As she approached on tiptoe, the hand that had been lying relaxed on his thigh slipped back beneath the jacket. One eye opened a crack, revealing a deep brown iris and alert pupil.
She held up both hands. “Don’t shoot.”
His fingers slid away from the holster at the back of his belt out onto his thigh. “Sorry.” He pushed himself into a more upright position. “Reflex action.”
Special Agent Starchaser J. Perez rose and wrapped his arms around her. She tilted her face up. Their lips met briefly, a not-unpleasant pressure on her lidocaine-numbed mouth. He tasted like coffee. Suddenly she craved an espresso from Mack’s stovetop maker. “Come with me.” She motioned toward the stairs.
“Blake told me I could find you at this address. What gives? Last time we met, you were a writer.”
Sam grimaced. “Try to keep up, will you, FBI? The life of a freelancer is hectic. When we met, I was writing for the Save the Wilderness Fund. Then I had a weekly gig writing articles about hiking and outdoor equipment for an e-zine called The Edge, but a few months back they decided there’s not enough money in GORE-TEX jackets and hiking socks. In an attempt to fool us into believing that the economy’s recovering, they’ve switched from rugged individualists conquering the great outdoors to beautiful people conquering luxury spas. Now they’re selling designer yoga wear.”
The last three words were especially difficult to enunciate, but her mangled mouth must have worked better than she thought, because Chase said only, “Really?”
“Really. So, courtesy of the park service, I’m a biologist again. A big area of national forest land is being added to Olympic National Park to create a protected continuous wildlife corridor from the mountains to the coast. They hired me to do an environmental survey and management plan for the new area. It’s only a twelve-week contract, unfortunately, and I’m already more than two-thirds of the way through it.” She dreaded the end of her contract. She had always wanted to be a park ranger, but her timing had never been right. After college, she was too short and too female; now the NPS budgets were too small.
“You’re living in this…place?” She could tell that he really wanted to say dump.
“It belongs to my friend Mack. We shared a cubicle during my online encyclopedia days at Key Inc.”
Chase raised an eyebrow.
“Another job I had before we met,” she explained. “Mack was botany; I was zoology.” Post-lidocaine talking was definitely easier than her pre-lidocaine efforts, although she still slurred the plosives. “We commiserated about seeing plants and animals only on computers. Then he up and abandoned hi-tech for Olympic National Park. He lets me crash here once in a while.”
“You outdoor adventure types do like to sleep around.” His steps echoed on the wooden treads behind her.
“What about you?” she asked. “Why are you here?”
“I just happened to be in the vicinity.”
“Chase, there’s nobody in this vicinity except hunters and fishers and hikers. I figured you were hot on the trail of those robbers in Salt Lake. The armored car bandits?” She’d seen the story on the news two weeks ago. Or was it three? Four?
“I was. I am. The trail led to Boise, and now it looks like the perps have moved to Washington State. We’ve been chasing these guys across three, no, four states for months. Now they’re taking on banks, too.”
Sounded like a major crime spree. “How are they getting away with it?”
“There’s always a distraction for the local police at the same time. We’re beginning to think it’s a huge group, not just a few individuals. It’s become a road show.” He sighed wearily. “On a tip, we staked out a First Interstate in Olympia through the wee hours, but nothing happened.”
That explained the whiskers. The “we” reminded Sam of Chase’s partner. “Where’s Nicole?” she asked.
“Some fancy resort in the San Juan Islands. Hubby picked her up in his private plane for a romantic weekend.”
The plane reference made her think about Lili’s school friend. Just how many people had their own planes, anyway? Was she living that far out of the mainstream?
She unlocked the door, pushed it open into the foyer off Mack’s compact kitchen. Although a pair of blue jeans dangled from a chair, she was relieved to see that no jockey shorts or balled-up socks littered the front room this time.
Opening the freezer door, she rummaged for the bag of coffee. She poured the last of the dark-roasted beans into the grinder and pressed the button.
Perez put his hands on the countertop, leaning close to be heard over the racket. His lips tickled her ear. “I was hoping for a romantic weekend myself.” His tone promised steamy embraces. He inhaled deeply. Wrinkling his nose, he drew back.
She released the grinder button, grinning. “I know. Smoke. Singed hair. Sweat. I even find myself disgusting. I wondered why you didn’t comment on my appearance.”
He blinked. “Why? Have you done something different?”
“As well as ruining my coiffure”—she patted a few sticky strands for effect—“I banged my head and cut my tongue and lip. I’m surprised I can talk at all.” She balled up the empty coffee bag and aimed it at his nose.
He easily caught the bag and crumpled it into a smaller sphere. “I thought you were trying to seduce me with a sexy lisp.” His last two words came out “thexy lithp.”
So much for sympathy. She placed the double pot on the burner and turned up the heat. “Watch that, will you? When it stops hissing, it’s done. I’m off to the shower.”
He smiled. “I’ll join you.”
“Not this time, FBI.”
She closed the bathroom door behind her. Her relationship with Chase Perez consisted of a kidnapping drama they’d floundered through in Utah, and a handful of encounters here in Washington State when he was passing through. They’d dated off and on for nearly ten months, but hadn’t yet progressed to mutual nakedness. Something always prevented the time from being right. Like now; filthy, thick-lipped, and headachy, she felt far from sexy.
She pressed her face into the shower spray, wincing as the water glanced off her blistered cheek. With a liberal application of almond soap, her greasy coating of perspiration and smoke disappeared down the drain in a dark swirl.
“So tell me about your bad hair day.” Chase’s voice came from the other side of the shower curtain, in the direction of the vanity. He probably had his handsome backside perched on the beige Formica.
She gingerly rubbed shampoo over the sore spot at the back of her head, enjoying the vanilla scent. No wonder Mack smelled like a candy bar.
“It was night, not day,” she told him. “You would have loved it. Just your kind of thing.” Her lower lip still felt like a block of wood. She hoped she wouldn’t dribble her coffee.
“Murder? Mayhem? High-powered shoot-out?”
“Definitely mayhem. Some firebugs lit a couple blazes. While we were putting out the flames, we found a body.” She shivered, remembering Lisa facedown in the ashes.
“How old?”
How old was Lisa Glass? No. He was asking how recently the victim had died. “This body was still alive. Barely. A girl from the trail crew. Head injury, smoke inhalation. Second- and third-degree burns.” Sam raised a hand to her own face and was reassured to find the skin was for the most part still smooth and intact, except for that dang blister on her temple. She turned off the shower and squeezed the excess water from her long rope of silver-blond hair.
“So, what’s the story?”
“The espresso’s done, Chase. Go take it off the burner.” She raised her hand to the shower curtain. “I’m coming out now.”
Silence.
“Get out of here!”
“Spoilsport,” he mumbled. She heard the soft thud of the door closing.
When she emerged into the kitchen, he had poured the espresso into decorated mugs, a great white shark for him and a wolf howling at the moon for her. To hers, he added a small dash of milk, j
ust the way she liked it. He’d only seen her prepare coffee once, but his mind recorded every detail. A remarkable talent. Her thoughts constantly strayed away from the here and now like dogs that wouldn’t stay on the porch.
His gaze traveled from the new Band-Aid on her temple down her uniform to the thick hiking socks on her feet. “You keep clothes here? You’ve moved in with Mack?”
She raised an eyebrow at his tone. “Why not? He’s a good-looking guy and—”
“At least a decade your junior.”
“Watch it,” she hissed. “That gap is a piddly eight years.” She finished French-braiding her hair, secured the end with an elastic band. “Actually”—she dropped her voice to a stage whisper—“it’s not Mack I’ve got the hots for. It’s his couch.”
The sagging, stained brown futon clearly dated from Mack’s college days. Chase looked at her, tried to keep a straight face but failed, and they burst into laughter simultaneously. She pressed her fingers over her lips to quell the resulting pain, then bent her aching head and struggled to pin her park service ID onto the khaki shirt.
“Uh-oh,” he groaned, coming over to help. “You’re still on duty? I assumed that after fighting fires all night, you’d get the rest of the day off.”
“That’s because you feebs are pansy-asses. We outdoor adventure types don’t need rest breaks.” She couldn’t stop a wistful sigh at the thought of lounging around with Chase. A strand of inky hair slipped onto his forehead as he fastened her pin. She had the urge to caress it back into place, but was afraid of starting something she didn’t have the energy to finish. “I have to go back; the usual fire lookout’s off on emergency leave. There’s nobody else to fill in. Besides arson, there are other hinky things going on.”
“Kinky things?” He raised an eyebrow. “Then I better come for sure.”
“Hinky things. Strange, weird things.”
“Well, kinky or hinky, sounds like you could use a trained special agent at that fire lookout.” When she didn’t protest, he grinned. “It’ll be like old times—getting in trouble together in the wilderness.”
SHE fired up the truck.
“Four U.S. troops were killed when a roadside bomb detonated near Kabul,” the radio informed them. Sam quickly turned off the NPR news station she normally listened to, not wanting the latest grim details from the Middle East to intrude on her time with Chase. She didn’t like to think about the billions of dollars that had drained into that sinkhole instead of flowing into wildlife conservation or education or health care or anything worthwhile. She hoped those four soldiers had not died in vain.
As she drove from Forks to the new section of the park, Chase questioned her about the fire and the discovery of Lisa Glass.
“No chance of identifying the vehicles, I suppose?” he asked.
“I was five miles away; it was night.” Her mouth seemed to be working fine, but now that the lidocaine was wearing off, she could feel the ragged bite marks on her tongue and the insides of her cheeks. “At least six vehicles have driven up and down that road since the firebugs took off, so there’s virtually no chance of identifying tire tracks.”
She stole a quick glance sideways. He’d changed into jeans, boots, and flannel shirt. The informal clothes made him look less intimidating, less hard-edged. Was his gun in the pack he’d brought or in the pocket of his jacket in the backseat?
“How did the fire first get your attention?”
She slapped a hand against the steering wheel. “I completely forgot about the explosion!”
He perked up. “Explosion?”
“A big bang.”
“The creation of the universe?”
She groaned at his humor. “It seemed earth-shaking at the time. And then came the fire.”
He considered for a second. “Could it have been a Molotov cocktail?”
She wasn’t even sure what a Molotov cocktail was. “They explode?”
He shrugged. “Frequently.”
“Then it might have been that. Or maybe a firecracker. It sounded powerful.” A suspicion flashed through her thoughts. How could she have forgotten? “Raider!” She gripped the wheel with both hands and applied her foot more forcefully to the gas pedal.
Chase braced a hand against the dashboard. “What?”
She hit a chuckhole head on. They bounced hard, but she didn’t slow down. “It could have been a high-powered rifle. The bastards might have been after my bear.”
4
IN daylight, the burned area seemed small and pathetic, totally lacking the menacing majesty of a blaze under a full moon. The tops of many blackened trees were still green, but their scorched trunks were sad skeletons. Birds flitted among the naked branches, exploring the new spaciousness of their forest. Sam watched a red-shafted flicker skitter up a ruined pine, its rust-colored feathers bright against the charcoal bark. The bird stopped and cocked its head, displaying a red blaze beneath its bill that marked it as a male. It let out a shriek, then hammered a violent staccato tune on the blackened trunk. A black-and-white hairy woodpecker landed just above the flicker. A noisy squabble ensued as the flicker defended his hunting ground.
“Poor things,” Sam murmured, “I hope they nested outside the burn zone.”
Chase gave her a look that told her his thoughts were not stuck on birds. Hers should probably be on other issues, too, like arson and unconscious girls. And bears. After a night of no sleep, she wasn’t processing too well. At the edge of the burn line, she paused to run her fingers over a patch of missing bark on a Western cedar.
“Looking for woodpecker holes?”
She shook her head, and instantly regretted the motion. Pain sloshed over her, leaving nausea in its wake. Maybe she did have that concussion, after all. “I’m looking for fresh bear marks. We moved Raider here a week ago.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Raider?”
“A two-year-old black bear, most often seen on top of picnic tables or butt-side-up in garbage cans. Usually with an audience of screaming campers. He has a white scar on the back of one ear.”
“If you say so.” He pulled her around so she faced him.
“This is prime bear habitat,” she continued. “We hoped he would find female bears more fascinating than picnic leftovers.” She rubbed a spot on her cheek, remembering the struggle to get the bear into the cage. Would Chase think it was too weird if she told him it had been fun?
He drew the tip of his index finger across the faint pink line left from one of Raider’s claws. A pleasant ticklish sensation quickly spread to more sensitive areas of her body. How much would it hurt her mouth to French-kiss this FBI agent?
“My wild woman,” he murmured. “You still haven’t learned to give the beasts enough tranquilizer? I’ll never forget having to sit on your mountain lion last year.”
My wild woman? Why did men always have to own women? Why couldn’t Chase be different from the typical possessive male? “Tranquilizing wildlife is not an exact science. I’d rather end up with a few claw marks than a dead animal.” The words came out with more frost than she’d planned.
His eyes clouded and his hand dropped back to his side. Great. Now she’d hurt his feelings. She definitely needed more practice with this man-woman-relationship dynamic. She still felt like a sap for the way that her previous boyfriend, newscaster Adam Steele, had used her to further his own career. Now she worried that she would misread Chase Perez, too. It was hard to figure out where their relationship was going when they met only a few times a year.
Feeling uncomfortable now, she turned to survey the blackened woods. Joe and another ranger were out here somewhere; there had been two NPS trucks in the parking lot.
Thankfully, Chase changed the subject back to wildlife. “Black bears aren’t endangered, are they?”
“Not yet.” Give the human race enough time, she thought grimly, and all wild animals will be endangered.
“Is it bear season now?”
“No.” But now that she thought a
bout it, the season on the Olympic Coast was only a week away. Oh, goody. More armed men in the woods. Something to look forward to. “Poachers work all year round,” she told him.
He nodded. “The gall bladder business still going strong?”
“Yep. The Chinese still make medicines out of them, still pay big bucks for them.” She made a face. “Bear paws, too—rich Asians eat them on special occasions, like wedding banquets.” It was too easy to envision Raider sliced and diced. A horrible thought. She almost shook her head again, but caught herself just in time.
“There will be no bear hunting here. This is my area,” she said.
He looked surprised.
“Well, it’s my area right now,” she explained. “Wildlife is protected in the national park. That’s one of the reasons we barricaded the road, so I could do my survey, and to have a transition period, to let the regular national forest users know that this area is now off-limits to hunters and off-road vehicles and such.”
“That must piss them off.”
“Got that right. It doesn’t stop all of them, either.” She told him about the armed intruder she’d encountered.
He frowned. “Sounds like that hunting guide in Utah—the one we investigated after your friend Kent was shot? Ferguson, wasn’t it?”
“Buck Ferguson.” Even saying his name raised her blood pressure. She had glued his photo to a dart board in her home office. “There are plenty of guys like him around here, too. You’ve heard of the spotted owl controversy in the eighties?”
“Sure. Endangered species regulations shut down local commerce—that’s not unique to the Pacific Northwest.”
“The logging community over here was particularly enraged. A tavern in Forks used to host a spotted owl barbeque every Friday night.”
“Sounds hostile.”
“It was chicken, of course.” She sighed. “Very few people have seen an actual spotted owl.” She still hoped to catch a glimpse of one.
Bear Bait (9781101611548) Page 3
