Dream Shadow (7 page)

“Being on guard is one thing, expecting violence at every turn speaks of a harsh life.” He reached up and touched the brim of his hat. “Good morning.”

She fought the urge to return his smile. That quickly her resolve to maintain her composure collapsed. The need to protect herself against him became pressing. “It was.”

“You must have missed the Army code-of-conduct class on social etiquette.”

“Maybe you should take the hint.”

“And get lost?” Brice stepped in a slow circle that forced her to either move with him or give him access to her back. She snapped about to prevent him from gaining that advantage. “Can you track from objects in the cabin?”

So the man still wanted to question her? Well, Grace did have to give him extra points for persistence. At least it was an impersonal topic. “Sometimes.”

That grin appeared on his face again. Confidence radiated from the small expression. The man was a perplexing tangle of emotional stimuli. Grace watched the way he let his eyes slip down her body again. It was annoying to discover how much she enjoyed the man looking her over. “Jacobs makes the decisions on just where I go tracking.”

“Do you want to go back up to that cabin? I could use a hand tracking down the culprits.”

Straightening her legs, she tugged her gloves more firmly into place. The only skin exposed to his stare was her face and her cheeks were tingling with heat. Exposure was something Brice Campbell held a skill for. His brown eyes seemed to see all too clearly the way her body leapt in response. There wasn’t any logic to such a conclusion, but Grace tugged at her gloves again anyway.

“Do you just avoid questions, or am I a special case?”

“I normally ignore them,” she answered.

“The questions or the men?”

“Both.”
There
. Now she was being rude.

He thrust his hand forward and curled a finger across the satin surface of her face. “Looks like you’re not having too much luck with me.”

Already far too aware of the man, his touch sent her body into a full panic. Pushing her hand upward, Grace was rewarded with the rather satisfying smack that came from hitting the man’s elbow in its one soft spot. Brice rocked back on his heels as his hand rubbed at the spot. His eyes closed to mere slits, satisfying her greatly.

“Leave.”

“Why don’t you like being touched?”

That simple curiosity confused her again. Why was the man interested in her feelings anyway? If it wasn’t critical, it didn’t matter. “Emotions are distracting.”

“A little distraction can be…enjoyable.”

“Concentration yields results. Everything else is a waste of resources.” That was the reality.

“No, honey, but I’d sure like to hit the man that taught you to think about yourself like that.”

His attitude was so…possessive. It should have made her angry. Instead, Grace took a moment to consider whether or not Brice Campbell might have a good point. Her body certainly thought his ideas were good.

“I would have loved to see that look on your face last night.”

Grace knew that. The low rumble of his voice brought her memory surging forward. It brought back the raging need that she’d felt throbbing in her body for most of the night. Her skin tightened under his sharp eyes.

“Maybe we can try it again tonight,” he suggested in a husky tone. “Unless you’re going to refuse to go tracking with me because you’re too chicken to see if you can hold onto your precious control once we’re alone again.”

She hissed softly under her breath. A second later, she sprang away from him.

“I am not afraid of you.”

He inclined his head and she saw the flare of promise in his eyes.

“Glad to hear it, Grace.”

Anger really could hurt.

“Which direction, Grace?”

“North.” Snapping the word out, Grace set her teeth together again. Jacobs angled his aircraft into the north as she considered the forest below them.

The man had to be sick. Jacobs never agreed to investigations.
Never
.

Yet here they were. Covering the miles she’d carried Paige over.

But the real problem was that she had agreed to it. Risen to the challenge Brice had dangled in front of her nose and taken the bait. It was irritating, but what frustrated her was the curl of excitement it unleashed. Becoming further interested in the people of Benton would prove painful for her when they left. Emotional detachment had always been her truest friend even if it was more of a shield.

One she was dropping too easily around Brice Campbell.

The helicopter sliced through the distance in mere minutes. As isolated as the location was, it was easy to spot from the air. Even if her eyes had failed her, the spot still held amazing interest.

Grace let her anger dissolve as she studied the cabin once again. Her curiosity jumped to attention. There was still something here. She opened the door the moment Jacobs touched down because something lingered inside the structure.

Despite her intention to ignore the man, Grace followed Brice Campbell with her eyes. He joined her unit when they hit the ground and began an approach on the cabin. Without the tan of his uniform, she would have been hard pressed to note any difference between him and the other men of the unit. His movements blended in with those of the other soldiers without a hint of awkwardness.

“Brice Campbell is a Ranger.” Between the sharp attention and sure movement of his body, the training was unmistakable. His current uniform was irrelevant. Once a man reached a certain level with the Special Forces, he never truly left them.

“One of the best.”

Coming from Jacobs, that was rather high praise. The note in his voice said a great deal about his respect for the man.

“That explains a lot about this expedition,” she muttered in a soft voice. By the last word, it was only a whisper because she was absorbed with the cabin.

Returning her eyes to the objective, Grace waited for an all clear. It wouldn’t be long now. The cabin sat in a twenty-foot clearing. The Rangers would make a combined assault on it to minimize any threat to the unit.

“It’s clear.” Jacobs stood watching her. Considering the cabin again, Grace felt her curiosity rising. That was trouble, pure and simple, but she really wanted to go back down into that cabin.

Each step she took toward her target was odd. Mainly because she didn’t have a target. There was never a time there wasn’t a target or a purpose that she was told to focus on. There were emotions swirling around the cabin like odors in a kitchen. There was no food to be seen but you still tried to identify the scents.

Stopping in front of the door, Grace turned and considered the silent forest. She could feel the weight of the men watching her, but it wasn’t enough to stop her from wanting whatever sat on the other side of that door.

Grace let her mind shift into focus. Stripping her gloves from her fingers, she entered the cabin. Too many people had used it over the years. Images sprang up in large amounts of static. While the forest was warm with the approach of summer, the cabin was sticky from its windows being secured shut.

Wandering about, Grace reached out, touching a piece of furniture here and a countertop there. The living room was an odd collection of shabby furniture that had seen better days the decade before. Something was here, but nothing was taking firm shape. The static continued interfering.

The bedroom stood just in front of her. This was where she had clearly seen Paige when she had first tracked her. Grace knew every inch of the bedroom. She walked into it and stopped dead in her tracks. Sitting in the middle of the bed was a small crumpled blanket. The kind a child used for security. The hand-knitted stitches lay pulled and stretched out of their original orderly rows. Wear like that only resulted from the tiny hands of a child as they carried it about for comfort.

It was not Paige’s. Grace was absolutely sure of it. She regarded it like a coiled snake. It was odd that something that personal had been left behind, but then it was very possible another child could have been moved in haste after Paige had been removed.

Grace reached for the blanket, curling her fingers into the fabric. She closed off everything and fell into the void that might allow her to locate the owner of the item.

Brice stood and waited. He had been waiting for the past hour. No one spoke. Nothing moved. There was no sign of Grace, and from his view there was no movement inside the cabin either.

Brice ran his eyes over a couple of the unit’s Rangers. They were deadly serious and equipped for war. Brice felt inadequately armed with only his pistol on his hip. Maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised that Grace jumped into a fighting stance on a regular basis. Her companions were fingering automatic rifles.

Another hour crawled by. Jacobs started to shift closer to the cabin. Tension was beginning to build in the man’s body.

“Is this running long?”

Jacobs nodded. “But I’ve seen longer.”

Another twenty minutes passed by before the tension broke. Jacobs turned his head. Something must have come over his radio. Brice watched as the huge shoulders relaxed and he started down into the clearing. Brice followed, watching as Grace came around the corner of the structure. A small scrap of cloth was tightly clenched in her fist as she covered the ground separating them at a rapid pace. It seemed to require a great deal of effort for her to halt and give Jacobs the briefest of glances.

“There was another child here.”

How could she have missed a second child? She was never that careless. Grace put her aggressions into climbing the hill. The others were scrambling to keep up, but she didn’t care. By the time she got to the helicopter she was drenched in sweat, her heart pounding beneath her breasts. Still, she couldn’t have cared less. She had been so certain that there weren’t any other children here that night. How had she missed it?

Grace paced around the helicopter in circles. She was so mad it hurt. She could clearly see the other child but couldn’t get a location. It was floating in pieces around her head. There was just too much static. Nothing was clear. Except for the actual child herself. Anger boiled higher as frustration caught her in its grip.

She could hear her. The tinkling sounds of laughter. It echoed between the trees. Solid red clouds were all that Grace saw as she faced the aircraft. Self-inflicted anger consumed her, as did the inability to solve the current case. She looked at the tiny box that she was expected to climb into and her mind rebelled. She heard the laughter again and instinct took over. She pivoted on both feet and went toward the sound.

She made it three paces before Jacobs grabbed her around the waist. With one arm, he lifted her off her feet. Two strides and he wrenched the door of the helicopter open and dropped her into the seat. He sent the door closed with a slam and depressed a lock button on the exterior of the door. He pinned Brice with a hard stare.

“Now we’ve opened a can of worms,” he stated before circling the craft to climb into the pilot’s seat.

They covered the distance back to Brice’s home in record time. Grace seemed determined to outrun her vision. But she was intent on some goal. She left the helicopter the moment it landed but stopped just twenty feet from the black machine. The blanket dangled from her fingers that were free from the black gloves she seemed to favor. Now she worked her slim fingers along the spots that were worn while pacing.

The rest of her unit fanned out and hunched down to remove themselves from her line of sight.

“Is she always this intense?” Brice asked.

“When she works, yes.” Jacobs watched his operative with a practiced eye.

She suddenly stopped and threw the blanket down. The action seemed to jerk her away from whatever link she’d established. Sweat started pouring down the sides of her face as she drew in deep breaths.

“Ready to come in?” he asked. His voice was low but she jumped like he’d shouted. For a moment, their gazes were locked giving him a view of her emerald eyes. Her pupils looked dilated but she blinked and began walking toward the front steps of his home.

Grace hesitated as she reached the bottom step. She cast her eyes back toward the forest, tilting her head like she was listening to something. Her expression tightened with frustration. “I’ll make a sketch.”

She sat in plain view of the front window and looked out at the blanket from time to time. She pulled a small pad of paper from her backpack and angled her head toward the blank page. Her eyes became mere slits as she forced her vision to life on a sketchpad.

“She’s not much on explanations,” Brice said as he continued to watch her work. The vision appeared to capture her attention completely. It was like she was attempting to translate her psychic sense into something the world around her would understand.

Turning away from Grace, Jacobs considered his men. They were perched among the trees as they waited for his orders. Their training was evident as each man found cover instead of standing around in the open.

“She’s frustrated. Grace likes her cases neat and clean.”