make it a big mess.”

Reversing course, she jogged around to the back of the cabin, where she kept the gasoline generator that had gotten her through one frigid winter when the mountain snowfall had knocked out her electricity. Next to the generator stood the weatherproof bin where she kept a five-gallon container of gasoline. She’d just stocked up a couple of days earlier, in anticipation of next week’s promised thunderstorms.

She didn’t like to be stuck in the dark. Not anymore.

Rick caught up with her. “What are you doing?”

Amanda pulled the gas can from the bin and pulled off the cap. The pungent odor of gasoline fumes wafted around her, fueling her sense that she’d reached a point of no return. She met Rick’s troubled gaze, her lips curving in a ghost of a smile. “Remember Choqori?”

His eyes widened. “You’re not going to—”

“Burn it to the ground?” A ripple of laughter escaped her throat. It sounded like madness. “Oh, yes. Yes, I am.”

WITHIN TEN MINUTES, they’d made it through the woods undetected and headed out of Thurlow Gap, driving south, leaving behind one hell of a bonfire. They’d already heard sirens heading for Amanda’s property, which meant the fire would be put out sooner or later. And, eventually, people would probably be seeking Amanda for questioning about the charred body inside.

But they could worry about that problem another day, Rick thought as he tore off a piece of his shredded shirtsleeve to get a better look at the bloody groove in his upper arm. He grimaced at the sight of the torn and friction-burned skin.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Amanda said from her position behind the steering wheel. She was keeping to the speed limit—not too fast, not too slow—although Rick could see a frenetic glow in her smoky-blue eyes that suggested it was taking all of her willpower to keep from gunning the Charger up the highway.

“I need to clean it out before infection sets in.” There were pieces of singed shirt and probably pieces of bullet shrapnel embedded in the groove of flesh, rendering the wound a fertile environment for bacteria.

“As soon as you drop me off in Chattanooga, you can go find a doctor.”

He shot her a look. Drop her off? Did she really think that was going to happen? “Doctors have to report gunshot wounds. You know that.”

She shrugged. “Tell him you gouged it on a nail.”

“There’s not a nail in the world big enough to make this kind of wound.”

“Then tell him it was a railroad spike.”

He clenched his jaw, pain from the gunshot wound exacerbating his growing frustration. “How about this instead? We find somewhere outside Chattanooga to hunker down for the night, and you help me bandage up the gunshot wound I got trying to help you while we figure out what to do next.”

She slowed the Charger as they came up to a traffic light, taking advantage of the wait to look at him. The fiery determination evident in the set of her square jaw was so familiar it made his chest ache. She had always been the most stubborn creature he’d ever known.

“There’s no we, Rick. You never should have come here. We’re going to pretend that you didn’t.”

“You were always better at pretending than I was.”

The look she gave him held a hint of hurt. Just a hint, as if the life she’d lived since they’d last said goodbye had mostly cauterized whatever wound had remained from their breakup.

He wished he’d been able to rid himself of the painful memories as efficiently as she had. She still haunted him, usually deep in the night when he was alone and pondering the mess his life had become since that day when he walked away from her for what he thought would be forever.

“It’s one night, Tara—”

“Amanda,” she said sharply. “Tara Brady’s dead. She’s not coming back.”

He clamped his mouth shut, then started again. “Amanda. Just one night.”

“I never did tell you my real name, did I?”

He shook his head.

“I guess it won’t hurt now. It was Audrey. Audrey Scott.”

“From somewhere in south Mississippi,” he murmured.

She slanted another look at him. “What makes you think that, hotshot?”

“In Kaziristan, you had your accent almost completely contained,” he said, pleased that he’d managed to surprise her. “But you’ve been living in Tennessee for a while now, surrounded by people who talk a lot like the people from where you grew up. Your accent has come out to play again.”

She pressed her lips into a tight line. When she spoke again, that subtle hint of Mississippi had been ruthlessly stripped away. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

“I like the accent,” he admitted. He’d heard it now and then, back when they were sneaking moments of passion in a Kaziristan hotel. When she’d started to lose control, her Mississippi accent had slipped out more than once. “It’s sexy.”

The look she shot his way would have been lethal if it had been a bullet.

Before he got a chance to enjoy his small victory, Amanda released a soft curse.

“What?”

“There’s a police cruiser about a quarter mile back. Coming up fast.” She spoke in a flat, grim tone.

Rick’s gut tightened, but he’d been trained by MacLear to keep his head in a threatening situation. He imagined her CIA training had been even better preparation.

“Let’s determine one thing right now,” he said, fighting to keep the punch of adrenaline out of his voice. “No cops get shot, no matter what happens. If we have to talk our way through the truth, it’s better than killing a cop.”

She grimaced at him. “What do you think I am?”

“A burned CIA agent without much to lose.”

“Technically, I wasn’t burned. I was relieved of duty. They didn’t cut me off completely.” Her voice didn’t hold a lot of conviction, Rick noticed.

“Just keep doing what you’re doing. Stay in the right lane and keep to the speed limit.” He pulled his jacket back on, hoping the bloody rip in the dark leather wouldn’t catch the policeman’s eye if he pulled them over.

The cruiser approached in the side mirror, moving at a clip. Rick resisted the urge to turn and look out the back windshield. Talk about drawing attention to them—

“He’s passing us,” Amanda murmured.

Rick kept his gaze straight ahead, ignoring the police cruiser until it passed. He allowed himself to breathe again.

“One threat averted,” Amanda said. “It won’t be the last.”

“You really have no idea who’d be gunning for you?”

“I have no idea who’d think I’m significant enough to pay for a hit.”

Rick leaned his head back against the headrest, trying to think his way through the chaotic mess of the past three hours. It had started, for him, with the phone call to Cooper Security from Alexander Quinn claiming to be Derrick Lambert and wanting a meeting in Knoxville. Clearly, he’d wanted Rick to be in the area when Amanda called.

He’d known Rick would recognize the voice. He’d known he couldn’t walk away without trying to see her.

“You called me. Where did you get the number?” he asked aloud, rolling his head to the side so he could look at her.

She slanted a quick look his way. “Someone left a package on my front steps. Your number was inside the package.”

“Just my number?”

“Mostly. You know me. Curious as a cat.”

Cautious as a mouse was more like it, he thought. At least these days. “So Quinn sent you my number, and he arranged for me to be within an hour’s drive from where you lived.”

“Looks that way,” she said carefully.

“And he pretty much put me in a position to deliver a warning to you. But why me? Why didn’t he give it to you himself?”

Her lips curved a little, making his breath catch. Time had given her a lean, feral look she hadn’t possessed when he’d known her three years ago, but when she smiled, he saw the ghost of the vibrant, fearless woman he’d spent a few glorious months loving in the heart of a war zone.

“Why does Alexander Quinn do anything he does?” She shook her head. “Foreign services around the globe have written books trying to answer that question.”

Rick gazed through the windshield, wincing at the growing ache in his arm where the bullet had grazed him. According to the highway sign they’d just passed, they were near Athens, Tennessee, about an hour outside Chattanooga. Once they reached the city, they could find some nondescript little no-tell motel off the highway and hunker down for a night. Clean up his wound and maybe plot their next move.

“When we get to Chattanooga, I should call my brother.”

She shot him a look of disbelief. “We’re not contacting anyone, Rick. We have no way of knowing whether or not Quinn sent that gunman after me. And since he’s the one who sent you, he probably has your family’s phones tapped.”

Her level of paranoia was off the charts. “But why would Quinn send me to Thurlow Gap to warn you if he was in on the assassination attempt?”

“I don’t know!” Her voice rose, tinged with fear. He stared at her, barely recognizing her as the woman he’d last seen on a street in Tablis, Kaziristan, walking away with long, confident strides, each click of her high heels against the cobblestone street ripping another shred in his heart.

Tara Brady had been brazen in her sense of control and self-reliance. She’d needed nobody.

Not even him.

Amanda Caldwell, on the other hand, might share Tara’s honey-blond hair and smoky-blue eyes, but the confidence came and went. Back at the house, with the gunman breathing down their necks, she’d been all business, her training taking over with a vengeance. But now that the adrenaline rush had faded, and they were driving into an unknown future, the fear he’d seen lurking earlier behind her eyes had crept to the surface.

She was terrified, and seeing her that way was more frightening to Rick than being shot at, back at her cabin.

“Why did you leave the CIA?” he asked. She hadn’t yet given him a satisfying answer to that question, had she?

He saw her jaw set like concrete. “Got tired of it.”

“Just like that?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“I asked questions about you. Back in Kaziristan.” After the debacle that had been the beginning of the end of his career with MacLear.

Losing Amahl Dubrov to the terrorists had been the worst error he’d ever made on the job. God only knew what the al Adar rebels had done to Dubrov once they got their hands on him.

Rick never should have listened to Salvatore Beckett. He should have trusted his instincts and bugged out of Tablis with Dubrov before al Adar found them.

“Asked questions?” Amanda said when he didn’t continue.

He’d wanted to see her one more time before he headed back stateside, he remembered. He had been due back in Atlanta the next evening to attend a debriefing with Jackson Melville, MacLear’s CEO. Melville wouldn’t be pleased. Rick had known losing Dubrov might cost him his job. “It was a few weeks after we last met. I was heading back to the States. I just wanted to see you one more time before I went.”

Her expression closed like a door. “I wasn’t in Tablis anymore. You wouldn’t have been able to find me.”

“Nobody had any answers for me. So I left.”

Her gaze focused on the road ahead. She said nothing else.

He sank back against the seat, resting his head against the window. In the side mirror, traffic behind him was as light as it was on the road in front of them. They’d hit the road at just the right time—

In the mirror, a vehicle that had been just a dot on the road behind them had grown several sizes larger in the span of the few seconds his gaze had settled on the mirror.

Next to him, Amanda uttered another low oath. He looked up to find her staring at the rearview mirror, her brow furrowed. “Vehicle, coming up fast.”

“I know.” He checked the side mirror again and saw the black dot was a large black SUV bearing down on them, moving at alarming speed. It looked familiar. “I think that’s the Toyota Land Cruiser I saw at the gas station back in Thurlow Gap.”

“Great,” she muttered tersely.

He pulled his Walther from the holster at his waist and checked the clip. He’d transferred a couple of boxes of ammunition for the Walther from the trunk of the Charger to his glove compartment before they hit the road, and he’d seen extra guns and rounds in Amanda’s duffel bag, as well. But if the person in the fast-approaching SUV had backup and bigger weapons, all their firepower might not be enough.

“If they’re up to no good, I don’t think we can shoot this thing out,” Amanda said.

“How are your defensive-driving skills?”

“Rusty,” she admitted, “but I still remember a few things.”

Rick checked the back window. The SUV was about four car lengths back. “This Charger will do 140 miles an hour. I bet we can outgun that land boat back there. If they try to run us off the road or start shooting, just floor it.”

She gave a brisk nod, her gaze flicking back and forth between the light traffic ahead and the rearview window. He saw her shoulders tighten. “Weapon!” she barked.

He turned and saw a large-caliber handgun extending from the passenger window of the Toyota. “Duck and gun it!”

Dropping low in his seat, he held on as the Charger bolted forward, the engine singing with the power surge, and sent up a quick prayer of thanks that his sister Shannon had talked him into buying the muscle car instead of a less expensive, more practical sedan.

Amanda weaved the Charger through traffic, the SUV staying with her for about a mile before it started to fall back.

“I love this car,” she declared, sounding like the Tara Brady he remembered. A rush of pure male hunger surged through him, badly timed but strangely welcome. For the first time in a long time, he felt like the Rick Cooper who’d fallen hard for the sexy American spook.

It was about damn time.