FOR THE CHILDREN Page 9

  "I told the girls to stay by the truck until I came beck out." His low, husky voice was like sandpaper over her nerves, making her whole body tingle. Reluctantly she turned around to face him, determined to be as casual as he was.

  "What do you need?"

  Heat leaped into his eyes, making them glow like two hot embers. She stared at him for a moment, mesmerized, before she turned away to fumble with the dishrag again. "For the bear trap, I mean." She barely recognized the low-pitched, throaty voice as her own.

  She heard him draw a long, shaky breath. "Just some odds and ends from the kitchen. I'll get them in a minute." The harsh, impersonal voice was back, and Abby turned around slowly to face him again. He studied her face, all expression wiped off of his own.

  "Have you tried to call your sister today?"

  Abby swallowed as she stared at him, unable to look away. The wall was solidly back in place, as impenetrable as ever. That moment of heat and need she'd seen in his face might never have existed. "No," she finally said. "I haven't called her yet. I thought I'd wait until Maggie and Casey are outside with you."

  "Good." He handed her his cellular phone and moved over to the door. From the tension in his back she knew he was watching the twins. "Go ahead and call. I'll keep an eye on the girls."

  Picking up the phone, Abby watched her hand tremble as she punched the numbers into the keypad. Would Janna answer her phone? Was she even at the hotel in Mexico? A horrible fear for her sister filled her. She was far away in Mexico, and she was in danger. What would she say when she picked up the phone?

  The phone seemed to ring forever, but the hotel picked it up after the third ring. When she asked for Janna Steward, the clerk put her on hold.

  "At least she's registered there. The operator is ringing Janna's room," she told Damien. The silence on the phone line stretched on and on, tightening along with her nerves. Finally the hotel operator came on the line again.

  "I'm sorry, there is no answer. Would you like to leave a message?"

  "Would I like to leave a message?" Abby repeated, looking over at Damien.

  He shook his head, and she looked blindly down at the telephone in front of her. "No, thank you," she said softly to the operator. "I'll try again later."

  Laying the phone gently on the counter, she looked up at Damien again. She knew her fear was obvious, but she didn't care. "Why didn't you want me to leave a message?"

  "Because a message isn't private," he answered calmly. "Anyone can look at it, and I have no intention of telling anyone where we are."

  She nodded, feeling numb. "She's probably working already. I'll try her again tonight."

  "Probably." His voice had no inflection. "Why don't I get what I need and get busy on that bear trap? I don't want your nieces wandering down to the lake because they got bored."

  "Take whatever you need." Abby waved her hand around the kitchen. "Shea didn't seem like she would mind."

  Damien looked at her for a moment, then nodded. Moving swiftly through the tiny kitchen, he picked up an odd assortment of items, put them into a bag with a roll of twine and stepped out the door. Turning to look at her before he let it close, he said, "We'll be within shouting distance if you need us."

  Abby's sense of security dissolved like the bubbles in flat champagne. Heading for the door, she watched Damien vanish into the woods, Maggie and Casey right behind him. For a few moments she watched the place where they had disappeared, listening to the girls' giggles and the cracking of branches under their feet. Then she turned around and went back into the cabin, closing the door behind her.

  This wasn't a game. Damien wasn't taking Maggie and Casey into the woods to play out their childish fantasies about bears. This was about protecting all of them from a possible threat to their lives.

  Abby tried to forget about the smoke and its possible implications. She moved around the cabin, picking up the girls' toys and poking into cabinets to see what kinds of supplies Shea had provided. But after fifteen minutes the cabin was spotless and she had memorized the contents of every cabinet. Finally she sat down in the tiny living area of the cabin, dragging a chair close to the window. As she stared out at the mountains surrounding the cabin, she wondered again who had been camping last night. Surely Damien was right. It had been someone from a nearby ranch, stranded on the mountain after dark.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw something move. When she turned to look, she saw a man on a horse, standing on an outcropping of rock across the lake from the house.

  Without taking her eyes off the man, she reached behind her to find the binoculars on the counter. When her hand finally closed around them, she pulled them out of the pouch and brought them up to her eyes. She was trembling so hard that she couldn't see anything for a moment. Then the man and the horse sprang into sharp focus.

  * * *

  Damien listened to the excited chatter of the two girls behind him as they headed into the stand of trees behind the cabin. With a supreme effort of will he tried to harden himself against the pain. This was an opportunity too valuable to be missed, and he might not get another chance. If the twins relaxed around him today and accepted him as a trustworthy adult, then they might answer the questions he had to ask. His personal feelings didn't matter.

  "Damien!" one of the girls shouted behind him. "Is this a good place for a bear trap?"

  He turned around and looked. Casey jumped up and down in a small clearing, her eyes blazing with excitement. Something moved in his chest as he watched her joyous enthusiasm, and he realized with a jolt of surprise that it wasn't pain. It was delight in her pleasure, enjoyment of her complete and utterly unconscious happiness. It was an emotion he hadn't felt for three years.

  Guilt made him answer too gruffly. "We'll remember this place. But we need to check out the rest of the forest first. We wouldn't want to build our bear trap, then find someplace better, would we?"

  "I think the bears would hide in the bushes, not in the open." Maggie looked at Damien with Abby's hazel eyes. "Don't you, Damien?"

  The trust in those huge eyes made Damien squat down in front of Maggie. He dug his hands into the dead leaves on the ground, resisting the sudden impulse to reach out for her. "I think you're a very smart little girl. And you, too, Casey," he added to the girl next to him. "You're very observant. We may have to make more than one trap, just to be sure we get them all. What do you think about that?"

  "I think we need ten traps," Casey shouted, jumping into the air. "Maybe twenty. And maybe we should put some on the beach, too."

  "Bears are only in the forest," he answered quickly, then stood up again. "So we need to stay here." Without giving either Casey or Maggie a chance to think about the beach, he handed each of them a small bag of supplies. "Do you think you girls could carry these for me? I'm afraid I'm making too much noise with them. We wouldn't want to warn the bears that we're coming."

  "Do you think they're watching us?" Maggie's voice was hushed in the woods.

  Damning himself for scaring her, Damien squatted in front of her again. "No, Maggie, I don't. I think those bears are sleeping late this morning. But that's one of the rules when you're in the woods. You don't make more noise than you have to. That way you can hear what's going on around you."

  "You mean like birds and squirrels, and things like that?" Casey piped up.

  "That's exactly what I mean." Damien glanced over at her. "What do you like to see and hear in the woods, Casey?"

  "I like the birds," she answered immediately.

  Damien rocked back on his heels and watched her. "I like watching the birds, too," he said gravely. "What is it you like about them?"

  "They're pretty, and I like the way they can fly. I want to be able to fly like them." She raised her head to look at the tops of the trees, and her expressive face was suddenly filled with longing. "If I could fly, I could hide in the trees and no one would be able to find me."

  "Why would you want to hide in the trees?" he asked, holding
his breath. It couldn't really be this simple, could it?

  Casey looked back at him, her eyes solemn. "Sometimes I don't like the man at Mommy's work." Then she turned to her sister, her mood apparently forgotten. "Come on, Maggie. Let's go find a fairy tree."

  The two girls scurried away as Damien slowly straightened. Janna worked with several men. Abby might know which one Casey was talking about. It might be completely unrelated to this case, but the hairs on the back of his neck rose as he thought about Casey's words. He couldn't afford to ignore them.

  He followed the sound of the twins' laughing voices through the trees until he found them squatting underneath an aspen tree. "Is this a fairy tree?" he asked, trying to keep his voice even.

  "Yep," Maggie said, pointing to a puffball mushroom. "See, here's the fairy dust." She pressed gently on the top of the mushroom and both girls watched, enthralled, as the spores rose in a tiny cloud out of the bole in the top.

  "What makes this a fairy tree?" he asked, sitting down in the leaf litter next to them.

  Maggie turned to him, her eyes wide and solemn. "Fairies live in trees, you know."

  Her gaze was trusting and completely open. An unexpected wave of guilt washed over him, and he swallowed once and forced himself to meet her gaze. "No, I didn't know that."

  Maggie nodded. "They do. And they picked this tree because there's fairy dust around it. See?"

  Damien looked around and saw that puffball mushrooms surrounded the tree in a rough circle. "I can see that," he said slowly. "I believe you're right, Maggie. This must be a fairy tree."

  Casey nodded happily beside him. "You can't see the fairies. They only come out when nobody's looking. But I'm going to leave a wish at the fairy tree, and the fairies will make it come true."

  "What kind of a wish do you want to make, Casey?" he asked, tensed for another revelation like the one about the man her mother worked with.

  "You can't tell," Maggie warned her sister. "It won't come true if you do."

  "I know that." Casey's voice dripped scorn. She threw her arms around the smooth bark of the tree and scrunched her eyes closed. A moment later she opened them and grinned at Damien and Maggie. "Your turn, Mags."

  Maggie stepped delicately over to the tree and laid her palm against the trunk. She turned her wide, solemn gaze onto Damien, and he watched her lips move as she mouthed a silent wish. Then she stepped away from the tree and closer to him.

  "Do you want to make a wish at the fairy tree?"

  Damien shook his head, trying to swallow around the hard lump of pain in his throat. "I don't think it works for grownups, Maggie." Regret stirred inside him, and for a moment he wished passionately that he believed in fairy trees and the magic of fairy dust. Holding more tightly to his bag of supplies, he said, "We'd better get to work on this bear trap."

  "First you have to promise, Damien." Casey's earnest young voice stopped him before he'd taken two steps.

  "Promise what?"

  "That you won't tell."

  Slowly he turned around. "What can't I tell, Casey?"

  "About the fairy tree, of course." She sounded impatient with his dimness. "You have to keep it a secret."

  Damien squatted down in front of Casey, careful not to touch her. "Do I have to keep it a secret from everyone in the whole world?"

  She nodded, giving him another of her grins. "You can't tell no one."

  "What about your aunt Abby? Can we tell her?"

  The twins exchanged glances, then turned to look at him again. "Aunt Abby keeps secrets good," Maggie said.

  Damien's heart began to pound. "Can we tell her about the fairy tree? Maybe she'd like to make a wish."

  Maggie and Casey looked at each other again, then nodded. "We can tell her," Casey said.

  Damien closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then looked at the two girls. "If I had secrets, I would tell your aunt," he said in what he hoped was a casual voice.

  If he hadn't been watching very carefully, he would have missed the flash of fear on Maggie's face, missed Casey's sudden stillness.

  The next moment Casey went dashing off into the woods, shouting. "I know a good place for a bear trap."

  Maggie gave him a frightened look, then followed her sister through the brush. Damien walked after them slowly, cursing himself for his clumsiness. He hadn't intended to bring up secrets and the sharing of those secrets this morning, but the opportunity had seemed too good to pass up. And now Maggie and Casey watched him with wary eyes again.

  * * *

  Two hours later the three of them headed back to the cabin. He was hot and sweaty, and the two girls were giggling and laughing about the bears they were going to catch tonight. He had been very careful not to mention secrets again, and gradually the twins had relaxed around him.

  "What are we going to use for bait in our bear trap, Damien?" Maggie's voice jerked him back to reality, and he looked at the child walking next to him.

  "I've heard that bears are very fond of chocolate-chip cookies."

  A gleam lit Maggie's eyes. "Aunt Abby knows how to make chocolate-chip cookies."

  "Maybe she'll let us help her make some, then we can put them in our bear trap. What do you think?"

  Maggie gave the idea serious consideration. "I think she will. Aunt Abby doesn't want any bears to come around here. And I'll say please when we ask her. She likes it when we say please."

  Damien took a deep breath and closed his eyes as the memories tore at his heart. A dark-haired little boy stood in front of him, saying "pease" in a hopeful voice, his enormous dark eyes pleading. Damien watched himself kissing the boy goodbye, telling him firmly that he had to go, that it was only for a little while. It was the last time he'd seen him alive.

  "Here we are at the cabin," he said as he spotted the reddish brown logs through the trees. His voice sounded strained and harsh. "Why don't you go tell Aunt Abby about the bear traps we built? I'll check the outside of the house."

  The twins scampered toward the cabin, and as soon as Damien saw them go inside he stopped and leaned against a tree. Grief welled up inside him again, churning with the guilt that was always there. He couldn't face Abby and the girls until he had buried those feelings deep inside of him, buried them so far below the surface that the sight of Maggie and Casey wouldn't make him want to die himself.

  He should have backed out of this assignment as soon as he heard that the possible witnesses were two children. Except that he'd never backed out of an assignment in his life. He'd been sure he could handle it.

  He hadn't counted on Maggie's huge hazel eyes and Casey's utterly disarming grin.

  He hadn't counted on Abby Markham, either.

  After a few moments he straightened and walked toward the cabin with grim determination. He had a job to do. The two children and the woman in that cabin needed his protection, and all the crying in the world wasn't about to change that. He hadn't let his personal life interfere with his job for three years, and he wasn't about to start now.

  * * *

  Abby listened to Maggie and Casey tell her excitedly about the bear trap and their adventures in the woods. Waiting for Casey to take a breath, she asked, "Where did Damien go?"

  "He's checking the outside of the cabin," Casey told her, bouncing up and down on the chair. "He wants to make sure that no bears can get in here."

  Abby glanced at the door, wondering where he was. Had he found something outside that alarmed him? Was there something wrong?

  "Can we, Aunt Abby?" Maggie asked. "Please?"

  Abby jerked her attention back to her nieces. "I'm sorry, honey, I didn't hear you. What did you want to do?"

  "Can we make some chocolate-chip cookies? We need them for the bear trap 'cause Damien says bears like chocolate-chip cookies."

  For a man who didn't want to be around children, Damien certainly seemed to understand them. How could he have known that the only way of keeping the girls off the beach was to tempt them with cookies? "Of course we can make co
okies, Maggie," she murmured. "We don't want any bears around here."

  The door opened silently, and Damien slipped inside. "The girls tell me we need cookies for the bear trap," Abby said brightly.

  Damien nodded once and headed for the sink. "Chocolate chips are best," he said, his voice abrupt. "The girls want to help you make them."

  Abby stared at his back. His spine was rigid and stiff, his muscles braced as if for an attack. Had he seen something outside?

  "Girls, why don't you get cleaned up and wash your hands," Abby said, standing up and shooing the twins toward the bathroom as she watched Damien. "Then we'll get started on those cookies."

  Maggie and Casey hurried off to the bathroom, and Abby walked into the kitchen. "Did you see something out there?" she asked in a low voice.

  Damien shook his head. "Not a thing. I couldn't even be sure someone had been in the woods last night."

  "Then why are you so tense? Did something else happen?"

  "Nothing happened outside, Abby." He stared out the window, his back to her, and the air around him seemed to quiver with tension. "We built a few bear traps, and now we're going to make cookies. That should keep them off the beach for a while."

  "You don't have to worry about them going down to the beach."

  Slowly he turned around. Before he could disguise it, she saw terrible anguish in his eyes. The three hours he had spent with Maggie and Casey had taken their toll.

  Then he looked over her shoulder at the closed bathroom door, and his eyes were a careful blank again. But Abby knew she hadn't been mistaken. The pain in his eyes and his rigid stance were impossible to hide.

  "Why don't I have to worry about the beach?" he asked, his voice sounding impersonal and distant.

  "Because I think I saw the man responsible for the campfire last night."

  He swung his gaze back to face her. "What?"

  "I was watching out the window after you left, and I saw a man on a horse over there." She waved to the other side of the small lake.