Blue Ridge Ricochet
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“What are you, a tax collector?” she joked.
Before he could respond, she heard the trill of the telephone coming down the hall. For a moment, she considered just letting it ring, but it might be the call she’d been waiting for.
“Wait right here,” she said and headed to the bedroom.
It was Trevor Colley on the phone. He was the manager at Dugan’s. “Can you work the morning shift?” he asked. “Bella’s stuck over in Abingdon looking in on her mama because of the snow.”
She paused, torn. Normally, she jumped at working as many hours at the diner as she could, both for the money and for the opportunity to rub elbows with the militia members and their wives and girlfriends who frequented the diner on a regular basis. She’d made friends with some of the women already, and an incident a few weeks ago had even earned her the respect of a couple of the men.
“Del McClintock is here.”
She straightened. “Yeah?”
“He asked if you were coming in.” Trevor kept his voice light, but she heard a hint of disapproval in his voice. The militia men might be good-paying customers, but the manager had never seemed particularly happy about their patronage. He took their money, of course. He’d be a fool not to, given that in this impoverished part of the county, paying customers could be hard to come by.
But he wasn’t exactly happy about his best fry cook befriending members of the Blue Ridge Infantry.
Nicki did her best to straddle the line between her manager’s feelings and her own need to make inroads into the BRI’s inner circle. It could be a delicate dance at the best of times.
But even Trevor, as much as he disliked the hard-eyed men who ate daily at the diner, wasn’t above using her interest in them to get his way. “Should I tell him you’re coming in?”
She pressed her lips together as she considered her options. Del McClintock’s sexual interest in her presented a very tempting opportunity to get a little closer to her target.
But what was she going to do with Dallas Cole while she was working a shift at the diner? The last thing she wanted to do was leave him here on his own while she worked a few hours at the diner.
No telling what kind of trouble he could get into.
* * *
THE MURMUR OF Nicki’s voice drifting down the hall was like a lure dangling in front of a hungry bass. Dallas couldn’t have resisted the temptation to hear what she was saying any more than he’d have turned down a juicy steak after three weeks of near starvation.
Urging his aching body into motion, he moved as quietly as he could down the hallway until he could hear Nicki’s end of the conversation.
“And Davey can’t come in?” There was a brief silence, then she sighed. “No, I get it. Everybody else has family to see after, except me. I’ll be there in a few.”
She must be talking to someone at the diner where she worked, he realized. He eased away from the door and turned to go back to the kitchen. But his foot caught in the carpet runner in the hall, tripping him up. He landed against the wall with a thud, the impact eliciting a grunt.
Before he could tamp down the pain in his bruised ribs enough to breathe again, Nicki emerged from the bedroom, her blue eyes flashing.
“What the hell are you doing?” she challenged. “Eavesdropping?”
His pain-fogged brain tried sluggishly to catch up. “Bathroom.”
Her dark eyebrows arched. “You passed it to get here.”
Damn.
“What did you expect to overhear?” she asked.
Ah, hell. Maybe he should just tell her the truth. “How about why you left the cabin for an hour last night in the middle of a snowstorm?”
Her eyes narrowing, she took a step away from him until her back flattened against the wall. “What are you talking about?”
“You left the cabin shortly before midnight and disappeared into the woods for over an hour. Then you snuck back in here, real quiet, and settled down for the night. Want to tell me where you went?”
“You were asleep at midnight. I checked on you.”
“You thought I was asleep. I wasn’t.”
A scowl creased her forehead. “You were spying on me?”
“You woke me when you started to leave. I got curious. You’re not the only one who spent the night with a stranger, you know.”
“You’re still alive, so I guess I’m not a serial killer.” She folded her arms across her chest, angling her chin at him. In her defiance, she seemed to glow like a jewel, all glittering blue eyes and ruby-stained cheeks.
A flush of desire spread heat through his body, making his knees tremble. He flattened his back against the opposite wall of the hallway and struggled to stay upright beneath the electric intensity of her gaze.
She was dangerous to him, he realized.
In all sorts of unexpected ways.
He pushed himself upright, willing his legs to hold his weight. “You know, I think I should call someone.”
Her suspicious gaze was as sharp as a blow. “Who’re you going to call?”
“You’ve got a sheriff’s department around here, right?”
Her scowl deepened. “They’re probably a little busy today. With the snow and all.”
“Not like it was a blizzard.” His legs were starting to ache, from his hips to his toes. He fought the urge to slide down the wall to the floor.
“No, but in this part of the state, people aren’t used to driving in snow.”
“But you’re going to, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re going in to work aren’t you?” He nodded toward her bedroom. “That’s who you were talking to on the phone.”
“So you were eavesdropping.”
No point in denying it. “You can drive me into town with you. I’ll take it from there.”
Alarm darkened her eyes. “No. I can’t do that.”
The first flicker of fear sparked through him. “Why not?”
“You don’t want to go into River’s End.”
He urged his legs into motion, edging back from her. He hadn’t seen any sort of weapon in his limited exploration of the cabin, but he hadn’t exactly looked in every nook and cranny while she was gone last night. In fact, there were parts of the cabin that were still a complete mystery to him. She had already told him she had a shotgun. For all he knew, she could have a whole armory stashed somewhere in the back.
“Why don’t I want to go into River’s End?”
She moved with him as he stepped backward, maintaining the distance between them without letting him get out of reach. “Don’t be coy, Dallas.”
There it was again. He’d heard that same tone in her voice the night before, when she’d spoken his name while trying to help him into her Jeep. A flicker of knowing that hadn’t really registered in the midst of his stress the previous evening came through loud and clear this morning.
“You know who I am,” he said before he could stop himself.
Her expression shuttered. “Who you are?”
“Now who’s being coy?” A surge of anger eclipsed his earlier fear. She was lying to his face. Had been lying this whole time. “If you know who I am, then you know there are people who are looking for me.”
She dropped any pretense. “That’s abundantly clear from the bruises and scrapes all over your body. Which is why I don’t think you really want to go into River’s End this morning.”
His legs began to tremble again, aching with fatigue. “They’re in town, aren’t they?”
She didn’t ask who he was talking about. Clearly, she already knew. “Yes. And not just in town. They’re all over the place, Dallas. Everywhere you could possibly go.”
Damn it. Fear returned in cold, sickening waves, but he fought not to let it show. Those bastards who took him captive had worked damn hard to break him, but they hadn’t. He’d escaped before they could.
He wouldn’t break in front of this woman, either.
“Then let me call someone to come get me.”
The look she gave him was almost pitying. “I can’t let you do that, either.”
He forced a laugh, pretending a bravado he didn’t feel. “And you’re going to stop me how?”
Her response was a laugh in return. “You say that as if you think it would be difficult. I told you last night, in your condition, I’m pretty sure I can take you.”
He didn’t really want to test her theory, considering how shaky his limbs felt at the moment. “Okay, fine. I’ll stay put.”
Her eyes narrowed a notch. “I don’t think you will.”
Before he could move, she closed the space between them, grabbing both arms and shoving him face-first into the wall. Pain exploded where his bruised jaw hit the hard Sheetrock.
He struggled against her hold, but she was much stronger than he was at the moment, shoving him down the hall and into the kitchen. When he tried to turn around to fight back, she slammed her knee into the back of one of his, making his leg buckle under him. She released his arms just long enough to let him catch himself before he lunged face-first into the floor, but he still hit hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs.
The world went black around him for a moment, then started to return in flecks of light as he gasped for air. He felt movement, pressure and then a big gulp of sweet air filled his lungs. His vision cleared and all his aches and pains came into sharp, agonizing focus.
He was facedown on the floor, his hands twisted behind his back. He felt the weight of his captor settle over the backs of his thighs as she held him in place. The unmistakable sound of duct tape being ripped from its roll reached his ears a split second before he felt her wind the sticky tape around his wrists, binding his hands together behind him.
Nicki moved off his legs and grabbed him by his upper arms, her grip like steel. She might be small, he thought, but she was a lot stronger than she looked. “Sorry to do this, but you leave me no choice.”
The fear returned, beating at the back of his throat like a wave of nausea. He swallowed it down, refused to give in. “And here you promised you weren’t a serial killer.”
“Believe it or not, this is all about keeping you alive.” She got him to his feet and pushed him toward a door he hadn’t noticed before. “Watch your step.”
She opened the door and reached inside, flicking a switch. He saw he was standing at the top of a steep set of stairs descending into a dim basement. “You’re not going to chain me to your dungeon wall, are you?” He tried to keep his voice light, make it into a joke. Anything to keep the fear at bay.
She helped him down the steps, grabbing the wood railing on one side of the descent when he stumbled and nearly pulled her down the stairs with him. “Sadly, I haven’t had time to put in the shackles yet.”
They reached the bottom of the steps and she gave him a little shove. He stumbled forward into the shadows, wincing in anticipation of the impact.
His upper body hit something soft. Opening his eyes, he saw he’d landed face-first on an old, overstuffed sofa braced against the cinder block wall of the basement.
Cellar, he amended mentally, his eyes beginning to adjust to the low light. There was a shelf against the opposite wall full of Mason jars full of home-canned fruits and vegetables.
“Stay put. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” Nicki’s voice drifted down toward him from the top of the stairs. He looked up at her, squinting at the bright daylight backlighting her through the cellar door, rendering her little more than a curvy silhouette.
“Don’t go,” he called, fear hammering past his last defenses.
She paused in the doorway. When she spoke, she sounded genuinely distressed. “I’m so sorry. But I have to go.”
Then the door closed behind her, shutting out the blessed daylight. He heard the soft thuds of her footfalls drift into a thick, deafening silence.
Once again, he was alone. Trapped and helpless, just like before, with nothing but darkness and fear to keep him company.
Chapter Four
What have I done?
The question rang in her head, over and over in rhythm with her pounding heart, as she muscled the Jeep down the mountain to the main road that led into town.
She’d tied a man up and locked him in her cellar. Had she lost her bloody mind?
The cell phone peeking out of her purse presented a powerful temptation. She had never felt this great a need to talk to another human being in her life. Calling Alexander Quinn was out of the question—he’d never answer a call from her cell phone and risk blowing her cover.
But her cousin Anson might answer. She could shoot the breeze with him, avoid anything incriminating. Just hearing a friendly, familiar voice might be enough to knock the edge off her nerves, right?
She dragged her gaze back to the road as her wheels slipped a little on the slick surface. No. No calling anyone from her past, no matter how freaked-out she felt at the moment.
She’d agreed to this job. She knew what was at stake.
Hell, that was why she’d just imprisoned a man in her cellar, wasn’t it?
Despite the weather, the parking lot of Dugan’s Diner was half-full when she pulled her Jeep into one of the employee parking spots and entered the kitchen through the employees’ side door.
The only other person in the kitchen was Tollie Barber, one of the kitchen assistants who helped out with food prep and handled some of the easier cooking duties. She was busy at the counter, processing potatoes for hash browns, her frizzy blond curls tamed by a hairnet. She darted a quick gaze at Nicki. “So much for a snow day, huh?”
Nicki tucked her own dark hair under a protective cap and headed to the sink to wash her trembling hands. She kept her tone calm and light, hoping her agitation didn’t show. “Gotta snow a lot more than this to keep people away from breakfast at Dugan’s.”
Trevor Colley entered the kitchen from the front area, moving at a quick pace for a man his size. His barrel chest and linebacker shoulders seemed to take up half the kitchen when he stopped next to where Nicki was preparing the griddle. “You’re a good ’un to come in so fast, Nicki,” he said in a gruff voice that rumbled like thunder. It was all the thanks he’d give her. Trevor wasn’t one to gush.
“Quite a crowd for a snow day,” she commented, cracking a couple of eggs for the first order clipped to the order wheel. Two eggs, sunny-side up, hash browns and bacon. “Something up?”
Trevor gave her an odd look. “You tell me. Del McClintock brought four of his boys with him. They brought their girls, too. Should I worry?”
Nicki supposed it was a good thing that Trevor believed she might know the answer to his question. It suggested that people were starting to connect her with the Blue Ridge Infantry. Which meant, hopefully, that the BRI members themselves were starting to think of her as one of them.
That was her goal, wasn’t it?
“No, don’t worry. If you have any trouble with them, come get me.”
Trevor frowned at her but went back out to the front of the diner, leaving her and Tollie to get the orders filled.
As she laid out the strips of bacon on the griddle to fry, the image of Dallas Cole’s rainbow-hued collection of scrapes and bruises filled her head. Her whole body went cold and numb, and for a second, she thought she was going to be sick.
Oh, God. She’d taped a sick, injured man’s hands behind his back and locked him in her cellar without even feeding him breakfast first. She hadn’t even left him a bucket if he needed to go to the bathroom. Which he couldn’t do with his hands duct-taped, anyway.
What the hell had she been thinking? Had she lost her ever-lovin’ mind?
But what else could she have done? Dallas had insisted on calling the FBI. Maybe it had been a trick—maybe the whole thing was a setup to prove she wasn’t who she said she was. Maybe it had been a test. But if that was the case, she had no idea whether she’d passed or failed.
But what if he was legit? She certainly couldn’t let him bring the FBI swarming into River’s End at this point. Even if it didn’t end up blowing her cover, every BRI member in town would crawl back in the holes where they’d come from, and it’d be months, even years, before she could get this close to the group’s inner circle.
She was doing what she had to do. She was. She just had to get through this morning and she could hurry back home and let him out before anything bad happened.
Assuming something bad hadn’t already happened.
* * *
THERE WASN’T AN inch of his body that didn’t hurt in some way, including the new scrape on his inner wrist from the nail protruding from the wooden shelf where the beautiful but treacherous Nicki kept her canned goods. But Dallas was damned if he was going to be bound and locked in by the time she got back from her shift at the diner.
Who the hell was she? Was she connected to the militia members who’d taken him captive a few weeks earlier? If so, why had it taken her all night to decide he was safer behind a lock and key?
Everything had changed when he told her he wanted to call the authorities. That had been the catalyst. He’d seen fear in her eyes, not unlike his own reaction when she’d pinned him down and taped up his hands. His mention of the authorities had made her feel just as trapped as he felt now.
But why? What was she hiding?
The tape around his wrists snapped apart as the sharp edge of the nail head finally broke through the last of the fibers. He pulled his arms apart, groaning as the stretched muscles of his chest and shoulders put up a painful protest. He worked them slowly for a moment, taking care not to make his condition any worse than it already was.
He had to find the strength to get past that locked door and get the hell out of this crazy woman’s cabin.
There were no windows in the cellar, no doors visible besides the one at the top of the stairs. As much as his wobbly legs protested the idea, he had to go upstairs and try to figure a way to get through the locked cellar door. Ramming it open was no option, given his weakened state.
But maybe he could pick the lock.
He’d already spent nearly an hour searching the cellar for something to cut himself free of the duct-tape bonds. He’d found a small, rickety cabinet in the corner that held a box of tools. He’d had no luck using the garden shears he’d found inside to cut himself free because he couldn’t get the blades turned to the right angle behind his back to cut the tape. But there had been other tools in the box that might work to unlock the door, hadn’t there?
He crossed to the box lying on the top of the rough-hewn cabinet and started to pick through the contents, looking for something—
There. A jumble of old paper clips, some of them hooked together, some twisted apart. If he was very lucky, the lock on the door at the top of the stairs would be a simple spring-driven lock, and he could use the paper clip to push it open.
But if it wasn’t...
He grabbed a pair of pliers and twisted one of the bigger paper clips until he’d fashioned a crude tension wrench, then curled the tip of one of the smaller clips into a modified hook, hoping they’d work well enough to get the job done.
“Picking a lock isn’t as hard as you’d think,” an FBI special agent had told Dallas once, and then he’d proceeded to explain just how to beat a pin-and-tumbler lock. “It’s all about the pins. That’s how a key works—getting the pins in the right position to turn the cylinder.”
He carried his tools up the steps and slid his makeshift tension wrench into the keyhole, turning it one way, then the other, until he was satisfied which way the cylinder had to turn to open. Applying a little pressure to move the cylinder just out of position, he inserted the second paper clip into the keyhole.
His hands shook and his legs began to ache, feeling as if they’d suddenly lost the ability to hold him upright, but he kept at his probing examination of the lock’s internal workings. One by one, he painstakingly pushed the pins up until they caught on the ledge, clearing the cylinder. Finally, the last pin clicked into place, and he used the larger paper clip to turn the lock.
The dead bolt slid back into the door with a soft click, and he gave the door a push open.
He eased into the kitchen and looked around, squinting as bright daylight assaulted his eyes. Around him, the cabin was quiet and still.
He looked around the house to make sure he was still alone, then checked out the front door to assure himself Nicki and the Jeep were still gone. Then he went into the bedroom to find the phone.
But it was gone, no longer sitting on the bedside table where it had been the night before.
He checked the floor on either side of the table and even crouched to check under the bed. No phone.
A room-to-room search of the cabin revealed no sign of the missing phone. Nor did he find a computer or any sort of modem or router with which to access the internet if he wanted to reach the authorities that way instead.
He sank into one of the kitchen chairs and willed his wobbly legs to stop shaking. He clearly wasn’t going to be able to call in the cavalry, so he was going to have to get the hell out of this cabin on his own somehow.
But first, he needed something to eat. Some of his unsteadiness might be from sheer hunger. He pushed himself to his feet and crossed to the refrigerator, bracing himself to find it as empty as the bedside table had been. But the refrigerator was well stocked, and he grabbed a couple of eggs from the carton for his breakfast.
She had plenty of cookware in her cabinets, too. Made sense, he supposed—she’d said she worked as a diner cook, hadn’t she? As he heated a pat of butter in one of the pans on the stove, he grabbed a couple of slices of bread from the bread box and stuck them in the toaster.
The smell of toasting bread and frying eggs made him almost light-headed with hunger, but once he’d wolfed down his breakfast, he felt considerably better.
But did he feel well enough to walk out of these woods to seek help?
He left the pans for Nicki to wash—the least she could do, considering she’d locked him in her cellar—and took another look around the house, this time for some sign of who Nicki really was and what had compelled her to lock him up rather than let him call the authorities for help.
She’d admitted to knowing who he was. Which meant she had to know that he’d disappeared somewhere between Washington, DC, and wherever he was now. That foul play was suspected.
Or was it? Did people think he’d disappeared on his own? He’d been on the phone with a man named Cade Landry when those BRI thugs had run him off the road and dragged him out of his banged-up car. But Landry had been a fugitive. For all Dallas knew, he still was. He might not have had the opportunity to tell anyone what he’d heard over the phone.
So what, exactly, did Nicki think she knew about him?
There were no personal items anywhere around the cabin, he realized after another search of the place. She probably had her driver’s license and other ID with her, since she’d taken the Jeep into town, but most people had other personal records scattered around the house, didn’t they?
Back at his apartment in Georgetown, he had a whole four-drawer filing cabinet full of tax information, personal records, vehicle papers and more. He even had a box in his closet filled with things he’d kept from his high school and college days.
As far as he could tell from his search, Nicki had nothing like that stashed anywhere around the cabin.
He sat on the bed and looked around the small bedroom. Simple gray curtains on the window. Plain pine dresser that matched the bedside table. The bed was little more than a mattress and box set on a metal frame. No headboard or footboard. Plain gray sheets and pillowcases, plus a couple of matching waffle-weave blankets that acted as the bedspread.
A large woven rag rug stretched over the hardwood floor next to the bed, the hodgepodge of blues, grays, black and white offering only a little more color than the rest of the decor.