Rocky Mountain Lawman (15 page)

Acutely aware of the burden that placed on him, momentary nervousness filled him. She took care of that in short order by leaning into him and wrapping her arms around his neck. There was no doubt this woman knew what she wanted, and that pleased him hugely.

Nervousness vanished. As he returned her kiss, he grasped her rump in his large hands and pulled her closer until their hips connected. He almost groaned as she pressed against his staff and her moist heat reached him even through two layers of denim.

He slipped his hands upward now, sliding them under her sweater and shirt, running his palms over her satiny skin. Edging steadily upward he sought the clasp of her bra, wanting to free her to his touch more than he had wanted anything in a long time. Women were no mystery to him anymore, but this one was affecting him as if she were a brand-new one, like the very first one, filling him with need and fear, anticipation and apprehension all at once. He wasn’t sure she wouldn’t change her mind. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t disappoint her. Both kept him on exquisite tenterhooks of deepening hunger and inescapable uncertainty.

He found the clasp. She felt it and arched backward, almost as if offering herself to him. He quickly slipped his other hand beneath to join the first and when he released the hooks she gave a soft moan. His finger felt the bra pull open as it ceased to support. He didn’t hesitate now, but slipped his hands around until he cupped both her breasts.

She groaned. He closed his eyes in absolute delight as she filled his hands, as he felt the hard, big pebbles of her nipples pressing into his palms. He now had no doubt she was coming on this ride with him, as hungry as he.

The pounding in his body grew harder and more insistent. His staff had stiffened until he felt it would explode, good, so good.

Running his thumbs across her nipples, he reveled in the shivers that ran through her, in the way she almost jerked at his each touch. He squeezed and kneaded, and even pinched her lightly, trying to wring every drop of pleasure out of this for both of them.

But most especially her.

She pushed hard on his shoulders, holding herself up, making her breasts available to his caresses. As she pushed against his shoulders, she brought her center even closer to his groin, and began a slow, steady rocking against him. He could feel her thighs tighten around his with each movement.

This was incredible, he thought hazily. Had it ever happened so hot and hard for him before?

They were going to reach a peak before he even unbuttoned their jeans, and damned if he cared. He rose up to meet her, savoring the pressure and her immediate response.

Finesse vanished. They were riding a sudden storm and with each movement of their hips the deep ache grew, goading them closer to the precipice.

Then, as if shot out of a bow, they flew. He heard her quiet keen, she bucked once hard, then collapsed on him weakly. An instant later, with one last upward jolt, he followed her.

He hadn’t even started to catch his breath when the radio across the room started crackling, Lucy calling his name impatiently.

* * *

The sound of the radio was an unwelcome, unwanted intrusion. Sky straddled Craig’s lap, sated, wanting to melt into him again, amazed that they had visited such heights in such a hurried fashion. Cripes, like kids in the back of the car, she thought. She might have been embarrassed except that she hadn’t gone there alone. Craig had been right with her.

And that warmed the kernel of hope in her heart even more. The most basic of sex, and it had been good for both of them. No wine, no roses, no dinner, little foreplay, no romance and it had been exquisite.

Then the radio. She didn’t even bother to stifle a groan of protest as she tried to find strength to lever herself off him. Long-ago training rose to take over: you didn’t ignore a radio call. Ever.

He seized her waist and helped her to stand, standing with her at the same time. Then he eased her back into the chair.

“I’m going to kill Lucy,” he remarked.

“Don’t bother. She doesn’t know.”

He paused long enough to brush her hair lightly and drop a kiss on her mouth. “Wonderful,” he said. “More later, unless you object.”

Her cheeks flamed but she smiled. He returned the smile then headed for the radio, which sat on the shelf next to his hat and gun belt.

“What’s up, Lucy?”

“Something’s going on, Craig. Don is on his way. You’re still at the cabin, right?”

“I was taking a comp day.”

“Sorry, it’s over. I’ll let him know where to find you. Out.”

He put the radio down and looked at Sky. “The comp day was over, except for you, since Micah showed up.” Walking over to the window, he stood looking out at what had become a steady rain. “I wonder what the hell is going on.”

“She didn’t seem to want to say on the radio.”

“No, she didn’t.”

They both understood what that meant. Whatever the news was, it wasn’t meant to be overheard.

* * *

“There’s too many forest service guys in the area,” Cap said.

Buddy shrugged. “They’re looking for a blocked stream. It’s important.”

“Well,
we
blocked the stream, so how do you think that’s okay?”

Buddy bridled a bit. Sometimes he didn’t like the tone Cap took with him. “This is
my
land. I can do whatever the hell I want on it. Those rangers can’t even cross my boundary without my permission.”

“You were sure eager enough to show that sheriff around.”

Buddy glared at him. “You want to draw attention? The best thing to do when the sheriff pays one of his courtesy calls is to act like everything’s normal. Be friendly. If I stop doing that, he for sure knows I’m up to something. Cut it out, Cap. He didn’t see a damn thing he doesn’t always see.”

“You hope. He saw the new barracks and he didn’t look like a dope to me.”

“I told him it was because I needed more storage. There’s no reason on earth for him not to believe that. He knows I got a lot of food stashed out here. Never made a secret of that.”

“Well, maybe you should have.” Cap frowned at him. “You’re a little too open for a prepper, Buddy.”

“I’m also too far out for anyone to care when the stuff hits the fan.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Well, that’s what you’re here for, right?”

Cap didn’t answer immediately, which made Buddy nervous. He was seriously wondering if he’d made a mistake by inviting the man here. The questions seemed to grow by the day. Before Cap, he hadn’t had any trouble with anyone.

“My men are out there working, Buddy. I told you that. The day is coming. They’re already starting to come this way as they finish their jobs. But in the meantime, we’re going to have to keep an eye on those rangers. If they find out we’ve diverted most of a stream to make a reservoir, they can tell you to remove the dam, right?”

“It’s my land,” Buddy said stubbornly. “They can’t tell me anything.”

“They’re the government. I wouldn’t be too sure of that. Anyway, we need to keep an eye on them so they don’t get too close. What’s going on here needs to be absolutely secret.”

“What we need to do,” Buddy said off the top of his head, “is make them less suspicious. You start following them around the woods with your patrols, and they’ll get even more suspicious. We need a way to look like the good guys.”

“Got any plan for doing that?” Cap asked sarcastically.

“I’m thinking on it,” Buddy said stubbornly. “I’ll come up with something. By the time I get done, we’ll look like heroes and they’ll leave us alone.”

Chapter 10

C
raig put on a fresh pot of coffee, apparently as much of a requisite for the forest service as it had been for the army. He also pulled out prepackaged sweet rolls to go with it, so full of preservatives they probably could have safely been stashed for the entire summer on that very shelf.

She understood, though: food and coffee, the essentials, especially when life lacked other comforts. On a day like this, Don probably wasn’t very comfortable.

Because the rain had been so steady, Craig went out to check on Dusty, carrying a heavy wool horse blanket with him. “He may be waterproof, but he doesn’t have a way to run around and keep warm out there,” he explained. “I’ll be a few minutes. I’m going to brush as much water out of his coat as I can and check the drainage. I don’t want him standing in water.”

On a day like this, Sky figured there was no way to avoid standing in puddles. A little while later, she heard thumping. Curious, she grabbed her jacket and went outside.

Dusty stood near the side of the cabin, under the overhang, wearing his blanket. Craig, however, appeared to be using a shovel to dig a trench. The center of the corral had become a lake.

“Can I help?”

He didn’t argue. “There’s another shovel around back in the small toolshed.”

Walking around back, she noted with amusement that Dusty seemed unfazed by all of this. He was eating grain and watching Craig’s efforts with one eye.

It felt good to use her muscles for hard labor again, though, even though she was sure she’d probably feel it later. They trenched their way steadily toward a downslope just beyond the corral fencing.

Craig paused, wiping his forehead on his arm. “It’s going to be muddy no matter what, but at least it should dry faster when the rain stops. I need to get some bales of hay out here to spread around if I’m going to be here often.”

“But he’s okay when you’re moving around, right?”

“Sure. He can always find a dry place to stand and some shelter. It’s just being cooped up like this that concerns me, and I’m probably worrying too much. It’s only one day, and he’s found a fairly dry place to stand. It’s not like I’m going to leave him standing in water up to his hocks for a week.”

She liked that he cared this much, though, even if he thought it might not be essential. “We could go scoop up armloads of pine needles from around here.”

He cocked a brow at her. “Do you want to spend the rest of the day on that?”

Well, actually, no, she thought, quickly bending to start shoveling again. As wet as the earth was, it was easy to trench. There were other things she’d vastly prefer to do with the hours ahead. Damn, she’d had sex with a man and they hadn’t even gotten naked. Think of that. Good sex, too.

They were just finishing the trench, watching the puddle vanish from the center of the corral, when Don drove up in a service pickup. He climbed out into the steady rain, pulling a bright orange poncho over his head.

“Why the hell aren’t you two inside where it’s dry?” he asked as he walked over to the corral. Then he saw the trench. “Oh. Afraid Dusty will melt?”

Craig just snorted. “Go on inside. I just made coffee. We’ll be there as soon as we rinse off.”

“Naw, it’s more fun out here.” He winked at Sky.

She quickly reached for Craig’s shovel. “I’ll put these back.” The wink had probably been innocent, but after what she and Craig had just experienced, she didn’t want to flirt, even casually.

“No, I’ll do it,” Craig said. “I need to lock up. You go on in with Don.”

Exactly what she didn’t want to do, but given no option, she crossed the corral and led the way inside. Much to her relief, Don didn’t seem to want to go any further than that wink. He doffed his poncho, sat at the table with a mug of coffee and took a sip with a satisfied “Aah.”

“We’ve got some sweet rolls, too. Want one?”

“I’d love one. Somehow this turned into a long day.”

She tore the wrapper off the foil tray and put it on the table with a couple of paper plates. “You traded in Tragedy for the day?”

“I stabled him, more for my comfort than his.”

Sky laughed. “It’s a good day for that.”

“I thought so.” Don flashed a grin. Just then Craig came inside, stomping the mud off his boots before he crossed the threshold. Sky immediately poured him coffee and as soon as he dumped his rain gear, she handed it to him.

He sat with Don at the table, pushing wet hair back from his face. “What’s going on?”

“I was out at the overlook this morning.”

“Overlook Rock?”

“Well, of course.”

Craig snorted. “Like we don’t have a heap of scenic overlooks.”

“But only one we call
the
overlook,” Don retorted.

Sky sat, too, watching the men needle each other. Some parts of male interaction she would never understand, but whether she understood or not, she was familiar with it.

“So,” Don asked, “you estimate that Cap guy has two or three others with him?”

“That’s all I could see a few days ago.”

“Multiply it. While I was checking around this morning I got some good views of the Jackson property and the surrounding area. He may have only three or four of these guys working on that new structure of his, but there are more of them out in the woods.”

Sky felt her heart accelerate.

“How many?” Craig asked.

“I wish I could tell you. They’re ringing the place like a defensive perimeter and keeping an eye on the woods around.”

“What makes you sure they aren’t just hikers?”

Don nearly rolled his eyes. “Oh, I dunno. They all wear the same camouflage and they’re all carrying AR-15s? They look like a damn army. They fanned out for a while, then pulled back. Like they were checking to make sure nobody—namely us—was poking around anywhere near Buddy’s place. I wanted to think they were just playing games, but I kept remembering that hiker who turned up dead a month ago.”

“He was four miles from Buddy’s place. Anything could have happened, and we still don’t have a definitive cause of death.”

“I know.” Don sipped more coffee. “These guys were out a few miles from Buddy’s place. Just saying.”

Craig didn’t say anything immediately. Sky waited with an almost sickening sense of dread about where this might lead. The idea that Buddy might be building an army, even a small one, boded no good.

“They’ve got to do something wrong,” Craig said finally.

“I know. I get it.”

Sky spoke. “This hiker. How is it nobody is sure how he died?”

“The reality of a corpse left unburied in the woods. Between animals and decomposition, there wasn’t a whole lot left. We identified him because nothing dined on his driver’s license or credit cards.”

“It doesn’t take long,” Don agreed. “You know that’s one of the very real arguments about why we’ll never find Bigfoot remains.”

Sky did a double take. “Bigfoot? For real?”

Don laughed and Craig cracked a grin. “Rumors abound,” Craig said. “Always.”

Don kind of laughed. “Never seen one. But you know that’s what they say. If the remains are buried, they’d be nearly impossible to find. If they’re not buried, they’d be gone lickety-split.”

“All bases covered,” Sky said drily.

“You got it. Even bones don’t last long in the woods.”

“Scat,” Craig said. “We’d see scat.”

“Only if we know what we’re looking at and it hasn’t been buried.”

Craig arched his brow. “Are you buying this, Don?”

“Who, me? I’m just trying to lighten an otherwise depressing conversation. A hiker died, there’s good reason why it’s so hard to determine cause of death. However, I’m not ready to say four miles from Buddy’s place is too far. Not after what I saw today.”

“How many did you spot?”

“I counted five. I watched for about three hours.”

“Five.” Craig repeated the number, frowning thoughtfully. “And that was only what you could see from the overlook.”

“Exactamundo. Five. That side of Buddy’s place. If I hadn’t been so far above them, I wouldn’t have known it. As it was, they emerged into clearings just often enough for me to get what was going on. There might have been more.”

“Militia,” Craig said.

“That’s my guess. This isn’t the kind of thing Buddy used to do. He was just a squirrel gathering acorns against a winter that would probably never come. He always struck me as harmless.”

“Me, too.” Craig sipped coffee, then rubbed his chin. A moment later he tore off a piece of sweet roll and ate it. “I guess Lucy isn’t exactly amused by this.”

“Hell, no. The boss was in fine form. She was
not
happy about a bunch of guys patrolling
our
forest with AR-15s, legal or not. Her first thought was that some visitor could get hurt. Thank God we don’t have too many of them right now, but she’s going to steer them as far from Buddy as she can.”

“The ones who stop by the office, anyway.”

Silence fell as Don ate and got himself some more coffee. Sky sat wondering what anyone could do about any of this. If it wasn’t illegal for those guys to be out there, then...what?

“Anyway,” Don said, “Lucy wanted to be sure everyone was alerted. You know we’ve been moving as many guys as we can to this part of the park for a few days. Now she’s worried
we
might run into trouble.”

“Not if we’re careful. Imagine the flares they’d send up if something happened to one of us. Although, the more of us that are skulking in the trees around here, the more likely that gets.”

Don nodded and reached for more roll.

“About the valley river,” Craig said. “That’s been my excuse for wandering around the area.”

“Yeah, that’s what we’re all supposed to be checking out.”

“I can’t find anything on forestry land. That leaves Jackson’s place. He’s got one of the biggest of the feeder streams running through his acreage. If he were to divert a significant amount, we’d notice below.”

“It’s probably him,” Don agreed. “So tell me how we prove it.”

“I’m just thinking out loud,” Craig said. “Ordinarily I’d say there’s no reason for him to divert anything. He’s always had a few small ponds to carry him through a dry spell.”

“Unless he adds a bunch of people,” Sky added.

The two men exchanged looks.

“Quite a few people,” Don amended.

“So how many of these guys is he planning to bring out here?” Craig wondered out loud. “And more importantly, why? I guess I need to go have another talk with him.”

Sky’s heart slammed. “Not alone! Those creeps were following me in the woods. Don’t you dare go over there alone.”

“Following you?” Don looked worried. “Why in the hell? You’re just a painter. Are they that paranoid? Damn it, Craig, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this before something blows up that can’t be contained.”

“Parameters would be useful. Some idea of what they’re up to would help. Playing soldiers in the woods isn’t illegal.”

“Damaging a national forest by diverting water is,” Don said.

“Prove it. That’s why I’m going to have to talk to him again.”

“Not alone,” Sky repeated.

He looked at her at last. “Not alone,” he agreed. “This time I think we might need to join up with our friend the sheriff.”

Relief washed through her. “Good,” she said firmly.

Don left a short while later, promising to get back to them after working things out with Lucy. Apparently they were now observing radio silence except for the most innocuous of things.

“It never,” Craig remarked, “used to drive me nuts to be out here without phone or internet. The radio was more than enough. Now I’d give my eyeteeth for an internet connection.”

“I can imagine.”

“I should probably take you to town, make sure you’re out of the line of fire.”

“We don’t even know that there’s a line of fire,” she argued. “What’s more, those creeps know all they want to know about me now. They went through my things. Nothing but painting supplies. No guns, no ammo, no fancy spy cameras. Just my digital SLR camera with a bunch of lenses and a handful of memory sticks. I’m no one and they know it.”

“So?”

“So I’m not going to be run off. I came here to paint, and as soon as the weather clears, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. We sure don’t want to do something that might alert them to the fact we know something is going on.”

“I doubt—”

“Hush,” she said firmly. “I’m not running, and I’m not leaving you out here alone. Period. I don’t care how much backup you have. I’d never forgive myself for hightailing it.”

He stared into those determined eyes of hers and realized he had a new team member whether he liked it or not. She had something riding on this, too, although he would have liked to know exactly what it was.

“What’s more,” she said, “I can keep an eye on things without being obvious as long as I have a canvas in front of me and a paintbrush in hand. I also want to take another walk to that gorge. It’s beautiful.”

Well, that was a confusing mix. He couldn’t decide if she was throwing all this out in the hopes that if she tossed enough, something would stick. In spite of himself, he laughed.

“How will going to some gorge keep an eye on Buddy?” he asked. “Do you have a line of sight?”

“Well, I’ll find out if they’re patrolling this side of the valley regularly. And if they are, I’ll keep at least one of them preoccupied.”

Still he hesitated. While he had no proof that this could turn dangerous, he had an ugly suspicion it might do exactly that. Men patrolling the woods with AR-15s were dangerous if only because they might use those weapons carelessly. One itchy finger was all it would take.

Every protective instinct he owned wanted her out of here. But when he took a mental step back, he realized that even if he dragged her to town, she was determined enough to just get in her car and come right back out here.

“Look,” she said, “your people are going to be concerned with what’s going on over at Jackson’s. I can keep an eye out over here. If they’re spreading out this far routinely, that’s more information to evaluate.”

At last something that made actual sense to him other than apparent stubbornness. Okay, then. At least she’d be on this side of the valley, probably safe from most of it.