Page 5

A very bad call on her part.
“That wasn’t a suggestion so much as an order, sweetheart,” he growled at her. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here. I don’t have any interest in running down memory lane. High school sucked. I don’t talk to my stepsisters and I don’t care if your brother does, because I don’t talk to him, either. I guarantee you that whatever you want, I can’t help you.”
“If you can’t, no one can,” she said, and there was that strung-out, desperate thing in her voice again. He could see it all over her. It made her distractingly pretty green eyes in that problematic face of hers shine too bright, as if she were fighting back tears, and that was it. He was boned.
Blue wasn’t built to ignore a cry for help.
Especially not from a pretty woman who’d known him when he couldn’t help anyone, not even himself.
Behind her, he saw one of his Alaska Force brothers drop soundlessly from the tree where he’d hidden himself like the terrifyingly accurate marine sniper he was, because threat or no threat, anyone who rolled up on the lodge here in Fool’s Cove was an opportunity to practice for the inevitable day when it really was an adversary. Griffin Cisneros nodded coolly at Blue, then melted off around the far side of the lodge like the six-foot-two ghost he was, all glacial focus and ice straight through, so quietly that Everly never knew he’d been there. It was one of his specialties.
But Templeton Cross—ex–Army Ranger, ex–Delta Force, and always happy to play the jackass—took a different approach. He strolled on down from the command station in the trees, where he’d been the one to clock Everly’s rental car roaring down the winding, dizzyingly steep mountain road in the first place, a huge smile on his face, like this was a party.
“You didn’t tell us you had friends,” he said, aiming that giant grin of his right at Blue. “I had money riding on you being born mean and alone.”
“I don’t have friends,” Blue said. Again. He scowled at Everly as she gazed up at Templeton, who was six feetand four inches of a beautifully mixed DNA cocktail that made the average female walk into things when she saw him. Blue reminded himself that he had no reason to care that Everly appeared to be maintaining that average. “Everly isn’t a friend. And she’s leaving.”
“I apologize for his manners,” Templeton told her, with exaggerated courtesy, probably because he knew exactly how much that made Blue want to take a swing at him. “Sometimes I think he was raised in a sewer.”
“A four-bedroom suburban Colonial, actually,” Everly replied. She shrugged when both men stared at her, her gaze shifting back and forth between them like she didn’t know which one of them she found more intimidating. “I grew up across the street.”
“A figurative sewer.” Templeton stuck out his hand. “Templeton Cross, ma’am. It’s a pleasure to meet anyone who can get under my man Blue’s skin, a feat I personally would have told you could not be accomplished without a bullet, some luck, and very good aim.”
Blue shoved Templeton’s outstretched hand away from Everly before she could take it, and opted not to question that move. Or the way the other man grinned wider, as if he didn’t need to question it because he already knew the answer.
“I will never understand why Isaac doesn’t keep you on a leash,” Blue muttered.
“Isaac would never put me on a leash,” Templeton explained to Everly, who hadn’t asked. As if he didn’t see Blue slowly losing his cool right there next to him, when Blue was quite certain he did. “That would be a deep violation of the bonds of brotherhood, obviously, but would also hurt my feelings.”
As if anything could hurt him. The man was as bulletproof as he was deceptively talkative. All that chatter lulled the enemy into a false sense of security, because Templeton was one of the deadliest men Blue had ever met. And Blue pretty much knew only the most lethal individuals alive.
He didn’t bother telling Templeton to STFU again. It would only delight him.
“Get in your car,” Blue ordered Everly. “And go before the next rain, which will probably be tonight, when half of that pass will wash out again and you really will die up there.”
“They think I murdered her,” Everly said instead, looking startled, as if she hadn’t expected to speak. But the words kept coming. “They can’t decide if I’m a cold-blooded killer taunting them with my crimes or a very sick woman who doesn’t know she’s committed them in the first place.”
Templeton went still and intent, while Blue studied the paleness in her cheeks and the lack of any mascara, which he should have paid attention to earlier. It was unusual for a pale redhead with copper lashes like Everly to go without, and slightly jarring when he really looked at the preciseness of her haircut and how it was clearly meant to showcase her face in a very specific manner. Her haircut and the clothes he’d already identified as high quality told him she was a woman who probably wore makeup, but wasn’t today.
If she hadn’t been Everly freaking Campbell, shouting out his name in the middle of Alaska like a blast from the entirely unwanted past, he would have already noticed that.
And then there was the fact the jeans she wore were faintly baggy in the knees, which suggested normal wear, but also at the waist, which hinted that she’d lost a few pounds—maybe too quickly to get a belt or a smaller pair. Her fingernails were short—too short for a woman who wore jeans so obviously expensive and a pair of flats in a complicated metallic color with teal soles that he knew at a glance cost as much as or more than the jeans and certainly had no business in a glacial wilderness. The way the blazer fit her told the same story, and made her ragged nails that much more of a tell.
And he felt like a dick. Because he’d been so busy fighting with ghosts in his head that he’d deliberately missed the fact that Little Miss American Pie was actually here because she was in trouble, just like all the other lost and tortured souls who found their way to Isaac’s remote hill and the deadly little army he’d assembled here.
“Who did you kill?” he asked casually, and she flinched.
“Rebecca. My roommate. But I didn’t kill her. I saw her get killed.” She swallowed, hard. “I think I did. I mean, I know I did, but there’s no proof, because when I got back with the police, there was nothing there.” She looked too vulnerable, suddenly. “Or maybe the police are right and I’m a complete psycho. Either way, I need help.”
Blue exchanged a swift look with Templeton. His brother nodded, then headed toward the lodge to gather the team in the big room, once a lobby, they used as the official Alaska Force office when there was a clientaround. Blue waited until he heard the door swing shut behind Templeton and then he moved closer to her. Too close, if he was honest. Because now he could see the way her pulse throbbed in her neck, and that wasn’t going to help anyone. It only made him feel more greedy.
The kind of greedy that was a hell of a lot more trouble than he planned to get into, no matter what she had or hadn’t done.
Maybe if he kept telling himself that, he’d keep his hands to himself.
He tilted his head to one side. “Do you think you’re a psycho?”
“If I thought I was a psycho, I wouldn’t have driven twelve hours a day for almost five days straight to find you when the police told me to stay put,” she threw at him, in a tone that told him she was barely holding on to her own composure.