Dangerous Ground, no. 1 Page 4

  They’d been okay by the end of the day though, back in sync, back in step, and after their shift they’d gone for drinks at their favorite watering hole. Will should have realized then: Taylor was knocking back Rusty Nails like they were going out of style. His usual drink was beer. In fact, Taylor had a thing about trying every obscure import or microbrew out there. Whenever and wherever they traveled, Taylor had to try the local brew. The only time he ordered the hard stuff was when he was stressed — or people had done their best to maim or kill him.

  But that night Taylor was putting the booze away like he had hollow legs. By the time Will had been ready to call it a day, Taylor was blasted: tie loosened, hair disheveled, giggling. Giggling, for chrissake. And, yeah, it was mildly cute: that boyish little gurgle, and those under-lashed looks Taylor was throwing him — like he was flirting with Will.

  “Last call for you, buddy boy,” Will had said, shaking his head, trying not to laugh when Taylor — leaning toward him — nearly fell off his stool.

  And Taylor had draped an arm around Will’s shoulders and drawled, “Take me to bed, William, or lose me forever!”

  Will had laughed, although that kind of thing was risky as shit in what amounted to their local hangout. It was one thing to be gay; it was another to be openly gay. The last thing they needed was to buck for Federal GLOBE poster boys.

  But Taylor was an affectionate drunk, no problems there, and he’d let Will steer him to Will’s car, let Will drive him to Will’s house, let Will walk him to the spare bedroom and help him undress — like they’d done for each other plenty of times in the past three years.

  But then…then it had gotten hinky.

  Taylor had put his arms around Will and said a lot of stupid things — drunken shit that Will had tried to ignore, tried to joke away — but Taylor had been insistent, if incoherent. They had wrestled around a little, Will losing patience maybe faster than he should have.

  Because…he was tempted. He could admit that now. Sure, he’d been tempted — what with Taylor trying to nibble on his ear and all.

  And it turned ugly fast — with the end result of Taylor grabbing his clothes and departing into the night.

  The next day, for the first time in three years, they had nothing to say to each other. Maybe it would have worked itself out, but by lunchtime Taylor was in surgery with a bullet in his right lung, fighting for his life.

  “It’s letting up,” he said, jolting Will out of his thoughts. “The rain,” Taylor said, meeting Will’s blank gaze.

  “We could make camp here tonight,” Will heard himself say. It made sense. He and Taylor had to get things straight between them, and that wasn’t going to happen once they got back to civilization.

  But Taylor was already crawling out of the tent. “May as well keep moving,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  * * * * *

  The light was amazing. Those crepuscular rays — golden shafts of illumination — penetrating the snowy rafters of clouds. What did they call those? Jacob’s ladder? The fields around them were bathed in amber, the trees glinting and flashing in the dueling sun and shade. The surrounding mountains looked purple and blue.

  With cold, probably.

  Taylor put that thought away. As long as he kept moving he was warm enough, and it looked like they would be moving till nightfall. But that had been his choice. All he had to do was say the word and Will would be fussing over him like a hen with one chick. And the sad thing was, there was a part of him that would have almost enjoyed that.

  He glanced at Will walking a little ahead. His face was flushed with sun and exertion, his eyes sparkled — despite everything, he was enjoying himself. Will was totally in his element out here. He liked the silence, the emptiness, the loneliness. He’d have been perfectly happy on his own, whereas nothing but Will would have dragged Taylor out to this wilderness — beautiful as it was.

  He shivered as a gust of wind — tasting of snow and distant mountaintops — hit him. Will glanced his way, but said nothing.

  * * * * *

  “I think we should stash the money,” Taylor said, breaking the silence of nearly an hour. He was trailing two or three yards behind Will, and Will was glad to have a reason to stop and take a look at him. He looked beat, and it pissed Will off, made his voice sharper than it needed to be.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know if waltzing into a sheriff’s station with two million dollars is a good idea.”

  Will stared, trying to see it from whatever angle Taylor was viewing this. “You think someone in the sheriff’s department was involved?”

  “I don’t know.” Even Taylor’s voice was tired. “I just know it’s a small town, a lot of money, and the sheriffs didn’t seem to make a lot of headway on the case.”

  “Well, hell, neither did the FBI.”

  Taylor didn’t say anything. Will’s dad had been a small town sheriff in Oregon, and Will knew what Taylor thought: that Will was on defense because of that — and maybe Taylor was right.

  “Okay. What’s your idea?” he asked grudgingly.

  “We could leave the money in one of these bear boxes, contact the feds —”

  Will spluttered, “Leave two million dollars in a bear box?”

  “Just hear me out.”

  Blue eyes met green.

  “We could put the money in my pack. I don’t have a dry change of clothes left and you’re carrying half my gear anyway —”

  Will had opened his mouth but he shut it at that.

  “Whatever else I need — my pistol — I can carry.”

  “And what if someone steals your backpack?”

  “The kind of people who hike back into these mountains aren’t even the same species as the sewer rats we deal with. Besides, we’ve seen…what? Two hikers and one park ranger since we set out? I don’t think anyone’s going to rip off my pack. But…I’ll leave my ID.”

  “What?”

  Taylor sighed. “Just listen a minute. It’s only for about forty-eight hours, and we’re basically alone on this mountain. But say some lowlife does go through my gear. My ID acts as a kind of hands-off. You’ve gotta be pretty hard-core to tangle with the federal government — which is what my ID amounts to.”

  “That is the dumbest damn idea I’ve ever heard.” But even as Will was saying it, he was thinking that Taylor did have a point. Leaving his ID in his backpack was about as clear a staking of claim, a warning, as there was — and he was also right about the unlikelihood of their running into anyone. Even so…

  He said, “And then the feds have to hike up here to retrieve the cash?”

  “Come off it, Brandt. They have to anyway. There’s the crash site, the body — this hill is going to be crawling with law enforcement in seventy-two hours. There won’t be any possibility of the money slipping through the cracks.”

  “That would have to be a pretty big crack for two million dollars to slip through.”

  “Yeah, well, sorry if I don’t feel like taking a chance when it’s your name and mine attached.”

  “You are one paranoid sonofabitch.” But Will was grinning, amused, and in a weird way, pleased by these nutty Machiavellian maneuverings. It was so…Taylor.

  And Taylor gave him a little sideways grin, acknowledging the compliment like a pretty girl accepting roses.

  * * * * *

  The bear box was a long and low metal trunk painted a particularly ugly shade of brown. The campground was deserted, and Taylor’s pack was on its own as he stowed it, and locked the lid.

  Will was shaking his head, but he had decided it didn’t hurt taking this extra precaution — and, frankly, they could move faster if Taylor didn’t have to lug a fifty-five pound backpack.

  “Did you want to camp here tonight?” he asked. The shadows were lengthening, the air growing chillier. They were going to have to call it a day shortly anyway.

  “Let’s keep moving.” Taylor was already heading
for the trail.

  And Will couldn’t help the edge that crept into his voice. “I didn’t realize you were in such a big hurry to get back.”

  Taylor just gave him one of those long looks, aloof and wronged at the same time. It aggravated Will — but then Taylor seemed to do that without any effort these days. It didn’t make sense. He and Taylor had always got along well; even in the ways that they were unalike they used to complement each other. It was just since the shooting that everything was different. Will didn’t want it to be different. He wanted things to go back to the way they had been.

  His eyes rested a moment on Taylor’s wide shoulders, moved down to his narrow hips and long legs.

  Damn Taylor for ever opening this Pandora’s box because while it was true Will had refused to ever consider sleeping with his partner and friend — the best partner and the best friend he’d ever had — it wasn’t like he had failed to notice how…hot…Taylor was. He’d have to have been blind to have missed it. Taylor was sexy as sin. Sexy, funny, smart, capable — all the things Will wanted in a lover. But besides being Will’s partner and best friend, he was commitment-shy and had the mating instincts of a young gazelle. He was a bad relationship risk for anyone, but in particular he was a bad risk for Will.

  Will liked stability, reliability, predictability. He needed those things.

  All the same, turning Taylor down that night at his house had been one of the hardest things Will had ever done — and if Taylor hadn’t been definitely the worse for alcohol, Will wasn’t totally confident he’d have managed it.

  He’d put the thought out of his mind during the long weeks of Taylor’s recuperation, but now that Taylor was looking and acting more like his old self — and continuing to put himself on offer — Will was starting to have trouble.

  Like…in his dreams at night.

  The visuals were bad enough, but in his dreams it was the smell, the taste, the feel of callused hands sliding over ridged abdominals, cut pectorals, taut nipples — smooth skin and soft hair — the damp tangle of groin, fingers wrapping around a hot, rigid shaft. In the dream he was initiating and experiencing at the same time, as if there were no division, no separation between where he ended and Taylor began.

  That wasn’t a dream; that was a nightmare.

  And a bigger nightmare was the fact that even in broad daylight it was a struggle keeping his mind off the thought of having Taylor — or, for that matter, Taylor having him. And how weird was that? Will didn’t enjoy bottoming for anyone, but the idea of Taylor…imagining the exquisite shock of that full body contact, of strength equal to his pleasuring him, owning him. It made him half-hard just thinking about it, his face heating up in a way that made him grateful that Taylor had turned away again.

  * * * * *

  The terrain had changed quite a bit from that morning: sunbaked bluffs and stony slopes giving way to chinquapin shrubs and manzanita which yielded in turn to hillsides of oaks and conifers leading to a series of meadows and lakes.

  After leaving the junction campsite, they followed a trail which descended the north wall of East Hancock Gorge. The drop was moderate at first but ended with a series of steep, rocky switchbacks.

  Taylor’s legs were shaking by the time they reached the bottom of a long trench where a green and sparkling tributary tumbled in a suicidal fall off the mountainside. They still had that mountainside to get down, and he was glad he wasn’t carrying his pack — in fact, it seemed worth two million dollars to have unloaded it. He was cold, he was hungry, and he was depressed.

  Even the thought of having recovered the money from the Black Wolf Casino heist didn’t particularly cheer him up; maybe Will had a point if recovering a couple of million dollars felt less important than the rift in their partnership. Maybe his priorities were getting screwed up. At this point he was too tired to care.

  He followed Will down a narrow, deeply shaded trail to a clearing where white steam rose in the rain-swept air from what looked like a rough, rock-ringed pool. Will stopped and lowered his pack, so apparently they were taking another break, and thank Jesus for that. At this point, a few weeks of being stuck on desk duty sounded like paradise.

  “Junction Hot Springs,” Will said. “There used to be a hotel a few miles down the mountain. I think it’s a private lodge now. If it’s still there at all.”

  “A hotel here?”

  “It was a health resort. People used to come up here for the fresh air and massage and the miracle waters.”

  Taylor was rolling his head from side to side on his shoulders, trying to work out a crick. “I wouldn’t mind a massage.” He heard the echo of his voice, and just managed to avoid looking at Will.

  After a minute, Will said, “Well, how about a hot bath anyway? Get you nice and warmed up, take the ache out of your muscles.”

  Will was already pulling his olive drab sweater over his head, followed by his thermal top, and then his snowy white T-shirt. Beneath all the layers, his chest was brown and smooth, the soft dark hair bisecting his taut, muscular torso and disappearing beneath the band of his camo pants.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. We could both use it.” Unself-consciously — and why should he be self-conscious? They’d dressed and undressed in front of each other plenty of times — Will stepped out of his pants and boxers, lowering cautiously to the man-made cement bench inside the pool.

  Hands propped on his hips, Taylor studied him, but Will just sighed and closed his eyes, putting his head back. “Come on, MacAllister,” he murmured. “Relax for five minutes.”

  Swearing under his breath, Taylor peeled off his vest, flannel shirt, T-shirt and wriggled out of his Levi’s. Will ignored him, still soaking, face skyward while the steam drifted up around him.

  Taylor slid into the water and yelped, standing up and preparing to jump right back out. “Jesus, it’s boiling!”

  Will’s eyes opened. “It’s about one hundred and fifteen degrees.” Will was a stickler for accuracy. He always insisted on looking over Taylor’s reports before he handed them in — not that Taylor was any less accurate — but Will was a little bit of a control freak. “Stay still,” he advised. He was flushed and perspiring, but on him it looked good. Sexy. But then Will looked sexy whether he was staring down the barrel of an M4 or eating a sloppy joe.

  Taylor leveled him a look but held motionless, giving his body time to adjust to the heat. Finally, he eased the rest of the way down on the stone bench and sank back, the water level rising as he did, sloshing gently back against Will, who stretched his arms out along the back of the tub.

  The steam settled on Taylor’s face, and his forehead broke out in sweat. He breathed in deeply, hot moisture invading his nostrils.

  Will smiled lazily.

  Taylor spread his legs, the water rippling gently with his motion, and let the wet heat suffuse every part of his body. Yeah, that was better. The water was silky soft, and now the heat felt caressing, sinking into every pore, every cavity. Startling, but good. In fact, it was the first time he’d felt really warm in days.

  He glanced over and Will was staring. He looked down. His chest was still a mess of scars beneath the soft dusting of returning hair. The scars would fade in time but they were ugly now. He let himself slip lower into the water, hiding the ugliness from Will.

  Will’s eyes moved to his face, and Taylor said, “This was a good idea.”

  Will nodded.

  “Finally,” Taylor added, and Will chuckled and kicked water his way. And because Taylor was lying so low, he took a wave of hot mineral water in the face — which couldn’t go without retaliation.

  A second later Will was the one with his hair plastered down his face. He whipped his hair back and laughed. Water sparkled on the tips of his eyelashes and his teeth were very white.

  “You’re living dangerously, buddy boy.”

  Taylor lazily flipped his foot, spattering Will with smoky wet.

  “Bring it on, cowboy,” he drawle
d.

  Will dived for him and they grappled amiably, hands slipping on slick bodies, tussling and twisting in the steaming water. They stepped on each other’s feet, but avoided kneeing anything vital, the rough stone scraping their backs and butts — panting and laughing.

  Finally, Taylor managed to wriggle free, and half-lunged, half-waded over to the other side of the tub. Will turned his head to spit out the water he’d swallowed. “Hey,” he said. “Do you have any protection?”

  Taylor bit back a grin, scissoring his legs through the water. “You think I’ll need more than the SIG to keep you back?”

  “Funny,” Will said. “I mean, do you have a condom with you?”

  He was serious. Taylor stilled. All at once his heart was pounding very fast. He managed to keep his tone lazy as he asked, “Is this a trick question?”

  Will said slowly, “Well, we could get it out of our system.”

  It took Taylor a moment to absorb that one.

  Finally he managed, “Gee, and they say romance is dead.”

  “You want to, right? That’s what you said. That’s what it was all about, right?”

  Taylor’s eyes narrowed. “It wasn’t just about fucking.”

  “No?” Will’s smile was cynical.

  “No.”

  Will moved next to Taylor on the rock bench, put a wet hand on Taylor’s shoulder, tugging him over. A warm, possessive handprint breaking apart in tiny drops, rolling down Taylor’s skin; it had no power over him — yet he let himself be drawn into Will’s arms.

  Chapter Four

  “I don’t know about this,” Taylor said gruffly.

  Which was kind of funny considering how hard he’d pushed for it on one notable occasion.

  And even funnier considering how his body was already reacting to the proximity of Will’s.

  Will’s muscular arms felt good about him; the last time he had held Taylor this tight they had been fighting for real, and Taylor had wanted to kill him. But now Will’s arms felt friendly, familiar, and although he was asking for something Taylor wasn’t sure he could give, he felt no need to fight, to force his release.