I’d heard that sound before. It was the laugh I’d heard when we reunited a parent with their missing child. When the body releases all its fear and just slumps, defenseless, because it’s back with someone—
Someone it really cares about.
I swallowed and looked away. Then I started to get up.
He grabbed me. Our eyes locked. I was suddenly very aware that I was poised over him, straddling him, with my blouse gaping open. My cleavage was practically in front of his face.
I tried not to stare at that full, soft lower lip. I tried not to think about how it would feel if he just leaned down and kissed me right now.
“Slowly,” he warned. “Don’t move any further on the path.”
We rose together, his hands on my waist. Part of me was trying to work out what the hell he’d seen. Part of me was thinking about how good those hands felt.
We looked along the path, our breathing slowing to normal. “See it?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “That’s why they’re so evil.”
He picked up a stick and took a couple of small steps forward, back to where I’d been when he’d grabbed me. Then he crouched and used the stick to part the grass.
Metal. Little triangles pointing up at the sky, sharp and brutally strong. They were attached to a thick band of steel. He cleared away more of the grass. The teeth ran in a big oval, and in the center was a bar and a set of powerful springs.
A bear trap. I’d only ever seen one in old movies.
I’d been about to put my foot right in it.
It took me a few seconds before I could speak. “People use those? They just leave them….” I trailed off.
“It’s on an animal trail. Designed to catch the bear when it comes down to the stream to drink.” He stood, turned the stick vertically and then brought the end of it down onto the sprung bar, just as my foot would have done.
The trap moved so fast, I couldn’t see it. The sound was like nothing I’d ever heard, a dead sound, the steel so heavy and thick that it didn’t resonate. The teeth slammed into each other with a snap but then the sound just stopped. That would be the moment. That would be when the pain hit.
Boone slowly moved the stick aside. It was just a stump now, the lower piece on the path, the ends shattered into splinters. “It’s designed to break the leg,” he said bitterly. “So the bear can’t walk away, dragging the trap. It has to stay there until the hunter comes.”
I wanted to throw up. That would have been my leg. My bones shattered, my arteries cut. Lying there on the path with no hope of rescue. I would have died out here.
“Is it even legal?” I asked at last.
“Out here, not everybody cares.” He poked the trap. “Some of these traps are fifty years old, passed down within families.”
I looked around at the landscape. Just as I thought I had a handle on it, Alaska hit me again with how utterly different it was. And then I remembered that he hunted. “Do...do you use—”
He shook his head. “I catch rabbits. Deer. I do it quick. Don’t like them to suffer.” He picked up the trap, walked a few steps towards the creek and then hurled it. I heard it splash.
As he passed me on his way back, he caught my eye and his step faltered. All that effort he’d made to push me away and all the effort I’d made to convince him I was fine with it. And it had nearly gotten me killed.
He stood there and just stared at me. His eyes were almost angry but not angry at me. Angry at the world, that it had put me in front of him: something he couldn’t shut out and ignore. He put out his hand and slowly cupped my cheek and I melted into his warmth, pressing my face against his fingers. He looked down at me as if I was the most frustratingly irresistible thing in the world.
He gave a tiny nod of his head. An admission that things had changed. An admission that he felt it, too.
He lowered his hand but, instead of going on ahead, he fell into step beside me. We walked for a few minutes in silence, both of us feeling our way. At last he muttered, “What about you?”
“What about me...what?”
“I told you how I wound up out here. How’d you wind up in the FBI?”
I blinked. I hadn’t expected it to go there. Didn’t want it to go there. But I’d asked him enough questions. If I wanted him to open up, I couldn’t be a closed book myself.
I looked ahead along the path. We were coming out of the scrubland and back into forest. I focused on the trees. “My sister,” I said. “Marcy. I was eight and she was six. One day, she never came home from school. Didn’t get on the bus. Just...gone. We had an amber alert, the police, the whole nine yards.”
I felt him looking across at me. “And the FBI got her back?”
I focused very hard on the trees. “No,” I said. “They didn’t.”
It’s funny. I think of Marcy a lot at work. I think back to the memories and the anger burns white-hot. I use it to power me, when it’s four in the morning and I’m still digging through files for clues. I use it to blast through the layers of arrogance and bullshit, when I’m interrogating some guy who’s twice the size of me. I use it to forge armor of iron and steel for when the guys at work put me down because I’m a woman....even though wearing that armor can make it very cold.
But when I talked to Boone, the anger didn’t flare up. It hurt but I didn’t have to turn it into anything. I could feel the shape of it. I could feel what was inside it: the cold and emptiness.
“For the first few days, there was a lot of activity. Houses got searched. Posters went up. But after...I don’t know, a week? There was this creeping sense that...that was it. We’d got used to seeing the same cops, the same detectives...but gradually, they started to be pulled off for other assignments. They used to call every day with an update, then it became once every two days, then once a week.”
I kept walking towards the trees. My legs were starting to ache but moving kept me focused, kept me in the now and not back in that house, coming home from school every day to find my parents’ faces a little more gray, a little more resolved.
“The local police gave up,” I said. “The state police gave up. There were no leads. But I was just a kid. I didn’t understand things like leads and evidence. I just wanted answers. I knew she wasn’t coming back but I knew someone had taken her and I wanted them caught. I wanted justice. And I wanted to know what happened.” I shook my head. “It was like...it was like I’d got to the end of a book, my favorite book ever, and the last page had been torn out. And I knew it was going to be a sad ending but I had to know.”
Beside me, Boone changed course to walk a little nearer, his body towering over mine. I could feel him looking down at me with that look I’d seen on the plane, that fierce, protective gleam in his eyes, like he’d happily kill everyone who’d ever hurt me. I didn’t dare look at him. Already, the trees ahead were growing blurry.
“Six months after it happened, the posters were still all over the neighborhood. Because no one wanted to take them down, you know? But they were frayed at the edges and the ink had run. You could barely even tell it was her anymore. Everyone had given up hope.”
I felt my expression change. My lips pressed together and then formed a grim, sorrowful smile. “But there was this one guy,” I said. “FBI. Special Agent McKillen. He didn’t give up. He was there right from the start and he just kept going and going, pulling at these tiny threads no one else could see. When they pulled him off it, he kept working the case in his own time. And finally, finally, he put it all together.”
“He kicked down the door of a house in Boston and arrested a guy, and when they took the house apart, they found the bones of three little girls, all from different cities. And one of them was Marcy.” My chest ached—it didn’t normally hit me like this, but sharing it with Boone was different. It hurt, but for the first time in years I felt the release, too, just like when they’d found her.
I blinked and the trees ahead went swimmy
and then sharp again. “That’s why I joined the FBI,” I said. “Because people shouldn’t get away with things like that. We need to bring them down, even if it takes forever. There’s got to be justice. Otherwise, what’s any of it worth?”
For the first time, I dared to look at him. His face was stony. “You think that’s bullshit, don’t you?”
“Justice wasn’t so good to me.”
“That was the system,” I told him. “Not justice.”
We plunged into the forest. This time, we made sure to walk loudly, crashing through the undergrowth, in case there were any bears around.
I tried to keep my voice casual, keep it light. “What we talked about before,” I said, “the charges against you—”
“No.”
I glanced sideways at him. “I could help you,” I said. “We could appeal. Force Hopkins to take the stand, get all sorts of character witnesses for you—”
“No.”
I stepped in front of him, so he had to stop. “It’s not right, Mason!” I pointed behind us. “You’ve got an entire life waiting for you, back in civilization! You don’t have to be out here!”
“And what if you’re wrong?” he growled, scowling down at me. “What if you bring me in and they crush the appeal? Or the appeal happens and we lose? They put me back in a box and—”
He took a long, shuddering breath as if trying to bring himself under control. “I’ve made my peace with it.”
“Bullshit,” I said viciously. “It’s eating you up inside. Hopkins is living free and you’re living like this.”
“At least I’m alive!” he snapped. He stared at me for a few seconds. “Didn’t you wonder why nobody else spoke up for me? Why all the SEALs in my unit let me get court martialled? They’re all dead, Kate. The unit got wiped out while I was—” He went silent for a moment. “While I was MIA.” He shook his head at me. “Character witnesses? There are no character witnesses. No one’s going to believe me.”
And he pushed past me and stalked on through the forest.
27
Boone
Goddamn it!
I knew she was right. Sure, there were no character witnesses and sure, an appeal was a long shot, but of course it was worth the gamble. Of course it was worth risking twenty years in jail when the alternative was my whole life spent in exile.
Unless you were me.
Unless there was something inside you just waiting for the cuffs to go on and the door to close so it could rush up and own your mind. That was the real reason I couldn’t turn myself in. Even if the appeal worked, I’d still have to do time in a cell until it happened. She didn’t understand what that would be like. And she couldn’t. Even if I could find some way to explain it to her, just telling her would put me back there, would open up the door in my mind that I kept tight shut.
And there was another reason, too. I didn’t want her to see me like that. I didn’t want her to think of me that way. I didn’t want her to know I was broken. And hell, now it was making me paranoid: out in the scrubland, again I’d sworn I could feel someone watching us.
I listened to her behind me, to those soft, feminine footsteps. I didn’t dare turn around and look at her because the feelings were getting too strong. Damn it, when I’d seen her about to step in the trap I’d felt fear like I’d never known, worse than if it had been my leg. When she’d been lying on top of me, those soft breasts spilling out of her ruined blouse, her thighs straddling mine…. I closed my eyes for a second, remembering the feel of her waist in my hands.
My footsteps slowed.
No.
My hands came up, fingers flexing.
No.
There was a tree right next to me. I was going to turn around, grab hold of her waist again and ram her up against it. I didn’t care anymore. Those lips were mine. That blouse was coming off. I’m going to kiss every inch of her body—
No!
I stopped. My hands tightened into fists.
“Mason?” Her voice like silk. She was incredible. Brave. Smart. I felt it all tugging at me: everything I’d given up when I fled out here: not just sex but being with someone.
I’d thought I was okay. I’d told myself I didn’t need any company but my own. I’d been wrong, so wrong.
She was right behind me, now. Her voice grew even softer. “Mason?”
I couldn’t go to New York. I couldn’t make a life even in a small town. Everything was computerized, now. The first time I visited a hospital, the first time I rented a car or tried to open a bank account, some computer screen would turn red and the cops or the military police would descend on me in minutes. The only place I had a shot was right here in Alaska.
And this was no place for someone like Kate.
Hell, it was even worse than before. After four years, I figured I’d dropped off the radar. But now the military knew exactly where I was. And when the authorities found the crash site and discovered I didn’t die in the crash, the military would come looking. I’d have to hunker down harder than ever. I might not be able to risk going to a town for six months or more. Maybe I could manage that, but Kate?
“Mason?” she asked. “What is it?”
It didn’t matter how much I wanted her. It didn’t matter how much I needed her. If I wanted to do the best thing for her, I had to get her to safety...and then let her go. And the closer I let her get, the more painful that moment would be when it happened.
“Nothing,” I grunted. “Just getting my bearings.”
She stepped in front of me, making me look at her. “You figure it out?”
I nodded, unable to speak. And continued on.
We hiked through the forest for the rest of the day. I managed to find some more berries to eat. Then, around noon, I stabbed four small fish as they swam past my feet in a creek and cooked them on a flat stone over a fire. It wasn’t much but it would keep us alive until I could get us to the cabin.
The sun was setting when we neared the river. But even before I could see it, I knew something was wrong. The sound was too loud, too wild. We broke through the final few trees and I cursed.
The river ran through a gully, here, the water twenty feet below us. And instead of being a calm flow it was a raging, white-topped beast. As I watched, a tree branch washed past, flashing by us in seconds.
“We have to cross that?!” asked Kate.
“It’s not normally this fast and deep. I always cross in the morning—you can wade across, then. It gets worse in the afternoon: the sun melts the snow during the day.” I looked across the river. “Dammit. My cabin’s only a few miles from here.”
“So what do we do?” She looked down into the gully. There were no rocks, like at the stream. “Do we swim?”
“God, no. It’s mainly melt water. Ice cold. Swimming, we wouldn’t make it halfway across even without the current. And it’s too strong: it’d smack us into a rock.” I looked downstream. “Come on. Let’s take a look further down.”
But things were no better half a mile downstream. If anything, the river was deeper and fiercer.
Then I found the log.
A tree had toppled, right at the edge of the gully. The trunk made a bridge across. Kate looked at the tree, looked down at the water and went green. “You’re not serious?”
I weighed it up in my mind. The trunk was thick and, when I thumped it with my boot, it seemed sturdy. It wasn’t going to move. If I’d been on my own, I would have climbed across it without a second thought. But I knew Kate hated heights.
On the other hand, I didn’t want her to have to spend another night in the open. It would be dark soon and we’d left it too late to find a good spot to camp. What’s more, I knew where I was: my cabin was less than two miles away. If we got across the river, we could spend the night in comfort. And however irrational it was, however much I knew it must just be paranoia, I still kept feeling like there was someone watching us. All my instincts were screaming at me to get my woman somewhere safe and warm.
Idiot.
I turned to Kate. “It’s your call,” I told her. “We can climb across and get to the cabin tonight or we can camp one more night and wade across tomorrow when the river’s down.”
She took a long look at the log. Then she looked around at the darkening forest. The temperature was dropping: it was already colder than the previous night. She pulled her borrowed jacket tighter around her.
“Let’s climb across.”
28
Kate
“I’ll go first,” said Boone. “To make sure it’s solid.”
“You’re not sure it’s solid?!” I started to second-guess my decision.
“It feels solid. But just in case it’s rotten in the center. If it takes my weight, it’ll take yours.”
He straddled the log like a horse, then began to shuffle out over the water. I made the mistake of looking down into the gully and my stomach twisted. The light was fading fast. The water was just roaring, glossy blackness, only visible when it crashed against rocks and turned to white foam.
Boone reached the center: God, he was so far away! He bounced up and down a few times and I saw the log flex just a little. I drew in a horrified breath.
“Seems okay,” he said. “I’m going to keep going.”
I dug my nails into my palms as he shuffled further and further away. He’d almost disappeared into the darkness when he swung his leg over and climbed off. Safe.
“Piece of cake!” he yelled.
I looked down at the river. “Don’t do that!”
“Do what?”
“Be all reassuring!” As I stepped towards the log, I felt sick. I’d changed my mind. It was higher and darker and the river was louder than I’d thought. We should have camped.
“Kate?” he called. “I can come back. If you’ve changed your mind, it’s okay.”
I opened my mouth. But as soon as I did, I felt every guy who’d ever patronized me waiting with baited breath.
I closed my mouth again. And climbed onto the log.
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