by Terry Spear
"How good are you at starting fires?"
He smiled. "Eagle Scout. Although, I have to admit I always carried a lighter with me on campouts as a boy."
She laughed and even though her sweet voice was half drowned out by the roaring wind, her laughter warmed him deep inside.
"Come on, boy scout, before we freeze our buns off out here. We'll go to whichever is closest."
"Black Bear Den. Yours."
He hoped she'd be amenable to letting him remain the night. It wasn't that he was so needy, but he didn't like the idea that a woman would be staying alone in a cabin in the wilderness with no one about. Especially in the midst of a blizzard. Well, truth be told, he was feeling a bit needy, too.
They wound their way along a narrow forested trail on their snowmobiles, the trees helping to shield them from the blowing wind, until they reached the first of the small log cabins facing the frozen lake. Through the clearing, bitter cold wind whipped off the ice.
A carving of three whimsical black bears holding a sign that said, Welcome, Black Bear Den, attached to the door of the cabin, indicated they were at the right place.
As he recalled from the map Charles had sent him when Cameron booked the reservation, his own cabin was quite a distance from Faith's. Each of the cabins had a screened view of the lake with plenty of trees in between to provide them enough privacy from their neighbors. Which was another reason he didn't like it that Faith would be alone.
Snowdrifts were piled against the side of the cabin all the way to the windows, at least a foot of accumulation covered the deck, and the roof was bearing a heavy load. Although it was midday, the blizzard made everything look gray, cold, and foreboding.
Which made it imperative he started a fire right away to heat up the place. As soon as she was inside, he hauled in his stuff behind her. No sense in leaving it out to freeze in this weather even if he wasn't staying the night. When he put his bags down on the knotty pinewood floor, she raised her brows and gave a funny little smile.
"Not snow proof," he said, as if answering her unspoken question, then headed back outside before she could retort. When she followed him to get the rest of her stuff, he waved her inside. "Go set up housekeeping, Faith. I'll take care of the rest of your bags. Dressed the way you are, you're way too much of a distraction."
He loved the way the skin underneath her eyes crinkled when she grinned, shook her head, and returned to the cabin. His attention then focused on the skin-tight ski pants hugging her derrière. The thought came to mind how much fun it would be to ski with her in the great Northwest, share a hot toddy at the ski lodge, and snuggle together with her in a spa, the snow piled up around it. And then work out all the kinks from a day on the slopes in a soft bed made for two. He shook his head at himself, grabbed the rest of her bags, and returned to the cabin, shutting the door against the howling wind.
Faith had pulled off her ski hat, mask, goggles, and gloves but was still wearing her jacket as she looked inside the cabinets. The log cabin was ice-cold, with unadorned large picture windows facing out on the frozen lake. The walls were made of logs, but insulated. Cameron didn't feel a bit of wind coming through the walls, which he was grateful for. At least once he had a fire going, the place should warm up pretty quickly.
"Have a fire started in a jiffy. As soon as I can find my lighter."
Faith had already started a tea kettle on the gas stove. "Fire here," she said, pointing to the flame under the kettle. "Did you bring coffee? I've got green tea."
"Coffee." He knew he'd forgotten something. Although he figured he could have gotten some to drink at the main lodge, the thought crossing his mind that cuddling with Faith early in the morning would negate any need to get up to have any for some time anyway.
"You didn't bring any?"
"No. Forgot all about it."
"How about hot cocoa then?"
"Either is fine." He finally got the fire started in the wood-burning stove, turned on the fan to blow heat into the room, and looked around. One double-sized bed and two twin beds in two bedrooms off the living room. Although a queen-sized suited his height better, a double was better for snuggling with a sweet feminine body on cold winter days. No bedding or linens on the bare mattresses, which is why they had to bring their own sleeping bags, and he considered how well his would fit on her mattress.
She caught him eyeing the bed. His ears burned with chagrin, and he smiled. Hell, he was caught in the act, and he was pretty sure she could read his transparent thoughts. Women often could.
"So, I offered to fix lunch. Or have lunch with you. But since it appears this is where we'll be eating, what appeals?" She took off her jacket and laid it on a chair, then started pulling out cans of spinach, green beans, corn, asparagus, salmon, and the package of tuna.
"How about you pick out the vegetable and we can fix my salmon steaks?"
He looked around the kitchen. Sink, no running water. "Ice box, but no refrigeration. They'll have to supply us with ice, but looks like no one's around to do that today."
"We could gather up some snow and put it in the ice box. But the salmon sounds good to me."
"No breakfast for me, so it sounds fine."
She cast him an annoyed expression.
He smiled. "Yeah, I know that look. You didn't wait too long for me at the restaurant this morning, did you?"
"No, just ate and left." She turned her back on him and emptied the contents of the can of spinach into a saucepan.
"Ah, good." He didn't believe a word of what she said. She'd waited for him. In fact, he suspected, she had gone straight from the restaurant to Back Country Tours. So she must have waited a good half hour for him at least, which made him feel like a cad to an extent. But his partners' welfare, he believed, had been at stake. "I thought I had a lead concerning my friends so I ran out at five thirty this morning. Turned out to be a dead end. I figured by the time I found that out, you'd have left the restaurant, so I headed to Back Country Tours. And lo and behold, here's my favorite lady."
She hmpfed. "Panicking over a dead body."
He moved in closer and with her back still to him, he rubbed her arms, the soft peach sweater sliding a little, her subtle sweet fragrance tantalizing. "You looked a little pale, and you were doing the smart thing by leaving in a hurry when you heard an intruder in the place, but you did it with true grit. Any other woman I've known would have run out of there screaming."
"Not the screaming type. Normally. Although when I found a snake curled up in my wet laundry in the washing machine once…" She pulled out a broiler pan for the salmon. "I'm sure you could have heard me all the way to Seattle."
"Fear of snakes?"
She smiled up at him. "Only when I reach for a handful of wet clothes to put in the dryer and feel something solid, wet, round, and slimy that shouldn't have been there." She sprinkled lemon and pepper seasoning on the salmon. "About the dead guy though, he had a needle mark in his chest. I think you were right in figuring he was injected with something. But there was the oddest thing next to the puncture wound."
Hell, he wished he'd taken a look now, too.
"A drop of what looked like a silver solution," she continued. "I would have loved to have taken a sample of it and analyzed it. But I didn't want to tamper with the evidence, and besides, I don't have any equipment here to do the analysis anyway."
He admired her for having investigated the situation when he left the office. He never suspected she had. "Silver? Mercury, maybe?"
"Hmm, no on the mercury poisoning. A year ago, we had a case of an attempted suicide who unsuccessfully used an intravenous mercury cocktail. It didn't lead to acute systemic toxicity. Or in laymen's terms, it didn't overload his system causing death."
That was a new one on him.
"But silver poisoning?" she said, raising her brows. "Yes. You can find silver remedies that claim all kinds of health cures. So they're not hard to come by either online or in health food stores even. Argyria is the nam
e of the condition when people ingest silver and silver poisoning can turn skin gray. It's permanent. So slow poisoning is visible to the naked eye; not a good way to murder someone on the sly. In high amounts though, it can kill someone also. I investigated a case where the husband injected his wife with 50 mg of silver salts because of the life insurance policy he had on her, and she promptly died. But in another instance, a quack doctor injected a pregnant mother with silver nitrate for an abortion and killed the mother, too."
Cameron was speechless at first. He and his partners could really use someone like her on their team. "You could be handy in an investigation."
"That's what my coworkers always tell me. So did you see anything in the offices that you checked?"
"Papers strewn all over the place. Looked like someone was searching for records of some sort."
"Anything on your friends?"
"No. At least not that I could find on such short notice. The records were in a shambles, so they probably were there in the mess."
She stirred the spinach. "I hope your friends are okay."
"They're former police officers, too. I'm sure they can handle themselves just fine. But I have to be certain. Where had you planned on going exactly? Do you know where your father actually went while he was out here?"
"No. Trevor Hodges knows though. If I can find him. The man who owns this place? Charles Roux? He runs the dog sledding part of the business here also and said he could take me to see Trevor at his campsite beyond Baxter Park."
"Ah, so then why were you at Back Country Tours?"
"You know," she said, running her finger along Cameron's sweater-covered chest, then gave a little tug on his belt hidden beneath the sweater, "you sound just like a cop."
Loving the way she touched him with a hint of flirtation, suggesting she wanted more, he was ready to delay the meal. "I've always sounded like a cop. Ever since I was a kid. Heck, one of the Boy Scouts in my troop stole money from several of us. I had to prove who the culprit was." He combed his fingers through her hair, loving the soft texture, enjoying the small smile playing on her lips.
"Didn't you feel like a tattle tale?"
"No. And I doubt you would have felt that way either." If he had her figured right. He wrapped his arms around Faith, and to his delight, she melted against his chest. He breathed in her heavenly scent, loved the feel of her pliant body pressed against him.
"You're right. If a girl in my Girl Scout troop had been stealing from any of us, I would have set a trap, taken pictures, or videotaped it, and caught her red-handed."
Just envisioning Faith in her super-sleuthing activities as a kid, he laughed, surprised that she was a Girl Scout. "Right is right and wrong is wrong. I've never had a problem with seeing the difference. So what made you get into the business?"
"The truth?" She pulled away from him and motioned to the salmon. "I'd better turn them before they're blackened."
He didn't care as long as he could cuddle with her longer. He hadn't felt like that toward a woman in eons, but the way she spoke, he sensed some darker reason had catapulted her into her chosen career field. He was sure he wouldn't like it.
"The ten-year-old girl across the street disappeared when I was sixteen. I helped put out fliers, helped look for her in the neighboring communities, brought food to the distraught family." Faith stared at the spinach for sometime before she spoke again. "They found her four days later, dead. The search for Christine was over, but looking for her murderer?" Faith let out her breath. "I couldn't do anything more for the family, so I decided right then and there I'd help find Christine's killer. Took me nearly ten years."
Now that, he hadn't expected. Gavin's father had been on the police force and had died in a robbery shoot-out. That's what made Cameron and Gavin join the force. David had always had a sense of adventure, so it was either that or join the military. When the rest of them decided to join the force, he was not one to be left out. And Owen? His father had been in enough barroom brawls that he was always on the opposite side of the law. Owen didn't want to follow in his father's footsteps and much preferred being the arresting officer. But Cameron didn't even like thinking of the danger Faith might have been in, searching for her neighbor's killer.
She offered Cameron a sad smile. "We got him. The bastard was an older cousin, who didn't like it that she had loving parents, lots of everything, when his dad was an alcoholic and his mother was never around much. I thought it might have been him, the times I'd seen him treat Christine meanly when he came to visit. But we had to have proof. And after I was trained in forensic science, I was able to obtain the proof in the cold case files after sorting through boxes of evidence that had sat idly for years." She sighed. "What about you? What made you go into the business?"
"Nothing as dramatic as your situation. But Gavin's father had always been like a surrogate dad to me since my own died in a car accident when I was a teen. So when Gavin's dad died in the shootout, I wanted to become a cop, too."
"I'm sorry about Gavin's father. And yours also."
He didn't want to tell her that even when his dad was around, he wasn't much to brag about. Gavin's father was a different story. War hero, all-around nice guy. His father? Womanizer, carouser, gambler, all-around dead beat. But it didn't seem the time to talk ill of the dead.
He glanced around at the cabin. Fabric with black bears on plaid covered the pillow cushions on all the seats. Pictures of real black bears in the woods, fishing in a stream, hung on the walls. And a mixture of real to-life black bear carvings and whimsical ones sat on a shelf. Cuddly, oversized teddy bears added to the black bear theme of the cabin.
He could imagine what his cabin looked like. The intense amber eyes of white wolves watching every move he made, strategically placed everywhere in the cabin.
Faith motioned to a plastic jug. "At least they left us some water before the staff took off. The five-gallon container should last us a while. If we run out, you can go get yours."
Glancing out at the storm, not letting up in the least, he shook his head, having no intention of leaving Faith and the toasty cabin, unless they were in dire need. "We'll have to make this last for now." But if he didn't read anything wrong in what she was saying, did she plan to let him stay?
He intended to change her mind if she didn't want him to and made himself useful, setting out the silverware, the plates, only glancing back at her in the kitchen when she stopped rattling pans around. She was watching him, a small smile percolating on her lips. She held his gaze as if measuring him for a job, licked her full sensuous lips like she was readying them for a well-placed kiss. And he was damn well ready to kiss her again.
He hadn't entertained a thought about a woman in such a way for months—not with the self-imposed sixty hour work weeks he'd been putting in. Not to mention his former girlfriend jilting him several months ago. Just about the time he began working lots of overtime. Yet he was more than intrigued with Faith. Which he thought had something to do with the way she handled herself at a crime scene and how knowledgeable she was in figuring out clues. And not flighty when she came face-to-face with a naked stranger. Her endearing story of her neighbor and the way she helped out impressed him also. Plus, he'd never have figured her for the kind who would manage roughing it in a place like this.
His ex-girlfriend would have thrown a fit not to have an attached bathroom and running water and linens for the bed. And no maid service or room service or television either. Nope, Marjory would have given him notice before they even arrived at the place once she learned she couldn't use the Internet or phone her friends. One of whom happened to be the guy she took off with.
Distracting him from his thoughts, Faith turned and flipped the salmon again and switched off the oven.
If his intuition was right, he was certain Faith was considering letting him stay the night, although he was ready to convince her if she had any doubts that it was the best thing for all concerned—for safety's sake, of course.
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nbsp; "Meal's ready." She began to dish out the spinach, when they heard someone yell out somewhere in the woods.
He looked out the window but didn't see anything or anyone. Immediately he worried someone had been ice fishing and fallen through the ice. "Stay here," he said, jerking on his coat and gloves.
"Maybe I should go with you."
He shook his head. "Lock the door after me. Probably nothing, but I've got to check it out." He yanked on his ski mask and hat, then headed outdoors, hoping he wouldn't find anybody in any real danger. He didn't like leaving Faith alone, but he had to make sure no one was in any real trouble.
Faith scooped the spinach back into the saucepan and kept it on low heat. Then she returned to the window to watch for any sign of anyone, but mostly for Cameron. She liked it that he was a take-action kind of guy, but prayed no one was really in any trouble. His story about Gavin's father endeared him to her. But it made her wonder what the deal had been with his own father because the concern he shared with her reflected much more sorrow for Gavin's father than his own. She sighed. Maybe his father had been like her mother. Not there to really count on for anything.
After locking the door, she began making the bed. His double-wide sleeping bag and her single sleeping bags unzipped fit the double-sized bed nicely. Even though it was a bit presumptuous of her to think he would stay the night, she figured he was hoping. They might as well share the place and meals, keep each other company while they dealt with the staff of Back Country Tours.
Tomorrow, they could straighten out the cost and, well, since Cameron was going to go broke if he didn't choose the cheapest brand of tuna—she smiled—this would save him a little money.
She returned to the stove and poked at the salmon again. At this rate, it would be overdone and cold by the time Cameron got back. Then one of their snowmobile's engines began to rumble, and for a minute, she thought Cameron had come back for it. But when hers started up, she assumed the worst. Someone was stealing their snowmobiles. She grabbed a large cast-iron frying pan, hurried to the door, and opened it, just in time to see two men sitting on the sleds, both backing up from the cabin in the wind-driven snow.