Dark Knight: A Loveswept Romance Classic (14 page)

“Well, then why don’t you explain this situation so that I do understand.”

“I can’t.”

“Won’t.”

“The result is the same.” She didn’t shrink back from him, though he topped her above-average height by at least three inches. In fact, she braced her hands on his chest and pushed. “I’m sorry if you don’t like it. But that doesn’t change anything. You want to risk that I’m lying, then go right ahead. You’ll be responsible for Lucas’s death along with those sixteen children. Not that you’ll have to lose any sleep over it since you’ll likely get yourself killed in the process.”

“You’d let me walk out of here?”

“Not without a fight I won’t.” His hand closed over the butt of her gun at the same time she reached for it.

“No more gunplay, Scottie.” He yanked the gun loose, dismantled it, and tossed the parts on the counter where they landed with a clatter. She didn’t flinch, nor had she taken her eyes off of him during his little demonstration.

He squashed the burgeoning respect he felt toward her. He needed anger right now. “We’ll settle this, but not with bullets. More violence is not the answer.”

She didn’t soften either her stance or her tone of voice. “I’ll sacrifice one life to save eighteen others if that’s what you push me to. But I don’t have to kill you
to stop you. I get the job done, Logan. One way or another. Don’t ever forget that.”

“Then you better start talking. I’m not a fool, Scottie. I’m not exactly expecting the Brethren to open the door and invite me in for tea. I realize now that Lucas is not a cult member, that he’s there for covert reasons. I’m thrilled as all hell to hear that, more than you can know, but if things are as dicey as you say, then I want to see my brother before he gets himself killed.”

“I’m doing my best to make sure that doesn’t happen, but you’ve got to play this my way. You’ve waited thirty-seven years, Logan. Give me five more days. You lose nothing but a little time. It’s a small price to pay if it means lives could be saved.”

He abruptly let go of her and stepped away. “Not true, Scottie. Sometimes a little more time can be the most priceless commodity in the world.”

EIGHT

Scottie watched Logan stalk over to the sliding doors.

“Where are you going?”

He dug wool socks out of his duffel bag, tugged them on, then pulled on his boots, his back to her the entire time.

“Where can I go?” It was a rhetorical question, not a request for permission.

She answered him anyway. “Not very far, but out of here, I guess.”
Away from me.

He tightened his boot laces with a yank that should have snapped them off. “Pretty good deduction, Detective.”

“I asked you not to call me that.”

“Correction,” he said, efficiently knotting his other laces. “You ordered me not to.” He stood and faced her. “You should know something up front. I don’t take orders real well. Since you’ve obviously had your hands all over my personnel file from the Detroit PD, I would
have thought you knew that. Getting a little sloppy, Detective? Or should I call you commander?”

Scottie gritted her teeth and watched him walk to the sliding doors. He pulled on a black thermal ski sweater, the edges of his long green shirt hung out below.

He slid open the door. A rush of cold air blasted her clear across the room. She shivered but made no move to rub her arms. “When will you return?”

He looked over his shoulder. “What, no threat of shooting me? Don’t you have tranq darts in your bag or something?”

“Like you said, where could you go?”

“You got up here.”

“I had help.”

“Which brings up another interesting question.” He leaned in the open doorway, apparently impervious to the freezing slices of wind cutting through the room. “Why did I rate the commander of the team herself? Why not send a field agent up here to detain me? Shouldn’t you be off somewhere running the show?”

It took considerable focus to stop shivering. However, now it was not only the cold wind threatening her. Logan was sharp. Scottie had given him far too much information, more than she’d realized, and he was putting it all together way too easily.

“The show is being run just fine,” she said, keeping her jaw tight so her teeth wouldn’t chatter.

“Just not by you.”

Scottie didn’t react. She didn’t have to. Damn the man.

“We still have a lot to discuss,” she said evenly.

Logan pinned her with his black eyes. There was
enough heat in that one look to keep her warm if she were standing naked in a blizzard.

“Yes, we do.” He stepped out on the deck and pulled the door shut.

From where Scottie stood, she watched him cross the open area behind the cabin, heading toward the trees. His progress was slow in the thigh-high snow, but his determination was such that he seemed to wade through it like water.

Only when he disappeared into the trees did she think about following him. He wouldn’t find the trail she’d forged. Even if she hadn’t thoroughly disguised it, he was heading in the opposite direction. The timber was tall and closely packed. There was far less snowfall in the woods. But she knew that the stand ended less than five hundred feet upslope. And when he came out on the other side, the snow would likely be chest-deep. She spent another moment wondering if he was experienced enough not to end up over his head in the stuff. People died in much less snow, often within yards of shelter of some kind. She spent another moment wondering if her concern about his welfare was strictly job related.

The answer that immediately sprang to mind was not reassuring.

“He’s too ornery to let something as flimsy as snow kill him,” she muttered. He’d just glare at the snow, and it would melt a path for him. Still, she watched the tree line. Amazing, she thought, how one man could be such a mix of easy charm and deadly determination. The question echoed in her mind.
Just who are you, Logan Blackstone?

“And why do I care so much?” she asked herself.

Scottie decided to use the break to do what she should have been doing all along—searching the entire cabin. Of course, the subject of her assignment was supposed to be restrained to a bed not traipsing about loose in the woods. She consoled herself with the fact that at least something was going according to plan. If she could turn up any information on Blackstone, preferably something that would support her “allowing” him his freedom, then she would be able to report something positive to Del when he contacted her.

She also hoped Del had something positive to report to her. She wanted more background information on Logan—such as where he’d been trained and what he’d been doing besides running a bar for the last five years. Maybe apples really didn’t fall far from the tree. A fleeting thought of her father made her shudder, but she pushed past it and followed the original idea.

Had Logan ended up in espionage of some kind like his brother had? It would explain where he’d gotten the contacts to track down Lucas. Although it appeared now that even though he’d tracked his brother to the Brethren compound, he’d had no idea of Lucas’s real reason for being in Montana.

She scanned the interior of the cabin. She’d already checked the bathroom. She thought about doing a more in-depth look in the kitchen, but her eyes strayed back to the other open door. The bedroom.

It was the best bet. She didn’t waste time. She checked the armoire, but there was nothing hidden there. She checked under the bed, felt along under the slat supports. Nothing. She stripped the sheets off the bed, then pulled the mattress off. Nothing in the box springs. She ran her hands over all four sides of the
mattress, scanning for any new seams or slits near the edging. Nothing. Then she noticed the manufacturer’s label on the bottom, a big rectangular piece of printed silk. The adhesive used to adhere it to the mattress showed a bit more on one side than the other, as if the label had been peeled off and put back on slightly off center. She picked at one corner, then pulled it back.

“Bingo.” Logan had cut away part of the bedding and made a small hidey-hole. She pulled out his wallet, a small envelope, another handgun, two ammunition clips, each fully loaded, and a passport. “Passport?” she murmured. To go to Montana?

She didn’t have much time. The envelope and his wallet were the best bets for potential information, but curiosity had her picking up the passport. She flipped open the dark blue cover. There was a picture of Logan, taken at least a few years before. She glanced at the date of issue and saw that it was almost five years old. He looked dark and menacing in the photo, there was no hint of the easy smile and quick wit she knew he possessed.

She went to riffle through the pages, to see where he’d been in the last four and a half years, when her attention was caught by the name typed next to his picture. She’d been so busy checking dates, she hadn’t thought to look. “Grant Hudson.” The rest of the info on the cover page fit the man in the photo. All but the name.

There was no doubt he was Logan Blackstone—she had Lucas as biological evidence on that one—which meant Grant Hudson was an assumed identity. “Just a minor federal offense,” she said sardonically. She glanced over her shoulder into the main area of the
cabin. She could see beyond the deck from this angle. No sign of Logan. Still, she worked quickly. He’d been gone for over an hour, but even he wasn’t tough enough to stay out in that much cold and snow with only boots and a sweater on for much longer.

She flipped through the pages of the passport. Almost every page bore entry or exit stamps. The countries represented spanned the globe, but she noticed that most were in the Middle East, a few more were from some of the newer countries that had formed since the demise of the USSR, and a few others were from Central and South America.

She flipped to the last page. The most recent date was less than one month earlier. Five weeks after his father had died. He was still active, so much so he took his passport with him even when on personal business. She considered the fact that he could be after his brother for professional reasons, but instinct based on his father dying so recently told her that wasn’t the case. She closed the book, her mind already spinning as she dropped it back into the nest and picked up the envelope.

Why in the hell hadn’t Del caught this information on his initial background sweep? She knew he’d been in a hurry because of the time frame, but with his contacts there was no excuse to let something that had so much potential to affect her assignment slip by unnoticed. Which meant Del had no clue whatsoever about Logan’s alternate life. Which also meant that whatever team it was that Logan worked for was buried even deeper in the labyrinth of secret government agencies than the Dirty Dozen. A startling thought, especially
when she knew that only a handful of people on the planet knew about the Dirty Dozen.

She dropped the envelope and quickly flipped open the wallet. Michigan driver’s license. Picture, name, and address were all the same as the information Del had given her. She slipped out two credit cards, one gold, both inscribed with the name Logan Blackstone. There was a wad of cash, mostly twenties and fifties, in the billfold, about five hundred dollars give or take. She looked behind the driver’s license and in every other slit and crevice, but there was nothing else in the wallet. She dropped it and unclasped the small manila envelope.

A driver’s license, social security card, and a couple of credit cards slid out into her hand. All in the name of Grant Hudson. She slid them back in and pulled out a few folded pieces of paper. A photograph slipped from them to the floor. She picked it up. It was a part of a photograph, actually half of one. It was old, the black-and-white film fading to gray and yellow over the years. The picture was of a tall, well-built man with dark hair. He was wearing pleated pants and a white button-down shirt, and he was holding an infant. The smile on his face as he looked down at the child in his arms was very familiar.

“My father.”

Scottie startled badly, barely squelching a scream. Logan was just behind her, looking over her shoulder. His cheeks were ruddy from the cold, and his hair was wind ruffled. It made him appear a bit wild, untamed. He looked more dangerous than ever.

“The … uh, the resemblance is uncanny,” she said, scrambling to regain her equilibrium. There were
very few ways to handle being caught red-handed. She opted for ignoring the crime and focusing on what the act had uncovered. “I take it the child is you?”

“No, he thinks it’s Lucas.”

Logan’s expression hadn’t changed, meaning he still had none. She had no idea what was going on behind those flat, black eyes of his. She doubted it was anything warm or positive.

“Thinks?” Keep him talking. She quietly stretched her fingers under the envelope until she could touch the gun. Just in case.

“According to my father this was taken about a month after we came home from the hospital. He’s pretty sure he was holding Lucas, and my mother was holding me.”

“Where’s the other half of the photo? I assume it’s of you and your mother?”

“I don’t know where it is. Lucas could have it. This was the only photo taken of us as a whole family.”