Big Bear Mountain - The Complete Series (12 page)

C
assie remembered the old Colt revolver as
she was tidying up the mess left by the intruders. She made a mental note to
file a report with the sheriff tomorrow, in case she needed it to claim the
insurance. That thought caused her to pause. Then she released a breath she
didn’t even realize she’d been holding. A lump filled her throat as she thought
of the big buffoon covered in mud, all for the sake of the stranded colt.

She’d been hard on him. That’s what she
did. Offense is the best defense and she saw the way he looked at her. That
attitude had to be nipped in the bud right away. Not only was unwanted
attention going to interfere with her investigation, but it would also end up
with her getting hurt. She knew that all too well and was determined to see
that didn’t happen. Not again. She’d honed her skills over the years and had
become quite adept at keeping men at a distance.

A cursory Google search on her phone
revealed that some old Colt handguns, if they were in decent condition, might
be worth many thousands of dollars. Some even many tens of thousands of
dollars. Grandma would always tell anyone who’d listen about her collection, so
it was no secret. The ransacking of the cabin started to make sense, although
the extent of the destruction made it seem like they didn’t find what they were
looking for.

Exhausted from the long drive, the
unscheduled rescue mission, the trail of ruin she found in the cabin and her
near death experience with the biggest bear on the face of the planet, Cassie
dragged a sleeping bag from the trunk of her Cutlass and made herself
comfortable on the sofa. The bedroom was a wreck and the mattress had been
slashed to ribbons, so the sofa was her bed for the night. She doubted she’d
get much sleep on the lumpy sofa.

Thumbing the safety on, she tucked the
robust CZ-75 under her pillow and flicked off the table lamp, leaving the cabin
lit only by the moonlight. Her anxiety at the recent invasion of her new,
although temporary, home was offset by the stopping power that nestled beneath
her head. She was asleep within minutes.

I
n her dream, the big Grizzly Bear pounded on
the door relentlessly, determined to break through the solid oak door and tear
her apart with its giant paws. She fumbled for her weapon, but it was gone. She
screamed as the huge bear splintered the century old door like it was made of
matchsticks and tore the remnants from the hinges before squeezing its way
through the opening that had been designed for human sized visitors.

She woke in a cold sweat, felt the
comforting bulge of the 9mm under her pillow and allowed her eyes to adjust to
the dimly moonlight cabin. As her head cleared, she remembered where she was
and the visions from the horrifying nightmare began to fade.

Her hand subconsciously rose to her neck,
fingers seeking the security of silver key she wore around her neck. It had
become a habit. Whenever she was nervous or unsure, she’d seek reassurance by
touching grandma’s key.

But the incessant pounding on the door
didn’t stop.

Cassie ran her fingers through her ‘bed
hair’ in an effort to bring some order to the chaos wrought by the sleeping bag
hood, grabbed her gun and padded across the cold stone floor to open the door.

Sheriff Raven took in the sight of the
trashed abode as soon as the door swung open and feared the worst. His fears
were confirmed when he saw the state of the woman’s hair. He was too late.
She’d been in one hell of a fight. He failed to notice the gun in her hand.

“Are they still here?” he snapped as he
drew his department issued Glock.

“Is who still here? And why are
you
even here?” She glanced at her watch. “It’s two o’clock. In the
morning
.”

“I need to look around. I haven’t got time
to explain, but there’s a bomb here.”

“I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, but
there’s no bomb here.” She looked around at the devastation in the room. “Yeah,
I know, right? It looks like a bomb’s gone off, but it’s just a break in.
Probably just local kids looking for something to steal, for kicks.”

Neither looked convinced. They were both
professionals and knew a thorough search when they saw one.

His grey-blue eyes scanned the room
anxiously. “I really need to look around.” He shouldered his way past her and
into the debris strewn room.

“What made you think someone was here?” she
asked, closing the door behind her.

“You look like you’ve been in a fight and
with all this …” His hand swept the room to make his point.

A smile danced across her lips as she
pulled her shoulder length, strawberry blonde hair into some semblance of a
pony tail and coiled an elastic around it to hold it in place. “Is
that
better?” she asked.

Was that actually a smile?
He couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be sure about anything when it
came to this woman.

He continued to survey the room as he
nodded. “Seriously, I need to look around. Do you mind?”

“Knock yourself out but I can assure you,
there’s no bomb here.” She rolled her eyes. He was wasting his time and her
sleep.

“With respect, how about you let the
professionals be the judge of that. I don’t think you city girls get much
explosive ordinance exposure, if I’m not mistaken.”

Frustration boiled inside her, threatening
to burst. She itched to tell him she’d been a PI long enough to have learned a
thing or two about explosives and firearms. But she couldn’t. Not yet, anyway.

Discreetly, she palmed her gun and slipped
it under her pillow as Jack used his shifter heightened olfactory senses to
trace the source of the C4 he’d detected earlier in his bear form. There was no
need to give him cause to start asking about carry permits and other awkward
questions. She had to maintain her cover.

J
ack sensed that the explosive charge wasn’t
actually inside the cabin, but somewhere nearby. The scent indoors was weaker
than he’d detected during his first visit.

“Lock the door and wait here, I’m going to
look around outside.” His tone didn’t invite discussion on the matter which
only caused Cassie to seethe even more. It was
her
home, after all. Who
did he think he was telling her what to do?

As easy as his task would be if he’d been
able to shift into his bear, Jack was forced to rely on his human senses to
find the bomb. He couldn’t risk being seen shifting by a stranger. So, he
clicked his Maglite into life and began a systematic sweep of the grounds
surrounding the cabin, ending up at the spring where he’d first become aware of
her scent. He closed his eyes and allowed his bear to enjoy the memory of that
pivotal moment.

His bear knew she was the one. It was going
to take a lot more time for Jack to catch up with his bear.

Then he spotted it. Wrapped in brown,
greasy paper and shoved inside an old motor oil can. And it was a big mother,
too!

J
ack entered the
cabin slowly as Cassie held the door open. He moved smoothly and carefully,
like a cat on the prowl, his arms extended forward. An unwrapped brown package
rested on his upturned palms.

“You’re not
bringing
that
in here!” Cassie insisted, as if he were carrying a dead
rodent instead of enough C4 to blow up half the forest.

“You seem very
calm about this for a city girl. Shouldn’t you be asking what it is or what
it’s doing hidden near the spring in your yard?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Or do you have people trying to blow you up wherever you go? Come to think of
it, you probably …” He didn’t finish that sentence. He didn’t need to.

“I’ve seen enough
CSI and Homeland to know what a bomb looks like, thanks Sheriff Smart-Ass. Big
blocks of stuff with ‘C4’ stamped all over it, wires and detonators all over
the place and a digital timer counting down. You’re surprised I know what that
is? Really?” Once again, her hands went to her hips. She thought she was
looking all strong willed and dominant. All Jack could see was the way it made
her stunning, voluptuous breasts jut out.

“Wait … did you
say
counting down
?” He wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. Her gorgeous
breasts really were a distraction.

“Yeah, it’s got 10
minutes on the countdown … no … 9 minutes and 59 seconds.”

“Shit!”

“I’d make you put
a dime in the swear jar, but I think Mr. Unabomber broke it.”

“This isn’t funny.
I thought I could diffuse it or at least have enough time to find a way to
detonate it safely while we got out of blast radius. We’re not going to do that
in 10 minutes. I must have set the timer off when I moved it.”

“Well, you’re the
one with the badge, carrying around a handful of explosive, what’s your plan,
now?”

He looked
carefully at the bomb and placed it on a nearby table, taking note of the time
remaining on the timer. He’d seen devices like this before. This one was built
by a real pro.

Cassie watched his
eyes fix keenly on the wiring and the detonators. His fingers moved efficiently
and deftly as he turned the bomb over and examined it from all angles. She
wondered, briefly, what those fingers would feel like against her skin, cupping
her breasts. If she was going be vaporized into oblivion, she wanted to at
least go out with some happy thoughts.

“It’s black wired,
so there’s no way to know which wires are active and which are decoys. It’s
tamperproof. If I pull out the detonators, it blows. If I cut the wrong wires,
it blows.”

5:20

Beads of sweat
began to form on his brow. His fingers trembled slightly as the adrenaline
surge he’d felt when he first found the bomb began to recede.

“I need something
to cut the wires,” he demanded, all his attention was on the device and the
timer.

4:59

Rummaging through
a nearby cosmetic case, Cassie pulled out a large pair of toenail clippers and
offered them to Jack.

“Seriously?” He
wasn’t sure if she was still fooling around or not.

“It’s all I’ve
got. I don’t know where anything is around here and good luck finding
anything
in all this mess.” She continued to hold the clippers out for him to take.

Reluctantly, Jack
took them and began to trace the wiring once again, making sure he had the
schematic firmly committed to memory before trying to figure out which wire to
cut.

“If I get it
right, the timer will stop counting down.”

2:30

“And if you
don’t?”

“We’re right
royally
fucked
,” he stated with certainty.

“Swear jar,” she
quipped softly.

There was no more
time for decision making. It was now or …

He pulled a single
strand of wire from the nest of wires surrounding the timer.

He cut it with the
clippers.

The timer
continued to count down …

01:59

01:58

01:57

H
urling back her
chair, Cassie dashed to the chaos of the kitchen and began rummaging through
the flotsam on the floor. She picked up a flour bag. It was torn. She found
another that apparently passed her scrutiny as she stopped searching and
grabbed the CO2 fire extinguisher from its bracket and scurried back to the
dining table.

Jack stared at her
uncomprehendingly. “We haven’t got time for that. We need to get away from
here. Fast.” He stood and moved toward the door.

“We’d never get
far enough away by the time it detonates, even in daylight.” She looked out the
window. “It’s too dark to go running through that forest.”

Jack was tempted
to tell her
he
could guide them and protect her if they ran for it, but
before he could form the words, she’d snatched the bomb from his hands and
shoved it into the empty flour sack.

01:23

“That’s not going
to help. You realize that, don’t you?” Jack wasn’t trying to be condescending,
but Cassie seemed to take it that way.

“You idiot. If
you’re not going to do something useful, then shut the hell up. I’m working
here,” she snarled as she jammed the large black nozzle of the fire
extinguisher into the bag and proceeded to wrap the top of the bag tightly
around it.

“What do you want
me to do?” Jack asked, trying to placate the obviously stressed woman.

“I’ll hold the bag
around the nozzle. You pull the locking pin and press the lever and keep it
down until the extinguisher is empty. Got it?”

“Yes, boss.” Jack
gave a mock salute before proceeding to pull the locking pin from the
apparatus. “I think I can see where this is going.” He paused for a moment.
“Damn. This might just work.”

And with that, he
depressed the lever and the flour sack ballooned as it filled with carbon
dioxide, forming chunks of -108F dry ice around the explosive. As soon as the
extinguisher had run dry, Cassie pulled the sack from the horn and tied it
firmly before racing to the door and hurling it into the darkness.

Within a few
seconds, they heard the impotent
boomf
as the small detonators exploded,
failing to set off the frozen blocks of C4.

Jack’s face beamed
with admiration for the stunning, curvy girl who had just saved their lives. A
wry smile twisted his lips. “You’re not your average city girl, are you?”

“
You’re
not
your average hick sheriff.” She stated flatly, yet her eyes sparkled as they
met his. “And you’re sure as hell no MacGyver. I’ve seen him disarm
thermonuclear weapons with a lot less than a set of toenail clippers.”