And so, in a broken-down SUV that had died in the back of beyond, he broke the rules he’d spent most of his adult life figuring out—three dates to a kiss, at least ten to take it further, everything slow and methodical, and designed to test the compatibility and long-term potential of each match. This wasn’t the third date, wasn’t even a date, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was kissing Tori.
Chapter Five
As Jack’s lips touched hers, Tori decided that she didn’t care that he was a cop and a local; she only cared that he was solid and warm against her. His mouth was firm, his grip demanding even though she knew he would let her go if she pulled away.
She crowded closer instead, and parted her lips to taste him.
A groan rumbled in his chest as their tongues touched and slid, and her soft moan echoed beneath the sound, coming from the sharp, masculine flavor and the heat that seared through her, surrounded her. He was there, he was real, and that was a shock to the senses in the wake of the last few hours, which felt suddenly unreal, as if they had happened to someone else, or came from a movie about shootouts, sabotaged vehicles and car chases.
The man kissing her was equally outside of her normal zone, as were the heat and desire rocketing through her, but she could grab on to those feelings, dig into his solid strength and feel alive. They had made it out, made it down. They were okay, thanks to him. If he hadn’t been there… She shuddered against him, feeling safe and protected.
But at the same time she was very aware that this, too, was a moment out of reality, fleeting and temporary. It had to be. So when her hands wanted to clutch, she made them caress instead, and when his body stiffened and he made a low noise of surprise, she let go and leaned back, hands up and open in the universal gesture of “don’t freak, no harm, no foul.”
That was how she ran each and every one of her short-term relationships, after all: no harm, no foul.
They sat there a moment, in a pool of light coming from the observatory’s floods, staring at each other. His breathing was fast, his eyes hot with a desire that speared straight into her and made her want to fling herself at him, on him, kiss him until neither of them was thinking about anything but the slip and slide of flesh and the pounding of their hearts.
But even though his eyes were hot, he shook his head slowly as if to clear it, or maybe deny what had just happened between them. And although that rejection pinched at her feminine core, she was the one who’d let go first, and she was the one who broke the suddenly strained silence to say, “Sorry. Got caught up in the moment there.”
He searched her face for an interval that stretched long enough for her to wonder what he was looking for, what he saw. But he only said, “We should get inside and start making calls. The guys at the station house need to hear about what just happened, as do the members of the task force; I need backup, and you need an official escort back down to the city.”
The implication was “and a plane ticket the hell out of here,” and she wasn’t arguing—there was a line between dedication and stupidity, and sticking around when she was being shot at would put her way over onto the “stupid” side.
THE RINGING PHONE brought Percy Proudfoot groggily awake. As he fumbled on the nightstand for his cell, he muttered, “Damn it.” He slept alone, so there was nobody to care if he kept up his cursing when he knocked the phone off the nightstand and onto the floor and had to get down there and hunt for the damn thing. And if the staffers who lived in the other wing of the mayoral mansion heard anything, they’d been well-paid to turn a deaf ear to far stranger sounds.
The Aubusson carpet scuffed his bare knees and he nearly brained himself on the corner of the nightstand, but he came up with the phone and leaned back against the giant canopy bed to flip it open. There was no ID on the display, just a number, but when he saw that it was coming in on his most private line, the sleepy cobwebs disappeared.
Taking a deep breath, he clicked the call live and answered with a professional, borderline respectful, “Proudfoot here.”
It wouldn’t do any good to irritate the man on the other end of the line. He was powerful, far-reaching, and he had Percy’s mayoral future in a vise.
“You said you’d keep the cops away from the Forgotten.” The Investor—that was what he’d told Percy to call him from the very start of their association—sounded more than irritated. He sounded coldly furious. Murderous, even.
Uh-oh. Going on instant alert, Percy searched his memory banks for even a hint of trouble, and drew a blank. “I did. They are. Chief Mendoza pulled his people off the militia investigation and prioritized the drug case last week. There’s nothing going on out in the Forgotten.”
“You’re out of the loop, Mayor. There was a cop there today, Jack Williams, along with a woman scientist.”
“Bull. They wouldn’t—” But given his increasingly strained relationship with the Bear Claw P.D., it was possible that they had cut him out. Or rather, that they had delayed crucial info as long as possible, knowing he would clamp down on anything that sounded expensive. Ice chased through his veins and he went into damage control mode. “What happened?”
“One of my scouts found their vehicle and tracked them into the hot zone. They were less than a mile away from the encampment when he found them. Unfortunately, he couldn’t pin them down, and his comm malfunctioned, so he had to go back on foot for help, and by the time he returned with a team, they were gone. Which means they made it back down to the city most likely, and you don’t have much time to clamp down on whatever kind of a response your people are putting together. And I mean clamp down, Proudfoot. The Forgotten is my territory, bought and paid for.”
“I know. I… Damn it.” Percy’s mind raced as he sorted through his options, knowing he would have to be very careful right now, not just to get the Investor’s needs met, but his own as well. There was an election coming up, after all. If he spun this right…yeah. He could make it work. “Okay, I can handle this, no problem. But I could use your help…”
WITHIN A COUPLE of hours of Jack calling in the attack, Tucker and several other cops were up at the observatory taking statements and starting the process of reorganizing the Shadow Militia task force. At least that was the plan, but then things started to get strange.
“Well, this puts a new spin on things,” Tucker said, his expression thoughtful as he clicked off his phone—which was the only satellite-enabled phone the P.D. had managed to fund, despite repeated requests.
“A guy seriously walked in off the street, handed over his hunting rifle and confessed to going after me and Tori?” Jack asked, having picked up the gist from his boss’s side of the conversation.
They were sitting in the downstairs main room of the observatory, Jack on one of the sofas, Tucker in a big club chair. Tori was upstairs and, outside, the floodlit parking area was starting to get busy, as more cops and feds arrived and the militia task force started assembling prior to making the trek out to the Forgotten at first light.
Except now it sounded like it might not have been the militia after all.
Tucker nodded. “A drifter named Wayne Gibbs. He’s got priors in California for aggravated assault, is strongly antigovernment, and says he’s been camping in a cave a little ways away from where you and Tori were searching. As far as he’s concerned, he was just protecting his homestead. And, yeah, he’s got a prescription for antipsychotics that hasn’t been filled since summer.”
“Damn.” Jack shook his head, not just because it sounded too convenient, but also because he could actually see it. Hell, he had seen it: a couple of years earlier, there had been a similar case when an ex-marine decided the country owed him some land. The guy had moved his camper and his junkyard dog onto a chunk of land near Station Eight and claimed squatter’s rights, then went after a couple of rangers with his shotgun when they tried to run him off.
And that wasn’t the only instance of people squatting on state and federal land in the area either. Between the e
conomy and the loss of most of Bear Claw’s homeless shelters due to budget cuts, there were more and more indigents trying to scratch a living wherever they could, including the state park.
They were usually found pretty quickly, though. Which begged the question, “Why did it take us this long to notice him?”
Tucker lifted a shoulder. “We’re looking into it, but the last serious scan was a couple of weeks ago. Could be that he just hasn’t been there that long.”
Jack blew out a breath. “Okay, so if we say it wasn’t the militia, then what does that mean for me and…Dr. Bay?” He stumbled when me and Tori sounded way too intimate within the confines of his skull.
He’d made sure to keep things coolly professional when Tucker had arrived and immediately called her downstairs to go over the attack. He’d kept his report by the book while trying to keep his mind off their kiss…but it’d been almost impossible when he could still—even now—remember exactly how she tasted, how her surprising curves had melted against him, how her breath had caught in her throat when he touched her.
He’d told himself over and over again that they were both adults and a simple kiss—even one that was way off his usual schedule—didn’t have to change anything between them, especially given her “I’m backing away now, and we don’t have to talk about this” reaction. But the thing was, he couldn’t stop thinking that it had changed something. Because now he was almost preternaturally attuned to her, entirely aware that she was upstairs working on her samples, that she had showered and changed and that she hadn’t met his eyes more than twice after the kiss.
“Well, if the shooter wasn’t part of the militia—” Tucker began, only to have his phone start ringing again. “Hold that thought.” He answered, listened and blew out a breath before he said, “Yeah, okay. Thanks.” He didn’t look thrilled as he clicked off, though. With a glance at Jack, he said, “Her people are putting the investigation on hold. They don’t like their scientists being shot at.”
“Didn’t much enjoy it myself,” Jack said, but the attempt at a quip fell seriously flat. “They’re pulling her out?”
It was the logical thing to do. So why did his instincts say it was the wrong decision?
Tucker nodded. “It’ll simplify things at any rate.”
“Maybe not,” Tori’s voice said from behind Jack. “Because things just got more complicated, at least on my end.”
He turned, realizing that he wasn’t surprised to see her there; part of him had sensed her, had known she was near. Standing halfway up the spiral staircase with a mini laptop in her arms, she was wearing jeans and a blue-green zip-up hoodie, and had traded the boots for beaded moccasins with polka-dotted socks that added an unexpected touch of whimsy. There was no whimsy in her face, though. She was pale, drawn and resolute.
“Did you find something in the samples?” Tucker asked with a pained expression that suggested the antacids would have gone down real good right then.
She nodded. “To put it bluntly, you’re in deep trouble here. The fungus is spreading exponentially, and it’s poised at a threshold value right now. A few more days, a week at the most, and you’re not going to be talking about just one section of the forest anymore.”
Jack wanted to say You’re kidding, but he could tell from her expression that she was deadly serious. “All of the Forgotten will be infected that quickly?”
“Not just the Forgotten. The entire state park.”
“The… Hell.” The park wasn’t just one of the three biggest tourist attractions in the city, underpinning the economy; it was Bear Claw Canyon State Park, and it was home.
As she crossed to the seating area, Tucker pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tell me you’re not serious.”
“I’m serious. Here.” She sank down to the sofa beside Jack, her weight barely denting the cushions as she leaned forward and set the notebook computer on the glass-topped coffee table. “Watch this.” She tapped a few keys and a satellite image of the Bear Claw region popped onto the screen. When she hit Play, a small red patch appeared near the river that cut across the northeast quadrant of the Forgotten. “The first survey done a month ago.” The red expanded like blood from a wound. “The second survey.” More red. “Today…and this is what’s going to happen if we don’t suppress this thing.” It took three slides for things to go from bad to worse—to a bloodbath.
“Damn,” Jack muttered. “Are you sure?”
“I’m confident in the data and the simulation, but we’re talking about Mother Nature here. She’s capable of endlessly surprising us humans. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not.”
“We can’t bet on Bear Claw Canyon for hoping for a surprise.” Jack reached across to rerun the simulation. “And we’re not just talking about the trees either, are we?”
Tucker’s bleak expression went bleaker. “We’re not?”
“The trees help anchor the ecosystem,” Tori answered, and gave him a quick run-through of the summary she had given Jack earlier.
“Damn it.” Tucker shook his head as if trying to deny the inevitable. “The Park Service has put the investigation on hold until we’re sure it’s safe for Dr. Bay to be out in the Forgotten.”
“Tori, please.”
“Tori, then.”
“Aren’t we already sure?” Jack asked. “You’ve got the shooter in custody.” Even as he said it, the voice of reason inside him was saying What are you doing? And it had a point: he should take the out he was being offered and be grateful for it. But at Tori’s questioning look, he briefed her on the gunman’s confession, then added, “A team will go up there in the morning and check out his story, but if he seems legit, then it was just a random attack, not evidence that the Shadow Militia is still in the area.”
But Tucker wasn’t convinced. “I’ve got my orders, which are to put Tori on a plane out of here and put every available cop on the drug case, pronto. The boss didn’t even want us to bother corroborating the confession, just wanted to run with it.”
“Tell him that the disease is poised to hit the rest of the park,” Tori urged.
Tucker agreed, although he didn’t look convinced that it would make a difference. As he made the call, Tori went upstairs to explain to her bosses that it looked like the shooting wasn’t related to the militia and, moreover, that the outbreak was a bigger problem than they had thought. But even as Tucker clicked off his phone, shaking his head, Tori came back into the room glowering. “They’re insisting that I’ve got enough sample material to work with back at the lab, and that regardless of why the shooting occurred, the situation is too ‘volatile’—” she scorned the word with finger quotes “—for me to risk it.”
“They’re not necessarily wrong,” Jack said. “You could have been killed today.”
“But I wasn’t,” she countered. “And they’re wrong about the samples. Sure, I’ve got enough to get started, but I never know what I’m going to need until I actually get into the work itself. I need to be here, need to have access to the Forgotten if I’m going to have any chance at all to get ahead of this outbreak before it reaches critical mass.”
Tucker spread his hands. “I tried, but Mendoza isn’t budging. The official investigation into the outbreak is over for right now.”
Her eyes blazed. “You’ll have to drag me out of… Wait a minute. You said that the official investigation is over. Does that mean I can stay up here on my own time?”
“Not without an escort, and I can’t officially spare anyone to stay up here with you.”
There was that word again: official. Jack heard the hint loud and clear.
So did Tori. Without missing a beat, she turned to him. “Will you stay with me…unofficially?”
“I…” Damn. It wasn’t a surprise that she asked—of course she had asked. She’d do whatever it took to stay on the job, and she had the tenacity of a top-notch cop. What surprised him was the fact that he was torn, not because he was attracted to her or because they had kissed, but be
cause she needed to be there. And because, despite everything that had happened today, being out there with her had reminded him that he had always loved the backcountry.
He’d grown up roaming the great outdoors with his father and brothers, had escaped to the mountains during college and his rookie years, letting the fresh air and open skies clear his head and remind him that most of his day-to-day hassles could be easily outweighed by the sight of an eagle soaring overhead or the satisfaction his inner caveman got from fishing for his dinner and cooking it over an open campfire. And even the bad stuff that wasn’t totally outweighed—and as a cop he’d seen more than his share of the wretched and unforgivable things humans could do to each other—had lost some of its teeth when he was up in the backcountry.
The trips had tapered off and then gone away as he’d grown up, though, and he hadn’t realized until today just how much he missed it. There was a sense of freedom out there, a wildness that called to something inside him so strongly that he didn’t know how he’d gone so long without recognizing the lack in his life. Hell, he’d been up to Station Fourteen and the Forgotten a handful of times in the past few months, first investigating the attempted murder of a park ranger, then the Shadow Militia. Back then, he’d scanned the crime scenes without seeing beyond the job. Today, for the first time in far too long, he had done his job but seen the beauty, too.
He couldn’t let that be destroyed. But he also couldn’t forget about the dozens of people who had already been hurt by the Death Stare, the hundreds more that could be affected if the cops didn’t get a handle on the drug trade, pronto.
“I can ask Matt to recommend someone to escort Tori,” Tucker said. “A couple of the rangers are ex-cops or ex-military, and they know the backcountry.”
“So do I,” Jack grated. More, he knew a bit about Tori, and how her combination of guts and dedication could get her in trouble. And he knew that he didn’t want anyone else watching out for her. He didn’t believe in instant connections—at least not of the man-woman kind—but that didn’t stop him from wanting to be the guy out there with her, making sure that nothing bad happened to her while she was in Bear Claw.
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