Secret Hideout. Пола Грейвс

How in hell did they think they were going to get her out of here? Was that even the plan anymore? He’d been damned lucky to hear about what the Swains were planning in the first place, considering how close-mouthed the people of Bolen Bluff, Alabama, could be.

       He’d overheard the conversation while snooping around Tolliver Feed and Seed. Hidden in the back room, he’d eavesdropped on two Swain clansmen talking cryptically about an operation the next day, something to do with a woman at a Fort Payne hotel.

       And if the Swains were up to something, it was bad news.

       Down the hall, a door opened, and he heard scuffling sounds. He forced himself to remain in place as footsteps thudded down the hall toward his position.

       He edged toward the ice machine, tugging the bill of his baseball cap lower over his face. He didn’t have an ice bucket, but someone had helpfully left spares stacked on top of the machine, so he grabbed one of those and opened the ice machine bin. As he dug into the ice, he heard footsteps shuffling past him at a quick clip.

       Once they’d passed, he took a quick look down the hall after them. He caught sight of a mass of dark curls and his heart gave a disconcerting flip.

       Two men flanked her, holding her up as she sagged against them. A third man lagged behind, watching their backs. All of them wore caps low over their faces, just like his.

       They were heading for the stairs.

       He waited for them to enter the stairwell before he hurried after them. Cracking the door open, he listened for a second, trying to gauge how far ahead they were.

       The footsteps echoed in the cavernous stairwell, making it hard to be sure where the sounds were coming from. He slipped into the stairwell and eased after them, keeping close to the wall to stay out of sight.

       He had no idea how he was going to get her away from them without being seen, but if it came to a choice, he’d risk identification to save her. Whatever it took, he was going to get Isabel Cooper away from her captors.

       What happened after that, however, would be anyone’s guess.

      * * *

      SHE WAS IN A CAVERN. A tall, twisting cavern, painted in hieroglyphics that almost seemed like words.

       Almost.

       The almost-words shimmered on the walls as if they were painted with glitter. Sometimes they slid down the walls and slid back up again, making her dizzy.

       And still she and her captors descended. Down, down, down, into the pits of hell.

       Jasper Swain’s eyes had stopped bleeding. At least, she thought they had. He’d taken off the mask, but his cap bill was so low that all she could see of his face was a deep shadow.

       And she knew he wasn’t Jasper Swain, either. Swain was still in prison in St. Clair County, not due for his next parole hearing for at least five more years. Her head was playing games with her.

       She remembered a needle. They’d shot her full of something. Something potent. That was why the walls were melting and she was seeing people who weren’t there.

       “What do you want with me?” she asked, raising her head to look at the one she still thought of as Swain.

       He didn’t answer, and his shadowy face seemed to undulate in front of her eyes. She dragged her gaze away from the mesmerizing dance and gazed upward, wondering if someone had heard her screams.

       What she saw on the landing above nearly made her racing heart stop in its tracks.

       She was seeing another person who wasn’t there.

       Couldn’t be there.

       The face was almost as familiar to her now as her own reflection in the mirror. Maybe even more familiar, considering how much she’d seemed to change over the last six months. He’d changed little at all. A little more scruffy, as if her hallucinating mind had conjured up the beard stubble she’d secretly wanted to see on his clean-shaven jaw. His hair was longer, too, no longer combed back into a neatly groomed cut that seemed to scream “federal agent.”

      Oh, Scanlon, she thought, blinking back sudden tears when his ghost disappeared from sight. A fresh sense of loss overwhelmed her, oddly energizing. Rage infused her—rage at her own sense of powerlessness, at the ravening grief slowly eating her from the inside out.

       He’s gone. He’s not coming back. And you’ll be gone, too, if you don’t get your head back together and figure out how to get away from these goons.

       The walls around her closed in, threatening to trigger claustrophobia. Seeing what she thought was an exit door on the next stair landing, she focused hard, making out the number two. Second floor.

       She knew the first-floor door opened onto a narrow corridor from which a person could either head down the hall to the front lobby or go out a side door to the parking lot. She’d gone that route earlier that morning, when a couple of the conference coordinators had taken her out for breakfast.

       If they got her to the first floor, they’d be out to the parking lot before her screams could grab anyone’s attention.

       She tensed her muscles and glanced upward again, hoping to see Scanlon’s ghost. But he didn’t make a reappearance. She tamped down a rush of sorrow.

      Now, she thought.

       She let herself sag heavily against the two men holding her upright. The sudden shift in weight caught them by surprise, giving her an opening.

       Swinging as hard as she could, she jabbed her elbows into their crotches and pushed to her feet, jerking free as they reacted to the pain of her blows.

       The door to the second floor was right in front of her, shimmering and undulating. She pushed through it, ignoring the ruckus behind her.

       “Get her,” she heard one man say, his voice a pained croak.

       She didn’t look back, racing down a writhing, spinning tunnel. There was still enough sense left in her drugged-out brain to realize she was running down the second-floor hallway of the hotel. She gave a half second’s thought to banging on the doors, looking for help, but she suspected the people inside those rooms, even if they answered her knocks, would see her swaying and drunk-eyed and slam the door in her face.

       Worse, the men she heard pounding down the hall behind her might kill anyone who answered.

       She found her strength flagging, and even though she had put a fair amount of space between herself and the men running behind her, she knew they must be gaining.

       She had blown past the elevators, knowing she couldn’t risk waiting for one to arrive, but there was a second set of stairs at the end of the corridor that led down to the parking lot. It was on the opposite side of the hotel from where she’d parked her little green Ford Mustang, but at least she’d be outside with more room to maneuver.

       She hit the door to the stairwell at a dead run, stumbling into the railing and nearly pitching headfirst down the stairs.

       She heard footsteps pounding from above her, coming down a flight of stairs at a clip. Had one of them circled back, anticipating her destination?

       She started running down the steps, but whatever they had injected into her neck was hitting its stride, making her head swim as if she’d just spent the last ten minutes riding a tilt-a-whirl. She stumbled a few steps above the landing and pitched forward, landing hard.

       The air whooshed from her lungs, making her vision go black. As she struggled to breathe again, she heard a thudding of footsteps racing down to where she lay.

       She tried to push to her feet, but she didn’t have the strength. She felt a pair of strong, warm hands drag her to her feet. She blinked, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

       The ghost of Ben Scanlon stared back at her, his blue eyes soft and so beautifully familiar that tears filmed over her eyes, blurring his features.