Paula Graves - Smoky Mountain Setup

As she stared at him, heat spreading through her from the point where his fingers had closed around hers, he let go and sat back, clearly struggling to regain his cool composure.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Go on.”

“They’re going to take you when you’re alone. So you need to make sure you’re never alone.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Look, I know your boss offered you the chance to stay at the office with some of the other agents. Maybe you should do that.”

She looked at the whiteout conditions outside the cabin window. “Too late for that.”

He followed her gaze. “I’m sure your boss could come up with some way to get you out of here.”

She shook her head quickly. “Landry, I’m safe enough here. For now, anyway. I’m armed and it’s not easy to get here in the snow. And you’re here, right?”

He nodded toward the rolltop desk. “But I’m unarmed.”

She met his warm gaze, trying to be objective, to put everything from their past, good or bad, out of her mind and just assess the situation as an agent.

He’d shown up unannounced, after having disappeared for nearly a year, and told her that he’d been working with the same dangerous militia group he now said had made her a target for assassination. But he’d come alone and warned her of the danger against her. He’d had the opportunity to hurt her earlier, when he’d got the drop on her with her Mossberg shotgun, but he’d done nothing to hurt her.

Was he trying to pull some sort of scam? Was this story about hillbilly assassins part of some bigger plan the BRI had hatched?

Or was he telling her the truth?

“Why?” she asked finally.

His eyebrows twitched upward. “Why did I come? I told you—”

She shook her head. “No—why has BRI targeted me specifically? Do you know?”

“They didn’t say. At least, not the part of their discussion I was able to overhear.”

“What about your friend? The kid whose uncle is a BRI member. Would he be able to find out why they’ve targeted me?”

“If I could get in touch with him, yes. But that’s very dangerous. Even more so for him than for me. He took a big chance letting me sneak in to eavesdrop on the meeting. If either of us had been caught...”

She quelled a shudder as her mind finished the sentence for him, in vivid, brutal images. She’d seen the lengths to which the BRI would go to carry out a plan. “I get it.”

“After the snow thaws, I’ll see if I can reach him. But I’ll have to be very careful.”

She pushed to her feet, nervous energy getting the better of her. “There has to be something I can do while we’re waiting. Research or something—”

He stood and crossed to her, closing his hands around her arms and pulling her to face him. His expression was fierce at first, but it softened when she met his gaze.

“I’ll tell you everything I can remember from what I overheard,” he said in a tone so earnest, so familiar, it made her heart ache. “This all has to be confusing and disturbing—”

“Don’t do that,” she murmured. “Don’t handle me.”

Slowly, he dropped his hands away from her arms, but the sensation of his touch lingered, making her feel jittery and unsettled. “Let’s sit down, okay? Take a second and breathe.”

He was still handling her, but at least he wasn’t touching her. She returned to the armchair, and he sat on the coffee table in front of her.

So close. So palpable a temptation.

“They managed to get someone inside The Gates—Marty Tucker, I presume—but he was inside before you got there. They don’t assume their limited success with Tucker can be repeated, especially since you’re still there, sniffing out any possible traitors in your midst.”

“How do they know that?”

“They said Quinn’s not trying to hide that information. In fact, he made sure it got out through some of the information channels the BRI already knows are compromised.”

Olivia straightened, alarmed. “Quinn put information about me and my role at The Gates out there for the BRI to hear? Deliberately?”

“You didn’t know?”

She shook her head.

“See why I’m not sure we can trust your boss?” he asked softly.

She pressed her lips to a thin line, not ready to speak ill of Quinn to anyone, especially Cade Landry. But Quinn should have warned her, damn it! He’d deliberately made her a target by putting the information out there about her role at The Gates.

Was her life a bargaining chip in his plan to take down the BRI?

“He set you up as bait.” Landry’s voice was a soft growl.

“If you’re telling me the truth.”

“I am.”

She wished she could say she didn’t believe him. But the truth was, setting her up as bait without warning her was exactly the kind of thing Alexander Quinn would do. He was always, always about the bottom line. Get the job done whatever it took.

Even if what it took was putting one of his employees in the line of fire to set a trap.

“So they’re targeting me? Do they think he won’t find someone else to do what I’m doing?”

“They’re not going to kill you.”

“But you said I was a target.”

“You are. But remember when I said they were going to take you? I really meant take you. They’re looking to take you captive.”

“Why?”

“They seem to think they can use you to break someone.”

She frowned. “Someone? Who?”

Landry dropped his gaze, his expression enigmatic as he silently studied his hands for a long moment. When he finally looked up again, an unspoken question darkened his green eyes. “After listening in to Quinn’s conversation with you this afternoon, I think they’re planning to use you to get to him.”

“Why? Why do they think that would get them anything?”

He held her gaze, the questions in his eyes multiplying. “You tell me. I asked you this before, but you didn’t really answer. Is something going on between you and Quinn? Are you lovers?”

“No,” she answered bluntly. “I mean—”

His eyebrows quirked. “You mean?”

“We’re not lovers. But there have been times—” She swallowed with difficulty, suddenly overcome by the acute awareness that Alexander Quinn might have her cabin wired for sound. She took a bracing breath and continued. “There have been times I thought he wanted to be.”

“He’s in love with you?”

“I don’t think Quinn has ever loved anyone that way,” she said with a soft laugh. “But he’s a man.”

“And you’re a beautiful woman. Who seems very alone.”

She looked up at him. “I choose to be alone.”

“Why?” He shook his head. “You’re not a loner, Livvie. You enjoy being around other people. You like companionship.”

“That was two years ago. My life is very different now. For one thing, I’m too busy for relationships. My job is dangerous and thankless, and I don’t want to inflict that kind of stress on someone else.”

“Even one of your fellow agents at The Gates? They’re working the same stressful job. They understand the long hours, being on call—”

“Why are you pressing this issue? Do you want me to tell you I’ve moved on from you? I have. It was two years ago.” Her voice rose with emotion. “When I left the FBI, I didn’t look back. Are you happy?”

“No.” He stared back at her, his nostrils flaring. “No, I’m not happy.”

She snapped her mouth shut and looked away.

“I know I drove you away. To this day, I don’t know how to trust you again, but I have missed you every single moment. The smell of you haunts my dreams. I can close my eyes and conjure up a vivid memory of the sun glinting off your hair that long weekend we spent on Assateague Island. I can feel the thunder of horse hooves beneath my feet when that wild herd ran past us on the beach. I can remember the way your laugh rang in my ears like music.”