Passion to Protect (2 page)

A missing person he couldn’t help but care for, no matter how clear she’d made it that she didn’t want his company.

He grabbed a jacket against the chill that stole over the mountain nights even in late August, then shoved both his phone and a rechargeable two-way radio left over from his firefighting days into the pockets. After locking up the cabin, he made his way back to the corral...

...only to find that Liane had already gone, taking both the pinto mare and Misty.

Left behind just as he’d been, the river of horses continued milling restlessly, causing him to wonder whether the animals were still worked up over Liane’s panic, or did they sense, as he did, that the worst was yet to come?

* * *

Liane knew Jake would be hurt that she had left him, but as she negotiated the easier portion of the lower trail, she couldn’t allow herself to worry about the man who served as an unwelcome reminder of the worst decisions of her life. Still, an image blazed up before her of the stiff-necked pride written in his deep brown eyes and etched into his chiseled features. Wounded pride, when she’d brought up his injury.

Despite how often she’d seen him running lately, she couldn’t imagine he was up to this night ride, no matter how brave and confident he’d sounded, how quick he’d been to take charge. But the more she tried to convince herself she was better off without him, the more she longed for someone, anyone, she could lean on, if only for tonight.

An image formed in her mind of another tall, strong man, this one standing over her to take aim....
A crack of thunder had her flinching with the memory, an old nightmare carved from shadow. A nightmare that served as another unwelcome reminder of the high price she’d paid for trusting the wrong man with the things most precious to her.

A thin branch slapped across her cheekbone, a stinging whiplash that had her hissing through her teeth and hauling back on the reins. The realization that she could easily have lost an eye brought home the point Jake had been trying to get through to her. She could end up hurt or even dead out here, with no chance of help for either herself or her family until morning.

A shaggy, four-legged form emerged from the undergrowth ahead. Whining, Misty took a few steps forward, then circled back, as if encouraging Liane to hurry.

Liane nudged the pinto with her heels and followed the dog. A great favorite of the trail ride customers, the shepherd often accompanied her father on his trips, her long legs and incredible endurance allowing her to keep up with the horses. Even in the dark, the dog’s experience and eagerness to see her beloved master would allow her to pick up the familiar trail.

Imagining their reunion, with Misty leaping up to lick Dad’s face, then racing around Cody and Kenzie in happy circles, Liane managed to slow her breathing, to focus her thoughts as she’d been taught, on the most positive of outcomes rather than imagining all manner of disaster.

The technique seemed to be working, until another clap of thunder echoed off the rocks around her and she finally allowed herself to admit what she was smelling.

As the first faint wisps of wood smoke filtered among the trunks and understory bushes, the pinto pranced sideways and nickered.

More worried than ever, Liane urged the mare forward. Time and time again the horse balked, and then the shepherd whined and circled back to find her. Perhaps the smoke was frightening the dog, too. Or maybe Misty was reacting to the same sixth sense that was warning Liane that her family was in more danger than ever. Either way, they all fed on each other’s apprehension, with Misty’s whining becoming more insistent and Liane digging her heels into the nervous pinto, pushing her forward ever faster. Far too fast, considering the darkness pressing in around her flashlight’s bright beam, and the trail’s growing steepness and unevenness beneath the pinto’s hooves.

An overhanging tree limb, not a stumble, knocked Liane from the saddle when she failed to duck in time to avoid it.

She landed with a painful grunt, the wind knocked out of her as first her body and then the back of her head slammed into the rocky ground. Her lungs suddenly empty and her ears ringing, she barely made out the sound of the mare’s receding hooves. Racing back home, Liane thought miserably, to the safety of the herd.

Seconds later the air that had been knocked from her returned with a noisy gasp. With the influx of oxygen, pinpoints of light exploded in her vision, the only light, since the flashlight had been knocked from her hand and shattered.

By thinking of her family, she ignored her throbbing head and fought past the bleeding edge of terror. Horseless as she was, and injured as she might be, if she lost control now, she could die here. And whatever happened, she refused to let her family’s hopes die with her.

“I can do this,” she assured herself. “I
will
do it.”

The familiar words triggered a memory, and she saw herself as if from above, lying beside the kicked-in door of that motel room in Las Vegas, her body painting a bloody swath on the cheap carpet as she dragged herself to the phone. An agonizing journey of eight feet had seemed more like eight miles, every inch fueled by the terror that Mac would come back any second, only this time she would be unable to keep him from the locked bathroom and the children.

Skin crawling, Liane told herself that if she could find the strength and courage to get through that night and the ordeal of the trial that followed—a trial that had been overshadowed in the press by the far more titillating case of a celebrity accused of groping showgirls—she could certainly make her way through this one. With no better option, she took stock of her situation, assessing her pain to figure out whether she was going to have to limp or even drag herself to find her family. Because find them she would, no matter what it cost her.

Misty reemerged from the smoky layer that hugged the ground like moon-touched mist. This time, though, the dog remained at Liane’s side, her damp nose and little kisses urging her mistress to rise.

Pushing herself onto hands and knees, Liane struggled to stand, then cried out at the sharp pain that followed, and night’s obsidian curtain crashed down on her, obliterating every conscious thought.

Chapter 2

A
t first, Jake took the sound for more thunder, but moments later he recognized the clatter of steel horseshoes on the rocky ground. Could Liane be coming back already?

The buckskin gelding he had borrowed lifted his head and neighed loudly. When the greeting was answered, Jake knew the animal ahead must be one of the buckskin’s stable mates.

Pointing his flashlight down the trail ahead, he called, “Liane?”

His heart sank when the riderless pinto emerged from the dark.

Jake urged his mount forward, then leaned over to catch the mare’s trailing reins. “Liane! Where are you?”

His words echoed through the woods, mingling with the thin smoke. Rather than the answer that he hoped for, the sky flashed white, and thunder shook the air. With the pinto squealing and struggling to escape, his own horse fought for his head, clearly planning to join the mare in a run for the safety of the stable.

His balance hampered by his prosthetic leg, Jake had a hell of a time convincing both animals that he, and not their flight instinct, was in charge. Though he was far from an expert horseman, he’d watched Deke on enough occasions to mimic the soothing, confident tones that normally put horses at ease.

But he was no Deke Mason, and there was nothing normal about tonight. Jake might have succeeded in keeping both animals from bolting, but he wasn’t kidding himself. The buckskin would dump him and race the pinto back home if he let his guard down for a moment.

Still, he risked calling out again, “Liane, can you hear me?”

Once again there was no answer other than the echo of his own words.

Jake swore, then swallowed past the lump in his throat. In spite of her coolness and the fact that she’d once more wasted no time ditching him, his gut clenched as he imagined finding her out here somewhere, hurt, her braid unraveled and her delicate face—a face he remembered kissing so thoroughly on that last day, before she’d gone off to college—transformed into a mask of blood. Just as painful as the idea of losing the first girl, the
only
one, he’d ever offered his love was the idea of telling Cody and Kenzie that their mother had been killed in an attempt to find them.

That, just as he had been, they would have to be raised by their only surviving relative, a single grandparent.

Breathing a silent prayer that it wouldn’t come to that, he continued forward, grateful that the surefooted buckskin, at least, seemed to have recovered his senses. Feeling a little more secure, he pulled the radio from his pocket and switched it to the channel he knew the Masons used.

“Deke?” he said into it. “This is Jake Whittaker. What’s your location? Is Liane there with you?”

Again and again he tried to raise the older man as static crackled, coinciding with the flickering lightning. Recalling how he’d seen Deke tinkering with his handheld only a few days earlier, Jake nearly gave up hope before he heard the indistinct chatter of an excited male voice, but the transmission was so broken up, he couldn’t make out a single word.

* * *

Though Misty would ordinarily growl at a stranger’s approach, she fanned her bushy tail as a rider emerged from the darkness. Blinded by the powerful flashlight beam cutting through the smoky haze, Liane raised her arm to shield her eyes and called, “Who is it?”

A horse whinnied as it was reined to an abrupt stop, while behind it, a second animal danced and snorted.

“Thank God,” came Jake’s voice. “When I found your horse running loose, I was afraid you might be—are you hurt? I’d get down, but...”

She nodded, knowing that he would find it tough to climb back on board a nervous horse without a mounting block. “I fell and bumped my head. Smashed my flashlight, too, but I’ll be okay. And I’m really sorry I ran off the way I did.” Her words were clipped, embarrassed, reminding her of another time when she’d left him, but she couldn’t afford to waste time thinking of things she could never undo. Overhead, lightning flashed, a long, low growl of thunder on its heels. “I’ve been out of my mind worrying, but at least the fall knocked a little sense into me.”

“I’m worried about this smoke. This lightning’s definitely sparked off something.”

“Do you have any idea where the fire is?” She prayed he wouldn’t say Elk Creek Canyon.

“Can’t see anything from this far down the mountain,” he said. “Smoke could be blowing in from miles away or over the next ridge. Considering the weather, more than likely there are multiple ignition points.”

Anxiety knotted her stomach. If there was fire between her and her family, then what? The only other way into the canyon was an even rougher path off an old logging road so far to the north they would have to ride back home, then trailer the horses to reach it.

“You think you can make it back up on your horse again?” Jake asked.

Swallowing hard, she nodded. “If you can hold her still.” She limped over to the mare. “It’s all right, Queen. It’s okay, sweetie,” she crooned, until the horse accepted her presence. Before remounting, she forced herself to take time to stroke the silken neck, keeping her voice soft yet assured, and her hands gentle and steady. Earlier she’d allowed herself to get so worked up that she’d forgotten everything she knew about working with horses, and it had cost her dearly. She couldn’t afford to make the same mistake again.

Feeling the mare relax beneath her touch, she reached up, grabbing the saddle horn and cantle, then swung aboard in one swift, sure motion. Though the movement had her head spinning again, she swallowed back a groan and leaned over the horn, imagining herself a rock in one of Yosemite’s wildest rivers, a stationary object that pain and panic flowed past.

Jake leaned close to hand her the reins. “You’re hurting, Liane, and a head injury’s nothing to fool with. We need to get you back home.”

Straightening, she forced herself to ignore the worry in his voice. “Listen, Jake, I’m really glad you’re here. But if you came all this way just to tell me to turn around, you’re wasting your breath.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he reminded her. “But it’s not safe here—”

“Which means my family’s in danger.”

“Which means,” he insisted, “that your dad’s more than likely found someplace to take shelter with the kids. Someplace off the trail, where we could ride right past him.”

“I know every cave and overhang, all the spots he uses when a sudden storm comes up. I’ll find them, Jake, I know it. And after I finish hugging them all within an inch of their lives, I swear I’ll never let them out of my sight again.”

A gust of wind had the trees swaying, their scraping, rattling branches making crazy shadows as heat lightning strobe-lit the dark sky.

“It’s getting worse,” Jake said. “There’s no way your father would want you out in this.”

The urgency in his tone had her on alert. “Is there something you aren’t telling me? Something you’ve found out?”

“I haven’t been able to reach anybody—too much static. But I don’t like this wind. It gets high enough, it’ll bring down a lot of this dry timber and feed the fires.”

“We’re wasting time here. Let’s get moving.” As she spoke, she heard her voice going cold and felt herself stiffening, the way she always did around him since her return. Because she’d understood almost from the day she’d moved back to her dad’s house last year that Jake Whittaker was more than an uncomfortable reminder of the past. He was a danger to her, with his handsome face and hard, masculine body, a body so defined and sculpted that the briefest glimpse of him in a tight T-shirt was enough to weaken her knees. And enough to rekindle a memory so bittersweet, it tasted of her own tears.

But there was more, far more than a body born to tempt her, from his willingness to help her dad out at a moment’s notice to the way the two of them would get to grinning—though that deep, open laugh that she remembered had been another of the casualties of last summer’s fire. Jake was so good-natured around her kids, too, happily putting up with Cody’s tendency to talk the ears off anyone who would listen and gently teasing smiles out of her shy daughter. Seeing them together reminded her all too painfully of how often he’d daydreamed aloud of someday having a big family of his own to make up for losing his own parents at a young age.

She’d known instinctively that he was the sort of man who could entice her to forget the years that lay between them, the sort of man who could sneak back into her heart if she didn’t pay attention. But she could never risk forgetting how the man she’d eventually gone on to marry had seemed every bit as kind, as strong, as stable, until, seemingly overnight, he’d changed. Mac was never convicted of embezzling a fortune from the securities firm where he’d been working, but the shame of the public allegation had changed him into a violent, paranoid monster overnight. The sort of monster she could never risk allowing into her life or her bed—much less her children’s lives—again.

“You’re sure you’re okay to ride?” Jake asked, his concern so at odds with her memories of her ex that guilt lashed her.

“I am,” she said, feeling even worse as she recalled the way she’d implied earlier that he would only hold her back. Despite that, he’d come to find her. “And thank you. Thanks for riding out.”

Taking the lead, he nudged his mount into a jog and said over his shoulder, “It’s no problem.”

As she clucked at the pinto to get her trotting, discomfort lit up Liane’s bruised nerve endings like a switchboard. But she kept her mouth shut, not wanting to give Jake another excuse to argue that they should turn around.

Besides, he must be hurting, too, considering that he hadn’t been back on a horse since last summer’s fires, and she didn’t hear him complaining.

She made a mental note to bake him some more of those gooey caramel brownies he was so crazy about once this was all over—neighborly offerings that were far easier for her than conversation. Or maybe she would even invite him over for dinner one night, the way her father and the kids all kept suggesting.

Because she had the strength to manage that and keep her distance. The strength and, most of all, the experience to remind her of just how deceptive, how deadly dangerous, a handsome, helpful, seemingly safe man could prove to be.

* * *

Sheriff Harry Wallace reluctantly admitted to himself that he was getting too damned old for nights like this one. With the sky crackling and the wind howling, his office phones were ringing off the hook, and the few deputies who had survived the most recent round of budget cuts were scattered from hell to breakfast, checking out “smell of smoke” and automatic alarm calls from systems tripped off by power surges. To make matters worse, his heartburn was killing him, probably because he’d been drinking coffee by the pot-full in an effort to stay focused.

He was trying to shovel down another bite from the warmed-and-rewarmed dinner that his sister had dropped by when his hapless young assistant came fluttering through the door, a paper clutched in her hand. Seeing the terrified look on her freckled face, he put down his fork and snapped, “What is it now, Camille?”

Her flush deepened, making him feel guilty. It was his fault, not hers, for hiring some fool kid right out of high school to replace the office manager who’d kept this place running like a top for decades. On nights like this one, he wished he had retired with Gladys rather than settle for the sort of help he could hire for only a whisker above minimum wage. The sort of help he’d had to shake his own damned family tree to find.

“I— I’m so sorry, Sheriff Wallace,” his sister’s granddaughter managed. “I hate to bother you, but—but somehow this fax must’ve slipped behind the cabinet. I just found it, but it’s marked Urgent, so I—”

“Well, give it here,” he said, reaching out to snatch the paper from her. He almost choked on his casserole when he peered through his reading glasses at the header.

The Nevada Department of Corrections

Victim Services Unit

VICTIM NOTIFICATION REQUEST: Urgent

Dated three days earlier, it went on to name Liane Mason, giving her father’s address along with the handwritten notation:
Please remind victim to update her phone number for our system!

But it was the message that followed that had Wallace pushing away from his desk and getting to his feet. “Damn it, Camille. I told Liane Mason not to worry. Told her that Deke and her kids would be just fine ’til morning. And we were sitting on something like this?”

Camille shrank back, her green eyes streaming. “I’m really sorry, Uncle Harry,” she said, forgetting her promise not to call him that here at the office.

He held up one hand for silence, grabbing his desk phone with the other. On his call log, he found Liane Mason’s number and pressed the buttons, his mind worrying over how to break the news. While it was still possible—he would even call it likely—that the late return of his oldest friend Deke Mason and Deke’s grandkids had nothing to do with a prison break over in Nevada, he knew Liane wouldn’t buy it for a second. Already scared out of her wits, there was no telling what she might do.

“Hell’s bells. Call’s not connecting,” he grumbled. “What do you want to bet this wind’s knocked a tree across the phone lines?”

“Is there something I can do to help?” Camille pleaded.

He nodded, grabbing his hat and jacket from the coat rack in the corner. “Yeah, there is. You can dump my dinner in the trash and hold down the fort. If anybody needs me, I’m heading over to the Masons’ place to check on Liane. I’ll call from there to let you know what’s going on.”

With one foot out the door, he paused and darted a look back at his red-faced grandniece. “And one more thing, Camille. Quit wasting your time crying and start praying for the Mason family instead.”

* * *

Jake’s gut tightened with the nagging suspicion that he was making a mistake not snatching the reins from Liane and forcing her to turn back. As worried as he was about her family, he’d known Deke Mason long enough to feel confident that, as long as he still drew breath, the experienced outdoorsman would see to his grandkids’ safety.

He tried to picture his friend sitting cross-legged on a cave floor, regaling his grandchildren with story after story as they snuggled under the old blankets he had cached there for just such an emergency. Knowing Deke, the old man had them convinced that their extended trip, from the broken radio to the storm itself, was all part of some grand adventure.