Until I Found You (8 page)

M
ost people thought
nick rode
the Harley for the speed, danger, and “bad boy” allure. They were wrong. What made riding such a pleasure—an oasis of sorts—was the intense need for control. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted by anything, including Kate’s arms snug around his waist. The road demanded his full attention, and he gave the asphalt the respect it required. Not even her seat-belt-like grip could pull his thoughts from the double-yellow line dividing the narrow highway.

In addition to controlling the bike, he needed to control himself. No idle flirting. No leading Kate to expect more than he had to give. This morning before leaving his house, he had asked God to make him a slave to righteousness, to guard his heart and eyes, and to bless Kate in unexpected ways. Judging by her request for speed, the blessings had begun with a lessening of her fears.

If the day went as Nick expected, they would return to Meadows with a story for page three and his personal pledge in place with one small modification. He and Kate would be friends, a necessary amendment, considering they worked together.

The miles to the Tin Canyon Wilderness Area passed quickly. When he turned on to the gravel road leading to the launch site, he called back to Kate. “How are you doing?”

“Great!” she answered. “How much farther?”

“About ten miles.”

They rode in silence, with Nick dodging potholes and Kate exclaiming over the desolate beauty of empty sky and stretches of coppery earth. He agreed with her that it looked a little like Mars, but mostly he kept his eyes on the road until they reached the launch site.

A low building with solar panels provided living and office space for Marcus, other scientists, staff, and volunteers who performed a variety of tasks. A flight pen that resembled a batting cage stood tall on a low hill. It housed birds in transition from the zoo to the wild, and the biologists used it when they performed health checks. If Nick and Kate were lucky, they’d see a condor up close.

He throttled down and glided to a stop in front of the building. After removing his gloves, he climbed off the bike and offered Kate his hand. She laid her palm against his and swung her leg over the seat. In unison they slipped off their helmets and smiled at each other.

“Helmet hair,” he said as he dragged a hand across his scalp.

She grinned. “Me, too.”

The messy look charmed him. So did the excited grin on her face, but he knew a thing or two about women. They liked hairbrushes and lipstick, so he opened the saddlebag holding her purse. “I’ll trade you the purse for the helmet and jacket.”

“It’s a deal.”

While she brushed her hair, he set the helmets and her jacket on the concrete porch and put on the field vest he wore for adventures like this one. One pocket held a camera and a notepad. The contents of the second pocket included a knife,
Band-Aids, gloves, a water bottle, and a couple of energy bars. The boy scout in him loved this stuff.

When Kate finished with her hair, she slipped the brush in the saddlebag and removed her own camera, then faced him with her eyes aglow. “The ride was great.”

“I enjoyed it, too.”
We’ll do it again
sometime, maybe a ride up the coast. There’s a
good seafood place in Pismo . . .
No. Today was about friendship and a news story, not a sunset walk on the beach. Mentally, he wiped the slate clean and focused on the here-and-now. “It’s a good road for the bike, one of the best in California.”

“You’d know about that.” A smile curved her lips, freshly pink and moist with lipstick. “With the book and all, you’ve been everywhere. You’ve done so much—”

“Too much.”

He needed to set Kate straight about the allure of the old days, because his past was neither admirable nor romantic. But when? And how? Telling her about his daughter would cross the very boundary he needed to preserve—the one between casual friendship and feelings that cut deep enough to bleed. His pledge didn’t end for six more months. He had to hold back, but what was best for Kate, whose eyes were shining with admiration?

Before Nick could break the mood, Marcus stepped out of the building. The biologist was in his midthirties, built like a barrel, and sporting a brown beard that matched his close-cropped hair. Dressed in a khaki shirt and green uniform pants, he resembled Smokey Bear without the hat.

Nick offered a handshake. “Hey, Marc. It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too.” The men shook, then Marcus’s attention shifted to Kate. Without warning, he lifted her in a hug and spun her around. “Kate Darby, you are
awesome
!”

Nick’s brows snapped together. Marcus was known to be exuberant, but a hug?

Kate wiggled out of the biologist’s grasp. “I’m glad Number 53 is all right. Seeing her on the road was quite a moment.”

Marcus stepped back, his expression somber now. “I’m sorry about the accident.” He hooked a thumb at Nick. “This guy’s a hero.”

“No.” Nick didn’t want praise—especially from Kate, who was looking at him as if he could walk on water, even run on it. “Anyone would have helped.”

“But you were the one,” she said, lightly touching his arm. “You were a hero that day. I’ll never forget it.”

A hero with feet of clay. If they had been alone, he would have told her he was human and struggled every day to be an honorable man, that he believed in Jesus and the bloody cross and all those sticky subjects that made people cringe. He and Kate needed to have a conversation but not now, not with Marcus silently laughing at him, because the biologist saw Kate’s sweetly bowed lips as plainly as Nick did.

She liked what she saw in him.

They had chemistry, sparks, attraction. Whatever a person called it, those feelings made any friendship between them complicated. For Nick, the next six months were as critical as the buildup to a NASA space mission, where every minute of preparation had a purpose, even the final ten-second countdown. He had to remember that he and Kate were just friends—nothing more. But if Marcus hugged her again, Nick would be sorely tempted to bloody his nose.

Kate prided herself on reading people’s expressions, a skill she had honed in meetings at Sutton where clients masked their enthusiasm to drive down the price. If she glimpsed
a client’s face during that first reaction, she almost always gauged the person’s thoughts correctly. Nick had blanked his expression when Marcus hugged her, but not before she saw a scowl that lasted a nanosecond. He liked her and was jealous of Marcus, though judging by his expression now—a mask of neutrality—he didn’t want her to know it. Some women would have used that flash of jealousy to fire up his interest, but Kate refused to play games.

She stepped to his side, putting them shoulder to shoulder as she spoke to Marcus. “I’m thrilled to be here. My grandfather loved condors.”

“He was a good man,” Marcus replied. “How’s Leona? I heard about the stroke.”

Kate gave her standard answer. “She’s recovering.” Any other reply led to lengthy explanations.

“Glad to hear it.” After a respectful pause, Marcus indicated a path that led to a rocky hill. “Are you ready for the ten-cent tour? It’s a bit of a hike, so we’ll have plenty of time for questions.”

“Sounds good,” Nick answered. “Where are we going?”

“To check out Tin Canyon. Two of our condors are flirting with each other. Elvis is a ten-year-old male who flew down from the program near Big Sur. He’s interested in Moon Girl, and she’s staked out a nest site in a cave. With a little luck, we’ll see courtship behavior.”

“That would be amazing.” Kate tightened her grip on the camera. “My grandfather would have loved this.”

“You will, too,” Marcus replied. “If Elvis puts on his usual show, you’ll see why he’s named for the king of rock ’n’ roll.”

“Sounds like fun,” Kate said.

“Oh, it is.” The biologist waggled his brows, then made a suggestive remark.

Kate laughed, but she didn’t want to encourage Marcus—
either his interest in her or the ribald joking. Apparently Nick didn’t like the joking either, because he placed his hand possessively on the small of her back. The biologist stepped to Kate’s other side, and the three of them headed up the path. Kate asked the question foremost in her mind.

“I’d like to know more about Number 53. Does she have a name?”

“It’s
Wistoyo
, which means ‘rainbow’ in Chumash. And she’s not Number 53. Technically she’s Number 253. We drop the first digit on the tags. She’s fifteen years old now and one of our veterans. We need her to find a new mate and breed, and to teach the younger birds how to survive.”

“A new mate?” Nick asked.

“She was paired up with Number 174. About a year ago he perched on a power pole and was electrocuted.”

Kate’s thoughts drifted to her grandfather’s sudden heart attack. What a loss it had been for her grandmother. “Condors mate for life, don’t they?”

“Yes, but they’ll find a new mate if the first one dies.” Marcus kicked aside a rock. “Wistoyo was conceived at the Los Angeles Zoo, raised by foster parents, and released into the wild about six years ago. She went through aversion therapy to teach her to avoid humans, but she’s still one of our more curious birds. A thousand years ago that trait would have been an asset, but today it’s a flaw that could get her in trouble.”

“Why?” Kate asked.

“She’ll check out something she shouldn’t, like old farm equipment leaking toxic fluids.” Marcus heaved an exasperated sigh. “Condors and people don’t mix. The same dangers that led to their near extinction are still present.”

Kate knew the history of the birds as well as she knew her own family tales. In ancient times, condors ruled the skies from Oregon to Mexico, with Southern California being their
primary home. As civilization encroached, new dangers entered the condor’s world. Power lines, trash, antifreeze, poachers, and lead poisoning all caused their numbers to dwindle. Conservation work began in the 1960s, and the birds were added to the endangered species list in 1967, in part because of her grandfather’s widely published photographs. Captive breeding began at the San Diego Zoo and fieldwork picked up, but the number of condors dropped until 1987. When there were just nine birds left in the world, the recovery team brought the last condors into captivity.

Nick glanced past her to Marcus. “Environmentally, what’s the most immediate problem?”

“Lead poisoning,” the biologist replied. “When hunters make a kill, they leave the entrails and sometimes whole carcasses with lead bullets and bullet fragments in place. The birds ingest the lead and become ill. If we don’t intervene in time, they die.”

“What do you do to prevent it?” Kate asked.

“Regular health checks. If a blood test shows lead, the bird goes to the zoo for chelation therapy.”

Kate thought of Leona in the ICU after the stroke and how much she wanted to go home. “That must be hard for them.”

“Yes and no,” Marcus replied. “They’re accustomed to being handled.”

The conversation stayed on the condors, with Nick asking questions for the article and Marcus detailing condor history, which included the infamous Meadows picnic. Kate knew the story well.

When condors were re-released into the wild in the early 1990s, they were attracted to human activity. Three of them landed on Herb Watson’s deck. Being hospitable, Herb fed them hot dogs. Kate smiled at the mental picture, but the reality hung over the species like a shroud. Condors lived
in a fragile, dangerous world, one complicated by politics, economics, and individual beliefs about the environment.

When the trail split, Marcus led them up a hill steep enough that someone had hung a rope to use as a handhold. The path went up about thirty feet—not nearly as far as the drop in San Miguel Canyon but far enough to make Kate break out in a cold sweat.

Marcus tugged on a pair of gloves. “I’ll go first. Kate, you’re next, then Nick.”

She faked a brave smile. “No problem.”

When Marcus started to climb, Kate’s mouth went dry. Her pulse rushed as if she were in the BMW, and her throat closed to a pinhole.