Deception Lake. Пола Грейвс

the dust of Purgatory, Tennessee, behind her.

      * * *

      “SHE DITCHED YOU at an urgent-care clinic without even waiting to see if you had a head injury?” Riley’s eyebrows nearly reached his hairline as he walked with Jack out to the clinic’s parking lot. “Good Lord, son, what did you do to the woman?”

      “Besides steal seven grand, gamble it away and humiliate her in an Amarillo honky-tonk?” Jack grimaced as he climbed into the passenger seat. The wound in the back of his head had required six stitches and still hurt like hell, despite the local anesthetic. Or maybe that was just his conscience.

      “And now you have to go retrieve your truck from her backyard.”

      “Well, technically, it’s just down the road.”

      “Any chance she’ll key the paint job and slash your tires?”

      Before seeing Mara again, Jack would have said no. But she had changed in the past four years. Drastically. “Let’s just hope she got her revenge by leaving me wounded to fend for myself.”

      Riley’s side-eye glance was a thing of sarcastic beauty. “Poor you.”

      “Seriously, Riley, a big man dressed in camo attacked her right there at her cabin and she didn’t want to call the cops.” Jack shook his head and immediately regretted it as the stitches pulled, sending a stinging pain through his scalp. “What the hell is going on?”

      “Maybe you should call the local cops and make a report,” Riley suggested. “The guy assaulted you.”

      “Technically, I attacked him first.”

      “Because he was attacking your friend.”

      “Who hates me and doesn’t want the police involved. What if she lies and says I assaulted someone?”

      “Wow, you really don’t trust her, do you?”

      “I broke her trust. She owes me nothing.”

      “Then maybe you should just get your truck, follow me back to town and let’s get on with our fishing trip.”

      Jack could tell by Riley’s tone that he didn’t like what he was saying any more than Jack did. But he was right. Mara Jennings didn’t want him anywhere near her life, and he sure as hell couldn’t fix what he’d broken.

      Still, the idea of leaving her out here to fend for herself went against every instinct he had.

      He’d half expected to find his truck had been towed away, but the Ford F-150 was still sitting there on the side of the narrow gravel road, about thirty yards from the cabin’s driveway. Mara’s little blue Mazda car wasn’t anywhere around, however.

      Had she gone back to work?

      As Jack opened the passenger door of the Bronco, Riley asked, “Should we expect you at dinner?”

      Jack turned to look at his brother-in-law. “I don’t think so.”

      Riley’s mouth flattened to a thin line, but he didn’t look surprised. “Be careful, Jack.”

      Jack nodded and closed the door, walking slowly across the crunchy gravel to his truck. He settled in the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition. But he didn’t start the truck.

      Instead he settled down to wait.

      * * *

      HER CELL PHONE rang while she was loading the data sanitization programs on the computers she had to leave behind. She glanced at the display. Alexander Quinn.

      She ignored the call and shoved the lone laptop computer she was keeping into her backpack. She’d packed light for the bugout. She wasn’t exactly a clotheshorse to begin with, and the less she had to carry with her, the better to make a complete escape.

      It might be a relief, really, to go underground again. No more pretending to be someone she wasn’t.

      Someone she never had been.

      The phone rang once more. Quinn again. With a grimace, she answered the phone. “What’s up, boss?”

      “What happened to Jack Drummond?”

      “What happened?” She should have known he’d already heard about the visit to the urgent-care clinic. Purgatory was a small town, and not much went on there that Quinn didn’t know about. “He fell down the porch stairs and split his skull on the gravel. He’s fine.”

      Although she couldn’t say that for sure, could she? She’d left him at the clinic to fend for himself.

      “Fell down the steps?”

      A flutter of alarm twitched through her gut as she realized maybe Quinn knew something she didn’t. “Yes. Why? How do you know about what happened?”

      “Someone saw you with Drummond at the clinic.”

      She bit back a sigh. Damn small towns. “I didn’t want him to sue me. Or, more to the point, you, since this is your property.”

      “And he just fell down the stairs. Unaided?”

      “You think I pushed him?”

      “Did you?”

      “No. I didn’t.” It was a grizzly of a camouflage-clad intruder who did the pushing, she added silently. “And I made it clear to Drummond that I don’t care to see him again.”

      “I’ve looked into Jack Drummond’s past,” Quinn said.

      That fast? She glanced at her watch. Nearly seven. There were no windows in the secret room, but the day had already been waning before she finished packing. She would be out of daylight when she finally hit the road.

      Maybe that was better. Easier to disappear in the dark.

      “Not curious?” Quinn asked when she didn’t respond.

      “Not particularly.” A lie, of course. Curiosity was one of her most enduring traits. And one that often got her into considerable trouble.

      And Jack Drummond was, if nothing else, an intriguing creature in all the wrong ways.

      “He’s been off the rodeo circuit for two years,” Quinn said. “Retired after a bull ride gone wrong crushed his pelvis. He’s lucky he can walk.”

      She hadn’t noticed any sign of infirmity. But she supposed she wouldn’t have. She’d been trying very hard not to pay any attention to Jack Drummond at all.

      “Is there a point to telling me this?” she asked.

      “He used to have quite the reputation as a hard-drinking, hard-loving, hard-riding cowboy.”

      She knew his reputation had been well earned. She knew that better than most people did. “Used to have?”

      “Four years ago, he stopped drinking. I don’t know if he stopped womanizing, but the stories about his bedroom exploits subsided around that time. The only thing he kept doing was riding, and from what I hear, he became increasingly reckless about it, which led to the accident that ended his career.”

      Four years ago, Mara had walked into an Amarillo honky-tonk to meet Jack for a date and found him wrapped around a pretty blonde barrel racer he’d met while waiting for Mara to arrive. He’d been three sheets to the wind already, and when he spotted Mara, he’d just smiled a drunken smile and shrugged.

      Just shrugged, as if to say, what’s a cowboy to do?

      God, she hated him for that.

      She’d never believed for a second that he’d change. Not for a second. Men like Jack Drummond barreled their careless ways through the world, leaving destruction in their wake, and almost never suffered the consequences.

      “Maybe he just hides it better now,” she said.

      “Maybe,” Quinn conceded. “Or maybe something