Her lips curved and she sighed. “Oh, this is wonderful.”
Restless energy kicked through him like a jet on afterburners, making him want to… Hell, he didn’t know what he wanted to do except get moving. Maybe Tucker was right about his needing some time and space to get his head clear after all.
Jerking a thumb toward the main door, he said, “Come on in. I need to pick up some extra gear before we head out to the site.” A glance at the sky had him frowning. “If you even want to bother going up there today, that is. You’re really going to get only a few hours out at the site before we have to call it a night.”
Although there was a road between Fourteen and the Forgotten now, it was questionable at best, treacherous at worst, and there was no point in tackling it after dark.
“I’ll take what I can get,” she said firmly. “While you’re loading your stuff, I’ll change out of my airplane clothes and drop off some of my stuff if there’s a place for it.”
“There should be. It’ll be tight quarters with you, me, Matt and Gigi, but we’ll make it work.”
Once he let himself through the unlocked front door, though, the first thing he saw was a note lying on the butcher-block breakfast bar, with his name scrawled at the top. A quick scan told him that things weren’t going to be nearly as crowded as he had thought…and he really didn’t want to analyze why that information had his gut fisting on a low burn of heat.
Clearing his throat, he said, “Matt and Gigi are going to be out of town for the next few days. Looks like we’ll have the run of the place, along with a little extra elbow room.”
She avoided his eyes and shrugged. “Fine by me either way. I’m used to living in close quarters, and most of the time we’re here, I’ll be working on the data and samples I’ve collected. Don’t worry about entertaining me. The more I work, the faster you can get back to whatever you were doing before you got stuck babysitting me.”
“I’m not… Hmm.” He caught her faint grin, and almost wanted to laugh at himself, restlessness and all. “Hell. Go dump your stuff and we’ll get moving.”
She might be tiny, but she gave as good as she got.
Nodding, she strode across the lower level, which had the kitchen at one end, a good-size fireplace at the other, bracketing an open space filled with cushy couches and chairs strewn with colorful pillows and throws that were undoubtedly Gigi’s influence. She headed for the spiral staircase off in the far corner, but as she reached it, she turned back. “Sorry, I’m on autopilot. I’m in the guest room upstairs, right?”
“Yeah. I’ll be on the couch, keeping an eye on the perimeter.” The main station house had recently been rebuilt after the militia members torched it as a diversionary tactic after all, and with the other rangers stationed on the ski slopes for the winter, they were going to be alone up there.
It wouldn’t pay for him to let down his guard. On the contrary, it could be a huge mistake. And if, deep down inside, he knew damn well that his taking the couch also had more than a little to do with his having noticed that behind those glasses her brown eyes were lush and gorgeous, and framed by some of the longest lashes he’d ever seen, he was the only one who needed to have any inkling of it, or of the way his heart skidded a little at the thought that the two of them would be alone together tonight, on either end of a spiral staircase.
She looked at him for an extra moment, making him wonder what she saw, but then she nodded and headed upstairs.
He didn’t watch her go, instead turning to the pile of gear Matt had left for him, which included additional firepower and survival gear. He thought the water purifier was overkill—especially given that they were in the middle of a drought—but there was plenty of room in the SUV, so he figured he’d load it all on the “better safe than sorry” theory. And he had asked the ranger to hook him up with everything he thought they might need out at the Forgotten.
Ten minutes later, as he came back in for the third and last load, he saw Tori coming down the stairs. And he stopped dead, his brain vapor locking and his body going on red alert, and his only coherent thought one of Oh, hell.
He was in serious trouble.
She wasn’t wearing her windbreaker or glasses anymore, and those changes made way too much of a difference. Gone was the impression of an adolescent owl or a teenager wearing her boyfriend’s jacket. In its place was the sight of a woman who might not be built big, but she was built right. Her legs were long in proportion to her body, and her slim waist accentuated with a webbed utility belt fitted through the loops of cargo pants that hugged her hips and moved lovingly with her as she came toward him. Her T-shirt was tight across a pair of surprisingly full breasts and snugged in at her waist and across a flat stomach that showed just a hint of a feminine curve.
She was carrying a knapsack over one shoulder, and the combined effect made him think of coeds and college. Hesitating near the breakfast bar, she said, “What’s wrong?”
In other words, he was staring. And that thing he’d been thinking about there not being a problem with attraction? Yeah. That had just gone straight out the window. She might not be long, cool or blonde, but he was attracted all right.
Yanking his attention to the last of the gear he hadn’t yet put in the truck, he set his jaw. “Nothing. Everything’s just fine.” He would make damn sure of it, in fact. Grabbing the last of the stuff, he turned away. “Come on, let’s get moving.”
As far as he was concerned, the sooner she finished her studies and headed back wherever she had come from, the better, because right now he couldn’t afford the distraction. He had to protect her, look for clues on the militia and get back on the Death Stare case as quickly as possible. The victims might be nothing more than junkies to some, but as far as he was concerned, they were just as important as any other group of victims. Which meant that he didn’t have time for big brown eyes or surprising breasts, or the way his body tightened as he heard her come outside behind him.
And even if he did have time, he reminded himself as he stowed the last of his gear, he wouldn’t be spending it with another woman who was just passing through. Been there, done that, bought the tux.
BY THE TIME Jack parked the SUV in a small clump of scrubby, stunted trees that looked exactly like the last thousand such clumps they had passed since leaving Ranger Station Fourteen, Tori wasn’t sure which was worse: the way he was grimly ignoring her, or the fact that it bothered her far more than it should.
Throughout the drive, one part of her had been cataloging the passing scenery, tapping notes into her hand-held and generally getting a feel for the northernmost reaches of the state park and the damage done by the recent drought conditions. Another part of her, though, had been all too aware of Jack as he navigated the rugged one-lane track with deceptive ease and one hand on the wheel. Beneath that layer of calm, though, there was an electric tension that was transmitted in his every shift and breath, and in the few glances he sent her way.
She didn’t kid herself into thinking that he, too, was far too aware of the small space they were sharing. No, he was undoubtedly still seething over having to babysit a “tree doctor” instead of working other, more important—to him, at least—cases. But even that didn’t seem to be enough to make her hormones cool their jets, because as he climbed out of the SUV and turned back to retrieve a shotgun from a box in the backseat, she caught herself admiring the smooth grace of his big body, and the lethal economy of his practiced movements, which made her feel simultaneously safer and more exposed.
More, as she set about pulling the nonessentials from her knapsack, lightening the load for her first look around the site, she was acutely conscious of the way he slung the shotgun across his back with an easy, practiced move that brought a shiver of pure feminine appreciation.
Still, though, while he might be easy on the eyes and practically oozing outdoorsy pheromones, facts were facts: he was a cop; he was a local; and, justified or not, he was making it difficult for her to do her job. Th
ree strikes and you’re out.
She should do herself a favor and remember that.
Focus. She needed to focus, darn it. Forcing herself not to watch him as he walked an ever-widening spiral away from the vehicle, scanning the territory as he went, she pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. When she did, the world spun slowly, warning her that she was more tired and jet-lagged than she’d even realized. Which explained her overactive libido but warned her that she needed to pay attention to her surroundings, not her escort. The Colorado backcountry could be seriously unforgiving, as could a mishandled investigation.
The scuff of a footstep had her straightening and turning to face him, hoping that he couldn’t see anything in her face—not the fatigue, not the knowledge that she wasn’t at her best and certainly not the buzz that entered her bloodstream as he drew close, eyes still scanning their surroundings, then going to the sky as he said, “You’ll have about three hours before we need to turn back, and even at that time we’re going to be getting in later than I like.”
His voice sounded strange to her after so much quiet between them. He didn’t offer an explanation or apology, but then again, he didn’t owe her either of those things. Regardless of what her hormones thought, they were nothing more than temporary business acquaintances. And if he could keep it professional despite not wanting to be there, she could do the same despite wanting… Well, better not go there.
Dredging up a professional smile and keeping a tight rein on both her thought process and her tendency to blurt the first thing that came to mind, especially when she felt a little out of her depth, she nodded. “Like I said before, I’ll take what I can get. Are we at the edge of the infected area?” The trees around them appeared normal, with none of the ghostly white filaments she’d seen in the photographs that had been sent to her by the prior Park Service investigator.
“Yeah. The white stuff starts about fifty feet from here and stretches all the way to the river, which is a few miles away. We can walk it or drive it, your call.”
She didn’t make the mistake of thinking the “your call” would extend one iota beyond when it suited him, but had to give him credit for trying. “It’ll take me a couple of hours to take preliminary samples and measurements, so parking here and hiking works for me. Then tomorrow I’d like to start from the river and spiral in from there.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
It didn’t take her long to select the gear she wanted to carry with her and load it into her knapsack, then jettison a few of the less crucial pieces so she wouldn’t kill herself trying to carry it. Jack stood nearby the whole time, keeping watch. With the shotgun slung across his back and a 9 mm in a hip holster, and his eyes scanning the trees with practiced intensity, he didn’t look like any cop she’d dealt with before. There was no badge or polyester, no subtle twitch that said he was more comfortable with civilization than out in the backcountry. Instead, there was the deep stillness she associated with hunters and spiritualists, though he didn’t strike her as either of those things, or at least not entirely. He was…different, she decided. Unexpected.
And she really needed to stop trying to figure out her chaperone and do her darned job. “Ready?” she said too brightly.
He gave her a look that said they weren’t headed off to a picnic and she didn’t need to sound so happy about it, but aloud, he said only, “You take point and I’ll watch our backs. You see anything suspicious, yell out, okay? I don’t care how small or silly it might seem—let me make that call.”
Sobering, she nodded. “Got it.” Even though given how thoroughly he was scanning their surroundings, she had a feeling he would pick up on anything suspicious way before she even had a clue. She wasn’t sure why that made her nerves worse rather than better, but she was definitely on edge as they headed off along the continuation of the tire-beaten track. She was hyperaware of his walking slightly behind and off to the side of her like a big, bristling guard dog at heel. Only he was so much more than that…which made him far too distracting.
Then she saw the first thready tendrils hanging from a strangely gnarled branch, and her attention sharpened between one heartbeat and the next. She paused on the track and said softly, “Oh. Hello there.” And in that instant, she felt like herself for the first time since she’d stepped through the final airport security checkpoint and into Jack Williams’s world.
She was aware of his watching her and keeping close as she moved off the track and circled from one infected tree to the next, following where the tendrils grew thicker and thicker, along a wandering line that angled away from the roadway. She dragged her fingertips along the trunks but didn’t touch the tendrils yet. Instead, she cataloged her impressions of the desert-dry backcountry, where the sun beat down even at its fading angle and the dust had a faint tang she couldn’t quite place. What are you? she thought, looking up at the white strands and seeing the way the branches curled inward where they attached, becoming bent, until the most infected of the trees came to look like ancient gnomes, stooped and gnarled, with wispy white hair that trailed nearly to the ground.
“Anything I can help with?” Jack asked.
She looked back at him, startled, both because for a moment she’d almost forgotten he was there and because he actually seemed to mean it. “Actually, there is. Give me the local-level dirt on this place.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How’d you figure me for a local?”
“You mentioned your father and uncle being detectives here, too. I made the leap.”
That earned her a considering look before he nodded and said, “Good leap. Yep, umpteenth-generation local here. My great-something-grandparents helped found the city, and there have been Williamses policing Bear Claw pretty much ever since.”
“Which makes you the perfect person to fill me in on the Forgotten,” she said, turning her attention back to the trees and telling herself there was no reason for her to feel a pang at the confirmation that his roots went deep.
“What do you already know?”
“Pretend I just walked in here with no advance info. You never know what’s going to spark a connection.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I know how that goes. Okay, the Forgotten… Well, it’s a federal buffer zone beyond the state park, too far away from civilization to interest regular campers and not challenging enough to interest the hard-core mountaineers. Doesn’t have anything really in the way of natural resources or any real reason for anybody to pay attention to it, although it recently changed hands, going from federal to the city, and then almost to a public sale.”
“I saw that in the file,” she said, reaching up to sift her fingers through the dry, wispy strands of the parasitic fungus that was gnoming the trees, killing them. What are you? she asked inside. Aloud, she said, “What happened with the sale?”
“Mayor Proudfoot was pushing to sell the land to a private investor who, not surprisingly, dropped the negotiations when things broke.”
“I assume you’ve taken a good, hard look at the investor? It would seem to me that buying the property would be to the militia’s benefit.”
He shot her another sidelong look. “Thought you were a plant…whatever it was.”
“I’ve got a couple of cops in my family. You learn the thought process.” Among other things.
“Well, it’s not a bad theory, but the investor was legit, if an idiot. He had some geologist swearing to him that there’s gold in the area, and thought he was going to put one over on the government by buying the Forgotten and striking it rich.”
“I didn’t think there was gold around here,” she commented as they moved into a clearer area, where infected trees were more sparsely distributed among clusters of huge boulders. These trees were more severely affected than the surrounding clusters, though, which had her antenna quivering. Was there some environmental component at work?
Jack shook his head. “There isn’t any gold. Just some played-out copper mines.”
“Right.” She had seen that from the photos, just as she had learned about the land deal from the dossier. She needed something else, something more. So, as she went into her pack for the first of the sampling kits, she said, “What about rumors, old campfire stories, that sort of thing?”
“You want to use old legends to figure out a tree disease?”
“Like I said, you never know what’s going to make a connection.” And, yeah, maybe she liked the sound of his voice when he wasn’t being condescending, and she liked being back on her professional footing where things made sense and she didn’t feel nearly so off balance, even with him only a few feet away.
“Local legends, huh? Well, depending on which story you believe, the Forgotten was either considered cursed by the native tribes in the area, or the story of the curse was whipped up later to scare people away from what was actually a hideout for the toughest of the Wild West outlaws in the decades after the Civil War.”
She made a “bring it on” finger wiggle with her free hand as she tweezed fibers into a series of sterile sampling units, sealing them shut and tucking them away.
“Okay, here’s how the story goes. There was once a young brave named Bear Tooth, who was smaller and weaker than his friends, and always came in last when they raced. But then one day—”
Sudden gunfire split the air, cutting him off. They were under attack!
Chapter Four
Jack reacted instantly, tackling Tori and hurling them both into the lee of the nearest boulder. His arms went around her and he muffled her scream in his chest, protecting her from the impact as they collapsed together against the stone.
Moments earlier, the fallen slab had seemed huge. Now it felt small and thin as shots rang off the far side and he anticipated the burn of a bullet crease, or worse. There was just the one shooter, but his weapon was high-powered; he was shooting from the concealment of a trio of larger rocks on higher ground; and he wasn’t missing by much.
Bear Claw Bodyguard Page 3