Timber Lake (The Snowy Range Series, #2) (18 page)

Sonny wondered who was sicker—the man who’d done the deed, or himself for failing to find a way to deal with the situation instead of running to Michael for help. What did the warden think of him now?

He muttered, “Whoa, Spot.” The mule’s ears twitched. He was still fighting the bit, shaking his head, but he’d come to a standstill in the creek rather than rolling rocks with his hind legs and throwing both of them off-balance.

Time ticked off in increments of what seemed like hours, although Sonny guessed he’d been waiting for less than ten minutes since Michael had dispatched the badger. The warden would be doing his job, searching the area. He might be on foot, looking for tracks. Or more traps. Sonny had no clue how running a trap line worked—how close together you placed them, how they were secured or concealed, how scents were hidden from animals with keener senses of smell than mere humans.

When he thought about all the potential hazards his warden faced—pits with sharp spikes at the bottom designed to impale, nets to sweep a man off the ground and immobilize him until the enemy could gather him up at his leisure, nooses and trip lines with arrows aimed to maim if not kill—he should have laughed at the idiocy of such musings. His imagination was running amok because he had no other information to go on. There was a solution for that, and it was past time he got off his butt and did something about it.

Muttering, “Fuck this,” Sonny squeezed the mule’s sides and slapped his rump with the flat of his hand. When the mule barged forward out of the stream, Sonny gave him a pat on the neck and said, “Whatever’s happening in there can’t be any worse than what I’m conjuring out of thin air out here.” Saying it out loud steadied his resolve, but it did nothing to alleviate the clawing inside his gut.

There were always worse things. He’d be damned if he’d let Michael Brooks face them alone, even if he was armed to the teeth and had a history of taking care of himself and others.

I shot a man.

What exactly had Michael seen that had driven him to chase down the man responsible for what the warden had discovered? To use the word ‘torture’ did little to convey the actual acts, not that Sonny needed that kind of corroboration. But what worried him now was how Michael was going to handle a sensitive trigger, to use current psychobabble.

If their short history together was any indication, there was suppressed anger and violence always on offer with the warden. What Michael did with it, how he channeled it, wasn’t something Sonny cared to experience without some sort of safety net. There was no way their tenuous friendship with benefits was solid enough to handle that kind of disruption. And his own sappy, one-sided emotional attachment would be the first casualty on that battlefront, the boundaries of which Sonny couldn’t even conceive.

After carefully retracing his steps, Sonny eventually came across Michael’s gelding tied to a low-hanging branch about ten or fifteen yards from where he had discovered the badger. He dismounted and looped the reins around the trunk of a young lodgepole pine, then went in search of the warden who was nowhere in sight.

“Michael? Where are you?” Sonny’s voice barely rose above a whisper. Though he suspected the trapper was still in the vicinity while he was sitting astride his mule in the stream, it was just a guess and not that prickle of fear you got when you think you’re being watched. Now, here in the woods and within a few steps of where the trap had been, it had swapped out to a certainty.

Curious, Sonny approached the dip in the forest floor, looking for signs of the carcass and the ugly metal device. The area had been swept clean of debris, though the blood stains that had seeped into the hard ground were still visible as black ink stains, the graffiti of a violation so profound the waking nightmare he’d witnessed would forever haunt his dreams.

The ring of metal-on-metal drew Sonny down a small ravine. When he rounded a cluster of boulders, he found Michael furiously digging a trench in a marshy area through which a trickle of water lazily made its way toward the larger creek, and eventually the lake. Keeping his distance, Sonny crouched on his heels and waited as the warden finished his task using the small, folding shovel he had stuffed into his saddle bags.

When he’d finished burying the carcass and what looked to be at least three steel traps, he made quick work of covering the trench and placing deadfall over the top of it. It wasn’t until he’d mopped his brow and picked up the rifle from where it lay braced against a stone outcrop that he finally spoke. “I thought I told you to stay put, Dr. Rydell.”

Frantic thoughts raced through Sonny’s head.
I was worried. I wanted to help. I was scared shitless.
Instead he said, “I think we’re being watched.”

Shrugging, Michael climbed the slight incline and brushed past, the movement aggressive enough to force Sonny to lose his balance and teeter on the edge of the incline. He regained his footing, with angry words on the tip of his tongue...
What the hell’s your problem, asshole
... but he swallowed them back and trailed after Michael.

He needed to cut the man some slack. He’d done what Sonny himself couldn’t. He’d humanely put the animal out of his misery. He’d searched for and discovered additional traps and disabled them, then he’d taken responsibility to bury the remains so that it wouldn’t draw unwanted predators to their doorstep.

By the time he got back to where he’d left his mule, the warden was mounted and moving in the direction of the creek, the rifle still braced on his right thigh. He asked, “You finished with setting up your toys, doctor?”

Toys? What the hell? Sonny had been prepared to be contrite and understanding, but now—with that snarky, supercilious tone of voice—the warden set off his own set of triggers, enough so he growled, “Not quite, but I’m pretty sure I can handle setting up my instruments without your help.”

“I wasn’t offering.”

Michael kicked the gelding into a canter and vacated the area, leaving Sonny confused and calling out, “But what about the...” but it was too late. The warden and his temper were on a mission that didn’t include him or his
toys
.

Damn the man.

Disgruntled, Sonny mounted, wondering how it had all gone to hell so quickly. Yesterday, they’d been lovers and friends, today they were strangers with conflicting agendas. He couldn’t recall how it had started. What had he said or done to set Michael off? An hour ago he would have done anything, said anything to make it right.

Now he just wanted to distribute the remaining sensor array, do a quick and dirty calibration, then get the hell away from Timber Lake and the illusions formed in the lake’s mist.

Turning the mule toward his next destination, he replied to Brooks’
I wasn’t offering
comment with, “I wasn’t asking, Brooks.”

He was glad he was alone so no one other than himself could hear the lie...

****

M
ichael tethered Red at the base of the climb. He’d scouted the perimeter of the lake searching for a vantage point from which he could see the lake, including the hills beyond where Dr. Rydell was laboriously constructing his climate stations.

If he was correct—and he had no doubt both his and Rydell’s spidey senses were dead on—then whoever was loitering in the area would also have found a suitable location from which to observe. Michael needed to get high and set up a tripod of rocks to stabilize the rifle scope. He had decent field binoculars but they were back at the camp, and he hadn’t wanted to spare the time to go looking for them.

He could have, maybe even
should
have, gone with the researcher to facilitate the positioning of the devices. Better yet, he should have told the man to get his ass back to camp to pack up his gear and be ready to hit the trail at first light. After what he’d found, prudence dictated they get back to civilization and call in the professionals. He and a civilian were not equipped to deal with another crazy loon getting his rocks off mutilating helpless animals.

A small voice in the back of his mind suggested that if he ever wanted Seamus Rydell as a friend after this cluster fuck their trip had turned into, then he needed to step back and let the man do
his
job. Tit for tat. If that meant he was the doctor’s new guard dog, then so be it.

He found his spot and slowly swept the area, letting his eyes go soft focus to take in the big picture. The details would reveal themselves in due time.

Meanwhile, he forced himself to set aside his worries about Tex, and concentrate on keeping them both alive.

Tex...

The name, and the man, were already carving holes in his chest. He missed him, the rangy nerd with the mop of curly blond hair and leonine eyes that carved pieces of his heart out every time they looked his way.

How can I miss something that isn’t real?

But he did miss it, all of it—even after he recognized it was all his imagination, a fairy tale castle built on shifting sands. And what made matters worse... he’d done the one thing he vowed never to do: reveal his vulnerability. Now he felt more exposed than he ever had in his entire life.

It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, but he had too much pride to simply fold their tent and run back to his metal box in the campground and a life that had been adequate until he’d met Seamus Rydell.

The shadows stretched long across the valley floor. Cramped, cold and hungry, Michael sighed with relief as he saw the mule picking his way downstream in the direction of their camp. They were nearly forty-five minutes out. That would give him enough time to get back to camp and get a fire going for dinner.

The sensation of being observed had long since dissipated. Michael slid down the slope, and when he got to his horse, he placed the rifle in the leather scabbard before mounting. Red was happy to pick up a trot, knowing they were headed back to camp and his buddies. Michael wished he felt the same. The prospect of having to deal with a pissed off researcher was one thing. It was quite another to be nagged by the feeling something was wrong, and it had nothing to do with Rydell and their tiff.

When he knelt to arrange the kindling in the fire pit, he glanced at his gloved hands, still covered with blood and gore from the hapless badger. The sightless eye sockets, the senseless desecration hit him like an out-of-control semi. He doubled over, clutched his gut and heaved the contents of his belly unto the hard ground.

****

S
onny dismounted and led Spot to the creek for a drink before heading up the slope to their camp. Admittedly he’d lollygagged, as his mother would call it, because dealing with Warden Brooks was going to take more than he had to give right that minute.

He thought the enforced solitude and the chance to focus on his work would have unkinked the knot in his throat. It hadn’t. Now he dragged his feet, taking more time than necessary to untack and put the mule out to graze with the others.

The ledge with the tent was in shadows. He knew Michael was in the camp—the red horse was grazing with the others—but there was no fire, no smells of cooking, no sign of activity other than the low hum of insects and contented munching by the horses.

He checked the tent and the area around it. Nothing. Concerned, Sonny trotted down toward the lake, following the curve past the beaver dam and jumping at the slap on the water that echoed eerily in the now still air. Mr. Beaver had loosed a warning shot across the bow: stay away. Sonny was happy to oblige.

The mist rose lazily off the surface of the spring-fed pool, steam forming at the juncture of heated water and rapidly cooling air. Sonny suspected it might go below freezing, and he wondered idly how the hell he was going to keep warm when the odds were good he and Brooks wouldn’t be cuddling like happy puppies inside their doubled sleeping bags.

Hell, he wouldn’t put it past the asshole to make him sleep outside the tent on the cold ground.

Even though his night vision had kicked in, it was still difficult to make out shapes with any certainty. The first clue that Michael was nearby was when Sonny tripped over a pile of clothes in a heap just at the edge of the shoreline. Ripples in the surface alerted him to the man’s presence.

Stripping, Sonny added to the pile, then moved the lot further from the shore to keep their clothing dry. As he waded into the warmth of the water, he caught the reflection of Michael’s silhouette in the pool.

Sonny said, “Michael. It’s me. Can I join you?” Michael ignored him, his head bent, shoulders and back rigid with tension.

Racing through his choices—leave and return to camp, find a spot further on, or join the warden—Sonny had no good answers. If he left, that gave the impression he was pissed. He was. If he waded off to lay claim to his own little piece of liquid real estate, he’d look like a princess in a snit. Close enough for a cigar. But if he slid behind Michael and wrapped his arms around the man, nuzzling his neck, rubbing his cock in the crease of the man’s ass, was that a pre-emptive strike worthy of retaliation that might end in bloodshed?

Or was there a chance Michael Brooks would take the gesture for what it was... an
I’m so fucking sorry, I can barely breathe when you aren’t holding me
confession that was nanometers from telling the man how he really felt?

The warden’s back glistened like a million tiny sparklers in the dim light, the muscles rippling and shying away as Sonny used his body to form a nest and eased Michael’s stocky frame into the shelter of his arms. If he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn Michael was shivering from the cold, but they were immersed in water just short of scalding.

Sonny rested his chin on Michael’s shoulder and whispered, “I’m sorry.” The man sucked air and pulled away but Sonny kept a tight grip, waiting for the words that would send him away.

They didn’t come.

Whispering, “I’ve got you,” Sonny prayed for his lover to relax into the embrace. What he got shocked him. His warden bent forward, shoulders heaving, sobs wracking his body with grief so powerful it nearly broke Sonny in two.