Heroes In Uniform (289 page)

Cooper parked the Indian behind Gina's and hopped off. He slapped his gloves against his thigh in frustration.
Damn
, the woman was infuriating.

Why did she still refuse to talk to him? Refuse to trust him?

He pounded a clenched fist against a rough wooden fence surrounding the parking lot, and stalked toward the rear door of Gina’s.
Damn it to hell
!

He swiped up a vegetable crate from the ground. It had been half a lifetime since he'd taken his temper out on an innocent tree or building—hell, it'd been half a lifetime since he'd
had
a temper—but tonight he
really
felt like breaking something.

He heard the call of the evil windigo spirit.

A growl started low in his throat, getting louder as he swung the big wooden crate against a dumpster. His roar crescendoed with the crash, and a thousand splinters mingled with drops of deep red blood, spraying across the asphalt.

Damnation
! He felt more torn tonight than he'd ever felt in his life. More than between two conflicting cultures, more than between his cousin Bernie and the law when he'd been arrested. More than between the dangerous, lonely job he loved and the dream of a peaceful, uneventful life with a family of his own.

He
had
to solve this case.

Quickly.

If nothing else, for the sake of his own sanity. Before the windigo claimed him for good.

He slammed the door to Gina's and threw himself into a booth. He’d blown it badly tonight with Maggie. He’d meant to keep his distance. To play it cool and professional. He really had. Of all the possible stupid things to do, kissing her again was right there at the top of the list.

Second only to smoking her.

Good fucking night
. Of all the times for his so-called mystical abilities to kick in, they'd had to choose precisely
that
moment. He raked a hand through his hair, oblivious to the drops of blood trickling down his wrist.
Jesus
, what he’d seen in her mind. What they had done together.

What he had given up by stopping
.

Gina walked over and handed him a towel and a mug of beer. He took a long gulp.

Fucking, merciful hell
.

Just minutes later, he signaled for a second beer. She plunked it down in front of him, and picked up the blood-stained towel. “So, what's got your buckskins in a twist?” Her voice hinted that she already knew.

He regarded her stonily. The woman had an uncanny ability to read minds. “What I do not need right now is a lecture by some armchair psychologist.” He jetted out a breath. “Or a medicine woman, either,” he added in concession to their tenuous cultural bond. He'd always suspected she had some Indian blood, though she delighted in denying it.

“Suit yourself, Creek.” She shrugged, and ambled back behind the bar.

“Cree,” he muttered morosely. “I'm just
up
a creek.”

Barely Dangerous: Chapter Forty-One

Maggie covered her ears and groaned. It was impossible to escape the irritating, nails-on-chalkboard sound floating up from below.

Damn it! She could have sworn she’d ordered Cooper to move his damn campsite! Why was he still here, filling up the quiet night air with his infernal racket?

The singing had started shortly after he arrived back from Gina's, and had been going on for a good hour-and-a-half now, with no end in sight.

Did she say singing? What she really meant was caterwauling.

At first she’d thought the chanting was pleasant. Cooper's deep voice had been surprisingly soothing—especially after her nerve-wracking experience with him earlier. When he’d ridden up, she’d been terrified he’d come bounding up the tower stairs to confront her. Not that it would have mattered—the blue sedan guy had spooked her so badly, she’d pulled every piece of furniture in the cab in front of the door to block it. But Cooper had gone straight to his camp, without sparing the tower so much as a single glance. She knew, because she’d been watching.

Gradually, her frayed nerves had calmed to the sound. His chanting had wrapped an appropriately primitive aura around their isolated surroundings, imbuing the forest with its tranquility, and restoring her equilibrium.

The moonrise had been magnificent, the black sky mellowing to a rich midnight blue, spangled by twinkling silver stars. The soft, rhythmic singing wafting up from the lakeside made watching the moon rising up through the dark forest trees a near mystical experience.

After a while, however, the chanting took on a different, almost strained, quality. Occasionally it would stop, only to be taken up even more vigorously a few minutes later.

Despite the moon and the stars, the sparking red glow of Cooper’s campfire was the only thing discernible down on the ground. And the moon soon deserted her, apparently getting enough of the ungodly noise, and moved on to more peaceful territory behind the high clouds.

The man was uncanny. He had no need for guns, torture, or any other means of intimidation. She would do anything he wanted,
anything
, if he would just cease that infernal chanting.

The really ironic thing was, even before he came back and started his vigil, she'd decided to tell him about the battery. Her secret was already out, anyway. Somehow, he’d found out about Dinny. How much he knew about her situation with the FBI was uncertain. But if she told him about finding the battery, and why she’d taken it, maybe he'd believe her, and leave her alone.

For the tenth time, she stomped out onto the catwalk to glare down at him. He was sitting cross-legged in front of the fire, facing the lake, as he had been for nearly two hours now, a black shadow against the darkly shimmering water—stark, unmoving.

She could see heat rising from the hole in the top of the small, round tent that lay a few yards from his sleeping tent. Could it be a sweat hut? She’d read about them, but had never seen one in person.

She stood at the rail, and drummed her fingers in irritation. She had tried everything—ignoring the chanting, humming along, humming something else, becoming one with it, holding a pillow over her head.

She was right on the verge of screaming down to him, “
You win! I surrender!
” when, abruptly, the chanting stopped.

She watched in suspense, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He sat for a few minutes in silence, then rose and stalked to his sleeping tent. The beam of a flashlight flailed against the green nylon as his black shape crouched and maneuvered inside. Then he emerged and prowled to the round hut, dropping a small, square object several feet in front of it. She heard a sharp crack as the tent flap was lifted, then snapped shut.

Alrighty, then
.

She tried her best not to imagine Cooper sitting nude in a cloud of steam, rivulets of sweat trickling down his virile, masculine body. Or the heated flush of his smooth skin over iron-hard muscle. Or his slumbering cock reposing between hot, powerful, naked thighs.

With a groan, she licked her lips and closed her eyes, unconsciously tipping her face up to re-live his scorching kiss in her mind.

God, he tasted good
.

And she was such a damned liar. She didn't need hypnosis to want his kiss. To want all of him.

For a moment, the forest was mercifully peaceful and still. Then, all at once, the calm, crisp night air was shattered by the strident clash of electric guitars.

A rough voice cut through the darkness, demanding, “
American woman, stay away from me!
”

Barely Dangerous: Chapter Forty-Two

Lieutenant Blue Wolf Cooper hunched down in the furnace of his small sweat lodge and felt the heat assault the wound-up springs of his muscles. He poured clear water over the hot rocks he'd brought in earlier from his fire ring, and reveled in the punishment of the steam against his glistening skin.

The harsh music streaming out of his MP3 player soothed his jangled nerves on this night as no Cree hunting song possibly could.

Grizzly Bear Woman
, that's what Maggie was. An evil sorceress who’d cast a spell on him. That was why he couldn't get the beautiful, deceitful,
wasichu
woman out of his head.

Just let her dare come to him in the sweat lodge. Let the grizzly bear woman come, and he'd do his own version of the tent shaking ceremony.

He jetted out a breath.
Damn it to hell
. He needed to empty his mind, and become Blue Wolf. So he could accept the dreams he hoped would be sent by Memekwesiw, the Owner of the Bears, the Owner of All the Animals.

He’d sung tonight until his throat was raw. He had sung to ask for help in searching for the poachers.

Yeah, okay, that wasn't the sort of thing traditionally asked for in hunting songs. But bears were the special messengers of Memekwesiw, so, surely, the Owner would help him find the desecrators of his spirit helpers.

Coop didn't know if he really believed all this, but his forefathers had, and right now he could use all the help he could get. He had also lived long enough to know there were many things in this world that couldn't be explained by modern science, and he wasn't willing to discard the old ways simply because they didn't seem rational or logical in the sense the white man's society taught.

Or because they’d never worked for him before.

Before earlier this evening, at any rate...

When the strident beat of his mix ended, he was much more relaxed. The old rock tunes had purged the woman from his consciousness as the cleansing sweat had removed the toxins from his body.

The purifying heat had defeated her magic.

He eased out a breath of satisfaction.

He would sweat for a while longer, then go out and immerse himself in the chilly waters of the lake. Afterward, he would go to his tent and lie down. He would again hang his medicine bag in the
taawpwaataakan
—the dreaming place—and he would sleep.

Perhaps tonight the dreams would come.

Barely Dangerous: Chapter Forty-Three

An eerie calm enveloped Tower Eight when, at last, Cooper's camp fell silent. Maggie pulled her nightgown over her head and buttoned it all the way up to the top. After double-checking the locked and blocked door, she snuggled under the quilt and closed her eyes.

An hour later, sleep still evaded her. She tossed and turned, and couldn't get comfortable. She couldn't stop thinking about him. Or the lovemaking they had shared in her smoky mind.

How would she rid herself of that blissful memory? Of the realization that she was drawn to him as she had never been to any other man? That she was in imminent danger of giving him anything he asked of her, just to be near him?

That she was falling in love with him...?

She pulled the quilt over her head and groaned. It seemed like danger threatened from every part of her life.

How the hell had Cooper found out about Dinny? And what about the post office guy in the blue sedan? Had Whitney been able to find her out here in the middle of nowhere?
How?

Iris hadn't answered when Maggie called this afternoon, but she and Dinny would definitely have left urgent voicemails if they’d found out anything alarming about the blue sedan. Maybe he wasn’t Whitney’s henchman, after all.

But still Maggie felt uneasy. Maybe they just hadn’t had enough time yet to complete their background check.

She'd thought she could avoid going into witness protection, even if the trial went badly, but now she could forget about that. Without a brand new identity, it looked like she could be found by anyone determined enough.

She flopped over onto her stomach and pulled the quilt down around her shoulders. So...she'd just have to make sure she put Whitney behind bars for good.

She closed her eyes and smiled into the pillow. But before she went off to the trial and an uncertain future, she'd like a certain dark, handsome man to give her just one more long, hot, erotic kiss.

Or maybe two or three...

Barely Dangerous: Chapter Forty-Four

Blue Wolf stood in his camp and gazed up at Tower Eight through heavy-lidded eyes. He was naked except for a deerskin loincloth and an eagle feather tied in his loose hair. He had rubbed his body slick with a thin concoct of bear grease, and now his skin shone and glistened in the moonlight. He held his hands still at his sides.

He lifted his face into the wind and inhaled, to catch a whiff of the woman's scent. The woman in the tower. The woman called Maggie.

The woman he would have this night.

He knelt down on one knee in front of the ring of still-hot river cobbles and dragged two grease-moistened fingertips across one of the fire-blackened stones. Bringing his fingers to an eye, he ran them around the socket, leaving a dark, oily circle of black soot. After repeating around his other eye, he blackened all five fingertips and drew them down from each black circle to his cheek, painting long, scratch-like marks. Then, he carefully tucked his bone-handled dagger into the thin leather strap holding his loincloth.

He had become Bear.

Loping on bare feet across the darkness of the forest floor and up the hill, he quickly found the tower stairs. Noiselessly, he climbed them, pausing only when he reached the door behind which the woman slept. He gently turned the knob. It was unlocked. Stealthily, he entered and crept toward her bed.

For a moment, he looked greedily at her sleeping form. Her light hair, tumbling away from her face on the pillow, shimmered in the reflection of a million stars blinking through the windows. Long lashes kissed her sleep-flushed cheeks. He grasped a corner of the quilt she had over her and slowly, smoothly, pulled it off her body. A lacy, white cotton nightgown with a long row of very small buttons down the front modestly covered her nude body. She stirred, and moaned softly.

Blue Wolf's body burned for the woman, for the feel of her silken skin against him, for her full breasts pressing into his chest, her hot thighs tight around his flanks.