Witness in the Woods Read online

  He’ll fight tooth and nail

  To keep her safe.

  When shots are fired, wildlife officer Joe Cash responds to the call and finds himself face-to-face with Skylar Davis and her pet...wolf. It’s Joe’s job to protect all endangered species—including the pretty vet’s menagerie of rescues. As the threats intensify, Joe realizes Skylar could be the key to busting a ruthless poaching ring. But she’s keeping a secret that could cause more harm than either of them can imagine.

  “If that bullet had been half an inch closer...” The man suddenly bowed his head and winced.

  Skylar was taken aback by his reaction. “Joe? What’s wrong? I’m okay.”

  “Right.” He lifted his head and his jaw pulsed with tension. “You always were able to take care of yourself.”

  He’d learned exactly what she’d hoped to teach him about her. Regrettably.

  Skylar lifted her chin bravely. “Still can take care of myself.”

  “Being shot at is no way to go about it, Skylar. If anything would have happened to you...” He winced again and looked aside, toward the firepit.

  Skylar found herself leaning forward in hopes of him finishing that sentence.

  WITNESS IN THE WOODS

  USA TODAY Bestselling Author

  Michele Hauf

  Michele Hauf is a USA TODAY bestselling author who has been writing romance, action-adventure and fantasy stories for more than twenty years. France, musketeers, vampires and faeries usually feature in her stories. And if Michele followed the adage “write what you know,” all her stories would have snow in them. Fortunately, she steps beyond her comfort zone and writes about countries and creatures she has never seen. Find her on Facebook, Twitter and at michelehauf.com.

  Books by Michele Hauf

  Harlequin Intrigue

  Storm Warning

  Witness in the Woods

  Harlequin Nocturne

  The Witch’s Quest

  The Witch and the Werewolf

  An American Witch in Paris

  The Billionaire Werewolf’s Princess

  Tempting the Dark

  This Strange Witchery

  The Saint-Pierre Series

  The Dark’s Mistress

  Ghost Wolf

  Moonlight and Diamonds

  The Vampire’s Fall

  Enchanted by the Wolf

  In the Company of Vampires

  Beautiful Danger

  The Vampire Hunter

  Beyond the Moon

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Joseph Cash—A conservation officer with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Joe’s investigation into a local poaching ring will rip a trusted friend from his life and bring him back to the woman he has always desired.

  Skylar Davis—A small-animal veterinarian who rehabs rescue animals. Her only dream is to build a sanctuary for all the animals who need help. But will her family allow that to happen?

  Max Owen—The elderly Chippewa naturalist who took Joseph under his wing when he was a child and became his lifelong mentor, teaching him to respect the wild.

  Stella—The timber wolf Skylar rescued as a pup; lost a leg to a snare trap.

  Cole Pruitt—Skylar’s ex-fiancé has a new job, a new address and a big secret.

  Malcolm Davis—Skylar’s uncle, who lives on the property bordering her land and owns Davis Trucking. He’s known for poaching, and getting away with it, but what else is he doing to evade the law?

  Dorothy Davis—Skylar’s long-lost mother. The things she doesn’t know could change Skylar’s life forever.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Enemy Infiltration by Carol Ericson

  Chapter One

  Joseph Cash raced toward the admittance doors of St. Luke’s emergency room. He’d driven furiously from Lake Seraphim the moment he’d heard the dispatcher’s voice announce that an elderly Indian man near death had been found crawling at the edge of County Road 7. A young couple had spotted him, pulled over and called the police.

  Joe had responded to Dispatch and asked if he could take the call. She’d reported back that an ambulance was already at the scene and the man was being transferred to Duluth. The patient was seizing, and the initial report had been grim. They couldn’t know if he’d arrive alive or dead.

  The description the dispatcher had given Joe could have been that of any elderly Native American. Sun-browned skin, long dark hair threaded with gray and pulled into a ponytail. Estimated age around eighty.

  But Joe instinctually knew who the man was. His heart had dropped when he’d heard the location where the man had been found climbing up out of the ditch on all fours. That was the one place Max Owen had used to rendezvous with Joe when he brought him provisions, because from there it was a straight two-mile hike through the thick Boundary Waters to where he’d camped every summer for twenty years in a little tent at the edge of a small lake.

  Joe hadn’t seen Max since June, two months earlier. He’d looked well, though his dry cough had grown more pronounced over the past year. Max had attributed it to the bad habit of smoking when he’d been a teenager. If anything happened to end that old man before Joe could see him—no, he mustn’t think like that.

  Now he entered the too-bright, fluorescent-lit hallway of the ER intake area. Three people queued before the admissions desk, waiting to be assessed for triage. Normally, Joe would respectfully wait his turn, as he had occasion to check in on patients he’d brought here himself while on duty as a conservation officer with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

  Fingers curling impatiently in and out of his fists, he stepped from foot to foot. He couldn’t wait. If the emergency crew hadn’t been certain about Max’s condition...

  “The Native American man who was brought in,” he said over the head of a stooped elderly woman at the front of the line.

  The male nurse behind the bulletproof glass glanced up and, at the sight of Joe, smiled. Though weariness etched the nurse’s brow, his eyes glinted. “Hey, handsome, who you looking for?”

  “An old man was found on County Road 7 about forty-five minutes ago. Dispatch says they brought him here.” He wore the conservation officer’s green jacket over his matching forest-green cotton shirt, so he had the official gear to grant him authority. But it probably wouldn’t matter, Joe decided, as the nurse winked at him.

  “Please, I don’t mean to interrupt, ma’am.” Joe flashed a smile at the old woman who was giving him the stink eye. “I think I know him. I can provide identification. He’s eighty-two, Native American...” Joe thought ab
out it less than a moment, then clasped his fingers at his neck. “And he always wore an eagle talon on a leather choker at his neck.”

  The nurse nodded. “We got your guy.” He glanced at the computer screen before him and then muttered, “Oh.”

  That single utterance dropped Joe’s heart to his gut. Because he knew. The nurse didn’t need to say anything more.

  Wincing through the sudden rise of sadness that welled in his chest, Joe nodded toward the doors that led to the treatment rooms. The nurse touched the security button, which released the lock on the doors, and Joe dashed through, calling back a mumbled thanks.

  He hadn’t bothered to ask for a room number. There were only two rooms designated for those bodies that awaited the coroner’s visit. He knew that from previous visits. Walking swiftly down the hallway, he beat a fist into his palm as he neared the first room. The walls were floor-to-ceiling windows. All the curtains had been pulled, and no light behind them shone out.

  “Officer?” A short blonde nurse in maroon scrubs appeared by his side and looked up at him. She smelled like pink bubblegum.

  “I heard the dispatch call on the old man,” Joe said. “I may be able to identify him.”

  “Excellent. We thought he was a John Doe. I’ll just need your badge and name for our records. Why don’t you step inside the room and take a look to confirm your guess while I grab some forms?”

  “Is he...? When did he—?”

  “He was DOA. Dr. Preston called it ten minutes ago. Presented as ingestion of a poisonous substance, but we’re waiting for the coroner to do a thorough workup. I’ll be right back!”

  She was too cheery, but then Joe had learned that the ER sported all ranges of personalities, and it was those who exuded cheer who survived longest the grueling emotional toll such work forced upon them. Either that, or she was faking it to get through yet another endless shift.

  He opened the sliding door, which glided too quietly, and stepped inside the room. Though the body on the bed was covered from head to toe with a white sheet, he just knew. The ten-year-old boy inside him shook his head and sucked in his lower lip. Not fair. Why Max?

  Carefully, Joe tugged back the sheet from the head. Recognition seized his heart. He caught a gasp at the back of his throat.

  “Oh, Max.” Joe swore softly and gripped the steel bed rail. The man had been so kind to him over the years. He was literally the reason Joe currently worked for the DNR.

  Poison? But how? It made no sense.

  The sudden arrival of the nurse at his side startled him. She moved like a mouse, fast and stealthily.

  “Sorry.” She handed him a clipboard and then turned on a low light over the bed. “Just need your signature. Do you recognize the deceased?”

  “I do.” Joe scribbled his name and badge number on the standard form and handed it back to her. “His name is Maximilien Owen and he’s Chippewa. The Fond du Lac band. Doesn’t live on the Fond du Lac reservation, though. Hasn’t associated closely with his tribe for decades. Eighty-two years old. Has never seen a doctor a day in his life. I thought he was healthy, though he’d had a dry cough of late. Are you sure it was poison?”

  “That was the initial assessment. You know these Native Americans have herbs and plants they use for rituals and whatnot. Probably ate the wrong plant or something. It’s very sad,” she added.

  Joe lifted a brow. She had no idea.

  “Max would never eat the wrong plant,” Joe insisted. “He lived off the land his entire life. He knew the Boundary Waters like no one else. His dad used to be a tracker in the Vietnam War, and he taught Max everything he knew.”

  “Oh, that’s touching.”

  She wasn’t in the mood to hear the old man’s life story, and Joe wasn’t going to gift her with Max’s wonderful tale. He pegged her cheery attitude as a false front.

  “I’m going to stick around for the coroner,” he said. “I want an autopsy.”

  The nurse’s jaw dropped. “Do you...know his family? We don’t usually...”

  “He didn’t have family. I’ll pay for the autopsy. This is important.”

  Joe wasn’t about to let the old man be filed away as an accidental poisoning. That was not Max. At all. Something wasn’t right. And Joe would not rest until it was confirmed that Max’s death had been natural—or not.

  Two weeks later...

  BURNING CEDARWOOD SWEETENED the air better than any fancy department store perfume Skylar Davis had ever smelled. Pine and elm kindling crackled in the bonfire before her. A refreshingly cool August breeze swept in from the lake not thirty yards away and caressed her shoulders. She breathed in, closing her eyes, and hugged the heavy white satin wedding dress against her chest.

  It was time to do this.

  Beside her on the grass, alert and curious, sat Stella, the three-year-old timber wolf she’d rescued as a pup. Skylar could sense the wolf’s positive, gentle presence. The wolf was there for her. No matter what.

  She opened her eyes and then dropped the wedding dress onto the fire. Smoke coiled. Sparks snapped. Stella sounded an are-you-sure-about-this yip.

  “Has to be done, Stella. I can’t move forward any other way.”

  Using a long, charred oak stick peeled clean of bark—her father’s fire-poking stick—she nudged the lacy neckline of the dress deeper into the flames. The tiny pearls glowed, then blackened, and the lace quickly melted. The frothy concoction, woven with hopes and dreams—and a whole lot of reckless abandon—meant little to her now.

  Stepping back to stand beside Stella, Skylar planted the tip of the fire-poking stick in the ground near her boot and nodded. She should have done this two months earlier—that Saturday afternoon when she’d found herself marching into the county courthouse with hell in her eyes and fury in her heart. An unexpected conversation with her uncle an hour earlier had poked through her heart and left it ragged.

  Her world had tilted off balance that day. The man she’d thought she was ready to share the rest of her life with had a secret life that he’d attempted to keep from her. She’d had her suspicions about Cole Pruitt, which was why she had been the one to approach Uncle Malcolm in the flower shop parking lot that morning she had intended to say I do. Normally she’d find a way to walk a wide circle around the family member who had done nothing but serve her and her father heartache over the years. But she’d had to know. And Malcolm had been just evasive enough for her to press—until he’d spilled the truth about Cole.

  Since then, life had been strangely precarious. Not only had she ditched a fiancé, but her uncle had been keeping a close eye on her, as well. Hounding her about the parcel of land he wanted her to sell to him. And so close to making threats, but not quite. Still, she was constantly looking over her shoulder for something—danger, or...a rescuer?

  Hell, she was a strong, capable woman who could take care of herself. She didn’t need rescuing.

  Maybe.

  “Stella, I—”

  Something stung Skylar’s ear. It felt like a mosquito, but immediately following that sudden burn, she saw wood split out, and a small hole appeared through the old hitching post three feet to her right.

  “What the—?”

  Clamping a hand over her ear and instinctively ducking, Skylar let out a gasp as another hole suddenly drilled into the post.

  Stella jumped to all fours, alert and whining in a low and warning tone. The wolf scanned the woods that surrounded their circle of a backyard. Cutting the circle off on the bottom was the rocky lakeshore. A cleared swath in the thick birch and maple woods opened to the lake, where Skylar saw no boat cruising by. Was someone in the woods?

  She opened her hand before her. Blood smeared one of her fingers. What had just happened?

  The holes in the post answered that question. And set Skylar’s heartbeats to a faster pace.

  “Stella, stay here.”
Still in a squat, Skylar patted her thigh. The wolf crept to her side and Skylar ran her fingers through her soft summer coat. “Someone just shot at me,” she whispered.

  And, unfortunately, that was no surprise.

  Chapter Two

  Finishing off a ham-and-pickle sandwich he’d packed for a late lunch, Joe Cash sat in his county-issue four-by-four pickup truck outside the public access turnoff to Lake Vaillant. He’d just come off the water after a long day patrolling, which involved checking that fishermen had current licenses, guiding a few lost tourists in the right direction and issuing a warning to a group of teens who had been trying to dive for “buried treasure.” The depths of the lake were littered with fishing line, lost hooks and decades of rusting boat parts. Only the beach on the east shore had been marked for safe swimming.

  All in a day’s work. A man couldn’t ask for a better job. Conservation officer for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources was a title that fit Joe to a tee. Ninety percent of the time, his office featured open air, lakes, trees, snow and/or sun. Joe’s job was to keep the public safe, but also to protect and guard the wildlife that flourished in this county set in the Superior Forest. Not a day passed that he didn’t get to wander through tall grasses, spot a blue heron or, if he was lucky, spy on a timber wolf from a local pack.

  He smiled widely and tilted back the steel canteen of lukewarm water for a few swallows. This job was what made him wake with a smile and dash out to work every morning. Nothing could give him more satisfaction. Except, that is, when he finally nailed the parties responsible for the rampant poaching in the area. Someone, or many someones, had been poaching deer, beaver, cougar, turkey and the animal most precious to Joe’s soul, the gray wolf. But tops on the list was the bald eagle. Taking down the other animals without a proper license was considered a gross misdemeanor. Taking down a bald eagle was a federal offense. And recently he’d begun to wonder if the poachers were using something beyond the usual snare or steel trap. Like death by poisoning.