Run Wild (16 page)

“Let’s get out of here.”

She straightened and looked around the cabin. “What about the sleeping bag and clothes over there?” she asked.

“Leave them. I have a few items in the truck we’re going to leave here as well.”

Her eyes lit up when she looked at him. “Spy toys?”

“Spy toys?” he repeated.

She grinned and looked away. “That’s what I call them.” She shrugged. “Surveillance equipment. It’s pretty much my favorite part of the job. There is some really cool stuff out there on the market.”

He gathered the evidence bags while Natasha put the wall back together. When she was done he could hardly tell where the compartment was. Then leading them out to the truck, he placed the bags in a small tote he kept in the back of the Suburban and opened a side hatch.

“Well, I admit these aren’t my favorite part of the job,” he said, pulling out a small leather black box.

Natasha almost grabbed it out of his hands. “What do you have?”

“Just some listening devices.”

She’d already opened the box and was fishing through the unwrapped bugs he’d purchased almost a year ago but never used.

“Have you formatted them to your computer yet?” she asked.

“Huh?”

Instead of answering, she held the listening devices in her hand but stared ahead. “You feel like someone is watching us?” she whispered.

He’d been attentive to the darkness around them every time he’d left the cabin and while moving around inside it. He hadn’t seen, or heard, anyone.

“He’s come back,” she whispered. “He’s watching us.”

“Fascinating that he’d come back,” Trent also whispered. “Must be something in that cabin worth dying for.”

“Everything we found looked old and forgotten. Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere else to go,” she suggested, her eyes wide as she focused on his face.

Trent saw clouds covering her pretty tan eyes. She looked haunted, confused, and willing to go to any means to fix things.

“Let’s get in the truck.” Before she could answer, Trent took her arm and turned her, then guided her to the passenger door, which he opened for her. “We’ll talk inside,” he added under his breath when she looked at him like she’d protest.

The moment he closed his driver’s side door, Natasha started speaking. She was leaning forward, long black strands of hair already fallen free and preventing his ability to see her face. The black leather box with his unused listening devices he’d bought over a year ago with grant money the county had qualified for was on her lap, and she fingered it delicately, stroking the leather with her thumbs and index finger.

“I don’t know if that is my father out there or not,” she mumbled.

“I know.”

“I know you have to go on the assumption that he is George King.” She sounded resolved and defeated.

More than anything Trent wanted to pull her hair back, see her pained expression. He knew he’d see ghosts she’d kept hidden possibly most of her life. Maybe knowing her father was a criminal yet keeping that knowledge stuffed in some forgotten dark corner had allowed her to believe he was good, like the uncle who might have been more of a father to her than her biological father. She didn’t want Trent to see the pain she was enduring any more than she wanted to feel it.

“We’re supposed to ride on knowledge that all men are innocent until proven guilty,” she continued, tracing invisible lines over the top of the box. “And you haven’t told me all of your insurmountable evidence that points toward my father being a killer, but the man out in those hills…” She paused, blew out a loud, exhausted breath, and straightened, staring straight ahead.

There wasn’t a thing Trent could fault about Natasha. If she had a boyfriend, or several men, down in L.A., she’d made no show of calling anyone or sending calls to voice mail. Natasha was one of a kind, a woman unlike any he’d ever met before. It created a tightening in his heart, spreading through his chest, just staring at her and acknowledging the depths of her complicated nature. The more time he spent with her, the more he wanted to know her.

She patted the box in her lap. “These have to be formatted on your computer, or a laptop,” she said, changing the subject. And when she glanced at him her expression revealed none of the pain she had to be experiencing. “It isn’t hard to do and only takes a few minutes. I don’t suppose you have a laptop here in the truck?”

He shook his head, skeptical that doing anything with those listening devices involving a computer would be simple or only take a few minutes. He should have known the advertising was misleading when it said the devices were simple and could be installed with one simple step.

Natasha grinned, grabbing his attention.

“Old school,” she grumbled, rolling her eyes. “You have no idea how much easier your job could be if you kept a laptop at your fingertips.”

He returned her grin. “You’re full of shit, King,” he informed her, then nodded at the box. “Let me install those in the cabin. We’ll get out of here and go check on your truck.”

“Working together isn’t going to last too long if you don’t believe me.” Her eyes flashed with that glow that made her entire expression flush with a vibrancy he’d love to untap and explore. Natasha nodded at the phone on his belt. “Call KFA right now and ask them about my computer skills. I know what I’m talking about.”

“I’m sure you do.” he said slowly. “It would be smarter to plant them now and you can show me all your formatting skills once we’re back at my place.”

She narrowed her gaze on him at the mention of going to his place. “Okay. We’ll do it your way. But I’m planting them in the cabin. If that is my father out there, and I am saying ‘if,’ he won’t hurt me.”

“No way,” Trent said, reaching for the box. “He’s already shot at you once.”

Natasha didn’t try to stop him from taking it. “Trent,” she said, saying his name with a soft, alluring tone. “My father is possibly a better shot than my uncle. Always has been. My grandfather was a hunter and believed his boys should know how to use a gun as well as they could use a pencil or pen.”

“You aren’t going to convince me he missed you, or me, on purpose. The man didn’t have to shoot. He could have just kept running.”

When she stared at him and didn’t continue arguing, Trent slipped his hand out of his glove and cupped her cheek. In spite of how red her cheeks were, her skin was soft and warm. He rubbed his fingertips over her cheekbone.

“My father believed the same thing, darling,” he whispered, unable to keep his voice from sounding raspier than it had before. The urge to kiss her damn near overwhelmed him. “I’m one hell of a shot and you can call anyone in Weaverville and ask them right now if you don’t believe me.”

When she smiled, he swore the inside of his truck got a hell of a lot warmer. Trent stared into her incredibly unique eyes and the silence grew between them. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Natasha could piss him off, pick a fight with him, and challenge him in ways that if any other woman tried, he would never tolerate. Maybe once he fucked her, his strong attraction toward her would subside. He hoped so. Trent had no desire to get all wrapped up in any woman. He had the biggest case of his life to solve and wished Natasha weren’t distracting him so much.

“Now stay here. And I mean it this time.” Even as he stepped out of his truck, he worried sleeping with Natasha wouldn’t take his mind off her. He was fooling himself thinking otherwise, but whatever it took to work this case.

Trent held the bugs in his hand as he turned an eagle eye on his surroundings and made himself focus on the night instead of the beautiful woman in his truck. The icy chill in the night air helped clear his head. It was imperative he remain focused. If King wasn’t staying at this cabin, Trent needed to face the possibility he might have a second case on his hands.

He didn’t have several deputies, or dogs, he could scour these hills with. Nor did he use computers. It didn’t bother him being called old school. He would study everything they’d bagged and labeled from inside the cabin. Then if he learned anything substantial after planting these bugs, he would take it from there. If a manhunt came into play it wouldn’t be difficult to round up volunteers to help lure whoever was out here in.

He walked across the uneven ground to the old, dilapidated cabin with the flashlight weighing down in his coat pocket. His gun hand was free and his fingers twitched, ready to pull his forty-five. More than likely whoever had set up camp in this cabin would steer clear of it for awhile.

Trent entered the cabin and set the black box on the unstable-looking table in the middle of the room. He pulled his small notepad out of his pocket and jotted down a quick note, ripped it from the pad, and left it on the table. Then grabbing the black box he headed back to the Suburban.

He might be foolish in buying into the haunted look he’d seen on Natasha’s face. The evidence against George King was pretty strong. But Trent was going to give Natasha this one chance. So he’d written:
Don’t hurt your daughter. She’s here for you.

*   *   *

Trent’s home was surprisingly cozy, even with its strong masculine edge. Natasha got the impression a woman hadn’t put her mark on this place in a long time, if ever.

She’d set up shop with her laptop at his couch. Trent had disappeared upstairs after building a fire, which she now stared at instead of doing the work online she’d planned on doing. It was nice being alone to regroup, get a handle on her senses, but being in Trent’s home was making it more difficult than if she’d been alone in a motel room somewhere. Or at least that’s what she told herself as she was continually aware of every creak in his home as Trent moved around upstairs.

“It’s just a bad case of lust,” she mumbled, returning her attention to her laptop and trying to get her eyes to focus. Now wasn’t the time to fall for a guy. She managed a chuckle. Especially a guy who was a good day’s drive away from where she lived.

“What’s funny?” Trent asked.

Natasha started and grabbed her laptop to keep it from sliding off her legs. She hadn’t noticed him standing in the doorway leading from his hall into the living room.

“I was just thinking about the new girl we hired at the office not too long ago,” she lied.

He nodded and started toward her. “The place going to be in shambles when you get back?”

Natasha wouldn’t be surprised if Patty rearranged the entire office to her liking while she was gone. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Your truck will be ready in the morning,” he told her, stopping at the edge of the coffee table and tilting his head as he stared at her laptop. “What are you doing?”

She’d been doing a lot of things in the hour or so she’d been sitting in his living room, but mostly being acutely aware of how everything around her breathed of Trent Oakley. Whether she’d leaned back on the comfortable couch or sat forward, stood and stared out the large window behind the couch or paced the length of the room, feeling the braided oblong carpet under her bare feet, or the smooth, cool hardwood floor around it, every sensation she’d experienced brought Trent front and center in her thoughts.

“Well, I haven’t been formatting your listening devices,” she said, leaning back and making a face. “Bring me the box. I need their serial numbers and the brand name. I don’t remember it.”

“Okay,” he said slowly but didn’t make a move to go get the box. “What else have you been doing?” he pressed, starting around the coffee table to see her laptop.

“I’ve been checking out the serial numbers on these bills.” Even going over the items they’d found at the cabin made her think of Trent, when they should have been guiding her thoughts around what the hell they were doing in the cabin and, more so, whoever put them there.

Trent sat on the couch next to her, resting his arm on the back of it and moving in close enough to see her screen. “Learn anything?” he asked.

His leg pressed against hers. Her insides quickened and instantly she was wet. She was being ridiculous. They were both adults. He was a sheriff and she had plenty of law enforcement training. She’d done research to help find someone or solve a mystery plenty of times. Trent wasn’t the first good-looking man she’d worked with before. She didn’t remember it ever being this difficult to focus on work when any other man with strong sex appeal had sat next to her.

“Actually, yes.” At least her fingers didn’t tremble when she pointed at her screen. “This site allows you to see circulation patterns of bills. It’s a highly regulated site, but my uncle has access to it. Therefore, so I do, since I work for him,” she explained, and grinned, hoping when she looked at him her expression was playful, yet relaxed, and that she looked indifferent to how close he sat. Because she was sure that was how she looked whenever she explained something to any of the men who came into the office back home. Although at the moment, even a couple of the men who came to mind, who occasionally worked with her uncle, didn’t hold a flame in the good looks department compared to Trent.

He nodded, those green eyes of his searching her face for a moment before returning his attention to her screen. “So what did you find?”

He was all business. It sucked. She sighed loudly and inched away from him slightly when she leaned back on the couch. “Nothing,” she told him.