“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 groaned, probably not in pain but in frustration.
“You need to contact the Drug Enforcement Administration,” she pointed out. And if he were really an agent, wouldn’t he have already done that?
“I know for sure that someone with the DEA is on the warden’s payroll,” he said. “That’s why I can’t trust anyone. Nobody else can find out I’m still alive, or I’m a target.”
She shrugged, feigning indifference. Even though she didn’t know him and didn’t trust him, she didn’t want him to be killed. But helping a fugitive would land her in prison like her brother. And, unlike Jed, she wouldn’t be innocent of the charges brought against her.
She probably shouldn’t have treated this man’s injury, but she had nearly become a doctor and as such, she would have taken an oath to do no harm. In Macy’s opinion that included providing medically necessary treatment no matter the circumstances. After putting in the last stitch, she swabbed antiseptic on the wound. He sucked in a breath, and when she affixed the bandage, he covered her fingers with his.
“And if Warden James finds out I’m alive,” Rowe continued, “then Jed’s a dead man, too.”
“Wh-why?” she sputtered as her greatest fear gripped her. She tugged on her fingers, pulling them out from under his.
“Jed disobeyed the warden’s order to kill me, and instead he helped me escape.”
If Warden James had ordered Jed to kill another inmate, then her brother had become a liability to the man. Not that anyone would believe a convicted cop killer over a respected prison warden. But the warden might not be willing to take that chance. Nor would he want other prisoners believing they could get away with disobeying him.
The grinding of the descending elevator drew their attention to the open door of the morgue. “Is there another way out?” Rowe asked in an urgent whisper.
Macy shook her head. “There is no other way out of here.”
“If I’m discovered and sent back to Blackwoods, I will be killed,” he insisted, his blue eyes intense with certainty and desperation.
Damn it. She believed him and not just because of what he knew about her and her brother, but because he seemed too sincere to be lying. “And if you’re killed, so will Jed…”
A door creaked open and a male voice called out, “Macy? You still here?”
“Y-y-yes, Dr. Bernard. I’ll be out in a minute,” she said. Then she rushed toward the wall and pulled open a drawer.
Rowe’s dark gold brows drew together as he grimaced in revulsion. But he climbed inside the metal compartment. Macy threw a sheet over him. As she drew it up his bare chest, the backs of her fingers skimmed over skin and muscle. Her face heated, her blood pumping hard.
Rowe caught her wrist in his hand again. “Can I trust you?” he asked.
“If you’re telling the truth, you don’t have a choice,” she said.
But
