* * *
He winced as he watched the sting of betrayal fill her eyes. Well, of course he’d told her that. He’d been both too immature and frightened back then to even consider telling her the truth. Moments such as this made it hard to forgive himself for the man he used to be.
“Looks like you were just incapable of telling the truth about anything. How ironic you became a journalist.”
He leaped to his feet. “Nicky, wait—”
“The lightning has stopped, and we’ve got a boat to find.”
“Please. Let me explain.” He reached for her hand.
She pulled away. “What could you possibly say now that would make any of this okay? I cherished my happy memories of you. Don’t you get that? Even though you’d left. Even though you’d hurt me, I could still look back and know that just once in my life I had a short, perfect, summer romance with an incredible guy. Something real and true, that nothing else ever compared with since.
“I told the story of you to so many heartbroken teenagers who needed to know that they’d get over their first breakup, too. But now you’ve just turned up and trashed every good memory I had. You’ve erased any good feelings I was able to have looking back. Part of me almost wishes you’d just left me with my happy memories, whether they were true or not.” She turned to the rain. “Yes, I do forgive you. I’ll be professional about this weekend and I get that right now we’re in this mess together. But as far as the past is concerned, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Fine. Then just look.” He pulled his shirt open, feeling the buttons pop one by one. Then he slowly peeled his arm out of the sleeve. She gasped as her gaze traced the labyrinth of burn scars running down his chest and shoulders.
“What happened?” Her voice brushed softly through the dark air. The cave walls seemed to shrink around them.
“Boiling water. My mom said she spilled it by accident, but I don’t really know. I was pretty little at the time, and my mom spent most of my childhood drunk. So it’s hard to know what to believe.”
Her fingers slid through his. “I’m sorry. How did your dad—?”
“Never met him. Which was a good thing.” His voice sounded gruff. She was so close now he could almost feel her untamed hair brushing against his jaw. Had he pulled her toward him without realizing it? Or was she the one who’d drawn closer to him?
“Look, I’m genuinely sorry that I hurt you. I wish I could turn back time and undo every lie I ever told. When you met me I was nothing but a runaway teen with a criminal record for shoplifting and petty theft, hiding out in an abandoned cabin. Definitely not a camp counselor, let alone at Ace Sports.” The back of his fingers touched her cheek. “You listened to me, Nicky. You prayed for me. You were the first decent, kind person I’d ever met in my life. I repaid you with lies, and I didn’t have a clue how to love you. Not like how you loved me. But leaving you was the kindest thing I could’ve done, and I don’t regret it.”
She stepped back. A light flickered in the woods. Then a bright flashlight beam swung across her face, just long enough for Luke to see the deep pain echoing in her eyes.
“Hello? Nicky?” The voice was male, young and uncertain. “You out here?”
“Trevor? Yeah! Yeah, we’re here!” She glanced back toward Luke. Then she ran out into the storm.
FIVE
The Friday morning sun beat down against the surface of the lake. Luke stood on the hill on the edge of Ace Sports’ property. He watched as a lithe, dark-haired figure in jeans and a plaid shirt arranged canoes down the beach, their bows jutting out into the water. He sighed and pulled out his cellphone. Thankfully, he was still in range to use Ace Sports’ Wi-Fi signal.
Nicky had barely said two words to him last night after Trevor had rescued them. To anyone else it would’ve probably looked as though she was just relieved George’s son had taken the initiative to come looking for her and was in a hurry to file a police report about the stolen boat. Not to mention exhausted. But even through her relief, he’d seen just how tightly she’d pressed her lips together and how she hadn’t once looked his way. Well, he was sorry if he’d destroyed her fantasy of what they’d once had, but the truth was leaving her then had been the right thing to do.
His phone began to ring. It was Jack Brooks, Torchlight’s most tenacious crime reporter and a solid friend. “Hey! How goes the book tour? As glamorous as they say?”
“Sure.” Jack laughed. “If your idea of glamor is drinking coffee in a highway hotel while your fiancée’s half a country away planning your wedding. Got your voice mail. I thought you were in a forest this weekend?”
Cars were pulling into Camp Spirit’s parking lot. Luke watched as Nicky left the beach and strode up to greet them. “I am. Arrived yesterday. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Luke quickly filled his colleague in on both the fire and what had happened on the island.
Jack whistled. “So obviously you think there’s a connection between the fire and this hunter guy?”
Relief spread over Luke’s shoulders. It felt good to hear someone else say it! This is exactly why he knew he’d been right to call a fellow reporter. “Yeah, I do. But the police don’t and Nicky doesn’t. I don’t even know for sure the man I saw running away from the lodge is the same man who jumped us on the island. Honestly, I was half expecting you to tell me I was crazy.”
Jack’s chuckle echoed down the phone line. “I’ve been there.” Not that long ago Jack’s gut and his fiancée’s tenaciousness had been the only things standing between innocent lives and a ruthless serial killer.
“It’s not exactly helping matters that I’ve got a bit of a history with the current camp director, Nicky, and it’s not pretty. We had a thing back in the day, and I’m not proud of how it ended.” Luke ran his hand over the back of his neck. “I still don’t know why it mattered so much to George that I came up this weekend.” There were five new vehicles in the parking lot now. Even from a distance he could spot a few familiar faces, including a local politician. “Tabitha Grey just arrived.”
Jack chuckled. “Hoping for a weekend of glamor camping no doubt.”
Luke grinned. Tabitha was striking woman in her late fifties, with a mane of stylishly coifed red hair. She was with a curvy, much younger woman with the same flame red hair. The younger woman pulled two bags from their trunk. Tabitha’s teenaged daughter perhaps?
A large man with a huge white handlebar moustache stepped out of an old pickup with Lake Huron Sports on the side—owner Russ Tusk, probably. There was also a man with a battered fedora whose face he couldn’t see, and two young men with huge mops of brown curly hair—twins by the look of it. Then a large blue van with a grizzly bear on the side pulled in. “Big Bear Construction is here, too.”
Torchlight News had a pile of unproved allegations about Frances “Bear” Wane’s shady dealings and illegal shenanigans almost three inches thick. But with the exception of one dismissed lawsuit where he allegedly waved a handgun at his workers, Torchlight had never managed to dig up enough concrete proof to run the story.
“I’m guessing I’ve got about twenty minutes before I’ve got to get down there,” Luke added. “Last thing I want is Nicky thinking I’ve bailed on her again. Then I’ve got no internet or phone until Sunday. Can you do me a favor and get someone at Torchlight to text me any background I should know about Tabitha Grey, Russ Tusk of Lake Huron Sports and ‘Bear’ of Big Bear Construction?”
“I’m on it.”
A breeze rustled the trees behind him. A suspicion nagged at the back of his mind. “For that matter, Nicky obviously doesn’t like the owner of Ace Sports Resort, Neil Pryce, and the only other person I know was around the camp is George’s son, Trevor Dale.”
“Got it.” Keyboard keys clicked furiously. “So you’re still going on the camping trip?”
“I’m not even sure I have a choice.” Luke said. “George asked me to and somebody needs to have Nicky’s back.” Whether she likes it or not. “If it were up to me, they’d either cancel this trip or send along some kind of security or police. I don’t have your investigative skills. I’m just a sport’s reporter.” Not to mention a former runaway with a history of petty crime. Being back in the local police station last night had stirred up some uncomfortable memories.
Jack snorted. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. A sport’s guy who just happens to have razor-sharp reflexes. I keep telling you that you should volunteer to coach something at the community center—”
“And I keep telling you, I’m the last guy anyone’s going to want as a role model.”
“So you say,” Jack said. “Just give yourself some credit. Nicky could do worse than you coming along.”
People were leaving the parking lot and following Nicky and Trevor down the trail to the waterfront. The young curvy redhead was near the back of the pack. As Luke watched, one of the twins—black shirt, blue bandanna—ran past her and pressed something into her hand. She slid it into her bag without even looking at it. No one else had seemed to notice, but Luke had spent enough time on the streets to recognize a handoff when he saw one.
“Still there?” Jack’s voice crackled in his ear.
“Yeah. Sorry. Just thought I saw some kind of handoff between two of the young ones.”
“Drugs?”
He rolled his jaw. “Really hope not.”
“You want my advice?” Jack said. “Go camping, keep your eyes open and don’t stop praying. Trust that if God wants you to see something, or do something, you’ll know.”
Luke picked up his rucksack and prayed. Dear Lord, please may he be right.
* * *
The smell of the forest hung heavy in the air and mingled with the scent of ashes. The lodge’s hollowed-out shell stood like a shadow behind the beach. Nicky tucked a defiant wisp of brown hair back into her bun and jabbed it down hard with a bobby pin. Every one of the potential donors had arrived—except Luke. Well, if he didn’t show, that was on him. The last thing she was going to do was waste another moment of her life waiting around for him.
She watched as Trevor fitted the men and women with life jackets and then showed them how to find the right size paddle. Boney knees jutted out from under Trevor’s plaid shorts as if his joints were trying to escape through his skin, and there was too much gel in his white-blond hair. But his lanky stance and tone was so much like George’s it was uncanny. She’d never known the young man to be so thorough. Maybe his dad being in the hospital had kicked some sense into him. After all, he had come to rescue her last night.
A tall shadow fell over the path. A smile crossed her lips. She turned, expecting to see Luke. It was Neil. Ace Sport’s director sauntered down the beach in between Trevor and the potential sponsors, smiling and nodding at each one as he went. “Please don’t let me interrupt.”
Trevor hesitated then went back to talking about canoe safety. Neil sidled up behind her. His fingertips slid over the edge of her clipboards and down over the list of campers. He whistled softly. “Wow, that’s quite a turnout. Russ Tusk is one of our favorite gear suppliers. Bear Wanes is building a new gym for us this year. Even Tabitha Grey! You know she cut the ribbon at the opening of our new pool? I’m guessing the twins would be David and Aaron Elliot of Up Start? That’s a website that helps young people find volunteer and job opportunities, right?”
Nicky turned her clipboard over. “What do you want?”
One hand slid on her shoulder. He pulled her back a couple of steps away from the group. “Just here to see if you need anything, doll.”
She snorted and shrugged him off. Yeah, as if she was about to fall for his nonsense today.
The rival camp director raised both hands. “Hey, I just figured that with George in the hospital and your camp locked down, you might appreciate a spare pair of hands this weekend. I can be pretty handy, you know. Come on, we both know Trevor is an all right guy to have a good time with, but he’s hardly the kind of solid camp professional you need for a trip like this.”
Her back stiffened. True, Neil was hardly telling her something she hadn’t thought herself more times than she could count. But she’d take Trevor’s laziness and unreliability over Neil’s slimy attempts to weasel his way into this trip and steal their sponsors any day. “Spoken like a true ‘Acer.’ Either someone’s the best or they’re worthless.”
“Look, all joking and rivalry aside, you are a solid camp instructor, Nicky. With skills like yours...” Neil shook his head. “Off the record, you’re more than qualified to be a member of Ace Sports’ staff team. You know how rare that is for me to admit about anyone.”
Did he actually mean that as a compliment? Telling her she was good enough for his shiny, obnoxious camp? As if she’d ever doubted she was every bit the athlete as those sparkly, spandex-clad gym nuts that Ace filled its ranks with each summer.
“Our facilities rival any camp in the continent,” he went on. “And you know, when it comes to campers, we attract some of the best, most talented young people from across the country...”
She tossed her head. “Wow, you must be desperate to derail our sponsorship trip if you’re trying to tempt me to quit just as we’re about to set sail. But fortunately for all those campers who aren’t up to your stellar standards, not to mention not having Ace Sports’ kind of money, Camp Spirit has always been happy to take on people who still need a little work and don’t see their ability to toss a ball as something to laud over others.”
Neil stepped back. “Believe it or not, I’m actually trying to help you. I’m not going to apologize for being the only one in your life man enough to point out that you’re too good for a ragtag place like this.” His eyes narrowed. “I just hope that you’re smart enough to face the facts before an old man’s dying dream ends up dragging you down with it.”
SIX
Nicky’s fingers tightened on the clipboard. Her heart pounded. What on earth did Neil mean by that? Did he actually know something about George’s plans for Camp Spirit she didn’t? Or was he just trying to throw her off her game?
“Is that a threat?”
The rival camp director grinned. His hand slid onto her arm. Footsteps pounded down the path. She turned. Luke was jogging through the trees. Her heart skipped an unexpected beat. Looked as if the sports reporter was coming, after all. He looked hard in their direction. An unspoken question flickered in his eyes.
Neil pulled his hand away. “Not a threat, sweetie. Just a cautious word of advice.” He nodded to Luke, waved at her campers, then sauntered up the path.
Two hours later Nicky sat alone in the last canoe as they glided in near silence along the wooded shoreline. A few more minutes and she’d be able to point out the hazy outline of the island in the distance. Trevor had gone on ahead in what was now Camp Spirit’s only motorboat, loaded down with their packs and equipment. She closed her eyes and listened to the gentle rhythm of paddles dipping in and out of the water. Lord, I wish George could be here. Help me to inspire these people to pitch in and help keep our camp alive.
A breeze tickled the base of her neck. She opened her eyes. As much as she wanted to tell herself that Neil had just been tossing around empty words, his tone had hardly sounded like idle smack talk. Of course she knew how fragile the state of Camp Spirit’s finances were. She was camp director, not some doe-eyed counselor fresh off the bus. And, yes, unless Trevor’s recent responsible transformation stuck, when he inherited the camp, she’d probably be out of a job. But, so what if saving the camp was like trying to patch up a snowman as the spring grew closer? She’d cut her salary down to bare room and board if that’s what it took to keep the camp alive even one more year.
She scanned the row of canoes. Tabitha Grey had volunteere
d to paddle the lead canoe. So much for thinking the politician’s icy reputation and poster-ready smile meant she wasn’t ready to hack the great outdoors. Tabitha’s daughter, Gracie, shared her canoe. A shy girl, Gracie was the baby of the group—five feet tall, full-figured and barely nineteen, with long red hair and a gaze that seemed to constantly drag her eyes toward the identical twin brothers from Start Up.
David and Aaron Elliot were twenty-one. The college students had founded an ambitious youth employment and volunteering website a little over a year ago. It looked as if Gracie’s eyes favored older brother David. But younger brother Aaron was the only one who glanced back her way. Ah, young people and their crushes. Then Nicky’s gaze fell on the dark, chiseled form of Luke, paddling steadily in the canoe behind them. Strong muscles rippled through his soft gray T-shirt. Her heart fluttered, like a spider skittering through the cobwebs of long-forgotten pathways. She looked away.
Luke was paddling with Martin Bright, who was on the board of directors of a charity called Faith Camps. Martin was a good man. Which was something she couldn’t say about the two men paddling to his left. Sports equipment powerhouse Russ Tusk had a white handlebar moustache and the tendency to ooze just a little too much charm. While “Bear” Wanes was a grizzled, brick-shaped man, with the habit of barging into the camp office without an appointment and trying to push George into spending money they didn’t have.
A row of swanky hotels and rental chalets rose from a peninsula ahead of them. The loud tinny chimes of a cell phone text split the peaceful air. Paddles fell as hands rose instinctively to people’s pockets. Someone must have picked up a momentary signal blip from one of the nearby hotels. But who’d be thoughtless enough to bring a phone after she’d explicitly told them to leave all electronic devices back in their cars? A second text chimed. Then a third and a fourth.
Silent Hunter Page 4