“Those crutches are worse than ice skates on the packed snow. I nearly broke my neck getting up the walkway.” He turned a pleading gaze on Megan. “I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse. You won’t even know I’m here.”
Megan looked at her sister. “What can it hurt to let him spend the night, Cam? We’d do no less for a complete stranger.”
“But he’s not a stranger. He’s the bastard who broke your heart.”
“To keep her safe,” Jack growled.
Camry spun toward him. “Safe from what?”
“Megan didn’t tell you? A man was murdered on the tundra a couple of days before your sister told me she was pregnant. Breaking her heart was the only way I could think of to make her leave.”
Camry turned to a suddenly silent Megan. “Is that true, Meg?” Not waiting for an answer, she spun back to face Jack. “You didn’t have to crush her heart. You only had to explain your concern.”
Jack arched an eyebrow. “And knowing your sister, you think she would have just packed up and come home?”
Camry turned to Megan again, holding her arms out in question. “How come this is the first I’m hearing about this?”
Megan went to the woodstove and dropped a piece of wood inside. “I didn’t know the man had been murdered. I thought he’d gotten drunk, fallen in a pond, and drowned.” She faced them both, her expression defensive. “And for all we know, that’s exactly what happened. Wayne’s the only one saying he was murdered.”
Man-o-man, she really wanted him to be Wayne, didn’t she?
“Jack has proof,” he told Camry. “You can call the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Edmonton and check it out. They investigated, and they shut down the study the very next week.”
“It was already shutting down when I left,” Megan defended.
Camry threw up her hands. “Sorry, sis. If what he’s saying is true, you’re not going to find anyone around here who’d be willing to beat him up for you. Hell, Dad will probably give him a pat on the back.”
Jack found himself torn between wanting to jump for joy that Greylen MacKeage would take his side, and wanting to run over and hug Megan when he saw her shoulders slump in defeat. But he stayed right were he was, not willing to chance being sent home. Maybe he should work on Camry a bit more, since she seemed to be softening.
“Did Rose Brewer notice if anything else had been stolen?” he asked while looking around for his crutches.
“Nothing that she could see. But they must have eaten four cases of candy.” Camry shook her head in amazement. “That’s a lot of sugar for a couple of kids to put down.”
“How many kids did you actually see running out of the store?” Jack asked. “Megan, where are my crutches?”
“Under the couch,” she said from the sink, where she was suddenly very busy washing dishes.
Camry walked to the staircase. “I couldn’t really tell. I just saw them running past you toward the lake. They stayed in a tight pack.”
“And where did they go then?” he asked.
Camry shrugged. “Beats me. That’s when the guy stepped out of the shadows and grabbed you from behind.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“No, it was too dark. He was big, though.” She eyed him speculatively. “About the size of our cousin, Robbie MacBain.”
“Robbie isn’t the man who attacked me.”
“How come you’re so sure?”
“The guy who jumped me had the same smell that was all through Rose’s store, only not quite as strong. MacBain smells sort of like pine pitch.”
Camry wrinkled her nose. “I swear I’ll never get that foul odor out of my nose hairs. And the slime…” She shuddered, then walked over to Megan. “You’re a biologist. What does this smell like to you?”
Megan leaned close to take a whiff of Camry’s sleeve, then jerked away. “Eewww, that’s awful,” she said, wiping her nose on her own sleeve.
“But do you recognize it?”
If Jack hadn’t been watching carefully, he might have missed Megan’s reaction. But when she stilled with her face buried in her sleeve, and her eyes widened before she suddenly turned back to the sink, he was certain she did recognize the odor.
“I can’t say what it is, exactly,” she said, her back to them. She started washing the dishes again. “It’s definitely organic, though.”
Jack remained silent, but Camry, bless her pushy heart, was like a dog with a bone. “Take another whiff,” she suggest, lifting her arm again. “You’re sure you don’t recognize it? It’s sort of pungent. And stagnant.”
Megan wiped her hands on a towel, then walked to the oven and opened it. “One whiff was enough. Let me think about it; maybe it will come to me later.”
Camry seemed puzzled by Megan’s unwillingness to even hazard a guess. She walked to the stairs again, and looked back at Jack. “Rose said Simon told her the bakery break-in had the same slimy goo all over the place, and that the state forensics lab hasn’t been able to identify it.”
“Not yet,” Jack confirmed.
She cast a sidelong glance at her sister, then told Jack, “I think it’s reptilian.”
“Reptiles aren’t slimy,” Megan interjected. “It’s more likely from an amphibian, like a frog or salamander.”
Camry gave Jack a smug smile, obviously proud of herself for finally getting Megan to comment. “Rose’s store was covered with it,” she said. “That’s an awful lot of frogs.”
Megan became very busy again.
Camry shrugged at Jack and ran up the stairs. “I’m taking a shower,” she called as she disappeared.
Jack studied Megan. What could she possibly know about the break-ins?
Or had she recognized the smell from hermit boy?
So what secret was the bastard hiding? No, make that Secrets with an S, to include the favor he’d asked from Megan. Hermit boy had hugged her, and that’s what Megan had just noticed on her own sweater. Kenzie Gregor smelled like a bog.
He was the right size to be Jack’s attacker, too.
Jack pulled his crutches out from under the couch and slowly got to his feet. “Thank you for letting me stay, Megan. I can’t imagine how I’d lug firewood to keep the stove going. It’s all I have for heat.”
She twirled to face him, her hands on her hips and her beautiful green eyes snapping fire. “Just don’t get the wrong idea. I’d do the same for a stranger I found on the side of the road. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And if you so much as allude to us getting back together, you’re out of here. Got that?”
“Got it.”
“And no talking about the baby.”
“Come on, Meg. You can’t ask me to ignore our baby.”
“It’s not our baby, it’s mine. You blew any chance of it being ours four months ago.”
Jack felt his neck heat up. “I didn’t have any choice. You were in danger.”
“Did it ever once occur to you to simply tell me about the danger, instead of treating me like a mindless idiot?”
“Of course it did,” he snapped. “And it also occurred to me that you’d dig in your heels and try to get to the bottom of it yourself.”
As suddenly as the tension had built, it disappeared. Megan gave Jack a speculative look. “So let me get this straight. I had to leave because it was dangerous, but it was okay for you to stay?”
“I was in the middle of a job.”
“So was I.”
“But I wasn’t pregnant. Look, I’m sorry if you don’t care for double standards, but those with wombs are to be protected by those without. Especially if that womb happens to be occupied.”
“So if I hadn’t been pregnant, you wouldn’t have sent me away?”
Jack wiped a hand over his face. Dammit, he was digging this hole deeper and deeper, and she was about to start throwing dirt on top of him.
“Unfair. That’s one of those questions women ask like, ‘Do these pants make my butt look fat?’ If I say yes, I’m still in the doghouse, and if I say no, you’re going to assume I’m lying.”