Caden's Secret Page 2

  The kid blinked, and she exploded into action. She flung her hands behind her back, yanked out her gun, and braced her arms to aim at him. “You’re under arrest! Drop the weapon on the ground and put your hands over your head.”

  The kid woke from his trance and snorted at her. “You can’t arrest me. You’re Forest Service. You don’t have the authority to arrest anyone.”

  “This is a citizen’s arrest!” she yelled. “Drop the weapon and get down on the ground.”

  An insidious smirk stole across his face and his eyes twinkled. “All right. I’ll put it down. Just take it easy…..”

  He let go of the bear’s paw. It flopped onto his shoes. Ever so slowly, he put up his hand and took hold of the gun strap. He lifted it off his shoulder and eased the gun into his hand.

  The woman held herself stiff and ready. She crushed her pistol in a white-knuckle grip and trained it on the guy. She never faltered. He twisted his wrist around, and the gun flipped into his hand.

  What happened next unfolded so fast I couldn’t exactly comprehend it until it was all over. She straightened her arms to point her weapon at him. “Put it down!” she called.

  He didn’t put it down. Quick as lightning, he tossed the strap upward and caught the gun by the trigger grip. He let it fall into his other hand and fired. He didn’t even take proper aim or bother to shoulder the gun before it exploded.

  The girl ducked and pulled her own trigger at the same moment. The bullet whizzed wide above the kid’s head. She never got a chance to recover before he rushed her. He swiveled the rifle around and smashed it into her face full force.

  The blow buckled her to the ground and the guy pounced on top of her. He hauled back the butt for a devastating blow when another firecracker sounded through the clearing.

  My instincts told me to get out there and help her. No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than the guy reared back howling in pain. I didn’t see what happened until he writhed the other way. A searing red mark cut up his back and the pistol smoked in her hand.

  The shot gave her a brief instant of reprieve. She dropped her pistol, lunged off the ground, and seized his rifle. She didn’t try to get it away from him. She rocketed upward and forced it into his face. She cracked him hard across the cheek with the barrel.

  His head whipped back for a second and she was on him. She bucked him sideways with a powerful up thrust of her hips. She toppled him over and jumped on top of him. For an instant, I got a glimpse of her face distorted in primal fury. While he was still stunned from her surprise attack, she wrenched the rifle out of his hands, hauled it back, and smashed it into the bridge of his nose.

  The whole confrontation lasted a matter of seconds. By the time I gave myself the command to go to her aid, it was all over. The kid lay motionless on the ground, and that woman straddled him gasping and wheezing for breath.

  I retreated into the bushes to hide, but I didn’t leave. I watched her slump off her fallen enemy. Her shoulders hunched and her hair stuck to her sweaty forehead. I still couldn’t bring myself to believe what I’d just seen.

  3

  Caroline

  I threw the flatbed into Park and kicked the emergency brake down. I turned off the ignition and sat in the seat for a minute to catch my breath before I opened the door.

  A man I didn’t know leaned against the porch of the Forest Service office. A blue baseball cap covered his short brown hair, and two piercing blue eyes scrutinized the flatbed under the curved brim. His plaid shirt strained at the armpits to reveal the bulge of his biceps. A hint of a smile played on his lips.

  I glared at him through the dust-covered windshield. After the morning I just had, I wasn’t in the mood to listen to any wisecracking locals remark on this bust.

  Morris ambled onto the porch and cursed under his breath. I climbed out of the cab and handed up the file folder. “They’re all there, Morris. I checked and recorded all ten traps exactly where your informant said they would be. I took pictures of them all, and I found this at the spot near Howlers Creek.”

  “Christ, Caroline,” he muttered. “I told you not to be a hero.”

  “What was I supposed to do—let him get away with that haul?” I waved toward the flatbed. It took me over an hour to lug the last bear on top by myself, but I did it in the end.

  Morris whistled under his breath and shook his head. He pushed back his Stetson and scratched the scruff on his brow. “I suppose not, but you should have been more careful. You could have been killed.”

  “Well, I wasn’t. What do you want to do with all this?”

  He glanced up and down Main Street. Already, a bunch of the townsfolk gathered to stare at the pile of bear carcasses. “They have to be logged as evidence. Since it happened on Forest Service land, the case will go to the FBI. Take the truck down to Peter’s and store the carcasses in his deep freeze. It’s the only place in town big enough to hold them all.”

  The guy next to the porch burst out laughing. “I’m sure Peter will love that.”

  I rounded on him. “Do you have a better idea?”

  Morris interrupted. “Just tell him I told you to do it. If he has a problem with it, tell him to come and talk to me. The Forest Service will pay him more for the freezer space than he could make in a week selling sausages.”

  “What about this?” I put my hand into the cab and towed out the captive. With his wrists and ankles trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, he thudded to the ground at my feet. He swore and spat and called me every filthy name in the book, but I ignored him. “What do you want to do with this?”

  Morris stared at the guy and blinked once. “You didn’t.”

  “I had to,” I replied. “He attacked me. I had to knock him out. It was self-defense.”

  Morris shook his head and turned away. “Dear Lord in Heaven, preserve me from this lunatic.” He let out an agonized sigh. “All I ever wanted was to do some good in the world before I retire, and now I gotta deal with this.”

  The guy by the porch spoke up again. “You have to hold him until you can hand him over to the Feds. It could take them weeks to get up here to take custody of him, and you don’t have a cell. You don’t want to keep him up here. Why don’t you drive him down to Atlanta? Then you won’t have to house him and feed him and….”

  The prisoner pried back his head and bared his teeth at the stranger. “Shut the hell up, Caden Kelly! This is none of your business.”

  “Let me guess,” the man replied. “You trapped those bears on Smokey Ridge, didn’t you? That makes this my business.”

  I swung around to glare at the guy. “Kelly! You live on Smokey Ridge?”

  “Yep.” He gave me a clipped nod under his baseball cap brim. “I’m the one who reported the poachers in the first place.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. Something about him sent a chill up my spine. This guy knew more about the poachers than anyone, and he just so happened to be standing around doing nothing when I brought this kid in. Something didn’t add up here.

  Morris stepped in. “Never mind. I’ll take custody of Barret until I decide what we do with him.”

  He lumbered down the steps and laid hold of the suspect. He tried to lead the kid up the steps, but the rope around Barret’s ankles made him pitch forward into the dust.

  Caden bit back a smile. Morris fumed. “For the love of Jesus, Caroline, cut the man free so he can walk.”

  I took out my pocket knife and severed the rope. Morris took Barret inside and left me standing there face to face with this curious stranger.

  His eyes glittered more than ever. The crystal blue glowed with an inner light. Everything about him radiated command and control. Was that what made me think he knew all about this case or was it that he belonged to the Kellys and he was the one who found those traps? I couldn’t make it out, but his presence drew me to him. He sparked my curiosity to find out more about him.

  He dipped his hat brim one more time. He still kept his arms crossed
over his broad chest. Whoever he was, he was built like a tank under his jeans and faded shirt. “You did good bringing him in.”

  I shrugged. “I had to. I couldn’t let him walk away with all those bears. It’s no wonder these mountains are struggling with people like him around.”

  “They won’t stop,” he remarked. “Don’t think you made a dent in their operation with one bust. They’ll keep going, no matter what you do?”

  My head shot up. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re new around here. You don’t know.” He waved his hand toward the office. “That kid is Barret Lynch. His Clan lives in the northern mountains. They run a huge organization shipping these bears to China for the black market. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry. One bust won’t stop them.”

  I couldn’t blink staring at him. “How do you know so much about them?”

  “Oh, I know all about the Lynches. I know more about them than I want to, and I know one bust won’t stop them when they set out to do something. I also know they’ll have Barret out on bail in a few hours.”

  I gasped out loud. “A few hours! How could they? He would have to go before a judge and have a bail hearing and everything.”

  “Not for this. This is a federal case and the Lynches have connections going all the way to Washington. He’ll make one phone call. Heck, he’s probably in there making it right now. His old man will pull a few strings and Morris will get a call from the FBI telling them to let Barret go. They’ll be back running their trapline by morning. I can promise you that.”

  I shook my head, but I already knew it was true. If they got away with it once, they wouldn’t stop. The lure of big money would keep them coming back.

  I pushed those thoughts out of my head and studied the man in front of me. The more I talked to him, the more I wanted to keep on talking to him. I wanted to find out everything he knew, not just about this case but all about the mountains and the local area and everything. Who better to ask than him?

  “Did you…..?” I faltered. “Did you notice anything…. you know, unusual when you found those traps?”

  His eyes drilled into my soul. Why did I ask that? Why couldn’t I just leave well enough alone?

  He gritted his teeth for a second. His jaw muscle jumped before he answered. “Do you mean the ginseng?”

  My jaw dropped. “You know about that?”

  “It would be kinda hard to miss it,” he replied. “I smelled it all over the traps and all around them, too. It was unmistakable.”

  “I wondered if I imagined it.” I couldn’t speak above a whisper. Somehow, I got the feeling I was sharing a dangerous secret with him. My heart fluttered against my ribs.

  “You didn’t imagine it. I smelled it, too. That’s how I knew it was the Lynches who set those traps. They farm ginseng in their neck of the woods up north. Whoever set the traps must have tracked the smell there on their shoes.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “Really?”

  “Do you think it’s an accident they just happened to place those traps as near as possible to Smokey Ridge?” he asked. “They were trying to frame the Kellys. They thought they could make a mint and get us in trouble at the same time. They probably hoped we would get our land confiscated.”

  “Why would they want to do that?”

  “Because they hate us. That’s why,” he replied. “They probably hoped they could lure us into a Clan war, or that if anyone found the traps so close to our boundary that we would take the blame. That would be just like the Lynches.”

  I shook my head and scanned the town, but I didn’t see anything in front of me. The whole incident played out in my head. So that was why the poachers planted their traps within a few hundred yards of private property.

  Any other poachers would trap a bunch of bears in one location and then move their traps somewhere else. The bears would smell the blood and dead scent of the corpses. They would change their habits. A smart poacher would shift his traps around to catch the bears unawares. Besides, the bears themselves wouldn’t hang around so close to the Kellys fence line. The location would be less than ideal for catching as many bears as possible.

  The Lynches must have had some ulterior motive to keep their traps so near the Kellys’ property. The fact that Caden reported the traps and their locations proved that his Clan didn’t plant them. They wouldn’t poach bears so close to their own land. That would be moronic, and Caden didn’t strike me as a moron—far from it.

  He pushed himself off the porch. He unfolded his arms and took a couple of long strides toward me. He lowered his voice to a murmur even though no one was around to hear him. “You have to be careful from now on, Caroline. Barret will tell his Clan who arrested him and who took his haul of bears. In a few hours, the whole Clan will know your name. They won’t forget this. Watch your step out there. All right?”

  His bottomless blue eyes caught me in their mesmerizing glow. I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, but no sound came out.

  The next second, he stepped around me and vanished out of my sight without a trace.

  4

  Caden

  I slammed the Jeep into Park. For a second, I let my forehead fall against the steering wheel and closed my eyes. I had to pull myself together.

  Caroline. Caroline. That name kept ringing in my head. I had to get her out of my mind and fast. I couldn’t imagine her sultry brown hair whipping sideways when she knocked Barret Lynch out. I couldn’t let myself dream about her rounded hips hiking through the forest right in front of me.

  I couldn’t think of her at all. She wasn’t one of my kind. She was an outsider, and that meant only one thing. I had to keep as far away from her as possible. I already screwed up big time following her to the Forest Service office to find out who she was.

  God, what was happening to me? I shouldn’t be interested in one of the Others. That wasn’t allowed, and anyway, it was impossible. Everybody knew that. The humans kept to their world and we kept to ours. That’s the way it stayed for hundreds of years and it would continue that way for hundreds more. It wouldn’t change with one person.

  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t force her out of my head. She put herself on the wrong side of the Lynches and she didn’t even know it. She did it with one blow. That fight against Barret would change her life. In all likelihood, it would get her killed.

  What if….? No, it couldn’t be, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to turn my back on her. She might be human. I could ignore that. I could even ignore my feelings for her, but I couldn’t ignore what she did. None of the Kellys could.

  I didn’t have any feelings for her. I kept repeating that over and over in my mind. I didn’t have any feelings for her. I couldn’t. That would be like a dolphin having feelings for a sheep.

  I fired up the Jeep and drove the rest of the way up the Ridge toward home. I angled in next to the house and switched off the motor. My Pop, Xavier Kelly, and his brother Andrew sat in their places on the porch. They didn’t twitch a whisker when I made my appearance.

  I got out, but I didn’t go near the house. I didn’t belong there anymore until I settled this. I walked to a low bungalow on the other side of the yard. I let myself in and made my way to the room in the far rear. I spun the combination dial on a gun safe in the corner.

  I took out a shotgun and cracked open the breach. Two gleaming shells winked up at me. I closed it and set it aside when an all-too-familiar voice made me look up. “Is everything all right, son?”

  I relaxed when my Pop migrated to my side. “Everything’s fine—well, sort of not fine, actually. There’s a new Forest Service ranger in town. She just busted Barret Lynch poaching bears across our east fence line. He’s under arrest at the Forest Service office, and she took about eleven bear carcasses into evidence. I’m going to keep an eye on her for a while just so she’s safe.”

  He nodded. “Good idea. Go on, then, son.”

  He started to turn away, but I called after him. “Po
p?”

  “Yes, son?”

  “When you met Ma…I mean….” I stammered. “How did you two meet?

  He furrowed his brow. “You know all about that, son. You know we met at her father’s place in Granite Gorge when my Uncle Thompson went up there for a treaty negotiation.”

  I waved my hand, more confused than ever. “I know that. I’m just asking…. did you…. I mean, when you first met her…. did you…..What I’m trying to say is….”

  He waited. “What exactly are you trying to say, son?”

  I whirled around to hide in the gun safe. “Nothing. I’m not trying to say anything.”

  He cocked his head like he was listening to something outside the range of hearing. “You can’t be thinking of starting something with this ranger lady. You know the rules, son. Don’t even think about it.”

  “I’m not. I just….”

  “She’s not one of us,” he continued. “It’s impossible.”

  “But don’t you think…..maybe…..there might be some chance…..”

  “No, I don’t,” he snapped. “You know the rules. Don’t even go there. If you think you need to keep an eye on her to keep her safe from the Lynches, I won’t stand in your way. Just don’t talk to me about anything beyond that. Are we clear?”

  I bowed my head and drilled my toe into the carpet. “Yes, Sir. We’re clear.”

  He marched out of the bungalow and left me there. I stared down at my shoes for a long time. I already knew everything he said. I heard it all my life. Our people didn’t mix with Others. We took mates from the other Clans. That’s the way it worked.

  He and my Ma would probably be happier if I married someone from Clan Lynch than to look sideways at one of the Others.

  I wasn’t looking sideways at Caroline. I just wanted to help her. She did our Clan a big favor busting Barret like that. She got herself in trouble doing it. She didn’t know how much trouble yet, but I did. I owed her. We all owed her.