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

office, didn’t chuckle this time.
    “I don’t know why you’re so worried about this prisoner,” Bernard said. “You’re acting like he’s not dead. But that’s not possible. Doc declared him dead.” He glanced toward his friend’s body. The two physicians had been true friends.
    How much did Bernard know about what went on in Blackwoods? With the bodies that came from the prison to the morgue, he had to know…too much.
    James followed Bernard’s gaze to Doc’s body. Why would the old man have risked their financially beneficial arrangement and his life? How had Cusack gotten to him?
    “And since Doc declared that guy dead, he’s dead,” Bernard insisted.
    James’s voice shook with rage now as he shouted, “Then show me his damn body! Now!”
    The coroner walked over to the wall of open drawers as if Cusack was hiding somewhere inside it. But the man had been too damn big to just disappear. He would have filled one of those drawers. Or covered a whole damn gurney, like that body the girl had been standing next to earlier. She and that body were gone now.
    “The crematorium was coming for this body,” Bernard said, stopping next to the drawer holding the old man. “They must have taken the wrong one.”
    “The crematorium?” Warden James asked. “The girl that was here earlier said she was waiting for the funeral home.”
    “The crematorium is part of Sutherland’s funeral home,” Bernard explained. “Sutherland’s kid works for him. He would have been the one coming to pick up the body to be cremated.”
    “So you’re saying that if his body went there, by mistake, that it’s going to be burned?” Leaving behind no proof that the man had ever existed? That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, if James didn’t doubt that the man was actually dead.
    “Yes. But probably not until tomorrow. We will be able to retrieve the prisoner’s body for you, Warden,” Bernard assured him. “Don’t worry.”
    But he couldn’t stop worrying…until he knew for sure that DEA Agent Rowe Cusack was dead and not about to destroy James’s entire operation.
     
     
    M ACY WAS CRAZY. She had made a lot of sacrifices for Jed, quitting med school, moving to Blackwoods County, working two jobs…
    But this, helping Rowe Cusack, could prove to be her greatest sacrifice yet. Maybe the ultimate sacrifice. Her hands trembling, she tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “You’re sure Elliot didn’t see you?”
    “Only the Polaroid you showed him of my body,” Rowe answered from the back of her van. He lay across the seats with his head low so that she couldn’t even catch a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror.
    All she spied were the headlamps of another vehicle burning through the thick darkness behind her. Did that vehicle just happen to be on the road leading toward the small cabin she rented? Or had it been following her since she’d left the hospital?
    “Good,” she said. “Then if anyone asks about you at Sutherland’s, he will vouch that you were cremated tonight.”
    “It was a great idea, Macy.” He praised her with none of the surprise other people had showed in her intelligence.
    She felt empowered. She enjoyed actually being able to help someone for once instead of being forced to stand by while he was unjustly imprisoned. Yet still she worried....
    What if Rowe Cusack wasn’t really whom he claimed to be? Not only would he be unable to help her brother but she’d have just aided and abetted an escaped convict. But Jed would have never revealed that childhood story unless he had been sending her a message.
    “You’ve helped me more than I could have imagined,” he said, as if he’d never met anyone who had helped him without an agenda. He still hadn’t, though. She had an agenda…for Jed. “I can’t ask you to do any more.”
    Her breath caught in alarm. “You’re backing out of our arrangement?”
    “No. I’ll help Jed,” he promised. Again.
    Dare she believe him? She