More Than Magic (25 page)

Grace twisted in her seat to face him. “Look, I haven’t had the benefit of seeing what you have, when it comes to drugs and what people do in that world. But I’ve seen black bear carcasses left to rot in the woods and priceless ginseng beds stripped of even the youngest plants by thieves who have
no
understanding of what they mean to our future! I’ve seen things that could cure cancer, reverse Alzheimer’s, eliminate malaria, lost forever because we’re slowly killing the very planet that gives us all life. It’s like this filthy
b-blackness
corrupting everything. I have d-dreams about it.”

Nick’s fingers were on her skin, wiping tears away—his thumbs stroking her cheekbones. He had both hands cupped around her face, gazing at her with those gray eyes of his.

Grace froze. She hadn’t realized he had stopped the car. She certainly hadn’t realized she was crying.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He leaned toward her.

With every fiber of her being, she wanted to stay still. To let him kiss her. To kiss him back. To let him—

“I can’t.” She pushed away, turning to grab the door handle and look out at where they were—gauging how far it was to walk from here.

“Grace.”

“No. Just no. Okay? You understand
no
, right?” She had to stop this before it caused more harm than it already had. “You aren’t like Boyd Taggart, are you?” She knew it didn’t sound convincing because her voice was shaking as she said it.

Nick flinched and he pulled back to look at her. Then without a word, he slid back into his seat and put the car in gear.

Apparently the only answer she was going to get was his foot pressing the gas pedal hard enough to make the tires squeal and the SUV fishtail for a moment.

Damn it all to hell. He hadn’t let his hormones lead him around this badly since high school. And here he was, making an absolute ass out of himself.

Slick Nick, on the rampage in Western North Carolina. Details at ten.

He glanced sideways at her. She’d gone pale and those nearly invisible freckles of hers were showing up again. The anger was a front—an attempt to get him to back off for all the wrong reasons. She wasn’t angry. She was afraid.
 

But she wasn’t afraid of him. And it hadn’t been just the alcohol last night, or some casual tease. She was attracted to him. His gut told him that much. And his gut wasn’t wrong about this,
or
about the case.

Because the answer to the Smoky Mountain Magic case
was
on this mountain. And his gut told him the Taggarts were at the heart of it.

But he needed to keep his hands off Grace Woodruff until this was over and done. Until he could tell her the truth. He glanced at her again. She was staring out the window now. He made a point of slowing down on the winding road.

The barrier she had thrown up would be hard enough to get through, finding out that he had lied to her and pretended to be someone else might make it impenetrable. He would have to be completely free. No case, no responsibilities. Free to camp out on her front porch or in her meadow or at her gate until she would talk to him again. Until she would talk to Nick McKenzie.

The mental picture he had of himself in a little tent camped out in Grace’s meadow almost made him smile, until he remembered what they had been doing out on that meadow last night.

Whatever had made her back away from him was hiding under that blank in his memory. And it wasn’t anything
he
had done.

Grace in his arms—wrapped around him.

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

Grace moving over him in response, her hands on his chest as he closed his hands around hers.

Then swirling blackness shot through with brilliant shafts of light, obliterated, until nothing was left but light—gold and shimmering behind his eyelids.

“Nick!”

He slammed on the brakes.

“Where are you going?” Her voice was tight.

“What?”

“You just went past the gate.”

He looked back. Sure enough, the gate was behind him. “Sorry. I was— I was thinking.” He reversed the car, pulled into the entrance and entered the gate code. She probably thought he was really upset.

“Sorry,” he repeated, pulling through the gate.

“No. I shouldn’t have said what I did. You’re nothing like Boyd. That was uncalled for. I’m sorry.”

“We seem to spend a lot of time apologizing to each other,” he said. “Or telling each other not to apologize.”

He drove across the meadow, looking out toward where the cemetery lay in the shadow of the trees.

“Yes, we do, don’t we?” She sounded relieved.

Nothing left but light—gold and shimmering behind his eyelids.

“Nick? Are you all right?”

“Oh. Sure, yeah. Like I said. Thinking.”

“Well, we have company. Don’t run her over.”

Jamie was ahead of them on the road, pedaling furiously, her overstuffed backpack wobbling and that rosy face looking back now and again to see if they were gaining.

Nick slowed down and grinned as Jamie sprinted over the hill into the parking area and raised her arms in victory. Then she had to lean forward and grab the bars before the backpack’s weight pulled her off the bike.

Nick pulled into the parking lot and Jamie was at the door, opening it for Grace before he could even shut off the engine.

“I brought my overnight stuff. Did you know the snow was coming in early? We got let out of school and Mom left early too. So, here I am. I need to go get the last part of my project done afore it snows though,” she said in one breath.

“Good to see you too, Jamie,” Grace said.

“Yes, and good to see you today, Dr. Grace,” Jamie said.

Nick smiled. The conversation was so fast it had gone in reverse.

“But I don’t think I want you out there by yourself today,” Grace added. “The weather could come up too fast and you might get caught out in it.”

“Aw, I’ve been in storms before, and the wind stopped already! Snow ain’t no big deal. I got my GPS. Besides, this is it. Once I get this one, I can put together my project book while I’m here.” Jamie looked troubled. “If I don’t get it now, the snow’ll ruin everything!”

“But I don’t want you to go out alone and I can’t go with you. It will—”

“I’ll go,” Nick offered. It would give him a chance to ask Jamie some more questions about that notebook. And a way to get out of Grace’s vicinity for a while, since he couldn’t think straight around her. “Unless you need some help—”

“No, I’ll be fine. But don’t stay out there too long. When the weather changes up here, it changes fast.”

Nick nodded. “Sure. Just do me one favor. Don’t go up to look at that cell tower until I can go with you and bring along the sat phone. Okay?”

He was pretty sure she was about to protest that she would be fine, but something stopped her. Instead, she smiled warmly. “Okay.”

Nick walked back to open the hatch and retrieve their packs. “Let me change and get my gear.”

“I’ll be ready in just a sec!” Jamie yelled, running inside.

Grace shouted after the vapor trail that Jamie left behind, “You are going to wait until I put together a lunch for you, Jamie Lynn!”

Nick handed Grace her pack and started for his cabin.

“Nick?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

She smiled at his exaggerated politeness. “If I could be wrong about Boyd, I could be wrong about the rest. I apologize—”

He held up his hand. “Too much apologizing going on already. Let’s just hope we’re both wrong and Old Annie won a contest or something.”

“Yes, let’s hope,” she said. “But if you think we should report this or have someone investigate—”

I’m doing my best, ma’am.
“They’d probably come up empty-handed just like before. If they are involved in drug dealing, they’re hiding it really well. And I think you’d pretty much have to catch poachers in the act.”

“Well, it’s too bad Old Annie doesn’t feel the same way about poaching as she does about doing drugs. But the Taggarts have always used the line between legal and illegal as a jump rope.” Grace pulled something out of her pack and handed it to Nick. A folding shovel.
 

“Sorry, but you may have to pitch in and help with the kudzu if you don’t want this trip to last too long.” She smiled a trifle too smugly.

He stared at the shovel for a moment without seeing it. Something about what she had just said about Old Annie—

“Yeah. No problem.” He stuffed it in his pack. “Saving the world one kudzu at a time.”

Her lovely laugh followed him up the steps to his cabin.

“So, how often do you do this?” Nick asked.

Jamie climbed ahead of him. “What?”
 

When they had started out, Nick had braced himself for the uphill climb because they were going straight up the ridge instead of the longer, less steep walk around. But his stamina amazed him. His muscles were feeling the strain, being out of practice as they were, and he would probably regret it tomorrow, but otherwise he felt great. He had spent most of their trek enjoying how it felt to do this kind of thing again.

“Actually go hunt for something Grace has found and marked for you?”

Jamie had a bright blue stocking cap pulled over her hair and down over her ears. She looked back at him as if she were indulging a toddling grandparent. “For my school project? Once a week. Mostly weekends. But when I ain’t— I
am not
doing the project, we only do it every once in a while.”

Nick stifled a smile when she corrected herself. “So about how often do you set up a cache for Grace to find?”

“Oh, gosh. About once a month or so. I mean, she don’t have time.”

“But you have a lot more puzzles than that in your notebook.”

Jamie spun around at that. “Hey, you didn’t let Dr. Grace see ’em did ya?”

Nick shook his head. “Nope. Just like I promised, but why would that have been a problem?”

“Well, I ain’t used but about four of ’em on her.”

“That’s a lot of caches to do in the future.”

“Yep. We’ll probably use ’em at Christmas for presents and stuff. So did you like ’em? My puzzles?”

“Absolutely. I was surprised that you took the time to work out a different kind of cipher for each one.”

“Well, it gets boring if you use the same set up every time. I’d study a famous cryptogram and then use it.”

“And no one helped you with it? That’s amazing.”

“Nah.
Solving
some of them famous ones, that’d be amazing. Like the Beale ciphers and the Sweet Sixteen.”

“Your mom didn’t help?”

Once again he was confronted by Jamie, arms akimbo, face pinched. “Are you sayin’ I ain’t smart enough to do ’em by myself?”

Nick backtracked as an adult must when confronted with such an expression. “Not at all. I just wondered if anyone else had shown an interest in them. Like Grace and me.”

“That’s ‘Grace and I’. And only stupid old—Well, only one other somebody did. And he was the reason I had to redo ’em all again.”

“You had to—” Nick felt a twitch right between his eyes. “Why did you have to redo them?”

“Wait. We’re there. I mean here. We’re here.” Jamie was studying her GPS and their surroundings.

Nick took a deep breath as they hiked closer to the top of the ridge.
She’s just a little girl, McKenzie. Take it slow. No rush.

“The answer to her puzzle was ‘the color of bananas’. I bet it’s that bunch of witch hazel over there with kudzu climbing onto it from the other side.” Jamie pointed at a tangle of bushes with unusual yellow blooms.

“Flowers in November,” Nick said.

“Yep. They’re something. Dr. Grace always picks out something unusual like that. Makes it easy to find.”

“So what’s next?” Nick undid his pack and dropped it on the ground. “Lunch?”

“Nah. We can have that after. As a reward. I need to take a picture of the ‘before’. Then we dig up the kudzu, or as much of it as we can, and then take an ‘after’ picture.”

“Great. Let’s get started then. Where’s your camera?” Nick asked. “We need to do it pretty fast. I think the temperature’s dropping while we stand here.” He looked up at the clouds, which seemed to be snagging on the tops of the trees.

Jamie fished around in her fanny pack and came up with a digital camera. “Birthday present from Dr. Grace. Found it in a cache.” She took a picture.

“So, who was the other somebody who made you redo all the puzzles?”

Jamie moved and took another shot. Nick shadowed her.

“Oh, he didn’t
make
me redo ’em. He saw me looking for a cache and asked me what I was doing. He seemed real interested, so I told him all about geocaching.” She peered at him over her camera suspiciously. “Like I did you. And I showed him my notebook, like I did you, and told him all about how it worked and everything. He even helped me find my next cache, but while I opened the box—”