Lawman Lover - Lisa Childs Read Online Free PDF

scalpel beneath the edge of the gurney she clutched and realized how ineffectual the weapon was as she stared up at the broad-shouldered prison warden. With his bald head and big build, the fifty-something-year-old was an intimidating man. He didn’t need the muscle he had brought with him, but four heavily muscled and armed guards stood behind him.
    If they wanted to see the body under the sheet, she wouldn’t be able to stop them, even with the scalpel. Her heart pounded hard and fast with fear that she had made a horrible mistake. She would have been smarter to lock her and the prisoner inside the morgue, rather than out of it.
    “Get Dr. Bernard out here,” Warden James said. The man was obviously used to everyone jumping to obey his commands.
    If he had really ordered her brother to kill an undercover agent, Jed would not survive his show of disobedience.
    She swallowed hard and replied, “He left for the evening.”
    “Then you need to call him and get him back down here. Now,” the warden insisted, a jagged vein standing out on his forehead as he barely contained his rage.
    “I don’t have the doctor’s private numbers, and I’m not sure where he is, sir,” she murmured, barely able to hear her own voice over the furious beating of her heart. Now she understood why everyone in Blackwoods County feared Warden Jefferson James whether they were confined in his prison or not.
    “I’m just waiting for a funeral home pickup.” Forcing away her nerves, she gestured with a steady hand toward the gurney.
    “So you have a key to the morgue?”
    She shook her head. It wasn’t really a lie since she wasn’t supposed to have a key to the morgue. “No. Dr. Bernard left me in the hall here, waiting. The funeral home’s driver is late.” Her friend wasn’t actually going to show at all, but hopefully the warden wouldn’t check her story.
    “Who does have a key?” James persisted.
    Despite the tension quivering in her muscles, she managed a shrug. “Maybe the hospital director?”
    “Can you call him down here?”
    She shook her head. “Sorry, sir, the phones don’t even ring down here after hours. And I can’t leave this body unattended until the funeral home gets here.”
    “Why not?” Warden James asked, his already beady eyes narrowing with suspicion. “It’s not like he’s going to walk off.”
    A couple of his goons uttered nervous chuckles of amusement.
    “Is it?” the warden asked. Now he focused on the DEA agent’s sheet-covered body.
    Macy willed the sheet not to move with Rowe’s heartbeats or his breathing. “Of course not, sir. It’s protocol for the hospital and the state that a body never be left unattended outside the morgue. I might lose my job if I leave.” And her life if she stayed and the warden lifted that sheet. If he was willing to kill an undercover DEA agent, he would have no problem killing her. And then her brother…
    Her eyes widened as she imagined the sheet shifting a bit as if sliding off Rowe’s body, and she accidentally bumped into the gurney so that the wheels lurched a couple of inches across the linoleum floor. The sheet moved, too, but didn’t slide off any farther. Nothing of Rowe was visible beneath it but the outline of his long, muscular body.
    The warden stepped back with a slight shudder of revulsion. How could a man who was so often around death be unnerved by it? “I don’t give a damn about protocol,” he said. “I need to talk to your boss right now.”
    “If you go to the main desk upstairs, they can help you,” she said. “They’ll be able to reach Dr. Bernard at home and have him come back to the morgue.”
    The warden glared at her before turning and heading toward the elevator. Like devoted dogs at his heels, the guards followed him. Macy waited until the doors closed on him and his henchmen; then she exhaled the breath she’d held and her knees weakened. She stumbled against the gurney and sent the wheels rolling forward a few