Passion to Protect (5 page)

The nightmare image replayed itself, her vision of her children surrounded by flames and crying for her. Her son and daughter dying, frightened and alone.

She screamed her children’s names, and when no answer came, her calls morphed into keening, like a wounded animal’s cries. Grief and terror mingling and reverberating from the rock.

“Liane, please.” Rising, Jake reached for her and pulled her into his strong arms. Pulled her close against him. “Please, don’t...”

Unable to bear being touched, she struggled free. “Don’t tell me what to do. What to feel. He’s—he’s my father. They’re my children.”

“That’s right. And now your kids are going to need you to find them. Your dad—your dad would want you to—” His voice broke, but he quickly pulled himself together. “You know damned well he’d tell you to pull up your bootstraps and get yourself in check. He’d kick your rear if he had to—just the way he did mine after last year’s fire—and remind you to attend to what needs to be done.”

She stared at him, allowing his words to filter past her shock. Her father was gone. With his body lying so close, there was no way to deny it. But Jake was right about what her dad would say, what he’d said to her after the shooting.

Cody and Kenzie needed her, more right now than ever. And without their grandfather to rely on, they had no one else. No one except her and the help Jake Whittaker had offered. It was little enough to stand against a wild animal’s hunger and an even more dangerous forest fire.

“We’ll find them,” she vowed. “We’ll bring them home alive.”

Because she would go mad if she considered any other possibility.

* * *

Despite his exhaustion, Cody jerked awake, heart pounding, at the sound of Kenzie’s coughing. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep, or how late it had been when he and his sister had sunk down into a hollow thick with scratchy pine needles just to rest a minute. Huddling together for warmth, they’d dropped off almost instantly.

Now Kenzie was wheezing and needed her inhaler. But the first aid kit was packed on Grandpa’s mule, and he had broken free with both the horses and run off, after...

Blinking back tears, Cody started coughing, too, the smoke nearly choking him. Smoke that had gotten so much thicker while they’d been sleeping.

And smoke meant a fire somewhere. He couldn’t see one anywhere around them, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t find them if they didn’t move.

“C’mon, Kenzie, wake up,” he urged, reminding himself that he was the big brother, so it was up to him to take care of her, to get his little sister home and back to their mom. “We’ve gotta go. We have to hurry.”

She murmured, rolling away, and he heard her burrowing deeper into the dry needles. That was one thing about Kenzie. She could make a nest and conk out absolutely anywhere.

“Get up,” he ordered, trying to sound as stern as Grandpa when they didn’t wake up for school after the first two times they’d been called.

At the thought of Grandpa—of the moment he had taken his eyes off the bad man and shouted
“Run!”
—Cody’s stomach pitched, and he thought he might throw up.

But he didn’t, couldn’t, just like he couldn’t let himself cry. Because crying would make his eyes sore and his throat hurt, but it wouldn’t do a thing to help them.

Still, he couldn’t stop remembering, couldn’t help thinking of what he’d glimpsed or how he’d grabbed Kenzie by the hand and dragged her into the thickest woods, sticking his palm over her mouth to keep her from screaming....

To keep
him
from finding them. From taking them away and maybe hurting
them,
too, because he’d sounded so mad when they hadn’t answered his yells.

Scary mad, just like Cody remembered from two years ago, even if Kenzie had been too little to know what he was like.

Wiping his hot eyes with his sleeve, Cody gave his sister a shake. “Come on, Kenz. You’ve gotta move now, or you’ll be late and we’ll both be in trouble.”

“Wanna sleep!” she burst out. “Leave me ’lone, Cody. It’s still dark.”

“It’s the smoke,” Cody said. “It’ll make your asthma real bad if we stay here. And Grandpa said to get home, to find Mom and tell her what happened.”

Kenzie jerked her skinny body upright, her short sparkle-polished nails digging in as she clung to him. She hiccupped a little, the way she always did when she cried, and her breathing came in noisy little gasps.

“Cody, we hafta go back and find Grandpa so he can take us home on Buttercup and Arrow.”

“I don’t know where they are,” he said, wishing so hard that they still had the fat and fuzzy palomino or Arrow, his favorite. Or even Grandpa’s giant mule, but there had been no time to do anything but run and run, then crawl beneath the low branches of a laurel and make themselves as small as two mice, wishing that Grandpa would come and find them. But they were alone, which meant he was in charge. Which meant he had to make Kenzie listen, whether she wanted to or not. “We’re going to have to walk.”

“How far?”

“Not too far,” he lied.

“No. I want Mommy,” she whined, then started coughing again.

“If you come with me, I’ll take you to her.”

“But we’re lost. How will you find her?”

“I just will,” he swore. “You’ll see. And then she’ll tell Mr. Jake to get his hotshot friends to go help Grandpa.”

“Buttercup, too?”

“All the horses,” he said, and it seemed to calm her down a little.

Peeling his sister off him, Cody felt around for the fat stick he’d picked up yesterday. A walking stick, like Grandpa might use. Then he took his sister by the hand and started moving forward blindly.

Listening to her wheezing grow worse with every step.

* * *

Jake sucked in a breath through clenched teeth and dragged his gaze from Liane’s father. There was nothing he could do for Deke. Nothing beyond getting Liane’s family—the family the older man had undoubtedly defended to his last breath—back to safety.

“We have to go,” Liane said. Clearly in shock, she slipped off the red jacket she was wearing, her movements stiff and jerky as she thrust it toward him.

“Cover him with this, please,” she said. “Cover up his face.”

Jake shook his head. “You’ll need it. It’s still chilly. And there could be burning cinders, too.”

“I can’t—we can’t just leave him out here like this. What if it comes back, whatever did this to him? What if it decides to—”

He laid a hand on her arm. “A jacket wouldn’t stop an animal, but the lack of one could stop you.”

As she peered down toward the body, Jake shifted to block her view. He didn’t want her seeing Deke’s face, didn’t want her to remember the way death had caught him, midscream, terror written in his blue eyes.

It must have been a bear, possibly startled during feeding or separated from its young, that tore into his throat. But try as he might, Jake couldn’t remember any other cases of the area’s black bears actually killing anyone, and there hadn’t been a grizzly seen around here in decades. Maybe a mountain lion, then, one that had set its sights on Deke’s mount, but those attacks were incredibly rare, too, and other than the fatal neck wound, he’d seen no other bite or claw marks.

Chills shot up his neck as he considered the idea that whatever had killed Deke was no animal but instead some depraved individual who had used the isolation of the mountains as cover for dark deeds. Because aside from some random lunatic, who would want to kill Deke Mason? Or could Cody and Kenzie have been the real targets, with their grandfather nothing but an obstacle to be disposed of?

The longer Jake thought about the possibility of a child predator, the sicker he felt. Now that he’d allowed himself to consider the chance that the attacker had been human, he was pretty sure that either a blade or a bullet could have caused the wound to Deke’s throat. And he and Liane had come out here without a gun.

“Let’s go,” he said grimly. “We’re almost to the top, but first, put on your jacket.”

He waited, prepared to offer his own jacket to cover Deke’s face if she balked. Instead, after one last glance in the direction of her father, she said, “C’mon, Misty,” slipped on the jacket and started walking, her shoulders shaking with her quiet sobs.

As she turned away, a practical thought cut through Jake’s shock, prompting him to squat down to check his old friend’s pockets in the hope that he might have been carrying Kenzie’s inhaler. Finding nothing—not even a wallet—he caught up to Liane and reached for her again, as much because he needed to receive comfort as to offer it.

She didn’t pull away when he put his arm around her.

Liane paused, looking behind them. “Misty,
come
.”

Whining in agitation, the dog swung her attention back and forth between Liane and the man she’d worked with, lived with and followed nearly everywhere since she’d been a pup. With her tail tucked between her legs and her head lowered, she finally made the decision to obey.

The hike was steeper and longer than Jake had thought, so by the time they reached the ridge a leaden smudge had lightened the eastern horizon. But the brightest illumination they saw lay to the west, where a hellish orange flickered, reflecting off the low gray bellies of thick banks of smoke.

Elk Creek Canyon was ablaze in half a dozen places, with thousands of towering trees going up like matchsticks. Jake knew that before help could arrive the fires would unite, then run rampant, destroying the forest and the thick carpeting of branches and leaf litter, and blackening every rock.

A part of the life cycle of this land, such purges were considered vital to the forest’s health, especially after a long drought. But priorities changed when they put human life—particularly the lives of a pair of children—at risk.

Letting go of him, Liane cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Kenzie! Cody! Can you hear me?”

When she paused, her own voice echoed back. But there was another sound, as well, a breeze rattling through dry foliage and blowing toward them. Hot and thick with ash, it might have been a breath straight out of Hell.

“Cody! Kenzie!” Jake yelled, his deep voice rolling like thunder. Neither of the children answered.

“Try your phone,” he told Liane, hoping that with the higher elevation they might be able to get a signal and make contact with the authorities. “I’ll try mine, too, and the radio.”

Pulling the phone out of his pocket, he winced when he saw that the battery had died. The radio was still working, if anyone was close enough to pick up his signal.

He tried channel after channel, broadcasting their names and approximate location, along with a request that any listener call for emergency assistance. For a few minutes he thought someone might be attempting to respond, but then he realized he was hearing one side of a conversation regarding another search and rescue operation on the north slope of Bear Mountain.

“Jake,” Liane said, “I couldn’t get a call through, but I sent a text to my boss.”

“You reached Em?” Jake had known the lodge owner for years, had even dated the tall blonde a couple of times before he’d figured out that she was a firefighter groupie, a bored rich woman intent on sleeping her way through the ranks. Though for years his relationships with women had been no better, he had finally come to a point when the futility of that approach had put him off.

But as shallow as Emma was when it came to relationships, he was confident she would act on Liane’s message if she received it.

Liane nodded. “She texted back, said she’s calling the sheriff right now so he can send help. I gave her our location and told her the kids are out here somewhere.”

“That’s great,” he said, and he meant it. But as he looked back toward the fires, he was disturbed to see how much closer the nearest blaze was. Since fire always traveled faster uphill, it would only pick up speed as it moved toward them. “But the bad news is, we can’t wait around for help to get here or we’ll be overtaken. We’re safest heading back down the way we came.”

She turned a panicked look back to the forested canyon below them. “What if my kids are down in there, Jake? How can I—they’ll be burned alive.”

He knew she was right. If they were still alive, those two small children—the adorable kids he’d grown so attached to—would almost certainly burn, or succumb to smoke and heat. But he had no way of knowing whether they were there at all, much less
where,
much less any way of knowing if they were even still alive.

All he could say for certain was that he and Liane were both still breathing. And that they wouldn’t be for very long if they failed to retreat.

* * *

Sheriff Harry Wallace had spent half his night on the phone, calling in every off-duty deputy, badgering search and rescue to get a copter in the air as soon as possible, and coordinating possible evacuations with the new captain of the local hotshot fire crew.

To no one’s surprise, blazes had sprung up all over the damn place, but crews were being sent to fight only those that threatened human habitations. To make matters worse, the Masons and Jake Whittaker weren’t the only people who’d gone missing. The list included a pair of backpackers who’d chosen the worst time possible to take their first hiking trip into the backcountry.

He was still on the phone, arguing that the Masons needed to be top priority, when Camille burst into his office. Two red splotches, bright as hand slaps, stained her freckled cheeks.

Though he knew she had to be exhausted, her green eyes sparkled with excitement. Dancing from one foot to the other, she couldn’t even contain herself until he finished with his phone call and burst out, “It can’t be him! McCleary’s not here! So none of this was my fault after all.”

“What the devil? No, not you, Jerry, but I’d better go see what this girl’s carrying on about.” Hanging up the phone, he stared at Camille and barked, “Explain yourself.”

“Fred Richards emailed you.”

“He didn’t call?” Harry had been trying half the night to reach the man from the Nevada Department of Corrections who was coordinating the search for Stephen “Mac” McCleary, and Richards had responded with an
email?
Harry loathed computers, which never seemed to do anything he wanted. He especially hated being blown off with some newfangled memo when what he really wanted was an old-fashioned conversation—and an explanation for how an attempted murderer had managed to escape custody with three other felons and elude pursuit for days.