Blue Ridge Ricochet. Пола Грейвс

waiting for her inside the cave cubbyhole.

      But she had a feeling he passed this way daily, just in case she needed his help. At least, she liked to think he did.

      It made her feel a little less alone in this dangerous world in which she now operated.

      The people she worked with at the diner in town called her a dinosaur because she eschewed so much of the technology they couldn’t live without. She owned no computer, though she knew more about how to use them than any of her coworkers and customers would believe. She had a cell phone out of necessity, since power on the mountain could go down so easily, leaving her without phone service, as well. But she turned on the phone only when her landline wasn’t working. She had no desire to be instantly reachable, especially when she was on what she’d come to think of as her secret missions.

      How on earth had her life come to this? There’d been a time, not very long ago, when nobody who knew her would believe she’d take on a dangerous undercover mission on the side of the good guys.

      Not Nicolette Jamison, the wild girl from the Smoky Mountains who’d never met a bad situation she couldn’t make worse. Somehow, by the grace of God and a generous utilization of her good looks and native charm, she’d managed to skirt the edge of the law without quite crossing the point of no return, keeping her record clean enough to pass cursory scrutiny.

      She’d never pretended to be a saint. Hell, she wasn’t one now.

      But she knew the difference between trouble and evil. Trouble could lose you a few nights of sleep. Evil would rob you of your life without blinking. And the men she was tangling with these days were about as evil as they came in these parts.

      Snow had begun to fall by the time she reached the clearing where her cabin slumbered quietly in the dark. Fat, fluffy flakes started to pile up on her shoulders and dampen the ski cap she’d tugged down to cover her ears. She hurried up the porch steps as quickly as she dared, dodging the spot on the second step that creaked whenever it took any weight, and hurried to the front door, automatically checking the lock to make sure it was still secure.

      Still locked up, nice and tight.

      She slipped her key into the lock and turned it carefully. The door opened with only the faintest of creaks and closed behind her with an almost imperceptible snick. She engaged the lock and sat in the nearest chair to remove her hiking boots before she padded silently in socked feet down the hallway toward her bedroom.

      The door was still open a crack, just as she’d left it. She could just make out Dallas Cole’s lean form, still lying diagonally across the bed. She waited a moment until she could make out the steady rise and fall of his breathing before she tiptoed back to the living room and finished undressing for the night.

      She slipped on a pair of flannel pajamas she’d found tucked in the bottom of her drawer, a gag gift from her cousin last Christmas inspired by her past visit, when he’d found her sleeping in his bed, dressed in his Atlanta Braves T-shirt and nothing else. The timing had been particularly bad, given that he’d promised his bed to the pretty blonde he had brought home for the night.

      Flannel pajamas were about as far from her normal nighttime attire as it got, but she was trying out the straight and narrow these days. Well, straighter and narrower, anyway. No more wandering around in skimpy nighties when strange men were staying the night.

      No more strange men staying the night anymore, for that matter. Some undesirable habits deserved to be broken, and her addiction to bad boys was one of them.

      She wondered what kind of boy Dallas Cole was. If all she had to go on was the FBI record her boss, Alexander Quinn, had gotten his hands on, she’d say Dallas Cole was about as good a boy as they got. Hardworking, well liked by his colleagues, a go-getter who was looking to move up the ladder at the FBI even though he wasn’t a special agent.

      What had happened that night three weeks ago when he’d headed south out of Washington, DC, and disappeared without a trace until now?

      Did he have a hidden bad-boy side nobody had ever seen?

      She had to find out before he was strong enough to give her real trouble.

      * * *

      DALLAS EASED HIS eyes open when he heard Nicki’s soft footfalls retreat down the hall. Damn. That had been close.

      He’d barely made it back to the bedroom before he heard her key in the front door lock, a tiny clink of metal on metal that he probably wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been listening for it. If he’d still been asleep, he wouldn’t have heard it at all.

      But the sound of her leaving had roused him from a deep sleep, leaving his nerves jangling and his mind reeling. He’d dragged himself from bed in time to see her disappear into the woods on the right side of the house, bundled up against the cold.

      He’d waited by the window until his legs had given out, then sat in the chair near the fire for almost an hour, going by the clock on the mantel that ticked away the minutes with sharp little clicks of the second hand.

      Where the hell had she gone? Did she go to meet someone?

      Had she told anyone where to find him?

      It didn’t matter, he realized as his vigil ticked over to a new hour. He was too tired and weak to make his escape. He had nowhere to go.

      Her footsteps on the porch had jolted him from a light doze a few minutes ago. He’d peeked through the narrow gap in the curtains in time to see her easing her way up the wooden porch steps.

      He’d made it back to the bed with only seconds to spare, forcing his respiration to a slow, even tempo even though his heart was racing like a rabbit chased by a fox.

      He eased over to his back, wincing a little as the bed creaked. He held his breath, waiting for her to return, but after a few minutes, he realized she must have settled down for the night.

      He stared at the dark ceiling over his head, his heart still pounding from the rush of adrenaline that had driven him back to bed.

      Where had she gone tonight? Who had she seen? What had she said?

      Would he live to regret stumbling into her path tonight?

       Chapter Three

      Frost painted the cabin windows with delicate fronds of ice, lit by the morning sunlight angling through the glass. Outside, snow blanketed the ground and glistened in the trees, catching every drop of dayglow and refracting it into diamond sparkles.

      Nicki pressed her forehead against the icy glass, remembering her six-year-old self doing much the same thing on a snowy morning in the Smoky Mountains, before everything went so awfully, irrevocably wrong.

      Footsteps behind her drew her back to jaded reality, and she turned to see Dallas Cole enter the kitchen. He moved with a painful hitch that made her own back ache in sympathy, and the night’s sleep had done little to return color to his cheeks or vigor to his demeanor.

      “You look like you could use another week’s sleep,” she murmured, reaching for the empty cup she’d set out for him earlier. “Coffee?”

      “Please.” He groped for the back of the nearest chair and settled down at the small table in the window nook.

      “Creamer? Sugar?”

      “Just black.” He looked at the frosty window. “How much snow did we get?”

      “Just a couple of inches.”

      His dark eyes narrowed as she set a cup of steaming coffee in front of him and took the chair across from him. “Did you sleep okay on the sofa?”

      There was a strange tone to his voice that she couldn’t quite read. “Yeah, it was fine.”

      “Thanks for letting me have the bed. Very comfortable.” He took a sip of coffee, grimacing. She’d made