by Mia Sheridan
“Allow me,” Brett said, taking her arm before she could protest. He led her to the table, pulling out her chair and immediately taking the one next to her. The one to her right was the head of the table and she looked back over her shoulder, flustered. Jak’s jaw was tight as he moved around the table, taking the seat across from her. She shot him a helpless smile.
Mr. Fairbanks took a seat at the head of the table, Mrs. Fairbanks next to Jak, and Gabi next to her mother.
The first course was brought out and the chitchat centered around the food. Harper took a spoonful of the rich tomato bisque, letting out an appreciative moan as the creamy soup hit her tongue. “Oh my gosh, that’s good.”
Brett leaned toward her, whispering so only she could hear. “I like the way you sound when you moan.”
Wait, what? Heat rushed to Harper’s face as she tried to work out what he’d said. She had to have misheard him. She gave him a shocked glance, and he smirked at her, tilting his chin. She hadn’t misheard him. Good lord, who were these people?
You’ll be one of us in no time.
God, please no.
She looked across the table to see Jak glaring coldly at Brett. Her skin prickled. A low growl emitted from Jak’s throat and his fingernails scraped across the wood table next to his bowl.
“Did he just . . . growl?” Gabi asked loudly and incredulously, a small laugh bubbling from her mouth. “Oh my God, he did. He growled.”
“He sure did, didn’t he?” Mrs. Fairbanks purred, unmistakably appreciative.
Harper didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She’d never met people with such a lack of class. And she’d grown up in the social services system. These were Fairbanks, for heaven’s sake. Was this all a joke? Would they all start laughing any minute?
Brett’s eyes widened as he took in Jak’s angry expression, and he scooted away from Harper, suddenly obsessed with his soup.
“I, uh . . . so . . . Mr. Fairbanks, that painting is beautiful,” Harper said, nodding at the oil painting of a field of flowers hanging over the buffet. “The ones in the hallway are by the same artist, aren’t they?”
“You have a good eye,” he said, giving her an appraising look. “Yes, Jak’s grandmother painted those. She was an amazing talent.” True sadness passed over his expression, and Harper thought back to what Jak had said about him being a better man . . . before his loss. But even so, why bring a group of barracudas into your home, she wondered, glancing at Loni, Gabi, and Brett.
“She was,” Jak said, looking back at the painting, apparently having moved on from Brett and his lecherous comments. Harper breathed an internal sigh of relief. “She got the flowers just right. The way the sunlight hits them that way right before it goes down for the night.” He lowered his eyes, appearing shy, uncertain about his comment.
“Well, nature boy would know,” Gabi muttered, taking a bored sip of her water.
Anger gripped Harper, her hand tightening around her napkin. “Yes. He would know. He knows things none of us could learn if we studied every textbook ever written. He’s a nature expert and his knowledge is something we should all revere. I know I do.” She raised her water glass to Jak, his smile shy but happy, his eyes wide.
“Hear hear to that,” Mr. Fairbanks said, raising his own glass, a look Harper swore was respect in his gaze as she met his eyes.
“So, Harper what is it you do, exactly?” Mrs. Fairbanks asked, abandoning her spoon in her still-full soup bowl. Hadn’t she said she was starving?
Harper set down the roll she’d been about to slather with butter. “I started my own company several years ago. I do nature tours, take tourists out to camp or to hunt, or sometimes just for the day.”
“I . . . see,” Mrs. Fairbanks said, looking as though Harper had just told her she cleaned Port-a-Potties for a living.
“Started your own company, did you? And so young. Very enterprising,” Mr. Fairbanks said, and he seemed genuinely impressed. “Do you enjoy it?”
She smiled. “I do. But I don’t believe I want to do it forever. I plan to start classes in Missoula soon.”
Mr. Fairbanks gave her another nod and then picked up his glass once more, smiling around the table. “Well, let me propose a toast. To new endeavors”—he turned his eyes to Harper and smiled—“and to having my grandson back.” He appeared to get choked up for a moment, but just as quickly recovered. “It’s been too long since a Fairbanks son has sat at the family table.”
Everyone raised their glasses, Brett scowling, Gabi rolling her eyes again, and Loni’s gaze glued to Jak. Harper suddenly wished she’d asked for something stronger than water.
The rest of the dinner went by relatively quickly, everyone seeming eager to get away. At least the food was incredible, though Jak seemed suspicious of it all, and Mrs. Fairbanks pushed hers around her plate.
Harper noticed Jak watching the food being cleared and as the woman picking up the mostly full dishes passed by, he stopped her, asking softly, “What do you do with the food?”
She looked down. “The food, sir?”
Jak leaned back, speaking more quietly. “The food we don’t eat.”
“We . . .” The woman glanced around helplessly, but no one but Harper was paying attention to the exchange. “We throw it away, sir.”
“Oh.” Jak turned, the expression on his face embarrassed and dejected. He swallowed and Harper’s heart ached. She felt ashamed for every extra bite of food she herself had thrown in the garbage. How often had he starved? How often had he sat somewhere in the forest, hungry and alone? To see the excess here—the thoughtless waste—must be so incredibly distressing.
Finally, Mr. Fairbanks stood. “Thank you for a lovely meal, everyone. I have some work to get back to, but, Harper, it was nice to have you join us.” He gave her a nod, and everyone else stood as well.
“Thank you, Mr. Fairbanks,” she said as he left the table.
Jak came around and took her hand, shooting a threatening look at Brett, who was already moving away. She took Jak’s hand eagerly and let him lead her from the dinner table.
They both seemed to breathe a mutual sigh of relief as they walked quickly down the hall and into the foyer. Nigel appeared as if out of nowhere and they both startled, covering their mouths with their hands as he let them out the door. They both withheld their laughter until the door closed behind them and then their laughter exploded, both fast-walking away from the house as they tried in vain to keep their hilarity muffled.
Jak swung her under the garage door awning on the other side of the house and they gave in to their laughter. Harper had needed the release and felt a hundred times more relaxed once her giggles had subsided. It had all been so ridiculous.
They were awful. With maybe the exception of Jak’s grandfather. But even he was obviously judgmental, only not where it counted. Why hadn’t he turned that sharp-eyed judgment on Loni and her bratty, insufferable children? Still . . . they were Jak’s family. He needed them if he was going to thrive in his new life. At the very least, he needed what they could provide for him. The Fairbanks name would open any number of doors that would never open for mere mortals—like her.
“What do you think of them?” Jak asked once their bout of laughter had completely faded away. “Do you . . . enjoy their company?” He raised a brow.
She gave him a small smile. “They’re not the Gallaghers.” She reached up, moving a lock of hair off his forehead. “But they’re your family. Your grandfather cares about your well-being, I can tell. He wants to help you adapt. To learn. To find success. I think you should let him.”
“You do?”
She nodded.
“Okay.” He laced his fingers with hers. “When can I be alone with you?” he whispered close to her ear and she shivered. “I want it to be now.”
She groaned. “I know. Me too. But, I don’t want to be a point of contention between you and your grandfather.” His brows did that up and down movement that meant he was figuring out a
word, and she smiled with affection, standing on her tiptoes and kissing him. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow and show you a little more of Missoula. We’ll go to my place for a while afterward.” She smiled at him suggestively.
“It won’t be enough. I want the whole night.”
She laughed. “Okay, greedy. But we’ll make do with what we have for now. You can’t be spending every waking hour with me. You still have about ten thousand books to get through.” She winked at him and he smiled, but looked disappointed. This separation is hard for me too, Jak.
He sighed, stepping back. “Okay. Someday I’m going to have a house of my own, and you’re going to live there with me, and never spend another night alone.”
“Oh, Jak,” she breathed, stepping into him, kissing him, breathing him in. His innocent simplicity. He wanted that so much right now. But she wondered again how his changing, his merging and blending with society at large would alter who he was and what he wanted. And she knew it wasn’t fair of her not to let him go if ultimately, him changing meant leaving her behind.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The snow had melted, the earth soft and spongy beneath her feet. In the distance, she heard the occasional yap of a dog as she and Agent Gallagher made their way through the wooded area.
She’d been surprised when he’d called her that morning, asking for a ride to Isaac Driscoll’s place, even though the roads were markedly better than they’d been the week before. Harper had assumed her less-than-prestigious police consultant career had officially come to an end. But Agent Gallagher had told her he not only needed a ride, but that he could use her help “poking around in the woods” as he put it.
Harper had suggested that Jak come along and help too—or even instead of—after all, no one knew those particular woods better than he did. But Agent Gallagher had said no, and she thought he’d acted cagey about it, and so there she was, stepping over a decayed log as she studied the piece of paper Isaac Driscoll had drawn and apparently kept in his bedside drawer.
“Boss?” came a voice from behind them.
“Yes,” Agent Gallagher called, moving past her to the edge of the woods where the other man stood. She recognized him as one of the men who’d been holding a dog when they’d arrived a half an hour before.
Harper looked away, studying the map again. Agent Gallagher had told her the word at the bottom—obedient—had something to do with the Spartans. Apparently, Driscoll was obsessed with them. Harper released a frustrated breath. Without any specific starting point, she had no idea what to look for. There was nothing that looked like anything she’d seen on a traditional map before.
“Two bodies, sir,” the man’s voice carried to her. She froze, her eyes widening. Two bodies?
She heard Agent Gallagher blow out a slow breath. “Children?” he asked and there was something in his voice that made her think he already knew the answer.
“Appears so, yes. One very young, the other older. The lab will tell us more.”
“Okay. Thank you, David. Did the dogs hit on anything else?”
“Not yet. We’re going to widen the search, come back tomorrow if necessary.”
“Thank you. Let me know right away if you find anything else.”
“Will do.”
Harper heard the man named David walking away, heard Agent Gallagher approach her from behind and turned slowly to meet his eyes. He must have seen by her face that she’d overheard their conversation, because he blew out a breath and said, almost to himself, “I hoped I wasn’t right.”
“Two children?” Harper whispered, the horror of that coursing through her. There were two children buried out there. Whose children?
Agent Gallagher nodded solemnly.
“They found two,” Harper said. “Do you . . . do you think this third marker is another one?” And if he did, why did he have her out there? The dogs seemed to be up to the task.
“I don’t know. I hope not. There are two red ones and one black.” If the red ones are the location of the two bodies, then the black one might be something different. “This wavy line here that looks like a stream or a river, think we can find it now that some of the snow is gone?”
She swallowed, gathering her strength, feeling a . . . responsibility to those children. If there was something out there that would provide a clue how to get them back home to those they belonged to, then she would do anything she could to help.
She was supposed to pick Jak up in a little while, and as far as she knew, he didn’t yet have a phone, nor would she necessarily get service out there anyway, but . . . he would understand. When she told him what she’d been doing, he would understand her delay.
“Can we go back out and see the location of the graves?” she asked. She hated even contemplating the word graves, but what else could she say?
Agent Gallagher nodded and they exited the heavily wooded area, walking to the back of Driscoll’s house. The dog handlers had moved farther away, letting the dogs lead the way apparently, and from where they stood, she could see the locations of the two areas that had been dug up, men and women in white suits and masks bent over both spots. A wash of sadness moved through Harper and she did her best to ignore it. For now. She knew the value—the relief—of finally having answers, and two families were going to get that now. She would focus on that while she was out there. She could cry for those children later.
No wonder Jak had hated Driscoll, gotten a bad feeling from him. The things he’d been doing and why . . . she shivered. It was unthinkable. Monstrous.
And for the first time, she wondered if Jak wasn’t telling the whole truth about his relationship with Driscoll, wondered if he’d left some of the story out. Wondered if he’d not only been lied to, but used in some more heinous way he was too ashamed to talk about.
Oh, Jak.
She held up the map, lining up the two graves. They did seem to be positioned in the same way the two red boxes were drawn on the map. Her gaze moved to the place beyond, the place where the dogs were now searching.
“There’s a river in that direction, and a few small streams as well,” she told Agent Gallagher. If the wavy line in fact indicated water. She thought about it for a minute. “I could take you to each of them, but they’re miles away. Whatever Driscoll marked could be anywhere. Although”—she studied the map again for a second—“the marker is drawn right on the edge of the wavy line.” Not that anything was to scale. Harper blew out a breath. This felt like hunting for a needle in a haystack.
“I know,” he said. “It’s frustrating. But we might have a couple of starting points now, and it’s more than we had. I’ll tell the searchers we’re taking the truck to drive closer to those rivers.”
She nodded. They couldn’t drive straight to any of those bodies of water. But they could get closer and then walk. She’d taken fishermen to one of those streams a few times that had an excellent fishing hole. “I’ll wait here.”
He walked away, stepping carefully over the soggy ground. Harper looked at the map again, wondering why she was even bothering. It was so simply drawn, with four shapes and a word. She already had it memorized.
Agent Gallagher was talking to one of the men now and she looked briefly up at the blue sky, filled with fluffy white clouds, soaking in the peace of the place. Terrible things had happened there, but those terrible things had all been done by humans. She wished it would be left to the animals—and only the animals—once more.
As she turned in the direction of Jak’s old cabin, the one she’d barged into not once, but twice, a small smile curved her lips. She recalled sitting at his table, their heads bent close together, reading with him, kissing him . . . A twinge of melancholy squeezed her chest at the memory of that wonderful simplicity, something that would never be fully recaptured.
As she began turning back in the direction of the graves and Agent Gallagher, her gaze snagged on the mountains, low-lying clouds softening their peaks, making them look more like a wavy line in the sky
than sharp spikes. She turned back. What if . . . She held up the map. The graves—the two markers—were behind her now, but what if the wavy lines indicated the mountains instead of any number of various water sources in the opposite direction?
The same problem remained though. The mountains were far off in the distance—miles—the third marker could be anywhere between the graves and the base.
Unless . . . Her eyes moved from the exact wave of the lines to the mostly cloud-obscured peaks. They matched in a very simplistic way. Because it was the most simplistically drawn map possible. So, with that in mind, what if the square drawn underneath the mountain simply indicated a visual sense of where the mountains touched the earth from exactly where she was standing?
Agent Gallagher was still talking with the other men, so she walked around Driscoll’s house, heading toward the copse of trees in front of her, focused on that dark area. A good hiding spot for . . . anything really. But what? If the two red markers had indicated the bodies of dead children, what other horrors might be lurking out there? She paused, deciding to turn back. She’d wait for Agent Gallagher.
Just as she began to turn, the sun hit the side of the forest and she spotted a large grouping of rocks beyond a couple of sparse trees. She walked toward it, entering the trees, her eyes adjusting to the dim light. She’d seen other areas like this, other . . . yes. It was an old mine shaft, a door inset in the side of the rock. Her heart started hammering. Was this what Isaac Driscoll had marked? And why?
She pulled on the door, expecting it to be locked, but with a rusty squeak, it opened, light flooding the space. She leaned inside, the air colder in there, the smell metallic and dank. Her heart rate increasing, she turned on her phone’s flashlight and shone it into the room.
She sucked in a breath. The small room, an entrance to a deeper portion of the mine at the far side blocked off, had a table and a monitor and pictures tacked up to every portion of the walls.
Jak.