Timber Lake (The Snowy Range Series, #2)

by Nya Rawlyns

  Sonny rested his chin on Michael’s shoulder and whispered, “I’m sorry.” The man sucked air and pulled away but Sonny kept a tight grip, waiting for the words that would send him away.

  They didn’t come.

  Whispering, “I’ve got you,” Sonny prayed for his lover to relax into the embrace. What he got shocked him. His warden bent forward, shoulders heaving, sobs wracking his body with grief so powerful it nearly broke Sonny in two.

  Sonny had no words of wisdom for when a man’s strength shattered. All he could do was hold his lover, his friend, and whisper, “I’m not letting you go, Michael.”

  Not ever...

  Chapter Fourteen

  Recap

  They held hands, like lovers, their clothes balled in clumps and tucked under one arm—Michael in his left as he picked his way over the stony ground. Sonny clutched his neater pile to his chest, his left hand squeezing and releasing as he guided them toward the tent.

  The horses followed like a monstrous fan behind them, searching for treats. The mule didn’t. He was already parked near the highline, waiting on his keepers to get with the program: a handful of Calf Manna, then quiet time to rest up. His ears flicked, listening to the night sounds.

  Evening vespers was Michael’s favorite time of the day, the routine calming and satisfying. A reward for a day’s labors. He slipped his flannel shirt on, bowing to the chill seeping into his bones.

  Sonny grunted, “Good idea,” and followed suit with his sailcloth button-down.

  Michael said, “Best to hitch them first.” He maneuvered his big gelding next to the mule. Horse and mule glared daggers at each other until Sonny distracted them, rattling the bag with the last of the supplement.

  Sonny observed, “Looks like they’ll work it out being next to each other.” At Michael’s grunt of agreement, Sonny proceeded down the line, his fingertips scraping the bottom of the bag for the last morsel. He muttered, “That’s it for their ration. I’ll get the fire going, add this.” He held up the heavyweight paper container.

  “The logs are set up. It’s good to go.” Michael ducked behind the mustang, putting some distance and a solid object between the evidence of his near collapse and the still simmering wash of embarrassment from his failure to control his emotions. He’d lost his cool at the fire pit. What had happened at the lake defied description.

  Despite all the horror of those days in the high country, stumbling onto one trap after another, each one testing his limits, he’d buried those images away, locked the door and thrown away the key. He’d prided himself that, even at the last minute, when the trapper had lifted the knife toward the kid, he’d kept it together. One shot. Blood spurting. Him catapulting over boulders, knee to shoulder, wrestling the knife away while pandemonium erupted around him.

  The aching beauty of crystal blue sky pockmarked with high clouds, the mirror surface of the lake, granite greyed to statuesque sculptures. Flowers. A riot of color carpeting the meadow. Rusty red seeping into the earth. His universe had hiccoughed into a disconnect so profound, a part of him had separated, electing to dismiss the event as just doing his job and leaving a small nodule of disquiet to eat away at his sanity.

  The inquisition afterwards, the pats on the back from his fellow wardens, the trust Paul showed him—none of it had tripped his neurons into overload like Sonny had, sliding behind him in the lake. Telling him he was safe.

  Michael wished with all his heart he believed it. But as the day wore on, the more he thought about the badger, the traps and the hideous similarity to his week-long tracking nightmare that should have ended with the perp locked away, the easier it was to entertain the impossible.

  The scent of wood burning and coffee brewing drew him out of his reverie and toward the man crouched over a pan, frying deer jerky.

  “You realize you don’t have to cook that crap, don’t you?”

  Nodding, Sonny flicked the strips of jerky over using the tips of his fingers. “I don’t know about you, Warden, but I need something warm in my stomach. We haven’t eaten since breakfast and I’m starved.”

  Michael settled onto a saddle pad and made himself comfortable. If Tex wanted to fuss over him, so be it. Truth was, he needed the consideration. It gave him time to sort the puzzle pieces and restart the process of finding the big picture by looking at tiny fractions of it.

  Sonny handed him a charred bit of jerky. Michael bit into it, surprised at the explosion of flavor on his tongue. He grinned and said, “Not bad, Tex. You keep cooking up good meals like this, I might decide to keep you around.” I’m not letting you go, Michael... He’d let Sonny’s promise skate past earlier, unable to respond. This was his way of saying yes.

  They kept a silent sentinel on the night, sipping coffee and chewing the jerky. The cathedral canopy of overarching limbs broke apart and reformed unevenly at the whim of a stray breeze, but eventually the ceiling of dense starlight winked through and displayed its slow rotation. If you watched long enough, your brain would concatenate the changing frames into a single, long streak of movement burned into your retina.

  At some point, Sonny left to clean up the mess, trotting down to the stream and back. He ducked into the tent and emerged with a wool blanket. Michael had registered the drop in temperature but kept the awareness at arm’s length. It wasn’t something he could change. What could change was how he processed what he’d witnessed that day.

  First order of business, figure out why there were too many things not adding up.

  Michael glanced at Sonny. He was fingering the wool blanket as if waiting for permission to use it. Scooting closer, Michael wrapped his arm around Sonny’s shoulder and reeled him in. Together they positioned the cover around them, capturing the warmth from the wood blaze and storing it inside their cocoon.

  Michael said out loud the words he’d been turning over in his head. “Something’s not right.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Not just this.” Michael waved his hand in a circle. “Today, I mean.”

  Sonny laid his head against Michael’s temple and spoke, picking up the thread of Michael’s musings. “Doesn’t add up, does it. Today and what happened to you before. Could be a coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences, do you?”

  “You think it’s a couple drugged out freaks working together? I mean, what the hell does anybody get out of doing...” He let the words trail off, his voice choking at the memory of that single incident. Michael had seen a half dozen over the course of several days and nearly three miles of wilderness trekking. Most were worse than the badger. But Sonny didn’t have that perspective.

  Michael tried to dial it back a notch. “It would explain the similarities between today and what I found a few weeks ago.”

  Sonny chewed his bottom lip for a few minutes, then asked, “What’s different about this time compared to the others?”

  That was a good question, and it was exactly what he needed if he was going to understand why his gut was telling him to get the hell out of Dodge. Backing up to day one of the chase and his initial find, Michael said, “When you come across a trap, the hunters are usually camped in a central location. They run their trap lines in a pattern based on tracks or scat they find in the area, along with what they’re permitted to catch. Time of year, weather... Lots of things affect how it’s handled.”

  Sonny asked, “How was it different, what you saw?”

  “I didn’t really take note until I stumbled across the second one. I’d circled around a couple of the walk-in campgrounds at lakes in the higher elevations, checking on the fishermen, that kind of thing. I ended up maybe two, two and a half miles from the first incident.” Michael needed to distance himself from the actual event by reverting to neutral words: incident, victim, perp. “It was a cougar that time. Close to elk grazing grounds. The perp had picked a good spot. He didn’t intend to take the pelt.”

  “Do you keep to a schedule when you’re patrolling? I mean, g
oing in a fixed pattern?”

  Michael’s respect for his lover’s research skills ramped up another notch. He answered, “Not during the week, but on the weekends it’s a good idea for the tourists and regulars to know you’re around certain times, or where you’ll be next in case they need you.” He paused to consider his territory, the one he patrolled on horseback rather than on an ATV or in his truck. He continued, “There’s only so many trails and camping areas available with facilities, so yeah, you do fall into a rut, keeping it regular.”

  That meant the asshole had probably known approximately when he’d show up at a particular location. The traps had been set with that in mind, now that Michael thought back on it.

  He blurted, “It was a goddamn game.” After the first two finds, the asshole had added a level of difficulty, seeing if the Warden on his tail would find the next display.

  Sonny squeezed his thigh. “Was he testing you? Seeing if you could get there in time to save them?”

  Explaining to Sonny in what shape he’d found the animals would do neither of them any good, so Michael just said, “Their fate was never in doubt. I think the perp wanted me to find them, but only as a lure to apprehend him, if I could.” The ultimate game of cat and mouse.

  Quietly Michael explained how, up until that moment, he never once considered he might have been complicit in the asshole’s choice to break cover and head toward that popular camping spot. Maybe the suits had been right about him going lone gunman and breaking protocol. If he hadn’t, would that lunatic still have gotten his jollies out of his performance art when there was no audience to outrage?

  As if reading his thoughts, Sonny said, “You’re second guessing yourself, Michael. You have no way of knowing what was going on inside that bastard’s head.” Poking a stick at the fire, Sonny spread the embers out, allowing them to die down. “What about today? Was that a legitimate trap?”

  The answer to that was yes and no. Michael explained, “The traps were near a beaver pond, but that particular spot shows no evidence of activity. Beaver will sharpen their teeth on larger trees. They’ll often bring them down to get to the smaller branches they can use in constructing or maintaining their lodge.”

  “Sounds like pretty distinctive markers.”

  “It is. The cluster of traps I discovered are consistent with normal trapping.”

  “Except for...”

  Michael hissed a breath. “Yeah, except for that.” He stood and helped Sonny to his feet. “I think we need to saddle the mule and Red, just in case. I’m not tired so I’ll take first watch.” He brushed off the saddle pad and grunted as he lifted the heavy saddle.

  “What about tomorrow?” Sonny nudged the mule to move out of the way. “I have one more sensor array to install.”

  “You do that while I take a quick look around on the north side of the lake. Remember I told you about that tie hack building rumored to still be around?” He set the saddle on the gelding’s back and loosely secured the girth. If he had to, he could cut the tie line down and ride with just it and the lead rope.

  Sonny argued against that plan. “Listen, Michael. You aren’t the only one feeling squirrelly tonight. I think from now on we stick together. Two hours to install the last unit, then a quick check on the first one to see if it’s working. After that, I’m all for packing up and getting the hell out of here.” He reached into the tent and dragged the doubled up sleeping bag toward the opening.

  Michael said, “I won’t need that. You use it. It’s gonna be cold tonight.”

  “That’s why you need it, dipshit. That wool blanket’s not enough to keep you warm.”

  Michael took Sonny’s chin in his right hand, tilting it down so he could plant a kiss on lips thinned to disagreeable. Tex didn’t like being countermanded. Or was that Mister Zero? It was getting difficult to tell the two apart.

  “In case I didn’t mention it, Dr. Rydell, I’m a warden. I patrol, it’s my job. Now get some sleep. I’ll wake you up in three or four hours.”

  Michael smiled as his lover crawled into the tent complaining he was missing out on really good makeup sex. After strapping on his service revolver, he carefully knotted the latigo ties around his right thigh. He pulled the shotgun from Sonny’s saddle and palmed a handful of shells that he tucked into his jacket pocket. He needed the broad spread of the 12-gauge rather than the high-powered hunting rifle if he ran into a nocturnal visitor.

  Michael liked the thought of makeup sex, but he was willing to wait until it was worth it for both of them. And if he was any judge of character, he was pretty sure Tex was going to pop an aneurysm in the morning.

  For now, job number one was keeping Sonny safe.

  ****

  Light rain dribbled through the overhanging spruce boughs as Sonny exited the rear of the tent and headed into the woods to take care of his morning ablutions. He had tried his best to stay awake, listening to the footfalls as Michael made good on his promise to patrol the perimeter of their camp. After a while he gave in to the inevitable and decided a light doze wouldn’t hurt.

  He should have known Michael intended to let him sleep. For that he planned on first giving the man a piece of his mind. Afterwards, he’d prepare a decent breakfast using the last of their dehydrated food packets, while he continued to press his argument about them staying together.

  Sound logic would surely win the warden over. If not, he’d pull the emo card and be the worst case scenario drama queen. Hells bells, if they were going to die, cut down by a madman with a high powered rifle and a hard on for blood, then they’d do it together like Butch and Sundance.

  Sonny recognized the signs of running on empty. Neither of them had eaten much, just picking at their food while they’d fretted over real and imaged slights. The day before would go down in memory as a glitch. Or as a powerful reminder they were trailblazing in dangerous territory.

  Though the two-step they were doing was complicated, the rhythm and cadence seemed too right to be just a fling. Yesterday’s fireworks had been Sonny’s wake-up call. If he hadn’t been convinced before how much Michael Brooks meant to him, having his lover place his heart and soul in his hands had sealed the deal.

  Now the only hitch was him needing to return to D.C. to report to his sponsors and bring the rest of the programming team on board. Once he’d done that, perhaps he could explore other options within the USDA. But that was getting ahead of himself.

  He whistled softly, hoping to alert Michael he was coming rather than startle the man out of a sound slumber under the tree. It didn’t register at first that Michael was nowhere in sight. Not at the creek or the lake. Certainly not tending to the fire and making coffee for both of them. The wool blanket was folded neatly under the tree. Sonny knelt and touched the wool. It was cold and damp and hadn’t been used for hours.

  The mule snorted and pawed, anxious to get to the stream for a drink and then enjoy his hour or so of grazing before being called on to do his job.

  The red horse was gone, along with the saddle bags.

  “Damn it, Brooks. You couldn’t wait, could you?”

  Frustrated and annoyed, Sonny grabbed lead ropes and attached them to the halters so he could take the group for a drink. After that he’d let them graze while he redid the highline, moving it to the last area with grass. There was no way he was going to leave two of them to their own devices while he and the mule headed up the last knoll. Fortunately it was the closest to camp so he’d be able to keep an eye on their stuff.

  Watching the wet ground as he maneuvered his charges toward the lake, he tried to spot any fresh tracks that might give him a clue in which direction Michael had gone, but the ground was either too hard or too soft for him to take an educated guess. All he recalled was Michael pointing to a section on the topographic map where he’d heard the tie hack camp might have been located. It had been a good two miles as the crow flies, probably a two or three hour trip one way. And any scouting around would take up additional time.

/>   Realistically, he figured he had most of the day to spend on the installation and calibration. Just enough time to work himself into a fighting frenzy.

  Spasms of rain blew through intermittently, interspersed with warm sun that dried you enough to lull you into taking your rain jacket off before it spit again. His saddle was wet. So was his ass. His jeans had rubbed his calves at the seams because he’d decided not to wear his chaps. His notebook wasn’t waterproof. And he was hungry enough to chew nails.

  He threw the reins over the mule’s head and said, “Heads up, buddy. Time to go home.”

  At the stream, he knelt and cupped his hands to splash water on his face, scrubbing through the scruffy growth of beard. The first thing he planned on doing was shaving the damn thing off. The second thing would probably land him in jail on a morals charge. He grinned. Spending time alone was all well and good when it was your choice. Usually he was most comfortable in his own company, but since he’d met Michael his brain and his cock had far more enticing activities to contemplate.

  As he rounded the bend, he called out, “Yo, Warden!” only to be met with silence. Four hours later as the stars winked into the clearing sky, Sonny wondered if Michael had a problem. He kept a lookout, pacing the tie line and circling their campsite. Jumping at every night sound.

  At five in the morning, with storm clouds looming, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt Michael was in serious trouble. The animals stirred restlessly, picking up on his increasing disquiet. He could sit and wait, see if Michael came wandering back with a story and a reassurance all was well. Or he could go with his gut instincts.

  The choice made, Sonny stuffed their medical kit and as much survival gear as he could into the saddle bags and mounted his mule. Following the north shore, they found a crossing that Michael would have used if he had gone that direction.