Boneyard Ridge Read online

  Completing his latest assignment could impact investigator Hunter Bragg’s future. But only if he can keep Susannah Marsh alive.

  All Hunter Bragg wanted in Purgatory, Tennessee, was a little peace of mind. A private investigator plagued by his own guilt, he never imagined his next job would resurrect old demons. Targeted by an anarchistic militia group, events planner Susannah Marsh is his next mission: keep her close…keep her alive. But Susannah has a secret. A secret that will reveal the true motive of her potential assailants. For Hunter, being Susannah’s protector soon becomes more than just a job. And in order to succeed, there can be no half measures. With undeniable attraction simmering between them, he’s determined not to let the promise of a better future fall into the hands of ruthless predators.

  He wanted to argue with her, the urge to spill the whole ugly tale so powerful it felt like poison in his gut.

  His leg was bad. It couldn’t do the same things he’d once asked of it. But he was stronger now than he had been in the middle of that burning hell.

  He’d never known that level of utter helplessness before in his life. He prayed to God he’d never know it again.

  He willed Susannah to step back from him, to take away her soft warmth, her sweet scent, her gentle, disarming gaze.

  Of course, being Susannah, she stepped closer, her hands lifting to his cheeks, ensnaring him. “I have no idea what to say to you,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I don’t know what you need.”

  You, he thought with growing dismay. I just need you.

  BONEYARD RIDGE

  Paula Graves

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Alabama native Paula Graves wrote her first book, a mystery starring herself and her neighborhood friends, at the age of six. A voracious reader, Paula loves books that pair tantalizing mystery with compelling romance. When she’s not reading or writing, she works as a creative director for a Birmingham advertising agency and spends time with her family and friends. She is a member of Southern Magic Romance Writers, Heart of Dixie Romance Writers and Romance Writers of America. Paula invites readers to visit her website, www.paulagraves.com.

  Books by Paula Graves

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  926—FORBIDDEN TERRITORY

  998—FORBIDDEN TEMPTATION

  1046—FORBIDDEN TOUCH

  1088—COWBOY ALIBI

  1183—CASE FILE: CANYON CREEK, WYOMING*

  1189—CHICKASAW COUNTY CAPTIVE*

  1224—ONE TOUGH MARINE*

  1230—BACHELOR SHERIFF*

  1272—HITCHED AND HUNTED§

  1278—THE MAN FROM GOSSAMER RIDGE§

  1285—COOPER VENGEANCE§

  1305—MAJOR NANNY

  1337—SECRET IDENTITY¤

  1342—SECRET HIDEOUT¤

  1348—SECRET AGENDA¤

  1366—SECRET ASSIGNMENT¤

  1372—SECRET KEEPER¤

  1378—SECRET INTENTIONS¤

  1428—MURDER IN THE SMOKIES††

  1432—THE SMOKY MOUNTAIN MIST††

  1438—SMOKY RIDGE CURSE††

  1473—BLOOD ON COPPERHEAD TRAIL††

  1479—THE SECRET OF CHEROKEE COVE††

  1486—THE LEGEND OF SMUGGLER’S CAVE††

  1517—DEAD MAN’S CURVE^

  1522—CRYBABY FALLS^

  1529—BONEYARD RIDGE^

  *Cooper Justice

  §Cooper Justice: Cold Case Investigation

  ¤Cooper Security

  ††Bitterwood P.D.

  ^The Gates

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Hunter Bragg—The former Army Sergeant may not be in the service anymore, but he still has a life-or-death mission: go undercover to stop a domestic terror group from killing an innocent woman who could interfere with their deadly plot.

  Susannah Marsh—The pretty, polished event planner stands in the way of a plan to target a law enforcement conference, and her only chance of surviving is a scruffy hotel maintenance man who is anything but what he seems. But can she trust anyone, especially since she’s hiding deadly secrets of her own?

  Billy Dawson—The current head of the Blue Ridge Infantry has deadly plans for the upcoming law enforcement conference.

  Marcus Lemonde—Susannah’s right-hand man has to take over her job when she’s forced to run for her life. Will he be next on the target list?

  Asa Bradbury—The head of a brutal mountain crime family is out for revenge, and he’s finally got a lead on his brother’s killer.

  Alexander Quinn—The former CIA agent has put a lot of faith in Hunter Bragg to handle the dangerous undercover assignment. But does he have another agenda where Hunter is concerned?

  For all the wounded warriors who put their lives and their bodies on the line every day to make the world a safer place. God bless you, and thank you for all you do.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Excerpt

  Prologue

  Smoky Joe’s Saloon had never pretended to be anything more than a hillbilly honky-tonk, a hole in the wall on Old Purgatory Road that served cold beer, peanuts roasted in the shell and a prodigious selection of Merle Haggard hits on the ancient jukebox in the corner.

  At the moment, “The Fightin’ Side of Me” blasted through the jukebox’s tinny speakers, an apt sound track for the bar brawl brewing around the pool table in the corner.

  Two men circled the table like a pair of wary Pit Bulls, eyes locked in silent combat. The older of the two was also the drunker, a heavyset man with bloodshot eyes and a misshapen nose, mottled by red spider veins. He seemed to be the aggressor, from Alexander Quinn’s vantage point at a table in the corner of the small bar, but the younger, leaner man had shown no signs of trying to de-escalate the tension.

  On the contrary, an almost frantic light gleamed in his green eyes, a feral hunger for conflict that Quinn had noticed the first time he’d ever laid eyes on the man.

  His name was Hunter Bragg, and he’d finally found the trouble he’d been looking for all night.

  “Come on, Toby, you know he’s going to beat the hell out of you the second you take a swing. Then I’m going to have to call the police and you’ve already got a couple of D and Ds on your record this year, don’t you?” The reasonable question, uttered in a tone that wavered somewhere between sympathy and annoyance, came from the bartender, a burly man in his early sixties with shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair and a gray-streaked beard. He was dressed like most of the patrons, in jeans and a camouflage jacket over a T-shirt that had been through the wash a few times, dulling its original navy color to a smoky slate blue.

  He was the “Joe” of Smoky Joe’s Saloon, Joe Breslin, an Army vet who’d opened the bar with his savings after deciding not to re-up decades earlier when the trouble in Panama was starting to heat up. He’d packed on a few pounds and lost a few steps since his military days, but Quinn had seen him in action a few nights earlier when another loudmouthed drunk had taken the angry young man’s bait and lived to regret it.

  “He’s askin’ for an ass-kickin’, Joe!” the man named Toby complained, shooting a baleful look at Hunter Bragg. “I don’t care if he is a damn war hero.”

  “I’m no hero,” Bragg growled, the feral grin never faltering.

>   “Bragg, I don’t want to kick you out of my bar, I really don’t,” Joe said. “But if you don’t shut your damn trap and stop picking fights, I’m gonna. You think your sister needs any more trouble?”

  Bragg’s gaze snapped toward the bartender at the mention of his sister. “Shut up.”

  Breslin held up his hands. “Just sayin’. She’s already got enough on her plate, don’t she?”

  “Shut up!” Bragg howled, the sound of a wounded animal. Chill bumps scattered down Alexander Quinn’s spine and, on instinct, his hand went to the pistol hidden under his jacket.

  Toby took a couple of staggering steps backward until he bumped into the wall, dislodging some darts from the board that hung near the pool table. “You’re crazy, man.”

  Bragg’s head snapped back toward Toby, barely leashed violence throbbing in his tight muscles. Quinn wasn’t sure if the man had come to the bar armed or not; Joe Breslin wasn’t the sort of proprietor who made people check their weapons at the door. And so far, Bragg had never used anything but his fists in a fight.

  But things could turn disastrous in a heartbeat, Quinn knew. He’d seen it happen too many times.

  He crossed the room with quiet speed, inserting himself into the arena of conflict. As he’d hoped, his mere presence put a big dent in the tension, as both men turned their wary gazes toward him.

  “Gentlemen,” he said with a polite nod. “Are you still using this table?”

  Toby stared at him as if he were crazy, but Bragg’s eyes narrowed, his head tilting a notch to one side.

  “I know you,” he said.

  Quinn nodded. “We’ve met.”

  “In Afghanistan?”

  Quinn shook his head. “At Landstuhl.”

  Bragg’s face blanched visibly at the mention of the military hospital in Germany where combat-injured American troops were treated until they were stable enough to return to the States for further treatment.

  Bragg had spent over a week there after an improvised explosive device, or IED, had obliterated his troop transport vehicle, killing everyone else in the Humvee and leaving Bragg with a mangled leg and a head injury. Surgeons had saved the leg, though when Quinn had seen the man in the hospital in Germany, there had been some question as to whether he’d have much use of the limb again.

  Now, it seemed, it was the head injury that should have caused the doctors more concern. Bragg’s limp was barely noticeable these days. But he was no longer the good-natured practical joker his fellow soldiers had nicknamed the Tennessee Tornado.

  “You brass?” Bragg asked warily.

  “Civilian,” Quinn answered.

  The green eyes narrowed further, little more than slits in his stormy face. “Spook?”

  Quinn just smiled.

  Bragg’s eyebrows rose slightly, opening his eyes enough that Quinn could read the sudden recognition in the younger man’s gaze. “You’re the guy who runs that new PI joint over in Purgatory.”

  Quinn removed his hand from his jacket pocket, producing a simple, cream-colored business card. “The Gates,” he said, holding out the card.

  Hesitantly, Bragg took the card from Quinn’s outstretched hand. “I’m not in the market for a private eye.”

  “I’m in the market for employees.”

  Bragg handed the card back. “I’ve got a job.”

  “You sweep floors at the Piggly Wiggly.”

  “It’s honest work.”

  “So’s this.” Quinn held up the card.

  “I’m not looking for excitement.”

  Quinn merely lifted one eyebrow, shooting a look toward Toby, who stood next to the dartboard, watching Quinn and Bragg with a confused expression on his whiskey-slackened face.

  Putting the card on the green felt surface of the pool table, Quinn looked back at Bragg. “If you change your mind.”

  He left the bar without looking back to see if Bragg picked up the card. He couldn’t make the decision for the man. He could only offer an option that might channel his anger in a more productive direction.

  He wasn’t in the business of saving people from themselves, no matter what the good folks of Purgatory seemed to think.

  Chapter One

  “Damn it!” Susannah Marsh looked with dismay at the jagged chip in her French-manicured thumbnail and mentally calculated whether or not she could work in a trip to the salon over the next seventy-two hours.

  Nope. Not a hope in hell.

  “What’s the matter?” Marcus Lemonde looked up from his desk in the corner of the small office, the expression on his narrow face suggesting the query was more about politeness than interest.

  “Broke a nail, and I won’t have time between now and the conference to get it fixed.”

  “Can’t you just file it down or something?” Even his feigned attempt at interest disappeared, swallowed by mild annoyance.

  She sighed, knowing she’d be just as annoyed in his position. It hadn’t been that long ago she’d have rolled her eyes at a manicure mishap herself. “Yeah. I’ll do that.” Because a perfect French manicure was so easy to achieve, especially when one nail was now considerably shorter than the rest.

  How on earth had she managed to choose a career where things like manicures and stiletto-heeled shoes practically came with the job description? Lord, if the kids she used to run around with back on Boneyard Ridge could see her now...

  She dug through her purse for the manicure kit she always kept with her, but it wasn’t there. Had she left it in another purse? No, she distinctly remembered getting it out of yesterday’s bag that morning.

  And leaving it on the breakfast bar in her apartment.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it!

  The resort had a gift shop at the far end of the hotel that carried things like nail files and other items hotel guests might have forgotten to pack. But she barely had time to get to her meeting with the Tri-State Law Enforcement Society’s representatives, who were meeting with her and hotel security to go over last-minute plans for the conference that would start on Friday.

  With a glance at Marcus to make sure he wasn’t watching, she dipped her hand into her purse and grabbed the slightly bulky Swiss Army knife she also kept with her at all times. Its attached file was a bit rough for a good manicure, but it would do for the meeting. Then she could run down to the gift shop for a nail kit to do the job right.

  Flipping open the nail file as she hurried down the corridor, she bit back a laugh. All this drama for a broken nail!

  For the first sixteen years of her life, she’d chewed her nails to stubs and never thought twice about it. She’d owned one purse at a time, which she carried only when absolutely necessary. Skirts were the bane of her existence, baring as they did the scars of a lifetime of scratches and scrapes, and high heels were so far off her radar she’d had to spend a whole week of secret practice sessions with her cousin from Raleigh before she could navigate her way across the room in a pair.

  How had she turned into such a girl?

  The obvious answer was leaving Boneyard Ridge, making a new life for herself in a world where little redneck tomboys from the hills could easily find themselves chewed up and spit out before they could blink twice.

  She wasn’t going to let her grandmother down, the way everyone else always figured she’d do.

  As she waited for the elevator to the third floor, where Ken Dailey, head of Highland Hotel and Resort’s security team, would be waiting for her with three of the law-enforcement society’s event organizers, she ran the coarse file across her nail, wincing as it snagged heavily on the broken edge. The friction, she saw with dismay, was doing horrible things to the French tip polish. Giving up on the nail-file attachment, she flipped open the scissors and snipped off the whole tip of the broken nail.

  The elevator dinged and the doors swept smoothly open just as she snapped the scissors back into the knife handle. She quickly dropped the knife into the pocket of her jacket and pasted on a smile to greet whoever might be insid
e the elevator car.

  There was only one other occupant, a scruffy-looking man wearing a maintenance-crew jumpsuit. His green eyes lifted in surprise as he pulled up to keep from running straight into her.

  “Sorry,” he said in a voice as deep as a mountain cavern. He stepped back into the elevator to let her in.

  “You aren’t getting out?” she asked.

  “I pushed the button for the wrong floor.” His gaze dropping, he reached out and started to push the button for the third floor, then looked sheepish when he realized it was already lit up.

  He was a rangy man in his early thirties, with shaggy dark hair that fell into his darting eyes, making him appear to be looking at her from under a hood. He would probably be nice-looking if he didn’t come across as such a sad sack, Susannah thought, torn between pity for his obvious discomfort and irritation that he wouldn’t lift his head and look her in the eye.

  He had spoken in a strong hill-country twang, reminiscent of the harsh mountain accent she’d ruthlessly subdued since leaving Boneyard Ridge.

  “Grubby little tomboys from here don’t get to live out their dreams, Susie,” her grandmother had told her as she handed Susannah $400 in cash and a bus ticket to Raleigh. “You gotta learn how to make it out there in the real world.”

  The maintenance man let her off the elevator first when they reached the third floor. She moved ahead, trying to ignore the prickle on the back of her neck as he brought up the rear. He didn’t overtake her, despite his longer legs. When she stopped to straighten her clothes before entering Meeting Room C, she spared a quick glance his way.

  He kept his head down, apparently determined not to meet her gaze as he passed behind her. He walked with a strangely deliberate gait, as if each step were a decision he had to make before he committed himself to the next one. A couple of steps later, she figured out why. He had a limp.

  She couldn’t remember ever seeing him around the hotel before, but maintenance workers and hospitality staffers had a pretty high turnover rate. Plus, while she wasn’t someone who saw the people who pushed mops and brooms as interchangeable drones, the stress and speed of her job as the resort’s head events coordinator meant she didn’t have the time or opportunity to get to know many people outside of her own office.