LITMIR.BIZ

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he just claimed had stabbed him. “It was the only way to get me out of Blackwoods alive.”

      “By trying to kill you?” she asked.

      “He didn’t really try,” he said. But besides the bandage, he had bruises on his ribs and one along his jaw. “He just made it look like he did. If your brother had really wanted me dead, I have a feeling that I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. I’m lucky he came up with an alternative plan.”

      She reached for the bandage, her fingers tingling as they connected with his bare skin. She steadied her hand and tore off the gauze.

      He grimaced as the stitches stuck to the dried blood, pulling loose. And a curse slipped through his clenched teeth.

      “Who treated this?” she asked. “This needs more stitches.” And antiseptic. The wound was too red, and as she touched it, too hot. He was going to develop an infection for certain.

      “Doc just put in a couple quick stitches,” he said, referring to the elderly prison doctor. “He couldn’t do more without raising suspicions. It would have made no sense for him to treat a dead man.”

      “He declared you dead?”

      He nodded. “And zipped me into that damn plastic bag before the coroner got to the prison.”

      “So the prison doctor and my brother both helped you escape Blackwoods?” she asked, careful to keep her doubts from her voice so that she wouldn’t anger him. She had no idea how dangerous this man was. Given how delusional he was, she suspected that he was very dangerous.

      “Yes,” he replied, as if he actually expected her to believe him.

      “It needs more stitches,” she said, examining the wound, “it’s too deep.”

      “Jed had to make it look believable, so I had to lose a lot of blood,” he explained with a wince.

      Just how much blood had he lost? Enough that he might be weak enough for Macy to be able to overpower him? But then she remembered how quickly he’d knocked the scalpel from her grasp. Muscles rippled in his arms and chest; he hadn’t lost that much blood.

      “None of this makes any sense.” Jed would have never helped a convict escape prison. Dear sweet Doc, the prison doctor, wouldn’t have helped either. This guy—whoever he was—was definitely lying.

      She gestured toward the empty body bag. “I was supposed to toe tag you,” she said. “What name would I have put on that?”

      If he’d really been dead…

      She would have looked at the records Dr. Bernard had sent with the body, but she couldn’t reach for the file without his probably thinking she was reaching for a weapon again.

      Although he didn’t touch her now, she could still feel his hands on her wrists and her face. Her skin tingled where he had touched her and where she had touched him. She shouldn’t have taken off his bandage, but she’d wanted to see the wound.

      “Prison records will show my name is Andrew ‘Ice’ Johansen,” he replied. After drawing in a deep breath, he continued, “But my real name is Rowe Cusack. I work for the DEA. I’m a drug enforcement agent.”

      She bit her bottom lip to hold in a snort of derision at this claim; it was nearly as wild as his claiming that Jed had stabbed him.

      As close as they were standing, he didn’t miss her reaction and surmised, “You don’t believe me. Jed warned me that you wouldn’t, that you’re too smart and too suspicious to blindly accept my story.”

      “Can you prove it?” she challenged.

      “I was undercover at Blackwoods Penitentiary. I couldn’t exactly bring my badge and gun.” He took in an agitated breath. “But my cover still got blown. Your brother knows who I am.”

      “How?”

      “The warden told him…when he ordered Jed to kill me.”

      “No.” She shook her head. “You’re lying.”

      “Jed said you’d say that, too.”

      “Stop that!” she yelled, her patience snapping so that she could no longer humor him no matter how dangerous he was. “Stop quoting my brother to me. You don’t know him.”

      “Not really,” he agreed. “But I know about him like I know about you. I know that you were about to start med school when he got arrested, and you put off school for the trial. Then, after his sentencing to Blackwoods Penitentiary, you moved up here to be close to your brother. You believe in his innocence. But you’re the only one.”

      She swallowed hard, choking on her doubts about this man’s truthfulness. “I am the only one.” Her exfiancé hadn’t. Not even their parents had believed in Jed. But Macy had no doubt that her brother had been framed. “You haven’t told me anything that you couldn’t have found out from old newspaper articles.”

      During Jed’s trial, the press had taken a special interest in her. Some had admired her sisterly devotion while others, including her ex-fiancé, had called her a fool for not accepting that her brother was a cold-blooded killer.

      “How about this?” he challenged her. “You have a scar on the back of your head from when you fell out of Jed’s tree house when you were seven.”

      She shivered, unnerved by the memory and more by the fact that this man knew it.

      He continued, “There was so much blood that Jed thought for sure you were dead when he found you. But then you opened your eyes.”

      Like he had when she had unzipped the body bag. Now she understood how Jed had felt when she had done that all those years ago. He’d been kneeling by her side and when she’d opened her eyes, he had actually gasped. “Oh, my God…”

      “That’s not in any old newspapers,” he pointed out. “Your brother told me that so you would believe me, Macy. He and I need you to believe me.”

      “You’re really a DEA agent?” she asked, struggling to accept his words.

      He leaned close to her, his forehead nearly brushing hers as he dipped his head. His gaze held hers. “I’m telling the truth. About everything.”

      Her world shifted, reduced to just the two of them—to his blue eyes, full of truth and something darker. Fear? Vengeance? She should have immediately recognized the emotion; she’d seen it before, in Jed’s eyes, the day he had been sentenced to life—to two life sentences—in a maximum-security prison.

      “Why does my brother want—need—me to believe you?”

      “So you’ll help me.”

      She drew in a shaky breath. “I’ll help you,” she agreed. “But only with your wound.”

      No matter what he was, she couldn’t let him lose any more blood than he must have already lost. She reached for the tray of tools again.

      He didn’t stop her this time, not even when she began to add more stitches to the deep gash along his ribs. He just clenched his jaw and sucked up the pain, which had to be intense. She hadn’t put even a local anesthesia on his skin, and she suspected the wound was getting infected. But he barely grimaced. The man had an extremely high threshold for pain.

      “You need to call the Blackwoods county sheriff,” she said. “Griffin York will be able to verify your story with the Drug Enforcement Agency.”

      “Administration,” he automatically corrected her. Most people were probably not aware that the A actually stood for Administration and not Agency. But he would know—if he were truly a DEA agent. “Are you sure the sheriff’s not on the warden’s payroll?”

      “No. I can’t be sure,” she admitted. “There are rumors that the warden made some pretty significant donations to the new sheriff’s election campaign.”

      He

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