“I want to stay in bed with you.” Joel mumbled the comment into her hair.
She had to smile at the grumbling. “Cam would kill you.”
The man protected for a living and could shoot anything, track anything, catch anything, yet he hated waking up. It had always been that way with Joel. Morning came and he whined and groaned and tried to get her to stay in bed beside him.
He’d concoct elaborate scenarios just to win another ten minutes. When that failed, he’d start kissing her, and he’d always won the bed battle once that happened.
“Trust me, Cam would understand.” Joel lifted up and balanced over her on one elbow. “He can’t believe I let you get away the first time.”
“Me either.”
She hadn’t said the words last night because she wanted him to accept the risk and tell her first, but she did love him. They’d said it before and it didn’t stop him from walking out. She had no idea if it would matter now. The not knowing made her want to knock some sense into him.
His mouth opened, then closed. It took another few seconds before he said anything. “I walked into that one.”
“And, technically, you left me.”
He groaned and sat up. “On that note, I’ll get out of bed now.”
Naked and not even a little shy about it, he threw his feet over the side of the bed. He wiped his face with his open hand but didn’t cover his body. Just looked around the floor.
“I’m going to regret this a few hours from now when I’m trudging through the forest dead on my feet,” she said as she gathered the lone blanket against her bare skin and sat up. “Now I just have to find my clothes.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “What are you doing?”
“Coming with you.”
This time he stood up. “You are not.”
Her body flushed at the sight of him. He was long and fit, and the idea of crawling back into bed and pulling him in there with her nearly won out. But they needed to keep moving and get ready to head out.
She had no idea what would happen between them back in the real world, but she knew she’d be safer there. “I’m not staying in this cabin alone.”
“I will be right outside. Guard duty consists of sitting on the porch with a gun and shooting anything or anyone I don’t recognize.”
She spied his pants at the end of the bed, underwear still lodged in them, and lifted the bundle up to him. “And you won’t be out there alone.”
He took the pants and just as quickly dumped them on the floor. He reached for her arm instead and tugged her to her feet, closer to him.
With his arms around her waist, he leaned down and kissed her. Sweet and warm but not demanding.
He smiled when he lifted his head. “Did I ever tell you how beautiful you are?”
All the time. Joel wasn’t one to hide his feelings. He’d told her repeatedly that he loved her and how much he wanted her. His expression would get all heated when he looked at her, and his breath would catch when he stripped her. The man knew how to convince a woman with words and actions how beautiful he found her.
He just didn’t know how to stick around.
Rather than fight and ruin a perfectly good moment, she leaned into him. Her arms went to his neck and she brought him down for another kiss. “Yes, but feel free to say it again.”
This kiss rumbled through her. When she thought he’d pull back, he deepened it, crossing his mouth over hers until a wave of dizziness hit her.
She ended it before poor Cam started banging on the door. “I like the way you use your mouth to make an argument. Very interesting, but I’m still coming with you.”
“I figured as much.” Joel smacked her butt and winked. “Get dressed.”
When they stepped out on the porch five minutes later, Cam was already standing there with his fist raised as if about to knock. His gaze passed from Joel to Hope.
Cam swallowed a smile. “I can take another shift.”
“Okay.” Joel turned back into the cabin.
Hope ignored the flush of heat hitting her cheeks and grabbed him. “Joel, no.”
“Fine.” He stepped outside with a hand on her lower back and pulled the door shut behind them. “Anything happening out here?”
“Shuffling over there.” Cam pointed at a shadowed spot to the far left of the cabins. “When I went to check it out I met a raccoon family.”
Joel blew out a long ragged breath. “They know anything about the shooter?”
“If so, they’re not talking.” Cam yawned.
Joel shook his head as he grabbed Cam’s flashlight. “Go to bed, you lightweight.”
Hope took two steps off the porch and glanced around, looking for anything that might have changed from the nights before the retreat went haywire. Same logs and campfire area.
The front porch lights of each cabin remained off as Joel ordered. Turning them on would cast the world just a few feet out in total darkness, and that was too risky. So, they went with limited lighting and depended on their vision to adjust.
The night was still and the rain had slowed to a drizzle, so she lowered her hood. She could hear the dripping of water off the leaves. The soft ping of raindrops hitting the ground usually comforted her. Tonight it had an odd shiver shaking down her spine.
Something wasn’t right. She’d spent so much of her life outside and could pick up on the strangeness of a moment. Her father joked she was one with nature, whatever that meant. Really, she had mentally catalogued the sights and sounds...and smells.
She turned around and the men stood right behind her. In her haze she hadn’t heard them move.
Joel frowned. “What’s going on?”
The scent. That was it. “Do you smell that?”
“I smell rain,” Cam said.
Joel leaned past her in the direction of the cabin Cam was temporarily using and where Perry recuperated. “No, she’s right.”
Memories of her father’s powerboat from when she was a little girl. The sharp scent she smelled every time she filled the tank of her car. “It’s gasoline. Fire.”
Joel was already running, with Cam right behind. They were shouting orders but she couldn’t pick up the words as they got lost in the forest in front of them. They ran toward Perry’s cabin.
Joel hit the door first. He reached for the knob and drew his hand back fast. Bending down, he rammed into the wood with his shoulder and it slammed open, bouncing against the inside wall.
He disappeared. Never hesitated. Never called for help. He just slipped in, stuck on hero mode like always.
Through the doorway she could see the orange flames licking up the inside back wall, and her heart shredded. Heat punched her in the face as smoke curled out of the opening and into the dark sky.
She tried to get her legs to move, but a sharp scream cut through her consciousness. It took another second to realize it came from her. Then Cam was in front of her with his hands on her shoulders.
He gave her a small shake. “We need water.”
She grabbed fists full of his shirt and pulled. “Joel.” His name ripped out of her.
“I’ll get him, but I need water.”
The comment refused to register in her brain. Every cell screamed at her to rush in that door and hunt Joel down. “What?”
Cam put a hand on her cheek. “Hope, listen to me. We need to put this out before it spreads. It could take out all the cabins and us with it.”
The cloud of confusion hovering around her cleared. Sparks caught on the breeze and drifted up into the sky in bright flashes of light. “There’s a hose in the kitchen cabin. It’s hooked to a well, but—”
“Go bang on Charlie’s door. Wake him and everyone else up. We need all bodies on this.”
A load roar had her looking past Cam into the cabin. She could make out a figure moving around. Her fingers tightened on Cam’s shirt. “Get Joel out of there.”
“I promise.” He turned her toward Charlie’s cabin. “Go.”
Time blurred as she raced to the far cabin. Every step took forever, as if her legs weighed a thousand pounds each, and she yelled as she ran. By the time she hit the steps, the door opened and Charlie stood there in a white tank and shorts.
She ran right to him. “Fire!”
His eyes widened. “What?”
“We need everyone.”
She didn’t stay around to explain. She took off again. Her feet slid in the mud and she skidded across a patch of slick grass. Her balance faltered and her arms waved.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a shadow looming near the doorway of the burning cabin. With her concentration gone, she slipped and fell, catching her weight on one arm before hitting the ground on her butt.
“Hope, are you okay?” Lance was right behind her, dragging her back to her feet with his hand under her arm.
His strength stunned her. The mild-mannered guy nearly picked her up with one hand. But her attention was on the scene in front of her. Joel staggered onto the porch with Perry hanging across his shoulders. Relief had her knees buckling. She would have fallen back to the ground if Lance wasn’t holding her.
Joel got to the steps and flames shot up around him. The fire crackled and there was a loud bang from inside the cabin.
Hope needed to get to them. She took a step and ran into Jeff. He stood there, holding a blanket and staring blankly into the flaring orange.
Snatching it out of his hands, she rushed forward. She met Joel halfway down the stairs. The fire followed them. In a blind panic, she threw the blanket over Perry’s body and patted out the flickers on his back and sleeve.
At the bottom and a good fifteen feet away from the porch, Joel dropped to his knees. He rolled Perry off him and onto the ground. Joel followed a second later as he hacked and his body shook.
She slid down, ignoring the way the ground soaked her jeans and the residual pain from her knee injury. “Are you okay?”
A second coughing fit stopped whatever Joel was about to say. Slapping his hands against the ground, he turned around and got up on his hands and knees.
The noise plus the crackling of the fire drowned out his words. She looked up at him. “What?”
He put his hands over his mouth like a funnel. “Where are Charlie and Cam?”
Then she remembered the hose and the danger. Perry hadn’t moved and Joel’s skin was warm to the touch. Soot stained his forehead and she saw a hole in the back of his shirt where she guessed a spark had hit him.
“We need to get this fire out.” She got up, thinking to grab Lance, until she felt a hand on her leg.
Looking down, she watched Joel use her for balance as he struggled to his feet. His chest caved from coughing, but his grip was strong. “We need a hose,” he said over the shuddering cough.
“Cam is getting it.” She pushed Joel farther from the fire and toward Jeff and cleaner air. “Lance and I will go.”
Joel was already shaking his head. He pointed at the far side of the cabin. “We all go.”
“What about Perry?” Lance asked as he stared at the still body.
“He’s dead.”
The sharp words stabbed into her. They’d lost Perry. It would have been Joel, too, if he’d stayed in the cabin another minute or two. Even now she heard wood break as the roof shifted.
She only shook herself out of the nightmare when Joel started moving. She reached for him just as she saw Cam and Charlie come around the corner with a hose and buckets.
Joel straightened as his coughing abated. “Everyone move.”
“It won’t reach,” Cam called out the problem as he yanked on the thick hose dragging behind him. “We have to get this fire out now.”
Charlie motioned to Lance and Jeff. “You two come with me and get the barrels.”
She had no idea what that meant. Desperate to do something, she stood by Cam and Joel on the side of the fiery cabin and took over the job of spraying water. The hose was heavier than she’d expected and slipped through her hands twice, sending water shooting up and soaking her.
With a tighter grip, she tried again. This hose was nothing like one she’d seen in gardens. It was thicker and heavier. Heaving it under her arm, she aimed the stream at the flames peeking through the cabin wall.
As the flames grew, crashing thundered around them. The fire raged and more beams fell. More than once Joel and Cam stomped out small fires that jumped the cabin and took hold on the forest floor.
“Figures it’s not raining now,” Cam said.
Joel headed for the porch again. “We can’t reach around to the front door and I need to get water in there. If I can get higher...”
When he eyed up the roof her gut twisted until she thought it would explode inside her. “No.”
Cam sided with her and grabbed Joel just as he started to move. “No way. It’s caving in. You’ll go right down into the fire. Honestly, it will tick me off to have to go in after you.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“Shove something into the side. Make a hole.” She screamed to be heard over the mix of fire and banging and water.
Both men stared at her.
She tried again. “Crash it in if you have to, just make an opening wide enough for me to get the water in.”
This time they moved. After a quick look around, Joel motioned to the impossible-to-move logs they used as a seat around the fire pit. They each took an end and pulled.
She saw the strain on their faces and shaking in their arms. Somehow they carried it over to the cabin’s side. Heat pulsed off the building in waves. Sweat rolled down her back, and her face felt on fire, like the worst, most intense sunburn ever.
On a count of three, with the muscles on their arms bulging from the staggering weight, they heaved the heavy piece of tree trunk at the wall. She waited until that exact minute and hit the buckling wood with a blast of water.
At first nothing happened. She held her breath and kept shooting the water. Then the crashing started. With a series of booms and thuds, a beam buckled. The roof side closest to them caved in and took a chunk of the wall tumbling down with it.
One minute she saw peeks of fire through the wall. The next it flared right in front of her. Scorching heat licked at her and then her back hit the ground.
The breath knocked out of her and the world went dark for a second. When she opened her eyes again, Joel’s body pushed her into the mud as fire flashed over their heads.
Men yelled all around her. Over Joel’s shoulder she saw Cam grab the abandoned hose and Charlie and Lance heave what looked like some sort of white powder at the fire. The joint hit had the flames lowering by a few feet.
She knew they weren’t safe and the whole thing could explode. She searched her memory for anything incendiary inside the cabin and couldn’t think of a thing.
Without another word, Joel helped her off the ground. In a line, working together, they all kept at the flames and doused any fires caused by sparks before they could burst into a new disaster.
No one mentioned how it could have started or pointed fingers. They were too busy trying not to be consumed by it.
* * *
TONY COULD FEEL the clock ticking as if it had been wound and placed in his brain. Connor had thrown his weight around and gotten Rafe all riled and demanding action. Now search parties had been set up. On Connor’s orders, they were planning a hike to the campsite, rain or shine. Connor threatened to take a helicopter in even if it was raining.
Control had shifted and Tony no longer held the reins. After all the plotting, all those tedious hours of setting this up just right, one stupid woman had brought it all down. She didn’t play the role he’d assigned her. Add in Connor and his group and it all fell apart.
Tony had planned this from the beginning. Step in, turn Baxter around and become its savior. When the sales numbers had come back soft, he’d waited. Then he’d seen preliminaries for a second quarter worse than the first and panicked.
H
e knew the work was there for Baxter. Piles of money just waited to flow his way, but he had to get the division in line with expectations. He had to dig more, push his staff harder. He needed time and bought it.
Then people got nosy and he had to regroup. The retreat had been the perfect way to settle things down. An accident and the game could reset.
Instead, Tony shoved pages into the shredder at four in the morning. His wife had called twice. She spent most of their weeknight dinners complaining about his long work hours.
Never mind that he worked around the clock for her. For the things he could give her and buy for her. That he had won her with his checkbook and the big house.
His trophy wife was slowly turning into a regular annoying one. He wanted pretty and obedient and understanding. A woman to wear on his arm and show off at the club. A blonde he’d enjoy in bed. One who would cause envious glares from his business associates. He’d had that for less than a year, and now he had the whining.
The shredder buzzed and the paper pulp dropped in the can underneath. He had a batch here and more at home. With his problem gone and the evidence erased, he could put the system back together again. The board might back off in deference to whatever was happening at the campground.
Tony could get his needed time, but it all depended on Connor not sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. Making pages disappear and fudging numbers was one thing. Taking out a guy with a background in special ops was another.
No, Tony had to pull the plug. Shift the blame to another member of the executive staff. Plant the seed and focus the guilt elsewhere.
The idea came to Tony. If Mark was missing, maybe there was a reason he’d walked away, disappeared. Guilt. He’d played with the books to improve the look of his performance. He caused it all, did it all.
The more the idea spun in Tony’s brain, the more he liked it. Turn Mark into the guilty party and then sit back and act surprised.
Tony pressed the button and stared at the stack of documents left in the file. He needed to spend his time recreating paperwork and making the trail. It would lead right back to his trusted vice president.
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