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DANA EYED THE rusty-looking Ford pickup truck parked a block down Main Street from the community center, then shifted her gaze back to the tall, dark-eyed man who seemed to be watching her for her reaction. She got the feeling this moment was some sort of test, but damned if she knew what the right answer might be.
“Nice wheels,” she murmured.
The right corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Thanks.” He opened the passenger door without producing a key.
Her high heels weren’t the most practical footwear for climbing into an oversized truck, but she managed to haul herself into the cab without making too much of a spectacle. Her wool slacks and cable-knit sweater had seemed to be sufficient for the cool night, but the truck’s hard vinyl seat felt like a block of ice under her backside. She stifled a shiver and held her breath until she located the seat belt and reassured herself that it actually worked.
Walker Nix slid behind the steering wheel and engaged his own seat belt before turning to look at her. “Need a blanket?”
She bit back a shiver and shook her head no. “How far away is Doyle’s house?”
“You’re not staying there?”
She shook her head again, hoping he didn’t ask any uncomfortable questions. “I booked a room at a motel in a town north of here. Quaint name—Purgatory.”
“That’s a bit of a drive.”
A bit of a drive? Purgatory was maybe ten minutes away by car. A commute that short in Atlanta, where she lived and worked, was something to be deeply coveted.
Thinking of the short drive from Purgatory reminded her that her car was parked across the street. The Chevy featured soft seats and a working heater. But before she could suggest they take her car, Nix had already cranked the truck and swung it out of its parking place.
“You didn’t see anything on the drive here?” Nix asked her.
“No, but I was already in town by seven.” She’d waffled over the gift she’d picked out for her brother and his new bride on the drive from Atlanta and had decided to do some last-minute shopping in Bitterwood. But, of course, most of the town’s quaint little shops had closed down at five. “Thought I’d do some last-minute shopping, but nothing was open.”
“Everything closes at five around here.”
“Everything?”
“Well, there are some joints here and there where you can paint the town red until you can’t see straight. But I don’t think they’re selling what you were wanting to buy.”
Like most of the other people she’d met since arriving in town, Walker Nix had a hard-edged mountain accent, though his was tempered a bit, as if he’d spent some time away from the hills. He wasn’t handsome, exactly, but she rather liked the flat planes and hard angles of his features. He had olive skin and dark hair worn very short on the sides and only a little longer on top. Military-style, she guessed. Probably had some armed-forces service in his background—marine corps, or maybe army. Infantry, not rear echelon. The man had jumped right to action at the first sign of trouble.
Once they left the small town center, artificial lighting nearly disappeared, save for the occasional residences spaced every few hundred yards along the winding two-lane road. So the sudden bright beams of light that split the darkness around a blind curve caught them both by surprise. Nix hit the brakes, the sudden deceleration slamming Dana hard against the restraint belt crossing her chest. The brakes squealed, but the truck shimmied to a stop a dozen yards short of the large black truck that lay on its side in the middle of the road, its headlights slicing through the darkness.
No, God, no. She stared at the wreck with a knot in her gut. Not Doyle, too.
Before Dana could unlatch her seat belt, Nix had jerked the truck in Park and jumped out, running toward the wreck. She joined him, cursing the high heels that kept getting caught in the uneven, rutted pavement. Terror sucked the air right out of her lungs as she faltered to a stop in front of the vehicle.
The beam of Nix’s flashlight scanned across the bloodied features of her brother Doyle.
Oh, God, please no.
Her brother’s eyes opened, squinting against the flashlight beam. She felt her knees wobble and grabbed the first thing she could wrap her hand around—Nix’s arm. “Doyle?”
Her brother’s gaze met hers, and he forced a smile that looked more like a grimace. “About time you got here. I’m an hour late for my own engagement party, and nobody thinks to come looking for me?”
She nearly drooped with relief, dropping her hand from Nix’s arm. Doyle sounded as if he was in pain, but his sense of humor was still in play. That had to be a good sign, right?
“How bad are you hurt?” Nix asked, shining the light toward the floor of the cab. Dana could see that one of Doyle’s legs was broken. Grimacing, she looked back at his face, trying to figure out where the blood was coming from.
“Broken leg,” Doyle growled. “My head is bleeding, but I haven’t lost consciousness, so I don’t think it’s bad. My seat belt saved me from going through the window.”
“Where’s your cell phone?” Dana asked as Nix backed away to call in the accident.
“Somewhere on the floorboard. I tried to get it but...” He waved at his broken leg. “I decided I wasn’t about to bleed out and could wait for help to find me. Although I have to admit, I was about to get desperate enough to risk wiggling around again to find the phone.”
“Rescue’s on the way, Chief.” Nix walked back over to the wreck. “What did you hit?”
“The bridge abutment.” Doyle waved his right hand backward, groaning as the movement apparently shifted his broken leg.
“Be still, idiot.” Dana softened her words with a gentle squeeze of his shoulder.
He looked up at her. “Call Laney, will you?” he asked. “She’s probably worried.”
“Okay.” Dana stepped away and pulled out her cell phone, dialing Laney’s number.
Laney answered on the first ring. “Dana?”
“He’s been in an accident, but he’s alive and making jokes.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nix bend in to hear whatever Doyle was saying. Gritting her teeth against the flare of curiosity, she gave Laney a quick rundown of Doyle’s injuries. “Rescue’s on the way.”
“Why couldn’t he call?” Laney asked, sounding suspicious, as if she thought Dana wasn’t telling her the whole truth.
“His cell phone fell on the floor, and with his broken leg, he couldn’t stand the pain of trying to reach it.”
“I want to talk to him,” Laney said. “Please?”
Dana knew if she’d been in Laney’s shoes, she’d have demanded the same thing. She took the phone over to her brother.
Nix backed out, not meeting her gaze, giving her room to hand over the phone to Doyle. “Laney wants to talk to you,” she told him.
As Doyle reassured Laney that he’d live, Dana crossed to Nix, who was shining his flashlight on the road behind the wreck. “What are you looking for?”
He didn’t answer, turning the light back toward the truck lying on its side.
“I’m a federal agent,” she said quietly. “And I’m Doyle’s sister.”
“You’re on vacation, and he’s my boss.”
“What did he tell you while I was calling Laney?”
“He just went over what he remembers of the accident.”
Such a dodge, she thought. “Which was what?”
Nix’s dark eyes turned toward her, gleaming darkly in the reflection of the flashlight beam off the cracked windshield. “He hit the bridge abutment.”
“I heard that much.” She took the flashlight from his hand and aimed the beam toward the bridge visible about thirty yards behind the wreck. It was a truss bridge, not particularly long, but the land fell away precipitously beyond the nearest edge, and a quick hike down the road revealed why. The bridge stood over a deep gorge, at least a thirty-foot drop, with a narrow ribbon of water reflecting starlight below.
If Doyle had missed the abutment and gone over the edge into the gorge...
She shuddered and walked back toward the truck, stopping midway as a sudden thought occurred to her.
“Detective Nix, what’s the name of this bridge?” She turned the flashlight toward him, centering the beam on his face so she could read his expression.
He squinted, angling his face away from the light. “Purgatory Bridge.”
Dana’s heart dipped. She turned slowly and ran the flashlight beam over the delicate ironwork of the bridge, blinking back a sudden burn of tears. She’d crossed this bridge earlier on her way into town. Passed over it without a thought.
Never realizing she’d crossed over the place of her parents’ deaths.
She made her way slowly back to the wreck, schooling her features until she was certain her emotions didn’t show. She gave the flashlight back to Nix and bent to look in on her brother. He’d finished his conversation with Laney and sat with his hands folded over his chest, clutching her cell phone in his bloodstained fingers.
“You doing okay?” she asked softly.
He looked up, handing over the phone. “Laney wanted to come down here, but I told her to stay put until I find out where the EMTs want to ship me.”
Dana glanced at Nix and found him watching them, his expression unreadable. With a sigh, she bent closer to her brother. “What really happened, Doyle? You’re a good driver. You didn’t just run into a bridge.”
He met her gaze, a hint of apology in his green eyes. “And it’s your vacation, too,” he murmured.
“What happened?”
Closing his eyes, he laid his head against the headrest. “The brakes failed.”
A ripple of dread snaked through her. “How long since you had them replaced?”
He rolled his head and opened his eyes to look at her. “Last week.”
Nix’s voice rumbled behind her, grim as the grave. “Someone tampered with his brakes.”
Chapter Two
“Have there been any overt threats?”
Nix looked up at Dana Massey, wondering if she was ever going to run out of restless energy and stop pacing a hole in the waiting-room floor. He’d taken pity on Laney Hanvey, who looked as if she was close to snapping as it was, and removed Doyle’s sister to the other end of the waiting area, where she could walk the floor to her heart’s content.
“No overt threats,” Nix answered when she stopped in front of him, a belligerent look in her mist-green eyes. “But he’s not without enemies.”
She sank into a chair across from him, as if she’d run out of gas. Stretching her long legs in front of her, she dipped her chin to her chest and looked at him beneath a fringe of dark eyelashes. “So Merritt Cortland is alive, then.”
“Can’t be sure of that.”
“He has the strongest motive.”
Nix nodded. “But not the only motive.”
“Who else?”
“We haven’t yet figured out who else from the police department Cortland might have had on his payroll. The closer we look, the more feathers we ruffle.”
“Whose feathers?”
What did she think she was going to do, go run down every police department employee who ever grumbled about the new chief’s campaign of cleaning out all vestiges of corruption? There wouldn’t be much of a force left. Even those who’d never thought a minute about taking money from Cortland resented being under constant scrutiny. Nix certainly did.
But he knew it was necessary, so he dealt with it. Others in the department weren’t quite as sanguine.
“Everybody gets tired of being a suspect,” Nix answered.
“Too bad.”
He smiled a little at that. “You must be popular with your fellow marshals.”
The withering look she shot his way might have stung a lesser man. But Nix shrugged it off. She was tense and upset. And she was clearly a woman of action, so sitting around waiting for someone else to solve the mystery of the tampered brakes had to be driving her crazy.
Ivy Calhoun had volunteered to go with the vehicle to the garage, leaving Nix to stay with the chief. Massey had asked him to stick close. Nix suspected he wanted someone there at the hospital to protect Laney and Dana.
Not that Dana needed a knight in shining armor. He’d put his money on her in a fair fight.
“Doyle wanted me to go home for the night.” She tried to hide it, but Nix heard a hint of hurt behind the words.
“Not a bad idea. The doctors have already told you he’ll live, and they’ve sedated him for the fracture reduction, so he’s probably not going to be able to talk to you again before morning.”
She winced a little at the term “fracture reduction,” the kind of pain-filled grimace that told him she’d suffered a break or two in her time. Not surprising, considering she chased fugitives for a living. “I just worry he’s in danger.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Nix said.
Her eyes narrowed. “And to keep an eye on Laney while he’s unconscious?”
He should have known she’d figure it out. “That’s my guess.”
She pushed out of her slump. “I haven’t said ‘thanks.’”
“For what? Putting on the brakes in time to keep from smashing into the wreck?”
“For taking the initiative to go look for him in the first place.”
“If I hadn’t, someone else would have.” He nodded toward her. “You were already thinking about it, weren’t you?”
“Just say ‘you’re welcome.’”
He felt a smile crack his face. “You’re welcome.”
The smile she shot back at him came complete with shiny white teeth and a set of dimples that took ten years off her age. “I don’t suppose you could give me directions back to Bitterwood?”
He pulled out his notebook and sketched a quick map for her. “Where are you staying?”
