Paula Graves - Secret Hideout

“You were a good team once. Who says you can’t be again?” Brand’s voice sounded tinny and faint over the satellite. Non-emergency communications between Scanlon and his SAC were supposed to be rare and carefully scheduled, carried out only over the satellite phone, which Scanlon kept locked in a metal box hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the linen closet.

“If the Swains discover she’s here—”

“Don’t let that happen,” Brand said reasonably. “They don’t make a lot of visits there—”

“They visited today.” Scanlon told Brand about Davy McCoy’s unexpected appearance.

“Sounds like a breakthrough to me,” Brand said. “And the invitation came from Addie Tolliver herself?”

“That’s what Davy said. I think it’s a test.”

“I’d concur.”

“But I can’t have Isabel staying here,” Scanlon added, the extra layer of desperation in his voice having little to do with his worry about her safety.

He was still feeling the effects of the kiss he’d planted on his partner at the Fort Payne Mountain View Inn.

Right now, she was watching him with that excited grin she got when a case started going her way, and it was all he could do to keep from hanging up on Brand and hauling her back to his bedroom to kiss that smile off her smug little face. Six months away from her had done nothing to quench the passion he’d been nurturing for almost as long as he’d known her.

But Brand didn’t know anything about those feelings. Isabel certainly didn’t have a clue. He’d worked hard to keep his attraction to her carefully hidden, staying within the bounds of their professional relationship.

“You’ve been puzzling over those files for months now without being able to figure out if any of the Swains are even involved in last year’s bombings. The bombings were Cooper’s baby in the first place—let her do the profiling work while you’re out in the field. She can give it a fresh eye.”

Any other agent, and Scanlon would have agreed without another argument. He hated pushing around paper, looking for clues, much preferring to be out in the field.

But Cooper wasn’t any other agent. “If they catch her here, we’re both dead.”

“So don’t let them catch her,” Brand responded, reprising his earlier argument.

Scanlon growled with frustration. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you planned this.”

“Good thing you know better,” Brand said.

“She’s going to need clothes. A weapon.”

“Maybe they left my Beretta and my clothes in my hotel room,” Isabel suggested. “Can they look?”

Scanlon passed along the information to Brand.

“We’ve already secured her clothing. The Beretta was there, as well. But there’s going to be the matter of her family. They’ll be looking for her.”

“That’s why we should send her home to them. Let the bad guys think she got to a safe place and contacted her family.”

“My brothers and sisters aren’t going to believe just any old story,” Isabel warned from her position near the stove. “You’ll have to let me talk to one of them.”

“Let her call one of them,” Brand said.

“We can’t take that chance—”

“I’ll have the Huntsville office deliver a new phone with her clothes and her weapon when an agent comes to pick up the van this evening,” Brand said calmly. “Let her call one of her family on the phone you’ve got.” He hung up without warning.

Scanlon swore under his breath.

“Boy, didn’t take long for you to go all lone wolf,” Isabel said, her tone flippant. But he knew her well enough to recognize the hurt in her dark eyes.

“Everything here’s so dangerous,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you in the middle of it.”

“I’m trained to be in the middle of it.” She lifted her chin, trying to look tough, but she wobbled a little, lingering weakness from the drug injection betraying her.

He couldn’t hold back a smile, slipping his hand under her elbow to steady her. His fingers seemed to burn where he touched her. “I know.”

“This investigation has to do with the serial bomber, doesn’t it?” she asked, letting him lead her to the futon sofa.

He dropped beside her, allowing himself the secret pleasure of sitting close enough that their arms brushed when they moved. “It does,” he admitted. “At least, we think it’s connected. Either way, I’ll be happy to bring the bastards down.”

He had his own personal reasons for wanting the Swains to pay for their crimes, reasons that had nothing to do with the serial bomber investigation. Even Adam Brand didn’t know what motivated him, as far as Scanlon knew. Then again, the wily SAC had a way of learning things only God himself could know.

“Well, you have plenty of time now to bring me up to speed.” She nudged him with her shoulder, a light, friendly touch that shouldn’t have sent fire pouring into his gut.

But it had. And now the memory of the kiss outside the hotel—the kiss she didn’t even remember because she was so drugged up she could barely stand—assaulted his mind with a barrage of images designed to make him crazy.

He wanted to kiss her again, this time when she was conscious and would know what it meant when her lips pressed back against his. Her reaction to his kiss had caught him by surprise, a fierce, passionate response that had almost knocked him from his own feet.

Had she known it was him? Or had she been hallucinating some phantom lover, one she saw as more than just a partner and friend? The question had damned near begun to haunt him.

He crossed to the stove, needing distance from her. “At the time of the Virginia bombing, we’d already begun looking at older blasts that might fit the bomber’s MO.”

“Right—the explosion in Rome, Georgia, that killed a judge, and there was a bombing here in north Alabama—” She paused, her brow crinkling. “Are we still in north Alabama?”

“Yeah. A place called Bolen Bluff, about fifteen miles northeast of Fort Payne.”

Her eyebrows notched upwards. “Jasper Swain’s hometown.”

Scanlon nodded. “Exactly.”

“But Swain’s been in jail for over twenty years,” she said. “We talked about the possibility of a copycat, but—”

“But the Swains are concentrating on meth and weed these days,” he finished for her. “I know. But the MO was so close to the Swain bombings. And the bomb in Virginia happened only after we started snooping into the Swains’ business.”

“You think they targeted us specifically?”

“Targeted you,” he said flatly. He’d let her run the investigation into Jasper Swain’s bombings, despite his own personal interest in the case. He’d even let her be the one to go visit Jasper at the jail in St. Clair County, afraid the old man might recognize him even after all these years.

Funny to think about now, considering he was living in the middle of the bloody Swains, trying to worm his way into the family business.

That had been Brand’s idea, too. He’d seen a golden opportunity to kill off Scanlon’s old self and create a whole new person for the undercover assignment he’d been thinking about for months.

“They’re up to more than just drugs and protection down there,” Brand had insisted soon after the bombing, while Scanlon had been hidden away at the SAC’s hunting retreat in central Virginia. Scanlon had agreed to the undercover assignment and headed south to Alabama as soon as he recovered from the worst of his injuries.

Fortunately, he apparently looked different enough from the child he’d been the last time he was in Bolen Bluff that nobody had recognized him at all, at least as far as he knew.

“This was Brand’s idea—sending you here.” Isabel echoed his own thoughts so closely he had to smile. After years of working together, they’d formed the habit of finishing each other’s sentences, their minds honed to think in similar directions.