Harlequin Intrigue November 2014 - Box Set 1 of 2: Rustling Up Trouble\Boneyard Ridge\Cold Case at Cobra Creek by Delores Fossen

Author:Delores Fossen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

About four months earlier, shortly after Alexander Quinn had approached him at Smoky Joe’s Saloon in Bitterwood, Hunter had decided to see what the CEO of The Gates was really all about. So he’d followed the man one afternoon on a winding ride up Lamentation Rise, a foothill just outside the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. On a clear day, he suspected, a person could probably see most of Ridge County spread out like a postcard, but the day he’d followed Quinn had been rainy and cool for early June. The peak had seemed to be buried in the clouds, the sprawling cabin near the summit a misty apparition in the afternoon gloom.

All this time, Hunter had believed that Quinn hadn’t spotted his tail job. He should have known better.

“Meet me at my cabin on Lamentation Rise,” Quinn had said tersely into the phone after warning Hunter about the two men heading for his front door. “I know you know where that is.”

“How much farther?” Trudging beside Hunter, Susannah sounded weary. She looked weary as well, her brow furrowed and dark circles starting to bruise the skin beneath her winter-gray eyes. They’d been hiking for almost two hours now, rabbiting around in circles for the first mile up to be sure to avoid any searchers out in the woods. Quinn’s cabin was far enough up the mountain that it wasn’t likely the searchers would get anywhere near it.

But they had to get there without being spotted first.

“Almost there,” he told her, hoping he was telling the truth. Quinn had given him quick GPS coordinates before hanging up, but a lot had been going on. He wasn’t sure he’d remembered them exactly, and it wouldn’t take much to go completely off track.

If he could just find the narrow road he’d traveled up the mountain to reach Quinn’s cabin—

“Is that a road?” Susannah asked.

He followed her gaze and saw the dusty gray of a gravel track barely visible through the trees ahead.

“It is,” he answered, relief fluttering in his gut. Reaching for her hand and giving it a tug, he set out for the road, giving her little choice but to follow.

The day was clear, the cabin visible almost as soon as they reached the rocky road up the rise. Next to Hunter, Susannah sucked in a quick breath, and he turned to find her grimacing.

The gravel, he realized, watching her take a couple of limping steps forward. The rocky surface must be hell on her injured feet, especially after so much nonstop hiking.

He shrugged his pack from his back and swung it from the crook of one elbow. “Okay. Hop on.” He held his free hand out to her.

She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“You enjoy pain?”

“Enjoy might be a strong word. I can endure it, though.”

“You don’t have to. Come on. Piggyback time.”

She stared at him a moment, her lips pressed into a thin line of annoyance. But he could see the idea of getting off her sore feet appealed to her as well.

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