Lawman Lover

Light blue eyes stared up at her, now open when before they’d been closed.

Her lips parted on a shocked gasp. Then a scream burning in her throat, she tried to utter it, but a big palm clamped tight over her mouth. His skin was rough and warm against her lips.

The man sat up, the body bag falling off his wide shoulders to pool at his lean waist, leaving his muscled chest bare but for a light dusting of golden hair and a bloodied bandage over his ribs.

Macy twisted her neck and her wrist, trying to wrestle free of his grasp. But he held on tightly, the pressure just short of being painful. Her heart pounded out a crazy rhythm as fear coursed through her veins.

She had to break loose of him and run out the open door. With his lower body still zipped in the bag, he wouldn’t be able to chase her, and maybe the elevator would be back. Or she’d take the stairs…

“You’re safe,” he murmured, his voice a deep rumble in that heavily muscled chest as he assured her, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

About the Author

Bestselling, award-winning author LISA CHILDS writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & Boon. She lives on thirty acres in west Michigan with her husband, two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a Rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, www.lisachilds.com, or snail mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.

Lawman Lover

Lisa Childs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Kimberly Duffy, for always being there for me.

Your friendship means the world to me!

Chapter One

The cell door slid open with the quick buzz of the disabled security alarm and the clang of heavy metal. Rowe Cusack swung his legs over the side of his bunk and jumped down onto the concrete floor. Had the warden reinstated his privileges?

Rowe couldn’t understand why they’d been suspended in the first place. He hadn’t started the fight in the cafeteria even though he had ended it. But the warden had punished him anyway and ignored Rowe’s demands to use the phone.

He needed to make the call that would get him the hell out of…hell. His instincts tightened his guts into knots; he was pretty sure his cover had been blown.

But how? He had been going undercover for years before he had joined the Drug Enforcement Administration, and even as a rookie with the Detroit Police Department he had never been discovered.

“Hey, guard,” Rowe called out, disrupting the eerie quiet of predawn in the cell block. “What’s going on?”

Even if his privileges had been reinstated, they wouldn’t allow him to make a call at this hour. He hadn’t been allowed one in over a week. No visitors either, not even a letter or an email. After just a few days of no contact, his handler, in his guise as Rowe’s attorney, should have checked in on him. Or Special Agent Jackson should have had him pulled out. Leaving him in here with no backup and no real weapon for self-protection, if his cover had been blown, was like leaving him for dead.

“You got a new roommate,” a deep voice announced, and a hulking shadow darkened the cell. “Get out of here, Petey.”

Rowe’s scrawny cell mate scrambled out of the bottom bunk and flattened his back against the wall as he squeezed through the cell door opening around the giant of a man entering it.

Rowe reached for his homemade shiv, closing his fingers around the toothbrush handle. Even in the dim glow of the night security lights, he recognized the man whom he’d given a wide berth since his incarceration. His flimsy weapon wouldn’t be much protection against the burly giant.

“What the hell do you want?” he asked the monster of a man.

“Same thing you do,” the deep voice murmured. “To get the hell out of here.”

“There’s no escape route in here.” Rowe had checked for one. He’d had some tough assignments over his six years with the DEA, but getting locked up like an animal, with animals, was his worst mission yet. From between his shoulder blades, sweat trickled down his back, and panic pressed on his chest.

Damn claustrophobia…

He’d fought it since he was a kid, refusing to let it rule or limit his life. But maybe he should have used it as a reason to get out of taking this assignment.

“You’re my escape route,” Jedidiah Kleyn said, stepping closer. Light from the dim overhead bulb glinted off his bald head and his dark eyes. The eyes of a cold-blooded killer.

This was the last person Rowe would have wanted to learn his real identity. He shook his head in denial. “You got the wrong guy.”

The prisoner laughed; the sharp, loud noise sounded like a hammer pounding nails into Rowe’s casket. “That’s not what I hear.”

“What do you hear?” He wondered how the man heard anything; Rowe wasn’t the only prisoner who gave him a wide berth. Nobody wanted to mess with this man, and so as to not risk pissing him off, nobody talked to him.

“I hear that you ask a lot of questions.” Kleyn stepped even closer. Rowe was over six feet tall and muscular, but this guy was taller. Broader, like a brick wall of mean. “I hear that you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

Rowe lifted his chin, refusing to retreat. Since he’d basically raised himself, he had learned young to never back down from a fight. He damn sure couldn’t back down in here—not even if the fight killed him. “I’ve never bothered you.”

Kleyn laughed again, like a swinging hammer. “Nobody does. They all know better.”

“So do I,” Rowe admitted. “I’ve heard stuff about you, too, even before I got transferred to Blackwoods to serve out the rest of my sentence.” A few years ago Jedidiah Kleyn’s horrendous crimes had been all over the news. So even though Rowe’s cover claimed he’d been incarcerated in another state penitentiary, he still would have heard about the killer.

Kleyn expelled a weary sigh, as if it bothered him to be the topic of discussion. “Well, you shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

“No,” Rowe agreed. “I didn’t pay all that much attention to what anyone had to say about you.”

“That’s because I have nothing to do with drugs,” Kleyn said. “And that seems to be all you want to know about.”

Rowe’s gut clenched. Damn. He had been careful, as he always was. In the three weeks he’d been locked up in the maximum-security prison, he’d done more listening than talking. And he had saved his questions, only asking a few and of people who’d seemed to think nothing of them. He’d learned years ago when and who to talk to so as to not raise any suspicions, and he hadn’t had a problem before.

What the hell had gone so wrong this time? No one could have recognized him; before the Drug Enforcement Administration had sent him undercover, his handlers had checked the inmate roster to make sure Rowe had never had contact with any of them.

“Drugs have nothing to do with why I’m not that interested in the gossip about you,” he said, trying to convince the other man. “I don’t care what people say about you because I’m just not scared of you.”

A grin slashed deep grooves in Kleyn’s face. “And here you are, with more to fear from me than anyone else in this damn hellhole.”

“Why’s that?” he asked. Except for the crimes Kleyn had committed, Rowe had had no problem with him. A different inmate had attacked him in the cafeteria. The guy had been big, but Rowe had overpowered him without much effort. He worried he wouldn’t be able to handle Kleyn as easily.

“You’ve heard about me,” he said, “so you know why everybody leaves me alone.”

Rowe nodded. Unfortunately he knew. If he hadn’t had an assignment to complete, he might have sought out Kleyn, and discovered just how well he could handle a fight with the intimidating giant, in order to dole out a little physical justice for Kleyn’s crimes. “You’re a cop killer.”

“And you’re a cop.”

His cover was definitely blown.

Rowe tightened his grip on the shiv. But could he bury the flimsy weapon deep enough to stop the big guy from killing him?

His throat burned as he forced a laugh. “That’s crazy. Sure, I asked some questions. I saw what’s going on in here, and I wanted in on the action. Getting busted for dealing is the reason I’m in here, man.”

“You’re in here to investigate Blackwoods Penitentiary and find out how far the corruption goes. Just a few guards or all the way to the top.”

The short hair lifted on his nape as the prisoner relayed word for word the synopsis Rowe’s handler had given him for his current assignment.

“You really should have asked me,” Kleyn replied, “because I can definitely answer that question for you.” He lifted his beefy hand, and light glinted off the long blade of the big weapon he carried. “All the way to the top.”

Rowe stepped back but only to widen his stance and brace himself for what he suspected would be the battle of his life. For his life. “You don’t want to do this.”

“No,” the man agreed with a sigh of resignation. “But I have to. Only one of us can come out of this cell alive.”

Rowe intended to fight like hell to make sure he was the one to survive. Kleyn had already killed too many people. So, his flimsy weapon clasped tight in his hand, he lunged toward his would-be assassin.

MACY KLEYN’S FINGERS TREMBLED on the tab of the body bag. Her heart thudded slowly and heavily with dread. Could this be…? She drew in a deep breath of the cool air blowing through the vents in the morgue. Then she closed her eyes in fear of what she might see when she unzipped the bag.

“Macy, you got this?” a man called out to her from the hall. “Dr. Bernard won’t be here for another hour or so. The sheriff and the warden called him back out to the prison. So I gotta bring the van out there again.”

Why? The body, from that morning’s fatal stabbing, was here, inside the black plastic bag lying across the gurney. She shivered, and not from the cold air, as she realized the only reason the county coroner had returned to the prison.

Someone else had died.

“Just shove him inside a drawer until Dr. Bernard gets here,” Bob, the driver said, his voice growing fainter as he headed toward the elevator, which would carry him to the hospital floors above ground.

“Sure, I’ll take care of him,” she said, her words echoing off the floors and walls, which were all white tile but for the one wall of stainless steel doors. Her reflection bounced back from one of those doors—her dark hair pulled into a ponytail, leaving her face stark and pale, her dark eyes wide with fear. She had to stow the body behind one of those doors, inside a cold metal drawer.

But first she had to see if the nightmare she had been having for the past three years had come true. Had her brother—her dear, sweet, protective older brother—died in the awful, soul-sucking place that he never should have been?

Tears of frustration stung her eyes at the injustice of his conviction. He wasn’t a killer. Not Jed. Now had he been killed, just like she saw him die in the nightmares from which she always awoke screaming?

Macy had given up so much to be close to him, to keep him going while they tried to find evidence for an appeal. But the whole time she tried to prove his innocence, she heard a clock ticking inside her head. Blackwoods Penitentiary was the worst possible place her brother could have been sentenced. Prisoners were more likely to leave the facility in body bags than to be paroled. Not that her brother had any chance for parole; he had been sentenced to life without possibility of parole for each of the murders he’d been convicted of committing. Two life sentences.

Had they both just been commuted?

She drew in another deep breath, bracing herself for what she might find. Then she tightened her grip on the zipper tab and tugged it down to reveal the stabbing victim from that morning.

Blond hair fell across his forehead, thick lashes lay against sharp cheekbones, and his sculpted lips pressed tight together. It wasn’t Jed.

Macy’s breath caught then shuddered out; her relief tempered with guilt and regret. Whoever this man was—he was too young to die, probably only in his early thirties. And, not that it mattered, he was ridiculously handsome. He was also a convict, though, and unlikely to have been innocent like Jed. She hated to think of anyone else being so unjustly accused and sentenced…to death at Blackwoods.

She reached for the zipper again but as she lifted the tab, a hand closed over hers. Her breath catching in her throat, she jerked her attention back to the body. Light blue eyes stared up at her, open now where just moments before they had been closed.

Her lips parted on a shocked gasp, with a scream burning in her throat. But she couldn’t utter that scream. A big palm clamped tight over her mouth. Instead of being cold and clammy, his skin was rough and warm against her lips. This was no corpse but a living and breathing man.

He sat up, the body bag falling off his wide shoulders to settle at his lean waist, leaving his muscled chest bare but for a light dusting of golden hair and a bloodied bandage over his ribs.

Macy twisted her neck and her wrist, trying to wrestle free of his grasp. But he held on tightly, the pressure just short of being painful. Her heart pounded out a crazy rhythm as fear coursed through her veins.

She had to break loose and run out the open door. With his lower body still zipped in the bag, he wouldn’t be able to chase her, and maybe the elevator would be back. Or she would take the stairs…

She stretched, using her free hand to reach the tray of Dr. Bernard’s instruments. Her fingers fumbled over sharp, cold metal.

“You’re safe,” he murmured. His voice was a deep rumble in that heavily muscled chest as he assured her, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Macy couldn’t make the same promise. A scalpel in her grasp, she lunged toward him. The hand on her mouth slid away. Then he caught her wrist in a tight grasp and knocked the weapon to the floor. The steel instrument thudded as it struck the linoleum.

She drew in a breath then released it in a high-pitched scream—not that anyone would hear her. The morgue was in the basement of the hospital and soundproof because of the bone saw and other instruments Dr. Bernard used. But just in case Bob, the driver, had forgotten something and returned…

“Help! Help me!”

Although she struggled, the convict effortlessly manacled both her wrists in one big hand and clamped the palm of his other hand over her mouth again. His fingers cupped the edge of her jaw, his thumb reaching nearly to the nape of her neck.

“Shh…”

Holding her, he swung his legs over the gurney and kicked off the bag with a barely perceptible shudder. Although he’d lost his shirt somewhere, he wore jeans and prison-issue tan work boots. He was definitely an inmate—or he had been until his escape.

“No one’s coming,” he told her. “No one heard you scream.”

Oh, God, now this man—this escaped convict—knew that he could do whatever he wanted to her. He held her in a tight grasp that she couldn’t break despite how she struggled to free her wrists. Her weapon lay beyond her reach. She couldn’t protect herself from him and she couldn’t summon help.

Bob and Dr. Bernard would be returning. But would they come back from the prison in time to save her? This man hadn’t gone to the trouble of escaping Blackwoods so he could hang around the county morgue. And if he was desperate enough to risk a prison escape, he was capable of anything.

Even murder…

Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. She couldn’t afford to lose it…not now. If she couldn’t help herself, she wouldn’t be able to help Jed.

She would be of no use to her brother…if she were dead.

HIS HAND SHAKING WITH RAGE, Warden Jefferson James slammed the door to his private office. The force rattled the pictures on his wall, knocking his daughter’s graduation portrait askew. He couldn’t straighten it now; he couldn’t even look at Emily. Her pale blond hair and big blue eyes reminded him so much of her mother. He hadn’t been able to protect his wife from the real world. How had he thought he would be able to protect his daughter?

He turned his back on the wall of photos and stared out the window. The view of a cement wall topped with barbed wire rattled him, so he closed his eyes against it. He could leave here any time he wanted. Now. But he had to damn well keep it that way.

He dragged an untraceable cell phone out of his inside suit pocket and punched in a speed-dial number. “We have a problem.”

“We?” his partner scoffed.

“Yeah, we,” James snapped. “How the hell did you let an undercover DEA agent into Blackwoods?”

“You’re the warden,” he was needlessly reminded.

He knew, and at other times had relished, that he was the man in charge of one of the state’s biggest penitentiaries.

“I can’t turn prisoners away,” he replied, not without raising more suspicions than Blackwoods apparently already had since it had become the target of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation.

“You can’t turn them away,” his partner agreed, “but you can get rid of them. We agreed you were going to get rid of Rowe Cusack.”

James ran his hand down his face, feeling the stubble and the lines and wrinkles of age and stress. “He left here in a body bag this morning.”

A breath of surprise came over the phone. “I can’t believe it was that easy for you to get rid of him,” his partner admitted. “Cusack’s one of the DEA’s best agents.”

“I’m not sure how easy it actually was,” James admitted, bile rising in his throat along with fear and regret over what making sure Cusack was really dead had forced him to do. If only there had been another way…

“But you said he left in a body bag.”

“Yeah, I’m just not sure he was really dead.” Doc had declared him dead, but then the old physician had acted so strangely. So suspiciously…

Another breath rattled the phone, this time a gasp of fear. “You better make sure he’s dead, or you have a problem.”

“We have a problem.”

“He doesn’t know about my involvement, but he knows what’s been going on in Blackwoods.”

James glanced out the window again, at that damn cement wall and barbed-wire fence. “How—how do you know that he figured anything out?”

“Because he’s a good agent and you just tried to kill him. He knows.”

“He might be dead.” That had been the plan, but had the plan really been carried out? James had seen all the blood on the floor of Cusack’s cell, but that didn’t mean the man had died from his wound.

“You better make damn sure he’s really dead. Or…”

“Or what?”

“He won’t be the only one dying,” James’s partner threatened.

A ragged sigh slipped through James’s lips. How had everything gone so wrong? “He already isn’t.”

“You killed someone else?”

“I didn’t kill anyone.” His phone number was untraceable but he didn’t trust that his partner wasn’t recording the call. James had just learned how far he would go to cover his own ass; he suspected his partner would go just as far.

“You had someone else killed?”

He choked on the bile of his self-disgust. “I had to clean up the loose ends around here.”

“You better concentrate on the biggest loose end. Cusack.” His partner’s voice rose with panic. “Make damn sure he’s dead!”

The call disconnected, leaving Warden James with a dial tone and a pounding pulse. From the moment he had learned who the new inmate was, he’d known the DEA agent would prove dangerous. He just hadn’t realized how dangerous Rowe Cusack was.

Chapter Two

Macy closed her eyes. Maybe this was just another nightmare. It couldn’t be real. A dead body couldn’t come to life. She had imagined the whole thing.

Dreamed it.

But when she opened her eyes, the prisoner was still there, his blue gaze trained on her face. “I’m going to take my hand away,” he told her, his deep voice pitched low, “but I need you to stay calm.”

He wasn’t the only one. She needed to stay calm for herself, so she could figure out how to get the hell away from him and call authorities to apprehend him.

“Can you do that for me?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Not that you’ve been irrational,” he admitted. “In fact you’ve been quite resourceful.” His blue eyes narrowed as he studied her. Then he slid his hand down from her lips to cup her jaw, his palm warm against her skin. “You’re smart.”

She nodded again but remained silent. No one had heard her scream, so when she opened her mouth next, she needed to speak calmly and rationally and engage him in conversation without arousing his anger or distrust. She had to stall him until someone came—either Bob or Dr. Bernard.

After clearing the fear from her voice, she praised him. “You’re smart, too. Very smart.”

His lips curved into a slight grin, as if he were totally aware and amused by her tactic. “How do you know that?”

“No one has ever escaped Blackwoods before.” She hadn’t believed it possible or she might have considered using this ploy to help Jed escape.

“I didn’t do it alone.”

She glanced down at the empty body bag. “Someone else escaped with you?”

“Not with me. But he helped me.”

“How?” she asked. “Tell me every detail.” And in the time it would take him to brag about his successful plan, Dr. Bernard or Bob might return…if she were lucky.

And if she were very lucky, she might figure out a way to help her brother as well as herself. Maybe her helping apprehend an escaped convict would award Jed more privileges in prison, like more meetings with his lawyer in order to work on his appeal.

“You would like that,” the man said, his grin widening, “you’d like to stall me until someone else shows up, someone who actually might hear you scream this time.”

Was he going to give her a reason to scream? Did he intend to hurt her? Fear rushed back, choking her so that she couldn’t deny the truth he spoke.

He nodded as if agreeing to something. “You are as smart as your brother said you are, Macy Kleyn.”

Her pulse leaping at her name on his lips, she gasped. “Jed? You’ve talked to Jed?”

His handsome face twisted into a grimace, and he touched the bloodied bandage on his ribs. “Who do you think did this to me?”

She shook her head in denial, knocking his hand from her face. “Jed would not have done that to you. He would never hurt anyone.”

She didn’t care what a jury and a judge had decided; she knew her brother better than anyone else. He was not a killer.

“He had no choice,” the man said, almost as if he were defending the guy he just claimed had stabbed him. “It was the only way to get me out of Blackwoods alive.”

“By trying to kill you?” she asked.

“He didn’t really try,” he said. But besides the bandage, he had bruises on his ribs and one along his jaw. “He just made it look like he did. If your brother had really wanted me dead, I have a feeling that I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. I’m lucky he came up with an alternative plan.”

She reached for the bandage, her fingers tingling as they connected with his bare skin. She steadied her hand and tore off the gauze.

He grimaced as the stitches stuck to the dried blood, pulling loose. And a curse slipped through his clenched teeth.