by Rachel Lee
It struck Jerrod that while he was of no real use, this was still the most useful day he’d spent in a while.
“Damn, man,” he said aloud, “you’ve got to get your act together soon.”
* * *
The daylight was fading by the time they got back to town. Allison had driven farther along the stream than he’d expected, and stopped frequently to take samples from the bank and the water. By the time she was done, the back of her vehicle was loaded with samples and she’d used quite a few pairs of gloves. He guessed the next time she went, if she did, she wouldn’t have any trouble giving him some protective gear so he could help. She also skipped stopping back at the ranch house for a hot drink. It was getting late.
“Want me to help you unload?” he asked when they had parked. He crossed the small space between their two driveways easily this time.
“Nothing leaves my car until the state comes for it. Why don’t you come in for some coffee? And I think I have some lasagna I can heat for the two of us.”
It would have been smart to say no, but instead, a different word popped out. “Thanks.”
Being with her all day had been easy. No reason to think another hour or so wouldn’t be just as easy. Nothing about her was pushy or intrusive.
He paused once again and scanned the street. That made twice today he’d felt watched. The uneasiness began to creep along his nerves again, a feeling he usually only had on missions, but a feeling that had too often been his companion since he’d returned to civilian life. Like some kind of training he couldn’t shake.
But the street was quiet and growing dark, and this was a safe little town in the middle of nowhere. It was as if his brain was trying to take him back to places he no longer needed to go. Not at all. Or as if he couldn’t let go of an adrenaline addiction.
Yeah, that was probably all it was. Imagining things because he was used to a whole different kind of life, one full of threats. Years of training he couldn’t quite shake.
He blew a disgusted breath and followed Allison into her house. This adjustment thing was too much. Ridiculous.
Hell, he’d even lost his sense of humor, although he supposed the kind of black humor he and his team had often indulged in probably wouldn’t fly well with civilians. But he clearly remembered it, remembered how often they had found reasons to kid around. It was a great way to break tension.
He hadn’t laughed since he’d wound up in the hospital the last time. Man, he needed to shake himself up good. Rattle his head until it settled into this new world.
Inside, he found Allison in the kitchen. Evidently she was still cold because she hadn’t even unzipped her suit yet. He needed to get one of those for himself, if the past few days were any indication of what he could expect here. A parka and jeans weren’t making it.
Assuming he stayed here, of course. He wasn’t even sure about that yet.
“Grab a chair,” she said cheerfully. “I may thaw by tomorrow.”
“And here I am looking at that snowmobile suit of yours with envy.”
“I can see why,” she answered, running her eyes over him. He didn’t miss the appreciative glimmer in them as he ditched his parka. Despite everything, he’d kept himself in fighting trim. His shoulders weren’t quite as broad since he hadn’t weight trained in a while, but all the walking and running, along with calisthenics, had at least kept his belly flat and the rest of him lean enough.
He held her gaze for just an instant, long enough to feel the sizzle himself, and wondered how it was that a woman bundled up almost like a polar bear could get to him like this.
The coffeemaker started brewing. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “I want to change.”
Back into her sweats, he supposed. He could understand why. Even after the cold they’d endured all day, he could tell she didn’t keep her house that warm.
Five minutes later she was back, this time wearing a sweat suit that looked relatively new, a gold one that emphasized the unusual color of her eyes. Peeking out beneath the sweats were fuzzy booties in an astonishing hot pink. He blinked.
“No fashion sense, I know,” she remarked. She waggled a foot at him. “But they’re warm. Very warm.”
That was when he smiled, genuinely smiled, for the first time in a long, long time. “I like them. I wouldn’t advise them if you don’t want to be noticed, though.”
A peal of laughter escaped her. “We need to get something straight.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m a flaky professor. And I like the flaky part. As well as the professor part.”
“Nothing wrong with being flaky.”
The coffee finished as she popped a frozen lasagna in the oven. It looked homemade, and the thought made him instantly hungry. She brought two mugs of coffee over to the table and joined him.
“There are some things I’m not flaky about,” she said, continuing the conversation. “Like my work. There I have to be very precise. No flakiness allowed.”
“So it bursts out other ways?”
Her eyes smiled at him over the rim of her cup. “Obviously.”
“What happens now with those samples?” he asked. “Do you test them?”
She shook her head. “The state lab is sending someone down to pick them up. I don’t know where they go from there. Could be Washington, for all I know. I just don’t have the facilities in my lab to test for something like this. It’s a community college with limited equipment.”
“Given what you told me about this toxin, can I say I’m glad to hear that?”
“I’m not real keen on working with it myself.”
“But you still collected the samples.”
She waved a hand. “It wasn’t the biggest of risks. I’ll need to collect some more, though, attack a bigger area. We don’t know where that bait came from. If it was a poisoned animal, there could be trouble elsewhere, like up in the mountains.”
“You’d need more than one person to search up there.”
“Well, I can circumscribe an area, guessing how far the bait animal could have traveled. Or how far something that ate some of it might have gone. That’s a good starting point. I’ll check for other carcasses, take a few samples as I go. Then we’ll see. By the time I do that, I should have some information back from the lab. This is going to be a priority. Those samples will get tested as soon as they reach the right person.”
He nodded.
She sighed and put her chin in her hand. “It’s going to be tough, though. We’re going to be relying a lot on hunters to report anything unusual.” She closed her eyes a moment. “Enough of that,” she said, snapping them open again. “If I think too hard about it I’ll feel overwhelmed.”
“But you’re fairly certain you won’t be able to source it?”
“Not likely. Now, if the bait were wearing a tag or collar...” She shrugged.
“Would someone have that kind of a grudge against Jake Madison?”
“Wow,” she murmured. “That’s scary to contemplate. It’s possible, though. He’s the chief of police, such as it is, and his fiancée’s dad is angry with him, I hear, but to do something like this?” She shook her head a little. “Is this how you think?”
He pulled back. Tendrils of ice filled him inside. Before he could say anything, however, she spoke quickly.
“I’m sorry. That didn’t sound like what I meant. You have to understand you’re talking to a small-town girl here. We almost never have things go to that extreme. But you’re right, it’s possible. I need to think about it.”
He relaxed again, muscle by muscle, and tried to do his part to smooth it over. Here he was enjoying a woman’s company for the first time in forever, and he’d stuck his foot in it.
But it was still possible. Like it or not, this could have been a directe
d attack. And if that was the case, Allison could be inserting herself in the middle of something that could be deadly.
He needed to gather intel, but how the hell was he supposed to do that? Nobody in this town was likely to share much with him. He was a stranger and a total unknown.
But he remembered that sense of being watched, both out on the rangeland, and then here on her street. He trusted that feeling. It had never yet failed him, and had probably saved his life more than once. He’d be a fool to dismiss it.
Allison might be wading into deeper trouble than she had any idea. He came from a world where such things were possible. She did not. Yet just being aware of such a possibility might make all the difference.
She sort of changed the subject then, as if she wasn’t ready to deal with what he had suggested.
“So,” she said, a twinkle in those sherry-brown eyes, “how miserable were you standing out there in the cold while I took the samples?”
“I’ve endured worse. But next time it would be nice if you’d let me help.”
“That might be arranged.”
“Good. I hate feeling useless.”
She studied him, and after a minute he started wondering what she was seeing, other than that knife slash across his cheek. He liked to think he was impenetrable unless he chose otherwise, but he had the uneasy feeling that she might be able to see right into him.
“You’re young,” she said suddenly.
“Young?” The idea didn’t fit his self-image at all.
“Agewise,” she explained. “Not experiencewise. I can already tell you’ve probably had a lifetime of experiences I’ll never know or even understand. No, I was just thinking you look maybe thirty?”
“Thirty-three.”
She nodded. “So you didn’t want to stay in the military until retirement?”
“It wasn’t a choice. Medical separation.”
She drew a breath. “Wounded?”
“Yeah.” No details. The last thing he wanted was sympathy. In life you made your choices and lived with the consequences. He’d made his.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “And that probably sounds empty. But I am. I hope you’re okay.”
“Okay enough.”
She frowned faintly. He wondered if she had any idea just how revealing her face was. He enjoyed the chase of expressions across it. “I suppose I can’t ask what that means?”
“I’m walking and talking. That’s okay.”
She gave a little nod. “Fair enough. And you can’t talk about any of it?”
“Not much. Most of my life is classified now.”
“Well, that’ll make getting to know you an adventure.”
He laughed. He had to, because of the way she rolled her eyes.
“I can’t play truth or dare with you,” he said presently. “But I can tell you a few things.”
“I’m all ears,” she said drily.
“I graduated from Annapolis. I took some training at Quantico, and then some other places.”
She perked a little. “Do you happen to know Seth Hardin?”
“I’ve met him a few times. Briefly.”
“Aha!”
“What?”
“That explains why you wound up in the middle of nowhere. I was wondering. Okay. I won’t bug you about the rest. I heard Seth say once that most of his life was redacted.”
Another laugh escaped him. “That about covers it.” He wondered if she realized that her eyes were devouring him and awakening a hunger in him. Probably not. He doubted she had any notion of how easy she was to read.
“SEAL?”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”
Her eyes widened a bit. “You mean there are units nobody ever hears about?”
“I can’t tell you that, either.”
“I think you just did. Okay, I won’t bug you, promise. Even if I die of curiosity. But if you’re thinking of hanging around here for a while, you need to meet Seth’s family. His father and a couple of his sisters would be just about the only entrée you need around here.”
An entrée? That snagged his attention. An entrée meant intelligence, and he still wanted a better sense of what Allison might be getting into.
“Okay,” he said. “Should I just go over and introduce myself?”
“You could, but Marge might overwhelm you. She mothers everybody.” She paused. “I’ll find a way for you to meet his dad. Tomorrow. He used to be a Green Beret, so I guess he’ll understand what redacted means better than I ever could. He used to be the sheriff here and knows everybody.”
Exactly the man he wanted to meet, Jerrod thought. Handed to him out of the blue. Funny how those things worked sometimes.
The aroma of the lasagna was beginning to fill the kitchen now, and his stomach rumbled loudly as if it couldn’t wait.
Allison laughed. “Twenty more minutes. Sorry.”
“I’ll survive.” He was pretty sure of that. He’d been surviving for a long time.
Chapter 3
Allison awoke Monday morning after the worst night ever. Well, maybe the flu had been worse, but last night had been something else. How many times had she wakened from barely remembered dreams that had left her aching with desire? Heck, she hadn’t even done that in high school.
Jerrod Marquette was certainly getting to her, and doing it in ways she didn’t want. The man had materialized out of nowhere, couldn’t talk much about himself and gave her the distinct feeling that he might evaporate at any moment.
He certainly wasn’t planted here, and to her way of thinking that was as big a problem as the secrecy imposed on him. She’d lost everyone in her life who had mattered to her, except some girlfriends, and she didn’t want to risk any more. Jerrod struck her as a huge risk.
He certainly was as zipped up as anyone she’d ever met. Maybe more so. Seth Hardin came across as an ordinary guy, easy to talk to, with a sense of humor that sometimes bordered on the wicked. Nor was Seth the only other former special-ops guy in the county. Nate Tate, the former sheriff and Green Beret, seemed to attract them. Or at least if they wanted to hang around, he helped make it possible.
When she thought about it, she almost laughed and spewed her toothpaste. This county probably had more guys with a background in special ops per capita than any place other than a military base.
She rinsed the toothbrush, decided last night’s shower could carry over because the house was so cold this morning and climbed into her warmest clothes for work.
“Climate change,” she muttered as she looked at her thermostat to ensure it had readjusted itself for the day.
She called Nate as she climbed into her frozen car and tried not to hop up and down on the seat from the cold. Sheesh. At least her cell phone was warm as she put it to her ear, waiting for the engine to warm up before she started driving.
“Nate Tate,” the familiar gravelly voice answered.
“Hi, Nate, it’s Allison McMann. I have a rescue mission for you.”
“Yeah?” He sounded interested. “And how are you doing? Collecting those samples?”
“I’ve got a bunch in my trunk, but I think I’m going to need to branch out to be safe.”
“Probably.” He sighed. “Damn fool thing to do. There are better ways to protect stock.”
“Nobody can afford cowboys and herders anymore.”
“So I hear. But they got paid squat even in my youth. Just about enough to tie one on when they came in from the range. So what’s this rescue mission?”
“I have a new neighbor.”
“I heard.”
There was nothing Nate didn’t hear, so she wasn’t surprised. “He seems okay. One of your kind of guys.”
“Meaning?”
“He said most of his life was classified.”
“Ah. And you want?”
“It’d be nice if he met someone besides me. Someone who gets where he’s coming from. He seemed interested when I mentioned you.”
“I’ll introduce myself, then. He at home now?”
“His truck’s in the driveway. I’m getting ready to go teach a bunch of bored students about the Avogadro constant.”
Nate ripped out a laugh. “You’re over my head already. Okay, I’ll drop on over.”
“One warning,” she added before she disconnected. “He’s the most buttoned-up guy I’ve ever met. Thanks, Nate.”
She shoved the phone back in her pocket and felt some warmth coming out of the heater vents at last. Time to go to work.
Definitely time to put Jerrod out of her mind and settle down her crazy hormones. Man, if she had to get the hots for someone suddenly, why couldn’t it have been one of her fellow teachers? Not some guy who wouldn’t or couldn’t talk about himself, a guy who would actually think of things like someone pulling this stunt with a deadly toxin because they had a grudge against Jake Madison.
That was so far outside her world it astonished her, and it was also a world she didn’t want to enter. Not even tangentially.
Oh, God, had she actually told him he could help collect samples next time she went out? She ought to be barring the barn door before the horse escaped, ought to be avoiding a situation with trouble written all over it in neon capital letters. One broken heart was enough for a lifetime.
Maybe she could just forget. Kind of space it, and just go off by herself on her next collection. Distance seemed like a great choice right now, the more, the better.
After debating whether to take the samples into her lab, she left them in the back of her locked car unless the state wanted her to do something different. She pulled out her cell again as she hurried toward the science building, calling her contact with the state.
“I’ll just come down and collect them from you today,” Dan Digby said. “Much safer than you handling them repeatedly.”
“They’re in the back of my car. Let me know when you get close.”
