Bear Claw Bodyguard Read Online Free PDF

from there.”
    “Sounds like a plan.”
    It didn’t take her long to select the gear she wanted to carry with her and load it into her knapsack, then jettison a few of the less crucial pieces so she wouldn’t kill herself trying to carry it. Jack stood nearby the whole time, keeping watch. With the shotgun slung across his back and a 9 mm in a hip holster, and his eyes scanning the trees with practiced intensity, he didn’t look like any cop she’d dealt with before. There was no badge or polyester, no subtle twitch that said he was more comfortable with civilization than out in the backcountry. Instead, there was the deep stillness she associated with hunters and spiritualists, though he didn’t strike her as either of those things, or at least not entirely. He was…different, she decided. Unexpected.
    And she really needed to stop trying to figure out her chaperone and do her darned job. “Ready?” she said too brightly.
    He gave her a look that said they weren’t headed off to a picnic and she didn’t need to sound so happy about it, but aloud, he said only, “You take point and I’ll watchour backs. You see anything suspicious, yell out, okay? I don’t care how small or silly it might seem—let me make that call.”
    Sobering, she nodded. “Got it.” Even though given how thoroughly he was scanning their surroundings, she had a feeling he would pick up on anything suspicious way before she even had a clue. She wasn’t sure why that made her nerves worse rather than better, but she was definitely on edge as they headed off along the continuation of the tire-beaten track. She was hyperaware of his walking slightly behind and off to the side of her like a big, bristling guard dog at heel. Only he was so much more than that…which made him far too distracting.
    Then she saw the first thready tendrils hanging from a strangely gnarled branch, and her attention sharpened between one heartbeat and the next. She paused on the track and said softly, “Oh. Hello there.” And in that instant, she felt like herself for the first time since she’d stepped through the final airport security checkpoint and into Jack Williams’s world.
    She was aware of his watching her and keeping close as she moved off the track and circled from one infected tree to the next, following where the tendrils grew thicker and thicker, along a wandering line that angled away from the roadway. She dragged her fingertips along the trunks but didn’t touch the tendrils yet. Instead, she cataloged her impressions of the desert-dry backcountry, where the sun beat down even at its fading angle and the dust had a faint tang she couldn’t quite place. What are you? she thought, looking up at the white strands and seeing the way the branches curled inward where they attached, becoming bent, until the most infected of the trees came to look likeancient gnomes, stooped and gnarled, with wispy white hair that trailed nearly to the ground.
    “Anything I can help with?” Jack asked.
    She looked back at him, startled, both because for a moment she’d almost forgotten he was there and because he actually seemed to mean it. “Actually, there is. Give me the local-level dirt on this place.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “How’d you figure me for a local?”
    “You mentioned your father and uncle being detectives here, too. I made the leap.”
    That earned her a considering look before he nodded and said, “Good leap. Yep, umpteenth-generation local here. My great-something-grandparents helped found the city, and there have been Williamses policing Bear Claw pretty much ever since.”
    “Which makes you the perfect person to fill me in on the Forgotten,” she said, turning her attention back to the trees and telling herself there was no reason for her to feel a pang at the confirmation that his roots went deep.
    “What do you already know?”
    “Pretend I just walked in here with no advance info. You never know what’s going to spark a