Naked Edge (20 page)

The moment they left the cover of the trench, they'd be dead.

CHAPTER 12

SOMEONE HAD FIRED at them. Someone was trying to kill them.

Kat held the phone to her ear with hands that refused to stop shaking. Then, over the thrum of her own heartbeat, she heard a woman's voice. She cut in. "Hello, dispatch? There's shooting at Mesa Butte! There's shooting at--"

She gasped as three more shots tore through the air, the woman on the phone firing questions at her that she didn't hear.

Beside her, Gabe ducked back inside the trench, gun in hand, his dark brows drawn together in a look of focused determination. "Tell dispatch it's one shooter with a high-powered rifle positioned somewhere near the top of the access road. Tell them we're about three hundred yards east of the butte. Tell them you're calling on behalf of sixty-forty-five, off duty."

Kat repeated his words into the phone, doing her best to answer the dispatcher's questions and fighting not to scream as two more shots whined overhead. "No, no one's hurt, but he keeps shooting at us!"

She thought she heard dispatch say help was on the way, then Gabe swore.

"Goddamn it! Tell dispatch I'm returning fire!"

"He's returning--"

Bam!Bam!Bam!

Kat instinctively squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears against the deafening sound as Gabe shot back, the cell phone falling into the dirt. When she opened her eyes again, she found herself lying on her side, looking at Gabe's profile. Beads of sweat trickled down his temple, and he seemed to be listening, his breathing deep and even, a look of focused concentration on his face.

How could he be so steady when she was shaking like a leaf? He seemed more angry than afraid. And then she saw.

Blood.

It had soaked through the right side of Gabe's coat near his collar, a large hole torn in the black fabric, white fiber batting stained dark red.

"You've been shot!" She crawled over to him, only one thought on her mind--to help him.

He shook his head. "Get down, dammit! Leave it! It's nothing--just a graze. Now listen to me! Whoever this bastard is, he's probably realized he can't hit us as long as we're down here. The only chance he has of getting us before the good guys get him is to come down here. If he tries, I'll do my best take him out. But if anything happens to me, take the Glock and--"

The distant wail of sirens.

"Hear that? The bastard who's shooting at us hears it, too, and is probably high-tailing it away from here. It's going to be okay." Gabe took her hand with his, gave it a reassuring squeeze. "Stay down until I say it's clear. Understand?"

Kat nodded.

"Good." He pressed a quick kiss to her lips, then turned away from her onto his side and peeked carefully around the pile of earth that shielded them.

The next two minutes passed like an eternity. Even as the sirens drew nearer, Kat couldn't shake the feeling someone was watching them, perhaps getting closer to them, waiting for his chance. She closed her eyes, kept her head down, and prayed.

Wailing sirens. Barking dogs. Men's shouts as Mesa Butte and the surrounding land were cordoned off and searched. And finally the sight of two men in Mountain Parks uniforms, guns drawn.

"Hey, Chief, Hatfield. I can't tell you how glad I am to see your ugly faces." Gabe stood, gun in hand.

The ranger Kat recognized as Hatfield looked around at the battered landscape, a look of shock on his face. "Holy fuck!"

Chief Ranger Webb turned in a slow circle, his gaze on the trenches, his face red with rage. "Son of a bitch! What the fuck is going on out here, Rossiter?"

"Isn't that obvious? Someone has turned Mesa Butte into his own private archaeological dig." Gabe took Kat's hands, helped her to her feet, then drew her into his arms, holding her tight. "Are you okay, honey?"

She held on to him, still shaky. "Y-yes, I think so."

He kissed her hair. "Let's get you out of here."

As he helped her climb out of the trench, Kat looked beyond him and saw the butte swarming with law enforcement--park rangers, police, sheriff's deputies. There, not twenty feet away, stood Officer Daniels talking with another cop.

And he was watching her.

"WHAT WERE YOU doing there?"

Gabe looked from Police Chief Barker to Chief Ranger Webb and back again. "I already explained all of this--twice. Wait a minute ... Am I a suspect or something?"

He'd been at police headquarters for three hours now, filling out paperwork, answering question after question, wanting nothing more than to find Kat and get the hell out of this place. She'd been badly shaken up by the shooting, and he didn't want to leave her alone any longer than necessary. She didn't know it yet, but either she was going to stay at his house again tonight or he would stay at hers. No way was he going to leave her unprotected, not after what had happened today.

"This is just a standard debriefing, Rossiter." Webb gave him a bored look. "Someone shot at you, and you fired back. Just answer the damned questions so we can all go home."

Gabe could tell Webb's patience was worn as thin as his own. "As I told you, she wanted to check Mesa Butte for signs of looting, and I asked her to wait until I got off work at four because I didn't want her going there by herself. If looters were to blame for the old man's death--"

Barker frowned. "Red Crow's death was ruled an accident. You know that."

"Yes, but she doesn't believe it, and after what happened this afternoon, neither do I." How could anyone? It seemed obvious now that Red Crow's death had something to do with looting. "Someone is stripping the place of artifacts and was willing to blow our heads off to conceal that fact. You all saw what's going on there. The investigation into Red Crow's death needs to be reopened."

"We'll make that decision." Barker spoke the words casually, but there was an edge to his voice that said he didn't like taking suggestions from a park ranger.

"Did you see anyone?" Webb tossed a few Turns in his mouth and chewed.

Gabe shook his head. "No. My decision to fire was strategic. I wanted the attacker to know I was armed so that he would think twice before moving in on us. I hoped to buy us a little time so backup could arrive. And it worked. Once I fired, he quit shooting."

Webb nodded. "There's no doubt that you made the right decision."

Barker looked up from his notes. "How many rounds did you fire?"

"Three." They'd already taken Gabe's service weapon and his spare magazine and probably knew the answer to this themselves.

Barker glanced back down at his notes, his brows drawn together in a frown. "What I don't understand is how Ms. James knew to look for looting in the first place. Can you shed any light on that?"

And Gabe realized he was fucked. If he told the truth, he'd lose his job. He took a breath, steeled himself, wondering if the rock gym would hire him. "She--"

Webb cut him off. "She was at the crime scene, remember? She saw the potsherds next to Red Crow's body. That's what she claims at any rate."

For a moment Gabe thought he'd gotten lucky. And then it hit him. "You're questioning her?"

"Of course we're questioning her." Barker glared at Gabe, his voice filling the small room. "Every time we've been called to Mesa Butte, she's been there. Is it too hard to imagine that she's mixed up in this somehow? Maybe the whole lot of them are doing it together--stealing artifacts and selling them, using their ceremonies as a pretext for looting the place and then pretending the shit belonged to their great-grandfathers or some damned thing."

Gabe couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Who's with her? Is it Daniels?"

Barker stood, leaned forward, his face inches from Gabe's. "Daniels is a good cop, a good man, a family man. If you've got a problem--"

"Your
good
cop dragged an innocent woman by her hair and lied--"

"Shut the fuck up!" Webb's voice roared. "Both of you--shut up!"

Barker's face was red. "Get your boy under control, Webb. He's in my shop now, and I've had about enough of his attitude."

Then Barker stood, threw the door opened, and stomped out of the room.

Gabe would have gone after Kat, but Webb shut the door again, a look of unmistakable anger on his face. "What the hell is going on, Gabe?"

"What do you mean?"

"I see how it could happen. You rescue a pretty, young woman. She's grateful. You're horny. The next thing you know she's got your dick wrapped around her little finger, and you're dragged into her problems. Maybe she and her friends are behind this looting. Maybe they've been using their ceremonies as cover like Barker suggested."

Gabe bit back a stream of four-letter words. "Kat hasn't so much as laid a finger on my dick, and she's incapable of stealing."

"You're sure of that, are you?"

"Yes, I'm sure of it. She was totally broken up when she saw what was happening there."

"Maybe she's a good actress."

Then Gabe spoke the words he knew would end his career. "You want the truth? I'll give it you. She only went to the butte to look for looting because I told her about the potsherds. She wanted to know what was in the lines the cops had redacted, so I told her--off the record, of course."

Webb stared at him, his ruddy complexion slowly turning redder. "So she lied to us in order to cover for you."

"She wasn't lying. She was protecting her source." There was a difference--to a journalist anyway.

"Her source? I let you off last time. I sat there in my office and lied to Feinman to save your ass." Webb jabbed him in the chest. "But not this time. You're a damned good ranger, Rossiter. Hell, you're the best. But I won't put my job on the line to save yours, not when you refuse to follow the goddamned rules. You are terminated."

Webb ripped the badge from Gabe's coat and held out one hand.

Some part of him unable to believe this was really happening, Gabe fished the keys to his service truck out of his pocket, lifted the chain that held his key card from around his neck, removed the Glock, and dropped them into Webb's outstretched palm.

Then Webb opened the door and strode down the hallway, leaving Gabe alone.

KAT SAT IN the passenger seat of Marc's SUV, the lights of Boulder passing outside the window. Body armor that was much too big for her pressed into her thighs and bumped against her chin. Beside her, Marc argued on his cell phone with Julian, who was ahead of them driving her truck.

"What do you mean you don't know how to get to US-36 from Twenty-eighth Street? Twenty-eighth Street is US-36, dumbass. Yeah, I'm sure. Go straight."

Oddly reassured by their familiar bickering, Kat drew a deep breath and tried to release the tension that coiled inside her like a spring. For more than two hours, detectives had grilled her, their line of questioning leaving no doubt that they suspected she knew more about the looting than she was telling them. She'd expected compassion from them, given that someone had tried to shoot her. Instead, she'd been interrogated.

More than a little overwhelmed, she'd done her best to answer their questions. No, she'd had no idea there were artifacts at Mesa Butte. No, she'd never heard Grandpa Red Crow or anyone else in Denver's Native community talk about artifacts or looting at the butte. Yes, she knew Native people sometimes dug up artifacts and sold them on the black market, but that typically happened on the reservation where few had good jobs and many went to bed cold and hungry. No, she would never cover for looters, even if they were Indian, because stealing artifacts was wrong.

When they'd demanded to know why she'd wanted to check for looting, she hadn't been able to tell them the truth because that would have exposed Gabe. So she'd told them she'd seen the potsherds beside Grandpa Red Crow's body. Then they'd wanted to know why she hadn't mentioned the shards in her statement to police.

"I was very upset that night. I forgot about it."

"You forgot about it," the older of the two detectives had replied, his tone of voice implying that he didn't believe her.

She wasn't a very good liar.

Some part of her realized they were doing their job, but knowing that hadn't made their suspicion any easier to bear. She'd left the interrogation room feeling weary, shaken, violated--only to find Marc and Julian waiting for her in the lobby. The sight of them very nearly unleashed the tears she'd been holding back.

"How did you know I was here?" she'd asked them.

"You called Tom, remember?" Marc had explained, giving her a hug.

She hadn't remembered.

"You're in shock," Julian had suggested. As tall as Marc with dark hair he kept back in a ponytail, he had the kind of presence that intimidated even hardened criminals. "Flying bullets have a way of shaking people up. Let's get you home."

But she hadn't wanted to leave--not yet. She'd wanted to find Gabe, to thank him, to make sure he wasn't badly hurt, but the person at the front desk told her he thought Gabe had already gone. So Marc and Julian had sandwiched her between them and escorted her out to Marc's waiting vehicle, Julian helping her inside and shutting the door behind her before jogging over to her truck, her keys in his hand. They were taking her to Marc and Sophie's house, where they wanted her to stay till this was over.