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The figure darted to the left, leaving the sidewalk behind in favor of trying to lose him in the thickening woods of the Presidential Grove. He’d wandered through it once on a lazy Sunday. Each past president had a tree planted in his name. He’d found it amusing that Nixon’s had been split by lightning and needed to be replaced.
Damp leaves made the ground even more difficult to navigate, and Shane cursed under his breath a second before Quinn zipped past him. His long legs easily ate up the distance. The cheeky bastard flashed him a smirky grin as he passed Shane. He was never going to hear the end of this, but he wasn’t going to complain. Quinn’s sweet ass was perfectly framed in his jeans as he ran, giving Shane an excellent view as he tried to keep to his feet.
At the edge of the Grove, the ground sharply dropped off back to the road that wound up the hill to the Conservatory. A surprised scream jumped from Quinn, signaling that he had no idea about the drop-off. Shane was several yards behind Quinn, but he could see the man grasping frantically at tree branches and shrubs to slow his sliding descent.
Shane hit the slope and turned his right foot sideways to control his slide, while Quinn partially slid and partially tumbled down the steep slope, stopping only when he hit the metal guardrail running along the side of the road.
“Are you okay?” Shane called as he reached Quinn.
“No,” he said sullenly. “I think I’ve got a splinter in my ass.”
Shane grabbed his arm and helped him back to his feet. They were both covered in dirt and leaves from the waist down. “I promise to pull it out with my teeth later.”
Quinn snorted. “I’m holding you to that.” He led the way over the guardrail, across the road, and into the woods that surrounded that open park area of Mirror Lake.
After thrashing through that wooded area, they exploded into the open green space and bright sunlight to find…the runner was gone.
“What the fuck…” Quinn said, his voice trailing off.
The park had only a dozen people in the area. Most were either walking or jogging around the man-made concrete lake, but not one matched the description of the person they’d seen in the dark sweatshirt and ball cap.
“Are you sure you saw the person cross the road and head into the woods?”
“No. I was too busy falling down the goddamn hill,” Quinn snapped. “But where else could she have gone?”
Shane wasn’t convinced the person was a she, but he let it go. The question was valid. He saw the runner head down over the hill just before Quinn. If he or she didn’t cross over the guardrail but stayed in those woods, he would have seen it. But wouldn’t they have also seen if the person stayed on the road rather than crossing to the other woods?
Turning back toward the woods, he scanned the area, trying to spot places of overturned branches or leaves where someone else would have passed through. If they didn’t cut across the street, the runner could have circled back up the road toward the Conservatory.
“Guess you would have been better off with one of Rowe’s bodyguards,” Quinn mumbled behind him.
Shane stopped and twisted around to look back at his companion in confusion. “Why would you say that?”
“Rowe and Noah trained a lot of them in tracking. They could look at…this,” he said with a wave of his hand to encompass the woods. “And they’d be able to spot if someone had come through here.”
“I don’t need one of Rowe’s knock-off rangers. I need my computer geek.” He reached back and grabbed a handful of Quinn’s shirt. Jerking him in, Shane intended to thoroughly kiss him, washing the bitter taste of defeat from both their mouths, but his lips skimmed off Quinn’s cheek as he turned his face at the last second.
“What the fuck!” Quinn said, pulling away from Shane to walk past him.
Yeah, that’s what he was thinking.
Shane turned to watch Quinn stomp over to a navy lump in the leaves. Bending over, he picked up the navy sweatshirt…the same sweatshirt the runner had been wearing.
“Son of a bitch!” he swore. A few feet away, the ball cap lay abandoned on the ground as well. The runner had shed both as he or she passed through the woods and blended in with the other joggers going around the lake by the time Quinn and Shane had emerged from the woods.
Quinn grabbed the hat and walked over to stand next to Shane. “Now what?”
Shane snagged a handful of Quinn’s shirt a second time and pulled him in until their chests bumped. “First,” he said and then grabbed Quinn’s mouth in the searing kiss he’d attempted just a minute earlier. A moan rose up from Quinn’s throat as he fully leaned into Shane, giving in to the kiss completely like he wanted Shane to devour him.
