by Nicole Helm
Which hurt. Dad wouldn’t have left T.J of his own volition. Ever.
Cam didn’t respond as she put out the feed and searched for something to put some water in to give the horse a drink. Cam crouched next to her and rummaged around in his pack. He pulled out a camping pot. It was small, but it would have to do. She filled it with water.
“We can’t use him,” Cam said, disappointment tinging the edges of his voice. “We’ll have to call someone to come get him.”
“Who’s coming to do that?”
“Dylan can once the bank closes.”
“He needs shelter now. Food and water.” T.J. didn’t touch the food or the water. He simply stood there.
Hilly swallowed at the emotion clogging her throat. The horse couldn’t have been here the whole time Dad had been missing. He’d be dead of exposure at the very least. She didn’t know if that was hope or not. Dad had been alive at least a few days ago.
But he’d left T.J. to basically die. That filled her with a hideous, heavy dread.
“We can’t take him back to town. Your father was clearly here.” Cam pointed to a set of footprints in the mud. They’d hardened over, so were easy to spot. “There are two sets of footprints here, Hilly. We need to follow that lead while we can.”
He was right, of course. Rain or snow or even a hard wind could take out any trail they could find without warning. And Dad had been here sometime in the last forty-eight hours, she had to guess.
She looked at Cam helplessly. “Don’t you know anyone else who could help him? We can’t leave him.”
Cam pulled a face and then sighed heavily. “Fine,” he grumbled, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “But, boy, are you going to owe me.”
Chapter Nine
Cam grimaced with every punch of the button into his phone. He hated the fact he even knew this phone number. He hated the fact his brother was so dedicated to that damn bank he wouldn’t take off to help Cam with a horse, a fact Cam didn’t even question enough to consider calling Dylan.
But the only other person in his arsenal of people who would have the time, a horse trailer, the space and the inclination to help an ailing horse was the last person he wanted to call.
“Hello,” a sweet, feminine voice answered with the sound of a kid yelling happily in the background.
“Hi, Addie. It’s Cam.”
“Oh, hi, Cam,” Addie greeted, a thread of suspicion entering her voice. “Everything okay?”
He couldn’t blame Addie for jumping to things not being okay. Though Addie and Laurel were friends, and Addie sometimes joined in with family festivities since she was a distant Delaney relative, Cam didn’t usually call up to her residence.
A Carson residence, because Addie had gone and married herself a Carson, despite that distant Delaney blood of hers.
“Everything is fine, but I...” He cleared his throat. “Is Noah around? I’d like to speak to him.”
Addie was silent for so long he almost thought the phone had gone dead. “You...you want to talk to Noah.”
“About a horse.”
“You want to talk to Noah,” she repeated.
“About a horse,” he ground out through clenched teeth.
“All right,” Addie said, clearly not feeling as though anything was all right. “Just a minute.”
There was the muffled sound of voices, Addie’s kid still yelling in the background, then a low male voice.
“What?”
“Carson,” Cam greeted, trying not to sound like he felt. As though he was calling the devil. Silly overreaction, that. Maybe Delaneys had feuded with Carsons for over a century, but that was history and this was the present. This was for Hilly.
There was a long pause on Noah’s end. “Yeah. What?”
“I need a favor.”
A deep chuckle. “Oh, really? A favor for a Delaney.”
Cam’s jaw clenched. As much as he didn’t believe in his father’s obsession with the Carsons being bad blood, while the Delaneys were perfect—even more ludicrous now that Cam knew his father had had an affair with a married Carson—Cam did believe in the feud. He believed in history, and the way one family had flagrantly disobeyed rules and laws for over a century. It didn’t mean all Delaneys were saints or all Carsons were evil, but it did mean he didn’t trust a Carson as far as he could throw one.
Noah wasn’t a bad guy, though. Not nearly as obnoxious as Grady Carson, Noah’s cousin and Laurel’s fiancé. Cam shouldn’t be this reluctant to ask a Carson who had such ties to him for help, especially when Noah was one of the least obnoxious Carsons.
But Cam didn’t want to do this. Because Noah, and likely all the Carsons, and possibly a few Delaneys, would hold this over his head for a while.
He glanced at Hilly, who was whispering soothing things to the horse. Free was pacing the area Cam had just searched. Worry permeated the air around them.
Cam closed his eyes and accepted his fate. Sometimes a man had to do uncomfortable, obnoxious things to help.
“I’ve found an abandoned horse in the woods north of town,” Cam said, working carefully to make his tone devoid of any emotion. “It’s been tied to a tree outside for I’d guess twenty-four to thirty-six hours and it’s not in great shape. I’ve got a case I’m working for my security business and I’m in the middle of a lead, and Dylan’s at work. Our ranch crew is on a drive.”
“So I’m your last resort.”
“Obviously.” So much for diplomacy.
Noah chuckled a little at that, almost good-naturedly. “I can probably come get it. You gonna pay for its upkeep till you can take it off my hands?”
“Of course.”
“Delaneys,” Noah muttered, as if Cam wasn’t being more than generous.
“Where is this horse?”
Cam explained where they were.
“Gonna be tough getting a horse trailer up there.”
“It is,” Cam agreed. “And you’ll have to do some hiking, but I can’t let this lead go cold. And...” Cam scowled since Noah couldn’t see him. “I need you not to tell Grady, because he’ll only tell Laurel, and that’s only going to get in the way of my case.”
“Bending the law a bit, Delaney?” Noah asked, cheerful as Cam had ever heard him sound. He supposed sticking it to a Delaney was that enjoyable to him.
“Are you going to help?” Cam demanded irritably.
“Yeah, give me the directions again so I can write them down. We’ll handle the horse till you can.”
He relayed the directions once more, trying to be as specific as possible about the off-the-trail location of the horse. It galled him to have to say the next, but it was the right thing to do. “Thank you. We’ve got to get going, so the horse will be tied up and alone.”
“We shouldn’t be too long. I’ll text you when the horse is safe.”
“Good. Thanks.” Cam clicked off the call and turned to see Hilly staring at him from where she stood, still gently petting the horse.
“You asked someone you hate to come get the horse.”
“I don’t hate Noah,” Cam replied, uncomfortable that she’d picked up on all that. He didn’t want to add worry onto her plate.
“You don’t like him.”
“It’s complicated. And we have too much work to do to excavate how complicated.” He went over to the set of footprints he’d found. “Two men. Can you tell from the print which one’s your father?”
Hilly left her post by the horse and came to stand next to him. She stared down at the footprints, a line dug into her forehead. “I don’t know. I’d guess the smaller one is my dad, but I don’t know.”
“As long as the footprints stay together, it doesn’t matter,” Cam said, more to himself. But if they diverged, things would get tricky. One step at a time. “Get your pack on.”
“We ca
n’t leave him here,” Hilly said, frowning at T.J.
“Help is on the way, Hilly. I promise. Noah’s going to text me when they get him, so we’ll know. I don’t trust Carsons with a lot, but they’ll take excellent care of a horse.”
“You promise.” She looked at the footprints on the ground, then the horse, then him. Her gaze was questioning, confused, but she straightened those shoulders and held his gaze. “You promise?” she demanded.
“I promise,” he said, a solemn oath. It would be such to anyone, because he didn’t take his word lightly, but it somehow meant something more to say it to Hilly. He couldn’t begin to count the things he’d sacrifice to keep his word to her.
“Okay,” she said on an exhale. She pulled that determined aura around her as she held his gaze. “Okay, let’s go find my father.”
* * *
THE TRAIL WAS hard to follow. Too much rock, not enough mud to follow footprints easily. But Cam seemed to recognize things she didn’t. A snapped tree branch, crushed grass. Hilly had no idea if they were on the right track, but Free following along without racing off again gave her hope.
They seemed to skirt the base of the impressive mountains, weaving this way and that through clearings or groves of aspen or pine. The air was cold, but the scenery took her breath away. When she got sight of the impressive peaks, they were craggy and white. When they passed by a pond or a creek, the water was always a clear, dazzling reflection of the vivid blue sky. She’d always loved the clearing she’d spent the past twenty years in. The way the sun warmed the pines in the summer, the way snow made everything blindingly white in the winter. It was home.
But this was the world.
Cam stopped, staring at a few rocks as if they were telling him secrets. Then he pulled out his map and his compass, and sat on a nearby fallen tree trunk. Though Dad had tried to teach her how to use a compass, she’d always been helplessly confused. Probably because she’d never been able to go very far away from the cabin—she hadn’t needed to depend on a compass to bring her home.
“I think we’re heading to the compound.”
“Really?”
Cam nodded. He smoothed out his map. “We started here, then went in this direction to the horse.” He tapped the spot they’d stopped. “We were somewhere in here. The compound is here. Following the trail your father and the other person left has led us straight west.” He moved his long, capable fingers over the map, one finger reaching the other. Hilly watched those fingers, not sure what the tingling spreading along her skin meant.
She decided to ignore it.
A mechanical chirping sounded and Cam pulled out his phone. He scanned the screen, then shoved it back in his pocket. “Horse is safe and sound on the Carson ranch.”
“Carson,” she murmured. The name didn’t trigger quite as potent a sensation as when Laurel had said Hillary, but it was similar. An odd itchy feeling in her brain. Something recognizable but out of reach.
He looked up at her, eyebrow raised. “You know the Carsons?”
“No, I just...”
Cam stood, putting the map and compass back in his pocket while he studied her. “Just what?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. I don’t.”
She saw the flicker of unease in his expression, a second of distrust, before he smoothed it away until his face offered nothing at all.
It made her desperate to explain herself. Even as her mind admonished her not to trust him with everything, to be careful and keep some things to herself. The words tumbled out as if to escape her inner admonitions. “It’s a feeling I can’t explain. Like when Laurel said Hillary. Or when I saw the picture of the eagle—only, that I could recognize. These names I can’t, but they give me a feeling. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but—”
“It doesn’t have to. Some things don’t. Gut feelings. Maybe old memories. I just want you to tell me when you get that feeling, okay? Maybe eventually it helps us piece something together.”
“But they could be wrong. Silly, pointless—”
Cam shook his head, striding along whatever path he had in his mind. “It doesn’t matter. Better to sift through everything than miss something because we think it’s silly.”
There was that word again. We. He kept including her, like they were a team. It was a sharp contrast to how her father had always treated her. Which she supposed could be normal. Dad called the shots and she was expected to follow. Maybe all father-daughter relationships were like that, and maybe other relationships were more like this. A partnership where people brought two equal things to the table.
She bit her lip against the inappropriate smile that threatened her mouth. She was scared sick over her father’s disappearance, over T.J. being abandoned, but there was something amazing about having someone to share her worry with, her determination to find Dad with. It made her feel stronger, not weaker.
Cam stopped in a small clearing. They’d traversed up and down different altitudes all afternoon. They were somewhere in the middle right now. Not down in the muddy earth, but not up in the craggy mountains. The ground under their feet was smooth rock, but boulders surrounded the space to create a kind of alcove.
“We’ll camp here tonight.”
“Shouldn’t we keep going?”
“We don’t want to get turned around in the dark. And we can’t show up at the compound at a weird time. They have to believe we’re a couple trying to find asylum with the Protectors, not two people rushing to find someone who might be in trouble.”
It was smart, of course, but Dad wouldn’t have left T.J. of his own volition. Even if Cam said there was no sign of a scuffle or altercation, and that it looked as if Dad had gone along easily enough, Hilly knew what he wasn’t saying. Hilly knew there would have to be a reason Dad left the horse.
Probably a gun, or some kind of weapon, that threatened him to come along with the other person and leave the horse behind.
In Hilly’s mind, there was no other possible answer to Dad leaving T.J.
So, her father was being led around by another man, likely with a weapon, and Cam expected her to camp and wait.
“Hilly.” Cam stood in front of her. In a slow move that had her holding her breath, he reached out and undid the backpack’s snap over her chest. She was wearing three layers, including an oversized heavy coat, and could barely feel the brush of his hands as he undid the clasp at her waist, as well. Still, her body felt as though it was going haywire—nerves misfiring and skin overheating.
The strangest part was it wasn’t unpleasant. She wanted to explore that jittering thing inside of her, and see how far it would go.
“I know you’re worried about your father’s safety, but let’s consider this. If he was coerced away from the horse by force, that means whoever did so wanted to keep him alive. He’s being taken somewhere, likely to the compound. And, yes, I won’t lie, he may be in danger, but it’s not fatal danger or that would have already happened.”
Icy cold diluted all that intriguing heat. “It doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen at the compound. That they’re bringing him there to do something awful—”
He gently pulled the pack off her shoulders, then went through the mesmerizing moves of taking off his own. “Thinking about the worst-case scenarios doesn’t solve anything, and it puts us in danger. We have to be methodical. I know he’s your father, and your emotional responses are valid, but trust my method to keep him and us as safe as we can be.”
“I’m doing nothing but trusting you.”
“I know.” He smiled ruefully. “Don’t think I take that lightly, Hilly, because I don’t.” He pulled some things off his pack with deft, certain movements.
“I don’t know anything about setting up camp,” Hilly murmured, feeling unaccountably useless all of a sudden.
“That’s all right. One tent won’t take much time.” He lo
oked around the sky as he knelt to unload more supplies. “I brought MREs so we won’t need a fire.”
One tent. She was going to sleep in the same tent as him?
He grinned up at her. “Sorry, military talk. MREs are ready-to-eat meals. Well, meals, ready to eat. I figured that’d be easier than trying to cook,” he explained, as if that was the reason for the shocked expression on her face, not knowing what his acronym stood for.
But she didn’t care about that. They were going to sleep in the same tent. Her insides jumped with nerves. She couldn’t even explain why. Cam wasn’t going to do anything to her.
He worked silently on putting up the tent, and Hilly just stood there feeling useless, extraneous and like her face was on fire.
“Why don’t you get Free some water?” Cam suggested gently as the tent took shape.
“Right. Sure.” Water the dog. Sit here and stare at the teeny, tiny tent she was going to share with a man, and worry that her father had been forcibly kidnapped by some strange antigovernment group he may or may not belong to that she and Cam were going to pretend to want to join.
No big deal. Not at all.
Chapter Ten
“We should try to get some sleep,” Cam said as the riotous color of sunset began to fade into nothing but darkness and starlight. “We should be able to reach the compound tomorrow if we’re well rested.”
He couldn’t see Hilly’s expression, only the shadow of her body perched on a rock, Free’s shadow curled up on the ground next to her.
She didn’t say anything or make a move. She was pensive, edgy. Clearly, she was worried about her father, and she should be. Something wasn’t right here.
He wished there was some way to set her mind at ease, but the best he’d been able to give her was the knowledge that if they wanted her father dead, he’d already be dead. But that didn’t mean things couldn’t have gone down at the compound. If that was even how this all connected.