Tag, You're It! (29 page)

Her temper shifted down long enough for Tag to see the unhappiness in her eyes, to hear it in her voice. "That was just adrenaline talking, us against the world, the heat of the moment."

"No, it wasn't."

She sighed, lifting her gaze to his. "I love you, too. But how long do you think it would last if I stayed here and took a job with the FBI? How long would you love me if I talked you into walking away and living in some forest or other with me? You'd miss the danger, the rush. You'd get bored. And you'd begin to resent me."

"You're wrong about that."

"Am I? What if I asked you not to go after Sappresi?"

"That's different. He killed my partner."

"So this one is personal. What about the cases that came before?"

"They were bad guys. They needed to be taken off the streets."

"There are a lot of bad guys out there, Tag, and they're not all going to grow consciences suddenly."

"Somebody else can deal with them."

She snorted softly. "Real convincing, Donovan. I especially like that little stutter when you said's-somebody else."

"Doesn't mean I wasn't serious. I'll quit, right after I bring in Sappresi."

"Really? You're volunteering to go with me?"

"Absolutely." He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Where are you going?"

"Colorado. My report. Then… I don't know."

"Well, that sounds like an adventure." A tame one. "I could—"

Alex shook her head. "Give it up, Donovan. You know you'll be climbing the walls inside of two days."

"You asked me to quit my job—"

"No, I didn't," she said. "I asked you what you'd do if I wanted you to walk away from Sappresi, and you answered all my questions."

The strike team came out of the U.S. attorney's office, along with Daniel Pierce. Whatever Tag had been about to say, he'd changed his mind, now that five of his coworkers were in the vicinity. Alex figured they'd said everything there was to say, but then, she didn't have to face anyone the next day. Except herself.

She stepped up to Tag, rested a hand on his chest, and leaned in for a short, bittersweet kiss. She felt his heart kick under her palm, just like hers did. And when she stepped back, she moved her hand to her own heart, a vain attempt to ease the ache there.

"Good-bye, Tag," she said, and went back inside to call a cab because she didn't want her last memory of him to be walking away from her—knowing that where he was going he might not come back alive. Better to remember him vital and excited, heading off to do the job he loved. More than he loved her.

ALEX SCOTT EASED THE BINOCULARS UP TO HER eyes an inch at a time, barely drawing breath. She made no sudden movement, there was no glint of reflected light off the lenses, no sound, and still her quarry whipped around. Wild, piercing golden eyes, magnified a thousand times, seemed to stare directly into hers.

Excitement shivered down her spine, mixed with a healthy dose of fear. A full-grown African lion was nothing to mess with, especially half-starved from a brutal dry spell that should have been relieved by the yearly rains a month ago.

Good thing she was a mile away, and there was a herd of zebras milling around the nearly dry water hole between the two of them.

Alex waited until the cat went back to stalking its prey, then she carefully hung the binoculars from the rearview mirror of her open-top Jeep, fielding the look her dog sent her from his guard post on the rear seat. Canine impatience. "Just a couple of shots," she said, her hand moving over the rifle scabbard and stopping at the camera bag nestled between the seats, "then we'll pack it in for the day." Stupid whined, but he did it softly.

It was the plane that set everyone off. It wasn't unusual for a small plane to fly through that part of the Serengeti, but the sound carried for miles. So did Alex's curse. The zebras scattered, and the cat took off in pursuit. Alex was pretty much frozen in place, shading her eyes, watching gravity invade her life for the second time.

Facing a hungry lion was nothing compared to realizing that whoever it might be was aiming, unmistakably, for her. Her heart was pounding a mile a minute, and the term "fight or flight" would only have applied if she'd been steady enough to drive. Or run.

If it wasn't Tag Donovan hanging from that parachute, she'd eat one of those zebras herself. The question was why. It was the possible answer that had her all worked up. Stupid wasn't too happy about it, either.

He crossed the seat to where Alex stood by the driver's door. She scratched absently behind his ears and, reassured, he paced to the other side of the Jeep. As the parachute dropped lower, though, he started to whine, his hackles went up, and his attitude switched from doggie perplexity to dehis territory. Alex knew from firsthand experience that his territory included her. Stupid might be a mutt, but he was smart, he was loyal. And he was protective.

She stowed the camera bag she was still holding, systematically packing up the rest of her gear, and studiously ignoring the parachute, even when she heard the distinctive thud of a touchdown way too close for comfort.

Stupid went into full pre-attack mode, snarling, growling, poised to spring. Alex brought him to heel with a hand movement.

"It worked out so well the first time, you decided on a repeat performance?" she said when the footsteps she'd heard stopped not far away. She didn't look up. She couldn't.

"They let me have a parachute this time," was the response she got, in a voice that made her heart jump into her throat and her stomach drop a couple of feet.

She didn't know whether to cry or throw up, but either option was unacceptable. Turning around and keeping her expression absolutely blank was what the situation called for. Seeing Tag, standing there,
alive
, in all his mouthwatering, muscular, irreverent… maleness didn't make that easy.

The heartbreak she'd managed to hold off ratcheted up to excruciating. But at least she didn't have to worry about crying anymore. Getting her Winchester and shooting him, that was a real possibility.

And he'd take it as a sign she wasn't over him. "They?" she asked with a nonchalance that might have been convincing if it hadn't been so studied.

"The guys I hired to bring me out here."

She closed her eyes, took a few seconds to let the relief wash through her.

"What, you thought I was on a case?"

She shrugged. "What else?"

"I missed you in Colorado."

That brought her head up, her eyes finding his.

Tag sauntered around the Jeep, Alex turning to keep him in sight with the kind of wariness and suspicion she'd have shown toward one of her cats. It wasn't exactly misplaced. She had no idea what Tag was going to do next, but there was a good chance it wouldn't be healthy for her.

The dog didn't like it either.

"Stupid," Alex said, sharply enough to have him sitting back on his haunches. He never took his eyes off Tag.

"Stupid? First Jackass, now Stupid. And of course he's a male."

"Of course, but that's not why I named him Stupid," Alex said, relaxing marginally. "I never told you Jackass's original name was Benny, did I?"

"Benny. Bennet Harper. So Stupid—"

"Didn't really have a name. He was a stray that just sort of dropped into my life and refused to leave. He's smart as a whip. Somebody already had him trained on simple commands, and it didn't take me long to teach him to obey me.

But he has a stubborn streak a mile wide, and he can't quite get it through his hard head that I can take care of myself."

Tag grinned. "Sounds like someone I know."

Alex felt that grin sucking her in, taking her back to the times they'd worked together, laughed together, and… She pulled herself back from memory lane before the inevitable next step.

Recovering from Bennet Harper had been child's play compared to getting over Tag Donovan. Nearly two months had passed since she'd walked away from him at the U.S. attorney's office in Boston. But she hadn't left him behind. Not really. She'd fallen in love with Tag Donovan. Not the superficial, starry-eyed kind of puppy love she'd felt for Bennet. This was the real thing, the warts-and-all version of love that didn't blind you to a person's faults but made you jump in heart-first anyway.

There was only one way to fight that kind of stupidity. Work, lots and lots of work. She didn't think of him every waking moment, and she didn't lose sleep over him anymore. But he snuck up on her at odd times, crippled her thoughts, ached in her heart, exhausted her with the battle to banish him again. Now he was invading her in person, and she felt all those things, but if she backslid into their old relationship, that would be her fault.

"I know that look," he said. "You're building a wall, Alex."

"Damn right, I am."

"You said you were done running. Hiding's the same thing."

"Don't spout that psychobabble at me," she snapped. "I made my choice. So did you." She dug out her trusty old satellite phone, flipping it to him. "The battery is fully charged. I suggest you get in touch with someone who can take you to the nearest airport."

Tag put the phone down. "You don't want to know what I'm doing here?"

"I want to see the back of you, walking away."

A muscle in his jaw worked, and his expression went stony before he smoothed it out. "Okay, let's talk about you."

"Let's not." She started to step into the Jeep, but he reached in and snagged the keys from the ignition.

Alex made a wild grab. Stupid lunged for him. Tag jumped back, which might have been comical if he hadn't snagged the prize.

"I nearly lost a couple of fingers there," he said.

"Give me the keys or you'll lose a lot more than that."

"If I give you the keys, I'll lose everything."

Alex held out her hand, palm up, pretending she hadn't heard his comment. Or that she was reading anything into it.

"If you want them," Tag said, slipping the keys into the front pocket of his jeans, "come and get them."

Her eyes on his the whole time, she walked over and reached into his pocket as shallowly as possible, just until she could curl her finger around the key ring. "You can't talk your way around me anymore, so now you're playing cheap tri…"

He dropped his mouth to her neck, cruised his lips up to her earlobe, and all the breath wheezed out of her lungs. She closed her eyes for a second, just a second while need rushed through her on hot and prickly feet. But when she felt her heart begin to trip, felt him move in closer, she jerked away and climbed into the Jeep, a clean, quick break before the pounding and throbbing inside drowned out any shred of reason.

"Alex, don't run," he said, his voice as unsteady as her hands fumbling with the keys. "I still love you. Isn't that worth a few minutes of your time?"

She fought with herself briefly, then sat back, defeated by a combination of desire and logic—both her own. Tag was right. She'd have cut her tongue out before she admitted it to him, but he was right. If she was ever going to put him behind her, she needed to finish this once and for all.

"I didn't run away from you in Boston, I didn't run away from Colorado, and I'm not running now." Stupid whined, still nervous about Tag and probably picking up on her mood. She reached back and ruffled her fingers through his mangy fur, letting her eyes roam around to reherself why she was there.

The Jeep was completely open but for the windscreen and a roll bar, so she could see the land stretching away to the horizon in all directions. The sun was a huge yellow ball sinking into the west, the sky around it a pastel watercolor, the air before shimmering with heat waves. It was so different from a Colorado sunset where the shadows of the mountains raced out to drop the land into darkness before the sky followed. It was different from Colorado in every aspect, but just as wild and beautiful in its own way. She took a deep breath of the dusty air and knew again that she'd made the right choice. She didn't belong in any one place. She belonged to the world.

"I'm changing careers," she said, "going into photojournalism. Conservation projects mostly."

Tag had let her have her moment, now he came over to lean against the side of the jeep, just by the windshield where he could see her face in the deepening twilight. "Photojournalism doesn't pay very well."

"It won't pay anything until I establish myself."

"And yet you're rebuilding your cabin—"

"With indoor plumbing and a darkroom."

"No stable?"

She smiled fondly. "Jackass decided to stay at Dee's. With Angel. I'm using the cabin as a home base between assignments. It's free, doesn't cost anything to maintain, and I can get there on my dirt bike just as easily as I can on horseback."

"Dirt bikes aren't cheap." Tag leaned a forearm on the top of the windscreen, grinned over it at her. "The treasure was bigger than you thought, wasn't it?"

Alex popped up an eyebrow. "What treasure?"

"You took the map when you left Boston. Interestingly enough, some gold coins showed up recently for sale on the Internet. The claim is they came from Juan Amparo's gold mine, the Lost Spaniard."

"I'm not selling anything on the Internet."

"Citizens for Casteel is—that's a newly formed charitacorporation."

"I've heard of them" she said. "I understand they're planning to build a school in town."

"Nice of you to cut them in," Tag observed.

"They had to put up with the invasion of crazies every few years," Alex said, "they deserve it."

Tag looked like he wasn't entirely convinced of that, but he let it go. "How did you figure it out?"

"Aubrey did, actually." Alex climbed out and went around to the old but still sturdy strongbox bolted behind the Jeep's rear seat. She didn't have much of real value, but she'd learned if she wanted to keep it at all, she needed to keep it close. She worked the lock and pulled out her satchel, removing the map as she walked around so she could spread it open on the hood. The fact that it would be an unspoken invitation to Tag escaped her until he came to hover over her shoulder.

She did her best to ignore him. She managed it mentally. Her body was a different story, but she could get past the heat and tingling and heart palpitations. She just had to concentrate on something else. Conveniently, she had the perfect distraction right in front of her.

"Aubrey did some research and figured out that Juan was probably a wealthy man in Spain who fell on hard times," she began. "This notation at the top of the map means Amparo's salvation, and she thought he was trying to accumulate enough money to get back on top."

"But he was killed for the map, right?"

"Right. Aubrey couldn't find any report of the treasure having been found, and we know it wasn't at any of the sites marked."

"We didn't check the third site."

Alex waved that off. "It wasn't there, and the only other place we never managed to identify is Mount Rosalie, so I did some research before I left the Colonnade. Turns out Mount Rosalie was renamed Mount Evans in 1895, after Juan's time. At first, I thought it was just another landmark, like Denver, but why choose Mount Evans? Why not something more well-known, like Pikes Peak?

"The notation for east at the side of the map kept bothering me, too," she continued. "Aubrey passed it off as Juan being an amateur mapmaker, but why would he point out east instead of north, especially since the north is at the top of map? None of it made sense, until I fell asleep on the flight back to Denver, and all the stuff about crosses and salvation and Juan being religious connected up in my brain." She drew an imaginary line between Casteel and the stone cross due north of it, another between Mount Evans and the right side of the map. "The fourth point of the cross is Castile in Spain, which is what the east notation means, and my cabin is right at the intersection." She looked up, met Tag's eyes. "No one ever knew exactly where Juan lived."