The Mountain's Shadow (28 page)

“I would recommend you stay here until you know you’re safe.”

“I appreciate your concern,” I told him, “but I think that will happen at about the half of never.”

“Then Godspeed on your journey. Do you know what route you’ll take?”

“Not yet. It depends on construction.”

“Please give me a call when you arrive.”

Galbraith followed the bomb squad and patrol car out of the apartment complex. His car reinforced my initial impression of him as the creepy undertaker in some old B-movie.

“Was that a little much?” I asked. I looked over the grounds of the apartment complex for a large black wolf to appear. Where was Leo?

“I believe so. He seemed very concerned.”

“A little too concerned. Or am I being paranoid?”

Iain put his hands on my upper arms and squeezed gently. “After surviving two explosions in two days? I would say you haven’t been paranoid enough.”

“You’re probably right. We still have to find Lonna and Gabriel.”

“So why are we going back to Crystal Pines? Shouldn’t we revisit the scene of the crime? Look for evidence? See if they were, indeed, kidnapped?”

“Nope.” I hoped that my impression had been correct and that the clearing had been empty before the explosion. “It’s all been obliterated. And we’re not going back to Crystal Pines.”

“I see.” That’s what I liked about Iain—he understood that sometimes good research needs tangents. “Where are we going, then?”

“I’m paranoid, remember? I won’t tell you until we get there. But first we have to wait for Leo.”

“I always told that cad Robert that you would be the better boss.”

We walked inside and straightened up the mess the bomb squad had left. If—no, I chided myself, when—Lonna came back, I didn’t want her to find the place trashed.

Iain yawned. “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since getting here. Would you mind if I take a nap while we wait for Leo to reappear?”

“That’s fine.”

Iain went to rest. I sat on Lonna’s couch and flipped through a magazine, but I didn’t really see what was in it. Leo stumbled into the apartment a few minutes later. He wore his clothes from the day before.

“Forget something?” he asked.

His clothes. From the alley. I put my palm to my forehead. “Whoops, I forgot to get those. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, good thing I hid them pretty well. Otherwise, my wallet may not have still been in my pocket. I was able to use what little cash I had for a cab. So what’s the plan now?” Although he hadn’t had any more sleep than Iain, he looked as alert and ready for action as he had the day before. His rumpled appearance with his wild hair and a day’s growth of beard reminded me of when I first saw him blasting out of Galbraith’s office like a dark energy fireball. I blushed when I remembered his kiss in my bedroom at the Manor.
 
He was dark and dangerous, and all I wanted to do was jump him, wrap my legs around his waist, and run my fingers through his hair while showing him I could be just as good a kisser as he was.

“You have an interesting expression on your face, Doctor,” he said.

The heat in my cheeks intensified. “I’m not at liberty to say why, Doctor. That’s classified information.”

For a moment, I imagined what the two of us must look like standing there in Lonna’s living room: him rumpled and wild—yes, that word kept coming to mind—and me looking disheveled and forlorn.
 

He took my hand, examining my injured wrist again. “This doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would after all that,” he said. When I looked at him, I saw he moved his gaze from my wrist up my arm to my shoulder and my torn shirt, where the edge of my bra peeked out, up my chest to my neck and finally my lips, and I trembled as though he had actually touched me.

I could barely speak between the heartbeat that seemed simultaneously lodged in my throat and between my legs. “It’s feeling pretty good right now.”

He pulled me against him, and I leaned into his strength and steadiness. “Someone tried to blow you up,” he said.
 

“Twice.” A hysterical giggle escaped.

“Most women, most people, would be crying puddles on the floor.”

At his words, a tear escaped from each eye, but I refused to let him see me cry again. “I’m not most people.”

“No,” he said and tilted my face up with his index finger. “You’re stronger than anyone gives you credit for.”

His echoing Lonna’s words on the first day of this horrible adventure made the lump in my throat grow to a burning coal, but still I struggled to keep the tears in check. His lips on mine, soft and questioning, brought me back to the present, and I opened to him. I felt the hardening in his pants between us, and my pelvis seemed to press into it on its own. He groaned and tightened his fingers in my hair and on my butt, trapping me to him.
 

He’s just been off the hunt
, the rational, scientific part of me said
. He could be dangerous. Remember your wrist.

Shut up
, I told it.
I’m not threatening him.

But again, he pulled away and walked across the room.
 

“Okay, now I feel like melting into an emotional puddle on the floor,” I said, crossing my arms so I wouldn’t shiver with the sudden absence of his warmth. “What the hell was that? Why won’t you finish what you start?”

“It’s my brain,” he said with a heavy sigh. He sat on the recliner and put his head in his hands. “I don’t know if wanting you is me or if it’s the wolf instinct trying to protect you and claim you.”

The image of him dragging me off somewhere and...
Not now, brain!
“Why do you need to claim me? It’s not like there’s a bunch of suitors vying for my hand.”

He shook his head. “Do you remember where I was all night until the explosion in the clearing?”

“Tracking the black wolf.”

“And do you know where I tracked him?”

“No. How could I possibly know that?”

“Joanie,” he said, his tone serious. “The black wolf followed every one of your moves from the police station to the Italian restaurant to your chase after Lonna.”

“Wait a second. If you knew we were following Lonna, why didn’t you help?”

“Because I felt the black wolf was a threat, and...” He sighed again. “My brain wouldn’t let me leave it until it warned you away from the explosion at sunrise.”

This time I couldn’t suppress the shiver, and I sat on the sofa.
It warned me twice, but what does it want?

Iain walked into the room and stretched. “There, now, much better. Oh, good, you’re back.” He stopped and looked at us more closely. “Did I interrupt something?”

“No.” I stood and looked out the window to the east. “We don’t have time to be fooling around, anyway.”

“Right,” Leo said, but I thought I heard a trace of regret in his tone. Or maybe that was wishful thinking on my part. “So what’s the plan now?”

“She’s not saying.” Iain’s lips twitched, and I could tell he was amused. “But I have a suspicion.”

“We’re not going back to Crystal Pines?”

“Nope.”

We piled in the car, Iain in the passenger side and Leo in the back. When I turned on I-40 toward Memphis, Iain smiled. That was the other thing I liked about Iain: his mind worked very similarly to mine. He held up his cell phone in a query.

“Go for it.”

I didn’t read the text he sent, but I knew that it said something to the effect of,
Doctor Robert Cannon, be prepared for visitors. Tell us where to meet you.

Iain and Leo snored in harmony by the time we crossed the river into downtown Memphis. Not that I blamed them. It was a long, flat, boring road, and none of us had slept much. Adrenaline—and the breakfast burritos we’d stopped off for—kept me going.

I rehearsed what I would say to Robert in my head. Now that I knew he’d only fired me because he’d been forced to, it gave me hope that we may be able to get something back. I was surprised that my thoughts turned to the research partnership rather than the romantic one, but it seemed indecent to remember the episodes on the office sofa with one of my colleagues in the car.

Before I could follow that train of thought, a semi passed us, its horn blaring, and the noise startled the guys awake.

“What in the hell?” asked Iain. Leo just blinked sleepily in the backseat.

“Just a lorry,” I said, using the British term for large truck. “Did you come up with any good inspirations while you dozed?”

“Not a one.” Iain checked his cell phone. “Oh, bugger!”

“What?”

“Robert texted me back. He said he’s out of town on business.”

“He’s not here?” Frustration and relief warred in my chest at the delayed confrontation and possible reconciliation.

“That’s not all. He said that he’d like to meet you at your manor this evening at midnight.”

“Oh, crap. That means we have to turn around and drive all the way back.”

“Wait a minute,” said Leo. “He’s out of town on business but can meet us in Crystal Pines? Where is he?”

“Didn’t say,” replied Iain, “but you have a point. I think that we’ll find more from our Doctor Cannon than we expected.”

I spotted an exit, but I had to think fast. This one or the next one? The impetus of seeing Robert again made up my mind for me. Without worrying about my turn signal, I swerved into the next lane and on to the exit ramp.

The blast of a horn startled me, and an out-of-control tractor trailer swerved into the lane where I had just been, crashed, and burst into flame on the other side of the bridge.

“Son of a…” I looked at the plume of black smoke and pressed my foot to the gas, running the red light to get away on the access road as fast as I could. I couldn’t get the image of what my car could have looked like out of my mind.
If I hadn’t taken the exit, I would have been trapped by the bridge supports, and we would have been crushed.

“Should we try to help him?” asked Iain as he twisted around to get a better look.

“Are you nuts? He was after us.” Instead of left to get back on the interstate, I turned right and headed into town, hoping that amidst the smoke, no one had seen us. I wiped my trembling hands one at a time on my jeans to make sure they wouldn’t slip off the steering wheel, and I was grateful for that rest stop a half hour before.

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s the trailer part of the truck that burst into flame, not the cab.”

“She’s right,” said Leo. “I watched it. I took an oath to help people, but I’m not itching to go back. They tried to squash us.”

We darted through quiet neighborhoods, careful not to drive too fast or attract attention. My tag was still for Shelby County, Tennessee, so no one would have reason to notice us.

“Are we going back to Crystal Pines?”

“Yes, but we’re taking back ways. I’m going to use the I-55 bridge, not the I-40 one to get back into Arkansas, and then we’re staying off the highway. Hopefully they think they did us in back there. It’ll take them a while to figure out they didn’t.”

“How did they know we were here? Did you see anyone follow us out of town?”

Another shot of adrenaline hit my heart, and I slowed the car. “Good question.” I thought for a moment. “Robert may have set us up. Or someone’s cell phone is tapped, and they can intercept messages. Turn your phone off.”

Iain did as I suggested, and I turned mine off as well. Leo didn’t have one. I pulled into a small road between two new neighborhoods and stopped the car in the shade of an oak tree.

“What are you doing?”

“I need to think for a moment.” I spotted the manila folder from Galbraith and opened it. Inside, we found a sheaf of papers in my grandfather’s handwriting. Iain looked over my shoulder.

“Joanie, this is—”

“Just what I had asked him for.”

“We have to get back. This work is incredible.”
 

I put my hand on Iain’s arm, which trembled with excitement. “That is just what they were hoping we’d do. And I bet we’d have found a nasty surprise when we got there.”

Comprehension dawned on his features. “Galbraith set us up yesterday.”

“And again today. I bet they have Lonna and Gabriel, too.”

“How do they know how to find us?”

“It may be the cell phones, or I bet there’s a GPS in the car or on the car. The bomb squad could have planted it while Galbraith was talking to us.”

“So they’ll know that we weren’t killed by the tractor trailer.” He licked his lips and looked out the window.

“We need to find the GPS and hide it here.”

“Why here?”

“This is Robert’s neighborhood. They’ll think we’re headed to his house.”

We searched the car, lifted seat cushions, and emptied the glove compartment. We emptied the trunk, checked under the spare tire, and lowered the backseat in case it was nestled in the space under the bottom of the seat. Finally, with a flashlight, we saw it: a black box with a blinking red light magnetically attached to the underside of the car.