“No, I couldn’t, not with Warden James and his goons hanging around the hospital,” he agreed. So he’d had to trust Macy Kleyn again and rely on her quick-witted thinking to get him out of the hospital unseen.
He lifted his gaze from the windshield to the rearview mirror hanging from it, and caught the reflection of headlamps burning through the darkness behind them. His gut knotted with apprehension. “But someone still might have followed us.”
In the rearview, Macy’s wide-eyed gaze met his. “Someone’s following us?”
“It’s possible.” Given his recent run of bad luck, highly probable.
“Or maybe you’re just paranoid,” she said, her voice light even though her eyes, reflecting back at him from the rearview mirror, darkened with fear.
“Paranoia isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” He touched the wound on his ribs that Macy had had to add stitches to completely close. If her brother had obeyed the warden, that knife would have gone deep enough to kill Rowe.
Who within the administration had given him up? His handler or someone else in the office? He had worked with his handler, Agent Jackson, before. Hell, after six years with the DEA, he had worked with everyone in his department and a few others. He would have never suspected one of the special agents of blowing someone’s cover. But it was the only way the warden could have learned his real identity.
So Rowe had no idea who he could trust—besides Macy Kleyn. And if he’d gotten her brother killed, he was certain she would turn on him, too. “Because sometimes everybody really is out to get you.”
“I know.” She jerked the wheel, abruptly turning off the road. The hearse barely cleared the trees on either side of it as it bounced over the ruts of a two-track road. She shut off the lights but not the engine as she continued, blind, through the trees.
“Where the hell did you learn to drive like this?” he asked, that paranoia making him suspicious of her now. Her brother had said she was studying to become a doctor, not a stunt driver.
“EMT class.”
“So how did you wind up working in the morgue?” he asked, with a sense of revulsion as he remembered the coldness and the closeness of that drawer she’d kept shutting him in.
“I applied for a job as an ambulance driver,” she explained, “but the only opening at the hospital was in the morgue.”
She had given up school and her choice of career to be close to her brother—a brother Rowe might have gotten killed just as he had Doc.
Remembering the frustration and worry in his voice when Jed had told him about his younger sister, Rowe said, “Now that we’re away from the hospital, you need to drop me off somewhere and then forget that you ever saw me.”
She snorted out a breath that stirred her bangs. “Not likely.”
“Macy, I appreciate what you’ve done, but I can’t ask you to do any more.” He couldn’t allow her to get involved any deeper than she already was. He wouldn’t break his promise to the man who had gotten him out of Blackwoods alive.
“I’m not doing this for you,” she said as she pulled up behind a building. After shutting off the engine, she jumped out. Seconds later the back door of the hearse opened. Moonlight glinted off a row of smokestacks on the corrugated steel roof.
“Where the hell are we?” he asked as he crawled out of the hearse.
“Hell is right.” She tossed his earlier words back at him. “The crematorium.” She jangled a ring of keys in her palm.
“You have the keys?”
“It’s my second job,” she explained. “Unofficially.”
“That’s why the hearse was in the parking lot?” He’d been surprised when she had rolled his gurney out to that particular vehicle.
“Yes, Elliot took my van and left the hearse. We have an arrangement.”
“And that is?” And who the hell was Elliot?
“I fill in for him when he has a gig. He’s a musician. He pays me cash, and I don’t tell his dad, who owns this place, that Elliot’s not doing his job.” Her teeth flashed in the moonlight as she smiled.
“Nice arrangement—if neither of you mind a little blackmail.”
“What’s a little blackmail between friends?” she said with another quick smile and a shrug. “It’s going to work out well for you.”
“It already has. You got me past the warden.” He glanced back toward the road, but he could see nothing other than the dark shadow of leafless trees swaying in the cool night breeze. Yet if someone had been following them, they may have just shut off their lights, too.
Were they sneaking up on them now? He had no weapon, nothing to defend himself and her. Lying under that sheet in the morgue had been the hardest thing he’d ever done—relying on her to protect them both. Her brother hadn’t exaggerated about her at all. Macy Kleyn was damn smart.
Too smart to be risking her life for him.
Macy rattled the keys as she fingered through them, obviously searching for the right one. “Are you warm enough in the sweatshirt?” she asked as she huddled in her parka.
Winter was officially over, but northern Michigan had yet to get the memo. Rowe ignored the wind biting through the shirt to chill his skin. He had more to worry about than the weather.
“I’m fine. Thanks.”
“It’s freezing out. Elliot might have a coat inside,” she said. Finally, she jammed a key in the lock and pushed open the back door.
He hesitated outside. Even though it was damn cold, he would rather be out in the open than confined anywhere else. Ever. Again.
“What are we doing here?” he asked.
“We’re going to burn the wrong body.”
“What?” He glanced back to the hearse. He had made damn certain that he’d been riding alone back there. While he’d done his share of skeevy undercover assignments, this one had been the stuff of horror movies since the first moment the prison bars had slid closed behind him. And it had only gotten worse since he’d escaped. “Whose body are we going to burn?”
“Yours.”
He laughed at her outrageous comment. “Yeah, right. You’re funny, too.” Kleyn hadn’t shared that tidbit about his kid sister.
“I’m not kidding.”
“Then you’re crazy.”
Her teeth flashed in a quick smile. “You’re not the first one to call me that.”
When she flipped on a light, he studied her. “Have you been called that because you believe your brother is innocent?”
She jerked her head in a sharp nod.
“And because you quit school to move up here to be close to him?”
“That wasn’t about being close to him,” she clarified. “It’s about proving his innocence.”
“That may be impossible to prove,” he warned her. No matter how smart Macy Kleyn was, she wouldn’t be able to prove the innocence of a guilty man.
“Alone,” she admitted. “It would be. That’s why I want…” Her gaze skimmed up and down his body, over the black sweatshirt that molded like a second skin to his chest and over the faded jeans.
If she kept looking at him like that, Rowe had a feeling he would give her whatever she wanted. “Are you going to tell me or do I have to guess?