Hot as Sin (22 page)

Oh yes, it would be her pleasure to wrap her arms around his waist and chest and tuck her hips against his muscular butt.

Sam revved the engine and then they were flying down the dirt trail. Her long hair was whipping out of the bottom of her helmet, dust from the trail soon covering her legs and boots.

She’d never felt so wonderfully alive!

Between the speed and Sam’s closeness, she found herself laughing out loud. And best of all, she was getting to share this moment with Sam.

The beauty of the trees and mountains and blue sky above were so colorful, so lovely. She hadn’t been able to appreciate any of it until now, and she prayed that once she and April were back in San Francisco, she’d get to share another incredible moment like this with Sam.

Being with him had always been her biggest thrill. A total rush.

It still was.

Sam heard her laugh and smiled. He never considered that he might find himself on a dirt bike with Dianna, speeding down a narrow trail in the Rockies. And yet, these had been the most exhilarating couple of days in recent memory. No wildfire could compare to Dianna. Not even the heat.

Seeing her look so happy this morning after April’s call, it was impossible not to want to see her look that way again. The night before, he’d grappled with the question of giving things another shot. This morning, he couldn’t remember his reasons why not.

She was beautiful. Smart. Loyal. And, despite everything he’d tried to convince himself she’d done during the past decade, incredibly loving.

He’d be a fool to let her slip out of his life again.

The bike was fast, and because Dianna didn’t seem to mind the speed, he kicked it up another notch. Within the next quarter hour they were pulling into the campground’s front gates. Heading for the ranger’s headquarters, he put the brakes on and Dianna was off the bike and running up the stairs before he turned the engine off.

Seconds later, she came back down, her face pinched and tight. “She’s not there.”

Oh shit. April’d had plenty of time to get to the ranger’s station. She should have been there.

And then, he heard Dianna gasp, her hand going over her mouth as all the color left her face, her finger pointing toward the sky.

A quarter mile to the left, in the direction of the river, a plume of fresh, black smoke was rising into the blue sky.

A building must have just been set on fire.

“Get on,” he yelled, and once her arms were back around him, he sped down the paved one-way road that wound through the campsites, wanting to get as close as he could to the fire as quickly as possible before he went in on foot. A group of vacationing families stood huddled together in the parking lot watching the flames.

Again, Dianna jumped off and raced toward the cabin before the bike’s tires had completely stopped spinning.

Leaping off the leather seat, the dirt bike dropping onto the dirt, Sam ran after her. She was fast, but he was faster. He grabbed her arms, not letting her take another step toward certain danger. She struggled hard, trying to pull away, and he had no choice but to imprison her against him, her back pressed hard against his front.

“What if April’s inside? I have to save her!”

It was a big leap, but he understood why she’d gone there. April’s safety was all she could think about right now.

But if he couldn’t get her to listen to reason, there’d be more than one casualty today.

“We don’t know if she’s inside. And it’s not safe for you to go anywhere near that building,” he said firmly in her ear to make sure she got it.

“But what if she is? I can’t let her burn to death!”

There was no reason in her voice, only desperation. He understood, but it didn’t mean he was willing to risk losing her.

The tall dry grass in front of the building was already engulfed in flames. Before he could even get near the cabin, he’d need to put out the grass fire. Still, he wouldn’t let her go until she’d regained control.

“The only way I can get to the building is to light a backfire.”

“No,” she gasped. “Not more fire.”

“When the two fires make contact, they’ll burn each other out. It’s the only way.”

Finally, she seemed to understand, giving him an anguished “Okay.”

He was still afraid that she’d make a run for it when he released his hold on her and pulled several flares out of his pocket. A couple spilled to the ground and Dianna picked them up. Looking at the trees, he studied the direction of the wind to make sure the flames weren’t going to blow straight toward them, or toward the crowd of people who should have known better and evacuated the site already.

But he didn’t have time to warn them of the dangers of loitering so close to a live fire. If Dianna’s sister was inside, he had to save her.

If it wasn’t already too late.

He’d been in the very same position with his brother Connor, had watched him suffer agonizing burns. Even though he’d done all he could to save him, he’d always wished he could have done more.

Would Dianna ever be able to forgive herself if April perished in the fire? And would she forgive him for not saving her?

He reached for her hand and she dug her nails into his knuckles as the fire ravaged the ground in between them and the cabin. And then, less than a minute later, a path cleared in the field into a mass of sizzling embers.

“I’m going to try and get in the cabin now, but I don’t want you to follow me. It’s not safe.”

Sam could see that Dianna wanted to fight him on it, but he had to make sure she understood.

“I can’t help whoever is in the cabin if I have to help you too.”

“Just hurry,” she said, quickly giving in. “Please.”

Without his turnouts, the heat emanating from the ground was intense, but he’d been in far hotter forests. He ran toward the small building, all of his focus on finding a way to get inside, considering that the entire front half was already on fire.

Quickly jogging around the perimeter, he found no doors, no windows to enter from. He’d have to go in the front by diverting the fire from the door.

Grabbing a large branch off the ground, he climbed a nearby tree behind the building and launched himself onto the steaming roof. Moving quickly, he ripped off old roofing tiles, exposing the thin wood planks that covered the beams.

He worked fast with the stick, ramming it into the wood, busting a hole in the ceiling. Any second now, flames would find the new source of oxygen and shoot out the hole. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be caught in them, but if he didn’t make the hole big enough there wouldn’t be enough oxygen to divert the flames from the rest of the structure.

A split second before fire rushed out of the hole he’d made in the roof, Sam jumped out of the way, launching himself the eight feet to the ground.

Like clockwork, the flames moved away from the door. Moving around the front, he kicked it in. The smoke was black and thick, but he’d spent ten years maneuvering through these kinds of conditions, and his eye was trained to look for limbs, to listen for coughing and look for bodies.

But the building was empty. Completely empty.

Sam heard the familiar crackle of a building about to implode and in the nick of time he got out of the building and ran like hell. The walls started falling in on themselves before he reached Dianna.

“Where is she?” Dianna screamed at him.

“She wasn’t in there.”

She fell to her knees, her face in her hands.

Sam had never felt so helpless in all his life as he squatted down to gather her in his arms.

The man watched Dianna Kelley from the parking lot, waiting for the perfect moment to make his move.

Her sister was already in the trunk of his car. When he got back to his compound, he’d punish the girl for the way she was thrashing around, for the noises she dared to make. Fortunately, with all of the commotion from the fire—children and women yelling and crying, sirens finally making their way into the campground from an oncoming Colorado Department of Forestry fire engine and police cars—no one could hear his prisoner struggle.

He’d been furious when Mickey woke him up out of his dark dreams with the news that April had escaped. But it had been fairly easy to guess where she’d end up. Tigiwon was as close as they got to civilization around here and straight down the hill from his lab.

After speeding down the single-lane road to the campground, he’d spotted her on a pay phone, probably giving Dianna instructions on where to find her. Moving silently, he’d followed the girl after she hung up the phone, keeping out of her range of sight until she made the mistake of believing she’d really gotten away.

As she took the narrow trail that led between the parking lot and the ranger’s station, after first making sure they were alone, he’d jumped her, slamming his fist into her jaw once, then twice, until she crumpled to the ground.

Setting the cabin on fire had been pure genius. It was the perfect distraction so that he could not only take April to his car unnoticed, but given that he knew Dianna was on her way to collect her sister, it was the ideal opportunity to finally take his true prize captive as well.

If only that goddamned guy would leave her side for thirty seconds, maybe he could get close enough.

Moving away from his car, he headed toward the throng of people surrounding the fire engine. At the first available opportunity, he’d be ready to spring.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

TWO HOURS later, after the cop cars and fire engines drove away, after the crowd of bystanders had grown bored and dispersed back to their campfires and card games, after she and Sam had circled the campground twice looking for clues and found absolutely nothing, Dianna was on the verge of giving up hope.

She’d never been able to forget the pain of being eleven years old and watching the state official drive away with April. Losing her own baby had been brutal and, of course, the breakup with Sam had been horrible. But sitting against a tree, her knees under her chin as she wrapped herself into a tight ball on the forest’s dirt floor, knowing her sister was at the mercy of some anonymous creep … well, that was almost unbearable.

Sam had offered to deal with the police alone, but although she’d felt so raw and her fears about her sister burning alive in that cabin were still jammed in every pore, every cell, every single breath she took, Dianna had felt that it was best if she spoke directly to the cops.

Not that it had mattered. Sure, the police had taken notes. They’d looked concerned. But they’d also made it perfectly clear that they didn’t have the resources to jump on the case, not with a couple of recent murders in the area taking top priority.

“Why aren’t they going to do more to find her?” she asked Sam. “It feels like they’re hardly taking me seriously.”

To Dianna, it seemed like the cops had been much more concerned about who had set the fire, asking Sam endless questions about how he’d been able to put it out without a water truck and fire gear.

Sitting beside her now, his arm around her shoulders a shock of warmth against her cold limbs, Sam pressed his lips against the top of her head.

“Nothing’s changed from our original plan,” he reminded her. “We’re going to find April.”

She longed to believe him, but she wasn’t sure she could anymore. Her life had turned into a bad dream. A surreal nightmare. She desperately wanted to get the hell out of here and pretend that none of this was happening, that everything was exactly as it had been before she’d come to Colorado.

But she couldn’t do any of those things. Because April was still missing, even after they’d come so close to finding her.

“I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve been up against some pretty nasty wildfires, but I’ve never been in a situation like this before.” He paused, brought her hands to his lips, and pressed a kiss against her knuckles. “I’ve never had you by my side, either. That’s why I know we’re going to find April and bring her home.”

She wanted to listen to his words, rather than all of the voices in her head telling her that they were too late, that she was never going to see April again. But letting herself believe that everything was okay after April’s phone call had been her biggest mistake.

Having hope ripped away had shattered her beyond repair and she felt broken inside.

“How can you have that kind of faith in me?” she whispered. “I’m failing her, Sam.”

“You sure as hell aren’t failing her. You’re pushing yourself to the limits to help her. And trust me, April knows you well enough to know you’re not going to give up. You’re tenacious. And you love her. So even if she can’t escape again, she’s going to hold on and wait for you. She knows you’re coming. She’s always known it.”

Dianna could hardly swallow past the lump in her throat. “I’m just so scared, Sam.” God, she hated tears, hated feeling weak and completely out of control. “I hate that I don’t know what to do next.”

“Of course you’re scared. She’s your sister and you love her. But you’ve got to see that this isn’t much different from fighting to pull April out of the foster system.”

“It is,” she protested.

“Not really. You didn’t know much about the people she was living with back then. But you knew she was unhappy, so you fought and fought and fought and fought for her. You won, Dianna. You won.” He closed his eyes and bowed his head against her hands before looking back into her eyes. “You’re going to win again. And I’m going to be with you every step of the way.”

A flash of lightning crackled overhead and thick drops of rain began to fall.

She was still silently digesting his optimism, his faith that they’d find April despite this crushing blow, when he pulled her to her feet.

“I know you want to stay here in case she comes back, but we don’t have our gear and I’m not going to risk you getting sick in the wind and the rain tonight.” Before she could protest, he added, “And if she can get to a phone again, she’ll know where you are. She’ll call the Farm first.”

She knew he was right, but even as she let him take her over to the dirt bike, she hated leaving the campground without having gotten one step closer to finding April, hated thinking that the person responsible for all of this pain could be standing in the forest watching them right now.