Secret Hideout. Пола Грейвс

       But he was dead. She’d seen the aftermath of the explosion. Examined the autopsy report. Watched his casket lowered into a grave in the tiny town of Maribel, Texas. Held his mama’s hand as she’d cried.

       She was hallucinating. One of her captors had found her and grabbed her again. That was all it could be.

       But she didn’t have the strength to fight anymore. The appearance of Scanlon’s ghost seemed like a mercy, one last chance to be with her partner again before she met whatever fate her captors had planned for her.

       Giving in to the fantasy, she stopped resisting and let Scanlon’s ghost lead her quickly down the stairs and out into the blinding sunlight.

       He slipped a jacket over her shoulders as they reached the side of a dark green van. Dragging her around until her back met the solid wall of the panel van, he pulled the cap off his own head and shoved it onto hers.

       She blinked with confusion, opening her mouth to ask what he was doing. A strange halo limned his body, an aura of brilliant blues and dazzling greens. She’d never seen anything so beautiful in her life.

       His hands cradled her face, his touch crackling like electricity. His bent head blocked out the sunlight as he touched his mouth to hers.

       Fire flowed from his lips into hers, poured through her veins in a flood of bright sensation, immolating her from the inside out.

       She wound her arms around his neck and pressed closer until she melted into him, their bodies melding until she no longer existed outside of him. A low groan rumbled through her. She didn’t know which of them had made the sound.

       The world disappeared into a brilliant pinpoint of light, pulsating with colors that throbbed and danced until they finally exploded like supernova.

       The fireworks fell away, fading into a cold, black void, and it was a long time before Isabel formed a conscious thought again.

      Chapter Two

      Consciousness returned in sickening waves, crashing against a wall of agony in her head. Even the small effort of opening her eyes seemed beyond Isabel’s strength, so she suffered awhile longer in a dark cocoon, willing the nausea to subside.

       Where was she? Why so much pain? Why had she been asleep?

       Movement nearby forced her to open her eyes. Wincing as light needled into her brain, she bit back a moan and focused on a man standing with his back to her as he stirred something in a battered pot on an old gas range.

      Scanlon, she thought, even though she knew it couldn’t be so.

       Then he turned to grab a spice tin from the counter beside the range, making her gasp. The aquiline nose and stubborn chin definitely belonged to her former FBI partner.

       Her dead partner.

       He turned around at her gasp, his blue eyes soft. “Hey there, Cooper. Back among the living?”

       She shook her head, seized by fear. Had she lost her mind? Was that why she couldn’t remember where she was or why she was here? “You’re dead.”

       “Cooper—”

       “No, you died! Six months ago! I saw footage of the explosion. I—I read the autopsy report.” She swiped tears from her cheeks with a jerk of her hand. “I held your mama’s hand as we buried you—”

       Pain flickered across his expression. “I know.”

       “I don’t believe in ghosts!” If she wasn’t dreaming, then she was crazy. Loss could do that, and she’d been hiding her own grief all this time, trying not to worry her family or even admit to herself how important Scanlon had been to her—

       “I’m not a ghost.” He crouched beside her, threading his solid fingers between her own. The warmth from his hands worked its way up her arm into her chest. Hot tears burned her eyes and she let them fall, staring at him in disbelief. She reached up to touch his stubbled jaw, wondering if her hand would slide right through him. But he was solid. Warm.

       Alive.

       He caught her face between his hands and made her look into his eyes. “I know it’s confusing, but I’m here. I didn’t die in the explosion. I was there, but I escaped.”

       An ache settled in the center of her chest. “But you let me think you were dead.” The buoyant happiness that had kept her upright for the past few seconds fled as suddenly as it had arrived, supplanted by a rush of anger. She pushed against him. “You were alive and you let me think you were dead!”

       “It’s complicated—”

       “How could you do that to me? We were partners! You don’t do that to your partner!” Growling, she tried to throw off the patchwork quilt tangled around her legs, but the pain in her head grew excruciating. She jammed the heels of her hands into her temples, certain her head was going to explode.

       The bed beneath her shifted, making the world roil around her again. Scanlon’s hands closed around her upper arms, steadying her. “You have to calm down. You’re still suffering the effects of whatever they gave you.”

       An image darted through her brain. A flash of light on the point of a needle. A corresponding sting pricked the side of her neck. The alarming memory did more to dispel her escalating rage than anything Scanlon could have said.

       “Somebody shot me up with something.”

       “I know. There’s a needle mark near your carotid, and you were hallucinating before you passed out.” His voice emerged as hard as steel. “Stupid cretins could have killed you.”

       “Who?” Why couldn’t she remember anything more than the needle? It felt as if she’d walked into a solid wall, nothing but blankness wherever she looked. “Who did this to me?”

       “I’m not sure.” He dropped his hands from her arms and averted his gaze. She realized he wasn’t telling her the truth.

       But why?

       She changed tacks. “Any idea what they shot me up with?”

       “Not sure about that, either.” He stood and crossed to the saucepan on the stove. “Food will help, whatever it was. Dilute the effects, at least.”

       She wasn’t sure her rolling stomach could handle a glass of water, much less whatever it was he was pouring from the saucepan into a bowl. As he pulled a sleeve of plain crackers from a nearby cabinet, he asked, “You want to eat in bed or do you feel like sitting up at the table?”

       “I don’t know if I can hold anything down.”

       “Give it a try, at least.” He brought the bowl of steaming liquid to the bed, which she now realized was actually a futon sofa that took up half the wall in the small room. The rest of the room was cramped by the furnishings—a stove, a sink and a refrigerator, plus a card table that seemed to serve as a dining table, sat across from her. A door, the futon and a small bookshelf took up the wall behind her. The narrow end wall was just large enough to accommodate a low table with a television set that looked decades old.

       “Where are we?” she asked.

       He placed the bowl of soup on a portable tray table pulled from the narrow space between the stove and the refrigerator. “Soup first. I’ll tell you everything in a minute, I promise.”

       She eyed the bowl, a little freaked out at being suspicious of Ben Scanlon. “What is that?”

       “Chicken noodle soup.” He set the tray table in front of her. Up close, she noticed for the first time a wicked-looking scar on the back of his left hand.

       He saw her reaction. “I didn’t escape the bomb entirely.” He turned his hand over, palm up, and she saw that the scar extended to his palm as well. “A piece of bomb shrapnel went straight through my hand. Hurt like hell.”

       Any hint of