She and Anton had worked so many cases together—from undercover operations designed to infiltrate wildlife trafficking rings, illegal guiding operations, and even discovering a case of the intentional poisoning of bald eagles—that she knew her partner's every action.
Until today. Rattled by a recent divorce and custody battle over their two-year old daughter, Anton wasn't wholly in the game—when every bit of their attention had to be focused on the danger right here and now. Not that anything dangerous was about to happen, but then again, the last time nothing was supposed to either. It gave her a new perspective when dealing with traffickers.
With two partners who had marriages on the rocks that had affected their ability to do their jobs, she really was glad she wasn't in any kind of a relationship right now. She'd been there, done that, anyway.
Tracey couldn't help worrying about Anton, considering this was eerily like her former partner's lack of focus—in his case, due to liquor—when she had to remain just as alert about the possible peril all around them.
She'd thought Honey might have set her and Bill up, but when the police found Honey's body riddled with bullets in a downtown Denver apartment two days later, she assumed someone had learned he was a FWS informant. She felt badly that he had been murdered, even though some of her fellow agents had discovered he had been involved in wildlife trafficking, just as she had suspected. And he was attempting to eliminate his competition, which hadn't gone over well with them.
Now, a scrawny eighteen-year-old, by the name of Ricky, was her new informant and had told them a trafficker was using this place as a hideout for his ivory. She was certain it was old news. The same old news that Honey had shared with her six months ago. But what if it wasn't? She had to check it out. What if the trafficker had returned to the scene of the crime? Figuring no one would come here again, looking for his stolen goods?
Twice, Anton tried to get ahead of her on the path. Yeah, he was taller and had a longer stride than her. But he knew the rules. She went first. Her cougar hearing, sight, and smell dictated it. Neither he nor any of the other agents she'd worked with knew why her senses were so enhanced, only that her instincts were much better than theirs. After a few close calls and one death that could have been avoided, they'd quit being all macho or totally alpha and taking the lead when she was partnered with them.
Until today.
***
Sheriff Dan Steinacker called Hal Haverton, who worked as his part-time deputy for Yuma Town, Colorado, their official duties covering nearly 3,000 square miles of unincorporated territory. He asked him to check out widowed Mrs. Blasdell's claim that wild kids were off partying at one of the boarded up miner's houses on the hillside next to the old wagon trail that led to the ghost town of Anderson. As a kid, he and Dan and the rest of his Special Forces buddies who lived in Yuma Town, had loved to go up there and scare the spit out of each other. They'd climbed the mountains as cougars, sneaked into the boarded-up buildings, and even had a séance once in one of the saloons. Stryker, Yuma's full-time deputy, had even let on that he had communed with several ghosts—a couple of hanged stagecoach robbers, miners fighting over silver, a gunslinger, and others who had died violently in the town centuries earlier.
If kids wanted to play around in the boarded-up houses, Hal didn't mind. As long as they didn't vandalize the old buildings or hurt themselves. Or go down into the silver mines. The mines could be real death traps and many had lost their lives over the years when they had broken through the boarded-up mine shafts to go exploring.
The houses were close by and easy to check out. Only once did he catch someone in one of the houses. He and the other deputies and Dan never knew if Mrs. Blasdell was just lonely and wanted some attention, or if the partygoers had left before he arrived. Though when he'd investigated the other times, he'd never smelled anyone who had been in them recently, so he assumed it was just her imagination, or she needed a little company. Which he never minded.
On the warm summer day, he saw fresh tire tracks on the washed-out dirt wagon trail, the grass and weeds growing there crushed by the tires of a vehicle. But the vehicle hadn't stopped at any of the miners' houses. He followed the trail up toward the point where it ended, assuming then, Mrs. Blasdell had been right. Maybe it wasn't kids, though. He called Dan to let him know he was checking out tire tracks leading up to Anderson. After the shootout here on New Year's Day, they were a little more cautious about assuming everything was fine.
"Do you want to wait for backup?" Dan sounded concerned.
"Nah. When I reach the vehicle, I'll give you the license plate number, and you can check it out."
The going was slow and Hal finally reached a silvery-blue Hummer covered in dust parked at the end of the trail. He called in the license number, make, and model of the vehicle and waited.
"The Hummer is registered to a Tracey Whittington, Fish and Wildlife Services Special Agent."
Hal frowned as he grabbed his pack. "Wasn't she the one involved in that shootout up here?"
"Yeah. January 1st, not a good way to start out the New Year. Do you want to wait for assistance?" Again, Dan sounded like he wanted Hal to hold up until they could get there to watch his back.
"No. If she's poking at rattlesnakes again without a lot of reinforcements, I need to be up there, making sure she doesn't get bit. If she's got more armed manpower this time, then we won't need anyone else." He smelled around the vehicle and frowned again. "Hell, unless it's someone else, she's a cougar."
"You're kidding."
"No. Call her boss." Mick Sorenson was a good friend of theirs, both a Special Forces officer and a cougar. But he'd never mentioned he had a she-cat working for him as a Special Agent.
"I will."
After all hell had broken loose up here on New Year's Day, Dan, Stryker, and Chase Buchanan, their other part-time deputy, had been up here investigating the matter. Hal had been out of town, picking up his horses stabled at another ranch, his own ranch finally ready for them. So he'd missed out on all the action. He still couldn't believe all that had gone down at their old childhood playground. Apparently, it had been like the old west shootouts all over again.
"Didn't you know she was a cougar?" he asked Dan, still pondering why none of them had known it or mentioned it to him if they had. He was certain his buddies wouldn't have kept the fact secret.
"I never had a chance to talk to her. It turned into a murder investigation. Feds were in on it and took over. The woman had been hospitalized for a nasty knife wound and was lucky she had survived. Mick never said a thing about it to me. As far as we knew, she and her partner were strictly human."
"Well, hell, Dan, now some of what happened makes more sense." Hal stalked up the dwindling remnants of the wagon trail, smelling a male human's and a female cougar's scents. "A cougar attacked the injured man up on the cliffs and killed him. You thought the cougar had smelled his blood because the gunman had been wounded, and the cougar came for dinner. But it didn't eat him. Just killed him. You assumed the cougar was saving him for dinner later then because he'd recently eaten. But if Tracey is one of us, she must have shifted and gone after him. Here we thought she had suffered a knife wound at the hands of the trafficker, which she had, but as a human, not a cougar." A woman after his own heart. "What does she look like?"
Dan chuckled.
"Well, we know she's up here. It's her vehicle. But we don't know who her partner is. So I need to know what she looks—"
The official agency photo came through on his cell phone. Hal studied it and smiled. Hot. Damn.
Long, dark blond hair, piercing green cougar eyes, sensuous lips meant to be kissed, but looking perfectly serious in the picture, meaning she was all business. But her green eyes captured his attention to such a degree, he tripped in a rut on the trail and practically fell on his face. He grinned at Tracey's picture.
Dan said, "She's unattached and appears to be married to her job."
Hal definitely liked
the unattached part. "So, neither you nor Stryker made a play for her?" Not that Dan would. He was in sort of a relationship with Dottie Brown, their dispatcher.
"We didn't meet her, remember? And we didn't know she was one of us."
"Right."
Hal wondered if she had a new lead in her partner's murder now and that's why she was up here. Or if she had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and was trying to come to terms with what had happened here. "Hey, ask Mick if they ever solved her partner's murder case."
"Mick says no. And before you ask, she's up here with her partner, Special Agent Anton Genova. She got a tip from an informant, but she believes it's an old tip related to the first time she was up here."
"All right." So far everything sounded above board, not like a woman having trouble letting go of the guilt that she might be feeling for having survived when her partner didn't. At least she wasn't up here alone being a Lone Ranger without her boss's approval. Hal was relieved she was doing everything by the book.
"Do you want a picture of Genova?"
"Of course I do. I'm a professional." Though Hal was certain he wouldn't be nearly falling on his face on the rutted wagon trail when he saw Tracey's partner's picture.
Dan sent him the agency photo. The man was dark-haired, large nose, nearly black eyes, the same kind of look that meant he could deal out the rough stuff if he got riled. That was good. The woman needed a man like that at her side, considering what happened the last time.
"Okay, thanks."
"Mick said he's glad you're going up there to check things out. He didn’t want her to go, worried about how she might deal with the memories, but she insisted she was fine."
So maybe this wasn't all above board and she was still dealing with the issues. Frankly, he wouldn't blame her in the least. If he'd had to deal with that himself, he probably would have still been shaken up. Not that he'd admit that to anyone. "What's Stryker doing?"
Dan laughed. "I'll let him know what happened to you when you checked into Mrs. Blasdell's kid problem."
Hal smiled because whenever Mrs. Blasdell called, Stryker had a more pressing assignment.
"How's the mare doing?" Dan asked.
"Foaling in about a week."
"I bet you'll be glad when—"
Gunfire crackled a mile away in the vicinity of the ghost town. Hal abruptly stopped in his footfalls, surprised as hell.
"Shots fired!" His heart pounding pell mell, Hal took off at a run. He couldn't believe the woman could be in a firefight again—in the same ghost town, of all places.
***
Tracey and Anton had been systematically inspecting each of the buildings, as she'd done before, ensuring no one had entered one recently. She was saving the schoolhouse for last. Not because she feared going in, but because she didn't believe the traffickers would use the same place again, if Ricky's information wasn't out-of-date.
Unlike Honey, who had been older and she suspected had been working both sides of the equation, and then learned he had been, she assumed Ricky was in the midst of bad stuff going down, and he had a moral compass that said he'd rather be an informant than be involved in criminal activities. She normally didn't warn an informant how dangerous their life could be, but with him, being that he was so young, she had. They needed him, and he'd already helped bring closure to two cases, but he was the first informant who had worked for her that she really worried about. Maybe because he was so young.
"Here," Tracey said, surprised Anton hadn't found the opening into the second saloon first. He had passed this way just moments ago, and again, she worried about him—that he was too distracted to really be paying attention if they got into trouble.
With her headlamp on and her Glock readied, she climbed through the hole that had been covered with a single piece of plywood, aged, but only attached in a way that made it easy to swing to the side and up, like a secret door to a kids' hideaway.
She had her gun out, more for encounters with rattlesnakes taking refuge in the saloon, rather than being anxious that they might find someone in here. This was the time of year and a great place for rattlesnakes to take refuge from the hot summer's sun.
She heard no sounds, other than her boots walking across the creaking floorboards and then Anton joining her. Like the schoolhouse, she saw boot tracks, men's size elevens and twelves, tromping all over the dusty floor. Nothing real recent, but recent enough. Weeks, maybe? Days? She couldn't guess.
It didn't mean that anyone sinister had been here either. Just that a couple of men, or even teens with big feet, had been wandering around in here. She started examining the floorboards, looking for any that were loose, just like at the schoolhouse before this.
"Here," Anton said, breaking free from his gloomy mood for a minute.
She hurried to see what he'd found behind the old dust-covered bar.
"Fingerprints." He got out his kit to lift them off the scarred, oak countertop.
She turned to study the floor and just as she realized that brand new footprints had walked this way from what looked like a store room, she knew she and Anton were in danger.
She smelled the men's different colognes as they'd recently moved in this direction. Saw the business end of two rifles poke through the slats of a wooden door. With her enhanced feline vision, she easily caught sight of the slightest movement.
She was quick, her cat actions so flexible even when in human form, she turned and dove for Anton. It was the best she could do. But she was afraid it wasn't good enough.
Gunfire exploded from four different directions. Tracey slammed into Anton's six foot, two-inch frame, knocking into him. He went down like a wall of cement, hitting the wood floor hard. She landed on top of him, but quickly moved off him to see if he'd been shot.
He was staring up at her with his nearly black eyes focused on her, and then he began to get up, but she saw the stain of blood spreading across his black T-shirt. She grabbed his shoulder and shoved him down.
"You're wounded," she said, her voice hushed. "I'll take care of this. Stay there."
Rounds crashed into the solid oak bar that they were behind, providing Anton and her some protection. Splinters of wood rained down on top of them as rounds hit the countertop. Tracey hurried to pull out her medical pack, then jerked Anton's black T-shirt free of his black cargo pants. Blood spilled from his side. She fumbled to rip open one of the packages containing a sterile pad and bandage. Her heart racing a million miles a minute, she prayed Anton would live as she rushed to stop his bleeding.
The shooting continued and she hoped the rounds smacking into the solid oak protecting Anton and her wouldn't penetrate it and hit either of them. As soon as she had done all she could for Anton, she tried her phone, knowing she wouldn't have any reception, but she had to give it a shot.
Not enough of a signal. Damn.
Her skin was perspiring, her heart pounding as she felt the whole damn past catch up to her.
When neither she nor Anton returned fire, the traffickers—at least that's who she thought they had to be—ceased shooting.
She pocketed her cell, kept her gun ready, and hoped the men believed she and Anton were seriously injured, maybe even dead. Which could be a good thing, giving the perps a false sense of security. Even so, one agent against four armed men was no match if the men chose to rush their location. She and Anton would both be easy targets.
She glanced down at her partner. His face was ashen, perspiration beading his forehead, his long dark hair dusting the wooden floor. He gritted his teeth in silent suffering, trying not to make a sound. She was crouched beside him, facing the bar so that if the men tried to reach them from either end of the bar, she could see their movement and hopefully shoot them first. She reached over to squeeze Anton's hand. It was cold and clammy. As hot as the old saloon was this summer afternoon, that wasn't a good sign. He applied the slightest pressure while squeezing her hand back, and she feared she would lose him. Just like she lost Bill.
> Her Glock readied, she listened to hear what was going on beyond the bar, her left hand still gripping his right. She couldn't let go just yet, wanting him to know she was there for him.
Barely breathing, she attempted to hear the slightest movement. Then hurried footfalls scurried across the wooden floor, creaking, headed away from Anton and Tracey's position—two men, she thought. They moved in the direction of the hidden entryway Tracey and her partner had used. She desperately wanted to take the two men out. But the other two remained where they were, waiting for the agents' response. She knew as soon as she came up to take the shot, she'd be gunned down.
The men staying behind probably thought if she and her partner were all right, they would chase after the men departing the area.
No matter how much she wanted to take them all down, her place was right here at her wounded partner's side this time. They had some cover, unlike the last time where they were sitting ducks inside the schoolhouse. Anton had a dark-haired, pigtailed daughter waiting for him back home. Tracey couldn't let him die.
No one was talking, so she assumed the men were communicating with hand signals. Running footfalls took off outside and headed away from the saloon. Damn it. She hated that any of the bastards had gotten away. Further silence lingered on for what seemed like eons, but could have been only a couple of minutes, then the two men still there began to move toward Anton and her.
Every board-creaking footstep brought them closer.
She placed Anton's hand on his chest freeing up her hand. Then she used both her hands to steady her gun. As soon as a bearded, black-eyed man appeared around the end of the bar, his gun readied, she fired twice, hitting him in the forehead both times. He stumbled back into the other man, a smaller redheaded guy trailing behind him, using the bigger man as his shield.