Special Agent's Perfect Cover

He laughed shortly as he shook his head. The sound had no humor in it. “Funny, and I figured you had enough sense to leave here,” he replied, his tone sounding edgier than he’d meant it to.

Carly shrugged, momentarily looking away. But the children were all playing nicely. No squabbles that needed refereeing on her part. She had no excuse to leave.

She tried to tell herself that Hawk’s words didn’t sting, but it was a lie. Even after all this time, his opinion still meant a great deal to her. It probably always would.

“Something came up,” she said by way of an excuse—and, again, she was being truthful. Something had come up to keep her here. Her sister’s marriage bombshell.

Hawk’s eyes skimmed over the dress she wore. He tried to do his best not to imagine the slender, firm body beneath the fabric or to remember that one night that she had been his. He hadn’t realized then that he was merely on borrowed time.

“Yeah,” he said curtly. “I can see that.”

She sincerely doubted that he hated the dress she had on as much as she did, but wearing it was necessary. It was all part of convincing that hideous megalomaniac that she was as brainwashed as everyone else who had joined his so-called “flock.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Carly prodded gently, her curiosity mounting. “Why are you back in Cold Plains?”

He minced no words. The days when he had wanted to shield her were gone. “I’m trying to find out who killed five young women and left their bodies to rot in five different, remote locations in Wyoming.”

She looked at him sharply. Had he struck a chord? Did she actually know something about these women who had been cut down so ruthlessly? But then the look vanished, and her expression became completely unreadable. He swore inwardly.

The next moment, a strange smile curved her lips. “So you did it,” she concluded, nodding her head with approval.

Hawk narrowed his eyes in annoyed confusion. “Did what?”

He’d told her that he wanted to do something adventurous, something that mattered. He wanted to leave the world a better place than when he found it. It was why she’d made him leave. Someone like that couldn’t be happy in a town the size of a shoe box.

“You became a law enforcement agent. A U.S. Marshal?” she asked, guessing which branch he had ultimately joined. It had to be something along those lines in order to give him the authority and jurisdiction to investigate a crime like the one he had just mentioned.

Hawk shook his head. Then because she was obviously waiting for a clarification, he said, “I’m with the FBI.”

“Even more impressive.”

Working for the FBI wasn’t impressive as far as he was concerned. It was a job, something that allowed him to move about, to keep from being tempted to put down roots in any one place for long. And it allowed him to keep the rest of the world at bay. For that, he had her to thank. After she had broken his heart, telling him that she had never loved him, he’d decided that he would never subject himself to that kind of pain again. The only way to do that was not to allow anyone in. Not to form any attachments.

Ever.

So what was he doing, standing here, feeling as if he’d just walked through a portal and gone back in time again? What the hell was he doing feeling again? It seemed that no matter what his resolve, all it took to undo everything he’d built up in the last decade or so was to be in Carly’s presence again for a few minutes.

It just didn’t seem right, but there it was, anyway.

“It’s a job,” he told her, shrugging off her compliment.

She heard the indifference, the callousness, even if he wasn’t aware of expressing them. A wave of concern came over her. Maybe she shouldn’t have turned him away. Not if it had turned out all wrong.

“Then you’re disappointed?” she asked.

The thought that he was disillusioned sliced away at her heart. She had made what to her was the ultimate sacrifice, sending Hawk away so that he could follow his dream. If his dream had turned out not to be what he really wanted, then all these lost years had been for nothing.

“Yes,” he answered coldly as his eyes skimmed over her again.

He wasn’t talking about his job, she realized. Hawk was talking about how he felt about her. More than anything in the world, she would have loved to have set him straight, to tell him what she was really still doing here, but if she did that, she would wind up instantly throwing away everything she’d done up until now. It would mean sacrificing all the work she’d put into making Samuel believe that she was one of the faithful. One of the “devotees” he took such relish in collecting and adding to his number.

“Why are you dressed like that?” Hawk demanded, frowning. He looked around as he asked the question, adding, “Why are all the women out here dressed like that?”

“Not all,” Carly pointed out, doing her best not to let her relief over that little fact show through. “There are still holdouts.”

Thank God, she added silently.

“‘Holdouts,’“ he echoed her words. “As in, not having found the ‘right path’?”

She widened the forced smile on her lips, hating this charade that circumstances had forced her to play. “I see you do understand.”

He felt contempt. Had she always been this weak and he hadn’t noticed, blinded by the so-called sacrifices she’d made to keep her father’s farm running?

“Not by a long shot,” he answered, disgusted. Again, he looked around. From all indications, they were standing in the center of town. And yet, it was all wrong, conflicting with his memories. The town he had left behind had been a rough-and-tumble place, a place where people existed without the promise of a future. A place where grizzled, weathered men came in to wash the taste of stagnation and failure from their parched throats at the local bar.

The bar was conspicuously missing as were other establishments that he remembered having once occupied the streets of Cold Plains.

“Where’s the hardware store?” he asked. There was a health club—a damn health club of all things!—standing where he could have sworn the hardware store had once been.

Since when did the people who lived here have time to idle away, lifting weights and sitting in saunas? Health clubs were for the pampered with time on their hands. Nobody he knew in Cold Plains was like that. They had livings to scratch out from an unforgiving earth.

Or, at least, nobody had been like that when he’d left all those years ago.

Obviously things had changed.

“The owner had to relocate to Bryson,” she told him, mentioning the name of a neighboring town. “He couldn’t afford the rent here anymore.” She saw confusion in Hawk’s sharp eyes as he cocked his head. It took everything she had not to raise her hand and run her fingers along his cheek, the way she used to when he would look at her like that.

With effort, she blocked the memory. “New people came in and started buying up the land—investing in Cold Plains,” she explained, quoting the official story that had been given out about the changes. Changes, everyone had been told over and over, that were all “for the better.”

“And the diner?” Hawk asked, nodding toward a place down the block. The diner was clearly gone, replaced by another, far more modern-looking restaurant with a pretentious name. “Exactly what the hell is a ‘Vegetarian Café’?”

“Just what the name suggests it is,” she replied, then added, “They serve much healthier food than the diner ever did.”

The name indicated that no meat was served on the premises. From where he stood, that just didn’t compute. “This is cattle country,” Hawk protested. “Men like their steaks, their meat, not some funny-looking, wilted green things.” As he spoke, it struck him that the people who continued to walk by him all seemed to have the same eerie, neat and tidy and completely-devoid-of-any-character appearance as the new buildings did. “Speaking of which, where the hell are all the men?” he asked.

She knew what he meant, but of necessity, she pretended to be confused by his question. “They’re all around you,” she answered, indicating the ones who were out with their families or just briskly walking from one destination to another.

“No, they’re not,” he bit off. He’d grown up here, had lived among them. The men who had lived in Cold Plains when he was a teenager spent their days wrestling with the elements, fighting the land as they struggled to make a living, to provide for their families and themselves. The men he saw now looked too soft for that. Too fake. “These guys look like they’re all about to audition for a remake of The Stepford Wives.’’

“Lower your voice,” Carly said, using a more forceful tone than he’d heard coming from her up until now. That was the Carly he remembered, he thought.

But it bothered him that she was looking around, appearing concerned. As if she was afraid that someone would overhear them.

What the hell had happened to Cold Plains?

To her?

“Or what?” he challenged. “Whatever great power turned all these guys into drones will strike me dead for blaspheming?” he demanded angrily. “Who did all this?” he asked. “Who made everyone so damn fake?” But before Carly had a chance to answer him, Hawk shot another question at her. “You can’t tell me that you actually like living this way, like some mindless preprogrammed robot.”

Though his tone was angry, he was all but pleading with her to contradict his initial impression, to let him know somehow that she was here looking like some 1950s housewife against her will. That she didn’t want to be like this.

Carly forced herself to spout the party line. “Samuel Grayson has generously done a great deal for this town,” she began, the words all but burning a hole through her tongue.

“Grayson?” Hawk repeated. She was talking about Micah’s twin brother. The smooth talker of the pair. He remembered thinking that the man could have easily been a snake oil salesman in the Old West. Last he’d heard, Grayson had hit the trail, spouting nonsense. They called that being a “motivational speaker” these days. Still a snake oil salesman in his book. “Samuel Grayson did all this?”

She nodded, forcing herself to look both enthusiastic and respectful at the mere mention of the man’s name. “He and the investors he brought with him,” she told him.

She hated the look of disbelief and disappointment she saw in Hawk’s eyes, but she knew she couldn’t risk telling him the way she actually felt. Couldn’t tell him that she knew Grayson, charming though he might seem at first, was guilty of brainwashing the more gullible, the more desperate of the town’s citizens. These were people who had tried to eke out a living for so long that when they had been given comforts for the very first time in their lives, they’d willingly fallen under the man’s spell. They had given their allegiance to Grayson gladly, never realizing that they were also trading in their souls. Samuel Grayson accepted nothing less than complete submission. He fed on the power he had over the growing population of the so-called, little utopian world he had created.

So the rumors and his first impression were right, Hawk thought grimly. This was what Micah had vaguely alluded to when he’d asked to meet with him. Samuel Grayson had established a cult out here, preying on the vulnerable, the desperate, the easily swayed. He’d used all that against them to establish a beachhead for his particular brand of lunatic fringe.

“And where is Samuel Grayson right now?” he asked.

Again, the words all but scalded Carly’s tongue, but she had no choice. She’d seen one of Samuel’s henchmen come around the back of the school yard. The man didn’t even bother pretending that he wasn’t watching her. It was enough to make a person deeply paranoid.

“Samuel is wherever he is needed the most,” she replied.

Without fully realizing what he was doing, Hawk took hold of her shoulders, fighting the very strong urge to shake her, return her to the clearheaded, intelligent woman he’d once known—or at least believed he’d once known.

Exasperation filled his veins as he cried, “Oh God, Carly, you can’t possibly really believe what you just spouted.”

Carly forced herself to raise her chin the way she always used to when she was bracing for a fight. “Of course I believe what I just said. And I’m not ‘spouting,’ I’m repeating the truth.”

Hawk rolled his eyes, battling disgust.

“There a problem here?” someone asked directly behind him.

The low, gravelly voice belonged to the town’s chief of police, one Bo Fargo. It was a job title that Fargo had apparently bestowed upon himself. The title elevated him from the lowly position of sheriff, a job he had just narrowly been elected to in the first place. But he did Grayson’s bidding and, as such, was assured of a job for life, no matter what.

Carly’s eyes widened.

“No, no problem,” she declared quickly, hoping to avert this from turning into something ugly, given half a chance. She knew how Fargo operated. The stocky man didn’t believe in just throwing his weight around but in using his fists and the butt of his gun to do his “convincing,” as well. She didn’t want to see Hawk hurt. “I’m just telling Hawk here about all the changes that have been introduced to Cold Plains—thanks to Samuel—since he left here.”

The name obviously struck a chord. Fargo squinted as he peered up into Hawk’s face.

In his fifties, the tall, husky man was accustomed to having both men and women alike cowering before him whenever he scowled. He enjoyed watching the spineless citizens being intimidated by him. He went so far as to relish it.

“Hawk?” Fargo echoed as he stared at the outsider through watery blue eyes.

“Hawk Bledsoe,” Carly prompted by way of a reminder. “You remember Hawk, don’t you, Chief?” she prodded, watching the man’s round face for some sign of recognition.

“Tall, skinny kid,” Fargo said, deliberately taking a derogatory tone.

Hawk gave no indication that he was about to back away. “I filled out some.”

There was another moment of silence, as if Fargo was debating which way to play this. Hawk was not easily intimidated, and Fargo clearly didn’t want to get into a contest where he might wind up being the loser. So for now, he laughed and patted his own gut.

“Haven’t we all?” he asked rhetorically. “So what brings you back, Bledsoe? You thinking of resettling here in Cold Plains now that it’s finally got something to offer?” he asked.

Hawk’s eyes never left Fargo’s. “No, I’m here to investigate the murders of five of your town’s female citizens.”

To back up his statement, Hawk took out his wallet and held up his ID for the chief to see.

If he didn’t know better, Hawk thought, he would have sworn that Fargo turned pale beneath his deeply tanned face.

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