Half-naked.
Technically, he’d been wearing jeans, but that still qualified as half-naked. And she’d really enjoyed that half. The two years since he’d retired from Prospero had been kind to his body. His chest still shifted in hard slabs of muscle, his belly a perfect six-pack.
“Meg? Meg?”
“Huh?” She wiped the drool from her chin and turned toward her straggler.
He was studying a sprig of red berries. “Are these safe to eat?”
She extended her hand, wiggling her fingers and he dropped the plant into her palm. She plucked off one of the berries and popped it into her mouth, puckering her lips at the sour taste. “These are okay. But unless you’re experienced, you should stick to those granola bars you’re chomping on. Safe is sometimes just a few shades darker than poisonous.”
The man rubbed his hands on his jeans and plopped down on a large rock, where he proceeded to unpack several items from his pack to pull out a book on Colorado flora and fauna.
He didn’t believe her?
Meg chugged some water and then stowed it in her pack. “Are you ready to continue?”
They grumbled a little, but eventually secured their water bottles and lined up on the trail, following her like baby ducks. She glanced over her shoulder, hoping one of those ducks didn’t turn out to be a fake. She hadn’t wanted to take Ian’s advice to stay off the job today, but was relieved she had the easy hike.
At their next lookout point and twenty minutes from the end of the trail, her straggler wailed and dropped his pack to the ground. Meg spun around and stumbled to his side. If she lost another tourist…
“What is it?”
“I left my binoculars back there.” He waved his arms in the direction behind the group, most of who were now rolling their eyes and snickering. There had to be one in every group.
With her head still light from the jolt of fear, Meg rubbed her temple. “I’m sorry.”
Next time don’t bring so much crap.
“I have to go back and get them.” He began stuffing his accoutrements back into his pack.
Meg put her hand on his arm. “Oh no, you don’t. I can’t allow you to go all the way back there on your own.”
He glanced up, his eyes owlish behind his glasses. “I can’t lose those binoculars. They’re not even mine.”
“Tell you what.” Wrinkling her nose, Meg held up an empty hot water bottle that had fallen out of his backpack. She thrust it into his eager hands and said, “We’ll continue the hike as planned, and then if you don’t mind waiting about an hour, I’ll go back and retrieve your binoculars for you. You can also leave, and I’ll just drop them at the office for you to pick up later.”
“W-will they still be there?” He shoved the glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“I don’t think a fellow hiker would steal your binoculars, unless someone picks them up to turn into our office. And if that’s the case, I’ll meet them on the trail.” She helped him drag the zipper across the bulging backpack. “How does that sound?”
His gaze darted over her shoulder and then back to her face. “I suppose that’s okay.”
The group behind them gave a collective sigh, and Meg pushed up from the ground to finish her talk and resume the hike. Twenty long, uneventful minutes later, the group looped back to their starting point on the trail and the cars they’d left in the turnout.
The straggler, Evan, retreated to his car while Meg said goodbye to the rest of the group. She strode to Evan’s car and he rolled down the window. “It’ll take me forty five minutes up and back. Will you be okay here?” She gestured around the empty parking lot, save his car and hers.
“Sure.” He patted a cooler on the passenger seat. “I stocked some food in here. Do you want a sandwich?”
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
Meg stamped her feet and headed back onto the trail. She could make twice the time without her ducklings trailing behind her.
Although the air had been cold all day, a warm glow had encased her heart whenever she thought about Ian and Travis last night. Travis had always been a friendly baby, but not so touchy-feely as he he’d been with Ian. He instinctively trusted his father.
Meg believed all children intuitively trusted their parents, and continued to do so even after those parents did nothing to warrant that trust. That’s why parents like Ian’s devastated children—devastated Ian.
They’d both been drunks, and when a baby had come along, they’d had no clue what to do with him. Who knows if Ian would’ve been better off in the System. His parents always kept one step ahead of social services.
Ian had learned survival skills the hard way. When he graduated from high school, he enlisted in the army and took on every challenge they threw at him with vigor and commitment. He had something to prove.
He’d probably exhibit that same commitment toward his son, again yearning to prove to himself that his birth was simply an accident of genes.
Meg almost growled when she spotted the silver wrapper of a granola bar in the middle of the trail. She hoped someone had dropped that accidentally, since she’d always felt a twinge of guilt leading people into this pristine wilderness. Of course, if she didn’t do it somebody else would, and then she’d have no control at all.
She’d almost reached the spot where Evan left his binoculars, and hadn’t run across anyone else. They should be right where he left them. Meg pumped her legs harder, faster, stronger, to get there. She rounded the curve of the trail and tripped over the toes of her boots.
A tall man had the binoculars to his eyes and was scanning the gorge that fell off to the right. But he was no ordinary tourist on a solitary hike.
Ian lowered the binoculars and smiled.
Meg’s silly heart sang like a bird obliviously flying straight toward a plateglass window. She smiled back anyway, bracing for the impact.
“What are you doing in these parts?”
“Bird watching.” Ian raised the binoculars hitched around his neck, and then let them drop where they thudded against his chest.
“You followed me.” She tried for an accusatory tone, but it came out all sticky sweet and melting.
“I hit the trail shortly after you and your group did, and kept you in my sights. Wasn’t hard—slowest bunch of hikers I ever encountered.”
Meg grimaced. “You and me both, and then one of them left his binoculars behind. Care to tell me the purpose of your exercise?”
She already knew, but she wanted to hear him say it. Maybe it would wipe clean his other statement last night about how he wasn’t the least bit interested in sharing her bed. She wanted to shake the sand over that one, clearing the Etch-a-Sketch for sweeter sentiments.
“You know I didn’t want you going on this hike.” He shrugged, the puffy shoulders of his down vest reaching his earlobes. “When I realized you didn’t give a damn about my wants, I figured I could keep tabs on you anyway.”
Oh, she gave a damn about his wants. Every last one of them.
“That’s honorable of you, but completely unnecessary. Did you have a chance to do any more digging on those tourists?”
“No, but something else happened.” He skimmed his fingers along the straps of the binoculars.
His tight jaw caused her heart to do a little dance. The something else that happened couldn’t possibly be a lottery win or the discovery that his drunken parents kidnapped him from the Cleaver family.
“Just spit it out, Dempsey.”
“When I got back to my hotel room this morning, the maid was out cold and someone had tossed the room and stolen Kayla’s camera.”
She gasped, bringing her hands to her mouth. “Is she okay, the maid?”
“She has a big lump on her head, but she’s lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“Lucky she didn’t see the guy.”
A chill brushed across her flesh. “And what about Kayla’s camera? Wasn’t it broken?”
“I checked it wh
en I got back to the room and it was in working order again. I clicked through the pictures and was planning to enlarge them. Someone took a shot of her right before she died…probably her killer.”
The chill deepened and Meg hugged herself. First her place and then Ian’s hotel room. This guy had a line on them. Why didn’t he just try to find the suitcase himself? Did he think they had something he wanted?
Ian grabbed her gloved hands. “Are you cold?”
“To the bone.”
“I have an idea. Are you in a hurry?” His green eyes flashed with a challenge and an edge of mischief. How many times had she seen that look in Travis’s eyes?
He still had her hands in a warm clasp, and he increased the pressure on her fingers, as if to sway her. All he had to do was take her in his arms, press those soft lips against hers and she’d follow him anywhere.
“Well, I do have to take those binoculars you’ve appropriated back to their rightful owner.”
“His fault for leaving them.”
“What’s your plan?”
He pointed to the ridge across the gorge. “Aren’t the falls around that bend?”
“Yeah.”
“Kayla would’ve had a clear view of that area from where she was standing. Once we went down to the river, we lost that perspective.”
“Are you suggesting we hike down there and have a look?” She bit her lip, holding her breath. Another adventure with Ian? It had been too long and too lonely.
“It shouldn’t take long. It’s just the two of us. You’re not leading a bunch of whiny tourists.”
Just the two of us. And Travis.
“Why not? If Evan really wants his binoculars, he can pick them up at the office…or report me missing with stolen property.”
They drank some water and then began their descent into the thick, green carpet spiked with toffee-colored streaks and bursts of amber, purple, red-gold and sunset orange—the tapestry of autumn in the Rocky Mountains.
They cut a swath through the dense vegetation, creating their own trail that no other human could follow. Meg inhaled the strong scent of pine and it cleared her mind, stripping her senses clean. The wilderness saved her when Ian left, when her marriage had failed. It had steadily renewed her faith in everything, including herself. It had always been her refuge.
Especially when her mother and twin sister died. Meg would’ve been in that limo when the drunken limo driver smashed it into a cement bridge, if she had followed the plan her father had laid out for her and her twin, Kate. He’d wanted both of them to follow the society girl route, but only Meg refused him. Kate had agreed to the whole debutante mess to garner their father’s love and approval. Kate and Mom had been on their way home from one of those stupid balls.
And her father had never been able to disguise the fact that he wished Meg had been in that car instead of Kate. Kate, the one who’d given up control of her own life just to see a little approval in their father’s cold face. Meg would never give up control—ever.
She blinked her eyes and zeroed-in on Ian’s back. He’d almost reached the bottom.
Ian jumped into a clearing, planting his boots firmly on the ground. He held out his arms to her. “Ready?”
The branch Meg held in her grip slipped from her grasp and she flung herself against Ian’s chest. She hit him square in the solar plexus and he tumbled backward with a grunt.
“Whoa.” He cushioned her fall by placing his body between her and the hard ground.
“Are you okay?” She braced herself with her arms on either side of his body, puffing a cold breath into his face.
Blinking, he tightened his arms around her, backpack and all. “I didn’t think you were going to throw yourself down the rest of the incline. I wasn’t ready for you.”
She blew upward at a piece of her bangs hanging in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I lost my grip.”
And her concentration.
“No harm done.” He slipped his hands beneath her pack, splaying his fingers across her lower back. “You’re as light as a puff of dandelion.”
“Is that why you grunted when I took you down?”
He grinned. “I always grunt when I’m having a good time. Don’t you remember?”
She had a hard time forgetting, even when she wanted to. And she didn’t want to right now. She could depend on Ian without getting swallowed up. He’d been as skittish as she was when it came to making commitments. It had suited them both…once. Meg moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, her face inches from his.
He moved his hand from her back to the nape of her neck. He nudged her head forward with his long fingers, plowing through her hair.
She closed her eyes when their lips met, but a burst of light exploded behind her lids. Sunshine poured into all the dark recesses of her soul, warming her, nourishing her. She kissed him back, opening her mouth slightly, feeling her way back into his heart with tentative steps. One false move and he might remember she’d kept Travis from him for two years. Then he’d end the magic of their kiss.
Ian kept possession of her mouth while slipping the straps of her backpack from her shoulders and shoving it off her body. His hands burrowed beneath her layers of clothing to find the warm skin of her back. His gloved finger traced the line of her spine and she shivered from anticipation more than the cold touch of his glove.
He smiled against her lips. “If you’re cold, I’m not doing my job.”
Before she could assure him that a blazing heat had invaded every cell of her body, he rolled her onto her back and nudged her onto a dense carpet of soft grass. Straddling her, he shrugged off his own backpack and then buried his head against her neck.
She had no idea what they hoped to accomplish on a chilly afternoon at the bottom of a gorge with fifty layers of clothing between each other’s bare skin. But right now she couldn’t think beyond the soft lips and sharp teeth that alternately kissed and nibbled at her flesh.
Ian swirled his tongue in the hollow of her throat, and Meg moaned, skimming one hand through his cropped hair and flinging the other to her side in wild abandon to the sensation. He trailed his tongue lower. She curled the fingers of her outstretched hand and froze.
Ian murmured against her chest. “Do you want me to stop?”
She jerked her hand back and twisted her head to the side. Gasping, she wrapped both arms around Ian in a vice grip.
“I think we just found Hans.”
Chapter Nine
Ian stopped his sweet journey down Meg’s body and whipped his head around. His gaze followed the direction of her shaking finger to a white hand curled into a fist and sprinkled with dark hair. Instinctively, he pulled Meg away from the arm that beckoned from the underbrush.
Rolling off her body, he yanked her into a sitting position almost in his lap. “How do you know it’s Hans? It could be someone else.”
“There’s nobody else missing in these mountains, Ian.”
“Not that we’re aware of, anyway. Maybe someone jumped out of that plane along with the suitcase.” He and the colonel had considered that possibility. They’d considered all possibilities.
“I don’t know which prospect is worse.” She slid from his lap and crawled toward the body. “But don’t you think we’d better find out?”
“Let me.” He grabbed her ankle, his fingers wrapping around the thick leather of her hiking boot.
Digging her knees into the mulch, she glanced over her shoulder. “We’ll do it together.”
Ian nodded. He hadn’t married a girly-girl. He shuffled on his knees beside her and bent forward, sweeping back the foliage that obscured the upper torso of the body.
The man’s pack lay beside him, wrenched from his back, and wet leaves covered his face. Ian said a small prayer that the animals hadn’t gotten to his flesh yet. Meg may not be a girly-girl, but she didn’t need that vision burned into her brain.
“Are you ready?” His hand hovered over the man’s face. “You can look away.”
Meg turned her head into Ian’s shoulder while he brushed the leaves from Hans’s head. He blew out a breath, plucking one last twig from the man’s intact face. “Nothing got to him yet, and you’re right. This is Hans Birnbacher.”
“Birnbacher? That’s his last name?”
“That’s the name he used to book the hike. My CIA contact checked him out and he came back clean, but we still don’t know if that name is a cover or the real thing.”
Meg gestured to Hans’s lifeless form. “What do you think now? Real or Memorex?”
Ian shuffled in closer to the body and checked the man’s pulse against his ice cold throat. Nothing there. “If he was involved with the arms dealers or the terrorists, he must’ve stepped on some toes.”
“Stepped on toes? That’s a polite way to put it. You don’t have to dress it up for me, Ian.”
“And if he wasn’t involved with either of them, he must’ve really screwed up—big-time case of wrong universe, wrong century.” Ian didn’t want to move the body, but he didn’t have a clue how Hans had died. If he’d taken a bullet to the back of the head, it hadn’t made its way through the front. Hans had on too many clothes for Ian to tell whether or not someone had shot his torso.
Meg sat back on her heels and fumbled with the radio in her pocket. “He was a curious guy on the hike, always asking about this or that. Sometimes asking questions totally unrelated to the mountains. Maybe he asked someone the wrong question.”
“Are you going to call it in?” He pointed to the radio in her hand. Sheriff Cahill would have a field day with this one. He just might run Ian out of town on a rail.
“What do you suggest?” She tilted the radio back and forth. “We just leave him here to rot?”
“Of course not. Just wish I had a better handle on his identity.” Ian pushed to his feet and dragged the binoculars from his backpack. With a sweeping motion, he surveyed the terrain across the gorge. “What do you think Hans was doing out here?”
Mountain Ranger Recon Page 9