by Jenna Mills
“Thank you,” I said, backing away. “But I need to get going before I lose this great light.”
“Oh, of course!” the woman said, but the guy said nothing else, just kept watching—exactly like so many others.
Not wanting to think about it, I turned and headed back to the trail, in the same direction as the blond hiker. I wasn’t ready to go home. Home was not where the heart was, or any of that other sugary stuff from greeting cards. Home was where my mom was, and I didn’t want to see her or fix her dinner. I didn’t want to smile at her boyfriend-of-the-week. I didn’t want to have to lock myself in the twelve-by-twelve space that passed for my room.
I was so ready for my own place. I’d planned it since seventh grade, that I would graduate, find a place on campus and get on with my life. But college wasn’t happening this semester, and my job at The Java Joint didn’t pay enough for me to live on my own. And then there was my mom, who acted like me moving out was going to be the end of her world.
Of course, there was a very real chance that it would be. Without me, who would take care of her? Who would clean? Make sure the house didn’t burn down?
Following the well-worn trail, I shoved those questions aside—it wasn’t like they mattered.
I’d been coming to the park since I was a little girl, when my grandfather would take me on Sundays after church. It was our special adventure, when we’d walk the trails hand in hand. He was always stopping to point something out to me, a bird or a prairie dog, a delicate flower or rotting tree trunk, a fossil, a rock, a cloud formation bubbling over the mountains. Each trip was different, but equally magical.
And then he died.
But I kept finding ways to come back, even when my mom wouldn’t take me. I always felt safe on the trails among the pine, as if somehow this were my real home.
Until the night in April, when I’d quit feeling safe anywhere. Afterwards, my world shrunk, random, spontaneous daylong hikes with my camera and compass replaced by a strict routine of school, work, and home. Nowhere alone. Always around people.
People who knew.
People who saw me now.
People who watched.
Because I was that girl, the one from the news.
The one who’d almost killed her mother’s boyfriend.
After he almost raped her.
I hung there, crouched on the edge of the pine forest, and tried to feel the June sunshine. But the whispers wouldn’t go away, the cold that had blanketed me from the inside out for two months and four days.
Dr. Rivers told me I had to move forward, and I knew he was right. Detective Cooper told me I was safe, and I knew he was right, too. That’s why I went to the park, the trails, where there were people—but not too many: to take back what I lost the night Tucker Cole came into my bedroom.
Behind me something snapped.
A twig, I told myself. They were everywhere. There was no such thing as quiet along a hiking trail. People made noise, and people swarmed the trails of Chautauqua—
Underbrush rustled.
An animal, I reasoned, but this time my hand was reaching into my side pocket. Detective Cooper had given me mace—but my grandfather had given me more. He’d taught me to survive.
Quiet familiarity slipped through me as my fingers curved around the cool steel of the old switchblade. The one I’d learned to carve with—hunt with, if necessary.
Slowly I stood, letting the camera dangle from the strap around my neck. With my free hand I reached for my phone, glancing down to thumb over to Detective Cooper’s number. 911 was great, but if I only had one call to make, it would be L.T.
Around me, the cool breeze slipped through the endless branches of pine. I scanned my surroundings, acutely aware I was being paranoid. Chautauqua Park was a major tourist attraction, as well as popular with the locals. People came here to run and walk their dogs, to play, to get married. There were cottages for rent. In the summer there were concerts. It was naïve to think I would have a trail to myself. That’s why I’d worn the hat. So my white-blond hair wouldn’t give me away.
Behind me something rustled. I twisted fast, hand swinging out in front of me as I scanned the army of trees. I would have sworn I saw a shadow slipping away in the exact second I turned.
My throat tightened. My heart started to race. And I hated it. I hated how easy the panic consumed me, in broad daylight in a public place. Of course there were shadows in a forest of pine. Of course the wind made them slip.
The problem was me.
To prove it, I forced in a deep breath and clomped straight for the tree.
I was halfway there when I caught the blur of black and white and grey.
I slowed, the tight coil inside me relaxing the second I found them, three baby raccoons playing at the base of a skinny tree.
“Well, hi there,” I whispered as the smaller two kept wrestling, but the largest froze, big round eyes trained on me.
Going down on a knee, I lifted my camera and zoomed in on the cuteness of the little guy’s face, the smudges of black against the swirls of white and gray. “It’s okay…I won’t hurt you.”
I won’t hurt you…won’t hurt you…
The other two broke abruptly, one of them taking two quick steps toward me while the third vanished into the tangle of shrubbery.
“Where’s your mama?” I asked, snapping as quickly as I could, easing out from the close-up of their faces to a wider shot, encompassing both of them.
They looked more curious than scared.
I shifted to allow more light to filter into the picture. “D’you get lost? It’s a big, scary world to be all alone in…”
Don’t scream…
Without warning they tensed, and then they were gone, vanishing into the underbrush before I could snag any more pictures.
The voice came a heartbeat later, low, quiet…directly behind me. “You’re pointing that in the wrong direction.”
Chapter 2
With a violent kick of my heart, I twisted around, and saw him. He stood there, more in shadow than light, a guy. A guy who’d gotten within five feet of me without me so much as sensing his presence.
Or had he? Had the shuffling I heard been him all along? Or the raccoons?
“Oh, am I?” I fired back, pushing to my feet so that at least he didn’t tower over me. He wasn’t huge or anything, more lanky than muscular, his white t-shirt suggesting wide but not bulky shoulders, his khaki cargo shorts looking like they could fall down at any moment.
“Where should I be pointing?” My eyes met his. “At you?”
Green. That was the first thing I noticed. His eyes were green, almost the exact woodsy shade as the moss consuming the decaying tree beside him.
Amused. That was the second thing I noticed. A slow gleam of amusement glimmered in those eyes. Not awareness. Not recognition. Not…malice.
“Well, I don’t know why you’d want to do that, either,” he said, with a slow, crooked smile.
I bit back the answering smile that tried to form, and reminded myself that he was a stranger. And we were alone. In the woods.
Long tangles of sweaty blond hair slipped from my cadet cap. Instinctively I swiped at them.
“Then where should I have been pointing?” I asked as a soft wind started to blow.
He stepped toward me. “Here, let me show you.”
I tensed. It was automatic and instinctive, and I hated it, because he stopped dead in his tracks, lifting his hands as if I’d pulled my knife on him—my knife which I still held in my hand.
“Hey, it’s okay.” His voice was quieter this time, almost oddly so, strained with a caution that hadn’t been there before.
A caution I hated.
I hated because it destroyed.
It destroyed the easiness of the moment before.
An easiness I hadn’t known, hadn’t felt, since—
I didn’t let that thought form, finish.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he wa
s saying, and now he was looking at me in a way that I recognized, the way of the first responders who’d found me sitting inside my neighbor’s living room, my arms tight around my middle. I could still see the way they’d approached me, slowly, arms outstretched, promising they weren’t going to hurt me…
And I hated that, too.
I hated whatever it was this guy was seeing that made him look at me like that, that transformed him from amused to…cautious.
“I’m not scared.” The words shot out of me. By now they were so rote I probably said them in my sleep. I’m not afraid, I told Emily. I’m not afraid, I insisted to Dr. Rivers. I’m not afraid, I promised L.T. I’m not afraid, not afraid, not afraid…
Every time I uttered them, they lost a little more meaning.
“’k,” he said. “It’s just…”
The way his voice trailed off told me it wasn’t okay at all.
“What?” I asked. “Why did you say that? Why did you think I’m scared?”
His gaze slid to the knife, the blade flicked outward—when had I done that?
“The way you were looking at me,” he said, “like you thought I was an axe murderer or something.”
I winced, the words scraping clear down to my soul.
It was almost unnatural how still he held himself. “Here,” he said, holding out his hand. “Let me show you.”
I looked at him standing against the backdrop of shimmering pine and snow-capped mountains, at the dark blond hair falling into his face, and the steady way he watched me.
“Show me what?”
“You’ll see.” Before there’d been cold, but as he lifted his hand to mine and took the camera, the warmth of the wind swirled closer.
“Step back,” he instructed.
And suddenly I couldn’t do it one second longer, couldn’t just stand there like some damaged little victim afraid of her own shadow. That’s why I was here, I reminded myself, to prove that my life was mine and that no creep or pervert could take it from me.
I broke my stillness, and did as he instructed.
“A few more steps,” he said, watching as I eased back from him. “Right there, by the tree.”
It was a dead tree, one with not a trace of green remaining, only a shell of its former self. But still it stood, stretching up against the blue, blue sky.
“A little to your right,” he murmured, and with that last step, shadows gave way to a glimmering puddle of light.
“Just like that,” he murmured, lifting my camera to his face. “Perfect.”
And I realized it then, what he was taking a picture of.
Stepping toward me, he slid his finger toward the shutter. “Beautiful. Now take off your hat…”
I don’t really know what happened next, how the moment broke as quickly as it did, the stillness of curiosity shattering into something so different and ugly, but I turned away, turned away fast, before he could snap a picture, and some place inside me, some place I’d forgotten about, started to bleed.
“Hey—” His voice was soft, gentle all over again, but there was nothing soft or gentle inside me, and I didn’t know what to do, didn’t want to be there, in that moment, with him, this guy I didn’t know, but that looked at me with a tender confusion that made the woods around me start to spin, didn’t want him to see me, to know—
He was moving toward me, I could hear him, the twigs snapping beneath his sneakers. “You sure you’re okay? I didn’t mean to upset you—”
“Not another step.”
That voice. So hard and full of authority that even the wind didn’t dare disobey. Everything stopped, the guy with my camera and the breeze around us, even the rustle of the branches, everything except the violent pounding of my heart. And then he was there, emerging from behind a cluster of young pine trees with the intensity and purpose of a cop closing in on a crime scene.
“L.T.” My voice thinned on his name. Confusion poured through me. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing, couldn’t I?” he said, but he barely even spared me a glance. With his feet shoulder width apart and his hand hovering at the belt slung around his hips, where his service revolver waited, he took in the stranger. “Who’s this?”
“Nobody,” I said.
The other guy’s eyes met mine. I couldn’t read what I saw there. Confusion definitely. Maybe alarm. But also something that looked oddly like concern.
“Nobody,” L.T. repeated, sounding every bit like the cop that he was.
“We were just talking,” I scrambled to explain. “We just met. It’s no big deal.”
His shoulders rose, fell. “Why does he have your camera?”
The moment that had been holding all of us, holding us frozen against the edge of a stark ravine, finally broke, and the guy stepped closer. Not many people did that with L.T.
“Because I wanted to show her what I saw.”
“And what was that?” L.T. pressed.
The guy’s eyes met mine. They were greener and darker at the same time. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s…gone.”
Something soft and warm moved through me, as if he’d touched me, touched me without so much as lifting a hand.
“Obviously I’ve made a huge mistake and walked into something I shouldn’t have,” he continued, holding my gaze a heartbeat longer than was comfortable before shifting his attention back to L.T. “Didn’t know she was with someone.”
I’m not, I wanted to say—scream, but the words wouldn’t form.
L.T. glanced back at me. “He telling the truth?”
I looked beyond the width of his shoulders, seeking out moss green eyes. “Yes.”
“Then you won’t mind giving me your name,” he said, returning his attention to the guy.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, looking from L.T. to me, back to L.T. “What does my name have to do with anything?”
L.T. let out one of his signature cop-like breaths, all rough and suspicious. “Is there a reason you don’t want to give it to me?”
“Austin,” the guy said, frowning. “Austin Sumnter.”
L.T. nodded, extending his hand. “Her camera?”
For a second Austin did nothing, at least not what L.T. asked. He looked beyond him, toward me, and it was all gone, all the amusement and mischievousness of a few minutes before, the easiness of those first few moments, replaced by sharp-edged confusion.
“I’m sorry,” he said, not to L.T. but to me. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”
My throat tightened. “You didn’t.”
So many questions collided in his eyes, like dark monsoonal clouds bubbling over the mountains, and some place inside screamed all over again. For a few magical moments, there’d been no past. I was just a girl, he was just a guy. It had been easy.
Now reality was pouring back in, filling up all the empty spaces with its familiar poison.
“Okay, well, see ya,” he muttered, shoving the camera into L.T.’s hands. And then he was gone, vanishing into the shadows of pine, gone as quickly and quietly as he’d appeared, leaving me standing there, alone, wondering what would have happened if L.T. hadn’t broken through the brush.
Wondering…what the guy named Austin had seen.
“You sure you’re okay?” L.T. asked.
I swallowed, glancing up at the concern in his eyes. At first look he was a man of hard angles, the lines of his face and those of his body warning of sharp edges that could slice to the bone. Even the blue of his eyes was hard, glacial. But I was coming to know the edges inside were different, blunted. Broken.
It was impossible not to wonder why.
But Detective L.T. Cooper was not a man to talk about himself.
“Completely.” I smiled brighter than what I felt. I knew he was studying me, and that he wasn’t a man to accept simple words. He always wanted more, demanded more. Inflection, tone, body language. He took in everything, analyzing it thoroughly before forming his opinion.
&nbs
p; At twenty-six, L.T. Cooper was already one of the sharpest detectives on the force.
He studied me, the blue of his eyes a laser penetrating straight through me. Then he smiled, that rare, razor sharp smile of his. “Don’t scare me like that, Slim.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “I’m pretty sure I’m not capable of scaring you.”
Actually, I doubted anything scared L.T. Cooper.
He lifted a hand to the side of my face. “You might be surprised.” His fingers were calloused but gentle as he eased the tangle of hair back behind my ear. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”
That was easy. “I love this place.” The words, the truth, felt good. “It’s my happy place, remember?”
The angles of his face hardened, and just like that, the easiness of that moment evaporated, too.
“What are you doing here?” I tossed back.
“Looking for you.”
“Why?”
He looked beyond me, scanning, always scanning…always looking for something unseen.
“Is something wrong?” My heart started beating a little faster. Dark possibilities pushed through me. “Is it Tucker Cole? Has something happened—”
“No.” L.T.’s hands settled against my shoulders. “Nothing’s wrong. I stopped by the coffee shop but you weren’t there. Emily said something about Lexi being Lexi and Group—”
I frowned.
“And then when you weren’t at home—”
“You went there?”
He nodded.
I cringed. “So you came here,” I realized. “You remembered.”
Somewhere nearby, a bird started to sing. “I did.”
I’d told him about my grandfather. I’d told him about the park. I’d told him how much I missed wandering the foothills and mountains with my camera.
“And found me with some strange guy,” I added, grinning.
He didn’t grin back. “It wasn’t the guy.”
I didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”
“It was the look on your face.”
My mouth worked. No sound came.
“You weren’t scared, Z. You were terrified.”
