Light blue eyes stared up at her, now open when before they’d been closed.

Her lips parted on a shocked gasp. Then a scream burning in her throat, she tried to utter it, but a big palm clamped tight over her mouth. His skin was rough and warm against her lips.

The man sat up, the body bag falling off his wide shoulders to pool at his lean waist, leaving his muscled chest bare but for a light dusting of golden hair and a bloodied bandage over his ribs.

Macy twisted her neck and her wrist, trying to wrestle free of his grasp. But he held on tightly, the pressure just short of being painful. Her heart pounded out a crazy rhythm as fear coursed through her veins.

She had to break loose of him and run out the open door. With his lower body still zipped in the bag, he wouldn’t be able to chase her, and maybe the elevator would be back. Or she’d take the stairs…

“You’re safe,” he murmured, his voice a deep rumble in that heavily muscled chest as he assured her, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

About the Author

Bestselling, award-winning author LISA CHILDS writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & Boon. She lives on thirty acres in west Michigan with her husband, two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a Rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, www.lisachilds.com, or snail mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.

Lawman Lover
Lisa Childs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Kimberly Duffy, for always being there for me.

Your friendship means the world to me!

Chapter One

The cell door slid open with the quick buzz of the disabled security alarm and the clang of heavy metal. Rowe Cusack swung his legs over the side of his bunk and jumped down onto the concrete floor. Had the warden reinstated his privileges?

Rowe couldn’t understand why they’d been suspended in the first place. He hadn’t started the fight in the cafeteria even though he had ended it. But the warden had punished him anyway and ignored Rowe’s demands to use the phone.

He needed to make the call that would get him the hell out of…hell. His instincts tightened his guts into knots; he was pretty sure his cover had been blown.

But how? He had been going undercover for years before he had joined the Drug Enforcement Administration, and even as a rookie with the Detroit Police Department he had never been discovered.

“Hey, guard,” Rowe called out, disrupting the eerie quiet of predawn in the cell block. “What’s going on?”

Even if his privileges had been reinstated, they wouldn’t allow him to make a call at this hour. He hadn’t been allowed one in over a week. No visitors either, not even a letter or an email. After just a few days of no contact, his handler, in his guise as Rowe’s attorney, should have checked in on him. Or Special Agent Jackson should have had him pulled out. Leaving him in here with no backup and no real weapon for self-protection, if his cover had been blown, was like leaving him for dead.

“You got a new roommate,” a deep voice announced, and a hulking shadow darkened the cell. “Get out of here, Petey.”

Rowe’s scrawny cell mate scrambled out of the bottom bunk and flattened his back against the wall as he squeezed through the cell door opening around the giant of a man entering it.

Rowe reached for his homemade shiv, closing his fingers around the toothbrush handle. Even in the dim glow of the night security lights, he recognized the man whom he’d given a wide berth since his incarceration. His flimsy weapon wouldn’t be much protection against the burly giant.

“What the hell do you want?” he asked the monster of a man.

“Same thing you do,” the deep voice murmured. “To get the hell out of here.”

“There’s no escape route in here.” Rowe had checked for one. He’d had some tough assignments over his six years with the DEA, but getting locked up like an animal, with animals, was his worst mission yet. From between his shoulder blades, sweat trickled down his back, and panic pressed on his chest.

Damn claustrophobia…

He’d fought it since he was a kid, refusing to let it rule or limit his life. But maybe he should have used it as a reason to get out of taking this assignment.

“You’re my escape route,” Jedidiah Kleyn said, stepping closer. Light from the dim overhead bulb glinted off his bald head and his dark eyes. The eyes of a cold-blooded killer.

This was the last person Rowe would have wanted to learn his real identity. He shook his head in denial. “You got the wrong guy.”

The prisoner laughed; the sharp, loud noise sounded like a hammer pounding nails into Rowe’s casket. “That’s not what I hear.”

“What do you hear?” He wondered how the man heard anything; Rowe wasn’t the only prisoner who gave him a wide berth. Nobody wanted to mess with this man, and so as to not risk pissing him off, nobody talked to him.

“I hear that you ask a lot of questions.” Kleyn stepped even closer. Rowe was over six feet tall and muscular, but this guy was taller. Broader, like a brick wall of mean. “I hear that you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

Rowe lifted his chin, refusing to retreat. Since he’d basically raised himself, he had learned young to never back down from a fight. He damn sure couldn’t back down in here—not even if the fight killed him. “I’ve never bothered you.”

Kleyn laughed again, like a swinging hammer. “Nobody does. They all know better.”

“So do I,” Rowe admitted. “I’ve heard stuff about you, too, even before I got transferred to Blackwoods to serve out the rest of my sentence.” A few years ago Jedidiah Kleyn’s horrendous crimes had been all over the news. So even though Rowe’s cover claimed he’d been incarcerated in another state penitentiary, he still would have heard about the killer.

Kleyn expelled a weary sigh, as if it bothered him to be the topic of discussion. “Well, you shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

“No,” Rowe agreed. “I didn’t pay all that much attention to what anyone had to say about you.”

“That’s because I have nothing to do with drugs,” Kleyn said. “And that seems to be all you want to know about.”

Rowe’s gut clenched. Damn. He had been careful, as he always was. In the three weeks he’d been locked up in the maximum-security prison, he’d done more listening than talking. And he had saved his questions, only asking a few and of people who’d seemed to think nothing of them. He’d learned years ago when and who to talk to so as to not raise any suspicions, and he hadn’t had a problem before.

What the hell had gone so wrong this time? No one could have recognized him; before the Drug Enforcement Administration had sent him undercover, his handlers had checked the inmate roster to make sure Rowe had never had contact with any of them.

“Drugs have nothing to do with why I’m not that interested in the gossip about you,” he said, trying to convince the other man. “I don’t care what people say about you because I’m just not scared of you.”

A grin slashed deep grooves in Kleyn’s face. “And here you are, with more to fear from me than anyone else in this damn hellhole.”

“Why’s that?” he asked. Except for the crimes Kleyn had committed, Rowe had had no problem with him. A different inmate had attacked him in the cafeteria. The guy had been big, but Rowe had overpowered him without much effort. He worried he wouldn’t be able to handle Kleyn as easily.

“You’ve heard about me,” he said, “so you know why everybody leaves me alone.”

Rowe nodded. Unfortunately he knew. If he hadn’t had an assignment to complete, he might have sought out Kleyn, and discovered just how well he could handle a fight with the intimidating giant, in order to dole out a little physical justice for Kleyn’s crimes. “You’re a cop killer.”

“And you’re a cop.”

His cover was definitely blown.

Rowe tightened his grip on the shiv. But could he bury the flimsy weapon deep enough to stop the big guy from killing him?

His throat burned as he forced a laugh. “That’s crazy. Sure, I asked some questions. I saw what’s going on in here, and I wanted in on the action. Getting busted for dealing is the reason I’m in here, man.”

“You’re in here to investigate Blackwoods Penitentiary and find out how far the corruption goes. Just a few guards or all the way to the top.”

The short hair lifted on his nape as the prisoner relayed word for word the synopsis Rowe’s handler had given him for his current assignment.

“You really should have asked me,” Kleyn replied, “because I can definitely answer that question for you.” He lifted his beefy hand, and light glinted off the long blade of the big weapon he carried. “All the way to the top.”

Rowe stepped back but only to widen his stance and brace himself for what he suspected would be the battle of his life. For his life. “You don’t want to do this.”

“No,” the man agreed with a sigh of resignation. “But I have to. Only one of us can come out of this cell alive.”

Rowe intended to fight like hell to make sure he was the one to survive. Kleyn had already killed too many people. So, his flimsy weapon clasped tight in his hand, he lunged toward his would-be assassin.

MACY KLEYN’S FINGERS TREMBLED on the tab of the body bag. Her heart thudded slowly and heavily with dread. Could this be…? She drew in a deep breath of the cool air blowing through the vents in the morgue. Then she closed her eyes in fear of what she might see when she unzipped the bag.

“Macy, you got this?” a man called out to her from the hall. “Dr. Bernard won’t be here for another hour or so. The sheriff and the warden called him back out to the prison. So I gotta bring the van out there again.”

Why? The body, from that morning’s fatal stabbing, was here, inside the black plastic bag lying across the gurney. She shivered, and not from the cold air, as she realized the only reason the county coroner had returned to the prison.

Someone else had died.

“Just shove him inside a drawer until Dr. Bernard gets here,” Bob, the driver said, his voice growing fainter as he headed toward the elevator, which would carry him to the hospital floors above ground.

“Sure, I’ll take care of him,” she said, her words echoing off the floors and walls, which were all white tile but for the one wall of stainless steel doors. Her reflection bounced back from one of those doors—her dark hair pulled into a ponytail, leaving her face stark and pale, her dark eyes wide with fear. She had to stow the body behind one of those doors, inside a cold metal drawer.

But first she had to see if the nightmare she had been having for the past three years had come true. Had her brother—her dear, sweet, protective older brother—died in the awful, soul-sucking place that he never should have been?

Tears of frustration stung her eyes at the injustice of his conviction. He wasn’t a killer. Not Jed. Now had he been killed, just like she saw him die in the nightmares from which she always awoke screaming?

Macy had given up so much to be close to him, to keep him going while they tried to find evidence for an appeal. But the whole time she tried to prove his innocence, she heard a clock ticking inside her head. Blackwoods Penitentiary was the worst possible place her brother could have been sentenced. Prisoners were more likely to leave the facility in body bags than to be paroled. Not that her brother had any chance for parole; he had been sentenced to life without possibility of parole for each of the murders he’d been convicted of committing. Two life sentences.

Had they both just been commuted?

She drew in another deep breath, bracing herself for what she might find. Then she tightened her grip on the zipper tab and tugged it down to reveal the stabbing victim from that morning.

Blond hair fell across his forehead, thick lashes lay against sharp cheekbones, and his sculpted lips pressed tight together. It wasn’t Jed.

Macy’s breath caught then shuddered out; her relief tempered with guilt and regret. Whoever this man was—he was too young to die, probably only in his early thirties. And, not that it mattered, he was ridiculously handsome. He was also a convict, though, and unlikely to have been innocent like Jed. She hated to think of anyone else being so unjustly accused and sentenced…to death at Blackwoods.

She reached for the zipper again but as she lifted the tab, a hand closed over hers. Her breath catching in her throat, she jerked her attention back to the body. Light blue eyes stared up at her, open now where just moments before they had been closed.

Her lips parted on a shocked gasp, with a scream burning in her throat. But she couldn’t utter that scream. A big palm clamped tight over her mouth. Instead of being cold and clammy, his skin was rough and warm against her lips. This was no corpse but a living and breathing man.

He sat up, the body bag falling off his wide shoulders to settle at his lean waist, leaving his muscled chest bare but for a light dusting of golden hair and a bloodied bandage over his ribs.

Macy twisted her neck and her wrist, trying to wrestle free of his grasp. But he held on tightly, the pressure just short of being painful. Her heart pounded out a crazy rhythm as fear coursed through her veins.

She had to break loose and run out the open door. With his lower body still zipped in the bag, he wouldn’t be able to chase her, and maybe the elevator would be back. Or she would take the stairs…

She stretched, using her free hand to reach the tray of Dr. Bernard’s instruments. Her fingers fumbled over sharp, cold metal.

“You’re safe,” he murmured. His voice was a deep rumble in that heavily muscled chest as he assured her, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Macy couldn’t make the same promise. A scalpel in her grasp, she lunged toward him. The hand on her mouth slid away. Then he caught her wrist in a tight grasp and knocked the weapon to the floor. The steel instrument thudded as it struck the linoleum.

She drew in a breath then released it in a high-pitched scream—not that anyone would hear her. The morgue was in the basement of the hospital and soundproof because of the bone saw and other instruments Dr. Bernard used. But just in case Bob, the driver, had forgotten something and returned…

“Help! Help me!”

Although she struggled, the convict effortlessly manacled both her wrists in one big hand and clamped the palm of his other hand over her mouth again. His fingers cupped the edge of her jaw, his thumb reaching nearly to the nape of her neck.

“Shh…”

Holding her, he swung his legs over the gurney and kicked off the bag with a barely perceptible shudder. Although he’d lost his shirt somewhere, he wore jeans and prison-issue tan work boots. He was definitely an inmate—or he had been until his escape.

“No one’s coming,” he told her. “No one heard you scream.”

Oh, God, now this man—this escaped convict—knew that he could do whatever he wanted to her. He held her in a tight grasp that she couldn’t break despite how she struggled to free her wrists. Her weapon lay beyond her reach. She couldn’t protect herself from him and she couldn’t summon help.

Bob and Dr. Bernard would be returning. But would they come back from the prison in time to save her? This man hadn’t gone to the trouble of escaping Blackwoods so he could hang around the county morgue. And if he was desperate enough to risk a prison escape, he was capable of anything.

Even murder…

Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. She couldn’t afford to lose it…not now. If she couldn’t help herself, she wouldn’t be able to help Jed.

She would be of no use to her brother…if she were dead.

HIS HAND SHAKING WITH RAGE, Warden Jefferson James slammed the door to his private office. The force rattled the pictures on his wall, knocking his daughter’s graduation portrait askew. He couldn’t straighten it now; he couldn’t even look at Emily. Her pale blond hair and big blue eyes reminded him so much of her mother. He hadn’t been able to protect his wife from the real world. How had he thought he would be able to protect his daughter?

He turned his back on the wall of photos and stared out the window. The view of a cement wall topped with barbed wire rattled him, so he closed his eyes against it. He could leave here any time he wanted. Now. But he had to damn well keep it that way.

He dragged an untraceable cell phone out of his inside suit pocket and punched in a speed-dial number. “We have a problem.”

“We?” his partner scoffed.

“Yeah, we,” James snapped. “How the hell did you let an undercover DEA agent into Blackwoods?”

“You’re the warden,” he was needlessly reminded.

He knew, and at other times had relished, that he was the man in charge of one of the state’s biggest penitentiaries.

“I can’t turn prisoners away,” he replied, not without raising more suspicions than Blackwoods apparently already had since it had become the target of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation.

“You can’t turn them away,” his partner agreed, “but you can get rid of them. We agreed you were going to get rid of Rowe Cusack.”

James ran his hand down his face, feeling the stubble and the lines and wrinkles of age and stress. “He left here in a body bag this morning.”

A breath of surprise came over the phone. “I can’t believe it was that easy for you to get rid of him,” his partner admitted. “Cusack’s one of the DEA’s best agents.”

“I’m not sure how easy it actually was,” James admitted, bile rising in his throat along with fear and regret over what making sure Cusack was really dead had forced him to do. If only there had been another way…

“But you said he left in a body bag.”

“Yeah, I’m just not sure he was really dead.” Doc had declared him dead, but then the old physician had acted so strangely. So suspiciously…

Another breath rattled the phone, this time a gasp of fear. “You better make sure he’s dead, or you have a problem.”

“We have a problem.”

“He doesn’t know about my involvement, but he knows what’s been going on in Blackwoods.”

James glanced out the window again, at that damn cement wall and barbed-wire fence. “How—how do you know that he figured anything out?”

“Because he’s a good agent and you just tried to kill him. He knows.”

“He might be dead.” That had been the plan, but had the plan really been carried out? James had seen all the blood on the floor of Cusack’s cell, but that didn’t mean the man had died from his wound.

“You better make damn sure he’s really dead. Or…”

“Or what?”

“He won’t be the only one dying,” James’s partner threatened.

A ragged sigh slipped through James’s lips. How had everything gone so wrong? “He already isn’t.”

“You killed someone else?”

“I didn’t kill anyone.” His phone number was untraceable but he didn’t trust that his partner wasn’t recording the call. James had just learned how far he would go to cover his own ass; he suspected his partner would go just as far.

“You had someone else killed?”

He choked on the bile of his self-disgust. “I had to clean up the loose ends around here.”

“You better concentrate on the biggest loose end. Cusack.” His partner’s voice rose with panic. “Make damn sure he’s dead!”

The call disconnected, leaving Warden James with a dial tone and a pounding pulse. From the moment he had learned who the new inmate was, he’d known the DEA agent would prove dangerous. He just hadn’t realized how dangerous Rowe Cusack was.

Chapter Two

Macy closed her eyes. Maybe this was just another nightmare. It couldn’t be real. A dead body couldn’t come to life. She had imagined the whole thing.

Dreamed it.

But when she opened her eyes, the prisoner was still there, his blue gaze trained on her face. “I’m going to take my hand away,” he told her, his deep voice pitched low, “but I need you to stay calm.”

He wasn’t the only one. She needed to stay calm for herself, so she could figure out how to get the hell away from him and call authorities to apprehend him.

“Can you do that for me?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Not that you’ve been irrational,” he admitted. “In fact you’ve been quite resourceful.” His blue eyes narrowed as he studied her. Then he slid his hand down from her lips to cup her jaw, his palm warm against her skin. “You’re smart.”

She nodded again but remained silent. No one had heard her scream, so when she opened her mouth next, she needed to speak calmly and rationally and engage him in conversation without arousing his anger or distrust. She had to stall him until someone came—either Bob or Dr. Bernard.

After clearing the fear from her voice, she praised him. “You’re smart, too. Very smart.”

His lips curved into a slight grin, as if he were totally aware and amused by her tactic. “How do you know that?”

“No one has ever escaped Blackwoods before.” She hadn’t believed it possible or she might have considered using this ploy to help Jed escape.

“I didn’t do it alone.”

She glanced down at the empty body bag. “Someone else escaped with you?”

“Not with me. But he helped me.”

“How?” she asked. “Tell me every detail.” And in the time it would take him to brag about his successful plan, Dr. Bernard or Bob might return…if she were lucky.

And if she were very lucky, she might figure out a way to help her brother as well as herself. Maybe her helping apprehend an escaped convict would award Jed more privileges in prison, like more meetings with his lawyer in order to work on his appeal.

“You would like that,” the man said, his grin widening, “you’d like to stall me until someone else shows up, someone who actually might hear you scream this time.”

Was he going to give her a reason to scream? Did he intend to hurt her? Fear rushed back, choking her so that she couldn’t deny the truth he spoke.

He nodded as if agreeing to something. “You are as smart as your brother said you are, Macy Kleyn.”

Her pulse leaping at her name on his lips, she gasped. “Jed? You’ve talked to Jed?”

His handsome face twisted into a grimace, and he touched the bloodied bandage on his ribs. “Who do you think did this to me?”

She shook her head in denial, knocking his hand from her face. “Jed would not have done that to you. He would never hurt anyone.”

She didn’t care what a jury and a judge had decided; she knew her brother better than anyone else. He was not a killer.

“He had no choice,” the man said, almost as if he were defending the guy he just claimed had stabbed him. “It was the only way to get me out of Blackwoods alive.”

“By trying to kill you?” she asked.

“He didn’t really try,” he said. But besides the bandage, he had bruises on his ribs and one along his jaw. “He just made it look like he did. If your brother had really wanted me dead, I have a feeling that I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. I’m lucky he came up with an alternative plan.”

She reached for the bandage, her fingers tingling as they connected with his bare skin. She steadied her hand and tore off the gauze.

He grimaced as the stitches stuck to the dried blood, pulling loose. And a curse slipped through his clenched teeth.

“Who treated this?” she asked. “This needs more stitches.” And antiseptic. The wound was too red, and as she touched it, too hot. He was going to develop an infection for certain.

“Doc just put in a couple quick stitches,” he said, referring to the elderly prison doctor. “He couldn’t do more without raising suspicions. It would have made no sense for him to treat a dead man.”

“He declared you dead?”

He nodded. “And zipped me into that damn plastic bag before the coroner got to the prison.”

“So the prison doctor and my brother both helped you escape Blackwoods?” she asked, careful to keep her doubts from her voice so that she wouldn’t anger him. She had no idea how dangerous this man was. Given how delusional he was, she suspected that he was very dangerous.

“Yes,” he replied, as if he actually expected her to believe him.

“It needs more stitches,” she said, examining the wound, “it’s too deep.”

“Jed had to make it look believable, so I had to lose a lot of blood,” he explained with a wince.

Just how much blood had he lost? Enough that he might be weak enough for Macy to be able to overpower him? But then she remembered how quickly he’d knocked the scalpel from her grasp. Muscles rippled in his arms and chest; he hadn’t lost that much blood.

“None of this makes any sense.” Jed would have never helped a convict escape prison. Dear sweet Doc, the prison doctor, wouldn’t have helped either. This guy—whoever he was—was definitely lying.

She gestured toward the empty body bag. “I was supposed to toe tag you,” she said. “What name would I have put on that?”

If he’d really been dead…

She would have looked at the records Dr. Bernard had sent with the body, but she couldn’t reach for the file without his probably thinking she was reaching for a weapon again.

Although he didn’t touch her now, she could still feel his hands on her wrists and her face. Her skin tingled where he had touched her and where she had touched him. She shouldn’t have taken off his bandage, but she’d wanted to see the wound.

“Prison records will show my name is Andrew ‘Ice’ Johansen,” he replied. After drawing in a deep breath, he continued, “But my real name is Rowe Cusack. I work for the DEA. I’m a drug enforcement agent.”

She bit her bottom lip to hold in a snort of derision at this claim; it was nearly as wild as his claiming that Jed had stabbed him.

As close as they were standing, he didn’t miss her reaction and surmised, “You don’t believe me. Jed warned me that you wouldn’t, that you’re too smart and too suspicious to blindly accept my story.”

“Can you prove it?” she challenged.

“I was undercover at Blackwoods Penitentiary. I couldn’t exactly bring my badge and gun.” He took in an agitated breath. “But my cover still got blown. Your brother knows who I am.”

“How?”

“The warden told him…when he ordered Jed to kill me.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You’re lying.”

“Jed said you’d say that, too.”

“Stop that!” she yelled, her patience snapping so that she could no longer humor him no matter how dangerous he was. “Stop quoting my brother to me. You don’t know him.”

“Not really,” he agreed. “But I know about him like I know about you. I know that you were about to start med school when he got arrested, and you put off school for the trial. Then, after his sentencing to Blackwoods Penitentiary, you moved up here to be close to your brother. You believe in his innocence. But you’re the only one.”

She swallowed hard, choking on her doubts about this man’s truthfulness. “I am the only one.” Her exfiancé hadn’t. Not even their parents had believed in Jed. But Macy had no doubt that her brother had been framed. “You haven’t told me anything that you couldn’t have found out from old newspaper articles.”

During Jed’s trial, the press had taken a special interest in her. Some had admired her sisterly devotion while others, including her ex-fiancé, had called her a fool for not accepting that her brother was a cold-blooded killer.

“How about this?” he challenged her. “You have a scar on the back of your head from when you fell out of Jed’s tree house when you were seven.”

She shivered, unnerved by the memory and more by the fact that this man knew it.

He continued, “There was so much blood that Jed thought for sure you were dead when he found you. But then you opened your eyes.”

Like he had when she had unzipped the body bag. Now she understood how Jed had felt when she had done that all those years ago. He’d been kneeling by her side and when she’d opened her eyes, he had actually gasped. “Oh, my God…”

“That’s not in any old newspapers,” he pointed out. “Your brother told me that so you would believe me, Macy. He and I need you to believe me.”

“You’re really a DEA agent?” she asked, struggling to accept his words.

He leaned close to her, his forehead nearly brushing hers as he dipped his head. His gaze held hers. “I’m telling the truth. About everything.”

Her world shifted, reduced to just the two of them—to his blue eyes, full of truth and something darker. Fear? Vengeance? She should have immediately recognized the emotion; she’d seen it before, in Jed’s eyes, the day he had been sentenced to life—to two life sentences—in a maximum-security prison.

“Why does my brother want—need—me to believe you?”

“So you’ll help me.”

She drew in a shaky breath. “I’ll help you,” she agreed. “But only with your wound.”

No matter what he was, she couldn’t let him lose any more blood than he must have already lost. She reached for the tray of tools again.

He didn’t stop her this time, not even when she began to add more stitches to the deep gash along his ribs. He just clenched his jaw and sucked up the pain, which had to be intense. She hadn’t put even a local anesthesia on his skin, and she suspected the wound was getting infected. But he barely grimaced. The man had an extremely high threshold for pain.

“You need to call the Blackwoods county sheriff,” she said. “Griffin York will be able to verify your story with the Drug Enforcement Agency.”

“Administration,” he automatically corrected her. Most people were probably not aware that the A actually stood for Administration and not Agency. But he would know—if he were truly a DEA agent. “Are you sure the sheriff’s not on the warden’s payroll?”

“No. I can’t be sure,” she admitted. “There are rumors that the warden made some pretty significant donations to the new sheriff’s election campaign.”

He groaned, probably not in pain but in frustration.

“You need to contact the Drug Enforcement Administration,” she pointed out. And if he were really an agent, wouldn’t he have already done that?

“I know for sure that someone with the DEA is on the warden’s payroll,” he said. “That’s why I can’t trust anyone. Nobody else can find out I’m still alive, or I’m a target.”

She shrugged, feigning indifference. Even though she didn’t know him and didn’t trust him, she didn’t want him to be killed. But helping a fugitive would land her in prison like her brother. And, unlike Jed, she wouldn’t be innocent of the charges brought against her.

She probably shouldn’t have treated this man’s injury, but she had nearly become a doctor and as such, she would have taken an oath to do no harm. In Macy’s opinion that included providing medically necessary treatment no matter the circumstances. After putting in the last stitch, she swabbed antiseptic on the wound. He sucked in a breath, and when she affixed the bandage, he covered her fingers with his.

“And if Warden James finds out I’m alive,” Rowe continued, “then Jed’s a dead man, too.”

“Wh-why?” she sputtered as her greatest fear gripped her. She tugged on her fingers, pulling them out from under his.

“Jed disobeyed the warden’s order to kill me, and instead he helped me escape.”

If Warden James had ordered Jed to kill another inmate, then her brother had become a liability to the man. Not that anyone would believe a convicted cop killer over a respected prison warden. But the warden might not be willing to take that chance. Nor would he want other prisoners believing they could get away with disobeying him.

The grinding of the descending elevator drew their attention to the open door of the morgue. “Is there another way out?” Rowe asked in an urgent whisper.

Macy shook her head. “There is no other way out of here.”

“If I’m discovered and sent back to Blackwoods, I will be killed,” he insisted, his blue eyes intense with certainty and desperation.

Damn it. She believed him and not just because of what he knew about her and her brother, but because he seemed too sincere to be lying. “And if you’re killed, so will Jed…”

A door creaked open and a male voice called out, “Macy? You still here?”

“Y-y-yes, Dr. Bernard. I’ll be out in a minute,” she said. Then she rushed toward the wall and pulled open a drawer.

Rowe’s dark gold brows drew together as he grimaced in revulsion. But he climbed inside the metal compartment. Macy threw a sheet over him. As she drew it up his bare chest, the backs of her fingers skimmed over skin and muscle. Her face heated, her blood pumping hard.

Rowe caught her wrist in his hand again. “Can I trust you?” he asked.

“If you’re telling the truth, you don’t have a choice,” she said.

But despite knowing about the scar on the back of her head, was he really telling the truth? If he were actually a DEA agent, wouldn’t he have been able to call someone to get him out of Blackwoods?

He released her wrist and drew in a deep breath as she pushed the drawer closed. But not tight.

“What are you doing?” Dr. Bernard asked.

Macy whirled toward her boss, stepping in front of the door behind which she’d hidden Rowe. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“I thought you’d be gone for the day by now.” The doctor pushed a hand through his thin, gray hair. “I thought I’d be home by now.”

“But you were called out to the prison again.” For another body. Her pulse quickened. Had someone realized Rowe wasn’t dead? And had they realized that Jed had helped him escape? “Wh-who was it…?”

“It was—it was…” His voice cracked with emotion.

God, not Jed…

Dr. Bernard’s hand shook as he pulled it over his face. “It was…Doc.” He expelled a shaky breath. “Doc was killed.”

Again she felt that quick flash of relief, which guilt and regret then chased away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know he was a friend of yours.”

“Even if he wasn’t, nobody should die like that.” The older man shuddered.

“Oh, my God—what happened?”

Dr. Bernard sighed. “I can determine cause of death even before I do a full autopsy. Someone beat him to death. What I can’t tell you is—why.”

“I’m sorry….”

His eyes glistened with a sheen of tears. “Why would someone do that to Doc?”

Maybe they had been trying to get information out of him. If they’d forced him to confess to declaring a live man dead, the coroner would probably be called out next for her brother. Her relief fled completely, leaving her tense and anxious.

“Bob’s bringing Doc’s body in, but the warden wants me to do the autopsy on that prisoner who died this morning first,” Dr. Bernard said.

Nerves lifting goose bumps on her skin, Macy stepped away from the drawer. “Wouldn’t the warden be more concerned about Doc?”

“You’d think. I know I am. I just don’t know if I can autopsy him.” Dr. Bernard shook his head, his gray eyes filling with sadness. “Too bad you hadn’t gone to medical school. I could use an extra pair of hands around here.”

“If I’d gone through medical school, you wouldn’t be able to afford me,” she teased, to lighten her boss’s mood, like she always tried to lift Jed’s spirits.

“True. And you’re still my extra hands,” Dr. Bernard said. And as a morgue assistant, she was much cheaper than a doctor. “Did you take a look at the prisoner?”

She nodded. “Cause of death is pretty obvious. Stab wound.”

“So he’s dead?”

She fought the urge to shiver. “I don’t think he would’ve let me shut him in a drawer if he wasn’t.”

“Is that him?” He gestured toward the not-quite-shut drawer.

She shook her head. “No. That’s Mr. Mortimer. The crematorium is coming to pick him up soon.”

“That’s why you’re still here.”

“I’ll wait for Elliot.” Elliot Sutherland worked at his uncle’s crematorium/funeral home, but Elliot wasn’t coming to the morgue. She had agreed to take the body to him, so that he and his band would not have to miss a gig. “And I’ll wait for Bob to bring in Doc’s body from the prison,” she offered. “You go ahead home. The autopsies can wait till morning.”

The coroner ran his hand over his face, etching the lines even deeper. “They’re going to have to. The only cause of death I could figure out tonight would be my own. Exhaustion.”

“Go home,” she urged.

He offered her a halfhearted smile. “You’ve been a godsend, Macy. I’m not sure why you came to Blackwoods, but I’m really glad you did.”

She could only nod. She would have rather been anyplace else. But she’d had no choice; she had to be close to Jed. He had no one else. And neither did she.

SHE HAD LEFT THE DRAWER OPEN a crack, but Rowe couldn’t hear much. Her voice and the coroner’s were muted, as if drifting down to him through six feet of dirt. Despite the coldness of the temperature inside the drawer and of the stainless steel against his bare back, sweat beaded on his skin, leaving it clammy.

Rowe fought the panic, just as he’d had to fight it while zipped inside the body bag. Jedidiah Kleyn’s plan, to stab him deep enough to make it look fatal and convince the prison doctor to declare Rowe dead, had kept him alive but that damn plastic bag had nearly killed him.

Even though Doc had left it unzipped enough that he’d been able to draw some air, he’d had to force himself not to gasp. But then Macy Kleyn had unzipped him.

For a moment he’d thought she was an angel. She was so beautiful with her warm brown eyes and dark hair curling around a ponytail clip. Maybe she was an angel—a fallen one who’d brought him straight to hell when she’d shut him inside the drawer.

Although probably only minutes passed, it felt like hours. Then finally metal ground as the drawer opened and the sheet lifted from his face. He stared up—again—into those warm brown eyes. Rowe’s stomach lurched. He shouldn’t have let her shut him in the drawer where he hadn’t been able to hear what she’d said to the coroner. Had she told her boss that the prisoner was alive? Were the warden and some of his guards about to burst into the morgue and drag him back to hell?

He reached out, grabbed the side of the metal wall and pulled out the drawer all the way. Then he sat up and swung one leg over the side. The ding of the elevator doors drifted back from the hall and had his every muscle clenching. At this hour, the morgue shouldn’t be so busy. Employees wouldn’t be coming and going. And no loved ones were coming to claim his body. She must have given him up for being alive—which was the same as giving him up for dead.

Rowe had been betrayed. Again.

Chapter Three

“Jed told me I could trust you,” he said. Rowe had been a fool to believe a killer. But what choice had he had? His flimsy shiv hadn’t even fazed the muscular giant, neither had any of the trick moves he’d learned growing up on the streets of Detroit.

He grimaced, his body aching from the well-placed blows Jed had used to subdue him. And the stab wound throbbed in spite of, or maybe because of, Macy’s additional stitches.

If Rowe hadn’t trusted the man, he would have wound up dead—at Jed’s hands or another prisoner’s. But still he shook his head in self-disgust. Someone in his own office must have betrayed him. So trusting a stranger, even though he hadn’t really had any option, had been crazy.

“I should have known better than to believe a prisoner professing his innocence,” he berated himself.

“Jed is innocent, and you can trust me,” she assured him. Then she swung his leg back onto the tray and shoved him down.

“Get back in the drawer,” she whispered, as footsteps approached with the squeak of rubber wheels rolling over tile.

“I’ll be trapped in there,” he said, the panic rushing over him again.

She shoved the drawer, sending it—and him—inside the cool cabinet. He hooked his toe so it wouldn’t close all the way. But she must have been satisfied, because she scrambled into the hall. The wheels ground to a halt as she breathlessly told someone, “I got it.”

What? Him?

Through the crack the drawer was left open, he studied the morgue, determining his escape route in case she had told the coroner the truth. But she walked back in alone—pushing a gurney.

He waited a moment, making sure no one else followed her. As if she had forgotten all about him, she just stood there and stared down at the body bag on the gurney. Breathing hard, he planted his palms against the top of the drawer and propelled the tray out the door.

“You okay?”

Her face pale and eyes wide and dark, she just shook her head. “No.”

Son of a bitch…

Not her brother. Even if Jedidiah Kleyn wasn’t innocent as he claimed, he didn’t deserve to die like this just because he had helped Rowe instead of killing him.

“No…” he murmured, a knot of dread moving from his stomach to his chest. He jumped out of the drawer and walked over to the gurney. Then he reached for the zipper of the body bag and pulled it down, over the battered face of the man who had helped him.

But it wasn’t Jed. It was the other man, the one who had been scared but agreeable to aiding Rowe’s escape. Rowe stared down at the bruised and broken body of the gray-haired prison doctor.

“Son of a bitch…” he cursed low and harshly. “I did this….”

As if rousing herself from a nightmare, Macy shook her head. “You were already on your way here in a body bag when this happened.”

“But it’s my fault,” he said. “They beat him to death because of me.”

Damn it. Damn it. If only there had been another way to get out…a way that hadn’t involved an innocent man winding up dead.

“What if he told them you’re not dead?” she asked, her voice cracking with fear. “Will my brother be coming here in the next body bag?”

“Macy—”

Anger flushed her face. “How could you use him like this? You put him in danger.”

Just getting sentenced to Blackwoods had put Jedidiah Kleyn in mortal danger. More prisoners left like he had, in body bags, than on parole. That was part of the reason he’d been given his undercover assignment at the penitentiary. The other part of the reason had been the drugs that moved more freely than the bodies in and out of the prison.

“You have to help my brother,” she pleaded. “You have to get him out before he winds up dead, too.”

Rowe glanced down at Doc’s battered face. If the elderly physician had talked, it was probably already too late for him to save Kleyn. The elevator dinged again, and Rowe groaned. Was this one her brother, just as she feared?

“I don’t know who that is,” Macy murmured, horror and dread glistening in her dark eyes. “It can’t be…”

“It’s not,” he said.

“No,” she agreed, and jerked her head in a nod that had her ponytail bouncing. “The van didn’t have time to get to the prison and back again. It’s not Jed.”

Yet.

“Then it’s someone you’re not expecting.”

She cursed and bit her lip. With a ragged sigh, she reached for the instrument tray and grabbed up a scalpel. She studied him a moment, as if she had just realized that the easiest way to save her brother was to prove that he had really killed the undercover DEA agent. Rowe’s dead body would be all the proof she needed.

“I can’t help your brother if I’m dead,” Rowe pointed out.

“Get on a gurney,” she whispered.

He hesitated a moment, wondering if she intended to plunge the scalpel into his chest the minute he lay down.

“Please,” she murmured. “You have to—your life isn’t the only one at risk now.”

Hers was, too, just as Jedidiah Kleyn had worried would happen when Macy helped Rowe get out of the morgue. The only promise the prisoner had extracted in exchange for helping Rowe was that the DEA agent keep his little sister safe.

The sound of heavy footsteps echoing down the corridor compelled him to move. Whoever had come down to the morgue had not come alone. He had no more than jumped on a stretcher than Macy draped a sheet over him and pushed him into the hall. As she drew the morgue door shut behind them, the click of a lock echoed with finality. Through the sheet, he glimpsed shadows—several of them—walking toward the stretcher and Macy.

“Good evening, Warden James,” she murmured. “How can I help you?”

By turning over the only man who had ever escaped Blackwoods Penitentiary and the corrupt warden’s reign of terror?

MACY BIT HER LIP AND WISHED back her greeting. But the warden didn’t react to her recognizing him. Everyone in Blackwoods County knew who Warden James was, so he probably would have reacted more had she pretended not to know him.

She held the scalpel beneath the edge of the gurney she clutched and realized how ineffectual the weapon was as she stared up at the broad-shouldered prison warden. With his bald head and big build, the fifty-something-year-old was an intimidating man. He didn’t need the muscle he had brought with him, but four heavily muscled and armed guards stood behind him.

If they wanted to see the body under the sheet, she wouldn’t be able to stop them, even with the scalpel. Her heart pounded hard and fast with fear that she had made a horrible mistake. She would have been smarter to lock her and the prisoner inside the morgue, rather than out of it.

“Get Dr. Bernard out here,” Warden James said. The man was obviously used to everyone jumping to obey his commands.

If he had really ordered her brother to kill an undercover agent, Jed would not survive his show of disobedience.

She swallowed hard and replied, “He left for the evening.”

“Then you need to call him and get him back down here. Now,” the warden insisted, a jagged vein standing out on his forehead as he barely contained his rage.

“I don’t have the doctor’s private numbers, and I’m not sure where he is, sir,” she murmured, barely able to hear her own voice over the furious beating of her heart. Now she understood why everyone in Blackwoods County feared Warden Jefferson James whether they were confined in his prison or not.

“I’m just waiting for a funeral home pickup.” Forcing away her nerves, she gestured with a steady hand toward the gurney.

“So you have a key to the morgue?”

She shook her head. It wasn’t really a lie since she wasn’t supposed to have a key to the morgue. “No. Dr. Bernard left me in the hall here, waiting. The funeral home’s driver is late.” Her friend wasn’t actually going to show at all, but hopefully the warden wouldn’t check her story.

“Who does have a key?” James persisted.

Despite the tension quivering in her muscles, she managed a shrug. “Maybe the hospital director?”

“Can you call him down here?”

She shook her head. “Sorry, sir, the phones don’t even ring down here after hours. And I can’t leave this body unattended until the funeral home gets here.”

“Why not?” Warden James asked, his already beady eyes narrowing with suspicion. “It’s not like he’s going to walk off.”

A couple of his goons uttered nervous chuckles of amusement.

“Is it?” the warden asked. Now he focused on the DEA agent’s sheet-covered body.

Macy willed the sheet not to move with Rowe’s heartbeats or his breathing. “Of course not, sir. It’s protocol for the hospital and the state that a body never be left unattended outside the morgue. I might lose my job if I leave.” And her life if she stayed and the warden lifted that sheet. If he was willing to kill an undercover DEA agent, he would have no problem killing her. And then her brother…

Her eyes widened as she imagined the sheet shifting a bit as if sliding off Rowe’s body, and she accidentally bumped into the gurney so that the wheels lurched a couple of inches across the linoleum floor. The sheet moved, too, but didn’t slide off any farther. Nothing of Rowe was visible beneath it but the outline of his long, muscular body.

The warden stepped back with a slight shudder of revulsion. How could a man who was so often around death be unnerved by it? “I don’t give a damn about protocol,” he said. “I need to talk to your boss right now.”

“If you go to the main desk upstairs, they can help you,” she said. “They’ll be able to reach Dr. Bernard at home and have him come back to the morgue.”

The warden glared at her before turning and heading toward the elevator. Like devoted dogs at his heels, the guards followed him. Macy waited until the doors closed on him and his henchmen; then she exhaled the breath she’d held and her knees weakened. She stumbled against the gurney and sent the wheels rolling forward a few feet this time.

Still covered with the sheet, the body rose, like a ghost rising from the dead. Then Rowe shrugged off the shroud and turned to her. He expelled a ragged sigh as if he’d been holding his breath. “That was close.”

“That was crazy,” she said, trembling in reaction to the confrontation. “I thought for sure he was going to lift the sheet. You were moving.” She reached out to smack him, as she would have her brother, but this man wasn’t her brother. He was a potentially dangerous stranger, so she snatched back her hand before she could connect with his bare skin and muscle.

“I wasn’t moving,” he said, his already impressive chest expanding as he filled his lungs. “I wasn’t even breathing.”

In her fear, she had only imagined the sheet slipping then. “The warden kept staring at you like he knew I was lying….”

Thank God he had not called her on that lie.

“I thought your brother was lying,” Rowe admitted.

“About his innocence?” She bristled with indignation. “He is innocent.”

“I thought he was lying, or at least exaggerating about you,” he said, as he slid off the gurney, “but you are really smart. You think faster on your feet than some agents with years of experience on the job.”

“I feel like a fool,” she said, because he was probably playing her for one. “I should have called the police, or at least told Dr. Bernard about you.” She could have trusted her boss to help her; he had treated her very well the past three years.

“You’ll get me and your brother killed,” Cusack warned her.

“I only have your word that will happen,” she pointed out. And she had been stupid to take his word for anything.

“Remember what happened to Doc,” he advised her. “Why do you think he died?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It could have had nothing to do with you. A prisoner could have freaked out on him.” So many ODs came to the morgue from the prison, the inmates overdosing on controlled substances to which they never should have had access. It was very plausible and overdue for the DEA to investigate the drug problem at Blackwoods Penitentiary.

“Then why did the warden show up here?” he asked, his blue eyes bright with anger. “He’s looking for me.”

“And I probably should have turned you over to him.” But she couldn’t take the risk that Jed wouldn’t get hurt or, worse, wind up like Doc, if she talked.

Trusting this stranger, though, was putting her own life at risk. Warden James was not going to be happy if he learned that she had lied to him. So she had to make certain that he never learned the truth.

“I THINK YOUR BROTHER DID kill me and send me straight to hell,” Rowe grumbled as he zipped up the sweatshirt Macy had tossed over the seat a minute before. “First a body bag and a coroner’s van.”

“Then a slab in the morgue,” she murmured over her shoulder.

“And a cold unventilated drawer.” It had also been dark and confining, reminding him of those closets he’d been locked in so many years ago.

“I didn’t shut it all the way.”

He leaned through the partition separating the back from the front seat. “No, you didn’t, or I would have suffocated and wouldn’t be taking this ride right now—” Rowe shook his head in disbelief “—in the back of a hearse.”

“You couldn’t just walk out of the morgue,” Macy said, her voice muffled as she stared straight ahead, peering through the windshield. She steered the hearse down the narrow road which, like every other road in Blackwoods County, wound around woods and small, inland lakes in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

“No, I couldn’t, not with Warden James and his goons hanging around the hospital,” he agreed. So he’d had to trust Macy Kleyn again and rely on her quick-witted thinking to get him out of the hospital unseen.

He lifted his gaze from the windshield to the rearview mirror hanging from it, and caught the reflection of headlamps burning through the darkness behind them. His gut knotted with apprehension. “But someone still might have followed us.”

In the rearview, Macy’s wide-eyed gaze met his. “Someone’s following us?”

“It’s possible.” Given his recent run of bad luck, highly probable.

“Or maybe you’re just paranoid,” she said, her voice light even though her eyes, reflecting back at him from the rearview mirror, darkened with fear.

“Paranoia isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” He touched the wound on his ribs that Macy had had to add stitches to completely close. If her brother had obeyed the warden, that knife would have gone deep enough to kill Rowe.

Who within the administration had given him up? His handler or someone else in the office? He had worked with his handler, Agent Jackson, before. Hell, after six years with the DEA, he had worked with everyone in his department and a few others. He would have never suspected one of the special agents of blowing someone’s cover. But it was the only way the warden could have learned his real identity.

So Rowe had no idea who he could trust—besides Macy Kleyn. And if he’d gotten her brother killed, he was certain she would turn on him, too. “Because sometimes everybody really is out to get you.”

“I know.” She jerked the wheel, abruptly turning off the road. The hearse barely cleared the trees on either side of it as it bounced over the ruts of a two-track road. She shut off the lights but not the engine as she continued, blind, through the trees.

“Where the hell did you learn to drive like this?” he asked, that paranoia making him suspicious of her now. Her brother had said she was studying to become a doctor, not a stunt driver.

“EMT class.”

“So how did you wind up working in the morgue?” he asked, with a sense of revulsion as he remembered the coldness and the closeness of that drawer she’d kept shutting him in.

“I applied for a job as an ambulance driver,” she explained, “but the only opening at the hospital was in the morgue.”

She had given up school and her choice of career to be close to her brother—a brother Rowe might have gotten killed just as he had Doc.

Remembering the frustration and worry in his voice when Jed had told him about his younger sister, Rowe said, “Now that we’re away from the hospital, you need to drop me off somewhere and then forget that you ever saw me.”

She snorted out a breath that stirred her bangs. “Not likely.”

“Macy, I appreciate what you’ve done, but I can’t ask you to do any more.” He couldn’t allow her to get involved any deeper than she already was. He wouldn’t break his promise to the man who had gotten him out of Blackwoods alive.

“I’m not doing this for you,” she said as she pulled up behind a building. After shutting off the engine, she jumped out. Seconds later the back door of the hearse opened. Moonlight glinted off a row of smokestacks on the corrugated steel roof.

“Where the hell are we?” he asked as he crawled out of the hearse.

“Hell is right.” She tossed his earlier words back at him. “The crematorium.” She jangled a ring of keys in her palm.

“You have the keys?”

“It’s my second job,” she explained. “Unofficially.”

“That’s why the hearse was in the parking lot?” He’d been surprised when she had rolled his gurney out to that particular vehicle.

“Yes, Elliot took my van and left the hearse. We have an arrangement.”

“And that is?” And who the hell was Elliot?

“I fill in for him when he has a gig. He’s a musician. He pays me cash, and I don’t tell his dad, who owns this place, that Elliot’s not doing his job.” Her teeth flashed in the moonlight as she smiled.

“Nice arrangement—if neither of you mind a little blackmail.”

“What’s a little blackmail between friends?” she said with another quick smile and a shrug. “It’s going to work out well for you.”

“It already has. You got me past the warden.” He glanced back toward the road, but he could see nothing other than the dark shadow of leafless trees swaying in the cool night breeze. Yet if someone had been following them, they may have just shut off their lights, too.

Were they sneaking up on them now? He had no weapon, nothing to defend himself and her. Lying under that sheet in the morgue had been the hardest thing he’d ever done—relying on her to protect them both. Her brother hadn’t exaggerated about her at all. Macy Kleyn was damn smart.

Too smart to be risking her life for him.

Macy rattled the keys as she fingered through them, obviously searching for the right one. “Are you warm enough in the sweatshirt?” she asked as she huddled in her parka.

Winter was officially over, but northern Michigan had yet to get the memo. Rowe ignored the wind biting through the shirt to chill his skin. He had more to worry about than the weather.

“I’m fine. Thanks.”

“It’s freezing out. Elliot might have a coat inside,” she said. Finally, she jammed a key in the lock and pushed open the back door.

He hesitated outside. Even though it was damn cold, he would rather be out in the open than confined anywhere else. Ever. Again.

“What are we doing here?” he asked.

“We’re going to burn the wrong body.”

“What?” He glanced back to the hearse. He had made damn certain that he’d been riding alone back there. While he’d done his share of skeevy undercover assignments, this one had been the stuff of horror movies since the first moment the prison bars had slid closed behind him. And it had only gotten worse since he’d escaped. “Whose body are we going to burn?”

“Yours.”

He laughed at her outrageous comment. “Yeah, right. You’re funny, too.” Kleyn hadn’t shared that tidbit about his kid sister.

“I’m not kidding.”

“Then you’re crazy.”

Her teeth flashed in a quick smile. “You’re not the first one to call me that.”

When she flipped on a light, he studied her. “Have you been called that because you believe your brother is innocent?”

She jerked her head in a sharp nod.

“And because you quit school to move up here to be close to him?”

“That wasn’t about being close to him,” she clarified. “It’s about proving his innocence.”

“That may be impossible to prove,” he warned her. No matter how smart Macy Kleyn was, she wouldn’t be able to prove the innocence of a guilty man.

“Alone,” she admitted. “It would be. That’s why I want…” Her gaze skimmed up and down his body, over the black sweatshirt that molded like a second skin to his chest and over the faded jeans.

If she kept looking at him like that, Rowe had a feeling he would give her whatever she wanted. “Are you going to tell me or do I have to guess? I don’t have time for games, Macy.”

He had already wasted too much time that he should have spent putting distance between him and Blackwoods Penitentiary. A lot of distance.

“I know,” she agreed. “So lie down.”

His heart kicked his ribs. Maybe he really had died, but he’d gone to heaven instead of hell…if Macy Kleyn wanted him. “What? Why?”

“Lie down on this,” she said, and pointed toward a metal table. “And play dead again.”

“We’re out of the morgue,” he reminded her.

“But we’re not done yet.” She picked up a Polaroid camera.

He had trusted her before and she hadn’t betrayed him. Yet. With a sigh, Rowe lay down. “I’m getting a little too good at playing dead.”

“We have to do this right, or you won’t just be playing.”

“We?” There she went with the word Rowe had always made a point of never using. “I just needed your help to get out of the morgue. I don’t need anything else from you.”

“Really?” she asked, her lips curving into a smug smile. “Do you have a cell phone? Someone to call if you did? A ride or a vehicle to take you somewhere Warden James won’t find you? Or the police who will be looking for you when news of your escape from prison gets out?”

He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ground together. She was right. He had none of those things. No one he could trust. But he had made a promise. “I’ll figure it out.”

“I’ll help you.”

“You’re not even convinced I’m telling you the truth,” he said. She was too smart to completely trust him despite his knowing about her childhood accident.

“But if you are telling the truth and I don’t help you, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“What happens to me is not your responsibility,” he said. No one had ever really taken responsibility for him. Not his parents and now not even the handler who should have pulled him out weeks ago when he hadn’t heard from Rowe.

“No, it’s not,” she agreed. “But I would never forgive myself for wasting this opportunity to help Jed, too.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. He suspected she wasn’t talking about just keeping her brother out of trouble with the warden. “What do you want?”

“Close your eyes.”

He, who had always had problems with authority, did as she said. And a light flashed behind his lids.

He sprang up. “What are you doing?”

“Shut up. Dead men don’t talk.”

Chapter Four

Dead men didn’t do a lot of things that Rowe couldn’t help but think of doing with her, especially as her hands pressed against his shoulders, pushing him back onto the table.

“Don’t look so tense,” Macy directed him. “Relax.”

“You’re not the one somebody’s trying to kill.” Not yet anyway. But once the warden figured out Macy had helped Rowe get out of the morgue—and the man was too shrewd not to figure it out—he would retaliate. First by killing her brother and then…

“Macy, I appreciate everything you’re doing,” he sincerely told her, “but you can’t help me. I can’t get you any more involved than you already are. It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m already involved,” she pointed out as she snapped another picture. “So I might as well get something for my trouble.”

Disappointment rose like bile in his throat. Macy Kleyn was certainly no angel; just like everyone else, she had her price.

He asked her again, “What do you want?”

“I will help you get in contact with someone you can trust,” she said, “someone who can get you safely out of Blackwoods County.”

That was easier said than done, and his wish, not hers. “And what do you want in exchange?”

“For you to get Jed safely out of Blackwoods Penitentiary.”

“You want me to break your brother out of prison?” he asked. Apparently she still hadn’t accepted that Rowe was a federal agent, since she expected him to break the law for her.

“I want you to clear his name,” she said. Her hands gripped his shoulders again, squeezing. “He was framed.”

Rowe sat up and swung his legs over the side of the metal table, his thigh bumping against her hip. Unable to help himself, he touched her again, cupping her soft cheek in his palm. His fingers tunneled into her hair, brushing over the ridge of the scar on the back of her head. Her eyes, so full of intelligence, widened as she stared up at him.

Rowe couldn’t lie to her even though Jed probably had, so that he wouldn’t lose her respect and adulation. “Everybody serving time in jail claims that they’ve been framed.”

“Even you,” she said, her chin lifting defensively as she pulled away from him and stepped out of his reach.

“I wasn’t framed,” he clarified. “A jury did not find me guilty of any crime. A judge did not sentence me for any crime. I was sent in undercover to investigate Blackwoods.”

“A cover that didn’t last long.”

He didn’t need the reminder. His ribs ached, the wound throbbing. But he welcomed the pain; it confirmed that he was still alive. For now.

“Why was that?” she asked. “Aren’t you very good at what you do?”

“I’m the best,” he said. He wasn’t just bragging, either; he had the commendations to prove it. But more importantly he had the convictions. He had put away so many bad people. After seeing how the prison doctor had been tortured and beaten, he suspected that the warden might prove the worst. Rowe had to put him away, but he couldn’t do that if the warden found him first. “Someone blew my cover.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.” He looked away from her, then back again to her beautiful face. “And that’s why I can trust no one.” Not even her.

“You can trust me, Rowe,” she promised, her big brown eyes earnest.

“No, I can’t.”

She smiled slightly, as if pitying him. “I don’t think you have a choice.”

Rowe was afraid that she was right. Maybe about everything. “You really believe that your brother was framed?”

She studied him a moment before nodding. “Just like I believe that you’re really an undercover DEA agent.”

He closed his eyes, dragged in a deep breath then committed himself. “Okay, we have a deal.”

Her eyes widened and sparkled with hope. “You’ll help Jed?”

“If he was really framed, I’ll work to clear his name,” Rowe promised.

But in making this vow to Macy, he was breaking his promise to her brother. The more help Rowe accepted from her, the more danger he put her in.

“He was framed,” Macy insisted with total certainty.

Her brother had to be telling the truth, because if he really was a cop killer, he would have killed Rowe instead of risking his own life to get him out. A killer wouldn’t have hesitated to kill again. Only a good man would put himself in danger to save someone else.

“Then I have to help him.” Because Rowe knew what it felt like to be an innocent man locked up like an animal. He had only been behind bars for weeks; Jed had been sentenced to life, which might not be a bad thing if Rowe wound up getting his sister killed. Because if that happened, Rowe had no doubt that Jed would really become a killer.

“You can’t help anyone if you’re dead, though,” Macy said, as if she’d read his mind. “So I’m going to fire up the incinerator now.”

“The what?”

“The oven,” she said, gesturing toward the big metal box at the end of the metal table. “We have to burn your body.”

God, she really was crazy. And he had actually considered trusting her….

JEFFERSON JAMES SHOVED THE coroner aside and dragged open those refrigerated steel drawers, himself, until every damn one was pulled completely out of the wall. Only a few held bodies. An old man. A teenage accident victim.

Doc.

He quickly looked away from the battered face of the man he had once considered a friend. Or if not a true friend, at least an ally. For years Doc had had no problem cashing his very generous payroll checks. He’d known why his salary was so much higher than any other prison doctor’s. He had been reimbursed for his discretion. But then he’d taken it too far.

He’d betrayed James. And no one betrayed Jefferson James and lived to brag about it.

“Where is he?” the warden snapped, his anger and frustration spilling over.

Where the hell was Rowe Cusack?

Bernard gazed around the room, as if the body was hiding somewhere in the white-tiled room. He ran a hand over his face, wiping away the last traces of sleep. James had had to wake him up and physically drag him out of bed to bring him back to the morgue.

It was late. But James didn’t care. He wasn’t sleeping himself until he saw Rowe Cusack’s dead body with his own damn eyes.

“Bob brought the prisoner’s body straight here from Blackwoods,” Dr. Bernard said.

“Then where the hell did it go?” the warden asked. “Did he get up and walk out the damn door?” He tensed, goose bumps lifting on his skin as he realized what he’d said and that he’d said it before. His men, the guards who stood in the doorway between the morgue and the outer office, didn’t chuckle this time.

“I don’t know why you’re so worried about this prisoner,” Bernard said. “You’re acting like he’s not dead. But that’s not possible. Doc declared him dead.” He glanced toward his friend’s body. The two physicians had been true friends.

How much did Bernard know about what went on in Blackwoods? With the bodies that came from the prison to the morgue, he had to know…too much.

James followed Bernard’s gaze to Doc’s body. Why would the old man have risked their financially beneficial arrangement and his life? How had Cusack gotten to him?

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.