Expect the Sunrise

by Susan May Warren

  You chose poorly, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t dredge the words from his mouth. They felt sour in the face of her obvious grief. Still, he couldn’t reach out to her, couldn’t release the anger that pinned down every other emotion inside him.

  He’d longed for this moment, an opportunity to face the person who’d killed his brother.

  For the first time he realized that maybe it wasn’t Andy/ Andee MacLeod he had to face at all. And maybe it wasn’t Andee he had to forgive—at least for Brody’s death.

  “When I realized you were the man I’d talked to on the radio, you have to know I died inside. I wanted to tell you, to explain and beg your forgiveness, but I needed you. I couldn’t risk having you hate me so much you wouldn’t assist me—or worse, try to get help alone. I had five other lives at stake, and I gambled.” She looked away. “Maybe I didn’t make the right choice. Maybe I should have trusted you. I know it wasn’t right to deceive you. You have to know how I longed to tell you.” Her voice dropped to a soft, nearly inaudible rasp. “And how very sorry I am.” She wiped at her eyes. “Please, please forgive me.”

  He listened to her apology, to her broken voice and realized he’d heard it before. Many times, in fact, over the past few days. Yes, she’d known who he was. What she’d done. And in spite of her choice to keep it from him, she had started apologizing long ago.

  He felt something unwind from his soul. Still, he couldn’t speak. Instead, he turned and walked away from Andee MacLeod and everything she’d done to him.

  “Mac!”

  He let her voice bank against the mountains, echo down the flowing river. The air smelled of fall, with a hint of snow. His feet already felt damp as they crunched on the broken rocks. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stopped walking, stood on the edge of the river, not looking back.

  This really hurts, Lord.

  He didn’t know exactly where those words came from. They bubbled up from some stopped-up place inside, some long-ago wound he’d thought he’d stitched over but had only poorly bandaged.

  He closed his eyes, probing for a place that didn’t hurt.

  “I’m so sorry, Mac,” Emma—no, Andee—had said as she sat on the scree hill watching the northern lights. He’d heard the pain in her voice even back then.

  “Do you ever regret the choices you’ve made?” she’d asked as the night had enfolded her. He’d watched her shiver, knowing that she’d given her blanket to Ishbane.

  “God does believe in you, Mac. That’s why you’re here with me. He knew that Sarah needed you.” She’d leaned back on her hands, tugging up a smile as they sat in the grass on the hill overlooking the camp under the fall of stars.

  He saw Andee, thanking him for carrying Sarah, putting up their tents, making dinner, caring for Flint and Sarah.

  “I trust you, Mac. And I’d like you to trust me too. I’m not a terrorist.”

  Mac ached with each memory, aware that, despite his best efforts, he’d let another kind of terrorist sneak inside to blow to bits with her servant’s heart every line of defense he’d built over the years.

  She’d made him slow down, see her as a friend, trust her.

  Lord, I believe everything happens for a reason. But I admit I have a hard time seeing how things fit together from this viewpoint. I thought You’d put me on that plane for a second chance. His eyes burned. But this wasn’t the second chance I was looking for. I’m not ready to forgive anyone . . . yet.

  Mac crouched on the rock. He splashed water on his face, letting the shock reawaken him and wash away the realization that for the first time in years he had to forgive the terrorist in his life.

  Chapter 14

  ANDEE PUT ONE foot ahead of the other. She hated her chapped cheeks and the way the others looked at her, especially after Mac had returned to camp without so much as a glance toward her. She’d cooked the fish she’d filleted, and after eating in a silence that felt colder than the descending front, they’d packed up camp.

  Thankfully, Mac had resumed his post at Sarah’s head, taking his end of her stretcher onto his wide, capable, unforgiving shoulders.

  At least he hadn’t left them all alone in the woods for her to take care of by herself. Then again, with this cold demeanor, she shouldn’t count on him for help. She swallowed a rush of pain and kept her eyes fixed on her footing.

  She still couldn’t believe that he’d suspected her to be a terrorist—or any of them for that matter. However, with her little news bomb, he could label her a terrorist, on a par with someone who inflicted pain and chaos.

  “How long have we been traveling?” Sarah’s voice lifted from her stretcher.

  “This is day three.” Or four? Or two? Andee frowned at her own answer. It seemed every day of struggle had merged into the next. “I think.”

  “Then I missed your birthday.”

  Andee let that thought bring her upright, and then she smiled. Trust Sarah to remember the one day Andee always tried to dodge. “No, actually, it’s today.”

  “Happy birthday, Andee. I wish I had a cookie for you.” Sarah had started a tradition years ago of sending an oversized chocolate-chip cookie in the mail to the Team Hope members for their birthdays. “I’d get one that read My Hero.”

  “Wait until I get you out of here before you start singing me anthems.”

  “I think she’s a hero,” Phillips said from behind them. He and Nina held Flint between them. Ishbane trailed them, picking his way on the rocks, bemoaning his wet feet. “Happy birthday, Emma.”

  “It’s Andee,” Mac growled so low that probably only Andee caught it.

  “My name’s Andee,” she corrected Phillips. “My call name is Emma. It just seems easier in the summer for people to call me Emma.” And it perpetuated the feeling that here in the northland, she could be someone different, perhaps someone she’d always wanted to be, at least part of the time. Someone who didn’t let people down or destroy their lives.

  “Her friends call her Andee,” said Sarah, a little bird of information. “And I’ll bet that Conner is waiting for you when you get to Fairbanks. He mentioned your birthday in his last e-mail.”

  “Conner isn’t coming to Alaska, Sarah,” Andee said. Conner Young, former Green-Beret-turned-computer-whiz had left the army five years ago to start a computer-security consulting company. In between tending his IT company in Montana and the various SAR jaunts he took with Team Hope, he lived very comfortably on a five-acre plot on Ashley Lake. He had little incentive to trek two thousand miles north for scenery. Or the birthday of a friend, even if it might be a good friend.

  “He would if he knew our plane crashed. He worries about you, you know.”

  They all worried about her. Andee, the nomad. “He doesn’t worry about me any more than Micah or Dani do.”

  “Sounds like you have a lot of admirers, Andee.” Mac’s voice, again low, drifted back at her and stung.

  She frowned at him, angry at his assumptions.

  Angry and curious.

  What did he care who her friends were?

  “I don’t have admirers,” Andee said quietly.

  Mac didn’t stop walking or respond.

  She watched how he climbed over the rocks, his steps sure, his arms easily balancing the weight of his burden. Apparently he hadn’t heard the pain in her voice or her words of apology. How easy it seemed for him to assume the worst about a person. Obviously he hadn’t the faintest idea what it felt like to look back on the choices you made—life-and-death choices, choices of the heart, even choices about your future—and wonder if you’d made them correctly. She’d give her next meal and a warm bed to have a God’s-eye view on life and know that she was headed in the right direction. That at the end of the Granite River, they’d find Disaster Creek, and it would lead her home.

  That goal felt like some sort of epitaph of her life. Hoping to head toward disaster. As if she couldn’t hope for better. Well, with her history, maybe not.

  She slogged on through t
he boggy riverbank and gnarled roots, searching for sure footing, listening to her stomach growl. Stunted willow, black and white spruce, and spindly birch clumped in welcome as the group descended toward the tree line of the boreal forest. The sun climbed as high as it could, then held on, fighting the pull to lower ground.

  Andee finally called a halt a little after noon and passed around the water bottle, making sure Sarah got something to drink. Then, staring at the weary faces of her passengers, she grabbed the pot from the mess kit. “I’m going to look for food.”

  She walked away from the river, through whitened tufts of reindeer lichen, dissected with spruce. She startled a peregrine falcon, and it lifted off in a rustle of feathers and a cry. The thinly forested hillside gave little hope for food, but as she walked farther from the group, she looked for signs of blueberries. This time of year, perhaps they’d still be ripe enough. The smaller plants of this northern region produced the sweetest berries.

  From the north, the wind rushed through the trees and brought with it the scent of the river. She spotted Dall sheep, white against the granite cliffs that bordered the valley to the west. She wondered what it might be like to be hind’s feet on high places, navigating like a poet through the rugged Highlands.

  My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

  My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer,

  Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,

  My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.

  Mac’s voice turned her father’s words through her mind. She’d learned too many Robert Burns poems on too many fishing trips. What was it about Scotsmen that turned their thoughts to poetry when they ventured out into the hills? Too much time around Mac would prove painful in so many ways.

  She knew she should turn around, but the thought of returning to Mac’s angry airspace made her push on, over downed, decaying trees, stepping carefully over the knotted roots. The last thing she needed was a twisted ankle.

  She came out into a clearing, a meadow seeded with buttercups, saxifrage, and mountain avens. Clumped among them she spied blueberries growing low to the ground. Her stomach tightened.

  She walked over to the berries and picked a handful. After sorting through them and flicking away hardened, rotten berries, she popped the rest into her mouth.

  Flavor exploded, sweet yet tangy, and her stomach roared with greed. She picked another handful, then started filling the pot. Perhaps it would get them through until supper. And then maybe they’d find a squirrel or a—

  Andee froze, hearing a whuffing sound, then the sound of breaking trees and heavy feet crushing the forest floor.

  Holding her breath, she looked up and turned. Time suspended into long, drawn-out gasps of fear. Some twenty-five feet away at the edge of the meadow and flanked by her two large cubs stood a grizzly sow. Her blonde fur, backlit by the sun, glowed with an ethereal, pagan power.

  Andee’s bones felt like liquid. Move.

  She couldn’t move. Couldn’t even breathe. She stared at the hulking animal, at the black eyes boring into hers. Then the bear opened her mouth, baring fangs, pulled back her black lips, and roared.

  Mac stood at the edge of the river, scooping up a handful of rocks. He felt like a heel, arguing with himself that he should be following Andee into the forest and helping her.

  Conner, Micah, Danny. How many men did she have in her life? He knew he had to drive Andee from his thoughts. He should have guessed that she’d have an array of admirers.

  “I trust you, Mac. And I’d like you to trust me too.” He pushed Andee’s voice away, but it found footing and dug in. So she had a good reason to lie. . . .

  He heard footsteps kick rocks out ahead of him and turned. Phillips approached him, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped, as if Mac might not guess the guy had an agenda on his mind.

  “Don’t start, Phillips,” Mac said in warning.

  Phillips looked up, as if surprised. “I was just wondering if you might need a friend.”

  Mac narrowed his eyes. He didn’t know Phillips’s agenda, but he couldn’t help but appreciate the man for his hard work. And that prayer he’d spoken the first night out still lingered in Mac’s soul. Mac turned away, pitched a rock into the stream.

  “I don’t know what she did, Mac, but I think she deserves the benefit of the doubt.” Phillips came to stand beside him on the shore.

  “She lied to me.” The words erupted in a bitter, surprising rush. Apparently three days in the bush had taken its toll on his ability to rein in his emotions. He threw another rock.

  “Even so, everyone in Alaska can tell she’s sorry. She won’t even look at you. And I have to say, you seem intent on making her suffer.”

  Ouch. Mac sighed. But shouldn’t she suffer?

  “You have to know I died inside.” Andee’s voice, putting words to his own pain. Maybe she was already suffering. Mac pitched in another rock, then watched the sun ripple off the rock, the flowing water.

  “Here’s the deal, Mac.” Phillips faced him, his dark eyes holding Mac’s. “I don’t know what happened in the past, but you can’t live there. You have to go forward. Consider not the woman who hurt you, but the woman who seems bent on taking care of you and all of us. I think she deserves it.” Phillips paused, looked back out over the river. “I would suspect that based on what I see in Andee, she probably had a good reason to keep the truth from you.”

  “I’m not hiking out of these mountains without you.” Mac heard his own words again to Andee. Emma. Whoever. He’d spoken them to the lady who’d nearly gotten killed trying to save the lives of her passengers. Whom he’d accused of being a terrorist. She’d needed him, and he’d led her to believe he’d help her.

  Maybe he’d betrayed her.

  That thought made him wince, one eye closed in realization. Perhaps he’d keep his promise, but only until they reached civilization.

  For the time being anyway, maybe he’d try to forgive her.

  Oh, who was he kidding? An empty, longing part of him wanted to forgive her. To see her smile and hear her call him FBI, even in exasperation. She’d been faced with hard choices—hadn’t they all? And she’d made them regardless of the costs.

  Regardless of her obvious struggle with regret.

  Besides, holding on to anger only seemed to dig a hole through him, leaving him hollow. He could at least try to forgive her for the sake of their safety.

  He sighed, feeling the tight knot of anger inside him loosen. He turned toward the group. “Stay here. I’m going to help Andee.” He met Phillips’s approving look and saw Nina glance at him. “I’ll be right back.”

  As he plunged through a clump of willow, he heard a roar shake the forest and echo against the mountains. His feet responded before thought kicked in, and he ran toward the sound. “Andee!”

  He heard her scream, and every hair on his neck and arms raised. “Andee!”

  Crashing through the forest, he felt his ankles bend on the gnarled floor, nearly catching him, tripping him. He heard another roar and burst into the meadow in a blur of fear.

  A gunshot.

  Reflex dropped him to his knees. Breathing hard, he heard another shot break through his thundering heartbeat.

  A third shot, and he looked up to see Andee with a handgun. It shook in her hands as she pointed it skyward. She stared to the west, away from Mac, her gaze fixed on a retreating hulk of an animal breaking through the forest, two cubs on its trail.

  Andee dropped the gun, shaking.

  Mac stared at her, realizing two things: She’d just scared away a grizzly.

  And she had a gun.

  A gun.

  If she’d been a terrorist, she would have used it on him days ago.

  “Andee?” He found his feet and ran toward her, remembering her story of the grizzly. Only this time she hadn’t frozen.

  “Andee?” He put a hand on her shoulder, and she nearly jumped through her skin. “You’re okay. It’s gone
.”

  Breathing hard, she turned toward him, her eyes glassy with fear.

  Everything he’d been trying to bottle up or deny since she’d begged him to forgive her broke loose. He pulled her to his chest, nearly crushing her as he closed his eyes, letting his own relief rush over them and yanking the plug on the last remnants of his anger. How could he not care about her? not forgive her? “You scared me.”

  She didn’t move, didn’t speak. She trembled in his arms, and he held her tighter. “You’re okay, Andee. It’s gone. You scared it away.”

  “I did . . . ?” she said. It sounded more like a question. “I did.”

  “You did,” he said, a smile finding one side of his face. “You’re amazing.”

  “Or stupid.” She shook her head and looked at him.

  She was so close to him, so incredibly close he could see every detail of her beautiful brown eyes. Only they weren’t just brown. They were brown around the edges with golden flecks inside that hinted at the treasure of knowing her. Long lashes outlined those eyes, and freckles dotted her tanned skin.

  Wow, she is pretty. She fit into his embrace as if she belonged there, just like she had the first time. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, licking her lips, her voice broken and soft.

  “She just snuck up on me. I didn’t see her until she roared, and then I knew I couldn’t climb a tree fast enough.”

  He touched the side of her mouth, where tiny lines framed her smile. “Climb a tree.”

  She seemed startled by his touch, and her smile faded. “I . . . ah, well . . . I had the gun and I—”

  He couldn’t help himself. He sweetly touched his lips to hers. She stilled, then, amazingly, relaxed. He imagined her closing her eyes as she kissed him back. It lasted only a moment, but he let himself be inside this one perfect tick in time, isolated from the chaos and aches and journey that defined their lives. Andee, in his arms, trusting him. She tasted of blueberries, sweet and tangy, pure Andee.