Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs (20 page)

Rowe slammed on the brakes. The hearse was black, like the paint on the rear bumper of Macy’s van. He’d thought that the SUV that had run Macy off the road had been the one that had tried the night before. But there had been no old dents on it before they’d sent it crashing down into the ravine.

“Son of a bitch…”

She thought the man was her friend. She would never see it coming when he hurt her. Despite her resourcefulness and quick wits, she wouldn’t be able to protect herself.

He jerked the wheel, spiraling the truck around in a tight U-turn. The front tire nearly dropped off the road into one of the deep ditches, but it caught the shoulder, spewing gravel behind it. Rubber squealed against asphalt as he hit the accelerator and turned off the street to speed down the narrow two-track lane that led to the back entrance of the crematorium.

He parked behind the hearse, trapping it between his truck and the building. As he threw open his door, he reached for the gun he had taken off the last guy who’d tried to hurt Macy. And he hoped this kid wasn’t armed, too.

With his free hand he grabbed the handle of the back door of the creepy metal building, but the knob wouldn’t turn. The kid had locked it behind himself, locking Macy inside with him and help outside, so that she had no one to turn to—just as she had had nobody since her brother’s incarceration.

Macy had learned to rely on and protect herself. But she didn’t have to do that anymore. She had Rowe, even though he’d been too much of a pigheaded fool to make sure she knew how he felt about her.

The reinforced steel door wasn’t keeping Rowe out. He shoved his shoulder against it and hammered his foot against it. But when he couldn’t budge it with his shoulder or his foot, he jumped back into the truck. He rammed it into Reverse and then into Drive. Stomping on the accelerator, he steered directly into the door.

He switched his foot to the brake, stopping short of plowing right through the building, so that he wouldn’t drive over Macy. He jumped out of the truck and scrambled around it to the door. But his bumper had only torn the wooden jamb loose. He still couldn’t get through the door until he kicked it open far enough to squeeze inside. He did so with caution, keeping his head low in case someone fired at him.

They would have definitely heard him coming and had time to arm themselves.

But the room with the oven was empty. Of living people and dead bodies.

“Macy!” he shouted over the noise of the truck’s idling engine. “Macy!”

Was he already too late? He passed through the oven room into a short hall.

Then he heard her cry. Soft sobs drifted through an open office door. His heart clutched with the fear and pain in her voice.

He rushed through the doorway into a scene of destruction. A desk and chair had toppled over, pictures and papers strewn across the room. He nearly missed Macy. The man was on top of her, his body covering hers as he trapped her to the ground.

What had the son of a bitch done to her? Had badly had he hurt her?

Rowe lifted his gun, training his barrel on the kid’s back. But he couldn’t shoot. As tightly as they were locked together, the bullet could pass through the man and right into Macy.

“Get off her!” he ordered, his shout echoing inside the metal building and hanging in the cold air like a puff of smoke. “Let her go!”

“Rowe!” she cried. And she shoved at the man until he rolled off her.

Blood smeared her face and saturated her shirt. Panic and fear stole Rowe’s breath. He dropped to his knees beside her. “Where are you hurt?”

She shook her head.

He glanced at the man, to make sure he wasn’t a threat any longer. The kid stared back at Rowe through eyes wide with shock and glazed with death. Blood covered him too, from the open wound in his chest.

The blood-covered scalpel clattered against the cement floor as it dropped from Macy’s trembling hand. When was he going to accept that this woman could take care of herself? She didn’t need him.

But then she threw her arms around his neck and clung to him, sobs racking her bruised and bloodied body. She had killed her attacker, but she hadn’t come through their fight unscathed. Either physically or emotionally.

M
ACY HAD WANTED TO BE A DOCTOR
to save people and yet she had just taken a life. That was a certain violation of the oath to do no harm. But she had never taken that oath.

“I—I killed him,” she said.

“You had to,” Rowe assured, one hand cupping the back of her head while his other one ran over her body as if he checked her for injuries. “You had no choice.”

Elliot had landed a few blows. Enough to steal Macy’s breath but not her strength. She hadn’t lost her grip on the scalpel. But he’d lost his grip on her when she’d kicked him a lot higher than his shins.

He’d fallen back and doubled over in pain. But before she could get away, he’d recovered and come at her again. And when he’d charged her…

She had done what she’d had to in order to survive. “I—I thought he was my friend.”

“I know…”

Of course he would understand her pain; he had been betrayed, too. She had given up med school and had moved to support Jed. But until now, she had never really understood how he’d felt. Someone had framed him; someone he’d known and trusted had betrayed him. Like Elliot had betrayed her…

“It was him that first night,” she said. “He tried to run us off the road.”

“I know,” Rowe replied, his hands trembling slightly as they ran over her back, clutching her tightly against him. “I saw the hearse. It had a dent on the front bumper. It’s why I came back.”

“You’re back,” she said, pushing against his chest. Her shock easing, she was able to focus again. He was real; she hadn’t conjured him up out of fear or because of some kind of psychotic break over being forced to kill to protect herself. “You shouldn’t be back here. You should be at the prison.”

With Jed. It was probably too late, but her brother deserved justice—for his death and for his false conviction. “Go.”

He shook his head. “I’m not leaving you.”

“You have to go,” she insisted. “You put this whole thing in motion.” To save her brother. “You need to be there to see it through, to see who gave you up to the warden.”

He glanced down at Elliot’s body. “I’m not leaving you here.”

“He’s dead.” Because of her. But there had been no other way. He’d lunged at her when he’d heard the truck. He would have killed her if she hadn’t killed him first. “He can’t hurt me now.”

“I’m still not leaving you alone,” Rowe said as he helped her to her feet. “You’re coming with me. I don’t dare let you out of my sight again.”

Relief shuddered through her. She didn’t want to be apart from him either.

He leaned down and picked up the bloody scalpel, then wiped off the blade on the side of his jeans. “Even though you’ve proven again and again that you can protect yourself…”

She shook her head, never wanting to touch that sharp blade again. But he dropped it into her purse. Then he leaned down again and picked up the picture that had fallen to the floor during her fight with Elliot.

When she’d kicked him, he’d fallen back and knocked the chair over. Then when he’d lunged at her, he knocked her into the desk and sent it toppling over and the two of them onto the floor.

“This is the guy.” The one he had killed to protect her.

“The warden told Elliot to grab me, but after he failed running us off the road, he sent his friend.” Maybe he hadn’t wanted to hurt her himself. But then she’d claimed to have killed his friend and he’d snapped.

Rowe sighed. “And both of them are dead and therefore unable to testify that the warden had given them their orders.”

“I’m sorry....”

“It’s okay,” he said as he led her toward the broken-in door and the idling truck outside it. “We’ll find other people to testify.”

“You can testify,” she said. “And Jed.”

If he was alive…

“
I
T’S OVER,
W
ARDEN,” A DEEP
voice taunted him through the bars of the cell in which they’d locked him, after storming his office and dragging him out into the prison.

But James refused to give in to the fear that niggled at him. These animals wanted to scare him. They wanted to make him suffer as they imagined he had made them suffer. But, despite their weapons, ones they’d stolen from guards they’d either hurt or killed, and their threats, he had nothing to fear.

They were too stupid to realize just how powerful he was. He had connections. He had bought off people in high places. He had backup—right outside the prison—that would save him and destroy all of them.

Beginning with Rowe Cusack and Macy Kleyn…

It was time. They would have made it from Detroit back to Blackwoods, because his partner already had. His partner was out there waiting for them.

“It’s not over yet,” he disagreed. “But it will be soon....”

That deep voice uttered a rusty-sounding chuckle. “You’re so delusional that you think you’re still in charge?”

“Delusional is your thinking I wouldn’t have an insurance plan.” He snorted in derision at their stupidity.

“Money won’t get you out of this, James,” the inmate advised. “Money doesn’t mean anything in here.”

No. Money wouldn’t get him out of this situation. But despite his greed, he knew what was more powerful than money.

Love. It would get him out of Blackwoods and back with his daughter. And maybe she would love him enough to believe him despite what would surely be revealed about how he’d run Blackwoods.

“I know what matters,” he assured his prisoners, who were now his jailers. He met the hard gaze of the man who ruled the rebels. “I know what matters most to
you.
And if you don’t want me to destroy it, you’ll do what I tell you.”

The prisoner laughed again. “Let me guess…let you go?”

He nodded. The only way he could make certain that Macy Kleyn and Rowe Cusack were dead was if he killed them himself.

R
OWE HADN’T NEEDED TO WORRY
about reinforcements at the prison. The sheriff and the state police had barricaded the street leading to the entrance. If he hadn’t grabbed his credentials off Jackson’s body, he never would have been allowed past the blockade.

“You’re Rowe Cusack?” the sheriff asked as he leaned down to the level of the open driver’s window of the truck. The man was tall and young and mad as hell; his face flushed with anger, his voice gruff with it. “You’re the one who called in everyone but me.”

“I didn’t know if I could trust you.” He still didn’t know, but he was pretty sure he couldn’t. “Since I didn’t call you in, why are you here?” He arched a brow and challenged the man with a direct question even though he didn’t expect a truthful response. “Did the warden call you?”

“I came when the alarms went off,” Sheriff Griffin York replied.

“What alarms?” Macy asked, leaning across Rowe to stare up at the sheriff.

“The alarms for the riot,” he explained. “They report directly to my office.”

“There’s a riot?” Macy gasped.

“The whole place is on lockdown,” the sheriff replied, leaning down farther to meet her gaze. He gasped himself when he noticed the blood on her clothes. “Are you all right, miss? Are you wounded?”

“She’s fine,” Rowe lied.

She was actually trembling with shock over her latest brush with death and with concern for her brother.

With a flash of pride, he added, “She just fought off an attacker.”

“Attacker?” The sheriff’s gaze trailed over her again, as if he could visually assess her injuries. “Who attacked you, miss?”

“Elliot Sutherland, a drug dealer,” Rowe informed him. “
He
was on the warden’s payroll.”

“The kid from the funeral home?”

Macy nodded. He’d been more than that to her; she had considered the young fool a friend.

“What the hell’s been going on in my county?” Sheriff Griffin York asked, his voice shaking with fury while his face flushed darker with wounded pride. “I didn’t even know there was a DEA agent undercover in the prison.”

“Nobody was supposed to know,” Rowe replied. That was kind of the whole damn point of going undercover. “But somehow the warden found out.”

York sighed, but it was ragged with his own frustration. “You keep blaming James for everything. Do you have any proof to support your allegations?”

“I came here undercover and left in a body bag,” Rowe replied, and that should have damn well been proof enough that the warden was corrupt. Too bad the courts and apparently the sheriff would need more to press charges and convict. “Where is James?”

York jerked his head toward the prison. Despite evening falling, the place was ablaze with security lights and police flood lamps. “Inside.”

“Have you had contact with him?” Because he wouldn’t put it past the warden to use the riot as a diversion to slip out to a private airfield. The guy was probably halfway to someplace with no extradition treaty with the United States.