Paula Graves - Blue Ridge Ricochet

She had to tread carefully. Everything she’d worked for over the past few months was at stake.

Dallas stumbled on his way to the door, flashing her a grimace of a smile as she grabbed his arm and kept him from face-planting in the gravel between the Jeep and her kitchen door. “I’m usually steadier on my feet.”

“How long has it been since you ate anything?”

“Not counting roots and berries?” he asked with a lopsided smile, leaning against the side of her house while she unlocked the door.

“Yeah, not counting those.” She opened the door and helped him up the two shallow steps into the kitchen.

Inside, the cabin was blessedly warm and familiar, driving away some of Nicki’s tension. Dallas Cole didn’t seem to be faking his weakness, and she was finally back in her own comfort zone. She knew where the knives were kept and where to find her Remington 870 pump-action shotgun and ammo.

And there was the satellite phone hidden under the mattress of her bed that would get Alexander Quinn on the line in a second. He might be two and a half hours away in Purgatory, Tennessee, but he had eyes and ears all over the hills. She knew from experience.

“How much snow do you think we’ll get?” Dallas asked as she flicked the switch on the wall, flooding the kitchen with light. He squinted at her, as if it had been a while since his eyes had been accustomed to so much light.

“I guess you haven’t heard a forecast in a few days?” She crossed to the stove and grabbed one of the saucepans hanging over the range. “We’ll get an inch or two, maybe. It’ll probably be melted off by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Glad to be out of it.” He nodded toward the small kitchen nook table. “May I?”

Polite, she thought. Though she’d met a few well-mannered devils in her day who’d give you the shaft and thank you for it. “Sit. I’ll see what’s in the pantry.”

He groaned a little as he sat, and she wondered how many injuries he had hidden beneath his grimy clothes. “Thank you. I’m not sure how I’ll be able to repay you for your kindness.”

His accent was subtle but there, the hint of a mountain twang not unlike her own Tennessee accent. She’d done little more than glance over the information Quinn’s mystery operative had left for her at the dead drop a few weeks earlier before she’d destroyed it, not exactly expecting Dallas Cole to show up in the middle of River’s End. But there’d been something about a hometown in eastern Kentucky—

“No repayment necessary.” She looked through the cans in her pantry. “Chicken and vegetable sound okay?”

“Sounds like heaven.”

As she heated the soup, she searched her brain for any other details she could remember from the dossier on Dallas Cole. His job at the FBI wasn’t exactly what she might have expected—that much she remembered. She wasn’t dealing with a special agent or a forensic science whiz.

No, he was a graphic designer with the Bureau’s public affairs office.

How on earth had an artist gotten himself crossways with the Blue Ridge Infantry?

* * *

HE HAD NO idea what to do next, so he did nothing. Nothing but sit and bask in the warmth of this tiny kitchen and watch a blue-eyed brunette with killer curves heating a can of chicken soup on an ancient gas range.

Nicki, she’d said. Short for Nicole?

“This is a nice place,” he said, mostly to end the silence. Over the past three weeks, silence had become his enemy, an auditory void in which his deepest fears had held sway.

She glanced toward him. “Compared to what?”

Her blunt tone made his lips twitch with unaccustomed humor. He hadn’t had a lot to laugh about recently. “I’ve been worse places.”

“Haven’t we all?” She pulled a couple of stoneware bowls from a nearby cabinet and put them on the counter by the stove. “You in the mood for a little or a lot?”

His stomach seemed to be turning eager flips, but his brain kicked in with a stern warning. The last thing he wanted to do in front of a pretty girl like Nicki was throw up. “Let’s start with a little.”

She slanted a curious look his way but put a bowl half-full of steaming soup on the table in front of him. “Careful. It’s hot.” She fetched a spoon and put it by the bowl.

He blew on a spoonful of the soup and took a sip. The savory broth tasted like heaven in a spoon.

Nicki took the seat across from him, not looking at him as she started eating her own bowl of soup.

Prickles of suspicion played at the back of his neck. Why wasn’t she looking at him?

“Just you here?” he asked.

Her gaze snapped up to meet his, and he realized how shady the question probably seemed.

Her green-eyed gaze leveled with his. “Me and my Remington 870.”

He smiled at that. “Message received.”

“Sorry. That was a tad rude, wasn’t it?” One corner of her lips tilted upward.

“Probably earned it with that badly phrased question.” He fell silent and concentrated on eating his soup as slowly as his ravening hunger would allow. His stomach felt unsettled but the food was staying down, at least for the time being.

He needed food and rest, in that order. Because once he left this cabin, he wasn’t sure when he’d get much of either again.

“How did you end up out there in the woods?”

The question he’d been waiting for ever since she’d stopped to help. “It’s a long story.”

“And you don’t want to tell it?” In her voice, he heard a surprising thread of sympathy. He looked up and saw her sharp eyes watching him with understanding.

“Not at the present,” he admitted.

“Okay.” She turned her attention back to her soup.

That was easy.

Too easy.

He didn’t know how to deal with someone who didn’t seem to want—or need—one damn thing from him. Especially after the ordeal of the past few weeks. He didn’t know how to relax anymore, how to sit quietly and eat a bowl of soup without waiting for the next blow, the next trick.

He knew his name was Dallas Logan Cole. He was thirty-three years old and had spent the first eighteen years of his life in Kentucky coal country, trying like hell to get out before he was stuck there for the rest of his sorry life. He was a good artist and an even better designer, and he’d spent the bulk of his college years trying to leave behind the last vestiges of his mountain upbringing so he could start a whole new life.

And here he was, back in the hills, running for his life again. How the hell had he let this happen?

“I guess those are the only clothes you have?”

He looked down at his grimy shirt and jeans. They weren’t the clothes he’d been wearing when a group of men in pickup trucks had run his car off the road a few miles north of Ruckersville, Virginia. The wreck had left him a little woozy and helpless to fight the four burly mountain men who’d hauled him into one of the trucks and driven him into the hills. They’d stripped him out of his suit and made him dress in the middle of the woods in the frigid cold while they watched with hawk-sharp eyes for any sign of rebellion.

Rebellion, he’d later learned, was the quickest way to earn a little extra pain.

“It’s all I have,” he said, swallowing enough humiliating memories to last a lifetime. “Don’t suppose you have anything my size?”

Her lips quirked again, triggering a pair of dimples in her cheeks. “Not on purpose. I can wash those for you, though.”

“I’d appreciate that.” He was finally warm, he realized with some surprise. Not a shiver in sight. He’d begun to wonder if he’d ever feel truly warm again.

She picked up his empty bowl and took it to the sink. “The bathroom’s down the hall to the right. Leave your clothes in the hall and I’ll put them on to wash.”