Bear Bait (9781101611548) (7 page)

The guy shrugged again. “Maybe.”

Ernest decided to get off the vet thing. “And jobs?” he said, snorting for effect, “When I moved up here, I asked the forest service and the park service for jobs. Nothing but trail crew, they said.”

Ford nodded. “Yeah, there’s always trail crew jobs in the summer. Pay’s not bad, but it’s damn hard work.”

Ernest shook his head. “Do I look like I can bust a trail? That’s a job for kids.” He placed a hand on the counter. “But that’s the government for you. They just use a man till he’s all used up, don’t give nothin’ in return.”

Ford’s gaze remained locked on the news program. He curled his fingers around the beer mug, gestured with it in the direction of the television, which now showed a bunch of kids on skateboards whizzing around with juice drinks in their hands.

“You know that blond gal, she was down in Utah bugging a friend of mine last year,” Ford growled. “And now she’s up here! She’s one of those tree huggers who think animals are more important than people.” He leaned toward Ernest, wafting the heady scent of Budweiser beer his way. “Well, I’m going to beat her at her own game. I know how to fix her wagon. I know how to fix all their wagons.”

THE
brightness of sun on her eyelids woke her up. Sam yawned, rolled her head to the left, and was startled to find Chase’s face only inches from her own. He lay on his stomach, his face mashed into the pillow. The sleeping bag had fallen away from his bare shoulders. They were nice muscular shoulders, tapering to a lean bronze back. It was weird how they’d been through so much together and yet she had never seen him without a shirt before.

His black hair was ruffled, for once not parted knife-straight with FBI rigidity. His lips were slightly parted, pale against the dark sheen of whiskers. Relaxed in sleep, his features looked softer. It was easy to picture what he’d looked like before kidnappers and extortionists and bank robbers had sobered him. But it was still hard to picture him as the accountant he’d been before joining the FBI. She raised herself up on an elbow.

The movement woke him. His eyes snapped open, focused on her, and then crinkled at the corners. “Good morning.” His voice was husky. He smiled and rolled over on his back, stretching his arms above his head. His bare leg grazed hers beneath the covers, startling her. He had zipped their sleeping bags together.

Trying to be inconspicuous, she slid a hand down into her own sleeping bag. She was wearing a T-shirt, bra, and panties. She could feel Chase’s gaze on her face. Damn the blush creeping up her cheeks!

He cupped his hands behind his head. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Okay,” she mumbled. Confused was more accurate.

“How’s the head?”

Actually, her head felt surprisingly good, considering. She searched her memory for the night before, remembered wine and pain pills and his hands on her shoulders, then couldn’t come up with anything beyond leaning back into his arms. She turned her eyes away from his. “Uh, last night…Did I…”

“Still having trouble with the mouth?” His expression was deadpan, but a gleam lurked in his dark eyes.

Damned smart aleck.

“You called me
fine.
” He used the same inflection that Lili had, and batted his eyelashes at her.

“When exactly did I do that?” Had she finally tangled the sheets with Chase and not even remembered it?

A pained expression took over his face. “It was that forgettable?”

Her cheeks burned. “Well, I…” She remembered wanting to kiss him and see him naked, but she didn’t remember actually doing either of those things.

Clapping a hand to his jaw, he focused his gaze in the direction of his feet. “Jeez,” he sighed, using her slang, “I guess I’m going to have to study the manual again.” He leaned back against the pillow, rolling his eyes. “I practice and practice…”

She jerked the pillow out from under his head and pressed it down over his face. “You…you…” She fumbled for an appropriate term. When she took the pillow away, he was laughing. “You’re an exasperating man, Chase Perez,” she told him.

He rolled over, pushed himself up on his elbows, and moved his head close to hers. “I don’t take advantage of unconscious women, Summer.”

Pulling himself out of the sleeping bag, he stood up. She had long wondered whether he’d wear boxers or briefs.
Trust him to choose something in between, a close-fitting type of gray knit underwear that hugged his buttocks and muscular thighs.

He retrieved his jeans from the floor. “Keep staring like that and you’re going to see more than just my shorts.”

“A little more?” she teased. “Or a lot?”

“Hey, they don’t call me a special agent for nothing.”

“You do gymnastic tricks or something?”

“More like magic.”

“Show me.”

He groaned. “Hold that thought. I’ll be right back.” He jammed his feet, sockless, into his boots. “If the President calls, I’ll be in the small conference room, the one with the half moon on the door.” The door slammed behind him. It sounded like he was descending the ladder three rungs at a time. She should have told him that it was all right to pee off the balcony.

Should she take her T-shirt off? Wait for Chase to do it? A delicious thought. Then she had a sudden vision of the tight neckline getting hung up on her chin or nose. Decidedly unsexy. She ripped the T-shirt off, tossed it in a corner, studied her bra and panties with dismay. White cotton. She wished she were wearing the peach-colored lace set at the bottom of her underwear drawer.

She crawled to her daypack, pulled out the tiny mirror. Surprisingly, the face that looked back was not too bad. Her lower lip was still swollen and dusky, but if she ignored the stitches, the injury gave her kind of a sexy, hard-kissed look. She squeezed a dab of mint toothpaste onto her tongue and ran it around her mouth, sniffed her armpits, finger-combed her tangled hair. Then she slid back into the sleeping bag, pulled the quilted nylon up to hide the utilitarian bra, arranged herself as if casually lounging against the pillow.

It was finally going to happen. She and Chase. Actual lovemaking. Sex. Anticipation—or was it anxiety?—tingled throughout her body. Did she even remember how to
do this? It had been nearly a year since Adam. You never forget, she told herself, like riding a bike. Well, no, not a bike. Riding a horse? Hardly. Well, sort of like riding, anyway…

A couple of clomps thundered against the ladder. “So you’re the guy who usually mans this tower?” Chase said loudly.

What the heck?

More clomps. “She’ll be
so
glad you’re back.” Chase’s voice rose in volume. “Not to mention—
surprised
to see you so
soon
!”

Goddammit! Sam dove for her T-shirt, found the wad of her uniform in the corner. She jammed a splinter into her bare foot as she hopped one-legged into her pants. Damn, damn, damn! She buttoned the waistband just as Perez walked into the room, accompanied by a red-haired, mustachioed fellow. The redhead carried a loaded backpack, which he dumped onto the floor before extending a hand.

“Greg Jordan,” he said. “I’m back.”

The firewatch volunteer. She pumped his hand. “Glad to meet you, Greg,” she lied. “I’m Sam Westin, the temporary bio-study hire. And I guess you’ve already met my friend.”

Behind Greg’s back, Chase pantomimed choking the younger man. Sam pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. By the time Greg turned around, Chase was reaching for his flannel shirt, which dangled from the back of the solitary chair.

“How’s your mother?” she asked Greg.

He swiveled to face her again. “Back to her usual critical self, in spite of the heart attack. I couldn’t wait to get back here, out of range.”

Chase fired an imaginary pistol at the back of Greg’s head. Three shots.

Sam laughed aloud. Greg, assuming her response was due to his wit, chuckled along with her.

While Chase jammed sleeping bags and pillows into stuff sacks, she made a pot of coffee over the small propane
two-burner stove. The three of them drank it and chewed granola bars as Sam told Greg about the fire.

“I wish that’d happened on my watch,” he said wistfully.

Sam rolled her eyes at Chase.

“You may still get your chance,” Chase said. “People that get a kick out of starting fires usually do it more than once.”

“I heard about that poor trail worker,” he said. “What happened there?”

“Nobody knows yet,” Sam told him. “So keep an eye out for anything suspicious going on.”

She described her fears about Raider and the illegal hunter. Greg promised to keep a lookout for bears as well as fires, and listen for gunshots. “Call me if you even suspect hunters might be crawling through the woods,” she told him.

He looked happy to have a mission. “You got it.”

Chase frowned. “And then you’ll both call the rangers, right?”

Ignoring his tone, she followed him to the door. “Happy rhymes,” she said over her shoulder.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Greg blurted out. “You’re supposed to check in at headquarters. The main HQ, not the district building.”

“Now? I’m supposed to drive all the way to Port Angeles?” Seemed like she’d been at the hospital there only hours ago. “Why didn’t they call me?” She pulled her radio from its holder on her belt. The power light didn’t show even the faintest glimmer of life. “Well, crap.”

Chase peered over her shoulder. “Looks more like a dead battery to me.”

Not checking her radio: another demerit on her record. Good thing there hadn’t been another fire last night. She’d find her spare battery as soon as they got down to the truck. “Do me a favor, Greg?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t report in for twenty minutes, and…you never saw my friend.”

“Perez? Never heard of him.” He gave them a two-fingered salute.

As they neared town, Chase’s cell phone trilled from his shirt pocket. After answering and listening for a moment, he sighed heavily, then said, “On my way,” before clicking the phone closed.

She was about to ask him if it was the bank robbers when he turned to her, one eyebrow raised, and asked, “Happy rhymes?”

“He won some sort of grant,” she told him. “He’s a poet.”

“Aha. That’s how he stands it up there by himself.”

Chase didn’t appreciate the solitude of the fire tower? A spark of anxiety flared in her gut. “That boring, huh?”

“Not for a short time. And that sunset was certainly worth a verse or two.”

Well, at least he’d enjoyed that. She focused on the road ahead, trying not to think about what he would say if it had rained last night.

His hand crept onto her khaki-covered thigh, his fingers hot. “And then there was your body—”

“Don’t start that again,” she groaned. “Not now.”

She stopped at Mack’s apartment building in Forks, where Chase had left his car.

He kissed her gently as they said good-bye in the parking lot. “Be careful out there in the woods. Call me if there’s any more trouble. Watch out for vampires.”

She laughed.

“And come see me in Salt Lake, okay, Summer?” He pressed her more tightly to him. “Make it soon.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist. “As soon as I can. After my contract is up here.” Pressing her ear to his chest over his heart, she murmured, “I want to see these special-agent magic tricks.”

“I’ll study the manual.”

Putting on a disappointed expression, she looked up into his eyes. “I thought you had it memorized.”

He snorted, licked his index finger, and theatrically
marked a point in the air for her, then turned and slid into his car. Her chest pulled tight at the thought of what almost happened between them this morning. So close. She swallowed hard, waved, and watched him drive away before she turned her truck toward Highway 101 and park headquarters.

SAM
entered the park’s central administration building forty-five minutes later. Mack Lindstrom was lounging in the dilapidated lobby, shooting the breeze with the park’s geologist, Jodi Ruderman, as they waited for the crowds to gather at the visitor’s center for their afternoon lectures.

“Yow.” Jodi stared at Sam’s lip. “Does that hurt?”

“It looks worse than it feels,” Sam told her. Were the stitches
that
ugly?

“Sam frequently looks like she’s been in a bar brawl,” Mack said helpfully. Then, to Sam, “Hoyle’s waiting for you.”

Uh-oh. She’d expected to be cross-examined by Tracey Carsen, the superintendent, not Peter Hoyle, the assistant super. This didn’t bode well. Carsen was all about conservation and promoting public appreciation for wilderness; Hoyle was all about rules and regulations. Sam had heard that he’d been an officer in the Army Quartermaster corps before joining NPS, and that seemed to fit his officious personality.

“Joe’s in there now,” Mack added.

This didn’t bode well at all. Joe should have been at home with his family. Sam reluctantly changed course to Hoyle’s office. Mack murmured in a low voice, “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, prima donna.”

Joe was slumped in one of Hoyle’s folding metal visitor chairs. Catching her eye, he mouthed the word
sorry
before focusing again on his lap. Peter Hoyle sat ramrod straight, his hands folded together on top of his immaculate desk. Overhead, the cheap fluorescent light fixture buzzed like a trapped bee.

“How are you, Peter? What’s the word on Lisa Glass?” Sam asked, hoping to head off whatever unpleasantness was planned.

Hoyle waved at the empty chair. “We’ll get to that in a minute. I want to talk about this situation with Lili first. Sit.”

Sam slid into the other chair. “I know I shouldn’t have had her up there.”

“Damn straight, you shouldn’t have. You got the manual, you signed the contract, you know the regs.”

“But the volunteers—”

“Have guests all the time, I know.” He leveled a finger at Joe. “And I know that Choi asked you to invite Lili. That was the first mistake. You can go now, Choi. Close the door behind you.”

Joe slunk out of his office.

Behind his wire-rimmed glasses, the assistant superintendent’s eyes were fierce. “The volunteers are beside the point, Westin. They’re
volunteers
. The park service doesn’t pay for their health care, doesn’t pay for insurance, and doesn’t have to answer for their irresponsible actions. Lili is a dependent of an employee. And you—you may be just a temporary hire, but you still have to obey the regs. What if Lili had been hurt out there? We’ve already got one employee on the critical list.”