by Norah Wilson
But much as he hated to concede it, Ember was right. She was a grown woman, trained in wilderness survival and with an M.D. after her name. He’d also schooled her in self-defense techniques himself, so he knew she could take care of herself. If she wasn’t his baby sister, he wouldn’t turn a hair about letting her go out there alone.
“Fine. You win. Keep your phone on, though. Is it on?”
She looked like she wanted to roll her eyes again but refrained. With only the smallest of sighs, she pulled her phone out of her pocket, and checked that it was on to pacify him. “See?” She held it up. “It’s on and fully charged. Okay?”
It would have to be.
With Ember on his heels, he walked around to the back of the truck, lowered the tailgate, reached under the tarp, and hauled his heavy backpack forward. He knew its contents like the back of his hand. Map, compass, GPS, water, food rations, electrolyte drink mix, first aid kit, headlamp, flashlight, fire starter kit, waterproof matches, knife, multi-tool, all-weather blanket, and a ton of other stuff. Not an inch of space was wasted. And strapped to it were his sleeping bag and self-inflating ground pad rolled up in a ground sheet, and a small, lightweight tent.
He checked his fully-charged satellite phone and slid it into the left arm pocket of his heavy jacket. He zipped up the pocket, double-checked it. Then he shouldered his heavy pack and turned to his siblings.
Ember grabbed her own pack. She shoved the stranger’s pharmacy bag inside and lashed the slim briefcase to the back of the rucksack. Then she shouldered it, making a show of how easy it was to do so. Her pack was scaled to size and not as heavily laden as his, but with the added weight of the briefcase, it’d be plenty heavy.
“Let’s go over the drill one more time,” he said.
“We know the drill.” She snapped the sternum strap on her pack closed. “Help people. Be safe. And love your family.” She went up on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Don’t worry.”
He’d worry. If anything happened to her, it would be on him.
“You either, Scott.” She hugged him quickly.
“You sure you don’t want me to come with?” Scott asked.
“No way.” She adjusted the pack’s hip belt, tightening it across her hipbones.
“Be careful, Em,” Titus said.
She looked at him steadily. “You too, Titus the Titan.”
Titus watched her walk away. If anything happened to her, he’d never forgive himself.
All over again.
Chapter 5
OCEAN STOPPED for a moment to rest. And yeah, figure out where the hell she was.
When she’d left the Yasmine Trail, she figured it would be easy to connect with Angel Trail. Just keep the mountain’s upside to her right and the downside to the left and she couldn’t help but intersect with the other trail. But that was before she got herself all turned around and lost her straight ahead sight line. As she traveled through the thick forest, it quickly became clear that it wasn’t all straight up or straight down. There were rises and falls and gullies, and sometimes she climbed up a slope to find herself facing what looked like an appreciable descent, so she’d corrected course. Or at least she thought she had. Now, she wasn’t so sure. She could have been going around in circles for the last hour, for all she knew.
Crap!
She wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her upper arms hard through her bomber jacket. She might have been away for a few years, but a person never truly forgot how cold it could get in northern New Brunswick, even in the fall. And deep in the shadows of Harkness Mountain’s tall pines, it was even colder.
Not that fall in New York City wasn’t chilly too. But it was a different cold than this. It had everything to do with gleaming skyscrapers versus tall trees. Crowded, busy city streets versus dense pines and rough and rarely traveled terrain. Hard sidewalks as opposed to the ground she stood on now, covered in a cushion of pine needles. A cushion she found made it a little slippery underfoot.
But while she’d dressed reasonably for the weather, the refreshingly crisp autumn morning she’d set out in had turned into a nippy afternoon.
She shook her head.
If her New York roommates could see her now.
Then again, unlike her, they were busy. Shining their lights on Broadway. Okay, off-Broadway. Way, way off Broadway. But every one of them still had the stars in their eyes.
Their plays were still breathing.
She stopped abruptly at an enormous gray boulder. The X she’d scratched across the top earlier with the point of a sharp rock verified it: she had been walking in circles! Well, at least for the last twenty minutes.
Her shoulders slumped. She turned and leaned against the rock. Despite the circumstances, that bit of rest felt so good. She unclipped her pack and plunked it down on the boulder, then pulled herself up to sit beside it. Her feet dangled, toes barely touching the ground. She raised the hood of her jacket over her hat and eased herself down until she was lying on the rock. Sharp edges bit into her butt and back, but it was so wonderful to be prone she could easily ignore the discomfort. She stared up through the canopy of pines.
“Dammit!” She was cursing herself more than the small patch of darkening sky she spied through the branches.
She never should have stepped off the trail system. She was from Harkness—she knew better! Hadn’t her mother always told her how easy it was to get lost up here? How wild and dangerous it was? How easy to lose your bearings? As a young girl, how many nights had she stared out her bedroom window toward Harkness Mountain’s peak in the distance, worrying over the latest hiker reported lost in these dense woods?
If only her mother hadn’t called until she’d gotten through to Angel Trail.
Ocean hung onto that thought for a mere two seconds. Her mother had called out of concern. That was always Faye Siliker’s motivation when it came to Ocean and her sister, River. Wasn’t that the real reason her mother had suddenly needed Ocean to come back home from New York? Just when Ocean’s latest play had been passed over again? Just when she’d started to confront the idea that she might not make it as a playwright?
She shook those gloomy thoughts away. She needed to focus. Angel was barely a mile from Yasmine. How difficult could it be to intersect with it?
“Apparently, pretty darn difficult, huh, Lacey?”
She heard no answer, of course. Because Lacey Douglas, her childhood friend, was dead.
God, she missed her.
But oddly, ever since she’d set foot on Harkness Mountain, she’d felt her friend’s presence. She could almost hear Lacey’s laughing voice. Not consistently, but every once in a while. And maybe “voice” wasn’t the right word, exactly. She didn’t hear it the same way she heard the breeze stir the trees or the birds calling. It was completely internal. And completely Lacey. A couple of times, she’d felt it so strongly, she’d actually turned around, half expecting to see her friend standing there, fun in her eyes and a mischievous grin on her face.
But Ocean was completely alone.
So what now? Where now?
Should she stay right here on this boulder? Curl up for the night? Wasn’t there something about rocks storing heat from the sun in the daytime, and releasing it at night? Then again, how much heat could be stored in mid-October? Even if it had been a sunny day. And even if the sun could penetrate the thick branches of the pines.
She had matches. She was no boy scout, but could build a fire if she had to. Of course, she’d prefer to do it with a fire pit already dug, kindling laid, and tinder ready, but she could build it from scratch if circumstances demanded.
Oh God, what about wild animals? Black bears would still be around. It was too early for them to be hibernating. She knew they tended to avoid humans when possible, but they could still be deadly, especially if they had cubs with them. Bobcats roamed this forest too. She’d never actually seen one herself—like most big cats, they were really shy and stayed well-hidden.
&
nbsp; Coyotes. Now they might be an actual threat. These weren’t the thirty-pound western coyotes that roamed the prairies. These were the fifty- and sixty-pound “super coyotes,” the result of breeding with red wolves. Brush wolves, some people called them.
What if there was a hungry pack of them close by? Sniffing the air collectively and catching scent of her? Maybe they were tracking her now. Stalking her. Licking their lips and drooling hungrily. Sneering, even.
Argh!
She’d always had a huge imagination—thus the love of writing. But that imagination was clearly taking over right now. How much of her musings was imagination, and how much was real? Sometimes the line between the two seemed pretty thin.
She sat up, pulled her backpack onto her lap, and dug out a bottle of water.
What she wouldn’t give for a nice cup of Earl Grey tea right now. But she was grateful for the water. She drank greedily, then recapped the bottle and dug out an energy bar. It tasted like chocolate dirt, but it would fill the gap. Not as well as roasted turkey breast would. Or her mother’s sage dressing, gravy, and garlic mashed potatoes. Her stomach growled as she took another gritty bite of her bar.
Her mother would be having kittens worrying about her if she wasn’t home soon. That call would have done nothing to alleviate the worry. Crap, she didn’t even know how much her mother had heard her. If at all.
Ocean looked at her watch. It was almost three o’clock. She’d been out here for hours. Okay, she’d take one more look through her backpack for the trail map. If she could just find the map, maybe there was something—anything—on it that would be useful to her now.
She unzipped the side compartment of her bag.
It still wasn’t there. Just a copy of her play—pages and pages of it. Coffee stained, dog eared, and panned a dozen times over.
Judging Kate by Ocean Siliker.
Maybe she had tinder after all.
She’d spent the last six years in New York City, eking out a meager living waiting tables at a little café near Times Square, and living with five other writerly hopefuls and one wannabe agent in an apartment meant for three. It had been adventurous. A learning experience. A growing experience. It had been New York City.
But it had also been a failure. For her. Her New York friends told her not to give up, even as one by one, they found their own success. But she just couldn’t break through.
So what had she done? She’d run home with her tail between her legs. Her mother’s gentle arm twisting to move back had been a timely excuse.
So much for living fearlessly.
She shoved the bar wrapper into her pocket.
Okay, she had to make up her mind what she was going to do. If she was going to try to hike back down the mountain, she’d better start now. And she had better plan on a slow pace. Those tightly clustered pines hid some very sharp drops. And even if she managed to skirt them all, who knew where she’d finally come out? Maybe near the car, or maybe a mile away.
And—dammit—down meant defeat. Again. That chafed against every instinct she owned.
She turned her face to the sky once more as she closed her eyes. She steadied her breathing, and for a few minutes, she took in the mountain air.
Up.
She’d go up.
Instead of trying to find a trail, she’d just keep traveling up—forget about the ‘across’ plan for now. She had no idea if she was closer to Yasmine or Angel. Hell, maybe she’d crossed over one or both as she’d walked around lost, and just hadn’t noticed. But to keep hiking up, meant not giving up.
That settled it.
Fearless or crazy?
She wasn’t quite sure.
She bolted upright, her eyes snapping open as she heard the thrashing of something coming through the woods to her right.
God, what was it? It had to be large. Bear-sized, by the sound of it! Or crap, moose-sized. Neither would be pleased to blunder into her.
Her heart hammered. Her throat tightened.
She knew better than to scream, though. Not yet. Whatever approached might change course and go crashing right past her. But if it didn’t, at least she had the added height of the rock. She’d make herself look as large and scary as possible.
“Ocean?” a male voice called. “Ocean Siliker?”
Her hand flew to her chest, but did nothing to slow her pounding pulse.
“Here!” she called back. “I’m over here!”
She hopped down off of her rock perch and waited.
Seconds later, a man appeared. He had to be six-foot-four, at least, and appeared to be carved of nothing but muscle. Close-cropped hair revealed a hard, serious face. A face graced with the darkest, sexiest, thickest-lashed brown eyes from here to New York City.
Ocean could almost hear Lacey laughing as he drew closer to her.
Because this wasn’t just any man. This was Titus Standish.
Chapter 6
TWO HOURS ago, Titus had started up the Yasmine Trail, hoping he’d chosen the right one. Less than a hundred yards in, he knew that he had. There were no convenient footprints in the earth, but someone had definitely been through here. Most people wouldn’t even notice the disturbance in the blanket of pine needles covering the ground, but Titus had trained for this.
When he’d come to Marker 32—that small metal plate planted close to the ground—he’d noticed it had been wiped clean. Whoever had stopped here had wanted to make sure they were at the right place. He’d looked left, into the cover of pine trees.
That damned “shortcut.” At least once a year he was called up here to rescue some intrepid hiker who fancied himself a mountain man, but who had no idea how easy it was to get lost in these dense woods. And too many times it was right at this point, as they tried to intersect with Angel Trail. But it was harder than it looked. The forest floor rose and fell, quickly confusing hikers about which way was up the mountain versus up the next slope. And there were some sizeable vertical drops. For Titus’s money, this section could be trickier to traverse than it was to climb White Crow Cliff itself, the challenge the weekend warriors were inevitably seeking when they went off trail.
Marker 32 had only confirmed what Titus had known deep down in his gut—she’d headed that way. His blood had run cold as he’d stepped off the path and into the trees, redoubling his pace in hopes of catching up to her before she got too hopelessly lost.
Ocean. He’d known her all his life. He could still remember his six-year-old horror when Mrs. Siliker had brought Ocean over to the house on the first of what would become regular visits with Margaret Standish. A plump toddler with wildly curly black hair, she’d raised her arms and waggled sticky little fingers at him, demanding to be picked up. He’d had enough of ankle-biters from dealing with his own little sister, but under his mother’s watchful eye, he’d had no choice but to pick Ocean up for a minute. And so it went on every visit, until he got old enough to escape to the orchard when Mrs. Siliker’s station wagon turned down the driveway. But eventually Ocean and Ember got big enough to search him out wherever he tried to hide. By then, though, Scott had joined the family, and he at least had some masculine company to even the odds.
Eventually, as Ocean grew older, Mrs. Siliker stopped bringing her along on visits, and he’d only see her on the school bus. Then she’d turned fourteen. All of a sudden, skinny, perpetually blushing Ocean Siliker was routinely biking all the way from her home on Delcrombie Road out past the Standish farm, smiling at him through her braces every time she saw him.
Of course, Ember used to have her over sometimes too, along with a small crowd of other girls, for birthday parties or to primp before the school dances.
Titus hadn’t been interested in any of his little sister’s giddy friends, curling their hair, doing their make-up, and strategically adding touches of glitter to their wannabe cleavage. But he had noticed how Ocean seemed always to be on the fringe of the group. A quiet one. A thinker. A watcher. And he’d seen how she’d watched him with thos
e doe-eyes.
The braces were long gone. So was the glitter. The years had turned her into a beautiful, striking, grown-up woman. He could attest to that, since he’d seen her every Christmas for those intervening years at the Standish annual Christmas party.
Yeah, the Standish Christmas party.
His mother had started the tradition not long after she and Arden Standish were married. Back then, when the town was smaller, it lacked an appropriate venue for a large community gathering and dance, so Margaret had talked her husband into opening one of the barns—the Far South Barn—for the purpose. In later years, there were plenty of conventional halls to be booked, but his mother had insisted the venue remain the same. Titus had kept the tradition going through Margaret’s illness to please her, and after her death to honor her. Arden completely approved, saying his mother would be proud. Yet the elder Standish still couldn’t bring himself to attend the event without his beloved Margaret. He’d go to the reception that preceded it, but always left before the dance itself began.
His father might have the luxury of bowing out, but Titus hadn’t. If Scott made it home for Christmas, it was at the last-minute. Ember usually landed home in time to help with the actual execution, but the responsibility for planning and hosting it fell to Titus. A fact he resented marginally less in recent years, since it afforded him a chance to talk to Ocean, who grew more sophisticated, polished—and yes, sexy—with every year that passed.
For what felt like the hundredth time, he shouted her name. And this time—thank you, God— she answered.
“Here!” The shout came from his right, about two o’clock. Relief washed over him.
He’d found her; she was safe.
This time it wasn’t going to end badly. This time Harkness Mountain wouldn’t win.
“I’m over here!” she called again.
He started toward the sound of her voice, picking up his pace. Pushing a pine branch out of the way, he finally saw her standing in front of a huge boulder. It hit him again how completely grown up she was. Slender, but strong-looking, and rounded in all the right places. Glossy black curls poked out from beneath the knit toque she wore, framing a slightly square-shaped face with high cheekbones. Those enormous blue eyes no longer looked too big for her face. Her cheeks were red with the cold.