LANYON Josh (13 page)

Taylor joined him and they watched for a moment.

Nothing moved. Nothing but the ripple of winter grass in the fields.

“Why hasn’t anyone noticed they’re missing a park ranger?”

Will shook his head. “Maybe they have.” His eyes never left the pine-studded hillside.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Taylor asked.

Will turned his head and grinned slowly. “Probably.”

* * * * *

“Actually, what I’m thinking is I’m going to have to take away one of your merit badges,” Taylor remarked forty-five minutes later.

Will grimaced between gentle puffs of breath on the pile of smoking pocket lint and dried leaves. “The approved Firecrafter method is a bow and drill.” He tilted the purpling broken glass to better catch the sun’s rays. “I don’t know if it’s bright enough or hot enough,” he muttered. “You’ve got wood stacked up inside if I can get this going?”

“It’s all ready to go. We just have to transfer the blaze from here to there.”

“The blaze…?” Will said ruefully.

They were silent, watching.

Minutes passed.

Taylor made a sharp exclamation as the pocket lint suddenly ignited. “Beautiful!”

“We’re in business.” Will used the glass to scoop up his tiny fire, protecting it with his hand as he stepped carefully through the broken door and put the fire to the stack of dried boards and timber Taylor had piled in the center of the lodge floor.

They stared in silent satisfaction as the flames caught.

“There’s the cheese,” Taylor said. “Now we just wait for mice to show up.” He smiled at Will, who reached a hand behind his neck, drawing him close and kissing him.

Will was smiling, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You watch your back, Taylor. Understand me?

Twice is all I can take.”

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Taylor kissed him in return, a quick, distracted press of mouths -- then turned back as Will caught his arm. “You’re doing it again, Will,” he said softly.

“For the record, this isn’t about not trusting you.”

“You sure? Because that’s how it feels.”

Will said, “You want the truth? There’s no one I’d rather have beside me in a fight than you. There’s no one I trust more to watch my back.”

Taylor grinned. “And your faith is well-placed, my son. I’m the best there is.”

Will’s hand tightened on Taylor’s thinly-muscled arm. “No. Don’t joke around. And don’t get cocky. If something happens to you now -- I don’t think I’d get over it.”

“That’s fine,” Taylor said, “because nothing is going to happen to me. And I’ll tell you something else.

You were afraid we couldn’t do our job if we let ourselves care too much. That was one reason you didn’t want to get involved. But you said it yourself this morning. We’ve been involved a long time --

regardless of what we call ourselves: friends, lovers, partners. We’re a team, Will. We always have been.

We always will be.”

He freed himself, catching Will’s hand briefly in his own before slipping away. Frowning, Will watched him lift himself up and out through the broken window frame.

Taylor paused, balanced in the window for a moment. “And when this is over, you owe me a real vacation,” he said. “We’ll call it a honeymoon.” The next moment he was gone, disappearing into the twilight.

Will waited, watching the fire shadow dance over the dead ranger’s body.

* * * * *

They would come. Taylor had no doubt on that score. He lay in the tall grass behind the well, watching the meadow, waiting for their approach. A glance back at the lodge showed empty windows orange with firelight. Yeah, they would come, expecting to find Taylor and Will inside -- maybe even sleeping.

The moon turned the waves of grass to silver. Somewhere on the other side of the building Will was lying in wait with the rifle. The thought cheered him. There was no better shot than Will. He smiled a little, thinking of Will’s words before they’d separated.

Funny how he’d resented Will’s overprotective streak before. Now it just felt reassuring.

If unnecessary.

The hours passed.

Taylor began to wonder if Will was wrong. Maybe Bonnie and Orrin had decided to cut their losses and head for the hills.

And then he heard the rumbling in the distance -- raising his head he saw lights in the distant sky. A helicopter -- with search lights.

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Too far away -- checking the next valley over. Interesting, though. He wondered what it meant; would have liked to ask Will what he made of it.

He resisted the temptation to look for Will. He knew he was there. He could feel him out there --

hunting -- just as Taylor was, and it was crucial to their survival both as a team and a couple that they prove to themselves that they could still do this. That they could still operate.

All the same, he’d have liked to know where Will was right now.

An owl hooted somewhere over on the other side of the corral: a low, raspy
who-o-o, who-o-o
.

It sounded so natural that it took Taylor a moment to recognize that call for what it was: Will checking in, letting him know where he was positioned. He grinned in the darkness, and cupped his hands, mimicking a whippoorwill -- which was the only birdcall he could make that sounded halfway realistic.

As far as he knew there were no whippoorwills in the High Sierras, and he could just imagine Will shaking his head over it.

More time passed. His stomach growled. Too much longer and he’d be willing to sample the berries growing by the side of the house. He was beginning to feel his assorted aches and pains with a vengeance, his muscles stiffening up. That was liable to slow him down when the moment came.

Taylor was still mulling this over when a rifle fired, cracking the silence. He scooted out from behind the well and Orrin was striding up the meadow, firing steadily at a clump of chinquapin. He made no attempt at concealment, so he had to believe he had them cornered -- which meant he already knew they weren’t inside the building.

And Will wasn’t firing back.

For a split second Taylor was afraid, and then he put it out of his mind, trusting Will to know what he was doing as he expected Will to trust him. He crawled forward along the outside corral, and as he did a bullet slammed into the wooden fence a few inches above his head. Bonnie -- coming up from behind the lodge.

He had to give them credit; that was a smarter move than he had expected, but Orrin and Bonnie weren’t taking any chances this time. Taylor dived behind a small shed. He could hear the
whup, whup,
whup
of the helicopter, the searchlight skimming over the trees and fields heading down the valley --

moving their way.

Orrin was still blazing away. As Taylor watched, Will rose up out of the grass -- nowhere near that chinquapin shrub.

“Drop it.”

Orrin froze.

“I said drop the rifle, Orrin,” Will called.

Orrin didn’t move -- and didn’t throw the rifle away -- and Taylor immediately understood. He began to look for Bonnie.

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“Not going to tell you again,” Will said calmly, trusting Taylor to take care of business.

Sure enough, there Bonnie was, stepping out from behind the smoke shack, drawing a bead on Will.

Taylor launched himself at her, tackling her around the waist. He felt one bullet burn past his cheek -- she went down firing -- and he felt another bullet hit the ground next to his foot.

He slammed Bonnie against the ground -- wanting it to end there, wanting to not have to punch her --

and wrested the rifle from her.

She was screaming and swearing, doing her best to kick him in the balls, and then, in the distance, Taylor heard another rifle shot.

And even though he trusted Will to look after himself, for one very long second his heart forgot how to beat.

He cuffed Bonnie on the head, and she stopped fighting, sobbing with fury and frustration. Scrambling to his feet, he searched for Will, and became aware of the thrum of helicopter rotor blades drowning out everything else. Pale light bathed the yard like a spotlight. He couldn’t see anything.

“Brandt?” he yelled.

“This is the California Department of Fish and Game. Put down your weapons.”

Taylor stared across the blanched white yard, the tall grass whipping in the wind created by the helicopter blades.

He opened his mouth to call for Will again, but Will shouted back, “Right here, MacAllister.”

“We repeat. This is California Department of Fish and Game. Put down your weapons.”

Saved by the Department of Fish and Game? They were never going to live that one down. Filing that one away for future amusement, Taylor threw aside Bonnie’s rifle.

“You
bastard
,” Bonnie said. “I wish we’d killed you.”

Taylor made a kissing sound to her, moving forward to pat her down quickly, and then stepping back.

She continued to swear a steady stream of invective as the helicopter landed, dust blowing toward them in a wave. Taylor ignored her, ignored the Fish and Game wardens piling out of the copter. He gazed across the sea of grass and spotted Orrin standing there, swaying, one arm cradling the other -- and a few feet to his left, Will.

And Taylor relaxed. At last.

Feeling Taylor’s gaze, Will looked across to him. He nodded. Taylor nodded back. And then Will’s face broke into a grin. Taylor grinned back.

Yeah, they were back. Back on solid ground.

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Josh Lanyon

Josh Lanyon is the author of three Adrien English mystery novels. THE HELL YOU SAY was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and is the winner of the 2006 USABookNews awards for GLBT fiction. Josh lives in Los Angeles, California, and is currently at work on the fourth book in the series, DEATH OF A PIRATE KING.