He asked, “You have heat in the shed?"
When she leaned down to retrieve towels from a kitchen drawer, her hair swished about in thick torrents, making him long to race over and bury his face in its richness, to smell its wildflower essence. It always filled him like a breeze. He was hungry for that rush. It scared the hell out of him suddenly to know that a woman in a little cabin in Wisconsin could give him a charge as powerful as any racing boat going full-tilt across an ocean. Had she done this to him that summer? Was she the reason he took up racing with such a vengeance, and diving and anything dangerous? Had he been in search of this feeling of being with her?
Oh, yes
.
Fortunately she was busy talking, ignoring his silent epiphany. “I've got several heat lamps on. The animals are probably more snug than we'll be.” He heard her intake of breath. “I mean, than I'll be."
“My tent will do me fine."
“I have a slicker you can borrow. And blankets."
“No need. A little rain won't hurt me. Once I'm in my sleeping bag, I'll be snug as a bug in a rug.” It sounded cold, wet and miserable.
He followed her through the formal dining area, past the viewing scope, which made him smile. Once in the breezeway, she halted and he almost ran into her.
“What's wrong?"
Slamming the basket of clinking bottles at him, she raced at the shed entrance door. “No light under the door. It means the heat lamps are out. My new babies!"
Cole limped after Laurel. Inside the shed, he watched her almost fly about like a distressed bird, flicking on lamps, reaching for animals.
“I must have forgotten to turn them on before I left,” she shrieked. “I can't believe I did this."
Cole's stomach turned leaden. He wondered if the sheriff's plan was already working. Was someone tracking him? Lurking about? “Tell me what to do to help."
“Find Rusty. I've got to adjust these lamps. Oh dear. This one's got a broken bulb, too."
He peered in a cage. “The fox seems fine."
“Take a look at Owlsy. He's newer."
Owlsy sat on a branch with a white bandage wrapped around one wing and half his body. His yellow eyes blinked back at Cole in utter confusion over all the commotion. Cole admitted to confusion, too. Forgetting something as important as these heat lamps wasn't like Laurel. Someone had meant to do harm to Laurel or to Cole through her. A hoary anger crowded his already pounding head.
He asked, “You want me to start feeding?"
“No!” She rolled up her sleeves and was reaching in a small box. “You can't feed baby animals until they warm up. They can't digest anything when they're cold."
Laurel had tears streaming down her face. He'd never seen her like this. He felt as if she'd just plunged a knife in his heart. Reaching out to try and soothe her, she quaked in his arms, like a wounded animal herself.
“Laurel Lee! I'm sorry. Don't go hysterical on me. Put me to work. Let me help you, damnit!"
She reached into a box filled with fluffy tissues, and before he could blink, she plunged two small gray creatures inside the open “V” of his shirt. They tickled his chest.
“Hold them there, against your skin and on your heartbeat."
He peered down. Two silken baby rabbits, their eyes mere slits and their tails only a notion, snuggled between his palm and chest skin. They felt cool to his touch and fragile. He stood still, awed by his unexpected responsibility.
“Now what?” he asked.
“It'll take a minute or two for their nest to warm up. I'm going to go outside and check on the coyote pups and the fawn—"
That's when they both noticed the far door ajar and banging suddenly amid the thunder. Cole didn't like this at all.
“Get in the house,” he ordered.
“Why?"
All of the dread that had followed him for days, even weeks now, whooshed in around him with the force of a Florida hurricane.
Laurel's face went chalky white. “Someone was in the shed."
Someone who wanted your animals to die in order to mess with me
, Cole thought. Then he had an even uglier thought. “The front door was open. Someone could be in your house right now."
Her eyes, growing large, beseeched his. “It could be a neighbor. Right? Tell me there is no Rojas."
His heartbeat gathering against a storm, he held fast to the innocent baby bunnies, regret slashing through him.
* * * *
“I DON'T CARE a rat's ass how late it is, Sheriff, we have to find him,” Cole said, limping back and forth in front of the fireplace.
Laurel wondered how he could ignore the deep wound in his leg.
She slumped in the rocking chair, wrung out. Before the sheriff even got to her cabin, Cole had scoured the house with Mike's hunting knife in hand. She stayed in the shed, shutting doors and settling the bunnies back in their nestbox. Now, her insides were a volatile cocktail of fear and anger, all of it centered on Cole.
Sheriff John Petski sat on the edge of a sofa cushion, fresh from his inspection, coat still on and dripping, hiked behind his holster. He held his plastic-covered hat in his hands. “I don't see how he could get here that fast."
“Hell, the man owns a jet."
“According to Dade County, Marco Rojas was attending a diplomatic reception only four hours ago. It's possible, but nobody flies in this stuff."
A measure of relief settled into Laurel, reminding her of the hour and how tired she was. “Maybe I really did forget the lamps."
Cole scowled at her. “The door, too? No way. I know you. You love those animals more than anything, more than people."
She flinched at the unsettling and offhanded accusation. “I was in a hurry, and distracted today. The more we talk about this, the sillier it makes me feel. I must have thought I closed the door and turned on the lamps and never did."
Cole glanced at the sheriff. “You found nothing over at the mansion?"
Laurel watched the two men exchange an intense gaze. She didn't like the feeling it gave her.
John said, “Nothin’ there except a leaky roof and creaky wood. You already looked in the duffel and said everything was there. Even the jewelry."
“Thanks for bringing my stuff over,” Cole said, turning quickly toward the fire, his back to Laurel.
Jewelry? Laurel would have to ask about it later.
John stood. “Maybe you two just got spooked talking about Rojas and his rich lady friend from Texas—"
“Sheriff,” Cole interjected, stepping forward and slapping a hand on John's shoulder, “Laurel and I have done enough talking about Rojas for one night."
Jewelry? Lady friend? From then on, John avoided her gaze. At the door, he turned to Cole. “Stop by. We have to settle up with the tavern. Wiley'll be sober in a few hours."
“Sure thing,” Cole said, closing the door against the rain.
Laurel didn't care for the odd glint in his eyes when he turned around. “What're you two up to?"
“You need sleep. I'll be fine out here on the couch,” Cole said.
“Don't treat me like I'm still seventeen. I don't need a guard dog on duty. Rojas isn't here, but you two clearly expected him. He was all you talked about, not an ordinary burglar or tourist committing a heist."
“We can talk in the morning."
“I won't sleep until we talk.” She stomped over to him, grabbed his arm and dragged him to the couch. “You and John know something you don't want me to know. Why not?"
“I'd like to think I'm protecting you by not wanting to scare you at every turn."
She threw up her arms. “Like I wasn't scared tonight? Like I wasn't scared the day you arrived here and told me you were going to be killed? Like that didn't bring all the scary feelings back when my father went into a rage—"
Her body went slack. She's said too much. Her throat tightened. His eyes grew wide, beckoning like the lake, waiting for her.
He offered, “I don't want to talk about the things your father did back then."
Licking her lips, she sighed, thankful. “He loved me. He couldn't help what he felt about the situation of you and me. But sometimes I feel I'm like him. Stubborn. Fulfilling his mission to get rid of you."
She blanched, the truth delivering a tremor down her spine. Was she really doing that? Repeating the past? Trying to justify all the meanness her father showed toward Cole fifteen years ago?
He patted the cushion next to him. Because of the gravity on his face, she sat down next to him. He put an arm around her, drawing her against the same warm spot on his chest where the bunnies recovered earlier. His heartbeat pounded erratically. The man was afraid!
“Cole, I'm sorry. I hate being at odds. I hate worrying."
“I'm nothing but a bastard, just as you called me, if I bring you into this then tell you nothing.” His voice resonated through his chest. Her body rose with his deep breath, settling in.
“Sheriff Petski got some information off his communiqués tonight that aren't pretty,” he began, sending new tremors through her. “It involves a woman I dated a couple of times, who ended up in the arms of Senator Milo Goetz."
“What about this woman? And who is Goetz?"
“Goetz heads the CIA oversight committee. Has for years."
Shivering, she stared into the dying fire. “Your brother said not to go to Langley. That's CIA. Did Mike know something about Goetz and Rojas?"
“My hunch is, yes."
“But if they're involved in anything illegal together, that means high-ranking government officials might be part of it. The implications of all this—"
“Are enormous."
Looking up at his face, she watched the firelight's reflection flicker in his dark eyes. “What about the woman, Cole? What's the connection?"
Cole eased her back against him and dropped a kiss on top of her head. There was an urgency about it that added to her worry.
“Goetz messed around with her on a yacht in our marina, near a slip Rojas used. The sheriff says she was last seen boarding Rojas's yacht."
Her mouth went dry. “He killed her?"
“No. According to Sheriff Petski, Interpol's involved. She comes from a very rich family who's making this a national human interest story. Authorities figure she was sold into the white slave trade in the Mid-East."
She shivered. “That really exists?"
“According to John, hundreds of young women disappear every year, not only from the U.S."
More icy tremors tumbled through her. “You believe Rojas would use a woman to get to you, don't you?"
Closing her eyes momentarily, she forced herself to add, “You think he'd kidnap me?"
The fire hissed, almost masking his reply. “Yes."
Shook by the simplicity of the horror, she slipped from his protective arm, got up and closed the glass doors on the fire.
A fire of her own stoked inside herself. “I refuse to be afraid anymore. Nobody messes with ... us."
“Us?"
“I've been thinking about what you said about me hiding from life. I can't do that with you, not with you here. You're a friend. And I must help you because that's what I do for friends."
He laughed, an odd disjointed sound in the shadowy seriousness of the cabin. “What's your first step partner?"
Warming to the new balance in their relationship, even tenuous as it was, she smiled back. “You think Buzz remembers meeting Mike? We don't know much about Mike's itinerary here—"
Cole's face lit up. Sitting back against the sofa pillows, he nodded. “But it has to lead us to the goods on Rojas. I need to start talking to people. Mike would have gone to the bait shop. We'll start there."
“You're not asking my mother a thing.” Her head throbbed instantly.
“I have to. If what Mike left me isn't at the house, then it's in town somewhere."
“Look, I found out about your engagement from my mother. She came to me triumphantly with a clipping from one of her magazines she sells, but I didn't need to look at it. She was reading it aloud to me as a not-so-gentle reminder that I was too young to know what love was and that you had other fish to fry. She wants nothing to do with you."
“Other fish to fry?"
“It's a turn of a phrase my mother uses. She meant, you were never lacking for women, and the story of your engagement within a year of leaving here seemed to prove that."
Rubbing the back of his neck, he curled his mouth into an obvious twist of disgust. “I already told you why I married Stephanie."
He began rearranging the pillows on the sofa.
“Is Lisa waiting back there for you? Did you leave behind someone who really cares ... too much?"
After a pause, he put down the pillow in his hand and turned to her, the muscles playing on his face. “Since my life is bound to dribble out on newspaper pages, you might as well know, Lisa Shaw's the one who talked about marriage, not me. She owns the dive shop where I get my equipment."
For some reason, she welcomed that news. It felt less messy to know he was unattached right now, that he wasn't abandoning another woman. An unexpected concern rose, though.
“Are you afraid for Lisa?"
His face took on gruesomely gray shadows. “Yes. The same way I'm afraid for you. I never told Rojas about Lisa or her shop, but he's a sick man."
Laurel trembled from her epicenter. “Sheriff Petski has always watched out for me."
“I'll watch out for you tonight. I'll be here, on the sofa, until the sunrise. Get some sleep, Laurel Lee, please. I worry about you."
With her common sense threatening to leave her, with her heart wanting her to stay with him, she rushed from the room with a “goodnight."
But then in her room, the darkness settled around her and she longed to be back in his arms.
The lightning crackled, illuminating the dresser photos of her father and Kipp. She sought their company, but the frames felt cold, not what she yearned for tonight at all.
Quickly readying for bed in a favorite soft T-shirt and climbing under the blankets, she thought about how the men she loved became elusive for her. They were never permanent. The man sleeping in her livingroom—Cole Roberto Sanchez Wescott, the hunted and the hunter—was a prime example. He'd left her after vowing they would marry for real someday. Then there was his commitment to his son—or lack thereof—that still bothered her. And he'd divorced his wife. Now there was Lisa Shaw, whom he couldn't commit to.