Tag, You're It!

by Penny McCall

  Great, Alex thought, suddenly sure the man on the sled had a bad character since his shady acquaintances had come back to finish the job. And she didn’t think they’d care if she and Jackass got in the way. In fact she had a sneaking suspicion they’d prefer it.

  She grabbed her shotgun, pointed it skyward in the plane’s general direction, and squeezed off a couple of shots. She didn’t have any real hope of hitting the plane, but she wanted whoever might be tempted to shoot at them to know she was armed. The plane veered away and up above the trees, but apparently she didn’t pose that much of a threat because it went a ways off and started to loop back around. Which gave Alex all of ten seconds to make a decision.

  She could cut the sled loose, hop on Jackass, and get away under cover of the trees while the guys in the plane took out their primary target. But she was already tugging at the horse’s bridle. It went against the grain to leave someone helpless out in the open like a shooting gallery duck. Even after he’d stuck a gun in her face.

  She was a good fifty yards from the trees, and her snow-shoes were made to walk in, not run. If she took them off she wouldn’t be going much faster, not in a couple of feet of wet snow. All she could do was slog along at a shuffling trot, hoping like hell it took the homicidal plane a while to get back and that the guys inside would aim at the sled first. Okay, so she couldn’t leave him out there like a big spread-eagle “shoot me” sign; that didn’t mean she was prepared to give up her life for him. Or her horse’s life. And since Jackass was the bigger target and more likely to get hit than either of the people around him, Alex stepped up the pace to a point where she was in danger of falling on her face at any second.

  She managed to make it into the trees just as the first bullet kicked up snow behind the sled. The plane veered off again, and Alex threaded their way into the thickest part of the forest she could find, belatedly checking to make sure her cargo hadn’t rolled off somewhere along the way. He was still there, and if she was cold and wet, he wasn’t going to survive very long.

  She would have preferred to stay out of sight a little longer, just in case, but again her only choice was to risk a run for the cabin. Thankfully it appeared the plane was finally leaving, judging from the faintness of the engine.

  She covered the half mile to the house as fast as she could, unhooked the sled by the front door, and took Jackass around to his nice, warm stable, wishing, for the first time, the horse was a man. Even her ex-fiancé, bastard that he was, would be welcome. Nope. There was never a good reason to think about Bennet Harper. If she were dying of kidney failure and he was the only living donor, she wouldn’t want him back in her life. She’d have to find a way, all by herself, to get this guy inside before he turned into an icicle.

  For once that day, something went right. He was awake—at least halfway, moaning and shivering and trying to get up. “C’mon,” Alex yelled at him. “You can do it.”

  He made an effort, she had to give him that, but he just couldn’t manage on his own. Sighing, she picked up an arm and tugged until he got his wobbly knees under him. Then she half dragged him inside, stopping just over the threshold and wondering what in blazes she was going to do with him.

  And if the plane was going to come back and make the decision unnecessary.

  Chapter Two

  TAG DONOVAN WOKE UP AND SAW LOGS. LOG ceiling, log walls, log door. He cast his memory back, trying to see where logs fit into the last twenty-four hours. There was a plane, there was shooting, there was a short fall and an agony-of-defeat landing. Nothing after that. Logic told him he ought to be looking at the sky. Or burning in hellfire, if he believed what his Irish Catholic upbringing had drummed into his head.

  Somehow, though, he wasn’t dead. He took another tour through his recollection of the last few hours and came up with the fuzzy memory of a woman with a smart mouth and no appreciation for danger. The only clear visual was a set of sharp eyes the color of storm clouds. The audio portion of the memory consisted of a voice, low, smoky, not the kind of voice mat brought logs to mind. Not the kind voice that brought anything to mind, actually. What it inspired was more… visceral. And he was in no shape for visceral.

  Maybe the woman with the smoky voice had been a figment of his imagination and he’d been rescued by lumberjacks. She’d been yelling at him, so it wouldn’t be a complete tragedy if he’d invented her, because when she yelled at him his head hurt.

  His head hurt when he tried to lift it, too, and when he stopped trying to lift it. And when he blinked his eyes. His head hurt all the time; it was just a matter of intensity. He reached automatically to cradle his skull and nearly forgot about the pain when he discovered his hands were tied. So were his feet.

  He was lying on a bed made of logs; there was a pillow beneath his head and a blanket slung over him, and he was tied up. Except for his boxers he saw that he was naked, once he could think about more than how much everything hurt.

  Now he was really hoping it was a woman who’d rescued him, because if it was lumberjacks, he didn’t want to know how he’d gotten out of his clothes. He didn’t like his odds of talking his way out of the ropes either. And he needed to get out of the ropes.

  It was imperative in fact, so imperative he sucked up his courage and turned his head. It notched the headache back up to excruciating, but once he could get his eyes to uncross it was worth it because, sure enough, there was a woman watching him from the hearth beside a large field-stone fireplace.

  “Cinderella?” he croaked.

  “Alex.”

  Her voice was smoky, like he remembered, and she wasn’t yelling at him, which was hopeful. “Any chance you’ll untie me, Alex?” His throat might be dry, but the rest of him wasn’t going to be if he didn’t get some relief.

  “Nope.”

  “Then you’d better get me a bottle. An empty bottle.”

  She quirked an eyebrow and tried not to smile. “And I don’t even know your name.”

  “Tag.”

  “As in, ‘you’re it’?”

  “Yeah, I’ve never heard that one before.”

  “It’s your name. Don’t blame me.”

  “It’s Irish,” Tag said, because in his book that explained everything. “The bottle?”

  She stood up, putting her face in shadow and the rest of her in the light. She had the body to go along with the sexy voice; it was the first thing he noticed, and he wasn’t happy about it—not her body, the fact that he’d been sidetracked by it.

  So what if she was tall and slim (healthy slim rather than starvation chic)? So what if he caught the hint of some intriguing curves under her baggy sweatshirt and jeans? He needed to concentrate on the important things. Like what kind of woman she was.

  Her clothing was well-worn, for instance. So were her hiking boots; and the rest of her was no muss, no fuss, from her cropped blond-streaked hair to her sensibly short fingernails. She was either practical or broke. Or both. And she was strong, strong enough to somehow get 180 pounds of dead weight out of the snow and onto this bed. And it didn’t stop there.

  She took something off a shelf and crossed the room, her movements unhurried, efficient, effortless. And silent, except for the slightest suggestion of hollowness when her boot heels contacted the wooden floor. It was kind of unholy how quietly she moved. Her face was quiet, too. It was an attractive face, not beautiful but strong, a face that would age well, he thought. The fine lines at the corners of her eyes only made her look calmer, more comfortable in her own skin.

  Those lines must’ve been from the sun, though, because he’d yet to see her smile or frown, or do more than quirk an eyebrow. Cool, calm, and collected was the phrase that came to mind. If you didn’t look her in the eye. Pure steel there—even the color, slate gray, made it seem like a storm was brewing inside her all the time, just waiting for some unsuspecting clod to come along and salt the clouds.

  She was exactly the kind of woman Tag usually steered clear of. Unfortunately that wasn’t an
option this time. He was there for a reason, but aside from the snowdrifts that had saved his ass, he wasn’t sure what he’d jumped into. Except he knew it was trouble.

  Ordinarily he liked trouble. The right kind made things more interesting, not to mention exciting. At the moment, however, he had a very definite agenda, and getting tossed out of a plane into the lap of a strange woman with unknown affiliations wasn’t anywhere on the list.

  He fought for patience, but he knew he was losing it, hands and feet straining against the ropes, Alex’s face disappearing behind a tide of red. This was supposed to be a fluff assignment, something to keep him busy while he got over the murder of his partner, and now this? He was stuck, powerless, dumped into a situation he knew nothing about except that he needed to gain Alex’s cooperation if he had any hope of solving the case.

  All he wanted was to get the hell out of there and find out who’d killed his best friend before the trail got too cold to follow. That brought on another surge of anger—which ended when he heard the distinctive sound of a shotgun being racked to slam a shell into the firing chamber. But it wasn’t pointed at him, he noticed when he managed to focus on Alex again.

  “You were looking a little hysterical,” she said, holding up her Winchester by way of explanation. “This seemed a better solution than a slap in the face.”

  And a hell of a reminder that she had the upper hand. At the moment. Tag lay back, got his breathing under control, and let the anger settle like ice in the pit of his stomach while he put his head back into the game. The others would be waiting for him when he got out of this mess, he told himself, and if his handler thought time and distance would help him get over losing his partner, he was wrong. Revenge— now that would be a start.

  “Your bottle.”

  He looked up, studied the pop bottle she was holding while he put the past back in the past. Better to focus on the present. In fact, focusing on the present was becoming a dire emergency. “Got anything with a wider opening?”

  “Your aim that bad?”

  “It has nothing to do with aim.”

  She dropped it beside him and crossed her arms.

  “Fine. It’s your bed,” he reminded her. “You planning to stand there and watch?”

  “I’m kind of curious to see why you think you need a bigger bottle.”

  “You undressed me. Don’t you already know the answer to that?”

  She held his eyes for a second, and then her gaze panned down, stopping at the body part in question. She looked like she had a pretty good idea what was inside his boxers, and her expression could best be described as unimpressed.

  “I was cold,” Tag objected, “and unconscious.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Tag ground his teeth together, and then he noticed the way her eyes were sparkling. “I could do better than a visual,” he said, looking at the ropes around his wrists. “Even with a handicap.”

  “Says the man with an inferiority complex and something to prove.”

  “I don’t have an inferiority complex. And I don’t have anything to prove.”

  “Good, then you won’t mind if I take a pass.”

  “I’ll mind if you don’t untie me,” he said, “at least long enough to test my aim.”

  She’d already started across the room. She stopped and looked back at him for a long moment, then returned, bringing the shotgun back with her. Tag added cautious to her list of character flaws.

  “You really think you’re going to need that?” he asked, his eyes on the Winchester. “I’m actually harmless.”

  “Now that I took away the pistol you stuck in my face.”

  He met her eyes, grinning. He’d thought he’d lost everything between the plane and the bed, but some of it was coming back to him—well, mostly what was coming back to him was him half-dead, and still trying to protect himself. “Not bad for a guy who just had a near-death experience,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. “It was a toss-up whether you were going to shoot me or blow your arm off, since you were trying to use my rifle as a crutch.”

  “That’s right, I took your gun away from you, too.”

  “And then you passed out, and I got both guns.”

  “I can see how happy that makes you. And since you have all the firepower,” he held up his hands, “I promise I won’t make any sudden moves.”

  “And I should believe you why?”

  “I just fell out of an airplane. About all I can do right now is lie here and look pretty.”

  “Nothing wrong with your ego.” She set the gun down on her left, away from him, the barrel resting against the side of the bed. She untied his hands, stuffed the rope into her back pocket, then picked up the gun again. Her eyes never wavered from his. “Except the way you came by it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “At the expense of other people. Probably women.”

  She went back to the fireplace, leaving Tag to replay the conversation and wonder where it had taken a left turn from joking and sarcasm to her slapping him down. Must be a cynical streak hiding behind that matter-of-fact exterior, he decided. And it wasn’t because of something he’d done. Not that he hadn’t left a woman or two with a heightened level of… resentment. But he hadn’t done anything to Alex. Aside from the gun thing. “I’ll bet there’s a man in your past,” he concluded.

  “You had a mission, remember?” She looked pointedly at the pop bottle, then confined her attention to the fire, poking around in it and adding more logs. The cabin was one room, big enough for a sleeping area and a living/work area, small enough to be warmed by the single fireplace. Barely manageable for bodily functions involving strangers.

  Alex stayed by the fireplace, making cover noise by poking at the logs but keeping him in her peripheral vision so he didn’t try any funny business. He didn’t know her story, but whatever it was it had left her pretty suspicious. He’d barely set the pop bottle down on the opposite side of the bed when she picked up the interrogation again.

  “So what’s your story?” she asked.

  “You first.” When she didn’t answer, he popped up an eyebrow.

  She mugged back at him, but he could see she was amused. She wasn’t, however, wordy. “I grew up, went to college, and got a grant to come out here and study mountain lions,” she said. “Just the normal stuff—except for the Miss USA thing.” She did the royal wave. “But that was before I got my PhD.”

  Tag snorted. “You should tell people you were a stand-up comic. That I’d buy.”

  “You don’t believe me?” She pressed a hand to her heart. “I’m devastated.”

  Her expression was so perfectly deadpan, Tag couldn’t help but laugh.

  “So?” she prompted. “What about you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t have anything as exciting as being a beauty queen to show for my life.”

  “Well, we can’t all be gorgeous and talented, but you got dumped out of a plane without a parachute. You could start there.”

  “Is that coffee I smell?”

  Up went that damn eyebrow. “Is that evasion I hear?”

  “It’s caffeine withdrawal.”

  “Then by all means, let’s take care of that,” Alex said. “Wouldn’t want you to succumb to your addiction before you satisfy my curiosity.”

  She did some more stuff by the fire, then brought him a cup and a bowl. The bowl was filled with gray slop, which he promptly handed back to her. He’d had enough oatmeal in his childhood to stucco the Washington Monument. Besides, the cup was sending off little tendrils of steam that made his nostrils twitch in anticipation. She handed it to him. He ignored the headache long enough to lever himself up and take a healthy gulp. The minute it hit his tongue he opened his mouth over the cup and let the coffee trickle back out.

  “Hot?” she asked.

  “Crappy,” he said. “Do you actually drink this stuff?”

  “I did yesterday. I didn’t get around to cleaning the pot b
efore I went out this morning, so it’s been sitting on the hearth for twenty-four hours, give or take.”

  “Give or take?”

  She shrugged. “I figured a guy who could survive a header out of an airplane could drink day-old coffee.”

  “That’s not coffee,” Tag said. “I’m not sure it even qualifies as a liquid.”

  “Rocky Mountain espresso.” She took the cup from him and set it down on a small table beside the bed. “No self-respecting cowboy would turn his nose up. But you’re not a cowboy, are you? Or even a Westerner, for that matter.”

  “You’re not exactly the kind of woman I normally associate with either.”

  “Why? Because I don’t charge?”

  “Because you carry a gun.”

  “So do you,” she reminded him. “So where are you from and what do you do that you need one?”

  He huffed out a breath. “Anybody ever mention dogs and bones around you?”

  She raised her chin and looked down her nose at him, and Tag could feel his face heating. He knew that look. He hated that look. She might be broke and alone in the middle of nowhere, but she’d come by way of a society drawing room. Could be Washington, DC, could be New York, but every now and then he heard a hint of broadness in her vowels, so he’d put his money on Boston.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” she said in a tone of voice that went with the expression on her face.

  “It’s not important.”

  She took her time digesting that. Her eyes were on him the whole while, and he had to battle the urge to fidget.

  “Let’s start with something easy,” she finally said. “Do you have a last name?”

  “Donovan.”

  “Good. No hesitation, and it goes with the Irish theme. Donovan might actually be your last name. Care to tell me why you fell out of that airplane? Or did you jump?”