Heat of the Moment (4 page)

“Steh.”
Reggie stood, but he didn't move until Owen showed him the red rubber ball that was his reward, then gave the forward command,
“Voran.”

Reggie nosed open the door, which Becca had left ajar. Owen followed at a slower pace, using the railing, the wall, the door for balance. He should probably use a cane. He had one, but he hadn't been able to make himself hold on to it for more than a minute, let alone walk with it.

He'd been on a plane since yesterday. Exhaustion, combined with more walking and more sitting than usual, then driving from Minneapolis, as well as the digging, had made Owen shakier than he liked.

What he should do was take a pain pill, then sink into a warm bath and fall into a fluffy bed. However, thanks to his mother's drug issues, he didn't take pain pills. He doubted the water heater worked any better now than it had when he lived here. Considering the electricity was off, along with the water, it wouldn't matter if it did. The mattresses were as trashed as the rest of the furniture, and even when they hadn't been they weren't fluffy.

He'd grit his teeth and get along. One of the first things he'd learned upon joining the Marines.

Inside there was no sign of Reggie. As Owen had mentioned kibble, he'd thought the dog would be waiting outside the still-closed kitchen door to the right. When he'd gone out to dig the grave, he'd put Reggie behind it, not wanting him to mess with the disgusting scene in the living room.

Reggie was a well-trained dog, but he was a dog, and sometimes he grabbed things he wasn't supposed to—like a terrorist—and dragged them around. While Owen often enjoyed that little mistake, having Reggie ingest charcoal pet remains wouldn't be at all amusing. So he'd confined him in the kitchen. That the windows were broken wide open had escaped him until the dog vaulted through one.

Becca spoke in the living room. Was she talking to Reggie or herself? Owen had told the dog to
voran,
which was a command to go forward, in working-dog-speak to do what he was supposed to do. While Reggie was usually searching for explosives, he might also find and detain insurgents if he came across one. Though Becca was neither, she was standing in front of a scene that had to smell pretty nifty to a dog.

Owen swallowed. But not to him.

“I know,” she murmured, and Owen frowned. Had he said that out loud?

He entered the living room as she smoothed her palm over Reggie's head. The dog's tail thumped once. She'd been talking to him. Nothing new. When they were kids she'd believed that dogs talked back.

Becca eyed the display atop the old table that someone had dragged in from the kitchen, which gave Owen a chance to move closer unobserved and take a seat on the arm of the water-stained couch. Reggie hurried over and sat, waiting for his beloved red ball.

Owen handed it over, and, enthralled, Reggie dropped it, chased it, chewed it. The dog would do anything for the red ball, which meant Owen kept the thing in his pocket 24/7—and carried a spare in his duffel.

“The chief had reports of three missing cats, a dog, and a rabbit,” she said. “There's more than that here.”

“Some people must have figured their pets ran off or got plucked by a wolf.” Becca cast him a narrow glance, and Owen held up his hands in surrender. “I didn't say it was your wolf.”

“Not mine.”

“A wolf, coyote, fox, bear.” He paused. “Do bears eat meat?”

“Yes. Though they don't digest it well. Which is why most of their diet is plants and berries.”

“They still might snatch a Pekinese that's wandered into the woods.”

“No ‘might' about it,” she agreed.

“But if an owner lives close to the forest and Fluffy disappears, most of them wouldn't report it to the police. The cops aren't going to arrest Yogi.”

“As Yogi is smarter than the average bear, he'd probably be above stealing then eating Fluffy, but I take your meaning.”

Owen smiled. Even before he'd fallen in love with her, he'd liked her so damn much. He still did.

Be honest, dumbass.

He still loved her. He always would.

Becca pulled out her cell phone, looked at the display, cursed, and put it back in the pocket of her track pants. “I need to call Chief Deb.”

“Chiefdub?”

“Deb. Debbie Waldentrout is the police chief now.”

“Debbie Waldentrout is three feet tall.” The idea of her in a police chief's uniform was somewhat cartoonish.

“Is not.” Becca headed for the door.

As she went past, Owen took her elbow and she stilled. He should have let her go, especially when she shivered. Instead he rubbed his thumb over her ulna, and she shivered some more. Because he was sitting on the edge of the couch and she was standing, his gaze was level with her chest, which rose and fell so quickly he was captivated.

That scent of lemons overshadowed the scent of death, and Owen breathed in, out, and in again. From the moment he'd met her, she'd cleansed him, healed him, elevated him. He'd become so much more while he'd been with her. He'd become so much more
because
of her. She had loved him. She had saved him. He'd always wanted to tell her that, but he'd never been quite sure how.

What he saw in her gaze made Owen tighten his fingers—to push her away, or pull her closer. He never knew, because she leaned over—so quick he had time to do nothing but say her name. A whisper. A plea. A prayer. And then she was kissing him; he was kissing her.

The years fell away. It was their first kiss. Their last.

That first one had been tentative—soft, a little afraid, yet so full of hope. The last had been shocked, a little tearful, and full of despair. This one tasted of both. How strange. What did she hope for? What did she fear? Why did she despair?

Questions for another time, right now he delved, taking her mouth, tasting her teeth, wishing, hoping, praying for more, even though he knew it could never be. For so many reasons …

Suddenly she was gone. His mouth followed hers in retreat, seeking those lips he still dreamed of. His arms reached; his empty fingers closed on nothing. He started to stand. The pain sent him right back.

His breath hissed in. Reggie yipped and rushed over, shoving his precious ball into Owen's hand, sharing what always made him feel better. Owen put the toy into his pocket, then pushed his fingers into Reggie's fur to keep them from doing what they shouldn't.

Rubbing his leg. Yanking her back. Making a fist and punching a wall.

“I don't know why I did that,” she said. “It's just—” She waved a hand toward the table, and he suddenly remembered what he had completely forgotten.

The travesty in his living room.

How could he have kissed her and dreamed of doing so much more, with that only a few feet away? Because, for him, a room that contained Becca Carstairs was devoid of anything else worth noticing.

“You always made everything better,” she blurted to the wall and not to him. “At least until—” Her breath rushed out.

“Until I made everything worse.”

After a few seconds of silence, during which Reggie glanced back and forth between the two of them, brow wrinkled, mouth open, she straightened. “I'm going up on the ridge to see if I can get a signal.”

The ridge lay between this house and her parents' farm and was the highest point for miles around.

“Try the porch first.” Owen jabbed his thumb toward the stairs that led to the bedrooms on the second level. The largest, his mother's, had a flat, porchlike area that extended over the garage. The trees had been shorn away from the utility poles more than once in the past ten years and created a tiny avenue to the sky. “Higher might help.”

She started for the stairs. “If I can't get through I'll have to head to my folks' and use their landline.”

He wanted to say he'd go with her, but the idea of climbing up one side of the ridge and down the other made his leg pulse.

“If you go, take Reggie.”

She paused. “Why?”

“That wolf is still out there.”

Becca glanced at the front door. “In the yard?”

“I didn't see her, but—”

“Yeah, no,” she said.

“What do you mean, no?”

“Did I stutter? The last time your dog saw a wolf, he attacked her.”

“Exactly.”

“She wasn't doing anything but protecting me.”

“And why was that?” he asked.

“Because you had a shovel and you appeared ready to use it. On my head.”

“I didn't mean why did she protect
you,
but why did she protect anyone? She's a wild animal. They don't protect humans.”

“Wolves are different.”

A long, low, mournful howl rose toward the moon.

“That one sure is,” he muttered.

*   *   *

I escaped upstairs while Owen was distracted by the wolf howl.

He hadn't looked so good. I suppose finding a pile of charred fur in your living room wasn't the best welcome home, but it hadn't been aimed at him. Had it?

No. No one could have known he'd be coming home. Could they?

I hadn't lied when I said I hadn't listened to scuttlebutt about him. I couldn't bear it. I'd loved him so damn much. His leaving had been difficult, but I'd tried to understand.

I have nothing, Becca.

You have me.

I wasn't enough. I'd tried not to let him know how much that hurt. I got up every morning hoping for his letter. When it came at last it was agony.

So why had I kissed him tonight like the foolish girl I'd once been—crazy in love with a boy who would only hurt me?

My father's words. He couldn't help it. He loved me.

He'd loved Owen too. But us together … Not so much.

In the end he'd been right. Owen had left me. I'd been so devastated my first year of college was still a blur. I'd managed not to flunk out, and at the University of Wisconsin that wasn't easy. The school was hard and my major, zoology, not for sissies.

Considering our history and my heartbreak, why had I kissed him? Because he'd been sitting on the couch where we'd first touched? Because when he came near me all I could do was remember every single other time that he had?

Or had it been because the sight on that table had scared the shit out of me, and I'd needed to forget for an instant in the arms of the only man who'd ever made me feel strong, capable, and adult?

Hell, be honest, Owen was the only man who'd ever made me feel anything. The first brush of his mouth and I'd been lost.

I was twelve, and he was taking my hand, holding it tight during
The Blair Witch Project.
The movie had struck a little close to home. I had no idea why we'd watched it.

I was thirteen, and he was kissing me in that very room, tasting my tongue, his palm hot at my waist, his thumb almost brushing my breast.

We were fifteen, and they'd just taken away his mother for what would be the last time. Those damn voices had told her to kill him. Was it any wonder I'd never mentioned hearing voices of my own?

The expression on his face—confused, crushed, helpless. I'd held him in my arms; we'd both fallen asleep on the couch. My parents had found us. I'd begged them to give him a home, and they had. Soon after, I'd tried to give him me. To his credit, he'd refused.

For a few years more.

Memories tumbled through my mind as I ran up the steps, down the hall, through a room as trashed as those below. At least the windows weren't busted, but the door leading onto the porch was warped, and I had to put my shoulder into it to get the thing open enough to slip outside. I was just glad I didn't have to ask Owen for help. I needed some distance, and I needed it now. Damn him for bringing everything back. I hadn't thought of Owen McAllister in …

Days.

I moved to the edge of the porch. There wasn't even a railing to keep stupid people from tumbling off. Obviously not up to code—if Owen tried to sell the place, there was going to be a lot he'd have to add, subtract, and update first.

I stood there breathing for a minute—lovely fresh air that didn't smell of blood and fire, flesh and mold. But mostly it didn't smell of sun and grass, hay and midnight.

Of him.

The wolf called to the moon that swelled heavy and ripe and cool straight above, but she was so far off maybe it wasn't even the same wolf. And about that wolf …

Owen had seen her. His dog had rolled around with her. Which made the animal a lot less imaginary. I had to wonder why she'd shown herself to someone after all these years and why that someone had been Owen.

I glanced at my phone; I had a signal. Yay! I didn't want to go to my parents'. I didn't want to explain why I was here, what I had seen.

And who I had seen it with.

I located the police station's direct number in my contact list. Less than a minute later, the dispatcher put me through to Chief Deb.

“You know those animals you were looking for?” I asked. “I found them.”

 

Chapter 4

The living room window gave Owen a perfect view of the ridge. If Becca couldn't get a signal upstairs, she'd appear on top of it very soon. She'd no doubt shimmy down the drainpipe before she'd come back through here.

While Owen didn't like the idea of her being alone out there, she wouldn't be for long. The bright moon would catch the reflective stripe on her track pants. He'd be able to follow her progress up, up, up through the breaks in the trees until she popped out on top like a piece of toast.

Then Owen would give Reggie the command,
voraus,
or
run out.
He'd be hard-pressed not to tell him to
bringen,
or
fetch
. But Reggie didn't
bringen
nice people back any less chewed on than he brought back the not-so-nice.