Blue Ridge Ricochet. Paula Graves

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       Chapter Four

      What have I done?

      The question rang in her head, over and over in rhythm with her pounding heart, as she muscled the Jeep down the mountain to the main road that led into town.

      She’d tied a man up and locked him in her cellar. Had she lost her bloody mind?

      The cell phone peeking out of her purse presented a powerful temptation. She had never felt this great a need to talk to another human being in her life. Calling Alexander Quinn was out of the question—he’d never answer a call from her cell phone and risk blowing her cover.

      But her cousin Anson might answer. She could shoot the breeze with him, avoid anything incriminating. Just hearing a friendly, familiar voice might be enough to knock the edge off her nerves, right?

      She dragged her gaze back to the road as her wheels slipped a little on the slick surface. No. No calling anyone from her past, no matter how freaked-out she felt at the moment.

      She’d agreed to this job. She knew what was at stake.

      Hell, that was why she’d just imprisoned a man in her cellar, wasn’t it?

      Despite the weather, the parking lot of Dugan’s Diner was half-full when she pulled her Jeep into one of the employee parking spots and entered the kitchen through the employees’ side door.

      The only other person in the kitchen was Tollie Barber, one of the kitchen assistants who helped out with food prep and handled some of the easier cooking duties. She was busy at the counter, processing potatoes for hash browns, her frizzy blond curls tamed by a hairnet. She darted a quick gaze at Nicki. “So much for a snow day, huh?”

      Nicki tucked her own dark hair under a protective cap and headed to the sink to wash her trembling hands. She kept her tone calm and light, hoping her agitation didn’t show. “Gotta snow a lot more than this to keep people away from breakfast at Dugan’s.”

      Trevor Colley entered the kitchen from the front area, moving at a quick pace for a man his size. His barrel chest and linebacker shoulders seemed to take up half the kitchen when he stopped next to where Nicki was preparing the griddle. “You’re a good ’un to come in so fast, Nicki,” he said in a gruff voice that rumbled like thunder. It was all the thanks he’d give her. Trevor wasn’t one to gush.

      “Quite a crowd for a snow day,” she commented, cracking a couple of eggs for the first order clipped to the order wheel. Two eggs, sunny-side up, hash browns and bacon. “Something up?”

      Trevor gave her an odd look. “You tell me. Del McClintock brought four of his boys with him. They brought their girls, too. Should I worry?”

      Nicki supposed it was a good thing that Trevor believed she might know the answer to his question. It suggested that people were starting to connect her with the Blue Ridge Infantry. Which meant, hopefully, that the BRI members themselves were starting to think of her as one of them.

      That was her goal, wasn’t it?

      “No, don’t worry. If you have any trouble with them, come get me.”

      Trevor frowned at her but went back out to the front of the diner, leaving her and Tollie to get the orders filled.

      As she laid out the strips of bacon on the griddle to fry, the image of Dallas Cole’s rainbow-hued collection of scrapes and bruises filled her head. Her whole body went cold and numb, and for a second, she thought she was going to be sick.

      Oh, God. She’d taped a sick, injured man’s hands behind his back and locked him in her cellar without even feeding him breakfast first. She hadn’t even left him a bucket if he needed to go to the bathroom. Which he couldn’t do with his hands duct-taped, anyway.

      What the hell had she been thinking? Had she lost her ever-lovin’ mind?

      But what else could she have done? Dallas had insisted on calling the FBI. Maybe it had been a trick—maybe the whole thing was a setup to prove she wasn’t who she said she was. Maybe it had been a test. But if that was the case, she had no idea whether she’d passed or failed.

      But what if he was legit? She certainly couldn’t let him bring the FBI swarming into River’s End at this point. Even if it didn’t end up blowing her cover, every BRI member in town would crawl back in the holes where they’d come from, and it’d be months, even years, before she could get this close to the group’s inner circle.

      She was doing what she had to do. She was. She just had to get through this morning and she could hurry back home and let him out before anything bad happened.

      Assuming something bad hadn’t already happened.

      * * *

      THERE WASN’T AN inch of his СКАЧАТЬ