Nicki moved off his legs and grabbed him by his upper arms, her grip like steel. She might be small, he thought, but she was a lot stronger than she looked. Sorry to do this, but you leave me no choice.
The fear returned, beating at the back of his throat like a wave of nausea. He swallowed it down, refused to give in. And here you promised you werent a serial killer.
Believe it or not, this is all about keeping you alive. She got him to his feet and pushed him toward a door he hadnt noticed before. Watch your step.
She opened the door and reached inside, flicking a switch. He saw he was standing at the top of a steep set of stairs descending into a dim basement. Youre not going to chain me to your dungeon wall, are you? He tried to keep his voice light, make it into a joke. Anything to keep the fear at bay.
She helped him down the steps, grabbing the wood railing on one side of the descent when he stumbled and nearly pulled her down the stairs with him. Sadly, I havent had time to put in the shackles yet.
They reached the bottom of the steps and she gave him a little shove. He stumbled forward into the shadows, wincing in anticipation of the impact.
His upper body hit something soft. Opening his eyes, he saw hed landed face-first on an old, overstuffed sofa braced against the cinder block wall of the basement.
Cellar, he amended mentally, his eyes beginning to adjust to the low light. There was a shelf against the opposite wall full of Mason jars full of home-canned fruits and vegetables.
Stay put. Ill be back in a couple of hours. Nickis voice drifted down toward him from the top of the stairs. He looked up at her, squinting at the bright daylight backlighting her through the cellar door, rendering her little more than a curvy silhouette.
Dont go, he called, fear hammering past his last defenses.
She paused in the doorway. When she spoke, she sounded genuinely distressed. Im so sorry. But I have to go.
Then the door closed behind her, shutting out the blessed daylight. He heard the soft thuds of her footfalls drift into a thick, deafening silence.
Once again, he was alone. Trapped and helpless, just like before, with nothing but darkness and fear to keep him company.
Chapter Four
What have I done?
The question rang in her head, over and over in rhythm with her pounding heart, as she muscled the Jeep down the mountain to the main road that led into town.
Shed tied a man up and locked him in her cellar. Had she lost her bloody mind?
The cell phone peeking out of her purse presented a powerful temptation. She had never felt this great a need to talk to another human being in her life. Calling Alexander Quinn was out of the questionhed never answer a call from her cell phone and risk blowing her cover.
But her cousin Anson might answer. She could shoot the breeze with him, avoid anything incriminating. Just hearing a friendly, familiar voice might be enough to knock the edge off her nerves, right?
She dragged her gaze back to the road as her wheels slipped a little on the slick surface. No. No calling anyone from her past, no matter how freaked-out she felt at the moment.
Shed agreed to this job. She knew what was at stake.
Hell, that was why shed just imprisoned a man in her cellar, wasnt it?
Despite the weather, the parking lot of Dugans Diner was half-full when she pulled her Jeep into one of the employee parking spots and entered the kitchen through the employees side door.
The only other person in the kitchen was Tollie Barber, one of the kitchen assistants who helped out with food prep and handled some of the easier cooking duties. She was busy at the counter, processing potatoes for hash browns, her frizzy blond curls tamed by a hairnet. She darted a quick gaze at Nicki. So much for a snow day, huh?
Nicki tucked her own dark hair under a protective cap and headed to the sink to wash her trembling hands. She kept her tone calm and light, hoping her agitation didnt show. Gotta snow a lot more than this to keep people away from breakfast at Dugans.
Trevor Colley entered the kitchen from the front area, moving at a quick pace for a man his size. His barrel chest and linebacker shoulders seemed to take up half the kitchen when he stopped next to where Nicki was preparing the griddle. Youre a good un to come in so fast, Nicki, he said in a gruff voice that rumbled like thunder. It was all the thanks hed give her. Trevor wasnt one to gush.
Quite a crowd for a snow day, she commented, cracking a couple of eggs for the first order clipped to the order wheel. Two eggs, sunny-side up, hash browns and bacon. Something up?
Trevor gave her an odd look. You tell me. Del McClintock brought four of his boys with him. They brought their girls, too. Should I worry?
Nicki supposed it was a good thing that Trevor believed she might know the answer to his question. It suggested that people were starting to connect her with the Blue Ridge Infantry. Which meant, hopefully, that the BRI members themselves were starting to think of her as one of them.
That was her goal, wasnt it?
No, dont worry. If you have any trouble with them, come get me.
Trevor frowned at her but went back out to the front of the diner, leaving her and Tollie to get the orders filled.
As she laid out the strips of bacon on the griddle to fry, the image of Dallas Coles rainbow-hued collection of scrapes and bruises filled her head. Her whole body went cold and numb, and for a second, she thought she was going to be sick.
Oh, God. Shed taped a sick, injured mans hands behind his back and locked him in her cellar without even feeding him breakfast first. She hadnt even left him a bucket if he needed to go to the bathroom. Which he couldnt do with his hands duct-taped, anyway.
What the hell had she been thinking? Had she lost her ever-lovin mind?
But what else could she have done? Dallas had insisted on calling the FBI. Maybe it had been a trickmaybe the whole thing was a setup to prove she wasnt who she said she was. Maybe it had been a test. But if that was the case, she had no idea whether shed passed or failed.
But what if he was legit? She certainly couldnt let him bring the FBI swarming into Rivers End at this point. Even if it didnt end up blowing her cover, every BRI member in town would crawl back in the holes where theyd come from, and itd be months, even years, before she could get this close to the groups inner circle.
She was doing what she had to do. She was. She just had to get through this morning and she could hurry back home and let him out before anything bad happened.
Assuming something bad hadnt already happened.
* * *
THERE WASNT AN inch of his body that didnt hurt in some way, including the new scrape on his inner wrist from the nail protruding from the wooden shelf where the beautiful but treacherous Nicki kept her canned goods. But Dallas was damned if he was going to be bound and locked in by the time she got back from her shift at the diner.
Who the hell was she? Was she connected to the militia members whod taken him captive a few weeks earlier? If so, why had it taken her all night to decide he was safer behind a lock and key?
Everything had changed when he told her he wanted to call the authorities. That had been the catalyst. Hed seen fear in her eyes, not unlike his own reaction when shed pinned him down and taped up his hands. His mention of the authorities had made her feel just as trapped as he felt now.
But why? What was she hiding?
The tape around his wrists snapped apart as the sharp edge of the nail head finally broke through the last of the fibers. He pulled his arms apart, groaning as the stretched muscles of his chest and shoulders put up a painful protest. He worked them slowly for a moment, taking care not to make his condition any worse than it already was.
He had to find the strength to get past that locked door and get the hell out of this crazy womans cabin.
There were no windows in the cellar, no doors visible besides the one at the top of the stairs. As much as his wobbly legs protested the idea, he had to go upstairs and try to figure a way to get through the locked cellar door. Ramming it open was no option, given his weakened state.
But maybe he could pick the lock.
Hed already spent nearly an hour searching the cellar for something to cut himself free of the duct-tape bonds. Hed found a small, rickety cabinet in the corner that held a box of tools. Hed had no luck using the garden shears hed found inside to cut himself free because he couldnt get the blades turned to the right angle behind his back to cut the tape. But there had been other tools in the box that might work to unlock the door, hadnt there?
He crossed to the box lying on the top of the rough-hewn cabinet and started to pick through the contents, looking for something
There. A jumble of old paper clips, some of them hooked together, some twisted apart. If he was very lucky, the lock on the door at the top of the stairs would be a simple spring-driven lock, and he could use the paper clip to push it open.
But if it wasnt...
He grabbed a pair of pliers and twisted one of the bigger paper clips until hed fashioned a crude tension wrench, then curled the tip of one of the smaller clips into a modified hook, hoping theyd work well enough to get the job done.
Picking a lock isnt as hard as youd think, an FBI special agent had told Dallas once, and then hed proceeded to explain just how to beat a pin-and-tumbler lock. Its all about the pins. Thats how a key worksgetting the pins in the right position to turn the cylinder.
He carried his tools up the steps and slid his makeshift tension wrench into the keyhole, turning it one way, then the other, until he was satisfied which way the cylinder had to turn to open. Applying a little pressure to move the cylinder just out of position, he inserted the second paper clip into the keyhole.
His hands shook and his legs began to ache, feeling as if theyd suddenly lost the ability to hold him upright, but he kept at his probing examination of the locks internal workings. One by one, he painstakingly pushed the pins up until they caught on the ledge, clearing the cylinder. Finally, the last pin clicked into place, and he used the larger paper clip to turn the lock.
The dead bolt slid back into the door with a soft click, and he gave the door a push open.
He eased into the kitchen and looked around, squinting as bright daylight assaulted his eyes. Around him, the cabin was quiet and still.
He looked around the house to make sure he was still alone, then checked out the front door to assure himself Nicki and the Jeep were still gone. Then he went into the bedroom to find the phone.
But it was gone, no longer sitting on the bedside table where it had been the night before.
He checked the floor on either side of the table and even crouched to check under the bed. No phone.
A room-to-room search of the cabin revealed no sign of the missing phone. Nor did he find a computer or any sort of modem or router with which to access the internet if he wanted to reach the authorities that way instead.
He sank into one of the kitchen chairs and willed his wobbly legs to stop shaking. He clearly wasnt going to be able to call in the cavalry, so he was going to have to get the hell out of this cabin on his own somehow.
But first, he needed something to eat. Some of his unsteadiness might be from sheer hunger. He pushed himself to his feet and crossed to the refrigerator, bracing himself to find it as empty as the bedside table had been. But the refrigerator was well stocked, and he grabbed a couple of eggs from the carton for his breakfast.
She had plenty of cookware in her cabinets, too. Made sense, he supposedshed said she worked as a diner cook, hadnt she? As he heated a pat of butter in one of the pans on the stove, he grabbed a couple of slices of bread from the bread box and stuck them in the toaster.
The smell of toasting bread and frying eggs made him almost light-headed with hunger, but once hed wolfed down his breakfast, he felt considerably better.
But did he feel well enough to walk out of these woods to seek help?
He left the pans for Nicki to washthe least she could do, considering shed locked him in her cellarand took another look around the house, this time for some sign of who Nicki really was and what had compelled her to lock him up rather than let him call the authorities for help.
Shed admitted to knowing who he was. Which meant she had to know that hed disappeared somewhere between Washington, DC, and wherever he was now. That foul play was suspected.
Or was it? Did people think hed disappeared on his own? Hed been on the phone with a man named Cade Landry when those BRI thugs had run him off the road and dragged him out of his banged-up car. But Landry had been a fugitive. For all Dallas knew, he still was. He might not have had the opportunity to tell anyone what hed heard over the phone.
So what, exactly, did Nicki think she knew about him?
There were no personal items anywhere around the cabin, he realized after another search of the place. She probably had her drivers license and other ID with her, since shed taken the Jeep into town, but most people had other personal records scattered around the house, didnt they?
Back at his apartment in Georgetown, he had a whole four-drawer filing cabinet full of tax information, personal records, vehicle papers and more. He even had a box in his closet filled with things hed kept from his high school and college days.
As far as he could tell from his search, Nicki had nothing like that stashed anywhere around the cabin.
He sat on the bed and looked around the small bedroom. Simple gray curtains on the window. Plain pine dresser that matched the bedside table. The bed was little more than a mattress and box set on a metal frame. No headboard or footboard. Plain gray sheets and pillowcases, plus a couple of matching waffle-weave blankets that acted as the bedspread.
A large woven rag rug stretched over the hardwood floor next to the bed, the hodgepodge of blues, grays, black and white offering only a little more color than the rest of the decor.
Drab surroundings for a woman as vibrantly beautiful as his hostess-turned-captor.
He pushed himself up from the bed and looked around, trying to make sense of all that had happened to him over the past twelve hours. And no matter which way he looked, it all came back to the same thing.
Nicki.
Who the hell was she? And what did she want from him?
* * *
BY NINE THIRTY, the breakfast crowd began to thin out, but Del McClintock and part of his posse lingered, nursing cups of coffee and chatting quietly in one corner of the diner. Nicki wasnt sure he was actually waiting for her to end her shift, but Trevor kept shooting troubled looks between her and the corner whenever he popped into the kitchen to check on things.
Nicki ignored her boss, taking advantage of the lull in customers to clean the griddle in preparation for the next crowd of hungry diners. She also tried hard not to think about the man locked in her cellar, without much luck.