Читать книгу Wyoming Cowboy Marine - Nicole Helm - Страница 12

She looked confused for a few seconds, then something like determination chased over her face. Too bad Cam didn’t know what she was determined to decide.

He finished wrapping the cut and picked his coat back up, pulling it on again. He ignored the shudder of cold that worked through him. “You’re worried about your father.”

“I am,” she said, chin lifting. “He goes away sometimes, but never this long.”

“And you don’t know where he goes?”

She paused. Not the kind of pause that preceded a lie either. That lost look in her eyes from the sheriff’s department stole through her once more, though she quickly hardened against it.

She was definitely young, but not that young. Early twenties, if he had to guess. She was strong enough to fire off a warning shot, kind enough to get him a bandage and smart enough not to give him her name.

No number of strange situations he’d found himself in as a Marine prepared him for this puzzle.

“I didn’t actually mean to shoot you,” she said, eyeing him. He noted it wasn’t an apology.

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“If you’d meant to shoot me, I’d have a lot bigger hole in my arm. Clipping this close without doing much damage? That’s pretty much luck of the try-to-get-close-enough-to-scare shooting variety.”

She studied the bandage he’d tied off, then him. “And you know a lot about shooting?”

“Enough.”

“You want me to trust you for no reason, and then you’re evasive?” she said with such utter contempt he had to believe she’d been hurt before. There was a reason she and her father were tucked away here, and judging from the weapon she’d used on him and the one she’d carried with her, cash flow wasn’t the problem, or the only one.

Unless the guns were obtained illegally, which was always possible. Too many questions. Not enough answers. Mostly, she was right not to trust him and find his evasion lacking.

If he wanted to help her—and he couldn’t explain to her or, even worse, to himself, why he wanted to help her—he’d need to offer up some truths. Besides, offering truths to her was better than finding the answer to that question inside himself.

“My name is Cameron Delaney, though I go by Cam,” he began, trying to think what would be important for a scared young woman to know. “I grew up in Bent, Wyoming. If you’ve ever been there you’ve probably heard of the Delaneys. My sister was the deputy you spoke with. I was in the Marines for almost fifteen years, but I decided to come home last year and open a security firm. Hence the knowledge of guns and shooting them. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

“Why?”

“Well, there aren’t a lot of security options in—”

“No, why did you leave the Marines?”

He had practiced responses to that question. Responses he’d given his family and friends. The rote answers weren’t coming right this second. He had to search for them.

“It was time.”

“Why?”

“It’s grueling, and I wasn’t...” Fit. He’d known he wasn’t fit for duty anymore. Not with Aaron’s suicide hanging over him. Not with that utter failure to notice, to help. He hadn’t been able to get past that.

“You weren’t what?” the woman demanded.

He owed her nothing. He could turn around and go home. He had all the choices in the world. But if he could help her... If he could help people, surely at some point it would make up for what he hadn’t helped.

“A man in my unit committed suicide.” His voice sounded rough and strained, and he wasn’t sure what he expected the woman’s response to be, but she only blinked. “I had a hard time coping after that.”

“They kick you out?”

“No, I was granted an honorable discharge.” Honor. What a laugh.

“If I let you help me, what’s in it for you?”

“Having helped,” he replied with all the sincerity he had.

“You don’t know me. What would helping matter?”

He shouldn’t be baffled or irritated by her pressing the issue, demanding some kind of proof he was a decent human being. She shouldn’t believe he was. She shouldn’t trust him. “Haven’t you ever helped someone simply because you could?”

“No.”

“It feels good. There’s a pride to having helped and having done the right thing.”

“So. You’re going to help me find my father. Then what?”

“Then I go about my life and you go about yours.” Assuming the father was missing under some kind of favorable circumstances. There was always the chance he was dead, or that he’d disappeared on purpose. Cam didn’t need to tell her that, though. Either she knew or she didn’t need the worry.

“Just because you want to help someone. Because it feels good.”

“You don’t believe me.”

She didn’t respond, but she looked at his arm. Even though he’d put his coat on, he had a feeling she was thinking about the fact she’d shot him. “How would you help?”

“I’d need some information about—”

She shook her head and patted her leg, the dog jumping to stand next to her. “No.”

“No... No?”

“No information.”

Something was so completely wrong here. People didn’t live off the grid for no reason, and he might have been able to chalk it up to some innocuous thing like environmentalism, but the woman’s evasion coupled with her utter lack of trust in a stranger meant all things pointed to shady.

“How can I help you find your father without information?”

She shrugged and started walking to the shack door. “I guess you can’t.”

“I have to know what he looks like. His name. Where he may have gone. I can’t wander around not knowing anything about the man I’m trying to find. If you don’t give that information to anyone, no one can help you.”

She stopped at that, her back still to him. She didn’t turn as she spoke. “I don’t think he goes by his name out there,” she said quietly.

“Out where?”

She sighed irritably and turned, making a broad arm gesture around them. “Beyond here.”

An uncomfortable chill shivered down his spine. Something was seriously wrong here. “What’s beyond here?”

“The outside world. That’s where he goes, and I don’t think he uses his name out there. Maybe that’s why the police couldn’t find records of him. He must use a different name.” Her eyebrows drew together, and she looked confused and definitely worried.

Whatever was off here, Cam had the sneaking suspicion this woman wasn’t part of it. She was in the dark about this “outside world.” Who talked about things like that? “And you don’t go into the outside world?”

Her brown eyes widened a little, but she kept the rest of her expression carefully blank. “I did today.”

“But that was rare. You don’t have transportation.”

“We have a horse.”

“But you don’t. Still, that helps. A middle-aged man on a horse. What are the names he answers to?”

She let out a shaky breath. “He wouldn’t want me to give out his name. He wouldn’t want me to have gone to the police.”

“But you did.” Cam couldn’t make sense of her fear, because it didn’t look like the kind of fear he’d experienced or seen. She had such a calmness, such a handle on it, and yet he could sense that what vibrated inside of her was fear. “How long have you lived here?”

Her eyes snapped to his, sharp and on the offensive. “My life and his are none of your business. Poking into us isn’t help, Cameron.”

“No one calls me that.”

“Guess what? I do.” She squared her shoulders, somehow looking imperious and regal even though he was taller and broader and just so much larger than her small, narrow frame. “I’ll pay you to—”

“I don’t ne—”

“I’ll pay you to help me, mostly because I need transportation. But the money I’m giving you means I don’t have to answer any questions I don’t want to, and it means you go away when I say. I’m using you as a tool to help me find my father. That’s it.”

He eyed the shanty of a cabin. “You don’t have to pay me.”

“Those are my terms. Stay put.”

* * *

CAMERON MADE HER ACHE. It wasn’t an ache she fully understood. It twined around her much like when she was sick and wished someone would take care of her. There was this yearning for something she couldn’t fully grasp because she’d never seen it in action, only read it in the fiction books Dad used to bring her from his trips outside.

Dad. Missing. Dad, who would hate that she was taking help from anyone. But she needed help. It was Dad’s fault she needed help.

She strode into the shack, Free at her heels, though the dog looked longingly back at the big man in their yard. Longing. Hilly didn’t understand it, or what exactly she was longing for, but it was there regardless.

She tried to put it out of her mind as she forced herself over the threshold of Dad’s room. He didn’t like her in here unsupervised. She had her own tiny closet of a room after all, and he never invaded her privacy, did he? She was only allowed in here to monitor his security setup, or fix it if anything was buggy. To come in and snoop through his things? Unheard of.

But she had to force all those old rules out of her mind and habits as long as Dad was missing. She was an adult, and she could handle any disapproval she got from Dad as long as she brought him home.

Do you need to?

That internal question stopped her in her tracks. It echoed inside of her, and something desperate clawed at her chest. What if she just got to live her life her way?

No. No, she didn’t know how to do that. She went for Dad’s desk and pulled out one of his ledgers. He worked on them sometimes in the kitchen, so she knew he kept track of supplies bought, money in from the odd jobs here and there and money out on said supplies. And that he would stash cash in between the pages of said records.

She flipped through the first one, pulled out a few hundreds. She had no idea what the going rate was for a fake detective helper, but she’d offer Cameron a hundred up front. If he laughed, well, she could up it.

She glanced at the monitors set up across Dad’s desk. Cameras that kept watch on the entirety of the woods that surrounded the cabin. They were always taping.

She’d already gone through the footage of the day Dad left, and she’d watched what he’d taken and which direction he’d gone, but it didn’t tell her anything. Everything had been usual, ordinary.

Maybe she should show it to Cameron. Maybe he’d—

Her brain stuttered to a stop as two men appeared on the east side of the cabin. Men with weapons.

The front door opened, quiet and with just the tiniest creak she only noticed because she was holding her breath. She looked around the room quickly, but Dad had all of his weapons hidden away.

“Free, guard,” she whispered, but the dog laid happily by the bedroom door, tail swishing calmly. Today of all days her dog was completely failing at every command she usually followed unerringly.

But then Cameron stepped into the room. “Someone’s out there.”

He was warning her. She didn’t know what to do with that so she glanced back at the screen where she saw the two men slowly inching their way toward the cabin.

“They see you?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t think so. I heard them more than anything. I thought it could be your father, but two people seemed ominous.”

She pointed to the screen. “Friends of yours?”

He frowned at the two men on the video, studying them closely. He shook his head. “I know most everyone in Bent, or I did. Those two don’t look familiar. They’re armed, though.”

Again Hilly nodded sharply. In all their years here, in all Dad’s excessive surveillance, they’d never had unwanted visitors that Hilly knew of. She knew he had his reasons for being careful, and she’d never questioned them...to his face.

“You don’t know them?” Cam asked gently.

I don’t know anyone. But she didn’t say that out loud. She studied their faces, trying to find some detail that would give her an idea of what they were after. “Maybe my father sent them. To get me a message.”

“I don’t know that messengers would carry Glocks, or sneak around the woods outside your cabin.”

“You did.”

“I didn’t sneak, per se.”

She spared him a glance, but when he only smiled at her, she quickly turned her gaze back to the screen.

Free started to growl, low in her throat, as if she sensed or heard the approach. “Easy,” Hilly murmured.

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to wait. And watch.” She glanced around the room. The cabin only had two windows. One here, facing the west, and one in the front facing the east. “Go close the curtains in the front for me,” she ordered. “Lock the door.”

“Already locked,” he said, even now on his way out front to close the curtains. She watched the screen with growing alarm as the two men conferred about something, and then split up.

Cam returned and Hilly couldn’t think about how much her world had changed in just a few hours. Being in her father’s room, with a man, two other men sneaking around her cabin.

“You might want to get one of those firearms you’re so free and easy with,” Cam said grimly. “I don’t think a locked door is going to keep those two out.”

Hilly broke her gaze from the monitors. She quickly moved through the cabin, gathering the rifle and the revolver, before she returned to Dad’s room and Cameron.

A strange man in her father’s room. She couldn’t fathom it even as it was happening. “I also have shotguns,” she said.

He nodded. “Get them.”

After a brief hesitation, she handed him the revolver and the rifle before she strode to her father’s closet. She knew his shotguns were in a hidden compartment at the back of it, though she didn’t think her father knew that she knew that.

But he wasn’t here, and she was in danger. She turned to study Cam. Was she really going to trust this stranger?

When she heard a rattle at the door, she knew she didn’t have a choice.