Wilderness Passion (13 page)

She blinked, wanting badly to be near him. “It’s all right It’s just one more thing....”

“You’ve got me worried, Lib. You’re sounding more tired as the weeks go by. Are they working you to death up there?”

Her voice cracked. “It’s pretty bad. More than anything, I miss you, Dan. I wish we could see one another....”

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Lib,” he began huskily. “About you. About me. I think we need to sit down face-to-face and discuss some things. Look, I’m trying to pull free here, but we’re gearing up and—”

“It’s all right,” she whispered, loving the velvety sound of his voice. “Just knowing that you care and want to come is enough for right now, Dan. We’re both under the gun right now with our jobs. Maybe in a month or two, when things settle down...”

“Realistically it’s not possible at this point,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t stop me from wishing you were here with me from the time I wake up in the morning until I go to bed at night.”

“Do you know how good that sounds?” she asked softly. “I miss you terribly, Dan. I miss the forest. Everything.’’

He gave a low laugh. “That’s the curse of being a druidess, Libby. The call of the wilderness is summoning you home.”

“Home,” she murmured. “The forest is like a home to me, Dan. I can easily understand why you love it. And I don’t blame you for staying there. I want to be there myself. One way or another, I’ll come back to Challis,” she promised. “Maybe not today, but perhaps for a weekend.”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll be waiting for you, Lib.” Dan gave a sardonic laugh. “Hell, you may be here sooner than you think if they drop Bates on me. We damn near got into a fistfight last time, and I feel no compunction about hitting him this time. After what he did to my last lease, he has it coming.”

“But did anyone check on Bates’s ecological analysis?” Libby asked, perplexed. “Because it’s my policy that when a biologist does discover a probable ecological imbalance, I go in and check it out myself so we have some supporting facts. That way we can make a decision based upon two scientists’ tests.”

“Well, if you can’t get Pershing to assign someone else to my lease,” Dan growled, “then I know I’ll be seeing you within two months. I just have a gut feeling Bates will come up with some damn off-the-wall theory. If I were a masochist, I’d wish for Bates, because then I’d know you’d be coming,” he said, a touch of irony tingeing his voice.

Libby smiled warmly. “Truly you are a knight, Mr. Wagner. Only a knight would place himself in the line of fire to rescue a damsel in distress,” she teased.

Dan laughed with her. “The only one who will be distressed is Bates,” he promised. “Call me when you I find out something on this, will you?’’

“I will, Dan.”

“I miss you, Druidess. And so does my forest.”

She closed her eyes, biting down on her lower lip. “You’re so special to me, Dan,” she admitted, her voice barely audible.

“You’re one of a kind, Libby,” he murmured, “and you’ve made me do plenty of soul-searching lately.” He hesitated. “Like I said, there are things we have to talk about, but I don’t want to do it over a phone. We’re just going to have to hope that in a month or so we can get away from our jobs and meet.”

Libby gave Doug Adams a rueful look. The weekend had crawled by and she had come in early to the office to try to catch up on the mounting workload. On Monday morning Pershing Associates had called to confirm that Bates was the only man available for the Sleeping Deer Mountain lease.

“Dan is going to hit the ceiling,” Libby said.

“Don’t I know it,” Doug groaned, pacing the length of her office. “Dammit!”

“Just how reputable is Bates?” Libby demanded.

“He’s thorough, but he’s picky and belabors a point when it isn’t necessary.”

Libby leaned back in her chair, familiar with that kind of biologist. Frequently, when a scientist felt his field of expertise was being questioned, he became adamant and blindly opinionated in order to salve a wounded ego. “Is Bates a stickler for fact or is he just out to support his own theories?” she asked.

Doug shrugged unhappily. “I honestly don’t know, Libby. Bates gave us a hard time a number of years ago, insisting that he’d found some rare insect on our lease lands.”

“I know—Dan told me about it.”

Adams stopped pacing and looked down at her. “Frankly, Bates should have been questioned on his findings. We never sent in another biologist to check out the site. That’s when we decided to hire a company biologist to keep tabs on people like him. Sometimes I think Bates was making a mountain out of a molehill.”

Libby rose. “Well, if he’s one of those types, he won’t get away with it this time,” she promised grimly.

It was early September, and Libby stood by her office window, looking toward the Bay Area. Two and a half months had passed and she still felt the pull of the mountains in her blood. No matter how hard she worked, she never forgot those glorious weeks spent with Dan in his forest. Turning, she gazed warmly at a lovely bouquet of flowers that sat on her desk. Dan had sent them the day before, reminding her that fall was in full swing and that he missed her greatly. She sauntered over to the vase, touching the golden chrysanthemum petals between her fingers. The phone rang, breaking her daydream.

“Hello?”

“Libby, it’s Dan.”

Her eyes widened, her heart beginning to pound because of the hardness in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ll give you one guess,” he said. “Bates.”

Her heart sank and Libby said, “Oh, no... What did he find?”

“You aren’t going to believe this,” Dan continued stormily. “The idiot swears he spotted a California condor up here.”

There was dead silence for a moment while Libby digested the statement. California condors were rare and protected by federal laws. Almost extinct, the world’s largest bird made its home in California. Finally she managed to squeak, “What?”

“A condor. Bates swears he’s been watching a condor for the last week up in the interior near Ridge 256. Libby,” Dan said fervently, “he’s going to try to order all our machinery out of that section. I’ve got bulldozers, graders and dump trucks trying to make a road into that area before the first snow falls in late October. I’m on schedule with the road completion date, and I’m not hauling one piece of machinery out of there unless Bates’s so-called sighting is confirmed.” He took a deep breath, then continued. “I’ve lived most of my life up in these mountains, Libby, and I’ve never seen a condor. Never! That guy is half blind. How the hell can he see two feet in front of him, much less through a pair of binoculars, looking up at some cliff face where this bird’s supposed to be living?”

Libby spent nearly a half hour on the phone with Dan, trying to calm him down. Doug Adams was equally unhappy with Bates’s discovery. “Well, I hate to say it, but you’re going to have to fly out there and settle this one way or another, Libby,” he said. “Damn! I just knew this would happen.” He glanced at her. “You’d better get out there tomorrow. If Wagner gets his fingers around Bates’s throat, there will be premeditated murder charges to deal with besides this fiasco.”

Libby subdued her excitement. “I will,” she promised Doug. “I’ll have Betty get me a ticket for a flight out tomorrow morning.”

8

T
HE SUN SHONE
down fiercely on the Challis airport as Dan impatiently watched the small Cessna taxi in from the runway. Libby would be on board. Anger with Bates warred with his happiness at being able to see Libby once again. Had she grown more lovely in her absence? Had she lost the beautiful tan that made her brown eyes look gold and her blond hair almost silver? He put his hands on his hips, catching a glimpse of her as the plane pulled to a stop.

Libby broke into a smile as she carefully stepped down from the plane and into Dan’s arms. His welcoming smile created havoc with her heart as she reached out and fell into his strong embrace.

“You look wonderful,” he told her, leaning down to capture her parted lips. He pressed his mouth hungrily against her sweet, full lips, tasting her, inhaling her female scent, which mingled with the lilac perfume she always wore. He slid his hand downward, capturing her hip for a moment, pressing her against him, letting her know just how much he had missed her in the intervening months.

Libby eagerly returned his ardent kiss, finally drawing away. Her clear brown eyes were filled with happiness as she surveyed his craggy, sun-weathered features. “Oh, Dan,” she whispered tremulously, joy in her voice.

He grinned, giving her a quick hug and reluctantly releasing her. “I like what I see in your eyes, lady. Come on, let’s get your luggage and I’ll fill you in on the way to the main camp.” She had purposely worn jeans, a lavender-colored scoop-neck T-shirt and sensible shoes. Libby stared at Dan. He looked incredibly virile.

She breathed deeply of the pine, tamarack and fir as they quickly left the small enclave of civilization behind, following the rugged dirt road that wound up through the surrounding hills. Everywhere she looked the mountains blazed with the vibrant oranges, reds and yellows of autumn. She laughed, reaching out and touching Dan’s broad shoulder.

“Do you have any idea of how good it is to be back here?”

Dan’s eyes crinkled with amusement “Judging from the look on your face, I think I do. Welcome home, Lib.”

“I feel a little guilty, you know,” she confided. “Poor Bates is our excuse for finally getting to see one another.”

Dan scowled, his brows drawing together in a downward arc. “Bates or no Bates, I had decided before this all broke loose that I was going to fly to San Francisco and kidnap you.”

Her lips parted in amazement. “You were?”

Dan nodded, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Yes, ma’am. I was going to surprise you, but Bates beat me to the punch. Besides, I’d much rather spend our time together here in our forest than in a city.”

She loved his words: their forest. She turned, gazing over at Dan, happier than she had ever been in her life.

“Will I be meeting with Mr. Bates when we reach the camp?’’

Dan snorted. “No. He refuses to come out of the interior. He’s camped up on Ridge 256. All we get are these daily calls from that battery-charged radio he backpacked in with, giving us his position and sketchy reports.’’

“Why won’t he come out?”

Dan shrugged, anger in his eyes. “He says he’s got a study under way and won’t leave until he’s completed it.”

“When’s that?”

“Who the hell knows? He won’t give me an ETA. As a matter of fact, he won’t talk to me at all. He’ll only talk to Chuck Busch, my foreman. Every time I get on the radio, he breaks off contact.’’ Dan ran his strong fingers through his reddish-brown hair in frustration. “Maybe it’s just as well, Libby. Because this time he’s gone off his rocker. There’s never been a condor this far west. I’ve seen condors in Peru and deep in the Andes and I know what they look like. Bates ought to stick to counting bugs instead of trying to pretend he’s a damned ornithology expert.’’

Libby curbed a smile. “So I have to go in after him?”

“Correction—you go nowhere alone.” He gave her a sharp glance. “You see how dry the woods are? Take a look around. It’s like a tinderbox up here. We haven’t gotten sufficient rain this summer and the ground is hard. Green plants that normally survive have died and dried up. We’re sitting on a critical fire situation as far as the US Forestry Service is concerned. One good lightning strike will blow this place up like
that.
” He snapped his fingers.

She sobered, looking around. It was true; even smaller trees were dying, their once green limbs turning brown from lack of the life-giving rain. “You seem to know quite a bit about fires.”

Dan grimaced. “I was a smoke jumper for five years, Libby. I’ve been dropped in on top of just about every kind of forest fire known, including those damn crown fires.” He shook his head, his eyes filled with disgust. “I hate crown fires. They’re the most common and the worst to control. Usually they start at the top of one tree, and then the fire leaps to the crowns of neighboring trees, spreading with disastrous speed.”

Libby stared at him with new interest. She knew little about smoke jumpers and the subject intrigued her. “Tell me about smoke-jumping. This is fascinating. Is there anything you haven’t done?” she asked, awe in her voice.

“I’m sure there is. I worked for the US Forest Service from the age of twenty until I was twenty-five. My team and I were equipped with parachutes and special fire—fighting gear. We’d be dropped far enough ahead of a fire to try to put up a line to stop it. It was grueling physical labor, believe me.”

“Why did you quit?”

“Busted up my leg on one drop. I damn near bought the farm on that one. I was unconscious and had a broken leg. My buddy Dave freed me from a tree, rescuing me just in time. The wind changed direction and the fire came directly at us. He carried me a good mile on his back before a truck picked us up and they got me to the hospital.”

Libby digested the account, suddenly grateful that he was no longer in that line of business. “It sounds terribly dangerous,” she murmured.

“It is and it isn’t. Jumping isn’t bad—it’s the fire that’s always your real enemy. Wind changes or a front coming through and creating different wind directions always makes it difficult to evaluate a forest fire.”

Libby shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “It would be horrible if these mountains caught on fire.”

“Happens every year, Libby.” There was worry shadowing his eyes. “And right now we’re sitting on a powder keg. As much as I personally dislike Bates, I wish to hell he’d fold up his tent and get back into camp until the danger is over. The thunderstorms are on the increase because of the temperature rise that occurs this time of year, and I just have a bad feeling about the whole situation.”

“So I can’t go in and contact Bates?”

“Yes, you can, but we’ll do it together,” he explained. He offered her a tender smile. “Ordinarily all I’d do is order one of our choppers to drop you off at Bates’s camp and you could do your thing. But with the fire danger, I don’t want you left alone. If you’ve never been in a forest fire, you can quickly become disoriented.”