Incriminating Evidence (3 page)

Tied down and being dragged, this wasn’t the time for him to make a move. He’d wait, bide his time. Strike when just the thought of moving didn’t make him want to vomit.

At last she dropped him inside a small, ancient, rotting cabin, and stepped outside. Once he was certain he was alone, he gingerly moved his arms and legs. No problem there. He turned his head. The room swam and nausea rose, but he could do it.

He felt at the ropes. He was tied to a tarp on a tree-branch frame. Clever. But she’d made a mistake. His hands, while bound, weren’t immobilized. It didn’t take much effort for him to slide free of the binding at his belt and work the knots that secured him to the travois until he’d freed himself.

Slowly, he rose, his balance wobbly, like a damn newborn colt, but again, he could do it.

“You sonofabitch! You made me drag you a mile when you could walk the whole time?”

Dammit!
He’d been so focused on getting upright, he hadn’t heard her approach. His Ranger buddies would laugh their asses off over this fuckup.

To hell with the throbbing in his head. This wasn’t a time to hesitate. This was a time to fight through the nausea and pain. He lunged for her, grabbing her by the throat.

It didn’t matter that she was a woman. No room for mercy given what she’d done to him.

She screamed, but the sound cut off as his grip tightened.

Blinding pain seared his good eye. His lungs burned. Then she landed a blow to his nuts. He released her, falling backward.

He doubled over and tried not to puke.

Chapter Two

I
sabel kept the bear spray out, ready to zap the bastard a second time should he so much as twitch in her direction. He’d been so close to her, she’d gotten a whiff of the painful pepper and struggled to get air into her burning lungs. She should have gone for the gun, but at least the spray—combined with her knee to his balls—had been effective.

“I should have left you in the woods to die,” she said, after she was able to breathe again. Her voice shook. Badly.

She’d been a fool to rescue him. She could have hiked back to her car, called 9-1-1, and gone home for the night. If she’d done the smart thing, she’d be in the Tamarack Roadhouse right now enjoying a beer with Nicole.

Instead she was six miles from nowhere stuck in a rotting cabin with a man who’d just tried to kill her. She rubbed her throat. She bruised easily, and this was likely to be an ugly one.

“Who the hell
are
you?” she choked out.

“Right.” He coughed and struggled to breathe. “As if”—another cough—“you don’t know.”

“I found you five miles deep in the Tanana Valley State Forest. You were beat to hell and don’t have ID on you. I have no frigging clue who you are.”

He’d rolled onto his back on the uneven floor, just a few feet from the travois where she’d originally left him. Slowly, his coughing abated, and he took in deep, wheezing breaths. After several minutes, he cocked his head toward her and squinted, then swore. Squinting must have caused the pepper to burn his eye again. “Do you have pepper spray wipes, so I can clean my eye?”

“Are you going to try to strangle me again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then no.”

He turned his face toward the ceiling, keeping both eyes closed. “Who are you? Why did you drag me here? Are you working for Stimson?”

Stimson? What was he talking about?

The sun had dropped behind a ridge, and the inside of the cabin was dark, shadowy. Some of the welts had subsided, and she could only see the good side of his face, without the swollen eye. For the first time, she saw his profile without being distracted by welts, bruises, or blood.

She knew who Stimson was, and suddenly this man’s profile was familiar. Stimson was the hint she’d needed.

Dread washed through her, causing her to suck in a sharp breath. Instinctively, she scooted backward, increasing the distance between them until her back hit the log wall. “Holy shit. You’re Alec Ravissant.”

A
lec forced his burning eye open to get a good look at her face. Her shock appeared real. But he didn’t know her. She could be an excellent actress. But he had nothing to gain by not playing along, and maybe if he pretended to believe her, she’d let her guard down. He could take her out and make a break for it.

Hard to believe he’d been taken down by this woman, who didn’t appear to be an operative of any sort. From the weapons on her belt and her heavy backpack, he’d guess she was some sort of forest ranger. Except she wasn’t in uniform. Maybe she was a hiking guide?

Christ, he was a frigging Army Ranger and he’d been beaten and abducted by a woman half his size? She must have had help. He couldn’t imagine any scenario where she’d have been able to overpower him.

Except she just had.

Well, he was wounded already, she’d hit him with bear spray, and she’d had an open shot at the family jewels.

But how had she taken him down the first time? Maybe her car had been broken down by the side of the road, and he pulled over to help her? Vision in the one eye sucked, but he could still see she was pretty enough. She looked almost fragile with sweet, delicate features and full lips. He could have been a fool who fell for the oldest trick in the book—damsel in distress who didn’t know spark plug from dipstick.

Well, it was clear he was the dipstick for underestimating her—twice. He wouldn’t make that mistake a third time. “Yeah. That’s me. Alec Ravissant, at your service.” He again shifted to his back and closed his eyes.

Something plunked on the wood floor. From the sound, the object was moving closer. He cracked the one good eye open and turned his head to the side. Her lightweight aluminum water bottle slowly rolled toward him.

“It’s water from the stream,” she said. “I used a purification tablet, but given how cold the stream water is, it hasn’t been long enough to eliminate giardia or cryptosporidium. Also, don’t drink it if you’re allergic to iodine.”

He sat up and took the bottle. The room lurched again, but not as much as it had the first time. Condensation had built up on the battered metal cylinder. He pressed it against his swollen eye. The cold eased the pressure in his head just a tiny fraction, and even that small bit was a huge relief. “Thanks. I’ll take my chances with the crypto.”

He opened the bottle and first poured a small amount of cold water over both eyes, then downed half the bottle in one long drink.

“Finish it,” she said. “I have plenty of purification tablets.” She rummaged in her pack and tossed something else in his direction. Lightweight, the item landed in the no-man’s-land midway between them. “That’s a pepper spray wipe. For your eye.”

“Thanks,” he said again. He slowly scooted toward the packet, being careful not to make any sudden moves to startle her. It hadn’t escaped his attention that she kept one hand on the canister at her belt. The wipe removed the burning oil from his skin, and at last he could really see again. He splashed more water on his swollen eye and was able to open it a bit as well. With some ibuprofen for the swelling and pain, he might be fit for human company. “Do you have any ibuprofen?”

“Yes. And I can make a cold compress—with stream water—for your eye as well. I have an emergency cold pack, but we should save it. The stream water is cold enough.” She paused and studied him. “If you roll the water bottle to me, I’ll toss you the ibuprofen, then go to the stream to refill the bottle.”

It was a fair prisoner exchange, especially since he didn’t have anything else to trade. But it was going to be a long-ass night if they both had to stay awake in an
Enemy at the Gates
sort of standoff.

He rolled the water bottle toward her, and she tossed him a pill pack. After extracting his promise not to follow her outside, she took her backpack and left him to get more water.

He didn’t have much choice but to make that promise, and he would even keep it, although she was a fool for trusting him with nothing more than his word. As soon as he got his various aches under control, he’d turn his brain to seriously considering the matter of who she was and what she wanted from him. But right now, every time he started to follow that line of thought, his physical needs—splitting headache, near-blindness, what have you—took over and demanded attention.

And he still had no clue how he’d gotten into this situation.

I
sabel returned to the cabin, relieved to see he’d kept his word and hadn’t moved from his ceded territory in the small, rectangular room. He had the back half; she’d taken the front. At least she had the only door. But she also had the broken window. Her territory would be colder.

She shivered as she stepped inside and pushed the heavy door closed. The swollen wood dragged against the floor, scraping off a layer of rotting timber. That the cabin was still standing was a testament to old-growth trees. The logs were so thick, the cabin would last another hundred years before it faded from existence. Then the only evidence a cabin had once stood here would be a moss-covered river-rock chimney tower, standing as proudly as its white spruce neighbors.

The wind had kicked up substantially, and she was chilled from those few minutes outside. Thank goodness they had four walls and a roof, because there was no way in hell she could share her emergency shelter tube tent with Alec Ravissant. The man was an injured bear with opposable thumbs, and he believed
she
was the person who’d beat the crap out of him.

As if she could take down a former Ranger like him all by herself. If he hadn’t been hit so hard in the head, he might see how ridiculous the idea was. But then, maybe he did see and assumed she had an accomplice.

The problem was, if he knew her name, he’d never believe she was innocent. Her name would only convince him of her guilt. She had, after all, declared it her life’s mission to get his precious compound shut down. And she’d succeeded—even if only temporarily.

Now it was about to reopen again, and he could easily assume this situation was her last desperate act to prevent the trainings from resuming.

She
did
have a beef with the man and the compound, but beating and abduction was a tad far-fetched, even for her.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

Evasive answers would only make him suspicious. Lying was her only option. “Jenna,” she said, thinking of a server at the Tamarack Roadhouse.

“Jenna what?” he persisted.

“Hayes,” she said without hesitation. Hayes was her mother’s maiden name and Isabel’s middle name. Even if Alec Ravissant had read the most detailed dossier on her, he wasn’t likely to remember that detail or, if he did, make the connection now.

“What were you doing—five miles, you say?—deep in the woods, when you found me?”

This was tricky. She couldn’t admit to being an archaeologist, because odds were, he
would
make that connection. Most non-archaeologists didn’t know a ton of archaeologists in their day-to-day lives, and whenever she mentioned her profession to someone, they immediately told her about every archaeologist they’d ever met or heard rumors about. But if she said she was just out on a day hike for fun, she had a feeling that would raise his suspicions even further. Few people hiked in bear country alone for fun.