Stranger in Cold Creek (10 page)

“My God.”

“Needless to say, everything I had on me that might be considered sensitive information was gone. My hotel room had been searched and cleaned out. My cover was more or less blown and I wasn't any use to the CIA any longer.”

“So they fired you? Because you got hurt?”

“Because I was compromised. It wasn't personal.” He shrugged. He'd known the stakes, known how easily a career in the CIA could end. “At least I'm still alive. I've been told it was touch and go for several days.”

“So then you went back to Johnson City and spent some time in that corner office?”

He laughed. “Not exactly. By then, my cousin Pete had earned the corner office. I had to start at the bottom. I figure I got maybe midway in ten years, at which point I realized being a decent accountant wasn't the same as wanting to be an accountant.”

“So what did you do between the time you left the accounting firm and the time you showed up on the Blanchard Building payroll?”

“I worked for a company called The Gates. Ever heard of it?”

She shook her head. “No. Strange name.”

“It's a security agency. Based in a little town called Purgatory, Tennessee, down in the Smokies. The boss is a guy named Alexander Quinn. Former CIA—legendary at the company, but most of what he's done in his life is so classified I'm not sure even the presidents he served knew some of it.” John poked at the waning fire, stirring up embers. “Seems that Quinn came from money, and when he came in to a big inheritance, he left the CIA and started his own agency.”

“What kind of security work?”

“All kinds, really. Some investigation, some bodyguard work, some security analysis and threat assessment.”

“In an agency working out of a little town in the Smokies?”

“That's the base. But he has people working for him all over the place. If you talked to the agents currently working for Quinn at the main office in Purgatory, they probably wouldn't recognize my name. I was working for him out of Abingdon, Virginia.”

“Doing what?”

“Well, I was officially a freelance security consultant. I did some jobs consulting with companies in Abingdon that were looking to improve all areas of their security. But what I was really doing was helping an undercover agent Quinn had in place in a little town called River's End, in the Blue Ridge Mountains not far from Abingdon. She was trying to infiltrate a militia group—”

“The Blue Ridge Infantry,” Miranda interrupted, her brow furrowed. “I've heard of them. But didn't I read that the FBI had finally had a big break in the case that's allowing them to round up everyone involved?”

“It wasn't the FBI who made that break happen. It was a tough lady named Nicki Jamison. I might have helped a little, too.”

Miranda crossed to where he stood, meeting his gaze. “You weren't hurt in a hunting accident, were you?”

“No. I mean, I was being hunted, but—”

She closed her eyes. “Is that why you're here? Recuperating?”

“That, and lying low.”

“So John Blake isn't really your name.”

“No, it really is my name. But nobody in Abingdon—or River's End—ever knew it. I was known as John Bartholomew there.”

“But you said you're lying low.”

“I am. Just because John Blake isn't the name I used doesn't mean that someone with some computer savvy couldn't eventually figure it out. And the BRI had some pretty nasty hackers working for them.”

“So maybe I need to be watching
your
back.”

“Maybe you should. Because the FBI believes one of the guys who might be looking for me is somewhere in Altus, Oklahoma.”

Her eyes widened even more. “That close?”

“They're not sure he's there. But he has family in Altus.”

Before Miranda could respond, her cell phone trilled. “Hold that thought,” she said before she answered. “Duncan.”

As she listened, her gaze snapped up to his, her eyes looking huge and dark in her suddenly pale face. “When?”

Whatever she was hearing on the other end of the call, it was bad news, he saw. Her free hand rose to her mouth as she listened with increasing distress. “And she's sure?”

The other caller must have answered in the affirmative, for Miranda gave a brief nod and said, “I'm on my way.”

“What is it?” he asked as she put her phone away and looked around for her jacket, spotting it on the back of the chair by the door.

She shrugged the jacket on. “A woman who lives off Route 7 had some chickens escape their coop this afternoon. When she chased them down, she stumbled on the body of a woman.” She lifted her troubled gaze to John. “They think it's Delta McGraw.”

Chapter Ten

The dead woman lying in the shallow arroyo behind Lizzie Dillard's chicken coop was definitely Delta McGraw. And she'd been dead for at least a couple of days.

The sight of her friend's body, cold and mottled with cyanosis and in the early stages of decomposition, seemed unreal somehow. She knew the full emotional impact would hit her soon enough. But right now, she had to be a cop first.

“She definitely wasn't out here the day of my wreck,” Miranda told Sheriff Randall as they stood looking down at Delta's cold body. “I was out here and I had a pretty good look around.”

“She's been dead longer than that,” Randall said. He looked toward the road, where John Blake sat in his truck, watching them work. “I see you brought your new friend.”

“He's watching my back.”

“You think we don't?” The sheriff's voice held an oddly defensive tone she hadn't expected.

“No, of course not. But we're a small agency. If John Blake has the time and wants to watch my back—”

“Didn't you say he's a carpenter or something?”

“He has some law enforcement training in his past.”

“A wannabe.” His tone was dismissive.

“No, more like a once was.” She glanced at the truck, not wanting to reveal too much to the sheriff, even though she'd trust Randall with her life. If John was telling the truth, and she had no reason at this point to believe he wasn't, his life was in as much danger as hers. She was watching his back, as well. “He's nice and he saved me the other day. If he wants to use his off time to make sure I don't get ambushed alone again, I'm not going to complain.”

“Fair enough.” He looked down at Delta's body. “Poor girl. She had one hell of a rough life.”

“I had such a sick feeling this time when she disappeared. She was finally starting to put down roots, I thought.” Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away. Not now. She couldn't fall apart now.

Randall caught Miranda's arm and pulled her back as two more deputies arrived, armed with crime scene kits to gather trace evidence and secure the scene. “Putting down roots?”

Miranda nodded. “I put it in my first report on the case. When we asked people around town if anyone had seen her, Luis Gomez from High Plains Realty contacted me, said that he'd been talking to Delta about looking for a house to buy.”

“She had that kind of money?”

“I didn't think so, but honestly, there's a lot about Delta I didn't know.”

The sheriff was silent for a moment, then tilted his head toward the house. “You need to talk to Lizzie, see if she saw or heard anything. She was too rattled earlier for Jenkins to get anything out of her.”

With a nod, Miranda headed across the yard to where Lizzie sat on the top step of her front porch, her head down and her shoulders hunched. When she looked up at Miranda's approach, her normally ruddy face was sickly pale, and her eyes were red rimmed and puffy.

“I gave up smokin' ten years ago. I've never regretted it until now.” Lizzie held her shaking hands out in front of her. “I'd sell this whole damn farm for a cigarette right about now.”

Miranda sat on the step next to her. “It must've been a real shock to find her out there like that.”

“I'm a farm girl. I see death all the time. It's part of raisin' animals for the market, you know? But that poor girl—” Lizzie buried her face in her hands. “I know she wasn't here yesterday evening when I went out to feed the chickens, because I walked out to the road to talk to Coy when he drove by on his way home and I went right by that arroyo.”

Miranda made a mental note to check with the desk sergeant. Maybe he'd seen something on his drive home that might be helpful. “You don't remember hearing anything last night?”

“Not a thing.” Lizzie scraped her graying hair away from her weathered face. “I work hard and I sleep hard. You know what it's like. Now, if old Rocket was still alive, he'd have barked his head off if there was anybody out there, but I had to have him put down last month, and I haven't had the heart to get me a new dog. Though Coy said his neighbor's hound mix just had puppies. Said he'd probably be happy to save one out of the litter for me.”

So anyone could have come along this road and dumped Delta's body out during the night, Miranda thought, without anyone seeing it happen.

But who would know that?

Almost anyone, she supposed, when she thought about it. She herself knew about Lizzie having to have old Rocket put to sleep the previous month. She'd heard it from Tina Shire, who worked at the vet clinic in town. And anyone who'd ever driven down Glory Road would know there wasn't another house within almost two miles of Lizzie's farm.

In some ways, it was the ideal place to dump a body, as long as you didn't care if it was found sooner rather than later.

“Lizzie, if you think of anything you might have seen or heard last night, even if it seems unimportant, you'll let us know, right?”

“Of course.” Lizzie patted Miranda's hand. “You must be sick about it. I know you two girls were friends.”

“I'm not sure Delta ever felt as if she had any friends,” Miranda said sadly, looking across the farmyard to where Sheriff Randall and the rest of the deputies had started processing the crime scene. Despite the warm sunlight beating down on the scene, Miranda still felt a bleak chill in the air.

Maybe it was coming from inside her.

“That's the fellow who moved into the old Merriwether place out on Route 7, ain't it?” Lizzie nodded toward John, who was watching Miranda rather than the deputies at the scene. “Hear tell he saved your life the other day durin' the snowstorm.”

“He did,” Miranda admitted. The cause of the crash was being kept secret at the sheriff's department, for now, but the crash itself was all over the town grapevine. Neighbors had been calling her father's store for a couple of days, asking if she needed anything and offering to bring food to her house.

If her place hadn't been trashed by the intruder search, she might have taken a few of them up on the offer.

“Heard he's some sort of builder or something,” Lizzie said.

“Something like that. He's actually going to be helping me finish repairing the tornado damage on my place.”

“Mighty kind of him.”

“Yes.” Miranda pushed to her feet, ignoring a symphony of aches and pains. The knocks and dings from the rollover wreck, combined with the strain of all the bending, lifting and carrying she'd done cleaning up her trashed house, had taken a toll on her body.

But you're still alive
, she reminded herself as she headed back to where the coroner's truck had arrived to pick up Delta's body. Things could have been so much worse.

She could have been zipped up in a body bag just like Delta.

“Mandy, go home,” Sheriff Randall told her.

“What? This is my case.”

“You're still on medical leave until tomorrow. And even then, I saw the way you looked at Delta's body. You're too close to the case. We've got other people who can investigate. Take the rest of the week off and get your head straight. Then we'll talk.”

“Damn it, sir, that's not fair.”

“You still believe life is fair?” Randall's expression was set in stone. There would be no changing his mind, Miranda knew.

“Fine. Will you at least let me call in for updates on the case?”

Randall's expression softened just a notch. “Sure. But I'm serious about taking the rest of the week off. You could easily have been killed in that wreck the other day, and I can see you're still sore. Take these days to get some rest and clear your head.” He nodded toward the coroner assistants, who were placing the body bag on a gurney to slide it in the back of a truck. “Since Delta didn't have any family left, she needs someone to handle her funeral. I don't know if she had any money stashed away anywhere or any sort of burial policy, but...”

Miranda doubted it. She hadn't been able to find any sort of bank account for Delta when she'd first taken on the missing person case, so it wasn't likely she had bothered with anything like life insurance. “Can I at least be the one to take another look at her place? I knew her better than anyone else on the force. There might be something there that'll mean more to me than another investigator.”

Randall looked as if he wanted to say no, but finally he gave a gruff nod. “I'll want another deputy with you.”

She bit back a protest and nodded. “Tell me when to be there.”

“I'll get with Robertson and give you a call.”

“Thanks.” She returned to the truck and climbed into the passenger seat. John watched her in silence, waiting for her to speak.

“It was Delta.”

He let out a slow breath. “I'm sorry. Are you okay?”

She buckled her seat belt and leaned her head against the backrest. “I don't know. I feel kind of like I'm in limbo. Waiting for it to hit me.”

He reached across the cab and put his hand over hers where it lay on the seat beside her. “What happens next?”

“I have to look into a few things. See if she had any sort of will or plans for what would happen in the case of her death.” She shook her head. “She was twenty-seven years old. Who plans their own funeral at that age?”

“Is there anything you can do right now?”

She looked across the cab to find him watching her with a gentle expression that made tears prick her eyes. She blinked them back. “I would really like to go home now. Can we just go home?”

* * *

J
OHN
PULLED
HIS
truck up next to Miranda's on the concrete driveway and cut the engine, waiting for her to move.

She sat in the passenger seat and was very still for a long moment before she slowly reached for the seat belt buckle and released herself from the harness. “I should call my dad and let him know.” She sighed. “Although as fast as news travels in this town, he probably knows already.”

Before she could move, her cell phone trilled, harsh in the silence of the truck cab. She pulled it from her pocket and checked the display. “Can I call it or what?” She got out of the truck and started toward the house, lifting the phone to her ear as she walked. “Hi, Dad.”

John followed more slowly, giving her a little privacy to talk to her father about her friend's death. By the time he reached the porch, she had hung up the phone and was unlocking the door.

“The sheriff took me off the case,” she said as she locked the door behind them. When she lifted her gaze to meet his, she looked more hurt than angry.

“Because you're too close to the case?”

“Yeah. And he's making me take the rest of the week off, too. I think it's just to keep me from nosing around the case, although he says it's because I need to take more time to recover from my injuries.”

“Maybe that's a good idea.”

The look she gave him was sharp enough to cut. “Et tu, Brute?”

He crossed to where she stood, arms folded, her brow furrowed. “I know you're tough. Hell, you were in a rollover accident three days ago, and I just watched you clean up a wrecked house and work a crime scene without even dragging your heels. But maybe it's time to give yourself a break.”

“I'm not fragile.”

“I know that.” He put his hands on her shoulders, running his thumbs lightly over the curve of her collarbones.

She opened her mouth as if to argue, then closed her eyes, taking a shaky breath. Slowly, she dropped her arms, her hands coming to rest on his sides, just below his rib cage. She took a step closer, the delicious heat of her body sliding over him until he felt as if he was on fire inside.

“I'm glad you're here.” Her voice was barely a whisper, her breath soft and hot against his chin. He bent his head until their foreheads touched, and he drank in her sweet herb scent.

“I'm glad I'm here, too.” He brushed his lips against her forehead. “I'll stay as long as you want me to.”

She lifted her gaze to his. “Don't make promises. It's way too early for promises.”

“Okay. No promises.” He was crazy to make promises, anyway, given how up-in-the-air his life was at the moment. “Why don't you lie down a while? I could figure out something for supper.”

“I couldn't sleep.” She moved away from him in restless strides, coming to a stop at the window. She gazed out at the dying daylight for a moment, her face tinged rose by the setting sun, before turning to look at him. “I wouldn't mind supper, though. What do you have in mind?”

“I thought I'd run to that little store down the road and pick up some groceries. Maybe grill a couple of steaks and bake a potato?”

“Sounds good.” She pulled her keys from her pocket and handed them to him. “The house key is the silver one there on the end. Pick up some vegetables, too, and I'll whip up a salad.”

“Okay, you're on.” He smiled at her as he unlocked the door. “Lock up behind me. I'll be right back.”

He hurried through his shopping, not liking the idea of leaving her alone for long. Delta McGraw clearly hadn't died of natural causes. And if the attack on Miranda was connected, the stakes had just gotten a lot higher.

“I haven't found much of anything on Delta McGraw,” Quinn told John when he checked in with his boss. “I have found a few things on her father, Hal, however.”

“Anything that could help us figure out who killed his daughter?”

“I'm not sure. The one thing I've learned is that he was charged with extortion by an oilman in Plainview shortly before his death. Apparently he tried to blackmail the man over something the oilman's son had done—selling drugs or something. The report I got had been redacted in places. Anyway, the oilman told Hal to go do something anatomically impossible and called the cops on him for his attempted extortion.”