Passion to Protect

by Colleen Thompson

  In stark contrast, the two lost backpackers who had stumbled upon him were strong and young—and willing to risk their own lives to keep him from blundering blindly into the flames.

  “Let’s go, man!” shouted one hiker. Mac could barely make out his bandana-covered head. Panic pitched his voice higher, making him sound more like a boy than a grown man. “We’ve gotta head over this way or the fire’s gonna catch us!”

  “No way,” his taller, darker-skinned friend argued. “I’ve been telling you, the car’s parked north of here. That’s where the road is.”

  The old logging road, Mac figured, remembering the second route into the canyon from a map of the area he’d studied. With their help, he could find it, then grab whatever chance came up to permanently prevent them from giving away his presence.

  It was a hell of a way to repay their kindness, but he’d come too far, risked too much, to reclaim his money—and the children he now saw as his true mission—to back down.

  “The trees—look up,” the tall hiker shouted, and above them, Mac made out the crown of one pine after another flaring into yellow-orange brilliance.

  “We’re cut off!” Bandana-head cried.

  Cursing the bear spray, Mac wiped his stinging eyes—just in time to see a flaming brand fall and ignite the guy’s clothing.

  As the fire leaped and caught the long fringe of hair beneath the bandana, he shrieked—an animal sound that made the hairs behind Mac’s neck rise—and started running.

  “Ryan, no! Get down! Roll!” his friend screamed, but in his pain and panic, the blazing man only tried harder to outrun his fate.

  Dropping his pack, the other hiker started after him. Mac clutched at his arm shouting, “It’s too late for him. But you and I can make it. Come on!”

  Shoving Mac away, the second hiker took off running after his companion. Even as blurred as Mac’s sight was, he soon made out the bright flare of a second human torch.

  Stomach heaving, he turned away, staggered by his shock and horror, even though their deaths had solved one problem. Snagging the abandoned backpack, he struggled to find a path to safety and prayed that his only real legacy, his son, hadn’t met the same fate as the men he had watched die.

  * * *

  Late in the day Liane received word that charred human remains had been recovered less than a mile-and-a-half from the spot where her ex-husband had last been seen. Though the body hadn’t yet been officially ID’d, Harry Wallace seemed confident that Mac had paid the ultimate price for his crimes.

  “Considering that he was blind,” the sheriff told her, “it stands to reason that you won’t ever have to worry about him again.”

  She wasn’t so sure. “What about his friends? The three men who escaped with him?”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much, since you and Jake and Cody didn’t see any of them in the woods and the Nevada people have plenty of evidence that at least some of them took a straight shot to the border.”

  “Not all of them,” she said. “After all, someone tore up Jake’s cabin while we were gone. What I’d like to know is why. What were they looking for?”

  Harry looked away before saying, “Valuables, most likely. Jake said something about some cash and his grandfather’s gold watch disappearing, and some old pain meds, too, leftovers from his accident. Whoever the guy was, once he had what he wanted, he had no reason to hang around waiting to be caught.”

  “I hope to heaven you’re right.”

  He laid an age-spotted hand on her shoulder, his gaze softening. “You look exhausted, Liane. Why don’t I take you on home? I’ll check the place out real good to be sure everything’s safe, and you can rest for a few hours while your kids are looked after here.”

  She shook her head. With an anxious glance toward the hospital room she’d just left, she explained, “Thanks but I’m not leaving them. They need me now more than ever, and I need to be here with them.”

  Besides, the thought of facing the homestead without the father who had always been there unnerved her. How would she ever manage without him? She tried—and failed—to imagine herself functioning in the wake of this new trauma, taking care of the ranch, the horses and the family business on her own.

  She knew instinctively that if she didn’t have her children to be strong for, the ice crystals spreading from her center would shatter, just as she would.

  Seeming to understand, Harry gave her a hug and said, “You need me for anything, you call me, day or night. Even if I’m home, I promise you, I’ll answer.”

  Too emotional to speak, she nodded.

  “Soon as I find out when your father’s remains will be released,” he continued, “I’ll be happy to help out with making the arrangements.”

  She tightened her arms around his soft middle before releasing him. “Thank you so much, Harry. I know I was mad before, but you were a good friend to Dad. Always.”

  He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Jake Whittaker was a good friend of your Dad’s, too. So I want you to promise me, for your father’s sake, you won’t keep the past from allowing him to help you, too.”

  In no condition to argue, she nodded, though she suspected that, just as her father had all too often hinted, Harry hoped that she and Jake would somehow find their way back to one another. That he could somehow forgive her for making the most disastrous choice in the history of choices.

  But she had no idea how to forgive herself or to find the strength to start again.

  * * *

  “She’s baaa-ack,” Jake said as he stepped inside the kitchen with a wriggling, eager Misty still hooked to the leash. After spending three days cooped up in a cage at the vet’s office, the shepherd had a clean bill of health and the energy to prove it. “Liane? Where are you?”

  Unsnapping the dog’s leash before she pulled him off his feet, he followed Misty as she raced past the large picture window that overlooked the forest and charged into what had been Deke’s study.

  “Ack! Get off me, you big lummox!” he heard Liane say just before he stepped inside the room, where she was sitting at her dad’s desk and fending off a slobbery greeting.

  Laughing, Jake dodged the brushy whip of wagging tail. “Sorry about that. Guess I should’ve taken her out for a run before I brought her inside.”

  “Down, Misty,” Liane said, rewarding the shaggy mutt with a scratch behind the ears when she finally settled. “Yes, I’m glad to see you, too, sweetheart.” She looked up and smiled. “Thanks for picking her up for me, Jake. The kids will be so excited to see her here when they get home from the movie.”

  “It’s no trouble, really. So you decided to let Em take them after all?” Before he’d left for the vet’s, Liane had been balking at her friend’s invitation.

  She shrugged. “Kenzie’s finally stopped coughing, and the movie will be good for them. Let them forget for a few hours, maybe even laugh a little. They have a rough day ahead of them tomorrow.”

  Her gaze drifted to the dozens of framed photos that lined the walls. In most, family members posed on horseback, from Liane herself at various ages to both the children, even her dad, looking unbelievably young, with her mother, who was seated on an old-fashioned sidesaddle, on their wedding day. There were other pictures, too, faded black-and-white shots of long-dead relatives and old dogs, of favorite visitors who’d become fast friends.

  It made sense, because when he wasn’t outdoors working, Deke had most often been found in this room, the original homestead the rest of the house had been built around. Jake could almost see him, working at his desk, or leaning back and nodding to the radio he’d always kept tuned to a local country station.

  Drawn by the misery in Liane’s eyes, he ventured closer, his limp barely noticeable today. Swiveling her chair around, he tried to knead the stiffness from her shoulders. Instead
of relaxing, she tensed. “Please don’t, Jake. You’ve been a huge help. Honestly, I don’t know what I would do without you, but right now I’m too stressed out.”

  “Sure, Liane. I didn’t mean to—” As he backed off he caught sight of the files strewn across the desk. “Bills? I thought we’d agreed I’d help you get those in order after the funeral?”

  “I know we did, but right after Em left with the kids, I got a call from the bank that Dad’s account is overdrawn. And I can’t find his last statement anywhere. I know he’s always been a mess when it comes to filing, but I can’t find anything.”

  “Which account?”

  “The checking. And I’m not on the account, so they’re refusing to give me any more information over the phone until I bring in all the documentation and—”

  “The hell with that. You need to call the sheriff right away,” he said. “Your dad’s wallet is still missing, right?”

  She nodded. “And his debit card was inside it.”

  “What about his access code? He wouldn’t keep it in there, would he?”

  “I can’t imagine he would, but what if Mac forced him to give up the number before he...” Her face went so pale that Jake knew she was imagining the horror of her father’s final moments.

  “Then that means either your ex or an accomplice got out of that canyon alive,” Jake reasoned.

  She rose and started pacing, her arms crossed. “What if—what if they come back here?”

  “Let’s not leap to conclusions. If they’ve gotten all the money from the account, it stands to reason they’ll be long gone.”

  She nailed him with a look, half terrified, half angry. “Don’t try to handle me, Jake, because you don’t really know that. You can’t.”

  “No, I don’t,” he admitted, already reaching for the phone on the desk. “So how about we find out? I’m calling Harry right now.”

  After hearing the facts, Harry promised to get back to them as soon as possible. “I do have some news for you, though,” he told Jake. “Now that the fire’s burned itself out, a cadaver dog’s located a second body in the canyon.”

  “One of the escapees? Or did they ever find those backpackers?”

  “Remains were pretty badly burned. Couldn’t even be sure of the gender. And no ID, so we’re back to waiting on the M.E.”

  Slanting a look toward Liane, who was rifling through the contents of another folder, Jake asked, “What about the first body? Any word yet?”

  “Medical examiner’s waiting on dental records out of the Nevada Department of Corrections, but she’s promised to get back to me the moment she knows something. She knows this case is a priority.”

  After finishing the call, he recounted the conversation for Liane’s benefit. When she went quiet, he tried a change of subject, gesturing toward the file she held. “Find what you’re looking for?”

  She shook her head. “The woman at the bank told me I’ll need to bring in a copy of the death certificate and his will to get access to his banking information. But I can’t find anything but bills. Lots and lots of bills.”

  “That can wait for now, Liane. Come here, please.” Taking her hand, he gently pulled her to her feet and enveloped her in his arms. Once again she went willingly, as if they’d never been apart. Despite the circumstances, it felt so right and so natural to Jake that he never wanted to let go of her again.

  But she was shaking, so he asked her, “When’s the last time you ate something?”

  “I made French toast this morning.”

  “For the kids, I’ll bet. Did you actually sit down and eat some?”

  “I think maybe.... I don’t remember.”

  “And what about lunch? How ’bout I make you some soup, or maybe a sandwich?”

  “I don’t care about food. I’m burying my dad tomorrow.” Her sigh, warm and human, slipped past his bare neck.

  “And what about sleep?” he asked, needing to distance himself from the sensations coursing through his body. “And I’m talking about really sleeping, not just collapsing and dozing for a few minutes.”

  “Whenever I lie down, I hear noises,” she admitted. “A footstep in the hall, a pinecone rattling off the roof, every little nicker from the horses.”

  “I promised you I wasn’t going to let anything get past me,” he reminded her. Since his cabin would take days to set to rights, she had offered him the spare bedroom just down the hall from her room. He had borrowed a handgun from Deke’s gun case, mostly to set her mind at ease.

  He had to admit that part of his own restlessness was prompted by the knowledge that she was sleeping so close to him. But each time he imagined her slim body slipping between the sheets, guilt roared to the surface. This was no time to fantasize about her, not when she needed his friendship and support to get through her father’s funeral.

  “I know,” she told him, “and it does help, knowing you’re right there.”

  God forgive him, but he ached to kiss her, to shed his own grief and distract her from hers. With his conscience shouting that it was wrong, that it would be unforgivable to take advantage, he drowned out his body’s protests.

  But before he could step back, she looked up into his eyes and ran her fingers along the light stubble on his jaw. “Jake...” she whispered.

  That was all it took for him to dip his mouth to hers, to taste the lips he’d dreamed of night after lonely night. And in that instant he felt whole again, unscarred, with the world and all its possibilities laid out before him like a feast.

  Liane responded eagerly, almost desperately, pressing herself so close that surely she must feel how hard he’d grown. But instead of pulling away, she let her lips part, her moan low and urgent as he deepened the kiss.

  He slid his hand along her side, feeling curves he longed to taste, to claim right here, right now, and damn the consequences. But as he reached to clear the desk behind him, awareness seared him—he was no rank boy but a man now, with a man’s obligations.

  Taking her like this, burning off her grief and his own in the raw lust he was feeling, would only make things even more awkward between them than they were already. And she and her kids needed him now to help them through this. He owed it to them, and to his friend Deke, to stop himself—and her—from doing something she would regret.

  When he felt the dampness of Liane’s tears against his skin he finally drew back, using the excuse of pulling a tissue from the box sitting on her dad’s desk.

  “Here, I think you need this,” he said, using it to blot the delicate skin beneath her eyes.

  Nodding, she took it from him, her eyes welling with remorse. “I’m sorry, Jake. That was wrong. I can’t— I don’t know what I was thinking, kissing you like that.”

  “You’re running on empty, and we’re both a little— We’re forgetting ourselves, that’s all.” For her sake, he managed to smile.

  She ran a hand over her loosely braided hair. “I’m losing my mind, wishing that I’d never met Mac, that I’d never left here in the first place. If I hadn’t gone away—”

  “You had to,” he said, and he meant it, though he, too, had blamed her for a long time. “It was never fair of me, expecting you to give up a full scholarship and your dreams to stay here and raise a family. I knew you weren’t ready for that. Neither was I. Not then.”

  “I’m home now,” she told him. “But you need to understand that it’s too late. It’s too late for me to—”

  “You know what your dad would say to that, Liane? He’d tell you that it’s never really too late. And then he’d tell you to march your rear into the kitchen and let me feed you lunch.”

  * * *

  Later that day, Liane had just put on a pot of water to boil to make pasta when Harry finally called.

  “I catch you at a bad time?” he asked,
when she mentioned turning down the burner. “If you want, I can call back later.”

  “No, please,” she said, her stomach roiling. “Now’s a good time. Tell me, what did you find out from the bank?”

  “First off, there’s been no theft that I can see. No activity at all on the accounts this past week, and no debit card use, either. Nothing but some automatic bill payments.”

  “So that’s what caused the overdraft, then?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s good news, isn’t it?” she reasoned. “It means I don’t have to worry that anyone has Dad’s debit card and PIN number, right?”

  “I think it’s safe to say they would’ve already used it if they could’ve. But I’ve had the account frozen anyway, at least for the time being.”

  “Good,” she said, thinking she could cover the bills long enough to give them a little breathing space before she was forced to take a hard look at finances—and the future of a property that had been in her family for more than a century. A property she knew her father would never have wanted her to sell. “But I don’t understand why Dad let his account get down so low. Do you think he just lost track?”

  At Harry’s hesitation, bands of dread tightened around her.

  “I’m sorry, Liane,” he said, “but it’s not just the checking account. Your father was having—I don’t know how to say this except to come right out with it. This tough economy’s done a number on his finances.”

  “But business was improving,” she argued. “Dad’s been really busy these last few months.”

  “Those horses you have out there, they eat all year round. Then there’s vet care, shoeing, taxes... Land value’s gone up even though the economy hasn’t, so the taxes are high.”

  “Did you know about this before? Did Dad say something to you about it?”

  “Not much, but that’s no surprise. Your father was a proud man, and he’s always played things close to the vest.”

  “But why would he keep secrets from me?” The line went silent for so long that she finally asked, “Still there?”