Luke fumbled with his cell phone. She nearly growled. Of course. He hadn’t respected her then and he apparently still didn’t respect her now. She let her eyes roll over the waters. No one was going to knock her off her game. Not a fire. Not a hunter. Not the slimy director of the camp next door. Not even the one man who had once broken her heart.
* * *
Even with the sun beating down on his back, Luke could practically feel Nicky’s chilly glare floating across the water toward him. If looks could kill, he’d be halfway to the bottom of the lake by now. Was it too much to ask that she actually have some faith in him? Or had the foolish lies he’d told as a teenager ruined any chance of that for good? It would be nice to think she’d actually manage to genuinely smile at the sight of him one day, instead of scrunching up that freckled nose of hers as though she’d just smelled something terrible. He sighed. Didn’t help one bit that she still managed to be beautiful when angry.
He glanced at his phone. The cell signal was gone again, leaving four messages in his inbox and the notice that there were two more that hadn’t made it through. He read them quickly.
Okay. Pooled the team. Neil Pryce is clean. Unless you count getting kicked out of football minor leagues for breaking someone’s nose.
Luke chuckled. No surprise there really.
Tabitha Grey. Politician. Former nurse. Widow. Conservative. Tough as nails. Some angry ex-staff. No scandals. Got nothing on daughter Gracie or what hand-off could’ve been.
Okay, then. Luke had already figured out it had been the younger twin, Aaron, who’d slipped something into Gracie’s hand. And that Gracie had a pretty heavy-duty crush on David.
Russ Tusk. Two ex-wives. Three lawsuits for sexual harassment, all settled out of court. Rumors of infidelity. General gossip. No actual news—that we’d report anyway.
Bear Wanes. Big file. But no one willing to go on record. Rumors of shoddy deals, aggressive negotiating tactics, intimidation, threats, extortion, destruction of property, alcoholism, accidental discharge of a firearm, including shooting a gun through someone’s office wall. Not to mention—
The text cut off. Luke almost found himself shaking his phone, willing more words to float onto the screen. Seemed whatever else Jack had wanted to say was lost in cyberspace. For a moment he let his eyes linger on Bear and Tusk. The two men seemed in an unspoken competition to each do as little paddling as possible.
Lord, if there’s something You need me to see to there, please help me see it.
The island was even more beautiful in sunlight. Towering pines rose thick and dense out of solid gray rock, like a natural fortress emerging from the water. There was no telling what someone would pay for the rugged, isolated slice of paradise. Luke’s paddle froze in his hands. A shadowy green figure stood on the same giant rock where he and Nicky had watched the Hunter peel off in their stolen motorboat the night before. Instinctively, Luke’s legs almost pushed him up to his feet before he could even register that he was still in a canoe. “Nicky!”
Nicky waved both arms at the figure on the cliff. He waved back then disappeared into the woods. “Sorry, just had to let Trevor know we saw him. Now what’s up?”
Luke fought the urge to smack himself with a paddle. Of course. The entire convoy had practically come to a standstill now. Every pair of eyes was on his face. He forced a smile. “Sorry. I just thought that was our visitor from yesterday.”
“Nope, we’re all good. It’s Trevor.”
How could she even tell that for sure from this distance? But if it had been the Hunter, he probably wouldn’t have waved. Then again, sitting on the lake with a bunch of other canoers, Luke was hardly in a position to argue. Nicky turned back and continued paddling. The canoes fell into formation.
“Hey, can people dive off that rock?” It was the older twin, David.
A glimmer of a smile crossed Nicky’s lips. “We don’t allow it. The water is pretty deep, but there are a whole lot of other smaller rocks to dodge on the way down.”
“But is it possible?” David didn’t sound like the kind of guy who liked taking no for an answer.
Now was he reckless, arrogant or brave?
“Only one staffer has ever been foolish enough to try,” Nicky said. “Fortunately she survived with nothing worse than a couple of stitches. But the moment George found out about it, he threatened to fire her if she ever pulled a stunt that dangerous again.”
“Was it you?” David asked.
She opened her mouth and then shut it again as a blush brushed over her cheeks. “Yes. But don’t follow my example, okay?”
David guffawed loudly. Others chuckled. Aaron smiled weakly at Gracie. But her eyes were too focused on David to notice. The canoes kept moving.
Trevor was waiting for them on the dock, beside the motorboat. His reflective yellow jacket practically glared like a spotlight in the sun. “Welcome everyone to our island!” Trevor spread his arms wide. “Now, please beach your canoes over there on the sand.”
He hopped off the dock into knee-deep water and helped drag canoes up onto the shore. Trevor grinned at Luke. “Saw Dad quickly at the hospital this morning, and he said I should get to know you.” He guided Luke and Martin’s canoe up into the beach beside Bear and Russ’s. “Sorry I didn’t quite recognize you when I picked you and Nicky up from the island last night. I thought you were just some reporter.”
Which meant what exactly? Trevor couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven when his father had driven Luke to the local jail, then stood there waiting as he’d stammered out his crimes to the officer. Did Trevor remember those nights a teenaged Luke had detoxed from drugs on his sofa? Or had George told him? Either way, it seemed neither of them had told Nicky. “I am just a reporter.” Luke managed a smile. “I didn’t think you’d ever remember meeting me.”
“You’re kidding!” Trevor’s smile tightened. “You were my dad’s favorite prodigal project! When you moved up from just stacking boxes at that paper up to an actual reporting job, Dad was so proud he stuck the article on the fridge.”
Before Luke could answer, Trevor ran over to the next canoe. What was he trying to say? That George was proud of him for somehow managing to be a less terrible human being than he used to be? Luke shrugged, wanting to shake off the misplaced praise like an invisible coat he had no business wearing.
Nicky led the group of campers single file through the forest. Luke took up the rear, his mind still spinning from Trevor’s words. George was wrong about him. Always had been. He’d lost track of the number of times George had asked him to come up to camp because campers “needed a role model” like him.
Luke slapped a tree branch out of his face. Didn’t George understand? He wasn’t anyone’s role model. He was nothing but the wreckage that resulted when a criminally selfish boy took advantage of an extremely drunk girl at some miserable party and then left her all alone to raise the son she obviously wanted nothing to do with. There was nothing laudable about simply being a more decent person than who he’d been raised to be.
Nicky’s laughter trickled through the dense trees ahead of him and his face lifted toward it. Had loyalty to George really been the only thing that had brought him up here this weekend? It’s not as if he’d expected Nicky to still be here, waiting where he’d left her. Still, he had to admit, the news his buddy Jack had finally found a woman he wanted to create a life with had sent Luke’s mind slipping back to the beautiful woman he’d once left among the Muskoka trees. But that was different. Jack might have taken on both a serial killer and his career to be with his Meg. But for Jack, the monster hadn’t been inside him. For Luke, it was in the very DNA flowing through his veins.
He’d almost lost sight of the group and was down to just catching the occasional glimpse of Trevor’s back through the trees. George’s son had taken off his ridiculous yellow jacket and t
ied it around his waist. It bunched in the back as he walked. No, there was an actual lump under Trevor’s shirt. Luke blinked. Now that was a shape a former runaway would recognize anywhere.
“Hold up.” Luke hurried forward a couple of steps and tapped Trevor on the shoulder. The rest of the group walked on without them. Luke lowered his voice. “Why are you carrying a concealed weapon?”
Trevor shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, you do. You’ve got something tucked into the back of your shirt and the only people I’ve known to carry things like that are trying to hide something.” And not something innocent. “Look, I’m not accusing you of anything. But I know you’re carrying something, and I want you to know that you can trust me.”
Trevor’s lips twisted into a smirk, as though he was trying to decide whether or not to take Luke seriously. Then he shrugged, chuckled and kept walking.
Right, as if Luke was going to let anyone go after a response like that one. With one hand he grabbed Trevor by the shoulder and spun him around. With the other he yanked up the back of Trevor’s shirt and grabbed the weapon.
It was a hunting knife.
SEVEN
Nicky and the campers had barely reached the campground when she heard Trevor shout. She looked back. Where had he gone? And for that matter, where was Luke? She forced a smile and turned to the group. “If you could all please find your bags, and pick a buddy or two to share a tent with, I’m just going to go check on what’s keeping the others.”
She walked back to the path as quickly as she could without looking suspicious. Then once she hit the trees she started to sprint. The muffled sound of Trevor spitting out swearwords filtered through the trees. She still couldn’t hear Luke. She rounded a corner on the path and her eyes saw a sight her brain didn’t even know how to process. Luke had Trevor pinned against a tree. Trevor was swearing and swinging punches.
“What on earth is going on here? Luke! Let him go. Now.”
Luke stepped back, his hands out in front of him, as if he was expecting Trevor to charge. Trevor’s eyes flashed like he was ready to leap for Luke’s throat. But instead, all he did was spit on the ground and mutter one final curse word under his breath.
They were unbelievable. “I’ll ask you again, what’s going on here?”
Luke straightened his sweaty shirt over his abs. Then he reached down and picked a jagged hunting knife up off the ground. “I caught Trevor carrying this.”
“It’s not mine!” Trevor pushed between Luke and Nicky. “I was going to tell you about it, and he jumped me.”
A harsh laugh crossed Luke’s lips that sounded more like a snarl. “I asked you about it and you laughed me off.”
“Since when do I answer to you?” Trevor turned his back on Luke. “Nicky, it fell out of someone’s bags when I was transporting them over here. I found it in the bottom of the boat and figured the smartest thing to do was keep it hidden until you and I could talk about it privately.”
Nicky gasped. “Whose bag?”
“I don’t know. It was just lying on the floor of the boat.” Trevor’s eyes narrowed. “Could belong to this guy for all I know.”
“Or it might not have come from anyone’s bag at all.” Luke’s snarl spread into a dangerous grin. She didn’t even want to guess the words Luke was holding back behind his clenched teeth. Then again, the young man she’d once known Luke to be wouldn’t have just sworn a blue streak at Trevor; he’d have also broken his nose. Maybe he had changed.
Trevor crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I also found some other pretty interesting stuff in some people’s bags, too.”
“What?” Nicky’s voice rose so high it almost squeaked. “You went through people’s bags?”
“Yeah!” Trevor snapped. “Because I’d just found a knife! Who knows what else people might have been hiding?”
Nicky squeezed the back of her neck with both hands. They’d been on the island less than an hour and already she was facing a crisis. Searching through people’s bags wasn’t just unethical—it could totally jeopardize any of them being willing to give them the help Camp Spirit was counting on. But Trevor wasn’t staff she’d hired; he was just here as a favor to his father who was in the hospital. Right now, the most important thing was to deescalate this situation. Discipline could wait.
“What you should have done was come to me first,” she said. “We could have handled this like adults and asked people who the knife belonged to. Maybe someone would have come right out and claimed it.” Though it was a pretty vicious-looking weapon for a simple camping trip, it wasn’t totally beyond the realm of possibility that someone had used it hunting and forgotten it was in their bag.
“Well, I found other things, too.” Trevor’s body practically quivered with nervous energy. “Bear brought a flask of hard liquor. Smells like whiskey. Bear also has surveyor’s maps to the entire area—including this island. I wouldn’t be surprised if he only came along because he knows someone planning to make Dad an offer for this place and wants to get a jump on a construction bid. You know as well as I do that this camp might be almost bankrupt, but this land it’s built on is worth a lot.” True. But that didn’t change the fact George wasn’t about to sell to a developer. “And Gracie had a letter from Aaron, begging her not to come on this trip because he didn’t want her to ‘get hurt.’ Whatever that means.”
She couldn’t believe her ears. “Searching for weapons hardly justifies reading someone’s personal letter!”
“It wasn’t sealed! It was barely even folded.”
This was getting worse by the moment. Apparently, Trevor’s sense of entitlement had gotten way out of control, and she wasn’t looking forward to the conversation she’d have to have with George about it when they got back.
Luke’s eyebrows rose. “I saw him hand her something before they got in the canoes. This could be it.”
This was the first she was hearing of it. “Where is all this stuff now?”
“I put it all back. Obviously!” Trevor gestured like a man deflecting invisible blows. “Except I dumped most of Russ’s alcohol out and then left the cap on the flask loose, so he’d think it spilled out on the way here. Because I figured you didn’t actually want someone getting drunk on your special camping trip. Unless you’d rather I’d just put it back and leave you to confront him about it.” His arms crossed. “Believe it or not, I was actually just trying to help. I want Dad to get the money to fix this dump up even more than you do.”
She sighed. “I get that, but you’ve got to know I can’t condone any of this, Trevor. Then again, neither am I going to storm into the campsite and cause a scene. I would like you to take personal responsibility for apologizing to everyone, privately, about looking in their bags. I’ll let you sort out how and when that takes place, but I expect it done today.” She was still in charge of this trip, whether he liked it or not.
He scowled. “I was trying to help.”
“I get that. But that doesn’t change the fact that you were in the wrong.” She took the knife from Luke’s outstretched hand. “We’ll see if anyone claims this. Either way I’m locking it in the glove compartment of the motorboat until we get back to shore on Sunday.”
Trevor sighed loudly. “I don’t have to be here, you know. I stuck around to help. And I don’t see why you double guess me but just trust Luke blindly.”
A bitter smile rose to her lips. “Believe me, I don’t trust Luke blindly. But he’s not the one who raided people’s bags.”
“Well, just so you know, I found a little whittled wood carving in Luke’s bag. So for all we know, Luke has a thing for playing with knives.”
“Wood carving?” Her feet stopped. She turned to Luke. His face paled. “What kind of wood carving?” As she watched, a pained look filled the gray of his ey
es. Her heart leaped in her chest. She knew the answer even before Trevor answered.
“A wolf,” Trevor said. “It was a little wooden wolf. Carved out of a piece of a tree branch or something. It’s on his key chain. Not particularly well carved. Like the kind of amateur work a kid would’ve done.”
Or a crush-struck eighteen-year-old girl who was just learning to whittle and had spent hours trying to craft the perfect gift for a boy named “Louie” because his name sounded a bit like loup, the French word for wolf. She’d never even guessed it was his real last name. Or that he’d keep the carving all these years.
“See, so it makes sense he’d have a knife!” Trevor added. “Ask him! He’ll tell you!”
She looked at Luke. But Luke had turned and started toward camp.
* * *
Luke slid the heavy canvas tent over the metal poles, feeling his shoulders tighten as Nicky walked behind him. They hadn’t spoken a word since they’d returned to camp. Instead, Nicky had leaped right into camp director mode, showing campers how to set up the tents and army cots.
What must she be thinking, knowing he’d kept that wolf she’d carved him all those years ago? The moment she’d handed it to him, shyly, sweetly, as they’d sat side by side on that cliff side was the moment he’d realized it was time to grab whatever he could steal and run. It had gone too far. They’d grown too close.
He’d never hidden anywhere more than two nights at a time before, and here he’d been hiding out in that broken cabin at Camp Spirit almost three weeks. As he’d unwrapped the gift, he’d heard the words, “Wolf, just like me...” cross his lips, and realized with a start that he’d just risked admitting his real name. The name of a runaway who had warrants out for his arrest. Not to mention coming within heartbeats of falling so deeply for her that he’d risked getting caught. So he’d hugged her, kissed her and slunk out of her life. But he’d kept the wolf she’d carved him. He’d even hung his keys on it when he’d grown up enough to get an apartment with a door that locked and then a car of his own. It was the closest he could ever come to acknowledging the girl who’d once turned his life upside down.
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