Rapid Fire (5 page)

Directly
at Maya and the little girl.

Chapter
Three

Heart
pounding a panicked rhythm in her ears, Maya bolted across the street, toward
the snack bar, which had an ice cream booth on the flat-topped roof. She
tightened her grip on Hannah and fixed her eyes on the stairs leading up to the
snack area. Up. If she could just get up, she would be—

A heavy,
hairy weight slammed into her from behind, driving her to her knees. Hooves
struck her in the side and she curled her body around Hannah in a futile effort
to protect the girl.

Then the
pain and the blows were gone. Too quick, Maya thought. That couldn’t have been
the whole herd.

It
wasn’t, she realized moments later when she uncurled and looked around. She’d
been struck by the offshoot group, the dozen animals who had burst through the
livery after her. They had turned and galloped down Main Street.

The
ground shook as the main herd bore down on her, no more than a city block away.
The noise increased by the moment, hoofbeats overlaid with snorts and bellows
and the sound of gunfire.

Maya saw
white-rimmed eyes, red-flared nostrils and pounding, pulverizing hooves coming
closer. Too close.

Knowing
she was too late, that there was no way she was going to make it, Maya dragged
herself to her feet, hauled the girl onto her hip and took two stumbling steps
toward the stairs, toward safety. Her knee sang with pain. Her legs folded
beneath her—

And
strong arms grabbed her, lifted her and half carried her across the road as the
air thickened with dust and fear.

Rough
hands shoved her toward the stairs and a man’s voice shouted, “Climb, damn it!”

Disbelieving,
heart pounding, Maya climbed, aware of being crowded, being hustled, being
shielded as her feet hit the stairs. She stumbled, needing both arms to hold
the girl, and felt strong hands grab her waist and boost her upwards.

The
leading edge of the stampede hit them. A big male bison demolished the lower
stairs, blasting through the two-by-four construction as though it was made of
matchsticks.

With
nothing holding them off the ground, the upper stairs sagged and began to fall.

“Go!”
Maya’s rescuer shouted. He nearly threw her up over the edge, onto the low roof
of the building. Wood splintered and Maya screamed as the stairs peeled away
from the building to fall into the sea of hairy bodies below.

Carrying
the man with them.

She
pulled Hannah’s arms from around her neck, set the girl on a safe spot well
back from the edge and yelled, “Don’t move!” Then she scrambled back to the
place where the stairs had been, lay flat on her belly and poked her head over
the precipice.

She saw a
hand. A forearm. The top of a man’s head. Her rescuer was clinging to the edge
of the building as the herd passed below in a deadly thunder of hooves and
horns.

“Hang
on!” Maya lunged forward and grabbed his arms, his shirt, anything she could
get hold of to help him up and over.

His
muscles were hard beneath her hands, his body powerful as he dragged himself over
the edge and flopped down beside her, breathing heavily, one forearm thrown
across his eyes.

“You
okay?” he asked, voice ragged.

She took
stock. Her body sang with the ache of bruises but not breaks, and when she
glanced at Hannah, she saw that the girl was crying softly but appeared
otherwise unhurt.

As the
rumble of the stampede faded and human shouts and whistles took over, Maya
cleared her throat of the hot, choking dust and the knowledge that without his
help, she would have died. She swallowed hard and said, “We’re okay. I can’t
thank you enough…” She trailed off, wanting a name for the stranger.

“Don’t
thank me. Let’s just say this makes us even, okay?” He dragged his arm off his
face, sat up and turned toward her.

Without
the sunglasses, his eyes were two different shades of hazel, one so light as to
border on amber, the other darkening to green, giving his face a skewness that
should have been lopsided but instead was arresting. Interesting.

Familiar.

“Thorne!”
she gasped, voice sharp with shock and memory.

For an
instant, she was back in the High Top Bluff Police Academy. She’d seen him
across the cafeteria, where he’d stood out from the others because he’d kept
his long, sandy hair tied back in a ponytail, and wore a burnished gold, almost
auburn five o’clock shadow at ten in the morning. He’d carried a casual air
that was part poet, part surfer dude, and was the center of a growing throng.
Maya later learned that people flocked to him, wanting to be included in the
friendly, whiskey-laced charm that hid deeper things.

Darker
things.

A murmur
had run through the room, quick snatches of whispered rumor. He was out in the
field…undercover with Mason Falk’s mountain men…captured…tortured…the drugs
made him a little nuts…he’s teaching psych while he heals…

Uncomfortable
with the sudden buzz, with the intimacy of knowing things about a complete
stranger, Maya had gathered her things to leave, but when she passed the
growing group, she’d glanced over at the man and found him watching her, found
him nearer than she’d expected.

She had
paused a moment, struck by the strangeness of his eyes, by the pull of him, by
the click of recognition. No, she had never met him before, but she’d
immediately recognized something about him. Something inside him, something
deeper than the faint tang of alcohol that laced the air between them, though
that, too, was a connection.

With the
bruises of her marriage still fresh on her soul, Maya had pushed past the man,
and had hidden in the back of his criminal psych class. He’d taught with an
uncomfortable sort of detachment, as though he didn’t want to be there,
couldn’t be anywhere else. More whispers had buzzed about him, rumors that he’d
once identified a murderer by touching the victim’s hand, that he had visions.

That he
drank to keep the visions away.

Maya had
stayed away from him, wary of the reputation and the alcohol, but every now and
then, when they had come face to face in the halls, or on the jog paths, or in
the cafeteria, he would look at her, and those strange, knowing eyes would
linger in her mind for days.

That had
been the only contact between them, the only connection until that one stupid,
stupid night, when Maya had given in to the temptation.

As much
as she’d told herself, then and now, that it was her fault more than his, that
mistakes happened, that sometimes even the strongest person stumbled off the
path, she’d lost something that night, something more than the six charms she’d
plucked off her necklace the next morning, and flushed down the toilet.

She’d
lost a piece of herself.

She felt
the same strength drain from her as quickly as the blood drained from her face
when she saw those eyes, when his features realigned themselves into those of
the man she had known. His beard was gone and his hair cut short, and he was
leaner now, fitter.

But he
was still Thorne.

She
thought she caught a whiff of alcohol on the air between them, though that
could have been a scent memory, kicked up by the shock of seeing him again, the
shock of the bison stampede that had nearly killed her.

His face
creased into a wry smile. “We don’t need to pretend this is a happy reunion. We
don’t need to rehash why you took off before I even woke up that morning, and
why you transferred all the way out of the academy to avoid me afterward.
Frankly, I don’t think I care anymore. Just suffice it to say I owed you a good
deed. Now we’re even. Okay?”

He rose
gracefully to his feet and extended a hand to her, though she wasn’t sure
whether he intended the gesture as a peace offering or a challenge.

Hell, she
wasn’t even sure which was appropriate.

What
would he do if she admitted she didn’t remember anything about that night? That
everything after finding the dead battery on her car was a blur, culminating in
her waking up the next morning in his bed, with his arm thrown across her waist
and his breath in her ear?

“Fine.”
She stood on her own, strangely reluctant to touch him when her fingers still
buzzed with the feel of his body as she’d helped pull him to safety. “We’re
even.”

But her
stomach twisted at the look in his eyes, which implied an uncomfortable
intimacy. For years she’d tried to block the memory of her single ignominious
one-night stand, tried to tell herself that nothing had happened, that he’d
been gentleman enough not to take advantage. His expression now told her she’d
been lying to herself about him, about them.

They’d
gotten drunk, they’d had sex, and then she’d run away.

Emotions
she’d fought off five years earlier rose up to swamp her, to slap at her with
feelings of failure, of humiliation, of disappointment—not with him, but with
herself.

She drew
breath to say something breezy, something that belied the turmoil within, but
before she could speak, a small voice said, “I want my mommy.”

Startled back
to the moment, to the case, Maya looked over at Hannah, who sat nearby with
tears drying on her face.

Thorne
crouched down near the girl. “And who is this?”

“She’s
Hannah,” Maya answered. She bent down, picked up the girl—thankful that she was
small for her age—and balanced the child on her hip, needing the contact
perhaps more than Hannah did. “And she’ll need to spend some time with Alissa.”

Thorne’s
strange eyes sharpened. “Why?”

Maya took
a breath and tried to figure out how to summarize the situation without
upsetting the traumatized girl further. “Let’s just say she wasn’t in the
petting zoo by accident. She had help getting there, and my guess is that she
was intended to draw more cops into the park before the stampede.” She paused
and fussed with Hannah’s shirt so she wouldn’t have to look at Thorne. “I
assume you’re on loan for the Master—” She broke off as the obvious conclusion
clicked in her brain.

Oh, hell.

She spun
and glared at him, as anger, frustration and a strange sort of betrayal flooded
her system. “Tell me you’re not my replacement.”

BUT HE
DIDN’T TELL HER that. He couldn’t. Instead, Thorne looked away, down to where a
half dozen mounted ranch hands were driving the exhausted bison into a far
pasture, while cops crawled over a section of downed fence, no doubt looking
for clues that the stampede had been rigged.

When he
spoke, his voice was low. “It’s only a temporary thing.”

She
narrowed her eyes, making him wonder what she saw in him, what she was
thinking. But she merely said, “Seriously? You’re just here to fill in until
Internal Affairs clears me to get my badge back?”

“I’m here
to help bring down the bastard who set you up today,” Thorne said. He hadn’t
answered her question, but the chief had urged him to keep quiet about the
possibility of taking over the psych specialist’s role in the Bear Claw
Forensics Department. The evasion burned, letting him know that even though
he’d saved her life, he still owed her.