Manhunt in the Wild West. Jessica Andersen
Chelsea flipped through the pages, nodding when everything looked good. Once all the bags were inside the morgue, she would open them up and inspect the bodies, making sure the info matched. Then, and only then, would she sign the papers indicating that she’d accepted the delivery, freeing the guards to make the return trip to the prison.
Not paying full attention to the driver, she said, “Rickey got held up this morning. I’m covering.”
Actually, her fellow medical examiner was in lockup, sleeping it off after being arrested on his third DUI, but she wasn’t about to advertise the fact. Sara had made a monumental mistake hiring the charismatic young pathologist in the first place, but he was related to one of her higher-ups, and he’d fit the “young and innovative” stamp she’d been trying to put on the ME’s office, so she’d given him a chance despite his less-than-stellar recommendations.
That’d come back to bite Sara, but Chelsea knew her friend would handle it quietly. There was no need to gossip.
Noticing that the driver had started to fidget, she said, “Don’t stress. It’ll just take a few minutes.”
He mumbled something, grabbed the clipboard and turned away, heading back for the van.
“Hey!” she called, starting after him. “I haven’t signed off yet.”
Just then, Jerry started pushing the first gurney toward the morgue, and she saw that he’d acquired a smear of red on the front of his scrubs.
“Jerry, stop,” Chelsea said quickly as a twist of worry locked in her stomach. She crossed to the blue-eyed guard, who was facing away from her, prepping the second bag for transport. She tapped him on the shoulder. “Weren’t these body bags surface-cleaned back at the prison?”
They certainly should’ve been. Not only was it standard protocol, but it was also doubly important in this case, given that they didn’t yet know why or how the prisoners had died.
Her guard turned—that was how she found herself thinking of him, as “her guard,” though that was silly—and she got the full-on gut punch of his charisma. His features were lean, his skin drawn and pale, and he didn’t look like he smiled much. And those eyes…up close they were even more magnetic than she’d thought them from afar, ice blue and arresting, and holding a level of intensity that reached inside her and grabbed on, kindling a curl of heat in her belly.
He looked more like a grown-up than most of the thirty-somethings she knew. He looked like a leader, like someone who would take charge of any situation.
“We’re just the transporters,” he said, his voice a rough rasp that slid along her nerve endings and left tiny shivers behind. “We’re running late, so it’d be best if you signed off on the delivery so we can be on our way.” Something moved in his expression, there and gone so quickly she almost missed it, but leaving the impression that his words were more an order than a suggestion.
Nerves fired through her, warning that something wasn’t right.
Not liking the feeling, or the strange effect the guard had on her, Chelsea backpedaled a step. But she stuck to operating procedures, saying, “I’m not signing anything if there’s blood on the bags. You have no idea what killed these men. For all we know, it could be an infectious agent.” She gestured for Jerry to step away from the gurney, and reached for her cell phone. “Leave everything right where it is. I’m calling my boss.”
This is so not what Sara needs right now, she thought, but protocol was protocol, and if the medical staff at the ARX Supermax had been so sloppy as to allow the bodies to be shipped without the bags being disinfected first, who knew what other safety precaution they might’ve skipped?
“Wait,” the blue-eyed guard said, holding up a hand. At that same moment, the guard behind him spun and grabbed for something on his belt. A gun.
Chelsea’s eyes locked on the weapon, and she froze.
Jerry’s head jerked up and his mouth went slack, his eyes locking on the other guard. “Hey, aren’t you—”
The man shot him where he stood.
Jerry jerked spasmodically as blood bloomed in the center of his forehead. Then he went limp and fell, his eyes glazing as he dropped, his mouth open in an “O” of surprise.
To Chelsea, the world seemed to slow down, his body collapsing at half-speed. She sucked in a breath to scream, but before she could make a sound, something slammed into her temple, dazing her.
She staggered, only just beginning to realize that the guards weren’t guards at all. They were convicts wearing the clothing of the guards who were no doubt filling the body bags in the van. Somehow the prisoners had played dead and then pulled a switch en route.
Heart drumming as her consciousness dimmed, Chelsea fumbled for her phone, and watched it spin out of her grasp and clatter to the ground, which pitched and heaved beneath her. The blue-eyed guard caught her as she fell, supporting her in his strong, steady arms, in a grip that shouldn’t have felt as good as it did.
The last thing she comprehended before she passed out was a piercing sense of disappointment that somehow existed alongside the terror. Of course he was trouble; she’d never been truly attracted to any other kind of man. Sara had even joked one time that Chelsea’s taste in men was going to be the death of her.
What if she’d been right?
Chapter Two
Jonah Fairfax hadn’t touched a woman in nearly nine months, and this was not how he’d pictured ending the drought.
When Fax had imagined his reintroduction to feminine companionship from the sterile gloom of his six-by-ten cell, he’d figured on candlelight, good food and soft music, and either a paid escort or a sympathetic friend of a friend. Or, hell, even his handler and sometimes lover, who called herself Jane Doe even in bed.
The woman’s identity hadn’t been particularly important to his sexual fantasy. What had mattered were the trappings of civilization, the colors and smells, and the textures of real life.
However, that fantasy most definitely hadn’t involved a prison meat wagon backed up to the morgue where they’d been stood up by Rickey Charles, the contact who was the key to the next stage in their getaway. And it definitely hadn’t starred a pistol-whipped woman hanging limply in his arms…and three seriously nasty terrorists glaring at him like they already regretted involving him in their jailbreak.
Not that they’d had a choice. He’d made damn sure of that, with help from Jane and some of the other agents working underneath her. She headed up a national security agency so secret it didn’t even have a name, one that was organized along the lines of the very terror networks it hunted, with each agent functioning as a separate cell, not knowing who else might be involved, or how.
For this particular op, Jane had gotten Fax arrested for murder, constructing such a deep, seamless cover that even his mother and brothers had written him off. That had been the only way to make him useful to al-Jihad, just as orchestrating an escape had been the only way they could come up with to flush out the high-level terrorist’s suspected contacts within Homeland Security itself.
The deaths of the prison guards and the morgue attendant were regrettable, but Jane had chosen Fax for the op because she knew he could function in the bloodiest situations and deal with an acceptable level of collateral damage—and innocent lives lost—if it meant getting the job done. It was cold, yes, but necessary.
Jane had honed that level of detachment, perhaps, but he could thank his wife, Abby, for setting him on the path. She’d been dead five years now, and he thought she would’ve hated what he’d become. No way she would’ve accepted the part her betrayal had played—she’d never been big on personal accountability. But even as he thought that, Fax was mildly surprised to realize it’d been some time since he’d last thought of the woman who’d been his high-school