Bear Claw Conspiracy

“As the best at whatever we choose to do. Usually it’s academics. In my case, crime scene analysis.”

He held her eyes for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Point taken.”

“Then let’s get to work.” She gestured around them. “How are you at tracking?”

“Fair to good, but when we came up this way the first time, I was looking more for four-legged predators than two-legged tracks. I can’t swear to it, but I don’t think there were any fresh footprints other than Cochran’s at that point, and even those were pretty faint. I took a closer look around once Tanya had been airlifted out, but nothing jumped out at me.” He grimaced. “Frankly, given the rock, hardpan and loose gravel, we’re not looking good for tracks.”

“Hopefully I’ll have better luck.”

“It’s a mess down there.”

“So I heard.” But as she moved up beside him at the crest of the ridge, she sucked in a breath. “Okay. Yeah. That’s a mess.”

Their vantage point overlooked an oblong flattened bowl that fell away into a dry riverbed on one side. There was a brushed-clean spot where the helicopter had come and gone; ropes snaking across the shale, which was gouged where they had been moved and dragged; and a scattering of detritus in the bottom of the wash.

Although she gave Blackthorn points for not cleaning up the med techs’ leftovers after Tanya was airlifted, the overall effect was not encouraging.

He shot her a look from beneath lowered brows. “Tell me you can do something with it.”

“I’ve seen entire cases hinge on a few strands of hair or a fingernail scraping,” she said. Which wasn’t quite an answer, so she added, “I’ve worked under worse conditions. At least here I won’t have to waste time going through a ton of alley garbage that has zero relevance to the case.”

“Small blessings.”

“In this job, you take what you can get.” And you’d better watch it, we seem to be having a semi-normal conversation, she thought but didn’t say. Instead, she nodded to the shotgun he carried slung over his shoulder. “I’m going to be pretty involved for the next couple of hours. You’ll keep lookout?”

Something shifted in the dark green depths of his eyes, and he nodded. “Nobody else is getting hurt on my watch.”

Sensing he didn’t want to hear that he wasn’t responsible for what had happened to Tanya, she gripped his forearm briefly. “Thanks.”

As she moved past him, she felt his surprise just as clearly as she had felt his leashed strength through the thin layer of his windbreaker. She wasn’t sure if his shock had come from the touch or the fact that they were getting along, but she would take it.

She had a feeling she would be better to have him a little off balance around her, not vice versa.

When she was halfway down the incline, he called, “Hey. Gigi.”

He gave it the softer pronunciation, as though they were in Paris rather than the middle of nowhere.

She turned back and found him backlit by the afternoon sun, a solitary figure on the ridgeline. She had to clear her throat before she said, “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry I was a jerk to you back in the city. You’re okay.”

“Be still my heart.” But she grinned when she said it. “And my name is Gigi,” she corrected, giving it the harder sound. “It’s short for Greta Grace, so you don’t need to get fancy with it. Or with me.”

He didn’t say anything, just gave her a slow nod, but she felt his eyes follow her the rest of the way down.

Then she tuned him out and got to work.

The next ninety minutes were a focused blur of photographs, sample bags and jars, and a whole lot of frustration at the lack of what she thought of as “big foam finger evidence”—the kind that pointed straight to an answer, or at least a new set of questions.

Granted, that was the exception rather than the norm, but still, she had been hoping for a quick break in the case.

By the time the sun dipped behind the mountains and the sky went pink around the edges, she was finishing up her preliminary round of collection. She locked her kit, and hauled its now considerable weight back up the ridgeline, where Blackthorn stood guard, silhouetted against the dusk.

He gave her a long, unreadable look. “All set?”

“With the first step, anyway. Now it’s time for me to put in some serious lab hours.”

He took the case from her without asking, his fingers brushing against hers. “But you’re not hopeful.”

“I’m always hopeful,” she corrected, telling herself it was impossible to get a whole-body tingle from that small contact. “But in this case, I’m not very optimistic. I didn’t see anything I could link straight to Tanya’s attackers. Between that and the beating her radio took, it was like she was dropped …” She trailed off, sudden excitement sparking. “Wait a second. Let me see your radio.”

He unclipped it from his belt and handed it over. “Bert can hook you up if you need a patch-through back to the lab or something.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

She took the sturdy unit, which, aside from being bright yellow rather than matte black, was very like the ones used by the HRTs back home, with long-range capabilities, GPS, a digital display … and a hinged faceplate that usually broke off within the first few weeks of use. It was the one design flaw in an otherwise solid piece of equipment.

Blackthorn’s still had its faceplate in place, though, and had a couple of upgrades she hadn’t seen before. “Is this new?” she asked.

“They arrived last week.”

Damn it, she had assumed Tanya’s faceplate was long gone—and because she had made an assumption, she almost missed the evidence … or lack thereof. “Do all of your rangers carry the same model?”

“Yeah, they’re interchangeable. We just grab one off the charger in my office. Why?”

She looked up at him, pulse kicking. “Did hers still have its faceplate when she left this morning?”

He thought for a second, then nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure it did.” He looked back down to the scene, making the connection. “It could’ve bounced pretty far. Even given that some of her injuries came from an attack, she still hit hard when she fell.”

“Or we were meant to think she did.”

He went very still, eyes darkening as he slowly looked down, then back at her. “Damn. I saw it.”

“The faceplate?”

He shook his head. “No, that there was a problem with the way she and the radio had fallen.” His expression went distant as he replayed the scene in his head. “She was lying flat on her back, kind of sprawled, with the radio a few feet away. There weren’t any impact marks … but there was a smoothed-flat place.” He refocused, met her eyes. “Like someone had been there, swept his tracks, and then tossed the radio down after the fact.”

“All we’re going to have on that is your statement,” she cautioned, “and my not finding the faceplate doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t there. I can’t use a negative to prove a positive.” But they were onto something. She was sure of it. “We’re going to need more.”

His expression firmed. “Then we’ll find it.” He paused. “You think this is a secondary scene. A dump site.”

She nodded. “That’s how it reads to me. And it’s consistent with her Jeep not being right in this area.” The vehicle’s GPS wasn’t registering and it hadn’t been sighted along what should have been Tanya’s morning route, either.

“So we have another crime scene to find.”

With another man she might’ve told him to stay out of the way and let the cops do their job. Given that he was the local expert, though, and the P.D. was spread very thin, she said, “The faceplate is going to be a needle in a really large haystack, and there’s no telling whether the Jeep is even still in the park. Take your pick.”

A muscle ticked at the corner of his jaw. “The Jeep would be an easier target, obviously, but an air search is going to be difficult to pull off, if not impossible. All the working birds are tied up fighting the wildfires, and a bunch are down for repairs. We’ve put out feelers to other parks, other options, but so far we haven’t come up with much.” His head came up and his shoulders squared. “So we go old school.”