by Mia Sheridan
Were there really still enemies? Or had Driscoll been the only enemy? He still didn’t know. He was trying to figure it out.
The man in the truck had steered off the road when he saw Lucas and then taken out his gun and pointed it at him. His hand had been shaking and Lucas had smelled his fear, knew he could overtake the man, steal his gun if he wanted, but he didn’t. The man had asked him to come in to town and answer questions. Lucas didn’t want to answer any of his questions. He could have darted away like a fox. Too quick to catch. But he had needed to know more about what was out there.
So he’d let the man drive him into town and the man had put him here, in the cell that unhappy people had sat in before him. Sweating. Crying. Peeing on the floor? Why? He couldn’t make sense of that. Even animals peed far away from where they slept.
Driscoll had talked about a cell. With bars. A cage. This must be what he meant. But the men who told him to sit there had also said he could go home after they asked him questions. But maybe they were lying.
He looked at the camera in the corner. He knew what a camera was. The redheaded woman had told him what to look for, and he’d remembered. Remembered from the long-ago world, the one he’d lived in. Before. The life where there had been cameras and cars, and food in cans, and boxes, even bottles of sweet orange-colored drinks with little bubbles that’d popped on his tongue.
Some of it he could remember the names for, some of it he could not. The tastes though . . . the tastes had already left his memory.
He looked up and a red light on the camera flashed. On. Off. On. Off. Like the slow blink of a red-eyed owl. They were watching him. Taking pictures. Why?
If they didn’t have guns, he could fight them all. He was bigger, stronger than both men, the one who had driven him there in the truck, and the other one who asked him questions and then put him in the cage.
That man was in the room next door, he could smell him, his scent both strange and familiar. Like pine trees only . . . too much. Too . . . everything. The smell made Lucas picture pine trees as tall as the sky and as wide as a mountain. Bright blinding green with pine cones huge like boulders. Lucas wasn’t sure what to think about that. His smell was just very.
But suddenly, underneath that, there was something else . . . he leaned his head back, closing his eyes and trying to pick up the scent beneath all the other ones. It was faint, very faint but he caught it and held on. A faraway wildflower field after a rainstorm. Clean. Earthy.
A woman.
Her smell . . . soothed him.
Confused him.
Her scent made the whispers stir up inside. They weren’t whispers, that was the wrong word, but the only one he knew to use. The feelings he got when everything else disappeared, except for his instincts. They were always quiet, but sometimes he understood them, and sometimes he did not.
He pulled in another breath. The scent of her was new and old, something that was not known and already a part of him. Deep down. Deep, deep down. Something came alive like a spark, rising up to greet its match, a singing in his blood that was like the wind that showed up on a cold winter morning telling the forest that springtime was in the close faraway.
Startled, he opened his eyes, letting the feeling settle, until his breath evened again.
Now there was another man in the room next to the cage Lucas was in. Lucas could smell him through the thing high on the wall that blew air out of it. Hot. Cold, he thought. Both. What was the name of that thing? He couldn’t remember. But the scents of the men were stronger than the lighter scent of the woman and he lost his grasp on it. She faded away.
After a time, he smelled the man getting closer and was unsurprised when he showed up, using a key in the door with bars and sliding it open, coming into the cage with a smile.
“Thanks for waiting for me,” the man said. He had hair the color of the big rocks that sat on the river’s edge—light gray and dark silver all speckled together. “If you’ll follow me this way, we can talk.”
Lucas followed the man, turning his head to see the woman. But the door of the room she was in was closed. The man brought Lucas to another room with a table and two chairs. “Please sit,” the man said, and when Lucas did, the man sat too. “My name is Mark Gallagher. I’m an agent with the Montana Department of Justice.” He smiled again. His eyes are nice, Lucas thought. But he didn’t trust himself to see niceness. Or meanness. Lucas knew well that people lied and pretended. “I know you’ve been mirandized and that the sheriff already asked you some questions, but I have a few more if you don’t mind.”
Lucas nodded slowly, not wanting to answer questions, but understanding that they weren’t asking, they were telling.
“Good. Will you tell me again how you knew the victim, Isaac Driscoll?”
“He traded things with me. Things I needed but couldn’t get.”
“Okay. And why couldn’t you get the things you needed?”
He didn’t tell the man why. He wasn’t sure he should. Didn’t know who to trust, and who not to trust. Not yet. “I didn’t want to leave the forest. I wanted to stay there. And I . . . didn’t have a car.”
“I see. Okay.” But he could tell by the man’s face that he didn’t see. Did he know Lucas was lying?
“Is there anything else you can tell me about your relationship? Anything you knew about him that we should know?”
“No.” He tried not to picture the blood when he answered, the puddle that had grown and grown moving across the floor.
“Okay. And you live in a house on Isaac Driscoll’s property?”
“Yes.”
“And you traded things with him in exchange for rent?”
Rent? Lucas wasn’t sure what that meant, but he knew the man—the agent—expected it was true so he answered, “Yes.”
“So, in essence, you depended on Isaac Driscoll to obtain things not available to you?”
There were too many words in that sentence he didn’t understand, but he nodded anyway. “Yes.”
“Did you like Isaac Driscoll?”
“I don’t know. I just traded with him.”
The agent waited for a second before talking. “Okay. Have you seen anyone unusual in, er, your area of the woods so to speak, recently?”
Don’t tell anyone about me.
“No.”
“Okay.” He gave Lucas a long look and Lucas stared back. “Have you ever been to town before, Lucas?”
“No.” That was almost the truth. He’d been to town once, but only walked a few steps into it. He didn’t want to tell the agent about that. His muscles still got achy and tight when he thought about it.
“How did you come to live way out there?”
“I . . . my . . . parents couldn’t care for me. Driscoll let me stay on his land.”
The agent stared at him, but his face didn’t say anything. “So, you’ve been living out there how long?”
“Fifteen winters.” So many. So much cold. So much hunger. So much loneliness.
The agent was looking at him in that funny way. Lucas didn’t know what he was thinking. “Alone? All of them?”
“Yes.”
The agent was quiet for a minute. He nodded. “All right, Lucas, thank you for your time. We’ll be out to talk to you if we have more questions. And of course, to return your property once it’s been tested.”
Lucas had no idea what they were testing for, but he nodded. I want to go home. But even as he thought it, his heart dropped. Because the forest was no longer the place that made sense. Everything was different now.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Agent Gallagher opened the door and smiled. “Ready to go if you are.”
She nodded, getting up from the chair where she’d been sitting as she’d resisted turning on the monitor again, and followed the agent out of the room. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the man—Lucas—being led out of the holding cell by Dwayne. “Sorry for the holdup,” Dwayne was saying. “Thanks for answering our question
s. You’re free to go.”
Dwayne turned and Lucas followed, swiping a magazine out of the holder on the wall outside the restroom door as they walked by, and quickly sliding it under his coat. Harper blinked. Had he just stolen a magazine right behind the sheriff’s back?
Dwayne stepped aside and Lucas looked up and met Harper’s eyes. For a frozen second, their gazes locked, and Harper felt trapped in his stare. Spellbound. She wanted to shake her head in amazement at seeing him in the flesh. As though he might have only existed inside that screen in the room she’d just exited, and the reality of his three-dimensional presence in front of her was almost . . . shocking.
And God, the way he was looking at her—the animosity she’d seen when he’d stared up at the camera gone, replaced only by . . . deep curiosity and that same keen intelligence. She’d never felt so completely captured in someone’s gaze. She swallowed. He was big. Bigger than he’d appeared on the small screen. At least six four and muscular. Completely overwhelming.
“Harper is going to give me a ride to Driscoll’s,” Agent Gallagher said as Dwayne approached them, Lucas trailing. The agent’s words—thankfully—snapped her from her trance before the older men noticed.
Dwayne looked pleased, shooting Harper a smile. “Excellent. Glad it worked out.”
Lucas stopped a few steps behind Dwayne, his gaze not having left Harper. He stared, his eyes moving over her like he was trying to figure something out. She stared back, and after a beat, Lucas looked away, his gaze roving the room, stopping quickly on this or that, and then moving on to something else. He was cataloguing as though he had just landed on some alien planet. Or stepped out of a time machine. Maybe he did. Maybe he’d recently come from the Cretaceous period and was experiencing civilization for the first time. Then again, the Levi’s he was wearing sort of disproved that theory.
“I’m going home now,” Lucas murmured, and even in that low tone, his voice was surprisingly smooth and expectedly deep. He looked at Harper again, and she saw that his eyes were blue with gold surrounding his iris. Sunset eyes, she thought. They were especially extraordinary in the otherwise rough-hewn lines of his face.
He turned toward the door, and Agent Gallagher stepped forward, halting him. “Deputy Brighton will give you a ride. It’s a long walk, and we’ve inconvenienced you.”
Lucas glanced out the window where large snowflakes were drifting past the glass, the sun already low in the sky. He paused for a second and then said simply, “Thank you.” He looked back at Harper again, and she switched from one foot to the other.
For a moment there she had wondered if they’d ask her to drive Lucas home too since he lived near Driscoll. Maybe the men were being cautious with her safety, or maybe they had another reason pertaining to protocol that called for Paul to transport him. Whatever the reason, she felt slightly relieved and slightly . . . disappointed. “Harper Ward,” she said, thrusting her hand in front of her.
“Harper Ward,” Lucas repeated, his gaze held steady on her face. He dropped his eyes, staring at her outreached palm for a moment before raising his own hand and wrapping it around hers. His hand was large and warm and calloused, and the feel of it made her breath catch, part thrill, part fear. He was all man, every bit of him, and never in her life had she felt another person’s presence so keenly. Never had she been stared at with so much intensity. It unsettled her. It intrigued her.
Mostly it unsettled her.
Maybe.
Deputy Brighton appeared from the front of the office, glancing at Lucas. “All ready?” he asked. But he looked like the one who was unsure. Lucas nodded and they all left the station together, a blast of icy snow hitting them in the face, causing Agent Gallagher to draw back and raise his hood. “Damn that’s cold.”
“Welcome to winter in Montana.”
Agent Gallagher gave Harper a rueful smile, squinting against the flurry. “Is this a welcome or a warning?”
Despite the heightened awareness of Lucas trudging next to her, she managed a laugh. “Maybe a little bit of both.”
Harper glanced at Lucas and saw that he was looking around, his gaze moving from the lawn and garden shop across the street—closed for the season—to the distance where a few homes could be seen among the bare trees, smoke spiraling lazily from the chimneys. He looked her way, and, for a fleeting moment, she swore she saw grief on his face. But why? She shook it off, focusing on her boots stepping through the snow in the parking lot. She had to stop trying to read that man. He sent her mind spinning.
And he might be dangerous.
Even Deputy Brighton was glancing at him suspiciously like he’d been assigned to transport a wild animal. But what? Was Lucas supposed to walk twenty miles home in a snowstorm just because he’d had the bad luck to walk in front of a sheriff’s vehicle and knew the murder victim? Okay, there was the bow and arrow too—but they were different, and didn’t it stand to reason that if one person hunted that way, others did as well?
She had no idea why she was trying to justify anything on his behalf.
They got to her truck next to Deputy Brighton’s SUV, the words Helena Springs Sheriff Department plastered across the side, and Harper turned at the same time Lucas did.
Like a few minutes before in the station, Lucas’s eyes locked on Harper’s. “Goodbye.” Lucas’s coat had opened slightly in the wind, and Harper noticed a dark shirt beneath it that looked to be regular cotton. A T-shirt? Something Driscoll had given him for some fish, or berries, or who the hell knew what else? What had he had to trade in order to stay on Driscoll’s property? A shiver went down her spine.
“Goodbye,” she murmured.
As he shifted to turn away, something around Lucas’s neck fell forward onto the dark material of his shirt, pulling Harper’s gaze to it. A round silver locket on a leather string. Strange jewelry for a man. Something about it . . . something about it . . . Harper realized she was holding her breath as she leaned forward, her hand beginning to extend unconsciously to pick that locket up in her fingers, get a better look at it—
Lucas turned and opened the back door of the deputy’s vehicle, closing it between them. Their eyes caught one last time through the glass, and then the SUV pulled away, disappearing into the falling snow.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A burst of light. Jak flinched, reaching back for the darkness. He floated for a minute, two, but cold was pricking at his skin. Hurt. Yes, he was achy, cold . . . but not as cold as he’d been . . . before. He smelled earth . . . dirt and leaves and something he couldn’t name. It smelled sort of like urine and he wondered if he’d wet himself.
His thoughts tumbled, his mind trying to grab a memory . . . Something wiggled against his foot and he pulled his knee to his chest, whimpering. He felt another movement near his shoulder and his eyes flew open. Memories of the man and the cliff and . . . and . . . he couldn’t remember more than that, but that made him move, clawing his way toward the circle of light above him. He came out of the hole he’d been in, rolling to the frozen ground, a cry of fear and confusion bursting from his cracked lips.
He put his arm over his eyes, waiting for them to stop blinking, and then slowly lowered it. Woods. And snow. Sunshine. The sound of dripping water all around him. At first, he thought it was rain, but no, it was melting snow. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth, the sweet taste of fresh water dripping from the bare tree branches above and catching on his tongue. Relief. Relief.
Looking down, he saw that his body was black and blue with bruises, and he was only wearing his underwear. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered stripping his wet clothes off. He’d been hot. Burning hot and then . . . he’d fallen. He looked quickly behind him and saw that the place he’d climbed from was a den. There were moving things around him, on him, whimpering and warm. On a rush of breath, Jak dropped to his knees and peeked back inside to where his almost-naked body had lay through the deep, dark night. There were six wolf pups, four sleeping, two staring up at him.
He blinked, and they blinked back.
He saw the outline of where his body had been curled next to the pups. He’d fallen into their den and they’d kept him warm when he would have frozen to death. “Hi,” he croaked, tears springing to his eyes. He was scared, hurting, and still cold. Shaking. He was only in his underpants, his bare feet in the snow, but all of a sudden, he didn’t feel so alone, and the feeling made a lump of thankfulness block his throat.
The two pups who were awake were still staring up at him, and when he reached down slowly, carefully, to pet one of them, he shrunk back in fear. Jak saw that their ribs were showing and his heart squeezed tight.
They were starving. They’d been abandoned by their mother.
Just like me.
But they had no Baka to take care of them.
He reached into the den, touching one of the pup’s heads softly and petting him as he whispered the words his baka had said to him when he had trouble sleeping. “It’s okay. You will be okay. You will survive. You are strong boy.”
When he reached his hand over to rub one of the sleeping pups’ bellies, he pulled back quickly. The pup was cool under his touch. The other four pups weren’t sleeping. They had died. To be sure, Jak touched them one by one, all of them cool, though not cold. Not yet. Not like the alley cat he’d found dead by the building behind his baka’s apartment before screaming for her to come help it.
She’d come running, but there was no help for that cat. It was gone to cat heaven she’d said, and it was not coming back. Just like these pups. But these pups were different. They’d saved his life before they’d lost their own.
“Thank you,” he choked, touching the heads of each small wolf.
His feet were starting to tingle with cold and he stood, shaking the snow off and turning toward the woods where sunlight lit the spaces between the tall green trees. He spotted a piece of gray cloth and walked to it, his limbs burning with soreness, especially his arms. But other than that, he seemed to be okay. No broken bones, he didn’t think. He stepped on the rocks and bare spots of grass where some snow had melted until he came to the piece of cloth.