Tag, You're It!

by Penny McCall

  She stowed the camera bag she was still holding, systematically packing up the rest of her gear, and studiously ignoring the parachute, even when she heard the distinctive thud of a touchdown way too close for comfort.

  Stupid went into full pre-attack mode, snarling, growling, poised to spring. Alex brought him to heel with a hand movement.

  “It worked out so well the first time, you decided on a repeat performance?” she said when the footsteps she’d heard stopped not far away. She didn’t look up. She couldn’t.

  “They let me have a parachute this time,” was the response she got, in a voice that made her heart jump into her throat and her stomach drop a couple of feet.

  She didn’t know whether to cry or throw up, but either option was unacceptable. Turning around and keeping her expression absolutely blank was what the situation called for. Seeing Tag, standing there, alive, in all his mouthwatering, muscular, irreverent… maleness didn’t make that easy.

  The heartbreak she’d managed to hold off ratcheted up to excruciating. But at least she didn’t have to worry about crying anymore. Getting her Winchester and shooting him, that was a real possibility.

  And he’d take it as a sign she wasn’t over him. “They?” she asked with a nonchalance that might have been convincing if it hadn’t been so studied.

  “The guys I hired to bring me out here.”

  She closed her eyes, took a few seconds to let the relief wash through her.

  “What, you thought I was on a case?”

  She shrugged. “What else?”

  “I missed you in Colorado.”

  That brought her head up, her eyes finding his.

  Tag sauntered around the Jeep, Alex turning to keep him in sight with the kind of wariness and suspicion she’d have shown toward one of her cats. It wasn’t exactly misplaced. She had no idea what Tag was going to do next, but there was a good chance it wouldn’t be healthy for her.

  The dog didn’t like it either.

  “Stupid,” Alex said, sharply enough to have him sitting back on his haunches. He never took his eyes off Tag.

  “Stupid? First Jackass, now Stupid. And of course he’s a male.”

  “Of course, but that’s not why I named him Stupid,” Alex said, relaxing marginally. “I never told you Jackass’s original name was Benny, did I?”

  “Benny. Bennet Harper. So Stupid—”

  “Didn’t really have a name. He was a stray that just sort of dropped into my life and refused to leave. He’s smart as a whip. Somebody already had him trained on simple commands, and it didn’t take me long to teach him to obey me. But he has a stubborn streak a mile wide, and he can’t quite get it through his hard head that I can take care of myself.”

  Tag grinned. “Sounds like someone I know.”

  Alex felt that grin sucking her in, taking her back to the times they’d worked together, laughed together, and… She pulled herself back from memory lane before the inevitable next step.

  Recovering from Bennet Harper had been child’s play compared to getting over Tag Donovan. Nearly two months had passed since she’d walked away from him at the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston. But she hadn’t left him behind. Not really. She’d fallen in love with Tag Donovan. Not the superficial, starry-eyed kind of puppy love she’d felt for Bennet. This was the real thing, the warts-and-all version of love that didn’t blind you to a person’s faults but made you jump in heart-first anyway.

  There was only one way to fight that kind of stupidity. Work, lots and lots of work. She didn’t think of him every waking moment, and she didn’t lose sleep over him anymore. But he snuck up on her at odd times, crippled her thoughts, ached in her heart, exhausted her with the battle to banish him again. Now he was invading her in person, and she felt all those things, but if she backslid into their old relationship, that would be her fault.

  “I know that look,” he said. “You’re building a wall, Alex.”

  “Damn right, I am.”

  “You said you were done running. Hiding’s the same thing.”

  “Don’t spout that psychobabble at me,” she snapped. “I made my choice. So did you.” She dug out her trusty old satellite phone, flipping it to him. “The battery is fully charged. I suggest you get in touch with someone who can take you to the nearest airport.”

  Tag put the phone down. “You don’t want to know what I’m doing here?”

  “I want to see the back of you, walking away.”

  A muscle in his jaw worked, and his expression went stony before he smoothed it out. “Okay, let’s talk about you.”

  “Let’s not.” She started to step into the Jeep, but he reached in and snagged the keys from the ignition.

  Alex made a wild grab. Stupid lunged for him. Tag jumped back, which might have been comical if he hadn’t snagged the prize.

  “I nearly lost a couple of fingers there,” he said.

  “Give me the keys or you’ll lose a lot more than that.”

  “If I give you the keys, I’ll lose everything.”

  Alex held out her hand, palm up, pretending she hadn’t heard his comment. Or that she was reading anything into it.

  “If you want them,” Tag said, slipping the keys into the front pocket of his jeans, “come and get them.”

  Her eyes on his the whole time, she walked over and reached into his pocket as shallowly as possible, just until she could curl her finger around the key ring. “You can’t talk your way around me anymore, so now you’re playing cheap tri…”

  He dropped his mouth to her neck, cruised his lips up to her earlobe, and all the breath wheezed out of her lungs. She closed her eyes for a second, just a second while need rushed through her on hot and prickly feet. But when she felt her heart begin to trip, felt him move in closer, she jerked away and climbed into the Jeep, a clean, quick break before the pounding and throbbing inside drowned out any shred of reason.

  “Alex, don’t run,” he said, his voice as unsteady as her hands fumbling with the keys. “I still love you. Isn’t that worth a few minutes of your time?”

  She fought with herself briefly, then sat back, defeated by a combination of desire and logic—both her own. Tag was right. She’d have cut her tongue out before she admitted it to him, but he was right. If she was ever going to put him behind her, she needed to finish this once and for all.

  “I didn’t run away from you in Boston, I didn’t run away from Colorado, and I’m not running now.” Stupid whined, still nervous about Tag and probably picking up on her mood. She reached back and ruffled her fingers through his mangy fur, letting her eyes roam around to remind herself why she was there.

  The Jeep was completely open but for the windscreen and a roll bar, so she could see the land stretching away to the horizon in all directions. The sun was a huge yellow ball sinking into the west, the sky around it a pastel watercolor, the air before shimmering with heat waves. It was so different from a Colorado sunset where the shadows of the mountains raced out to drop the land into darkness before the sky followed. It was different from Colorado in every aspect, but just as wild and beautiful in its own way. She took a deep breath of the dusty air and knew again that she’d made the right choice. She didn’t belong in any one place. She belonged to the world.

  “I’m changing careers,” she said, “going into photojournalism. Conservation projects mostly.”

  Tag had let her have her moment, now he came over to lean against the side of the jeep, just by the windshield where he could see her face in the deepening twilight. “Photojournalism doesn’t pay very well.”

  “It won’t pay anything until I establish myself.”

  “And yet you’re rebuilding your cabin—”

  “With indoor plumbing and a darkroom.”

  “No stable?”

  She smiled fondly. “Jackass decided to stay at Dee’s. With Angel. I’m using the cabin as a home base between assignments. It’s free, doesn’t cost anything to maintain, and I can get there on my dirt bike just
as easily as I can on horseback.”

  “Dirt bikes aren’t cheap.” Tag leaned a forearm on the top of the windscreen, grinned over it at her. “The treasure was bigger than you thought, wasn’t it?”

  Alex popped up an eyebrow. “What treasure?”

  “You took the map when you left Boston. Interestingly enough, some gold coins showed up recently for sale on the Internet. The claim is they came from Juan Amparo’s gold mine, the Lost Spaniard.”

  “I’m not selling anything on the Internet.”

  “Citizens for Casteel is—that’s a newly formed charitable corporation.”

  “I’ve heard of them” she said. “I understand they’re planning to build a school in town.”

  “Nice of you to cut them in,” Tag observed.

  “They had to put up with the invasion of crazies every few years,” Alex said, “they deserve it.”

  Tag looked like he wasn’t entirely convinced of that, but he let it go. “How did you figure it out?”

  “Aubrey did, actually.” Alex climbed out and went around to the old but still sturdy strongbox bolted behind the Jeep’s rear seat. She didn’t have much of real value, but she’d learned if she wanted to keep it at all, she needed to keep it close. She worked the lock and pulled out her satchel, removing the map as she walked around so she could spread it open on the hood. The fact that it would be an unspoken invitation to Tag escaped her until he came to hover over her shoulder.

  She did her best to ignore him. She managed it mentally. Her body was a different story, but she could get past the heat and tingling and heart palpitations. She just had to concentrate on something else. Conveniently, she had the perfect distraction right in front of her.

  “Aubrey did some research and figured out that Juan was probably a wealthy man in Spain who fell on hard times,” she began. “This notation at the top of the map means Amparo’s salvation, and she thought he was trying to accumulate enough money to get back on top.”

  “But he was killed for the map, right?”

  “Right. Aubrey couldn’t find any report of the treasure having been found, and we know it wasn’t at any of the sites marked.”

  “We didn’t check the third site.”

  Alex waved that off. “It wasn’t there, and the only other place we never managed to identify is Mount Rosalie, so I did some research before I left the Colonnade. Turns out Mount Rosalie was renamed Mount Evans in 1895, after Juan’s time. At first, I thought it was just another landmark, like Denver, but why choose Mount Evans? Why not something more well-known, like Pikes Peak?”

  “The notation for east at the side of the map kept bothering me, too,” she continued. “Aubrey passed it off as Juan being an amateur mapmaker, but why would he point out east instead of north, especially since the north is at the top of map? None of it made sense, until I fell asleep on the flight back to Denver, and all the stuff about crosses and salvation and Juan being religious connected up in my brain.” She drew an imaginary line between Casteel and the stone cross due north of it, another between Mount Evans and the right side of the map. “The fourth point of the cross is Castile in Spain, which is what the east notation means, and my cabin is right at the intersection.” She looked up, met Tag’s eyes. “No one ever knew exactly where Juan lived.”

  “Until now.”

  “Yep, and I wouldn’t have found it if Bennet hadn’t burned my cabin down. There were heavy rains while we were back East. Part of the ground that was protected by the cabin floor for the last hundred and fifty years washed away. Sticking out of the mud and mess I saw a corner of that,” she pointed to the strongbox where she kept her satchel.

  She’d hoped Tag would want a closer look at the box, but he stayed where he was, so close that if she took too deep a breath she’d rub against him. Alex braced herself and deliberately stepped back into him. He moved, but only far enough for her to open her satchel and take something out, something that sparked light from the rays of the setting sun.

  Tag reached over her shoulder and took the gold coin, holding it up. A woman’s head was on one side, the date 1860 below and stars around the edge. The obverse was the American eagle, olive branches in one claw, arrows in the other. Around the edge it read “Pikes Peak Gold, Denver, Five D.”

  “That was made locally in Colorado by Clark, Gruber and Co., who later sold their mint to the U.S. government.”

  “More Internet research?”

  Alex smiled, handing him another object, which he took in his other hand, so he had both arms around her now.

  She should have moved away; he wasn’t holding her there. He was barely touching her, but she didn’t have the strength to deny herself the breathless moment of pleasure, remembering how it felt to be wrapped in his arms for real.

  But a moment was all it could be. She concentrated almost desperately on the hunk of rock Tag held, the size of his palm, veins of pure gold threading through quartz.

  “Alex—”

  She slipped out of his arms before he could tighten them, and to hell with letting him see that he’d gotten to her. “I found everything from gold dust to minted coins to raw ore in the box,” she said when she’d put enough space between them. “Juan was a thief. That’s why we didn’t find a claim. He never filed one. He just robbed everyone else.”

  “So simple,” Tag said, his voice as husky as hers.

  Alex refused to let it mean anything. He was aroused. So was she. Sex had never been a problem for them. Commitment was, and it appeared her luck with men hadn’t improved in that area. “If Bennet had actually looked for the treasure, he’d have been richer than he could have dreamed. But he never had any imagination, never believed in anything but the quick, easy score.”

  “He took a shortcut,” Tag said. “Sometimes they don’t lead where you expect.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “So… you haven’t asked me any questions.”

  Because they were all loaded, she thought. They started off harmlessly enough, but they all seemed to lead somewhere emotional, and her emotions had been her enemies for the past couple of months. It didn’t help, knowing Tag was trying to take her off guard, talk his way around her.

  But she was curious—which she hid behind a one-shouldered shrug. “The case was all but closed when I left Boston.”

  “Hasn’t gone to trial,” Tag said, “but yeah, it’s closed. Harper wound up pretty much where we figured. Sappresi was brought in, and he won’t be able to slither out of the charges this time. Guys are lining up to rat him out.”

  “I thought the mafia frowned on that.”

  “He was getting to be a problem. I imagine they find it ironic that for a change the bureau is solving a problem for them. Junior got off pretty much scot-free, but he didn’t do anything wrong. And he’s probably burning that you found the treasure. Kills his perfect record.”

  “What makes you think he knows?”

  “I’d imagine somebody told him by now.”

  “Somebody?”

  “Trust me, he’ll get over it in no time.” Tag shifted from one foot to the other, crossed his arms, then uncrossed them. “Once everything was tied up I came looking for you.”

  “Took you a while to find me, especially since all you had to do was call my mom.”

  “Your mom wasn’t exactly cooperating.”

  Alex flashed him a grin. “She learned her lesson with Bennet Harper.”

  “Yeah. If I’d been thinking straight I would have used the FBI’s resources to locate you before I quit.” After a couple of beats, Tag smiled slightly. “It’s your turn to talk. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah.” But suddenly there weren’t any words in her head. There wasn’t anything but a dull roaring sound.

  “You’re not saying anything.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Go ahead, let me have it. I rehearsed.”

  Alex leaned a hip against the Jeep’s front grille. “You rehearsed?”

  “I didn’t stand in front o
f a mirror practicing facial expressions and different inflections or anything, but, you know,” he spread his hands, “kind of running scenarios in my head.”

  “How did they end?”

  He bumped up one shoulder. “I don’t know, but they all started the same way.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “I love you.”

  Alex put her things back in the satchel, walked to stow it in the strongbox, then came around to the driver’s side of the Jeep.

  Tag stepped in front of her waiting until she lifted her gaze to his.

  She sighed, shook her head. “Love isn’t a magic pill, Tag. We want different things out of life.”

  “Do we?”

  “I’m going to be on the road most of the time.”

  “Then I’ll go with you.”

  “You going to hold my camera for me? Be my gofer?”

  “I’ll go wherever you go, do whatever.” He said it without hesitation, with absolute certainty that he could leave behind a life that had so clearly defined him.

  Alex was still afraid to take that final leap of faith. “You’ll get bored,” she said.

  “First, you’re underestimating yourself. Second, I’m not completely without options. I think I can find something to keep me busy while you’re working.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that supposed to be an argument in your favor? Because the last time you kept me busy, there were people trying to kill me.”

  “Afraid I’ll get you in trouble again?”

  “Actually, yeah.”

  “Not on purpose, and not for a long, long while.” He took her in his arms, took her mouth.

  She tried to hold it back, but tears started leaking from her eyes. She’d been fighting for so long, herself more than anyone else, and she didn’t even know why anymore. “I don’t have to travel all the time,” she said. “You could get your job back, and—”

  Tag scooped her up in his arms, whirled them both in a circle, then set her on her feet, hugging her so hard she swore she felt her ribs rubbing together. “This isn’t going to be a long-distance relationship, Alex.”

  “But—”

  He kissed her again, and this time she went with it, wallowing in the fast burst of heat and the soft glow of warmth sliding with it into her system. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe love could solve all their problems, but she figured it would give them a pretty good common ground to build the foundation for a life together.