Dangerous Ground, no. 1

by Josh Lanyon

  Table of Contents

  VIP Offer

  What This Book is About

  DANGEROUS GROUND

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  VIP reminder

  About the Author

  Also by Josh Lanyon

  Copyright

  For a free audio book download sign up for Josh’s newsletter now!

  Special Agents for the Department of Diplomatic Security, Taylor MacAllister and Will Brandt have been partners and best friends for three years, but everything changed the night Taylor admitted the truth about his feelings for Will. But it's complicated...

  Taylor agreed to a camping trip in the High Sierras -- despite the fact that he hates camping -- because Will wants a chance to save their partnership. But the trip is a disaster from the first, and things rapidly go from bad to worse when they find a crashed plane and a couple of million dollars in stolen money.

  With a trio of murderous robbers trailing them, Will and Taylor are on dangerous ground, fighting for their partnership...and their lives

  .

  DANGEROUS GROUND

  Josh Lanyon

  Chapter One

  The nose of the red and white twin engine Baron 58 was crunched deep into the bottom of the wooded ravine. Mud and debris covered the cockpit windows. One wing had been sheared off when the plane crashed through the surrounding pines, knocking three of them over. The other wing was partially buckled beneath the craft. The tail of the plane had broken off and lay several yards down the ravine.

  Taylor mopped his face on the flannel sleeve of his shirt. Ten thousand feet up in the High Sierras, the sun was still plenty warm despite the chill spring air.

  Behind him, Will said, “Either the pilot was unfamiliar with the terrain or he didn’t have a lot of experience with mountain flying. Out here, avoiding box canyons is one of the first things you learn.”

  “Take a look at this,” Taylor said, and Will made his way to him across the rocky, uneven slope. Taylor pointed to the fuselage. “You see those registration numbers?”

  “N81BH.” Will’s blue eyes met Taylor’s. “Now why does that sound so familiar?”

  Taylor grinned. “It’s the plane used in that Tahoe casino heist last year.”

  Will whistled, long and low.

  “Yeah,” agreed Taylor. Just for a moment he let his gaze linger on the other man’s lean, square-jawed features. Will’s hair, brown and shining in the sun, fell boyishly into his eyes. He hadn’t shaved in three days, and the dark stubble gave him a rugged, sexy look — very different from the normal nine to five Will. Not that they exactly worked nine to five at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

  Will’s gaze held his for a moment, and Taylor looked away, focusing on the plane’s registration numbers again.

  “What’d they get away with again?” Will asked in a making conversation kind of voice. “Something in the neighborhood of 2.3 million, was it?”

  “That and murder,” Taylor said grimly. “They shot two sheriff’s deputies making their getaway.” These days he was touchy about law enforcement officers getting gunned down.

  “Doesn’t look like they got away far.” Will moved toward the open door of the plane. He hopped lightly up onto the broken wing, and for a moment Taylor felt a twinge of envy. He was still moving slowly after his own shooting six weeks ago; sometimes he felt like he was never going to get it all back: the strength, the speed — the confidence — he had always taken for granted. He felt old at thirty-one.

  He walked toward the broken off tail piece, and Will — only half-joking — called, “Watch out for snakes, MacAllister.”

  “You had to say that, didn’t you, Brandt?” Taylor threw back. He studied the rim of the ravine. It had been winter when three masked men with automatic weapons robbed the Black Wolf Casino on the Nevada border of Lake Tahoe. They had fled to the nearby airport, hijacked a plane, and disappeared into the snowy December night.

  Local law enforcement had theorized the Beechcraft Baron crashed in the High Sierras, but the weather and the terrain had inhibited searchers. It was clear to Taylor now that even under the best conditions, it would have been just about impossible to spot the little plane tucked away in the crevice of this mountainside.

  He glanced back, but Will had vanished inside the wrecked plane. He could hear the eerie creak and groan of the aircraft as Will moved around inside.

  Taylor worked his way around the crash site. Not their area of expertise, of course, but he knew what to look for.

  Scattered engine parts and broken glass were strewn everywhere. A couple of seats had been thrown clear and were relatively intact. There was a weathered plank of wood that must have originally been a table or a desk, and some broken light fixtures and vinyl parts of storage bins. The plane could have carried five passengers in addition to the pilot. The casino had been hit by three bandits; the fourth had been driving the getaway car that sped them to Truckee Tahoe Airport. Four people would have inevitably left DNA evidence, but the crash site was four months old and contaminated by the elements and wildlife. He glanced around at the sound of Will’s boots on the loose rock.

  Will said, “The pilot’s inside. No one else.”

  That was no surprise. The initial investigation had cleared the pilot of involvement in the robbery; if he’d been alive, he would have contacted the authorities. Taylor thought it over. “No sign there were any passengers on board when she went down.”

  “What about an incriminating black tie?” Will referred to the famous narrow black necktie that legendary hijacker D.B. Cooper left on the Boeing 727 he jumped out of way back in 1971.

  “Not so much as a stray sock.”

  “Then I guess they weren’t doing laundry up there,” Will remarked, and Taylor drew a blank.

  “You know how one sock always gets lost — forget it.” It was a lame joke, but once Taylor would have known instantly what Will meant. Once Taylor would have laughed. “Parachutes?” Will asked.

  “No parachutes.”

  “None?”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Taylor said.

  “Interesting. The pilot’s got a bullet through his skull.”

  “Ah,” said Taylor.

  “Yep.”

  Their eyes met.

  “Come take a look,” Will invited, and Taylor followed him back to the front section of the plane.

  Will sprang onto the wing, reaching a hand down for Taylor, and with a grimace, Taylor accepted his help, vaulting up beside him. The wing bobbed beneath their weight, and Will steadied him, hands on Taylor’s waist for an instant.

  Taylor moved away. Not that he minded Will’s hands on him — there was nothing he’d have liked more than Will’s hands on him — but this had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with lack of confidence. A lack of confidence in Taylor being able to look after himself. Not that Will had said so, but it was clear to Taylor — and maybe it was clear to Will too, which might explain what the hell they were doing up in the High Sierras one week before Taylor was officially due to start back at work.

  Because if they couldn’t figure this out — get past it — they were through as a team. Regardless of the fact that so far no one had admitted there was even a problem.

  “After you,” Will said, waving him into the gloomy and rotting interior of the plane with exaggerated courtesy. Taylor gave him a wry smile and ducked inside.

  “Jesus. Something’s made itself right at home in here.”

  “Yeah. Maybe a marmot. Or a weasel. Something
relatively small.” Will’s breath was warm against the back of Taylor’s neck.

  “Relatively small is good,” Taylor muttered, and Will laughed.

  “Unless it’s a skunk.”

  Almost four years they’d been together: partners and friends — good friends — but maybe that was over now. Taylor didn’t want to think so, but —

  His boot turned on a broken door lever, and Will’s hand shot out, steadying him. Taylor pulled away, just managing to control his impatience.

  Yeah, that was the problem. Will didn’t think Taylor was capable of taking two steps without Will there to keep an eye on him.

  And that was guilt. Pure and simple. Not friendship, not one partner watching another partner’s back, not even the normal overprotectiveness of one partner for his injured-in-the-line-of-duty opposite number. No, this was guilt because of the way Taylor felt about Will — because Will didn’t feel the same. And somehow Will had managed to convince himself that that was part of the reason Taylor had stopped a bullet.

  He clambered across the empty copilot’s seat and studied the remains of the dead pilot slumped over the instrument dashboard control panel. The pilot’s clothes were in rags, deteriorated and torn. Bacteria, insects, and animals had reduced the body to a mostly skeletal state. Not entirely skeletal, unfortunately, but Taylor had seen worse as a special agent posted in Afghanistan. He examined the corpse dispassionately, noting position, even while recognizing that animals had been at it. Some of the smaller bones of the hands and feet were missing.

  “One bullet to the back of the head,” he said.

  “Yep,” Will replied. “While the plane was still in flight.”

  Taylor glanced down at the jammed throttle. “And then the hijackers bailed out,” he agreed. This part at least still worked between them. They still could work a crime scene with that single-mindedness that had earned the attention and approval of their superiors.

  Not that they investigated many homicides at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Mostly they helped in the extradition of fugitives who fled the country, or ran interference for local law enforcement agencies with foreign police departments. But now and then they got to…get their feet wet. Some times were a little wetter than others. Taylor rubbed his chest absently.

  “In the middle of the night and in the middle of nowhere,” Will said. “Hard to believe all four of them made it out of these mountains safely. FBI and the local law were all over these woods within twenty-four hours.”

  “Yeah, but it was snowing, remember.”

  “Those guys are trained.”

  “They missed the plane.”

  “The plane wasn’t making for the main highway.”

  “Maybe the bad guys were local,” Taylor said. “Maybe they knew the terrain.”

  “Wasn’t the prevailing theory, was it?”

  “No.” He backed out of the cockpit, and Will did it again — rested his hand on Taylor’s back to stabilize him — although Taylor’s balance was fine, physically and emotionally.

  He gritted his jaw, biting back anything that would widen the rift between them. Will’s friendship was better than nothing, right? And there had been a brief and truly hellish period when he thought he’d lost that, so…shut up and be grateful, yeah?

  Yeah.

  Will jumped down to the ground and reached up a hand. Taylor ignored the hand, and dropped down beside him — which jarred his rib cage and hurt like fuck. He did his best to hide the fact.

  “More likely what’s left of ’em is scattered through these woods,” Will commented, and Taylor grimaced.

  “There’s a thought.”

  “Imagine jumping out of a plane into freezing rain and whatever that headwind was? Eighteen knots. Maybe more.”

  “Maybe someone was waiting for them on the ground.”

  Will nodded thoughtfully. “Two and an almost-half million divides nicely between five.”

  Taylor grunted. Didn’t it just? Kneeling by his pack, he unzipped it, dug through his clothes and supplies, searching for something on which he could note the crash site coordinates. It was sheer luck they’d stumbled on it this time. He found the small notebook he’d tossed in, fished further and found a pen, pulling the cap off with his teeth. He squinted up at the anvil-shaped cliff to the right of the canyon. The sun was starting to sink in the sky. He rose.

  Will moved next to him, looking over his shoulder, and just that much proximity unsettled Taylor. It took effort not to move away, turn his back. Will smelled like sunshine and flannel and his own clean sweat as he brushed against Taylor’s arm, frowning down at Taylor’s diagram.

  “What’s that supposed to be? A chafing dish?”

  Taylor pointed the pen. “It’s that…thing. Dome or whatever you call it.”

  “If you say so, Picasso.” Will unfolded his map. “Let me borrow your pen.”

  Taylor handed his pen over, and Will circled a spot on the map, before folding it up again, and shoving it in the back pocket of his desert camo pants.

  “Well, hell,” he said, “I guess we should start back down, notify the authorities we found their missing aircraft.”

  Will looked at him inquiringly, and Taylor nodded. That was the logical thing to do, after all. But he wasn’t happy about it. Three days into their “vacation” they weren’t any closer to bridging the distance yawning between them — and it would be a long time before they had this kind of opportunity again. By then it might be too late. Whereas this plane had been sitting here for over four months; would another four days really make a difference?

  “Right. We’ll rest up tonight and head back tomorrow then,” Will added, after a moment.

  Taylor directed a narrow look his way, but the truth was he was fatigued, and climbing in the dark would have been stupid even if he wasn’t. So he nodded again, curtly, and tossed the notebook and diagram back into his pack.

  * * * * *

  Will was tired. Pleasantly tired. Taylor was exhausted. Not that he’d admit it, but Will could tell by the way he dropped down by the campfire while Will finished pitching their two-man tent.

  One eye on Taylor, Will stowed their sleeping bags inside the Eureka Apex XT. He pulled Taylor’s Therm-a-Rest sleeping pad out of his own backpack where he’d managed to stash it that morning without Taylor noticing, and spread it out on the floor of the tent. He opened the valve and left the pad inflating while he went to join Taylor at the fire.

  “Hungry?”

  “Always.” Taylor’s grin was wry — and so was Will’s meeting it. Taylor ate like a horse — even in the hospital — although where he put it was anyone’s guess. He was all whippy muscle and fine bones that seemed to be made out of titanium. It was easy to look at him and dismiss him as a threat, but anyone who’d ever tangled with him didn’t make that mistake twice.

  He was too thin now, though, which was why Will was carrying about three pounds more food in his pack than they probably needed. He watched Taylor feeding wood into the flames. In the firelight his face was all sharps and angles. His eyes looked almost black with fatigue — they weren’t black, though, they were a kind of burnished green — an indefinable shade of bronze that reminded Will of old armor. Very striking with his black hair — Will’s gaze lingered on Taylor’s hair, on that odd single streak of silver since the shooting.

  He didn’t want to think about the shooting. Didn’t want to think about finding Taylor in a dingy storeroom with his shirt and blazer soaked in blood — Taylor struggling for each anguished breath. He still had nightmares about that.

  He said, talking himself away from the memory, “Well, monsieur, tonight zee specials are zee beef stroganoff, zee Mexican-style chicken, or zee lasagna with meat sauce.”

  “What won’t they freeze-dry next?” Taylor marveled.

  “Nothing. You name it, they’ll freeze-dry it. We’ve got Neapolitan ice cream for dessert.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Just like the astronauts eat.”
<
br />   “We pay astronauts to sit around drinking Tang and eating freeze-dried ice cream?”

  “Your tax dollars at work.” Will’s eyes assessed Taylor. “Here.” He shifted, pulled his flask out of his hip pocket, unscrewed the cap, and handed it to Taylor. “Before dinner cocktails.”

  “Cheers.” Taylor took a swig and shuddered.

  “Hey,” Will protested. “That’s Sam Houston bourbon. You know how hard that it is to find?”

  “Yeah, I know. I bought you a bottle for Christmas year before last.”

  “That’s right. Then you know just how good this is.”

  “Not if you don’t like it.” But Taylor was smiling — which was good to see. Not too many smiles between them since that last night at Will’s house. And he wanted to think about that even less than he wanted to think about Taylor getting shot.

  “Son, that bourbon will put hair on your chest,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, unlike you I prefer my bears in the woods.”

  There was a brief uncomfortable pause while they both remembered a certain naval officer, and then Taylor took another swig and handed the flask back to Will.

  “Thanks.”

  Will grunted acknowledgment.

  He thought about telling Taylor he hadn’t seen Bradley since that god-awful night, but that was liable to make things worse — it would certainly confuse the issue, because regardless of what Taylor believed, the issue had never been Lieutenant Commander David Bradley.

  Taylor put a hand to the small of his back, arching a little, wincing — and Will watched him, chewing the inside of his cheek, thinking it over. It was taking a while to get back into sync, that was all. It was just going to take a little time. Sure, Taylor was moody, a little distant, but he still wasn’t 100 percent.

  He was getting there, though. Getting there fast — because once Taylor put his mind to a thing, it was as good as done. Usually. When he started back at work he’d be stuck on desk duty for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month or so, but he’d be back in the field before long, and Will was counting the days. He missed Taylor like he’d miss his right arm. Maybe more.