Thorne Bay

by Jeanine Croft

  “Oh, I know exactly who I’m speaking to.” Woman, be cool! I smacked my brow with a grimace of disgust.

  “How’s the ankle?” he asked in a solicitous change of tone.

  “You mean my cankle,” I scoffed. “It’s fine.”

  He chuckled again. “I hope you don’t mind, but I got your number from Owen.”

  “No, that’s fine.” Argh! I forbid you from saying fine ever again! I lifted my eyes to the dresser mirror and flipped my reflection the bird.

  “I just spoke to him actually and he mentioned that tomorrow’s your day off?”

  “You were speaking to Owen about me?” I nibbled at my thumbnail as I waited breathlessly for the answer. And knowing just how subtle Mack Lovin’ could be, he probably volunteered my hand in marriage along with my number.

  “Yeah, he gave me your social security too and I passed it onto my cult leader.”

  “Oh snap.” I felt my lips curl instantly. Without meaning to, I caught myself picturing his smile (not the sharp smile), and the sexy way he’d sometimes angle his head, almost imperceptibly, whenever he made a wisecrack.

  “Too soon for cult jokes?” he asked.

  “No, I was laughing on the inside.”

  “Right.” The way he protracted the vowel only broadened my goofy grin. “Well, I was gonna invite you up for a helicopter ride, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Seriously?” My fingers were probably leaving indents on my phone. “No way!”

  “So that’s a yes? I don’t wanna assume anything…” But by the tone of humor prevalent in his voice, he knew exactly which one to expect.

  “I’d love to go!”

  “Okay, but you’ll actually be required to laugh at all future jokes no matter how questionable.”

  “Done.” Whoa, I hadn’t scared him off yet? Progress. I gave my reflection a thumbs up and an enthusiastic nod.

  “Pick you up around six AM?”

  “Are you asking or telling me?”

  “Wasn’t sure if you’d mind getting up at the ass-crack of dawn since you might’ve had plans to sleep in. The hangar’s a bit of a ball ache to get to, so we have to leave early.”

  “Negative, I don’t need any beauty sleep,” I lied. There was no amount of sleep capable of beautifying me anyway. “I’m in.”

  “Great. I’m taking two glaciologists up to Glacier Bay National Park tomorrow. Picking them up in Juneau just after ten, so skids up at seven thirty.”

  “Hmm, business and pleasure.”

  “Figured you’d want to dodge some birds and see a few glaciers with me.”

  “You figured right.” I’d help him scrub porta-potties if it meant spending time in Tristan’s company.

  “Text you tomorrow morning when I’m about five minutes out.”

  “I’ll be ready at six.”

  “See ya then.”

  As soon as the line went dead my music flared back to life. I began twerking my celebration dance on top of my mattress, and my folded clothes were soon reduced to nothing but a crumpled mess around me. When the song ended, I collapsed onto my clean laundry and reached over to retrieve the card I’d placed on my bedside table. I still hadn’t removed the bow from the soy milk either. In fact, my bedside had become a little Tristan shrine of late. That’s not freakin’ creepy at all. His words, as I imagined them in his voice, always made me smile each time I reread his note (and I did that at least twice a day).

  Evan—found this dodgy box of mystery milk at the market. Made me think of this weird girl I know, and her strange addiction to pretend milk :) Hope it tastes better than it looks. At the very least, you can use it to elevate your foot…or feed it to your pet spider.

  Tristan.

  P.S. I like weird.

  Screw flowers and chocolates, I thought. Sure, it would have been adorable if he’d sent those instead, but totally unimaginative. Although I wasn’t sure how I felt about him thinking I was weird. Then again, according to John Lennon, it was weird not to be weird.

  * * *

  “Ugh, he’s not in a cult.” I raised my eyes to the ceiling, sighing my annoyance and wishing I could keep a straight face around Melissa.

  “Did David Koresh tell you that himself?” she retorted. “Well, then, it must be true.”

  I threw a balled up sock at Melissa. She was sitting on my bed fiddling with her camera equipment. She was supposed to be helping me decide what to wear today but was failing miserably at it. Instead, she reminded me to pack my pepper spray in case I found myself kidnapped and married off to a psychotic polygamist with a harem of teenage wives.

  I purposefully removed the bear spray from my backpack and set it on the dresser to make a point. “It’s staying right here.”

  “Fine, it’s your creepy wedding,” she quipped with a shrug, implying that it was more like my funeral.

  “Focus, woman.” I laid out the two options for her to consider. “The red sweater or the green?”

  She had arrived at Bear Lodge much earlier, four AM to be exact, to shoot some sunrise landscapes over the lake, and had popped over a few minutes ago knowing I would already be up shaving my bits, spraying the pits, and generally freaking out about this date that wasn’t a date.

  “I heard Mrs. Dinwiddie saying that she saw Dean running naked through her backyard last week.” Melissa folded her arms and winged her eyebrows meaningfully at me. “And I’m pretty sure Mrs. Thatcher said the same about Tristan once.”

  “Melissa—” I threatened her with another sock “—Thatcher’s half blind. It was probably her drunken husband stripping in his shed again.”

  She waved her hand impatiently and got back to the topic, much to my annoyance. “Look, I like Tristan just fine. He’s not a bad tipper. Maybe he’s not in a cult exactly, but you can't tell me there isn't something weird about that whole family. Doesn’t Dean give you the heebie-jeebies? They live in a compound, for God’s sake. C’mon, Evan, that’s freakin’ weird.”

  “Uh, look who you’re talking to.”

  “Point taken.” She threw herself back against my pillows. “Actually, you suit each other.” She aimed a careless finger at the deep red cable-knit. “Wear that one. That way the sheriff can find your dead body in the woods a lot easier.”

  “Green it is.” I slipped the oversized emerald green sweater on over a white base layer and dark blue skinny jeans before inspecting the ensemble in the full-length mirror behind the door.

  I had elected to wear my hair in a messy bun on top of my head and I thought I looked casual in an I’m-not-trying-too-hard-but-don’t-I-look-cute-anyway? kinda way. Satisfied, I turned back towards the bed, feeling almost sick with nervy anticipation. But the incoming text distracted me instantly and, squealing happily, I dove for it even before Darth Vader had stopped his creepy breathing.

  I knew exactly who it was. So did Melissa, whose humorous little snort barely registered in my delirium. As oblivious as I was to my surroundings, and utterly engrossed in Tristan's text (informing me he was ten minutes out), I didn’t realize that Melissa was aiming her lens at me. Not until I heard the shutter going off in rapid succession.

  “Woman—” I narrowed my eyes at her “—I hope that’s a practice shot you intend to delete later.”

  “Sure.” The Mona Lisa smile she offered me completely belied her words. She gathered her things up, having noticed the time, and hugged me goodbye. A moment later she was at the open door, preparing to head out. But she unexpectedly halted at the threshold to rifle through her large handbag. “Ev, before I forget…”

  Something was already sailing at me through the air even as I said, “Yeah?” The instant I caught the object, Melissa bolted from the room, shutting the door firmly behind her. Within my uncurling fingers lay a little, square Trojan packet.

  “Safety first!” She yelled from the other side of the door, cackling as she sprinted down the stairs and out of earshot of the less than savory epithets I was shouting at her.

  Moments
later, I heard the bold thudding of footsteps mounting the stairs. Likely Melissa, I thought, returning because she had just realized she’d given me the last of her willie-warmers or something. Also, it hadn’t been ten minutes yet, and I hadn’t heard Tristan’s truck. So I ripped the door open and, without even checking first, hurled the Trojan at her with a vengeful, “Ha!”

  But my exclamation diminuendoed like the last note of a flat tire.

  “I told you, Evan,” said Tristan, grinning as he inspected the condom packet that had hit him square in the chest, “you gotta buy me a drink first.”

  10

  Predators

  “Oh. My. God.” When I saw Melissa again, I’d bloody choke her with that damn condom! I covered my face with my hands, horrified. The urge to cry was almost as strong as the urge to laugh. Well, that was bound to happen, wasn’t it? I couldn’t seem to go a full second without mortifying myself in front of this man. “That was…for Melissa,” I finished lamely.

  “I won’t ask.”

  “Probably for the best,” I muttered, stepping outside to lock my door.

  When I had dropped my key into my backpack, I turned to find Tristan already waiting at the passenger door for me. He was wearing a blue flight suit that did nothing to repair my tattered self-composure. There was nothing in the world hotter than a man in a flight suit, I decided.

  The day he’d driven me and my bum foot home I’d barely noticed his truck, but I took the time now. It was a modified black King Ranch with mud splatter thrown up over the fender wells. There was a winch below the brush guard and a large aluminum toolbox in the truck bed and a tank of jet fuel with a fuel hose attached. A very masculine truck indeed.

  “No more cankle,” he remarked, nodding at my boot as I hopped into the passenger seat.

  “And no more dignity.” The heat of humiliation was still cooking the proverbial egg on my face.

  “Which reminds me…” He dropped the foil packet casually into my lap. “This belongs to you.” He then closed my door firmly and walked around to his side wearing a shit-eating grin.

  “You know,” I said, glaring at the little silver square, and forgetting to filter my thoughts, “condom is right up there with all the other cringey words like moist—” I grimaced “—and orifice and coitus.”

  He snorted. “Then I’ll be especially careful never to use all four in one sentence.”

  “Yes,” I said, admiring his long fingers on the wheel, “feel free to use euphemisms.”

  “Like what? Wet, hole, and porking? Yeah,” he chuckled, “those are so much better.”

  I shuddered. “You left condom out.”

  “Does prophylactic sound any better to you?”

  “I prefer the term ‘French letter’, thanks.”

  “Come again?” His brows twitched.

  “French letter sounds way better than condom.”

  “Sounds just as dirty to me.”

  I chucked the French letter into the backseat and dropped my hands to fidget in my lap. “Nice try, Tristan, but you’re not ruining French letter for me.”

  “We’ll see.” He shot me a fleeting look, which I caught from my peripheral.

  Would we see? Why did that sound like the most delicious threat ever? I swallowed my heart back down from where it had somersaulted into my throat. “By the way, thank you for the card and the hippie milk.”

  “You’re welcome.” He gave a long-suffering sigh. “Can’t believe I’m encouraging your weird milk fetish.”

  “Yet you claim to like weird.” The proof of which was written in bold, black ink in the card on my bedside table.

  “I do.”

  “And you think I’m weird?”

  “Very.”

  “Oh.” My brow puckered with uncertainty.

  “Extraordinary, remarkable, exceptional—take whatever euphemism you want, Evan. The point is you’re different. Why would you want to be ordinary.” He said the word with heavy distaste.

  “Not ordinary, just normal would be nice for a change.”

  “Normal is boring, and people die of boredom every day.”

  “No,” I scoffed, “more people die of excitement. Boredom is safe.”

  “Well, would you rather die being bored or die doing something amazing?”

  “I’d rather not die period.” But he was right, it was why I was here at all—taking chances and making changes. “So can I assume that you’re weird too?”

  “You may.”

  “Really?” I eyed him skeptically. No way did we share that in common. I’d had acne in high school and might as well have been a leper. He’d have been the complete opposite—the quintessential football god with an entourage of half-dressed giggling pom-pom brats. I promptly asseverated as much to him.

  “Nah,” he answered, “I was homeschooled. Trust me, there’s no euphemism for the kind of weird that I am.” His expression was deadpan as he scanned the road and the trees either side.

  “Then may I just say that the weird in me respects the weird in you.”

  To that, I received only an enigmatic little smile. He was completely at ease after that, casually drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, watching the scenery as it passed by his window. By comparison, I couldn’t seem to sit still, looking anywhere but directly at him.

  The backdrop was incomparable, the conifers looming beneath a cerulean sky, cloudless and brisk, the likes of which we seldom saw down in Florida except in winter mostly. But he was by far the more magnetizing view, and I found myself ignoring the beauty of nature in favor of his.

  Unexpectedly, his eyes shifted sidelong towards me, catching the unmistakable detour that my gaze had taken over the slope of his mouth. Hurriedly, I looked away. When he pulled over suddenly, parking on the shoulder, my heart lurched into suspenseful overdrive. I imagined him suddenly pulling me over onto his lap for a passionate kiss, but the fantasy was snuffed almost instantly. He’d spotted a turtle sunbaking in the middle of the highway, and—as if he wasn’t perfect enough already—climbed out to rescue it. Once he’d removed the little thrill-seeker to the side of the road in which its mobile home had been pointed, he climbed back into his truck and we set off again.

  Was there anything in the world sexier than a nature-lover? No, there was not.

  When we eventually got to the Thorn Aviation heliport an hour later, I was to find that Tristan had, the evening before, already preflighted and fueled the aircraft (a sleek-looking, four-bladed dark blue helicopter with pop-out floats). So it was now just a matter of him steering the dolly out of the heated hangar with the tug and parking the bird on the big yellow ‘H’ painted over the square pad. On the whole, this all took no more than five minutes.

  “Jeez,” I said, gaping at the dark trees and wild terrain that hemmed the pad and hanger, “this place is in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Everything in Thorne Bay is in the middle of nowhere,” he answered, shoving chocks either side of the dolly wheels. “Although, technically,” he added, “we’re not really in Thorne Bay anymore.” He climbed onto the skids and made quick work of checking the oil levels of the engine and transmission (with a running commentary of what he was doing) and then fastened the cowlings back up before jumping down from the high skids.

  “So do you live close by?” I asked.

  “Yup, my cabin’s not too far from here.”

  “Your compound, you mean.” I was imagining high, barbed wire fences and massive alsatians patrolling the perimeter.

  “Exactly.” He shot me a flat look.

  “And where does the rest of the cult reside?”

  “Hereabouts.”

  “So where is here exactly?” I gave my phone a little impatient shake and held it high over my head as if that might magically improve the signal. It didn’t.

  Tristan shook his head and gave an amused snort as he watched my antics. “We’re about halfway between Coffman Cove and Big Lake.”

  “Is that where Alison and Owen’s hunti
ng cabin is?” The one that Dean seemed so eager to buy.

  “Yeah.” He was scanning the trees with a distracted frown.

  When I looked out to see what he was searching for, I saw only a handful of squirrels bickering in the branches and a thrush rifling through the leaves on the ground.

  “Their property abuts my brother’s.” His voice was lower now, his nostrils flaring toward a nearby thicket.

  Disconcerted, I raised my nose to do the same, sampling the breeze like a dog. Nothing. I opened my mouth to address his strange preoccupation, but he placed a finger against his lips in warning. Then he purposefully eased me behind him, so that I was positioned between the helicopter and himself while he glared keenly into the woods up ahead.

  “Tristan?” Unnerved, I sidestepped just enough to lean out and study his face for cues.

  “Shh.” His shoulders became rigid. No part of him moved except where the wind ruffled his hair and lightly compressed his flight suit to his abs. He was so attuned that, were it even possible, I’m sure his ears would’ve been pricked forward to whatever unheard decibel he’d detected. It was uncanny.

  The waiting attenuated my nerves, each one seeming to snap discordantly in the hush. When the bushes nearby began to rustle ominously I felt my pulse jolt with fright. Something large was moving within them. The next second a colossal bear emerged from the trees. It began sniffing the air with its long, mobile nose before emitting a low, pernicious moan.

  “Fuck.” Tristan’s muttered curse only exacerbated my fear.

  That was not a word anyone wanted to hear from their pilot—ever. I was pretty sure Captain Sully hadn’t even dropped a fuck into the black box when he’d lost his engines.

  “Tell me that’s just a black bear,” I said under my breath. Black bears were at least more tolerant of humans and not as aggressive as their larger counterparts. However, the grizzled white-tipped hair on its shoulder hump and the grisly stare suggested otherwise.

  He shook his head. “A brownie.”