The Loner

by Lindsay McKenna

  “You’re up....”

  Dakota stood in the doorway, dressed in body-hugging Levi’s and a black T-shirt. She gave him a drowsy smile. “How did you know I was smelling the coffee you were making?”

  His heart wrenched as he looked into her cloudy blue eyes. There was still swelling on the left side of her nose and a crescent of purple beneath her left eye two days after the attack.

  “I felt you wake up,” he said, walking over and handing her the bright yellow mug with steaming coffee.

  “Thanks,” she murmured, meeting his hooded gaze. He had shaved, his hair gleaming from a recent shower. “You look good,” she said, sipping the coffee. “How long have you been up?”

  “Not long.” Dakota sat down on the bed next to her, careful not to slosh the coffee out of the cup in her hands. “You awake enough to hear some news?” he asked. Her blond hair was badly mussed and needed brushing. Lifting his hand, he slid the strands gently across her shoulders. The pink flannel gown she wore was soft-feeling beneath his fingertips. She closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying his touch, absorbing it into her bruised body. He kept his rage over her attack on a leash. Right now his focus was on her.

  Shelby knew yesterday evening when Dakota had come back to the cabin that he’d accidentally killed Hartley. And she’d persuaded him to have the puncture wound looked at. A clean white dressing was on his forearm. Dakota had regretted killing Hartley. He’d wanted to see the bastard go to death row and suffer a very long time before they pumped him full of chemicals to finally take his miserable life.

  Shelby glanced at the clock on the bed stand. It was 9:00 a.m. This was two days in a row she’d slept in late, and she knew it was because of the shock and trauma she’d endured.

  He moved his fingers around her nape, her skin warm, the silk of her hair tangling between them. “Cade’s talked to the county prosecutor about what happened with Hartley. And he’s not pressing charges against me.” He heard Shelby gasp. Her head snapped up, her eyes widening as she stared over at him.

  “Thank God,” she whispered, pressing her hand against her pounding heart.

  Dakota explained the judgment by the prosecutor. It would be seen as defending himself. He wouldn’t go on trial and he wouldn’t go to prison, a relief to him. As he continued to touch her, he felt the tension dissolve in her shoulders.

  He’d left their bed at one o’clock this morning, looking to find Welton. And then Dakota had driven to his cabin to find it had been ransacked. By 3:00 a.m. he’d returned here to sleep with Shelby at his side. He hadn’t slept much, his mind churning over what Welton might try next. At 5:00 a.m., he’d awakened and allowed Shelby to sleep as long as she wanted.

  “After I drove up to our cabin last night, I found the door standing open.” His voice deepened. He knew this would upset her. “Welton knew where we were.”

  Setting the mug down on the bed stand, Shelby could sense the anger in his voice and in his eyes. She turned, her knees pressed against his right thigh. “But...how...?”

  “I suspect he followed you. He might have been hiding nearby when Hartley jumped you. Or he might have seen your cruiser on the highway below my cabin by chance. I just don’t know.” Dakota tenderly leaned over and kissed her wrinkled brow. “Don’t worry, we’re safe here, Shel. By the time I got up to my cabin, he was gone.”

  Shelby smelled warm and sweet. Dakota wanted to continue to kiss her, but the timing was all wrong. “I woke up at five this morning and I decided to drive back up to my cabin. It was too dark to search for tire tracks or footprints. The good news is that I found his footprints this morning. Cade sent up a forensics team and they made impressions. That will help in tracking him.”

  “Things are moving fast,” Shelby said more to herself than him. As his hand moved gently across her shoulders, she sighed.

  “You look upset,” Dakota said, kissing her temple. “What’s going on in your head?”

  “I sat here after I got up thinking I could have died out in that parking lot. I guess it’s shock hitting me.”

  The tremble in her softly spoken words tore at him. “Come here.” He brought Shelby into his arms, gently holding her. She came and nestled her head against his shoulder, her brow against his jaw. When her arms went around his waist, Dakota drew in a deep, ragged breath. He wanted to love her, tenderly, erase the fear he knew was lingering within her about her own brush with death. Pressing a chaste kiss to her hair, he said in a low tone, “You defended yourself. You saved your own life, Shel. You’re a well-trained law enforcement officer and you got the upper hand.”

  She released a ragged sigh and closed her eyes. “I was so shocked by the attack. So...scared...” Shelby opened her eyes and eased back just enough to meet his gaze. There was turbulence—and desire—in his light brown eyes. “Do you know what made me fight back with everything I had?”

  “No. What?”

  “When Hartley slammed me to the ground and I was semiconscious, I realized that I loved you, Dakota.” She smiled softly and slid her fingers across his sandpapery cheek. “I don’t know when it happened or how it happened, but lying there with his knee crushing my chest, seeing the look of murder in his eyes, I knew I loved you....”

  Whispering her name as if it were a prayer against her lips, Dakota took her with all the tenderness he possessed. He curved his mouth against her parting lips, wanting to somehow infuse her with his strength and love. He knew he could love her, heal her and help reclaim her life once again. But not right now.

  Welton was on the prowl and Dakota could feel the convict, feel his murderous intent toward Shelby. If he admitted his feelings, he couldn’t go back. He couldn’t survive losing Shelby. For now, all he could do was drown in the returning splendor of her kiss, the heat between them. As he sat on the bed with this fierce, independent woman who had fought to live, he knew without a doubt, he loved her, too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “SHELBY, I NEED YOUR help,” Cade Garner called on the phone. “We’ve got a tourist in Tetons National Park whose three-year-old boy walked away. He’s lost. I need some good trackers. Are you available?”

  After two weeks of being holed up at Cade’s parents’ ranch, Shelby was more than ready. “Yes. Have you contacted Dakota?”

  “I have. Drive on in. I’m putting you back on the roster and you’ll be a deputy again.”

  “Thank God,” she muttered. After hanging up, she quickly traded her shoes for a good pair of hiking boots. Going into the bush to hunt for a missing child would require some different clothing. The sun was streaming across the valley as she climbed into her Land Cruiser and took off. The day was bright, cloudless and warm.

  For two weeks, Shelby had stayed on the ranch, a relatively safe place. Dakota had been hunting for Welton every day in the Tetons. He’d found the convict’s tracks, but it was a dead end. No one knew what kind of a vehicle he had. Forensics had taken impressions of the tires of a vehicle down at the end the road, but they were a variety that a good half of Jackson Hole residents had on their vehicles. There was no way to find him in that avenue of investigation.

  Touching her cheek, she noticed that the scratches she’d acquired were gone. The swelling around her nose had disappeared. In a mirror, Shelby looked normal, no hint of the violence done against her. But she could still feel its effects. Frowning, she drove at the maximum speed limit, wanting to get back to work.

  * * *

  “HEY, GOOD TO SEE YOU,” Cade called as Shelby entered his office.

  Dakota was with him looking at a wall map of the Tetons.

  “Nice to be here. Thanks for letting me go back to work. I was slowly going crazy out there.” She grinned. Her gaze moved to Dakota, and she saw the worry banked in his brown eyes. Probably for her. He wanted her off this case for good, but Cade had refused to release her. Her body responded to Dakota’s hooded, smoldering look. This morning, before he left for work, they had made long, tender love. As much of a warrior he was, she’d di
scovered over the past two weeks how gentle he could be with her. Her love for him grew daily.

  “What do you have?” Shelby asked, moving to where Dakota stood.

  “Three-year-old boy, Bobby Parker, walked away from his parents’ campsite this morning. The mother was watching him, went into the tent for two minutes, came out and he was gone.”

  “Poor Mom,” Shelby murmured. “Kids at that age are so fast.”

  “I’m more worried about a grizzly finding the kid,” Dakota muttered. He punched the wall map with his index finger above where the camp was situated. “I was over in that area two days ago. I ran into two male grizzlies. One was a cinnamon color and the other was a dark brown. One had a collar on it for tracking purposes and the other did not. I reported both to the rangers and gave them photos. What’s bad about this is that brown grizzly is a newcomer. No one knows its behavior or its pattern of where it’s going to go to find food. He’s a wild card in this track.”

  Mouth compressed, Shelby said, “That’s not good news.”

  “Bears at this time of year are starving,” Cade said, scowling. “I have Charlie, the Tetons Forest Service supervisor, on this. He’s assigned three rangers to try to locate the whereabouts of this new bear. He’s worried the grizzly might mistake the child for a baby elk and kill it.”

  A cold shiver ran down Shelby’s spine. “It’s not a good situation.”

  “So you two are going in with major weapons in hand,” Cade warned them. “Carry your rifles and a pistol.”

  “I’m staying in my civilian gear,” she told Cade.

  “Good. Just show your identification to the parents once you arrive. I’m gathering another group of searchers and volunteers right now, but I need you on this now.”

  Dakota nodded and walked around Cade. “We’ll get over there now.”

  Shelby said, “I’ll pick up a radio for Dakota at the desk.”

  “Good. Test them out before you start tracking with our dispatcher. Make sure they have fresh batteries in them.”

  “We’re good to go,” Shelby said, walking out with Dakota.

  In the hall, Dakota looked over at her. She wore a bright red long-sleeved blouse beneath her dark green jacket. “You sure you’re ready for this?”

  She could hear the veiled worry in his deep voice. “I am.” Shelby reached out, caught his fingers for a moment and squeezed them. “I have to get back to work, Dakota. I’m fine. I’m healed up.”

  “If I had my way, you’d be chained to the bed.” A hint of a smile lightened his dark expression.

  “I know you’re worried for me, but you can’t hide me away in a castle. I need to work. I can’t let what Hartley did stop me from living. You know that.”

  “Yeah,” he groused, giving her a frown. “You’re hell-bent to get back to your deputy work.”

  “Look, this is a lost child. We’ll be tracking together. And we have radios. I really don’t think this kid disappearing is Welton’s work. It’s an accident. And we should be able to find him pretty quickly. I hope.” She had tracked lost children before in the Tetons, and each time she found them alive and well.

  Dakota halted at the dispatcher’s desk, where the woman handed him a radio. He thanked her and they walked toward the front door.

  * * *

  SHELBY CALMED BOBBY’S frantic parents at the campground. While she took the information for a report, Dakota had already identified the child’s tennis shoe tread and was following it into some brush located at one end of the large campground. By the time she reached him, he waited to show her the track.

  “There’s no reason why this kid would plunge into this kind of brush,” Dakota growled, pointing at the broken small twigs and branches.

  Shelby knelt nearby, studying the scene. “Is it possible the child heard a sound in the brush? If he did, he might have gone through it to investigate.”

  Scowling, Dakota saw the trail of tiny branches and torn green leaves in the wake of the child’s exploration into the brush. “Good call.”

  “Or maybe there was a baby elk on the other side of these willows?” Shelby stood up and craned her neck, but she couldn’t see over or through the thick brush.

  “Let’s go on the other side of this area and see.”

  The warmth of the morning climbed. Shelby shrugged out of her green jacket and tied it to the pack she wore. The pine needles were dry and cracked beneath the soles of their boots as they made it to the opposite side of the willow stand. She watched Dakota slow to a stop. He searched the area. Moving quietly to his side, she saw what he was looking at. There were some disturbed pine needles near the exit point in the brush. Moving forward, she leaned down, studying more closely.

  “The problem with pine needles is that they destroy the track on the sole of a shoe,” she muttered. She turned to glance up at him. “What do you think?”

  “I think the depression is a little too deep for a three-year-old kid,” he said. Kneeling down on one knee, he examined it intently for a moment.

  Shelby looked around. “But there are no other prints anywhere else.”

  Rubbing the back of his neck, he growled, “I know.”

  “Maybe the boy was running?” She pointed to the heel area of the depression. It was deeper than the toe area.

  “Running toward what?” he said, unhappy. Dakota had a bad feeling about this. He was jumpy anyway because of worry about Shelby.

  Slowly rising, Shelby walked parallel to the footprint and searched for other depressions. The problem was there were a lot of rocks up the face of the mountain along with dry pine needles scattered and thinning out across the area. “I’m spreading out to look for bear spore....” She hated even saying it. A grizzly could have been sniffing around this side of the willows, the child could have heard the bear and gone through the brush to investigate. A quick, cold shiver raced through her. Automatically, she prayed that the grizzly did not find the child.

  Dakota took steps in the opposite direction, carefully looking near the edge of the brush for any sign of bear spore. Nothing.

  “Dakota?” Shelby called. She knelt and waited for him to come over to her. His face was hard and unreadable.

  “Look, scat.”

  He leaned over, hands on his knees, next to her. “Yeah, but that’s old bear scat. At least two days.”

  “I know,” she said, disappointed. “But what it does prove is there is grizzly in this area.” Her voice trailed off and she stood up.

  Dakota reached out, pushing a few gold strands away from her healed left cheek. “Don’t go there,” he said. “Not yet...”

  Her skin tingled in the wake of his grazing touch. Despite how hard he looked, the lethal power that swirled around him, she reacted to his tender look and his finger trailing down the line of her jaw. “You think it’s a grizzly?”

  Shrugging, he studied the steep, rocky hill above them. “It’s a lead, Shel. That’s all.”

  She rested her hand on his broad chest, the heat of his skin emanating from beneath the dark brown shirt. There was a change in his eyes, and the line of his mouth softened. “We need to find this boy....”

  Leaning down, he curved his mouth across hers. Shelby’s response was heated and filled with promise. He slid his hand against her jaw, tilting her head slightly, and deepened their kiss. He inhaled the sweet scent of her as a woman, tasting her, absorbing her. Reluctantly, Dakota eased away, her eyes drowsy and filled with desire. “Let’s keep going. We got good daylight. Kids are fast but they tire out, too. We’ll probably find him within a mile of the camp.”

  Mouth tingling, Shelby yearned for another time and place with Dakota. She could never get enough of this warrior whose scarred hands were tender, sending her into realms she’d never gone before. “Okay,” she said, her voice softer than normal. “We have to find the boy before it’s too late....”

  “Let’s hold out hope for him, then.” He wrestled inwardly with his feelings for Shelby. Dakota was plagued with worry over
his PTSD and, some night, hurting her. He felt as if he had one foot in heaven and one in hell. And with no quick, easy answers to fix it or fix himself. Damn.

  Shelby moved away from Dakota, feeling heat, the power exuding from around him, the invisible rippling effect making her dizzy with need. Dakota could look at her a certain way and she would feel her body blossom in anticipation of his touch or kiss. Getting hold of her emotions, she turned and pointed to the edge of the hill. “I think the boy might have tried to find an easier way up this hill. What do you think?”

  “Don’t know. You take that side of it and look. I’m going to go up the rocks.”

  Shelby nodded. Trying to find the trace of a footprint on rock was nearly impossible. Yet she saw Dakota shift gears to the black lava rock face scattered with brown pine needles. She had the rifle over her shoulder as she went nearly a tenth of a mile to the right of where he was tracking.

  Dakota would look up every once in a while to check on Shelby’s location. There was no brush on the hill, just Douglas fir, like soldiers standing at attention. He’d then shift back to looking for a few pine needles out of place among the millions that were not. It was tedious, intense work to try to find those three or four needles.

  Shelby followed the curve of the hill. To her left, Dakota was about halfway up the rocky face. She was finding no depressions in the floor of the forest. Disheartened, she was leaned over, moving slowly, head down, gaze fixed and moving from right to left.

  She felt more than heard movement to her right. What? Lifting her head, she twisted and looked. A brown grizzly male, nearly seven hundred pounds, was less than a hundred feet away from her. Fear shot through Shelby. The bear whuffed—a warning.

  Without hesitating, she jerked the rifle off her shoulder. It was instinctive to flip off the safety. She knew from long experience to keep a bullet in the chamber at all times.

  The bear charged, roaring.

  Dakota jerked upright, hearing the roaring sound. Suddenly, to his horror, he saw the brown grizzly hurtling toward Shelby. Without thinking, he pulled his pistol out in one smooth motion. Shelby stood her ground, jamming the butt of the rifle into her shoulder, aiming and firing.