Bear Claw Lawman

by Jessica Andersen

  Jenn shuddered. “It might come to that. Which is why I should go.”

  “Go where?”

  “I don’t know. Back to the safe house, maybe.” She hadn’t even realized she was thinking it until the words came out. But the appeal was undeniable. Up at the mountain retreat, she hadn’t needed to worry about the people around her, the evidence, or even really her own safety. She had been protected. Inviolate.

  Or had that been an illusion, too?

  Gigi glanced over, frowning uncertainly. “If that’s really what you want, it could probably be arranged.”

  “No.” Jenn exhaled heavily. “It was nice while it lasted, but by the end I was going nuts wanting to be back down here, in the middle of the case. This is me.” She gestured around the lab. “This is how I can help. Not by hiding out up in the woods in somebody else’s love nest.”

  Unfortunately, the thought of the huge hot tub, padded floor and gas fireplace—complete with a fake bearskin rug so cheesy it was wonderful—made her think of something else. Or, rather, someone else…and a kiss.

  Granted, she could tell herself it had been a combination of relief and adrenaline on both their parts, as well as a need to cling to something safe and solid on hers. More, she had needed to remind herself that she was still alive, even though the Investor wanted her dead.

  It was a terrifying thought, and could’ve excused the kiss.

  Or it would have, if it hadn’t been for what he’d said about still wanting her, and being a bastard for acting the way he had. The look in his eyes and the fervency of his kiss had said he was telling the truth. And

  there had been no hiding her response. Not then and not now.

  Which left them…where? She didn’t know, and it wasn’t as if they’d had any time to talk about it. Heck, she wasn’t even sure he wanted to rehash it all.

  Over the past six weeks, she had talked herself out of caring for him, out of wanting to be near him, be with him…at least she thought she had. One kiss, though, and she was right back where she’d started—wanting him and ready to damn the consequences, even when she knew that was a really bad idea.

  Her hormones apparently didn’t care about the possibility—the certainty—of disaster. They just wanted the man.

  “So if you don’t want to hide out—and I didn’t think you would—then you should darn well stay here and do your job,” Gigi said pragmatically. “And trust the rest of us to do ours, which includes protecting you.”

  That wasn’t an empty boast, either. While most of the analysts were lab rats with some field experience, Gigi had completed all the training to be a technical specialist with a big-city SWAT team, and had only turned down the position they’d offered her because she’d opted to stay in Bear Claw with Matt when he became acting mayor. She was still licensed to carry concealed, though, and could strategize, shoot or fight her way out of most any situation.

  “Don’t tell me you’re on babysitting duty, too?” Jenn probably should’ve guessed. It just went to show how wrapped up she was in her own head that she hadn’t seen it.

  “We just want to make sure you’re safe.”

  “I appreciate it. Please don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing for me, what everyone is doing for me here.” She was the new kid on the block, and although she was working her butt off, she hadn’t really contributed all that much to the most important cases. Yet somehow she’d wound up with some of the P.D.’s top people treating her like a key member of the team.

  It was such a sharp contrast from how things had gone at her last job that she still kept waiting for it to all fall apart.

  “But…?” Gigi prompted.

  “Is it worth it? The manpower, I mean. The guards, the time away, all of it. I know when Tucker first sent me to the safe house, we were all hoping I’d be able to remember exactly what happened to me up in Dennison’s apartment.”

  “Nobody’s expecting a miracle, Jenn. It’s not up to you to solve this single-handedly.”

  “I realize that, I do…intellectually, anyway. Emotionally, though, I hate that I failed at the hypnosis.”

  “The technique failed, not you.”

  “Still, it really stinks knowing that the key to cracking the Death Stare case once and for all could very well be locked up here.” She tapped her temple. “And I can’t get it out. That’s almost worse than knowing I lost the key evidence.”

  She had been in the same room with something the Investor had feared enough to come back for. She might even have held it in her gloved hands. It was gone now, though, and the evidence the Investor had left behind—including the boots she was working on right now, with their soil-clogged treads—wasn’t giving them what they needed. At all.

  “It wasn’t your fault that he took the evidence. Hello, you were unconscious. Besides, if you’re going to blame yourself, then I should feel guilty for leaving you alone at the scene.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  Gigi just looked over with a raised eyebrow. Well?

  Ignoring that, Jenn kept going. “What if I hadn’t assumed it was one of the cops? What if I had been more on my toes when he first came into the apartment? What if I’d managed to call for help?”

  “Then you’d probably be dead,” Gigi said flatly. “Because there’s no way he would’ve just knocked you out and then searched the apartment for whatever he’d come back for. He would’ve gone into the kitchen, found whatever weapons he’d left behind the first time, and he would’ve finished you off.”

  That brought a shiver and a sick surge of bile, but Jenn forced it down and shook her head. “I can’t think like that. I can’t live like that. Not if I’m going to do my job.”

  Her friend’s expression softened. “What’s really going on here, Jenn? Are you afraid this is going to look bad when your probationary period is up? Because if that’s the case, I don’t think you should be worried. You’re doing the job. You fit in here and you’re damn good at what you do.”

  “No, it’s not that.” Or not entirely. “It’s this.” She glared at her computer screen, which was showing enlarged images of granular brown soil particles. “The evidence.” She waved into the other room, where the boots were locked up, bagged and tagged. “The case. All of it.”

  “Hey,” Gigi said softly. “Nobody’s expecting a miracle—we’re just treating you like part of the team, which you are. You don’t have to push yourself to do anything more than your best as an analyst, and there’s no question that you’re doing exactly that. So chill.” She slanted Jenn a pointed look. “Unless, of course, your frustration isn’t really about the case. Say, maybe, it’s more about something else?”

  Jenn flushed. “I thought Maya was our resident shrink.”

  Gigi’s grin turned wicked. “She’s been known to blab, especially when it’s not something bound by any kind of doctor-patient confidentiality. Like something she might’ve seen in a certain stairwell.”

  “It was nothing, really.” But the flush climbed higher.

  “That wasn’t how Maya saw it.”

  “I can’t let it be anything,” Jenn corrected herself. Learning that he still wanted her shouldn’t change anything between them, really. It didn’t make up for him having dumped her without any real explanation, and it didn’t change the kind of guy he’d turned out to be.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s over.” Except for that kiss. “It wasn’t ever anything serious.” Which was technically true.

  “If you say so,” Gigi said dubiously, but then turned back to her computer screen. Jenn let out a breath, grateful for the reprieve. She was just looking back at the soil samples, which had sedimented to different levels in the liquid-suspension test she’d run, when Gigi said, “Matt and I weren’t supposed to be serious, you know.”

  Jenn stilled, staring at the soil layers without

  really seeing them anymore. “Yeah. I know. He told me.” She had been surprised to hear that the former SWAT leader had fallen
for a cop, even more surprised to learn that he’d taken over the mayor’s office in Bear Claw. He’d never been a joiner. When she’d gotten to know Gigi, though, she had understood. And she had enjoyed Matt’s story about how the two of them had met—the flamboyant city-girl analyst butting heads with the reserved head ranger, and the two of them fighting their chemistry because she hadn’t had any intention of sticking around Bear Claw City for long.

  They had made it work in the end, Jenn knew. But that didn’t mean that it would work for her and Nick.

  Gigi flashed a quick grin. “I thought he might have told you about it. I’ve stopped being surprised to discover that the original loner had a friend or two back in his previous life.”

  “We were only ever friends, nothing more,” Jenn said quickly, not sure if there was a question implied there. “He helped me get through a really bad time in my life.”

  “Yeah. I know. He told me what happened back at your old crime lab.”

  Jenn exhaled, relieved both by her friend’s easy acceptance of her and Matt’s past, and by not having to tell her the whole sordid story. “So you understand why I need to focus on keeping my job. Eighteen months of working in a paternity testing lab was more than enough.” Her gesture encompassed the basement crime lab, with its high-tech equipment and evidence lockers. “This is what I want to do, who I want to be.”

  “And you think being involved with Nick would jeopardize that?”

  “It doesn’t matter, really. I’m not interested in starting back up with a guy who dumped me with zero explanation the moment things started to get a little complicated. That wasn’t a cool move, and I’m not putting myself in that line of fire a second time.”

  “What if he made a mistake?”

  Jenn started to give a “whatever” answer, but then found herself pushing away from the soil samples to turn and face her friend fully. “Even if he did, even if he apologized and asked for a second chance, I don’t know that I would go for it. I’ve had time to step back and really look at him, and I’m not sure he’s the guy I fell for. Besides, he’s going to be gone as soon as this case is over with, and I want to stay here. You and Matt might’ve found a compromise that worked for you, but you’re the exception, not the rule. Given all that, what’s the point of starting up again when it’s only going to end sooner than later?”

  “The point is that it’d be fun while it lasted.” Gigi blinked at her innocently. “Wasn’t that what you said the first time around?”

  “Oh, shut up.” Trapped in her own logic, Jenn spun back around to glare at her samples. “That’s just cr—”

  She broke off, thinking, Why, yes, it is crap. Not what Gigi had been saying—though, that was garbage, too—but the sample itself.

  Manure-laced soil, to be exact, along with some grains and a bit of what she thought might be hay chaff. “Hey,” she said, surprised. “Take a look at this.”

  Gigi rolled over and stared at the layers while Jenn explained, but after a moment, she shook her head. “You’re the expert here. If you say it’s cow poop, I believe you.” She paused. “And if you tell me to be excited, I will be. I’m not sure why, though, given that there are a lot of cows outside of the city.”

  Bear Claw might be famous for its ski slopes and state forest, but a good chunk of the surrounding flatlands were straight out of the Old West. Some of the spreads were still working ranches that maintained huge herds of beef cattle, while others had gone in different directions to combat the tightening economy, ranging from crops, to ostrich and buffalo farming, to becoming guest ranches with guided trail rides and gourmet meals. And, inevitably, others had failed altogether and now lay fallow and dispirited.

  “It’s a long shot that I’ll be able to identify exactly where Dennison’s boots picked up this dirt,” Jenn admitted, “but here’s the thing. I’ve taken samples from a number of the area ranches, and I can get more. Which means I can run some comparisons. Failing that, if it’s commercial feed, I might be able to match the grain and see who in the area uses it.” What was more, she had an excited flutter in the pit of her stomach. It wasn’t quite an aha moment, but it was more than they’d gotten from the other scenes.

  Gigi whistled. “Okay, now I’m impressed.”

  “No guarantees,” Jenn warned. “Soil composition can range widely over just a few feet, never mind over an entire huge ranch, and my soil databank is a work in progress at the moment.”

  “It’s something, though.” Gigi’s eyes sparkled a little, as if she was starting to feel the aha, too.

  As they shared a grin, footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  Jenn spun toward the sound and Gigi started forward to cover her, but then relaxed, letting her hand fall from her weapon. “It’s Matt.” Raising her voice, she called, “A little warning next time, mister. We’re a bit on edge down here in crime scene land.”

  “Sorry.” He came through the archway, holding up his cell. “Guess my text didn’t come through.” His eyes went to Gigi first, softening and lingering there just long enough for Jenn’s heart to give a bump of harmless envy. Then he glanced at her. “They got the driver.”

  “They…oh.” If she hadn’t already been sitting down, her legs might’ve folded. As it was, she went a little numb for a few seconds. “Dennison stepped in cow poop the last time he wore his boots.”

  Matt nodded as if that followed. “Good to know. You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m…” She stopped. Swallowed. “It wasn’t the Investor, was it?” If it had been, he would’ve led with that info, after all. Besides, that hadn’t been a crime lord’s car; it’d had “lackey” written all over its unwaxed panels.

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  “Who is it, then?”

  “We’re working on that right now. He’s talking, but he’s not saying much.” Matt paused. “Nick is going to take over the questioning. He thought you might want to sit in on it upstairs, see if anything jogs your memory.”

  She buried the instinctive snarl that nothing seemed to be able to jog her memory, damn it. But who knew? Maybe she would walk through the door into the viewing room on the other side of the one-way glass, take one look at the guy sitting opposite Nick, recognize her attacker and remember everything.

  Maybe.

  “Lead the way,” she told Matt, rising to her feet and not letting herself wince at the twinges that reminded her that she’d already had a hell of a day.

  Man up, she told herself. This could be the break we need.

  As she followed them up the stairs, though, she wasn’t thinking about the case or even the attacks. Instead, she couldn’t stop thinking about the way Matt had looked at Gigi when he’d first come into the lab, as if he hadn’t been able to help himself. The love between them was palpable, true. And it was exactly the kind of thing she’d wanted, back when she’d been looking to pair off and do the family thing. That hadn’t worked out, though, and her ideas of what she needed had changed.

  For a long time now, she had been telling herself that she wanted to be alone, that she liked the freedom of going out or not, dating or not as she chose. And if she chose “not” more often than otherwise, she had told herself that was okay. But now, as she hit the first floor and turned toward the interrogation rooms, she knew she had been wrong. Or maybe the too-familiar answer had been the right one at one point but wasn’t anymore…because she was starting to realize that she didn’t want to be on her own anymore.

  No, she wanted a man who would look at her like Matt looked at Gigi. And mean it.

  Chapter Six

  As luck would have it—or maybe fate, irony, whatever—Nick was interviewing the driver in Interrogation Three, where he’d waited for Jenn that day six weeks earlier and handed her that tired load of “it’s not you, it’s me.”

  Only he hadn’t even really said that. He’d just said it was over. Except now he was saying he still wanted her.

  That doesn’t matter right now. Focus. Get your head in the game
.

  She paused outside the closed door with the big number three on it, then kept going one more door down, to the viewing room that opened up from Interrogation Three. Long and narrow, with little more than a couple of chairs and a low shelving unit that held some random office supplies and a stack of sales brochures for various law enforcement supply stores, the viewing room wasn’t exactly built for comfort.

  Then again, she wasn’t there to hang out. She was there to jog her damned unjoggable memory.

  “You want company?” Gigi said from the open doorway. Matt stood behind her, not touching her yet somehow managing to look possessive and protective, as if he would take a piece out of anybody who tried to hurt her.

  Jenn knew he would do the same for her if the opportunity arose—they both would—but this wasn’t one of those times. “No, thanks. I think I need to do this one on my own.”

  Nerves fluttered at the thought of failure, though. She had put too much hope on Maya’s hypnosis, only to wind up with the same damn gap in her memory. It was smaller now, granted, but what she’d remembered wasn’t enough. And as the door swung shut and she looked through the one-way glass at the man who sat facing her, she saw only a stranger, and was badly afraid that this wasn’t going to help, either.

  The room’s lone occupant was in his late twenties, average height or a bit below, with a buzzed-close skull trim that went ragged over the ears, suggesting it was a DIY job. He sported a pierced eyebrow, an intricate tribal tattoo on one forearm, sharp features and a truculent scowl as he stared down at the cuffs shackling him to the bolted-down table.

  He looked like a hundred other guys she’d seen the Bear Claw cops wrestle into the holding area over the past few months, and like a thousand other

  guys she might walk past on the street without thinking twice about them. There wasn’t any glimmer of recognition, no belly-twitch of instinct telling her that this was the guy. No nothing, really, except the dull throb of a headache setting up residence behind her eyeballs, and a growing frustration that made her want to crack her skull open and shake out the memories, like she was a cartoon character with tweeting birds circling her head.