A Secret In Conard County

Lance laughed quietly. “The parts I’ve seen anyway.”

She tried to smile as she squirmed a bit, seeking that elusive position that would be more comfortable.

“Maybe,” he suggested quietly, “you could trust me just a bit and take a little pain medicine. Not enough to make you loopy, but maybe enough to give you some ease.”

She answered with the bald truth. “I’m afraid of it. When I was in the hospital they kept me pretty well doped. If I need a brain, I don’t want it stuffed with cotton and rainbows.”

He nodded understanding. “But maybe you could let us be your brains for a few hours. I doubt the guy could be here already. You can’t get much farther from anywhere than here. You could give yourself a few hours to rest some more. You need rest as much as activity, you know.”

“Speaking from experience?” she asked dubiously.

“Four gunshot wounds of experience,” he answered flatly.

She felt small. He’d already alluded to a bad confrontation and hinted that he’d been wounded, too. She had just assumed...well, what had she assumed? That nobody had ever really walked in her shoes? No, she definitely was nowhere near par. “Sorry.”

“For what? I get your worries. I also understand that part of what we’re trying to do here is take some of this off your shoulders. Gage understood why you didn’t like the idea of a safe house. I understand how much you must resent needing all this recovery time. Of course, I didn’t have to wonder if I was being stalked by a killer either.”

She met his amazing blue-green eyes just as the lattes dropped in front of them. A pulse of pure, hot desire hit her core—probably the only place that didn’t hurt, and he was making it ache.

“You look at them menus yet?” Mavis demanded.

“Still trying to decide between breakfast and lunch,” Lance answered, giving her a friendly smile. “Hey, Mavis, you’re not that busy right now. You can spare the booth.”

“Yeah, right,” the woman grumped, but she moved on.

Lance turned back to Erin. “We’d better hurry or she’ll order for us.”

“Would she?” An honest laugh trickled out of Erin and she relaxed internally as she reached for the menu.

“She would,” Lance answered. “Years ago, when the former sheriff was trying to lose some weight, it turned into an epic battle. He liked to come over here for coffee. Well, Maude was always slamming a piece of pie down in front of him. Got to be quite a thing.”

“Did the old sheriff lose the weight?”

“Twenty pounds. But I think he must have been cutting out stuff elsewhere.”

“He didn’t have to eat it.”

“He did if he wanted to keep coming in here. Never insult Maude’s pie.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She was also really starting to like this place. In a very short time, Lance had made her feel like she was an insider, not an outsider, an unusual way for her to feel. Generally speaking, Feds were about as well-loved as a fungus infection, even among law enforcement.

She finally settled on an omelet and some toast. Heavy food didn’t sit well on her stomach. Maybe it never would again. She brushed the thought aside and sipped her latte. Time to be friendly. It seemed the least she could do. “I appreciate all you and your department are doing for me.”

“No, you don’t,” he said, but his eyes twinkled a bit. “You hate it.”

When had she become an open book? But she knew. She hadn’t been concealing her thoughts and feelings too well since the incident. It seemed to require more energy than she wanted to invest. “Okay, I wish it wasn’t necessary.”

“That’ll do.” He smiled at her over his own coffee. “How much can you tell me about what happened? I got a little from what the sheriff said, but I don’t imagine they told him a whole lot either. I don’t have to tell you it would help to know what we’re up against.”

“A raving madman,” she answered. Moving carefully, she leaned back against the stiff but padded cushion, felt scars twinge.

“Professional assessment?” he asked.

“No,” she admitted. “Purely personal. You get any training at Quantico?”

“Some,” he acknowledged.

“Then you’ve had a look into the minds of people who do this kind of thing. We’d like to think they’re insane. They’re usually not.”

“No, they aren’t.” He waited, regarding her steadily. She sorted through her head, trying to decide what he really needed to know, and how much she could safely share. The Bureau liked to play close to the vest, revealing nothing until a case went to trial or a grand jury. But then, cops couldn’t freely discuss any open investigation. He was right, though. They needed to know something about this guy.

She sighed. “Without getting into details...”

“I know. Just what you think you can.”

“Okay. Serial bomber. Not a man who just likes to see things go boom. He likes to kill women. Individual women.”

Lance drew an audible breath. “Okay,” he said after a moment.

She hesitated, then plunged in. “This is not for distribution. We can’t find a link between his victims except for gender and approximate age. All his bombs are different. So for a while we weren’t sure we didn’t have some copycatting going on. Then I found...a piece of evidence that linked all the bombs. We knew we were after one guy.”

“So you’ve got this guy who has it in for women.”

“Apparently. Little did we guess I’d be his next target.”

Lance swore quietly. “But why? Any ideas? I mean...” He paused. “I guess if you can’t profile his victims, you can’t know why he picked you.”

“Yes, we can. Because his victims were all much younger than me. Early twenties. I’m outside the box. Then I got a phone call. I can’t say much about it, but at that point we were pretty sure he’d somehow learned I was on the task force working the case, and that I’d found an important piece of evidence.”

He gave a low whistle, a frown settling over his face. He didn’t even give Mavis a halfhearted smile when she slammed the food down between them. “That should never have gotten out,” he said when they were alone again.

“No.” She looked down at her plate, appetite nearly gone, reminding herself that eating was as important as breathing. She forced herself to pick up a fork. “Long story short. Before we’d even begun to really work the angle, I was at home alone that night, uneasy as all get-out, thinking about just going back to the office, when I heard something outside. Just a little sound, but I was jumpy. I went out, walked around to the side of my house and there he was. I lowered my gun because I saw a cop.”

“Oh, hell,” he murmured.

“He turned when I called out and shot me. I fell. The house blew up. And here we are.”

She stared at her plate, at the fork in her hand, and tried to shove the shadows of memory away. For a long time Lance didn’t make a sound. Absorbing what she had told him, she guessed. Purely out of willpower, she cut off a piece of omelet and put it in her mouth. It might have been sawdust.

“I’m surprised you didn’t shoot me,” he said finally.

“Well, my hand was on my sidearm,” she reminded him.

“True.”

She cut some more egg. “I didn’t get a look at his face. It was dark, and frankly I don’t remember anything except the muzzle flash as he fired at me. The irony is that I survived the bomb because I was lying flat on my face in the grass beside a tree and bleeding out when it went off. Bet he didn’t expect that.”

He finally cut into his own pancakes. “I’m surprised they didn’t put it out that you were dead.”

At that she lifted her head. “How did he know who I was, where I lived and how to reach me? Until we figure that out, no cover story would work, because someone on the inside might have loose lips.”

“You’re right, that’s what Gage said your ASAC is worried about.”

She went back to eating and to compartmentalizing what had happened to her. These were memories she kept safely locked away, memories that bubbled up usually only in her nightmares. She was having plenty of them these days.

“A safe house wouldn’t work either, if you’ve got a leak,” he remarked.

“That’s why they didn’t argue very hard when I said I wanted to hit the road,” she agreed. She began to eat a little faster, trying to put a distasteful chore behind her. At some level she realized she was eating a great omelet, but most of her didn’t want to eat at all. Just get it done. Like everything else. One foot in front of the other until she could take the guy on again. Or until someone else caught him. At this point she didn’t much care who took him down.

“You know,” she said slowly, “before this happened there was an ugly part of me that wanted to be the one who nailed this guy. Me personally. Now I don’t care who gets him as long as he’s caught.”

“You’re competitive, right?”

She looked up. “Yes.”

“And it must be harder for a woman in the Bureau than a man. Oh, I know all about equal opportunity, but then there’s reality.”

“Maybe,” she said cautiously.

“Of course you wanted to be the one to bring him down. That’s not ugly unless it hinders your performance. Just human nature.”

She already liked this guy, but she realized she could start to really like him. “Who made you so wise?”

He laughed, the sound instantly lightening the mood. It rolled out of him easily. “Street smarts,” he finally said.

Her curiosity about him was growing fast. “So what’s your story?” she asked.

“My wounding, you mean? I didn’t duck fast enough.”

In spite of everything, she felt her lips starting to curl into a smile. “That simple?”

“Especially when you’re facing an AR-15 on full auto, yes.”

Shock rippled through her. “Full auto? It’s a wonder you weren’t cut in half.”

“You can thank body armor and the economy for that.”

That surprised a small laugh out of her. “The economy?”

“Guy was unemployed. He couldn’t afford armor-piercing bullets. Still, he got me four times, arms and legs.”

She nodded and scooped up more egg. “You’ve recovered well.”

“It was years ago. I’ve had longer than you. Take it easy on yourself, Erin. We’re here, we’re not half-bad even by the Bureau’s standards and we’ll look after you. Just work on healing. When the time comes, we’ll need you in the best shape possible.”

When the time comes. She thought about that as she finished her breakfast. He seemed awfully sure that they were going to face the guy here. Well, she’d said they might as well have the showdown in this small town. But he also seemed to think they might have time.

But time enough for her to get her strength back? The Fates should be so kind.

Chapter 3

“You can’t stay at the motel,” he told her as they walked back to his car.

She had to agree with that. If she was at risk, then a lot of other people would be at risk. “Where, then?”

“I was going to suggest you stay with my aunt Maria, but much as she’d love the company, no way am I exposing her to you.”

She liked his honesty and answered with her own. “I seem to be deadly.”

“Exactly. So... My place.”

“Your place?”

“I’ve got plenty of room, and it’s away from other houses, so if this guy gets a wild hair to bomb it, nobody else will get hurt. It’ll also give us some nice clear sight lines.”

She could appreciate the sight lines but had other concerns. She kept them to herself until she had climbed slowly back into his vehicle.

“Well?” he asked as he turned over the ignition.

“Your house would be at risk.”

“I know. It’s insured.”

“Not against criminal acts, I bet. Most policies have an exception for that.”

“Not mine. I’m a cop and I can read. Look, Erin, you can’t hit the road. Frankly, you’re in poor condition to protect yourself, and like the sheriff pointed out earlier, whichever way you go, it’d be easy to follow you. Not a whole lot else between here and there, is all. You don’t want to be crossing the mountains by yourself in your condition. Do I need to keep on?”

She knew she was tired of running. She’d as much as said so in the sheriff’s office. Besides, she was beginning to wonder why she should have to be the one hiding or running. It made her blood boil just thinking about it. Trying to keep one step ahead of a criminal hardly suited her nature.

But she didn’t want to cost Lance Conroe a whole lot. Like his house. Like his life. It seemed so wrong.

“Can I get a flight out of here?”

“Only two commercial flights a week—a puddle jumper in and out of Denver on Friday and Sunday night,” he answered. “There used to be a daily flight while they were building the resort, but that’s all on hold. We have some folks who own small light planes, and one guy runs an executive jet service out of here, which is usually more out of here than here, if you get me. I think he’s in Mexico right now. Anyway, none of those little twin-engine jobs could get you safely across the mountains and I’m not sure their owners would even want to try. They’re ranchers, Erin, not pilots, if you get my drift.”

She got it. Definitely this was a kill box. She might persuade the Bureau to send a flight for her, if she begged hard enough, but she might as well put another neon sign on her back.

“I’ve been stupid,” she said finally.

“Why?”

“I should have just elected the safe house or caught a plane to the coast, rather than thinking I could drive myself there. And I surely shouldn’t have told Fran exactly where I was. Of course she’d tell my boss.”

“I kinda think that’s my fault. I must have lit up the boards when I checked your ID.”

It was true. Apparently her field office knew her whereabouts and was concerned about how many might know. Maybe Fran hadn’t passed it along. If anyone understood Erin’s position it was Fran.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly.

“I do. If you’re not afraid of me, I’ve got enough room to tuck you into. Let’s go back to the motel and get your car and other things. If you decide you want to take off, I won’t stop you.”

She gave in. What else could she do? Reviewing the decisions that had led her to this small town, she had an uneasy feeling that she wasn’t thinking with as clear a head as she might imagine, even without taking the pain meds. She was better than this.

With that gloomy thought, she let Lance take over.

* * *

Lance made it easy for her, and she was past arguing. She put the remaining few items in her cases and didn’t object when he took them out to her vehicle. She walked slowly to the motel office, and paid the bill in cash, but by the time she was hobbling back to her car, she was limping noticeably.

A burst of frustration and rage socked her. She was used to being able to do a lot more than walk, and now even walking could defeat her.

But, she reminded herself, she was walking. She might be limping but she’d walked a goodly distance this morning, to and from the diner, and now the length of the motel and back. She was getting her strength back. A week ago she’d have been ready to collapse.

Lifting her chin, she limped the rest of the way to her car. Lance was sitting in his vehicle nearby, engine thrumming, waiting patiently. She was so glad he hadn’t attempted to go pay the bill himself. Carrying her cases was one thing; pampering her to the extreme would be another.

He smiled and touched a finger to the brim of his hat as she reached the vehicles. She hated to think what she must have looked like, attempting to bend herself into her vehicle so cautiously. But she did it, and felt pretty good when she leaned forward, stuck the key in the ignition and started it up. The tow truck had left her nose-out, which meant she didn’t have to twist a whole lot to back out.

She pulled up beside Lance’s car. “Which way?”

“Toward the mountains,” he said, pointing. “I got me a little piece of heaven just a few miles down the road.”

A piece of heaven, and she might draw a bomber his way. Oh, great. For an instant she felt a wild urge to just leave town, but then reality slammed her hard. Her decision-making hadn’t been the best, obviously, nowhere near the top of her form. And the sheriff had been blunt about traveling through the mountains and about being followed. How could she trust her own thinking right now?

They traveled west on the state highway for a little over a mile, then turned onto a county road that needed some fresh paving. It was crumbling around the edges, but at least dozens of potholes had been filled in. And the mountains seemed to loom larger in her windshield.

She wished she had a map. It seemed this county was tucked into a wide mountain valley. Well, more than a valley. The eastern mountains were far enough away to make this feel like a plain. But the western ones loomed close, purple dashed with green in the midday light. Probably farther away than they looked, she decided. She had no perspective for judging that, but when she considered how long she’d driven while watching them slowly grow bigger in front of her, she imagined she was still far from reaching them.

But she was in the foothills for sure. The land here rolled, the road snaked around some curves, an occasional narrow bridge crossed a tumbling stream.

Another turn took them onto gravel and a small house appeared as if it had been dropped in the middle of nowhere. Some trees dotted the brushy, grassy landscape, and little else until woods appeared like a distant ring of tall sentinels.

Lance pulled a wide circle in front of the house and she followed suit, stopping behind him. When he climbed out, she turned off her ignition and sat waiting as he approached, moving only to roll her power window down.

He squatted by the car. “Home sweet home. Future plans not yet accomplished, but right now it’s just what we need. We’re not as far from town as it may seem but you don’t have to worry about anyone getting caught in any cross fire.”

“Thank you,” she said, really meaning it. “I’ll certainly be harder to find out here.”

“Counting on it. But not entirely. The other guys should stop by this evening so you can meet them and know who they are. Then the waiting game begins.”

He opened her door, and she twisted gingerly on the seat, finally putting her feet on the ground and pausing a minute. “You won’t count too much on not being found?”

“Of course not. Everyone can be found if they have an address. What we’re hoping is that this might stall him a while if he shows up. Nobody knows you’re staying with me except the sheriff and the other guys who’ll be watching over you, okay? Your ASAC was clear about not revealing your whereabouts.”

As the inevitable pain eased, she pushed out and stood. “So I’m in a safe house anyway.”

“Kinda,” he admitted. “But not exactly. I called in your ID, you told your friend about me. If this guy is halfway smart and actually comes here, sooner or later it’s going to occur to him where you might be.”

She couldn’t deny that. “We have to be ready.” Always plan for any eventuality. That had been drilled into her. The most remote possibility sometimes happened.

“We’ll be as ready as we can.”

She turned a little, looking from the snug little house to him. “Lance? Are you sure you want to take this risk?”

His blue-green eyes met hers steadily. “Isn’t this what we do, Agent?”

Hesitantly she nodded, acknowledging the truth of it.

“One cop to another, I’d do this. But oddly...” He rubbed his chin, staring past her over the prairie to the mountains. “Oddly enough, I’m developing a real need to catch this SOB. So buckle your seat belt, Erin. You’re not alone in this.”

“I never was,” she argued.

“Until you left home. But now you’re with people who have just one ax to grind. Catching this guy.”

What an odd way to phrase it, she thought. Ax to grind? Did he think someone at her field office had it in for her? That revealing her identity hadn’t just been a slipup?

But as he carried her bags inside, leaving it to her to decide when she’d follow, she ran through everyone she knew back home, and couldn’t think of a single one who might want to put her in harm’s way.

That didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone, just that she couldn’t imagine who.

Sighing, gathering herself, she headed for the porch. Two steps. She laid her hand on the rail and was relieved that she could climb without clinging to it. Getting better indeed.

* * *

Lance watched her ease into the house after he put her bags atop the dresser in his spare room. He felt an urge to wince for her, her caution and slowness giving away her discomfort even if she managed to avoid letting a grimace reach her face. He knew what a bullet could do, but clearly she had been injured by the bomb that destroyed her house, tree or no tree. Falling debris, maybe? The blast wave? He had no idea what kind of injuries she had survived and didn’t know how to ask. Seeing her move was a painful experience unto itself.

He watched her step through the door straight into his small living room, and glance around. Hardly something out of an interior design magazine, but comfortable and marked by long years. A battered chintz-covered couch, a wooden rocker with pillows, a braided rug.

“Have a seat if you want,” he suggested, “or explore. Single story, so your bedroom is in the back on the left. Kitchen is through there,” he said, pointing. “And you get your own bathroom.”

She glanced at him. “In a house this size?”

He flashed a smile. “I shared this house with my mother until she died. Two bathrooms were essential. Coffee? I can’t make you a latte, I’m afraid.”

“Coffee would be great. I need to stay awake.”

She needed more than that, he thought, and was relieved to see her at last settle into a padded rocker. It was almost like watching someone who was just learning how to use a body. “How about a pain pill to go with it?”

“You a pusher?” she asked, and he was relieved to hear the teasing note in her voice.

“Hey, if there’s any time it would be safe to stuff your brain with cotton, the next few hours are probably it.”

She just shook her head. “I’ll get some ibuprofen in a minute.”

Well, he could provide that as well as the coffee. In his kitchen—a comfortable room because his mother had made it so over the years—he started the drip coffeemaker and got a glass of water and the bottle of ibuprofen. He carried both back to her immediately, and she accepted them with thanks.

“I’m gonna step outside for a few minutes. Give me your keys and I’ll put your car in the garage. I’ll be back by the time the coffee’s ready.”

She simply nodded as she tipped two pills into her hand.

He walked out the front door and stood without moving for a while, feeling a bit like an old goat. Not that he was all that old, but that woman was raising his flagpole, as it were. He felt guilty as sin for even having such feelings when she was so clearly in recovery, but she appealed to him on the most basic level. He’d have bet the homestead that she wouldn’t like that either.

Regardless, he needed a few minutes to clear his head and get back on the real purpose of her being here. They had work to do, and no time for dalliances, even presuming she’d tolerate it.

The air held the musty, dusty, not-quite-green scent of midsummer. The world still hadn’t completely dried out from winter and spring, but it was on the way. They badly needed some rain, but he knew better than to wish for it. At this time of year, ponds were starting to dry up and only the toughest, hardiest of plants could make it. In a few weeks, dang near everything would be brown. That the mountains were still somehow managing to dump water into the creeks was amazing, but most of them wouldn’t be running for long.

But thinking about rain wasn’t helping him either. He stepped off the porch, sank into her small car and put it in his aging detached garage. Then he walked around the outside of his house, trying to make a professional judgment about what needed doing to keep Erin as safe as possible. The guys coming tonight would probably have more ideas than he, because they had more experience at this kind of thing.