Big Bear Mountain - The Complete Series (14 page)

“W
ere you stalking
me?” she asked, direct and to the point.

They’d dressed in
silence, neither acknowledging the act of animalistic lust that had just
occurred. Cassie was beyond annoyed with herself. How could she allow herself
to behave in such a heated and wanton way? All she knew was that Jack was
dangerous. He made her behave in a way she’d never done before. And worse, he
made her
feel
like she’d never felt before, too. He was very dangerous,
indeed.

She glared at him,
her eyes boring into him seeking an answer he seemed reluctant to give.

What did he say to
that?
No, actually I’m a Grizzly Bear and I just stopped by for a drink when
you pulled a gun on me?

“I was worried
about you. I came up here to make sure you were alright. That’s when I saw you
chase off the bear with your 9mm. Not the ideal weapon to stop a Grizzly, you
know that, right?”

“Crap,” she
snapped at him. “If you were coming to check in, you would have come to the
front door like a normal visitor, not skulking around the forest like a creep.”

“Well … to be
fair, you didn’t exactly give off the ‘drop in anytime for a coffee’ vibe when
we met earlier. More like a ‘fuck off and leave me alone’ kind of message is
what I was picking up.”

Good point,
she conceded.

“So why the sudden
concern?”

“I’m the sheriff.
It’s my job to make sure people are safe. Simple as that.”

“So there was no
other agenda? No ulterior motive?” she quizzed hopefully.

“None at all.
Purely professional.”

Her heart sank. It
was too much to hope that he’d actually had some feelings for her. Yet just the
thought of him stirred a longing within her that was more than just physical
attraction or pure sexual allure. There was some kind of ‘connection’ that she
didn’t fully understand. She’d hoped he felt it too.

Apparently, she
was wrong. She was nothing more than another conquest. Guys like him didn’t
fall for girls like her. She should have known better.

J
ack was furious
with himself. Every time he opened his mouth, it got him into trouble with her.
The only time it didn’t was when he had her …

He didn’t even
want to think about the soft, aromatic skin of her neck and breasts and how she
tasted. His bear rumbled, too, at the thought of her scent and taste. They both
wanted her. Wanted to protect her and care for her. But how were they going to
do that if she didn’t know about his bear?

And what about her
secret, too? Little Miss Innocent. All doe eyed and plaintive ‘oh, I don’t know
why anyone would want to blow me up with a high tech C4 explosive package’.
Yeah, right. Not to mention the way she calmly neutralized the explosive, like
she did that kind of thing every day. No, there was something going on and both
he and the bear were going to get to the bottom of it. Not just as a man
protecting a girl or a bear protecting his mate, but as a sheriff, dedicated to
his community and this was
now
his new community.

He wasn’t going to
take no for an answer. It was his job to investigate and keep her safe. As soon
as his shift was over, he planned to go back to the cabin. But first, he had to
make a stop to check something out.

I’m getting to
the bottom of this, once and for all. Nobody is blowing up shit and shooting
people on my mountain. If she doesn’t like it, well … the little princess can
soak it up
.

There was,
literally, a new sheriff in town.

“W
hat can we get for
you, sheriff?” Rosie asked from behind the counter as Jack entered the diner.

“Just coffee,
thanks, Rosie. And some local knowledge, if you have time.”

Rosie looked
around at the empty diner. “Let me check my schedule to see if I can fit you
in.” She smiled and came over with a fresh pot of coffee and an enormous white
ceramic mug with the Big Bear Mountain Diner logo on it.

Pouring the
steaming coffee she asked, “So, what did you want to know?”

“Well, you’ve been
here a long time, right?”

She nodded. “I was
raised here, so were my folks and their folks. I’ve run this diner and lodge
for most of my life, so I know what goes on around here. And you don’t get to
be my age without knowing a few things, ain’t that right?”

“You don’t look a
day over thirty, Rosie,” Jack lied easily.

“You mean a
hundred and thirty, but I’ll take the compliment. OK, what’s the question?”

“Why would someone
try to blow up a spring high up in the mountain? I can’t figure it out.”

“What happened?”
Rosie’s eyes widened in shock. Nobody ever blew anything up on The Mountain.
Mining and logging were banned, besides, the forest is all National Park.
That’s why the only visitors were climbers, hikers and nature lovers. It was a
peaceful place.

“I can’t say too
much because it’s an ongoing investigation, but someone tried to blow up the
spring on the old Larsen property last night. They used a bomb big enough to
collapse the whole thing. But why? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Rosie paused for a
few moments, staring out the window at the pristine forest that was such a big
part of their community. Jack thought she was trying to think of a reason why
someone set the C4 charge, but her eyes told a different story. She was trying
to determine if she should share something with him. He was a stranger to their
community. Could he be trusted?

R
ibbons of steam
wafted from Jack’s coffee cup as he picked it up and sipped from it. He had to
do something to fill the awkward silence that put a gulf between himself and
Rosie. There was something she wanted to tell him, but she seemed reluctant.

“I don’t need to
know all the town secrets, Rosie, but someone’s going to get hurt, or worse, if
I can’t deal with whatever it is that’s going on here. Just give me something
to get me started. Please?” he implored.

Rosie placed a
gentle hand over Jacks. “You’re a good man and we all have secrets, that’s why
people come to live here. To keep their secrets from prying eyes and from those
who wouldn’t understand.” She winked at him.

My God, she
knows. Is it that obvious?

“Spider told me,
dear,” she answered his unspoken question. “You’ll do well here and you have
friends and like-minded folk to look out for you, too.”

“See, I knew you’d
know what went on around here. You’ve just proven me right.”

“Before she
passed, old Grandma Larsen, that’s what we all called her, anyway, was getting
hounded by some big shot city lawyer to sell her property. They offered her
ridiculous amounts of money for it, but she wouldn’t sell. It had been her home
all her life and she had nowhere else to go, in any case.

When they figured
out she was a stubborn old thing and wasn’t going to budge, no matter how much
money they threw at her, things got nasty.”

“Nasty? In what
way?” Jack leaned forward, his interest piqued.

“Threatening
letters, the occasional dead animal left on her doorstep as some kind of
warning and once, her woodshed was set alight. No direct harm to her, but
things were escalating … is that the right word?”

Jack nodded.

“Yes, they were
escalating and the more they threatened her, the deeper she dug her heels in
and determined to stay put.”

“Did she say why
they wanted her property?”

“They never told
her, but  she said one curious thing, she mentioned that they sent the lawyer
up here with a contract with their ‘final’ offer of settlement. It seems he was
as interested in the water rights that came with the property as the property
itself. I thought that was strange. After all, this is hardly farming country,
right?”

They both looked
out at the heavily wooded forest framed by snowcapped mountains. Hardly an
agricultural setting.

“So, I got curious
and did some digging,” she continued. “The Larsen property has been in their
family since the late eighteen hundreds, so they have the water rights to that
spring on their land. Even though government technically
owns
the water,
the rights to use it belong to the Larsen’s and have been passed down through
the generations along with the title to the land. They filed a legal claim to
the water rights when they first bought the property.”

“Why would anyone
want the rights to a little spring high up in the mountains?” Jack shrugged his
shoulders and picked up his coffee as he listened to the old lady’s story.

“I asked the same
question after I heard what was going on. That spring looks small, but the
volume of water that spills from it is enormous and it runs 24 hours a day,
every day of the year and it’s been doing that for hundreds of years. By the
time it makes its way to the bottom of the mountain, it’s a full-fledged river.
And do you know what’s at the bottom of the mountain?”

Jack stared at her
blankly. He had no idea what was down there. He’d come in by helicopter, thanks
to his buddy ‘Spider’ and his rescue chopper.

“The pulp and
paper mill. That giant monstrosity of a place was taken over by some foreign
investment group a year ago and they use a hell of a lot of water in that
plant.”

Rosie paused and
went to a pitcher on the counter and filled a glass with water. She took a long
draw, thirsty from her morning of storytelling.

“Without water,
there’s no pulp mill. But their rights were only filed in 2001. So anyone with
rights filed before theirs and higher up the mountain can divert or stop the
flow of water anytime they like and there’s not a damned thing those bastards
down there can do about it.” She smiled at the idea of someone getting one over
on the big corporation that had done nothing for the local community other than
pollute it.

“OK, I get all
that. But how does them blowing up the spring help them? Doesn’t that mean that
eventually they run out of water, putting them out of business?”

“You’d think so,
wouldn’t you? But here’s the thing about water rights in these parts, even if
you’ve got the oldest filed claim, if you don’t actually
use
the water
to which you have the rights, then the law considers you’ve abandoned your
rights. You lose them, in other words.”

He still didn’t
get it.

“If someone blows
up and collapses your well and the water can’t get out. If it can’t get out,
then you can’t use it. If you can’t use it …”

Rosie let it hang
like that and waited. Jack’s eyes glimmered with understanding. He finally got
it. The pulp and paper mill owners would then have the most recently filed
rights to the water.

“So they want
superior water rights so there’s no risk of anyone usurping them. Is that worth
trying to kill people for?”

“We’re talking big
business here. There’s no telling what they’ll do to protect their investment.
Maybe they don’t even know what’s going on. They might have paid someone to
deal with the problem anyway they see fit. They just want results, right? They
don’t want to get their hands dirty, do they?”

Suddenly, Jack’s
mind turned to the black truck Cassie had seen leaving her property. The hired
guns. The guys who
did
get their hands dirty. And Cassie was up there
all alone and unprotected. She had no idea what was going on or what was at
stake.

He thanked Rosie
for her help and for the coffee before scrambling to the door of the diner.

He hoped he wasn’t
too late.

H
oping to keep her
mind off Jack, Cassie set about tidying up the cabin and getting things in some
kind of order. Slowly, one small area at a time it looked less like a hurricane
had blown through and more like her grandma’s old home.

It wasn’t working.
Her thoughts kept returning to the way her skin burned when he touched her. How
her legs trembled and lost the ability to hold her upright when he kissed her
neck and blew softly in her ear. The way a liquid heat rose between her legs
and the exquisite tightening in her belly when his magnificently hard cock
brushed against her when he held her close. Then there was the way he made here
come. Mind blowing orgasms that curled her toes and left her spent and glowing
with satisfaction.

She felt a
stirring in her belly at the very thought of how he pleasured her, selflessly
and with an eagerness she’d never before encountered. How dare he do that to
her. Make her feel that way, make her reach heights of pleasure beyond her
wildest dreams, then snatch it away, so she could never experience anything
like it ever again. How did she even let him close enough to do that to her?
The whole ‘keep them at bay’ with a frosty demeanor needed more work. He snuck
through her defenses.

Bastard!

As she swept the
dusty floor, she noticed swirls of dust rising from the floor in one corner of
the room. The window was closed, so the current of air had to be coming from
somewhere else. Curious, she got down on her hands and knees to examine the
floor, sweeping a section of it with a cleaning cloth she still had tucked in
her pocket.

A small section of
floorboard, set right into the corner, had been cut to form a small hatch. She
hadn’t noticed it before because a potted plant had been set atop the hatch,
obscuring it. The plant had long since died of neglect, so she’d tossed it out
on a growing pile of rubbish during her manic ‘post Jack’ clean-up frenzy.

There seemed to be
no way of opening the trapdoor, though. The craftsmanship was of such a high
standard that the gap around the edges was perfectly straight and so narrow that
she couldn’t even gain purchase with her finger nails. It simply wouldn’t open.
The more she tried the more her curiosity grew. Why would her grandma have a
hidden compartment in her cabin like something out of an Indiana Jones movie?
It made no sense.

Finally, her
patience, which she had little of at the best of times, ran out. She grabbed a
knife from one of the kitchen drawers and began digging at the edges of the
hidden opening. Eventually, her efforts began to pay off and little by little
the edges of the small trapdoor loosened. With a few more sturdy gouges with
the knife the wooden lid to the opening below lifted enough that she could get
her fingers under it and lift it away.

At first she was
disappointed. Part of her hoped that something so well concealed and so
difficult to open would contain something glamorous and shiny. Instead, it
contained what appeared to be an old metal strong box, covered in dirt and
dust. She tried to pull the box from its secret bolt hole, but it was too heavy
to lift all the way to the floor level.

Taking the cloth
she used earlier, Cassie carefully cleared years of accumulated debris from the
top of the box, blowing away the final remnants of dust. She was now looking at
a civil war era safe or strong box replete with two solid steel hasps, securely
fastened by two ancient and extremely robust padlocks. She’d seen something
like this once on History channel, so she knew exactly what she’d found. With
no way to remove it from the floor and no keys to open it, the puzzle would
remain unsolved for the moment. Her imagination ran wild from a civil war gold
shipment to priceless confederate banknotes in pristine condition. She itched
to unlock the secrets the old safe held.

So immersed in the
mystery was she that the sound of the approaching vehicle almost escaped her
attention. Almost.

Hurriedly, she
slid the panel back in place and did her best to swish the dirt on the floor
over it. Her butchery with the butter knife wasn’t going to fool anyone for
long, but she hoped nobody would be getting close enough to see the damaged
floor, anyway.

She was wrong.