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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.
