Smoky Ridge Curse. Paula Graves

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СКАЧАТЬ they’d last seen each other.

      People changed.

      “What happened? How did it get to this point?” Her eyes narrowed. “Does it have anything to do with the Davenport case?”

      “It’s connected,” he said. “But it’s a lot more complicated than that.” He tried to hold back a shiver, but the wind at his back was too damned icy for him to stop shaking.

      Delilah’s brow furrowed. “We need to get you inside and warmed up.”

      “I can’t go in there. Your mother’s there.”

      “You don’t have a choice. If you stay out here much longer, you’ll go into hypothermia. Here.” She took off her jacket and handed it to him.

      Brand looked at the thick denim jacket, built to hug her smaller frame. “That’s not going to fit me.”

      She gave him an exasperated look, one he’d seen a thousand times before and had feared he might never see again. Cold, hungry and hurting, he still felt a crushing need to pull her close and say all the things he’d never said, to hell with his reasons for choosing the path he had. But now was no better time than the other times he’d stayed silent and let the moment pass.

      “Wrap it around your neck to block the wind,” she said flatly. “I take it you don’t want to be found?”

      The pragmatism of her question made him smile. It felt as if his face cracked into a million pieces at the effort. “That would be best.”

      “I’ll make an excuse to my mother about why I have to go. Here.” She dug in the pocket of her jeans and handed him a set of keys. “Get in my car and lie down in the backseat. It should still be fairly warm. But don’t start the engine. I don’t want my mother suspicious.”

      She started toward the small cabin with the cheery golden light in the windows and fragrant wood smoke wafting from the chimney, moving with long, kinetic strides that reminded him of those days, so many years ago, when she’d brought energy and life to his little section of the federal government.

      He couldn’t say she hadn’t changed since that time—eight years of life had chiseled away the softness of her features, honing them to a mature, womanly beauty. And her eyes seemed, if anything, darker and more mysterious than he remembered, as if in leaving the FBI behind she’d also abandoned the openness of youth.

      Brand trudged over the frozen ground to the low-slung black Camaro he’d seen her park just a little while earlier. At least she hadn’t lost her sense of style, he thought with a weak grin as he opened the car and bent to push up the bucket seat so he could crawl into the back. Stretching out on the narrow backseat, with its console hump in the middle, he changed his mind, wishing she’d grown staid enough to drive a roomy four-door sedan with a bench seat in the back.

      At least inside the car he was sheltered from the biting wind and sleet, and the stinging numbness in his fingers and toes eased. For the first time in days, he closed his eyes and relaxed, enjoying the relative comfort of civilization while he could.

      Sometime later, the crunch of footsteps on the ground outside jerked him out of a light doze. He tensed until the driver’s-side door opened and Delilah slid into the car. “Still alive?” she drawled as she buckled her seat belt. Her Appalachian accent had gotten stronger during her time away, he noticed.

      “Barely.”

      “You’re not bleedin’ on my seat, are you?”

      Brand grinned. “No.”

      “Who shot you?” she asked.

      “I’m not sure.”

      She was silent for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to believe him. “Okay, who ordered you shot?”

      Not much got past her. “I can’t prove it, but the only person I’ve made an enemy of lately is a man named Wayne Cortland.”

      “Cortland.” She rolled the name around in her mouth the way only a mountain girl could do. “Never heard of him.”

      “Believe me, that’s by design.”

      She cranked the car and set the heat up to high. Warm air wafted almost immediately into the back, and he sighed with relief.

      “I’m renting a place just down the mountain,” she told him. “It’s a nice place, but it’s not far from the home of one of Bitterwood P.D.’s finest.”

      “Aren’t you one of Bitterwood P.D.’s finest?” He winced as she started down the winding mountain road, seeming to hit every bump and pothole along the way. The car fishtailed for a moment on the slick road, flinging him off the narrow seat onto the floorboard. He growled a couple of heartfelt profanities as pain knifed through his injured side.

      “Damn, we got really close to a drop-off that time.” Delilah’s voice had a jittery, amped-up quality he remembered well. Brushes with death had always left her a little giddy, as if the mere act of surviving was a wellspring of joy. He’d wondered, more than once, if she carried that same reckless abandon with her into the bedroom.

      And then, one snowy night in West Virginia, he’d learned the answer.

      “How did you know I joined the Bitterwood P.D.?” she asked curiously. “I just made the decision a couple of weeks ago.”

      He didn’t try to lie on the seat again, settling for a low slump against the back of the bucket seat on the driver’s side. “Called Cooper Security and asked for you. Got a talkative receptionist.”

      “I’ll have to mention that to Jesse,” she murmured drily. But she didn’t sound angry that he’d found her.

      “Why’d you leave? I thought you were happy there.”

      Her eyes met his in the rearview mirror. “How would you know?”

      “I assume you know by now that I’ve been in touch with Seth.”

      “Yeah, I know.” In the mirror, her eyes narrowed. “Why’s that?”

      Because I wanted a connection to you, he thought. Aloud, he said, “I thought he’d be useful to the bureau. He had connections we could exploit. And when he went straight, he turned out to be a valuable asset.”

      “He said you put him in some dangerous situations, like in Bolen’s Bluff. The Swains could have killed him if they’d ever found out he was working for the FBI.”

      “I didn’t expect them to kidnap Isabel Cooper and put the whole damned mountain on red alert when she got away.” Brand grimaced as they hit another pothole. “I haven’t talked to him since I had to run. Did he figure out who was targeting Rachel Davenport?”

      “It was her stepbrother,” Delilah answered after a long pause. “The police arrested him a couple of weeks ago, but he died in his cell. The autopsy was inconclusive.”

      “Cortland got to him.”

      “You make him sound like the bogeyman.”

      “He is, in all СКАЧАТЬ