Smoky Mountain Setup

“I’m armed,” he warned her as he dropped the duffel bag and complied.

“I figured as much.” She started to pat him down, her hands moving quickly over his arms, then slowing as she reached his waist. He couldn’t quell a shiver of pure sensual awareness as she slid her hands over his hips. “You’ve lost weight.”

“Meals have been hard to come by recently.”

She discovered the pistol stashed in his ankle holster and relieved him of it. “Where have you been?”

“Here and there.” He felt her retreat, cool air replacing the warmth of her body. “Can I turn around now?”

“Knock yourself out.”

He turned to find her emptying the magazine of his Kel-Tec P-11 onto a rolltop desk by the wall. His duffel bag was on the floor by her feet. “Is that really necessary?” he asked with a nod toward the pile of ammunition.

“For now.” She removed the round in the chamber and added it to the pile of ammo on the desk before she set the pistol down and turned her cool blue gaze on Landry. “Why did you come here?”

“Nice seeing you again, too, Sharp. It’s been such a long time.”

She shook her head, her eyes narrowing. “You disappeared nearly a year ago after McKenna Rigsby’s undercover mission went very wrong. At least one corrupt FBI agent has gone missing, and the Bureau is scrambling like crazy to find out what other agents might be compromised. You are on the top of their list.”

“I know.”

“And yet, here you are. Did you think I would just turn a blind eye to the fact that you’re wanted by the FBI for questioning?”

She was magnificent when she was angry. Always had been. Her blue eyes took on an amazing electric hue, and the atmosphere around her crackled with energy. He felt drawn to her, despite himself, and took a helpless step forward. “Livvie—”

“Don’t.” She held up her hand, a pained look replacing the fire in her eyes. “Please don’t call me that.”

“I know you have questions. But I’ve spent the last two hours riding a bicycle in the bitter cold. I’m tired. I’m freezing. I haven’t eaten since yesterday. It’s snowing out, and I need shelter. Food, if you can spare any. In exchange, I’ll tell you everything I’ve been doing for the past two years, and if you still want to turn me in to the FBI after that, then fine. I’ll accept that. Because I’m sick to death of running.”

Her forehead creased as she considered what he’d just said. “You’ll turn yourself in if I say so?”

He nodded, meaning it. He hadn’t realized it until he saw her again, but he really was through running. He’d trusted the wrong person once and lost his freedom for a month—and damned near lost his life in the process.

But he had to trust someone, or what was the point of going on? He couldn’t keep living under the radar forever.

And he’d already gone nearly two years without seeing Olivia Sharp. There had been a time when he couldn’t have imagined such a thing, couldn’t have considered even a week without her, much less a lifetime without her spreading out in front of him as far as the eye could see.

“Were you working with the Blue Ridge Infantry?” she asked, breaking the tense silence between them.

He met her gaze, took a deep breath and answered the question with the truth.

“Yes,” he said.

Chapter Two (#ulink_ec49a9c7-6071-5a58-9267-18013dc703cd)

Hearing Cade Landry admit what she’d spent the past year trying not to believe shouldn’t have felt like a kick in the teeth. But somehow, it did. It hit her hard enough that she took an involuntary step backward, her foot catching on the braided rug in the cabin’s entry.

As she started to lose her balance, Landry lurched forward and caught her before she could fall, his arms wrapping around her waist. His hands were cold—she could feel the chill through her sweater—but his touch sent fire singing through her blood.

He’d always had that effect on her. Even when he shouldn’t.

She pulled free of his grasp, steadying herself by clutching the edge of the desk. “How long?”

He stared at her, a puzzled expression on his face.

“How long did you work for the Blue Ridge Infantry?” When he didn’t answer right away, she added, “Are you still working for them? Is that why you came here?”

He took a deep breath and let it out in a soft whoosh. “I was never working for them.”

She shook her head, shock starting to give way to a fury that burned like acid in her gut. “Don’t play semantics games with me, Landry.”

His dark eyebrows arched, creasing his forehead. “Are you going to listen to what I have to say or should we just cut to the part where you call the cops to come haul my ass out of here?”

“The latter, I think.” She went for her shotgun.

He beat her there, jerking it out of her grasp. “Don’t,” he said sharply as she changed course, going for the P-11 she’d just emptied.

She froze in place, turning slowly to look at him. Something hot and painful throbbed just under her breastbone as she met his hard gaze. “Just get it over with.”

“I’m not what you think I am,” he said, lowering the Mossberg to his side. “That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

“You’ll forgive me if I have a little trouble believing you.”

His lips pressed to a thin line. “I was really hoping you, of all people, would look beyond the obvious.”

She pushed down a sudden flutter of guilt. “You don’t get to play the victim card. You’re the one who disappeared almost a year ago without telling anyone where you were going.”

“I did tell someone,” he said quietly, lowering the shotgun to the floor, still within his reach. “I told my SAC at the Johnson City RA that I had information the FBI needed to know about the Blue Ridge Infantry. And the next thing I knew, I was being bludgeoned and hauled to some backwoods hellhole and beaten to within an inch of my life.”

For a second she pictured what he was saying, imagined him tied up and pummeled by the vicious hillbillies who comprised the mountain militia known as the Blue Ridge Infantry, and nausea burned in her gut. She knew from her own investigations that the hard-eyed men who ran the so-called militia as a criminal organization were capable of great cruelty. If they’d ever lived by a code of honor, those days were long past.

Money and power drove them. In these hills these days, money and power too often came from drugs, guns and extortion.

“You told your SAC?” She repeated his earlier statement, trying to remember the name of the Johnson City resident agency’s Special Agent in Charge. “Pete Chang, right?”

He nodded. “I didn’t think he was corrupt. He’s a brownnoser, yeah, so maybe he told the wrong person the wrong thing. I don’t know.”

“You’ve been a prisoner all this time?” she asked, looking him over with a critical eye. “Take off your coat.”

He looked down at the heavy wool coat he was still wearing, a frown carving lines in his cheeks. “I wasn’t a prisoner the whole time,” he said gruffly as he unbuttoned the coat and shrugged it off. Beneath, he still wore a couple of layers of clothes—a long-sleeved shirt beneath a thick sweater—but while he looked leaner than she remembered, he definitely didn’t look as if he’d been starved for nearly a year.

“Then why didn’t you go to the FBI once you were free?”

“I just told you that the last time I told anyone with the FBI what I was doing, I ended up a prisoner of the Blue Ridge Infantry.” He pushed the sleeves of his shirt and sweater up to his elbows, revealing what they’d hidden until now—white ligature scars around both wrists.

Olivia swallowed a gasp. It was stupid to react so sharply to the scars—in the pantheon of injuries she’d seen inflicted in this ongoing war between the Blue Ridge Infantry and the good guys, the marks on Landry’s wrists barely registered.

It was what they represented—the loss of freedom, the indignity of captivity—that made her heart pound with sudden dread.