Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs by Intrigue Romance Read Free Book Online

do?”
    “I’m the best,” he said. He wasn’t just bragging, either; he had the commendations to prove it. But more importantly he had the convictions. He had put away so many bad people. After seeing how the prison doctor had been tortured and beaten, he suspected that the warden might prove the worst. Rowe had to put him away, but he couldn’t do that if the warden found him first. “Someone blew my cover.”
    “Who?”
    “I don’t know.” He looked away from her, then back again to her beautiful face. “And that’s why I can trust no one.” Not even her.
    “You can trust me, Rowe,” she promised, her big brown eyes earnest.
    “No, I can’t.”
    She smiled slightly, as if pitying him. “I don’t think you have a choice.”
    Rowe was afraid that she was right. Maybe about everything. “You really believe that your brother was framed?”
    She studied him a moment before nodding. “Just like I believe that you’re really an undercover DEA agent.”
    He closed his eyes, dragged in a deep breath then committed himself. “Okay, we have a deal.”
    Her eyes widened and sparkled with hope. “You’ll help Jed?”
    “ If he was really framed, I’ll work to clear his name,” Rowe promised.
    But in making this vow to Macy, he was breaking his promise to her brother. The more help Rowe accepted from her, the more danger he put her in.
    “He was framed,” Macy insisted with total certainty.
    Her brother had to be telling the truth, because if he really was a cop killer, he would have killed Rowe instead of risking his own life to get him out. A killer wouldn’t have hesitated to kill again. Only a good man would put himself in danger to save someone else.
    “Then I have to help him.” Because Rowe knew what it felt like to be an innocent man locked up like an animal. He had only been behind bars for weeks; Jed had been sentenced to life, which might not be a bad thing if Rowe wound up getting his sister killed. Because if that happened, Rowe had no doubt that Jed would really become a killer.
    “You can’t help anyone if you’re dead, though,” Macy said, as if she’d read his mind. “So I’m going to fire up the incinerator now.”
    “The what?”
    “The oven,” she said, gesturing toward the big metal box at the end of the metal table. “We have to burn your body.”
    God, she really was crazy. And he had actually considered trusting her....
     
     
    J EFFERSON J AMES SHOVED THE coroner aside and dragged open those refrigerated steel drawers, himself, until every damn one was pulled completely out of the wall. Only a few held bodies. An old man. A teenage accident victim.
    Doc.
    He quickly looked away from the battered face of the man he had once considered a friend. Or if not a true friend, at least an ally. For years Doc had had no problem cashing his very generous payroll checks. He’d known why his salary was so much higher than any other prison doctor’s. He had been reimbursed for his discretion. But then he’d taken it too far.
    He’d betrayed James. And no one betrayed Jefferson James and lived to brag about it.
    “Where is he?” the warden snapped, his anger and frustration spilling over.
    Where the hell was Rowe Cusack?
    Bernard gazed around the room, as if the body was hiding somewhere in the white-tiled room. He ran a hand over his face, wiping away the last traces of sleep. James had had to wake him up and physically drag him out of bed to bring him back to the morgue.
    It was late. But James didn’t care. He wasn’t sleeping himself until he saw Rowe Cusack’s dead body with his own damn eyes.
    “Bob brought the prisoner’s body straight here from Blackwoods,” Dr. Bernard said.
    “Then where the hell did it go?” the warden asked. “Did he get up and walk out the damn door?” He tensed, goose bumps lifting on his skin as he realized what he’d said and that he’d said it before. His men, the guards who stood in the doorway between the morgue and the outer