Danger at the Border by Terri Reed Read Free Book Online

neither is Seattle the wettest city in the U.S. The Southeast gets more rain than the Pacific Northwest.”
    “Really? That seems odd.”
    He explained about a study he’d recently read. They debated the finer points of living where it rained versus snowed like where she resided in Utah.
    “We get some snow where I live in Blaine,” he commented. “Though it makes a mess of the traffic going in and out of the country when it happens.”
    “I can imagine.” She yawned. He let the silence envelop them. He hoped she’d rest. Slowly, his senses adjusted to the nocturnal sounds, keenly in tune to the world around them, on the alert for any threat, both the two-legged kind and the four-legged kind.
    * * *
    “Tessa.” Jeff’s voice forced her eyes open.
    She shook off sleep to listen to the high-pitched whistles of marmots, several of them if the racket they were making was any indication. Underscoring the squirrellike creatures’ calls was the drumming of a nearby grouse, a chickenlike bird that inhabited the subarctic regions of the northern hemisphere. The rapping of a woodpecker added to the cacophony.
    The first fingers of dawn crept through the tree branches, stinging her retinas and stirring her guilt. She’d fallen asleep, left Jeff to keep watch. “I’m so sorry!”
    “No worries,” his deep voice rumbled.
    Slowly, her gaze shifted to where he stood, tall and intimidating with his hand outstretched. His uniform was dirty and disheveled, but nothing could take away from his rugged good looks. Her eyes met his stunning blue ones. Eyes she could get lost in. Her heart picked up speed, setting off an alarm bell inside her head.
    She’d spent too much of her life displaced at the whims of her parents, then her ex-fiancé, Michael. He’d wanted to meld and mold her into a different person. It had taken all her courage and strength to break his hold on her life before she committed herself to marriage.
    Because unlike her parents, once she married, it would be forever.
    Losing herself again wasn’t going to happen. At least not now, not with this guy. They had a job to do. Nothing more. Get a grip.
    “We need to get moving,” he coaxed.
    Wide-awake and eager to be gone from this forest, she scrambled to her feet without his offered help and inhaled the crisp morning air. Her stomach rumbled with hunger. Her limbs ached from yesterday’s excursion. She rubbed the kink in her neck.
    Jeff walked over to a lush, tall plant. Tessa blinked, her gaze sweeping over the multitude of similar plants growing among the trees in dense rows all around them. Surprise squeezed her lungs tight. “Uh, Jeff. Do you know what those plants are?”
    He picked a leaf, bringing the broken foliage to his nose. “Yep.” He lifted his gaze to meet hers. “I’d say we’ve walked into a major grow.”
    She swallowed as the implications of his words reverberated through her mind. They were looking at hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars’ worth of marijuana, and that was only the plants they could see. Who knew how far-reaching the expanse of the pot farm went?
    “A grow like this would be watched and closely guarded.” Anxiety twisted in her chest, making her heart rate double. “We need to make tracks and fast.”
    “Tessa, look.” Jeff pointed to the overflowing pipes of an irrigation system. A current of fluid flooded from in between the pot plants and flowed along the forest floor. The conduit for the toxin. Gravity did the work of taking the contaminated liquid all the way to the lake. “Must be some sort of insecticide in the water.”
    “This is bad. Real bad.”
    In two long strides, he reached her side and cupped her elbow. “We need to head in the opposite direction and pray we make it to the road undetected.”
    “Too late for that,” said a deep male voice from behind Tessa.
    She whirled around. A dozen men dressed in camouflage with bandannas covering the lower half of their faces stepped out of