searched the rest of that evening and couldn’t find her. Figured. He had better luck with animals. If Angela were a deer he’d be able to guess how she’d behave and move across the landscape. Even better, he’d be able to follow her trail.
He wished she wasn’t home today. But there was her black Honda Accord parked in front of her house.
Besides introducing himself, he’d wanted to explain his role in keeping the area safe when they’d met on Sunday night. For the past few months, every two weeks, he collected the trash residents put outside.
“Sure, you can borrow my truck and pick up the trash for me,” Albert, whose job it was, had said when Jake offered.
What Jake hadn’t told his friend—and what he wouldn’t tell Angela—was why he needed to be the trash collector.
He wanted to go through the Rubios’s trash.
So far, the past two months, Jake hadn’t found so much as an empty Ephedrine box, acetone or even stained coffee filters stuffed in their bins. If they were using the cabin as a meth lab, they were doing a good job of hiding it.
Pulling down his baseball hat, he adjusted his binoculars and scanned the cul-de-sac again, focusing on the occupant of 522 Jackrabbit Road: Angela Taylor.
Jake, on behalf of the Game and Fish Department, was working with the police to put Miguel Rubio away. Unusual, yes, but in small towns, agencies often worked together. Miguel was both a suspected poacher and drug dealer, and he didn’t mind putting his family’s—and neighbors’—lives at risk.
Angela stepped out of the cabin and checked her watch. He was far enough away and off the beaten path that he knew she couldn’t see him.
He gritted his teeth, remembering his failure to act all those years ago on the number seventeen bus. He had allowed a twentysomething female to become the top news item of the hour, day, week, year, thanks to a video caught on a teenager’s Nokia N95 cell phone, thirty frames per second. Jake had been in his mid-twenties, idealistic and wet behind the ears. He’d believed in the cop’s creed: serve mankind, safeguard lives and property, protect the innocent. Because Marena’s likeness had been seared into his brain, Jake had supplied details about her appearance that the teenager’s video hadn’t captured, and Marena Erickson, who’d been in the witness protection program, had been identified.
That’s when Jake had confided in one of his peers, who’d turned out to be a crooked cop.
The situation had spiraled out of control and Marena had gotten hurt. It was a hard way to learn that loose lips sink ships.
Maybe Marena Erickson hadn’t been so innocent. He’d seen a photo of her and her sister at just sixteen, sitting in a bright red convertible in front of a mansion that could have housed most of the people that lived in this area. She’d had flowing blond hair, dark sunglasses and a look that said, “I’m all that and more.”
Her twin, Sophia, had sat beside her. She’d worn a baseball cap and no sunglasses. They were a lot alike but they weren’t identical; Sophia’s hair was a shade darker, her face tanned. She, too, had the “I’m all that and more” expression. The two of them had been brave, turning state’s evidence against Marena’s husband as well as their father. The convertible and mansion had been sold to pay for lawyer fees.
Jake closed his eyes, remembering. Just one day after the bus incident, Marena had been shot, left for dead. The attorney general’s office had whisked her, her sister and her daughter away so quickly that Jake felt as if he’d been left standing on the edge of a crumbling cliff.
One he’d created.
Internal Affairs had nailed the cop Jake had spoken to. Jake had finished his current assignment and then, because he couldn’t trust himself, he’d turned in his badge.
He’d been unable to erase the face of a mother protecting her child while he’d sat there doing nothing.
And now here she was, renting an old cabin. Angela had planted something in the dirt in front. From a distance it looked like shrubs. The curtains were new and colorful. Two bright red outdoor chairs sat in the yard.
Jake had thought protecting forests would be a way to give back but not endanger anyone. He’d been wrong. There were just as many criminals in the wilderness as there were in the city. More, maybe.
Like the Rubio family.
Miguel Rubio had returned home just this morning after being gone two full days. According to Rafe, the man had been with another woman in Adobe Ridge, a small town not even an hour away. Jake wondered if Judy, the mother of his children, knew. She’d not left the house in two days, not even to let her little boy play in the sun.
Come to think of it, Jake had never seen Billy playing out front.
Jake really should be watching the Rubio cabin instead of Angela’s, wondering how, of all places, she’d found her way to his turf.
Angela Taylor. He needed to think of her as Angela Taylor.
Witness protection usually worked and, by all accounts, Angela had followed protocol. She’d eliminated contact with all family and friends, and she and her twin sister had made a totally new life.
They’d chosen a lifestyle completely different from the one in their previous lives and memorized personal histories with nothing personal about them. Marena had changed her appearance and lived as a single young mother who never dated and whose consistent was taking martial arts classes.
And now she’d changed it again. Her hair was straight, no bangs, and it cascaded down her shoulders. She wore little or no makeup. An emerald-green cowl circled her neck. She was probably an inch shorter than he was.
He knew her story by heart. Still dreamed it.
He’d blown their cover.
Guilt had him gripping the binoculars tighter. Luckily, watching her, he could tell she didn’t even limp. Amazing what a prosthetic leg could do. His fault, though. All his fault.
That fateful day she’d gotten off work and picked up her two-year-old daughter from day care. She’d been riding the bus home, completely innocent, not doing anything foolish.
Until the meth-head had reached for her daughter.
When they’d crossed paths, Jake was an idealistic undercover police officer living the life of a high school gang member.
Today, halfway through his thirties, he still carried a gun—only one—but the emblem on his shirt identified him as a forest ranger instead of a cop. Lately he wasn’t sure if he could save people from themselves. His main job was to give directions, check permits and to grouse at hikers who thought it sane to enter his wilderness without alerting anyone of their whereabouts.
Speaking of whereabouts...
He scanned the area. Angela had finished preparing her trash for pickup and was now uncovering her bougainvillea bushes. Unaware she was being watched, she did a little skip dance.
“Go back in,” he whispered. Please.
Years ago Miguel Rubio had run a meth lab. Jake remembered that bust. The Rubios had lost two children to foster care. Jake didn’t know if
