Lawman Lover. Lisa Childs

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ tray out the door.

      “You okay?”

      Her face pale and eyes wide and dark, she just shook her head. “No.”

      Son of a bitch…

      Not her brother. Even if Jedidiah Kleyn wasn’t innocent as he claimed, he didn’t deserve to die like this just because he had helped Rowe instead of killing him.

      “No…” he murmured, a knot of dread moving from his stomach to his chest. He jumped out of the drawer and walked over to the gurney. Then he reached for the zipper of the body bag and pulled it down, over the battered face of the man who had helped him.

      But it wasn’t Jed. It was the other man, the one who had been scared but agreeable to aiding Rowe’s escape. Rowe stared down at the bruised and broken body of the gray-haired prison doctor.

      “Son of a bitch…” he cursed low and harshly. “I did this….”

      As if rousing herself from a nightmare, Macy shook her head. “You were already on your way here in a body bag when this happened.”

      “But it’s my fault,” he said. “They beat him to death because of me.”

      Damn it. Damn it. If only there had been another way to get out…a way that hadn’t involved an innocent man winding up dead.

      “What if he told them you’re not dead?” she asked, her voice cracking with fear. “Will my brother be coming here in the next body bag?”

      “Macy—”

      Anger flushed her face. “How could you use him like this? You put him in danger.”

      Just getting sentenced to Blackwoods had put Jedidiah Kleyn in mortal danger. More prisoners left like he had, in body bags, than on parole. That was part of the reason he’d been given his undercover assignment at the penitentiary. The other part of the reason had been the drugs that moved more freely than the bodies in and out of the prison.

      “You have to help my brother,” she pleaded. “You have to get him out before he winds up dead, too.”

      Rowe glanced down at Doc’s battered face. If the elderly physician had talked, it was probably already too late for him to save Kleyn. The elevator dinged again, and Rowe groaned. Was this one her brother, just as she feared?

      “I don’t know who that is,” Macy murmured, horror and dread glistening in her dark eyes. “It can’t be…”

      “It’s not,” he said.

      “No,” she agreed, and jerked her head in a nod that had her ponytail bouncing. “The van didn’t have time to get to the prison and back again. It’s not Jed.”

      Yet.

      “Then it’s someone you’re not expecting.”

      She cursed and bit her lip. With a ragged sigh, she reached for the instrument tray and grabbed up a scalpel. She studied him a moment, as if she had just realized that the easiest way to save her brother was to prove that he had really killed the undercover DEA agent. Rowe’s dead body would be all the proof she needed.

      “I can’t help your brother if I’m dead,” Rowe pointed out.

      “Get on a gurney,” she whispered.

      He hesitated a moment, wondering if she intended to plunge the scalpel into his chest the minute he lay down.

      “Please,” she murmured. “You have to—your life isn’t the only one at risk now.”

      Hers was, too, just as Jedidiah Kleyn had worried would happen when Macy helped Rowe get out of the morgue. The only promise the prisoner had extracted in exchange for helping Rowe was that the DEA agent keep his little sister safe.

      The sound of heavy footsteps echoing down the corridor compelled him to move. Whoever had come down to the morgue had not come alone. He had no more than jumped on a stretcher than Macy draped a sheet over him and pushed him into the hall. As she drew the morgue door shut behind them, the click of a lock echoed with finality. Through the sheet, he glimpsed shadows—several of them—walking toward the stretcher and Macy.

      “Good evening, Warden James,” she murmured. “How can I help you?”

      By turning over the only man who had ever escaped Blackwoods Penitentiary and the corrupt warden’s reign of terror?

      MACY BIT HER LIP AND WISHED back her greeting. But the warden didn’t react to her recognizing him. Everyone in Blackwoods County knew who Warden James was, so he probably would have reacted more had she pretended not to know him.

      She held the scalpel beneath the edge of the gurney she clutched and realized how ineffectual the weapon was as she stared up at the broad-shouldered prison warden. With his bald head and big build, the fifty-something-year-old was an intimidating man. He didn’t need the muscle he had brought with him, but four heavily muscled and armed guards stood behind him.

      If they wanted to see the body under the sheet, she wouldn’t be able to stop them, even with the scalpel. Her heart pounded hard and fast with fear that she had made a horrible mistake. She would have been smarter to lock her and the prisoner inside the morgue, rather than out of it.

      “Get Dr. Bernard out here,” Warden James said. The man was obviously used to everyone jumping to obey his commands.

      If he had really ordered her brother to kill an undercover agent, Jed would not survive his show of disobedience.

      She swallowed hard and replied, “He left for the evening.”

      “Then you need to call him and get him back down here. Now,” the warden insisted, a jagged vein standing out on his forehead as he barely contained his rage.

      “I don’t have the doctor’s private numbers, and I’m not sure where he is, sir,” she murmured, barely able to hear her own voice over the furious beating of her heart. Now she understood why everyone in Blackwoods County feared Warden Jefferson James whether they were confined in his prison or not.

      “I’m just waiting for a funeral home pickup.” Forcing away her nerves, she gestured with a steady hand toward the gurney.

      “So you have a key to the morgue?”

      She shook her head. It wasn’t really a lie since she wasn’t supposed to have a key to the morgue. “No. Dr. Bernard left me in the hall here, waiting. The funeral home’s driver is late.” Her friend wasn’t actually going to show at all, but hopefully the warden wouldn’t check her story.

      “Who does have a key?” James persisted.

      Despite the tension quivering in her muscles, she managed a shrug. “Maybe the hospital director?”

      “Can you call him down here?”

      She shook her head. “Sorry, sir, the phones don’t even ring down here after hours. And I can’t leave this body unattended until the funeral home gets here.”

      “Why not?” Warden James asked, his already beady eyes СКАЧАТЬ