Dangerous Ground

by Grant, Rachel

  SEVENTEEN

  The rain had stopped. It was the first thought that crossed Dean’s mind as he slowly came to consciousness. The second thought was that he held the beautiful woman his brother wanted in his arms and he was at half-mast. He gave thanks it wasn’t a full-on morning missile.

  Sorry, bro. But she’s just as great as you described.

  Dean slowly extracted his arms from the sleeping woman and unzipped his side of the bag so he could slip out. He wasn’t about to do anything that could be construed as making a move on Dylan’s girl while he was out of commission.

  Thankfully, Fiona didn’t stir as Dean slipped from the bag and zipped it up again. If he was lucky, he could get the fire going and have the place warmed up, with coffee at the ready, before she woke.

  He hadn’t held a woman as she’d slept since Violet died. He’d spent the night with other women, sure, but holding them after sex—and especially holding them without sex ever being part of the equation—wasn’t something that had happened in more than ten years.

  Sometimes, it was hard to believe it had been ten years since the love of his life had passed. And yet, at the same time, it felt like it had been forever since he’d held her. The day after her funeral, he’d boarded a plane and departed for Tanzania, the trip he and Violet had planned as their college graduation present, before she got sick.

  She’d gotten a payout from her trust fund upon graduation, and she’d been eager to finance the trip for them both. A celebration of their wildlife biology degrees. Violet had dreams of being the next Dian Fossey, and Dean was ready to be by her side, taking photos that would show the world the wonders of great apes and other fauna in equatorial Africa.

  But before they could depart, she’d gotten sick. After her diagnosis, Violet had begged Dean to marry her—she didn’t want her parents to have medical power of attorney, knowing they would cut Dean from her life if she became incapacitated. They’d married in a small ceremony that included Dylan as best man and his father as the other witness less than a week before her first surgery.

  They’d agreed then that their African adventure would be a belated honeymoon, after she got better, but in the end, she’d made him promise he would take the trip without her, after she was gone. Boarding that plane without her after she’d been laid to rest was one of the most devastating moments of his life. He never would have done it if he hadn’t given her that solemn vow.

  He’d lost his father to H1N1 a few months after their hasty wedding, two years before he lost his wife to cancer. He’d lost his mom to kidney failure when he and Dylan were nineteen.

  He’d ended up staying in Africa—traveling from country to country, taking photo after photo of incredible wildlife—for nearly nine months, far longer than the original expedition was meant to be, because he had nothing to return to.

  Well, except Dylan, who’d encouraged him to explore the world and live life to the fullest after two and a half years of taking care of Violet. Of watching the tumors in her brain rob her of her ability to move, speak, and see.

  That first solitary expedition had been for her. He saw all the animals in their natural habitats that she’d never been able to lay eyes on herself. He touched the vines and trees in the jungle, because she never got to feel that texture beneath her fingers. He imitated the sounds of birds, because she never got to experience the joy of making a birdcall and hearing a response.

  Violet would have loved every minute of his African adventure, and for her, he tried to enjoy it too. And he did, but it took time. In a way, part of what made it possible for him to find pleasure in the trip was the hardship of it—nothing was easy or comfortable.

  It wasn’t some deluxe grand safari, even though that had been well within his budget.

  Between diagnosis and death, Violet had turned twenty-five, and her trust fund came into her control. She’d left it all to Dean. But he had no interest in a rich tourist’s pampered excursion. He’d wanted to get down and dirty in the thick of things. To see the animals up close and feel the heartbeat of the wilderness. He’d wanted to leave no mark on the land or animals while meeting them on their terms.

  He wasn’t naïve, so he hired guides, but they didn’t do the work for him. They taught him the skills he needed and made sure he didn’t die from his own ignorance. The end result was that the expedition was grueling. Hot. Miserable and dangerous. He carried his own pack and cooked his own food. There were times when food or water was scarce, and he and his guides survived on grubs and whatever else they could scavenge.

  It wasn’t fun in any normal sense of the word, but it had been utterly exhilarating. He was, well and truly, alive and living to the fullest extent possible, pushing his limits to the edge.

  Dylan had worried upon Dean’s return that he’d come back a daredevil, someone who felt the need to test the boundaries of mortality. And to a certain degree, that was probably true. But he’d dialed back the recklessness after that because he wouldn’t risk leaving his brother alone in the world. They’d lost both their parents in a short time. It would be too much if Dylan lost Dean too.

  Which was another reason he knew Dylan wouldn’t take off without a word. Ten years might have passed since Dean lost Violet, but Dylan wouldn’t do that to him.

  They’d made a lot of pacts over the years, but the number one most important was communication. They were the only family they had.

  After Violet died, Dean shut off the part of his heart that allowed for a deeper connection to anyone other than his brother. He wouldn’t open himself up to that kind of loss again. He had friendships, but they were superficial. He refused to care.

  His gaze landed on the sleeping woman, and he didn’t like the concern he felt for her. When he’d found her facedown in the mud yesterday . . . his heart could have stopped for the pain that had ripped through him.

  But that was because Dylan cared about her. And because it was Dean’s fault she’d been in danger in the first place. It was guilt, not any deeper kind of caring.

  And it had felt right to hold her last night only because it was safety and security for them both. Warmth and comfort, which they both needed.

  If Fiona didn’t feel for Dylan as his brother did for her, she’d change her mind when they found him, alive and well. He’d make sure of it. Dylan deserved happiness. Deserved a good woman by his side, and Fiona was . . . impressive.

  Maybe even glorious.

  He slipped outside to visit their makeshift latrine to see the snow that had fallen last night had all melted in the rain that followed. It was now sunny and clear, no sign of the storm that had whipped through yesterday.

  He had no clue what the updated forecast would say, but as of two days ago, the storm was supposed to be confined to one day, and then it would be clear for two to three days. If they could get the side-by-side up the muddy road, this would be a good window to visit the village. If the weather stayed clear, even satellite phones might work.

  Not that they had a satellite phone, but still.

  Back inside the plane, he found Fiona up, shivering in his T-shirt as she bent over the small pile of coals and blew slowly on the flame until it glowed a hot red and caught the kindling she’d piled on top.

  Her position—on hands and knees with her head bent low toward the flames—was unintentionally sexy, with her loose hair tousled around her shoulders. He felt a possessive heat burn in his gut. She wore his shirt and had slept in his arms. His cock thickened even as he tried to will the sexy associations out of his mind.

  She’s Dylan’s.

  Besides, he didn’t do relationships, and she didn’t do field flings.

  She glanced up, and he prayed she didn’t see the bulge in his sweatpants. He could hardly blame it on proximity now. He dropped down to a squatting position on the other side of the fire pit, hiding his reaction, which was thankfully deflating. “Morning. I was hoping to get water boiling for coffee before you woke.”

  “I blew it by getting out o
f bed. Lesson learned.”

  “You sleep okay?”

  She shrugged. “Better at first than after the rain stopped. It was fitful after that. You?”

  “Like the dead,” he lied. He didn’t want to tell her how much holding her had felt both right and wrong, interfering with his sleep.

  She gave him a look that said she knew he wasn’t telling the truth. He’d have to hope she assumed it was worry for Dylan that kept him awake. It was certainly part of it. He fed a few sticks of ammo box to the growing fire. “I’ll break up the other boxes and tie them in bundles. We should take as much as we can carry with us to the side-by-side.”

  “It’s safe to head out today?”

  “Yeah. No snow on the ground. Blue sky.”

  She nodded. “I think we need to go over Dylan’s maps, figure out where he worked on and around the volcano. He said he was going to the volcano that last morning to look for meteorite debris.”

  Dean nodded. “I wish we’d been able to find his phone in your tent. If I could get a look at the GPS data . . .”

  She glanced down, biting her bottom lip, hiding the freckle that had so fascinated him that first day.

  Still did, actually.

  His belly dropped as he realized the nervous lip-biting was a tell. “Please tell me you have his phone.”

  Slowly, she nodded. “It’s in the clipboard. I tucked it away before we left camp yesterday morning. I didn’t want to leave it out. I just . . . I had that weird vibe from Victor, and then I thought you might have searched my tent the night before while I was in the office tent. I didn’t want it out on the table.”

  He sat back on his heels, taking a deep breath. Her instincts had been spot-on. “I did go into your tent. I wanted to see if the phone was Dylan’s and if it still worked.”

  “And what did you learn?”

  “Yes on both counts. I left it because I was pretty sure you’d notice if it was missing.”

  “I would have. You know his passcode?”

  He nodded.

  She shook her head. “Man, I’m a little jealous. That’s some deep trust.”

  He laughed. “Well, it’s our birth date. So not so much trust as lazy.”

  She gave him a soft smile. “I stand corrected. But still, it’s sweet.”

  Dean supposed it was. Dylan knew all his most important passwords and vice versa. But then, it would be a lonely life if he didn’t have anyone with whom he could share his ATM PIN, wouldn’t it?

  Did Fiona have that? A personal identification number buddy? Did she even have siblings? Was she close to her parents?

  He knew nothing about her.

  When they had more time, he’d ask her all the important questions. But today, the search for Dylan had to take center stage. “Why didn’t you tell me where the phone was when I was looking for it?”

  “Because I was freaked out that you were searching so desperately for it, after you’d gone for Dylan’s clipboard before the sleeping bag. I thought you might be behind the other sabotage.”

  She must’ve been terrified of him right then. “Tell you what. I’ll make coffee, and we’ll take a look at the map and the phone.”

  She nodded and rose. “I need to use the latrine and get dressed. Then I’ll help make breakfast.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting side by side by the fire, each with a mug of coffee in their hands, Dylan’s phone and clipboard between them. Dean had powered up the phone. Now he unlocked it with the PIN.

  He went straight to the letter icon on the bottom of the screen to access the email accounts. Dylan had both his free, personal email account and work email configured on the phone. Given that they didn’t have Wi-Fi to download recent emails, only the previously downloaded messages from six weeks ago populated the screen.

  Dean had seen these same emails on Dylan’s computer in his Seattle apartment. He was more interested in emails sent from the phone by Dylan in his last days on Chiksook. Emails sent from this phone hadn’t been on Dylan’s home computer. Dean had had no way to access those messages until now.

  He went to the Sent folder for Dylan’s personal email and found a dozen emails from the last days he was on Chiksook. Two were to Dean—upbeat messages about the project and Fiona, including that last, unequivocal email that couldn’t have been written by anyone but Dylan.

  Dean showed her the phone, and the crease between her brows deepened as she read the last one he’d sent, in which he’d described going to see the archaeological site and how Fiona had looked on the bluff as she’d gazed across the landscape. He’d said he wished he had Dean’s photography skills, because only Dean knew how to capture the light just so to do her justice.

  She set down the phone and said, “Okay. I get it now. He does sound infatuated. But I swear, he wasn’t. Dylan wasn’t even a casual flirt, like you or Roy.” She lifted the phone again. “Besides, it’s irrelevant. We’re looking for emails you haven’t already read sixty times.”

  “A hundred, minimum. I’ve got all his emails memorized at this point.”

  Fiona’s hand dropped to his knee. “I’m sorry. I know how terrifying this is, and you’ve been living with it for weeks.”

  He frowned. “Have you . . . lost a sibling?”

  She waved a hand, as if to push away his question. “I mean, I only learned Dylan was missing last night. This is still new to me. And reading his email . . . I get it now. Dylan is gone. And you’ve been alone in your nightmare.”

  He caught his breath, realizing this was the first genuine sympathy offered by someone who also knew Dylan, and it . . . meant a lot. So much that his eyes burned, but he held it back.

  He had friends who’d understood the gravity—like the reporter who helped him get the Bill Lowell ID—but the reporter didn’t know Dylan. She didn’t care beyond the abstract. “We’re going to find him,” Dean said.

  She nodded. “We will.”

  He squeezed her hand and took another deep breath. He wasn’t alone in his search anymore.

  The last thing she wanted was to tell Dean about her own family. Not now. So it was with relief that he accepted her deflection, but also, it was true. It was finally sinking in.

  Dylan Slater hadn’t left Chiksook willingly. If he’d left the island at all.

  She scrolled through the sent emails and paused when she saw the name of a lab in Nevada. She tapped the cracked screen to open it. “Dylan said he wanted to send the metallic rock to this lab. He said they’d run a mass spec to identify the mineralogy. There was something about light signatures for different minerals, look at the geometric shapes or something. Between those tests, they’d be able to determine what metals are included in the stone.”

  She read the email, and her heart rate picked up as a wave of relief washed through her. “Dean, he sent the rock and the harpoon head to the lab!”

  He didn’t lose or steal the artifacts.

  Oh, sweet lord, she could cry at this news. Thank you, Dylan.

  She cleared her throat and continued. “He emailed the lab to give them the heads-up that the samples had been mailed from the Unangax̂ village, so they would take a few extra days to ship, and to send receipt confirmation to the billing email address he’d set up for the samples he sent in July.” She held up the phone so Dean could see the billing email address Dylan had included in the message. It wasn’t one of the preconfigured email accounts on the phone. “Does this address look familiar to you?”

  He shook his head. “Why wouldn’t he send this email from that account, if it’s the one he used when dealing with the lab?”

  “It’s not preconfigured on his phone, so he’d have to access it via the internet. Given the extra layer of going online and logging in, and the spotty internet here, odds are it timed out before he had a chance to type the email, let alone hit ‘Send.’ Internet is seriously dicey here. Even when using preconfigured accounts, we get timed out, and things aren’t delivered. Sending from the preloaded email server would ski
p the step of logging in via the web and loading the account.”

  “That makes sense. He didn’t want Pollux to know about the sample. He bypassed his work email in sending this from his personal account on his phone, and he paid for the analysis using an account he’d set up in advance with an online-only email account. Plus, he used the tribal mail system to send the sample out instead of using the camp mail service provided by the navy.”

  She nodded. “The locals have a regular weekly pickup and delivery. He must’ve stopped by the village after visiting the site and mailed it. But why the secrecy from Pollux? I mean, they should be the ones to pay for the test.”

  “Maybe someone in the village can answer that.”

  “I bet he was more suspicious of Sylvia than he ever let on.” Dylan Slater was taking a different shape in her mind with each new detail. He’d sent weird-ass emails to his brother that made it sound like he was enamored with her, he bypassed the mail system available to fieldworkers, and he used a secret email address to conduct geologic tests.

  And why had he left his phone and clipboard behind? The cracked screen could explain the phone. He wouldn’t have had reception in the volcano anyway. But why the field notes? And if he never left Chiksook, then Sylvia had lied about his taking the helicopter with her.

  Why hadn’t she taken the phone and clipboard?

  If one were trying to cover up a person’s disappearance and claimed they’d left the island willingly—wouldn’t it be prudent to pack all their belongings?

  Trevor had been Dylan’s roommate during the previous expedition, and he was the person who told Fiona about Dylan’s expulsion from the team. What did Trevor know? Was he as clueless as Fiona had been, or was he also involved? Why had he been pulled from the jet at the last minute and replaced by Victor?

  The fire popped and sizzled, bringing her focus back to the interior of the plane and not the office tent that evening nearly six weeks ago now, when Trevor had told her about Sylvia’s allegation and Dylan’s removal from the team.

  “I feel like we have too many chess pieces and no actual board,” she said.