The Legend of Smuggler's Cave (18 page)

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“Logan was kidnapped,” she answered, phrasing it so she didn’t give away whether or not he was still missing. Just in case she was wrong and he had already heard the news.

“I know. I’m so sorry.” He looked so sincere, she thought, her stomach cramping with dismay. “I asked if I could be in on the hunt for him, but they said at the station they were trying to go low profile on it. Is there anything new on it?”

She wasn’t sure if he didn’t know or if he knew and was trying to trap her. Her weary mind couldn’t figure out his meaning, so she just got to the point of her visit.

“Can I come in?” she repeated.

He hesitated, and the last of her doubts disappeared, leaving only disillusionment coiling like a snake in her chest. If Hunter Bragg weren’t hidden somewhere in the cabin, her partner would have let her in without a thought.

“My brother’s here, and he’s a light sleeper,” Thurman said. “Maybe I could meet you in a few minutes at Ledbetter’s for some coffee and an early breakfast?” He glanced back toward the darkness behind him.

It gave her the distraction she needed.

She whipped the Glock from her holster. By the time he turned back around to face her, the pistol was pointed straight at his chest.

The shock on his face was real, she realized. “Good God, Blackwood, what are you doing?”

“Is there anyone in your cabin besides your prisoner?” she asked.

He feigned confusion. “Prisoner? What the hell are you talking about? Put down the gun, Blackwood. Have you lost your mind?”

She felt more than heard Nix coming up the porch steps behind her. “It’s over, Gowdy. You made a mistake when you took that picture of Hunter Bragg. You forgot to move the bearskin off the wall behind him.”

Thurman’s expression shifted to dismay. Slowly, he raised his hands and twined them behind the back of his head. “I want a lawyer.”

“Is there anyone in the cabin besides Bragg?” she asked.

Gowdy just stared at her, silent.

Nix led two deputies from the county sheriff’s department’s SWAT team into the cabin. Briar kept her weapon trained on Gowdy, lowering it only when Delilah Brand and another Ridge County deputy took him into custody. “Good work, Briar,” Delilah said, sparing her a brief sympathetic smile.

She lowered her gun, trying to squelch the urge to sit in the nearby porch rocker and cry like a baby.

“He’s here,” Nix’s voice called from the back of the cabin. “He’s safe.”

More deputies moved past her into the house. She didn’t follow, instead trudging slowly down the porch steps and out toward the tree line at the edge of the yard. Sunrise was still at least a couple of hours away, but a faint lightening in the eastern sky over the mountains eased enough of the darkness for her to make out the shapes of trees and bushes in the mist-draped woods.

Suddenly, someone glided out of the gloom to stand in front of her. Dalton Hale, her mind registered with numb surprise. She blinked her eyes a couple of times, expecting the sight to disappear like the fatigue-induced fantasy it must surely be.

But he didn’t disappear. He moved closer through the gray predawn light, his gaze locked with hers. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She wanted to tell him she was fine. But she couldn’t push the words past her aching throat.

His eyes softening, he opened his arms and waited.

She didn’t mean to run, but she must have, for one second he was a couple of yards away and the next she was pressed tightly against his body, wrapped up in a fierce, comforting embrace.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I would never have suspected Thurman Gowdy of being part of this mess.”

She rubbed her face against his shirt. “It makes me wonder who to trust.” She leaned back her head to look at him. “I heard about Janet.”

“I suppose I should feel a little betrayed by what she did. I guess you must be angry at her.”

She was, she had to admit. At first. But the more the image of Hunter Bragg’s battered face had dug its claws into her thoughts, the less she could blame Janet Trainor for making the only choice she could bear to make. “I don’t think I could have made a different choice in her position,” she said.

He nodded toward the cabin, where Nix and the sheriff’s deputies were leading Hunter Bragg from the cabin. The man was hunched and shivering beneath a thick quilt, but he was limping along under his own power, Briar saw with relief. She looked back at Dalton, who was still watching the scene through narrowed eyes. “They’ll call it in to the station if they haven’t already. Someone will let Janet know her brother is okay.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to her. She kidnapped your son and turned him over to a criminal. I don’t think we can just make the charges against her go away.” He dragged his gaze back to hers, his grim look softening as he added, “I called Laney a few minutes ago to check on Logan. She said he’s fine. Still asleep on the sofa in Doyle’s office. She says Doyle’s taking his sentry job very seriously.”

She smiled, latching on to the one unadulterated bit of good news in her life at the moment. “I heard before I left that the county prosecutor was thrilled with getting his hands on that flash drive.”

“He definitely was.” Dalton smiled back at her, though there was a hint of reticence in his expression, as if there was something he wasn’t looking forward to telling her.

Her own smile faded, and her stomach began to knot again, nearly as badly as it had before, while she was waiting for her partner to answer the cabin door and crush her last stubborn bit of hope that she was wrong about him. “What’s wrong?”

He looked surprised by the question. “Nothing’s wrong.”

She wasn’t convinced. “Did Bevill say something to worry you?”

His surprise faded into resignation. “No, it’s not my boss I’m worried about.”

“He’s still going to back you as his replacement, isn’t he?” she asked. She couldn’t imagine the county prosecutor holding all that had happened to Dalton in the past few weeks against him. He was still the same smart, passionate prosecutor he’d been before the truth about his family came out. And he’d certainly proved his courage and determination during the past few tumultuous days while protecting her and Logan. “If he’s giving you trouble, I can talk to him. I can tell him how amazing you’ve been—”

He smiled, though the worry in his eyes didn’t quite disappear. “He’s thinking about running again.”

She looked at him in dismay. “He can’t do that!”

“He can,” Dalton assured her. “In fact, I encouraged him to do so.”

“Are you crazy? Do you know how hard it’ll be to beat a popular incumbent?”

“I’m dropping out of the race.”

Now she knew he was crazy. “Why? You can’t think people are going to hold what your father and grandfather did against you! People are smart enough to know you’re blameless—”

“I never wanted to be a politician,” he told her, curving his hands over her shoulders. His thumbs brushed lightly over her collarbone through her thin cotton T-shirt, making her shiver. “I just want to help people get a little justice in this world. I’m not cut out for politics.”

She wanted to tell him he was cut out for anything he wanted, but she could see by the relief in his eyes that he’d already figured out what he wanted, and it didn’t include running for office.

But did it include her?

She screwed up her courage and opened her mouth to breach the topic. But before she could speak, he lifted one hand to her cheek, his touch gentle and questing. “What I want,” he murmured in a voice that made her blood spontaneously ignite, “is you. You and Logan. I want to go to my office and do what I can to help people, then come home to you and the little man and do what I can to make you feel happy and secure.” A hint of doubt flickered in his eyes. “Do you think that’s possible? I know the past few days have been nothing but crazy, but there’s something between us, Briar. I feel it so strongly—it’s like you’re in my blood and there’s nothing I could ever do to get you out. And I don’t want to. I don’t want to ever lose the feeling that you’re part of me. That we’re supposed to be like this. Am I crazy?”

Tears burned her eyes, but she wouldn’t let them fall. She wanted to be clear-eyed and levelheaded. She wanted to talk about the problems and the struggles they’d have if they wanted to blend their lives together long-term.

But when she opened her mouth, what came out was not what she’d intended. “Yes,” she said, unable to tamp down a bubble of joy that burst into a smile. “Yes, you’re crazy. And apparently I’m crazy, too.”

He began to laugh, the sound just short of hysterical. His hand flexed convulsively against her face before wrapping around the back of her neck and pulling her into a hard, stake-claiming kiss.

Several breathless moments later, he drew back to catch his breath, his green eyes glittering with almost feral excitement. “I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you,” he warned. “And I don’t fall in love. So if you don’t intend for this thing between us to be a long-term thing, better say so now.”

Relief and a curious sort of triumph burned through her. She smiled up at him, her confidence soaring. “How long is long-term?”

He shrugged, his gaze mirroring her own growing boldness. His lips curved with satisfaction and just a hint of cocky masculinity. “I don’t know. I was thinking this might lead to...forever? Think you can handle that?”

“I’m a mountain girl,” she said, rising on tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck. “I can handle anything.”

* * * * *

Look for award-winning author Paula Graves’s
brand-new miniseries,
THE GATES,
later in 2014. You’ll find it wherever
Harlequin Intrigue books are sold!

Keep reading for an excerpt from THE BRIDGE by Carol Ericson.

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Chapter One

He wanted to kill her.

“Elise.”

The whispered name floated along the fog, mingled with it, surrounded her.

Her eyes ached with the effort of trying to peer through the milky white wisps that blanketed the San Francisco Bay shoreline, but if she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her.

And she planned to keep it that way.

A foghorn bellowed in the night, and she took advantage of the sound to make another move toward the waves lapping against the rocky shore. If she had to, she’d wriggle right into the frigid waters of the bay.

She flattened herself against the sand, and the grains stuck to her lip gloss. It now seemed ages ago when she’d leaned over the brightly lit vanity at the club applying it.

“Elise, come out, come out wherever you are.”

His voice caused a new layer of goose bumps to form over the ones she already had from the cold, damp air. Her fingers curled around the scrubby plant to her right as if she could yank it out of the sand and use it as a weapon.

If he caught her, she wouldn’t allow him to drag her back to his car. She’d fight and die here if she had to.

The water splashed and her tormenter cursed. He must’ve stepped into the bay. And he didn’t like it.

She drove her chin into the sand to prop up her head and peered into the wall of fog. The lights on the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge winked at her. The occasional humming of a car crossing the bridge joined with the lapping of the water as the only sounds she could hear over the drumbeat of her heart.

And his voice when he chose to speak, a harsh whisper, all traces of the refined English accent he’d affected outside the club gone.

What a fool she’d been to trust him.

Another footfall, too close for comfort. She held her breath. If he tripped over her, she’d have to run, find another place to hide in plain sight. Or at least it would be plain sight if the fog lifted.

The damp cover made her feel as if they were the only two people in this hazy world where you couldn’t see your hand two inches in front of your face.

Who would break first? The fog? Her? Or the maniac trying to kill her? Because she knew he wanted to kill her. She could hear the promise in his voice.

“Elise?”

She wanted to scream at him to stop using her name in those familiar tones—as if they were old friends. Instead of predator and prey.

She didn’t scream. She pressed her lips together, and the sand worked its way into her mouth. She ground it between her teeth, anger shoving the fear aside for a moment.

If this guy thought she’d give up, he’d picked the wrong target. The Durans of Montana were nobody’s victims.

A breeze skittered across the bay, and debris tickled her face. White strands of fog swirled past her, and for the first time since she’d hurled herself from the trunk of her captor’s car, she could see the shapes of scrubby plants emerge from the mist.

She swallowed a sob. When she’d least expected or wanted it, the cursed San Francisco fog was rolling out to sea.

A low chuckle seemed to come at her from all directions. He knew it, too.

Time to make a move.

Elise pinned her arms to her sides and propelled herself into a roll. Once she had the momentum, the rest was easy as she hit a slight decline to the water.

Arm. Back. Arm. Chest. Around and around she rolled. She squeezed her eyes shut and scooped in a breath of air. Her preparations didn’t make the impact any easier.

When she hit the icy bay, she gasped, pulling in a breath and a mouthful of salty water with it. She choked it out and ducked her head beneath the small waves.

The bay accepted her in a chilly embrace, and she clawed her way along the rocky floor. Fearing the swift current, she didn’t want to swim away from the shoreline, but the water might just be enough to hide her from the lunatic trying to kill her.

She popped up her head and dragged in another breath. The wind whipped around her, blowing her wet hair against her cheeks.

The fog dissipated even more, and she could make out the form of a man loping back and forth, swinging something at the ground.

She took a deep breath and went under again. The current tugged at her dress, inviting her into the bay. She resisted, scrabbling against the rocks. The current snatched her shoes anyway.

She scraped her knees on the bay floor and lifted her face to the surface, taking a sip of air. The figure on land seemed farther away. Would he be able to see her head in the water? Would he come after her?

She submerged her head again and managed a breaststroke and a scissor kick to propel herself farther from the man combing the shore.

She’d have to get out of the water soon or she’d die from hypothermia. As if to drive this truth home, her teeth began to chatter and she lost the tips of her fingers to numbness.

Once more she poked her head up from the water. The steel buttress of the bridge was visible in front of her. Maybe she could clamber on top of it to escape the cold fingers of the bay.

She twisted her head around. The man had disappeared from view. A seagull shrieked above, cutting through the rumbling of a car engine.

Elise whipped her head around. An orange service truck trundled along the road fronting the shore, its amber light on the roof revolving.

Elise screamed for the first time since her ordeal began. She clambered from the water, her dress clinging to her legs. She bunched the skirt of the dress around her waist and waded from the bay.

“Help! Stop!”

The occupants of the truck couldn’t have heard her, but the truck pulled to the side of the road anyway. A door swung open.

Her frozen limbs buckled beneath her, but she willed them to support her. She rose to her feet and screamed again, waving her arms above her head. “Help! I’m in the water!”

The white oval of a face turned toward her.

Elise pumped her legs, hoping they were obeying her command to run. She tried to scream again, but her jaw locked as a shower of chills cascaded through her body.

The man in the orange jumpsuit started jogging toward her, and another orange jumpsuit joined him.

Her bare feet slogged through the sand and she kept tripping over the bushes dotting the shore, but she continued to move forward.

By the time she and the service workers met, her body was shivering convulsively.

“Oh, my God, Brock. I think we’ve got a jumper.”

She shook her head back and forth.
Really? Would a jumper be able to swim to shore and run toward help?

Brock joined his buddy, shrugging out of his orange jacket. “I already called 9-1-1. It’s gonna be okay, lady.”

He wrapped his jacket around her, and she began to sink to the ground. He caught her under the arms. “Stay with us. The ambulance should be here soon.”

“How did you do it? How did you survive the jump?”

She licked the salt from her lips and worked her jaw. “I didn’t jump from the bridge.”

Brock tugged the coat around her tighter. “Then what the hell were you doing out there?”

As sirens wailed in the distance, she blew out a breath and closed her eyes. “Escaping a killer.”

* * *

H
ER
TOES
TINGLED
and she took another sip of the hot tea. When the ambulance got her to the emergency room, the nurses had stripped off her soggy dress and wrapped her in warm blankets. They’d tucked her into this bed and piled an electric blanket on top of her as well as wedged some heat packs under her arms and behind her neck.

When she could sit up, they’d brought her a cup of tea. Now Elise inhaled the lemon-scented steam from the cup and tried to relax her limbs.

Someone yanked back the curtain that separated her bed from the other beds in the emergency room. A doctor approached her with a small tablet computer clutched under his arm.

He clicked his tongue. “It’s clear you’re not a jumper since you don’t have any injuries that would indicate you’d just hit the water at seventy-five miles per hour from a height of two hundred and twenty feet.”

Elise slurped the hot tea and rolled it on her tongue before swallowing. “I told Brock and the other city worker I didn’t jump. Didn’t they believe me?”

“The first report was of a jumper, but the EMT said you were attacked.”

She wrapped her hands around the cup as her ordeal knocked her over the head all over again. “I went into the water to avoid him.”

“Boyfriend? Husband?”

Elise’s jaw dropped. Everyone sure liked making assumptions. “A killer. A stranger. He abducted me from the street. I escaped.”

The doctor nodded as if this was his second guess all along. “Based on the EMT’s report of his conversation with you, the police are on their way.”

“Here?”

“They want to question you immediately. Once you’re warmed up, you’re free to go.” He tapped the tablet screen. “The nurse indicated you have a bump on the back of your head, too.”

“He hit me, maybe with the cast he had on his arm.”

“Says here you’re not showing any signs of concussion and the skin on your scalp didn’t break. How’s the head feeling?”

“My head is the least of my worries right now.”

The doctor snapped the computer shut. “You’re lucky. A few more minutes in that water and you’d be dead. It was a crazy thing to do.”

“A few more minutes with that maniac and I’d be dead. I figured the water gave me a better chance.”

The doctor lifted his shoulders in his white coat and stepped beyond the curtain to practice his feeble bedside manner on another emergency-room patient.

Beneath her warm blankets, Elise shivered at the memory of the man stalking her. Would the police be able to find him based on her description? And how accurate was that description? The man she’d helped outside the club had spoken to her with an English accent. That accent had disappeared when he’d been searching for her on the sand. How much of his appearance was phony, too? The beard? The mustache?

“Knock, knock. Ms. Duran?”

A male voice called from outside the curtain.

“That’s me.”

The man brushed aside the curtain and pulled it closed behind him. “I’m Detective Brody. How are you feeling, Ms. Duran?”

“Elise. You can call me Elise. I feel...warm.” And it wasn’t because a fine specimen of manhood had just emerged from curtain number three. At least she didn’t think it was.

“That’s good after what you’ve been through.” He pointed to the plastic chair by the wall. “May I?”

“Sure. Of course.” It beat craning her neck to look up at all six feet something of him.

“They’re keeping you warm enough?” He tipped his chin at the space heater glowing in the corner.

She nodded, although she wondered if she’d ever feel warm again.

Detective Brody dragged the chair to her bed and slipped out of his suit jacket. He hung it over the back of the chair, smoothing the expensive-looking material. Hunching forward, he withdrew a notepad and pen from the pocket of his crisp white shirt.

“The EMT reported that you were out in the bay trying to escape from someone. Tell me what happened from the beginning, Elise.”

His dark eyes zeroed in on her face, making her feel as if she were the only woman in the world. She shook her head. He was a policeman and she was a victim—she
was
the only woman in the world for him right now.

She took a deep breath. “I was coming out of a club on Geary Street at two in the morning—the Speakeasy. Do you know it?”

“Private club, right? Stays open past two.”

“My friend got invitations from a member.”

“Was your friend with you at—” he glanced at his notepad “—one-fifty?”

“I was alone. I left her inside the club.”

“Had you been drinking?”

His tone got sharper and the muscles in his handsome face got tighter. She was glad she wouldn’t have to disappoint him.

“One drink’s my limit, and I’d had that at around eleven o’clock when we first got there.”

His spiky dark lashes dropped over his eyes briefly, and Elise knew she’d just passed some test.

“How were you getting home?”

“Taxi. There’s no parking in that neighborhood. I had the bartender call me a taxi, and I went outside to wait for it.”

“What happened next?”

Goose bumps rippled across her arms, and she pulled the blanket up to her chin. “I saw a man standing beside a car. The trunk of the car was open.”

“Did he see you? Speak to you right away?”

“I’m sure he saw me, although we didn’t make eye contact. He must’ve seen me come out of the club, but by the time I looked at him he was bending over the open trunk.”

“What kind of car? Make? Model?”

Was he serious? “I’m not sure. It was a small, dark car, old.”

“Then what? Did he talk to you?”

Elise licked her lips, and she could still taste the salt from the bay. “He seemed to be struggling with something. Then he poked his head around the open trunk and asked me if I could give him a hand.”

“Did you?”

“I guess I shouldn’t have.” She knotted her fingers, studying his face for signs he thought she was an idiot. She didn’t see any.

“I walked toward him, and that’s when I noticed his arm.”

Detective Brody’s dark brows shot up. “His arm?”

“It was in a cast.”

The pen dropped from the detective’s fingers and rolled under the bed. He ducked to retrieve it. When he straightened in his chair, his handsome face was flushed.

He cleared his throat. “The man’s arm was in a cast?”

“A full cast almost up to his shoulder, like he had a broken arm. When he asked me for help, I...I didn’t think anything of it. I wasn’t suspicious, and he looked...”

“He looked what? What did he look like?”

She shrugged and the blanket slipped from one bare shoulder. “Normal. He looked normal—blond hair, kind of on the long side, jeans. Normal.”

“We’ll get to the rest of the description in a minute. So, what did you help him with?”

“A box.” She folded her arms across her stomach, where knots were forming and tightening. “There was a box on the ground that he was trying to get into his trunk.”