by Mia Sheridan
“I’ll do it,” he said, turning away from Driscoll to gather Pup’s body. He’d bury him by the river where he’d once buried the small bodies of Pup’s brothers and sisters, those loved creatures who had once saved his life. And he’d say goodbye to his Pup, and wonder how he would walk each day even more alone than he’d already felt. Pup had saved more than just his life . . . he’d given him a reason to live.
Once Driscoll was long gone, Jak sank to his knees next to Pup, twisting his fingers in his friend’s fur, raising his head and howling his sadness into the empty sky.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tiny ice crystals. Sparkling. Glittering on the glass in the last light of the ending day. Lucas threw another log on the fire, holding his hands before it for a minute, thankful for the wonder of warmth. Sometimes, still, the flames felt . . . holy to him, like the first time he’d felt it after living through so many miserable winter days and nights with nothing but cold. Ice. Suffering. Aloneness.
A rumble made him pause, tilting his head as he listened. A vehicle? Shock and fear rolled through him. He walked quickly to the front window, his eyes widening when he saw that same large truck Harper drove, moving slowly—carefully—through the woods toward his house.
He watched as it came to a stop, and a minute later Harper climbed down, a heavy-looking bag over her shoulder, walking to the place where the fox den was and staring down into it. When she turned toward his house, she had a smile on her face.
He stepped back quickly, making his body still as he heard her climbing his steps. He shouldn’t answer. Why is she here? What does she want? She knocked at his door and he stayed still, trying not to answer, but in the end, a different part of him won out. The part that had come alive at the sight of her face, seeing that she’d come back. The part of him that knew she was his, even if he’d lived a life that could not make it be true.
When he opened the door, she smiled at him, moving from one foot to the other.
He waited for her to tell him why she was there, not knowing what to say. Hi? Hello? Why are you here? What do you want? He thought those questions might sound like he didn’t want her there, and maybe he didn’t—shouldn’t—even though he knew he did.
“I’ve been advised not to do this,” she finally said.
Advised. I’ve been . . . told. Someone told her not to do this. He frowned. “Do what?”
She looked away, then back. “Um, come out here.” Her cheeks turned light pink like flowers had suddenly blossomed under her skin, and she moved the bag from one shoulder to the other.
He leaned against the doorway and her eyes moved to his arms as he crossed them over his chest. His arms were bare and he thought she must be looking at the scars that crisscrossed his skin here and there. Everywhere. It made him feel . . . naked even though it was only his arms. Those scars told too many awful stories about the way he’d lived. Stories he didn’t want told. Ever. “Why didn’t you listen?”
“Oppositional defiance disorder?” She let out a small, uncomfortable laugh.
Those were three words he didn’t know, and nothing to go along with them that would help him figure them out. Lucas tilted his head. “I don’t know what that is,” he admitted.
She smiled. “I think it’s another way of calling a person pigheaded.”
He squinted at her. There it was again, three minutes into a conversation with her and he was already mostly lost. A gust of wind blew hard and she held the bag tighter to her, moving her shoulders in and making her head go lower against the cold. “Come in,” he said. “It’s cold.”
She looked thankful, not scared like she had the last time and she’d stepped inside. “No gun this time?” he asked as he closed the door and walked back toward the fire, looking inside the small glass window to make sure there was enough wood. Wanting to keep her warm.
“No. I’m . . . I’m sorry about that. I just—”
“I don’t blame you. You don’t know me. It was smart.”
He turned toward her and, for a moment, time seemed to stretch out, long and thin. Breakable. Like a blade of grass pulled too tight. She moved in place again. “Anyway, I came to say thank you for what you did.” She looked to the side for a minute like she was trying to find words written on his wall. “You helped me with something that was very, very important to me and I’m grateful.”
He looked down, wanting to tell her something, but not knowing if it was right to say. Not knowing the rules about things like that.
“What is it?” she asked, like she could read his face, knew his thoughts. It surprised him that he liked the idea of that.
“I wanted you to know that . . . I visited them. I . . . talked to them too. They weren’t alone.” He couldn’t look at her. His face burned. But when he finally did, there were tears in her eyes, and she looked like he’d made her happy.
“Thank you,” she whispered. She shook her head. “Those words feel too small. I . . . you’ve given me a gift. The gift of peace.”
Lucas lifted his head, smiling. He’d given her a gift and it had pleased her. “I’m glad it . . . helped you. To find them.”
She let out a breath. “Yes, um.” Her voice stumbled, and she cleared her throat, nodding her head to the bag on her shoulder. “Anyway, I also brought you this. A gesture of gratitude.”
“What is it?”
She took the bag off her shoulder, moving past him to set it on the table by the back window, and then she turned to him. He took the few steps so he was standing beside her, waiting. She paused for a beat and then shot him a smile before opening the bag and pulling a few items out. Cans. She held them up to him one at a time. “Chicken noodle soup and pears.” She set them on the table and then pulled out a few more items, listing them as she did. “Baked beans with ham, oh.” She pulled out another item and held it up to him like it was the best of all. “Peanut butter,” she said, her voice lowered to a whisper.
“I remember peanut butter,” he murmured.
“Oh. You do? Did you like it?”
“Yes, I liked it.”
Her face lit up so brightly that Lucas blinked. Each time she smiled at him, he felt good in a way he couldn’t describe. Like I’m a man. She makes me feel like a man. She took off the top and peeled back some silver paper showing the smooth food he hadn’t had since he was a little boy. He leaned forward, sniffing at it before dipping a finger in, pulling it out and sticking it in his mouth.
Oh, God. Good. His eyes wanted to roll to the back of his head, but he kept them glued to Harper’s, surprised by her eyes getting bigger as she watched him lick the peanut butter from his finger. The way she was watching him . . . Oh no, he was doing something wrong, acting . . . wrong. He dropped his hand to his side. Ashamed.
“Good?” Harper asked, and her voice sounded different than it had, deeper and a little slower. She reached into the bag, pulling something else from it. “Crackers,” she said, the word rushed as she threw the box to the table. “And a few other things. Food. I brought you food, because I was worried you might have a hard time getting out to hunt without your bow and arrow. And there’s a storm coming too, in case you didn’t know.”
“Thank you. I have what I need. You didn’t have to worry.” He said it, but he didn’t say that her worrying about him felt good, because it meant someone remembered he was alive. It did him no good, but maybe he was still part human. And that mattered to him.
She tilted her head and looked long at him for a minute, her eyes moving from his eyes, to his lips, staying there for a second and then over his jaw. It made him want to run a hand over his short beard, to make sure he didn’t have some peanut butter sticking to it. But he stayed still and let her study him. She seemed to like what she saw and he was curious, wanted to know her thoughts, but had no idea how to ask.
What do I look like to you? I was human once, but now I’m part animal. Which one do you see? And why aren’t you afraid?
He’d crawled.
He’d cried.
He’d eaten mud and bugs and dead grass when he was so starved he thought he’d die.
He’d begged.
He’d killed.
Could she tell? Could she see in his eyes how low he’d gone to survive? To live?
“I’m glad you have what you need,” she finally said, turning her head and looking at the food on his table. “I’ll leave this stuff anyway.” She looked up at him. “Is there anything that you do need? Matches? Or . . .” Her white teeth caught her bottom lip and slid over it, and it made his body tighten with want, his muscles filled with that heat that made him want to move. Toward her. “I don’t know.” She shrugged, letting out a small laugh.
He tried his best to ignore his body. “I do need matches, but I don’t have anything to trade.” He frowned. “And I know that’s not how things work in—”
“Oh, you don’t need to pay me in any way. I told you, you’ve already given me a gift. Let me repay you for your help. Your time.”
He watched her, not liking the idea of that, but not able to say why. He had always worked for the things he got. He didn’t know how to take without paying. The way she was looking at him though, with that something lighting her eyes and her lips pressed together like she wouldn’t breathe until he said yes. And he wanted to say yes, not only for the matches, but because he wanted her to come back. “Okay.”
She grinned, letting out that breath he knew she had been holding. “Great. What other foods do you like?”
He stared. He couldn’t remember. His baka had cooked for him. Meats and vegetables wrapped up in something he couldn’t remember the name for anymore. “Orange drink with bubbles,” he said, feeling shy, thinking he was probably saying it wrong.
But her eyes lit up. “Orange Crush. Yes, that is good. I’ll bring you some. What about bread? Do you like bread?” She smiled happily again and his stomach flipped, all thoughts of food disappearing. But she was looking at him waiting, so he closed his eyes, trying to remember bread. Bread. Yes, he’d liked that. It was soft, and he’d eaten it with peanut butter. “Yes.”
“Okay, great. I’ll bring you Orange Crush and bread and . . . oh, I’ll surprise you. How’s that?”
Lucas gave her a small not-knowing nod. She said the word surprise with a smile, but he didn’t like surprises. To him, surprises were not good. Surprises came out of the clear blue sky and knocked your head for a loop. But she was still smiling, so he’d trust that her surprise really did only mean food, nothing else.
Harper looked at the cans. “I can heat this up for us if you don’t mind sharing?”
He nodded quickly and she smiled again, using the little ring on the can to pull the top open. He had one pot that he got for her, and she started heating the chicken noodle soup on the top of his wood stove. Lucas watched her as she moved, his eyes moving from the curve of her backside as she bent over, to the female shape of her legs under her jeans, the straight line of her back. He loved the look of her, loved seeing all the ways a woman’s body was so different from his own. He wanted to see her naked, undress all the secrets hidden under her clothes, wanted to know what a woman’s skin felt like against his own. His male parts throbbed and he turned away from her, pretending to be busy moving the cans uselessly to the other side of the table.
He wanted her to leave and he wanted her to stay, but he didn’t know what he should feel. She wanted to share food with him. She’d liked his smoked fish too. And because the girl standing at his stove was heating soup for them to share, he felt confusion, but the one thing he didn’t feel was alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Missoula Main Library was a relatively nondescript brick building, located in downtown Missoula. Mark asked for directions from the man at the circulation desk and then made his way to the area where young adult books were kept. He took a moment to peruse the shelves, noting the white stickers at the bottom of the spines indicating the author and location, and the yellow sticker near the middle with a large number on it, indicating how long the book was available for loan. Harper was right.
There was a woman standing in front of a library cart nearby, re-shelving books and Mark headed in her direction. As he approached, she looked up, removing her glasses, and dropping them so they hung on the chain around her neck. “Hello.”
“Hello, ma’am, Agent Gallagher with the Montana Department of Justice.” He opened his wallet and showed her his badge, which she glanced at quickly, her eyes widening. “I’m hoping you can assist me.”
“Oh. I can try. What is it I might help you with?”
Mark pulled out his cell phone and showed her the photos he’d taken of the books that had been on the nightstand at the Larkspur. “Is there anything you can tell me about these titles and whether they might have come from this library?”
She studied the photos, swiping between the one of the covers and the one of the spines. She looked up at Mark and handed him his cell phone back. “Yes, they did. I helped the woman pick these out myself after she asked for my help. Then instead of checking them out, she stole them.”
Mark reached in his pocket, bringing out his notebook and the picture of the woman inside that the morgue had forwarded him. “Is this her?”
The librarian peered down at it. “Yes.” She raised her gaze to Mark’s, her eyes wide. “Is she dead?” she whispered. She brought her hand to her stomach, appearing ill.
“I’m sorry to say she is. Any information you can give me on her demeanor, or something she said that seemed off to you, would be very helpful.”
The woman bobbed her head. “Um, yes, well, she asked me if I would help her choose some books for a young man. I asked for a specific age, or reading level, and she seemed not to know how to answer that, and so I chose a few of our most popular titles for mid to young teens. She seemed appreciative, but then I noticed later that the books were missing. I just got this weird feeling, you know, so I checked the computer and found that they’d never been checked out.” She paused. “Are you able to tell me what happened to her, Agent?”
“Unfortunately, she was murdered.”
“Oh. Oh, that’s terrible. My goodness . . .” She trailed off and Mark nodded.
“Is there anything else at all you can tell me about her?”
“Oh, um . . . oh yes, one thing. She used the computer right over there.” She pointed to a couple of monitors. “She was sitting at the computer, actually, right before she asked me for help, so that’s why I noticed. She stood up from the monitor and came toward me where I was re-shelving books.”
“Does the library have security cameras?”
She shook her head. “No, no cameras.”
Mark nodded. “Okay. Would the history still be on that computer?”
“If she was using the Internet, I think so. Or at least, we don’t delete the history regularly. That was what . . . two weeks ago?”
“Yes, about that.”
The woman came out from behind the desk and Mark followed her to the computer monitor where she sat down and logged in, bringing up the Internet, and then going to the browser history. “Let’s see,” she said softly, “that would have been Monday . . . no, Tuesday.” She smiled up at Mark. “I’d come back from lunch with my sister earlier, and we always do Taco Tuesday down the street.” She turned back to the monitor. “Okay, hmm . . . there wasn’t a lot of activity on this computer but visits to pages don’t have time stamps. However, it looks as though all these entries are related to Ancient China . . . probably a research paper of some sort . . . and then there’s a visit to the contact page of Fairbanks Lumber Company, and then . . . to the contact page of the CEO of the company, Halston Fairbanks.”
“Could you print the entire history out?”
“I can take a screen shot and print it for you.”
“That would be very helpful, ma’am.”
Ten minutes later, Mark exited the building, the printout in his hand. Had the woman killed at the Larkspur looked up the contact infor
mation for Halston Fairbanks, a local lumber company CEO? And if so, why? Moreover, why had she stolen books from the library that looked to be for a young man? He had nothing to go on regarding the stolen books, but he’d contact Halston Fairbanks and hope to God, the man was able to provide some information that would move this case forward.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jak sat up sleepily, blinking around the dark room, the objects he knew well coming into focus as sleep cleared. There was a sound outside, one he didn’t recognize as part of the forest, a strange noise that must have pulled him from his dreams.
He reached for Pup, deep sadness squeezing him when he realized he wasn’t there. He’d never be there again.
His feet hit the cold floor and he stood, rushing to the back window and looking out into the snowy moonlit woods. A bright light suddenly blinded him and he startled, turning his head and using his arm to shield his eyes. He crouched, his palms hitting the wood hard and making him grunt with the pain.
For a minute he hid beneath the window, his heart beating loudly in his ears, his mind spinning. What is that light? What do I do?
Had the enemy come for him?
Would they break down his door? Overpower him? Hurt him? Kill him?
Will you die today?
No!
Jak gathered his bravery and raised his head, peeking over the sill as the light went out. There was a person—a woman, he thought—standing outside the window, some sort of light in her hand.
Jak watched, wide-eyed and tensed with fear, as she walked to the window next to the one he was hiding below and peered through that one. She knocked on the glass and though it was soft, it seemed to ring through the silent woods, the drumbeat of his heart following, loud and pounding in his head.
The woman stepped back and stood in the moonlight, looking at his house, seeming as scared as him. Jak leaned closer, trying to get a better look at her. No weapon, just a big bag hung over her shoulder. She looked one way, then the other, then behind her, before coming back to the window he was crouched below and knocking softly at that one again.