by Kait Nolan
No. No. You do not want to make out with the hot stalker guy. The creepy stalker guy, I amended.
“Hey,” he said.
I tried to relax the white-knuckled grip on my pack, while attraction and paranoia warred inside me. “Hey.”
Sawyer tipped his head toward the store. “You need anything?”
A new brain? A boost to my will power? For you to do something unutterably disgusting or hateful so that I don’t find you so damned attractive despite the fact that you may have been hanging around outside my house watching me? I shook my head, more in an effort to shake the absurdity out of my brain than an answer.
“Let’s go then.”
As I climbed into the passenger seat, I glanced around, on edge for a whole other reason as I looked for evidence of the Barbie Squad. The last thing I needed was another run-in with any of them. On that front, at least, it appeared I was safe. Once Sawyer pulled out onto the road, I kept my eyes on the tree line. Maybe if I didn’t look at him, it wouldn’t be so bad.
The wind whipped my hair, bringing with it a plethora of scents that my brain automatically tried to categorize. My own nerves. Trees. Freshly turned earth. Exhaust from other cars. Some kind of animal. It seemed my nose was getting more sensitive. Or maybe I was getting better at separating things out. I tipped my face up to get a better whiff.
“Morning person,” said Sawyer.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“I was trying to figure out if you’re a morning person or a night owl. If you weren’t a morning person, you’d be hiding behind sunglasses and a thermos of coffee,” he said.
I glanced at him, taking in the dark wrap-around shades he’d slipped on and the to-go cup of java from Hansen’s in the cup-holder. Covering bloodshot eyes because he’d been up all night hanging outside my house? Ridiculous. “You’re speaking in something other than monosyllabic grunts. That must make you a hybrid.”
His lips curved in that half smile that shot my internal temperature up five degrees. “Something like that.”
I had to look away again, grateful for the cool morning breeze against my hot cheeks. I really, really had to get this under control. What there was of my blunt cut fingernails, I dug unobtrusively into my leg as a distraction. God, at least it was only another couple of miles.
When he passed the turnoff for the research station, I turned back to him. “Where are we going?” The question came out a lot sharper than I’d intended.
Sawyer glanced at me, a frown line between his brows. “Dad’s having us meet in one of the north quadrants. He wants to start doing some prey density analysis.”
“Oh.” I had to work to make my shoulders relax. I could do this. Really, I could.
“You okay, Elodie?” There it was again. That talking to a scared animal tone he used all day yesterday.
Relax. “Fine. Just didn’t want to be late two days running.”
Huh. Was that weird metallic scent on my skin what a lie smelled like?
His irritation was back again. Good. Maybe he’d get annoyed with my hot/cold routine and decide I wasn’t worth the effort.
“You’re a lousy liar,” he said.
I didn’t dare look at him because I didn’t have control over my face. “Wh…what are you talking about?” Damn it, damn it, damn it. Why couldn’t I keep my voice steady?
“You’re afraid of me again.”
Damn straight. Panic fluttered in my belly, and I coiled my muscles prepared to… To what? Jump out of the Jeep if he made a move? That was insane. We were going nearly fifty miles per hour.
“What did I do?” he asked.
“You followed me home.” The words popped out before I could stop them. Well hell. I’d opened this can of worms, I might as well follow through. “I never told you which house was mine, but you already knew because you followed me home the other day. Didn’t you?” My voice didn’t squeak as I delivered the accusation. Bonus.
When he didn’t immediately respond, I got up the guts to glance at him.
He looked…sheepish? Contrite?
“Yeah, I did,” he admitted.
Wouldn’t an actual stalker be trying to deny the allegation?
“Why?”
“I was worried about you. For all I knew, you were unstable and were just going to pick back up where I’d stopped you. I wanted to make sure you got home okay.”
Well didn’t that sound reasonable? It was exactly the kind of logical explanation a stalker would come up with.
“And disappearing like some kind of ghost and playing the creepy stalker was a preferable alternative to actually walking me home?”
“Would you have let me?” he countered.
Okay, no, I wouldn’t, because I’d thought him every bit as unstable as he’d thought me. “That’s not the point.”
“What is the point, Elodie? I screwed up. I admit it. I freaked you out and followed you home all while trying to do the right thing. End of story.”
My head hurt from trying to analyze his scent and tone and words. He was angry, but not enraged. Defensive, but who wouldn’t be against such charges? Sitting next to him in silence, the whole thing felt stupid. He probably was telling the truth. A nice person probably would have followed a presumably unstable person home just to make sure they got there without killing themselves. Right?
Before I could make any kind of reply—as if there was an appropriate reply for this situation, we turned into the parking area beside the trailhead, suddenly confronted by dozens of cars and milling people.
“Something’s up,” said Sawyer.
In a glance I took in the half dozen dogs and the deputies from the Sheriff’s Department. “That’s the K-9 Search and Rescue Unit. Somebody’s missing.”
He wheeled into a space beside a park ranger’s truck and I leapt out, striding over to where a series of tables had been set up with radio equipment, coffee, and snacks. I recognized Eileen Nichols manning the home base and organizing the tracking log. A dispatcher for the county, I’d known Eileen for years because of Dad’s job with the fire department. As she finished giving orders to the assembled K-9 unit, I looked around to see if Dad was here. He was still on duty at the fire station, but that didn’t necessarily mean he hadn’t been called in for this. Eileen dismissed the assorted dogs and their handlers. I waited until she’d finished making notations in the log before I stepped up.
“Oh good. Somebody on the phone tree got you.” Eileen glanced over my shoulder, raised a brow. “And you brought reinforcements. Even better.”
I didn’t bother to look as Sawyer stepped up behind me.
“I didn’t get the call,” I told her. “What’s going on?”
“Missing kids. One your age. You probably know him. Rich Phillips and his little sister Molly.”
My mouth dropped open. “What happened?”
“His truck was found at the trailhead by patrol at dawn, and his parents say he didn’t come home last night. Last anybody saw him was when he picked Molly up from her Junior Explorers hike yesterday around 4:30.”
“His truck was at Hansen’s when I passed by a bit after 5 yesterday. There might be something on the security cameras,” I told her.
“We’ll get somebody to check, see if we can verify when he left and if anybody else was with him. Your dad’s already out in the field with Eddie Richenbach, but I can radio to find out their position if you’d like to join in,” said Eileen.
“No!” I said. God, the last thing I needed to do was run into my dad right now. “There’s no need to pull him from the search or hold him up waiting for me. Where is he?”
She tapped a finger on his last reported location and showed me his assigned sector.
“And what’s not currently being covered?”
She pointed to a couple of other areas. “Can you search?”
I hesitated, spotting Dr. McGrath and the rest of the team on the far side of the parking lot, talking to a couple of park rangers. “Not sure yet. I’m techn
ically working right now.”
“That’s right. Your dad said you were working as a guide this summer. Well, I know you won’t steer anybody wrong. You keep your eyes peeled out there today for that Phillips boy.”
Sawyer waited until we started toward his father. “You’re part of Search and Rescue?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, my mind already on the search to come.
“And what’s this thing about being a guide?”
“What my father—and yours—don’t know, won’t hurt them.” When he said nothing, I felt a spurt of panic and turned toward him. “Sawyer, please. I have my reasons.”
He studied me for a long moment before dropping his gaze. I followed and saw that my hand was clutched around his forearm. Horrified that I’d touched him without realizing it, I pulled back.
“Please,” I said again.
“Give me your reasons, I’ll give you my silence,” he said.
I grit my teeth, bit back a growl. “That’s blackmail.”
“I call it curiosity, but hey, potato, potahtoh.”
Narrowing my eyes, I said, “There’s no time now.”
“Later then.”
Chapter 4
Sawyer
Of course Dad and the others agreed to search. One of those missing was a child. Research could wait.
After briefly conferring with the woman who seemed to be organizing things, we were split into groups—Dad and Abby, Patrick and David, me and Elodie—and assigned search sectors. Elodie passed out radios and explained the check-in procedure.
“Be sure to keep a close eye on your heading and make notes on your map.” She turned to the other woman again. “Have the dogs alerted anywhere along the trail yet?”
“Here in sector three was the last strong alert. They found Molly’s windbreaker. That was about forty-five minutes ago. The Junior Explorers troop leader thinks she left it when they stopped for lunch.”
“So maybe Rich brought her out here to find it before they went home,” said Elodie.
“That’s the thinking. It’s the damnedest thing. The dogs were able to follow their scent from the parking lot to about a hundred yards in, then lost it. It’s like they up and disappeared.”
“We’ll find them.” She said it with a grim determination that made me suspect she’d stay out as long as it took.
I waited until we were away from the group and into the park before breaking the silence. “So riddle me this, Miss Rose. You can’t possibly be old enough to be certified in search and rescue, yet you very definitely seem to know your shit. How is that?”
She was so focused on looking for signs of passage, I wasn’t sure she’d heard me. “I’m as close to certified as I can get. My dad has made sure of it. I’ve passed all the classes and the tests. I just need to be eighteen. When they have searches like this, it’s all hands on deck.”
“So this is something you and your dad do together?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s kind of a strange father-daughter bonding exercise,” I observed.
“It’s practical,” she said. “Mountaineering. Survival skills. Tracking. He’s been teaching me how to do all of it since—” She cut herself off abruptly. “Since I was old enough to train.”
I really wanted to know what she wasn’t telling me, but I didn’t need my superior senses to tell that avenue of questioning was totally cut off. At least this morning’s bout of fear seemed to have abated now that she had something else to focus on besides my questionable behavior.
“Well that’s cool. So you and your dad are like the Bear Grylls family of Mortimer?”
She glanced back at me, a trace of amusement on her face. “Do you see me jumping unnecessarily off a cliff or being trailed by a camera crew from the Discovery Channel?”
“Hey, the day’s still young.”
Her lips curved in a smile that was gone so fast, I almost wasn’t sure I’d seen it.
“So what’s this whole deal about you lying to everybody about your summer job?”
For a few moments she ignored me, making notations in her notebook. She stalled a little longer by checking our heading on her compass and comparing it to the topographical map she carried. I had a feeling she didn’t actually need either. As far as I could tell, she was as at home out here as any of the native wildlife.
When she started moving again, she was agitated, her shoulders stiff, her stride jerky. “I couldn’t tell my father about this job. He wouldn’t approve.”
“Why not? Does he have something against science?”
She took her time answering, hopping down a rocky incline like a mountain goat. I followed fast enough to catch her quiet response. “No. He has something against college. He doesn’t want me to go.”
“But that’s nuts. You’re brilliant. If anybody should go to college, it’s you. Is it a money thing?”
Elodie glanced at me, her face twisted in frustration. “No. Or it’s not just that.” She fisted her hands. Flexed them. Fisted them again. “He’s afraid.”
“Of what?”
She dropped her eyes down to her bandaged wrist. “That I’ll turn out just like my mother.”
The subtle pain in her voice throbbed like an old wound. There was something here, something to do with what happened in that clearing. The wolf in me wanted to touch and nuzzle, to soothe. Instead, I stayed quiet, waiting for her to continue.
“My dad didn’t go to college. He never got the chance. He’s been saddled with me since he was seventeen.”
“Young to be a dad,” I said. I tried to imagine having a kid now. That kind of thing would be life altering in a way I couldn’t even fathom.
She flashed me a bitter smile. “Yeah, my parents were a good illustration for the ‘Why’ of safe sex campaigns everywhere.”
“So he’s worried about you repeating their mistakes?” That didn’t seem to fit with the grief, but single dad of a teenage daughter—it wasn’t an unreasonable fear. And it would explain why she hadn’t wanted me picking her up at her house.
She was quiet for so long, I didn’t think she was going to answer me.
“Three days after I was born, my mother handed me over to my father, checked out of the hospital, and disappeared into the mountains.” She stopped, crouching to check something that might have been the heel of a boot print. It must have been nothing because she straightened again and moved on.
“When you say disappeared you mean . . . ”
“Disappeared.”
“Like the kind of disappeared they’d be calling out search and rescue for?”
Elodie spared me a glance, nodded.
Well that explained the unusual father-daughter bonding.
“I’m not sure how long it took them to realize she was missing, and I don’t know that it would have made any difference if they’d gotten a search team out sooner. It was days before anybody found her. By the time they did, animals had savaged her body pretty badly. But it was still obvious that she’d slit her wrists.” Elodie absently traced a finger down the veins in her forearms.
The gesture chilled me to the bone.
Jesus. I was devastated by the loss of my mother, but at least she hadn’t chosen to die.
“So the other day in the clearing you were . . . ”
I didn’t really think the prompt would work, but she kept talking.
“Every year I go out on my birthday and I test myself, to prove that I’m not like her. That I’m strong enough to deal with the reality of my life.”
I wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or humbled.
I did the math. “Wait, three days after you were born . . . so that’s today. Today’s the anniversary.”
She nodded and sucked in a breath. I could hear the tremble of tears when she spoke again. “It’s twisted and morbid but there you have it. That’s what I was doing when you found me. And that’s why I didn’t tell my dad about this job. Because he’d have said no as a means to keep me close. And as it happens
, I’m more like my mother than either of us realized.”
“No you’re not.” I couldn’t help myself. I had to touch her, to brush away the tear that glittered on the curve of her cheek.
“How would you know?” she demanded, rubbing angrily at the stream of others that followed.
I ran a hand down her arm and curled my fingers around hers. “Because you’re still here.”
She shut her eyes, and I was already cursing myself for sticking my foot in it. But it was the right thing to say. On a sigh, the tension seemed to seep out of her body, her hand squeezing mine for the briefest of moments before she pulled away, moving again in an obvious effort to shake off the mood. “So,” she said. “There you have it. That is why I am lying to my father. Satisfied?” There was an edge to her voice that let me know she was still pissed I’d cornered her.
“No.”
Elodie whirled and glared at me.
Before she could spew forth what was no doubt an impressive display of temper, I said, “Now I owe you. Fair’s fair. So here’s a secret nobody else knows: I’m lying to my dad, too.”
She shut her mouth, waiting.
It was my turn to feel caged and restless, so I took the lead on the trail. “I got expelled from school eight months ago. Dad keeps pushing me to go to summer school so I can go on off to college in the fall. I haven’t told him I already got my GED.”
“Why?”
There was the $64,000 question. “I’m not what you’d call ‘on board’ with his plan for my life.”
“You don’t want college?”
“I don’t know what I want right now. He thinks everything can just go back to normal. That he can just move us across country and start over like nothing happened.”
“What happened?”
“My mother was shot.” The pain was bright and hot in my chest, and it woke the rage. The beast bristled, and I clenched my teeth, reaching for control. I was not gonna spill this shit on Elodie.
A tiny hand slipped tentatively into mine, squeezed. “I’m sorry.”
Anybody else tried to give me sympathy, the beast would snap, but for Elodie, it settled down. So we walked for a while in silence, hand in hand, until I was back in control.