Timber Lake (The Snowy Range Series, #2)

by Nya Rawlyns

  Chapter Thirteen

  Warden Time

  The chill in the air had nothing to do with the downdrafts cascading off the granite faces of the ridges surrounding them. Sonny rode quietly and carefully, making sure his mule gave the big red horse and his infuriated rider room to blow off whatever was chapping the man’s ass.

  Sonny hadn’t meant to abuse his mount by barreling up that ridge like the devil was on his tail, but he’d been so spooked and outraged by what he’d discovered, he was still nauseous and light-headed, with the images still playing in his head like a horror movie reel on steroids. Worst yet, Warden Brooks hadn’t allowed him the chance to explain what he’d found. Not that he’d be able to coherently put it into words... it was that heinous and upsetting.

  Michael’s back tensed, bringing the gelding to a halt. Sonny risked riding alongside and waited for the warden to say something, anything.

  When he did speak, it was terse and to the point. “Which way?”

  “Across the creek.” Sonny flicked his hand in the direction of a shallow spot clear of debris and large rocks. He swallowed, not sure he wanted to return, though not to do so would be cruel and inhumane. His inner turmoil distracted him from seeing the markers he needed to find, but eventually his eyes settled on the telltale spot. “There’s a tree with a notch six feet up. Looks like an arrow.”

  Michael nodded. “How far in?”

  “Couple hundred yards. It’s pretty close to the creek.” Sonny kept his eyes averted from the opening in the treeline.

  “You said it’s a badger. Caught in a trap.”

  Sonny got the distinct impression the warden was mulling over something in his head. He wasn’t hesitating just for the hell of it. It seemed as if he were assessing the situation and didn’t like what he was seeing or feeling. That alone made the hairs on the back of Sonny’s neck come to attention. He asked, “What’s wrong?”

  Michael shifted in the saddle, his rifle still resting across his thighs. When they’d reached the point where the descent flattened out, he’d chambered a round, the sound so startling Sonny had nearly shouted in alarm. The words ‘locked and loaded’ floated through his consciousness, followed by waves of regret and anger that he’d left the shotgun Michael had provided back at the campsite. If he’d had it with him, he wouldn’t be here now, quaking in his boots and embarrassed he’d been unprepared to deal with a situation like this.

  Now he had to rely on Michael to do the right thing, while he quivered in a mental corner like a little girl. Even armed, he wasn’t sure he would have the chops to calmly set aside that vision of horror and put the animal out of his misery.

  And it wasn’t just the trapping that had him wound tight and madder than hell. It was the aftermath...

  Michael barked, “Stay here,” and spurred his horse toward the break in the trees. The mule took a step, then another. Michael gripped the rifle and set the barrel on his right thigh, twisting his head enough to look behind him. He spit out, “I mean it, Rydell.”

  Sonny chewed on his bottom lip as the warden disappeared from view, his gut churning. He let the replay of what he’d discovered grip him in the vain hope he was wrong about what he’d seen. That he’d misinterpreted the grisly image, chalking it up to bad luck for the badger.

  Luck had nothing to do with it. Something had taken advantage of the helpless animal, leaving him to suffer.

  No, not something... someone. No cougar or bear, or any of the predators in that area, would have tortured with such surgical precision. The fact the animal was still alive meant whoever was responsible was close and probably watching them argue like kids in a schoolyard.

  Sonny stood in the stirrups and scanned the area, taking note of the tops of the trees swaying in the stiffening breeze, but there, standing at the edge of the creek, it was deathly quiet. Too quiet. Not even insects buzzed.

  The musical notes of the stream bounding over rocks became white noise, easily set aside. It gave him no information. What he struggled to hear was a chink of hoof on rock, a twig breaking, or perhaps the ping of gravel or stone dislodged by a misstep. For some insane reason, he wanted to be the rabbit, the distraction. If whoever was out there had eyes and ears on him, then his warden could ease the animal’s suffering, without interference and the potential of harm coming to Michael for taking what the trapper would see as belonging to him.

  Logic suggested he should rethink his priorities. Michael had the gun, he didn’t. He was exposed, Michael wasn’t. An ominous flutter in his gut ramped to a roaring din in his ears as a single retort split the air, the reverberations ricocheting off the cliff faces. The mule backed into the stream, fighting to turn and bolt toward camp. Sonny was sorely tempted to let him go, to let the beast carry him to safety.

  The nasty side of logic whined that he was dead weight, of no use to anyone. Not even worth a distraction to keep whoever had perpetrated that foul act from challenging them for rights to the carcass.

  Sonny wondered who was sicker—the man who’d done the deed, or himself for failing to find a way to deal with the situation instead of running to Michael for help. What did the warden think of him now?

  He muttered, “Whoa, Spot.” The mule’s ears twitched. He was still fighting the bit, shaking his head, but he’d come to a standstill in the creek rather than rolling rocks with his hind legs and throwing both of them off-balance.

  Time ticked off in increments of what seemed like hours, although Sonny guessed he’d been waiting for less than ten minutes since Michael had dispatched the badger. The warden would be doing his job, searching the area. He might be on foot, looking for tracks. Or more traps. Sonny had no clue how running a trap line worked—how close together you placed them, how they were secured or concealed, how scents were hidden from animals with keener senses of smell than mere humans.

  When he thought about all the potential hazards his warden faced—pits with sharp spikes at the bottom designed to impale, nets to sweep a man off the ground and immobilize him until the enemy could gather him up at his leisure, nooses and trip lines with arrows aimed to maim if not kill—he should have laughed at the idiocy of such musings. His imagination was running amok because he had no other information to go on. There was a solution for that, and it was past time he got off his butt and did something about it.

  Muttering, “Fuck this,” Sonny squeezed the mule’s sides and slapped his rump with the flat of his hand. When the mule barged forward out of the stream, Sonny gave him a pat on the neck and said, “Whatever’s happening in there can’t be any worse than what I’m conjuring out of thin air out here.” Saying it out loud steadied his resolve, but it did nothing to alleviate the clawing inside his gut.

  There were always worse things. He’d be damned if he’d let Michael Brooks face them alone, even if he was armed to the teeth and had a history of taking care of himself and others.

  I shot a man.

  What exactly had Michael seen that had driven him to chase down the man responsible for what the warden had discovered? To use the word ‘torture’ did little to convey the actual acts, not that Sonny needed that kind of corroboration. But what worried him now was how Michael was going to handle a sensitive trigger, to use current psychobabble.

  If their short history together was any indication, there was suppressed anger and violence always on offer with the warden. What Michael did with it, how he channeled it, wasn’t something Sonny cared to experience without some sort of safety net. There was no way their tenuous friendship with benefits was solid enough to handle that kind of disruption. And his own sappy, one-sided emotional attachment would be the first casualty on that battlefront, the boundaries of which Sonny couldn’t even conceive.

  After carefully retracing his steps, Sonny eventually came across Michael’s gelding tied to a low-hanging branch about ten or fifteen yards from where he had discovered the badger. He dismounted and looped the reins around the trunk of a young lodgepole pine, then went in search of the warden who
was nowhere in sight.

  “Michael? Where are you?” Sonny’s voice barely rose above a whisper. Though he suspected the trapper was still in the vicinity while he was sitting astride his mule in the stream, it was just a guess and not that prickle of fear you got when you think you’re being watched. Now, here in the woods and within a few steps of where the trap had been, it had swapped out to a certainty.

  Curious, Sonny approached the dip in the forest floor, looking for signs of the carcass and the ugly metal device. The area had been swept clean of debris, though the blood stains that had seeped into the hard ground were still visible as black ink stains, the graffiti of a violation so profound the waking nightmare he’d witnessed would forever haunt his dreams.

  The ring of metal-on-metal drew Sonny down a small ravine. When he rounded a cluster of boulders, he found Michael furiously digging a trench in a marshy area through which a trickle of water lazily made its way toward the larger creek, and eventually the lake. Keeping his distance, Sonny crouched on his heels and waited as the warden finished his task using the small, folding shovel he had stuffed into his saddle bags.

  When he’d finished burying the carcass and what looked to be at least three steel traps, he made quick work of covering the trench and placing deadfall over the top of it. It wasn’t until he’d mopped his brow and picked up the rifle from where it lay braced against a stone outcrop that he finally spoke. “I thought I told you to stay put, Dr. Rydell.”

  Frantic thoughts raced through Sonny’s head. I was worried. I wanted to help. I was scared shitless. Instead he said, “I think we’re being watched.”

  Shrugging, Michael climbed the slight incline and brushed past, the movement aggressive enough to force Sonny to lose his balance and teeter on the edge of the incline. He regained his footing, with angry words on the tip of his tongue... What the hell’s your problem, asshole... but he swallowed them back and trailed after Michael.

  He needed to cut the man some slack. He’d done what Sonny himself couldn’t. He’d humanely put the animal out of his misery. He’d searched for and discovered additional traps and disabled them, then he’d taken responsibility to bury the remains so that it wouldn’t draw unwanted predators to their doorstep.

  By the time he got back to where he’d left his mule, the warden was mounted and moving in the direction of the creek, the rifle still braced on his right thigh. He asked, “You finished with setting up your toys, doctor?”

  Toys? What the hell? Sonny had been prepared to be contrite and understanding, but now—with that snarky, supercilious tone of voice—the warden set off his own set of triggers, enough so he growled, “Not quite, but I’m pretty sure I can handle setting up my instruments without your help.”

  “I wasn’t offering.”

  Michael kicked the gelding into a canter and vacated the area, leaving Sonny confused and calling out, “But what about the...” but it was too late. The warden and his temper were on a mission that didn’t include him or his toys.

  Damn the man.

  Disgruntled, Sonny mounted, wondering how it had all gone to hell so quickly. Yesterday, they’d been lovers and friends, today they were strangers with conflicting agendas. He couldn’t recall how it had started. What had he said or done to set Michael off? An hour ago he would have done anything, said anything to make it right.

  Now he just wanted to distribute the remaining sensor array, do a quick and dirty calibration, then get the hell away from Timber Lake and the illusions formed in the lake’s mist.

  Turning the mule toward his next destination, he replied to Brooks’ I wasn’t offering comment with, “I wasn’t asking, Brooks.”

  He was glad he was alone so no one other than himself could hear the lie...

  ****

  Michael tethered Red at the base of the climb. He’d scouted the perimeter of the lake searching for a vantage point from which he could see the lake, including the hills beyond where Dr. Rydell was laboriously constructing his climate stations.

  If he was correct—and he had no doubt both his and Rydell’s spidey senses were dead on—then whoever was loitering in the area would also have found a suitable location from which to observe. Michael needed to get high and set up a tripod of rocks to stabilize the rifle scope. He had decent field binoculars but they were back at the camp, and he hadn’t wanted to spare the time to go looking for them.

  He could have, maybe even should have, gone with the researcher to facilitate the positioning of the devices. Better yet, he should have told the man to get his ass back to camp to pack up his gear and be ready to hit the trail at first light. After what he’d found, prudence dictated they get back to civilization and call in the professionals. He and a civilian were not equipped to deal with another crazy loon getting his rocks off mutilating helpless animals.

  A small voice in the back of his mind suggested that if he ever wanted Seamus Rydell as a friend after this cluster fuck their trip had turned into, then he needed to step back and let the man do his job. Tit for tat. If that meant he was the doctor’s new guard dog, then so be it.

  He found his spot and slowly swept the area, letting his eyes go soft focus to take in the big picture. The details would reveal themselves in due time.

  Meanwhile, he forced himself to set aside his worries about Tex, and concentrate on keeping them both alive.

  Tex...

  The name, and the man, were already carving holes in his chest. He missed him, the rangy nerd with the mop of curly blond hair and leonine eyes that carved pieces of his heart out every time they looked his way.

  How can I miss something that isn’t real?

  But he did miss it, all of it—even after he recognized it was all his imagination, a fairy tale castle built on shifting sands. And what made matters worse... he’d done the one thing he vowed never to do: reveal his vulnerability. Now he felt more exposed than he ever had in his entire life.

  It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, but he had too much pride to simply fold their tent and run back to his metal box in the campground and a life that had been adequate until he’d met Seamus Rydell.

  The shadows stretched long across the valley floor. Cramped, cold and hungry, Michael sighed with relief as he saw the mule picking his way downstream in the direction of their camp. They were nearly forty-five minutes out. That would give him enough time to get back to camp and get a fire going for dinner.

  The sensation of being observed had long since dissipated. Michael slid down the slope, and when he got to his horse, he placed the rifle in the leather scabbard before mounting. Red was happy to pick up a trot, knowing they were headed back to camp and his buddies. Michael wished he felt the same. The prospect of having to deal with a pissed off researcher was one thing. It was quite another to be nagged by the feeling something was wrong, and it had nothing to do with Rydell and their tiff.

  When he knelt to arrange the kindling in the fire pit, he glanced at his gloved hands, still covered with blood and gore from the hapless badger. The sightless eye sockets, the senseless desecration hit him like an out-of-control semi. He doubled over, clutched his gut and heaved the contents of his belly unto the hard ground.

  ****

  Sonny dismounted and led Spot to the creek for a drink before heading up the slope to their camp. Admittedly he’d lollygagged, as his mother would call it, because dealing with Warden Brooks was going to take more than he had to give right that minute.

  He thought the enforced solitude and the chance to focus on his work would have unkinked the knot in his throat. It hadn’t. Now he dragged his feet, taking more time than necessary to untack and put the mule out to graze with the others.

  The ledge with the tent was in shadows. He knew Michael was in the camp—the red horse was grazing with the others—but there was no fire, no smells of cooking, no sign of activity other than the low hum of insects and contented munching by the horses.

  He checked the tent and the area around it. Nothing. Concerned, Sonny trotted do
wn toward the lake, following the curve past the beaver dam and jumping at the slap on the water that echoed eerily in the now still air. Mr. Beaver had loosed a warning shot across the bow: stay away. Sonny was happy to oblige.

  The mist rose lazily off the surface of the spring-fed pool, steam forming at the juncture of heated water and rapidly cooling air. Sonny suspected it might go below freezing, and he wondered idly how the hell he was going to keep warm when the odds were good he and Brooks wouldn’t be cuddling like happy puppies inside their doubled sleeping bags.

  Hell, he wouldn’t put it past the asshole to make him sleep outside the tent on the cold ground.

  Even though his night vision had kicked in, it was still difficult to make out shapes with any certainty. The first clue that Michael was nearby was when Sonny tripped over a pile of clothes in a heap just at the edge of the shoreline. Ripples in the surface alerted him to the man’s presence.

  Stripping, Sonny added to the pile, then moved the lot further from the shore to keep their clothing dry. As he waded into the warmth of the water, he caught the reflection of Michael’s silhouette in the pool.

  Sonny said, “Michael. It’s me. Can I join you?” Michael ignored him, his head bent, shoulders and back rigid with tension.

  Racing through his choices—leave and return to camp, find a spot further on, or join the warden—Sonny had no good answers. If he left, that gave the impression he was pissed. He was. If he waded off to lay claim to his own little piece of liquid real estate, he’d look like a princess in a snit. Close enough for a cigar. But if he slid behind Michael and wrapped his arms around the man, nuzzling his neck, rubbing his cock in the crease of the man’s ass, was that a pre-emptive strike worthy of retaliation that might end in bloodshed?

  Or was there a chance Michael Brooks would take the gesture for what it was... an I’m so fucking sorry, I can barely breathe when you aren’t holding me confession that was nanometers from telling the man how he really felt?

  The warden’s back glistened like a million tiny sparklers in the dim light, the muscles rippling and shying away as Sonny used his body to form a nest and eased Michael’s stocky frame into the shelter of his arms. If he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn Michael was shivering from the cold, but they were immersed in water just short of scalding.