Read Online Bear Claw Bodyguard by Jessica Andersen - Free Book Online

mountains during college and his rookie years, letting the fresh air and open skies clear his head and remind him that most of his day-to-day hassles could be easily outweighed by the sight of an eagle soaring overhead or the satisfaction his inner caveman got from fishing for his dinner and cooking it over an open campfire. And even the bad stuff that wasn’t totally outweighed—and as a cop he’d seen more than his share of the wretched and unforgivable things humans could do to each other—had lost some of its teeth when he was up in the backcountry.
    The trips had tapered off and then gone away as he’d grown up, though, and he hadn’t realized until today just how much he missed it. There was a sense of freedom out there, a wildness that called to something inside him so strongly that he didn’t know how he’d gone so long without recognizing the lack in his life. Hell, he’d been up to Station Fourteen and the Forgotten a handful of times in the past few months, first investigating the attempted murder of a park ranger, then the Shadow Militia. Back then, he’d scanned the crime scenes without seeing beyond the job. Today, for the first time in far too long, he had done his job but seen the beauty, too.
    He couldn’t let that be destroyed. But he also couldn’t forget about the dozens of people who had already beenhurt by the Death Stare, the hundreds more that could be affected if the cops didn’t get a handle on the drug trade, pronto.
    “I can ask Matt to recommend someone to escort Tori,” Tucker said. “A couple of the rangers are ex-cops or ex-military, and they know the backcountry.”
    “So do I,” Jack grated. More, he knew a bit about Tori, and how her combination of guts and dedication could get her in trouble. And he knew that he didn’t want anyone else watching out for her. He didn’t believe in instant connections—at least not of the man-woman kind—but that didn’t stop him from wanting to be the guy out there with her, making sure that nothing bad happened to her while she was in Bear Claw.
    Tori held his eyes. “I’d feel better if it’s you out there with me.”
    Damn it. To Tucker, he said, “You’ll square it with Mendoza, right? It’s not like he really wants to see my face right now anyway.”
    Tucker nodded. “I’ll put you in for vacation, say you needed more time.”
    At Tori’s look, Jack shook his head. The sting of guilt at turning down a chance to get back on the Death Stare case was his problem, not hers.
    To Tucker, he said, “Do it.” To Tori, he said, “Looks like you’ve got yourself an escort, Dr. Bay.” And anybody who wanted to hurt her was going to have to go through him to do it.

Chapter Six
    Two days later, as she sat in her small room under the eaves of the observatory talking to her head lab tech via webcam, Tori finally started feeling like she was getting somewhere with the investigation.
    “I’ve got those sequencing results you were waiting on,” Chondra’s voice and image said from the screen of her laptop. “It’s a big file. The download may take a minute.”
    “Especially given that I’m in the middle of nowhere,” Tori agreed wryly. But although the signal was patchy and there was a good chance she could lose the uplink at any second, she was grateful to have even that much.
    Overall, life out at Station Fourteen hadn’t been as onerous as she had initially feared. She and Jack had dropped off the grid without major problems, and they’d been up to the Forgotten twice more. Granted, there had been some hairy moments—there always were on a field assignment—but nothing she couldn’t handle. And if once or twice she’d thought she saw movement in the distance, or it felt like someone was watching her, that was just the power of suggestion, just as the two times the motion sensors had gone off in the middle of the night, causing Jack to closet her safely away while he searched the observatory, had been false alarms