Pulling the Trigger

by Julie Miller

  Though Joanna stood at the back of the gathering, wedged between Bart Flemming and her guilty conscience, Ethan’s eyes sought her out. She didn’t need her ability to read people’s expressions to know he was sending her a message, silently telling her he’d accomplish this mission for her.

  Joanna blinked and looked down at the ground, pretending a rapt interest in a small tuft of grass, fighting for life in the gravelly muck at her feet. She rationalized that it was a smart rather than cowardly maneuver, to keep Ethan’s intuitive perception from reading her intentions. The pause in his briefing might indicate that he suspected something, but time and the priorities of the moment didn’t allow him the chance to probe for more information.

  “Since the Ute Mountains are sacred ground, completely encompassed by the reservation, the land has restricted access. That means there are few roads or trails, so traversing them can be difficult.” Joanna peeked up to see that his attention had shifted to the sky. “Overnight temperatures will have turned the rain and dew to frost or even ice at higher elevations, so watch your footing. Even dry lightning can be a danger to climbers, but if another storm hits, you’ll need to worry about washouts, mud slides and flash flooding, as well. If you get wet, be on guard against hypothermia.”

  And those were just the natural hazards they’d have to deal with.

  “Check your radios. Cell reception out here is unreliable.” He shifted his gaze over to Bart Flemming. “Bart, I need you to coordinate and triangulate our positions here at the command post. I want hourly checkins. You don’t hear from somebody, I want to know about it ASAP.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And keep an eye on the Doppler radar. I want to know in advance when we’re getting a repeat of last night’s storm.” He looked to Ben Parrish, who was buckling his radio onto his vest. “Ben, you’re with me. We’ll follow Cottonwood Wash up to Rising Sun Creek on Ute Peak. Joseph, you and Tom circle around Marble Mountain to Whispering Falls. And, Garan, you take Acevedo here through the pass between Horse Peak and Black Mountain. See if you can get as far as McElmo Creek. Good hunting, men.”

  The group dispersed, with the majority of them moving back to the command post tent. Tom Ryan and his guide headed south into the scrub pine forest at the base of the mountains, while Dylan Acevedo and his guide headed north toward the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.

  “Give me a sec,” Ethan said, telling Ben Parrish to start on without him. With a nod, Ben dropped down into an arroyo and moved toward the slope on the opposite side.

  Ethan and Joanna were left alone for a few precious moments. He moved silently over the gravel and mud as he walked off the distance between them. “Will you be okay waiting here?” he asked.

  In lieu of lying, Joanna chose not to answer. Instead, she reached out and flicked her finger across the handle of the long hunting knife he’d strapped to his waist. “You’re not taking a gun?”

  “I had my fill of guns in Afghanistan. I don’t like to carry one anymore.” In a deceptively casual gesture that conveyed something more, he brushed the callused tip of his index finger across her forehead and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “You worried about me?”

  His tone was tender, his touch even more so.

  “Yes.” She was quick to catch herself and shake her head. “No.” Not for the reason you think. “I’m sure you’ll be just fine. I mean, the wind or the rocks or that sixth sense of yours will tell you the bad guy’s coming before he gets there, right?”

  “Hope so.”

  She drummed up a smile. “You’ll know. I never have doubted your skills as a tracker.”

  “Then what’s bugging you?”

  Joanna’s gaze sank to the zipper on his vest. He’d handcuff her to his truck if he knew what she was planning. “Watts getting away. Losing my chance to confront him.”

  Could he hear the truth in her voice? Could he sense what she wasn’t saying?

  That same finger tapped her beneath the chin and asked her to look up into those beautiful onyx eyes. “He won’t get away.”

  Joanna nodded. Believed. Longed to trust in those words. But ultimately, she knew it was up to Joanna Rhodes to take care of what Joanna Rhodes needed. She peeked around him to nod toward Agent Parrish’s disappearing figure. “You’d better get going.”

  “Stay put. Stay safe.”

  Joanna’s breathing hitched at the dark husk of Ethan’s voice. Protocol wouldn’t allow a goodbye kiss, and she suspected that the next time they met in private, he’d be more likely to lecture her than to share any affection. Nonetheless, Joanna craved some kind of personal contact with him, something kinder than the tears and running away that had ended their relationship fifteen years ago.

  So she pulled his hand from her chin, wrapped her fingers around his and squeezed.

  He turned his big hand to engulf hers and squeezed back.

  Hidden from the view of any colleagues who might happen to glance their way, Joanna slid her palm along Ethan’s. Sensitive nerves awoke. Her skin warmed. Her pulse raced.

  “You’re a hard man to get over, Ethan Bia.”

  He leaned forward, ever so slightly. But he came close enough that she could feel the warmth emanating from his body. So much strength. So much heat. Every cell in Joanna’s body leaped with the desire to burrow into that warmth. Her lips parted. Her breasts tingled at the tips.

  “You were impossible,” he whispered.

  And then he pulled away. Backed away. Left her standing there with her mouth agape, her insides quaking with a riot of emotions. After all this time, after all she’d done, did he think he still loved her? She didn’t deserve that. She couldn’t handle it. She couldn’t handle hurting him again.

  “I’ll come back to you, Nüa-rü.”

  He turned and climbed over the lip of the arroyo, his long legs quickly eating up the ground as he caught up to Ben Parrish.

  When he was finally out of earshot, when she could finally squeeze the inevitable truth past the lump in her throat, she answered him.

  “No, you won’t.”

  Chapter Six

  “Here.” Ethan plucked out of the mud the reedy stalk that had been snapped in two. He handed the sign up to Ben and unsheathed his knife to poke aside the tall grass wedged in the triangle between two granite boulders, so as not to disturb the ground. “And here. He came this way. He’s trying to keep to the harder surfaces of the rocks to mask his trail.” He brushed his hand across the shady underside of the rock and came away with dewy fingers. “But the rocks were probably slick until the sun hit them, and he slipped every now and then.”

  “You’re sure it’s Watts and not some big cat or coyote?” Ben Parrish asked.

  “The cat’s not going to slip.” Pushing to his feet, Ethan pointed to the depression captured in the grass at the foot of a granite boulder. “And the coyotes around here don’t wear boots.”

  “Point taken.”

  Ethan wiped the dampness of his knife blade off on his pant leg and fastened it back in its leather sheath. He pulled the tube from his water pack free and sucked down a couple of good swallows. He reminded Ben to do the same. Drinking water became even more important as the air thinned at the higher elevation. Nasty headaches or muscle cramps could force them to call off the search before they had their man in custody.

  Ben pulled off his slim, wraparound sunglasses and shed his pack to retrieve a bottle of water. “Are we sure this is a legitimate trail? At our last check-in, Bart said Dylan and Garan had followed a dummy trail for almost a mile before it doubled back on them.”

  Ethan nodded. “Watts had a busy day yesterday. But that print was made last night. A lot later in the day than what Garan reported. From what I know about the man, we’re on the most likely path. If he truly wants to disappear, this is the way to reach the most rugged, inaccessible part of the mountains.”

  “My money’s on you, big guy.” After taking a drink, Ben climbed out onto a granite outcroppin
g to study the steep grade below them. “How high up are we?”

  Climbing straight up instead of zigzagging back and forth would have been a shorter, more direct route to the summit, but with the potentially deadly combination of too much water and typically dry soil, Ethan had opted for the longer, safer route. The chance to reach Rising Sun Creek before Watts had been negated by the danger of landslides or a simple misstep with nowhere to fall but way down.

  “Considering the base altitude was sixty-two hundred feet above sea level, and we’ve been climbing for almost four hours, I’d say we’re—”

  “Pretty damn high.” Ben pulled his cell phone off his belt and punched a few numbers. With a shake of his head, he clipped it back onto his belt and rejoined Ethan. “We’re out of range.”

  “No surprise there.” The sun was warm on his back through the layers of thermal and flannel shirts he wore, but the air was cool for a spring day—a sure indicator of the next round of storms heading their way by nightfall. Knowing the roughest part of their trek still lay ahead of them, Ethan breathed in deeply, taking stock of his body. He felt no sense of being winded or fatigued—not that he was prepared to rest until he had Watts in his hands. But he’d been hiking the mountains for decades. Ben here was a city boy, certainly fit, but he couldn’t afford to be slowed down by a partner who suddenly passed out from exhaustion. “You need a break?”

  “Do you?”

  Closing his eyes and turning his face toward the sky, Ethan tried to get a sense of company in the area, how much daylight was left, and how willing he was to return to camp to face Joanna without Watts. He might not understand her plan to get rid of Watts’s influence over her life by going one-on-one with him in that interview room, but he understood demons. He understood how badly it could gnaw at a person if salvation from those demons was denied.

  Ethan still carried that most awful day of the war with him. The day the carnage was too much. The day his team couldn’t recover one living soul. The day his buddy, Sam, had cracked on the battlefield and put his own gun to his head.

  He slowly opened his eyes, slowly relaxed the white-knuckled grip of his fists at his sides.

  Like Joanna, Ethan had come back home to heal.

  But unlike Joanna, he’d always believed that reclaiming the best in his life—her, them—was the only way to truly defeat those demons. Joanna believed she had to embrace the worst.

  Maybe there was no way they could both have what they wanted. But Ethan would never let her down again. He’d have to die on this mountain before he’d come back without Sherman Watts.

  “Ethan?”

  He’d been too quiet for too long. But his decision was made and he damn well wasn’t going to try to explain just how certain he was that he was doing the right thing to a man—to a world—that needed facts and science to believe anything.

  Pulling the radio from his vest, Ethan turned to face his partner. “I’m going to send Joseph and Tom back to base camp with Dylan and Garan.”

  Ben’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “You’re calling off the search?”

  “I figure we’ve got three hours before the rain starts up again, maybe an hour of daylight after that.”

  “Screw the rain. If we give Watts two nights of a head start, we’ll never catch him.”

  Ethan spelled it out in black-and-white. “I’m not turning back. Either I locate Watts or I make camp for the night and find him tomorrow. We’re the only ones who have any chance of reaching him at this point. But if we stay, we’ll be trapped up here when the storm hits.”

  “I’m game.”

  “It’ll be a tough night,” Ethan warned him.

  “You’re that certain we’re on Watts’s trail?”

  “Yes.”

  Ben put on his sunglasses and grinned. “That’s good enough for me.”

  “You want Watts as badly as I do, don’t you?”

  Ben nodded without offering a reason why. “Call it in. We’re not leaving this mountain.”

  “WHAT AM I SUPPOSED to do?” Joanna’s dark eyes were red and puffy with tears. Her skin was pale, making the fist-size bruises on her cheek and jaw stand out in angry relief.

  When Ethan had knocked on her trailer door that night and gotten no response, even though a light was on and her car was parked outside, he’d let himself in to check on her. He’d never seen such devastation of property—or woman—in his life. For a few minutes, he’d been in a bit of shock himself. But then the anger had kicked in, clearing his head.

  He’d gotten Joanna dressed. Found a clean towel to stanch the bleeding from the wound across the top of her left breast. He’d wrapped his denim jacket around her shoulders to keep her warm.

  And now, after buckling her up inside his truck, he handed her the ice pack for her lip, ran around to climb in behind the wheel and start the engine. The police would meet them at the emergency room in Kenner City.

  “Nüa-rü, you gotta talk to me. Who did this to you?”

  Silence. Hell. His insides were shriveling up with anger and hurt and helplessness. “Do you know who attacked you?”

  Finally, a nod.

  Double hell. “Who? After the hospital, we have to talk to the cops.”

  “They won’t listen to me. I’m a Kuchu. They’ve seen me too many times to believe—”

  “You were bailing out your parents! You were taking care of them!” Too loud. Too harsh. Ah, hell. Somebody punch him for making her shrink against the passenger door like that. “I’m sorry. You weren’t the one in trouble with the law. They’ll listen.”

  For the longest time, he thought his outburst had silenced her. He was too big a man to be yelling at a woman like that, even if it was out of frustration, or indignation on her behalf. “Talk to me, Joanna. Tell me what happened. I’ll listen.”

  His knuckles turned white around the steering wheel as she whispered bits and pieces of her nightmarish attack into the darkness of the truck cab.

  “He hit me when I fought back. He found a knife in the kitchen drawer and cut me. He held it to my throat while he…And then he…” Her soft sob clawed its way straight into his heart.

  Ethan had been raised to be a peaceful man. Had made a point of keeping things gentle and patient with Joanna so he didn’t scare her off. But he sensed he could murder a man right about now. “Who—?”

  “He thought I was my mother. He called me Naomi—kept saying he needed her. Said Mother owed him. He was making her pay.”

  Just a few hours after burying her mother? What kind of sick bastard would go after a woman while her grief was still so fresh? Who would be cruel enough to use that grief against her?

  “Who was it, Joanna? Tell me, and I’ll pound the son of a bitch.”

  For a moment, she roused herself from her shock. “Your father wouldn’t approve of that.”

  “My father wouldn’t approve of what happened to you, either.”

  “You can’t get in trouble with the law. Not for me. I’m not worth you losing your father’s respect and jeopardizing your future.”

  “Don’t say that.” He reached across the seat to squeeze her hand, but she jerked it into her lap almost as soon as his fingers brushed against hers. Curling his fingers into a fist, he pulled away. Of course, she wouldn’t appreciate a man’s touch right now. He pressed a little harder on the accelerator to get her to the hospital sooner. She needed someone to take care of her tonight. Even if it couldn’t be him. “I love you.”

  “I know.”

  “Joanna…” What was he supposed to say? How could he make her believe he would always be here for her? “This doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”

  She drew her legs up into the seat and curled her body into a ball. “It changes how I feel.”

  “About us?”

  “About everything.”

  “Who the hell did this to you, baby?” Her soft, voiceless sobs triggered a gritty dampness behind his own eyelids. She was so hurt. How could he have allowed the woman he
loved to get hurt like this? “Who raped you?”

  They raced another mile through the night before she spoke again.

  “He was drunk.”

  He quickly narrowed a short list down to one. The SOB had been drinking at the funeral. He had history with her late parents. “Sherman Watts?”

  Ah, hell. As he hit the outskirts of Kenner City, Ethan took a silent vow.

  That bastard would never hurt Joanna again.

  “Up or down? Ethan!” The sharp, authoritative voice cut into Ethan’s thoughts. For a split second, he was on recovery recon in the mountains of Afghanistan, and his lieutenant, Sam Keller, was warning him to start talking about where their unit’s point man was taking them. “Up or down?”

  Ethan had trudged along for an hour, guided by instinct, haunted by the past. But Ben Parrish’s urgent voice dragged him back to the present.

  “You okay, man?”

  Shutting down those old feelings and snapping his gaze into focus, Ethan made a quick survey of the area. Ben was right to demand guidance. Their steady climb was about to get tricky as he eyed the washout on the trail ahead of them. “I’m okay. Take a breather while I check things out.”

  They’d reached the Silverton River gorge. The roar of the river slamming through the narrow canyon three stories below them drowned out the ominous cadence of thunder that rumbled in the sky overhead. With the charged ions of dropping barometric pressure pricking the short hair at his nape to attention, Ethan was certain he hadn’t miscalculated the time of the storm. But anything in the sky sounded closer and more threatening at this altitude.

  He hoisted himself up onto one of the scrub pines that had been tipped at a dangerous angle over their path, testing the strength of the exposed roots clinging to the steep incline to their left. After one good bounce, the roots began to lose their grip on the soil and the tree made a deep, yawning sound as it bent closer to the drop-off on their right. Ethan jumped back to the ground, shaking his head.

  “Soil’s too wet. We can’t count on them to hold our weight if you miss a step.”