Legacy Lost

by Jillian David

  When she glanced over the horse’s neck, she froze.

  The horse’s ears laid straight back.

  The scent of rotten eggs drifted by, and for a split second, a mental blast of match-strike-sharp rage blew by her from the depths of the stall. A brief red glow blinked in the darkness.

  Then it was gone.

  The horse snuffled and shook himself, then nosed into the feeder and dug in for his meal like nothing had happened.

  Had nothing happened?

  Another coughing spasm hit, forcing her to lean over and concentrate on dragging oxygen into her burning lungs. She prayed that no one would see or hear her.

  When she caught her breath, she peered once more into the depths of the barn. Nothing but a big horse, chomping hay. Must have been her imagination. She walked through the barn once again.

  Nothing.

  Then why did she still feel like someone watched her?

  Chapter 2

  Eric was going to kill the wheezing woman hiking on the snowy trail in front of him. Unless Shelby killed herself first. At this rate, yeah, she would beat him to it.

  Hauling gear up the steep Teton terrain in late November behind the vision of Shelby’s lean hips blew on a good day, but watching the woman turn herself inside out to continue moving toward the victim ruined Eric.

  What could he do? When he got the call to go to Jackson Hole for the Search and Rescue mission early this morning, he had headed straight to the ranch, because Shelby would have gotten the same call.

  There he had made the mistake of reasoning with her. He tried joking with her, even attempted to use logic to explain why she wasn’t healthy enough to participate in this call-out, but after the second glare from those brown and gold eyes, followed by a crisp “go shove it,” he clamped his mouth shut. Wasn’t the first time he’d been the recipient of her flashing temper. In this potentially dangerous mission, he hoped it wouldn’t be the last.

  Most days he enjoyed her prickly ribbing and comebacks.

  But most days, he didn’t think she’d put her life in danger.

  Sure, he had the authority to pull her from the team, but he’d have to give a reason, and that risked spilling the secret about her power. He had vowed to himself never to betray her trust. In this instance, that promise meant letting her make her own bad decisions.

  Geezus.

  Shelby Taggart. Yet another thing he couldn’t control in his frustrating life.

  And all their dancing around? He loved their banter, the sarcastic jabs and fake flirting. But something had shifted the night she’d almost died in that fire two weeks ago. Now? He was getting tired of the circling. What if he could take their . . . whatever they had . . . deeper? Open up to her and get her to do the same? What did he have to lose?

  Everything. Goddamn his entire life. If he screwed up an attempt at anything resembling a relationship with Shelby, it could destroy everything.

  Well, that cut the decision off at the knees.

  For today, he would focus on keeping Shelby safe and finding the victim who had gone backcountry skiing late yesterday afternoon. Due to the skier’s group of friends and their après-ski pub crawl, it had taken until late last night for the friends to realize their buddy hadn’t returned.

  This morning, at first light, the Search and Rescue team had set out from the edge of the ski resort, hoping to find the skier still alive.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Fine.” The chilly wind whipped the sound of her voice away from him.

  “Are you sure?”

  She spun around, nearly vibrating. If the woman had been a porcupine, all the quills would be up. “Shut it.” No need to see beyond the mountaineering shades she wore. Without question, her eyes would be sending death lasers right into him.

  He threw his hands up. “Just checking.”

  Her gloved finger met his chest. “You check on all the teammates like that?”

  Well. Damn. “Fine. Keep moving.”

  “Trying to, but someone keeps stopping to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  God damn her.

  And while he was at it, damn the wiggle of her butt, visible even beneath the thick alpine pants.

  The powdery snow came up to his calves. Might have to break out the snowshoes if it got much deeper. He scanned the ridges, barely visible beneath the low clouds. At least this early in the season, avalanches weren’t likely, even with the increase in tremblers over the past year. Ever since Mount Shasta in California had blown up last year, the seismic activity had increased in every North American location prone to earthquakes.

  And fifty miles to the north lay Yellowstone, the largest active caldera fueled by molten lava and highly responsive to things like tectonic plates shifting and earthquakes. Way too close for comfort.

  He didn’t like the unstable geology one bit. Or the worsening weather. He scowled at the thick cloud cover that would be on top of them in another few hundred feet of elevation. The wind had picked up, blowing over the eight-person team, swirling powdery snow around them. Shelby wheezed again and covered a cough in the sleeve of her alpine jacket. The wild, orange curls that peeked out under her helmet shook with each cough.

  He reached out, but rolled his gloved hand into a hard fist.

  Don’t touch Shelby. Current theme of his damned pathetic life. He needed to get over whatever the hell had changed his brain chemistry toward her, and fast.

  When her shoulders curled forward as she suppressed another cough, he imagined the shards of the cold air in his own lungs. He tracked the movement as she lifted her head and scanned the area around them. Searching. Of course. She could find anyone or anything.

  How the hell had he missed that little secret? Made perfect sense, now that he examined the past fifteen years. Missing cattle had been miraculously found. When his high school girlfriend had wandered off during a high school group camping trip, Shelby had found her.

  Unfortunately, his girlfriend had already died.

  That awful experience and Shelby’s ability explained why she threw herself into Search and Rescue work, though. She was damned good at it. Obviously. Unfair advantage, unless you were the victim. Then it was your lucky day to have her on the search team.

  If he’d missed out on feeling like an outsider with the Taggart family before, since he’d learned of the secret she’d kept right there, in plain sight for all those years, he felt like an outsider now. Another example of loss of control. Grated the hell out of him, too.

  Shelby turned halfway back and shot him a sunglasses-hidden side eye. Didn’t matter. He knew when he was in the doghouse.

  “Some space?” she gritted out.

  Had he gotten too close? Didn’t care. He was looking out for his teammate, nothing more. “Fine.” He lagged behind her a few extra feet.

  Shelby Taggart. More things he couldn’t control.

  He studied the terrain, imagining how many things could hide behind trees or boulders.

  For a guy who hated uncertainty, he sure didn’t like being out here when there was still a madman on the loose. A madman who wanted revenge on Shelby’s family, any which way he could accomplish the goal.

  Eric glanced over the rugged, unforgiving terrain and shook his head. A madman who had burned down a barn on the Taggart ranch, tried to kill innocent people, then disappeared.

  Yet here Shelby was, two weeks later, hiking up the side of a damned mountain, putting her life at risk again, to try and save a stupid skier. His jaw ached with the effort to keep his mouth firmly shut.

  The team leader called a halt as they reached a saddle on the ridge.

  The second they stopped, Shelby whipped around, the visible portion of her cheeks and nose flushed red, and not with cold. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the wraparound sunglasses, but he knew that they glinted with those amazing gold flecks. Especially when she was pissed.

  Geezus, the woman quivered.

  “Quit it,” she hissed.

/>   No more. He would not give her even one inch. Summoning his most calm, rational voice, he said, “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She cocked her head to the side, but the other team members were busy taking in food and water and adjusting gear. “You know very well.” With her mere inches from his face, her scent of fresh air laced with saddle leather and apple pie—goddamned apple pie!—wafted around him. Explained why he wanted to lick his lips every time he got close to her.

  So much for her being like a kid sister to him, running around with her brother Kerr and Eric on the ranch all those years ago. Nothing about his response to her shouted “sibling” anymore.

  He no longer cared. Let her get both barrels of his concern. If he had to cede his hard-won control, then she should suffer right along with him. “I don’t like you being out here, all right?”

  “And I took your recommendation under advisement.”

  “You told me to blow it out my left nostril.”

  A shoulder lifted, shifting the backpack. “Same thing.”

  She wouldn’t listen to his recommendations to stay home for this mission, which meant he couldn’t keep her safe.

  Like it was his damned job?

  When she rubbed her temple and flinched, it was almost like she responded to his anger. Weird.

  Shelby pinched the bridge of her nose. “Look, Eric. I don’t know what’s up with you, but you have to keep whatever it is to yourself,” she whispered. “I’m too tired to, uh, block out your caveman act.”

  He shrugged. “How you react to my normal concern? Not my problem.”

  “What the heck? You should keep a better handle on your moods,” she hissed.

  Instead of continuing the verbal judo match, he pulled a metal Sigg bottle from his hip and unscrewed the lid with a big dose of hell-if-I-care. “If you had listened to me and stayed home, then you wouldn’t have to deal with my irritation. We’d never be having this conversation. Besides, you abandoned your sick dad to be here. Heck of a choice, if you ask me.”

  She reared back, hand on her chest.

  Low blow, even for him. Shelby’s father had suffered a stroke after all the stress a few weeks back. She had been working extra hard to care for her dad as well as handle the overload of duties on the ranch.

  Didn’t excuse putting herself at harm to do this Search and Rescue mission.

  “You know, you’re not the only one who can find this guy,” he said.

  She grabbed his arm and turned him away from the group. “I was the one who found Zach and Sara when Hank Brand tried to kill them.”

  “You almost died using your power that night.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “I was there when you passed out cold. And don’t even get me started on the headaches you’ve had since then.” He shrugged. “Like I didn’t notice?”

  “Whatever. My power is my business.”

  “And look at how well your powers are working now.” Her wince took the air out of his swelling anger. She didn’t deserve for him to pick on her, but damn it, he didn’t know how else to get through to her.

  “Are you lobbying to be jerk of the year? Because right about now, you’re a lock for first place.” The tight set of her mouth and crossed-arms posture made Antarctic ice seem toasty.

  Screw idle bantering. He took a swig of cold water and hoped to hell he wouldn’t do something stupid like choke on it. For all he knew, she also had the secret power to make the liquid go down his trachea.

  There was far too much he didn’t know about Shelby, and it pissed him off that it had taken this long to realize that she had kept secrets from him even as he’d volunteered to mend fences and feed cattle on the Taggart ranch. He’d been the scrawny teenager who took a seat next to Shelby at the dinner table, praying that Mrs. Taggart would pass the potatoes instead of questioning why Eric hadn’t gone home yet. Little did he know who Shelby really was.

  A life he couldn’t control. Damn it.

  “You’re not in charge of me—” A coughing jag stopped her, and she fought to contain it, her tall, thin frame folding as she bent over double.

  “You okay, Shelby?” the team leader called out.

  After clearing her throat and locking her jaw against what looked like another cough, she spun around and lifted her gloved hand. “I’m good, Ben.”

  “Okay.” The leader motioned. “Circle up, folks. Let’s make a plan.”

  With another warning glare at Eric, visible despite her sunglasses, she joined the rest of the team around their leader.

  “All right.” Ben pulled out the waterproof forest service grid map. “We’re here below the ridge moving southwest toward Rendezvous Peak. Last possible location of the skier was near the east cirque here.” He drew a line with his gloved finger. “That was five hours ago at first light this morning when the spotter in the chopper thought she saw him.”

  “Since then?” Eric asked. Five hours was an eternity up in the high country. That skier could be anywhere.

  Or dead.

  Ben’s mouth pressed into a grim line. “Nothing.”

  “Did he have backcountry experience?” If so, would it be too much to hope the guy would bivvy and stay put?

  “No. City slicker.”

  Every team member groaned. Someone muttered, “Stupid tourist.”

  “Hey, our job isn’t to judge.” Ben’s confident tone centered everyone. “Our job is to save this guy. We’re all connected up here. If we do our job well, the Jackson Hole ski resort looks good. Good press. More tourists come into town. More money in the local communities.” He pulled his wraparounds down and met each team member’s eyes. “Besides, there is a human out there who is lost, cold, possibly hurt. And we have the know-how to fix that.”

  “Roger,” his teammates said. “Right on.”

  “So here’s the plan. Eric, your team will follow the ridge south. Check on the other side of the mountain in case the guy went down there. He might have gotten confused, tried to head over the wrong side of the hill.” He pointed on the map. “My team, we’re heading toward the last known location below the cirque and then down that gully. Hopefully the guy didn’t go all the way down—below that steep cirque, there’s another sheer drop off about a thousand feet down the mountain.”

  Damn it, Shelby had a hand to her head as she peered up at the mountain.

  If Eric gauged her wince of pain correctly, she was using her ability to home in on the victim.

  Too bad her gift didn’t differentiate between whether the person was alive or dead.

  Wasn’t enough to let the Search and Rescue team do its job. Oh, no. She had to become a psychic bloodhound, drawn straight to whomever or whatever she sought. Only the dog never had to deal with unrelenting pain while sniffing out its target.

  Looking at Eric, Ben announced, “Radio check, then let’s get moving. It’s noon. We’ve got five hours of daylight, then we’re either back down the mountain or bedding down for the night.” He raised his eyebrows. “And it does not look like a good night for a campout, folks.”

  “Any chance of another copter today?” an older teammate, Rodney, asked.

  Ben cast a dubious look skyward. “Don’t count on it. Clouds are predicted all day, dropping lower as the afternoon goes on. So be careful and be smart. Use your gear. The weather may turn, too. Make safe decisions for yourself and your teammates.”

  Eric glanced over at Shelby, who stared straight ahead. But he didn’t miss the gloved middle finger extending toward him. Fine. She might be pissed off at him, but he had a job to do: find the idiot skier, keep the team safe, and prevent Shelby from doing something stupid. Simple enough.

  Chapter 3

  If Eric checked back to see how she was doing one more time, she would punch him in his rugged jaw. As it stood, her burning lungs hated Shelby and wanted her to die. Maybe she had returned to the Search and Rescue team too soon. But she’d be damned if she’d give Eric the satisfaction of being right.
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br />   To be fair, it was nice that he appeared to care about her health, but she couldn’t let warm thoughts about him enter into any equation. The minute she went from prickly comebacks to soft, squishy sighs would mark the first step down a horrible, dead-end road. Not an option.

  Besides, she had way too much on her plate to deal with dumb stuff like feelings.

  Sadly, her father hadn’t handled the stress of the barn burning. Or the other insanity of the past few weeks, as his stroke attested. Would he recover? Who knew?

  Her stomach clenched. As much as she hated to admit it, maybe Eric was right. Maybe she should be home caring for her father instead of hiking on this mountain ridge. But she needed to be here, needed to do the work that she could call her own. Needed to use her power to bring something good into this world.

  Speaking of which, another stab of her stupid ability to find people nailed her in the temple, stopping her in the deep snow. It was like a hand grabbed her face and swiveled it toward the lost skier. The high peak. She groaned. Of course. Nothing simple about today’s task.

  Eric glanced back over his shoulder. “Anything?”

  “Nope.” Damn it, he’d better not rat her out. This was her secret to keep, damn it.

  But how easy would it be to simply walk toward the victim and cut out all this . . . searching . . . in the dangerous high country? Super easy, if she wanted to out herself as a freak of nature. Until then, she’d pretend that all her finds were the result of pure luck. Selfish? Maybe. But necessary to protect her secret.

  It was bad enough that Eric now knew about her gift. She understood why she had to reveal the ability in order to save Zach and Sara. But she’d spent the first twenty-eight years of her life hiding. With her secret revealed even only to Eric, she still felt exposed, raw, and vulnerable.

  And Shelby Taggart did not do vulnerable. Not at all.

  So instead of vulnerable, she settled for pissed off with a piquant dash of back-the-hell-away-from-me, because crappy armor was better than no armor.

  As she continued hiking, a chill worked itself down her back. A sensation of someone whispering nearby, like what she’d experienced in the barn yesterday, made her whip her head around and stare across the cloudy, snowy terrain. The flat light made every feature look like a shadow. Wait. Was that a shadow? She blinked and squinted at the area around her. No. Nothing lurked out there.