Jessica Andersen - Bear Claw Bodyguard

She was aware of his watching her and keeping close as she moved off the track and circled from one infected tree to the next, following where the tendrils grew thicker and thicker, along a wandering line that angled away from the roadway. She dragged her fingertips along the trunks but didn’t touch the tendrils yet. Instead, she cataloged her impressions of the desert-dry backcountry, where the sun beat down even at its fading angle and the dust had a faint tang she couldn’t quite place. What are you? she thought, looking up at the white strands and seeing the way the branches curled inward where they attached, becoming bent, until the most infected of the trees came to look like ancient gnomes, stooped and gnarled, with wispy white hair that trailed nearly to the ground.

“Anything I can help with?” Jack asked.

She looked back at him, startled, both because for a moment she’d almost forgotten he was there and because he actually seemed to mean it. “Actually, there is. Give me the local-level dirt on this place.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How’d you figure me for a local?”

“You mentioned your father and uncle being detectives here, too. I made the leap.”

That earned her a considering look before he nodded and said, “Good leap. Yep, umpteenth-generation local here. My great-something-grandparents helped found the city, and there have been Williamses policing Bear Claw pretty much ever since.”

“Which makes you the perfect person to fill me in on the Forgotten,” she said, turning her attention back to the trees and telling herself there was no reason for her to feel a pang at the confirmation that his roots went deep.

“What do you already know?”

“Pretend I just walked in here with no advance info. You never know what’s going to spark a connection.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I know how that goes. Okay, the Forgotten … Well, it’s a federal buffer zone beyond the state park, too far away from civilization to interest regular campers and not challenging enough to interest the hard-core mountaineers. Doesn’t have anything really in the way of natural resources or any real reason for anybody to pay attention to it, although it recently changed hands, going from federal to the city, and then almost to a public sale.”

“I saw that in the file,” she said, reaching up to sift her fingers through the dry, wispy strands of the parasitic fungus that was gnoming the trees, killing them. What are you? she asked inside. Aloud, she said, “What happened with the sale?”

“Mayor Proudfoot was pushing to sell the land to a private investor who, not surprisingly, dropped the negotiations when things broke.”

“I assume you’ve taken a good, hard look at the investor? It would seem to me that buying the property would be to the militia’s benefit.”

He shot her another sidelong look. “Thought you were a plant … whatever it was.”

“I’ve got a couple of cops in my family. You learn the thought process.” Among other things.

“Well, it’s not a bad theory, but the investor was legit, if an idiot. He had some geologist swearing to him that there’s gold in the area, and thought he was going to put one over on the government by buying the Forgotten and striking it rich.”

“I didn’t think there was gold around here,” she commented as they moved into a clearer area, where infected trees were more sparsely distributed among clusters of huge boulders. These trees were more severely affected than the surrounding clusters, though, which had her antenna quivering. Was there some environmental component at work?

Jack shook his head. “There isn’t any gold. Just some played-out copper mines.”

“Right.” She had seen that from the photos, just as she had learned about the land deal from the dossier. She needed something else, something more. So, as she went into her pack for the first of the sampling kits, she said, “What about rumors, old campfire stories, that sort of thing?”

“You want to use old legends to figure out a tree disease?”

“Like I said, you never know what’s going to make a connection.” And, yeah, maybe she liked the sound of his voice when he wasn’t being condescending, and she liked being back on her professional footing where things made sense and she didn’t feel nearly so off balance, even with him only a few feet away.

“Local legends, huh? Well, depending on which story you believe, the Forgotten was either considered cursed by the native tribes in the area, or the story of the curse was whipped up later to scare people away from what was actually a hideout for the toughest of the Wild West outlaws in the decades after the Civil War.”

She made a “bring it on” finger wiggle with her free hand as she tweezed fibers into a series of sterile sampling units, sealing them shut and tucking them away.

“Okay, here’s how the story goes. There was once a young brave named Bear Tooth, who was smaller and weaker than his friends, and always came in last when they raced. But then one day—”

Sudden gunfire split the air, cutting him off. They were under attack!

Jack reacted instantly, tackling Tori and hurling them both into the lee of the nearest boulder. His arms went around her and he muffled her scream in his chest, protecting her from the impact as they collapsed together against the stone.

Moments earlier, the fallen slab had seemed huge. Now it felt small and thin as shots rang off the far side and he anticipated the burn of a bullet crease, or worse. There was just the one shooter, but his weapon was high-powered; he was shooting from the concealment of a trio of larger rocks on higher ground; and he wasn’t missing by much.

Body going into automatic mode, Jack shouldered his shotgun and snapped off two return shots that blasted off the rocks and got the guy’s head down even as his mind revved with the sickening realization that the damned Shadow Militia hadn’t ghosted after all … and he had led his protectee straight into an ambush.

Worse, if the guy moved and Jack didn’t notice, the only thing between her and a bullet was his body. He had her crowded up against the rock. Their legs were tangled, his chest was pressed to her back and he could feel the pound of her heart and the heave of her ribs as she gasped for air.

“Don’t panic,” he said, bracketing the words with two more shots and a reload. “I’ve got you.” His hand was itching to reach for his phone, but he didn’t make the grab because they were out of cell range and far away from backup. Which meant he needed her to stay calm and help him out. “Keep breathing. In and out. You got it?”

She whipped her head around and stared wildly up at him, her eyes huge and dark in her face. But he could see her struggling against the fear, see the growing determination as she nodded. “I got—”

Crack—crack—crack! The trio of shots hammered into the stone, breaking off a piece and sending something burning across Jack’s upper arm. “Son of a—” he hissed.

Tori’s face went stricken and she choked off a scream as she grabbed him and tried to drag him away from the point of impact. “You’re hurt!”

“Barely.” It was little more than a scratch really, and there would be far worse in store if he didn’t do something drastic, because they were pinned down in a weaker position. Catching Tori’s hands, he eased her back against the rock. “Stay,” he growled, “and I mean it. Don’t move. Just keep your head down.”

“Where—” She clamped her lips together, pale but resolute as she followed his gaze to the track he would need to take to reach the gunman, and winced. He could get to the rocks the guy was hiding behind—he would have to get there—but it meant crossing nearly a hundred yards of open space. “You’ll be a sitting duck.”