by Christa Wick
My head drifted side-to-side. I would wrap the ankle, stay off the leg as much as I could—things like that. But I wasn’t going to get sidelined by having to wear a soft cast, especially when I had a fresh lead to chase.
“I didn’t say it was optional, Agent Callahan. Unless you aren’t reporting this incident to your agency, your supervisors will see the diagnosis and my recommended treatment.”
“Soft cast sounds like just the thing,” a male voice rumbled from the other side of the curtain. “Safe to come in?”
The doctor looked at me.
“Yes,” I rasped.
Walker parted the curtains and stepped inside. His gaze went straight to my leg and swollen ankle. From just below my knee to the tip of my toes, varying shades of red colored my skin. The area around the joint mimicked an overripe tomato. A four-inch patch of flesh that looked like it had been lightly burned by an iron curled across the shin.
Placing his hand on my shoulder, he studied my face.
“How’s the pain?”
I rolled my neck, triggering a few satisfying cracks from the spine that settled my nerves.
“Manageable.”
The doctor typed on the laptop he’d brought into the room. Hitting ENTER one final time, he turned to me.
“Front desk will give you a print out of instructions and a prescription before you leave. Right now, a technician will come in with a soft cast and adjust the fit. I’ll check it when she’s done.”
Standing up, he shut the laptop and took it with him as he moved on to the next patient.
Walker claimed the vacated seat, his gaze locked on mine. Unable to match the intensity of his stare, I placed my hands over my face.
“What does ‘manageable’ mean?” he rumbled.
“Not passing out or puking.”
My hands muffled the words, but he made them out well enough to chuckle.
“I have a sense you’re persistently independent, Ashley Callahan.”
Lowering my hands, I rolled my eyes. Nolan, my one and only real boyfriend had labeled it a pathological trait.
“It’s the Montana in me,” I deadpanned.
He laughed a little louder, rolling the chair closer to the exam table. “You’re from Detroit with a side dish of California.”
Taking my hand, he laced his fingers through mine and kissed the center knuckle. “I know you have a new supervisor and all, Ash, but you need to go easy on your leg.”
I nodded, but the rest of my face, from the knitted brows to the squiggle of my mouth, disagreed with a stubborn vehemence. If I got sidelined, the investigation was over. Thomas didn’t have the authority to do it on his own and Moske refused to believe there was anything going on or, even if something was happening, the potential issue was “too small” to waste resources over.
“Did you know,” I asked, pulling a few statistics from memory, “that, ounce for ounce, a bear’s gallbladder is worth more than six times the value of cocaine.”
I paused so the number could sink in, then continued. “A pound of bile flakes is worth more than sixty thousand dollars. Six of eight known bear species are threatened with extinction because of the demand.”
“Didn’t know that,” Walker said, then tapped the lightbox with the x-rays still showing. “I know this, though.”
“When you catch the person a poacher is selling to, then you find the money launderers,” I persisted. “You get that hub under your thumb, you get more poachers and other bad actors. Drug dealers, drug labs.”
“I get it,” he said. “You’re exactly like Deacon that way. This is important to you.”
He rubbed my arm, kissed the back of my hand again.
“But you’re important to me, Ash.”
I closed my eyes, lips quivering. I wasn’t accustomed to anyone wanting to take care of me. An only child who had come late in life for my parents, I had grown up in a house of busy professionals with heavy responsibilities outside the family.
When I was three, my father had built a special cabinet in the kitchen, no taller than I was. My parents filled it with plastic bowls and cups, silverware, Tupperware containers with my favorite cereals, bread, peanut butter and the like. The bottom shelf of the refrigerator was all mine, the milk and juice poured by my parents from big containers into ones my little hands could handle. By the time I entered kindergarten, I was trusted with making my own eggs and toast.
I didn’t know how to let someone boss me around, no matter how well-intentioned the attempt.
Pulling my hand from his, I covered my face again.
A sigh escaped Walker, but he didn’t get up and leave.
“So what did you find out today?”
I risked a peek at his handsome face. I scanned for any sign that he was faking his interest but it appeared sincere.
“The packs cut from the trees were moved by five guys down a stream from inside the park to just outside the perimeter of Joyce Franco’s campgrounds while it was dark out. They used a raft up until the rapids, then carried the packs from there.”
His head bobbed, the gears visibly cranking inside his skull to process the information. “How do you know that?”
“From a trail cam photo of them carrying the packs onto her property and by finding the raft abandoned and weighted down by rocks right before the start of the rapids.”
He pointed at my ankle. “Did you slip at the rapids?”
My hand bounced off the mattress in frustration. “Yeah.”
I knew I should have let Thomas walk across. But there was a good chance either one of us could have gotten hurt. He was only an intern, his career not even begun, and his medical benefits if he did get hurt were far sketchier. I couldn’t let him do it, so I had ordered, strenuously at one point, for him to stay on shore after I spotted a flash of yellow weighted down in the middle of the water.
Walker cocked an unexpected grin, his green eyes dancing. He captured my arm before I could deny him, his fingers curling around my bicep.
“Depending on whose body you need help burying, I promise to help you bury it,” he joked. “And whatever help you need with this case, I’ll give it. But you have to get that cast, Ash. You won’t be able to work without it.”
“Moske will tie me to a desk—”
“Then you solve this from the desk. You need questions asked around town, I’ll do the asking. As much as I hate to say it, I’ve got as good a chance as getting an answer as any lawman does. Probably better.”
I chewed at the inside of my lip. Walker was right. I couldn’t do the fieldwork, at least not for the next few days. There were even odds I would puke or pass out when the technician put the cast on and adjusted it.
“Okay,” I relented. “I’ll do everything I can from the desk and have you do what’s safe and legal if you’re willing.”
Smiling, he released my arm and stood up from the chair. He brushed the hair from my face then kissed the spot right between my brows.
“So, what’s next?” I asked. “Other than waiting for the technician to get in here and do her job.”
“Next,” he grinned, kissing me again. “I take you home.”
17
Walker
Whatever I had meant by “home,” the only choice was Ashley’s apartment in Billings. The Jeep couldn’t stay at the clinic and Thomas wasn’t authorized to drive it without a supervising agent. Which meant Ashley had to ride all the way to Billings with the cast on her leg.
I followed in my truck. By the time we reached the parking lot for the federal building, Ashley was sweating bullets. Surprising me, she agreed to fill her prescription for painkillers, but only wanted a third of the count dispensed. I dropped her at home, made sure she was settled in bed, then went to the pharmacy to collect the pills.
Guessing her cupboard was as bereft of food as her apartment was of furniture, I picked up some basics at the pharmacy while I waited on the prescription then grabbed a pizza.
Balancing the bags and the pi
zza box, I pulled the spare key she had given me and slid it into the lock. Part of me sang at my possession of the key. I didn’t think Ashley allowed very many people into her world—was certain she didn’t. But here I was with the key to her place and permitted to run a few errands for her while she was vulnerable.
“Just me,” I announced, entering the apartment. Placing everything on the counter, I grabbed a glass from the strainer along the sink and filled it with orange juice then shook a pill free from the bottle.
“They’ll fill the other twenty when you need it,” I said, coming into her bedroom. I handed Ashley the juice, followed by the pill. “You can have up to three of these a day.”
The look on her face told me I'd be lucky if she consented to even one a day.
I shrugged after she swallowed the pill.
“Fine with me. The longer you’re laid up,” I teased, “the longer I get to play nurse.”
She lifted her brows, the first trace of a smile pushing at the corners of her mouth since we had left the clinic in Roundup. Lightning flashed in the gray gaze, the speculation stamped across her face sending a bolt of white-hot heat straight through me.
Swallowing hard, I pointed toward the kitchen. “I grabbed some food from the pharmacy shelves and a pizza on the way back.”
“I’m starving,” Ashley admitted. She bit at her lip for a second then released it. “Pretty bad that the first meal you’re eating in my place is a world away from your mother’s cooking.”
“Mama made sure all her kids were handy in the kitchen. You like to cook?”
She wiggled her hand. “It’s more a utilitarian thing. I’ve been cooking for myself since I was five.”
I frowned. Mama had started her kids early, too. By three we were experts at cracking eggs and running the beater. At six, we could handle small knives, chop salads and such. But she kept us away from the oven and stovetop until we were eight.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Ash.” Bending down, I kissed her cheek then took the glass from her. “I’ll top this off and grab us some slices.”
Stopping at the counter, I lifted a second glass from the strainer and filled both. Searching for plates, I opened a cupboard to find it stuffed with books. Classics comprised most of the fiction and poetry, the Bronte sisters, Thomas Hardy, Robert Browning, Houseman, Emily Dickinson, Solzhenitsyn, Dostoyevsky. A lot of people kept books like these on their shelves so guests would think they’d read them and be impressed. That the books were in the cupboard suggested to me that Ashley had actually pored through the pages.
Shaking my head, I closed the door and opened the next one to find her stash of non-fiction, all of it work related in one way or another.
“Door number three,” I joked under my breath. “Eureka.”
I pulled down two plates, loaded pizza onto both then rolled the little kitchen trolley that probably came with the apartment over and put the glasses and plates on it.
“Your books are a little depressing,” I teased, pushing the tray up to the nightstand. “Where is all the chick porn?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s under Siobhan’s bed,” she shot back.
Launching into a coughing fit, I dropped the slice of pizza I had just taken a bite from.
“You’re right,” I wheezed when I could breathe again.
Grinning, she bit into her slice. Her eyes rolled back with pleasure. “Didn’t realize it, but I’m starving.”
“Body needs fuel to heal,” I offered, carefully taking a seat on the opposite side of the bed.
“You tell your boss yet?”
Ashley scrunched her face. “He ordered me to take tomorrow off. Said he would tell me then if he wanted me out longer. Needed a longer look at the doctor’s slip first.”
“Thomas get anything back on the driver’s license or plate?”
“Plate belongs to a completely different RV,” she answered. “The driver’s license was for a Michael Abbot. The man and the driver’s license number exist, but our guy is not really Michael Abbot. The real one is in jail. What do you know about Joyce Franco?”
“Heard of her,” I answered. “Wasn’t local before she married Karl about two years before he died. Inherited the place, kept it up as well as he ever did, which was never saying much.”
My head danced around on my shoulders as I thought through the question. “Karl was a good decade older than her, more like fifteen years.”
I finished with a lift of my shoulders. “Franco family always kept to itself outside of running the business. Joyce is no different.”
I took another bite, chewed and swallowed.
“You have a picture of the driver’s license?”
Mumbling around her food, Ashley reached for her phone. She swiped through to the photos Joyce had sent.
“Don’t know him,” I said after studying the man for half a minute. “Could he be related to the real license holder?”
She took the phone back, swiped through again and showed me a picture of a markedly different man. The only similarities were same neighborhood for height and coloring.
“Maybe send Gamble a copy?”
“Already did,” she answered, eyeing my slice of pizza.
“Let me go grab us some more,” I laughed. Returning a minute later, I handed her a freshly loaded plate. “Still plenty in the box. Got anything more on the case?”
“Moske agreed to send the raft to the lab for fingerprinting, but it’s a long shot since it was submerged in the water since Friday morning. As bad as the details are from the trail cam, I don’t see any skin on their hands, so they probably wore gloves, although they could have packed the bundles barehanded.”
I made a little “gimme” motion because my mouth was too full to talk. She found the trail cam pic on her phone and showed me.
“Gamble has this one, too,” she confirmed.
I pointed at the man carrying two packs. “That is a really big guy. He’s even bigger than Kostya and Barrett. Not many men are, even around these parts. And he’s hairy as a bear, this one.”
“I asked Gamble to see if the local businesses could check their cameras.”
I started frowning before Ashley finished her sentence.
“Yeah, Gamble laughed when I said that. Apparently the businesses around Willow Gap don’t bother with cameras.”
“We don’t get much trouble,” I answered. “You think, though, with the fake ID and money laundering and everything, that these guys used any local business other than the campgrounds? They seem to keep a pretty low profile.”
Putting her plate on the tray, Ashley shook her head. Her eyelids grew heavy and her words slowed into fuzzy syllables as the painkiller kicked in.
“No, but sometimes it’s the line of inquiry that doesn’t seem worth following that ties everything together.”
I put my pizza aside, walked around to Ashley’s side of the mattress and rolled the cart out of the way.
“You should get ready for bed,” I cautioned. “Where are your night clothes?”
A racy grin sped across her face. I closed my eyes for a second, enjoying the image her expression suggested. I thoroughly agreed that the best way to sleep was with nothing on. But I planned on staying the night, so that wouldn’t work for either of us.
I had already looked around the room. There wasn’t a dresser. But there was a closet. I slid the door open and looked inside.
“Baby girl, you really need some furniture.”
I thumbed through the t-shirts folded on the shelf then selected the longest of them. It only had a few extra inches, but it would fall past the curve of Ashley’s shapely bottom.
Turning around, I showed her what I had selected. She nodded with sleepy approval.
“Not a baby,” she said as I stepped up to the bed.
“My baby, Ash.”
Her fingers fumbled with the buttons on her shirt. Getting on my knees, I dusted her hands aside. She leaned into the help I offered, her lips brushing my ear, her bre
ath soft and warm against my neck.
Fingers trembling, I unthreaded the last button then pushed the fabric past her shoulders and down her arms, revealing a dainty lace bra constraining her heavy breasts. Hot air vibrated my lips as I breathed out.
I slid the bra straps off her arms but made sure the cups stayed in place. Next I pulled the t-shirt over her head and down her torso. When her chest was covered, I reached under the t-shirt at the back and unhooked the bra, stripping it away as a fire built low in my gut.
“Moment of truth,” I said, my voice as shaky as my hands. “Have to take the cast off long enough to remove the pants.”
She cocked a brow at me, her eyelids fighting to stay separated.
“Okay with that, Ash?”
She rubbed at her face, pushed her hair back.
“Best to have them off,” she agreed.
Reaching for the cast, I stopped before touching it. It made more sense if I stripped the healthy leg out first and had the pants down by the cast before I messed with it.
“This is killing me, you know?” I meant it as a tease, but it didn’t sound that way. The tone was pure confession. I had fantasized about just this—without the cast—the very first night I met Ashley.
She looked at me, her sleepy gaze filled with understanding.
I unzipped her pants, grabbed the waistband on each side of her hips and slowly peeled downward. White panties with a lace trim rewarded my efforts. Heart punching the back of my sternum, I eased the fabric lower, her thighs slowly revealed.
Getting down to her knees, I touched the right leg.
“Can you lift this out?”
She tried but the painkiller was pretty strong—especially after the day behind her. I helped, my hands on her smooth right calf and the back of her thigh, so much blood filling my head that the room started to spin.
With the right leg out, I exhaled. Using my most delicate touch, I unfastened the boot and gingerly worked the fabric down the rest of her leg, over her ankle and onto the floor.
“We should ice it now that the boot is off.”
