palm. The man’s breath caught in a harsh rasp of pain. His muscles knotted, then relaxed again.
Darcy squinted at the thing she’d pulled out of his flesh. It looked like a small glass syringe, except it had a tuft of feathers on the end instead of a plunger. A few drops of some oily, viscous substance puddled in the mostly empty barrel.
“A tranquilizer dart?” She’d never seen one in person before, but she couldn’t think what else it could be. “Did someone mistake you for Bigfoot? Or did you fall victim to the world’s most thorough mugging?”
A flurry of snowflakes stung her face. She looked up, startled. The weather forecast hadn’t predicted more snow for the rest of the week. The night sky was still clear and unclouded, yet white flakes swirled through the air in a thickening flurry. Pine trees rustled, branches creaking.
She cast a glance at the gas station, but there was no shelter to be found there. This late at night, the attached convenience store was shuttered and locked.
Damn it. All this work wasted.
She’d spent weeks trawling through computer logs, narrowing down her target’s location. She still had no idea why Vance routinely visited this particular gas station at midnight, but she knew that he only did so every four weeks, give or take a few days. If she missed him now, it would be another month before she could try again.
But she didn’t have any choice but to abandon her stake-out. The mysterious man needed help, and fast. They were deep in the mountains here, at the ass-end of nowhere. By the time emergency services managed to reach them, it could be too late.
“Vance, you’d better not turn up while I’m gone,” she muttered. She fisted her hands in the firefighter’s harness. “Come on, big guy. It’s going to be okay.”
With a grunt of effort, she rolled the man onto his back. At barely four foot six in her thickest boots, Darcy was used to being the smallest person in any crowd…but this guy made her feel tiny. He was ridiculously huge, a great hairy mountain of muscle. He had to outweigh her twice over.
“Momma didn’t raise no quitter.” She rolled her shoulders and set her jaw. “Sorry, big guy. This is going to be a bumpy ride.”
With a lot of effort—and swearing—Darcy managed to drag the man into her car. She winced at every bump and scrape, but the firefighter himself didn’t react to her manhandling.
She drove as fast as she dared down the twisting mountain track, but it still took fifteen minutes to reach the cabin that she’d rented. Vance had really wanted to get away from civilization. Which was a bit puzzling. She was only pursuing him to find out why he’d run out on his wife. It wasn’t like he’d skipped bail or had an arrest warrant on his head.
She glanced at the unconscious firefighter in her rear-view mirror. Maybe he’d hold the key to unlocking some of the mysteries surrounding her target. It couldn’t be a coincidence that he’d been heading for the same remote gas station at the same time as Vance.
“Hope you can answer a few questions about your buddy, big guy.” Darcy pulled up outside her rental. “Then I’ll finally be able to put this goddamn job to bed. I am not getting paid enough for this.”
The cabin felt wonderfully warm after the arctic Montana winter outside. Darcy was sweating by the time she’d managed to wrestle the limp man to the living room. Getting him up onto the couch would have required a fork-lift, so she parked him on the rug.
“Hang on.” She tucked her coat back around the giant’s torso. “I’ll be right back.”
She whacked the thermostat up high, then gathered up every blanket and towel she could find. Arms full, she raced back to the firefighter.
“Okay, big guy. Here you go.” She piled coverings on top of the man, swaddling him in a big, haphazard cocoon. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you warmed up.”
To her relief, color seemed to be coming back into his face—at least, what little of it she could see. From the nose down, he was all beard. As a look, it was well past “hipster” and into “mountain man” territory.
With the beard and his tangled mane of black hair, he could have passed as a Biblical prophet. Forget forty days wandering the wilderness; this guy looked like he’d spent years living in a cave.
Fascinated by that feral profile, Darcy leaned closer. With