to stay open. At least Sean was considering the possibility that someone else may have killed Jackson. While thankful for his ability to focus on facts, what she really wanted was his trust. She sensed that once this man made up his mind, he would pursue his goal no matter how difficult the challenge.
She wanted him on her side and decided to use every ounce of her persuasive abilities to prove her innocence. Right now, it would be wonderful if he believed her, but she’d settle for what she could get. “The first thing I remember is you asking how my head felt. I don’t know where I am or how I got here.”
“You’re in Alaska.”
“Alaska!” She sat up abruptly and pain sliced down her neck.
“Easy.” With a big hand on each of her shoulders, he steadied her.
He smelled of cedar and a hint of wood smoke. For a moment she thought he might insist she lie back down. Instead he held her until she stopped swaying and she took comfort in his support. In her injured state, the last thing she needed was to crack her head again. She accepted his help, and yet she sensed the crackling tension in him. Obviously he wanted to find answers to Jackson’s murder as badly as she did.
While she couldn’t be certain whether to trust him, she’d come to the conclusion Sean McCabe would not act with haste. No matter how deep his feelings, he was a man with unusual self-control.
“I don’t remember how I got here. I’m from Florida.”
Her head spun. Her stomach refused to settle. And she wished he’d stop staring at her as if she were an exotic animal in a zoo. “How do we know each other?”
Before he answered, voices and several dog barks from outside the cave interrupted. A new voice echoed through the cave. “Sean! You want us to bring the sleds into the mine or leave them out—”
Three men entered the cave. The first man was huge as a grizzly bear and looked as if he’d never used a razor. His black beard must have been a foot long. He towered over a slender youth who wore neon-green ski gear, goggles on his forehead and five earrings in his left ear. The third man looked ordinary enough, except when he scowled at her, she spotted a gold front tooth.
From somewhere in her mind came a saying about women searching for husbands in a state where men outnumbered women eight to one. The odds were good but the goods were odd. Even with the knot on her head she couldn’t have dreamed up an odder assortment of men.
All three visitors took in Jackson’s body beneath the blanket and then their hostile gazes settled on her. At the anger and accusations in their faces, she wanted to lie back down and close her eyes, but she forced herself to remain sitting upright.
The man with the long beard pointed at her and spoke with a harsh growl. “Marvin said my brother killed his murderer.”
No wonder the man eyed her with such hostility. He was Jackson’s brother. Automatically, she looked for a similarity in features—but she had no idea what the man she’d supposedly killed looked like.
As if sympathetic to her plight, Sean placed himself between her and the intruders and sat on a crate by the camp stove. “I was mistaken, Roger.”
“Hell of a mistake,” chided the man with the gold tooth. “We could have all walked into a trap.”
Carlie kept quiet, her gaze flickering from the other men to Sean, who’d clearly taken charge. He had a stillness about him, a calm that spread outward from his center, which reassured her.
But Roger, Jackson’s brother, was clearly incensed. And while the gold-toothed fellow seemed to find her predicament diverting, the twenty-something kid in the ski clothes looked none too happy with her, either.
The kid tossed his goggles to the ground and unzipped his ski jacket. “Want me to call—”
“Why bring in outsiders?” Roger muttered through his beard as he peered at her with a scowl. “We should string her up right now.”
The man with the gold front tooth turned his head and spit out a stream of tobacco juice. “I’m not hanging no female.”
“There will be no vigilante justice on this mountain,” Sean said with an authority that sliced through the argument and had the men looking at their feet. “If she killed Jackson, she’ll get the justice she deserves.”
The men settled around the stove, forming a circle that closed her out, their argument swirling around her like a tornado. Amid the shouts, an aura of great stillness surrounded Sean. He did not shout. He did not shift from foot to foot or clench his fingers. And he didn’t just take up space, he controlled it.
Exhausted, she lay back in the blankets, bunching the material in her fists. Sean appeared to be in charge and inclined to protect her from the others.
But who would protect her from him?
AFTER TYLER UNZIPPED his ski jacket, he poured coffee, and Sean glanced at Carlie. Although he caught an alert gleam of speculation in her expression, the effort to hold up her head was costing her. Fatigue crept in around the edges of her eyes and her mouth drew into a tight line of pain. She’d clenched her jaw, but after she caught him watching her, she’d forced her features to relax, as if admitting to pain was a weakness. He couldn’t help but admire her mettle. She was strong, this woman, and he’d long ago discovered that strength often hid powerful passions. He couldn’t help wondering what kind of passions simmered beneath her surface. He also wondered if she thought she’d told him the truth.
She required medical treatment, but first, he had to think of the best way to calm down Roger. Jackson’s brother had one hell of a temper. He loved nothing better than a good fight. Next to fighting, he liked shouting, but once he settled, he had a good heart. And he never held a grudge.
Sean wished he could have a few moments alone with the man. From his clenched fists to the tight cords in his neck, Jackson’s brother appeared as if the grief bottled up inside him was ready to burst. But short of a fistfight, Sean had no way to ease Roger’s grief, fearing even a few kind words might set off Roger in front of the others.
Tyler set the coffee back on the stove, but not before shooting Carlie a look of angry speculation. He, too, had liked and respected Jackson, who had been popular among the men, not just because he was an old-timer and one of the partners in the Dog Mush, but because he had the habit of adopting strays, the lost, the lonely, the forgotten. So even the irreverent Tyler held him in high esteem, and his anger at his murderer was fully justified in his eyes.
Sean next glanced at Marvin. His normally gold-smiling visage was tight, as if having difficulty holding his poker face. Sean had his work cut out for him to defuse the men’s anger. Carlie was a stranger; Kesky’s inhabitants held a natural distrust of outsiders that was common in small towns and more prevalent in the Alaskan wilds.
Not liking the way all three men glared at Carlie and fearing their hostility could erupt into violence, Sean squatted back on his heels and accepted a cup of coffee. “When I called Marvin, I thought she—” he jerked his thumb at Carlie “—was dead, too.”
“Too bad you were wrong.” Roger’s dark brows drew together as he stared at his brother’s body.
“Why did she kill Jackson?” Marvin asked, his gambler’s eyes assessing Carlie with an interest that made Sean’s protective urges kick in.
“She
