Chapter 7

Seven

A mixture of fog from the surrounding mountains and mist from the lake rolled in sometime during the night. Heavy weighted sheets of the stuff collected in the valley like some botched science experiment to create one hell of a freaking wall he couldn't see through. Every damn shadow had him on high alert. Why the hell did he agree to risk her safety for a few samples of water? He could have easily come here alone for whatever she needed.

His gaze shot from one side of the tree line to the other. Off in the distance, the low call of an elk bull sounded off before everything grew quiet again. Above, endless blue sky woke from the night's slumber with an array of blue hues.

His legs trembled and his heart felt like it wanted to either come to a full stop or explode from the strain of his efforts. But he'd shake this off like he did everything else—it was just taking longer.

Fear for him drove her out here and his fear for her wouldn't keep him pinned down for the world.

Her silence as they made their way to the lake carried a heavy weight, and he flirted with the idea of slinging her over his shoulder and doing what he promised. She would be mad as a hungry grizzly, but at least she'd be alive.

Maybe he'd picked the wrong time to drop the question on her. Hell, he knew he had, but she had a way of riling him up.

He took another step and then another, shoving down the bolts of white-hot pain that blazed up his left leg every time his foot connected with the solid ground. He'd found another staff to serve as a cane, but at this point, nothing really helped.

He pushed harder and worked to steady his trembling heartbeats, but it didn't seem to work.

"You grit your teeth any harder and they're gonna crack."

Ethan tore a hand through his hair and squinted one eye closed as a drunkard would to help counteract the seesawing motion of the ground.

He ached to reach out and pull her in close, but she kept a solid three paces in front of him since stepping off the back porch thirty minutes ago. "We're almost there. Then I can rest."

Normally at this hour, robins and hares would be out foraging for berries and little insects to feed on. Instead, everything was quiet, even his little minx.

"Are you okay," he asked when she slowed to walk beside him.

"I'm just focusing on what I need to do."

Ethan took a couple of deep breaths. Sunlight twinkled between the branches to softly stroke along her exposed shoulders and kissed the lobes of her ears. The effect settled in his mind and worked like a painkiller.

But he couldn't fight back the anger as it slipped deeper in his gut and wrapped around his insides until he could barely breathe. Brax, the fucker, had almost taken her away from him yesterday.

Ethan wanted blood. Today he and his brother would put a stop to him and whatever the hell he had up his sleeve. One way or the other, which worried him, too. The man had been part of their family for so long he felt like a brother.

He'd sensed a shift in the man's attitude toward the family months ago at the onset of winter. When he disappeared three months ago, none of them knew what to make of it. The second he showed his face, filled with scars and strange bruises, to Drake a couple weeks back, he and his brothers knew something was up. His explanation of a tussle in a bar up north didn't fly then and made lesser sense now.

He frowned. "Let's pick up the pace."

She had the ends of that damn scarf of hers wound tight around her fingers and her glasses perched slightly off-kilter. A vision of adorable geeky beauty. He wanted to smile but couldn't find the energy.

Remy pegged him with a curious, worried expression. "You sure?" Though his command grated on her judging by the way her steps faltered, she didn't miss a beat and kept up with his long, lopsided strides.

He reached for her hand and gave her fingers a light squeeze.

Sweat dripped down his back and his hold slipped on his wooden cane, forcing him to refocus and tighten his grip. Erratic heartbeat after erratic heartbeat had him breathing heavier than usual, but they didn't have time for him to stop and rest.

He hunched over briefly and stumbled over an unexposed root that poked out of the heaving ground that wouldn't stay still no matter how many times he blinked.

He grimaced.

"We have to stop. You can't go any further. I'll go ahead and get the samples. You stay here and rest."

"No." He gathered the last of his strength and she slipped beneath his other arm and helped steady him. "We go together or we don't go at all."

"That's not an option, Ethan."

"Exactly. Now let's go, Doc." Her back grew rigid, but she didn't press him for more. Thank God. He didn't have the strength to argue with her and walk at the same time.

The small trail through the tall grass rounded a bend that cut through the trees and came to the open field hugging the lake. Unease settled between his shoulder blades as though someone watched.

"We're here."

"Grab what you need, and be quick so we can be on our way. We're way too exposed out here." Every word came with a struggle. He grunted as he pulled to a stop and narrowed his eyes on the horizon where the trees still stood in deep shadow, the fog impenetrable.

Glass rattled. "Shit."

"It's okay, baby. You don't need to be nervous," he rasped, unable to swallow. Black spots clouded his vision as he lowered himself to his good leg to try to rest before the even longer hike to his brothers.

"I know. I know. It's just I don't have many bullets left and what if, you know…" She slid those sexy black-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose for the fifth time in as little minutes. It drove him mad and made his finger itch to pluck them off her face and kiss her worry away.

He laid his staff down and moved in closer. "Let me help." Everything became blurry and he shook his head to clear the cloudy images.

"No. You come in contact with this water anymore and I'll be lugging your dead ass up the hill. Not a good idea. The mist off the water is already affecting you and me."

"Not really. I'm okay. Scout's honor."

"Liar. Not the time to be brave. Let me get the test tubes filled and labeled then we can go."

Remy set out three empty containers followed by three more containing a yellow solution that bubbled when moved. A purple one that turned blue when it came in contact with the water she dripped into it and a clear one that turned black when it came into contact with the same water. To him, it all looked like a collection of magical potions rather than what a wildlife vet would keep on hand.

"I didn't know you could test on the go? Hell, I didn't know you were an apothecary."

"A person can have knowledge of more than one topic, no? And normally we can't test on the go, as you say, but my grandmother and I created a portable system that can help test if water is potable for humans to consume. Let me back up. My grandmother was the apothecary. She taught me everything she knew. I think that is why my mother loves flowers so much, come to think of it. Anyway, one time, outside Vancouver on the U.S. side we ran into a case where several animals died because of water pollution. It could have all been prevented if we could test the water right then and there. A bunch of government red tape and paperwork. So, my grandmother devised a concoction from plants and herbs that helps me do on the spot testing for contaminants or poisons. Obviously, it's not foolproof. The water I tested in the last months must not have had enough of the poison for my kit to pick up the small traces." She tsked and fell silent a moment before continuing. "You'd be surprised by what the natives in Africa use to clean wounds and purify water."

The soft tone of her voice lulled his eyelids closed. She carried on, but his brain checked out as her sweet voice carried on the soft current of cool air coming off the water. She talked when she was nervous. He smiled.

Dew coated the grass where he reclined. Small shallow breaths came and went until his eyes drifted shut. Ten minutes. That was all he needed.

"Ethan, wake up. Wake up, damn it." Fear in Remy's voice lured him from the blackness that cocooned around him, locking him in place. Roars of anger rattled in his head but his body refused to respond.

Fire stung his cheek and his eyes shot wide. Stark light drove spikes deep into his pupils.

"What the hell, Remy." He sputtered and choked as she poured some kind of nasty-tasting liquid down his throat.

"Swallow. All of it."

She poured. He worked his throat. That or drown.

The more he drank the less he felt like a jackhammer replaced his heart and the clearer his mind became.

"It looked like you stopped breathing. We have to move away from the water. The mist from the lake is poisoned and we're breathing it in."

The morning mist collected on his skin and burned his eyes. It had to be doing the same to her. "Step back from the water. Go. I'll take care of myself."

What did she give him? He inhaled and nearly vomited from the vileness that oozed down the back of his throat.

"You have to move now, Ethan. The medicine I gave you isn't strong enough to counter what you already have in your bloodstream and what you're breathing in, too. You need more and if we stay here you're going to die. Do you hear me? Now move!"

Medicine? It was more like acid.

"What did you give me?" He gritted through the pain and forced himself to his knees.

"Fireweed and yarrow, now can we move?"

His eyes watered from the burn and it took every ounce of strength inside him to pry his eyelids open.

"Come on, aren't you a fucking badass mountain man?" Arms braced beneath his arms, she hastily lifted. Bless her for trying. No way his sweet little woman could lift him.

"Water." He pulled his shirt off as she poured some from a bottle she carried in her pack over his wadded shirt and helped him clean the poison from his eyes and then did hers. A few more swipes across his face and breathing became a little easier.

Pure adrenaline and a side dose of her juju flushed his veins and he hauled himself to his feet. "What the hell just happened?"

"You passed out. The heavy dose coming off the water mixed with what's already in you and it hit like a ton of bricks. But get this, I found something." She talked as they gathered her things and started out toward his brother's place at a slow pace and away from this fucking death trap. Excitement worked into her energy. It gathered behind her eyes and spilled over through every part of exposed skin as she talked.

Repeatedly glancing down at her and their surroundings, he asked, "How damn long was I out?"

Remy leaned in close and placed her hand over his heart. "Too long."

He cringed and doused his face with more water from the bottle she offered him instead of meeting her worried gaze.

"It took me five minutes to get you to respond. I had to resort to slapping you. Any longer and I would have started pounding on you with my fists or anything else I could find."

He grunted.

"What are you smirking at, Ethan Savage?"

"You slap like a sausage-handed Italian mob boss." He rubbed at his face. "It still stings."

"Good. You scared the crap outta me." Her nose wrinkled up and caused her glasses to slip. Again. What a weakness to have. God have mercy. Ethan wanted to resist the urge to pull her up for a kiss, but he gave in to the battle and decided losing the war wasn't all that bad after all.

They didn't have time for what he wanted to do to her, but he needed to taste her, feel her alive in his arms to settle the fucking panic attack wanting to take over him.

"Your medicine has worked, it seems." He took another step, placing more weight on his injured leg. "Thank you," he whispered against her lips.

"I thought I would leave this mountain and you once my job was complete and now…" Her thoughts faded.

He tightened his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. "Not in a million years."

She stared up at him and smiled in a way that made the pain fade to nothing but background noise.

The farther away from the water they walked the easier they both breathed. "I think I'll be fine now. Did you get your samples?"

"Got more than that. I know what Brax used to poison you and I know how to counteract it. That's what I gave you."

That had his eyebrows climbing and them both coming to an abrupt halt. "You what? Really?"

"It's all pretty simple. He concocted a poison that flew under the radar from a couple of plants no one would have suspected. Pretty smart, if not totally freaking insane. Another few doses to the water and it would have been strong enough to kill humans and wildlife well into the hundreds instead of just making them ill."

"We're lucky you sampled the water and knew the counteractive steps to take."

He let her continue talking uninterrupted from there. When she got started on the business end of her degree, he knew better than to try and jump in. She fixed her glasses and started off with a flourish of old Latin names and concoctions he'd never understand unless they were written in his field guide of how to care for a broken leg or high-altitude sickness.

"Doc, hold up, you lost me at Epilobium ang-something or other. Back up to the Silverleaf nightshade. You can confirm that?"

"Yes. I don't know how he made the compound so concentrated, but yes."

"What the hell?" Flooded with fear for his family and loved ones that lived around this lake and used the water, he balled his fists at his side, leaned back and let loose a deep roar of frustration. "Why? Damn him. Why!"

"It's what I used to clear the land of the filth. Savage filthy."

Darkness rose inside him and every muscle in his body flexed with hatred. Raw and brutal hatred. The familiar grating voice whipped them both around. Lips peeled back from his teeth, he felt the burn to kill.

"Fuck you, asshole," Ethan rumbled long and low until every cell in his body hungered for a fight.

For blood.

Ethan's gaze darted from side to side as his senses scanned the area for more potential threats. Through the mist, a single pair of pale blue eyes stood out first. Ethan's attention shot to the right then left when he picked up on additional rustling.

"Run. Or stay back, but don't you dare get in the middle of this," he snarled at Remy.

He could feel her eyes on him and her presence grow even stronger on his radar.

She wanted blood too.

"Brax. You should have stayed away because this is only going to end one way." His fists clenched by his side as he scooped an arm around him to keep Remy out of harm's way. If she didn't want to run, she sure as hell wouldn't be putting herself out there to protect him again. Not while he breathed. "You son of a bitch. Why don't you come closer so I can sink my fist into your face?" he rasped out with all the hatred eating at his gut.

Red-rimmed eyes bored into him from where Brax stood several feet away. He'd seen eyes like that on a man once and he was as fucked up as Brax.

A smirk smeared across his face. One he'd gladly wipe off. Shoulders slumped, he barely recognized the man he'd known for the better part of a decade.

Dried, crusted blood smeared across his neck and shoulder where Remy's bullet hit him.

"Easy brother. I'm not here to kill you. Yet," the sleaze-ball added with a little hum to his words while slithering a dirty look over Remy, who stood by Ethan with a fierce expression of her own. She worked her way to the side, and he took another step in front of her but faltered when his stomach tumbled into his throat. Dry heaves fisted around his insides and he hunched over, gasping for air.

Steel nerves and sheer fucking hate brought him back to his full height.

"Breathe through it. Nostrils then mouth. It will pass," Remy leaned in and whispered.

He did as she suggested.

"Having trouble, bro?"

"Looks like your plan worked, Brax."

A voice came up behind him and he angled sideways in time to see beefy hands wrap around Remy's arms. A man who looked way too similar to Brax for it to be a coincidence licked a slimy tongue up her cheek while provoking him with a challenging glare.

The world turned red. The thirst for blood flooded Ethan's senses.

The stranger holding Remy backed away quickly, leaving him to face Brax.

He didn't know who swung first but he took great satisfaction when his fist plowed into the asshole's face. Drops of blood quenched the thirst of the earth at their feet. And he kept pounding.

"Ethan. No. You can't kill him."

Yes. He could. And he would.