Bear Claw Conspiracy

by Jessica Andersen

  “You mean ‘when.’ Because if you’re not at the top of the list, your bosses in Denver are a bunch of idiots.”

  “Okay, ‘when’ I get on a team, my teammates are going to be depending on me to react appropriately, no matter what’s going on around me. And although there’s lots more sitting-and-waiting-and-planning than you’d think, there will also be times that I’m going to need to prioritize the job over my own safety. I’m not stupid and I’m not suicidal…but I can’t be as cautious as the people who care about me want me to be.”

  People like Alyssa and her other analyst friends, who didn’t get why she needed to escape from pure after-the-fact labwork. And like her mother and sisters, who still sent her job listings from their universities, somehow thinking that teaching and doing were the same thing.

  “Are you sure the program is going to be right for you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, ‘why?’” Gigi would have rolled her eyes, but she didn’t want to minimize Alyssa’s concerns—she just wanted to get at something. Choosing her words carefully, she said, “I want to get into the program because the members of the hazardous response teams are the ultimate cops, and their work is the ultimate adrenaline rush.” Which wasn’t far off from the answer she had given the selection committee during her interview. More, it was the truth. Her parents had given her every opportunity to excel, and she intended to do exactly that. Maybe not the way they had intended, but still.

  “And you’re happiest when you’re the ultimate?”

  “It’s not about being happy or unhappy, it’s about establishing myself. Once I’ve done that, then I can think about the other stuff in life—a husband, family, that sort of thing.” But that rang false, and honesty forced her to add, “Not that I’m likely to do the family thing if I’m with HRT. Not many guys can deal with having a wife who’s right out on the front lines.”

  “Especially one who’d jump back into a burning building because she forgot her jacket.” But Alyssa paused, then shook her head. “I think you’d be surprised. More guys than you might imagine are okay with stuff like that. Or at least some of them can get themselves square with it if that’s what it takes to make things work.” She sent a speculative look. “Tucker said Matt was pissed about you going back in there.”

  “I can’t totally blame him. He was the one who had to carry me out.”

  Whether thanks to hormones or a shared desire not to turn this into a friendship-leveling fight, Alyssa let herself be diverted. Unfortunately, she veered in a direction Gigi had been hoping to avoid. “He carried you?”

  Gigi flushed and focused on the feather, dropping it into the bottom half of a plastic Petri dish and slipping it into position beneath the bright field of a light microscope. “He was probably just making sure I didn’t double back again.”

  But Alyssa wasn’t buying it. “Tucker said there were vibes. What’s going on with you two?”

  “Me and Tucker? Nothing, I swear.”

  “Ha ha. Very funny. Spill.”

  “There’s nothing to spill.” At least nothing she was ready to talk about. “Blackthorn is rude, temperamental, arrogant, cynical and…” She trailed off because that wasn’t fair. He was all of those things, yes, but he was also tough, capable and fiercely committed to his job and the people who worked for him.

  “And?”

  “And I’m not interested.” Gigi made a few notes, switched the scope from 100x to 400x and looked again. No big foam finger yet.

  “There’s a difference between ‘not interested’ and ‘don’t want to be interested.’”

  “Fine. I don’t want to be interested. Aside from the know-it-all attitude, the guy’s got some pretty serious layers, and I’m not into layers. I prefer men where what you see is what you get.”

  Alyssa made a “no kidding” face, but then sobered. “I could tell you about a couple of those layers if you want.”

  She hesitated, but shook her head. “No. Don’t.” She had her path charted, her goals set. A pleasant detour was one thing. A cross-country trip on dirt roads without a map or GPS was another. The first one was fun. The second could go really wrong.

  Increasing the magnification another notch, she got up close and personal with some little alien-type creatures that were crawling on the feather. Ew.

  Alyssa pressed further. “Look, Tucker has known Matt a long time, and says he’s never seen him act the way he was acting last night over you. And maybe I haven’t known you all that long, but I’ve never seen you do the verbal duck-and-weave like this before. That tells me there’s something there…or could be.”

  “No.” Gigi shook her head. “I’m sorry, but no. The timing is…well, it’s wrong. That’s all.”

  “You’re the one who pointed out that moving back to Denver wasn’t the same as taking a trip to Mars.”

  “It’s not the logistics, it’s…” Everything. She made another note, caught herself looking at the shiny name tag again. “You know how I’ve told you about how my family lives life full blast? Well, the same thing goes in the relationship department. It’s all or nothing. Consuming. The emotions…there’s no room left for anything else except the emotions. And when it crashes, the debris field goes on for miles.” She couldn’t risk something like that. Not when she was so close to nailing a slot in the accelerated program.

  Alyssa narrowed her eyes. “Who was he?”

  “What are you, an analyst or something?” But Gigi lifted a shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.” She could barely picture him now, in fact. All she knew was that for one glorious, tumultuous summer during college, he had been her whole universe. And when he left, she had crashed hard, nearly washing out of her senior year in the process. She had graduated, but had been the only one of her four sisters to miss getting summa cum laude honors. “What matters is that I let everything else around me take a backseat to a guy, and I can’t afford to do that right now.”

  Maybe not ever. Miserable wasn’t a good color on her.

  “I think first love is supposed to be awful like that,” Alyssa pointed out. “You’re all grown up now. It’ll feel different.”

  “Yeah. It’s worse. After Matt kissed me—” She broke off.

  “Hel-lo. He kissed you?” Alyssa’s feet thumped to the floor. “Was this before or after he carried you out of a burning building?”

  Gigi pressed a gloved hand to her lab-coat-covered stomach in a gesture that did zilch to settle the jitters. “After. I dreamed about him last night.”

  What was it about him? He wasn’t anything like the men she usually gravitated toward. Opposites might attract, her grandmother liked to say, but they don’t stick for the long haul. Was this some sort of belated teenaged rebellion on the part of her subconscious? Had her hormones latched on to him because, like her job choices, he went against the grain? She didn’t have a clue.

  All she knew was that even though he had done his Ranger Surly routine last night, the thought of him still sent hot and cold shivers racing through her body. And that, more than anything, warned her that there wasn’t any sort of compromise to be had. She couldn’t get involved with him partway, couldn’t have the sort of “just having fun” interlude that had once been as natural to her as breathing.

  “I can’t go there,” she said, more to herself than to Alyssa. “I’m on the verge of my big break. I need to concentrate on that. Besides, even if I were inclined to get involved with someone right now—which I’m not—I need someone who respects my career choices. Which he doesn’t. He made that perfectly clear last night.”

  “About that—” Alyssa began, but the ring of the lab’s landline interrupted her. She checked the display, and her expression softened as she answered, “Hello, McDermott, Homicide. What’s the word?” She listened for a second before her expression shifted. “Really? Wow. Okay. Come on down.”

  Gigi went on alert. “What’s going on?”

 
; “The P.D. is forming a new task force, and I’ve been officially asked to release you to them for the time being. You and your new partner will both be deputized for the duration.”

  The words banged around in Gigi’s head for a moment, refusing to compute. She was thrilled about being tapped for the task force, but… “What do you mean, deputized? And what new partner? I ride with Jack.”

  “Not anymore you don’t,” an all-too-familiar voice said from the doorway behind her.

  She froze. Oh, no. Tucker hadn’t. He wouldn’t.

  Would he?

  The look Alyssa sent her—part sympathy, part dare—said that he would, and he had.

  Gigi’s body washed hot, then cold, then back to hot again. She turned slowly, not ready to face Blackthorn, especially not now, when her usual defenses were gone, stripped away by girl talk.

  But there he was, and she was going to have to deal with him. And with the way her body lit up at the sight of him filling the doorway. His presence seemed larger somehow down here in the rapidly shrinking confines of the basement.

  Heat speared through her, tempting and tantalizing, and making her think of hot sheets and waking with his taste on her lips.

  Maybe her awareness was so thoroughly heightened because she knew him now, had kissed him, been kissed by him. Or maybe it was the jeans and short-sleeved white button-down he wore in place of his tan-and-green uniform, making him look different, somehow less aloof.

  But then he shifted away from the doorframe, and her eyes zeroed in on his worn leather belt. Or, rather, on the badge and holster that rode together on his left hip.

  Deputized, Alyssa had said, which accounted for the badge, with its familiar Bear Claw P.D. insignia. But that didn’t explain why the holster bore LAPD markings…or why, when he saw her staring, his expression went brittle and he looked away.

  Gigi’s instincts fired in all directions, telling her something big was going on, but not what, or how she was supposed to handle it.

  In the end, she said, stupidly, “But you’re a ranger.”

  He looked back at her, one corner of his sculpted mouth kicking up with zero amusement. “I am now. Before that, I had a decade on the job. Now I guess I’m doing an encore, thanks to budget cuts and the fact that Tucker knew I was going to be working this case with or without sanction.” But his expression said that was only half of the story.

  She had a feeling she knew the rest. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Nobody said you did. And speaking of babies…” He looked past her to Alyssa and mock-glared. “I thought you were supposed to be taking it easy.”

  Hello, subject change. Gigi didn’t know what to make of that, what to make of any of it. But she couldn’t take her eyes off his weapon, which was an older Sig Sauer, a warhorse of an automatic.

  “My darling wife is supposed to be on her way home,” Tucker said, coming up behind Blackthorn to shoot Alyssa a stern look.

  “I’m sitting,” she said primly, but with a “don’t push me” look in her eyes. “So catch me up. Where do we stand on the Jerry Osage connection?”

  Gigi only half listened as Tucker summarized what his contacts had come up with so far, which was that yes, Jerry’s murder had been the catalyst for Tanya packing up her skis and becoming a ranger, but no, there didn’t seem to be any connection between the two cases. “Nobody’s taking any bets, though,” he said, “which is why we’re mobilizing a joint task force with the park service, including our newest deputies.” He raised an eyebrow in Gigi’s direction. “You on board? Ready to get deputized so you and your partner can head out?”

  Deputized. Partner. This wasn’t happening.

  Was it?

  Her better sense screamed for her to take a second to think it through, turn it down. There was no way in hell she and Blackthorn would survive being partnered up. He was going to try to rein her in, marginalize her, and she was going to be tempted to be twice as reckless as usual just to prove she could.

  But she nodded to Tucker. “Lay it on me.”

  Because, really, there was no way she could turn down the opportunity. It meant she would be working the case on an official basis while shadowing a ten-year veteran of the LAPD. It was going to look great on her résumé. As for the rest of it…well, she would deal. She was a Lynd, she could handle anything.

  Besides, maybe she would get lucky. Maybe he’d be such a jerk that her blossoming crush would wither and die.

  “Here. Catch.” Tucker tossed her a badge like the one Blackthorn wore on his belt: a Bear Claw P.D. shield with the serial number blank.

  She snagged it on the fly, and took a deep breath to settle the sudden churn of excitement in her belly as Tucker led her through an abbreviated swearing-in and ran through what she could and couldn’t do out in the field. “As for the rest of it,” he finished, “just ask Captain Blackthorn here, former leader of SWAT Team Four out of East L.A.” Gigi’s heart thudda-thudded and the bottom dropped out of her stomach, as though she had suddenly jumped onto an elevator headed straight up into the stratosphere. She stared at Blackthorn as a whole lot of clues suddenly lined up.

  Blackthorn was SWAT, or had been. Not only that, he had been a team leader. The best of the best.

  His face darkened. “Seriously, McDermott, don’t call me that. And if you value your face, you won’t get anyone else doing it, either.” He glanced over at Gigi, though she couldn’t read much in his expression.

  She sucked in a shaky breath. “Blackthorn, I—”

  “Call me Matt already,” he interrupted. “Not Blackthorn. Not ranger. And not captain anything. Just Matt. Got it?”

  She nodded, but wasn’t capable of coherent speech as her brain finally assembled the four critical new facts and entered them into evidence:

  Fact one: Blackthorn—or, rather, Matt—was a former über-cop.

  Fact two: he outranked her. Even if she aced the accelerated program, it would be years before she could shoot for captain. And although logic said his old rank shouldn’t matter here and now, it did.

  Fact three: he looked incredible in street clothes, and he wore his gun and badge like they were a part of him that had been missing.

  Fact four: she was in serious trouble. Because if there was one thing a Lynd woman liked better than being the best at what she did, it was meeting a man who was even better.

  Chapter Seven

  Within about a minute of walking into the lab, Matt had decided that if Gigi at full throttle had put a serious scare in him, she was even more terrifying when shocked into silence. Worse, she was staring at him like he’d just grown a second head…or thrown a cape over his shoulders and whipped off his shirt again, this time to reveal superhero spandex.

  Ah, crap. He hadn’t seen this one coming. Maybe he should have, but he was seriously rusty on the man-woman stuff. And Gigi was…well, she wasn’t like anyone else he’d ever met. Or kissed.

  And, yeah, the kiss was going to be a problem; it had been since the moment he’d moved in, his body overriding his usual survival instincts. He didn’t know how much further it would have gone if Tucker hadn’t shown up, but the simple kiss had made him all too aware of how damn long it had been for him. She was hot—if unconventional—and he was horny, and he had decided that was a bad combination even before Tucker called to float the idea of them working together.

  His first response had been a flat-out “No way in hell!” But Tucker had promised him that Gigi would be gone in thirteen days. The word from her home base was that they would need her one way or the other: either she would be heading for the academy or she would be covering for someone who was.

  That was why sometime during the long hours Matt had spent staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, far too aware of Bert tossing and turning on the couch in the main room of his quarters, he had talked himself into going along with Tucker’s plan. He had told himself that being deputized would get him smack in the loop, and it would mean he’d be stepping on fewer toes.


  Really, though, there was only one real reason he was doing it: to keep Gigi from getting herself killed.

  He had sworn off trying to fix people’s lives, it was true. But given all the stuff that had gone down in the past twenty-four hours, and the fact that he knew damn well that she was going to keep herself square in the middle of the case, he hadn’t been able to walk away. Not from her. Not from Tanya. And not from whatever was going on in his sector.

  He could handle himself around Gigi for a couple of weeks. Or so he’d thought. But that was before he’d strapped the gun and badge back on, and things had gotten even weirder.

  The moment he’d felt those familiar weights, old feelings came flooding back: the responsibility and connectedness; the knowledge that the whole damn world was riding right over his shoulder, breathing down on him…and the low-grade acid churn that said no matter how good he was, how much he planned things out, plugged gaps and covered contingencies, the odds were that he’d lose someone.

  Worse, now Gigi was staring at him like she expected him to leap tall buildings and shoot laser beams from his eyes. Oh, she was trying to hide it, of course, but it was there.

  This was a bad idea. He should back out now, head up to the mountains where he belonged, and join one of the search parties.

  Or, better yet, go search on his own.

  But if he did that, she’d be riding along with Jack Williams, who thought she’d make a hell of a cop.

  At the thought, the churn got worse.

  “How is this going to work?” she asked him, a reasonable question that put him back in the too-familiar role of calling the shots. He didn’t kid himself, though. Soon enough the shock would wear off and the loose cannon would return.

  “Security here in the P.D. is going to be ramped up until we know one way or another about the terrorist connection.” That was a no-brainer, given that the building itself had been infiltrated once before. “But any time you want to be out in the field, you’ll hit me up and we’ll make arrangements to meet.”