Macy closed her eyes. Maybe this was just another nightmare. It couldn’t be real. A dead body couldn’t come to life. She had imagined the whole thing.
Dreamed it.
But when she opened her eyes, the prisoner was still there, his blue gaze trained on her face. “I’m going to take my hand away,” he told her, his deep voice pitched low, “but I need you to stay calm.”
He wasn’t the only one. She needed to stay calm for herself, so she could figure out how to get the hell away from him and call authorities to apprehend him.
“Can you do that for me?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Not that you’ve been irrational,” he admitted. “In fact you’ve been quite resourceful.” His blue eyes narrowed as he studied her. Then he slid his hand down from her lips to cup her jaw, his palm warm against her skin. “You’re smart.”
She nodded again but remained silent. No one had heard her scream, so when she opened her mouth next, she needed to speak calmly and rationally and engage him in conversation without arousing his anger or distrust. She had to stall him until someone came—either Bob or Dr. Bernard.
After clearing the fear from her voice, she praised him. “You’re smart, too. Very smart.”
His lips curved into a slight grin, as if he were totally aware and amused by her tactic. “How do you know that?”
“No one has ever escaped Blackwoods before.” She hadn’t believed it possible or she might have considered using this ploy to help Jed escape.
“I didn’t do it alone.”
She glanced down at the empty body bag. “Someone else escaped with you?”
“Not with me. But he helped me.”
“How?” she asked. “Tell me every detail.” And in the time it would take him to brag about his successful plan, Dr. Bernard or Bob might return…if she were lucky.
And if she were very lucky, she might figure out a way to help her brother as well as herself. Maybe her helping apprehend an escaped convict would award Jed more privileges in prison, like more meetings with his lawyer in order to work on his appeal.
“You would like that,” the man said, his grin widening, “you’d like to stall me until someone else shows up, someone who actually might hear you scream this time.”
Was he going to give her a reason to scream? Did he intend to hurt her? Fear rushed back, choking her so that she couldn’t deny the truth he spoke.
He nodded as if agreeing to something. “You are as smart as your brother said you are, Macy Kleyn.”
Her pulse leaping at her name on his lips, she gasped. “Jed? You’ve talked to Jed?”
His handsome face twisted into a grimace, and he touched the bloodied bandage on his ribs. “Who do you think did this to me?”
She shook her head in denial, knocking his hand from her face. “Jed would not have done that to you. He would never hurt anyone.”
She didn’t care what a jury and a judge had decided; she knew her brother better than anyone else. He was not a killer.
“He had no choice,” the man said, almost as if he were defending the guy 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
