Durham and his band of bullies walked to his battered pickup without looking back. The truck started with a violent rev of the engine and its tires spun on the gravel, filling the air with a cloud of dust and debris.
Emma eyed their victim. Durham couldn’t be more wrong. No matter how beaten and battered he was, Benjamin Sinclair was the greatest threat alive.
She finally gathered her courage and slowly walked up to him. “You are Tom Jenkins, I hope.”
The lying snake looked her right in the eye and nodded.
“Well, Mr. Jenkins, Medicine Creek Camps is about six miles back.”
“Is there a reason you weren’t at the airfield this morning to pick me up?” he asked in an obviously pained growl, glaring at her from his one open eye.
“I was thirty miles north of town this morning, rescuing two lost canoeists who are staying at my camps.”
“And when you found them, were they also being beat up?”
“No, they were only half-drowned. I found them on a small island at the north end of Medicine Lake, huddled together to keep warm after they’d capsized their canoe.” Emma gave him a tight smile. “But then, they weren’t dressed like a sporting catalog model.”
Judging by his intensified glare, he didn’t care for that observation. Time to get Benjamin Sinclair patched up and away from Medicine Gore—and Michael—as fast as the next truck out of town could take him. Emma tucked her shotgun under her arm and stepped closer. “You need a doctor. Come on, Mr. Jenkins. My truck is up the road.”
“Go get it.”
His words were still more growled than spoken, and Emma instantly felt contrite. Benjamin Sinclair—or Tom Jenkins until she was ready to call him a liar to his face—was in immense pain. “It’s not far, Mr. Jenkins. And I don’t think I should leave you alone.”
Even slumped in pain, he was a good half foot taller than her. She didn’t want to get within ten feet of the man. Wounded animals were dangerous, and right now Benjamin Sinclair looked like he ate kittens for breakfast.
Emma picked up his backpack and fancy gun case, wrinkling her nose at the metallic smell of blood mixed with dirt. The sun was shining again and the birds were back to singing, but the temperature had permanently dropped in her heart.
Michael’s father was here.
“How far’s the truck?”
“It’s a good mile, at least,” she told him, hefting his pack onto her shoulder. “I’m sorry, but there will be more loggers driving these roads home from work. I think we should stick together.”
He reached for his gun case and grasped it like a cane. “Friendly town you’ve got here. Lead on, Miss … ?”
The man was obviously going to play out his charade. But he was badly beaten, he didn’t realize she knew who he was, and she had one very powerful trump card. All she had to do was tell someone in town who her guest was, and every living, breathing person would descend on him like a nuclear bomb.
Benjamin Sinclair hadn’t left any friends behind when he’d stolen out of town sixteen years ago—only a pregnant young girl, a town full of vigilantes, and a dead man.
Emma gave him a deceptively friendly smile. “I’m Emma Sands from Medicine Creek Camps. Um … welcome to Maine, Mr. Jenkins.”
Benjamin Sinclair started up the tote road, but he didn’t make it ten steps before his legs buckled and he fell to one knee.
Dammit. She would have to physically help him to the truck.
She expected him to feel like the snake he was; cold and slimy and disgusting. But what Emma felt as she set her shoulder under his was solid male muscle. The electric spark that shot through her nearly made her jump back.
Apparently he felt it, too. He shot upright and stiffened and glared at her again. Emma felt like a deer trapped in the light of molten gray eyes the exact same color of Michael’s.
Did he remember her?
Of course he did. The man wouldn’t have booked a stay at Medicine Creek if he didn’t know where his son was living.
The idealistic young man she remembered from sixteen years ago had been dangerously intelligent, if somewhat misguided. He’d been bold and handsome and charismatic, and Emma, only fourteen at the time, had idolized him. Her older sister had naively jumped into his bed, and Michael was the result of that recklessness. And now, after all these years, the boy was going to meet the man who had abandoned him and his mother without a backward glance.
“Are you planted here, Miss Sands, or are you waiting for me to bleed to death to save yourself the trouble of a lawsuit?”
Emma grabbed the back of his belt and started off down the dirt road. “It’s not my fault you were beaten up, Mr. Jenkins. My liability doesn’t start until you actually check in.” She snorted. “When out-of-staters wander these woods dressed like tree huggers, they have no one to blame but themselves for being mistaken for trouble.”
Emma watched him frown down at his clothes before looking back up the tote road they were hobbling along. His arm around her tightened and she shifted his pack on her shoulder, making him loosen his grip.
“They beat me up because they didn’t like my clothes?”
“There’s tension in these parts right now. Environmentalists, mostly out-of-staters, are trying to get clear-cutting banned in our forests. Everyone’s worried about losing their jobs as well as their way of life.”
Good Lord. She was explaining this to the biggest tree hugger of them all! Last time he’d come here, Benjamin Sinclair had had the backing of the Sierra Club to fight damming the river for hydropower. He’d been quiet in
