Passion to Protect (4 page)

A lump formed in his throat, but there was no way he was admitting that in truth Deke felt like a father to him—the father he’d never had, since his real dad had turned his back on the family when he was too young to remember the selfish SOB, or mourn him when he’d died a few years later. Jake might know wilderness firefighting, but he didn’t know much about construction. It was Deke who’d steered him away from a guest cabin whose mushy floorboards belied a weak foundation, Deke who’d taught him that when it came to a home, a business or a family, a rock-solid footing was the only place a man could put his trust.

“And I never really thought I liked kids that much,” he went on, remembering how the idea that Liane had had children with another man—children that might have been his—had stung, “but Cody cracks me up with all his stories, and Kenzie’s the cutest little thing. She looks just like you, you know. It’s the eyes.”

“I keep telling them they shouldn’t bother you so much.” Her voice shook with emotion. “I know you need peace and quiet for your work.”

“They don’t bother—well, yeah, they do sometimes,” he said, thinking of times when he’d been in the midst of some complex, tedious translation and one or the other of them rapped at his door, then raced away to hide around the corner, their giggles giving them away each time. Though his deadlines were often tight, he sometimes took a break on the porch and shared some of the caramel brownies they always seemed to know their mother had sent over. “To tell you the truth, if they ever really did quit bugging me, I’d miss the hell out of them.”

As the shaggy gray dog curled up beside her, Jake looked away, embarrassed by the surge of affection he felt for her family—and the lengths to which he would be willing to go to reunite them. Because they loved each other, their bond forming a closed circle he couldn’t help but want to protect, even though he stood on the outside.

Clearing his throat, he pulled out the radio and raised it. “Be right back.”

Between the howling of the wind and the crackling of lightning, he knew his odds of getting a message through on the handheld were slim. Still, he tried repeatedly, attempting to time his calls for Deke Mason and his requests for assistance between the flashes and the interference they created.

As the storm diminished for the moment, he once again heard a male voice intermittently breaking through the static. Though Jake didn’t recognize the speaker, he couldn’t miss the panic in his clipped words. Listening carefully, he made out something about a pair of hikers in distress and being boxed in by flames....

The image took him back to the night his own men had become trapped while following his orders. The night when the blaze had abruptly shifted and raced the wrong way, running downhill and against the wind, in defiance of the known laws of fire behavior.

Memory spiraled in on him, followed by the shock and horror he’d felt hearing their calls on the radio, the panicked need to get to them and lead them out to safety.

His rational mind had known it had been already too late, that there had been no way he could have made it in time and nothing he could have done if he’d gotten there except die by their sides. Still, he’d grabbed Micah and raced straight for them, the truck jouncing over the rutted track until it bottomed out and could go no farther. Though Micah had fought to stop him, Jake had leaped out from behind the wheel, running through the black smoke.

With a tortured crack, a huge trunk had given way an instant before he’d felt a shattering blow followed by utter blackness. And worst of all, the accident hadn’t made a bit of difference to the three men who had burned to death a mile away while Micah saved him from the same fate.

“Hikers, what is your location?” Jake asked now, his voice shaking with his need to have things end differently this time around. But no matter how many times he repeated his transmission, it was clear the speaker couldn’t hear him.

The hikers were cut off from help. And with no way to contact the authorities or guide them to a place of safety, he could only listen helplessly until the increasingly frantic calls gave way to silence.

A silence overwhelmed by static and the howling of the storm.

Chapter 4

I
f the gushing wind and crashing thunder didn’t do it, Mac was certain that Smash and Goose—and maybe even AK, who’d decided to meet up with them later because of his leg injury—meant to kill him. From the very start, he could now see, they had planned to off him the minute he found the cash, then split his share among themselves.

Only now they meant to force him to kill the witnesses—his children—first, though Smash swore they only meant to use the kids as leverage.

Could that be right? Or was it just another lie, like all the others? Mac could barely think straight, the images of those two babies flashing through his brain like lightning.

They weren’t babies anymore, he knew. In fact, he doubted he would be able to pick them out on a crowded playground, despite the brief glimpse he’d gotten when they had disappeared into the woods. But the brown-eyed boy, at least, was his for certain—his only sure legacy in the world, though he’d never been much of a father to him.

But it wasn’t his fault at all. It had been the medication. He understood that now. The pills were so easy to get and supposedly so harmless that doctors prescribed them to schoolkids by the millions. He’d only meant to use a few to sharpen his attention to detail, to give him an edge against the younger competitors always snapping at his heels, so he could take care of his growing family. At first the drug had worked, but then the young hounds had upped their game, too, so he’d started snorting coke, until his thoughts had raced round and round his mind like those little electric cars he’d had as a boy, the ones that could only go so fast before they flew right off their cheap plastic racetrack. But no matter how he’d fought it, one idea had clung stubbornly: the suspicion that Liane had been plotting his destruction so she could run back to the man her father, that old SOB, had come right out and told him to his face that his daughter should’ve married.

Mac could still picture the way Deke Mason had looked right through him that day as if all his accomplishments, all the money he had made by his own wits, had meant not a damned thing. As if an old man who always smelled of leather, sweat and horseshit had any right to judge the way he treated his own wife.

Fresh resentment boiled up with the certainty that Liane’s father had backed him into this corner. The way Mac saw it, the old man had forced his hand this afternoon just to make him look bad.

But as long as Mac was still a man, he had choices. Especially when it came to the two kids who bore his name.

“You told us you knew these woods,” Smash shouted above the wind, still angry that they’d lost the panicked horses. “So you’d damned well better find those brats fast, before Goose and me decide to cut our losses.”

Just in case he’d missed the point, Goose came up and grabbed him from behind, laying the cold steel of his knife against Mac’s pulsing throat.

* * *

“Liane.”

The voice woke her with a start, her body jerking so hard in response that her head banged against something as cold and unyielding as rock. No, it
was
rock. And the room was black, without the soft, safe glow of the alarm clock.

Because it wasn’t a room, and she wasn’t in her bed at home. She was back with
him,
subject to his insane demands, his violent temper. Her heart kicking into high gear, she swallowed back a cry. When a strangled whimper slipped out, she braced herself for whatever would come next.

“Storm’s over.” The words were quiet. “I thought you’d want to know.”

Not Mac.
Not Mac. Not Mac...
He didn’t have her, wasn’t here.

With that realization her brain slipped back into gear, and awareness struck her like a landslide, bringing the memory of where she was—and why.

No less terrifying than the past, the present chilled her to the marrow. She dragged in a breath of air, thick and tainted with the bitterness of ash.

“Liane?” Jake asked softly. “Are you all right?”

A spasm of coughing gripped her, making it impossible to answer. When he switched on his flashlight, she blinked at the sudden brilliance, then focused on his gaze, the dark eyes that had once upon a time made her feel so safe.
Thank God.

She nodded. “How long have I been sleeping?”

“A few hours, but don’t worry. I’ve been awake. Listening to the weather and trying the radio from time to time.”

Misty stretched and yawned beside her, fanning her tail hopefully. Ignoring the dog, Liane asked, “Did you reach him?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, no, but I did pick up a distress call. Two backpackers, trapped by fire. They were panicking, disoriented, said they’d started off on the trailhead back at Smuggler’s Gulch.”

“That’s a good distance from here.” She wondered by what trick of the airwaves their words could have made it this far.

“After a while they stopped transmitting.”

“Who was it? Did you get a name?”

“No name, and I have no idea. I only wish there was something, anything, I could’ve done.”

Hearing his haunted tone, she asked, “Then you think they’re...?”

“Dead? Probably. And I can’t even contact search and rescue to send them for the bodies.”

She began to tremble, imagining her own family ringed by flame, her children crying for her. Imagining that her best efforts, even with Jake’s help, wouldn’t be enough. Closing her eyes, she struggled to force back the images. But their terrified voices echoed through her mind. Her children’s voices, ringing through a hostile wilderness.

“We don’t know there’s fire in Elk Creek Canyon,” Jake said, giving her hand a lingering squeeze. “But we’re nearly to the ridge already. We need to climb up above the tree line and see what we’re dealing with.”

“Sounds like a good idea.” She coughed again, the sound raspy.

He pulled out a canteen. “Most of my water was on the horse, but here, have some of this.”

“Thanks.” Grateful for his generosity, she drank sparingly, just enough to calm her burning throat. Handing the canteen back, she admitted, “I had everything in my saddlebags. Everything except my stupid cell phone, for all the good it does us.”

Pulling it out, she checked the time. “It’s a little after 4:00 a.m. Sunrise comes at...what would you say, this time of year? Five? Five-thirty?”

“Sun might not make much difference, depending on the smoke.”

“Then we may as well get moving.”

Jake led the way back into the smoky darkness, moving toward the rocky spine that overlooked Elk Creek Canyon.

Liane stared past him, a lump tightening her throat. “Kenzie will need her inhaler. This bad air’s going to play hell with her asthma.”

“Your dad’s got her medication, right?”

She nodded. “If he—yes, he has it.”

“Then he’ll take care of her,” Jake assured her.

As they continued walking, she held on to the certainty in his voice, using it to tamp out the embers of panic whenever they threatened to ignite. For two years, even after her ex-husband’s arrest and conviction, she had taken medication to help her with anxiety. Since coming home, she’d quietly weaned herself off the pills, preferring to rely on long walks and focused breathing to keep her fear in check, training that stood her in good stead now.

She tried to concentrate on the quiet rhythm of their footsteps, on the ebb and flow of oxygen as she filled and emptied her lungs. Still, her eyes pooled with tears, anxiety gnawing at her ability to function.

After they’d been hiking uphill for a few minutes, he pulled something from his pocket and tore into its wrapper. “Here, try one of these. They’re not greatest tasting, but they’ll give you energy.”

“I’m not hungry.” Terrified of what they might see when they looked down into the canyon, she couldn’t think of food.

“You need to eat.” He pushed one into her hand. “Whether we end up hiking back out or moving forward, we’ll be burning tons of calories. And I’m in no mood to carry you when your blood sugar crashes.”

She sighed but didn’t argue. “Here I thought you firefighters lived for that sort of thing.”

“And here I thought you’d lost your sense of humor,” he said dryly.

She forced herself to smile. “Just goes to show how little you really know me. The grown-up me, I mean.”

Dutifully, she bit off a hunk of the energy bar. It tasted a little like honeyed, freeze-dried sawdust, but she forced herself to keep chewing anyway.

“I might get the chance to know you better,” Jake told her, “if you wouldn’t run for the house every time you catch sight of me.”

“I don’t run from you.”

“Come on, Liane. You want to kid yourself? Fine, but I’m not buying it for a minute. After the hundredth time, it gets to be painfully obvious that a person’s pretending not to see you and then scurrying for cover.”

“I wave back when you wave at me.” She hated how defensive she sounded, but she kept remembering the long hours they’d once spent talking about their dreams and ambitions...and how every one of his had revolved around creating the family he lacked. As a teenager with plans of her own, his intensity had scared her. Considering all she’d been through, the memory of that intensity had frightened her even more when she’d come home. “And I know we’ve spoken.”

“When you absolutely can’t avoid it.”

“I’ve sent cookies, brownies, even pies, and cards from the children while you were still in rehab.”

“And I’ve appreciated all of them. But I can’t help wondering, why is it I have to resort to leaving thank-you notes when we live less than a hundred yards apart?”

“I—I’m a busy person. I work full-time, have two kids—”

“Never mind,” he told her. “You don’t have to make excuses. I just wanted to see if I could figure out if there was something I’d said or done to—”

“Not lately,” she blurted, hating the reminder of her very worst decisions, along with everything that her mistakes had cost her. But even so, those same choices had given her the children she treasured, children whose existence was worth any price.

“What?” he asked. “Come on, Liane. Just tell me. Tell me what I’ve done to—”

“You’re imagining things,” she insisted, wincing at her own curtness. But better he should think her rude than force her to explain the memories triggered by his size, his build and that deep, masculine voice that scared her even though he, like those thankfully few male hotel guests who elicited the same reaction, had never done a thing to warrant her fear, not even for a moment. She hated feeling like a frightened mouse instead of the calm, competent professional she usually managed to portray at work, but she had no idea what to do other than avoid what the counselor called her “trigger points.”

Someone should have told that to her father before he’d gone and invited Jake, the man he’d always thought she should have married, to move in. A good man of her own age, a local man who would never hurt her. An inescapable reminder that, even at thirty, she couldn’t yet be trusted to make her own choices. Worried as she was about her father, that slap in the face still made her furious.

Her appetite gone, she fed the last half of the energy bar to Misty when Jake wasn’t looking.

He grew quiet as he moved from one flattened boulder to the next, focusing on his footing to scale a natural formation that looked almost like a staircase built by giants. The elevation had her breathing so hard that she still managed to fall behind, despite his cautious progress.

He had pulled substantially ahead when a smaller rock shifted beneath his prosthetic foot. He lost his balance, then cursed as he went down on hands and knees.

“You okay there?” she asked.

But he was staring to his left, through a gap between the squared shoulders of two huge rocks. “Wait!” he warned sharply. “Don’t come any closer.”

“What is it?” she asked, unable to see from where she was.

Misty bounded up the rocks to reach Jake. At first the dog tried to lick him, evidently considering it her duty to encourage him back up, before she abruptly flattened herself to the rocks, cowering and whining.

“What’s there?” she asked, thinking of bears and snakes and bobcats. “What is it, Jake?”

He raised a palm, indicating that she should keep back. “It’s—oh, God, no. It’s—” For all his earlier calm, his voice was shaking now, hollowed out by horror. “You don’t—Liane, you don’t need to see this.”

More than his words, his tone launched her into motion. Climbing to his level, she came up behind where he remained on hands and knees, only now he was leaning forward, reaching toward something between the boulders.

Her every heartbeat crashed like thunder. Her lungs seized even before she consciously registered the pair of khaki cargo pants, the bent knee and the booted foot.

Jake’s back and Misty’s bulk blocked the rest, but still, she knew that she was looking at the crumpled form of a man. A man half-hidden by the rocks he’d fallen down between. A man wearing the same clothing, the same style and brand of boot, as her...

But that was impossible. It couldn’t be the father who’d served as her bedrock, her lodestone. The father who’d invited his broken daughter and two scared kids to come home after the trial was over, brought them home and coaxed them patiently back to life.

“Dad!” she shrieked, tears stinging as she tried to push into the narrow space beside Jake. “Out of the way, Misty!”

She shoved the dog aside and saw red, the red of blood covering the torn neck and soaking through his shirt. Her dad’s plaid shirt, one of his favorites.

“No,” Jake warned, taking her by the shoulders and turning her away. “I told you to stay back. He wouldn’t want you seeing him like this.”

“But we have to help him,” she cried. “Move! You have to let me see.”

With Misty pacing and crying piteously behind them, Jake shook his head. “I’m sorry, Liane. I’m so sorry. But your dad—your father’s gone.”

At his confirmation of her fears, Liane began to sob. Half for what she’d seen already and half for what she hadn’t. Because as frantically as she looked around, she found no sign of her children. No indication of whether whatever wild beast had done this to her father had dragged them off, as well. Or had the two of them, both unfamiliar with the area, run blindly on their panicked mounts? Or were her babies trapped or lost in some remote corner of the canyon?