Dangerous Ground (Fiona Carver)

by Rachel Grant

  “Do you specialize? In wildlife, I mean.”

  “Not really. I’ve been lucky.” He closed his eyes and gave a small thank-you to Violet for the financial support she’d provided that had given him his start. “I had a financier who funded my early expeditions, which meant I could spend months abroad in different environments. On land. Underwater. Jungle, desert. You name it. I was able to spend far more time on expeditions than the National Geographic Society or other wildlife organizations could fund, and it gave me the opportunity to gain a diverse portfolio and develop connections that opened more doors. I get to pick and choose my jobs now, and if I don’t get the shot I want in the allotted time frame . . . I can linger, because I’m not relying on grants. Get the perfect shot. Patience is key in my business. I can afford to be very, very patient.”

  It was a luxury to extend expeditions at will, but then, he didn’t need the photos to pay the bills. For the most part, he lived within his photography income, but if he failed, he had reserves. Vast reserves.

  His gaze lingered on the beautiful woman in the puffy bag. Patience.

  The word slipped through his mind, but it had no place here. No place with her. She might not be Dylan’s girl, but his twin had, in essence, called dibs. And Dean would never, ever violate the rules they’d established as teens.

  Dylan wanted her. He’d made that clear with his claim they were involved. No matter how attractive Dean found her, he could not, and would not, have Fiona Carver. Patience be damned.

  She sat up. With the puffy hood tied around her face, the sleeping bag stayed with her, an orange lion’s mane. “How did you get on the team? Is Bill Lowell a real person?”

  “He is. I worked with him about five years ago in Costa Rica. He’s the real deal. Wouldn’t screw up Section 7.”

  “Well, he might. ESA is a US law. If he worked internationally, he wasn’t working on Environmental Impact Statements.”

  “True, but Costa Rica was his vacation. He lives in Florida and does most of his fieldwork there, which meant it was safe for me to borrow his name and credentials. Pollux was in too much of a hurry to do more than a phone interview. Bill was hired on the spot by the head of the EIS project.”

  “Sylvia didn’t hire you?”

  “No. I gathered after the fact that she had someone else in mind, but it was too late. Her boss picked Bill. Er, me.”

  “That’s quite a risk. If you’d been caught, you’d have been arrested and charged with a federal offense.”

  “No one really had reason to suspect, though, did they? I mean, why would anyone fake something like that? It was a risk, sure, but it didn’t feel like one until I was on Whidbey Island, ready to board the plane.” His gaze scanned the interior of their aircraft refuge. “And frankly, this part is feeling like the bigger risk now.”

  She let out a harsh laugh. “Fair point.”

  He reached for her bag and pulled out the collapsible bucket. “I’m going to get us some water. Keep an eye on the fire.”

  She nodded, and he crawled through the tail opening. The rain had slowed, but the stream flowed with vigor. While the water filled the bucket, he studied the plane. It was covered with vines and dirt, a natural camouflage. He never would have seen it if she hadn’t handed him that map. It was the perfect hiding place. Even the smoke from the fire was lost in the fog.

  They would be safe for the night.

  He let out a thankful sigh and grabbed the bucket. Minutes later, he was back inside and pouring water into the metal pot they’d grabbed from the cook tent and setting it by the fire to boil. He then stripped off all his outer layers down to his long underwear and hung them on the line. The interior of the plane had warmed to the point that he wasn’t miserably cold in his thick undergarments, but he wasn’t exactly warm either. If his sweater and pants weren’t damp, he’d keep them on.

  He turned his focus to cooking dinner. He’d originally planned on ramen noodles and protein bars, but they had meat and a fire and would be better off saving the portable food for when their options were limited. Plus, he was hungry.

  He placed two vacuum-sealed bags of chicken in a bowl of cold water to thaw, then set about searching for a pan or fork to use as a spit for cooking. He hadn’t thought to grab a separate frying pan, and they needed boiled water.

  “Can I help?” Fiona asked.

  He shook his head. “You know your job.”

  “Breathe and get warm. I know. But I’m feeling better.”

  “I don’t think you want to be crawling around the plane in nothing but a flimsy T-shirt. It’s damn cold. Plus, it’s getting dark, and we need to conserve flashlight batteries.” They had a crank flashlight, but he’d save that for later. He’d turn the crank to charge it after they ate.

  “I suppose. But it feels weird just lying here while you do all the work.”

  “Tell me what you know about this plane, then, while I search.”

  “The allied code name for this kind of plane was ‘Tabby.’ I think it crashed in 1944, after the Battle of Attu. There were no remains inside when I recorded it, which makes me think that at least some of the crew walked away and carried anyone who was dead or injured with them. The Tabby is really just a Douglas DC-3.”

  He smiled, pleased with himself that he’d guessed correctly. When he was a kid, he’d been obsessed with planes and had dreams of being a pilot. He’d never quite outgrown the obsession, even though he’d traded in the pilot dreams for photography before he’d graduated high school.

  He fed a few of the larger sticks into the fire, then resumed searching the nooks and crannies of the plane for supplies, finding a few tools that might come in handy and lots of dead rodents, which, he very much hoped, would not.

  He returned to the shelves with the ammo boxes and pulled down another one. He emptied it like he had the others and set it aside for dismantling later. He did the same with two more boxes, then reached for a fourth. One more and he’d go back to searching.

  He opened it . . . and couldn’t hold back a grin. He let out a low whistle. “Well, one of our Japanese soldiers was doing a little smuggling.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Alcohol stash.” He pulled out a blue-green bottle and held it up to the firelight. The distinctive color said it all. He’d seen piles of these when he photographed animals in the South Pacific, near other World War II battle sites.

  “Sake,” Fiona said.

  “Yep.” He was more pleased with the other bottles in the box, which he held up for Fiona to see. “And whiskey. Several bottles.”

  “You know, I don’t even like whiskey, but right now it sounds like heaven.”

  He set it aside. “We’ll have a splash after dinner. Don’t want to risk drinking on an empty stomach after the day we’ve had.”

  “That’s reasonable.”

  A few minutes later, he finished searching the plane and had a tin plate that would work as a frying pan for the meat. He sliced the slightly thawed chicken into thin strips for cooking over the fire. He would round out the meal with boiled ramen noodles in chicken broth. It wouldn’t be gourmet by any means, but he was so hungry, he didn’t care about the lack of cooking oil or seasonings.

  Fiona sat with the bag around her but open, revealing the T-shirt. Her cheeks were red, and with her hair coming loose from her braid, she looked tousled. Like they’d just enjoyed a good, rousing fuck and then she’d pulled on his shirt.

  His gaze fixed on that freckle on her bottom lip. The firelight made him itch to take out his camera. The photo would be gritty and sexy, with the traces of dirt on her face in the dim but warm light and rotting wreckage that surrounded her. The sleeping bag manufacturer would make a fortune if this were an ad.

  But this photo would be just for him. A beautiful woman bent on survival. There was nothing sexual about her pose, but damn, he felt the pull of desire for the strength she exhibited. The line of her neck as she tilted her head and stared into the flames. The firelight re
flected in her eyes.

  He’d photographed actual supermodels, but none of them had ever been more alluring than Fiona Carver right this moment.

  A sizzle and a pop sounded before he felt the sting of burning fat on his skin. He glanced down to stir the searing chicken and brushed his hand on his thigh to dispel the burn. He probably should be focusing on the task at hand and not the woman who might hold the answers to his brother’s whereabouts. After they ate, they would talk.

  He served up dinner in the bowls he’d salvaged from camp, the chicken strips mixed with the noodles and broth. She cupped the bowl with both hands and let out a soft moan as she held it up to her nose. It was a low, sexy sound that triggered yet another reaction.

  He needed to ignore both the sound and his instinctive response. She might not have been Dylan’s girlfriend, but his brother must’ve wanted her. Was it simple infatuation, or had he been in love with her, as he’d hinted on the phone?

  Dean shook his head against the thought and took a bite of his meal, letting out his own moan of pleasure. There was nothing like an improvised meal at the end of an intense day in the field, and today . . . well, it ranked on an entirely different scale of intense.

  He forced himself to eat slowly and noted she did the same. They were rationing, just in case, and the meal wasn’t large. They had to be careful, and eating slowly would let their bodies know they were getting the protein and carbs they needed, and the hunger would dim, at least, before the bowl was empty.

  She finished and set the bowl aside. “Thank you. That was one of the best meals I’ve ever had.”

  He didn’t doubt it, and it wasn’t because his cooking was stellar. “You’re welcome. Will you tell me about Dylan now?”

  She nodded. “I think I could use a cold pack on my knee, though.”

  He cursed. He’d forgotten about her injury. “Sorry, I meant to get you that as soon as your core temperature was stable.” He reached for the bag with the first aid kit. “How is your leg?”

  “It’s going to be fine. Just sore.” She unzipped the foot box on the bag and showed him her bare foot and ankle. “Ankle isn’t even swollen. It was just a twist that hurt in the moment. My knee”—she unzipped the bag from the bottom to expose her calf and knee—“is more bruised than anything. Ice will help with the swelling, but I should be able to walk on it tomorrow.”

  The wind whipped at the side of the plane, and the sound of rain tapping on the metal hull intensified. “I’m not sure we’ll be going anywhere tomorrow.”

  “We need to call my office. Let them know where we are.”

  “Absolutely. But you aren’t up for hiking to the village, and the road is a mess. We’ll reevaluate the situation in the morning.” He snapped the first aid cold pack to activate it, and the bag turned cool under his fingers. A shame to be wasting the pack when it was likely to drop to below freezing tonight, but the nearest snow was on the upper slopes of the volcano, a few miles away. He grabbed a bandanna to protect her skin and knelt in front of her, examining her knee before placing the wrapped pack on the lateral side just below her kneecap.

  The skin was red and the swelling minor, but still, he had the urge to press his lips to the injury. But then, he wanted to run his lips all up and down her legs.

  Her throaty words from earlier came back to him. “We might die tonight.”

  She’d been joking, hadn’t she?

  After all, she didn’t do field flings.

  Dylan wants her. She’s off-limits.

  Fingers touched his hair, and he realized he’d been kneeling by her leg for too long. He lifted his gaze to meet hers, and he saw a heady mix of heat and desire that he was pretty sure matched what his own eyes were saying.

  He cleared his throat and scooted back. “I think it’s whiskey time.”

  She let out a pent-up breath. “Thank goodness.”

  He rose and grabbed the bottle he’d set aside just for this moment and threw another wood scrap on the fire, before settling by her side to watch the flames. He broke the seal on the bottle and offered it to her; she took a swig, then handed it back.

  He studied the label. It was an American distillery, making him wonder where the Japanese soldier who’d smuggled it onto the cargo plane had gotten it. His mouth twisted in a bittersweet smile. “This is Dylan’s favorite brand.” He took a long, slow drink, then set the bottle between them, appreciating the burn as the amber liquid went down.

  After a long silence, she lifted the bottle and took a second pull, then lowered it and said, “You need to know, Dylan was my friend, but we were never involved.”

  “Is,” Dean corrected. “Is your friend.” He refused to speak of his brother in past tense.

  “Is,” she repeated. “Why did you think we were involved?”

  “He told me you were dating the last time we talked on the phone.”

  “When was that?”

  “Eight weeks ago. Before your last trip to Chiksook.”

  “I have no idea why he would have said that. I never spoke with him at all between trips to Chiksook. As I said before, I didn’t even have his number.”

  “Which explains why I found no correspondence between you when I finally got my hands on his computer.”

  “Then why did you believe it?”

  “Two reasons: one, Dylan never lies, and two . . . it was his desktop computer, not his phone. He doesn’t text on his desktop. And the only emails I could find there were work-related. He must have his laptop with him. We found his phone last night.” He paused. “For what it’s worth, he said the relationship was serious.”

  “What was the context? Why did it come up?”

  “We were planning his trip to LA. He hadn’t been down to visit since he moved north. I had invitations to a couple of events, including a launch party for an ad campaign featuring a model I know. I wanted Dylan to meet her. He was so crushed after the divorce, he needed to start going out again.”

  “So you were trying to convince him to spend his vacation, in which he was supposed to hang out with you, with some model he’d never met . . . and suddenly he tells you he’s madly in love with me?”

  Put that way, it did make a bit more sense. But still, he wasn’t ready to believe it. “You’re forgetting the part about how Dylan doesn’t lie.”

  She scooped up the bottle again and handed it to him. “Sorry to say, your brother wasn’t perfect. He lied.”

  “Isn’t. He isn’t perfect.”

  “Isn’t,” she repeated.

  He took a swig and handed the bottle to her, and she took her own drink. After a long pause, she said, “I think Dylan was being sexually harassed by Sylvia. Or at least, there was something odd going on between them. I had the sense he didn’t like working for Pollux at all, but he liked this project and wasn’t ready to walk away from it.”

  “His ex-wife worked with him at the US Geological Survey. She dumped him for another coworker eighteen months ago. He couldn’t stay in California after that and didn’t want to work for the USGS anymore. The job with Pollux was a chance to do the work he loved but for a different agency. I don’t see him getting involved with a coworker after that experience.”

  “But you thought he’d get involved with me?”

  “You don’t work for Pollux.”

  She nodded. “Okay, but none of that explains why you think he’s still on Chiksook Island. He left the day before the rest of us did.”

  “Did he? Did you see him get on a helicopter or a boat?”

  She frowned, her gaze fixed on the fire. “No,” she said after a long pause. “I was in the field with Christina all day. Dylan was supposed to come out to the site after he did some work checking sensors in the volcano.”

  “In the volcano?”

  “There are lava tubes and caves that are accessible from the north shore. After I showed him the metallic rock, he said something about maybe seeing something like it in one of the tubes or caves near one of his sensors. He was going to c
heck it out, then return to the site after we’d exposed more of the lahar. It’s why we opened up more than we should have, why the site was so vulnerable.”

  “But Dylan never showed up at the site that day.”

  “He didn’t. When I got back to camp that night, I went looking for him, but Trevor said he was gone. Sent home earlier in the day. Sylvia was gone too, and Trevor said she claimed Dylan had assaulted her. It was all so abrupt and bizarre. There were no witnesses. It was all he said/she said, and frankly, it was always Sylvia who was inappropriate with Dylan, to the degree he was uncomfortable and hinted as much.”

  “I will never believe Dylan would make a pass at—let alone assault—his boss.”

  “For what it’s worth—and from what I saw—I agree. But anyway, according to Trevor, Dylan had been flown home and put on unpaid leave while Pollux investigated. Dylan and Sylvia left on the helicopter. Together. But that seemed weird too. I mean, if someone had assaulted me, I wouldn’t be eager to spend time on a helicopter with them. I was told Sylvia caught a military flight back to Whidbey, while Dylan flew home commercial.”

  Dean startled at that. “I was told Dylan was on a military flight—and the navy refused to give me the flight manifest, which is one of the reasons I believed Dylan never left Chiksook. There is no record of him leaving, as far as I can tell.”

  Fiona’s brow furrowed. “The helicopter charter would have records of how many were flown to Adak, even if they didn’t provide names.”

  “They refused to answer either way. Military contract, operational security. They gave me the full runaround.”

  “So no one has seen Dylan in five weeks?”

  “No one. You would be one of the last people to see him, if you saw him that morning.”

  “I did. We had breakfast together and made plans to meet up.”

  “Was Trevor there?”

  She frowned but finally said, “No. I don’t think so. Christina wasn’t there either. She tended to sleep in and eat on the drive.” She gave a wry smile. “Gracious, was it just this morning that I did the exact same thing?”