Bear Claw Conspiracy (15 page)

“Oh.” Gigi had to swallow past the wistful lump in her throat. “Well. We already know Fax is a special case. And I’m the ‘doesn’t want to put down roots’ factor in this equation. I still have things I want to do before I settle down.”

“Why does it have to be settling? Why can’t it be making a choice of one thing you want over something else you want? Or, better yet, finding a way to have them both.”

Pulling the cushions off the sofa with more force than was probably necessary, Gigi probed the cracks and found the usual gnarly assortment of crumbs, old food, wrappers, coins and other garbage. “That’s not the way it works in my family.”

“So be the black sheep and do your own thing.”

“Been there, done that.” Gigi flicked at her earrings and hair.

“Those are little things.”

“The job isn’t.”

“Maybe, but you’re still doing the ‘got to be the best’ thing they’re so into.” Alyssa shifted, wincing.

Gigi’s instincts flared. “You’re not in labor, are you?”

“God, no. I’d be screaming my head off. And don’t change the subject.”

“Do you swear you’re not in labor?”

“I swear. Seriously. Now let’s move on.”

Gigi felt her way along the back of the sofa, where things sometimes got wedged and forgotten. “Look, I know my family is whacked-out, okay? In a good way, maybe, but whacked-out nonetheless. I know there’s no law that says I have to be in the top whatever percentile of the universe…but what if I want to be? My parents gave me all these great opportunities, so why not use them to shoot for the moon? I want to be on a hazardous response team. I want the adrenaline rush. I want to save lives and be an über-cop, not just date one.” Love one. Marry one and spend the rest of her life waking up as she had that morning, wrapped up in him and pleasantly satiated from their lovemaking. Maybe even riding herd on a couple of green-eyed—

Whoa, back up. Getting in way too deep there.
She could feel the urgency building, the need to see him again, even though he and Tucker were just outside.

“An über-cop?” Alyssa’s voice was amused.

“Oh, shut up. You know what I mean. I’ve got goals that are mine, not my family’s, and I don’t want to give them up.”

“Has he asked you to?”

“Not yet.” But he would. If things went any further between them, she would eventually have to decide between him and the job. She knew that deep down in her soul. “Right now,
I’m
more the problem than he is. I’ve got this thing going on inside me that I don’t like. At all. When I’m not with him, I’m thinking about him, obsessing over him, both the good stuff and the bad.” Even saying it aloud made her feel shaky and weak. “Then when I
am
with him, I go back and forth between wanting to tear his clothes off with my teeth, and wanting to slap at him because I hate feeling this way and it’s his fault. Only it isn’t. It’s
mine.”

“Oh, Gigi. Honey.”

She wound down, breathing hard, and realized she was crouched over the sofa, glaring into its sprung interior like a madwoman. Looking up, she found Alyssa watching her, wide-eyed. “See? He’s making me crazy. Strike that. I’m making myself crazy over him.” She pushed to her feet, wanting to pace, but not letting herself because she had a
job
to do, damn it.

“Gigi—”

“I hate this. I must look completely—”
Insane,
she started to say, but then broke off as she flashed on the prior morning, when Matt had yelled at Ian over the mayor’s shenanigans…and looked completely insane doing it. “Oh, for crap’s sake.” She started laughing helplessly, almost hysterically as she realized she was doing the same damn thing—yelling at a friend because she couldn’t deal with the amount of emotion he could pull from her. “You’ve got to be kidding me. We’re like fertilizer and fuel, functional on our own, but put us together and
pow,
stuff gets blown up.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know. It’s okay, really. I’m not losing it.” She took a deep breath. “I’m just figuring a few things out.” She put the sofa cushions back, then stood in the center of the room and did a careful three-sixty turn, looking for anything else that pinged on her radar screen, even if this particular scene might just be about going through the motions.

“A few things,” Alyssa repeated. “Like the fact that you two are good for each other.”

“Ha-ha. Try that one again. More like we set each other off, and… Well, what have we got here?” Her instincts suddenly kicked hard and she went on point. “Does that look like blood to you over there on the doorframe? Looks like blood to me.”

The rusty smear hadn’t been immediately obvious because the rest of the place was pretty filthy, but when she looked at it from exactly the right angle, there was a handprint pattern to the grime on the doorframe leading to the bathroom.

Senses humming, she approached the spot, ignoring the funky smell coming from the room beyond.

Alyssa came up behind her. “Looks pretty new.”

The blood was dry and rusty, but the imprint was crisp, unsmudged by later traffic.

“Could’ve been from yesterday,” Gigi agreed. “Maybe from the guy Matt shot, or someone who tried to stop the bleeding.” Which not only suggested the men had been in the apartment very recently, it made the bathroom the next obvious place to search.

She took pictures of the handprint and then lifted it and took a couple of DNA swabs. She handed off the evidence for Alyssa to bag and tag while she kept going, her pulse drumming a little with the high that came from being on the verge of finding a piece to add to the puzzle.

The bathroom itself was small and scuzzy, an abstract study in cracked porcelain and rodent droppings. It, too, had been stripped of its personal items, but the trash basket held a few scraps of wax-coated paper at the bottom. “Looks like someone did some first aid in here.”

“More blood?”

“Pieces of bandage wrappers. There’s no obvious blood—given how good they were about picking up after themselves elsewhere, they probably bleached it to nuke the DNA.” But that was okay, she had the handprint. She should be able to lift enough DNA from it to give Cassie something to work with.

After taking more photos, she picked up the trash basket and shook it to move the bandage wrappers around and see if there was anything more interesting beneath.

A piece of paper unstuck itself from the bottom of the can and fluttered to the floor.

“Hello.” There went her instincts again.

Alyssa poked her head in. “Got something?”

“Maybe.” Gigi took some photos and made a couple of notes, tightening up her chain of evidence in case the scrap of paper turned out to be something useful. Then she reached down and picked it up, handling it as carefully as she could.

For a second, disappointment threatened when she saw that it was just another bandage wrapper, this one mostly intact. But then she saw the bloody thumbprint on one edge and writing on the other side, and adrenaline sizzled through her. “It’s a note. Numbers. Letters. And a date and time.” She looked up, blood draining from her face. “Whatever it is, it’s happening in less than two hours.”

Chapter Fourteen

Matt took one look at the note Gigi had spread out on a rickety desk and said, “The middle numbers are GPS coordinates.” At Gigi’s frown, he added, “It’s a military notation scheme, not civilian.”

“Alex MacDonald was in the National Guard,” Alyssa put in.

He caught Gigi’s quick glance, but got busy pulling out his phone and keying the sequence into the GPS feature. “Who do you have that’s good at codes?” The number-letter sequences almost made sense, but not really.

She photographed the scrap of paper. “I’ll send it to a friend, see if she has any suggestions.”

“If you’re cool with it, you could hit up Ian, too. He’s good at puzzles.” At her nod, he rattled off the number. His GPS was taking forever. “Come on, you bugger. Load already.”

“Yeah,” Tucker put in drily, “Talking to it always helps.” He stood a few paces away with Alyssa, who was propped up against the sofa and looked more than a little pasty. Tucker, too, was pretty drawn all of a sudden.

“Everything okay?”

“I’d be lots better if people stopped asking me if I’m okay,” Alyssa snapped, then closed her eyes and shook her head. “Sorry. Crabby.”

“You’ve earned it, I’d say.” But he caught Gigi’s worried look, and his gut churned slowly at the realization that as a team, they were batting a thousand on the distraction factors. “Look, if you two want to head out—” His phone rang, interrupting. He glared at the stalled GPS transfer and stabbed the button to answer. “Blackthorn here.”

“We got MacDonald,” Jack said, satisfaction plain in his voice. “Idiot ran his truck off the road heading up into the backcountry.”

“Hang on,” Matt said. “I’m putting you on speaker. Go ahead.”

“One of the search parties found him and sat on him until I got here. He’s light-headed from blood loss and a fever, and he’s singing like a freaking canary. That’s the good news. The bad news is what he’s telling us: apparently he and a half dozen other local thugs, along with some out-of-town muscle, have been keeping those fires down at Sectors Five and Six going in order to tie up air support and keep the rangers focused downhill. The break-ins were theirs, too—partly for entertainment and profit, partly to mix things up and, again, to keep attention off other parts of the park.”

Matt’s blood iced with fury at MacDonald and the others—and whoever was controlling them. They’d destroyed thousands of acres and caused numerous casualties for nothing more than distraction.

But part of his fury was self-directed. He hadn’t caught on. The bastards had torched his station, yet he hadn’t made the leap to the wildfires.

A hand touched his, making him aware that he had grabbed onto a nearby doorframe, was clutching it so tightly his knuckles were white, his fingers cramping. Gigi. He knew it was her without looking, felt the sizzle in her touch, the compassion.

But when he looked down into her eyes, he only saw annoyance.

“You don’t have a crystal ball, remember?” She tapped his bloodless knuckles. “I don’t care how good your hindsight is, you couldn’t have seen this one coming. So just take a breath, cut yourself some slack, and focus on what we can do something about, which is what’s happening right now, and what we can plan in the next couple of hours.”

And the damn thing was, she was right. In three days, she had gotten to know him better than…hell, anyone in his life except, perhaps, for Ian.

He took a deep breath and nodded. “Thanks,” he said quietly, privately. Then, raising his voice, he said, “Sorry, Jack. You were saying?”

“Here’s the thing. MacDonald doesn’t know who he’s working for or why this guy—it’s a guy’s voice on the phone, that’s all I’m getting—wants our attention on the foothills. Or if he does know, he’s not saying.” He paused. “Apparently Tanya saw and took something she shouldn’t have, and the voice on the phone told MacDonald and a couple of his buddies to shut her up and destroy the evidence. The next thing they know, Matt and Gigi are on the list, too, because they’re getting too close. And then…wait, hang on.”

Voices murmured in the background, and then Jack cursed viciously.

Returning to the call, he said, “Okay, forget that stuff. You guys need to get on this,
fast.
Apparently MacDonald was headed up to meet up with the others and get new marching orders. They’re going to hit Sector Nine this afternoon.”

Matt’s blood went from ice to a vicious boil. “Sons. Of. Bitches. If Nine goes, the whole damn park goes.” Then it wouldn’t matter what Proudfoot sold or didn’t sell—it would all be worthless char.

“The meeting,” Gigi said urgently. She tapped the note. “That’s got to be it.”

A ping sounded from his phone, indicating that the download had been completed. “About freaking time.” He grabbed the phone and said to Jack, “Call us if you get anything more out of MacDonald.” Toggling over to the other screen, he took a look at the map the GPS coordinates had pulled up, and nearly groaned. “Perfect. That’s just freaking perfect.”

“Where are they meeting?” Tucker asked.

“The Forgotten.” Matt looked around the room, trying to stow his emotions and deal with the problem right in front of him, namely how they could get out there in time. “We need a damn chopper.” But the functional birds were all out at Sectors Five and Six, and most of them were limping—there wasn’t enough time to get one out to the Forgotten.

“What about Fax’s helicopter?” Gigi said. “The one with all the bells and whistles?”

“That might actually work,” Tucker said, surprised. “Last I checked, it was at the old airfield near Station Eight, on the west side.”

Alyssa was already on her phone. “Chelsea? We need your help. Well, actually, we need your chopper and your pilot.”

“Come on.” Matt said, heading for the door. “We’ll meet them there.” Entering a sort of highly functional haze that wasn’t quite his old crisis response mode, he hit redial, and when Williams answered, said, “If you can pawn off MacDonald, meet us at the old airstrip just past Ranger Station Eight. Wait. What’s your closest station right now?”

“Um. Ten, I think. I’m pretty far up.”

“Good. Go there first. Someone will meet you with guns. Grab them and meet me at the airstrip.”

He powered past the uniforms and hit the street, then turned back to Tucker. “We’ll see you there?” He was asking about more than just a rendezvous.

“Absolutely,” Alyssa said. When Tucker turned on her, she glared right back. “I’m. Fine.”

Leaving them to their fight, he ducked into the rental as Gigi launched herself into the other side and went for her seat belt. Her eyes gleamed. “Finally, a big foam finger.”

She terrified him.

Tabling that for the moment, he put in a call to his quarters, hoping someone was there. Bert answered, “Station Fourteen.”

For a second Matt couldn’t say anything, as the sound of the older ranger’s familiar voice slammed home how far he was from the man he’d been just a few days ago. He didn’t wish himself back up there, wasn’t pining for his solitude. He wanted to get to the airstrip and be right in the thick of things.

He glanced at Gigi, who was on her phone, trying to get some birds diverted to fly over Sector Nine. From the looks of it, she wasn’t having much luck.

“Boss? That you?”

“Yeah. Sorry, Bert. Look, I’ll catch you up later. Right now, I need you to patch me through to Ten, ASAP. Get me Harvey if he’s there. Once you’ve done that, get all of your volunteers headed for Sector Nine. There’s a chance someone’s going to try to torch it.”

“They do that, and the whole place is toast.”

“Which is why we need to make sure it doesn’t happen. So get me Harvey, and get the others moving.”

“On it.”

As Matt steered the rental onto the highway leading out to the city and passed a big sign for the state park, the head of Station Ten came on the line. “Blackthorn? Harvey here.”

“There’s a cop headed your way, name is Williams. He needs whatever serious firepower you’ve got, with full ammo. Hook him up and then spread the word that you may have firebugs incoming to Sector Nine within the next few hours. I’ll get you descriptions and more details when I can, but until then, do your best. Watch the roads, the skies, whatever it takes.”

“Blackthorn, what the devil is going on?”

“Someone is trying to keep our attention off the Forgotten. That’s all I know.” How the mayor—or his buyer—figured into it was something they would need to look long and hard at. Later.

Harvey cursed and cut the connection. But he was a good man, a good ranger; he would get the job done.

Gigi ended her call, shaking her head. “Maybe. That’s all I could get out of them. A maybe. They didn’t seem to want to hear that if Sector Nine goes, it won’t matter that Five and Six are burning—the whole damn place is going to go up.” She was tight-lipped and grim, but her anger shifted to something more personal as she looked at him. “It’s not a very big helicopter.”

He nodded. “Pilot plus three if you skip the copilot. Maybe one more if you get real friendly. She’s built for speed and fuel efficiency, but the trade-off is a low payload, and not much space.”

Her brows drew together. “You’d better not be thinking about leaving me behind. This is my case and I’m your partner.
Right?”

He hesitated. “Tucker’s got the final say. He’s got the rank, not me.”

But Matt was going to do his damnedest to make sure that she didn’t get anywhere near the Forgotten.