by Cassie Miles
He grasped her wrist and bent her elbow. The bore of the gun pointed toward the sky. His body pressed against hers. She could feel his hard strength and the heat that emanated from him. This was her first human contact in weeks, and the sensation startled her. She’d forgotten what it was like to be touched.
His nearness took her breath away. His fingers locked firmly around her forearm, and his gaze imprisoned hers.
“I could disarm you.” He wasn’t bragging, merely stating a fact.
Her lips pressed tightly together. There was no point in objecting. Liam was capable of physically overpowering her.
“However…” His voice was deep and resonant and— God help her!—sexy. “I’m not interested in taking your gun away.”
Up close, his hazel eyes were flecked with gold and deep, forest green. He stared with an unblinking intensity that verified her earlier impression: this was a stubborn man. She asked, “What do you want from me?”
“The truth,” he said. “You could have returned to civilization if you wanted. You seem to be healthy enough to hike out. But you stayed here, and I want to know why.”
Rain swallowed hard. “I don’t have a simple explanation.”
“We’ve got time to talk,” he said. “Without having you wave a gun in my face.”
“Fair enough.”
When he stepped back and released her, the gun lowered to her side. The fact that he had released her, rather than press his advantage, counted for a great deal. Though still wary, she had to believe that he meant her no harm.
“Come with me.” Rain circled around the boulders and led him into her little camp. He was the first person to see her wilderness home.
“Very nice,” he said.
She was proud of what she’d done here. The gravelled area in front of her cave was neatly groomed. This was her dining room and kitchen. She’d cleared away the foliage and built her fire pit against the rocks. Using stones and a sturdy pine branch with the bark whittled away, she’d made a spit across the fire. Though she hadn’t managed to catch any fresh meat to cook on her spit, she used the branch to hang her only cooking pot above the flames. The water in the pot churned at a slow, erratic boil.
She offered, “Would you like some tea?”
“Sure.”
Luckily, she had two cups—one of which she used for brushing her teeth by the creek. She poured water into the toothbrush cup to rinse it out.
“What’s that?” he asked. “The thing you’re using to hold your water?”
“It’s a sock.”
“I can see that. Why isn’t the water draining through it?”
“Because it’s lined with a condom.”
“Ah.” A sick expression pulled down the corners of his mouth. “And where did you find condoms?”
“In my backpack.” She pointed to three other condom-socks hanging from tree branches. “Handy little things. They hold about a quart of water each. Does that seem excessive to you?”
“Not if they’re elephant condoms.”
She dipped boiling water from the pot into each cup and added her own special mixture of sage, sorrel bark and mint. “We let it steep. Then, it’s tea.”
He asked, “Is this all the food you’ve had to eat?”
“I had seven MREs. Those lasted for about two weeks.”
“Meals, Ready-to-Eat. Like in the Army.” Liam leaned against a boulder beside the fire. “So you packed for a week’s worth of camping.”
“I had all the basics.”
Whether or not she’d packed these items herself was an unanswered question. Surreptitiously, she glanced toward the expedition-sized backpack that leaned against the inner wall of her cave. In addition to the camping gear, the bottom of the backpack had been lined with neatly wrapped bundles of hundred-dollar bills. Almost fifty thousand in cash. There had also been a pouch containing jewelry—diamonds and gold.
Rain had tried and tried to come up with reasonable explanations for why she might be carrying money and gems on a camping trip. Unfortunately, she kept coming back to the same conclusion: this loot was stolen. Which made her a thief. If she added that fact to the revelation that she was also possibly a murderer…
“What else was in your pack?” he asked.
No way would she tell him about the treasure. “A hunting knife. Fishing kit. Sleeping bag. That cooking pot. And first aid supplies, thank goodness.”
“Were you injured?”
She rolled up the tattered sleeve of her silk blouse and the T-shirt she wore on top of it. A wide, red scar crossed the middle of her upper arm. “This was bad at first, but I used antiseptic from the first aid kit. And I made a poultice from valerian leaves and roots to draw out the infection. I’m not sure if that was the right herb, but it seemed to help.”
“Was that your only wound?”
She reached up and rubbed her hand through her spiky hair. “I had a bump on my head. No big deal.”
Liam knew that head injuries could be tricky. If she’d had a concussion, it might explain her strange behavior. “You should see a doctor.”
“I’m already healed,” she said blithely. “No infections.”
“Kate, you have to go back,” he said gently. “Sooner or later, you need to let your family know you’re all right. Your mother’s worried.”
“When you leave, you can tell her that I’m okay.”
“She wants you to come home. She’s the one who convinced CCC to continue the search.”
An expression of concern crossed her face, and her gaze turned inward, as though she were reviewing her options. Then, she shook her head. “No,” she said simply. “This is my home. I’m safe here.”
“Safe from what?” he asked. “Why do you think you’re in danger?”
“I just know.”
She handed him a cup of fragrant mint tea and returned to the fire. She wasn’t insane. Her little hideout was orderly and efficient. Her ability to survive required an intelligent application of concentration and knowledge.
But she had completely disowned her prior existence; she refused to be Kate Carradine. “Is somebody after you? Who is it?”
She whipped around to face him. Her fists planted on her hips. Her voice was a challenge. “I can’t remember.”
That didn’t make a whole lot of sense. If she’d been scared enough to stay in hiding for nearly a month, she must know why. “Are you saying that you can’t remember their names?”
She met his gaze. “I can’t remember anything. When I first came here, my memory was completely gone. The slate was wiped clean.”
Son of a bitch! She had amnesia.
Chapter Three
As Liam studied the defiant woman who stood before him, he realized that handling Kate Carradine would require a delicate touch. He couldn’t fling her over his shoulder and haul her out of the forest. He needed to overcome her resistance and convince her to cooperate. Not an easy proposition.
When he’d worked for the Denver district attorney, he’d honed his skills in interrogation, and he was pretty damn good at knowing when someone was telling the truth. But how could he deal with amnesia? He wasn’t a psychologist. “You don’t remember anything?”
“Nothing about the immediate past.” She squared her thin shoulders and gave a diffident shrug. “It’s not really important.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
“If I can’t remember, what difference does it make?”
“Let’s start with the obvious fact that Wayne Silverman is still missing. Your memory might be able to explain what happened to him.”
“I can’t tell you.” Her gaze flickered, but she didn’t look away. “I’m sorry that my disappearance triggered a search-and-rescue effort. And I’m sorry that I caused people to worry. But I didn’t have a choice. I’m in danger.”
“From a person or persons unknown.”
“That’s right,” she said.
He sensed that her amnesia masked darker, more sinister events. So
mething traumatic had happened to her—something too terrible to remember.
If he hoped to uncover the truth, he needed to keep her talking. “Fill me in on what you do remember. You came here twenty-eight days ago. Wounded.”
“I wasn’t exactly here,” she said. “It took me a while to find this perfect little cave.”
“But you don’t remember where you came from.”
“I was on the run.”
“But you didn’t plan to go into hiding,” he said. “You only had enough food for a week.”
“That’s when the MREs ran out,” she said.
“So you lived off the land,” he said. “How did you know which plants were edible?”
“It’s not difficult. There are obvious ones to stay away from. Vetch. Locoweed. And the state flower, the columbine.” As she talked, she returned to her food-preparation tasks, lifting a cover of leaves from an expertly filleted trout and placing the fish in the boiling water to poach. “There are ways to see if a plant is poisonous.”
“Like what?”
“Cut off a little piece and put it between your teeth and your gums. If it starts to sting or cause some other reaction, spit it out.”
Her story intrigued him. He was familiar with mountain-survival techniques but had never known anybody who actually lived off the land. “How did you learn all this?”
“My dad,” she said. “He used to take me backpacking and we’d forage for dinner.”
“Makes sense. Your father was the head of RMS, Rocky Mountain Suppliers.” He hadn’t taken that piece of her background into account. “He specialized in outdoor equipment.”
“I remember.” The minute she mentioned her father, her attitude brightened. “When we went camping, we were always testing some kind of gear. Dad used to say he was the luckiest man in the world because camping was a business trip for him. He loved the mountains.”
“Eric Carradine,” Liam said. “And you’re his daughter, Kate.”
“Rain,” she said. “Call me Rain.”
“Okay. It’s Rain.” He decided to humor her. So what if she wanted to call herself Rain? Or Moon? Or Ruby-Throated Hummingbird? After all these days in the wild and a dose of amnesia, some delusional thinking was to be expected.
Besides, her Rain persona appealed to him. He respected and appreciated her gutsy stamina. In her identity as Kate Carradine, he expected her to be a socialite, a pampered society woman who arranged flower bouquets rather than eating them for dinner.
“There’s plenty of food out here,” she said. “Look at all these trees. Inside the new branches is a soft, woody part that’s edible. If you roast pinecones in the fire, then break them open, these little nuts fall out.”
“Sounds like a lot of effort.”
“Oh, it is,” she said. “I spend most of the daylight hours foraging. And I have to hike all over the place to do it because I don’t want to completely wipe out the ecosystem in front of my cave.”
“Because it’s bad for the environment?”
“And I didn’t want anybody to find me.” She poked at the fish in her cooking pot. “Why don’t you sit down and relax?”
Though he had the feeling that he was losing focus on his goal of getting her away from this place, Liam allowed himself to be seduced. He sat on a flat rock at the opposite side of the fire pit and watched as she efficiently arranged leaves and stems on a woven plate made from twigs.
“You made those plates,” he said.
“When I figured out how easy it was to weave young branches and reeds, I made a bunch of things. It gave me something to do at night, when I couldn’t forage.”
Given enough time out here, he suspected she might really create a home for herself. Her little space was swept clean, and she’d placed dried flowers among the rocks for decoration. He pointed to a tall woven vase just inside her cave. “What’s that?”
“My calendar.” She brought the woven vessel closer so he could see inside. “There’s one pebble for every day I’ve been here. I try to choose a rock that looks like the day.”
He reached inside and ran his fingers through the stones. “I see several black ones.”
“Dark days.” Hunkered down opposite him, she plucked out a caramel-colored stone. “This is today. It reminded me of a tiger, and that seemed appropriate because today I caught a fish. I was a huntress.”
“And you held me at bay,” he said.
“Yeah.” She gave a self-deprecating wink. “I’m really fearsome, huh?”
“I wouldn’t use that word to describe you.”
“No? What word would you use?”
“Resourceful,” he said. “Smart.”
She cocked her head to one side and grinned. “Keep going.”
When she wasn’t holding a gun on him, she had a vivid charm and enthusiasm. “Pretty.”
She rolled her eyes. “Now you’re making fun of me.”
“I’m not,” he said. “You look good to me.”
“Apparently,” she drawled, “you don’t get out much.”
But he wasn’t lying. He thought she had a great, expressive smile. And he liked the healthy tan color of her skin that contrasted with her cornflower-blue eyes. Even the weird hairdo worked for him. With the dark roots, and blond on top, she reminded him of some kind of exotic, tufted bird.
She passed him a plate with a miniscule shred of trout and weedy leaves. He took a taste. The flavor of the roughage was a cross between grazing and gnawing on a tree limb, but it’d be ungrateful not to eat the food she’d gone to such trouble to gather and prepare.
Rain attacked her plate with gusto. Though she wasn’t transported into ecstasy, like when she’d eaten the candy, she took regular bites and chewed thoroughly.
She glanced at his plate and raised an eyebrow. “Not hungry?”
“I eat slow.”
“If you don’t finish your greens, no dessert. That’s what my mother always used to say.”
The mention of Elizabeth Carradine-Rowe reminded Liam of his mission. He needed to get Kate out of here.
Glancing through the sheltering trees, he saw that dusk had begun to settle. Soon it would be too dark for him to attempt a takeoff in the Cub. “I can’t leave after dark,” he said. “I can’t see the hazards to the plane.”
“Tonight will be dark,” she agreed. “It’s a new moon tonight, only a skinny crescent.”
“Come with me. We can go now while there’s still enough light.”
“How many times do I have to say no?”
“I won’t leave without you.”
“Then we have a standoff,” she said. “You can’t force me to come with you. And, it seems that I can’t make you go.”
He set his plate aside and leaned back against the boulder, settling in. “Guess I’ll have to spend the night.”
For an instant, her eyes sparkled. He could tell that she was enjoying his company, no matter how resistant she pretended to be. “Don’t think—for one minute—that you’ll be sharing my sleeping bag.”
She stacked his plate on top of her own and went about her business, briskly informing him about the rules of the camp. No more wood on the fire. Food scraps must be carried far away and buried so they wouldn’t attract animals during the night. “And if you need to, um, relieve yourself, go a long way from camp. I don’t want the smell around here.”
“We don’t have to do this,” he said.
“I’m sure there are other ways, but I prefer—”
“Come back to Denver with me,” he said. “Tonight you could sleep in a bed. With a soft comforter. You could take a long, hot shower.”
“Not interested.”
The light was fading. He had only a few minutes to convince her. “What about your memory? A psychiatrist could get it back. Hypnosis or something.”
“It might be better if I don’t remember.” Her words held a disturbing ring of truth. “All I need to know, deep in my heart, is that I’m in danger. I’m the prey, and there are hu
nters coming after me. Can you trust me about this?”
“I trust you, Rain.”
Her face lit up. “You called me Rain.”
“The name suits you.”
He was drawn toward her by a compelling force. More than anything, he wanted to make her smile again and again. He wanted to hold her, to protect her from danger—be it real or imagined.
As she sat near him, the faint glow of sunset and the dying campfire illuminated the planes of her face. Her full lips parted as she breathed, softly and steadily. Gentle shadows outlined her high cheekbones and her sharp jawline.
Rain. He was struck by the realization that he liked this feral woman. He admired her gritty determination, no matter how misguided.
“Just for the sake of argument,” she said, “tell me what you know about Kate’s family.”
“The Carradines are a legend in Denver. Old money.”
She gave him her full attention. “So we’re rich.”
“Very.”
Liam tried to remember all that he could. In the early 1900s, the Carradines started with a general store. Kate’s grandfather turned it into a successful franchise of outdoor-sporting-goods outlets, Rocky Mountain Suppliers.
“And my father?”
“He took the business worldwide.”
From RMS, the Carradines built an empire with varied dealings in land development and housing, both in Denver and the mountain resorts. Though they sponsored charity events, RMS wasn’t known for their efforts to protect the environment.
“That can’t be right,” she said. “My dad was concerned about the environment. And so am I. In fact, I was working on a project. It was a wilderness camp for disadvantaged kids. My primary contact person was Rachel Robertson, a fantastic woman who runs a homeless shelter.”
“Like I said, RMS is involved in charities.”
“What else?”
Unfortunately, Liam had run out of things to tell her. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the photographs. “This is you. And Wayne.”
She stared for a full minute at the photo of herself, then she sighed. “You’re right. I am pretty. At least in this picture.”