Twice in a Lifetime

by Merline Lovelace

  Apparently Rachel would get her chance to apologize sooner than later. With a nod to Taggart, she climbed into the mud-streaked pickup.

  Jake idled the engine and let Shad drive out first. Dust plumed behind the first truck, causing the second to lag well behind. So far behind, in fact, that a couple bends of the road soon cut off all sight of the lead vehicle. Rachel didn’t attach any particular significance to its absence until Jake hit the brakes and brought the pickup to a halt smack in the middle of nowhere.

  Or so it appeared to Rachel. A wire fence separated the gravel and dirt road from an unbroken vista of brown grass and stubby pine. In the distance, the purple mountains showed a dusting of white on their peaks.

  Shoving the gearshift into park, Jake twisted the key and killed the engine. He angled to face her, then silence dropped like a stone. Rachel stood it as long as she could. Keeping her voice level, she launched into what she considered a calm and logical explanation.

  “I worked on the accident task force for a good part of last year. The sequence of the bills carried aboard that plane was burned into my brain. The moment I saw the fifty you passed at the fair, I had to report it.”

  Under the brim of his hat, his rain-blue eyes skewed her to the truck seat. Rachel fought the urge to fiddle with the window button or look out across the mesa.

  “I couldn’t tell you that night at the fair. I still can’t tell you the exact details. But I will tell you that my gut kept insisting you came by the fifty innocently.”

  Her gut, and the hours she’d spent with this man. From what she’d learned in the past few days, Jake held true to himself, to his family and to the memory of his wife. Particularly to the memory of his wife. Resolutely, Rachel ignored the sharp little ping that thought caused just under her heart.

  “Unfortunately, gut instinct doesn’t carry as much weight in my line of work as much as field samples, laboratory tests and data analyses.”

  The implication that he fell into the category of a field sample or lab test didn’t sit particularly well with Jake. He didn’t say a word, but his expression went from hard to downright dangerous.

  Doggedly, Rachel plowed ahead. As much as she would have liked to, she couldn’t put this whole mess off on Taggart. She’d gone along with him, even conducted a few discreet inquiries on her own.

  “We gathered information on you,” she told Jake. “The information we collected raised a few questions.”

  Questions that still hadn’t been completely answered. Taggart had yet to verify the source of the infusion of cash into the Bar-H’s operating account. Last night, a tight-jawed Jake had indicated that his brothers had provided the cash. As part owners, they shared the costs as well as the profits from the ranch. When Taggart informed them he’d already had someone checking their accounts, Marsh, Reece and Sam had agreed to provide proof of the money transfers…after they’d contacted their brother Evan and got the attorney’s take on the situation. It had not been a friendly exchange.

  “I accepted your invitation to dinner and came out to Bar-H with the deliberate intention of learning what I could about you,” Rachel admitted. “And then…”

  Then Jake had kissed her and short-circuited every system in her body.

  “Then things got personal between us, and I decided to go with my gut after all.”

  For an analyst trained to consider every scrap of information with intense scrutiny, the admission that she’d fallen back to instinct rather than data came hard for Rachel. Very hard. But there was no other way to explain her reaction every time Jake Henderson took her in his arms.

  “Are you finished?”

  “Yes. No.”

  Chewing on her lower lip, she dragged out the apology she’d rehearsed last night. It didn’t sound any better now than it had then.

  “I’m sorry, Jake. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to mix personal interests with professional responsibilities. It wasn’t fair to you, and it confused the hell out of me. All right,” she said, bracing herself for the blast she was sure would follow. “I’m done. Your turn.”

  Jake didn’t disappoint her. With an anger made even more potent because he kept it so tightly controlled, he cut right to the quick.

  “I told you Ellen was the only woman in my life, so she’s all I really have to measure things by. She never lied to me, not once in all our years together. Not that I know of, anyway.”

  Well, bully for Ellen!

  The irreverent retort popped into Rachel’s head. Thankfully, she had just enough sense to keep it from popping out of her mouth.

  “I couldn’t have loved her the way I did if she had,” Jake finished tightly.

  That hurt. More than Rachel wanted to admit. She fumbled for something to say and found herself resorting to Russ Taggart’s specious argument.

  “I didn’t lie to you, Jake. I just sort of filtered the truth.”

  The scornful twist of his mouth told her what he thought of that sorry excuse.

  “We’re going up to find Grizzly,” he said, enunciating each syllable with exaggerated care. “We’ll try to get him to remember where he picked up those bills. We’ll close out my part in this fiasco, and you’ll apologize to my family for dragging them into this.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And then, Ms. Quinn, we’ll talk about where we go from there.”

  Her stomach jumped. Cocking her head, she met his gaze head-on.

  “Just out of curiosity, where do you think we can go from there?”

  “I’m damned if I know. Without trust, we don’t have much of foundation to build on.”

  Ouch! Henderson could deliver a helluva punch when he wanted to. Well, Rachel refused to grovel any longer. What was done was done, and she couldn’t undo it.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she said with a lift of one shoulder. “You let me know when you decide whether you can trust me again, and I’ll let you know whether I care.”

  As it had earlier this morning, her breezy reply took Jake aback. Good grief, hadn’t the always perfect Saint Ellen ever stood up to him?

  Not very often, apparently. Ignoring the tight grooves bracketing his mouth, Rachel flapped a hand.

  “You’d better move it, cowboy. As you pointed out last night, it’s a long ride up to this cabin.”

  They found Shad and Taggart waiting for them at a pull-off cut into the side of a slope. A barely discernable dirt track wound upward, cutting through a maze of mountain laurel and tall pines.

  Shad had already unloaded his two ATVs and strolled forward to help Jake. Attaching a lightweight, tri-fold ramp to the pickup’s tailgate, they maneuvered the four-wheelers out of the truck. Mud-splashed and well-dented, the ATVs were equipped with an assortment of accessories that included rear carriers, brush guards, winches, utility lights, extra fuel containers and front mounts for snowplows.

  But it was the high-impact plastic scabbard Jake retrieved from the back of the pickup that snagged Taggart’s attention. Eyes hooded, he watched while the rancher opened the case and checked the rifle nestled inside. His gaze lingered on the high-powered scope clamped onto the stock.

  “That’s a Clarion scope, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Jake flicked him a cool glance. “An X-93.”

  “Pretty powerful piece of equipment. The last time I saw one of those, we took it off a dead sniper.”

  “That right?”

  The deliberately disinterested drawl brought spots of color into Russ’s cheeks. He started forward, came up short when Jake flashed him a warning look. For a moment, something so close to animosity arced between the two men that Rachel sucked in a gulp of the chill, pine-scented air.

  Unlocking his jaw, Taggart managed a credible drawl of his own. “Too bad the X-93 doesn’t accommodate an infrared targeting system.”

  Sliding his hand inside his down-filled red vest, he withdrew an automatic. Rachel knew next to nothing about guns, but she’d once heard Russ describe his as blue steel death. With seeming
casualness, he aimed at a nearby tree branch and thumbed a lever. A bright red beam lasered through the air and tattooed a small, round circle on the chest of a squirrel watching the proceedings with wide-eyed interest.

  Taggart held the bead for a second or two before thumbing the switch again. The bright red circle disappeared. Sliding the automatic back inside his vest, the agent brought his cool gaze back around to Jake.

  Rachel bit her lip. She couldn’t help thinking this little demonstration was something Jake’s two-year-old nephew might have indulged in. You show me your intergalactic ray gun or pee-pee or whatever, and I’ll show you mine. It might have been funny if the message conveyed wasn’t so unsettling.

  Henderson was still on Taggart’s list of suspects. He’d stay on the list until he presented the FBI agent with incontrovertible proof he didn’t belong there. And neither of them was prepared to trust the other until that happened.

  Trust.

  There it was again. With a grimace, Rachel folded her arms and waited while Jake snapped the rifle case shut and attached it barrel-down to the side of the ATV. Unsmiling, he strode over to check her out on the vehicle.

  “It’s pretty basic. The controls are in the handle-bars. You throttle up to increase speed, throttle back to slow.”

  “Got it.”

  “Watch the angle of the inclines. Of necessity, ATVs have high-set chassis to get over rough terrain. Even with their wide axles, they can tip and roll. Stay behind me and follow where I lead.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  He hadn’t thawed toward her yet. Not enough to find her flippant reply the least amusing, anyway. He strode back to his own vehicle and swung into the saddle. A twist of the throttles produced a muted roar, and Jake started up the sloping path. Cautiously, Rachel applied power and did the same. Taggart followed, with Shad bringing up the rear.

  For the first half hour or so, she concentrated on maneuvering under low-hanging branches, around rock outcroppings, and over tree roots. For the second half hour, she actually enjoyed herself.

  The scenery was spectacular. Tall, soaring pines in a dozen different shades of green speared into a sky so blue it might have been painted in acrylic. Beneath the pines, the dense underbrush offered patches of glossy red berries and an occasional clump of dark purple wildflowers. Every so often, the dirt path backtracked and the trees thinned enough to show glimpses of the slope they’d just climbed. The drop seemed a lot more vertical looking down than it had looking up.

  Only after she’d been jouncing along for nearly an hour did Rachel decide that the ATV’s cushioned seat could have used another inch or so of padding. When Jake throttled back and rolled to a stop in a small, grassy clearing, she was ready for a break. So was her bladder. She shouldn’t have downed that extra cup of coffee before driving out to the Bar-H.

  When Rachel threw her leg over the seat and dismounted, muscles still stiff from her hours on a horse yesterday afternoon registered an instant protest. She glanced around, spotted a thick-trunked tree at the edge of the clearing that would suit her purposes, and wished to heck she’d thought to stuff some tissue or a wad of toilet paper in her jacket pocket.

  Jake must have read her mind. Either that, or he caught the longing glance she gave the tree.

  “Check the carrier on the back of your ATV. We pack a stash of emergency supplies whenever we head up into the mountains. I think Sydney stuck in a few extra items the last time she rode out with us.”

  The emergency supplies, Rachel saw as she rooted around in the hard-cased carrier, included walkie-talkies, a first aid kit, a fold-up tool pack, a Swiss Army knife, a flashlight and matches, a tube of expensive sunblock and—bless Sydney!—a half-dozen packages of moistened towelettes.

  Clutching her prize, Rachel made a dash for the tree. She rejoined the men a short time later, refreshed and ready to resume the bumpy ride.

  The novelty of crawling up the side of a mountain on a four-wheeler wore off at about the same time the dirt path deteriorated into little more than a trail of sawed-off tree stumps. From there on out, maneuvering her vehicle was sheer work. Rachel played constantly with the handlebar controls, piling on power for the climbs, throttling back to keep from pitching over when the slope angled.

  She was sweating when they took the next breather. Shimmying out of her suede jacket, she stuffed it into the carrier and gulped down some of the bottled water Shad had packed. By the time the ramshackle cabin tucked amid a stand of ponderosa pine came into view, she couldn’t ever remember being so thankful to see signs of civilization in her life.

  As Jake had warned, the place was little more than a cracker box of weathered boards capped by a tin roof. Saplings with their branches hacked off supported a sagging porch. Two of the panes in the front window had cracked and were webbed with masking tape.

  One by one, the ATVs slowed to a stop in the small clearing in front of the cabin. The engines idled and coughed before dying. Exhaust sullied the purity of the high mountain air. Stifling a groan, Rachel swung her leg over the seat. She was testing her legs when Jake issued a low, terse warning.

  “Stay on the four-wheeler.”

  “What?”

  “Get back.”

  “I don’t… Good God!”

  Her heart jumped into her throat. She stumbled back, her gaze locked on the black snout that poked through the crack of the opened front door.

  “Damn,” Taggart muttered, sliding his hand inside his vest toward his automatic.

  “Stay easy!” Jake ordered sharply.

  The long, pointed muzzle poked out another inch. It was followed in short order by a small head, shaggy forepaws, and massive, humped shoulders.

  “Is that the grizzly your cousin adopted?” Rachel murmured to Shad, sincerely hoping that proved to be the case.

  “Looks like him. But he’s really an American black, not a grizzly. Some fool slapped Isaac with that nickname when he took in the cub and it just sorta stuck to them both.”

  Since she had no particular desire to get up close and personal with either an American black or a grizzly, Rachel merely nodded and kept back.

  “Wonder what he’s doing at the cabin?” Shad mused. “This late in the season, he’s usually out rooting up food twenty, twenty-four hours a day to get ready for hibernation.”

  Keeping both his stance and his voice nonthreatening, the foreman called out to his cousin. “Isaac, it’s me, Shad.”

  The only answer was a growl from the bear. The weathered boards on the porch creaked under its weight as it began to rock from side to side.

  “Jake’s with me, Isaac. Call off your watchdog.”

  The animal emitted another growl, only this one started low and slowly escalated into a keening howl that lifted the hairs on the back of Rachel’s neck.

  “What the hell?” Shad muttered. “Hey, Isaac! You in there, pardner?”

  He was in there, they discovered when the bear finally ceased its eerie wail and shuffled out the door. With a last look over his shoulder at the cabin, it disappeared into the pines behind the cabin.

  Rachel kept a wary eye on the trees as she followed the men to the cabin. The odor reached her before she’d stepped onto the porch. She didn’t need Jake’s restraining hand to pull up short. She’d participated in enough on-scene accident investigations during her early days with the NTSB to recognize the stench of putrefying flesh.

  Chapter 9

  “A man dies in his own bed,” Shad mused to Rachel, “his best friend standing watch over him. Not a bad way to go, all things considered.”

  Rachel nodded mutely in reply. She’d been sitting beside Shad on the trunk of a fallen tree for over an hour now. Patiently, the foreman carved another swirl on the knotty root he’d been whittling on while they waited for the arrival of a Coconino County deputy sheriff.

  It looked to be a long wait. Taggart had used the radio he’d brought with him to contact his Denver office, which in turn had notified the Coconino County sheriff’s o
ffice. Although it appeared Shad’s cousin had died of natural causes, the medical examiner would have to make the official determination. Or in this instance, the deputy sheriff who acted as a trained investigator for the ME when time, distance, or circumstances demanded. Marsh was bringing the deputy up to the shack to view the body and make his report. Then Shad intended to bury his cousin amid the mountains he loved.

  “It was something, the way that bear stood guard over ole Isaac. He would have been feedin’ the coyotes sure as shootin’ if that pet of his hadn’t kept them all away.”

  Rachel shifted to find a more comfortable perch on the fallen log. “How long do you think the bear would have stayed with your cousin if we hadn’t showed up?”

  “Don’t rightly know.” A tiny wood chip curled under Shad’s knife blade. “With winter comin’ on, he could’ve gone into hibernation and dozed off right there in the shack.”

  Rachel threw a glance at the cabin. Even with the door and windows opened wide, the stench was still overpowering. How in the world could Taggart stay inside? He’d been in the line shack most of the past hour, his handkerchief tied over his nose and mouth, probing the walls, the floorboard, the nooks and crannies under the tin roof.

  Rachel shook her head, marveling at the agent’s dedication. She’d recognized that he was driven when she’d worked with him last year, but to conduct a field search under these conditions went above and beyond the call of duty.

  Her gaze slid from the shadowy interior of the cabin to the man leaning against the porch rail. Jake had opted to remain outside, where the air was at least breathable. Arms folded, eyes intent under the brim of his black hat, he observed Taggart’s progress.

  “Jake Henderson didn’t have nothin’ to do with that airplane crash.”

  The absolute conviction in Shad McCoy’s voice swung Rachel’s head around. “I know.”

  “I watched him grow from a skinny, knock-kneed grasshopper to the man he is now.” Another wood shaving joined the pile between Shad’s boots. “He’d cut off his arm before he’d do intentional harm to man or beast.”