Paula Graves - Smoky Mountain Setup

“Could be a neighbor,” she said quietly, suddenly afraid he was going to bolt, even though a few minutes earlier, she’d been hoping he’d leave and not look back.

It was just curiosity, she told herself, the need to know what he’d been starting to tell her about his connection to the BRI. It certainly had nothing to do with the way her jaw still tingled where he’d touched her or the quickened pace of her heart whenever she looked his way.

“They’re stopping here,” he said bluntly, turning back to look at her. She saw fear in his eyes, raw and wild, and realized she had only a few seconds to keep him from doing something reckless.

She pushed past him and looked through the curtains. The truck that had stopped outside her house was a familiar but, under the circumstances, not exactly welcome sight. “It’s Alexander Quinn.”

Landry groaned. “Your boss.”

She looked at him, wondering how much he knew about Quinn. “You said you’re not on the BRI’s side. Neither is Quinn. If you know anything about The Gates, you have to know that.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s going to turn a blind eye to the warrants out for my arrest.”

“You might be surprised.”

He shook his head and picked up his duffel bag. “I’m going out the back. Just give me a head start.”

She caught his arm as he started past her, not letting go even when he tried to tug free of her grasp. “Don’t run. Not yet. My bedroom is through that doorway. First room on the right. Let me find out what Quinn wants.”

Landry stared at her as if he were trying to read all the way through to her soul. Finally, the sound of footsteps on the front porch spurred him into action. He went through the doorway and veered right into her bedroom, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

Olivia took a deep breath just as Quinn knocked.

Showtime.

* * *

HER ROOM SMELLED like Olivia, that half-sweet, half-tart scent he’d never been able to identify as anything other than her own unique essence. For a few seconds all he could do was breathe, fill his lungs with that scent, store it away for another drought like the two years they’d been apart since he’d left Richmond—and Olivia—behind.

The bedroom was small and sparsely furnished—a bed, a chest of drawers and a small trunk at the foot of the bed. The bedding was simple and neat—two pillows in pale blue cotton cases, sheets that matched and a thick quilt that looked handmade.

Despite the tension running through him like currents of electricity, despite the muted sound of the door knock just a room away, Landry couldn’t stop himself from smiling. It faded quickly, but the flicker of sentiment remained—she hadn’t really changed in the past two years if she was still decorating with handmade quilts.

She made the quilts herself, a secret she’d kept from her fellow FBI agents with the ferocity of a mother bear guarding her den. “If you ever tell anyone about this,” she’d sworn when she’d finally let him in on her secret, “I will hunt you down and kill you.”

The sound of voices drifted down the hallway. The rumble of a male voice, barely discernible, followed by Olivia’s alto drawl.

“New bike?” the male voice asked.

“Picked it up at a yard sale,” Olivia answered.

Landry pressed his ear to the door, trying to hear the conversation more clearly.

“It’s a man’s bike,” Quinn said in a tone that was deliberately nonchalant.

“I bought it from a man,” she answered, a shrug in her voice. “Women’s bikes are usually too small for a woman my height.”

Good save, Landry thought.

“I got a call from Daughtry,” Quinn said, still sounding like someone making small talk. “He said you got a hit on some bank account you’d asked him to monitor.”

“That man doesn’t know the meaning of honeymoon, does he?” Olivia laughed softly, but Landry heard the faint strain of tension behind her words.

Did Quinn hear it, too?

“One of the reasons I hired him,” Quinn answered. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”

“You didn’t ask a question.”

Still as smart-mouthed as ever, Landry thought.

“Whose account did you ask him to monitor?”

“Mine,” she replied. “I’ve been noticing some discrepancies in my bank statement, so I thought maybe someone had hacked my password for that account. It’s not a lot of money, but still.”

“So there’s someone tapping into your account? Why didn’t you just change the password?”

“That would only stop them from accessing the account. I wanted to catch someone in the act.”

“Did you?”

“Maybe. I have some feelers out.”

Landry didn’t hear anything else for several long seconds, not even an unintelligible murmur that would suggest they’d merely lowered their voices. The silence was unnerving. If he couldn’t hear them, he had no way of knowing where they were.

Or how close they were getting to his hiding place.

Come on, he thought. Start talking again.

“As much as I relish the screwball comedy potential of being snowed in with you, Quinn, you’re not going to be able to get that truck back down the mountain if you don’t make tracks in the next few minutes.”

“Now you’re just tempting me, Olivia.” There was a warmth to Quinn’s voice that made Landry’s gut tighten.

What the hell?

“Funny,” Olivia said, but there was no censure in her voice, only a soft amusement that made Landry want to kick down the door.

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay here alone? A few of the agents are bunking down at the office for the duration. It’s a little college dorm for my tastes, but I think you can handle the frat-boy atmosphere if you’d rather tough it out in a crowd.”

“No, thanks,” she said with a laugh that was too friendly for Landry’s peace of mind. “I’ll be fine here. I have a load of résumés to go through and some housework I’ve put off for the past couple of months. But thanks for the concern.”

“Are you sure everything’s okay?” Quinn asked in a tone so quiet and intimate Landry had to strain to make out the words.

“Everything’s fine.”

“Olivia, I know you’re blaming yourself for how close Daughtry and Ginny came to losing their lives, but you’re not infallible. Nobody in this business is. We all make mistakes.”

Olivia’s response was spoken too quietly for Landry to hear. But Quinn’s next words gave him a pretty good idea what she’d said.

“There are a lot of ways to pay for mistakes. Sometimes your own conscience is the harshest judge of all. I think you’ve already given yourself more penance than I’d have ever suggested. That’s why I let you come up with your own punishment.”

“I would have fired me.”

“That’s why you’re not the boss.”

There was another long silence. Landry clenched his fists to keep from reaching for the door handle.

“Call if you need anything. I might know how to get my hands on a snowmobile.” Quinn’s voice, tinged with amusement, broke the silence, and Landry started breathing again.

He heard the door close and waited until he heard Olivia’s footsteps outside the door.

“Still in there?” she asked quietly.

He opened the door to face her. “I was contemplating escape.”

“He’s gone.”

“I heard.”

One sandy eyebrow arched over a sky blue eye. “You were eavesdropping?”

“Was there something you didn’t want me to hear?”

The other eyebrow joined the first, creasing her forehead. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He meant to change the subject, talk about what a bad idea it was for him to stick around the cabin with her in case her boss decided to come back to check on her in that snowmobile he’d mentioned. But those weren’t the words that came out of his mouth.