Page 22 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

Tyler kissed me in the diner parking lot after my shift. He didn't ask. He pulled me toward him by the waist and pressed his mouth against mine and I let him because letting was easier than refusing. Afterward he said, "You're mine now, sweetheart," and I thought he was being romantic.

Ryker asked. He stumbled through a confession that fell apart mid-sentence. He walked toward me slowly enough that I could have stopped him with a word. He touched my face the way you touch something you're afraid of breaking. And when the fear arrived, he stepped back. Without being asked. Without a flicker of anger or impatience.

The two men are not the same.

I open my eyes. He's still there. Two feet away. Hands at his sides. Face patient and open.

"I'm okay," I say. "I needed a second."

"Take as many as you need. Take a hundred. I'll be right here counting."

I step forward and close the two feet and put my hands back where they were, fisted in the front of his shirt, my face against his chest, and I hold on. For the specific fact of him. This man. This cabin. This moment that I chose with my eyes open and my fear accounted for.

His arms come around me. Slowly. Giving me time. His chin rests on the top of my head. I can hear his heartbeat, steady and sure.

11

Ryker

I sleep in the chair.

Not the couch. The hard-backed wooden chair beside the bed where I sat the first night, when she was half-dead from exposure and I was a federal officer performing a legitimate rescue and the distance between us was simple to maintain.

The categories don't hold anymore. I kissed her four hours ago and the taste of her mouth is still on mine and my body is full of competing instructions. The professional telling me to get distance and the rest of me telling the professional to shut up. So I split the difference. I don't sleep on the couch, which would mean putting twenty feet between us. I don't sleep in the bed, which would mean something neither of us is ready for. I sleep in the chair, three feet from her, close enough to hear her breathing, far enough to keep my hands on my own knees.

She knows. When I pulled back after the kiss and said goodnight and sat in the chair instead of going to the couch, something moved across her face that she tried to hide. Not hurt exactly. The quiet dimming that happens when a person has opened a door and watched someone choose not to walk through it. She turned toward the wall and pulled the quilt to her chin and said goodnight in a voice that was perfectly composed and perfectly small.

She doesn't understand why I pulled back. She thinks it's about the fear she showed after the kiss. She's wrong. The fear didn't push me away. The fear was the realest thing she's shown me because it meant she was feeling something large enough to be afraid of. I pulled back because of what I felt when she came back. When she closed those two feet and put her hands in my shirt and chose me with her eyes open. What I felt then was not professional. It was a rearrangement so complete that if I didn't put something between us, even something as thin as a chair and three feet of floor, I would cross every line I have left.

So. The chair.

I don't sleep. I listen to her breathe and I think about the tracks in the snow. The two men heading north toward the ridge. The cigarette butt. The boot tread with the three chevron rows. I haven't seen additional activity during my perimeter checks, but the storm has been covering everything with fresh snow twice a day. Someone was in these mountains recently. The question is whether they're still here and what they want.

I think about Tyler. The man who walked into a diner late in the afternoon when the booths were empty and the waitress was alone and saw exactly the kind of person who could be taken without anyone noticing. Tyler, who slipped the net during the raid and vanished. Tyler, who is out there somewhere and whose interest in Zoe may not have ended just because she escaped.

Dawn comes gray and slow. Zoe is still turned toward the wall. I can tell by her breathing that she's been awake for at least an hour, lying still and silent. We are two people lying to each other with our silence.

I get up. Third plank. Coffee pot. I make her coffee the way she takes it, weak, powdered milk, her mug. I make mine strong. I set hers on the side table and go out the back door without speaking. If I speak I'll say something about the way she looked last night with her hands in my shirt and the firelight in her hair and if I say that I'll be on the bed and not in the chair.

The porch. The cold. The perimeter check. The snow is still falling but lighter now and the wind has dropped. The light is different too, brighter at the horizon, the cloud cover thinning at the edges. Something is changing.

The satellite phone gets a signal for the first time in thirty-six hours. I call Mason.

"Storm's breaking," he says. "NOAA has the main system clearing your elevation by tomorrow afternoon. You'll have a window."

"I know. I can see it in the cloud cover."

"Good. Because we've got movement. Tyler. We think we've got a hit. A man matching the physical description Zoe gave you has been seen in Alpha Range, about forty miles south of your position. Different name. Working at a mechanic's shop called Ridge Auto. Goes by Derek Bowen. Jax pulled the employment records. The Social Security number is clean but the work history prior to three months ago doesn't exist. It's a fresh identity, Ryker. Professionally built."

Alpha Range. Forty miles south. Close enough that two men on snowmobiles could cover the distance to my cabin in half a day.

"The tracks I reported," I say. "North toward the ridge. If they came from the Alpha Range side..."

"Then the trajectory fits. Kane is running the boot tread pattern against known purchases in the area. No match yet, but we're pulling surveillance footage from the outfitters in Alpha Range."

"What's the play?"

"We move. Jax and Kane are staged in Timber Creek. The moment the roads open, they drive to your cabin. We pull Zoe out, get her to the regional office, and start the formal process. Simultaneously I put a team on Tyler. Surveillance only until we have enough for an arrest warrant, which is where Zoe's debrief becomes critical."