Hidden Agenda

by Kara Lennox

  Had she ever forgiven him? Probably not.

  It was a good thing his new admin wasn’t the chubby Jillybean from his past, or he might have to think twice about spending time with her in the woods, alone, where there were no witnesses.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  JILLIAN TRIED NOT TO LOOK AT Conner. Although the four-wheel drive Jeep Cherokee Sport wasn’t a small car, it felt small when she was sitting in the front seat with Conner, whose sheer physicality dominated any space he occupied.

  Instead, she experimented with her camera, consulting the instruction book, fiddling with the settings.

  “Is that a new camera?” Conner asked once he’d navigated out of the worst of the Houston traffic. They were headed for the East Texas piney woods, a trip that would take them about three hours. She wondered why they had to stay overnight—it wasn’t that far. But she figured he knew what he was doing.

  Celeste had insisted he wanted to get her out of town so he could either murder her or seduce her with no witnesses, but Celeste was prone to drama.

  “Yes, I just got it yesterday.”

  “I thought you said you knew how to use a digital camera.”

  “I do.” The one on her phone, anyway. This one was more complex than she’d thought it would be. She’d snapped a few photos the previous evening just to be sure she had the basics down, but she had much to learn about settings and exposure. “I needed a new camera anyway, and this seemed like a good time to buy one. What will I be taking pictures of?”

  “I’m not sure. Apparently the lumbering crew got overzealous and took down some kind of special owl tree.”

  “Owl tree?”

  “A hollow tree that’s been a barn owl nesting site for the past ten years.”

  “Oh, poor owls. So this is a big deal?”

  “Since our agreement with the landowner specifically stated that this tree, and the area around it, wouldn’t be disturbed, we could get sued. But even without the legal angle, it’s still a big deal. Hollow trees aren’t that easy to come by. For every cavity, the owls have to compete with other birds, like woodpeckers.”

  That explained why the back of the Jeep was filled with birdhouses. Apparently Conner planned to offer some alternative housing for the owls whose home had been destroyed, and some for their competitors, as well.

  “Are they endangered owls?”

  “They’re rare in this part of Texas. The state forestry people like owls because the little ones eat insect pests that harm trees, and the larger ones, like barn owls, keep rodents in check. They’re an important part of the food chain.”

  Jillian didn’t know anything about owls, but apparently Conner did. He’d always been interested in science, she remembered that about him. His father had been some kind of ecoscientist back before “green” was in. Conner had been smart, too—straight A’s. He’d managed to make that look cool.

  Even entering the science fair—a notoriously geeky thing to do—had looked good on him.

  Jillian stopped, determinedly focusing on the road ahead, the sky, the puffy white clouds. Thinking about that science fair when Conner was sitting inches from her was a dangerous thing to do.

  “Your guy didn’t destroy a nest, did he? Like, with babies?” Jillian didn’t have any pets of her own, but that didn’t mean she didn’t like animals. She’d doted on Daniel’s golden retriever.

  “Nesting season is over. But the adult owls were still roosting at the nest site, and they were undoubtedly disturbed.”

  After a few more minutes Conner turned off the main road, then onto a still smaller road, then finally onto a logging road that was no more than a couple of tire ruts in the red dirt.

  Conner was busy driving, skillfully lurching from bump to bump and avoiding the largest of the holes, so Jillian could study him without fear that he would notice. He seemed to change as they left civilization. The deeper they got into the woods, the more relaxed his face became, to the point where he was almost smiling.

  She’d seen nothing but anger, impatience and irritation from him at the office; now he seemed to be enjoying himself.

  However, his face and body grew tense again as they approached the logging site. This area, scarred by the trucks and saws, wasn’t so pretty, littered with the stumps of pine trees.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” he muttered.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Something is very wrong.”

  Eventually they pulled up behind a huge, flatbed truck half-filled with logs. A U.S. Forest Service truck was parked off to the side. Several men, mostly in work clothes, milled around.

  Conner grabbed a folder from the backseat and nearly flew out of the truck.

  Ready for anything, Jillian followed, her camera around her neck, a digital recorder in one pocket and a notepad in the other.

  One of the workmen, a scruffy-looking redhead with a full beard, was already heading toward Conner, his long stride full of purpose. “Mr. Blake. I didn’t know anything about owls, I swear. I was just taking down the trees that were marked.”

  A second man had come forward, a tall, gaunt man in his sixties in overalls, clutching an unlit pipe in one hand. “He’s practically clear-cutting! Our contract states no more than twenty-five percent of the trees were to be cut, and just look at this! It’s a good thing I came to check on the progress.”

  “I only cut the marked trees,” Scruffy Redhead said again. “You can check the truck. Every single tree on that truck is marked with blue paint.”

  Jillian switched on the recorder, then started scribbling notes as fast as she could. This wasn’t anything like the civilized meetings she used to deal with at Daniel’s estate. It was a good thing she’d developed her own version of shorthand.

  “Who did the marking, then?” Pipe Man asked.

  “A man named Greg Tynes.” Conner’s jaw tightened and he all but spit on the ground, so obvious was his contempt. “I personally went over the contract with him and instructed how he was to mark. Obviously he didn’t follow directions.”

  Jillian’s heart quickened. So the dead man had been violating the terms of the lumber company’s contract with the landowner. Could that be a motive for murder?

  “Well, I hope you fired him!” Pipe Man said indignantly. “My forest looks like a wasteland.”

  “Rest assured, Greg Tynes no longer works for Mayall Lumber,” Conner said, giving nothing away. “In fact, he’ll never work in the timber business again.”

  That was one promise Conner could keep.

  The young, female forest ranger, who’d been listening intently, finally spoke up. “There’s more at stake than just the aesthetics of this woods. Mr. Whatley’s land abuts public lands, forming a contiguous forest, the size of which is crucial to—”

  “The owls,” Conner said.

  “Yes. Barn owl populations have been declining over the years. The nest site in question has been monitored by Cornell University for ten years. A camera has been in place for five.”

  “I get a tax deduction for lettin’ ’em do that, you know,” Mr. Whatley put in.

  “The owls are crucial to our woodland ecosystem,” the ranger continued. “They eat—”

  Conner put his hand up to stop her impassioned speech. “You don’t have to convince me. We’ve done something wrong here. I want to fix it. I want to make things right. Obviously, Mr. Whatley here will have to be compensated for the excess timber taken from his land. As for the owls—will you show me the nest site?”

  Conner retrieved a backpack from the Jeep. Then he, the forest ranger and Jillian began hiking.

  “How many acres have been screwed up?” he asked the ranger.

  “Between seventeen and twenty.” She seemed calmer, now that it appeared Conner wanted to make things right.

  He breathed out a sigh. “At least it wasn’t the whole seventy-five.”

  Jillian didn’t want to be impressed with the way Conner handled things. She wanted to continue hating him—i
t was so much easier. But how many men would so easily admit responsibility for a mistake and pledge to make things right, all without anyone making demands or threats?

  She well remembered how the suits at Logan Oil, of which Daniel was chairman of the board, consulted teams of lawyers if there was any hint that they might have made a misstep, searching for all possible legal remedies and never admitting to anything until a full investigation had been conducted.

  But just like that, Conner had owned the problem.

  The hiking wasn’t as difficult as Jillian had feared; her two-hundred-dollar boots might have been overkill. But it was warm, given that most of the shade had been cut down, and she was glad she’d bathed in sunscreen and worn a hat and sunglasses.

  Not the “special” sunglasses Celeste had provided. Those were bulky and unattractive. But Jillian kept them in her purse, just in case.

  Conner had a hat, too, a battered, Indiana Jones–style thing. It made him look quite rakish.

  Finally they came upon a huge tree lying on its side. It wasn’t pine, like most of the other trees around here, which Conner had said were planted maybe thirty years ago for the express purpose of timber harvesting.

  This was something left from an older, slower-growing tree that had probably been here more than a hundred years.

  It was dead, that much was clear. Dead, hollow…and marked with blue paint.

  “Why the hell would Greg mark this tree?” Conner wondered aloud. “It’s no good as lumber.”

  Poking around a bit more, Conner discovered the owl nest in a hole. A few whitish feathers drifted out on the breeze.

  “The female was using that hole as her roost,” the ranger said.

  Conner took his backpack off and rummaged around in it, producing a pair of binoculars, which he uncapped and used to scan the few trees that remained close by. No one said a word, so Jillian took a few pictures. Her camera lens was naturally drawn to Conner, whose straight back and wide shoulders pivoted this way and that as he searched, presumably for the displaced owl. She’d taken several shots before she realized what she was doing and made herself stop.

  What was she going to do next, blow up prints and put them on her bedroom wall? This was Conner Blake, whom she would cheerfully have used for target practice if he ever showed up on the shooting range. Just because he was devastatingly handsome was no reason to stop hating him. After all, he’d been handsome when she’d started hating him.

  “There,” Conner finally said. “She’s in that tree right there, third branch from the top on the left.”

  The ranger had her own pair of binoculars. “I’ll be damned, she sure is. How did you spot her? She’s camouflaged perfectly with the tree trunk.”

  “She cracked one eye open just at the right time,” Conner replied. “She’s watching us.”

  Jillian squinted at the tree, but she couldn’t see anything. “May I borrow your binoculars?” she asked, surprising herself by how much she wanted to see the barn owl.

  “Sure.” Conner lifted the strap from around his neck and looped it around hers. His fingers brushed her neck, and she gave a delicate shiver.

  “You see the tree I mean?” he asked, standing close to her and leaning his head right next to hers. He pointed.

  “I think so.”

  “On the left side, count three branches from the top.” His voice was soft, intimate. “A ball of light tan fluff right next to the trunk. She’s probably hiding her face under her wing.”

  “I don’t… Omigosh, I see it!” The bird turned its head and opened its eyes, as if it detected Jillian watching it. The round, black eyes shined from a white, heart-shaped face. “She’s cute.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you saw her swallow a whole mouse,” Conner said. “Or tear one apart to feed her babies.”

  “You really didn’t have to tell me that.” She handed him back the binoculars.

  “You can’t just put up a nest box and call it good,” the ranger said. “Owls are fussy. Although barn owls are more tolerant of humans than most owls, it’s very likely she’ll go someplace else next year.”

  Conner seemed not to be listening. He was inspecting the stump, the fallen tree and the surrounding area. At one point he leaned over, and a silver medal of some type, suspended around his neck on a chain, fell out from under his shirt.

  When he straightened the chain caught on a branch and the chain broke. The medal landed in the dirt.

  “Aw, hell.” Impatiently he scooped up the medal and chain and handed them to Jillian. “Can you put that in one of your hundred pockets, please?”

  He was making fun of her hiking pants. Well, he could think what he liked—the pants were practical.

  The medal was a Saint Christopher. She gave it a brief look before tucking it away. Conner hadn’t grown up Catholic. She wondered why he would have such an object.

  “We’ll put the tree back up,” he announced suddenly.

  “Beg your pardon?” the ranger said.

  “Yeah, it can be done. Get a forklift out here, maybe a winch and a truck and some strong guys. We’ll drill holes and sink some dowels into the stump, maybe erect some braces—yeah, it’ll work.”

  “That sounds like an expensive project,” Jillian said.

  Conner shrugged. “Gotta give Mrs. Owl back her house. And we’ll reimburse the university for the equipment that was destroyed, of course.”

  “Really?” The ranger took off her hat, scratched her head, as if she’d never encountered someone so agreeable.

  They hiked back to the road, where Conner informed the landowner that no more timber would be harvested until Conner himself had re-marked the trees to be taken—doing it right, this time. “We’ll start in the area that’s farthest from the owl nest, and we’ll make sure not to disturb that area any more than necessary. And, like I said before, we’ll compensate you for the extra trees taken above and beyond what was contracted.” He took out his phone, punched a few keys, then showed the screen to Mr. Whatley. “Would that amount be acceptable to you?”

  Mr. Whatley tipped his hat back. “I expect so.”

  “You should have a check in your hands no later than next Friday.”

  “What about me?” the lumberjack said. “Me and my crew gonna sit around on our thumbs till the trees are re-marked?”

  “You’ll be back to work by Monday, and you’ll be paid for the downtime.”

  Everyone nodded, and then they just stood there. They’d come fired up to do battle with Conner, yet that hadn’t proved necessary. It was like a pall of anticlimax had fallen on the group.

  Conner rubbed his hands together. “If that’s everything, then, I’ve got work to do. I’ll use red paint to mark the trees.” He addressed the lumberjack. “Tell your team to ignore blue paint, cut red paint.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Blake.” He and his men piled into an SUV, so covered in dust it was hard to tell the color, and bounced away.

  Mr. Whatley and the ranger each shook Conner’s hand, then they departed, as well. Soon it was just Conner, Jillian and the trees.

  Conner smiled and took a deep breath.

  Jillian was impressed, and damn it, that irritated her. She didn’t want to feel anything positive toward her boss. He used you, she reminded herself. He humiliated you. He took advantage of a homely, fourteen-year-old girl ga-ga in love with him when he was old enough to know better.

  A surge of outrage rose anew in her throat, a welcome feeling. She pulled her anger around herself like a comfortable, warm cloak, then schooled her features.

  “How long will this job take?” Jillian asked.

  “All weekend,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll get a good portion done, then I’ll get someone in to finish the job—one of the veteran guys I can trust.”

  “Shall I extend your reservation at the motel, then?”

  “No, I think I’ll just camp out. There’s no rain in the forecast, so I don’t really need a tent. I brought everything else.”

&nb
sp; She felt the first stirrings of alarm. Surely he didn’t want her to camp out with him! She did not do camping. Hiking in the woods was already a stretch, though it hadn’t turned out as horrible as she’d pictured it.

  Wanting to remain professional yet still slightly frosty, she formulated her next question carefully. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I’ll call in some men and equipment. I need you to meet them at the main road and escort them onto the property, then show them where the owl tree is. Will you be able to find it again by yourself?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Good. Once that’s taken care of…how do you feel about hanging birdhouses?”

  * * *

  CONNER HAD ALREADY EMPTIED one can of spray paint and was on to the second. Choosing which trees to harvest was part science, part art and part pure instinct. A healthy forest was one that encompassed many different species of tree as well as different sizes. Young trees, old trees and dead trees all provided habitat for different critters; the aim was to encourage a healthy diversity.

  This land had been overharvested the first time around. Fortunately Mr. Whatley, the landowner, had seen fit to replant with a few slow-growing hardwoods in addition to the fast-growing pines. Responsible forestry took patience. You had to plan for thirty, forty, a hundred years into the future.

  “Ouch!”

  Conner’s musings came to an abrupt halt as Jillian’s voice punctuated the silence. “You okay?” he called to her. She was forty yards distant from him, on a ladder, hanging a birdhouse.

  “Just hammered my thumb,” she called back. “No emergency.”

  Conner had to admit, he was surprised by Jillian every time he turned around.

  He’d expected her to congratulate him on the tidy way he’d dealt with the disaster. Problem-solving out in the field was something he was good at. But she’d had nothing to say on the matter.

  Then, when he’d told her he wanted her to hang birdhouses, he’d expected a flat-out no. All this tromping around in the woods was nowhere in her job description. But she’d agreed.