Chapter 26
Anna watched Owen go a moment, then hurried to catch up to him.
He didn’t look at her. “Be sure, Anna. It gets harder from here.”
Honestly? She couldn’t imagine anything being harder than knowing it was over between them.
When he finally looked over at her, his mirrored shades in place, she could tell nothing from his carefully blank face.
“I’m sure,” she said.
And with a nod, he kept going.
They didn’t speak for some time, until out of the blue, he said, “You do realize that your job is often far more dangerous than mine.”
She thought about that and had to admit that at times, it might be true.
Another ten painfully long minutes went by with nothing between them except huffing and puffing, during which she thought about her dad and what he would think of what she was doing.
Reading her mind, Owen said, “Even if we find the necklace and coins, it’s still circumstantial evidence at best.”
Still trying to make her feel better... “You used to be so certain he was the thief.”
“Yes, until I was reminded by this amazing, brilliant woman I know to keep an open mind. It was good advice, Anna. You should try it.”
She rolled her eyes. “In my line of work, it’s not about gut feelings, it’s about proof. And it’s not all circumstantial. There’s that pesky criminal record I never knew about. Plus, he’s also suspected of other crimes.”
“Suspected. Not proven. And we don’t even know if we’ll find the necklace and coins. But if we do, there will still be no proof he led us to them.”
“What are you talking about? The letter—”
“Was destroyed.”
Their gazes locked and held, and she knew he’d done it for her. “Owen—”
“Even if we find everything and I bring the coins and necklace back to Ruby, there’s still every chance she won’t remember they were missing.”
“So then you’ll keep bringing them to her until she does,” she said firmly.
He looked at her for a long beat, clearly fighting with his emotions. “I’m going to ask you again: Would you like to stay right here while I go the rest of the way? Whatever I find, or don’t find, you won’t ever have to know.”
She nearly melted on the spot because he meant it. And she realized that everything she’d thought she’d known about him early on had been so wrong. He wasn’t a selfish man-child who liked to charm his way through life. He was genuine and real. Honorable and loving. He would always protect the ones he loved, at any price. “We’re both going to do this. There’s no way I’m going to let your aunt down, whether she ever knows or not.”
They kept going, with each tight turn in the trail revealing more mouth-dropping vistas of nothing but the wild Sierras spread out before them as far as the eye could see.
Then the going suddenly turned far more difficult.
She was seriously winded by the time they came to the first rock face, which turned out to be a series of huge Ice Age slabs of granite that got increasingly hard to climb. They lost the trail several times.
Luckily Owen knew what he was doing, and he pulled out a paper map. Even with that, several times they also needed Ky’s help and twice had to backtrack.
“Are we lost?” she asked.
Owen shook his head.
“Did we go too far?”
“We’re going south, as far as we can get without walking right off the cliffs. We haven’t gotten to the cliffs yet.”
The higher they went, the more the wind whipped at them. Several times she’d have been knocked to her ass if Owen hadn’t grabbed her. He’d kept very close since they’d gone past the tree line, which she took as a lack of faith. Not unfounded, but, well, embarrassing. “I’m okay.”
“Anna, I’m not doubting your ability. When I’m at work and guiding people through challenging situations, I always stick close. Novice or expert, it doesn’t matter, not if you’re my responsibility.”
“I get that,” she said. “But I’m not your responsibility.”
“Today, on this trail that’s closed because people kept dying on it, you are. Don’t fight me on this. I intend to keep you in one piece and in working order, because I enjoy you in one piece and in working order.”
She snorted. “You mean in bed.”
“In bed. On the kitchen counter—” He stopped to laugh softly when she bit her lower lip, remembering that particular—and extremely memorable—adventure from a few nights ago.
“And the club chair in the corner of your bedroom. And my shower—”
She put a finger to his lips because while she was glad and grateful they were back to teasing each other instead of the painful silences, if he kept talking, they’d be adding “and on the trail against a massive rock” to the list, no matter if they were still together or not.
He nipped at her fingers, smiling when she jumped. “Against a rock, huh?”
Great. She’d said that out loud.
“You good to keep going?”
“Yes.” It only took about twenty more minutes for her to regret it. They were now having to climb up and over granite slab after granite slab, each feeling a little more unstable and slippery than the previous. Owen stopped and hunkered down, pulling off his backpack and taking out ropes. “If you trip, this will avoid you sliding backward.”
She glanced behind them and felt a little sick. The height was staggering. They were thousands of feet up. She couldn’t even see the area where they’d parked anymore. But that wasn’t her real problem. Her real problem was that she already missed Owen and he was right there. “Oh my God, what was I thinking?”
He climbed up the next slab and squatted low, reaching a hand down for her. He pulled her up onto the rock with him and wrapped his arms around her, brushing a kiss to her sweaty temple. “It’s going to be okay.”
Was it though?
“I’ve got you,” he said. “You know that, right?”
“Because... you’re friends with all your exes, including me?”
He shook his head. “You’re different.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Does that mean you won’t stay friends with me?”
“It means you’ll always be more than just a friend to me.”
She stared at him. She wanted to say “same,” but that age-old fear trapped the word in her throat. “This is very new for me, someone besides Wendy and Hayden wanting to keep me in their life.” It was an embarrassing truth. She’d never really felt understood or fully accepted for who she was. But here, in possibly the most dangerous situation she’d ever been in, she’d never felt more safe or secure.
“Hey,” he said, dipping down a little to see into her eyes. “Never doubt it.”
Unbearably moved, she leaned in and kissed him. At his surprise, she shrugged. “Well, we haven’t found the necklace and coins yet, right?”
He laughed low in his throat, a sexy sound that had her thinking about the up-against-a-rock thing again, but she controlled herself because she was too winded to follow through.
As they continued on, he helped her locate good hand- and footholds, and she found herself feeling secure and far more confident than she’d imagined possible. Owen had probably done stuff like this a thousand times or more, but he never gave any hint of irritation at her slower pace or that he wished he’d done this without her. Somehow, when she was with him like this, she felt exciting and fascinating and interesting. Like a new and improved Anna.
A couple of hours later, he boosted her over the last massive granite slab. She landed gracelessly and rolled to her back, panting. When she could, she got to her hands and knees and offered Owen a hand just as he boosted himself up and over, landing at her side.
“I think we found the cliff,” he said.
No kidding. With a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vista laid out far below, it felt like they were on top of the world. The wind was wicked and relentless. They both sat, trying to catch their breath as Owen checked in with Ky and consulted the printed map in his hands. He eyed the area around them, narrowing in on something slightly to his right. “There,” he said, pointing about a hundred yards off, to what looked to her like just another bunch of stacked rocks.
“There what?” she asked.
“There are the grottos.”
She started to stand up, but he stopped her. “Stay low. People have died trying to walk around up here.”
Anna gulped.
It was no easy task to go that last hundred yards, and even as they moved, she could only see one possible cave. It wasn’t until they made it closer that she realized it wasn’t just one, but a series of caves, almost all too small to crawl into.
Grottos.
She wasn’t claustrophobic by any means, and yet she still didn’t want to climb inside any of them. “Do you think we’re in the right place?” she asked, having to talk loud over the roar of the wind whipping around them. All she could think about was how many bugs and snakes probably lived in the caves. Maybe bears too, or even mountain cats.
Owen was carefully crawling around openings, peering in with the use of a penlight he’d pulled from one of the pockets of his cargo shorts. “I’m hoping we’re in the right place,” he said. “We won’t know until we search this entire area.”
That was one of the things she loved most about him. He never pandered to her fears, but he also always told her the truth, even when it was something she might not want to hear. “Divide and conquer?”
With a nod, he pulled another penlight from his backpack and handed it to her.
She went right and he left. In the first cave she came to, the opening was only a foot wide, so she had to get really low. Her beam of light revealed some rocks and dirt, nothing else. Same for the second and third, but on the fourth cave, the opening was larger, maybe two feet, and when she peered in, she caught sight of the largest spiderweb she’d ever seen. She covered her own mouth to hold in her startled gasp and quickly backed away.
“Anna? You okay?”
“Fine!” she yelled. She took a deep breath, then whispered to herself, “You are fine.” She went back to searching, coming across a cave slightly larger than the rest, not quite four feet tall. When she flicked the light inside, she got a reflection of something shiny, and her heart skipped a beat.
Unfortunately, whatever the shiny thing was, it sat at least ten feet inside the cave. Probably it was nothing, maybe a treasure of some sort that an animal had dragged in there. She craned her neck and saw Owen methodically checking everything near him, then turned back to the cave opening. “You got this,” she whispered to herself. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” she chanted softly on her hands and knees, moving through the damp dirt, the penlight leading her toward whatever the thing shining back at her was. It seemed small, and she couldn’t make it out until she got close enough.
And once she did, she gave an involuntary gasp. It was a flat black metal box, the kind that was sometimes used as a cashbox. The flat black didn’t reflect any light, but the silver clasp did, which had been what she’d seen from outside.
The box was locked. Before she could figure out what to do, she heard Owen calling for her, his voice urgent.
Getting out was far trickier than going in. She had to crawl backward while dragging the surprisingly heavy box along with her. “I’m coming!” she yelled, and as soon as her head cleared the cave, she stood up and whirled around. “Owen! I’ve got a—” She broke off because he was crouched low beside what looked suspiciously like...
A body.
An incredibly still body.
She blinked and was at Owen’s side without even realizing she’d moved. “Oh my God. Is he—”
“Badly decomposed?” he asked grimly. “Yes.”
Shocked and filled with horror, Anna shook her head in disbelief. “Who is it?”
Owen picked up a stick and used it to nudge the wallet that had fallen out of the guy’s nearly deteriorated jeans pocket. Still using the stick, he flicked it open and bent in closer to read the ID. “Rico Edwards.” He looked up. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
She stared at him. “Oh my God. Because he’s one of the five original suspects, and when I researched him, there were rumors he’d been linked to Shady Joe around the time Ruby’s things were stolen. Nothing concrete, so I had to let it go.”
Owen reached for the radio. “Ky, we’ve got a DB where X marks the spot. Call it in—” He broke off and sucked in a sharp breath.
“What?” Anna asked.
“What?” Ky also asked.
Owen very carefully used the stick to nudge the man’s pants pocket, from which the most gorgeous necklace she’d ever seen had slid from. A huge red ruby surrounded by diamonds twinkling in the late-afternoon sun in spite of layers of dust and dirt.
Owen looked up at Anna, eyes wide with surprise. She was pretty sure she wore the same expression.
They both startled at a sound, just a slight rustle, really, but they both whipped around—
—To find Will standing there pointing a gun at them. “Well, look at what I found,” he said. “This must be what Christmas feels like.”
Anna glanced at Owen, who gave her a pointed look. Right. Her job really was more dangerous than his.
“What are you doing?” Anna asked Will.
“Same thing you are.”
“I don’t have a gun in your face,” she said.
“For which I’m grateful because now I can take over this crazy ride.” He winked at her. “Better buckle up, buttercup.”