Buch lesen: «Secret Hideout»

Chapter One

The man down the hall was definitely watching her. And given how grubby she looked at the moment, Isabel Cooper didn’t think he was ogling her for the usual reasons.

Reaching for the handle of the ice machine door, she dropped her room key card on purpose, giving herself an excuse to shift position and sneak a better look at the man lurking at the end of the hall. He was lean and sandy-haired, wearing a simple black T-shirt and faded jeans. As her gaze rose toward him, he looked away. But she was certain he’d been staring.

Hair prickling on the back of her neck, she scooped ice into her bucket and headed back to her room. The carpeted hallway muffled even her own footsteps, so she couldn’t hear anyone moving up the hallway behind her.

But she could feel him.

Even though her room was straight ahead, she hooked a quick left into the elevator alcove. It was a dead end, but it gave her a chance to set herself for a fight.

She waited, her breath burning in her lungs.

But no one appeared around the corner.

The elevator dinged behind her, making her jump. The couple emerging from the elevator gave her a curious look. In the mirrored back of the open elevator, she caught a glimpse of her reflection, a wild-eyed brunette in a T-shirt and yoga pants, her feet stuck in a pair of fleece-lined house shoes and her unruly curls caught up in a lopsided ponytail.

The couple turned left, toward her own hotel room. She followed, darting a quick look down the hallway where she’d seen the loitering man. The corridor was empty.

Isabel released a puff of air. Wasn’t it time to stop looking for criminals around every corner? Six months had already passed since she’d resigned from the FBI and returned home to work for her brother.

Six months since she’d buried her partner and said her final goodbye to the man she’d worked with for years, since she was a snot-nosed green agent fresh out of Quantico.

God, she missed him.

Trudging to her hotel room, she pushed the painful thoughts of Scanlon from her mind, thinking about the man she’d seen in the hallway instead. He hadn’t looked familiar. And apparently she’d only imagined that he’d shadowed her up the hallway.

Tucking the ice bucket under one arm, she swiped the key card in the lock and let herself inside the hotel room. The door clicked shut, engaging the automatic lock. On instinct, she engaged the safety lock as well, waiting for the prickling sensation on the back of her neck to subside. But it lingered, the tingle of a thousand spider legs dancing across her skin.

She darted to the mirrored dresser, put down the ice bucket next to her overnight case and unzipped the bag, feeling inside for her Beretta 9 mm. She shouldn’t have left the room without her weapon, but there was nowhere she could hide it in her yoga pants, and she hadn’t wanted to alarm the other hotel visitors.

She ran her hands around the inside of her bag one more time, her fingers moving frantically in search of the weapon.

It wasn’t there.

Her heart lurched into higher gear, pounding against her breastbone, as she picked up the bag to see if it could have fallen out without her noticing.

As she moved, her gaze glanced across the mirror on the wall above the dresser. Her heart jolted as she saw a man in a black ski mask standing a few inches behind her, holding her Beretta in his gloved hand.

Terror sucked the breath from her lungs.

“Looking for this?” The man behind the mask spoke in a low, pronounced drawl, the unabashed rural accent of the north Alabama hills.

“You can take all my money,” she said, careful to sound neither too weak nor too strong. “Take the gun, too. I won’t give you any trouble.”

The man laughed. “Turn around.”

She obeyed, sucking in another quick breath when she realized the man was not alone. A second man, similarly masked and clad in a dark long-sleeved T-shirt and pants, stood nearby, watching her. He didn’t seem to be armed but was large enough, muscular enough, to pose a problem if she had to fight her way out of the situation.

The adrenaline coursing through her veins screamed for her to run. Catch them by surprise. But she’d engaged the safety lock—she’d never get it open in time to make her escape.

Was that the point of the man down the hall? To spook her into taking the extra precaution?

Think, Cooper. How do you get out of this?

“What do you want?” she asked, her voice strained.

“You don’t know?” The man sounded surprised.

“You don’t want money?” she asked, though it was clear her assailants weren’t here for anything as ordinary as robbery.

“Agent Cooper, you’re too smart to play games with us.”

Which answered one question, she thought. They knew who she was. Their agenda was personal, not random.

But why? She wasn’t working a case of any sort—she was here in Fort Payne, Alabama, to give a talk to some mystery writers about investigative procedure. It had been months since she’d worked any cases for the FBI, and she wasn’t even working an open case with Cooper Security at the moment.

What would bring three armed men to her hotel room?

“I don’t know what you want from me,” she said aloud.

The man holding the gun on her glanced toward the other man. Isabel took advantage of his brief inattention and grabbed the ice bucket off the dresser, swinging it at his gun hand. The Beretta went flying, smacking against the motel room wall.

She ran to the door, her fingers clawing at the safety latch. As it flipped open, hands circled her throat and gave a backward jerk. She choked as her windpipe began to close from the pressure, black spots forming in her vision.

“Do it now!” her captor growled, dragging her onto the bed. Terror eclipsed the sense of suffocation as she struggled against the hands holding her down. The pressure on her throat eased, and she sucked in a lungful of air. Her vision returned in time to see a flash of a needle descending toward her neck.

She screamed for help, fighting harder. The man who’d had her gun shoved his gloved hand against her mouth, laughing as she bit at the leather. “Scream again, and we’ll kill you now.”

The needle descended, pricking the side of her neck.

The men held her in place, laughing at her struggles, until she felt her lungs burning for air. The room began to spin and grow strangely out of proportion. On the wall, the bland painting of daffodils started to melt, the colors sliding down the wall to pool atop the dresser.

One of the men had moved away from her, she realized, wondering how that could be possible when it seemed as if a dozen pair of hands still held her down.

She felt powerless to move against the pressure keeping her immobile. Forcing her gaze upward, she found herself staring into a pair of piercing blue eyes.

Jasper Swain, she thought, giving a start when she realized the words had escaped her aching throat in a rasp.

The blue eyes widened.

Then they bled.

And she screamed.

* * *

THE CRY DIED QUICKLY, but he knew what he’d heard. It was her. And she wasn’t alone.

He flattened himself against the wall of the ice maker alcove down the hall from her room, knowing how disastrous it would be if one of the men inside caught sight of him. But he couldn’t let them take her out of here.

He’d considered calling in a tip to the police, but the men in that room were dangerous, reckless men who’d have little compunction about leaving a small-town cop bleeding out in a hotel corridor. The cops would be more likely to get in his way than help him get her to safety.

He closed his fingers around the Glock hidden in the pocket of his windbreaker, grimacing. He wasn’t the world’s best marksman himself. But unlike local law enforcement officers, at least he knew what he was up against from the start.

How in hell did they think they were going to get her out of here? Was that even the plan anymore? He’d been damned lucky to hear about what the Swains were planning in the first place, considering how close-mouthed the people of Bolen Bluff, Alabama, could be.

He’d overheard the conversation while snooping around Tolliver Feed and Seed. Hidden in the back room, he’d eavesdropped on two Swain clansmen talking cryptically about an operation the next day, something to do with a woman at a Fort Payne hotel.

And if the Swains were up to something, it was bad news.

Down the hall, a door opened, and he heard scuffling sounds. He forced himself to remain in place as footsteps thudded down the hall toward his position.

He edged toward the ice machine, tugging the bill of his baseball cap lower over his face. He didn’t have an ice bucket, but someone had helpfully left spares stacked on top of the machine, so he grabbed one of those and opened the ice machine bin. As he dug into the ice, he heard footsteps shuffling past him at a quick clip.

Once they’d passed, he took a quick look down the hall after them. He caught sight of a mass of dark curls and his heart gave a disconcerting flip.

Two men flanked her, holding her up as she sagged against them. A third man lagged behind, watching their backs. All of them wore caps low over their faces, just like his.

They were heading for the stairs.

He waited for them to enter the stairwell before he hurried after them. Cracking the door open, he listened for a second, trying to gauge how far ahead they were.

The footsteps echoed in the cavernous stairwell, making it hard to be sure where the sounds were coming from. He slipped into the stairwell and eased after them, keeping close to the wall to stay out of sight.

He had no idea how he was going to get her away from them without being seen, but if it came to a choice, he’d risk identification to save her. Whatever it took, he was going to get Isabel Cooper away from her captors.

What happened after that, however, would be anyone’s guess.

* * *

SHE WAS IN A CAVERN. A tall, twisting cavern, painted in hieroglyphics that almost seemed like words.

Almost.

The almost-words shimmered on the walls as if they were painted with glitter. Sometimes they slid down the walls and slid back up again, making her dizzy.

And still she and her captors descended. Down, down, down, into the pits of hell.

Jasper Swain’s eyes had stopped bleeding. At least, she thought they had. He’d taken off the mask, but his cap bill was so low that all she could see of his face was a deep shadow.

And she knew he wasn’t Jasper Swain, either. Swain was still in prison in St. Clair County, not due for his next parole hearing for at least five more years. Her head was playing games with her.

She remembered a needle. They’d shot her full of something. Something potent. That was why the walls were melting and she was seeing people who weren’t there.

“What do you want with me?” she asked, raising her head to look at the one she still thought of as Swain.

He didn’t answer, and his shadowy face seemed to undulate in front of her eyes. She dragged her gaze away from the mesmerizing dance and gazed upward, wondering if someone had heard her screams.

What she saw on the landing above nearly made her racing heart stop in its tracks.

She was seeing another person who wasn’t there.

Couldn’t be there.

The face was almost as familiar to her now as her own reflection in the mirror. Maybe even more familiar, considering how much she’d seemed to change over the last six months. He’d changed little at all. A little more scruffy, as if her hallucinating mind had conjured up the beard stubble she’d secretly wanted to see on his clean-shaven jaw. His hair was longer, too, no longer combed back into a neatly groomed cut that seemed to scream “federal agent.”

Oh, Scanlon, she thought, blinking back sudden tears when his ghost disappeared from sight. A fresh sense of loss overwhelmed her, oddly energizing. Rage infused her—rage at her own sense of powerlessness, at the ravening grief slowly eating her from the inside out.

He’s gone. He’s not coming back. And you’ll be gone, too, if you don’t get your head back together and figure out how to get away from these goons.

The walls around her closed in, threatening to trigger claustrophobia. Seeing what she thought was an exit door on the next stair landing, she focused hard, making out the number two. Second floor.

She knew the first-floor door opened onto a narrow corridor from which a person could either head down the hall to the front lobby or go out a side door to the parking lot. She’d gone that route earlier that morning, when a couple of the conference coordinators had taken her out for breakfast.

If they got her to the first floor, they’d be out to the parking lot before her screams could grab anyone’s attention.

She tensed her muscles and glanced upward again, hoping to see Scanlon’s ghost. But he didn’t make a reappearance. She tamped down a rush of sorrow.

Now, she thought.

She let herself sag heavily against the two men holding her upright. The sudden shift in weight caught them by surprise, giving her an opening.

Swinging as hard as she could, she jabbed her elbows into their crotches and pushed to her feet, jerking free as they reacted to the pain of her blows.

The door to the second floor was right in front of her, shimmering and undulating. She pushed through it, ignoring the ruckus behind her.

“Get her,” she heard one man say, his voice a pained croak.

She didn’t look back, racing down a writhing, spinning tunnel. There was still enough sense left in her drugged-out brain to realize she was running down the second-floor hallway of the hotel. She gave a half second’s thought to banging on the doors, looking for help, but she suspected the people inside those rooms, even if they answered her knocks, would see her swaying and drunk-eyed and slam the door in her face.

Worse, the men she heard pounding down the hall behind her might kill anyone who answered.

She found her strength flagging, and even though she had put a fair amount of space between herself and the men running behind her, she knew they must be gaining.

She had blown past the elevators, knowing she couldn’t risk waiting for one to arrive, but there was a second set of stairs at the end of the corridor that led down to the parking lot. It was on the opposite side of the hotel from where she’d parked her little green Ford Mustang, but at least she’d be outside with more room to maneuver.

She hit the door to the stairwell at a dead run, stumbling into the railing and nearly pitching headfirst down the stairs.

She heard footsteps pounding from above her, coming down a flight of stairs at a clip. Had one of them circled back, anticipating her destination?

She started running down the steps, but whatever they had injected into her neck was hitting its stride, making her head swim as if she’d just spent the last ten minutes riding a tilt-a-whirl. She stumbled a few steps above the landing and pitched forward, landing hard.

The air whooshed from her lungs, making her vision go black. As she struggled to breathe again, she heard a thudding of footsteps racing down to where she lay.

She tried to push to her feet, but she didn’t have the strength. She felt a pair of strong, warm hands drag her to her feet. She blinked, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

The ghost of Ben Scanlon stared back at her, his blue eyes soft and so beautifully familiar that tears filmed over her eyes, blurring his features.

“Scanlon,” she whispered.

“No time, sugar,” he answered in Scanlon’s voice, the cocky Texas twang she’d first hated, then grown to love.

But he was dead. She’d seen the aftermath of the explosion. Examined the autopsy report. Watched his casket lowered into a grave in the tiny town of Maribel, Texas. Held his mama’s hand as she’d cried.

She was hallucinating. One of her captors had found her and grabbed her again. That was all it could be.

But she didn’t have the strength to fight anymore. The appearance of Scanlon’s ghost seemed like a mercy, one last chance to be with her partner again before she met whatever fate her captors had planned for her.

Giving in to the fantasy, she stopped resisting and let Scanlon’s ghost lead her quickly down the stairs and out into the blinding sunlight.

He slipped a jacket over her shoulders as they reached the side of a dark green van. Dragging her around until her back met the solid wall of the panel van, he pulled the cap off his own head and shoved it onto hers.

She blinked with confusion, opening her mouth to ask what he was doing. A strange halo limned his body, an aura of brilliant blues and dazzling greens. She’d never seen anything so beautiful in her life.

His hands cradled her face, his touch crackling like electricity. His bent head blocked out the sunlight as he touched his mouth to hers.

Fire flowed from his lips into hers, poured through her veins in a flood of bright sensation, immolating her from the inside out.

She wound her arms around his neck and pressed closer until she melted into him, their bodies melding until she no longer existed outside of him. A low groan rumbled through her. She didn’t know which of them had made the sound.

The world disappeared into a brilliant pinpoint of light, pulsating with colors that throbbed and danced until they finally exploded like supernova.

The fireworks fell away, fading into a cold, black void, and it was a long time before Isabel formed a conscious thought again.