He brushed her cheek with his fingertips. “I’m always in danger these days, Cooper.” He closed the door, plunging the cramped closet into darkness.
* * *
BEN SCANLON RECOVERED HIS CALM as he walked to the front room. Already, Davy McCoy was banging on the door, commencing the visit Scanlon had been expecting since he’d grabbed Isabel Cooper at the Fort Payne hotel and rushed her out to the van the FBI resident agency in Huntsville had supplied. He hadn’t gotten a good look at any of the men, but he knew Davy was involved. Davy was the one he’d overheard making plans for the ambush.
He swept a final glance around the living room, making sure he’d left no signs of Isabel’s presence. She’d slipped on her shoes before she’d gone to the bathroom, and he’d already returned the futon to its sofa position.
He took a deep breath and opened the door.
Davy McCoy was a short, wiry man in his midtwenties, with dark hair thinning prematurely and a sneering smile that was a permanent fixture on his vulpine face. He didn’t wait to be asked in, pushing past Scanlon and entering the living room.
“You cookin’ somethin’?” He sniffed the air.
“Just soup.”
Davy eyed the bowl in the sink. “Been out today?”
The van Scanlon had driven to the hotel was hidden in an abandoned barn a half mile down the mountain, where he’d left his battered old Ford pickup while he was in Fort Payne. But he and Isabel hadn’t been back long. If Davy had touched the hood of the Ford, would it still be warm?
“Drove over to Silorville Pond to see if the bluegills were bedding,” he answered, the lie effortless. Lying came all too easy to him these days. “No luck.”
“Little early yet, I guess.”
Scanlon knew Davy didn’t have a particular reason to suspect he’d been involved in thwarting the attempted abduction. Nobody among Bolen Bluff’s tight-knit community of weed growers and meth mechanics knew what he’d overheard that night at the feed store. He’d made damned sure he wasn’t seen.
But he’d been in Bolen Bluff only a few months. Strangers were automatically suspect. The paranoia among the Swain clan was legendary. One wrong move could get a man killed.
Scanlon knew that better than anyone.
Davy was clearly searching the room with his gaze. He didn’t even bother to hide it. “Mind if I use your bathroom?”
Scanlon nodded toward the hallway, hoping the rapid thump of his pulse wasn’t audible. It swished so loudly in his ears he barely heard Davy’s footsteps as he clomped down the hall.
He went to close the front door that Davy had left open and spotted Bobby Rawlings standing out in the yard, watching him through narrowed eyes. Rawlings was even scarier than McCoy in some ways. He was a Swain by blood, son of one of old Jasper’s cousins. That gave him even more carte blanche for violence around these parts than Davy, who was only a Swain clan member out of criminal loyalty.
He gave Rawlings a wave. Rawlings didn’t wave back. Scanlon hadn’t expected he would.
He closed the door and turned as Davy’s heavy bootfalls heralded his return. “You and Bobby been out hunting coyote this morning?”
“Yeah,” Davy answered flatly.
“Any luck?”
“Got close, once. Just missed the bitch.” Davy shrugged. “We’ll find her again. Next time, ain’t gonna mess around—just put a bullet straight in her brain.”
Scanlon’s blood chilled.
“Thanks for the use of your facilities.” Davy slanted a look at Scanlon. “Reckon you’ll be comin’ to town Saturday?”
“I can,” he said carefully, not sure where Davy was going with the question.
“Addie Tolliver’s throwin’ a barbecue Saturday afternoon for Leamon’s birthday.”
Addie Tolliver was one of the Swain sisters. She and her son Leamon ran the feed shop in town, and he was pretty sure that Addie was the main mover and shaker in the Swain family’s meth and weed business. The family often used the store’s back room as a meeting place. He also suspected that the storage area may have been a temporary holding area for drug shipments going out to other parts of the state, though the one time he’d been able to sneak into the back room, all he’d accomplished was overhearing the plan to go after Isabel.
“The Brubakers are comin’ over from Higdon to play,” Davy continued. “Ever heard ’em?” When Scanlon shook his head, Davy gave him a look that smacked of disappointment. “They’re an old bluegrass family. The young ones are still playing the old stuff. You’d like it.”
Scanlon knew better than to assume he was being invited to the barbecue. He was still too new in town. He waited for Davy to let the punch line drop.
“Addie’s lookin’ for someone to watch the feed store for her while everybody’s at the barbecue. Said she’ll pay six bucks an hour for three hours. Under the table. Won’t be much to it—most everybody else in town will be at the barbecue.”
Everybody but the new guy, Scanlon thought, tamping down a flash of annoyance. He’d known going into this undercover operation that it would be a long-term assignment. He couldn’t expect an insular drug-dealing clan to take him to their bosom after a few months.
“I can do that,” he said aloud.
“Good. I’ll tell Addie you’ll be there. Two o’clock on Saturday.” Davy walked to the door and opened it. “She mentioned you by name, you know. Asked me to check with you specifically.”
Scanlon smiled. “Tell her I said thanks. I sure can use the extra money.”
Davy’s gaze dropped to Scanlon’s scarred hand. “Reckon the government’s not exactly real generous these days.”
“No. You’d think they’d want to do a little more to reward a fellow who took a bullet in their godforsaken wars.”
“Just be at the feed store Saturday. Maybe if you do a good job then, Addie or one of the other Swains will find more jobs for you to do.” Davy headed out the door, pulling it closed behind him.
Scanlon released a long, slow breath. Not quite what he’d expected when he’d spotted Davy McCoy coming out of the woods.
But was his sense of relief premature? The Swains had been plying their criminal trade for a lot of years now. They might not be brain surgeons, but they were as wily and vicious as the coyotes Davy McCoy liked to hunt.
Maybe they really didn’t suspect his involvement in helping Isabel get away. But he couldn’t afford to assume he was safe from scrutiny. He had to figure out a way to get Isabel back to safety as soon as possible.
For his sake as well as hers.
Chapter Three
The closet seemed to grow darker as time passed, despite the thin shaft of light drifting into the cramped space from the bedroom outside. The odor of old cedar tickled her nose, threatening more than once to make her sneeze. She had held the urge in check, hearing heavy footfalls from the hall that she knew didn’t belong to Ben Scanlon.
The ache in her head had eased a little, probably thanks to the food he’d insisted she put in her stomach to dilute the effects of whatever drug her ambushers had injected into her. Her memory was starting to leach back into her brain as well, at least the moments preceding whatever had happened to her.
She’d gone out of her room at some point that morning. She remembered getting ice and then—something. Something had happened after she went to get the ice.