Smoky Mountain Setup. Paula Graves
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Название: Smoky Mountain Setup
Автор: Paula Graves
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежные детективы
isbn: 9781474039321
isbn:
And she would be alone with the only man she’d ever let herself love.
She couldn’t stop herself from rising to join him at the window. He turned slowly to face her, his face half in shadow.
“They’re wrong,” she said. “The BRI, I mean.”
“About what?”
“Alexander Quinn might very well want to sleep with me. He might even feel some level of affection for me. But he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice my life if he believed it would serve justice in some way. That’s the sort of man he is. So if your friends in the Blue Ridge Infantry believe they can use me to control him in any way, they are sadly mistaken.”
“That won’t stop them from trying.”
She lifted her chin. “Let them try.”
His eyes narrowed as he held her gaze, studying her as if he’d never seen her before. “You’re different,” he murmured finally, reaching up to brush a piece of hair away from her cheek. His fingers lingered a moment, and she felt how work-roughened they’d become since the last time he’d touched her that way.
He dropped his hand to his side. “Do you trust me enough to give me back my weapon?”
Trust might not be the right word, she thought, but she was willing to take the risk. “Yes.”
He moved away from her to the rolltop desk and retrieved his pistol, reloading it with both speed and skill. “Any chance you have more 9 mm ammo around?”
“Of course.”
His gaze lifted to meet hers, a slow smile spreading over his face, carving dimples into his cheeks and taking a decade off his appearance. “Should’ve known.”
As she started toward the hall closet where she kept her extra weapons and ammunition, the lights went off, plunging the cabin into gloom relieved only by the dying fireplace embers.
“There goes the power,” she said with a sigh, detouring toward the hearth to coax the fire back to life.
“Wait,” he murmured as she reached for the poker. He was much closer than she’d expected; she hadn’t heard his approach.
“What?” she asked, her voice dropping to a near whisper.
“How sure are you that the snow caused the power to go out?”
“It’s not unusual during a snowstorm—”
He tugged her away from the window. “Or during a siege.”
Only the soft crackle of the smoldering fire and the quiet hiss of their respirations relieved the sudden blanket of silence that fell over the cabin. Outside, snow continued to fall quietly as Landry listened for any out-of-place noises.
Olivia moved away from the fireplace and picked up the Mossberg shotgun leaning against the wall by the desk. She slanted a quick look at Landry before she started toward the front door and grabbed the thick leather jacket that hung on a hook by the entry.
He caught up with her, closing his hand around her wrist. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She shook off his grasp and turned to look at him, her blue eyes glimmering in the low light. “I’m going outside to see if I can tell what knocked the power out.”
“Didn’t you hear a single word I said about a siege?”
“If there are people out there who want to take me captive, I’d rather get the fight over now than hide like a coward in the cabin.”
“Well, you’re not going out there alone.” He chambered a round in the P-11. “I’ll go first.”
“Why? Because you’re the guy?”
He angled a quick look at her. “Because you’re the target, and the target should never be the first person out the door.”
She frowned but stepped back. “You need a jacket.”
He backtracked and shrugged on the thick fleece coat he’d picked up earlier that day at the thrift store in Barrowville, hurrying in case she changed her mind about allowing him to join her.
But she waited for him at the door, her gaze drawing him all the way in as he closed the distance between them. She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as he was, and if anything, she looked even stronger and fitter than she’d been when they’d worked together in the FBI.
They’d always been a good team, right until the case that had broken them. He hoped the old instincts would kick back in for them now, despite all that had passed between them, because if there really were people out there lying in wait for Olivia, it would take all their skills and a whole lot of luck to make it out of the situation unscathed.
An icy blast of air greeted them as they stepped out onto the cabin porch. Wind had swirled snow beneath the porch roof, depositing about two inches halfway onto the porch’s weathered wooden floor.
Landry paused at the top of the porch steps and surveyed the cold white expanse in front of him. If there had been anyone moving around out here in the past little while, they hadn’t come close to the porch. The snowfield was pristine and undisturbed.
“The snow probably knocked a branch on a wire somewhere between here and the nearest transformer.” Olivia’s low voice, only inches from his ear, sent a ripple of pure sexual awareness darting down his spine.
He turned to look at her. “We should check all the way around the house before we let down our guard.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t protest as he led her down the steps into the thickening snow. Almost five inches covered the ground, even more gathering at the edges of the porch where the wind had blown the snow into rising drifts. It was a soft, wet snow, flattening under his boots as they slowly circled the cabin, looking for any signs of intruders.
But nothing had disturbed the snow around the cabin, save for a small set of tracks belonging to what he guessed was probably a foraging raccoon, looking for a meal.
“It was just the snow,” Olivia murmured, giving him a nudge toward the front of the cabin.
He trudged back through the tracks they’d left in the snow and nodded for her to precede him up the porch steps. She climbed the steps with a soft sigh he recognized as a sign of impatience and turned to face him when he joined her in front of the door.
“Fine,” he said. “It was just the snow. This time.”
Olivia shook the slush from her boots and opened the cabin door to head inside. He knocked the snow from his own boots before he followed her in.
She closed and locked the door behind him, shrugging out of her damp coat. СКАЧАТЬ