Blue Ridge Ricochet. Paula Graves

than she looked. “Sorry to do this, but you leave me no choice.”

      The fear returned, beating at the back of his throat like a wave of nausea. He swallowed it down, refused to give in. “And here you promised you weren’t a serial killer.”

      “Believe it or not, this is all about keeping you alive.” She got him to his feet and pushed him toward a door he hadn’t noticed before. “Watch your step.”

      She opened the door and reached inside, flicking a switch. He saw he was standing at the top of a steep set of stairs descending into a dim basement. “You’re not going to chain me to your dungeon wall, are you?” He tried to keep his voice light, make it into a joke. Anything to keep the fear at bay.

      She helped him down the steps, grabbing the wood railing on one side of the descent when he stumbled and nearly pulled her down the stairs with him. “Sadly, I haven’t had time to put in the shackles yet.”

      They reached the bottom of the steps and she gave him a little shove. He stumbled forward into the shadows, wincing in anticipation of the impact.

      His upper body hit something soft. Opening his eyes, he saw he’d landed face-first on an old, overstuffed sofa braced against the cinder block wall of the basement.

      Cellar, he amended mentally, his eyes beginning to adjust to the low light. There was a shelf against the opposite wall full of Mason jars full of home-canned fruits and vegetables.

      “Stay put. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” Nicki’s voice drifted down toward him from the top of the stairs. He looked up at her, squinting at the bright daylight backlighting her through the cellar door, rendering her little more than a curvy silhouette.

      “Don’t go,” he called, fear hammering past his last defenses.

      She paused in the doorway. When she spoke, she sounded genuinely distressed. “I’m so sorry. But I have to go.”

      Then the door closed behind her, shutting out the blessed daylight. He heard the soft thuds of her footfalls drift into a thick, deafening silence.

      Once again, he was alone. Trapped and helpless, just like before, with nothing but darkness and fear to keep him company.

       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 body that didn’t hurt in some way, including the new scrape on his inner wrist from the nail protruding from the wooden shelf where the beautiful but treacherous Nicki kept her canned goods. But Dallas was damned if he was going to be bound and locked in by the time she got back from her shift at the diner.

      Who the hell was she? Was she connected to the militia members who’d taken him captive a few weeks earlier? If so, why had it taken her all night to decide he was safer behind a lock and key?

      Everything had changed when he told her he wanted to call the authorities. That had been the catalyst. He’d seen fear in her eyes, not unlike his own reaction when she’d pinned him down and taped up his hands. His mention of the authorities had made her feel just as trapped as he felt now.

      But why? What was she hiding?

      The tape around his wrists snapped apart as the sharp edge of the nail