Chapter Eight
Adam took Jadyn’s hand again as the path wove between thick pine branches, the ground underfoot no more than tiny, slippery rocks.
“Now, listen,” he said. “From this point on, it’s dangerous until we get to the ridge. The path is narrow, and the drop is very steep. You fall, you die.”
She gasped softly. “Seriously?” She ventured a look to her right to confirm that the mountain dropped dramatically, and the only things between a hiker and a fatal fall were a few thin bushes and trees. “Good thing you know how to rescue a person.”
“Yeah.” He knew how not enthusiastic that sounded, but God, he hated this subject.
“You have saved lives, right?”
“Over a hundred,” he said, without fanfare or bragging.
“Have you ever…” She didn’t finish the question. But she didn’t have to.
He knew exactly what the next question would be and felt his jaw tense in anticipation. He expected honesty from her, and he would have to give it back, right? It wasn’t like he’d kept Dalton Butcher’s death a secret. His family knew and his closest friends. They just didn’t know what it had done to him. They might suspect, but they didn’t know.
“Have you ever not been able to rescue someone?” she finally asked.
They followed a sharp veer in the path, and he eased her ahead of him when it grew too narrow for two people. That way, she couldn’t see his expression while he didn’t answer, and in about ten feet, the view would get them talking about something else entirely.
“Oh my God,” she whispered as they rounded the last bend. “That’s…wow.”
“I know,” he said proudly, inching her to the huge flat stone that stuck out like nature had created her own balcony. “It’s my million-dollar view.”
“I’ve decorated enough homes with million-dollar views to assure you this is worth much, much more.” She scanned from east to west, drinking in the stunning beauty of sky, mountains, trees, river, and a sweet town nestled in the arms of it all. Adam never stood up here and looked out without being awed right down to his bones.
He’d never gone to church, probably never said a prayer in his life, and hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about the Creator of this universe. But up here, he felt close to nature and as holy as an unholy person could feel.
The look on her face, the wonder and amazement, told him she felt exactly the same way. And for some reason, that thrilled him.
Could she get this? A love of nature was a big criterion for him in a woman. Except, come to think of it…he’d never brought a woman here before. His friends, yes, and even some camping tours. But never a woman like this.
A woman whose name he didn’t know, he reminded himself.
The clouds had rolled closer, bathing the entire river valley in a smoky blue-gray that always soothed his soul. Rain might come, but he knew from experience that it would be no more than a light drizzle, not a storm. That was the kind of rain he loved up here while tucked under the overhang.
Below, the aptly named Snake River wended through it all like a navy-blue ribbon that wrapped the package, calm in parts, then whipped up and white where rocks rose up from the riverbed. Rafters and kayakers were few, but visible, dotting the water.
The bird’s-eye view of the whole area showed the dense streets and buildings in town, the warren of residential streets on the east side, and the woods, hills, and forested areas on the west side of the river where he grew up.
“Do you have your bearings?” he asked. “You see Sentinel Bridge right there, with the diner?”
“Oh yes. I do see it.”
“And A To Z and, to the right of that, the boathouse I’m not in the middle of renovating with nine days left.” Which reminded him why they were up here. For honesty and admissions that he hadn’t heard word one of yet.
“Oh, there’s an airport here!” She sounded more dismayed than surprised. “I had no idea.”
“That’s one of the reasons Eagle’s Ridge does so well in tourism. And it’s the thing that started it all.”
“How’s that?” she asked.
“When the men who founded the town had the opportunity to buy a lot of this land cheaply after World War II ended, they came up here to survey the possibilities and decide how to divide it all. One of the ideas was an airstrip to make money and attract tourists. It still does, and the commuter flights have really helped build Eagle’s Ridge into an easily accessible mountain playground. Now that Ryder Westbrook is the manager, it’s going to grow even more.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize it was so easy to get here.” Again, she didn’t seem thrilled with that idea.
“Not that easy.” And why did it bother her?
“What about the eagle?” she asked.
“The one my grandpa saw?” He turned and pointed to an overhang of stone and trees just above them on the side of the mountain. It was his protection from the rain and why the fire pit was below it. “Grandpa told me it was up there. A bald eagle, looking down on all of them.”
“That’s a wonderful story.”
Not as wonderful as the one he was waiting to hear from her.
“It’s such a unique story and such a special place. Could I talk to those men? Are they still alive?”
More procrastination. “Oh hell, yeah. Old as these hills, but they love to talk, especially my grandfather and his pal David Bennett.”
“I really want to talk to them.”
“Jadyn,” he said pointedly. “You promised.”
She sighed and leaned into him a little as a chilly breeze made her shiver. She had on only a sweater and down vest, and the temperature was probably freezing to her thin tropical blood.
Putting his arm around her, he guided her back around the fire pit.
“Come and sit here.”
“Did you make this fire pit?”
“The original was made by my grandpa. He brought me up here when I was young, and I’ve been camping here for years and always improving the pit, especially after winter.” When she sat down on the rocks that faced the pit, he grabbed some of the small kindling he kept tucked away. Throwing it in, he dug through the backpack for a lighter.
“You mean you don’t rub two sticks together?”
He gave her a look. “And if you switch subjects, ask another question, or otherwise delay what you came up here to tell me, I’m going to…”
He looked at her, seeing a mix of emotions in her eyes he couldn’t quite read. He stared at her for a minute, too long, really, but he couldn’t look away.
“Come on, Jadyn,” he finally whispered. “Talk to me.”
“All right, all right.” She blew out a noisy breath and finally nodded. “I’m a very successful interior designer in Miami.”
Which he already knew or…thought he knew. “So your résumé was truthful?” He brushed some dirt from his hands over the small fire and sat down next to her, getting close to warm her even more.
“Most of it, yeah. Did you call any references?”
“No. Should I have?”
She swallowed noisily. “I’m not sure the numbers would work, but if they did, you’d probably be talking to an FBI agent.”
He inched back at the answer, not sure he’d heard right. “The FBI?”
“I’m not running from a boyfriend or anything like that,” she said. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and for my own protection, the FBI sent me away. Off the grid, as they say.”
She turned a little, giving him the chance to look right into her bottomless eyes and decide if this was the truth or not.
He stared back at her, hating that he was leaning to not. “Are you serious?”
“Dead. And if I don’t want to be, I’m not saying any more than that.”
“What? You have to tell me what happened. You know I won’t quit asking until I know.”
“I’m beginning to figure that out.” She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them as if she could ball herself up from what she knew she had to say. “One of my clients, my biggest, wealthiest, most profitable client, I might add, turned out to be a drug trafficker. A Bolivian drug lord, actually, living the high life in a multimillion-dollar penthouse in Miami Beach that I was redesigning for him.”
Possible. Plausible, even. He knew quite a bit from the Coast Guard about trafficking and knew that Bolivia, though landlocked, bordered some heavy hitters. Bolivia had been gaining in stature in the South American narcotics trade, and Miami was well known as a hub for US-based transnational drug rings.
But that kind of person seemed like an unlikely client for this woman who demanded a full background and history before picking a paint color. He tamped down his doubts and asked, “Okay, so what happened?”
“I honestly don’t know,” she said. “One day I was home, in my apartment, minding my own business, and someone knocked on the door, and it was a woman who I thought was one of his many hangers-on. Rich people are surrounded by sycophants, something I’ve gotten used to in my business. I opened the door, and wham, she flashes a badge, tells me she’s undercover FBI and that they’d almost arrested my client the night before.”
“But they didn’t?” And if they hadn’t, would they really tell a civilian? Not a chance. Not a molecule of a chance.
“He got wind of what was going down—I have no idea how, who, or what they were going to do. All I know is someone in his organization told him that he’d been betrayed by a woman.”
“The one at your door. The undercover FBI agent.”
She nodded and eyed him as if she’d picked up the note of skepticism in his voice. “I’m telling the truth,” she said simply.
He didn’t answer and saw that register on her face, too. Man, she was easier to read without makeup. Her color rose and fell, and her eyes were less distracting without the paint, and far more honest.
“He decided that woman had to be me, that I was the undercover agent or mole or whatever.”
“Why? What would make him think that?”
“I didn’t ask at the time because the sense of urgency was real.” She rubbed her arms, but not against any chill since the fire warmed them both. He imagined her chill was from the memory of what happened…or knowing she was lying.
Why couldn’t he tell?
“This agent literally swooped me out of town,” she said. “She packed my bags, drove me to Miami International, stuffed a ticket to Seattle in my hand, and the whole time, she was firing instructions at me, which were basically ‘get the hell out of Dodge and fast.’ Oh, and don’t trust anyone. That was rule number one.”
He didn’t say a word for a long time, playing this through in his mind.
After a moment, her shoulders fell. “You don’t believe me.”
“I…I don’t not believe you,” he said. “But as stories go, this one is out there.”
She looked disgusted. “What’s ‘out there’ is a guy who wants me dead. So I followed her rules. When I got to Seattle, I got on a bus that was going as far as I could go while staying in Washington State, which was one of the rules.”
“Why?”
She choked. “I don’t know, Adam. Maybe proximity to an FBI office?”
“Closest one’s in Portland. In Oregon.”
“I honestly don’t know. I’m just doing what I was told to stay alive.” She notched her head in the direction of town. “I had no idea this place has an airport, because that makes it a heck of a lot less appealing to me.”
“So you wouldn’t have come?” And all this could have been avoided…or missed, depending on his point of view.
“I picked the town by looking at a departures board in a bus station. The name sounded…uplifting.”
He didn’t say anything, but poked a stick at the fire, still thinking it all through. Why would she just make up a wild-ass story like that if it wasn’t true?
Because she was on the run from the law herself? She was involved in a drug ring? Who knew? She did. She knew and wasn’t telling him.
“It should all be over in a few weeks, though,” she added. “And I can go home.”
“Are you sure? How?”
“The agent called me, and they have a new plan to get him. But he still thinks it’s me, and he thinks I took something important from his office that’s missing, so…”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know,” she said again, frustration in the words. “I am not in the inner circle of FBI undercover activities, Adam. I was his interior designer one minute and on his hit list the next.”
“What’s this guy’s name?”
She closed her eyes. “I can’t tell you names.”
“Why? You worried I’ll Google him and find out you’re lying?”
She flinched a little at that. “I don’t know what you’d find if you Googled him, probably the fact that he owns a penthouse on Ocean Avenue worth four million and runs ‘multiple companies,’ if you found anything at all.”
“What were you doing for him?”
“I told you. Renovating and redecorating.”
“So if he was a drug lord, why didn’t you find that out when you tried to get into his psyche so you could be inspired to do his design?” He heard the note of cynicism in his voice, and judging by the look on her face, she heard it, too. And it hurt.
Damn it.
“He was pretty much throwing money at me.”
“Cash?” he asked, still a little too sharply.
She turned away and didn’t dignify that one with a response. “I’m not lying,” she whispered. “Is that what you think? Really?”
“I don’t know what I think,” he said softly. “Tell me more about this guy. And the FBI agent.”
“Don’t you think it’s better if you don’t know?”
“What if someone by that name comes to town and I find out because I’ve lived here most of my life and I know everyone? I could warn you if Mr. Bolivian Bad Guy checks into the Broadleaf.”
“He won’t,” she said.
“How do you know?”
She answered with a deep sigh. “I’ve told you everything I’m comfortable sharing. That’s why I didn’t want to show ID to the police. What if they put it in some file somewhere and he has access or a cop on the take who gives him the information? I don’t know how powerful this guy is.”
“Can I see your ID?”
“No.”
“Will you tell me your real name?”
“No.”
“What would you do if I contacted my friend the policeman and asked him to run a little check on FBI undercover operations on Bolivian drug lords in Miami?”
She turned to him, her eyes surprisingly welling with tears. “What if I’m telling the truth and that gets me killed? How would you feel about that, Adam?”
The question punched him right in the gut. She was right, of course. And one death on a man’s soul was enough.
Slowly, he stood and smothered the fire with some dirt. Then he brushed his hands on his jeans and reached for the pack. “We better get down the mountain before it rains.”
She squinted up at him, those tears still threatening and torturing him. “Do you believe me?”
Yes. No. Maybe. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But you’re not going to die on my watch, that’s for damn sure.”
She closed her eyes in relief, and one tear trickled down, slicing through him. “Thank you.”
“You can stay at my apartment.”
After a moment, she held her hand up to him. “Thanks for the rescue, Coastie.”
He lifted her easily and pulled her up to his chest. When she looked up at him, the impact of her dark eyes and sweet, vulnerable face damn near buckled his knees. They held each other’s gaze, like a silent promise, and then she closed her eyes, and he had to fight with everything he had not to kiss her.
Because that was the last damn thing he needed.