Undercover in Copper Lake

As light as a feather, she laid her palm against his jaw.

“I do worry about you, Sean. I worry that you don’t see the good in yourself. I worry that you take on far too much responsibility for someone who says he doesn’t want any at all. I worry that you mistake safe choices for good ones.”

Safe choices. Yeah, that was what he’d been making all these years, and where had it gotten him? He couldn’t help but think that taking a few risks couldn’t have landed him in any more trouble than he was already in and might have been a hell of a lot more fun, too.

But he didn’t want to think about any of that. Time was limited, and he had a beautiful, sexy woman waiting to be kissed in a way he hadn’t kissed a woman in a long time. She smelled of tequila, Mexican food and something delicate and expensive, and her shoulders were slender beneath his hands as he leaned closer.

Undercover in Copper Lake

Marilyn Pappano

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARILYN PAPPANO has spent most of her life growing into the person she was meant to be, but isn’t there yet. She’s been blessed by family—her husband, their son, his lovely wife and a grandson who is almost certainly the most beautiful and talented baby in the world—and friends, along with a writing career that’s made her one of the luckiest people around. Her passions, besides those already listed, include the pack of wild dogs who make their home in her house, fighting the good fight against the weeds that make up her yard, killing the creepy-crawlies that slither out of those weeds and, of course, anything having to do with books.

For the kids in my life, some grown, some still working on it, who gave life to Daisy and Dahlia: Brandon, Lauren, Kate and Kevin Kadon, Cameron, Gavin and Declan

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Extract

Copyright

Chapter 1

A stiff breeze blew in off the harbor, carrying with it the smells of salt and fish and pollution, along with a chilly hint of fall on its way. Sean Holigan stood in the shadows of two buildings, face to the water, and toyed with the cigarette he held. Though he hadn’t had a smoke in six and a half months, the temptation to light it was there, the desire no less than it had been 195 days before.

But the flare of the lighter, the glowing end of the cigarette and the acrid blue-gray smoke would be like a neon sign pointing straight at him. Not the best idea, since the last place anyone expected him to be at 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday was on the docks. If his boss or their buddies found him there, it was a sure bet he would pay the price for it. He just didn’t know how big a price that would be.

Maybe, probably, death.

Fog swirled around the two massive warehouses that shielded him and turned the cargo containers stacked between them and the water into islands of dull metal. The damp seeped into his jacket and misted across his skin. It darkened the thin paper of the cigarette wrapper and increased the stiffness in the middle three fingers of his left hand. Ever since he’d gotten them caught between an engine and a car frame three years ago, those fingers had developed an aversion to cold and damp.

He’d been waiting more than ten minutes without bothering to check his watch when he sensed rather than heard someone approaching. Like him, Alexandra Baker was always early to these meetings. Unlike him, she completed a thorough check of the area before appearing before him, tonight from around a corner, like a magician’s illusion.

She wore dark clothing, dark shoes, a dark hood covering her white-blond hair and casting her pale face in darkness. She could stand absolutely still on a night like this and blend completely into the background. The way she moved and walked and talked was unnaturally quiet, still. Illusion was a good description of her. Since she’d first approached him three months ago, she seemed about as real as a dream.

A bad dream.

“Why do you tempt yourself?” she asked, her voice quiet but not soft, her question personal but lacking curiosity.

He glanced at the cigarette, shrugged and slid it into his jacket pocket. “Why do you get me up in the middle of the night?”

“Because I know Kolinski’s tucked safely in bed.”

Craig Kolinski. His boss. His best bud for thirteen years. The man responsible for Sean’s relatively comfortable life. The man he was betraying every time he spoke to Baker.

“He’s going to ask you to look into something for him tomorrow,” she went on. “It’ll mean going out of town for a while. You’ll agree.”

Sean didn’t ask how she knew Craig’s plans. He figured his boss had more bugs than a Volkswagen plant, thanks to the Drug Enforcement Administration: his house, his cars, his office above the garage, probably even the garage bays themselves. Sean hoped whoever listened to all those hours of tapes got a headache from the constant whine of pneumatic tools.

“Where out of town?”

If it were anyone else, he would have said Baker hesitated, but since she was the calm, collected ice queen, he would call it a pause instead. “Georgia.”

A chill passed through him that had nothing to do with the temperature. He’d grown up in Georgia and had left the first chance he’d gotten, swearing he would never return. Nothing, not the family he’d left there, not even the father who’d died there eight years ago, had lured him back.

“Where in Georgia?”

Ice queen or not, this time she flat-out hesitated. She and the DEA knew damn near everything about him, including where he was from, why he’d left and why he’d go hundreds of miles out of his way to avoid the place. They knew Georgia wasn’t an acceptable answer. They’d already demanded too much from him and he’d given it, but this...

“Copper Lake,” she said with the first hint of emotion he’d ever heard from her, as if her frozen little heart knew what a huge request—order—this was. But it was just a hint. Emotion didn’t rule Alexandra Baker. She didn’t sympathize, never felt regret, never let feelings get in the way. She was committed 100 percent to her job, and by God, she would do what she had to do.

Which meant everyone around her would do what they had to do.

“No.” He never thought of the place if he could avoid it, never considered it home. Home was a place where a person belonged, where he fit in, where people wanted him around. Copper Lake was a nightmare that had taken eighteen years to escape.

Baker didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t have much of a choice in ratting out Craig.” There were limits to what he could overlook, and his boss had stomped all over them. “But I’m not doing this. I’m not going back to Copper Lake.”

“Kolinski will ask you to go, and you will. You don’t have a choice this time, either.”

The calm disinterest in her voice, as if the idea that she wouldn’t get her way had never occurred to her, got under his skin. He shoved his hand through his hair, dislodging water. “The hell I don’t. I’ve told you everything I know about Craig’s business and his personal life. But there’s no freaking way in hell that I’m going to—”

“It’s about Maggie.”

That sucked the air from his lungs. He hadn’t heard his little sister’s name in more years than he wanted to count. He tried not to think about her, either, in a situation worse all those years ago than his own. She’d cried when he left and begged him to take her with him, and, bastard that he was, he’d promised to send for her just as soon as he got settled.

Did it make any difference that part of him had wanted to take her with him and give her a better life? That he hadn’t known he would land in prison, just like every Holigan man before him?

No, no difference. Because from the time he was twelve years old, he’d intended to leave everything behind, including Maggie. He’d wanted a life with no responsibilities but himself. He’d wanted to escape the curse of his family, and how could he have done that dragging his baby sister along?

“What about Maggie?” His voice was rough, harsh, in the night air.

“Did you know she’s involved romantically with one of Kolinski’s people?” She didn’t pause long enough for him to answer. She already knew the answer. “She lived with the guy before his most recent arrest. They trust him to keep his mouth shut about the business. They don’t trust her. You know what happens to people they don’t trust.”

He’d seen it for himself once. Imagining his sister in that position, terrified, on her knees, begging for her life... Bile rose in his throat, and for one moment he thought he was going to puke right there in front of Baker. Nothing like showing weakness to someone who was as cold-blooded and single-minded as Craig was.

“He’ll call you into the garage today and tell you to go to Copper Lake. To keep an eye on Maggie. To determine whether she can hurt him. He’ll use your information to figure out the best way to deal with her.”

“Am I supposed to believe you’ll use it to keep her safe?”

Baker nodded, the action practically lost in the folds of the oversize hood.

How the hell had Maggie caught the attention of one of Craig’s dealers in the first place? And why in hell had that dealer been in Copper Lake long enough to even meet her?

Leverage, maybe. Sean had been loud in his opposition to Craig’s first expansion of the business, to the point that he’d almost walked away from the garage he’d worked his ass off to help save from bankruptcy. Craig had made a few concessions, keeping what he laughingly called his parts supply service separate from the garage and keeping the next expansion to himself.

And maybe sending someone to Copper Lake to find something to hold over Sean if it became necessary.

He shook his head slowly. “I won’t do it.” But even as he heard his own words, he recognized them for the lie they were. Maggie was the only person in the world who could make him return to the town he’d run away from.

“We’ll be in touch with you once you get there.” More sure of him than he was of himself, Baker tugged the hood forward another inch, then melted into the darkness. He didn’t hear her footsteps as she retreated, couldn’t even sense her presence. She stepped around the corner and was gone.

He let his head fall back until it connected with the warehouse wall with a solid thunk. How the hell had he come to this? Was this the payoff for betraying a friend? For abandoning his family as if they’d never existed?

He snorted derisively. Craig was a friend, yeah—one who’d made a fortune in stolen vehicles and drugs. What felt like a betrayal to Sean was really just the regular action any normal person would take. If Craig had dragged Maggie into this to control Sean, that was a betrayal.

Sweet damnation, all he’d wanted was a regular life: a job that didn’t make him want to shoot himself; enough money to pay his bills and have a little fun on the side; a place to live that wasn’t falling down around him. He hadn’t wanted any attachments to people, places or things. Drinking buddies, not friends. Hookups, not girlfriends. No obligations, no emotional connections, no having to think of anyone besides himself.

And he’d had that for a lot of years. Until three months ago, when he’d stopped by the garage late one night to pick up the cell phone he’d left behind and walked in on Craig shooting a man in the back of the head.

Everything had gone to hell after that.

Tomorrow he was going to another kind of hell, better known as Copper Lake. He would hate every damn second of it, but he would go and do whatever was necessary to protect Maggie. He’d let her down once before.

He wouldn’t do it again.

* * *

For Sophy Marchand’s entire life, Sunday morning had meant church, and though she’d missed the past two Sundays, she vowed that stopped today. She stood in the guest room of her second-floor apartment, one hand on her hip, watching the two little girls snuggling together in one of the twin-size beds, eyes closed, lips parted, looking angelic in sleep.

Except they weren’t asleep, and God bless them, there was absolutely nothing angelic about them.

“Dahlia, Daisy, this is the last warning. Get up now, or we’ll be late to church.”

One of them—Dahlia, she thought—made a sound that was more snort than snore, but neither moved. No lashes fluttering, no eyes shifting beneath their lids, no twitch of their mouths.

You are the most incompetent foster mother in the history of the world, Sophy chastised herself, but that didn’t stop her from lifting her free hand, fingers wrapped around vivid yellow plastic, and squirting both girls in the face with cool water. It was a trick her grandmother had used when trying to rouse five recalcitrant boys to do their chores, and it proved effective.

Daisy, the younger, slighter child, shrieked and dived under the covers, while Dahlia, older by a year, sprang upright and fixed a mutinous glower on Sophy. She refused to swipe the fine mist from her face but instead folded her thin arms over her chest. “You could’ve just woke us up.”

“I woke you up. Three times.” Sophie set the spray bottle on the table just outside the bedroom door, then went to the closet. “You’ve got just enough time to brush your teeth, comb your hair and get dressed. Hustle, now.”

Dahlia grumbled as she pushed back the blanket, exposing Daisy to the sunlight that filtered through the sheer curtains at the windows. Her black hair in a tangle, Daisy scrubbed her fists over her eyes. “What about breakfast? I’m hungry.”

“You could have had breakfast if you’d gotten up the first three times I was in here. Now there’s no time.” Of course, there were protein bars waiting on the counter beside Sophy’s purse. She would never send them off without something to eat, though they didn’t know that yet. Before they’d come to stay with her nearly three weeks ago, their previous experience hadn’t included anything like consistency, stability or being a priority for anyone, not even their mother.

The thought sent an all-too-personal pang through Sophy. She knew how it felt to have a father who didn’t want you and a mother who couldn’t take care of you, and she wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

She pulled a hanger holding a pastel dress from each side of the closet. Daisy’s was white with her favorite cartoon characters, while Dahlia’s was simple, a pale green shift with a forest-green ribbon that served as a belt and a three-quarter-sleeved sweater in the same shade.

Daisy’s natural response on seeing her dress was a smile of pleasure, but after an elbow poke from Dahlia, she wiped it away and scrunched her face into a frown that matched her sister’s. “We have to wear that?” Dahlia asked.

“Yes, you do.” Sophy hung each dress on hooks on the closet door, then gestured toward the bathroom. “Teeth, hair, dress. Go.”

As they stomped across the hall and into the bathroom, her phone rang from the kitchen counter. Her heels made soft taps on the aged wood floor as she strode to the phone, picking it up on the fourth ring.

“Are you skipping church again today, or did you decide to catch the later service?” her mother asked without a greeting.

“Uh, no, Mom, we’re just running a little behind.”

“How are the children doing?” Caution seeped through Rae Marchand’s voice. It underlaid everything she and Dad had said to Sophy from the moment she’d told them she was becoming a foster parent and that her first kids would be the five-and six-year-old Holigan girls.

“They’re getting ready now. They’ve never been to church before, so they’re not eager for the experience. They’ve been dragging their feet.”

I want to give back, Mom, she’d told her. Someone fostered me when I needed it, and you and Dad adopted me. I just want to pay that along.

Rae had choked up. You’ve got a good heart, and I love you for that. But Maggie Holigan’s kids? Honey, that’s like going to buy your first kitten and coming home with a Siberian tiger. Jill Montgomery told me they’re the hardest kids she’s ever had to place. No one wants them.

That was why Sophy wanted them: no one else did.

“Will you be over for dinner?”

Dinner at her parents’ house was another Sunday tradition. Her older sister, Reba, and her family always came, too—four kids who adored their aunt Sophy. Maybe they would be a good influence on Dahlia and Daisy. “I plan to, but it depends on how things go at church.” Whether the girls tried to escape, went on a rampage, maybe burned down the sanctuary. They could well be the first kids ever kicked out of Sunday school in Copper Lake and banned from returning. Even the Lord’s patience had limits.

Matching stomps sounded in the hallway—amazing how much noise two skinny little girls could create—and Sophy’s fingers tightened. “Here they come, Mom. I’ll let you know about dinner.”

As she laid the phone down, she watched Daisy and Dahlia enter the room. As far as she could see, they’d done as she’d instructed. Their teeth had been brushed, if the toothpaste stains on Daisy’s chin were to be trusted. Their hair was combed with zigzag parts and bangs wetted and pasted flat against their foreheads. Their dresses were on, though Dahlia’s belt hung untied from two slender loops and her sweater was askew. They even wore shoes—ratty sneakers Dahlia had brought with her and bright yellow flip-flops Daisy had fallen in love with when they went shopping.

The best advice Sophy had been given so far: pick her battles carefully. She wasn’t going to argue about shoes.

“Wipe your chin,” she said, handing a napkin to Daisy. “You look lovely. Let me grab my stuff and we’ll go.” She slid her cell into a pocket of her purse, handed each girl a breakfast bar and grabbed her Bible, then went to the door, undoing multiple locks, ushering them out.

“Why’re you taking a book?” Daisy asked. “You plannin’ to read while we have to go to Sunday school?”

Sophy blinked. “It’s a Bible.” Seeing no comprehension cross their faces, she explained, “This is the book we study at church.”

Still no understanding. It was hard to imagine the girls having zero exposure to something as common as the Bible. Sophy had received her first one—white leather with her name embossed in gold—her first Christmas with her new family. She still had it.

But Daisy and Dahlia were Holigans. Enough said in this town.

It was entirely possible to live life comfortably in Copper Lake without a car, though naturally Sophy had one. Her apartment was above her quilt shop less than half a block off the downtown square. Her favorite restaurants and the businesses she primarily dealt with were within a few blocks. The house where she’d grown up and the elementary school she’d attended were along the way to church. The grocery store was a nice walk away, and living alone, she didn’t have to worry about buying more than she could carry.

But she wasn’t alone anymore, she reminded herself as she took Daisy’s hand, waited for Dahlia to claim the other one, then headed across Oglethorpe with them. They might be skinny little girls, but they’d increased her shopping list by about 500 percent. Instead of frozen dinners and ice cream, she now had to buy milk, fruit, veggies, snacks, green and yellow and red foods, chicken fingers and hot dogs and hamburger fixings.

It was almost like having a family of her own.

“Why do we have to walk everywhere?” Dahlia asked, scuffing her feet along the pavement.

Sophy kept her voice measured and calm. “I like walking.”

“I do, too,” Daisy echoed. “It’s fun.”

“Daisy!”

“Sorry!”

Dahlia’s chiding and Daisy’s apology were so habitual that their voices overlapped. They were close, not only in age but also in heart. It was a good thing, since they didn’t appear to have anyone else.

“Daisy’s allowed to have an opinion of her own,” Sophy said, earning a scowl from the older sister.

“We don’t walk nowhere ’less Mama don’t have the money for gas.” Daisy hopped over a crack in the sidewalk where a tree root reached for the surface, then swiped a strand of hair from her face with the hand clutching half an oatmeal bar. “When is she comin’ home this time?”

Her chest constricting, Sophy avoided looking at either girl. They were young, but they’d experienced things no kids ever should. If she lied, they would recognize it, or at least suspect it. “I don’t know.”

Truth was, Maggie wasn’t coming home from jail this time, not unless she had something substantial to offer the district attorney in exchange for leniency. This was the third time she’d been caught making meth in the house with the girls. With a lengthy list of previous offenses, this one would surely send her to prison.

Before either girl could respond, Sophy gestured to a house fifty feet ahead of them. “Bet you didn’t know that’s where I lived when I was a little girl.”

Dahlia’s look and shrug made clear her response: Bet we don’t care. Daisy, though, stared wide-eyed. “It’s got a porch. And a swing. And grass and flowers. And it’s yellow. That’s my favorite color.”

From their time spent together in the quilt shop, Sophy had learned that Daisy’s favorite color changed on a whim. Yesterday it had been lime-green. The day before it was red stripes with purple polka dots. “I used to sit on the porch swing and pester my sister while my dad mowed the grass and my mom knitted in that rocker. We had a big ole Irish setter who stretched out across the steps, so we always had to climb over him to get in or out.”

Her smile was a little pained. Those had been happy times, doubly precious because of the heartache she’d been through leaving North Carolina and her first family behind. She still loved her birth mother, two sisters and brother, still resented the hell out of her birth father, but she would forever be grateful to her Marchand family.

“What’s an Irish setter?” Daisy asked.

“A dog.”

The girl sighed longingly. “We had a dog once. She licked my face and slept on my feet and had really stinky breath. Her name was Missy, an’ I loved her. But she had babies, and we had to move, and Mama said she couldn’t come, so we left her behind.”

For the hundredth time in a week, Sophy wondered how the Maggie she’d known in school had turned out to be such a poor excuse for a mother. Sure, her situation at home had been tough. She’d been born into the world with automatic strikes against her. But people could overcome their upbringings. Sophy’s sister, Miri, was a perfect example.

When their father abandoned them to the care of their mentally ill mother, Miri, ten years old at the time, had taken charge. When the state had terminated their mother’s rights after a failed inpatient treatment, Miri managed to stay with her, doing whatever it took to survive and keep her safe. When their mother had died, Miri had buried her, mourned her and finally, for the first time ever, begun to live her life.

Now she lived in Dallas with a job she loved and a husband she loved even more. She used her computer skills to locate men who abandoned their children and denied them support, and private investigator Dean did the rest. Just as Miri had looked out for Sophy, Chloe and Oliver when they were little, she was still looking out for kids, making their lives a little easier.