Incriminating Evidence (12 page)

“The smart thing?” he asked.

“Sometimes you have to make a choice between the smart thing and the right thing. This isn’t the smart thing.”

He grinned, liking very much the option she left open. “But it definitely feels like the right thing.” He leaned down and pressed his mouth to hers, not hard and fast, but soft, testing. Giving her a choice. She leaned forward, into him. He took that as a good sign and slid an arm around her waist, pulling her against him as he slipped his tongue between her lips.

The slide of her tongue along his triggered a current that coursed through his body.
Absolutely the right thing.

She was every bit as sweet as he’d imagined when he woke with her in his arms this morning.

She dropped back to her heels, introducing space between them when he craved the exact opposite. He wanted to demolish all distance and give her nothing but pleasure. Erase pain and conflict with an act as old as humanity. Older than war.

“We shouldn’t—” she said.

“I’m finding it hard to give a damn about shoulds and shouldn’ts.”

She gently pushed at his chest. “Then I will for the both of us.”

He leaned back and held her gaze. What he saw gave him hope. Not rejection. Caution.

He rubbed a thumb across her full bottom lip. “Fair enough.” He stepped back. She was right to be cautious. Hell, he needed to think before he jumped in too. Just this morning, he’d been certain she’d orchestrated his abduction as some sort of twisted revenge for her brother.

She pushed off the wall and straightened her shirt—even though his hands hadn’t strayed and messed with her clothing. He only wished they had.

She looked cute in the blue flannel top and faded, worn jeans that adhered perfectly to her curves. Comfortable, relaxed. But he’d probably think she looked cute no matter what, because something had happened to his brain when he was hit over the head, and he found himself focusing far too much on her hair, body, and lips than a responsible man ought to.

He should be asking her about the forest yesterday, probing for missed clues. Her cell phone was missing. She’d found him on the rock, stewing in a pool of his own blood. What else? “Was I faceup or facedown on the rock when you found me?”

“Up,” she said immediately, and he had a feeling she was relieved he was getting down to business. “I wasn’t sure if you were dead or not, but then I saw you breathe.” She crossed the room and dropped onto the couch and pulled Gandalf to her lap. The cat settled in like a blanket.

“You bandaged me right away?”

She nodded. “I cleaned your cut while figuring out how to get you out of the forest.” She stroked the thick gray fur, and he found himself stupidly jealous of the cat.

“Doc Larson says you did a good job.” He touched the fresh bandages on his temple. “How long did it take you to build the travois?”

She bit her bottom lip as she considered his question. Finally she said, “Thirty, maybe forty-five minutes? It felt like forever—I was scared whoever had hurt you would return.”

He frowned, knowing she’d risked a lot in helping him, and he’d assaulted her and had her arrested. He had a hell of a lot to make up for.

“It took about two hours to drag you to the cabin,” she continued. “You are ridiculously heavy.” She scanned him from head to toe, and he very much enjoyed the appreciation she didn’t bother to hide.

“The cabin… How did you know it was there?
I
didn’t even know it was there, and it’s my land.” It might be marked on the title maps stored in his office at the compound, but it wasn’t something he’d have noticed when he purchased the company and all its assets after it had been seized from Robert Beck.

“I copied the locations of all known historic and prehistoric sites on my USGS quad maps. I received the data from the state historic preservation office in Juneau. The settler’s cabin was recorded decades ago.”

“I understand why you’d mark sites on state forest land, but why note historic properties on my land?”

She hesitated. “It’s always good to know where shelter is in the woods. Last night proved it.”

“I can’t argue with that but…” His blood pressure rose as understanding hit him. “Shit, Iz, you’ve been looking for the cave, haven’t you? That’s why you interrupted the live-fire training. You were searching for a cave with a lynx petroglyph.”

Her gaze flicked to her computer. Was that why she’d been nervous earlier? Was there evidence on the hard disk of her illegal forays onto his land?

Jesus.
Searching for the cave was spectacularly foolish for the careful, prepared hiker that she was. In the case of the live-fire training, it might have gotten her killed. She’d wandered onto the range and could easily have been shot before the instructors saw her. All because she was determined to find a cave that might not even exist.

She frowned and stopped petting Gandalf. “No. That would be impossible. Thirty-thousand acres is too large an area for one person.”

“Don’t lie to me, Iz.”

The cat opened its eyes and glared at Alec, likely recognizing the source of her irritation. “Listen, I’ve had a crappy twenty-four hours and don’t enjoy your company.” She lifted Gandalf from her lap and stood. “It’s time for you to leave.” She crossed the room and opened the front door.

Alec let out a sharp laugh, making no move for the exit. “Two truths and a lie.”

Her mouth flattened. “Three truths.”

He stepped up to her and took her hips between his hands. Again her breath hitched. “No. You only wish it were three.” He released her and turned toward the open door. “Tomorrow we’re going back to where you found me in the woods.”

“Tomorrow I need to get my truck back from impound and drive to Fairbanks to buy a new phone. I don’t have time for a trip down memory lane with you.”

“You won’t get your truck back until Monday at the earliest, but I’ll lend you a Raptor vehicle. And I’ll give you a phone, so there’s no need for a trip to Fairbanks. I’ll pick you up at eight. Be ready to hike.” With that, he stepped outside and pulled the door closed.

Chapter Nine

S
omething nagged at the back of Alec’s mind as he drove to the compound. It had to do with Vin’s emails, but he couldn’t quite place it. When he arrived inside the compound, he made arrangements for a car and cell phone to be delivered to Isabel and confirmed with Nicole’s assistant that she and Falcon team were meeting in the northwest conference room in thirty minutes, then he went to his suite.

He yanked off his tie—which he’d worn in case he had a run-in with the press in Tamarack—and unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt before settling in front of his laptop to email Isabel. He grimaced at the huge volume of emails that had arrived during his involuntary Internet hiatus. Apparently, disappearing for sixteen hours could make an in-box explode.

He dropped about twenty emails into his personal directory, then moved the rest into his DC office administrator’s folder. His assistant could read them and let Alec know which ones were worth responding to. Chore complete, he emailed Isabel, asking her to forward several of Vin’s emails, specifically requesting the one that described his illness when he’d been hiking alone, and the one in which he described his night-terror-like experience.

She responded almost immediately, and he couldn’t help but smile, imagining her sitting in front of her computer, her wild curls now dry, and he itched to run his fingers through them.

Shit, he had it bad.

He emailed her again:
What are you wearing?

Her reply:
Pervert.

He grinned and typed another message:
FaceTime with me?

She responded:
Hell, no.

He knew in his gut she was grinning as she typed each reply. His next message:
Fine. I was going to tell you
I’m sending two of my men to your place to drop off a car and a cell phone. I don’t like you being stranded without either. Please don’t run them off with a shotgun. It’s bad PR.

A minute later, he received her reply:
Spoilsport. Can I at least tase them?

He laughed.
No. Bad Isabel.
He hesitated, then typed his phone number and added:
That’s my private cell. If you need anything, call.

She sent him one last message:
I’m fine. See you tomorrow. Wear boots or I will mock you mercilessly.

Alec smiled as he switched from her reply to the first email she’d forwarded from Vin. He reread Vin’s description of the sudden, incapacitating headache he’d experienced while hiking alone, and Alec felt a flash of sympathetic pain.

And then he knew the feeling wasn’t sympathetic. He’d experienced the exact same thing yesterday. That was what had been nagging at him earlier.

A moose appeared out of nowhere, and I swerved and slammed on the brakes. The moose passed within inches of the front of the car as it darted across the road. I pulled off to the side to ride out the adrenaline.

Again, something flashed in my eyes. Deliberate. A signal mirror? Some asshole playing tricks?

The windshield shattered, and then my head felt as if it could explode. Nausea. Pain that started around my ears but settled in the gut. Agony ratcheted until I was certain I would die. Then nothing. Blessed oblivion.

Alec’s heart raced. He was panting just at the faint memory.

He’d read reports on various nonlethal experimental weapons and knew of one that could cause that sort of pain. It was theorized that it could be directional and wouldn’t penetrate glass. But it had never been effectively weaponized. The theories had never panned out.

Until now?

One way or another, he was certain he’d been incapacitated by infrasound.

A
lec dropped into the visitor’s chair in front of Nicole’s desk. “For the record, I like Isabel too. I’m not pro-declawing.”

Nicole leaned back and smiled. “You made peace?”

“More or less.”
Probably less, but hoping for more.

“Did you talk to her about Vincent Dawson?”

“I did.”

“Are you thinking her theory of what happened to Dawson has merit?” she asked.

He wondered what Nicole expected him to say almost more than he wondered what she wanted him to say. “I have to consider it, given what happened to me.”

Nicole cocked her head. “You think you were dragged off into a cave and tortured?” There was a hint of alarm in her gaze, but she hid it well. He had no doubt if he said an emphatic yes, she’d say she believed him, even as she mentally composed her report to the company shrink.

“No. But something happened to me, and I ended up deep in the woods with a blow to the head, and I can’t remember it.” He wouldn’t mention the potential for infrasound now. He wanted to talk to Keith and maybe even Curt first.

“I bet Barstow or that weasel Stimson is behind it.”

“Norm Stimson is a shit and a dirty politician, but I don’t think he’s
that
dirty. Simon Barstow on the other hand… I think he’d kill me in a heartbeat if he thought he could get away with it.”

“Shit, Rav. Do you really think it was attempted murder?”

“Unless they knew Isabel would find me and had the skills to stop the bleeding and get me out of the cold, yes. I probably would have died if not for her.”

“You seem so fine now. It’s hard to imagine it was that bad. What if you’d come to on your own? You could have stopped the bleeding and hiked out to the road.”

“I had no clue where I was. I could just have easily hiked for days in the wrong direction. I had no supplies. I’d have been screwed without her.”

“Can you get your buddy Dominick to investigate Barstow?”

“Curt is aware of my suspicions of Simon Barstow, but he can’t simply sic the FBI on the bastard because I’m mad his company is swiping my best operatives. Nothing Apex has done is illegal.”
That we know of.

Nicole opened her mouth to speak, but at the same time, her assistant knocked on her open office door. “Falcon team has gathered in the northwest conference room.”