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Wild Montana
Danica Winters


Have a former FBI agent and a park ranger met their match in the wilds of Montana? With a mysterious death to solve in Glacier National Park, Customs and Border Patrol agent Casper Lawrence must come up with motive, means, opportunity—and a killer. If he doesn't crack this case by the book, the former FBI agent on strike two will be out. Teamed with a beautiful park ranger, the cowboy agent with the gritty past has to trust sexy lone wolf Alexis Finch. But as their investigation takes them through dangerous terrain and an outlaw motorcycle club's turf, Casper will do anything to keep Alexis—and what they've ignited—alive







Have a former FBI agent and a park ranger met their match in the wilds of Montana?

With a mysterious death to solve in Glacier National Park, Customs and Border Patrol agent Casper Lawrence must come up with motive, means, opportunity—and a killer. If he doesn’t crack this case by the book, the former FBI agent on strike two will be out. Teamed with a beautiful park ranger, the cowboy agent with the gritty past has to trust sexy lone wolf Alexis Finch. But as their investigation takes them through dangerous terrain and an outlaw motorcycle club’s turf, Casper will do anything to keep Alexis—and what they’ve ignited—alive.


“What’s going on, Casper?” Alexis asked.

“Nothing,” Casper said, but his eyes were dark.

“Don’t lie to me. What’s wrong?”

He glanced over at her and took off his cowboy hat, then set it on the dashboard. He ran his hands over his face and through his hair in exasperation. “I just think it’s going to be better if you get away from all this—this investigation.”

“What happened?” she asked, trying to stop the hurt from leaking out into her voice.

All she had been trying to do for the past two days was solve this so they both could get their jobs done. Now, after a strange meeting with the Canadian Mounties, she was on the outs. It didn’t make sense.

“You didn’t do anything, Lex. I promise.”

She tried to remind herself they were only friends, and maybe barely that. Sure, they had shared the kiss in the woods, but ever since they had gotten caught he had barely been able to look at her.

“Is this because of what happened…you know, back there?” She motioned in the direction they’d come from.

But she was sure he knew exactly what she was talking about.


Wild Montana

Danica Winters






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


DANICA WINTERS is a multiple award-winning, bestselling author who writes books that grip readers with their ability to drive emotion through suspense and occasionally a touch of magic. When she’s not working, she can be found in the wilds of Montana, testing her patience while she tries to hone her skills at various crafts—quilting, pottery and painting are not her areas of expertise. She believes the cup is neither half-full nor half-empty, but it better be filled with wine. Visit her website at www.danicawinters.net (http://www.danicawinters.net/).


To Lane—

You work miracles.


Acknowledgments (#u6a77f333-7a0f-5c4e-bf16-f4852752ef79)

This book wouldn’t have been possible without the help of

my fans. Thank you for taking a moment out of your lives to

leave a review, come to book signings and send me notes,

cookies and even the occasional bottle of vodka. You inspire

me to keep writing when the going gets tough. Thank you.


Contents

Cover (#ub3dced78-50a3-55bf-be80-582c287762f2)

Back Cover Text (#u6b9a34d9-c42b-5811-b7cf-0453525cd266)

Introduction (#u7d87300e-25a0-5702-af26-38a8febba2b7)

Title Page (#u2171dbf1-ee4a-5a04-9751-c796c86fe84d)

About the Author (#u37ea7400-34ef-5fb6-987b-5c832716f380)

Dedication (#u09ccc192-9e5a-532b-9b77-a23a869eef28)

Acknowledgments (#uff52fa22-243e-5d93-ba58-877a965f9bb2)

Prologue (#uaafed647-5460-57d6-b7b7-88e43b3647d6)

Chapter One (#u32f6a354-fc8e-5458-800e-1c410fb3fb6a)

Chapter Two (#uea3b0747-a0d6-5097-9348-138bbe015fc8)

Chapter Three (#ub4fc1d3a-5180-5ca3-bf5c-87bded516a34)

Chapter Four (#ud5acfcd7-e13e-57c9-aa8c-417342f1c1b6)

Chapter Five (#u207d386f-bf20-5f9e-a91d-4338e77ca8e2)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


Prologue (#u6a77f333-7a0f-5c4e-bf16-f4852752ef79)

Seven. Most people thought the number was lucky. He’d even thought it had been lucky. This was supposed to be his seventh trip, the last run of the season, the last cleanup before he could head to Mexico and lie on the beach for the winter. Señoritas, sunshine, cervezas...everything he needed to be happy.

Yet now as he stared down the predator, he could have sworn seven was a curse.

The grizzly hopped on its front legs like a dog ready to play, but from what little he knew about bears, it wasn’t an action that meant fun and games...no, that was an action that meant danger.

He eased back a step as he held the bear’s gaze. Its beady black eyes bore into him, sizing him up.

Not for the first time in his life, he wished he were eight feet tall.

“Good bear,” he said, putting his hands up. “Good bear.” He turned to look over his shoulder, but the man he’d been sent there to meet was gone. “Damn him.”

Without warning, the bear charged. The fur on its shoulders rippled, its gold tips harsh against the white snow. He screamed, the sound echoing through the high mountain valley.

The beast didn’t slow down.

He turned to run, but it was too late. The griz hit him like no force he had ever experienced. Its putrid, hot breath seared the back of his neck as he fell to the ground. Heat and pain spread through his body as the predator’s teeth met bone.

He closed his eyes, pain burning through him as the gunshot rang out.

The world, the pain, the fear—everything stopped.


Chapter One (#u6a77f333-7a0f-5c4e-bf16-f4852752ef79)

Alexis Finch forced her body up the steep trail and toward the location the hikers had described. Ravens swooped through the air above her, calling out secrets to their comrades as they flew west. Even though she hiked nearly every day through the backcountry of Glacier National Park, each step was torturous. The altitude made her breath come faster, but she focused her attention on the thick pines that surrounded them, and she ignored the pain that shot up from her tired calves.

“Ranger Finch,” the Customs and Border Protection agent called from behind her.

She was thankful as she stopped and turned back, taking the moment to catch her breath and shift the straps of her backpack, as they had started to cut into her shoulders. “Hmm?”

Casper Lawrence stopped beside her, his cheeks pink and a sheen of sweat covering his tanned face. She found comfort in the fact that after more than three miles of this uphill battle, the handsome agent was hurting just as badly as she was. “According to the GPS, this should be the spot.” He motioned around them.

The hillside was covered with thick, frost-bitten grasses, timber and patches of snow that hid in the shadows. No evidence of a struggle. No blood. No fresh tracks.

“Look,” she said, pointing toward the ravens overhead. “No matter what the GPS says, we follow the birds. Listen to nature. It’ll give us all the information we need.” She cringed as she realized how much she sounded like a bumper sticker, but as she spoke the words she knew they were true, especially when it came to finding a body.

If she’d learned anything in working as a law enforcement park ranger in the park for the last five years, it was that the only thing she could trust was Mother Nature’s fickle attitude. She did as she pleased, and danger could be found in the moments that a person underestimated her power. It was easy to identify the people who had misjudged her; they were usually the ones Alexis and the other rangers were sent into the backcountry to find—or the ones whose bodies they were sent in to recover.

“I like nature, but don’t you get tired of being stuck out here?” Casper looked up, taking off his Stetson and wiping away the thin line of sweat that it had collected. His slightly-too-long chestnut hair hung down over his caramel-colored eyes, obviously blinding him from the beauty that surrounded them.

He gazed toward the birds and slipped the hat back on his head.

“Stuck? Out here?” She laughed. It was hard to imagine being stuck in a place like this, where there was only open sky and rugged earth. “I’d much rather be out here than in some tiny apartment. I had enough of that kind of thing in college.” She glanced over at Casper and his tan-colored hat. The wide brim cast his face in shadows, accentuating his firm, masculine jaw.

“Your girlfriend give you that?” she asked, motioning toward his hat.

He looked at her like he was trying to get a read on her. “I bought it in Kalispell a few years back.” He took it off again, spinning the brim of it in his hands like he was talking about an old friend.

“Cowboy hats are a lost art,” she said as she started to move up the trail.

A lot could be learned about a man by the hat he wore, whether he was a rancher or a weekend cowboy. Each style meant something different, but from the dents, the line of the crown and the sweat marks, it was clear he wanted to look like a cattleman.

“You grow up on a ranch?” she asked, excited that maybe they had some common footing.

He gave her that look again, like he just couldn’t make heads or tails of her, but rather than making her feel uncomfortable, she liked the feeling of keeping him guessing. Maybe she spent too much time alone, but being an enigma to this too-handsome cowboy made heat rise from her core.

“No, my family comes from Butte.”

“Ah,” she said, forcing herself to look away from the agent. “A Butte boy... So you’re Irish?”

He sent her a sexy half grin that made her nearly trip over her own feet. “Yep.”

“You visit a lot?”

“Last time I was there was for my brother’s funeral,” he said, his tone hard.

“I’m so sorry.”

Casper shrugged. “Robert had a lot of problems.”

From his tone she could tell he didn’t want to talk about it, so she dropped it and let the sounds of their footfalls fill the space between them. It made sense that he, the man who seemed to constantly be looking at her as if he was digging for something, came from a family of secrets in the rough and tumble mining town.

They crested the hill that led to Kootenai Lake. The crystal-clear water mirrored the snowcapped, jagged outcrops of Citadel Peak; it was an almost perfect picture, like one of the many postcards they sold at their visitor center. A raven cawed, pulling her attention away from the breathtaking view.

The bird sat in an old snag and picked at a bit of meat that it held in its grip.

“I think we’re in the right place,” she said, motioning toward the feasting bird. “Where did the hikers say they spotted the body?”

“When they stopped at the border crossing to report their findings, they said there wasn’t much of a body to speak of. All they said they found was a boot. Apparently, they marked the area.” As he spoke, an icy breeze blew off the lake. Near the west bank a piece of pink plastic duct tape fluttered on the bough of a tree, catching his attention. “There,” he said, pointing in its direction.

She hurried over to the tape, the weariness she had been feeling suddenly dispelled by a surge of adrenaline.

Hopefully the hikers had been wrong. Hopefully this was nothing more than some tourist’s castoff and not what they had assumed. If it was, she and Casper would have a mess on their hands and that, at the end of the main season, was the last thing that either one of them needed.

She pinched the tape as if it would give her the answers she needed, yet the plastic remained silent.

There was nothing at the base of the tree except needles and pinecones. No doubt that since the hikers had left this morning, the birds and other scavengers had been at work.

Alexis dropped the heavy pack she’d been carrying and started searching the ground around the pine. The grass had been mashed, and there was a faint trail of broken stems that led into the forest. She followed the game trail away from the lake and deeper into the timber.

“Ranger Finch?” Agent Lawrence called out, with a hint of panic in his voice.

She looked up from the nearly invisible game trail and turned. Agent Lawrence was nowhere in sight. “Yep,” she called. “I’m over here.”

There was the sound of breaking twigs and his cussing as he bulled through the timber. He may have been an agent, but he was clearly no ninja. He broke through the grips of the trees and came into view. There was a scratch across his cheek, complete with a speckle of blood.

“Don’t run off. I don’t need two bodies to recover.”

She chuckled. Based on his trail-breaking skills, she was more likely to make it out of the underbrush long before he would.

“Don’t worry, city boy, I won’t leave you again if you’re scared,” she teased.

He wiped at his cheek. “All right, I had that coming, but seriously...”

She waved him off as she started moving. “Got it, Agent Lawrence.”

“And quit calling me Agent. Only tourists call me that. I’d like to think that since you let me tag along on this one, we’re at least kind of friends.”

Kind of friends... She smiled at the thought.

In truth, she had been glad when he’d called and, due to the proximity to the International Border, they had decided to work this case together. For the first time since she had started working here, she had been looking forward to the end of the main season so she could find a little more distance from the tension between her and her ex. Until then, this cowboy and their kinda friendship could be her perfect distraction.

There was a scurry of movement as a small brown animal sprinted through the underbrush. Her body tensed as she stopped and tried to see the animal, but it had disappeared through a line of bushes. It could have been a pine marten or any number of other small mammals, but the unexpected movement made her even more wary than she had been before.

There had to be a body around here somewhere if the smaller animals were scavenging. No doubt bears, mountain lions and wolves were in the area. The scent of death would have brought every hungry mouth from miles around. She turned to warn Casper but stopped. He had a gun in his hand; it was half-raised.

“Little jumpy, eh? You can put the gun away, Casper,” she said. “If that had been a bear, it wouldn’t have done you much good anyway.”

“Hey now, I’m a good shot,” he said, sheepishly dropping the gun back into its holster.

“I doubt that,” she said, thinking back to the days she had spent plinking cans off the tops of fence rails at her family’s ranch. Back at home in the Bitterroot Valley, everyone knew her family—and her history. It was nice to meet someone who couldn’t judge her for her faults.

She moved toward the brush where the animal had first appeared. There, tucked under the branches, was a man’s REI hiking boot. Its sole was worn where the ball of the foot would have been.

“I got it,” she called.

Casper stepped carefully, avoiding the dried twigs that littered the ground in what she had to assume was his attempt to be quiet. He stopped beside her. “What is it?”

“See for yourself.” She lifted the branch so he could see the man’s boot.

“Do you think someone just left it behind?” he asked. “Maybe it dropped out of their pack or something.”

“No one just leaves behind their hiking boots, not here. Not when they still have a few miles to get back to the nearest trailhead.”

She took a few pictures to document the scene and then gingerly pulled the shoe out by its well-worn laces. The boot’s leather had dark brown stains over the toe and around the ankle to the heel. She flipped it up.

Her breath hitched in her throat.

Inside the shoe was the mucky white color of bone and dried dark red strings of chewed tendons and eviscerated flesh.

Whoever had put this shoe on was still wearing it.

She let go of the laces and stepped back from the gruesome object. She’d seen plenty of dead bodies, but nothing quite like this. It was so deformed and mutilated that, if it hadn’t been in a shoe, she almost wouldn’t have believed it had once belonged to a person.

“What do you think happened to this guy?” she whispered, out of some instinctual response to being around the dead.

“I have no idea,” Casper said, shaking his head. “But we have a place to start finding out.”

“How’s that?” she asked, looking up at him.

“We know the guy didn’t hike out.” Casper ran his hand over the stubble that riddled his jaw. “Now we just have to find the rest of his body.”


Chapter Two (#u6a77f333-7a0f-5c4e-bf16-f4852752ef79)

The Flathead Emergency Aviation Resources, or FEAR, helicopter touched down near the lake, its blades chopping at the air and making white caps on the crystal-blue water. Casper always hated this moment, the instant when the chain of command shifted and their team lost some of its control. Most times, he could find his best evidence and the most answers before a mess of officers showed up. Yet this time, he had to admit it was different. This was a death in which the only witnesses were the animals who had feasted on the remains and the two wayward hikers who had found the body. With an incident like this, they needed extra hands on deck—no matter how badly he wished it could just be him...and Alexis Finch.

It had been nice following her up that trail, her tight green pants stretching over hips and her full, round curves. It had made the brutal hike a little more bearable—and he’d found a new love for standard-issue forest service pants.

Alexis stood beside him, lifting her hand to shield her eyes from the dust the chopper’s blades kicked up. She squinted as she glanced over at him. “Let the party start,” she said with a cynical smile that made his gut clench.

He forced himself to look away from her full lips and the way the fine lines collected around the corners of her eyes when she glanced over at him.

He had to focus on their case.

It was only out of sheer luck that the hikers had come to him and he’d convinced his boss that he was vital to the investigation. His boss had only let him go when he’d lied and told him that there was some evidence that the hiker may have crossed the border—which landed the case squarely in their lap. If they screwed this investigation up his boss had, in no uncertain terms, told him he would be out.

This was his last chance.

His next stop on the career line was a desk job at a DMV somewhere—if he was lucky. Then again, he’d already been sent to the Siberia of the contiguous United States: a tiny stand-alone border crossing station on the side of a lake only accessible by ferry or foot. It was the CBP’s equivalent of exile.

Things couldn’t get much worse.

The coroner bent down out of the rudder wash and hurried toward them. The man was pale, but when he straightened up as he neared them, Casper noticed the telltale spider veins and reddened nose of a major alcoholic.

“Where’re the remains?” the man yelled above the sound of the slowing motor.

Alexis motioned for him to follow her.

As they drew near, Casper stared at the blood-covered leather boot. It was strange, but it looked exactly like one he had bought at REI earlier that summer. He wondered if somewhere along the way the man who’d worn this one had stood beside him in the store, passing the boot from one hand to the other as he decided if it was really the right one for him—just as Casper had done.

He pushed the thought from his mind. He had to remain detached.

It was the moment when things became real that emotions came into play, and emotions had been what had gotten him into trouble with the FBI. They had wanted the Robo-Cop—the man who could run through the blood and muck and then stand there and eat a sandwich without thinking about the residue of life that stained his footprints and constantly filled his reality.

If only he was better at disconnecting his head from his heart—life and work would be so much easier.

“Nothing else?” the coroner asked, like he appreciated the fact that there was so little to transport back to the medical examiner.

Alexis shook her head. “No. As of this time, these are the only remains we’ve managed to locate.”

“We need to get a full canvass on the area.” The coroner stepped out of the timber and motioned toward the helicopter.

Two rangers stepped out of the chopper and rushed toward them. From the puckered look on Alexis’s face she must have known the men. She gave a begrudging grunt as the guys made their way over and stopped next to them. The dark-haired ranger kept looking over at her like he was trying to get her attention, but she gave him the cold shoulder.

“Where do you want us to start, Hal?” the dark-haired ranger asked.

Alexis turned to the man. “I have a place you can go, Travis—”

“Travis, you take the northern trail,” the coroner interrupted, giving them both a disapproving glance. He turned to the other ranger, a blond. “John, you take the south. We only have a couple of hours before nightfall. The pilot needs us out before he’s flying in the dark. Make it count.”

Though he couldn’t say the same of the two rangers, he liked the coroner. He’d always appreciated the type of people who cut the small talk—all business and no bull. Life would be so much easier if everything worked that way; no politics, no favorites, no strings.

“Alexis, you go east and Agent—”

“Lawrence,” Casper answered.

“Agent Lawrence, you go west,” Hal said, motioning to each of them in the respective directions. He pointed to his radio clipped to his waist. “If any of you find something, I’m on four.” He turned away and went to work, going over Alexis’s pictures and her notes about the scene and its presentation.

Travis and John moved away through the timber.

Casper started to move west. He didn’t make it far before Alexis grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop. “Let’s work together.”

Her face was neutral, but he couldn’t help getting the feeling that she was frightened.

He looked in the direction of the coroner, but the man was busy with his work and didn’t seem to notice the break in his ranks. “Hal doesn’t seem like the type who likes rule breakers.” He nudged his chin in the man’s direction.

“First of all, this is my investigation. He had no business taking control of how I’m running this scene,” Alexis said, her voice flecked with anger. “Besides, he’ll be happy if we find something, and there’s a better chance to find something if we actually work together in canvassing the area.”

“You’re the boss,” Casper said, but in truth he was more than happy to be working with her. He liked being alone—he’d grown accustomed to it over the last year of working at the border crossing—but she made the constant hum inside him grow still and calm.

They walked a few arm lengths apart, moving through the timber and skirting around the lake. Every time she crawled over a bit of deadfall she would sigh, and after what must have been the hundredth tree he was certain that soft moan would be ingrained in his memory forever.

She sighed again and his thoughts moved toward the other moments she would make that noise... How her body moved... How she would look without those green pants and that khaki shirt. Maybe she was the kind of woman who liked lingerie, or maybe not. A girl like her was probably more of the comfort type, real.

She glanced over her shoulder as she was stepping over a downed log, and the leg of her pants caught on a sharp branch. She stumbled, her body moved slowly through the air as she tried to pull her leg from the gnarled grip of the broken bit of deadfall. Yet as she struggled, she lost her balance.

He rushed to her side. “Are you okay?”

He released her pant leg from the stabbing bit of wood. It had torn through her pants, making an L-shaped hole.

“I’m fine,” she said, trying to move but her body was wedged between two logs.

“I thought you were the expert in the woods, Ms. Ranger,” he teased, trying in vain to make the embarrassed look on her face disappear. He held out his hand, waiting for her to take his peace offering.

She stared at his hand for a second. “Even experts make mistakes.” She struggled to push herself up.

He reached down and took her hand, not waiting for the beautiful, stubborn woman to accept his help.

There was a surge of energy between them and her eyes grew wide, her mouth dropping open almost as if she felt it, as well. He pulled her to her feet and quickly let her go. She was gorgeous standing there, her mouth slightly agape as she flexed her fingers.

“Thanks for the hand. I guess it’s been a long day.” She glanced in the direction they’d come, almost as if she was expecting to catch a glimpse of someone. “I’m off my game.”

“Don’t worry, I got your back.” He felt stupid as the words left his mouth. He wanted to say so much more, ask her so much more. Yet it wasn’t the time or the place. The spark he’d felt was probably nothing more than residual adrenaline leftover from their hike, or some misplaced stress from their findings.

She opened her mouth to say something, stopped, and turned away. He moved ahead of her, taking the lead so he could help her through the deadfall. This time her movements were slow, deliberate.

He stopped when he spotted a patch of animal hair on the trail in front of him. It looked like fresh fur, its golden tips still sparkling in the little bit of sunshine that managed to break through the trees. “I think we got something here.”

She moved closer. “Look at those tracks,” she said, pointing toward the gouges in the earth beside the tuft of fur. The holes were deep and massive, and they littered the ground in the shape of a nearly perfect circle. “There must have been some kind of fight.” Bending down, she picked up a piece of the dirt and inspected it, like she could read something from the way the dust felt in her fingers.

The woman was amazing. There was no way she would ever be interested in a man like him—nothing to offer, no place to call home and one screw up away from being unemployed. More than that, she seemed like the kind of woman who liked being on her own—except when she’d seen the other rangers.

She looked up at him, her green eyes nearly the same color as the moss growing on the trees that littered the ground. “These are griz tracks. More than one—the scent of death must have brought them in. I’m guessing it was probably from sometime in the last twenty-four hours.”

That’s exactly what they needed. Not one, but two hungry grizzlies in the woods near them. In the deep underbrush, it was more than possible that they could run into one. Hopefully it wasn’t a sow with cubs. They’d never make it out alive.

Maybe that was what had happened to the hiker—one misstep in the woods; a hike that had started out as some kind of goal or dream and then ended in tragedy.

“Be careful,” he said, moving closer to her.

Her mouth quirked into a sexy smirk, but she instinctively reached down and touched the plastic trigger of the bear spray at her waist. “If I go out by bear, at least I’ll go out fighting.”

He didn’t doubt her, but he could have sworn he saw a flicker of fear in her eyes. Then again, anyone who came into these woods and didn’t pay heed to the place’s ability to take them out at the knees was a fool. And maybe it was just that type of fool whose body they were trying to locate.

A branch snapped and his attention jerked toward the unnerving noise. The sound came from higher up the mountain, as if something was moving through the dense forest in a hurry. He could only hope whatever had made the sound was moving away.

Alexis was motionless, but her body was tense as though she had kicked into fight or flight.

“It’s okay,” he said, trying to calm her fears while at the same time trying to conquer his own. “Whatever made that sound is long gone.” He waved almost too dismissively.

She glanced over at him, and her frown reappeared. “If there’s an animal up there, it means there might be more of the body. We need to look.”

He paused. The last thing he wanted to do was end up like the victim they were trying to identify, but he didn’t want to come off like a coward to the sexy, dark-haired Alexis. “I’ll take point. Watch my six,” he said, trying not to think about the job he’d volunteered for as he followed the deep gouges up the hillside in the direction of the terrifying noise.

On a small patch of melting snow a square of army-green cloth caught his eye. He moved toward the object, unsure of whether or not the thing was really something worth looking at or just another green splotch in nature’s underbelly.

Moving closer, he knelt down so he could make out the square lines and straps of a backpack, the kind that could be found at any of a million surplus supply stores. There was a smear of blood on the bag, near the right shoulder strap. Before he touched it, he motioned for Alexis to take photos. She snapped a few, carefully documenting the scene.

She stuffed the camera back into her pocket and knelt down beside him just as his knees started to grow damp in the snow. She gingerly picked the pack up by its straps and set it upright.

Opening up the bag’s top flap, the bag was filled with clear, square packages of drugs. She took out the bricks and one by one laid them on the only dry spot she could find, a downed log, and took pictures of each item with a scale.

“Holy...” he whispered. “How many bricks are there?”

“Ten,” Alexis said. “You have any idea about what kind of drugs these are?”

He leaned in closer, and through the cloudy plastic he could make out hundreds of blue pills. “Without a drug test kit I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but I know they ain’t Viagra.” His face flamed as he realized what he had said to her, and he instinctively glanced to the hand he had held.

She giggled, like she had been able to read his thoughts, and the heat rose higher in his face.

He held his head low, fearing that if he looked in her direction she would be able to see how embarrassed he was, but instead of studying him, she reached in the bag and pulled out the last brick and documented it.

She flipped the bag over. At the bottom was a wad of cash, at least a thousand dollars, held together by a thick rubber band.

“How do you think the bag got up here? You think the bears stole it?” she asked with a slight laugh at her twisted joke.

“You know of any bears that need a thousand bucks and some drugs?”

She laughed again, the sound fluttering through the air like a rare butterfly, and just as quickly as it had come, it disappeared.

“But really, either the guy dropped it when he was running or...” He picked up the bag and showed her the claw marks. He flipped it so she could see the dark bloodstains that were speckled over its surface. “This is definitely arterial spray. Which means this guy must have been carrying this when he was mauled.”

She shrugged. “It definitely could have been a mauling. It wouldn’t be the first and I doubt it will be the last, but something about this whole thing—maybe it’s the drugs—it just doesn’t feel right. There has to be something more, something we’re missing.”

He felt it, too, the strange charge in the air that came with a great case. “Do you think someone murdered this guy, Alexis?”

“Call me Lex,” she said, interrupting him. “My friends...they call me Lex.” A faint tinge of pink rose in her cheeks.

He smiled. So they were friends, just as he had hoped.

“Anyway...what were you saying?” she asked, her voice soft and coy.

That place deep inside him—that place in his heart he often pushed aside for logic and reason—reawakened.

“I...I guess I was just saying that you might be right was all... I mean, if I was a killer and I wanted to hide a body, this is one heck of a place to do it. It’s late in the season. It would be easy enough to bring a person up here, shoot them and leave them to be reabsorbed by nature. Another few days and no one would have been back up here until next year. It could have been a nearly perfect attempt at a murder and cover-up.”

She nibbled her bottom lip, and it made him wonder what it felt like to kiss those lips. They were so perfect, pink and full, even a little suntanned from all her hours hiking. He ran his tongue over his lip and gave it a slight suck as his mind wandered to more sultry thoughts of all the places of hers he would like to kiss.

“How do you know that’s arterial blood?” she asked, motioning toward the stain on the bag.

He forced himself to look away from her mouth. “Arterial blood spatter tends to have a redder color, and the droplets are small or medium because they are expelled from the body at a higher speed.”

Her face pulled into a tight pucker and she looked up the mountain. “You thinking it could be from a bullet?”

He shrugged. “Without having the medical examiner go over the foot, and without more of the body...well, it’s hard to say exactly what might have happened. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea if we go get Travis and the other guys.”

“No,” she clipped. “We don’t need Travis. We’ll be fine.”

There was definitely something between her and this Travis guy. Jealousy zinged through him.

She snapped another quick picture of the drugs and the money, and stuffed everything back into the bag before she stood up. “Let’s keep moving up the mountain. Maybe we’ll find the rest of whomever this belongs to. If we do, it’s possible we can get a few more questions answered.”

Maybe it was selfish, or adolescent, or whatever his therapist would’ve called it, but what he really wanted more than to find this body—and open whatever can of questions it would entail—was to spend more time with Lex. Their time together was the first real human contact he’d had all summer. Sure, he’d seen hikers and tourists, but their interactions had been little beyond looking at passports and the normal small talk.

In the deepening shadows, they picked their way up the hill into larger and larger clumps of snow, which made their tracking easier. A squirrel chirped overhead, making him jump.

“There,” she said, pointing toward a reddish patch on the snow. “Look...”

There, half-buried in the snow, was a yellow patch of bone. On its surface were smears of blood. His stomach dropped. Hopefully he’d been wrong about this being a murder. Hopefully this was nothing more than a mauling. A death was always a terrible thing, but if this was a murder the ramifications would play out until the case was solved, and the deeper the investigation would go, the deeper he would be forced to go into his former world—a world he had promised to leave behind.

Alexis carefully snapped a picture and documented the scene. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves, and reached down and picked up the bone that was buried in the snow. The bone was round and, where it wasn’t tacky with blood, it was oily from fat.

It could have been his years of seeing the dead, but as he watched her work to gently move the heavy, wet remains from the ice that had formed around it, he wasn’t thinking about the life that this bit of flesh had once belonged to; rather, all he could think about was Lex and the way her face had paled the second her fingers had touched the bone.

“You don’t have to stay, Lex. You can go get the guys,” he offered. “I can handle this.”

She shook her head and wiped the back of her sleeve over her forehead.

“Seriously, Lex. You don’t have to do this.”

“No. I’m fine,” she said, but her voice was weaker than what he was sure she had intended it to be. “This is my job. I got it.”

Ever so gently, he reached over and took the bone from her.

She gave an appreciative sigh. “Do you think...it is him?”

“It could be,” he said. He slowly turned the bone.

Lex gasped.

In his hands, barely discernible thanks to the jagged holes and chew marks, was the partial face of what had once been a man.


Chapter Three (#u6a77f333-7a0f-5c4e-bf16-f4852752ef79)

The coroner laid the skull down on the black body bag. There was a patch of hair, dark with dried blood and grease, and an ear that hung limp, tethered by only a thin strip of pale skin. “Look at this mark right here,” he said, pointing to a jagged, round wound at the base of the man’s skull. “If this was the entrance of a bullet wound, it would be smooth around the edges, and depending on the angle, there would be a large exit wound.”

“So this wasn’t a homicide?” Casper asked as he leaned in closer to look at the mark on the bone.

“If you look right here,” Hal said, “the margins of the wound are jagged. It’s the type you normally see associated with a high-pressure compression wound, consistent with that of a bite. However, without the rest of the body, it’s hard to say if this wound was the cause of death or was caused antemortem, perimortem or postmortem.”

She looked away. To get through this she had to think of him as just another man. A random being. A victim of the fates. It was nature.

“Are you okay?” Casper asked, putting his hand on the small of her back.

She swallowed a bit of bile that had managed to sneak through her resolve. “I’m fine,” she said, her voice hoarse.

Hal zipped up the bag, hiding the gruesome head from view. “I’ll get this to the medical examiner. Maybe he can tell us a little more, but for now I’m going to rule the cause of death as undetermined. Don’t be surprised if this comes back as being likely due to unintentional injuries. This bite,” he said, motioning toward the bag at his feet, “would have been fatal.” He stood up and wiped off the knees of his pants.

Travis tapped Hal on the shoulder, drawing his attention. “You ready? The pilot is starting to get antsy.”

Hal nodded. “You guys need a ride out?”

Casper took a step toward the copter, but Lex stopped him as she looked over at Travis. The last place she wanted to be was sitting next to her ex-husband in a flying death machine. “Thanks, but we’ll hike out.”

“Are you sure? Alexis, I think you should get back to the station—” Travis started to protest, but stopped as if he had realized, a moment too late, that he no longer had control over her. “Or do whatever. You never listened to me anyway.”

It wasn’t that she hadn’t listened, it was simply that she wasn’t the kind of woman who was ever going to have her actions dictated to her—especially not by someone who had once said that he loved her. “Would you and John let the other rangers know that we have a possible dangerous bear?” She carefully sidestepped his jab. “We’re going to need to send up the biologists and a ranger in the morning to track this bear down. We don’t need any more tourists getting hurt.”

“Maybe you should worry about yourself,” Travis grumbled, glancing over toward Casper.

Casper smiled, the motion so wide that it made her wonder if he had misunderstood Travis’s tone. “Don’t worry about Alexis,” he said, motioning toward her. “She’ll be safe with me.”

Travis gave a tight nod and turned away, muttering unintelligibly under his breath.

Watching him walk away, she was filled with mixed emotions. She thought of the first time she’d met Travis. It had been her first day at work, he had been so kind in showing her around and when she’d gotten a headache, he’d driven three hours to get her Tylenol. At first he had been so good at the little things, the love notes and wildflowers left on the counter. Yet after a couple of years, things progressively got worse and she hated him and what he had done to her, the way he had always put her down and treated her like she was less-than. Then again, such hate could only come at the cost of having once loved.

Casper looked over at her, and she tightened her jaw in an attempt to hide her thoughts from leaking into her expression. She didn’t need him asking her any questions about her past. “Thanks for everything, Hal. And please let me know how it all turns out,” she said, giving the coroner a quick wave.

“No problem. But wait, what about the drugs?” Hal asked, motioning toward the backpack at Casper’s feet.

“This whole thing’s going into evidence once we get down,” Casper said.

“You sure you don’t want me to take them with us? I can drop them off in evidence for you. Would save you a couple pounds carrying it out,” Travis said.

She would carry a thousand pounds just so long as she never had to ask for Travis’s help. “Nope. We got it,” she clipped.

“My team’s at your disposal if you need,” Hal added and then quickly made his way to the helicopter, disappearing behind its doors. She reached down and took Casper’s hand and pulled him, urging him to follow. His hand was hot in hers and she let go, the touch a jolt to her cold, exposed skin. Casper looked at her, a shocked expression on his face like he was surprised that she had touched him, but she pretended not to notice.

Hopefully Travis was watching and could see that no matter how they had left things, she was moving on with her life.

The helicopter lifted off the ground, the wash sending bits of dust and debris in every direction. Travis sent her a look through the copter’s window as he said something on his radio.

Casper turned toward her. “You do realize that now we’re going to have to hike out...in the dark.”

“That’s the easy part,” she said with a wicked smile.

He raised an eyebrow in question.

“The hard part,” she teased, “is that you won’t be able to beat me.” She took off with a laugh, relieved that once again she was alone with the cowboy.

* * *

THE CBP’S CHEVY always seemed to list to the left when he drove down the road, and it squealed when he applied the brakes, but as they got to the bottom of the trail, he had never been happier to see his old, beat-up, Fed-issued truck.

“You’re crazy. You know that, right?” Casper said between heaving breaths.

He’d thought five miles uphill going in was bad, but basically jogging five miles down steep terrain carrying not only his go-bag, but also the missing hiker’s drugs, had nearly killed him.

Even in the light of his flashlight he could make out the beads of sweat that were dripping down Lex’s temples. Her hair was damp and her cheeks were red, but she laughed like her body couldn’t be aching as badly as his. “Come on, that was fun.”

“Having a heart attack is never fun. You could’ve killed me. I’m getting old, you know.”

She lifted her brow, giving him a sexy “come on now” look. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out two protein bars and handed him one. “Here. Eat this, old man. It’ll make you feel better.”

He took it, dropping his bags on the tailgate of his truck parked at the trailhead. She lifted her bag up and set it beside his.

He looked over at her and tried to guess at her age. She was young; the lines on her face were barely defined in the thin light, but she had the eyes of a woman who had had her heart broken more times than once. “How old are you?”

“Young enough to be okay with it, but old enough to know not to answer,” she said, her sexy smirk returning.

He laughed, and some of his tiredness disappeared. “You wanna ride back to Apgar with me or do you want me to drop you off at the nearest station?”

She dropped her hand down on her backpack. “Apgar would be great. I don’t want to have to wait for another ranger so I can catch a ride.” She looked down at her watch.

“You don’t want to have to wait for another ranger, or is it that you don’t want to run into Travis?”

Her face puckered at the man’s name and he instantly regretted asking her the question.

“Sorry. Don’t answer that. It’s none of my business. Let’s go.” He slammed closed the tailgate and the topper. He jumped into the truck before she had a chance to answer.

After a minute she dropped into the seat beside him. They drove in silence for what seemed like an hour.

“How’d you know about Travis?” she finally asked.

“I was in the FBI for five years. Let’s just say I’ve learned how to read people.”

“If you’re so good at reading people, then how did you end up working at Goat Haunt? I thought only loners and outcasts liked that station. Last year it was manned by some lady...Gertrude or something. I swear the only word that woman ever said to me was, ‘Passport?’” Lex’s voice was soft, like she was trying to avoid hurting his feelings, but the blade had already sliced.

She was right. Goat Haunt was his own private version of Alcatraz.

“What can I say, I guess I’m just lucky,” he said, trying to make light of the situation.

He steered the truck around the sharp corners and down the narrow road of the Going-to-the-Sun Highway. The moon had risen and made it just bright enough that he could make out the snowcapped peaks of the jagged mountains around them. To their left was a steep drop-off; the only thing standing in the way of a car going over and plummeting hundreds of feet to the bottom of the mountain was a short rock wall.

He forced himself to focus on the road and ignore the tight knot of fear that always filled his gut when he came this way. At least the park was closed for the night, so there were only a few other cars—those that dared to spend the night in the park, or were hurrying to get out.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” Alexis started. “I...I’m just a little touchy when it comes to Travis. He’s my ex-husband. Lately things haven’t been going well between us.”

He knew all about exes. He’d had more than his fair share, but after the events that had transpired with the FBI, he’d taken the last two years off from dating. It was his way of protecting another person from getting hurt. Yet when he looked at Alexis, he was tempted to break his self-imposed vow of celibacy. There was just something about the tomboy next to him. She wasn’t the type of woman who worried about a broken nail. She was the type who would be happy hanging out, reading a book, maybe going for a hike—and no matter how he counted it, spontaneous and real were always a turn-on. No matter how badly he didn’t want them to be.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked, trying to avoid looking at her hand resting between them on the bench seat.

She shook her head. “What about you? I noticed you don’t have a ring.”

“It’s a long story,” he said, casting a look at her.

“I heard that kind of thing has been going around.” She smiled. “Relationships are tricky—when you think you have a good one, it’s easy to get complacent and take things for granted, and with bad ones you are always struggling to find an escape.”

His thoughts moved to his parents and how tricky their relationship had been. They hated one another and had fought every day when he’d been growing up. Though they were still married, the thought of the relationship they had made the word marriage sour on his tongue.

Though he didn’t like the thought of marriage—at least the type of marriage he’d seen as a child—he still held hope that one day he’d find something different. Yet from the way Lex spoke, he wasn’t sure if she was attempting to make him feel better, or if it was a way of telling him she wasn’t interested. Either way, whatever residual hopes he had held in making something out of their clandestine meeting were gone.

A roar grew loud behind them. In the rearview mirror was a single headlight.

Alexis leaned forward and peered into the side mirror. “Who’d be crazy enough to drive a motorcycle down this thing at night?”

Besides the cliffs and the sheer drop-offs, Glacier was known for the goats and random assortments of animals that loved to use the highway as their own personal travel system, avoiding the steep embankments and treacherous climbs.

“Maybe that’s why they want to hug my bumper,” he said, checking the mirror. The bike was now so close to their tailgate that he could no longer see the headlight—it was nothing more than a reflective glow.

He moved to slow down, but as he did, so did the biker, moving back so far that he lost track of the headlight around a corner.

“What’s that guy doing?” Alexis asked, a whisper of fear creeping into her voice.

“Who knows, but don’t worry. We’re fine. The guy’s probably just drunk or something.” Casper had driven this road a few times over the summer, but normally when he got off work he’d just avoid the park and drive home to the tiny town of Babb outside the park, where he had a little apartment on the second floor of a local auto mechanics shop. “Where’s the next pullout?”

Alexis shook her head. “Not for a mile or two.”

He was blinded as a car turned the corner ahead. It was moving fast and hugging the center line of the narrow road. He gripped the steering wheel, his fingers digging into the hard vinyl.

At the last moment, the car swerved into their lane. He jerked the wheel, running the truck off the road and toward the rock wall.

He reached across the truck, trying to stop Lex from lurching forward, but there was nothing he could do. The old Chevy’s tires squealed as the steel body ran against an outcrop of unyielding stone in a mess of metal and sparks.

The truck’s tire caught and, almost in slow motion, it twisted. The world shifted and what had once been up was now down. As they slid to a stop, the truck was lying on its roof. Lex was held in place by her seat belt, her body slumped against the straps and her eyes closed. Blood dripped down her hair and fell onto the gray roof.

“Alexis? Lex?” he called frantically, hoping she was still alive. “Lex, are you okay?”

He started to move, but his strap held him in place upside down. The blood started to rush to his head, making his face feel heavy and bloated. Reaching up, he tried to unclasp his belt, but his fingers fumbled as he tried to make them work.

The deafening beat of his heart started to slow and as he looked at Lex his vision distorted, making her look as though she were a picture going out of focus. His vision tunneled until he could only see her face. A wave of peace filled him.

If this was it, the last thing he was going to see—her long hair and full lips—he could think of no greater goodbye.


Chapter Four (#u6a77f333-7a0f-5c4e-bf16-f4852752ef79)

Alexis opened her eyes. The world was awash with the sounds of frantic voices. She didn’t know where she was; the world floated around her, moving and swaying like she was watching it through a pool of water.

“Alexis?” A man’s voice broke through her thoughts. “Are you okay? Lex?”

She blinked and there, kneeling beside her, was Casper with his silver badge on his belt and hair the color of chestnut, reds and browns that reflected the lights that filled the night, and shoulders so muscular that she was certain he did push-ups as a hobby. As he looked at her, his eyes were wide with fear.

She tried to speak, but nothing more than a slight squeak escaped her lips. Her head ached and as she drew a breath, her chest ached. Swallowing back the pain, she tried again to speak. “What...happened?”

Casper leaned closer and moved her hair out of her face. The strands stuck to her skin and she moved to reach up, but he stopped her. Then she tasted the blood. It filled her mouth, giving it the iron-rich taste of spilled life.

“Don’t worry. You’re going to be okay. The EMTs are almost here. It’s just important that you stay awake. Got it?” He spoke in fast, clipped words that she struggled to understand.

“How?” she asked, groping for the words that seemed to jumble in her mind.

“We were in a car accident.”

It all came flooding back. The car flipping through the air. The screech of metal on stone. The scent of gas in the air. She drew in a gasp, but was stopped by the pain in her chest.

She tried to sit up, but stopped as Casper shook his head. “Don’t move.”

A thin bead of blood slipped down Casper’s hairline and stopped next to his earlobe. “Are you okay?” she asked.

He nodded, reaching up and wiping the blood away, leaving a streak of red on his cheek. “I’m fine.”

In the group of people beside Casper there was a man staring at her. He wore a black leather vest with the words “Madness and Mayhem.” Just below them was the word “Montana” and then a black patch with red stitching that read “Filthy Few.” On the other side of the man’s vest was a patch that read “one-percenter.” The man had gray hair and even though it was dark, he had on sunglasses.

The man must have noticed her looking at him, as he lifted his chin in acknowledgment. This must have been the man who had been following them, the headlight in the mirror. Yet before she could speak, someone stepped in front of him and the man disappeared, becoming just another face in the growing crowd.

On the rock wall beside them she could see the glow of red and blue lights. Tires crunched on the side of the road as the EMTs pulled to a stop.

“Everyone out of the way!” the paramedic yelled as she pushed her way through people.

The EMTs poked and prodded Alexis, taking her pulse and checking her reflexes with lights. Even without them telling her, she knew everything wasn’t right. She closed her eyes and when she reopened them she was already strapped down to a board, her head and back immobile, and they were loading her into the back of the ambulance.

“Casper...” Alexis whispered as the female EMT stepped up into the back of the ambulance beside her.

“What, honey?” the EMT asked.

“Where’s Casper?”

“Your friend?”

Alexis tried to nod, but was stopped by the thick straps on her forehead. “Yes. I want Casper.”

The woman jumped out of the wagon and a moment later, Casper was sitting beside Alexis. He smiled. The blood on his temple had dried. “I’m here.”

There was so much going on. So much she didn’t understand. “Stay with me,” she pleaded, suddenly afraid.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay by your side as long as you need.”

* * *

HE’D SEEN MORE people hurt than he could count, but he’d never felt as terrified as when he saw Alexis covered in blood and confused. Hopefully she would be okay. She was so out of it.

She slept as they waited for the doctor to return with the results of her MRI. He hated the monotonous, shrill beeps of the machines that filled the emergency room.

Reaching into the plastic bag at his feet, he pulled out the little sewing kit he’d bought at the hospital’s shop and grabbed her pants from the foot of her bed. He pushed his fingers through the L-shaped hole in her pant leg from where she had caught it on the deadfall. She probably didn’t care about the pants, but he couldn’t sit there with nothing to do but worry.

He pulled out some string, threaded the needle and set to work as he sat in the pink vinyl seat beside her bed. When he’d been younger, his mother had told him that good domestic skills were the mark of a true man.

The stitches were even and as he mended, he kept looking up, hoping Lex would wake and everything would be okay.

He hated this. He hated hospitals—it brought up moments of his past that he never wanted to relive. The sooner they could be out of here, the better.

Every hospital he’d ever been to carried the same overpowering disinfectant smell. They could scrub away the blood and the waste products, but no matter how much they tried to hide it, he could still make out the pungent aroma of panic and fear. Yet as he sat there working, he wondered if the scent was carrying in from the patients or from those waiting for their loved ones to be helped.

He reached over and caressed Lex’s hand. There was no more fear for her, not now, not with the drugs that filtered through her system to numb her pain. Now the fear was solely his.

His phone buzzed. “Hello?”

“Agent Lawrence, this is Ranger Grant with the Glacier National Park Rangers Office. I was one of the responders at the scene of your accident. I believe you left me a message?”

“Thanks for returning my call. I appreciate it,” Casper said. “Did you manage to find the evidence?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “We found two large hiking backpacks—which I assumed were yours and Alexis’s—and there was an empty green military-style bag.”

“Empty?”

“Yep.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. You sure there wasn’t anything in the bag?” He pulled a hand over his face, trying to stave off the start of a headache.

“Yes, sir.”

“The drugs were packed into bricks. Were there any that had spilled out? Maybe into the truck bed or on scene?” He tried to sound calm as he thought about what it would mean if the drugs were truly missing.

“I didn’t find any bricks of drugs, but your topper took a pretty big hit when you rolled the truck.” The man paused. “When we pulled up, the truck’s topper door was open. I guess it’s possible they fell out and weren’t recovered.”

“Or they were taken...”

His mind raced. Who’d want to take the drugs? Only a few people had even known that they had them and were taking them back to Apgar. Was it possible that the coroner or one of the rangers had said something? Or was it completely a random occurrence that they had been in an accident and the drugs had been stolen?

He didn’t believe in coincidences, but he had a hard time believing that the rangers or the coroner would have any ill-conceived ideas of stealing the drugs. No one had seemed overly preoccupied with them on the scene. If someone had wanted them, Casper would have had some type of clue. He was jumping to conclusions... No doubt the drugs were probably scattered along the roadside near their crash site.

“Can you make a run back up to the site? Take another look around? We can’t have thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs get into the wrong hands.”

“No problem... I’ll call you when I get back into cell service and let you know what I find.”

Casper squeezed Lex’s hand. It had started to chill under the hospital’s air-conditioning and he carefully tucked her arms under the warm blanket.

“Thanks, Grant,” he said. “Appreciate your help.” He moved to hang up.

“Wait, Lawrence,” the man said.

He lifted the phone back to his ear. “Huh?”

“We did find a receipt inside the green bag. It was wadded into a ball and was stuck in the bottom corner.”

A receipt? He thought back to everything he’d dumped out of the bag. He didn’t recall a receipt. Was it possible it had been there the whole time, or had the person who’d stolen the drugs accidentlly, or purposefully, left it behind?

“What about the money?”

“No money. Just the receipt,” Grant said, sounding tired. “I’ll take a picture and send it your way.”

“Thanks, Grant.”

“No problem. We’ll start putting out feelers. If the drugs were stolen, maybe we can help you try to get a handle on this before word moves up the chain. Hate to see you get in trouble.”

“Let me know if you hear anything.” He hung up the phone.

He moved too fast as he pushed through another stitch and the needle jabbed into his finger, making him curse as he pushed his finger into his mouth to stem the blood flow.

He was going to be in deep trouble if the news that he’d fallen victim to a heist hit the Fed circuit. If it did, within twenty-four hours everyone from his boss to his old FBI buddies would know that he’d lost a vital piece of evidence.

Just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse.

He knotted the thread as he finished mending the hole and then put everything away.

He was going to need to get in touch with his boss. He glanced down at his watch. Midnight. No wonder Grant had been tired.

Instead of calling and waking up the captain, he wrote him a bare-bones email that emphasized the fact he was sitting in the ER. It was low, playing the mercy card, but he needed to buy some time and a little leniency. The last thing he needed his boss thinking was that he lost the drugs due to his incompetence.

The door to Lex’s room opened, but with the curtain drawn around her bed he couldn’t see who was coming in.

“Is this the right place?” a man asked, his voice tight and filled with panic.

“It is, Mr....” a woman answered.

“Yellowfeather. Travis Yellowfeather.”

Casper’s heart lurched in his chest. What was Lex’s ex-husband doing here?

He looked down at her sleeping face and contemplated waking her. Yet she looked so peaceful, her eyes fluttering with REM sleep and her hair, still specked with blood, haloed around her head. She needed her rest.

“Mr. Yellowfeather, I’m afraid she already has a visitor. We only allow one visitor at a time,” the nurse said.

“To hell with one visitor,” Travis said, pushing aside the curtain.

As soon as he saw Casper, Travis’s eyes darkened and his lips curled into a smirk. “I should’ve known it was you who would be here. I guess it wasn’t enough that you got her hurt, now you have to stay here to make sure she doesn’t die—all in an effort to save your conscience, I suppose.”

Casper went slack-jawed, but he quickly recovered his composure. “Who do you think you are, Travis, walking in here and accusing me of anything?”

“I’m her damned husband,” he retorted, moving to the side of Alexis’s bed.

“Ex, from what I hear.”

Travis’s scowl darkened. “She told you?” He snorted. “So she’s already on the prowl,” he said, half under his breath.

“Why don’t you leave, Travis? I know she wouldn’t want you here.”

“And you think she wants you?” His scowl turned into a dangerous smile. “If you think that, you don’t know Lex at all.”

Travis wasn’t wrong. He couldn’t tell anyone Alexis’s favorite sandwich or the color of her childhood bedroom, but that didn’t mean he was going to leave her here with the man whom, only hours before, she shied away from. He knew fear and hatred when he saw it.

“If you think she would want you here, then I may know her better than you do,” Casper said.

Lex’s hand tightened in his and he turned to see her eyes fluttering open. “Boys,” she said, her voice weak, “don’t fight.”

Travis pulled his lips into a tight line, but he shut up.

“How are you doing, honey?” Casper asked. He moved to caress her face but stopped as he felt Travis’s gaze searing into him. Lex didn’t need a fight, and no matter how much he disliked the man standing at the other side of the bed, he had been right—Casper barely knew her. They had talked a lot as they hiked, and there had been playful banter, but they were only friends.

She blinked for a few moments, as if trying to make sense of her world. “What are you doing here, Trav?”

Travis stepped closer to her and took her other hand. “I heard you were in an accident.”

He suddenly felt out of place as Alexis said her ex-husband’s pet name. Maybe he’d misread the entire situation. Maybe she didn’t hate Travis like he’d assumed. He let go. He was the interloper here, not Travis.

“But why are you here?” She moved her hand out of Travis’s. Casper hoped she would reach over for him, but she remained still. “You and I are done. You made that abundantly clear.”

“We may be divorced, Lex, but that doesn’t mean that I can just stop worrying about you.”

She pushed the button that moved the bed up. “Actually, Travis, that’s exactly what a divorce means. If that’s not what you wanted, then maybe you should have treated me like your wife instead of just someone you could use and throw away.”

Casper cleared his throat, his discomfort rising. He shouldn’t have come here and inserted himself into whatever domestic situation they had going on. “Hey, Lex, I’ll see you later.”

“No,” she said, her voice strong. “You stay here. Travis, it’s you who needs to go.”

“Are you kidding me?” Travis spat. “You are going to let this son of a—”

Alexis stopped him with a wave of her hand. “Just go.”

Travis looked at her and started to open his mouth to say something, but must have thought better of it. He turned to Casper. “You think she’s great now, but let me tell you a little something about Alexis Finch. She only cares about two things—the park and how she fits into it. She doesn’t care about anyone or anything else. If you think you are going to change her or if you got some notion that you are going to be someone she gives two shakes about...” He snorted. “You got another thing coming.” He turned and stalked out of the ER, rattling the curtain rings as he bulled through them.

Casper stood in silence, staring at the curtain. He had no idea what to say. Divorce was never pretty—especially when it came to navigating the waters of a new relationship. Not that they had a relationship, but things could get a bit hinky when it came to seeing an ex with someone else.

“I’m sorry about that,” Lex said. She tried to move her head, but it was still in the confines of a brace and as she moved, she winced.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, the tired edge returning to her voice.

“I’m serious, I can go, Lex. I don’t want to...interfere.”

Her lips turned into a thin smile. “You made a promise. You said you would stay by my side, remember?”

He moved closer to her bed. He thought about reaching down and taking her hand, but now that Travis had been there somehow it didn’t seem right.

“How’re you feeling?”

“I feel like I was in a fight... Who won, me or the truck?” Her lips curled into a playful half smile.

There was a knock on the door and the doctor pushed back the curtain. He had a black tablet hugged to his white lab coat.

“Mrs. Finch?” he asked.

“Miss,” she answered.

“Right, Ms. Finch, I’m Dr. Tag, the neurologist here at Kalispell Regional. I just got off the phone with your brother, Dr. Paul Finch. He was very concerned about your well-being.”

She cringed at the sound of her brother’s name. “I’m sorry, Doctor, he can be a bit...overwhelming sometimes.”

Dr. Tag didn’t smile or nod, rather, he remained unflappable, making Casper wonder if that was exactly what had drawn the man to medicine.

“It was no problem, Ms. Finch, but you should call him back when you get the chance. I think he wishes to speak to you regarding your accident now that you’re awake.”

She nodded but looked down at her hands.

“As for the results of your CAT scan, you are experiencing a slight bit of swelling, consistent with a mild concussion.”

“What does that mean, Doc?” Casper asked, trying to mimic the man’s cool demeanor.

“It means that for the time being, I’d like to have you stay here and be monitored for any residual effects. However, I think it would be safe to send you home tomorrow. You will just need to rest and everything should sort itself out.” He tapped on his tablet like he was noting something in her chart. “You are a lucky woman. A TBI, or a traumatic brain injury, can have a number of long-term effects, but from what I’m seeing on your scans, you should be okay.”

Casper let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. In a day that had been filled with nothing but death, despair, accidents and blood...something was finally going right.


Chapter Five (#u6a77f333-7a0f-5c4e-bf16-f4852752ef79)

Lex took a tentative step out of the car as Casper raced around from the driver’s side to help her into her house. He wrapped his arm around her waist and took hold of her arm as he cradled her body against him. He was so...warm. In fact, he was so warm that she wanted to move closer to him, to rest her body against him and let his heat ease the pain that seemed to pulse from her bruised and battered body. He smelled of hospital, but beneath the sharp odor of antiseptic was the heady scent of his sweat and the tangy edge of fresh air. She closed her eyes and took his scent deep into her lungs, trying to remember it for those nights that she would be alone.

“Do you need anything for your house? Groceries? Anything?” Casper asked.

“No, uh, I think I got everything I need.” She looked over at him as she spoke and saw his face was tight, just like it had been when the doctor had been in her hospital room last night. It was sweet that he was so worried about her, but he needn’t be; she was strong. “Thanks for giving me a ride—and for keeping the car on the road this time,” she joked, trying to make light of the accident.

Her joke fell flat as his brow furrowed and a storm brewed in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Lex. I...I never wanted you to get hurt—”

She stopped him by pressing her finger to his lips. The instant she touched him, a strange buzz of energy filled her and she quickly lowered her hand. “You—it wasn’t your fault. It was unavoidable. That car came at us. Seriously, don’t worry. Everything is fine. And hey, at least it was a work truck, right?” She struggled to find the right words to make him feel better, and to quell the surging need to touch him again.

He looked at her and some of the darkness in his eyes lifted. Before he could say anything, she stepped out of his cradling arms and hurried toward her house.

The log cabin was dark brown and its windows were trimmed with white, and like most of the other buildings of the park, it radiated with a cozy, rustic charm that always beckoned her home. She’d spent the last few summers holed up in the tiny building with Travis, often hating its inconsistent hot water and the electricity that seemed to come and go depending on the weather, but regardless of its downfalls she loved the place.

Yet it felt strange walking up the path with a man who wasn’t Travis. In fact, the night he’d left, she had sworn that, as long as she lived there, he would be the last man who would ever set foot in this place. Then again, Casper wasn’t anything like Travis.

He was handsome...maybe even a little too handsome for her liking. Every nurse who had come into her room had kept their eyes on him a moment too long. It had been tempting to show the women that he was hers, but the truth was just the opposite. He was nothing more than a work colleague...albeit a work colleague who hadn’t left her side since the accident.

More than simply being handsome, he had a kind side. Often he tried to act tough, all business, but when he’d stepped between her and Travis in the hospital she had caught a glimpse of the sensitive and caring side that he tried to hide from the world.

She glanced over at him, but his face was hidden in the shadow cast by his hat. Maybe she was wrong; maybe she had an idealized version of who he really was—she had a terrible habit of doing that. She had sworn Travis was her knight in shining armor. At first it hadn’t mattered that her friends had warned her off; it didn’t matter when he told her who she could be friends with and what time she should come home, and it didn’t matter that for days on end he treated her like she was nothing more than his often neglected pet...coming and going as he pleased and not speaking to her for days. All that had mattered was that when he looked at her, the world stood still.

If only she had listened to what everyone had told her, and that tiny place in the back of her mind that had told her it was all too good to be true.

She couldn’t risk being hurt like that again. She doubted she could live through it a second time. “What did you do before you got stationed at Goat Haunt?” she asked as she unlocked the door.

Casper tensed at the question. He was so quiet that she wondered if he had even heard her.

“Casper?”

“Yeah... I was in the FBI. Mostly specializing toward the end—handwriting analysis, that kind of thing.” He closed the door behind them and stood there, his back to her as he stared at the door like a trapped animal.

“Look, if you want, you can go. I think I can handle things from here.”

He took out his phone and glanced down at his screen. “No...it’s fine. Grant hasn’t gotten back to me yet. There’s nothing more for me to do until I hear from him.”

“What all did he say?” she asked as she gingerly walked to the old, tattered brown couch and sat down. There was a threadbare quilt that hung over the back, one her foster mother had made her back in grade school. There was even a bit of purple nail polish she had carelessly spilled ages ago.

“The drugs are missing. He’s going to go back to the scene and check to make sure he didn’t miss anything.” Stuffing the phone into the breast pocket of his jean jacket, he sat down in the recliner across from her. “And he found a receipt.”

“A receipt? What do you mean?”

“It was jammed into the corner of the green bag.”

“I swear I looked everywhere in that thing... But I guess I could have missed it. Wait, do you think someone planted it, Mr. FBI?”

He cringed, but she wasn’t sure why.

He opened up his phone and pulled up the photos of the bag that they had taken on scene. “Regardless of how it got there, because we screwed up the chain of custody, the receipt can’t be used in court for anything. We can’t prove that it was or wasn’t there without reasonable doubt.”

“But it could help us figure out the vic’s identity, right?”

“I suppose,” he said, giving her a weak smile. “Right now though, you need to take care of yourself and just focus on getting some rest.” He stood up and grabbed the quilt off the back of the couch, wrapping it around her shoulders.

She caught his familiar scent and closed her eyes. She imagined pulling him down on the couch beside her, wrapping him in the blanket and letting him hold her. They could spend the day together, huddled in each other’s embrace and away from the hurt that filled the world around them.




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