Primal Obsession (9 page)

They appeared too zombie-tired to do anything but nod. Annie never looked up from her screen. Carl poked at the fire. Ray and Frank went back to their game discussion. Nora didn’t participate, but looked on with approval at her son’s animation.

Sam had planned some stargazing for tonight, but everyone needed a break. Including him. He had to pull himself together, to mull over plans for the rest of the expedition so they had no more days like today. When he thought no one was looking, he slipped away.

Annie watched Sam melt into the trees.

She’d expected him to hassle her about her tent site, but his reticence continued. His whole demeanor changed. No flirting, no double-entendres, no devilment in those burnt-sugar eyes. Whatever ate at his soul sidelined his charm.

Forced retirement from the Major League had hurt deeply. She imagined the headline:
Wild Pitch Ends Promising Career.
He suffered a loss of identity, a wound more painful than physical injury. So he had to prove himself again. Today’s bushwhack was less than a howling success.

Speaking of headlines, maybe this caretaker they’d see tomorrow would have word of the outside world, even about the Hunter or the MCU’s progress in tracing him. All she could tune in on her tiny radio was static.

She slipped her tablet into her tent and followed Sam.

The path wound through fragrant cedars and came out on the west side of the spit of land. Sitting on a slab of granite, Sam gazed at the river and the green mountains beyond. His slumped shoulders and arms wrapped around his knees reminded her of Frank.

She ought to leave him to brood. Approaching him would send the wrong signals, would make him think she cared. She
didn’t
care. In spite of his charm and intelligence, he was too macho and too physical. And too bound up in his problems. She should turn around and head back to camp. Still, she’d figured out something he should know.

“You might as well come sit down, princess. Gonna be a great sunset.” Without turning toward her, he patted the flat granite beside him.

“Don’t call me princess.” Her thighs shook like Jell-O as she eased onto the rock beside him. The rays of the lowering sun washed the few clouds with shades of mauve and rose. Odors of campfire smoke and grilled chicken drifted on the air. “How’d you know I was here?”

He laughed, a deep masculine rumble that tingled through her. She clenched her teeth against the attraction. “Your stealth wouldn’t give old Thoreau’s Penobscot scout any competition. Too much noise. How’s the arm?”

“Aches a bit, but the swelling’s going down. Lucky I brought the meds. I’ve learned from a lifetime of Mother Nature’s tricks.”

He stretched out his long legs and slung an arm around her shoulders. “Look at that sky. Makes up for a lousy day.”

“You’re wasting time brooding about that lousy day.” Dam, she liked the feel of his arm around her. She ought to remove it.

“Who’s brooding? Now you’re a mind reader?”

His scowl didn’t fool her. “Goes with the territory. I’m a journalist, remember?” She scooted to the side, shrugging away his arm.

He rubbed his scarred hand. His lack of reaction to her rebuff was one more indication of his dark mood. “Damnation, how did we wander so far off course? Should have practiced more with the compasses. Did I check the calculations? Hell, I don’t know.”

He’d shaved after washing in the river, and his smooth, strong jaw was close enough to touch. One deep dimple was close enough to explore. Sparks zipped over her skin.

Before his clean masculine scent and the sunset’s romance reduced her to his sex slave, she’d better get to why she came. She slipped her bushwhack notes from her pocket. “I know why our navigating put us in foul territory today.”

A grin lit his handsome face. His eyelashes lowered as he clasped her hand and brought it to his lips. His mustache tickled her palm. “Mmm, I love it when you talk baseball.”

“Seriously, Sam.” She ought to pull away, but his big, blunt fingers felt too good, scars or no. “See the erasures in these last two compass readings? That 60 should be 100 due east, and the 100 should be 120. Someone changed them.” She pointed to the numbers that had led them to the wrong cove.

He peered at the paper. “You’re saying—”

She shivered at the cool air replacing his warmth. “Your guiding expertise is not in question.”

The smile beaming from under his sexy mustache licked her with heat. She wanted to test the texture of that mustache some more. So thick, so luxuriant. If he kissed her, would it feel bristly or soft against her face?

“Princess, you’ve saved my day.” His whisky-colored gaze perused her face, settled on her mouth. Had he read her thoughts? He pulled her against the hard wall of his chest and lowered his mouth to hers. “A quick smooch won’t do it.”

She would’ve protested, but his tawny eyes and sun-warmed scent mesmerized her.

His lips met hers with light pressure, warm, moist, tender. The sensations surging within her were anything but tender. She forgot about breathing, about ever breathing again, forgot everything but the heat between them.

He moved against her, the friction coursing ripples of fire through her. He caressed, he stroked, he savored, flicking his tongue across her lips until she opened to him.

“Oh, yeah!” He took the kiss deeper, spearing his big hands through her hair, holding her in his heat.

The silken sweep of his mustache added a new kick to her already hypersensitive senses. He tasted spicier than the barbecued chicken, hotter than the sun’s rays spearing them and more intriguing than any man she’d ever kissed. She reveled in him—languid heat, lean strength, and liquid passion.

As colors swam in her head, she floated inside the sunset. Desire melted her limbs, made her want more, more...

Sam ended the kiss with a soft brush of lips.

She sucked in air, stunned at the sparks tingling through her. Her head wobbled on rubbery neck muscles. When she could finally focus, she saw smug male satisfaction written on his face. “Sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Sure of
you
.” His voice was husky. “I just hit a double-bagger. I’m in scoring position.”

Her heart fluttered like a wild bird in her chest. She peeled his arms away and managed an unladylike snort. “Scoring position? You never got to first base, slugger.”

“A matter of time.” He trailed a finger along her lower lip. “The only reason I didn’t
slide home
is the fans in the stands.” He jerked a thumb toward the campsite.

Her body still pulsed with desire, but she shook her brain clear. Denial wouldn’t work. If the kiss had continued, they’d have been naked. And he knew it.

Better revise. Any more kissing and her heart would get tangled with her libido. Disaster.
No more jocks.
Especially not this one, who could dissolve her brain with a kiss. She stood and went to lean against the rough bark of a cedar tree. She held out the compass notes. “This presents a new problem. You know that.”

“Are you sure you didn’t make the changes yourself?”

“As I plotted each course, I wrote the numbers on another paper. I made changes there. Then I copied my notes on this sheet. Someone deliberately changed my bearings.”

“So we would go the wrong way.” His brows drew together, sprouting wild hairs like exclamation marks. “Who the hell would throw us that kind of curve ball?”

“Exactly. And why?”

TEN

He yanked the thin wire so hard the two sticks snapped. Control. He had to maintain control. Control was one secret of a hunter. And stealth. Yeah, stealth and control. He breathed deeply, calming himself, centering himself.

How dare they behave like nothing significant was happening? They were supposed to be nervous, wondering what disaster would befall them next.

Instead the two of them were kissing. Kissing and whispering. So he couldn’t even hear their conversation.

They were all oblivious. Like bungled hikes and hornets’ nests were everyday shit.

The hornets were a mistake. He’d meant the nest for the bitch. The damn tents looked alike. No matter. The stingers sent them all directions like rabbits fleeing a pack of coyotes.

He scooped a handful of the forest floor and held it to his nose. Dead leaves, rotted bark, black loam—the smells of nature’s cycle. The mulch that would return to the earth the outcome of his next hunt. He smiled.

They didn’t know who they were dealing with. They didn’t know how he’d suffered. How he’d escaped. From
her
. They didn’t know how he’d become strong. Invincible. Free.

The very set-up of this canoe trip was hindering him. He was too restricted, unable to toy with them secretly. After this little demonstration, his tactics would change. Satisfied with his plan, the Hunter knelt to his task. With new twigs, he looped the wire, placed the corn kernels.

Yes, indeed. Time to up the ante. Up the ante for Annie.

A giggle erupted. He clasped a hand over his mouth.

His change of plans was her fault. She discovered him, named him, and then abandoned him. She left his story for others to tell, for others less competent, less perceptive. She shouldn’t have done that. She had to be punished.

Now it was time for her to be afraid.

Time for her to learn she was being hunted.

And who was hunting her.

ELEVEN

Sam heaved a pebble across the water. Skipping stones was the only kind of throwing he could do. Didn’t have much finger control for that either.

The diversion gave him time for the tightness in his groin to ease and his lust-fogged brain to clear. What the hell was that? The kiss that began as sweet exploration powered to a fevered urgency he hadn’t felt since... hell, he’d never been hit by such a blowtorch.

To jack the temptation even higher, she felt the jolt too. There she sat in jeans and a sweatshirt that covered up too much of the good stuff. Sexy as hell. Even more so with her face scrubbed clean and her cheeks pink from the sun.

He hadn’t heard her sneaking up on him either. It was more like he’d sensed her presence, detected her sweet-tart scent above the insect repellant. That kiss and his lust-induced behavior afterward shouldn’t have happened at all. Hell. Holding the line with Annie would require the will power he’d mustered to pull himself together. Ben was right, damn him, about not getting involved with a woman on the expedition.

Then they had this other freaky puzzle to deal with.

He stared again at the erasure on her notes. This episode had kinked his muscles like a rookie paddler. “Man, that’s way out in left field. One of
us
screwed with your notes?”

“And maybe with Frank’s. They went to the wrong cove first, remember.”

“I’m used to edgy game strategies, but this beats all. Whoever did this had to suffer with the rest of us.”

“
If
Frank’s numbers were changed too.”

He nodded. “Let’s suppose they were. We may never know. Who had the opportunity?”

“Anyone and everyone. Frank and I left everything on the picnic table when we packed up our snacks for the morning. So the next question is why.” Her smoky eyes shone with excitement. Or was it the repercussion of their kiss?

His gaze dropped to her lips, swollen and moist and tempting as sin. He had to wrap his hand around another stone to keep from pulling her away from the damn tree she was propping up and into his arms. He cleared his throat. “Carl’s sense of humor has an edge to it.”

“He trooped across that island like a kid let out of school for the summer.” Annie shrugged. “I can see him going that far for a joke. Or to get us riled up.”

“If that was his intent, it worked.” Sam rubbed his scars. Their itching was always a sign of trouble.

“What about Ray?”

“Moving from virtual adventures to tinkering with our real one? I don’t know. He has a thing about accuracy.”

Annie’s mouth thinned. “True, but he caught on to the navigation stuff fast.”

“Computers are unforgiving.”

She cocked her head at him. “The voice of experience?”

“Don’t ask.” One of many disasters in his front-office fiasco. He unzipped the windbreaker. In her sexy presence and under scrutiny of his past failures, the garment was growing uncomfortably hot. “We were talking about Ray, remember?”

“Ray, right. Changing the numbers might be an attempt to increase the difficulty level. Like in his virtual world.”

“Damn, maybe they all did it. Nora would want Frank to succeed, so she would have changed only yours.”

Annie shook her head. “Nora seemed baffled by the whole map activity. I doubt she’d know how. Unless she was faking her confusion so her son would feel empowered.”

“Mama Bear protecting her cub. Yeah, she might do that. Unless you or I did it, now we come to the cub himself.”

“He has the obvious motive. Resentment at the adults for enforcing the chore rule. Resentment at his mom. At his dad.”

“At the world.” Picturing the boy this evening, Sam tossed another pebble. Frank enjoyed navigating and held onto his compass for the next day’s trip. A scrub in the lake left him with no colored spikes, just a thatch of naturally brown hair. “I watched him after supper. He squatted beside the fire and flipped apple chunks to a chipmunk.”

“He did that last night, fed corn to one. Nora said he wants to be a veterinarian when he grows up.”

“For obvious reasons we have a policy of not feeding the wildlife. I didn’t say anything. Let him be a kid.”

Annie smiled her agreement. “Frank’s like his name, open and honest for good or bad. Not devious like our saboteur.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“Everywhere and nowhere.” She sighed, pointing to his knife sheath. “I see you found your knife. At least that mystery’s solved.”

“I carry a spare. The other’s still missing.” He straightened. “Could the same person have taken my knife?”

Annie’s eyes flashed. “And planted the hornet nest?”

He didn’t like one damn bit where this was leading. “What the hell’s going on?”

Her gaze skittered away on a frown. Her mouth thinned as she pushed away from the cedar trunk. “Heck if I know. But it’s getting dark, and we’re not going to solve this tonight.”

The deepening shadows limned the concern on her face. What had occurred to her? “Is there something else?”

“No, of course not.” She looked up brightly as he rose to his feet. “What do you want to tell the others?”

Sam hated to disrupt the expedition. If he could, he wanted to keep the lid on, take care of the problem quietly, and not have to radio Ben for help. “Let’s keep it between us for now. If nothing else happens, we’ll let it go. Maybe our prankster’s gotten all his kicks.”

Annie nodded, but didn’t look like she believed it was over. He didn’t believe it either.

***

Friday

When the sun’s rays through the screened tent opening warmed her face, Annie kicked out of her sleeping bag. With distant coyotes howling and yipping, she’d spent a twitchy night wrestling with her sleeping bag and her suspicions.

You’ll see me, but you won’t know me.

Paranoia wasn’t pretty, and she felt foolish even imagining that the Hunter might be the poltergeist plaguing the trip. No, the notion was as crazy as the Hunter himself. She considered telling Sam. But there was no sense mentioning the impossible.

How could the Hunter have followed her? One of the group would have seen or heard another floatplane, and the distance from Greenville prohibited any other fast means. She might as well suspect an alien landing. Silly pranks had never been part of the Hunter’s repertoire as far she knew. Why would he plague them with hornets and erased directions? It made no sense. Those were wild ideas born of little sleep and the early morning hour. They were in no real danger. Except for the compass reading changes, the other problems were merely accidents. Not worth further thought.

She’d make coffee and work on her tablet before anyone else got up. She had at least another hour on that battery. Resolved, she slipped on a sweatshirt and pulled jeans over the leggings she wore to sleep in.

On the way to the lounge, shadowed evergreen trees darkened the periphery and loomed mysteriously, but no wild animals seemed to lie in wait for her. No moose or bears or wildcats, oh my. A cedar smell like her grammy’s woolens trunk perfumed the air.

When she spied a doe grazing in a corner of the clearing, she gasped and froze, her hand on her mouth. Exhaling, she watched in awe until the creature melted into the underbrush. Well, hey. For once she didn’t scream and run like a ninny at the first glimpse of movement.

In spite of Mother Nature or someone’s tricks, the wild beauty was beginning to get to her.
You knew, didn’t you, Emma?

Not that she’d admit it to Sam.

When she returned, Mr. Major League himself was emerging from his tent. His exaggerated yawns hinted he’d slept no better than she had. Even in his jeans and loose windbreaker, his stretching gyrations displayed his muscular form and wide shoulders. When he saw her, he blinked like an owl and muttered something unintelligible.

She grinned. Capable of only an inarticulate rumble, Sam needed fuel to start his early-morning engines. “I fixed the coffee pot last night. Give me a sec,” she whispered, not wanting to wake the others so early.

Sam rummaged in a cooler, and with a sigh of relief, withdrew a packet of orange juice. He tore into it and gulped.

Annie struck a match and lit the Coleman stove under the coffee pot. “Carl and I are making pancakes and sausage. At least, he said he knew how to do pancakes.”

A grunt muffled by a mouthful of oatmeal and raisin cookies was his reply.

“Yes, I know it’s a recipe you have already measured out.” This morning sluggishness didn’t fit with his usual energy and vitality. “Anyone would think you hit the sauce every night. You always wake up like this?” She turned down the flame under the pot.

“Always,” he growled. “Need coffee. Need sugar.”

“You sound like a caveman. Come to think of it, that’s not too far off base.” There. The flame was set. They just had to wait for the coffee to perk. It wasn’t her Chemex, but this primitive method made darned good coffee.

“Need woman.” This time the rumble was right behind her. His breath warmed her ear and thrilled down her spine.

When she turned, devilment danced in eyes golden and warm like the sun. The chemistry between them was pure alchemy.

The ascending sun filtered through overhead branches, splashing everywhere, blinding her to everything but Sam. His masculine scent, his bristled jaw. His sculpted mouth so close, so tempting. With the stove behind her, she couldn’t back up. Kissing him again wasn’t a good idea, no matter how provocative his mouth was. She’d get swept up in an affair she didn’t want, didn’t need, with the wrong kind of man.

Before her racing pulse changed her mind, she slid sideways and escaped to the opposite end of the table. “You need coffee, Sam, not this woman.”

“Damn. If I was more awake, you wouldn’t get away.” He peered at the percolator. “Come on, come on.”

She blinked in the sunlight. A glance at the table glued her in place. “Sam.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be okay after a few dozen cups of coffee.” He swigged more juice. “I always wake up like a zombie. When I was a kid too. Once all my circuits fire, I’m finest kind. I need caffeine and food to jump-start me.”

“No. No kidding around.” She stared at the table. “It’s a dead chipmunk. On the table.”

His shoulders straightened and alertness banished lassitude. “What the hell?”

In the middle of the table, on a spread-out napkin as if arranged for viewing, lay the small, furry body. The faint, sour scents of blood and decay laced the air. Where the head should be gaped a raw wound.

“Frank might have done some of that other stuff,” Sam muttered, “but could he do this? Is he angry enough to lure a wild animal close, then kill it?”

“This is the product of a sick mind, all right. But Frank?” She clutched at Sam’s arm. “No blood on the table. Killed in the woods maybe. Could some animal have killed it? Then somebody found it and put it here?”

“A two-legged animal. No claws or teeth slice that cleanly. Someone used a sharp blade.” He shook his head. “I’d bet my outfielder’s glove it’s not Frank.”

Annie pressed a hand to her stomach and willed away the bile that crept up her throat. “Whether the boy did it or not, I don't want him to see this abomination.”

“I’ll take care of it.” He carefully folded the napkin around the small corpse.

The coffee began to perk as it had every morning, puffing out the rich odor of the dark brew. The sun climbed and birds sang as though nothing odd were happening.

He stared at her with speculation before turning to leave. “You thought of something last night, something you didn’t tell me. I figure it’s time to end the shutout.”

Uneasiness weighed like a stone in Annie’s belly.

At the edge of the woods, Sam turned back. “The others will be getting up. We’ll talk later. In the canoe. Be ready.”