Lawman Lover

“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.

“Who treated this?” she asked. “This needs more stitches.” And antiseptic. The wound was too red, and as she touched it, too hot. He was going to develop an infection for certain.

“Doc just put in a couple quick stitches,” he said, referring to the elderly prison doctor. “He couldn’t do more without raising suspicions. It would have made no sense for him to treat a dead man.”

“He declared you dead?”

He nodded. “And zipped me into that damn plastic bag before the coroner got to the prison.”

“So the prison doctor and my brother both helped you escape Blackwoods?” she asked, careful to keep her doubts from her voice so that she wouldn’t anger him. She had no idea how dangerous this man was. Given how delusional he was, she suspected that he was very dangerous.

“Yes,” he replied, as if he actually expected her to believe him.

“It needs more stitches,” she said, examining the wound, “it’s too deep.”

“Jed had to make it look believable, so I had to lose a lot of blood,” he explained with a wince.

Just how much blood had he lost? Enough that he might be weak enough for Macy to be able to overpower him? But then she remembered how quickly he’d knocked the scalpel from her grasp. Muscles rippled in his arms and chest; he hadn’t lost that much blood.

“None of this makes any sense.” Jed would have never helped a convict escape prison. Dear sweet Doc, the prison doctor, wouldn’t have helped either. This guy—whoever he was—was definitely lying.

She gestured toward the empty body bag. “I was supposed to toe tag you,” she said. “What name would I have put on that?”

If he’d really been dead…

She would have looked at the records Dr. Bernard had sent with the body, but she couldn’t reach for the file without his probably thinking she was reaching for a weapon again.

Although he didn’t touch her now, she could still feel his hands on her wrists and her face. Her skin tingled where he had touched her and where she had touched him. She shouldn’t have taken off his bandage, but she’d wanted to see the wound.

“Prison records will show my name is Andrew ‘Ice’ Johansen,” he replied. After drawing in a deep breath, he continued, “But my real name is Rowe Cusack. I work for the DEA. I’m a drug enforcement agent.”

She bit her bottom lip to hold in a snort of derision at this claim; it was nearly as wild as his claiming that Jed had stabbed him.

As close as they were standing, he didn’t miss her reaction and surmised, “You don’t believe me. Jed warned me that you wouldn’t, that you’re too smart and too suspicious to blindly accept my story.”

“Can you prove it?” she challenged.

“I was undercover at Blackwoods Penitentiary. I couldn’t exactly bring my badge and gun.” He took in an agitated breath. “But my cover still got blown. Your brother knows who I am.”

“How?”

“The warden told him…when he ordered Jed to kill me.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You’re lying.”

“Jed said you’d say that, too.”

“Stop that!” she yelled, her patience snapping so that she could no longer humor him no matter how dangerous he was. “Stop quoting my brother to me. You don’t know him.”

“Not really,” he agreed. “But I know about him like I know about you. I know that you were about to start med school when he got arrested, and you put off school for the trial. Then, after his sentencing to Blackwoods Penitentiary, you moved up here to be close to your brother. You believe in his innocence. But you’re the only one.”

She swallowed hard, choking on her doubts about this man’s truthfulness. “I am the only one.” Her exfiancé hadn’t. Not even their parents had believed in Jed. But Macy had no doubt that her brother had been framed. “You haven’t told me anything that you couldn’t have found out from old newspaper articles.”

During Jed’s trial, the press had taken a special interest in her. Some had admired her sisterly devotion while others, including her ex-fiancé, had called her a fool for not accepting that her brother was a cold-blooded killer.

“How about this?” he challenged her. “You have a scar on the back of your head from when you fell out of Jed’s tree house when you were seven.”

She shivered, unnerved by the memory and more by the fact that this man knew it.

He continued, “There was so much blood that Jed thought for sure you were dead when he found you. But then you opened your eyes.”

Like he had when she had unzipped the body bag. Now she understood how Jed had felt when she had done that all those years ago. He’d been kneeling by her side and when she’d opened her eyes, he had actually gasped. “Oh, my God…”

“That’s not in any old newspapers,” he pointed out. “Your brother told me that so you would believe me, Macy. He and I need you to believe me.”

“You’re really a DEA agent?” she asked, struggling to accept his words.

He leaned close to her, his forehead nearly brushing hers as he dipped his head. His gaze held hers. “I’m telling the truth. About everything.”

Her world shifted, reduced to just the two of them—to his blue eyes, full of truth and something darker. Fear? Vengeance? She should have immediately recognized the emotion; she’d seen it before, in Jed’s eyes, the day he had been sentenced to life—to two life sentences—in a maximum-security prison.

“Why does my brother want—need—me to believe you?”

“So you’ll help me.”

She drew in a shaky breath. “I’ll help you,” she agreed. “But only with your wound.”

No matter what he was, she couldn’t let him lose any more blood than he must have already lost. She reached for the tray of tools again.

He didn’t stop her this time, not even when she began to add more stitches to the deep gash along his ribs. He just clenched his jaw and sucked up the pain, which had to be intense. She hadn’t put even a local anesthesia on his skin, and she suspected the wound was getting infected. But he barely grimaced. The man had an extremely high threshold for pain.

“You need to call the Blackwoods county sheriff,” she said. “Griffin York will be able to verify your story with the Drug Enforcement Agency.”

“Administration,” he automatically corrected her. Most people were probably not aware that the A actually stood for Administration and not Agency. But he would know—if he were truly a DEA agent. “Are you sure the sheriff’s not on the warden’s payroll?”

“No. I can’t be sure,” she admitted. “There are rumors that the warden made some pretty significant donations to the new sheriff’s election campaign.”

He groaned, probably not in pain but in frustration.

“You need to contact the Drug Enforcement Administration,” she pointed out. And if he were really an agent, wouldn’t he have already done that?

“I know for sure that someone with the DEA is on the warden’s payroll,” he said. “That’s why I can’t trust anyone. Nobody else can find out I’m still alive, or I’m a target.”

She shrugged, feigning indifference. Even though she didn’t know him and didn’t trust him, she didn’t want him to be killed. But helping a fugitive would land her in prison like her brother. And, unlike Jed, she wouldn’t be innocent of the charges brought against her.

She probably shouldn’t have treated this man’s injury, but she had nearly become a doctor and as such, she would have taken an oath to do no harm. In Macy’s opinion that included providing medically necessary treatment no matter the circumstances. After putting in the last stitch, she swabbed antiseptic on the wound. He sucked in a breath, and when she affixed the bandage, he covered her fingers with his.

“And if Warden James finds out I’m alive,” Rowe continued, “then Jed’s a dead man, too.”

“Wh-why?” she sputtered as her greatest fear gripped her. She tugged on her fingers, pulling them out from under his.

“Jed disobeyed the warden’s order to kill me, and instead he helped me escape.”

If Warden James had ordered Jed to kill another inmate, then her brother had become a liability to the man. Not that anyone would believe a convicted cop killer over a respected prison warden. But the warden might not be willing to take that chance. Nor would he want other prisoners believing they could get away with disobeying him.

The grinding of the descending elevator drew their attention to the open door of the morgue. “Is there another way out?” Rowe asked in an urgent whisper.

Macy shook her head. “There is no other way out of here.”

“If I’m discovered and sent back to Blackwoods, I will be killed,” he insisted, his blue eyes intense with certainty and desperation.

Damn it. She believed him and not just because of what he knew about her and her brother, but because he seemed too sincere to be lying. “And if you’re killed, so will Jed…”

A door creaked open and a male voice called out, “Macy? You still here?”

“Y-y-yes, Dr. Bernard. I’ll be out in a minute,” she said. Then she rushed toward the wall and pulled open a drawer.

Rowe’s dark gold brows drew together as he grimaced in revulsion. But he climbed inside the metal compartment. Macy threw a sheet over him. As she drew it up his bare chest, the backs of her fingers skimmed over skin and muscle. Her face heated, her blood pumping hard.

Rowe caught her wrist in his hand again. “Can I trust you?” he asked.

“If you’re telling the truth, you don’t have a choice,” she said.

But despite knowing about the scar on the back of her head, was he really telling the truth? If he were actually a DEA agent, wouldn’t he have been able to call someone to get him out of Blackwoods?

He released her wrist and drew in a deep breath as she pushed the drawer closed. But not tight.

“What are you doing?” Dr. Bernard asked.

Macy whirled toward her boss, stepping in front of the door behind which she’d hidden Rowe. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“I thought you’d be gone for the day by now.” The doctor pushed a hand through his thin, gray hair. “I thought I’d be home by now.”

“But you were called out to the prison again.” For another body. Her pulse quickened. Had someone realized Rowe wasn’t dead? And had they realized that Jed had helped him escape? “Wh-who was it…?”

“It was—it was…” His voice cracked with emotion.

God, not Jed…

Dr. Bernard’s hand shook as he pulled it over his face. “It was…Doc.” He expelled a shaky breath. “Doc was killed.”

Again she felt that quick flash of relief, which guilt and regret then chased away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know he was a friend of yours.”

“Even if he wasn’t, nobody should die like that.” The older man shuddered.

“Oh, my God—what happened?”

Dr. Bernard sighed. “I can determine cause of death even before I do a full autopsy. Someone beat him to death. What I can’t tell you is—why.”

“I’m sorry….”

His eyes glistened with a sheen of tears. “Why would someone do that to Doc?”

Maybe they had been trying to get information out of him. If they’d forced him to confess to declaring a live man dead, the coroner would probably be called out next for her brother. Her relief fled completely, leaving her tense and anxious.

“Bob’s bringing Doc’s body in, but the warden wants me to do the autopsy on that prisoner who died this morning first,” Dr. Bernard said.

Nerves lifting goose bumps on her skin, Macy stepped away from the drawer. “Wouldn’t the warden be more concerned about Doc?”

“You’d think. I know I am. I just don’t know if I can autopsy him.” Dr. Bernard shook his head, his gray eyes filling with sadness. “Too bad you hadn’t gone to medical school. I could use an extra pair of hands around here.”

“If I’d gone through medical school, you wouldn’t be able to afford me,” she teased, to lighten her boss’s mood, like she always tried to lift Jed’s spirits.

“True. And you’re still my extra hands,” Dr. Bernard said. And as a morgue assistant, she was much cheaper than a doctor. “Did you take a look at the prisoner?”

She nodded. “Cause of death is pretty obvious. Stab wound.”

“So he’s dead?”

She fought the urge to shiver. “I don’t think he would’ve let me shut him in a drawer if he wasn’t.”

“Is that him?” He gestured toward the not-quite-shut drawer.

She shook her head. “No. That’s Mr. Mortimer. The crematorium is coming to pick him up soon.”

“That’s why you’re still here.”

“I’ll wait for Elliot.” Elliot Sutherland worked at his uncle’s crematorium/funeral home, but Elliot wasn’t coming to the morgue. She had agreed to take the body to him, so that he and his band would not have to miss a gig. “And I’ll wait for Bob to bring in Doc’s body from the prison,” she offered. “You go ahead home. The autopsies can wait till morning.”

The coroner ran his hand over his face, etching the lines even deeper. “They’re going to have to. The only cause of death I could figure out tonight would be my own. Exhaustion.”

“Go home,” she urged.

He offered her a halfhearted smile. “You’ve been a godsend, Macy. I’m not sure why you came to Blackwoods, but I’m really glad you did.”

She could only nod. She would have rather been anyplace else. But she’d had no choice; she had to be close to Jed. He had no one else. And neither did she.

SHE HAD LEFT THE DRAWER OPEN a crack, but Rowe couldn’t hear much. Her voice and the coroner’s were muted, as if drifting down to him through six feet of dirt. Despite the coldness of the temperature inside the drawer and of the stainless steel against his bare back, sweat beaded on his skin, leaving it clammy.

Rowe fought the panic, just as he’d had to fight it while zipped inside the body bag. Jedidiah Kleyn’s plan, to stab him deep enough to make it look fatal and convince the prison doctor to declare Rowe dead, had kept him alive but that damn plastic bag had nearly killed him.

Even though Doc had left it unzipped enough that he’d been able to draw some air, he’d had to force himself not to gasp. But then Macy Kleyn had unzipped him.

For a moment he’d thought she was an angel. She was so beautiful with her warm brown eyes and dark hair curling around a ponytail clip. Maybe she was an angel—a fallen one who’d brought him straight to hell when she’d shut him inside the drawer.

Although probably only minutes passed, it felt like hours. Then finally metal ground as the drawer opened and the sheet lifted from his face. He stared up—again—into those warm brown eyes. Rowe’s stomach lurched. He shouldn’t have let her shut him in the drawer where he hadn’t been able to hear what she’d said to the coroner. Had she told her boss that the prisoner was alive? Were the warden and some of his guards about to burst into the morgue and drag him back to hell?

He reached out, grabbed the side of the metal wall and pulled out the drawer all the way. Then he sat up and swung one leg over the side. The ding of the elevator doors drifted back from the hall and had his every muscle clenching. At this hour, the morgue shouldn’t be so busy. Employees wouldn’t be coming and going. And no loved ones were coming to claim his body. She must have given him up for being alive—which was the same as giving him up for dead.

Rowe had been betrayed. Again.

Chapter Three

“Jed told me I could trust you,” he said. Rowe had been a fool to believe a killer. But what choice had he had? His flimsy shiv hadn’t even fazed the muscular giant, neither had any of the trick moves he’d learned growing up on the streets of Detroit.

He grimaced, his body aching from the well-placed blows Jed had used to subdue him. And the stab wound throbbed in spite of, or maybe because of, Macy’s additional stitches.

If Rowe hadn’t trusted the man, he would have wound up dead—at Jed’s hands or another prisoner’s. But still he shook his head in self-disgust. Someone in his own office must have betrayed him. So trusting a stranger, even though he hadn’t really had any option, had been crazy.

“I should have known better than to believe a prisoner professing his innocence,” he berated himself.

“Jed is innocent, and you can trust me,” she assured him. Then she swung his leg back onto the tray and shoved him down.

“Get back in the drawer,” she whispered, as footsteps approached with the squeak of rubber wheels rolling over tile.

“I’ll be trapped in there,” he said, the panic rushing over him again.

She shoved the drawer, sending it—and him—inside the cool cabinet. He hooked his toe so it wouldn’t close all the way. But she must have been satisfied, because she scrambled into the hall. The wheels ground to a halt as she breathlessly told someone, “I got it.”

What? Him?

Through the crack the drawer was left open, he studied the morgue, determining his escape route in case she had told the coroner the truth. But she walked back in alone—pushing a gurney.

He waited a moment, making sure no one else followed her. As if she had forgotten all about him, she just stood there and stared down at the body bag on the gurney. Breathing hard, he planted his palms against the top of the drawer and propelled the tray out the door.

“You okay?”

Her face pale and eyes wide and dark, she just shook her head. “No.”

Son of a bitch…

Not her brother. Even if Jedidiah Kleyn wasn’t innocent as he claimed, he didn’t deserve to die like this just because he had helped Rowe instead of killing him.

“No…” he murmured, a knot of dread moving from his stomach to his chest. He jumped out of the drawer and walked over to the gurney. Then he reached for the zipper of the body bag and pulled it down, over the battered face of the man who had helped him.

But it wasn’t Jed. It was the other man, the one who had been scared but agreeable to aiding Rowe’s escape. Rowe stared down at the bruised and broken body of the gray-haired prison doctor.

“Son of a bitch…” he cursed low and harshly. “I did this….”

As if rousing herself from a nightmare, Macy shook her head. “You were already on your way here in a body bag when this happened.”

“But it’s my fault,” he said. “They beat him to death because of me.”

Damn it. Damn it. If only there had been another way to get out…a way that hadn’t involved an innocent man winding up dead.

“What if he told them you’re not dead?” she asked, her voice cracking with fear. “Will my brother be coming here in the next body bag?”

“Macy—”

Anger flushed her face. “How could you use him like this? You put him in danger.”

Just getting sentenced to Blackwoods had put Jedidiah Kleyn in mortal danger. More prisoners left like he had, in body bags, than on parole. That was part of the reason he’d been given his undercover assignment at the penitentiary. The other part of the reason had been the drugs that moved more freely than the bodies in and out of the prison.

“You have to help my brother,” she pleaded. “You have to get him out before he winds up dead, too.”

Rowe glanced down at Doc’s battered face. If the elderly physician had talked, it was probably already too late for him to save Kleyn. The elevator dinged again, and Rowe groaned. Was this one her brother, just as she feared?

“I don’t know who that is,” Macy murmured, horror and dread glistening in her dark eyes. “It can’t be…”

“It’s not,” he said.

“No,” she agreed, and jerked her head in a nod that had her ponytail bouncing. “The van didn’t have time to get to the prison and back again. It’s not Jed.”

Yet.

“Then it’s someone you’re not expecting.”

She cursed and bit her lip. With a ragged sigh, she reached for the instrument tray and grabbed up a scalpel. She studied him a moment, as if she had just realized that the easiest way to save her brother was to prove that he had really killed the undercover DEA agent. Rowe’s dead body would be all the proof she needed.

“I can’t help your brother if I’m dead,” Rowe pointed out.

“Get on a gurney,” she whispered.

He hesitated a moment, wondering if she intended to plunge the scalpel into his chest the minute he lay down.

“Please,” she murmured. “You have to—your life isn’t the only one at risk now.”

Hers was, too, just as Jedidiah Kleyn had worried would happen when Macy helped Rowe get out of the morgue. The only promise the prisoner had extracted in exchange for helping Rowe was that the DEA agent keep his little sister safe.

The sound of heavy footsteps echoing down the corridor compelled him to move. Whoever had come down to the morgue had not come alone. He had no more than jumped on a stretcher than Macy draped a sheet over him and pushed him into the hall. As she drew the morgue door shut behind them, the click of a lock echoed with finality. Through the sheet, he glimpsed shadows—several of them—walking toward the stretcher and Macy.

“Good evening, Warden James,” she murmured. “How can I help you?”

By turning over the only man who had ever escaped Blackwoods Penitentiary and the corrupt warden’s reign of terror?

MACY BIT HER LIP AND WISHED back her greeting. But the warden didn’t react to her recognizing him. Everyone in Blackwoods County knew who Warden James was, so he probably would have reacted more had she pretended not to know him.

She held the scalpel beneath the edge of the gurney she clutched and realized how ineffectual the weapon was as she stared up at the broad-shouldered prison warden. With his bald head and big build, the fifty-something-year-old was an intimidating man. He didn’t need the muscle he had brought with him, but four heavily muscled and armed guards stood behind him.

If they wanted to see the body under the sheet, she wouldn’t be able to stop them, even with the scalpel. Her heart pounded hard and fast with fear that she had made a horrible mistake. She would have been smarter to lock her and the prisoner inside the morgue, rather than out of it.

“Get Dr. Bernard out here,” Warden James said. The man was obviously used to everyone jumping to obey his commands.

If he had really ordered her brother to kill an undercover agent, Jed would not survive his show of disobedience.

She swallowed hard and replied, “He left for the evening.”

“Then you need to call him and get him back down here. Now,” the warden insisted, a jagged vein standing out on his forehead as he barely contained his rage.

“I don’t have the doctor’s private numbers, and I’m not sure where he is, sir,” she murmured, barely able to hear her own voice over the furious beating of her heart. Now she understood why everyone in Blackwoods County feared Warden Jefferson James whether they were confined in his prison or not.

“I’m just waiting for a funeral home pickup.” Forcing away her nerves, she gestured with a steady hand toward the gurney.

“So you have a key to the morgue?”

She shook her head. It wasn’t really a lie since she wasn’t supposed to have a key to the morgue. “No. Dr. Bernard left me in the hall here, waiting. The funeral home’s driver is late.” Her friend wasn’t actually going to show at all, but hopefully the warden wouldn’t check her story.

“Who does have a key?” James persisted.

Despite the tension quivering in her muscles, she managed a shrug. “Maybe the hospital director?”

“Can you call him down here?”