Situation: Out of Control/Full Exposure

by Debra Webb

  He was in real trouble here.

  Panic had broken out in a cold, clammy sweat all over his body, in spite of, or maybe because of, the layers of synthetics he wore. Pants, shirt, parka, all of it was too familiar. Even the smell of the new fabric made his stomach churn. His heart pounded but it was more than the rigor of ascending several thousand feet…it was the whole package.

  The vast whiteness. The mountains jutting toward the sky. The occasional scrub brush and spot of ground that defied the snow by remaining visible after a bona fide blizzard. He had tried to talk himself down from the anxiety. Blamed the physical symptoms on the altitude and the fact that he hadn't climbed in more than three years.

  But it was none of those things.

  It was the memories.

  The way she'd looked at him before she'd fallen…before he'd failed her.

  His fault.

  He'd dragged her to Utah, insisted that there was this one peak he just had to climb. He wanted her there with him. She'd relented, though climbing was far from her favorite leisure time activity.

  Only one of them had climbed back down that mountain.

  It had taken days to recover her body.

  No one had blamed him. It was an accident.

  But he knew then and he knew now that it was his fault. She only went to please him.

  Heath stalled just inside the door of the cabin, tore off his pack, gloves and parka and started to pace the small main room. But the anxiety only escalated. Being inside…this place…It made things worse. The smell of something burning jerked his attention across the room.

  Jayne had built a fire.

  He blinked, tried to steady himself. She already suspected something wasn't right. He had to get back in control of the situation. He'd known this would happen. No one else at the Colby Agency had possessed his climbing skills. His selection had been necessary. There had been no time to prepare another investigator for this assignment. Not to mention the I.A. investigation had dictated that he be the one. He'd thought that maybe he could handle it. But he'd been wrong.

  A new realization made Heath go stone cold. Right now, at this precise moment, she was not safe with him. He wasn't at all sure he could protect her if the need arose. He hoped like hell Howard Stephens didn't choose this particular moment to show up. He'd man aged to keep his guard up fairly well on the way up, surveying the area, watching for any sign of movement, though he doubted if he'd been at his best.

  Heath's eyes closed and for the first time since the morning began he let the climate's bitter cold invade his senses. He was freezing. His fingers were numb in spite of the high-tech gloves he'd worn. His leg muscles ached and he felt more exhausted than—

  "Okay, enough of this."

  Jayne's firm tone ushered his eyes open. She stared at him as if she feared he might make a run for it any second. And, truthfully, that's exactly how he felt, as if he needed to run all the way back down this damned mountain and not look back. He clenched his fists, set his jaw hard. Anything to keep himself from flying apart.

  Deep in his gut he'd known this was a bad idea. But not once had he considered that it would be quite this bad. He'd thought he had put the past behind him. He'd been wrong.

  "What's going on?" Jayne demanded, drawing his attention back to the here and now. "You look terrified. What the hell are you doing following me around, Murphy, if you're scared of heights?"

  "I'm not afraid of heights," he growled, too frustrated to keep the savage sound out of his tone.

  She glanced at the pack, parka and gloves he'd discarded so carelessly. Whatever she thought of that she kept to herself. Instead of pounding him with more questions, she pulled the food from her own pack as well as his and warmed it over the flames. He stood back, unable to participate, and watched her methodical, familiar movements. His mind immediately conjured flashes of memory of him doing that very thing. He'd been there…done that…one time too many already. He had to be insane to be here now.

  The room started to heat up and Heath unbuttoned the Gore-Tex shirt he wore over two layers of full-length underclothes. The floor glistened with the snow that had melted from their boots. He wet his lips and swallowed back another surge of panic. Control, he had to grab back control. They were safe. There was no need to panic. And, yet, he couldn't slow the adrenaline soaring through his veins.

  He curled and uncurled his fingers and looked around the room for something to focus on or something to do.

  "The woodpile looks a little low," he muttered, more to himself than to the only other human being within a few thousand feet of him.

  She set the grub on the table and looked from him to the woodpile in the corner and back. "There's probably more out back. I'll bring some in to replace what we use after we eat. You need to eat and calm down."

  He shook his head and reached for his parka and gloves. "I'll take care of the wood."

  Before Jayne could say more he'd tramped out the door. What the hell was the deal here?

  She went to the window, forgetting the food that would get cold a hell of a lot faster than it had gotten warm, and watched as he checked a couple of snowdrifts before he found the woodpile. He gathered an armful of chopped wood and hauled it into the hut.

  When he'd stacked it in the corner he turned back to her. "That's the last of what's been prepared for the stove." He gestured to the wood-burning stove she had going at maximum capacity. "If there's an ax around here I'll chop some more."

  He couldn't be serious. "Of course there's an ax in the hall storage closet, but you don't need to do that. The owner or the renters take care of that, it's—"

  He cut her off, those dark brown eyes going from a listless deadness to a glittering granite glare. "It's like you said, it doesn't hurt to make sure all is as it should be before the avalanche advisory is lifted."

  Well, he had her there. Before she could even attempt to argue with her own words, he'd stormed back out into the frigid air.

  Not so foolish as to ignore her own needs, Jayne nib bled at her food as she observed his maniac episode and that's all she knew to call it. He'd exposed a pile of larger sticks of wood and was now hefting the ax to chop them into smaller, stove-size pieces. It was insane. Though she doubted she had to worry about him freezing to death. It just wasn't right.

  After thirty minutes of grueling labor, including stacking the newly chopped wood into a neat pile, he came inside again. This time he stomped most of the snow off his boots first. He put the ax away and came back into the main room where she stood, flabbergasted.

  "Anything else you'd like to do around here?" She waved her arms in punctuation of the question. "I don't know, maybe like clear the snow off the roof?"

  He didn't answer, just grabbed up his cold food and ravenously devoured it.

  When he'd finished fueling his body and cleaned up the remains her patience slipped again. "Okay, Murphy, let's have it," she demanded, hands planted on her Gore-Tex–clad hips. There was nothing attractive about cold weather gear for climbers. The thick layers of protective clothing probably made her hips several inches wider. She shook herself and refused to even speculate on why that thought had never once occurred to her be fore. This thing going on between her and him was too bizarre. They were strangers. She didn't even like him. Especially right now.

  "Have what?" He avoided her eyes, pretending to be concerned with something outside the front window.

  "You're not fooling me for a second." She marched up to him and poked him in the chest, not that the move did much good with all those heavy clothes in the way. But it did get his attention. "I know a panic attack when I see one. I've dealt with plenty when overzealous climbers underestimate their fears. You almost lost it on the way up here. Why?"

  They didn't have time for this. The daylight was wasting away while she played twenty questions with a virtual stranger. She had to be losing it, too. But there was something in his eyes…an emotion that compelled her to ask…to understand. Every instinct told
her that this man was far too strong and capable to be turned in side out by a moderate climb. There was more…a lot more.

  His answer was so long in coming she'd wondered if he intended to answer at all. Finally he did, but not before wiping his face and eyes clean of emotion. "I told you I'd done this a few times before."

  She nodded once, afraid to speak or make any sudden moves for fear of stopping him.

  One shoulder jerked in what was likely intended as a shrug. "There was an accident." His gaze connected with hers on a level that took her breath. She could feel his agony. "I don't want to talk about it." She blinked, he didn't. "I haven't climbed since."

  She wanted to curl up and die. What a jerk she'd been.

  "I'm sorry." She let go a heavy breath. "I shouldn't have dragged you up here like this." He didn't respond, just stared at her. "But I wanted to get back at you for…" Man, her motivation sounded so lame now. But she owed him the truth. "You walked out on me last night and I was supposed to walk out on you," she said in a rush.

  He didn't look completely surprised at her silly admission, but then he didn't look happy about it either.

  He blew out a weary breath of his own and shoved his hands into the pockets of his cold-weather pants. "Well, if it makes you feel any better," he offered, those dark eyes soft and sexy as hell once more, "it wasn't easy."

  A moment of awkward silence hung in the air. Jayne wasn't sure whether she should demand to know what his statement meant or run for her life.

  She decided on the latter.

  "We should go. Walt was right, this was totally unnecessary."

  She didn't give him an opportunity to debate the assessment. She put out the fire she'd built, carried out the ash and locked up the hut, safe and sound.

  Just under four hours later they were back at the trail head and climbing into her old clunker. She drove straight to town as quickly as the slick road allowed, parked and immediately headed up to her apartment.

  All without exchanging a word or glance with Heath Murphy.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jayne soaked in the tub for nearly an hour. She'd had to keep adding hot water in an effort to ward off the chill that seemed to come from her very bones. It was scarcely six o'clock and already she felt like midnight had come and gone.

  She kept seeing his eyes…the agony.

  There was an accident.

  I haven't climbed since.

  She squeezed her lids shut and tried to banish the memory but it simply would not go away.

  She opened her eyes and looked at her hands, the small calluses there. The physical rigor of her work left its mark other places as well. She lifted her left leg from the water and studied the jagged line on her calf where she'd taken her first fifty-yard tumble down into a gulley a few years ago. Twenty-eight stitches had been required to sew her up. Bruises and other aches and pains came with the territory on a regular basis.

  But there were other marks, the kind that scarred a person's heart and soul. The ones like Heath bore. She moved her head slowly from side to side in confusion. She hadn't noticed when they first met. She should have. Anyone who'd ever watched someone fall to their death or who had dragged a body out of a river a few thousand feet below where the victim had fallen had a look about them. It wasn't pretty. She should know. She stared into that haunted expression every day in the mirror.

  Her worst nightmares came from the rescues. Not the ones who survived but the ones who didn't. Those times when a rescue became a body recovery. Kids were the worst. God, she didn't know how parents dealt with the loss. Expert climbers fell occasionally. Not often, but once in a great while. She remembered one retrieval where a man with thirty years' climbing experience be hind him disappeared. It had taken days to find him. He'd fallen but hadn't died immediately. Before beginning what would be his final journey he'd opted not to carry a transmitter, commonly known as an avalanche beacon. He had carried his cell phone. But the vicious cold got the battery and then it got him. He'd left a journal of sorts down to the bitter end. His last entry spoke of feeling splendidly warm.

  The phenomena was kind of like a mirage in the desert, a person suffering from the final stages of hypothermia would feel incredibly warm and even start shedding the very garments keeping him alive.

  An experience like that had left its mark on Heath. She'd known people who lost friends and relatives but it didn't keep them away from the challenge of climbing. It was like an addiction, got in your blood. You couldn't deny the rush. That's what kept people like her going back out there bringing back the lost even after scraping up body parts from rocky gullies.

  But Heath hadn't gone back. Today had been tough on him. She'd watched him almost come apart right in front of her. Sheer determination had held him together enough to walk off that mountain. A new kind of respect for this man sprouted inside her. Mixed with that respect was guilt for putting him through the pain. But she hadn't known. She should have, but she hadn't. His courage had won out, though. He was every bit as strong mentally as he was physically.

  The dreamy smile that pushed across her face fell just as quickly. But that didn't explain or excuse his final re mark in that hut. Well, if it makes you feel any better…it wasn't easy.

  What wasn't easy? Walking away? That didn't make sense…unless he was attracted to her and suffered the same malady of need as she did.

  "Don't be ridiculous," she grumbled under her breath. He liked teasing her, that was clear. Definitely liked watching her, but that was part of the reporter gig, right? He couldn't do his job without getting to know her and observing her routine.

  Oh well. She was probably better off not knowing what he'd meant. In a couple of days he would be gone anyway. She was pretty sure he was only hanging around in hopes of having the opportunity to observe an actual rescue.

  A new line of confusion worried her brow. That didn't make sense. If he didn't climb anymore, how was he supposed to observe anything? She had a strong suspicion she wasn't supposed to have seen what she saw today. Just how the heck had he expected to get through the ordeal anyway? He'd be a liability. He had to know that.

  She sighed and relaxed more deeply into the water. She was too tired to figure this out. But there was definitely something out of sync here. If he hadn't come to write about a rescue, then why here, why her?

  Her father's warning exploded inside her brain, evaporating the oxygen in her lungs.

  Killers didn't have panic attacks, she reasoned. This guy had a full-fledged anxiety episode. She'd witnessed it with her own eyes. Spies and assassins didn't succumb to mere human frailties…did they?

  "Just give it up, girl," she muttered as she reluctantly dragged herself from the water. A few more minutes and she'd be a prune. Tomorrow was her birthday. She wanted to look good even if no one noticed.

  She wrapped a towel around her hair and then an other around her body. She'd eat in tonight. Didn't feel like company and there would be a crowd in the bar. The outdoor enthusiasts would be in full swing, celebrating the lifting of the avalanche advisory.

  That scene would just have to happen without her. She had a bottle of wine somewhere in her tiny kitchen, cheese, crackers. Hey, sounded like a party to her.

  She stared at her reflection in the mirror. She'd be twenty-five in a few hours. No boyfriend. Not even any prospects. That was truly sad.

  And then an old, too-familiar companion crept in.

  Loneliness.

  * * *

  HEATH WALKED THE perimeter once more before going back inside. He glanced at the display on his phone occasionally, quickly looking away when he noted Jayne's exact position. He drew in a deep breath of cold air. For the last hour she'd been in the tub. He'd known he couldn't hang around his room and not look at that monitor.

  No problem. He needed to check the area anyway. Uneasiness nagged at him. He'd accessed the system with his cell phone, picking up the monitor's feed. The image was small enough to lack detail but sufficient to set him at ea
se as to her every move.

  He stopped and turned around. The sidewalk wasn't crowded just yet. In another hour the streets would be jam-packed, but for now, it was pretty deserted. But the hair standing on the back of his neck warned him that he wasn't the only one watching the Altitude Bar and Grill.

  He was here.

  Not just in the area, but here.

  Heath surveyed the street, then the building before him. Its one-hundred-year-old facade was right in keeping with the old mining-town look still present around Aspen, as was the rustic interior. Even he couldn't deny that this was a lovely town. Picturesque most certainly. The snow-covered roofs and streets lit with holiday lights made the new as well as the old look cozy and welcoming. But it was the snow-capped peaks in the distance that drew folks from all around the country.

  Not the kind of place one would generally expect to find a man like Howard Stephens lurking. But he was here all the same. Heath could feel the anticipation building and this time it had nothing to do with altitude.

  He glanced right once more then headed toward the entrance of the bar. He'd lost a lot of ground today. Had allowed Jayne to see his weakness. She would have questions. Those questions would lead to more questions. Soon she would realize that two and two, in this case, did not equal four. And then the situation would spiral completely out of control.

  Somehow he had to stop that from happening.

  He hesitated at the door. His old psychologist would say that he'd faced his demons today. And he had. But he wasn't sure the challenge had accomplished any thing other than distracting and exposing him.

  He'd been distracted when they arrived back into town this evening but not so much so as not to notice the change. His old, reliable cop instincts had surfaced in the nick of time. He'd felt someone watching Jayne, watching him, as they'd exited her vehicle and headed into the bar. With each passing second since, that well-honed instinct he'd depended upon more than once had been sending him a warning with escalating urgency.

  Jayne might not have the opportunity to figure out who he really was and why he was here. He had a bad feeling that learning who and what her father was might just take precedence sooner than he'd hoped.