Bear Claw Lawman

by Jessica Andersen

  Nick cast a look back down the driveway, at the wrought-iron sign that arched over the driveway, swinging gently in a fitful breeze and squeaking on its fastenings. “The Lazy Joe, huh?” To be honest, this was the first time he’d really felt he was out in the West, far from his usual home base.

  “Rumor has it that the prior owner named it after her ex-husband,” Tucker said. “She sold out about five years ago and the current guy, Larry Dent, picked it up on the cheap, planning on turning it into an eco-friendly dude ranch specializing in exotic meats. Ostrich. Buffalo. That sort of thing.”

  “I take it that didn’t work out so well.”

  “I guess he had some investors who lost their money when the market crashed, and then got in trouble with his suppliers. Add in the droughts we’ve been having, and even experienced ranchers have been struggling, never mind a start-up.” Tucker shrugged. “Dent leased out the land to a local family and went back to the East Coast.”

  “Looks like the locals have diversified.” Nick glanced at a sagging wire fence line that marked off the pasture, where some decent-looking cows—for all that he knew about cows, anyway—were hanging out under a bunch of trees. Then, figuring he was far better off with people than cows, he headed for the office, intent on getting some answers.

  The hound raised its head at the men’s approach, but greeted them with a tail thump rather than bared teeth. Nick gave it a nod on the way through the door. “Nice to meet you, too.”

  Tucker’s chuckle followed him in.

  There was a desk near the door, heaped with papers, the chair behind it empty. A skinny young woman in her late teens sat on a rump-sprung couch farther into the space, frowning down at the clunky laptop. As the men came in, she looked up. “Help you?”

  Her voice was polite, but her hand went toward a cushion that lay flat on the sofa, with the sort of instinctive twitch that told Nick that he and Tucker weren’t the only ones with concealed weapons.

  “Easy there,” he said, going on instinct by jettisoning the “local guy looking to rent a locker” act and bringing up Good Cop by flashing the badge out of his pocket. “We’re not looking for trouble. We just need some info on one of your renters.”

  Her eyes got big, but she stood her ground rather than trying to rabbit out the back. “I’m just filling in. Daddy—my father—should be back around six. He got some hours over at the gas station, doing oil changes and stuff. We need the money, and this place isn’t exactly raking it in.” The look she shot around the Lazy Joe was more weary than anything, but when her eyes came back to Nick, they held a quiet sort of entreaty. “There’s trouble, isn’t there?”

  “I’m afraid so, and we can’t wait until he gets back. Can you call him?”

  “The boss won’t like that.” Which, he knew, could mean the loss of those precious hours.

  “Sorry, but either you let us into your records and open up this locker—” Nick unfolded a copy of the receipt Jenn had reconstructed and held it out, along with a warrant “—or we call him in to do it for us.” When her expression darkened, he added, “We’ll keep this as low-key as possible, but we need to do it. The guy who rented the space is dead. Murdered.”

  “Oh!” Her eyes went wide. “He…oh. Oh, wow. Um. Okay. Wow. Of course.” She grabbed the receipt, barely glanced at the warrant, and sat at the desk to rummage in a couple of file-cabinet drawers. She talked the whole time—about how she was taking criminal justice classes at the local community college, and how she wanted to work for the D.A.’s office and maybe put herself through law school. Or maybe she’d be a cop. She hadn’t decided yet, but had good grades in everything except Spanish, which really wasn’t her thing.

  It wasn’t a guilty babble, Nick knew. It was more a very human reaction to learning about a death that was only indirectly connected to her, and the relief that it hadn’t been worse. And if it reminded him of Jenn’s coping strategies when it came to crime scene work, nobody needed to know about it but him, just like nobody needed to know how often he thought about her, and how glad he was that Tucker had vetoed her request to come out to the Lazy Joe with them.

  With her safely tucked away at the P.D., he could focus on the job rather than worrying about her.

  Two minutes later, he was armed with a carbon copy of the receipt Jenn had found—one year, paid in advance by the victim—along with a pair of bolt cutters and the girl’s go-ahead for him and Tucker to cut open Bentley’s locker.

  With no evidence that the owners of the storage units were involved with the former Ghost Militia, and with nothing hitting their warning instincts, they signaled for the others to close in on the Lazy Joe.

  As they arrived, Nick headed for the locker, leaving Tucker to brief the incoming task force members. After a moment, two uniformed officers headed his way, pulling their weapons and gesturing that they would flank the storage space.

  Locker twelve was at the end of a row. There were high vents over the door and on the end of the building. The steel construction wasn’t nearly so ramshackle as the ranch buildings, but the gray paint and dark green doors seemed ominous against the gunmetal gray sky.

  The cattle had moved from their resting spot, drawn by the commotion down in the parking area, maybe. Nick was conscious of their thudding hooves and occasional calls, which made him very aware that he wasn’t in Miami anymore. It was rare for him to feel out of place—he could bluff his way through damn near anything—but the openness and Old West feel had him a little off balance, making him think he should be wearing a gun belt and a star-shaped badge.

  Not just Good Cop, but Good Cop with a Stetson.

  He glanced at the two guys backing him up, got their nods, and set the bolt cutters to the flimsy lock holding the door shut. It snapped off with minimal protest and clattered to the ground. Hearing nothing from inside the locker, Nick inched the garage-type door up a notch and crouched down to sweep his flashlight beneath.

  Seeing only a jumble of packing boxes, he straightened and waved to Tucker, who was headed his way across the parking lot with the others behind him. “Looks clear,” Nick called.

  “Then let’s open ’er up.”

  The green door rolled up a few inches and then stuck with a rusty grating noise, and Nick had to put his shoulder into it. One of his backup stepped forward to help just as it gave a grating pop and rolled free, rattling up into its overhead holder. Nick quickly scanned the stacked boxes, empty, along with a couple of bare dollies and a jumble of discarded-looking computer equipment and wires.

  But it wasn’t the rattle that froze him in place, or the sight of the junk that’d been left behind.

  It was the popping noise, and the subsonic whine that followed it.

  “Run!” he shouted, spinning and waving the others away. “Take cover!”

  He was moving already, heading for open—

  Crack-boom! The storage unit detonated with a roar of concussion and flames.

  The shock wave slammed into Nick, sent him flying. And all he could think as he slammed face-first into the dirt was, Should’ve called the bomb squad and their dogs, followed by, Thank Christ Jenn is safe. Because on the heels of that was the knowledge of what this discovery had to mean: the empty boxes and leftovers suggested that the Investor had found what he’d been looking for. Which meant she was the only thing keeping the criminal mastermind in Bear Claw…and he’d be coming for her soon.

  Chapter Eleven

  The cruiser Jenn had commandeered rolled into the parking lot of the Lazy Joe just as the storage building blew.

  She didn’t know if she screamed or not, didn’t know if the officer tried to keep her in the cruiser or not, because in the aftermath of the blast, as flames roared and a huge cloud of dark smoke and debris rolled up the alley between the storage buildings, her mind blanked and her body acted without rational thought.

  “Nick!” She knew he was down there, knew he would’ve been the one to open the door.

  She was out of the car in
an instant, pounding across the parking area. She didn’t care about the danger or the fact that she was supposed to stay in the car, wasn’t even supposed to be there at all. All she cared about was getting to Nick.

  But she couldn’t see him, couldn’t see anything through the gray-brown clouds and inky smoke.

  Her heart raced in her chest and her feet thudded on the hard-packed gravel. Someone shouted her name; someone else made a grab for her. She didn’t stop, though, couldn’t stop. Then she was inside the cloud, choking and coughing, and feeling the sudden burn of the nearby fire heating the air. “Nick,” she shouted. “Nick!”

  There was no answer, but when the smoke shifted a little, she caught sight of two shadows off near the edge of the far storage building—one a man down and motionless, crumpled against the dented door, with another man bending over him, then straightening to shout for help in a ragged voice: “Officer down!”

  And her heart stopped.

  “No!”

  The kneeling man’s head jerked up; his eyes went wide and angry. “Jenn, what are you—” He bit off the question with a curse. “For heaven’s sake, get back!”

  Nick was angry, but just then she didn’t care. All she cared was that he was okay. Her head spun and her legs went watery, and to her utter mortification she realized she was about to pass out. Which wasn’t going to help the situation one bit. Nick’s okay, she told herself. He’s okay. He’s not the officer down. The words went through her like a mantra but did little to steady her.

  Be strong, she told herself. Don’t wimp out now.

  Lungs heaving, she spun and staggered away from the explosion site, suddenly aware that she was out in the open in the middle of chaos, one the Investor had created. What if he was there? Had he set off the explosion? Was he even now closing in on her in the sooty smoke?

  Back at the lab, it had seemed imperative that she bring her second discovery—another receipt, this one for Unit Thirteen—out to the site herself when she hadn’t been able to get through by phone. Now, though, she realized she was just being stubborn, perhaps fatally so.

  She shouldn’t have left the lab, shouldn’t have bolted out of the cruiser. She had to get back!

  A man appeared out of the gritty cloud and she shrank back, nearly turning to run, but then she recognized the officer she’d been sitting with. His eyes were wide and wild, his jaw set, and he grabbed her and hustled her back to the cruiser, shouting “I’ve got her” over his shoulder.

  The next half hour was a blur of rescue vehicles, sirens and shouted orders that Jenn only half heard through the windows of the locked-down cruiser, followed by the dizzying lurch of movement, then more siren sounds as the ambulances pulled away and the cruiser she was riding in followed, rocketing the miles back to the city, leaving the Lazy Joe behind.

  She wasn’t going back to the lab, though. The officer was taking her to the hospital, following the ambulance that carried Nick.

  He’d been hurt. Not as critically as the two officers who’d served as backup, but still hurt enough to agree to an ambulance.

  “Nick,” she whispered through numb lips, only then realizing that her hands were shaking; all of her was shaking.

  “He’ll be okay,” her driver assured her over his shoulder, and she had the feeling it wasn’t the first time he’d said it.

  It was the first time she’d really processed it, though, and it was the first time she caught the worry in his eyes when he glanced in the rearview at her. “What about the others?” she made herself ask as the world started to come back into focus around her.

  “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  Suddenly feeling very small and self-centered, she sank back in her seat, eyes glued to the ambulance up ahead, with its flashing lights and precious cargo. Officer down. It wasn’t the first time one of Bear Claw’s cops had fallen during the Death Stare case. But, she was forced to admit, it was the first time it had hit so close to home.

  Worse, when she followed her escort through the sliding doors into the E.R. waiting room, all the familiar faces turned and locked on her when she walked through the doors.

  For a second, she flashed back on the night Terry died.

  Back then, before all the bad stuff had come out, she had walked into that hospital waiting room and found all their friends there, all their coworkers, and she’d seen the looks on their faces and she’d known it was real. Up to that point, part of her had thought it was a mistake, that she would get there and Terry would be waiting for her, contrite that she’d been scared. He would hold her and tell her he was fine, that everything was going to be okay.

  Only he hadn’t been waiting, and things had been far from okay.

  Now, the looks were the same. The sudden cold, congealing fear in the pit of her stomach was the same.

  Bile pressed at the back of her throat. Sudden panic.

  This was partly why she had embraced the safe boredom of the DNA testing lab, partly why she’d made a point of dating normal guys with normal jobs. She hadn’t wanted to be here, hadn’t wanted to go through this ever again—all those eyes reflecting shock, grief and the pity that said louder than words, We know you loved him, and we’re sorry about what happened.

  How had she forgotten this part? How could she deal with it?

  “Jenn.” Gigi appeared suddenly in front of her, and took her arm. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m…” Jenn saw another woman, a stranger who huddled in a corner chair and blotted at haggard, tear-filled eyes with a napkin while the woman who sat next to her—an older, heavier version of the crying woman—fussed quietly over her with fluttering hands and a sad, worried expression. And although Jenn didn’t know either of them, she knew exactly who they were, what they were going through.

  The far doors swung open without warning, and everybody in the waiting room jolted and looked toward the doctor who appeared. His scrubs were mostly clean, but Jenn’s trained eye picked out the faint spatters above his knees, showing where he’d been wearing a surgical gown.

  She swallowed hard, held on to Gigi’s hand too tightly, but the surgeon’s eyes went to the weeping woman. “Mrs. Trumble?”

  Gulping a sob, the woman lurched to her feet, pulling her mother with her. “Jeffrey,” she said urgently. “Is he…?”

  “He’s going to be okay. He came through surgery just fine, and is on his way to recovery right now. You can see him if you want.”

  “Yes!” Her eyes filled. “Oh, yes. Of course. Oh…”

  The surgeon kept talking, describing Trumble’s injuries in more depth and reassuring his friends and wife of the prognosis. Jenn only half heard the details, though, because just then the door swung open again and a very familiar figure filled the doorway, stalled there for a moment as he looked around the room. Then blue eyes locked on her, and he headed straight for her.

  Nick!

  His gaze was dark and hard, reminding her suddenly of the way she’d run into the smoke, looking for him, but she didn’t care if he was mad at her, just that he was there, on his feet and walking toward her.

  He was wearing scrubs, unlaced sneakers she didn’t recognize and a dark blue parka marked with BCCPD insignia. His clothing—and undoubtedly his person—had been processed for evidence, forcing him to borrow from the lost and found. Cassie or Alyssa would have taken his clothes, or maybe one of the bomb experts. They would have the first crack at this scene, after all, needing to know what kind of device it had been, how it’d been set off.

  But although that corner of her mind was aware of the practicalities—and the chain of evidence—the rest of her focused utterly on the man walking toward her. “Nick,” she said softly, the word slipping between her lips almost on a sigh.

  “I’ll go…” Gigi made a vague gesture. “Somewhere else.”

  The waiting area was practically a task-force meeting, it was so full of cops and analysts, and she knew she should hold it together, keep it casual. But when he got to her, reached for her, she
didn’t hesitate for even a second. She went into his arms, first holding on tentatively, afraid to hurt him.

  “I’m fine,” he said into her hair as he gripped her tightly. “Just knocked around a little.”

  She exhaled and locked her arms around him, burrowing into him for a moment and just concentrating on breathing. On believing that he was there, that this wasn’t Terry all over again.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, her words muffled in his chest. “I shouldn’t have come out to the ranch, shouldn’t have gotten out of the car or run toward you like that. I was just… Well. I shouldn’t have done it.”

  He pulled away slightly to look down at her. “Lesson learned?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay, then.” He kissed her forehead…but his expression stayed grim.

  A sudden chill slid through her at the realization that he might not be playing a role with her right now, but he wasn’t being his whole self, either.

  “Come on,” he said, tugging her toward the exit. “Tucker said for us to go straight back to your place, get some rest. The night shift has got the case for the next ten hours… . So let’s get out of here.”

  But when he said, “Let’s get out of here,” what she heard was, We need to talk.

  * * *

  AS HE DROVE THEM BACK to Jenn’s place, Nick knew he’d let things go too far again, and he had only himself to blame. He’d seen it in her face when she’d come running into the blast zone after him, and he’d felt it in himself when he’d seen her there. Despite both their best intentions, they were in too deep, cared too much. And it was going to hurt like hell when it came time to walk away.

  Thing was, as he’d sat waiting for the doctors to agree that he had a damn thick skull and none of the bumps he’d gotten were critical, he’d had some time to think…and even though his usual MO was to cut ties as soon as things started to go too far, he’d already tried that once and they’d both been miserable. So, yeah, it was going to hurt when it came time for him to walk and her to stay behind…but as he’d come out of the treatment area, he’d been halfway convinced that there wasn’t any reason to bolt now.