“I will.”
“Do the best you can to keep her safe.”
“I will.”
He ended the call and looked up to meet McKenna’s glare. “You called my brother of all people?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, he’s worried. He wants you to call him as soon as you get home. But he was the best choice to rely on to get word to Captain Wilkins.”
“I guess you’re right,” she admitted grudgingly.
“As usual.” He teased.
“Ha.” A flicker of a grin teased the corners of her mouth. “You’re right this time. But there’s a first time for everything.”
“Are we leaving or what?” Rick yelled from the plane. Will thought he saw a flash of annoyance on his boss’s face. He’d only kept Rick waiting for a few minutes, but it had probably been a stressful morning for him, wondering about Will’s whereabouts. Maybe he should cut Rick some slack.
“We’d better get in,” he told McKenna, climbing into the plane behind her.
He noticed she squeezed her eyes shut as she buckled the seat belt and then took slow, deep breaths as Rick eased the plane into the air.
He grabbed her hand. “You okay?”
She nodded, not opening her eyes. “Mostly.”
“Not excited about flying again?”
“No.” Her clipped tone said all it needed to.
He squeezed her hand tighter and she squeezed back. It was all the confirmation he needed not to let go, even when Rick caught his eye and raised his eyebrows.
Okay, yes, so he could see what his boss was probably thinking. Maybe the local wildlife trooper and a hunting guide weren’t the most logical match. But he and McKenna had been dancing on the edge of something more than friends for long enough. When this case finally slowed down, he’d finish the talk he’d meant to have with her that morning, let her know that this time he wasn’t going anywhere.
He still questioned whether he should have left Seward in the first place, the first time their relationship might have been blossoming into something more. But he needed to stop worrying over the past. He’d loved Rachael and believed God had put them together on purpose, even if their time was short.
But he also believed God was putting him and McKenna together now.
He just needed to keep her safe long enough to tell her.
Will studied her face, the frown lines that were faintly etched across her pretty features. He wished he could make this whole mess go away.
“Who’d you have to call?” Rick tossed the words over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off the front window.
“My brother,” McKenna answered for him. “He’s a bit overprotective.”
“Ah.”
Rick didn’t comment further, and McKenna didn’t, either. Will noticed she’d left out the message they’d passed on to her boss, and the fact that Luke was a police officer. Because she suspected Rick more than she had earlier, or because she wanted to limit the people who knew all that information?
He didn’t know. This case had so many aspects he felt unsure about.
That uncertainty carried over to his private life, too—and his ever-growing feelings for the woman beside him. She’d kissed him back, but had it been more the emotion of their situation and less about her wanting to take their relationship beyond friendship?
At the moment, he couldn’t decide which possibility worried him more.
* * *
McKenna woke later that night to Mollie’s tongue on her arm, licking and nudging her over and over.
She squeezed her eyes shut tighter and tried to pull her arm away. “Go back to sleep, Mollie,” she mumbled, hoping the dog would lie back down and let her catch a few more hours before she dived headfirst back into work.
Mollie ignored her, her nudges becoming more insistent till her pointy German shepherd nose was all but punching McKenna in the arm. McKenna sat up in bed, trying to coax herself to get up and let the dog out to use the bathroom, or howl at the moon, or whatever she was planning.
She shuffled to the door, wishing she had a flashlight to keep herself from stepping on anything she’d left on the floor.
McKenna squinted down at her feet. She could see better than she normally could at this time of night. A peek through the blinds told her it wasn’t a full moon.
She looked around the room again, suddenly realizing that something wasn’t right. Was someone in the house?
McKenna leaned forward, just enough to see out the open bedroom door and into the hallway. A faint orange glow pulsed from somewhere in the common area. Alarm bells exploded in her mind just as her nose identified the smell of smoke.
The house was on fire.
“Mollie, come!”
The dog darted toward her and McKenna gave her a quick scratch behind the ears in gratitude for saving both of their lives. The smoke detectors had never gone off, and she was sure that further investigation would reveal that they’d had the batteries taken out. McKenna hurried into the living room, where flames were just starting to lick up the far walls. It looked as if the blaze had started at the opposite end of the house from the guest room where she slept—maybe in Matt’s office. She tried to memorize as many details about the scene as she could, in case it could help with the investigation she knew would be coming. Then she grabbed the backpack with her case file that she’d left at the foot of the couch last night after looking over her notes from the day.
McKenna eased the back door open slowly, not wanting to add oxygen to the fire—and definitely not wanting to draw any attention if the killer-turned-arsonist was waiting for her outside.
The small backyard area and the street behind the Dixons’ house both looked clear.
Satisfied that it was as safe outside as it could be, McKenna motioned to Mollie, and the two of them moved away from the house, watching the fire do its work from the outside as she called the fire department on her cell phone. After hanging up with them, she texted Will.
And then there was nothing she could do but wait and watch the merciless flames destroy the house of people who had been so generous with her. The fire department showed up quickly and worked to put out the fire, but most of the house had been destroyed by then. McKenna brushed an unexpected tear from her eye, wrestling with emotions she couldn’t explain. As the blaze was brought under control by the men and women working, a heat inside her began to build. It was the same indignation she’d felt after Anna had been shot. This was out of control. The killer had to be stopped because clearly he was getting more and more desperate to hurt her. Did he really want her dead that badly?
Her shoulders shook with silent, tearless sobs. She wished she had tears to go with them, but they wouldn’t come.
A soft hand on her shoulder startled her, comforted her and made her feel self-conscious simultaneously.
“You’ll find him,” was all Will said. No empty promises that things would be okay. No awkward words of comfort. This man who knew her so well said the only thing he could say that would encourage her to keep going.
McKenna sniffed. “I can only hope so. I never should have let you talk me into staying here.” McKenna swiped a hand across her cheek, brushing another stray tear away.
“I thought it would be best.”
McKenna looked back toward the charred remains of the Dixons’ house, then had to tear her gaze away. She felt sick as she realized that, once again, her choice to stay here had caused this.
* * *
Will felt sick. He knew how hard Matt had worked to fix that house up just the way his wife had wanted it.
“Best?” McKenna turned from studying the scene and leveled him with a glare. “You call two people losing their home and everything they have, when their lives have already been turned upside down because someone shot Anna, best? Would you
please let me handle this from now on? I don’t want anyone else to get hurt because they’re trying to help me. I’m in charge here, I need to be the one making the decisions and carrying the responsibility. As I’ve tried to tell you more than once, I can handle everything just fine.”
Her words so echoed Rachael’s the night before she’d been killed that it felt almost as if she’d slapped him in the face and sent him back in time.
“It’s dangerous,” he’d told Rachael when she’d informed him of her skiing plans.
She’d only laughed.
“I mean it, Rachael. Be careful.” He’d considered his options, realized he wasn’t going to talk her out of it and then changed his tactics. “At least let me come with you. I know the wilderness—I can read signs that might point to animal danger or avalanches. Let me help.”
“I don’t need help, Will. I’m perfectly capable and can handle a ski trip just fine on my own. But thanks for the offer.”
She’d left the next morning and he’d never seen her alive again.
He jerked out of his memory back into the present, the smell of smoke highlighting the danger this stubborn woman in front of him was trying to ignore.
“Just let me help.”
“No!”
The past and present tangled as his frustration rose. “You’re being unreasonable, Rachael!”
He realized his mistake milliseconds before hurt flashed in McKenna’s eyes.
“McKenna...” Will reached for her arm.
“No, Will. I’m not her.” She swallowed hard and for a moment he thought she might cry. She didn’t. “And I don’t need your help.”
This time it was his turn to take a step back. He wanted to protect her, to help her end this case safely.
But it seemed she’d made her choice. Independent McKenna didn’t need anyone. He should have known all along this was what she wanted—to be left alone.
He walked straight to his truck, climbed in and drove away without looking back, heading out of town toward the wilderness. Maybe he’d sit by one of the lakes outside town for a little while. The space might give him the room he needed to think.
All this time, he’d wanted to help and protect her, just as he had when she was a kid. But that urge to look out for her, to fix things for her, had backfired, driving her away.
McKenna didn’t need him. And now, it seemed, she didn’t even want him around.
He’d been foolish to think she did. When he’d run into her, literally, at the grocery store, he’d noticed she was all grown up. He would have had to be blind not to. And this new woman version of McKenna he had gotten to know was the woman he was falling for, had probably already fallen for. Maybe he was guilty of being a little overprotective. But was it so wrong to want to protect the woman he cared so much about?
He pulled up beside one of the lakes, opened the door of his truck and listened to the quiet, the peacefulness of the arctic air contrasting with the churning in his gut from the events of that night.
There in the darkness, understanding about where he’d messed up finally hit him. Different as the two women were, different as his feelings for them were, he’d treated the situation as if it was Rachael all over again. His slip earlier—calling McKenna by Rachael’s name—had proven that, his heart admitting it subconsciously before his mind was able to.
“Why, God?” he let himself ask aloud. “What’s so wrong with trying to be a protector?”
Scenes of his life flashed through his mind. Choices he’d made. Choices Rachael had made. He’d always wanted to take care of his wife, give her everything she could ever want and treat her like a princess. That hadn’t been what Rachael had had in mind—she’d wanted to take care of herself, to choose her own adventures without his interference and his need to keep her safe. Maybe they hadn’t been a perfectly compatible match. But that hadn’t meant he’d loved her any less. Will wished she’d lived, wished he’d been able to do more to convince her not to ski that day.
But she’d made her own choices.
“Is that it, God?”
Pieces of a long-undone puzzle fell together in Will’s mind. He’d given McKenna a hard time about her lack of trust in God, her desire to be in control, yet didn’t he struggle with the same thing? Maybe his struggle looked a little different. But he was guilty at times of wanting to overprotect.
But Will wasn’t God. And in the end, people made choices and only God could watch over them. Will couldn’t always be enough. Not for Rachael. McKenna had been right. Her death hadn’t been his fault.
He couldn’t be enough for McKenna, either.
But with God’s help, Will would do the best he could. If McKenna would let him.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and glanced at it, knowing he needed to give her some space but wishing she’d call. Text. Something.
Will might have finally made peace with his past, decided he was ready to move on. But that didn’t mean McKenna would welcome him back into her life.
* * *
“I have news. Did you want to wait for Will to come back?” the man from the fire department asked McKenna.
She shrugged. Was Will coming back? As much as she’d been hurt by his slip—calling her Rachael, reminding her once again that Will had been in love before, with a woman she could never measure up to—she hadn’t expected that her words would drive him away. But somehow she’d seen the hurt she felt mirrored in his eyes when she’d refused his help and told him to leave her alone. She sensed that he wasn’t coming back anytime soon. Maybe not ever. “You’d better just go ahead and tell me,” she decided.
“Are you ready?” the man asked carefully, looking as if he was preparing to gauge her reaction.
McKenna sighed. “Sure.”
“It’s arson. No doubt about it. The burn pattern indicates it clearly already. There will be more of an investigation. The guys from the police department will probably be out to help and we’ll need to send samples off to the lab to confirm our preliminary ruling and see what kind of accelerant was used. But yeah, someone wanted to burn this house down.” He shook his head. “Any idea why?”
None she was willing to share. McKenna shrugged again and the firefighter walked away. She stood and surveyed the damage for herself, then walked closer to the house, which was now a stark contrast between piles of ash and broken glass and parts of the house looking the way they always had. Matt’s study had definitely gotten the worst of it. She’d be willing to bet that’s where the fire had started.
“Excuse me.” She motioned over the man who had spoken to her. “Can you tell me where it started?”
“Officially we can’t say yet.”
“But...?”
He weighed his words. “I’d guess it started right there.” He gestured toward the study.
“Thank you.” McKenna couldn’t have been less surprised. Whoever was here hadn’t only been trying to kill her, although she was sure that would have been a bonus. They’d also been trying to destroy her notes on this case and the evidence she’d gathered, likely guessing she’d been using the study as an at-home office.
It was a good thing she’d forgotten to put that backpack away last night.
He also must have known she was taking her notes back to the house where she was staying, because otherwise the trooper post, not the house, would have been the target.
It couldn’t have been ten whole seconds from when she had that thought to when half the firefighters suddenly packed up and jumped back onto their trucks, clearly preparing to face another fire.
Goose bumps crawled down her arms and she motioned for Mollie to stay while she ran toward one of the trucks that was leaving. “Excuse me,” she began, praying her gut feeling was wrong this time. “Where are you headed?”
The man blinked, looking surpri
sed to see her. “Aren’t you the new wildlife trooper?”
She nodded.
“I figured you’d called it in. We’re headed to another fire. This one at the trooper post.”
McKenna motioned for Mollie and jumped into her own car, following them to another fire that looked eerily like the first.
“It’s burning just like the house did,” she heard one of the men shout as they struggled to extinguish the blaze. Most likely the same accelerant had been used—further proof that the two fires had been set by the same person.
She watched the already exhausted men give everything they had to get the fire under control. But this time the fire was too strong, too fast, for the little building.
In a matter of minutes, the entire structure was gone. McKenna tried to blink away the shock but couldn’t process the scene before her. She was so deep into this case, felt as if she was so close to solving it, and now this. Her office was destroyed—all the files stored in the office were gone. Most of those had only existed as hard copies, since her predecessor hadn’t believed in digitizing his office. The notes in her backpack were all she had left.
She hoped that would be enough.
FOURTEEN
“Hello?” Will picked up the landline the next morning, rubbing his eyes, which were dry from lack of sleep, before he glanced at the caller ID and saw the call was coming from Truman Hunting Expeditions.
“You coming in to work today?” Rick’s voice sounded more harried than usual.
“I’d planned to take the day off. I don’t have any hunts scheduled.” Will glanced at the clock. Just past six.
“Change those plans. I’ve got a group in from Washington that wants to go out today.”
“We should have left already to get good time in.”
“Am I the boss here, or are you?”
Will let several seconds of silence tick by before he sighed. He may as well work today. It wasn’t as if he was going to do anyone any good sticking around town. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” he said and hung up.
Will picked up his cell phone out of habit. No missed calls or texts, which was a good sign. McKenna must have had a quiet night after the fire was taken care of.
Tundra Threat Page 15
