by Cindi Myers
“What about your job?”
“There are other jobs. I could transfer or work somewhere else. I’m used to going where the next opportunity takes me.”
She didn’t relax her grip on the wheel. “I can’t imagine living like that,” she said. “I’ve always had a plan for my life—a next step to get where I want to go.”
“If that works for you, that’s great,” he said. “It never worked for me.” Life was full of too many variables. If his mom didn’t pay the rent, they might have to leave in the middle of the night and find a new apartment across town, or in another town altogether. If she ended up in jail, Jake had to drop everything and look after Sophie. If he missed work to babysit his sister while his mother was roaming the streets in search of drugs, he might lose his job and have to find another one. All that uncertainty had taught him how to think on his feet. It had taught him not to rely on other people. Maybe to someone like Carmen, it made him seem unreliable. Someone she couldn’t trust.
She dropped her hands to her lap and sighed. “Aunt Connie likes to make predictions about people,” she said. “She says she’s a good judge of character.”
“Is she? Do her predictions come true?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes.” She shifted the car into gear and flipped on her blinker before turning onto the road. “She liked you, so that’s something in your favor.”
“I liked her, too.”
She pulled the car back onto the highway. “Do you want to see where I grew up?” she asked.
The question surprised him. The offer felt somehow intimate. Another acknowledgment that maybe not everything between them was strictly professional. “Yes, I’d like that.”
She nodded and turned the car away from the clinic and the casino and office buildings toward country that quickly grew more rural—housing developments and shopping strips gave way to hayfields and pasture. She turned onto a gravel lane that led through an open iron gate, past white-fenced paddocks and a towering red barn. “My father raises cutting horses,” she said. “Some of his horses are champions. It’s his passion.”
The drive curved past more paddocks and a modest white ranch house. “Home, sweet home,” she said, slowing in front of the house. “I’d take you in and introduce you, but my father is at a sale over in Farmington today.”
“It looks like a good place to grow up.” He glanced at her. “Were you happy?”
“Yes. Even though I don’t want to live here right now, I love having this place to come back to. I never understood Metwater’s followers wanting to come together to make a kind of fake tribe,” she said. “I didn’t think it could possibly be anything like the real tribe I was a part of. But then, when I went to live with them for a few days and really got to know them, I realized they were searching for what I had already found. Their makeshift family might be a substitute for the real thing, but it was better than whatever they had had before. I saw the strength in what they were trying to do—the courage it took to trust others enough to build something that had been handed to me for nothing and with no effort on my part. It made me a little more compassionate, I think.”
“My mother has a real family,” he said. “Me, my sister, and her parents and brothers and sisters. She’s hurt them, but I believe they still love her. I want us to try to be a family again. That would be better for Sophie than any fake family led by a pretend prophet.”
“I hope your mom will give them a chance,” Carmen said. She turned toward him. “What do you want to do now?”
He wanted to prolong the time with her and see more of this personal side of her. Driving through this ranch, he could imagine her as a girl, riding a horse across the pasture, her long hair streaming behind her. “Show me your favorite place on the ranch,” he said.
She hesitated, then nodded. “All right.”
She drove past the ranch house and turned down a road that was little more than two ruts winding up a steep hill. At the top, she parked the car beside a stack of boulders and got out. Jake followed her to a twisted pine, where the land fell away in a steep cliff, the valley below a patchwork of plowed fields, pastures and homes. “When I was growing up, this was my whole world,” she said. “This was my kingdom, and I was the queen.”
He put his arm around her, and she leaned in to him. “I could see you as queen,” he said. “You’ve got the attitude and the courage.”
“Some men have a problem with the attitude,” she said. “They say they admire strong women, but they don’t want to be with them.”
“I’m not one of those men.” He turned her toward him, so that they stood face to face, hip to hip. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked.
“Because you asked. And because I wanted to do this.” She cupped his face in her hands and pulled his mouth down to hers, the kiss as strong and confident as the woman, a meeting of their lips that was as much mental as physical. He lost focus on anything else as he wrapped both arms around her and pulled her close. He flashed back to the first day he had seen her, striding across the prairie, beautiful and wary as a wild horse. Holding her now, he still felt that wildness, an energy beneath his touch that reminded him she was allowing him to be with her this way but might change her mind at any moment.
She pulled slightly away, and he looked down into her eyes, trying to read the emotions there. “That wasn’t just a kiss,” he said and smoothed the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip.
“No,” she said and moved closer, fitting her body between his legs, the soft fullness of her breasts pressed against his rib cage. He grasped her hips, splaying his fingers along their curves, letting her feel how much he wanted her. If she was going to run, now would be the time.
But instead of running, she pulled him down onto the soft bed of pine needles beneath the tree. He rolled onto his back, bringing her on top of him. She looked down on him and brushed the hair back from his eyes. “When I met you that first day near the camp, I was a little bit afraid of you,” she said. “I still am.”
He stroked her arm, a gentling motion. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“Then maybe I’m more afraid of myself and what I might do with you.”
“I can think of a few things I’d like to do right now.” He stared into her eyes, losing himself in those brown depths, letting himself be that vulnerable. “One thing.”
“I suddenly can’t think of anything else.” She kissed him again, a long, drugging kiss of tangled tongues and tangled limbs, her fingers moving along with her mouth, unbuttoning his shirt, her touch sending hot tendrils of sensation through him to pool in his groin.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” He made himself ask the question, though there was only one answer he wanted to hear.
“Oh, yes.” She kissed his neck, then stroked her tongue across his pounding pulse. “This is exactly what I want.”
They didn’t talk much after that. Words seemed useless compared to the messages their bodies telegraphed. Though he would have kept some of his clothes on in deference to their exposed position, she insisted on removing every stitch, and he had to admit the sight of the sun gleaming on her body was one he would always treasure. When she took a condom from the pocket of her jeans, he laughed out loud. “So you were planning to bring me up here and seduce me,” he said.
“Not planning, exactly.” She held the packet up to him. “You might have said no.”
“But you knew I wouldn’t.” He knelt in front of her and ripped open the packet. “You knew I couldn’t.” He sheathed himself, then lay back once more, pulling her on top of him. She held herself above him for a long moment, staring into his eyes, as if searching for something there. He didn’t look away, trying to let her know without words how much she was coming to mean to him. Then he lost focus as she lowered herself over him and began to rock her hips gently, and then with more force, driving them both to a place he h
ad been wanting to go since the moment he met her.
* * *
WHEN JAKE OFFERED to drive back to Montrose, Carmen let him. She didn’t often surrender the wheel to someone else, but considering how much she had given to him already that day, driving seemed a small thing. She wanted time to think, without the distraction of steep mountain passes and narrow, winding switchbacks.
The man beside her was distraction enough. She could still feel the tension of his muscles beneath his fingers, the strength of him as he lifted her up with each thrust of his pelvis. Making love to him in the open like that, she had felt so vulnerable and at the same time so powerful. She had never done anything so daring with anyone before—had never wanted to even. But Jake made her want to be daring, almost as if she was trying to prove something to him, or to herself. Look how bold I can be! Look at the risks I’ll take!
But being with him felt like the biggest risk of all. He was so many things she had decided would make the absolutely wrong partner for her. First of all, he was a cop—a man with a dangerous job and lousy hours and a world view that required him to regard everyone with suspicion. Just because she understood what that was like didn’t mean she wanted to live with it every day, no matter what her mother predicted.
Then there was his family. He didn’t have an ex-wife or a kid, other no-nos on her list, but he had a teenage sister and a mother who needed looking after. She liked Sophie, and she liked Phoenix, too, but relationships were tough enough without those kinds of personal complications.
Jake was good at his job, willing to do what was necessary to conduct an investigation, even if it meant pretending to be someone else. She approached her job with the same kind of determination but, if a man was so very good at lying on the job, how could she trust him not to lie to her in real life? And would she be tempted to lie to him? Wouldn’t it be better to avoid putting themselves in a position where they would have to find out?
Safer, maybe. But that wasn’t the same as better. With the scent of him still on her and the memory of his touch still tantalizing her nerve endings, she couldn’t think of anything but how intoxicating being with him was—like a dangerous drug she could all too easily become addicted to.
Her phone beeped as they crossed the last pass. “We must be back in range of cell service,” Jake said, pulling out his cell. “I’ve got a call.”
“Me, too.”
He pulled to the side of the road. “I’d better check this,” he said.
She took out her own phone and called up voice mail. Marco Cruz’s message was clipped and to the point. “You need to get back to Ranger headquarters,” he said. “Daniel Metwater is here, and he’s asking for you.”
Chapter Eleven
Daniel Metwater paced the length of the conference room at Ranger Brigade headquarters, his dark, curly hair in disarray from continually raking his hands through it. He stopped and turned to face Jake and Carmen as they entered the room. “What took you so long?” he demanded.
“You could have returned to your camp, and we would have come to you there,” Jake said. Metwater didn’t look so in control of himself today. Dark circles beneath his eyes testified to a lack of sleep, and he stood with his shoulders hunched, as if anticipating a blow.
“It’s not safe for me there.” He jerked his head toward the door. “I’ve been trying to tell your colleagues, but they said I would have to wait for you.”
Carmen pulled a chair out from the conference table. “Mr. Metwater, sit down, and we’ll discuss this,” she said.
He scowled at her. “If you’d been doing your job instead of spying on me and my followers, you could have prevented this,” he said.
“Prevented what?” Jake sat across from the chair Carmen had pulled out for Metwater. “Sit down, and start at the beginning. We can’t help you if you’re not making sense.”
The scowl deepened, but Metwater dropped into the chair. “I need protection,” he said.
“Protection from what?” Carmen filled a paper cup from the water cooler by the door and slid it across to Metwater, then sat beside Jake.
“The people who killed my brother. They’re after me now.” He drained the cup, then crumpled it in his fist. “Killing Reggae was a warning to me.”
“Who are these people?” Jake asked.
“Organized crime. Russian organized crime. The Bratva.”
“The Chicago police suspected they were responsible for your brother’s death, but they never found any proof,” Carmen said.
“They killed him,” Metwater said. “He was into them for too much. He was so reckless and stupid—he thought nothing could ever touch him. He embezzled almost a million dollars from our father, but it wasn’t enough. He owed even more—gambling debts, women, drugs. If there was a vice, David had it.”
“And you were the good brother,” Jake said.
Metwater’s eyes flashed with anger. “I wasn’t a saint but, compared to David, I looked like one.”
“Why do you think your brother’s killers are after you?” Carmen asked. “They took their revenge out on him, and they’ve left you alone until now.”
He raked his hands through his hair again. “I don’t know why now. I thought that, after all this time, they were satisfied, that David’s blood was enough for them. Then they killed Reggae...”
“We haven’t found anything to link organized crime to Reggae’s murder,” Jake said. “It’s more likely that he died because he was involved with a man or men who are smuggling rare cactus off public land.”
Metwater stiffened. “What men?” he asked.
“Do you know a man named Werner Altbusser, a German?” Jake asked.
“Do you think he killed Reggae?” Metwater asked.
“We don’t know. Do you know him?”
Metwater’s shoulders relaxed, though sweat beaded his forehead. “Not well. He came to my camp and asked my permission to recruit some of my followers to hunt for cactus for him. I told him I didn’t care what they did. I don’t control their lives.”
“When did he ask you?” Jake asked.
“A few days ago. He approached me first about making a donation to my ministry.”
“Did you accept the donation?” Carmen asked.
“The money was freely offered and freely accepted,” he said. “There’s no law against it.”
“No, but I have to wonder if he was trying to influence your answer to his request,” she said.
“My answer was immaterial.”
“Was anyone else with Werner when you talked?” Jake asked.
“No. He was alone.” He opened his fist and let the crumpled cup fall onto the table between them. “Werner isn’t important. He didn’t kill Reggae, the Bratva did. And I’m their next target. You have to protect me.”
“I thought you had your own bodyguards,” Carmen said.
He sent her another withering look. “The men who are after me are professional killers. I need professional protection.”
“Then you should consider hiring private security,” she said. “We can’t devote officers to babysitting you on the basis of your own paranoia.”
He shoved the chair back so hard it toppled as he stood, the sound of it striking the floor jarring. “You think I’m making this up—that I’m not in any danger.”
“If you receive a threatening note or phone call, or have some other proof that your life is in danger, we’ll work with you to keep you out of harm’s way,” Carmen said. “But we’re not designed as a private security force.”
“If you feel you’re in real danger, perhaps you should relocate to someplace safer,” Jake said.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He leaned towards Jake, hands clenched at his sides. Jake braced himself for a blow, sure Metwater was going to hit him. But, at the last moment, the Prophet whirled away. “I should have
known better than to come here for help,” he shouted. “You’d be happy if I ended up dead!” He shoved past Jake and out the door.
Jake’s ears rang in the silence that followed. He turned to Carmen. “What do you think?”
“I think he’s really terrified,” she said.
Marco and Ethan came in. “We heard part of the conversation,” Marco said.
“You were listening at the door,” Carmen said.
“It wasn’t hard,” Ethan said. “He was shouting half the time.”
“Did anyone look into the mob angle?” Carmen asked.
“No one reported seeing anyone near the trailhead the morning Reggae was shot,” Ethan said. “No suspicious cars.”
“No swarthy men with foreign accents,” Marco deadpanned.
“We had a botanist from Colorado Mesa University look at the cactus that were in the backpack,” Ethan said. “Most of them were pretty common, but a few of them were rare enough to be of interest to a collector. So maybe Reggae knew what he was doing after all.”
“Or maybe he just got lucky,” Jake said. “Any sign of Werner?”
“All we can say is he hasn’t visited the national park,” Ethan said. “But that’s the only place you need a permit to enter.”
“He could be clear-cutting big swaths of the rest of the public land, and we’d never know about it if someone didn’t complain,” Marco added.
“It wouldn’t hurt to run a few extra patrols around Metwater’s camp,” Carmen said. “See if you spot anything suspicious.”
“And he can’t say we’re harassing him, since he practically begged us to protect him,” Marco said.
“Carmen and I can check around there this afternoon,” Jake said. “I need to talk to Starfall again, anyway. I want to know if she’s made contact with Werner.”
“Good luck getting her to admit to that,” Carmen said.
He sent her a look that was supposed to communicate that he didn’t care so much about Starfall—though he would talk to her. He needed to see Phoenix and Sophie and reassure himself that they were all right.
