Morgan's Hunter (23 page)

Thankful he’d ditched his pack a mile back, he nestled himself into a grouping of rough, thick limbs. He glanced at his watch. Exactly six minutes had passed since he’d left Morgan. He needed to believe she’d stuck with the plan and run. If she hadn’t…he wouldn’t think of that.

It wasn’t long before the two men from the guardhouse moved in his direction. He clung to the branches holding him, prayed they wouldn’t break. The guards walked past him, circled the area—never glancing up—and spoke into their radio. “We don’t see anything. We’ll continue to look around and head back. It was probably just a poacher or some shit like that farther north of here.”

A man on the other end of the radio ten-foured them.

The team of two wandered off. Hunter checked his watch again, anxious to be on his way. Eventually the guards came back, standing directly under him. They spoke into the radio. “The area’s clear. We’re heading back.”

When the twigs and branches littering the forest floor no longer snapped, Hunter quickly and carefully made his way down the giant tree. Much like earlier this afternoon, he followed behind the guards, giving them plenty of room.

He found his pack, took out his anti-reflective binoculars as he got closer to the guardhouse. He stopped, zeroed in on the bushy patch of pines where he’d left Morgan. Relief washed through him when she wasn’t there. “She did it,” he muttered.

He put his binoculars back, swallowed several gulps of Gatorade and made his way in a southeasterly direction. It only took him minutes to pick up Morgan’s trail. He spent time erasing a good half-mile of her tracks, made a false path leading in the opposite direction. He slid his feet along the ground, creating exaggerated footprints through pine needles and dirt.

After crafting a diversion obvious enough for any idiot to follow, he backtracked, picked up her tracks again. He ran a steady pace, stopped when he came to the spot where she’d clearly fallen. Hand and knee prints disturbed the scattering of pine needles among the dirt and tree roots.

She’d covered up her traces of sickness. Nearby was a lone banana peel. Hunter picked it up, threw it into the distance. No need to leave further clues.

He ran three more miles before he finally spotted her in the distance. She jogged along—slowly, lethargically—through the uneven terrain. He stepped on a branch and her head whipped up as she stopped. Her fists bunched and relaxed, bunched and relaxed as she looked around from left to right.

He walked out of the trees and watched her blink back tears suddenly filling her eyes. She started toward him with arms extended—as if she were going to hug him—but stopped and took a deep breath. A small smile moved across her lips instead. “You found me.”

“I told you I would.”

She nodded, blinked again, glanced away. She breathed in several times. “You were gone for such a long time. I thought they shot you. I thought you weren’t coming back. I almost turned around half a dozen times.”

Hunter brushed a strand of hair that escaped her ponytail behind her ear. “I’m glad you didn’t.” Trying to keep the mood light, he gave her a gentle elbow bump in the side. “You did a good job. You’re in one piece.”

She looked like she was ready to drop. Her green shirt clung to her, soaked with sweat. Her flushed face dripped from forehead to chin with fat drops of perspiration.

Morgan cleared her throat. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m ready for a dip in a ten-foot pool, but I guess a cool shower with stream water will have to do.” She took a long drink of her Gatorade and turned to walk again.

Hunter fell into step beside her. “Why don’t we sit down for a few minutes?”

She shook her head. “No, I want a shower.”

“We’re a good two miles away from that. I want to rest.” He could’ve kept going for miles, but worry tugged at him. Her cheeks were so flushed, her hair soaking wet.

“Then go for it. I’m going to keep on. I know where we are now. Catch up when you’re ready.” She looked at him. “I’m—I’m glad you made it back safely.” She cleared her throat again and pulled ahead.

They walked the last two miles in silence.

Morgan saw the knee-deep pool she waded in the night before; the ash pile they doused as they left earlier that morning. It seemed like days since they’d been there, not hours. She still couldn’t believe what they found.

She dropped her pack with a thud by the edge of the quick moving stream, took her boots off and walked into the chilly water with her socks and khaki pants on. Tipping her head skyward, she moaned as the cool liquid moved against her legs.

Hunter wandered over with the shower bag he dug from her pack. “Feels pretty good, huh?”

“It’s heaven.”

Morgan watched him fill the bag and tie it to the tree where they showered the night before. He stripped off his filthy shirt, took off his grubby pants, turned the nozzle on full blast.

The steady stream of water rained over him. His boxers clung like a second skin. Morgan couldn’t help but stare. Desire tugged low in her belly as she remembered the weight of his magnificent body pressed against hers.

She studied every muscled inch of him when he closed his eyes and let all five gallons of water drain from the bag onto his back without picking up the bottle of Campsuds.

Shaking her head, Morgan snapped out of her sex-hazed trance and put her effort into maintaining her balance while she stripped down to her panties and green t-shirt in the stream. Despite where her thoughts drifted, she felt her body temperature returning to normal even if her pulse still pounded. She had no plans to leave the blissful coolness of the water anytime soon.

Her pants landed on the bank with a wet plop as Hunter walked back to the river. He waded in, filled the bag for the second time. “I’ll give you fair warning. I’m taking it all off for a good rinse.” He gestured to his underwear. “If you don’t want your sensibilities shocked, I wouldn’t look over by the tree for the next few minutes.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow, giving him no hint to where her mind had wandered just moments before. “I’ll try to control myself.”

Hunter smiled and sent a tidal wave-sized splash her way.

She gasped as chilly water soaked her shirt, laughed and splashed him back. He cast another wave in her direction. Unwilling to be outdone, she gave as good as she got. Before long, they both dripped from head to toe, breath heaving, and called a truce.

While Hunter tied the shower bag to the branch again, Morgan got out of the water. She dug through her pack until she found the ultra long-range radio she brought with them. She tuned into the frequency she knew the northeast ranger’s station used and tried to radio in. “Robert, Miles, are you there? Can you read me?”

She only heard static.

“Northeast Station, do you read? This is Morgan Taylor checking in.”

When no one responded, she shrugged, turned it off. She put it back in her bag, returned to the deliciously cool water, unaware that the radio had been fitted with a beacon that activated when the radio powered on.

“I can’t begin to tell you how good it feels to be clean,” Hunter said. “Your turn, if you want one.”

Morgan glanced over, lost her breath. He stood grinning, wrapped from waist to calf in a navy blue towel. Droplets glistened on his powerful body. He was perfectly beautiful and she, desperately in love. Stunned, shaken, she stared down into the pool of clear water.

Hadn’t she just looked at him minutes before? She hadn’t felt anything then but a heavy dose of lust and longing. Yet something had changed in a flash of a moment, and she knew she would never be the same.

Morgan sat back against a large, slippery rock, shaking her head, trying to deny the overwhelming feelings rushing through her. “Yeah, I’ll take a turn. Just give me a minute,” she said dully.

“You okay?”

She looked up. Hunter stood before her, studying her. She stepped from the water, desperate for space and time to think. “Yes, of course. I’m just ready for a shower and a real meal.”

He put his finger under her chin. “You need to rest.”

“I’m fine. In fact, I think we should keep going after I shower and we eat.”

“Not happening. You’re done for today.”

Her eyes met the concerned blue of his, making her want. When he was kind, when he looked at her as if he gave a damn, she wished for something that could never be. Her voice chilled in defense. “What do you care? The rich-bitch princess wants to keep moving.”

He winced as she pulled away. “Morgan.”

She walked backward toward the shower, meeting his stare. “I’m sure if I tell Daddy I was brave and kept going, even though I broke a nail, I’ll get a matching bracelet for that new diamond necklace. I’ll be stripping down to nothing, so if you don’t want your sensibilities shocked, you might want to turn around.”

Steadier, she turned without giving him another glance.

Chapter 20

W
HILE MORGAN SHOWERED, HUNTER SET up camp. After staking the two-person tent to the hard-packed ground, he crawled inside, unrolled the navy blue sleeping bags, set them on their mattress pads. He placed the small LED lantern at the head of the beds as his mind wandered back through the events of the day.

With a weary sigh, he sat on his haunches, rubbed his fingers over the tight knots of tension squeezing the base of his neck like a vise. Christ, it had been a long one. There’d been too many close calls. He thought of the guard that all but stepped on Morgan, the flyover that missed discovering them by seconds.

No one could argue he wasn’t earning his pay.

He was ready to finish this job, hoped to wrap it up in the next seventy-two hours. It was time to get the hell out of Yellowstone. If they could make it to Bozeman without encountering any more complications, he could check this assignment off as another success. Morgan would return to D.C. in one piece—with the answers she’d come looking for—and he would be able to give Stanley the coordinates to bust up the mine.

But first they had to walk the several miles back to the cabin and actually avoid another catastrophe. He was starting to wonder if that was possible. Morgan seemed to attract trouble like a magnet attracted metal. Wherever she went, disaster wasn’t far behind.

Despite the chaos they encountered throughout the afternoon, Hunter couldn’t help but smile and shake his head. Hell if he knew why that amused him. She was a piece of work.

Their conversation moments before played through his mind, and his smile spread to a grin. She’d certainly told him where to go with her frosty words and firey green eyes.

Morgan could hold her own, of that he had no doubt. For such a tiny thing, she had one hell of a bite. It was easy to forget Morgan had a soft, sweet side and could be just as vulnerable as the next person. She didn’t show it often, which made it all the more powerful when she did—like earlier today when the guard almost found her.

Hunter’s smile vanished, his jaw clenched tight as he thought of the way she’d looked at him—pale, terrified. She’d almost undone him when she crawled into his lap, wrapping herself around him like a vine.

Her heart had pounded against his while she trembled and burrowed into him. As the scent of her soft hair surrounded him and her body pressed to his—molding perfectly as if she was made for him—tenderness engulfed him. He would have done anything to make everything okay, to make her feel safe again.

Hunter unclenched his bunched fists, let out another weary breath. It was definitely time to go. Seventy-two more hours, he promised himself, then he could put this all behind him and get back to his life in L.A.

With everything settled and little else to do, he backed out of the tent, started a fire for an early supper. He hoped the busy work of preparing a meal would distract him from his unwanted thoughts.

By the time Morgan wandered to their small camp—towel clad and hair dripping—chili simmered on the cook stove. Hunter sat comfortable and more relaxed in his convertible shorts, reading the novel he brought along.

He flicked a glance at her, sincerely wishing he hadn’t as a hot ball of lust settled uncomfortably in his belly. He knew just what was bundled under her towel and wanted
his hands all over her soft skin. Was she trying to make him crazy?

“I told you I wanted to keep moving,” Morgan said. “It can’t be more than three thirty, four o’clock. We can put in several more hours before we call it a night.”

Out of self-preservation, Hunter stared at the words in his book. “I’m ready to stop. We’ve had a long day.”

“I want to radio our location in to Miles and Robert tomorrow morning, when we get farther down in elevation. We have to tell them what we saw.”

Hunter’s head whipped up. His eyes locked on hers as a shiver ran down his spine. If only she knew how closely her thoughts mirrored her doomed team’s actions. He wanted to tell her about Shelly’s journal, to give her the rest of the answers she sought, but he couldn’t risk it. The less she knew the better. “I think we should skip the radio and head back to the station. We’ll book a flight home and tell your father when we get to D.C.”

She frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. We’ll radio in tomorrow. I tried while you showered, but I only got static.”

He shot up, grabbed Morgan’s arm. “You did what? Shit, Morgan, why did you do that?”

She yanked free of his grip. “Why wouldn’t I? We found an illegal mining operation on federally protected land. They’re rangers. That’s exactly what I’m supposed to do.”