Lawless

“You’re throwing out some scary words there.”

“So?”

She could shoot and run and build a camp from twigs, but that didn’t make her invincible. He wondered if she understood that. “My point is this story gets worse the more details you add.”

She glanced over her shoulder and deep into the woods behind her. “Anyway, I’d like to think if it was one of my guys, he would have helped or at least called out when I fell.”

The bad news just kept coming. Joel glanced at Cam. “And now we have a fall.”

She faced them again. “What?”

“You skipped that part before,” Cam said.

Joel guessed that was intentional. “Let’s just say your linear storytelling needs work.”

“I’ll run through all of it if you need me to—”

“I do.” Joel wanted her comment to stop right there.

She talked right over his interruption. “But since you’re here, you can come with me while I get my sat phone and then we can spread out and hunt for Mark.”

Joel caught her in the second before she took off. Never mind her tale about a stalker and the terror in her eyes only a few minutes ago. Now she was ready to head out. “I thought you lost the phone.”

“Yeah, but I know where.”

“Your definition of lost is no better than your storytelling ability.”

“We don’t have time for chitchat.” Her gaze dipped to where his fingers wrapped around her elbow, then bounced back up again. “I’m assuming you guys need to get out of here and head off to some other covert action-movie adventure, so let’s move.”

Nice try. “You’re my job this week, remember?”

“Yeah, we’re going to talk about that later.”

“Talk all you want. I’m staying.” That had been the plan before the knife and the story about the fall and every other bizarre fact she threw out, and he wasn’t changing it now.

But there was some good news here. Her feistiness clicked back into place with full force. While the verbal jabs about his job used to drive him nuts, he missed this side of her, too.

She didn’t back down. She didn’t care about his size or ability with a weapon. She understood he’d never hurt her and held her ground. Probably had something to do with having a former special ops father who made sure his precious daughter and only child could protect herself no matter what.

The attitude had gotten her in trouble more than once. Not with him, but some of the men in her father’s business, Algier Security, didn’t appreciate her refusal to be a good little girl and sit down.

Sexist idiots.

Still, she could be rough on the male ego. He glanced over at Cam to fill him in with a simple explanation. “She doesn’t approve of what we do.”

“Understood,” Cam said with a nod.

Hope wasn’t having any of it. She shot them both one of her men-can-be-clueless frowns. “That’s not true.”

Cam kept nodding, as if he’d figured out some great big secret. “Is that why you left him?”

Damn. “Let’s not go there.” This was just about the last topic Joel wanted to discuss.

Strike that. It was the last. Dead last.

“I figured it out.” Cam smiled. “She’s the ex.”

Suddenly Joel regretted that one night a month or so ago with too much beer and too much talking. Cam had wanted to know why Joel never dated and he mentioned a tough break-up. Cam clearly put it all together.

“Didn’t he tell you the story?” Hope’s eyebrow lifted. “Interesting.”

“How so?” Cam asked.

“Joel left me.”

Cam’s eyes bugged as his jaw dropped. “No way.”

“I know, right?” She shook her head. “Whatever.”

Cam whistled. “I didn’t see that news coming.”

That was enough of that. Joel cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. “Can we get back to the missing guy and the stalking?”

“Camp is back here.” She didn’t wait for a discussion or arguments. She headed off through the thick branches, with twigs and other debris crunching under her boots. She slowed down only long enough to glance over her shoulder and gesture for them to follow.

“Hope...and she’s gone.” Joel took a step in the same direction.

Cam slid in and blocked his path. “You dumped her?”

“Let it go.”

Cam laughed. “I think we both know that’s not going to happen.”

It was a long story and Joel knew he didn’t exactly come off well. With his messed-up upbringing, a quiet life in the suburbs wasn’t on the table. But she had tempted him, made him think even for a little while that he could do normal. Then he got offered a dream job with the Defense Intelligence Agency and, like an idiot, picked it over her.

Funny how karma nailed him on that one.

Cam leaned in with a hand behind his ear. “Not talking?”

“Nope.”

“You will.” He winked, then called out to Hope. “Hey, where was this stalker walking?”

She stopped and gestured to the line of trees directly across from her. “About fifty feet that way, running parallel with me.”

Joel tracked her white shirt as she pushed long branches out of her way and kept walking. “Notice how she acts like whatever happened wasn’t a big deal.”

“Was she ever an operative?”

“Mountain climber, archery expert, like Olympic skill level, outdoors type and can shoot better than some members of the Corcoran Team.”

“You’re talking about Ben, right?” Cam asked.

Ben Tanner was the newest member of the Corcoran Team and a former special agent for NCIS. The guy could shoot but he lacked the sniper skills of many on the team. And they never let him forget it. “Obviously.”

Cam stopped staring at Hope, and it looked like that took some control on his part. “Explain to me why you left her again? Because, gotta be honest, man, between the way she looks, the way she moves and that list of skills you just read off, I think I’m in love.”

“Get over it.”

Cam nodded, which he often did. “Ah, okay. Interesting.”

Hope’s white shirt got farther away. That meant one thing—the time for talk had ended. “Stop with that crap.”

Just as Joel lost sight of her, she peeked out from behind a massive tree trunk. “You guys coming?”

This time Cam laughed. “Your ex wants your attention.”

“Don’t call her that.” Correct or not, the term grated on Joel’s nerves. It meant she was free to find someone else, and even though he knew that was fair and the right thing, he despised the idea.

He’d spent the months away from her pretending he didn’t care when her father had called to alert him that she’d gone out on a date with this guy or that one. The old man was on a warped matchmaking mission. One that slowly broke Joel until he thought he’d go insane imagining her in bed with someone else.

“I am so happy I was available to fly you in for this op. Wouldn’t have missed this for anything.” Cam clapped Joel on the back. “Not sure who will enjoy this more—the guys back at the Annapolis office or the guys on my traveling team. Tough call.”

Both options sucked for Joel. “I could hide your body out here.”

“You’re welcome to try.”

Because Cam came to Corcoran with the nickname “Lethal” and rumor was he’d flown Navy missions so secret just mentioning the operation names would bring the FBI running with guns firing, Joel decided to switch the subject. “And this is a favor for an old friend, not an op.”

“If a businessman is missing and someone is chasing your woman, it’s an op.” Cam didn’t wait around for an argument. He headed in the direction Hope indicated as the stalker’s path. “I’ll be over there, straining to hear every word.”

Joel took off after Hope. She’d stopped, and with his long stride, he caught up fast. When he drew close he saw her standing near a fallen tree, staring at the dirt.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

She looked up, the anger obvious in her tight jaw and the flush of red on her cheeks. “My phone is gone.”

“I thought we already knew that.”

“No, I mean I had it in my hand while I was running—”

“You ran through this?”

“—and stumbled here. I dropped the phone and now it’s gone.”

There was no trail and no obvious signs of a path. Roots poked out of the ground, and the trees had grown to the point where they blanketed the area. Any sane person would watch her step. But she had run. Figured.

He thought about lecturing her but abandoned the idea when she bent down and started patting the rough terrain with her palm. Hope knew the outdoors, loved and cherished the openness. It was one of the things they had in common.

Still, a phone could only bounce so far. “Any chance you lost it somewhere else?”

“No.” She tried to reach her arm under the log. “I’m not exactly easy to spook. I know what I’m talking about.”

“But you are.”

She tugged on her arm but didn’t remove it or sit back up again. Twisting around, she looked up at him. “What?”

“Spooked.” And stuck. He wondered how long it would be before she admitted that. “Your pulse is racing and you’re jumpy. Not that long ago you were shaking and holding that knife like you were ready to slash anyone in your path.”

“Someone was chasing me.” She kept shifting and squirming. The heels of her boots dug into the dirt as she wrenched her shoulder.

Much more of this and she’d really injure herself. Any second now she’d ask for help. Well, most people would. With Hope, who knew?

He was ready to jump in. She just had to say the word, but he’d bet all the cash on him she wouldn’t.

“I get the chasing part,” he said.

She stopped moving around and shot him a big-eyed stare. “You don’t believe me.”

With Hope, he figured that was as close as he was going to get to a plea for help. He crouched and did the quick math on the best angle to pull her out without dislocating her shoulder. “I didn’t say that.”

“I am not a little girl who needs protecting. Your days of holding that job are over and, in case you missed it, I was never a little girl on your watch.”

“Oh, I noticed.” He jammed his fingers into the hard ground as dirt and peat moss slid under his nails. Ignoring the closeness and the way her arm brushed across his chest, he wedged his hand under hers and dug a shallow tunnel with his knuckles. “For the record, I noticed everything about you. Still do.”

Before he could add to the comment, footsteps echoed around him and boots appeared in front of his face. He strained to look up and got as far as the familiar utility pants.

“Our company is back,” Joel said into the relative quiet of the forest.

She tried to spin around and hissed when her trapped arm stopped her movements. It took another beat for her to get a word out. “Where?”

“He means me.” Cam dropped down to the balls of his feet with his body between Joel and Hope. “What are you two doing?”

With his hand caked with dirt, Joel wrapped his fingers around her bare arm and gave a quick pull. “Rescuing her.”

“I don’t need rescuing.” She popped free and fell back on her butt. Next she rubbed her shoulder joint. “Ouch.”

Joel refused to feel guilty for getting her unstuck when she’d been too stubborn to ask for his assistance. “Good thing you weren’t caught then.”

“Glad we cleared that up.” Cam stood. “She’s right about being followed. There are footprints over there.”

“Any clue about who or why?” Joel got to his feet and put a hand down, surprised when she took it to jump up next to him.

“Some interesting information.” Cam turned his camera around and flashed an image most people would think showed nothing but leaves but really showed an outline of a shoe. “Men’s size eleven. Probably a hundred-seventy pounds.”

She leaned in closer to the screen, her eyes narrowing. “You can tell that from a grainy picture?”

Cam nodded. “And your stalker is an overpronator.”

Joel had to smile at that. “Now you’re just showing off.”

Cam shrugged. “I’m good at my job.”

“Which is what again?” she asked.

No way was Joel entertaining an impromptu debriefing in the middle of an isolated forest. Protocol was very clear. The Corcoran Team operated on a need-to-know basis.

To the world they provided risk assessments and moved in to help if things went wrong. Important but not the complete story. The definition missed the reality of the constant danger and huge amount of shooting.

Fact was, telling the woman he once dated about his current occupation had to violate some rule. “Not up for discussion.”

She sighed. “I’ve been hearing that my whole life.”

A stark silence followed her words. Joel didn’t bother to explain the real-world need for not filling her in. She knew how this game was played. She’d lived with a man known for having secrets. Joel got that she hated the game, but that didn’t change it one bit.

Cam finally broke the quiet with a clap that thundered through the trees. “So, we have someone skulking around the woods.”

“And a missing phone.” She turned on Joel with a finger in his face. “Do not ask me if I’m sure this is where I dropped it.”

Those words died in his throat because saying them could get him punched. “No, ma’am.”

She treated him to a smile then. “That’s new.”

He tried not to notice how it lit up her face. “I’m not always difficult.”

“Yes, you are,” she said.

Cam nodded at the same time. “Not always, but mostly.”

“We should head back and make sure none of these weekend warriors cut off a toe.” Falling back into command mode kept Joel from telling both of them off. “We also need to check out Hope’s knee.”

She glanced down.

Cam nodded. “Maybe this Mark guy wandered into camp and there’s some reasonable explanation for all of this.”

The men started to walk but she stayed still. “What about your helicopter and wherever you were planning to go after stopping in here?”

Sounded like she still wasn’t understanding his assignment here. Joel tried again. “This is my final destination. With you.”

Cam slid his foot over the piles of leaves stacked around them. “And I’m good to hang out for a few hours.”

Her hands went to her hips, and her legs still didn’t move. “You both think something is seriously wrong.”

Joel decided not to sugarcoat this. Sure, the past half hour could mean nothing. Or it could mean Baxter Industries and her dad were right to send in reinforcements. They wouldn’t know until they got back to camp. “Stolen phone and a stalker? Yeah, Hope. Something is not right.”

Her smile came roaring back. “Good.”

He wondered if he would ever understand her mood swings. “How is that good?”

“Because you believe me. You’re not writing this off as some hysterical woman thing.”

Of all the things she could have said, that one came out of nowhere. “I’ve never known you to be hysterical.”

She eyed him up. “You know, you seem slightly smarter about women now. Maybe some things have changed about you since we last went out.”

And he worried the most obvious—how much he wanted her—hadn’t.

Chapter Three

Hope tried to ignore Joel for the entire walk back to camp. His constant stream of questions didn’t make that easy. He wanted to know about the campers and what her plan had been to get the men in and out of camp. She gave the details, even though she really wanted to stop and demand an explanation for why it was so easy for him to walk out of her life.

Then again, maybe she didn’t want to know. Her ego could only take so much, and he had the power to break her. Had from the minute she’d met him.

The forest floor crunched and crackled under their feet. Their steps echoed around her, and Cam whistled as he walked a half step behind her. It all seemed so normal...except for the missing businessman and lost phone. And who could forget the scary stalker?

Amazing how a nice morning could make a left turn into awful so quickly.

She had taken this job to emotionally recuperate. The double whammy of losing Joel and the disaster on her last climbing expedition had sent her world into a tailspin. A new career conducting business retreats and leading simple hiking and camping outings was supposed to be soothing. The way her nerves jumped around was anything but.

“Looks like we’re here.”

The sound of Cam’s voice over her shoulder made her jump and knock into Joel next to her. When her hands brushed against his, a new sensation spun through her. Something like excitement, and that didn’t make her happy at all. She wanted to be totally over him, or at the very least not feel anything. She’d do anything for a bit of indifference at the moment.

She settled for doubling her pace and broke through the trees and into the camp clearing a step before her self-appointed bodyguards. The businessmen sat on logs turned into benches around the fire pit area. They looked up as she approached.

They all started talking a second later. Shouting over each other in an attempt to hold the metaphorical floor.

Yeah, she hadn’t missed this part of their company dynamic during the past hour.

“Where have you been?” Jeff Acheson, the Baxter director of marketing, dumped his plate on the ground and stood up. His distaste for her was on full display, from his puffing red cheeks to the scowl marring what she guessed most women found to be his perfectly chiseled model face.

She took a long look at him in the bright sunshine and decided he was a bit too buffed and polished for her taste. He had a phony air about him. Probably because he listed his age as thirty-four on the questionnaire she had handed out last night to assess their skill levels, when she knew from the files Baxter gave her the number was more like forty.

That sort of thing struck her as ridiculous. She’d bet he took twice as long to get ready for a big date than she did.

She could still remember the up-and-down sweep he gave her when they’d first met in the Baxter offices. He’d turned on the charming smile back when he thought she was some sort of assistant to the real leader on the trip. That disappeared when she’d made it clear she was in charge.

But he picked the wrong time to get all uppity with her. She wasn’t in the mood. “Is Mark here?”

“What?” Lance Ringer, the Baxter personnel manager, asked.

Lance was the one guy Hope had liked immediately. He was the youngest on the retreat but didn’t try to impress her. He owned up to the fact he hadn’t been camping since he was a kid, more than twenty years ago, and would rather be home with his newborn and wife than out roughing it with the guys. Hope found his honesty refreshing.

“Mark was missing this morning and I went to look for him,” she said, waiting for Joel and Cam to pipe up and feeling a bit dazed when neither rushed to take the lead. “Did he ever come back?”

Jeff took a threatening step in her direction. “Why didn’t you tell us there was a problem before now?”

“Probably because of this type of overblown reaction.” Joel morphed from calm to a shield of muscles in two seconds. He reached around Hope, blocking some of her view of Jeff, and put a hand on his chest. “Back up.”

Jeff tried to push Joel’s hand away. “Who are you?”

“Not relevant at the moment.”

Joel didn’t move and Cam just smiled. Hope was smart enough to know those reactions meant brewing trouble. Joel’s protective nature made it tough for him to back down, and when he was faced with a pontificating blowhard like Jeff, there was no telling what could happen.

“You have a gun,” Jeff said.

Joel motioned toward Cam. “We both do.”

With the tension building and washing over all of them, she decided this might be a good time to make one point clear. “Joel is my assistant.”

She put her hand over his and it dropped away from Jeff. But the battle stance stayed, as did Joel’s unwavering gaze on Jeff.

Cam covered his smile with his hand as he mumbled, “This should be good.”

“What are you talking about?” Jeff asked as he turned his attention back to her. “I thought you were the supposed leader of this outing.”

She said the word assistant and Jeff assumed she was no longer in charge. The man heard what he wanted to hear.

Before anyone said anything else that made her grumbly, Hope made the necessary introductions to keep the chain of command clear. “This is Joel Kidd, my helper, and Cameron Roth.”

Joel cleared his throat. “Helper?”

With a raise of the chin she held her ground. “Yes.”

The silence lasted for only a second before he nodded. “Alrighty then.”

Relief poured through her when he didn’t push it. She turned back to Lance. “Where’s Perry?”

“Who’s that?” Cam asked.

Lance got up and brushed off his pants. He stopped to shake hands with everyone. “Perry Kramer is our sales manager.”

“What does he sell?” Joel stared at Hope when she shoved an elbow into his stomach. “What? It’s a fair question.”

Lance shrugged. “But it’s probably not important information right now.”

Hope heard the rustle of branches and glanced over in time to see Charlie Bardon, the camp owner and cook, break through the trees on the far side of the last cabin. He was out of breath and running his hands over his grimy chef’s apron as he walked.

“What’s going on out here?” he asked.

Joel looked to the newcomer. “That was going to be my question.”

Charlie didn’t look any more willing to back down than Joel. They stood face to face and shared the same former military in-command presence. Pushing fifty, Charlie had been out for decades, but Joel seemed just as determined and set in his ways at thirty-three.

Before this could blow into a full-blown argument, Hope tried to step in. “Mark is missing.”

“I was hoping he was with you.” Charlie turned his attention to Joel. “Where did you come from?”

Joel shrugged. “Annapolis...or are you looking for an explanation about how birthing works?”

The older man’s eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to be funny?”

“Not really.”

“Okay, enough.” She wasn’t sure who deserved the bigger kick to the shin—Joel for acting disinterested and maintaining his monotone voice through the snide comments or Cam, who couldn’t stop smiling. “Cam and Joel came in by helicopter to help me.”

If possible, Charlie’s scowl deepened. “With what?”

She had no idea how to answer the question, so she skipped it and talked to the campers, trying to ignore the fact another one appeared to be missing. “When is the last time anyone saw Mark?”

Taking a long time and making the movement last longer than necessary, Jeff folded his arms in front of him. “When you two fought last night.”

Joel turned to face her. “Really?”

“He stormed out, saying he was going to the cabin,” Lance said. “But he wasn’t in there when I went to bed.”

“What time was that?” Cam asked.

“Around midnight.”

Charlie blew out a long breath as he talked. “You didn’t think that was odd?”

“He was ticked off that Hope took his gun. I thought I heard him coming in later, but he wasn’t there this morning.” Lance looked at Joel as if he expected backup.

Joel leaned in closer instead. “His what?”

She knew there was no way that comment would slide by. “Gun, and I’ll explain later.”

“Yeah, you will,” Joel said.

But not now. Not when all those eyes focused solely on her. “Go on, Lance.”

“That’s it. I figured he was walking it off or getting something to eat. Honestly, I didn’t think it was a big deal. He got scolded. Get over it.”

Hope didn’t know what to do with any of that information. Mark had gotten angry and stormed off. She knew that before she took off on her search. But maybe she could get an answer to one question. “Were either of you out in the woods this morning?”

She got a lot of head shaking and mumbling but no answers. She scanned the crowd. Only Lance didn’t possess the right body type. He’d joked about gaining more weight than his wife during the pregnancy. Hope doubted that was true, but he was carrying around a few extra pounds that would have made it a bit tough to dodge in and out of the trees.