by Zoe Chant
* * *
JAMIE
The last of the day’s light stretched out across the forest. Treetops glowed gold and orange as the sunset spilled color across the landscape, then shattered into a million glittering sparks on the surface of a winding river.
Jamie should have felt at peace. Instead, she was filled with a strange restlessness—the same restlessness that had plagued her since Kes’s wedding.
She had skipped the post-wedding brunch. Lynda had done her best to convince her to stick around, but Jamie had managed to slip out while the other girl was fixing her hair, and jumped straight in her car.
Her own car.
A day’s driving later, Jamie had been back at work at the conservation center. She’d always thrown herself into her job, and now she had another reason to do so: distraction.
It hadn’t been enough. No matter what she did, she hadn’t been able to get the mystery man from the wedding out of her head. She’d even found herself looking at her phone, waiting for it to ring—which was insane, because she was pretty sure she hadn’t even given the guy her name, let alone her number.
Working at the center clearly wasn’t doing the trick. Luckily, Jamie had some field work coming up, so she’d packed her bags. For the past five years, the center had focused on raising California condor chicks for release into a conservation area. They’d recently released the first mated pair into the wild, and it didn’t take much to convince her boss that doing a quick trip to the area to check on the birds a little earlier than planned would be a good use of her time.
That had been a week ago. Now, for the first time in months, Jamie didn’t need to close her eyes and imagine she was a hundred miles from the hustle and bustle of the city, from bright lights and blaring horns and raised voices … Or away from late nights in an empty office, waiting for a phantom phone call. Instead, she just needed to open her eyes and look around. No imagination necessary.
Best of all, her quest had been successful. Well, one part of it, at least.
Jamie took a deep breath, enjoying the clean, fresh air. Then with a final heave, she pulled herself up on to what she had decided to call her ‘crow’s nest’—a thick, solid branch near the top of a tree that gave her a clear line of sight across the river. Moving quickly but carefully, Jamie attached a carabiner from her climbing harness to the anchor she had set in the tree trunk two days before. Jamie was happy to camp on her own, but it did mean that if she fell out of the tree, there wouldn’t be anyone around to alert Search and Rescue.
As soon as she was secure on her perch, Jamie unclasped the case around her neck and pulled out her trusty DSLR camera. Holding onto the trunk with one hand, she hefted her camera with the other. With the light fading, she had to move fast.
A hundred yards away, the evening light glittered on the rushing water of the river where it bent around a rough cliff. But Jamie wasn’t interested in the sunset. At least, not for its own sake.
Jamie ignored the peaceful beauty of the scene and kept her lens fixed on a spot partway up the cliff. Her target was invisible from ground-level; only here, perched on a tall tree, could she sneak a glimpse of the jagged crack in the cliff that made a rough cave. Squashed into that shallow cave was a huge black bird with a pinky-orange, featherless face.
“Hey, buddy,” Jamie whispered. “How about you stretch your legs and let me see if you’ve got anything back there?”
Jamie raised the camera to her eye, peering through the high-powered lens. The distant cliff shot into focus, looking close enough for her to reach out and touch.
The California condor sitting on the ledge looked even uglier in close-up, like a grumpy old witch wrapped in a raggedy cloak. Jamie sighed. If she didn’t know better, she’d think the bird was deliberately playing coy.
She had spent most of the last three days sitting in this tree, which was close enough to the nest to give her a clear view without being so close her presence would disturb the condors. In all that time, either one bird or the other of the mated pair had been sitting across from her, glowering suspiciously from the cave. When they sat there, they stayed stubbornly still, and when they changed places, they bustled hurriedly in and out so Jamie didn’t even get a glimpse of the nest site. Or anything they might be sitting on. Which was the whole reason she was here, after all.
A large black wing stretched out, and Jamie held her breath.
Come on, come on, she begged.
As Jamie watched, the bird shifted, standing up on thick legs. She moved the camera down, searching around its legs and gnarled claws.
Yes—there! Nestled in among the rocks and twigs was one solitary, milky blue-white egg.
Click!
Jamie grinned triumphantly. She had been waiting for this shot all day. All day for three days. And now she had it—proof that the mated pair of condors she had been tracking had successfully bred.
She hugged the tree trunk, wanting to whoop out in happiness but well aware that it might startle the birds. Grinning and tree-hugging would have to be enough.
For the first time since she’d come out here, another emotion—pure joy—broke through her strange restlessness. She had hoped, when she first saw the nesting site, that she would be able to return to the office with the good news that the pair had bred. Just the very fact that one or the other of the condors had been sitting on it constantly all the time she had been watching had suggested they were looking after an egg, but without actually seeing an egg she had no proof. Now she knew for sure, and the knowledge filled her heart with a warm glow.
Jamie had been working on the condor conservation project ever since she left college. Condors had gone extinct in the area decades before, and only now were plans to reintroduce them really taking off. If this chick hatched and survived, then those plans could become a reality.
It was possible. The big, ugly birds had been released into the wild in other parts of California, including in special sanctuaries. So this latest attempt to bring the rare bird back to the mountains where it had once flown free on the winds wasn’t some pipe dream—it could really happen.
So long as nothing happened to the mated pair, or their chick.
Jamie straightened her shoulders. Now that she knew the condors had produced an egg, her task here was all the more important. The nest wasn’t as far out in the mountains as she had hoped. The river was near a popular hiking trail. Not on the trail, but close enough that someone who wandered off-track to have a swim might disturb the birds.
Not on my watch, thought Jamie grimly. And: Finally, something to REALLY distract me from whatsisname.
Still glowing from the discovery of the egg, Jamie kept to her perch. If she was quiet enough, and quick enough, she might manage to get another few good shots in before the sun fell below the hills.
Maybe the universe decided one good deed was enough for the day. The second condor swooped down to join its mate just as the sun dipped below the horizon. Jamie lowered her camera.
“Oh, well. Night-night, you great big ugly things,” Jamie whispered.
The two condors disappeared in the darkness, blending in with the shadows over the river.
With her camera in its protective case slung around her neck, Jamie clambered down out of the tree. Her campsite was only a few minutes’ walk away, easy for her to find even in the dark. She had decided on a spot farther up the river, far enough away that she wouldn’t disturb the birds, but close enough that she could trek down each day to keep an eye on them—and make sure no one else went stumbling into the nest site.
Jamie walked quickly through the dark forest, lighting her way with a handheld flashlight. Her tent was huddled between two big old pine trees at the top of a scrubby ridge. She had tied a tarpaulin between the trees for some extra protection from the weather. She hadn’t seen any summer storms yet this year, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any coming.
In front of her tent, she had cleared a small space and lugged in some fallen branches t
o act as a rough bench and table. With the shadows growing, she set up her flashlight in lantern mode and propped it up on the table-log.
Dinner was an unexciting prospect. Jamie had set out on this job with enough supplies to keep her going for a few weeks, and that meant a lot of dehydrated ready meals. And granola bars. She peered into her food pack and sighed.
“And tonight’s celebratory dinner will be ...” she rifled through the packets. “... mac and cheese. Or, as your host likes to call it, cardboard bits with mysterious orange sludge. Mmmm. Yes, I think I will definitely deserve some chocolate for dessert after this.”
Jamie’s camping food prep had been the same since she started hiking as a teenager. It didn’t matter how school-cafeteria-gross the main meal was, so long as she had plenty of good, rich dark chocolate to rinse the taste out of her mouth.
Half an hour later, Jamie was scraping the last of the gluggy pasta meal out of the bottom of the pan and was about to delve into the all-important chocolate pack when her ears pricked. She had been in the mountains enough to become familiar with the usual noises of the river and the forest. This wasn’t one of them.
Something was moving around out there, past the golden circle of light from her lantern. Something big.
Jamie gnawed on her bottom lip. There hadn’t been any sightings of large predators in this part of the mountains for years, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still out there. She began to wish she had bothered to build a proper fire rather than just cook on her trusty Primus stove.
Then she heard another noise under the sound of movement.
Scraaaark!
Jamie leapt to her feet. Something was disturbing the condors. Her heart jumped into her throat as another screech cut through the air.
Was something attacking the birds? At night? She dug into her knowledge of local wildlife, trying to think of something that hunted at night, and could scale a cliff to attack a nest. Then she heard something that made her almost laugh with relief.
“Shit! Ahhh! Stop it, you crazy bird!”
Not a predator. Just some unlucky hiker who had stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time.
The crashing sounds got louder as whoever it was blundered away from the condors defending their nest. It sounded like they were coming upriver, closer to her camp.
Well, Jamie thought to herself, time for the all-important communications and outreach part of my job.
“Hello?” she called into the darkness.
The crashing noises stopped, but whoever it was out in the darkness didn’t call back. Jamie frowned. It hadn’t occurred to her before she shouted out that maybe she should be cautious about hollering to random strangers in the woods.
She shook herself. Stop being ridiculous. The river was a half-hour walk from one of the most popular trails this side of the mountain. Hundreds of hikers—families, young couples, hardy lone adventurers—would wander up and down it every day for the next three months. Whoever was bumbling around out there was more likely to be lost and glad to see a fellow human being than to be dangerous.
“Is there someone out there?” she called again, just to prove to herself how un-worried she was.
The noises stopped.
“Hello?” A man’s voice, deep and clear, floated out of the darkness. “Is there someone there?”
Jamie concentrated. It was hard to tell where the voice was coming from, but she thought probably down near the river. Which made it all the more important that whoever-it-was come up to camp. She didn’t want them stumbling back downstream and disturbing the nest.
Or, you know, stumbling into the water and drowning.
“Up here!” she called, holding up her light. It was a short walk to the edge of the scrubby bank that led down to the water. Sure enough, her flashlight caught the dark shape of a man standing at the edge of the river. Jamie was surprised to see that he didn’t have a flashlight of his own. He must have been making his way just by starlight and moonlight, she thought, as he turned to look at her and lifted one arm to shield his eyes.
“Oh, sorry!” she said, and lowered the light. “Hey, you really shouldn’t be down by the water at this time of night. Are you camping somewhere nearby?”
She hadn’t seen any other campers, but it was possible. Maybe he had set up farther up the river, and gotten lost.
“No—I was hoping to get further in before I set up camp, but I guess the day snuck away on me,” the man said ruefully. Jamie could see that he had a heavy pack on his back. She raised one eyebrow.
“And you were just going to keep walking in the dark? You know you’re way off the trail, right?”
The man made a gesture that somehow managed to convey a perfect sense of Well-yeah-but-you-know. Jamie decided against replying with a gesture that would show exactly how little she thought of that excuse.
“Well, come on up here, then. You can set up next to me tonight. There’s no point in keeping on walking now.”
She held the flashlight steady to light up the slope for him. It wasn’t an accident that the light also illuminated him. Jamie got a good look at the lost hiker as he made his way up the bank, though his face was still in shadow.
He was dressed suitably for a summer hike in the mountains, in lightweight trousers and sturdy shoes. Jamie approved. She’d seen far too many people decide to go out into the wilderness in just shorts and flip-flops. This guy might have gotten lost, but at least he wasn’t stupid. The pack on his back was a good sign, too, big enough for a longish trip without being overloaded.
Maybe this guy wasn’t a total idiot, after all.
Then he reached the top of the slope and stood in front of Jamie and whatever she was about to say vanished from her lips. She was suddenly extra glad he wasn’t a complete hopeless case, because holy crap, it was him.
The guy from the wedding.
His eyes caught the light of the lantern, a deep brown with shining flecks of gold. His skin was deeply tanned, and his dark hair curled around his face. She remembered that. She remembered how the tan went all the way down.
Sudden, burning desire struck Jamie like lightning. She remembered that, too.
He was at least a head taller than her. Taller than she remembered—but she’d been wearing heels at the wedding. In her hiking boots, Jamie only came up to the middle of his chest. She imagined—no, remembered—leaning against him, pressing her fingers against the muscles of his chest, feeling the heat of his body...
* * *
MARK
Mark had been daydreaming. No guesses about who, or what. And while he was daydreaming, evening had drawn in, so make that … Night-dreaming?
Or just … Regular dreaming.
Either way, he was stuck.
Mark squinted at the map. In the growing darkness it was hard to tell which squiggly lines were the track, or the river, or ... were they called contour lines? He sighed and stuffed the folded paper back in his pocket.
He should have guessed something like this would happen. Back home he never needed maps or trails to know where he was, or where he was going, so he’d never learned to read them. He knew his own mountains like the back of his paw. After all, his family had lived there for generations.
All of which was no use now that he was exploring a strange mountain range a thousand miles from home.
At least that distance had one advantage. He didn’t want to chance his family poking their noses in to what was going to be the most important event in his life.
Had it only been a week? He could hardly believe it. One week since Tom’s wedding. Hell, he and Kes were still on their honeymoon—their last vacation before the baby was due.
One week, and it had been simultaneously the most exciting and terrifying time of his life. He’d found his mate—well, he thought he’d found his mate—he might have found his mate…
…And, if he’d gotten all this right, he was about to find her again. And this time, he wouldn’t be a complete fool and mess it all up. He�
��d searched for her desperately at the post-wedding brunch, but it soon became obvious she wasn’t there. At least it had been easy enough to find out who she was: Jamie Sullivan, an old friend of Kes’s from school. The only redheaded bridesmaid.
Mark had kicked himself when he’d realized that. All the messing around with shoes, and he could have just asked who the woman with the beautiful red-gold hair was.
And once he knew her name, tracking her down had been—well, not easy, but manageable. The maid of honor—Lynda, was her name?—had seemed almost gleeful when she told him the name of the conservation center where Jamie worked. And, maybe she hadn’t been there when Mark made the trip, but then Tom’s new mother-in-law had remembered that “that very nice Sullivan girl” did field work in the summers. It had taken her a few more days to remember where Jamie did field work, but she’d sent Mark’s aunt a link to the conservation center’s wildlife projects page and Aunt Lou had sent it on to him, and Mark had packed his bags the moment he found the site on a map.
So, here he was.
He wasn’t completely naïve. He knew that, even if Jamie was his mate, they might not have anything in common other than the mate bond. She might not want anything to do with him. Maybe—and the thought had occurred to him more than once—maybe that had something to do with how hard she was to find. But if that was the case, he wanted to hear it from her.
In the meantime…
In the meantime, it looked like he was going to spend his vacation stumbling around in circles. At least until he was far enough into the wilderness that he could shift without risking any hikers catching sight of him. Mark’s bear senses were a lot stronger than his human ones, and he was going to need his bear’s sense of smell in particular to—har, har—get his bearings, let alone find Jamie.
Plus, in human form, he was about to trip over his own feet.
Suddenly, something squawked in the darkness above his head, and then he did trip over.
Mark swore softly and dusted off his hands as he stood up. Night had well and truly fallen now. And of course his flashlight was stuffed right at the bottom of his pack. He hadn’t thought he would need it until he unpacked to set up camp.