Northern Exposure Read online

  “No,” she said, swiping at the trickles of blood. He realized there were more than one. She’d obviously fought him off. “They’re just scratches. He didn’t mean to hurt me.”

  “The hell he didn’t.” He battled a primeval urge to crash through the wilderness, overturning rocks, uprooting trees if he had to, until he found the bastard. Never in his life had he wanted to kill a man, until now.

  “H-he wanted to scare me, that was all. He wanted me a-alone to scare me.”

  He looked at her and worked to catch his breath. He knew he couldn’t leave her to go after this guy, no matter how much he wanted to get him. He wasn’t going anywhere without her. Not a foot. And she wasn’t going anywhere without him.

  “H-he’s looking for something.”

  “What?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. He said Blake told him I had it. But I have no idea what it is.”

  “Come here,” he said, and folded her into his arms. He wanted to close his eyes and just feel her, warm and safe against him, but couldn’t risk it. “You have no idea what you put me through.”

  She raised her head from his chest and met his gaze. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine—and his, whoever the son of a bitch is. You get a look at him?”

  “Just for a second. Mostly just his eyes. I think he might have been the guy who stole my luggage at the airport. Other than that, I don’t know him.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded. “And it isn’t your fault. I was the one who slipped away. I wasn’t thinking. I take that back, I was thinking, but not about the creep following us.”

  He squeezed her tight and buried his face in her hair. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “Kiss me,” she said, stunning him, and raised her mouth to his. Her breath was warm, soft on his face.

  He didn’t give her a chance to change her mind. Trapping her lips, he tasted her, reveled in the feel of their tongues mating, felt the heat of her body against his. “When I heard you scream, I…”

  He’d never felt that kind of sick panic before, not even with Cat when she was a kid or with any of the wilderness rescues he’d assisted on, and there’d been a lot of those in his career.

  “I know,” she whispered, reading his mind. “Me, too.”

  They kissed again, more deeply this time, her arms winding around his neck, his gun hand pressed into her back, and he knew he was in this thing way over his head.

  “Come on,” he said, getting a grip on himself. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Late that afternoon they reached the next cabin. After Joe checked it out, Wendy followed him inside and collapsed onto one of the bunks. “What could it be? What is it this guy wants from me?”

  Joe bolted the door closed, then snapped the heavy wooden shutter into place over the cabin’s single window. There’d be no Peeping Toms tonight. Lighting the lantern they’d retrieved from an outside storage locker, he said, “We’ll figure it out. But first you need to eat something. I need to eat something.”

  He unpacked the blue backpack, and they worked in concert to get their overnight accommodations into shape. It was almost automatic now, after a week together in the wild. He built a fire in the stove while she laid out her sleeping bag and his blankets on opposite bunks.

  Briefly she wondered what he’d think if she laid them out together, side by side, on one bunk. She recalled his kisses, how good she’d felt in his arms, how safe, how right they seemed together…and promptly told herself she needed to calm down, be smart.

  She wasn’t thinking. She was just scared, terrified, when it came right down to it. And he was just being himself, an overprotective alpha male.

  “Tuna casserole or beef stew?” He turned the aluminum packages over in his hands.

  “Stew,” she said as she searched the blue pack for a reasonably clean T-shirt.

  In the cabin’s outside storage locker she’d spotted the galvanized washtub, which he’d dragged inside. She looked longingly at the bucket of water Joe had placed on the stove to heat. She was desperate to bathe, to cleanse her body and her mind of the feel of that man’s hands on her.

  “Wendy? You okay?”

  She nodded, pushing the horrible memories from her mind. “Just tired.”

  “He…he didn’t hurt you?”

  She knew what he meant, and read the pain in his face as he asked the question. He blamed himself for what had happened. Not her for leaving his side, not the camo-clad perpetrator, not even Blake, if, indeed, Blake was involved. He blamed himself, and she couldn’t bear it.

  “No,” she said. “He…touched me. But no, he didn’t do anything like that.”

  She watched the pulse point in his neck hitch, saw him grind his teeth behind creased lips. Lips she’d kissed and wanted to kiss again.

  “He’s looking for something he thinks I have.”

  “We need to figure out what it is, and where it is. Obviously he thinks you have it with you.”

  She knew it was time to share the rest of what she hadn’t already told him. She felt guilty, and more than a little stupid, for not telling him sooner. Taking his hand, she sat down with him on one of the bunks.

  “What’s wrong?” he said, reading the hesitation she knew shone in her eyes.

  She took a breath, then blurted it out. All of it. How her purse had been snatched while she was walking home from the police station one night, a week after the incident in the loft. How it was found by a passerby around the corner from her building, its contents miraculously intact. She told him about the break-in at her apartment three days later, and how, just a week ago, she’d found the door of her rented SUV unlocked, though she was positive she’d locked it. He already knew about the luggage.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  She knew he’d react like this, and she didn’t blame him. Not now. She should have told him before. More than that, she should have put it all together herself, weeks ago. But she hadn’t.

  At first she’d been in shock over Billy Ehrenberg’s death. Later she’d had to deal with Blake’s lies, the autopsy findings and resulting police investigation, then losing her job, the tabloids, her parents…

  Ouch. That had been hard.

  Purse snatchings and break-ins happened all the time in Manhattan. She’d simply never connected them with Blake or with Billy. Now it seemed ridiculously clear they were related.

  “What was taken from your apartment?”

  “Nothing. It was just torn up. The police thought it was kids. There’re some teenagers in my building, in trouble all the time.”

  “Tell me again what this creep said to you.”

  “‘Where is it?’ he said. ‘He says you have it.’ When I asked him who, he said, ‘Barrett.’”

  “Did Barrett give you anything after that night?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive. He sent me a letter in care of my parents in Michigan. It was just a guess on his part that I was there. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going when I left New York, not even the police.”

  “Where is it? What was in it?”

  “I…don’t know. I didn’t open it. I didn’t want to hear any more of Blake’s lies, so I didn’t read it.”

  Stupid, she thought to herself. If only she’d read it, maybe they’d know what this was about.

  “Where is it now?”

  “The letter?” She fished the tattered envelope out of her knapsack and handed it to him. “I carried it around in my camera bag for a week, unopened, and wrote some important phone numbers on the envelope.”

  He slid a finger into the razored flap and said, “There’s nothing inside.”

  “I know. I threw the letter away, right before I left for Alaska. I kept the envelope because of the phone numbers.”

  He read the postmark, dated nearly three weeks ago in New York.

  “Dam
n! Maybe this guy is after the letter.”

  “I don’t think so. My purse was snatched and my apartment was broken into before I left New York, before this letter was even written.”

  He looked at her and let out a breath. “We need to eat.”

  She wasn’t hungry but knew she had to keep her strength up. They had another sixty miles to hike to reach Joe’s station. “I’ll cook,” she said, needing something to occupy her mind, even if it was just boiling water.

  They ate in silence, and she knew he was allowing her time to think about what Blake could have given her that this guy wanted—why it was important enough to follow her four thousand miles, terrorize her and nearly get them killed, just to get it.

  “Okay, let’s go back to the beginning.” Joe cleared their plates, then checked the bucket of bathwater on the stove. “You’ve told me everything about meeting Barrett in the loft. Everything you remember.”

  “All of it.”

  “Okay, let’s start with the next day. What happened?”

  She shrugged. “I left the E.R. after Billy died, about seven that morning, and went to the office. Blake showed up later. I didn’t see him. He went to my cubicle while I was in the ladies’ room and got his camera. One of the other assistants said he was really agitated, ranting like a crazy man when he—”

  “Wait a minute. Why did he go to your cubicle to get his camera?”

  “Because I had it. I’d found it in the loft that night after Blake had left, along with one of his tripods.” She shrugged. “I was his assistant. Part of my job was to clean up after him.”

  “Yeah, that’s an understatement.”

  She slipped her hand from his and looked away.

  “So you took his camera, but he got it back.”

  “Yes, the next morning, just like I said. It was weird, though…I’d found it stashed in a corner of the loft. A drape was tossed over it, almost as if it was…”

  “Hidden,” Joe said.

  Her mind rocketed into warp drive, sifting through the details of that night. And then it hit her. “Oh, my God, the film!”

  She flew off the bunk, snatched her camera bag from the table. Dropping cross-legged to the floor, in seconds she unzipped every pocket and dumped the contents into her lap. Dozens of new and exposed film canisters rolled across the hardwood planks.

  Joe scooped them up and sat down beside her. “You have it.”

  “Yes.” Rapidly she picked through the canisters, glancing at speeds and exposures. “I didn’t even think about it. It’s what I always do. Part of my job is to make sure Blake’s camera is always ready. I don’t even remember doing it, it’s so automatic.”

  “You took the used film out of his camera and replaced it with a new roll.”

  “Yes. I always drop the exposed rolls into my camera bag, my knapsack. Always. It’s second nature. Then the next day we develop them in the lab.”

  “Only this time you didn’t do that.”

  “No. I didn’t even realize I had the film. Billy’s death, the police, the tabloids, I just…forgot.” She felt like an idiot!

  “The following week your purse was snatched, but not your camera bag?” He glanced at the now-empty green knapsack.

  “No.” Then it dawned on her why. “I almost always have it with me. Except I didn’t the night I walked home from the police station. I’d left it at the precinct, just forgot it. An officer brought it by my apartment the next day.”

  “It doesn’t look like a camera bag. Just an old knapsack, something you’d carry your lunch in. It wouldn’t have been the thief’s first target.”

  Her heart skipped a beat when she saw the exposed canister, recognized the speed designation that Blake preferred for indoor nighttime shots. “Here it is.” She held it up to the firelight and they both looked at it.

  “What’s on it?”

  “I don’t know.” But she could guess. Blake having sex with Billy. Only that, in and of itself, wasn’t enough to warrant all that had happened since.

  “Blackmail?” Joe speculated.

  “I don’t think so. Blake doesn’t have any money.”

  “But his wife does.”

  “True.”

  “Barrett might have hired this guy himself to get the film back from you.”

  She shook her head, uncomfortable with the idea. Not because she wouldn’t put it past him, but because it didn’t make sense. “All he would have had to do is ask me for it. I would have given it to him, no questions asked. Besides, Blake doesn’t know where I am.”

  Joe looked at her. “Well, whoever it is that wants it, has obviously already gotten to him.”

  “Blake told this—” she didn’t like thinking about him “—this creep, that I had it.”

  “No, you don’t,” Joe said, and snatched the film from her hand. “I have it.”

  The door crashed open, startling them, spraying wood splinters across the room. Wendy’s heart stopped. Joe dropped the film and went for his gun. Too late.

  The man who’d attacked her that afternoon pointed an automatic weapon at her chest. “Don’t even think about it, Hero Boy.”

  Chapter 12

  Dressed in predator-gray camouflage and sporting what looked to Joe like a 9 mm seven-round Makarov, their uninvited guest wore a black ski mask over his face.

  Which was significant.

  That, coupled with the fact that he’d had dozens of opportunities to off them over the past week, but hadn’t, told Joe he didn’t intend to kill them now. If Wendy was right, all this guy wanted was the film.

  “Who are you?” Joe said, careful not to move.

  “You don’t need to know that.”

  Wendy sat, frozen, next to him, her eyes wide with fear. “Wh-who sent you?”

  “You definitely don’t need to know that. You don’t wanna know it.” The man took another step into the cabin. Cold air blasted in behind him. Wendy shuddered.

  “It’s okay.” Joe shot her what he hoped was a reassuring look.

  “Yeah, peachy,” the man said. “Okay, let’s have it.”

  “Wh-what?” Wendy’s voice quavered.

  “Dumb, as well as blond, huh?” He nodded at the dozens of canisters littering the floor around them. “The film, bitch. Now.”

  With his eyes, Joe warned her not to move. “Come and get it,” he said to the guy.

  His gaze narrowed on Joe’s weapon. “Nice piece. Take it out, why don’t ya. Slide it over here, real slow.”

  Joe sized him up, guessing height, weight, noticing the set and color of his eyes, his pale skin tone, the brown scraggly hair sticking out from under the mask, committing to memory all the small details he’d need to later relate to the State Troopers. “You alone?” he said.

  “Like I’d need any help to deal with you two?”

  Joe breathed. All week he’d seen evidence of only one man tracking them, but had to be certain. Now he knew for sure Camo Man was alone.

  Slowly he removed his forty-five from its holster, conscious of the fact that the bastard’s gun was trained on Wendy. He might not want to kill her, but he could, Joe knew, if forced or if spooked. The thought of it made his mouth go dry. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Nice and easy. Slide it across the floor to me.” Joe had no choice. He did it. Camo Man knelt, retrieved it and jammed it into the pocket of his jacket. “Good decision.”

  Joe glared at him. “Okay. Take your film and go.”

  “No!” Wendy said.

  Damn it! Now wasn’t the time for her to be reckless or cavalier.

  “No?” Camo Man took another step into the room.

  He was so close now that, if Joe lunged, he could probably knock him off his feet. But it was too risky.

  “What’s the matter, babe? Got some nasty little pictures you don’t want me to see?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Wendy drew herself up and tipped her chin at him. Joe warned her with his eyes a second tim
e, but she ignored him. “This film is mine. Wildlife shots. Nothing you’d be interested in. Or, if you are, you can buy the magazine when it comes out next month.”

  He laughed and shot Joe a look. “She’s good, isn’t she? I like her. I’m gonna like her even more in a few minutes.”

  Damn it!

  He moved his weapon into line with Joe’s head.

  “Don’t!” Wendy said. “Here, take it. Take it all.”

  Joe felt a tightening in his chest as Wendy gathered up all the rolls and stuffed them into the green knapsack. All but one. An exposed roll she jammed purposely under his leg as she collected the others. He glimpsed the speed—four hundred—and knew it was the low-light indoor film Wendy had retrieved from Blake’s camera.

  “T-take it,” she said, and offered him the knapsack.

  “Bring it to me.” His eyes gleamed in the firelight with what Joe instantly recognized as lust.

  “No!” He grabbed her arm, pulled her back.

  Camo Man stepped closer, swung his gun directly at Wendy’s face. “Do it!”

  “Okay, okay!” Despite Joe’s protests, Wendy extracted herself from his grasp and stood.

  “Over here.” Camo Man waved her closer.

  Joe’s throat closed. His hands were clammy, his heart beating out of control. He had to do something. No way was that son of a bitch getting his hands on her.

  “It’s okay.” Wendy looked at him, nodding, her expression calm. “It’ll be okay.” She walked toward the intruder, head high, her gaze locked on his. The guy outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds.

  Christ, he had to do something now.

  He still had his buck knife, sheathed in leather, hanging from his belt. Camo Man hadn’t bothered relieving him of it. He’d never used it as a weapon, and didn’t think he could free it before the guy shot him, but he’d have to take the chance if what he thought was coming next actually happened.

  Wendy stopped a foot from him, cool as a cucumber, the 9 mm pointed directly at her chest.

  Camo Man smiled, then did something Joe hadn’t expected. He pulled his mask off. Joe stopped breathing. Wendy took a step back.