Guardian in Disguise

He laughed quietly. “I was coming to look for you.”

Her heart leaped and she forced it back down. “But my office is that way.” She pointed.

“I checked your schedule and figured you were on your way back from class.”

Another wave of heat rolled through her. She almost hated him for the effect he had on her. “Oh,” she said, unable to think of anything witty. “Why?”

“Because tomorrow’s Saturday. It’s going to be a beautiful day. Want to ride up into the mountains with me?”

She wanted to say no just because she wasn’t ready to admit she might be a fool. Because she really didn’t trust men all that much. Because it would be easier to convince herself all over again that this man had something to hide than it would be to risk the possibility of getting hurt by him.

But Gage’s reassurance rang in her ears, reminding her that she’d never vetted a boyfriend before. Besides, this was a bike ride, not a date. He probably thought it would be more fun to share the time than ride alone.

And she really, really wanted to go. She knew she was lying to herself when she decided it would be an opportunity to learn more about him. She just wanted to be on that bike, wrapped around him, winding up mountain roads with the wind in her face and the changing leaves showing between the firs.

“Yes,” she said, the word escaping her before she even realized it was coming.

“Great.” His smile widened a bit. “I’ll pick you up around ten, so the air has a chance to warm.”

She gave him directions to her apartment building, promising to be out front.

“Wear something warm and rugged,” he said. “Basic safety rule.”

“I know. Thanks.”

Then before she could gather herself, he was striding away again.

She realized that she watched Max walk away an awful lot for someone she had just met.

Resuming her trek to her office, not all that far really given the small size of the campus, she wondered if she needed her head examined.

She only wished she knew who was crazier, Liza the woman or Liza the reporter. At the moment, it seemed like a toss-up.

Hiding in plain sight is how Max explained it to himself. The best way to defang Liza’s suspicions was to make himself available as if he had not a single thing to hide. It had always worked before.

Besides, riding on the bike wouldn’t provide a whole lot of opportunities for in-depth questions or conversations. Of course, he was planning to bring a picnic lunch for them to enjoy, but that was part of the illusion.

Because he was all illusion. Sometimes he wondered if any part of his real self still existed. Every so often, the question would rise up and sting him.

Who was he? Damned if he really knew anymore. Doing his job required learning to think like the people he associated with. He not only had to reflect their actions, but also their thoughts so he would never slip, never be caught unawares, never give himself away.

Maybe he was just questioning himself because he’d been dumped into a new role and still hadn’t learned to entirely think the part. Worse, this role was only temporary, so part of him was resisting the change.

It was, he vowed, going to be his last game. He was going to finish this and then try to find his way back to who he really was before his thinking got so messed up he needed a decade on an analyst’s couch.

Easy to think, maybe not so easy to do. Sometimes he honestly wondered.

Late that night, he got on his bike and roared along the back roads of Conrad County. He had a contact here—a name given to him by Ames—who he could turn to if he needed to. But existential questions weren’t exactly the kind of thing he was supposed to need help with.

No, he was left with his own personality disarray and his own questions to be dealt with as he wrapped up his final job.

So what exactly did he know that was real? The bike between his legs, the almost-crazy ride down dark county roads and Liza.

His thoughts persistently came back to Liza. She was real. He wasn’t so sure, though, about how he was responding to her. Yes, she was acting on him like a sexual magnet, but she wasn’t the first, nor would she be the last, probably.

No, there was something else about her. Something that suggested her greatest lust was for truth, one lust he wouldn’t be able to satisfy.

He’d had some problems with his job before, times when he had questioned himself, but never before had he felt soiled by it.

Until now. Thanks to her.

His motives didn’t matter, not a bit.

How was he supposed to deal with that?

By playing the game out, he realized as he twisted the throttle up until he was tearing down the road like a bat out of hell. By playing it out.

He had no other choice.

Far, far away in a run-down section of Washington, D.C., a woman with long black hair and a sequined tube dress beneath a baggy olive drab jacket walked swiftly along dangerous streets with loudly tapping heels. More than once a car pulled up to the curb, but when the driver rolled down the passenger window to accost her, she shot him a death look that made him peel away fast. In her pocket, she clutched a small pistol, and each time her hand tightened around it.

She made it back to the abandoned, derelict apartment house, the one with the big signs saying it was scheduled for demolition, and slipped in through a back way until she reached an apartment in the middle of the hall.

She stepped into a filthy room where a bunch of mattresses padded the floor. A kerosene heater fought off the night’s chill.

Five men waited for her, all of them dressed in various kinds of cast-off army-style clothing. She couldn’t have looked more out of place.

They all looked up at her arrival.

“I got his real name,” she said with savage pride. “It was like we thought. And if that isn’t enough, I’ve got a date with the source in two nights. The way this guy is crumbling, I’ll probably get an address pretty soon.”

The man who went by the name Jody sat bolt upright. “Give me the name. I’ll find the bastard no matter where he’s hiding.”

The woman smiled, and it wasn’t pleasant. “Maybe you can. But if you can’t, I will.” She fingered the switchblade in her other pocket. She did like to use a knife, and a certain ATF agent was going to be her next work of art.

Chapter 3

Max was waiting for Liza when she emerged from her apartment building into bright autumn sunshine. He stood leaning against his silent bike, his arms folded, clad head to toe in leathers for the road.

Max wore “bad boy biker” pretty well, she had to admit.

She herself wore her thickest jeans and heaviest boots, and a sweater beneath a ripstop nylon jacket. Not nearly as good as leathers, but she didn’t have the money or the ability to buy leathers overnight.

She noticed that Max had added a backrest to the pillion seat for her. A thoughtful gesture, one she certainly hadn’t expected.

He greeted her with a smile and held a helmet out to her. “I was half convinced you wouldn’t show.”

“I don’t do that,” she said, although she could have admitted with equal honesty that if she’d had his number she might have called him any of a half-dozen times the night before to cancel. As many times as she’d been obliged to break a date, never had she failed to call. Maybe lacking his personal phone number was the only reason she was out here right now.

No, said a merciless voice in her mind. Quit playing games with yourself. She was out here because she wanted to spend time with Max, to ride that Harley, clinging to him and see what came next. Despite all her fears of rejection, she still couldn’t resist.

She was feeling a sense of adventure unlike any she’d known in a long time. The thrill of taking a risk. Ready to cast caution to the winds, to go along for the ride, sure that it would at least be exciting.

Lately she’d felt she was in danger of getting stodgy. No way was she going to let that happen.

So she let the excitement of the moment take her, and she mounted the bike behind Max. With the backrest, she didn’t necessarily need to cling to him as closely, but she clung anyway, her head pressed to his leather-covered back, her cheek liking the feel of that leather as she watched the world whip past sideways.

In fact, she liked it so much that not until she began to feel a bit dizzy did she lift her head to look forward at the ribbon of rising road. The height of the pillion gave her the ability to look right over Max’s shoulder as they started their climb into the mountains.

With increasing altitude, the color of the leaves brightened, dotting the mostly evergreen forest with blotches of orange and gold. The air also grew colder and she wished she had put on her gloves.

Each time they rounded a bend, her thighs tightened around Max as she leaned with him, and she was getting so aroused that she started to lose track of the passing world. The rumble of the bike itself only added to her heightened awareness and as the miles passed, she gave in to it.

Why not? He’d never know.

She began to wonder what would happen if they stopped. Was he feeling the same way? Possibly. If he was, what if he reached out for her, took her without warning or preamble?

She rather liked that idea. Talking only got in the way sometimes, and her body was awakening in a way that suggested being dragged off to a cave by her hair might be the perfect outcome.

She laughed silently into the wind, amused by the turn of her thoughts even as they continued to wash over her with increasingly blatant visions.

Yeah, he could just pull her off the bike when they stopped, and toss her on the ground—pine needles and leaves would probably make a soft enough bed, although the practical reporter in her was sure there’d be a rock in exactly the wrong place. Then he’d slip his hands, probably chilly, up under her sweater and …

Her thighs clamped around his in response. Thank goodness he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head because she was sure she’d turned beet red when she realized what she had done.

“Okay back there?” he called.

“Fine,” she lied. If fine was feeling like a stew pot that had suddenly been turned on high and wanted to boil over.

“I want to stop at the old mining town up ahead.”

“Okay,” she agreed as loudly as she could manage when it was impossible to breathe. Sheesh, the guy hadn’t done one suggestive thing and she was already on her way to bed with him.

No way.

He pulled off the road a half mile farther along and slowed as they started down a bumpy rutted old wagon track. She recognized it from her high school days but was surprised he knew it was here.

“How’d you know about this?” she asked.

“One of the faculty told me. Said I couldn’t miss it.”

“You can’t if you know what it is,” she agreed, her voice bobbling as the bike bounced hard.

“Sorry,” he said, and slowed even more.

Another half mile and they emerged into the area surrounding the old mining town. Signs, rusting a bit, warned them not to get any closer to the tumbledown buildings. The ground was pitted in a few places from cave-ins.

Max halted the bike, though the engine still rumbled. “Is it really that unsafe?”

“Very,” she said. “The ground all around is honeycombed with old shafts. Nobody knows how long they’ll hold out or exactly where they are.”

“I vote for using my good sense then.” He switched off the ignition, put down the stand, then slid off the bike with amazing ease. Turning, he helped her to the ground.

For an instant she thought her legs were going to give out. She must have been clinging to him tighter than she had realized, and the vibration of the bike had become so familiar her body wasn’t ready to recognize it was gone.

He pulled off his leather gloves, shoved them into the pockets of his jacket, then reached for her hands. “Sorry I didn’t think about this,” he said.

“About what?”

“How cold you were likely to get without gloves.” A faint smile accompanied the words as he sandwiched her hands between both of his large ones. He rubbed her flesh briskly, warming it.

“I’m too used to Florida,” she mumbled. “I have gloves. Silly me, I tucked them in my pockets instead of putting them on.”

His chuckle was warm, and regret filled her when he let go of her hands.

He turned to face the ramshackle town, a place full of the remnants of old buildings, silvered by the years. “The kid in me really wants to explore.”

“I know. I did when I was young and foolish.”

“But how come nothing is growing?” he asked, indicating the clearing around the town. It was actually quite huge, extending in an oval that looked as if the ground had recently been cleared.

“Tailings from the mines,” she said. “They were removed maybe fifteen years ago because they contained so many heavy metals. Poisonous stuff, and it was getting into the groundwater.”

“What kind of poisonous stuff?”

“Uranium for one thing. Some of that ground is still radioactive, and nothing grows on it. Then there’s arsenic, lead, zinc, bunches of stuff.”

“How radioactive is it?”

“Probably not that bad or we wouldn’t be allowed to get even this close.”

“I guess.” He looked at her. “How did you learn all that?”

“There was a lot of discussion when they wanted to clean it up, and I did a little research on my own.”

“Always the reporter, huh?”

She didn’t know whether to smile or frown. “Some things are ingrained.”

“Well, natural caution suggests this wouldn’t be a great place for our picnic. But I would like to look around a bit before we find a better spot.”

A picnic? She hadn’t expected that, and the thought delighted her. Clearly he was in no hurry to take her back. Feeling lighter, she walked around the edge of the clearing with him.

“This is fascinating,” he said as they paused to look at the small town from a different angle. “Imagine how hard folks must have worked up here to dig all these mines. What were they looking for?”

“Gold. It played out fast from what I hear. You can find isolated mines all over the mountain, though. They’re all barred up now.”

He nodded. “I don’t think any sensible person would want to risk their necks in one of them. Timbers must have rotted. Water may have destabilized the ground.”

“Obviously. Look at the cave-ins. So far they’ve been in areas where the mines are shallower, but can you imagine how deep some of these must go? And back when the tailings piles were here, you could really see how hard those guys worked. Huge mounds of broken rock, all pulled out of the ground with a bucket, a pulley and maybe a mule.”

“I’m almost sorry they cleaned it up.”

“You can see pictures of it in the library. But I know what you mean. When they took the tailings, they took away history. All sense of what this place used to be. Now it could be almost any old ghost town.” Her eyes were drawn to a bit of faded cloth flapping in a window. Somebody’s curtain from over a century ago hadn’t quite rotted. “Evidently in its day it was a pretty wild place. No law, claim jumping, a few murders. A saloon that collapsed years ago. Just imagine, men brought their families to a place like this.”

He nodded, studying the town. “Everybody was hoping to strike it rich and then get the hell out of here, I suppose.”

That surprised a laugh from her. “I guess so. I hadn’t thought of that. It never became big and grand like some mining towns, so there wouldn’t be much to hold anyone here except a hope and a prayer. A very basic, very difficult life.”

“And what about Conard City? Did that come before or after?”

“About the same time, actually. Cattle ranching was already underway, as I recall, when they found gold up here. And with those big ranches, you still needed a town for other things. Some central location for a blacksmith, a church or two—”

“And don’t forget bars. I can’t imagine cowboys without bars.”

“When I was a kid I saw the tail end of that. They’d come to town on Friday nights with their pay, and for a little while the cops were very busy, although they tried to look the other way. I hear it was even rougher when my parents were kids. Rougher but contained, the way they told it. My mother joked that she never needed a calendar to know when the weekend came. The streets filled up with pickup trucks.”

“It seems like a quiet town now.”

“It always mostly was, I guess. If you’re interested in local history, you should talk to Miss Emma.”

“Who’s that?”

She looked at him and found him looking right back at her. Those polar-ice eyes snatched her breath away. There was a noticeable pause before she answered. “Emmaline Dalton. Everyone calls her Miss Emma, although I don’t know why. Anyway, she’s the librarian, and her family was one of the very first to settle here. Her father was a judge, so she probably has lots of interesting stories apart from the library archives.”

“Dalton? Any relation to the sheriff?”

“His wife.”

“Ah.”

He nodded, glanced back to the town. “Well, since we can’t safely explore, I guess it’s time to move on and find a good place for a chilly picnic.”

This time when they mounted the bike she put her gloves on. It didn’t matter. He grabbed her hands and tucked them up inside his leather jacket. Warmth from his body, and a marvelous sense of intimacy filled her. Even through her gloves she could feel hard, rippling muscles as they bounced back down the rutted track to the paved road.

“So where is it they want to put this new resort?” he shouted over the bike’s roar.

“Just up ahead about two miles.”

When they reached the pavement’s end, he pulled them off into a small glade where a few late wildflowers blossomed in red and gold. The air smelled so fresh up here, scented with pine and mulch, and the trees were close enough to swallow the breeze. A few deciduous trees edged the small glade, their leaves like golden teardrops.

The cloudless day was so beautiful that she couldn’t help but let go of all her curiosity and suspicion. Max was just another guy, albeit damned attractive, and there didn’t seem to be one thing about him to arouse her curiosity. Not now, not today.

She was content to sit on the ground and lean back against a log while he pulled out sandwiches and bottles of water. She could tell by the packaging that he’d picked up the sandwiches at Maude’s diner, and her mouth watered.

“So,” he said, “this Dexter guy has been bearding me about saving the wolves up here.”

“He got me, too.”

“Are there many of them?”

“There’s a pack, maybe two. I guess all of a dozen or so.”

He nodded and settled beside her, also using the fallen log as a backrest. “Down from Yellowstone?”

“They must be. There’s no place else left for them to come from.”

“Is Dexter a pain in the butt?”

She grinned. “I don’t know yet. I guess we’ll find out. So tell me, why aren’t you practicing law? Isn’t that why most people get a law degree?”

“Most do, I suppose.”

Biting into a sandwich helped her to remain silent and wait for an explanation, but when it didn’t come, her suspicions about him rose to the fore again. “Is there a reason,” she asked when she finally swallowed, “that you don’t want to discuss it?”

He looked at her. “That’s a helluva loaded question. Sort of like, When did you stop beating your wife?”

She couldn’t help laughing. “No, no, I didn’t mean it that way. I just wondered.” Although truthfully, maybe she had meant it that way. This guy kept making her bristle with suspicion, no matter how ordinary he appeared. Instinct told her that meant he wasn’t ordinary and she’d better take care.

He shrugged, chewing a bite of sandwich before answering. “I haven’t made up my mind,” he said finally. “The law fascinates me, obviously. That’s why I became a cop, in part. But the longer I was a cop, the more I wanted to understand just what I was enforcing, and the more I realized I didn’t want to be a cop forever. Studying law seemed like the way to go. Lots of opportunities. If I wanted, I could become a prosecutor, maybe. Work in a private practice. Get into politics. Teach.”

“So now you’re teaching. Do you like it?”

“It’s early days yet. So far it’s fun.”

“I bet the girls are all over you,” she said. She couldn’t help it.

“You mean my students?” He lifted a brow. “Well, they do seem to cluster around a bit.”

She snorted. “You’re a new guy in a quiet town. Interesting. Attractive. I bet it’s more like flies to a honey pot.”

He unleashed a laugh. “Not yet, Liza. Not yet.”

“It’ll get there.”

“Are you warning me to protect my chastity?”

She snickered. “Not exactly. I just remember being that age and how some interesting, attractive professor could rev me up. They’ll swarm eventually.”

“What revs you up now?”

The question caught her sideways, and she almost blurted the truth: you. Thank goodness for that small hesitation between brain and mouth.

“Curiosity?” he suggested smoothly. “Like wanting to know everything about someone new?”

“Not everything!”

He smiled. “Okay. How about the Cliff’s Notes version. I was born in Michigan, after college I joined the … department, took some time to get my law degree, and otherwise I’ve been yawning a lot.”

She wondered if that hesitation before department meant anything. She sat up a little straighter, but decided not to probe that. She didn’t want to warn him he might have slipped because that usually turned people into clams. “No wife, no kids, no significant other?”

“Nope. Being on the streets only appeals to women until they have to live with it. It’s stressful and I saw a lot of spouses leave because of it.”

She nodded. “I saw that in my job, too. Bad hours. But your job had a lot of danger, as well.”

“Some. But you can’t blame a person for not wanting to wonder if someone they love is going to come home. Not everyone has a problem with it, but it takes a toll. I figured I’d wait until I changed careers.”

“And here you are, with a brand-new career.”

“That was the point.” He returned to eating his sandwich.

She bit her lip, then said, “You went to Stetson College of Law, right?”

“Right.”

“Then how come you didn’t mention it when I said I’d been working for a paper in Florida?”

He turned slowly to look at her, and something in his gaze seemed to harden slightly, just a little, but enough to almost make her shiver. “It never occurred to me. Is it all that important that I was there for three years? I’ve lived other places, too.”

She didn’t know how to answer him. While most people would automatically have said, “I lived there for a while,” when she mentioned Florida, that didn’t mean everyone would.

She looked down at her sandwich. This guy was a cop. He was probably used to asking questions, not offering information.

So maybe this was an innocent difference in their way of making connections. She was a reporter who had spent a lot of years learning to create rapport. His job was different, and maybe had taught him different things.

Or maybe it was something else. Trying to explain it away wasn’t making her feel any easier.

“I just thought it was curious, that’s all,” she said firmly, and bit into her sandwich to forestall any other questions. She had asked too many. How many times had she been told that she asked too many questions? More than she could count.

After a moment he spoke again. “I just didn’t think about it, Liza. Everyone who looked at my CV knows I went to Stetson.”

“True,” she mumbled around a mouthful of food.

He put his sandwich down on the bag it had come in and rolled over on his hip, so he faced her directly. It was an open posture, almost welcoming. “I’m driving you nuts,” he said. “I don’t talk enough about myself.”