Читать книгу Bear Claw Bodyguard - Jessica Andersen - Страница 9

As Jack’s lips touched hers, Tori decided that she didn’t care that he was a cop and a local; she only cared that he was solid and warm against her. His mouth was firm, his grip demanding even though she knew he would let her go if she pulled away.

She crowded closer instead, and parted her lips to taste him.

A groan rumbled in his chest as their tongues touched and slid, and her soft moan echoed beneath the sound, coming from the sharp, masculine flavor and the heat that seared through her, surrounded her. He was there, he was real, and that was a shock to the senses in the wake of the last few hours, which felt suddenly unreal, as if they had happened to someone else, or came from a movie about shootouts, sabotaged vehicles and car chases.

The man kissing her was equally outside of her normal zone, as were the heat and desire rocketing through her, but she could grab on to those feelings, dig into his solid strength and feel alive. They had made it out, made it down. They were okay, thanks to him. If he hadn’t been there. She shuddered against him, feeling safe and protected.

But at the same time she was very aware that this, too, was a moment out of reality, fleeting and temporary. It had to be. So when her hands wanted to clutch, she made them caress instead, and when his body stiffened and he made a low noise of surprise, she let go and leaned back, hands up and open in the universal gesture of “don’t freak, no harm, no foul.”

That was how she ran each and every one of her short-term relationships, after all: no harm, no foul.

They sat there a moment, in a pool of light coming from the observatory’s floods, staring at each other. His breathing was fast, his eyes hot with a desire that speared straight into her and made her want to fling herself at him, on him, kiss him until neither of them was thinking about anything but the slip and slide of flesh and the pounding of their hearts.

But even though his eyes were hot, he shook his head slowly as if to clear it, or maybe deny what had just happened between them. And although that rejection pinched at her feminine core, she was the one who’d let go first, and she was the one who broke the suddenly strained silence to say, “Sorry. Got caught up in the moment there.”

He searched her face for an interval that stretched long enough for her to wonder what he was looking for, what he saw. But he only said, “We should get inside and start making calls. The guys at the station house need to hear about what just happened, as do the members of the task force; I need backup, and you need an official escort back down to the city.”

The implication was “and a plane ticket the hell out of here,” and she wasn’t arguing—there was a line between dedication and stupidity, and sticking around when she was being shot at would put her way over onto the “stupid” side.

THE RINGING PHONE brought Percy Proudfoot groggily awake. As he fumbled on the nightstand for his cell, he muttered, “Damn it.” He slept alone, so there was nobody to care if he kept up his cursing when he knocked the phone off the nightstand and onto the floor and had to get down there and hunt for the damn thing. And if the staffers who lived in the other wing of the mayoral mansion heard anything, they’d been well-paid to turn a deaf ear to far stranger sounds.

The Aubusson carpet scuffed his bare knees and he nearly brained himself on the corner of the nightstand, but he came up with the phone and leaned back against the giant canopy bed to flip it open. There was no ID on the display, just a number, but when he saw that it was coming in on his most private line, the sleepy cobwebs disappeared.

Taking a deep breath, he clicked the call live and answered with a professional, borderline respectful, “Proudfoot here.”

It wouldn’t do any good to irritate the man on the other end of the line. He was powerful, far-reaching, and he had Percy’s mayoral future in a vise.

“You said you’d keep the cops away from the Forgotten.” The Investor—that was what he’d told Percy to call him from the very start of their association—sounded more than irritated. He sounded coldly furious. Murderous, even.

Uh-oh. Going on instant alert, Percy searched his memory banks for even a hint of trouble, and drew a blank. “I did. They are. Chief Mendoza pulled his people off the militia investigation and prioritized the drug case last week. There’s nothing going on out in the Forgotten.”

“You’re out of the loop, Mayor. There was a cop there today, Jack Williams, along with a woman scientist.”

“Bull. They wouldn’t—” But given his increasingly strained relationship with the Bear Claw P.D., it was possible that they had cut him out. Or rather, that they had delayed crucial info as long as possible, knowing he would clamp down on anything that sounded expensive. Ice chased through his veins and he went into damage control mode. “What happened?”

“One of my scouts found their vehicle and tracked them into the hot zone. They were less than a mile away from the encampment when he found them. Unfortunately, he couldn’t pin them down, and his comm malfunctioned, so he had to go back on foot for help, and by the time he returned with a team, they were gone. Which means they made it back down to the city most likely, and you don’t have much time to clamp down on whatever kind of a response your people are putting together. And I mean clamp down, Proudfoot. The Forgotten is my territory, bought and paid for.”

“I know. I … Damn it.” Percy’s mind raced as he sorted through his options, knowing he would have to be very careful right now, not just to get the Investor’s needs met, but his own as well. There was an election coming up, after all. If he spun this right … yeah. He could make it work. “Okay, I can handle this, no problem. But I could use your help …”

WITHIN A COUPLE of hours of Jack calling in the attack, Tucker and several other cops were up at the observatory taking statements and starting the process of reorganizing the Shadow Militia task force. At least that was the plan, but then things started to get strange.

“Well, this puts a new spin on things,” Tucker said, his expression thoughtful as he clicked off his phone—which was the only satellite-enabled phone the P.D. had managed to fund, despite repeated requests.

“A guy seriously walked in off the street, handed over his hunting rifle and confessed to going after me and Tori?” Jack asked, having picked up the gist from his boss’s side of the conversation.

They were sitting in the downstairs main room of the observatory, Jack on one of the sofas, Tucker in a big club chair. Tori was upstairs and, outside, the floodlit parking area was starting to get busy, as more cops and feds arrived and the militia task force started assembling prior to making the trek out to the Forgotten at first light.

Except now it sounded like it might not have been the militia after all.

Tucker nodded. “A drifter named Wayne Gibbs. He’s got priors in California for aggravated assault, is strongly antigovernment, and says he’s been camping in a cave a little ways away from where you and Tori were searching. As far as he’s concerned, he was just protecting his homestead. And, yeah, he’s got a prescription for antipsychotics that hasn’t been filled since summer.”

“Damn.” Jack shook his head, not just because it sounded too convenient, but also because he could actually see it. Hell, he had seen it: a couple of years earlier, there had been a similar case when an ex-marine decided the country owed him some land. The guy had moved his camper and his junkyard dog onto a chunk of land near Station Eight and claimed squatter’s rights, then went after a couple of rangers with his shotgun when they tried to run him off.

And that wasn’t the only instance of people squatting on state and federal land in the area either. Between the economy and the loss of most of Bear Claw’s homeless shelters due to budget cuts, there were more and more indigents trying to scratch a living wherever they could, including the state park.

They were usually found pretty quickly, though. Which begged the question, “Why did it take us this long to notice him?”