Bear Claw Conspiracy (17 page)

The responsibility was a heavy weight on his shoulders, the pressure a yoke around his neck. His blood burned with anger, his chest was tight with frustration…and he felt acutely, painfully alive.

He wanted to grab her, shake her, kiss her, make love to her. Watching Tucker and Alyssa drag her away from him had been one of the hardest things he had done; thinking it was over had been one of the lowest points of his life. And now, God, he didn’t know what to say, how to tell her that this was it for him, she was it. That somehow they were going to have to find a compromise, because he didn’t ever want to watch her walk away again. And he damn sure wasn’t going to watch her bleed.

Determination firming, he checked his readouts and turned to her just as the chopper crested a low line of trees. “Gigi, I need to—” A shrill bleat cut him off, coming from the console, where a display blinked a warning.

Blood icing, he whipped back to scan the ground below them. Too late, he saw that the “treeline” was camouflage netting strung over a half-dozen tents and twice as many vehicles, ranging from dirt bikes to a huge box trailer hooked to a heavy duty truck.

“There!” she cried, pointing to the smoky trail of a rocket-propelled grenade. It was headed right for them.

For a second, he froze, paralyzed by the thought that he, too, was going to die in a chopper crash, and that he was going to take Gigi with him. Then a second buzzer went off, snapping him straight into a crisis mode that was more intense than any he’d experienced before.

Shouting, he laid the chopper over onto its side and banked, veering sharply up into the sky. “Can you see it?”

She twisted, trying to get a look behind them. “No, I—” A booming thud reverberated through the tiny cabin and she screamed as more warnings shrilled.

Matt’s stomach headed for his toes and he swore as the chopper listed heavily, wallowed for a second and then nosed down. As it did, he caught sight of a forest service Jeep sitting beside a river a few miles away from the camouflaged camp, nearly hidden beneath a stone outcropping.

“Matt!”

“I’m trying!” He aimed for the Jeep, but the tail rotor was toast, his control sluggish to nonexistent, and they were too damn low for chutes to be any use. “Hang on!”

Chapter Sixteen

The helicopter crashed into the dry riverbed with a terrible, rending roar of tortured metal, the scream of an overloading engine, and the
whip-whip-whip
of the main rotor blades slamming into the ground and coming apart.

Gigi cried out as the cockpit took a huge, spinning bounce and she was shaken like a ragdoll. Her harness cut into her hips and shoulders, and her stomach couldn’t catch up, but all she could do was hang on and pray. As the windshield cracked and the rear door tore free, churning dust and rocks poured in, adding to the chaos.

Then the bulk of the cockpit thudded into something and jolted to a wrenching, shuddering stop. The console surged, spat and died.

“Gigi!” Matt wrenched free of his harness and lurched across to yank at hers.

Her head and stomach were spinning in opposite directions, but she slapped his hands away. “I’m fine.”

Then she popped the buckles, pitched into his arms, and let out two wrenching sobs as she clung to him with all her strength. She absolutely, positively was
not
fine. She was scared and shaken, and her emotions were all over the place. She wanted to push him away, pull him close, scratch at him, shake him, kiss him, hold on to him and never, ever let go.

She was a wreck. And so was their chopper.

He crushed her to him.
“Gigi.”
They held each other for a few seconds. Then they pulled apart and he shoved her toward the ripped-open doorway. “Go!”

As if they had practiced it a hundred times, she paused at the opening, crouched and looked low while he went high. She had her Beretta out; he was ready with his Sig Sauer. They shared a look and she went through the doorway, with him right behind her.

Her boots crunched wetly on the riverbed, which had a skim of water running through the rounded stones, a slightly deeper channel in the middle. She stuck to the edge of the narrow canyon, where a slight overhang offered the illusion of safety.

“Head downstream,” Matt directed, staying close and keeping his voice low. “We’re not that far from the bigger river. Fingers crossed that the Jeep is drivable and the keys are in it.”

Miles out of radio range, with the chopper’s main systems fried and limited knowledge of its tricks, their best option was going to be to drive to somewhere they could make contact with their team.

Turning downstream and picking up a mile-eating jog, Gigi tossed over her shoulder, “Keys are optional. I can hotwire it if it’s still working.”

She had the satisfaction of seeing his double take, then a reluctant glint of approval as she turned back and picked up the pace. Holding her gun at the ready as she ran, she scanned their surroundings for two-legged predators as well as others of the clawed or slithering variety. The coast seemed clear, the only sound that of the air moving through the trees.

It wasn’t that she’d stopped being scared—the fear was there, and not even buried all that deeply. But at the same time, going fetal wasn’t an option, so she was just doing what needed to be done.
Just do it,
she thought, the words taking on the feeling of a Lynd family battle cry.

“Hear that?” he said quietly. “I think we found Tanya’s waterfall.”

He was right. That wasn’t the wind in the trees; they were getting close to the river, and there was a cascade somewhere nearby. Excitement kicked at the sense that the case was finally coming together, though the adrenaline was tempered by the fact that they were cut off from backup.

The rushing roar grew louder, and the canyon took a sharp left, blocking their view. She paused at the turn, waited for Matt to move in close, and then looked low while he went high.

She caught her breath at the sight of a wide, rushing river with elevated banks that suggested it was far from its peak level. Both sides of the river were lined by scrubby trees that looked like an old man’s hands—gnarled and bent, with tufts of wiry white fibers growing in strange patches and trailing down. The water churned through a small set of rapids just downstream from them, and maybe five hundred yards or so farther down, the world dropped away. A cloud of mist beyond sparkled subtle rainbows.

It was stark, strange and beautiful. Even better, the Jeep was maybe a hundred yards away, parked up on the bank. It looked intact and untouched. And it was on their side of the river.

“We caught a lucky break there,” Matt said. “Let’s hope it holds.”

She looked up at him, and when their eyes met, her capable facade threatened to crack and crumble. It hadn’t been that hard to hold it together while they were moving, but now, with their one real hope within reach, fear crowded close, tightening her chest and stealing her breath.

If they couldn’t drive out in the Jeep, they couldn’t warn the others that it wasn’t just four or five hired thugs. Instead, they were dealing with a highly organized and well-armed camp.
Terrorists,
she thought. But she didn’t say the word aloud, because regardless of who the militants worked for, they would be en route to the crash site, looking to confirm the kills. Which meant that the Jeep better damn well work.

“Hey.” Matt dropped to a crouch, so they were at eye level. “You’re doing great.”

She nodded, gritting her teeth when they wanted to chatter, and forcing a smile that felt ghastly. “Don’t worry. I’ve got your back.”

“I know.” Still holding his Sig Sauer in one hand, he used the other to catch the back of her neck and draw her in for a kiss.

Logic said the timing was totally wrong. But the kiss was exactly right.

The press of his lips steadied her. The touch of his tongue said
we’re in this together.
The slant of his mouth across hers reminded her that when it came to dangerous situations, they were batting a thousand. And the warmth that rose in her, suffusing her body and lightening the heavy weight on her heart reminded her that she was with a man who had always believed in protecting others, even when he’d stopped believing in himself. And she, who never ever leaned, let herself lean into him for a precious second, drawing strength.

When they drew apart, he cupped her cheek in an uncharacteristically tender gesture. “No regrets, Gigi.”

Remembering their lovemaking, she smiled slightly. “No regrets.”

“I love you.”

Gigi froze. Heat slashed through her—maybe panic, maybe exhilaration, maybe some of each—and her fingers went suddenly numb where they clutched her lifelines, him on one side, her gun on the other. “I… Oh, wow.”

His grin was decidedly crooked, not an expression she had seen on him before. It lightened him up despite everything, making him look younger, more approachable, even a little roguish. Very much like a man a friend would call “Blackie.”

He took her gun hand and raised the Beretta between them. “Cover me…partner.”

Then he gave her hand a last squeeze and slipped past her, staying low against the riverbank as she headed for the Jeep.

She watched him go, staggered, her mind spinning. It was just the moment, she told herself. He couldn’t possibly love her. It was too soon; they were too different; everything was fresh, shiny and new now, but when that wore off the cracks would show. Opposites might attract, but they didn’t stick for the long haul.

I love you, too.
The words were trapped deep inside her, unsaid. She was entirely out of her depth. Love was too important to get wrong. How could she know for certain if it was going to last? She had thought she was in love before, and it had nearly destroyed her when it ended. Yet her feelings now were ten times stronger, a hundred. And as she watched Matt jump lightly from the concealment of the riverbank to the open ground above, her heart pounded with fear. Not for herself, this time, but for him. If anything happened to him… No, she wouldn’t think it. Couldn’t face it.

But it was that fear that broke her from her shocked paralysis and got her moving. Heart drumming lightly against her ribs, she edged farther along the riverbank, the rushing roar of the water and the deeper thunder of the falls covering the sound of her movement. She stayed concealed, but moved so she could see most of the clearing where the Jeep was parked. She covered her partner—her lover—as he headed for their best hope of surviving and warning the others what was happening inside the Forgotten.

And for the first time in her career, she wasn’t fighting against something—crime, bloodshed, injustice—she was fighting
for
something.

Him. And, maybe, their future together.

M
ATT’S HEAD WAS CLEAR,
his heart full, his senses attuned to his surroundings as he slipped between the Jeep and its rocky overhang. His cop self checked the frame and peeked through the windows, looking for evidence of a trap, while his ranger half listened for changes in the rhythms around him, the sudden silence that said predators were near.

No trap, no unwanted company, you’re good to go.
More, he was whole, connected, and entirely in the moment.

Becoming his better cop and ranger self hadn’t been about blocking out his emotions after all, it seemed. He had needed to accept them instead, embrace them.

When he had headed off to France with Ian, he had been so full of a college hotshot’s self-importance, so wrapped up in himself that he’d skipped his last visit home to go to a party being thrown by a guy he barely knew, to hit on a girl whose name he didn’t remember. He hadn’t told his parents he loved them, hadn’t teased his sister one last time—he had thought there would be time for all that later, after Europe. After college. Whenever. But then they died and there hadn’t been a later. There had only been grief, heartbreak, and raw, tearing regrets.

Not this time,
he thought as he eased open the driver’s-side door, took a quick look around, and then felt up underneath the overhanging section of dashboard where he and his rangers left their keys. Relief kicked when he found them right where they belonged. It looked like the Jeep had gone undetected, that they might be in the clear, after all. If he and Gigi could get back into radio range, he could mobilize a full-scale response. Not even Proudfoot could ignore the presence of an armed camp in his territory. And if the mayor tried to—if he was part of whatever was going on—Tucker, Fax and the others would go right over the top of him.

And damned if it didn’t feel good knowing that he was part of a team like that.

Easing partway out from behind the Jeep, he flashed a sign toward where Gigi was hiding, then held up the keys.
Stay there, I’ll come get you.
He was just easing back into concealment when there was a thump and a hiss from the nearby trees, and something came hurtling straight for him. Incoming!

He flung himself away. Behind him, the missile slammed into the Jeep and detonated. In front of him was Gigi. He bolted toward her, and—

Shockwave. Searing heat.

Blackness.

T
HE IMAGES BURNED
themselves onto Gigi’s retinas: Matt’s body silhouetted against the blast, his arms outstretched, his mouth shaping her name. Then, moments later, him lying crumpled on the ground, unmoving, the Jeep in flames behind him.

No!
The scream reverberated in her head and pain ripped through her chest. Inwardly, she went fetal. Outwardly, though, she bolted along the riverbank, clutching the Beretta so hard her fingers numbed.

She sobbed silently as she ran, choking on grief and guilt. He’d trusted her to watch his back, but she hadn’t seen or heard the grenade launcher, still didn’t know exactly where the RPG had come from. One second, she was clandestinely giving him the thumbs-up for finding the keys, and the next…
Oh, God.

“Please let him be okay,” she whispered. Then, not caring if it was reckless or not, only knowing that she had to get to him, she vaulted onto the plateau and sped toward him, staying low, her mouth souring with fear.

He’d said he loved her. And she had frozen—not because she felt nothing, but because she didn’t trust the huge, overwhelming feelings she had for him.

As he’d walked away, she told herself she needed time to think it through, time for the two of them to figure out if they could make it work. But even waiting five minutes had been too long.

She reached him, and had to choke back a sob. He lay facedown. His shirt was torn, his back streaked with blood, but she couldn’t tell if it was still flowing, or even if he was breathing. Beyond him, the flames had died down to inky, foul-smelling smoke.

She crouched and moved to touch him with a shaking hand. “Matt? Can you hear—” Movement blurred
above
her. Ambush!

She jerked back, gasping and bringing up the Beretta as a man leaped down from the rocky overhang. He landed on her with both feet, knocking her down and away. They rolled, grappling, and he nailed her with a vicious wrist chop that numbed her hand and sent her gun skidding. Then he was on her, straddling her, pinning her. She tried to knee him, but couldn’t shift his heavy bulk, tried to twist away, but didn’t have any leverage.

She was trapped. Oh, God. Terror rose, choking her.

Her dark-haired captor was wearing hunter’s camouflage, a full suit of it that looked fresh out of the catalog, along with a utility belt that held a GPS, spare ammo for a shotgun she didn’t see and a couple of fist-size canisters that were either grenades or gas.

His breath was hot on her face as he leaned over her, his blue eyes dark and feral. “You’re in luck, bitch. The boss said to bring him a survivor, if there were any. He wants to know how much the cops have figured out.”

A trickle of strength seeped into her and she sneered, “They know about everything. The camp, the stuff, all of it. If you want to get out of here, I’d do it now, because they’ll be here any minute.”

“Shut up.” He backhanded her, the blow made heavy and hard by the pistol he had clenched in his fist.

Agony exploded in her jaw and her head whipped to the side. She cried out, not just in pain, but with the gut-deep wrongness of what was happening, and the horrible realization that Matt had been right—it was nothing like cardboard cutouts and training spars. Real blood ran from a cut on her cheek, real tears leaked from her eyes.