Secret Hideout. Пола Грейвс

inhaled.”

       “They said they identified your body—” She shuddered, the memory of that day flooding back with fresh sharpness.

       “Brand arranged it.”

       She stared at him. “Adam Brand knew you were alive the whole time?” The SAC—Special Agent in Charge—had been one of the few people who’d seemed to understand her difficulty in dealing with Scanlon’s murder. Brand knew she’d felt guilty when she learned her partner had intercepted a note meant for her and gotten killed trying to protect her. He’d even understood her choice to leave the FBI.

       So he wouldn’t have to lie to her face every day?

       “We couldn’t let anyone connect me to what I’m doing here.” Scanlon slanted a guilty look at her. “Even you.”

      Especially me, she thought blackly. “Where is here?”

       “First, let’s get a little chicken noodle soup into you before you keel over on me.”

       “Not until you tell me what the hell’s going on.” She pressed her lips together.

       Scanlon sighed. “Where do you want me to start?”

       “The explosion,” she said flatly. “That message was left on my desk. Morelli told me that much. You took my message from Morelli and met with my informant. Why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you call me, at least?”

       Scanlon’s scarred hand stretched toward her for a second before dropping back to his lap. “I thought it was a setup.”

       “So you went in my place? Without any backup?”

       “Brand was with me, watching in case anything went hinky.”

       She tamped down her simmering anger, trying to be dispassionate. “Did you trigger a booby trap?” That was the finding after an exhaustive postmortem of the explosion. But now she wondered if anything Brand had told her was the truth.

       “It was on a delay—meant to give me time to get all the way inside before it blew. But I saw—something—” He frowned, as if making a mental effort to return to that moment in time. “I had a concussion from the blast. It seems to have erased my memories of what happened when I stepped inside the warehouse.”

       “Then how do you know you spotted something?”

       Scanlon’s mouth curved slightly. “I was wired for sound, at least until I ended up in the river. Brand told me I said something about a trap and then all of a sudden I was hauling butt away from the place.”

       The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees as Isabel pictured, not for the first time, what those last few seconds before the blast must have felt like for him. At least, this time, she could add a happier ending.

      If he’s telling the truth, a bleak voice in the back of her head added.

       She needed to talk to Brand. She had trouble believing he’d known this whole time. He had been so supportive—

       “I quit the FBI within two weeks, you know,” she said aloud. “It was hard enough to go into that office every day and see your empty desk. When they brought in a new agent—”

       “I know. Brand told me.” Scanlon leaned toward her, his expression troubled. “Go back to the Bureau. Brand will take you back—I know he will. As soon as we get you out of here.”

       The last thing she wanted was to go back to the FBI, especially if Scanlon was telling her the truth. The idea that people she believed she could trust would lie to her this way…

       She felt completely betrayed.

       “I’m working with my brother now,” she said aloud. “At the security company. We’re doing good things there.”

       “I thought you weren’t happy about your brother’s security company when he first came up with the idea.”

       She hadn’t been thrilled. Her experiences with private security firms while working for the FBI had been more negative than positive. But Jesse’s concept for the security firm appealed to her. The big jobs they undertook financed the low-cost and pro bono cases Cooper Security chose on an individual, need-by-need basis.

       “Things have changed,” she admitted.

       Scanlon’s eyes narrowed. “I guess they have.” He waved at the bowl of soup. “At least have a bite or two. It’ll help your body fight off the effects of what they gave you.”

       She forced herself to eat a few bites of the soup, knowing Scanlon had a stubborn streak that was nearly impossible to thwart. If she wanted answers, she’d have to play along with his rules, even if a bowl of chicken noodle soup was the last thing she wanted at the moment.

       But she managed to finish half the bowl and even nibble on a couple of crackers by the time Scanlon had poured the rest of the soup into a plastic container and put it in the small refrigerator next to the stove.

       She had so many questions racing through her mind, she felt overwhelmed, especially since the food had done nothing to ease her raging headache. She couldn’t think with her pulse pounding in her ears. The lights inside were dimmed, and heavy curtains shut out whatever light might be coming from outside the windows, but her eyes still ached from the glare.

       “I need to go to the bathroom,” she said. To her alarm, the words came out slurred.

       Scanlon crossed quickly to the futon and helped her up. Tugging her hand away from his when he showed every sign of walking with her to the bathroom, she said, “I can handle this myself. Just point me in the right direction.”

       He stared back at her, his expression hard to read.

       Unease fluttered in her stomach. “Please don’t tell me the bathroom’s outdoors.”

       His expression cleared. “No. Through that door, take a right down the hall and it’s the first door on the left.”

       She followed his directions and entered the tiny bathroom. It had a toilet and an ancient pedestal sink on one side of the room, and an even more ancient claw-foot tub on the other. She looked longingly at the tub, tempted by the thought of a nice, hot bath, but settled for running cold water in the sink and splashing it on her hot face.

       As she was about to head back to the front room, her gaze caught on the window next to the toilet. It was closed off by thick green curtains. She eased the curtains open and took a peek outside, squinting as bright daylight assaulted her eyes.

       There were woods outside, dense with new growth. The house seemed to have very little in the way of a yard.

       Movement outside caught her eye. A man, she realized. His dark green baseball cap came into view first, dipped forward as the wearer looked down, watching his footing.

       Instinctively, she narrowed the opening in the curtains to a crack. As he emerged into the clearing behind the house, the man in the cap looked up, directly toward the window.

       Her heart gave a little flop.

       She’d seen him before.

       He wore a black T-shirt under a faded denim jacket. His jeans were equally faded. His sandy hair curled lightly around the edge of the cap.

       Where had she seen him before? She could picture him in her mind, sandy hair, black T-shirt, faded jeans—

       No cap. He hadn’t been wearing a cap. Not then.

       The door behind her opened, making her whirl around in alarm. The sudden movement made her vision swim, and she had to grab the sink to keep from toppling over.

       Scanlon rushed in, cupping her elbow to steady her. “Go to my bedroom. Now. Hide in the closet. No time to explain—”

       “There’s a man outside. I know I’ve seen him before—”

       “There’s more than one man outside,” Scanlon