Bear Claw Bodyguard (10 page)

The SUV was picking up speed, its tires bumping along in the ruts they had been following, but that wouldn’t last long, because less than a half mile away, the road curved back around to the left and disappeared. Beyond the curve,
a short section of beaten sand continued on straight, then ended, it seemed, in midair.

He cursed viciously and pumped the pedal, then went for the emergency brake and cursed again. Then he shouted, “Hang on!” Grabbing the shift lever, he wrenched the transmission into the lowest driving gear. Something slammed ominously inside the engine and the SUV shuddered and bucked, but the vehicle slowed measurably.

Her heart leaped. “It’s working!”

“Don’t count your eagles,” he said through gritted teeth, shifting his grip on the gear lever, “until…they’re…” He yanked the lever into the Park position.
“Hatched!”

A second later, a louder slamming noise drowned him out and was followed by a metal-on-metal grating sound that made her cringe, but the SUV slowed even more. For a second she nearly cheered, thinking that he’d done it, he’d saved them. But then, horribly, the SUV bumped up out of the ruts and slewed sideways, skidding and churning up gravel as it kept going under its own momentum, heading for the curve in the road and the drop-off beyond.

Her breath rattled in her lungs. They weren’t going to make it. They were going to go over the edge and—

Fingers grabbed her hand and dug in with a pressure so intense that it was almost painful, bringing her out of her sudden shocked numbness. She yanked her eyes up to Jack’s, and saw his determination as he popped her belt and then his own, and then dragged her toward him.

That was when she saw his door hanging open, saw the dirt and gravel whipping past. “Oh, God.” The words bled between her lips, dying as her lungs seized up.
I can’t,
she thought wildly,
I—

“Come on! We’ve got to jump!” And somehow the de
termination in his eyes got her heart pumping and her brain working once more.
Hurry. Hurry!
She fought to make her arms and legs work so she could scramble across and crouch awkwardly with him, terrifyingly aware that it was almost too late; they were practically on top of the edge. “Go!”

He launched himself away from the SUV, pulling her with him. They landed hard, with her partially on top of him, but still gravel bit into her shoulder and upper arm as inertia slid them toward the edge.

“No!” She screamed and dug in her boots, but to no avail.

He shouted and moved convulsively against her, and suddenly they weren’t sliding anymore. They were stopped. Still.
Oh, God.
She didn’t question how or why, couldn’t do anything right then but cling to him and watch with utter horror as the back corner of his SUV went over the edge and suddenly tilted down.

“No.” This time the word was more of a sob, one that burned her throat and eyes as the vehicle’s dust-coated undercarriage popped into view for a second before the other far corner went over, and the gritty ledge crumbled with a sound that was almost like a sigh. Then the big car rolled and disappeared. Almost immediately, a rending, tearing, crashing noise rose up from down below.

And then… There was a moment of utter silence that seemed somehow out of place.

There was no movie explosion, no dramatic music, no nothing except a couple of pings of trickling dirt and Tori’s dawning realization that they were in serious trouble. She lay limply against Jack, clutching his shirt and waistband and staring after the SUV in utter stunned shock. “It’s
gone,” she said hollowly, knowing it was stupid even as she said it, but unable to come up with anything better.

He took a big, shuddering breath and then let it out on a single word. “Yeah.” Then he shifted beneath her, making her realize just how much of him was cushioning the majority of her body, protecting her from the impact and the cutting gravel. Her scrapes were minor, the pain already starting to fade. But what about him?

Hands starting to shake now with reaction, she fumbled to roll off him. It wasn’t until he sat up, flexing his hand with a grimace of pain, that she saw the matte black handle sticking out of the packed earth behind them and realized that he hadn’t just gotten them out of the skidding SUV safely, but he’d also used his knife as a makeshift piton to stop their deadly slide. The shakes moved inward from her hands to her core, so her whole body shook as she realized just how much he’d done for her in the space of a few minutes, maybe less.

She had survived mudslides, rockslides, snakes, predators, faulty equipment and a multitude of the other dangers that came with the nature of her work. Never before, though, had she come so close to dying. Or, rather, being murdered. Because there was no way the steering and brakes failed together like that unless they’d been sabotaged.

The members of the Shadow Militia were still in the area…and they had tried to kill her and Jack to halt the investigation.

The knowledge took root and dug in, chilling her blood and making her shake harder. She had to believe that fall would have been fatal, if not instantly, then soon enough if they had been injured and unable to help themselves. They were far from civilization, far from help, cut off from
backup. Her breathing thinned even further at the list… And at the knowledge that Jack had saved her life. Again.

“Hey,” he rasped. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” He paused, eyes darkening. “You
are
okay, right?”

She nodded, panting as she stared around them and a new, horrible thought occurred. “Are they out there? Are they coming for us?” Suddenly the rugged vista that had been hauntingly beautiful before now turned ominous and terrifying.

He didn’t insult her with platitudes. “I doubt it. If they were going to follow us they wouldn’t have bothered rigging the SUV. They would have hit us with a rocket-propelled grenade instead. Or if they wanted it to look like an accident, they could have waited for us to drive up and then dropped an avalanche on us.” He shook his head. “No, this smacks of someone who wanted to be far away from the scene of the crime.”

The matter-of-fact way he said it should have terrified her further. Oddly, though, it steadied her a little, as did the sight of him, big and capable-looking as he glanced over to where the SUV had gone, and grimaced.

In fact, she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

His shirt was torn at the shoulder and elbow, his pants were smudged with dirt. He wasn’t wearing his guns or hat, and their absence reminded her that their supplies had gone over the cliff. His badge still rode low on his belt, though, and his eyes were the same cool mountain-lake blue she had first noticed at the airport.

Her eyes filled, her heart lodged in her throat, and she whispered, “Oh, God. Jack.”

She didn’t know which one of them moved first; all she knew was that one second she was staring at him, stunned
by the knowledge that she owed him her life, and the next, she was in his arms.

And. It. Felt. Wonderful.

He surrounded her, curving his big body into and around her and banding his arms across her hips and shoulders as he dug in and just simply
held
her. She clung to him fiercely in return, still shaking as she twined her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek to his.

There was no kissing this time, no caressing, nothing but the basic human need for physical contact, the warmth and pressure of body against body that said
We’re alive.

“Thank you,” she said against his neck. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

He let her cling—and, she thought, clung a little in return—while her shakes subsided. Then, with a final squeeze, he eased away, though he kept a hand on her arm as if in reassurance that he wasn’t going anywhere without her.

Tipping his head toward the edge of the broken-off ledge, he said, “Let’s see if we can get to the wreck safely. The more gear we can get out of there, the more comfortable we’re going to be until help arrives.”

She blinked at him, sudden and unexpected hope kindling. “You got a distress signal out?”

“No, but if I don’t check in tonight, Tucker will send out a search party first thing in the morning. We’re right off the road, so we shouldn’t be hard to find.”

“Which means it’ll be equally easy for whoever sabotaged the brake and steering lines to find us if they come looking to confirm the kill.” She made herself say it, and felt the dread congeal in a hard knot in her stomach.

He nodded, not insulting her by trying to coddle.
“That’s possible, which is why we’re going to find a good, defensible position and do our damnedest to disappear. If, as it looks right now, the militia has been up here for months harvesting fungus, or copper, or whatever, and we couldn’t find them even with the best high-tech the feds were able to get their hands on…well, I’m betting that we can stay invisible for one night, especially if we can reach the wreck and get our hands on some of that survival gear we’ve been hauling around.”

She had no doubt he would get the equipment, even if it meant risking his own life to do so. But that wasn’t what had her frowning and saying, “I think… I don’t know.”

Until his fingers tightened on hers, she hadn’t realized he was holding her hand. “Trust me,” he said, keeping his eyes steady on hers. “We’re going to make it through this and get back down to Bear Claw safely.”

“I do trust you.” Instead of pulling away from him, she turned her palm and twined her fingers through his for a more intimate squeeze she probably wouldn’t have gone for under any other circumstance. “I do… There’s something else, though. A connection I’m missing. But I don’t know…” She trailed off as motion caught her peripheral vision—a flash of mottled brown with a hint of black-and-white stripes. Whipping her head around, she focused on the eagles. There were three of them this time, winging together in the same direction as the last group.

He followed her gaze. “Huh. I think we’ve seen more of them in the last half hour than I’ve heard about in the past month.”

“That’s it!” She gaped as it came together suddenly inside her. “That’s the connection! The eagles aren’t just attracted to the fungus, they’re attracted to whatever har
vesting technique is being used to process it—and I’m betting there hasn’t been any processing recently, or else it’s been happening somewhere off-site. That’s why nobody’s seen them for a while. There wasn’t any reason for them to congregate because there was no copper to lure them in!”

“You… Wow.” He followed the eagles’ flight path, expression pensive. After a moment, though, he nodded almost reluctantly. “You’re right. It fits.”

“What’s more, if I’m right, then the eagles are telling us that whatever the militia is up to, they’re doing it right now.”

His eyes snapped back to hers. “Please tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.” When she didn’t say anything right away, just looked at him solemnly, he groaned. “You
are
thinking it, aren’t you?”

She didn’t want to be thinking it, but yeah, she was. Her better sense might be clamoring for her to hide with him in some cave until tomorrow, as far off the radar as they could get. But her training and determination—and, damn it, the protect-and-serve motivation that was lodged in her DNA whether she liked it or not—said that she needed to do this and she needed to do it now, before their enemy realized that the sabotage had failed, and took even more drastic measures.

So she took a deep breath and shoved aside the fear, knowing that he was the only reason that was possible right now. She trusted him to have her back, and knew he would do the right thing. And this, whether they liked it, was the right thing. “We need to get in there, Jack, and we need to understand what they’re doing to the Forgotten, and why.” She paused, silently urging him to believe her, to believe
in
her. “So…what do you say? Want to see where those birds are headed?”

An hour later, as Jack hauled himself up another rocky ridge, cursing when his boots slipped in the loose shale and a couple of pulled muscles ached in protest, he still couldn’t believe he’d let Tori talk him into hiking after the eagles.

They should have had their camp set up, with their exit routes scouted and their secure perimeter set up, leaving them to hunker down together and wait for rescue. Instead, they had recovered the survival gear—which, fortunately, had been banged up but salvageable, though the SUV was a write-off—stashed the bulk of the supplies in a deep, rocky niche near the crash site, and set off hiking roughly east-northeast along the beeline the birds seemed to be making.

She had put up a good argument, though, and when it came down to it, there was something to be said for their staying on the move rather than right near the SUV when there was a chance that their enemies would go looking for the wreck. Granted, they were headed into the hot zone rather than out of it, but she had promised this was just recon. No matter what they found, she would leave it to the pros to make a plan.

And, yeah, as they started down the ridge and the
white-hung trees closed around them once more, darkening the day and tainting the air with what he now recognized as the bloodlike tang of copper, he was willing to admit that maybe part of why he’d agreed without too much of a fight was because he hadn’t been too keen on the alternative. It wasn’t going to be easy to hide with her alone in the wilderness, because while they might have talked things through last night, all the logic and self-preservation in the world didn’t change the fact that he still flat-out wanted her.

It was more than physical desire, too—he could have coped with that, he thought, though admittedly he’d never before dealt with this kind of a gut-deep and immediate chemistry. No, there was another level of connection between them, a growing respect and friendship, a camaraderie that tempted him equally, if not more. He wanted to be around her. It was as simple as that, yet not simple at all because they didn’t share the same values, didn’t want or need the same things.

Their decision the night before had been the right one. But that didn’t stop him from being acutely aware of her following close behind him, her movements almost hunter-silent, save for an occasional catch of breath or roll of a pebble or two. And it didn’t stop him from remembering the taste of her kiss, the feeling of having her skin against his, and the way her sexy moans had made his blood burn. Which left him more than halfway aroused with his pulse thudding in his ears, low and insistent, and seeming to come from the air around them, as if—

He froze suddenly, lifting a hand to bring her to a stop behind him as he realized that the low churning noise wasn’t coming from inside him at all. It was coming from
up ahead, maybe even from the other side of the next ridge.

“What is that noise?” she asked in a nearly soundless whisper.

“A generator, maybe.” It was definitely engine noise in an area where engine noise had no place being. More, a couple of mottled brown shapes glided overhead, aiming straight for the noise. He glanced back over his shoulder. “Looks like your hypothesis was right on the money, Dr. Bay.”

His respect for her brains increased even higher at how it fit together: the copper, the eagles, the militia…even the guy who had originally looked at buying the Forgotten might dovetail in there. Granted, he’d claimed to be looking for gold rather than copper, but right now, Jack’s gut said the P.D. should be taking another, closer look at his supposedly kosher background check. Given the way things were going in Bear Claw these days, though, and the chief’s reluctance to commit manpower to the backcountry when things were getting bad in the city itself, he would need more proof than just a plausible scenario and some engine noise.

Tori nudged his shoulder with her cell phone. “Let’s get in there and take some pictures.” When he hesitated, she shook her head. “Don’t even try it. The answer is ‘No, I won’t wait back here while you go reconnoiter.’ This is my case, too.”

He glanced at her and tried not to wince as he was struck anew by just how tiny she was, her fingers narrow and delicate where they held the phone. He knew from experience, though, that her grip—and her determination—were formidable. And they were just going to go
take pictures after all. So he nodded. “Fine. Stay close, keep your head down and do exactly what I say.”

She snapped a salute, but her eyes were deadly serious, as was her tone when she said, “I might be brave, but I don’t have a death wish. You’re in charge, one hundred percent.”

He wasn’t sure he entirely trusted that would hold true if she got caught up in the moment, but short of handcuffing her to a tree—and thus trapping her if something
did
go wrong—he didn’t have much of a choice if he wanted his evidence. So he nodded. “Then follow me. Step where I step, and keep as quiet as possible. We don’t know what kind of security perimeter we’re dealing with here, so we’ll assume the worst and try like hell to stay out of range. All we want is a little look at what’s going on down there, nothing more.”

And if he kept telling himself that, maybe he would lose the sense that he taking too big of a risk, potentially sacrificing his protectee for the good of the Death Stare case. But the creeping dread stayed firmly in place as they worked their way up the next ridge, with him testing each step and constantly scanning their surroundings, alert for any hint of surveillance devices. Granted, there was no guarantee that he would see the security devices, but he was hoping that whatever outpost they were coming up on was mobile enough that it used a pretty stripped-down perimeter.

The trees on that part of the ridge grew very close together and were badly infected with the fungus, and the hanging strands dragged eerily over the exposed skin of his arms and neck. The trees provided good cover, though, concealing them as they started down the far side of the
ridge, headed for where a lighter section up ahead suggested a clearing.

There, engine noise and a low-grade buzz of activity said they had found what they were looking for.

Tori touched his arm briefly, then gestured to the treetops, where a dozen or more barred eagles were touching down briefly and then taking wing again, making him think of gulls surrounding a fishing boat and confirming another piece of her hypothesis.

He looked at her and mouthed a soundless
Ready?

Her eyes were wide and stark in her pale face, but she nodded and lifted her cell phone. He took it, made sure the autoflash was off, and then held it back out to her. Their fingers brushed, and for a second he felt the warmth of that touch throughout his entire body. It made him want to say something to her even though he didn’t have a clue what that might be…and he knew he was probably better off leaving it unsaid.

He indulged himself, though, by closing his fingers over hers, folding them around the camera and giving a gentle squeeze.
For luck,
he mouthed, and then made himself let go.

She was still staring after him with a faintly bemused expression when he turned away and headed for the edge of the clearing. Moments later, she fell in behind him, keeping close and moving silently.

The engine noise grew louder, as did the buzz of movement and activity—it wasn’t any one definable sound, but rather a sense that there was a lot going on in the clearing. As they approached, he saw that it was actually a natural bowl. That gave him and Tori the advantage of elevation as the trees thinned and camouflaged shapes slowly became
visible, their outlines vague and undefined beneath their protective paint jobs and netting.

“Hot damn,” he mouthed, whispering the words more to himself than to her. And as his pulse picked up a notch, he realized that he hadn’t thought the eagles were going to lead them to the Shadow Militia, not really. But as he and Tori hunkered down at the edge of the depression, hidden behind a pair of gnarled old-man trees as they checked out the scene with the binoculars he’d brought from the wreck, he saw that she had been right on the money.

Below them was spread a mobile encampment of armored vehicles and fat-tired trailers pulled by huge, six-wheeled crawlers. One of the vehicles had a fifty-caliber mounted behind the cab, and another had a neat stack of guns in the back, piled alongside crates he’d bet money contained ammo and other armaments. Figures moved around the vehicles, most with purpose, a few wandering. All were male, under forty and wearing denim, T-shirts and army surplus, with a mix of races and nothing really to suggest a country or cause.

They were all heavily armed, and they moved with the sort of casual swagger he associated with street gangs and the top dogs on a given cell block.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath, skin crawling at the confirmation that there was a damned private army of some sort hiding in the Forgotten, seemingly right under the noses of the local and federal groups that had been on the hunt for months with no luck… Until now.

Moreover, one of the enclosed trailers had a second, open trailer sitting beside it. The smaller trailer had several huge barrels strapped to it, each in a different color and bearing bright stickers warning that the contents were
flammable, acid, volatile and whatnot. Hoses snaked from the containers to the larger trailer, while three big generators were chugging away on the back of a nearby flatbed, feeding thick power cables. Unless he missed his guess, that was the center of whatever they were doing there. And it was something the authorities would very much like to get their hands on.

Tori must have been thinking the same thing because she paused in her picture-taking to grin fiercely up at him, triumph flashing in her expression.

His mind raced. If the militia stayed put for twenty-four hours or so, he’d have time to bring in a team. If not, they could use the eagles to find the next encampment.

Adrenaline zinged through his veins at the dawning knowledge that he and Tori had cracked the case, not only of the fungal infection, but also the Shadow Militia itself. Now all they had to do was reconnect with Tucker and the others and make their report, and the task force would reconvene and take it from there. First, though, they had to get out of there, and keep their heads down until morning.

He touched Tori’s arm and tipped his head back the way they had come, mouthing,
Let’s go.
She nodded and stowed her cell, and they backed out of their vantage point and started retracing their steps.

Halfway down the ridge, though, he was brought up short by an ominous twig crack. His instinct fired and his heartbeat kicked up a notch, but he stayed still and gestured for Tori to do the same, hoping to hell it was an animal, a random forest noise, something other than—

Crunch-crunch…crunch-crunch.

Damn it. Footsteps. He inhaled and reached for his weapon as the noises came closer.

Breathing softly through his mouth, he urged Tori back away from the noises and their trail, stepping from boulder to boulder in case whoever it was stumbled on their tracks leading in. When they were several hundred yards off their original path, he guided her to a cluster of rocks and gestured her into a somewhat protected niche. Then he put his back to her and unslung his rifle.

“Hey, Ritchie,” a man’s voice—basso profundo and faintly twangy—called. “You out here?”

Tori flinched and bumped into him, and he tightened his grip on her arm, ready to get a hand across her mouth if she started to panic. But she quickly shook her head, mouthing,
Sorry.

He let go of her but stayed very close.

“Ritchie? Come on, man, I said I’d cover you for a little while you sparked up, but this is ridiculous. Get your stoned butt back to camp, will you?”

When there was still no answer, the
crack-crunch
resumed, not drawing closer now, but angling away from their position. Jack didn’t dare relax, though, because they had to assume that this Ritchie could be somewhere nearby as well.

“Damn it, Ritchie, where are you?” After a pause, there was the hiss of dead air and then the click and silence of someone pushing a radio over to the transmit position. Moments later came a twangy bass complaint of “Denkins, this is Boomer. I can’t find Ritchie anywhere. I bet he’s been at the product again. Did you check all the sheds?”

Jack couldn’t make out the squawk of return radio traffic, but Boomer cursed under his breath and the crunching footfalls resumed, headed back toward the encampment.

When they had faded to silence, Jack safetied his weap
ons, tucked his nine and reslung his rifle, and took what felt like his first real breath in too long. Then he turned back to Tori, found her pale but resolute, and got a firm nod that said she was good to go. They struck out with him leading the way, sticking to the rocks and heading downhill.

They hadn’t gone more than fifty yards when he found the body.

He stopped dead, causing Tori to put a hand on his shoulder to brace herself. “What— Oh!” Her soft gasp of horror sounded very loud, as did the low, vicious curse that hissed through his lips at the sight of the corpse’s bulging, terrified eyes.

“Is that…” She trailed off, fingers digging into his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he said, forcing the word from a chest gone fiercely hollow all of a sudden. “That’s the Death Stare.” And he got it. He got it. Damn, he thought as Boomer’s comment about the missing man having sampled the product took on a very grim new meaning. “It looks like we’ve been working on the drug case all along.”

The guy—presumably Ritchie—was wearing jeans and a camo jacket with the matching slouchy hat, and had a .38 on his belt. His face was horribly contorted, his skin the sickly greenish gray of death…and his eyes were open and staring, as if he’d spent his last minutes of life in a state of horrible terror.

Death Stare.

The Shadow Militia wasn’t using the strange fungus to refine copper ore or searching for gold. They were making drugs from it…and those drugs were killing the inhabitants of his city.