Passion to Protect

by Colleen Thompson

  Alarm punching at his chest, he went inside, dreading the thought that he might come across Whittaker’s body buried in the wreckage. Grateful to find no sign of either Jake or any blood as he checked the small bathroom and the bedroom space behind a low partition, Harry struggled to come up with a theory to make sense of the destruction. Could McCleary have come back here and grown jealous of the handsome former boyfriend living too close to his ex for comfort? Or maybe this vandalism had another source. Perhaps someone was still holding a grudge against Jake for what had happened last summer. Or, who knew, maybe it had been some local kids on a drunken spree, or even a hungry bear that had found the door ajar and wandered inside. As for why Jake wasn’t there... Knowing the man’s keen sense of responsibility would trump whatever hurt feelings he might harbor over some old high school romance gone wrong, Harry could easily imagine him riding out with Liane to keep her from searching for her family alone.

  As Harry hurried back toward his SUV, he suspected he was deluding himself to even consider that this break-in was coincidental. Still, he prayed it was possible that Jake and all the Masons would somehow get back home safely. Foolish as it might be, he couldn’t help hoping his earlier wishful thinking would prove true, and his old friend’s delay in returning with his grandchildren would prove to be no more criminal than a broken radio and a horse with colic or a thrown shoe.

  And above all, he prayed it would have nothing to do with his own failure to warn Deke and Liane that this might happen.

  Passing the corral on his way back to his vehicle, Harry went still at the sound of whinnying, then slowly turned his flashlight on the horses.

  A dozen or so had crowded near the far end of the enclosure, their attention on another animal shambling into view. As Harry approached, he saw the white foam of exertion on the sweat-soaked chestnut hide, along with a grayish coating of dust.

  No, not dust, he realized, his breath hitching as he registered the acrid odor. Ash—and the horse’s tail was singed, the long, brown hairs all crisped or missing. Which had to mean that there was fire between here and Elk Creek Canyon.

  “Where the hell are you, Deke?” he murmured, more worried than ever.

  Then his gaze found the saddle, and his stomach lurched as he took in the stirrups, which had been shortened for a child’s legs. Even worse, he saw dark splotches marring the brown leather.

  Bloodstains, he was certain, and so large they indicated a serious, if not mortal, wound.

  “God forgive me,” he murmured, raising his light at the sound of approaching hoof beats. A cloud of dust preceded Deke’s big black mule, Waco, as it came hobbling from the brush. Like the horse, the mule was saddled, but Waco’s tack included a special holster Deke had had made to fit over the pommel.

  Deke’s revolver remained in place, the sight of it adding to the nausea swirling in the sheriff’s stomach.

  After letting both exhausted animals into the corral, he used a handkerchief to pull the weapon from its holster. A sniff of the muzzle and a check of the chambers confirmed that whatever had happened, his old friend had never even gotten off a shot.

  But he wouldn’t give up hope. He couldn’t, so Harry broke into a run, heading back toward his Yukon and his radio, a radio he would use to call in backup from the state, the hotshot fire crews, the search and rescue teams—whoever the hell he could think of—to save whichever of the Masons might still survive.

  * * *

  Sizing up the crashing sounds from above in a split second, Jake grabbed Liane, holding her firmly in spite of her struggle to run from the avalanche.

  “We’re okay here,” he shouted as the slide rocketed past, smashing down more trees with an earsplitting racket that far outstripped the thunder.

  She held on to him for dear life, her nails digging into his back. Within seconds it was over, leaving her breathing hard.

  “There, you see?” He was breathing just as hard as he gave her a squeeze before releasing her. “But we’d better get out of here before the next one comes.”

  “I can’t—can’t believe we’re still alive,” she said.

  His senses heightened by their near miss, he grew hyperaware of the warmth of her breath against his face, the way her stiffness slowly dissolved into trembling. The sweet familiarity of her body pressed against his surged through his veins, along with the pell-mell thumping of her heart against his chest.

  On more than one occasion he’d dreamed of holding her this close again, a fantasy crafted from stolen glimpses of a woman who treated him as if he were some stranger. A woman whom Deke Mason had warned him needed space.

  Jake stepped back from her, heat rushing to his face. A man, especially a man who’d been without female companionship for as many months as he had, couldn’t be blamed for what ran through his head on dark nights in his chilly cabin, especially not with the first woman he’d ever been with living so close by. But Liane was terrified, and with good reason. His own heart was still pounding with the adrenaline surging through his bloodstream. “It’s over now. You’re all right.”

  “We’re safe?”

  “For the moment, anyway, but we’d better get to shelter before it happens again.”

  She nodded, then disentangled herself and started moving back up the mountain. Minutes later she crouched under the lip of a low overhang and waved him inside.

  “Whoa, there,” he warned, stepping past her with the flashlight. “Better let me check first, just to make sure nothing else has holed up in here. We definitely don’t want to end up getting between a trapped animal and freedom.”

  He ducked his head inside and used his light to skim the recesses of a cave only marginally larger than a box stall. Relieved not to spot any glowing eyes, he said, “Looks clear, but watch where you step. Snakes can be hard to see.”

  “I’ll take my chances with the snakes,” she said. “I just want out of this wind.”

  She sounded so exhausted that he instinctively—foolishly, he warned himself—reached for her. To his relief, she didn’t fight, only laid her head on his shoulder and gradually relaxed into his embrace. Despite the circumstances, he liked the way she fit—and felt—against him all too well.

  The moment served as another painful reminder of how good they’d been together once, and how isolated he’d been since leaving the rehabilitation center. When was the last time he had touched anyone for more than a brief handshake? But with the grandmother who had raised him long gone and his former fellow firefighters too sharp a reminder of things he could never change, he’d told himself that he was better off focusing on adapting to his new life than pining for the old one.

  Maybe he’d told himself wrong, at least the part about living like some kind of recluse. Maybe he should adopt a big, slobbery dog that he could run and roughhouse with, and spoil rotten when no one else was looking. Having something he could claim might keep him from latching on to a woman who didn’t want him and a family that wasn’t his.

  Or better yet, maybe he just needed to remember the sleepless nights and crushing pain she’d cost him at eighteen, then get out there and find himself a woman with a heart. A woman who would give him a family of his own.

  “Tell me, Jake,” she said, the hollowness in her voice making him feel guilty for judging her so harshly. “Tell me this is just some awful nightmare. Tell me we’re both sleeping, and Dad and the kids are safe at home.”

  “I wish I could do that,” he said honestly, “or snap my fingers and make everything right for you. But until this storm dies down, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “We could call for help, at least.”

  “I’ll try,” he promised. “But let’s get you out of this wind first. You’re dead on your feet.”

  Unwinding his arms from around her, he edged a little farther inside. Outside, the wind shifted, setting off an unearthly ho
wl as it gusted across the cave mouth like a child blowing over the top of a bottle.

  He focused his flashlight on a corner where leaf litter had accumulated and kicked at it with his prosthetic foot, but nothing stirred or slithered.

  “Why don’t you sit here and rest?” he suggested, his voice echoing in the enclosed space. “I’ll try the radio again.”

  He’d turned and made it several steps away when she said, “Thanks, Jake. And...I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” he asked, wondering if it was possible that she, too, might be thinking of their past. That she might be regretting the way things had ended.

  “For dragging you into this. And for the way...” as she knelt down in the dry leaves, the noise drowned out her next few words “...probably think I’m the biggest bitch in the county, the way I’ve acted toward you since I came back.”

  “What way’s that?” he asked, playing the Clueless Male card. Pretending that it hadn’t cut him to the bone.

  “Never mind,” she said, fending off Misty’s attempt to lick her cheek. “I just want you to know how much I appreciate what you’re doing for me. Especially since—”

  “Not just for you,” he interrupted, doing his best to compete with the gale. “Your dad’s been—he’s a great guy. A great man. When I first brought up the idea of fixing up the old bunkhouse in exchange for cheaper rent, I was only looking to save some money toward a new truck. I never banked on him insisting on lending me a hand—or turning into one of the best friends I’ve ever had.”

  A lump formed in his throat, but there was no way he was admitting that in truth Deke felt like a father to him—the father he’d never had, since his real dad had turned his back on the family when he was too young to remember the selfish SOB, or mourn him when he’d died a few years later. Jake might know wilderness firefighting, but he didn’t know much about construction. It was Deke who’d steered him away from a guest cabin whose mushy floorboards belied a weak foundation, Deke who’d taught him that when it came to a home, a business or a family, a rock-solid footing was the only place a man could put his trust.

  “And I never really thought I liked kids that much,” he went on, remembering how the idea that Liane had had children with another man—children that might have been his—had stung, “but Cody cracks me up with all his stories, and Kenzie’s the cutest little thing. She looks just like you, you know. It’s the eyes.”

  “I keep telling them they shouldn’t bother you so much.” Her voice shook with emotion. “I know you need peace and quiet for your work.”

  “They don’t bother—well, yeah, they do sometimes,” he said, thinking of times when he’d been in the midst of some complex, tedious translation and one or the other of them rapped at his door, then raced away to hide around the corner, their giggles giving them away each time. Though his deadlines were often tight, he sometimes took a break on the porch and shared some of the caramel brownies they always seemed to know their mother had sent over. “To tell you the truth, if they ever really did quit bugging me, I’d miss the hell out of them.”

  As the shaggy gray dog curled up beside her, Jake looked away, embarrassed by the surge of affection he felt for her family—and the lengths to which he would be willing to go to reunite them. Because they loved each other, their bond forming a closed circle he couldn’t help but want to protect, even though he stood on the outside.

  Clearing his throat, he pulled out the radio and raised it. “Be right back.”

  Between the howling of the wind and the crackling of lightning, he knew his odds of getting a message through on the handheld were slim. Still, he tried repeatedly, attempting to time his calls for Deke Mason and his requests for assistance between the flashes and the interference they created.

  As the storm diminished for the moment, he once again heard a male voice intermittently breaking through the static. Though Jake didn’t recognize the speaker, he couldn’t miss the panic in his clipped words. Listening carefully, he made out something about a pair of hikers in distress and being boxed in by flames....

  The image took him back to the night his own men had become trapped while following his orders. The night when the blaze had abruptly shifted and raced the wrong way, running downhill and against the wind, in defiance of the known laws of fire behavior.

  Memory spiraled in on him, followed by the shock and horror he’d felt hearing their calls on the radio, the panicked need to get to them and lead them out to safety.

  His rational mind had known it had been already too late, that there had been no way he could have made it in time and nothing he could have done if he’d gotten there except die by their sides. Still, he’d grabbed Micah and raced straight for them, the truck jouncing over the rutted track until it bottomed out and could go no farther. Though Micah had fought to stop him, Jake had leaped out from behind the wheel, running through the black smoke.

  With a tortured crack, a huge trunk had given way an instant before he’d felt a shattering blow followed by utter blackness. And worst of all, the accident hadn’t made a bit of difference to the three men who had burned to death a mile away while Micah saved him from the same fate.

  “Hikers, what is your location?” Jake asked now, his voice shaking with his need to have things end differently this time around. But no matter how many times he repeated his transmission, it was clear the speaker couldn’t hear him.

  The hikers were cut off from help. And with no way to contact the authorities or guide them to a place of safety, he could only listen helplessly until the increasingly frantic calls gave way to silence.

  A silence overwhelmed by static and the howling of the storm.

  Chapter 4

  If the gushing wind and crashing thunder didn’t do it, Mac was certain that Smash and Goose—and maybe even AK, who’d decided to meet up with them later because of his leg injury—meant to kill him. From the very start, he could now see, they had planned to off him the minute he found the cash, then split his share among themselves.

  Only now they meant to force him to kill the witnesses—his children—first, though Smash swore they only meant to use the kids as leverage.

  Could that be right? Or was it just another lie, like all the others? Mac could barely think straight, the images of those two babies flashing through his brain like lightning.

  They weren’t babies anymore, he knew. In fact, he doubted he would be able to pick them out on a crowded playground, despite the brief glimpse he’d gotten when they had disappeared into the woods. But the brown-eyed boy, at least, was his for certain—his only sure legacy in the world, though he’d never been much of a father to him.

  But it wasn’t his fault at all. It had been the medication. He understood that now. The pills were so easy to get and supposedly so harmless that doctors prescribed them to schoolkids by the millions. He’d only meant to use a few to sharpen his attention to detail, to give him an edge against the younger competitors always snapping at his heels, so he could take care of his growing family. At first the drug had worked, but then the young hounds had upped their game, too, so he’d started snorting coke, until his thoughts had raced round and round his mind like those little electric cars he’d had as a boy, the ones that could only go so fast before they flew right off their cheap plastic racetrack. But no matter how he’d fought it, one idea had clung stubbornly: the suspicion that Liane had been plotting his destruction so she could run back to the man her father, that old SOB, had come right out and told him to his face that his daughter should’ve married.

  Mac could still picture the way Deke Mason had looked right through him that day as if all his accomplishments, all the money he had made by his own wits, had meant not a damned thing. As if an old man who always smelled of leather, sweat and horseshit had any right to judge the way he treated his own wife.

  Fresh resentment boiled up wit
h the certainty that Liane’s father had backed him into this corner. The way Mac saw it, the old man had forced his hand this afternoon just to make him look bad.

  But as long as Mac was still a man, he had choices. Especially when it came to the two kids who bore his name.

  “You told us you knew these woods,” Smash shouted above the wind, still angry that they’d lost the panicked horses. “So you’d damned well better find those brats fast, before Goose and me decide to cut our losses.”

  Just in case he’d missed the point, Goose came up and grabbed him from behind, laying the cold steel of his knife against Mac’s pulsing throat.

  * * *

  “Liane.”

  The voice woke her with a start, her body jerking so hard in response that her head banged against something as cold and unyielding as rock. No, it was rock. And the room was black, without the soft, safe glow of the alarm clock.

  Because it wasn’t a room, and she wasn’t in her bed at home. She was back with him, subject to his insane demands, his violent temper. Her heart kicking into high gear, she swallowed back a cry. When a strangled whimper slipped out, she braced herself for whatever would come next.

  “Storm’s over.” The words were quiet. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  Not Mac. Not Mac. Not Mac... He didn’t have her, wasn’t here.

  With that realization her brain slipped back into gear, and awareness struck her like a landslide, bringing the memory of where she was—and why.

  No less terrifying than the past, the present chilled her to the marrow. She dragged in a breath of air, thick and tainted with the bitterness of ash.

  “Liane?” Jake asked softly. “Are you all right?”

  A spasm of coughing gripped her, making it impossible to answer. When he switched on his flashlight, she blinked at the sudden brilliance, then focused on his gaze, the dark eyes that had once upon a time made her feel so safe. Thank God.