“Joe lived for Cat,” Barb said. “When she died, he just retreated. Took that job up in the reserve, closed himself off from everyone and everything.”
“I didn’t know the Department of Fish and Game made remote assignments like that.” Before she’d left New York, she’d done some checking on the game reserve’s management.
“They don’t. But when that herd of woodland caribou were discovered out here last year, Fish and Wildlife Protection wanted somebody in the reserve for at least a season. Couldn’t get any takers.”
“So Joe volunteered.”
“You got it. First time the two agencies ever collaborated like this. Fish and Wildlife is technically part of the Alaska State Troopers.”
Wendy remembered Joe’s handgun. “Well, he certainly seems to be into the role, if you know what I mean. He really is a control freak, isn’t he?”
“Big-time. Which is probably the reason he blames himself for Cat’s death. Though I don’t know what he could have done to have stopped it. Cat was a grown woman. He couldn’t keep her under lock and key, now, could he? No matter how much he wanted to protect her.”
Joe was the protective type. Wendy knew that for a fact from yesterday’s little adventure. She could have made it back to her car last night before dark. She would have been dog tired, but she could have done it. All the same, no way a guy like Joe Peterson would have let her hike all that way on her own.
“How did Cat die?” she asked.
“Drug overdose. In New York last year. She was a fashion model, just starting out. Got mixed up with the wrong crowd, I guess.”
“Oh, God.” Wendy felt as if someone had punched her.
In her mind she sifted through the faces of the young female models she’d met at parties and industry events. Her own work with Blake had been mostly for men’s magazines like Esquire and GQ. She generally didn’t work with women. She knew she’d never met Cat, but wondered if Blake had.
“I, uh, recognize you from your pictures,” Barb said.
Wendy’s stomach continued to roll. Even out here in the middle of nowhere, she couldn’t get away from her past.
Barb shot a glance at the supermarket tabloid sticking out from under a fast-food bag on the dash of the pickup. “They’re still following the story.”
No wonder Joe Peterson had looked at her as if she were the lowest form of life on earth. Sometimes that’s exactly what she felt like. She wasn’t proud of some of the things she’d allowed herself to be sucked into, but that was over now.
And no wonder he was so angry—at her and himself. Wendy knew Joe was physically attracted to her, and had been from the moment he’d pulled her up onto the rock and saved her life. Once he’d realized who she was—sometime after supper and before bed, she guessed—that attraction would have been hard to reconcile, especially for a man like Joe. Given the way Cat had died, and given what he’d read about Wendy in the papers…
“Pull over,” Wendy said, reaching for the door handle. She thought she might be sick.
“Just about to. That’s your rental, isn’t it? A blue Explorer?”
She nodded, working to keep her breakfast down.
Stepping out of the truck, Wendy took a few deep breaths and felt better. Fishing the SUV’s keys out of her pocket, she frowned at the driver’s side door. It was unlocked. She was sure she’d locked it.
“Everything okay?” Barb called from her pickup.
“Um, yeah. Fine.” But it wasn’t fine. She was sure she’d locked it. “Barb, about those tabloids…”
“Oh, heck, don’t worry about it. No way I believe all the stuff they wrote about you.”
She tossed her knapsack in the Explorer, then smiled. “Thanks.”
“All set, then?”
One last question burned inside her. She had to ask it.
“How long were they married? Joe and Cat,” she added, when Barb’s thick brows wrinkled in confusion.
“Cat wasn’t Joe’s wife,” Barb said. “She was his kid sister.”
Joe snatched the phone on the fourth ring. “Peterson.” He’d been outside fixing a broken water pipe that ran from the spring up the hill into the cabin.
“Hey, it’s me.” Barb’s normally cheerful voice had an edge to it he didn’t like.
“What’s up?”
“Wendy Walters. I just thought you’d want to know.”
Joe pulled the phone onto his lap and slung a hip on the edge of the desk. “Know what?”
“She’s planning on hiking in over the east ridge after those caribou. That gun-sight pass—you know the one.”
“Son of a bitch!”
“I know, I know. Don’t kill the messenger. The whole first hour in the pickup I tried to talk her out of it, but she’s dead set on it.”
“How long ago’d you drop her?”
“’Bout two hours ago. My radio’s on the blink. Had to wait till I got back to headquarters to call you.”
There wasn’t any cell coverage in the area. Hell, the closest town was 150 miles away.
“All right, all right. I gotta go.” He started to put the handset down.
“Goin’ after her?”
He put the receiver back to his ear. “What do you think?”
The last thing Joe heard before he slammed the phone down on the desk was Barb Maguire’s trademark titter.
Chapter 4
It took him six hours to catch up to her.
And when he did, Joe realized his temper had ratcheted to dangerous proportions. “Get a grip, Peterson,” he cautioned himself. He was determined to handle this like a professional.
By the time he was able to gather his gear, get his truck out of the shop and break just about every traffic law on the books racing to the eastern edge of the reserve, Wendy Walters had gained a huge head start on him.
Still, he would have bet his next paycheck that he would have overtaken her miles ago, that she would never have made it as far as the steep, glacier-cut canyon he was now traversing. He would have lost that bet, he realized, as he caught a flash of movement on the sheer rock face a quarter of a mile ahead of him.
Instinctively he reached for the pair of Austrian-made binoculars secured to his chest by a well-worn leather harness. “I’ll be a son of a—” He bit off the curse as he peered through the field glasses.
Wendy Walters, wannabe wildlife photographer, trudged up the steep, rocky trail toward the narrow gun-sight pass marking the little-used eastern entrance to the reserve. Joe checked his watch. 7:00 p.m. She’d made damned good time. The woman was fit, he’d give her that.
But he was fitter, and right now he was fit to be tied.
He secured the binoculars, hunched his department-issue backpack high on his hips, recinching the padded belt, and took off at a jog. The weather looked iffy. Another storm was moving in from the west, coming right at them. Dark clouds massed overhead, obscuring a late-summer sun that had already dipped well below the jagged, snowcapped peaks surrounding the canyon.
Now that he’d found her, he didn’t