by Selena Scott
He had things to do tomorrow, important things. But that wasn’t until nightfall anyhow, and he figured he wasn’t harming anybody by spending time with a beautiful woman in the meantime. He looked her over again. And maybe for a few days or weeks afterwards. He had the feeling that this one might take some time.
“She is definitely not from around here. Trust me. I’d have noticed,” the gawky cashier said, and then instantly went a startling shade of red halfway to purple. Yup. 3/3. There’d been three gorgeous strangers and he’d made a fool of himself in front of all three of them. Great.
Jack grinned at the kid, because he remembered what it felt like to be fifteen and horny and awkward and wanting nothing more than to just sit close enough to a girl to get a whiff of shampoo.
Thea ignored the kid’s comment and handed over some cash. “Don’t know the area well enough to show it to anybody.”
But she was obviously camping. And the supplies she had were definitely only enough for one or maybe two days. Jack wanted to ask more, but he realized that any more questions about where she was camping and who she was camping with were only going to make him seem threatening, menacing, and over-interested in a single girl alone in the forest.
Yeah. He thought she was damn gorgeous, but he certainly didn’t want to freak her out. He could read signals well enough. And these were some serious ‘later gator’ vibes she was tossing his way. That was fine.
He might have asked for her phone number, or offered to give his, if it weren’t for a familiar feeling at the back of his neck. It was a feeling that he’d never talked to anyone else about before. And it was one that he’d truly come to trust. Jack Warren only had about two years of high school under his belt, no real college education to speak of, and very little time researching just about anything that couldn’t be studied with a glass of whiskey in his hand. But he was an uncommonly smart man, and when he had a burst of intuition, it was usually right. And at that particular moment, his intuition told him that this wasn’t the last time he’d see this woman.
“Alright, then,” Jack said, dropping his chin to her as she took her receipt and packed her supplies into her pack. “Then I guess this is goodbye.”
She looked up at him, surprised that he wasn’t pushing his agenda. She had, after all, just seen him whispering something in the ear of another woman. He was obviously an ambitious flirt. When she looked into his face, what she saw there also surprised her. It wasn’t the face of a ladies’ man, or of a man who’d just been rejected. There was a pensive look on his face. It reminded her of someone. She just couldn’t place who it was.
She shook the thought and nodded her goodbye to this Jack Warren. “There’s a trailhead out back, right?” she asked the kid.
He looked like a deer in the headlights to be directly addressing her again. “Ah, yeah. It might be a little hard to find through the raspberry bushes but it’s back there. Strange!” he called to her back after she’d nodded and started toward the door. Thea paused and looked back over her shoulder, waiting for him to finish. “No one has used that trail in years, far as I know, but you’re the fourth person to ask about it in just a couple days.”
Strange indeed, Jack thought, considering the fact that he’d been about ten minutes away from heading out back and checking out the supposed trailhead himself. Make that five people in the last few days.
This information led Jack to a few different possible conclusions, none of which would have surprised him particularly. He’d been around the block more than once, and he had the scars to prove it. He wasn’t interested in getting in anyone’s way, nor was he interested in allowing anyone to get in his. He hadn’t been a successful treasure hunter for the last twenty odd years by following the old ‘ladies first’ principle.
If she was headed out on the old trailhead, then there was a good chance this wasn’t a coincidence. There was a real good chance that this chickadee had a copy of the map. Wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened to Jack Warren.
“Say,” Jack said, loud enough for her to hear. “You happen to know what the date is?”
“July sixth,” she answered, quick as a snakebite, as if she couldn’t help but answer his question, as if the date was keenly, intensely relevant to her.
“Uh huh,” he muttered, watching her straighten up and stride out of the store, her long legs eating up the ground. He stared at the empty door for a few minutes after it slammed closed. He was a stealthy man. He knew how to not get his trail picked up. He’d give her a few hours to make some headway, and then he’d leave her alone. But there wasn’t an ice cube’s chance in hell that he was gonna let her beat him there.
“You missed a hell of a fireworks show on the fourth,” the cashier said conversationally, much more comfortable now that the hyperventilatingly gorgeous woman had left the vicinity.
“Huh? Oh. Is that right?”
The kid opened his mouth to say more, but Jack cut him off in that lazy way of his.
“You want some advice, kid?”
The cashier nodded.
Jack leaned forward, elbows on the knife case. He reached behind his ear for one of the cigarettes he’d forgotten he’d quit half a decade ago. In the same instant he felt simultaneously ancient and the thrum of youthful competition racing through him. There was something in those woods worth finding. And at least four other people believed it to be so. Jack couldn’t wait to see what it was. “You ever see another woman like that one there.” He pointed to the door that the black-haired beauty had just exited through. “You do one of two things, you hear?”
The cashier nodded.
“You either bow down, just about as close to the ground as your nose will let you go.” He held up one finger, and then with the dramatic flair of a storyteller, slowly held up another. “Or you run just about as fast as you can in the other direction.”
***
Thea knew, from her modern maps, that there was actually a much faster way to get to the star on the map, if she hitched a ride up 68 about six more miles. But there was something about walking the same path her grandfather had walked that she just couldn’t shake. Now, she could admit that that was sentimental and maybe a little illogical, but she hadn’t been lying to Ray when she’d told him that this trip was partly about saying goodbye to the man who’d raised her.
Chet Redgrave had been a real salt-of-the-earth type. Hell, Thea’d either come by it naturally, or learned it from him. He was hardworking and realistic and logical. He made hard decisions when he had to. Put down sick animals so as not to prolong their pain, fired farmhands who weren’t hard workers, and spanked his grandkids when they needed it. An old, leathery Montana man through and through.
And yet… Thea thought, as she adjusted the straps on her pack; she’d left the store about an hour ago and she had a good three more hours of daylight before she’d have to pull over and find some place to camp for the night. She’d do the rest of the ten miles the next day. The morning of the seventh. And yet, her grandfather had also believed in this map. And what it promised.
He wasn’t a mystical man, yet he’d traveled here, fifty years ago, because there was set to be a total eclipse on the night of July seventh. But the eclipse had been scheduled for three a.m., well into the eighth, and nothing special had happened. Except that Chet Redgrave had seen some beautiful country and had himself a lovely solo camping trip.
Which was exactly what Thea was expecting out of all this. All she wanted was to fulfill her promise to her grandfather, feel a little closer to him, have a little R and R, and then head back to Montana.
She hiked for a while and relished the cool air of the shadowy forest. There was something almost waxy in the shade, like the leaves themselves were evaporating into the summer air. As she walked, the terrain alternated between pine needles and packed dirt and a kind of mossy swamp. She was able to keep her feet dry by hopping from one little two-foot island to the next little two-foot island and by scrambling up f
allen logs. It was greener here, and harder to see the path, but it was also intensely lovely.
She hiked until the colors deepened in the forest and she knew it was time to make a small camp before the night fell.
The water, which Thea couldn’t decide if it was part of a creek system, or simply springing up from the ground water, was fresh and delicious. She filled her canteen and then selected one of the large islands to set up her camp. The mosquitoes were bad, which was the only reason she set up her tent. She ate a can of cold beans, a KIND bar, and a cheese stick, hung her pack in case of bears, and crawled into her tent. She unzipped the canvas at the top, revealing a mesh window that would keep out the bugs, but also allowed her to see the velvety strip of sky through the leaves.
When she fell asleep, she was at peace. She dreamed of the man in the store. Jack Warren. Of his golden hair and crinkled smile. When she woke up in the morning, the morning of July seventh, she didn’t remember.
CHAPTER THREE
The next day wasn’t nearly so peaceful for Thea. She woke up with a start and scrambled to get her tent packed. She ate breakfast walking, an apple she ate all of but the stem and another KIND bar. The reverence that she’d felt the day before for the beauty of her surroundings had waned. She was no longer feeling cosmically connected to her grandfather.
She couldn’t explain the nagging feeling she was having. Other than to say she felt as if she were suddenly in a race that she was losing. She didn’t feel followed. But she felt as if she were getting outpaced by invisible competitors. She picked up her pace. Stopping only for lunch, she was making incredible time. In fact, she was going to be at her grandfather’s clearing well before the sun even went down. The eclipse was scheduled for 10:15 pm. She’d have a few hours to kill just waiting around.
Thea heard a sound in the woods. A rhythmic one, like the sleeve of a raincoat whisking past itself. But then it was gone, either stopped or too far away. She didn’t stop again.
Thea wasn’t worried when the map called for her to veer off the trail. She was well acquainted with compasses. And besides, the old map matched up convincingly well with both the modern map and the topographical map of the area that she’d bought at the airport. She knew she was headed in the right direction, but something told her she wasn’t moving fast enough.
She cursed herself for her stupidity. Why oh why did she have to let that maple syrupy soft spot call the shots and demand she walk in her grandfather’s footsteps? Why didn’t she just hitchhike to the easier entry point? She would have made it there last night! She might have had too much time to kill, but it would have been better than this racing in her chest that told her to go-go-go.
She slugged water as she slogged up a slight incline and then down the other side into a gulch. The terrain had been fairly flat but now, closer to Lake Michigan, it was starting to get hilly. Thea could see that spots of the ground were blonde and sandy, as opposed to the gray and black clay that she’d been tromping through yesterday. They were getting into dune territory.
By the time she was little more than a mile away from the clearing by her calculation, she was flat out running. Her pack, tightened down on her back, didn’t jounce her, but it dug into her shoulders. Sweat ran down her back and between her breasts. Her hair was loose from her bun, but tucked underneath a red baseball cap. Her hiking boots were tied tight and high, saving her from about four different potentially twisted ankles.
The last quarter of a mile was done at an all-out sprint. She knew she was being ridiculous. She just knew it. She was going to get to the clearing, it would be beautiful and peaceful and undisturbed. She’d make camp, relax, watch the eclipse and say a last goodbye to Chet Redgrave. There was absolutely no reason to be running like there were demons on her heels.
She saw a lightening in the woods in front of her and started down the incline that her topographic map had warned her of. At the bottom of the dip would be another creek that fed straight into Lake Michigan. Beyond that was the clearing. It was only four in the afternoon. She’d made it with flying colors.
Thea practically exploded into the clearing, her T-shirt clinging to her skin under her flannel and her hat low on her forehead.
Here it was! So beautiful! A deeper green than she’d thought it would be, there were more shadows than her grandfather had described, but she could hear the creek and—
Hold on. Hold the hell on. There was a man reclining in the middle of the clearing, feet outstretched, leaning back on his pack. Her grandfather’s clearing. HER clearing.
The worn work boots were her first clue, her second was the blue jeans, white at the seams. And the third was the relaxed way his legs were crossed at the ankle. His formerly gray hat was over his face, shading him from the patch of sun in which he was lazing like a lion.
First, she reached for the jackknife in the pocket of the jeans she wore. Second, she charged forward, tossing down her pack.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded, stepping close enough to block his sun but far enough that it would have taken two moves for him to grab her.
Jack Warren lifted his hat from his face—his stubble had only gotten worse, she was chagrined to note—and gave her a rather sleepy look. “The exact same thing that you’re doing here, I imagine.”
“You were following me?”
“Pretty sure I got here first, chickadee. Were you following me?”
She tightened her jaw at the absurdity of the idea but she couldn’t argue with his logic. This clearing was well off the marked trail. It had required a good bit of trailblazing and map reading. There was no way he’d anticipated her. She glanced up at him and narrowed her eyes at what she saw behind him.
“You can’t set up your tent here. I’m staying here tonight.”
He noted that her voice was not bossy or argumentative. She was merely presenting the facts to him as if they were simple and should be taken note of. She was telling him a concise and immovable truth. He could appreciate that quality in any person, but it was especially impressive in a woman, whom he knew were often pushed around as if their thoughts and feelings didn’t matter.
“Tent’s not mine,” he frowned. That had been a real kick to his ego. He knew he’d outstripped the black-haired beauty at about midnight last night, while she slept soundly in her one-man tent. He’d already been here two hours. But so had the tent behind him. Someone had gotten here well before him, long enough to set up a respectable camp.
He didn’t like being beaten at his own game.
“There’s someone else here?”
He nodded, still looking up at her from the ground, the sun haloing around her head. “Yes and no. They haven’t come back yet. Not sure who it is.”
“Huh.” Thea turned to face the tent but didn’t turn her back to him. “Huh.”
She walked back to the edge of her clearing and grabbed her pack. She looked around, choosing a spot, and tossed it down. She made herself comfortable and sat down, appearing to do nothing more but sit and think.
“You alright?” he called over to her. She’d chosen a spot maybe fifteen feet from his. He thought that was interesting. He considered himself a bit of an observer of human behavior, and seeing as he was clumped over by the tent, he figured that’s where she would also situate herself. Nobody liked being the odd man out. But there she was, on the outskirts, her face gently pursed in thought.
She grunted in response. She obviously wanted some quiet. But he couldn’t help himself. He rolled up to one elbow, balancing his head on his palm. His hands played with the bits of moss in front of him. “Care to share?”
She looked up at him in exasperation and he held his hands up, palms out. “Come on, now, chickadee. You want quiet, there’s a whole wide forest just waiting for you. I have to think that you don’t mind talking if you chose the fifty square feet of these woods that happen to be ocupado.”
“I didn’t choose this place because you’re here…” she trailed off and Jack
wished that she’d finish that thought. I chose it because… But she didn’t. She cleared her throat. “I’m just waiting for the two others.”
“Two others?” That was interesting math. “How’d you figure on two?”
“The cashier at the store said that I was the fourth person to ask about that unused trail. I assumed he wasn’t counting you, or else he would have said so. So that makes one,” she pointed to the tent. “Two,” she pointed toward herself. “And now I’m just waiting on three and four. Whoever they are.”
“Funny,” Jack called back. “I’m thinking there might be four others.”
She stared across the distance toward him. He figured, once again correctly, that she wasn’t about to ask him to elaborate. So, he took the liberty of elaborating.
“I’m thinking there’s bound to be seven of us. Now that I know there’s more than just me, myself and I.”
Seven! thought Thea. Well, it made a sort of sense. Considering that the number seven was said so many times in the verse on the back of the map. The truth of it slowly sunk down onto her. He must know about the map, then. He must even have a copy of it? But how to ask without giving away too much? There were so many unknowns. She didn’t want to reveal that she also had one. Something flipped in Thea’s stomach. This was so strange. She’d never really believed her grandfather when he’d explained all of this to her. But to see that tent. And this strange man here. The man who seemed so strangely familiar to her.
Thea cleared her throat, but didn’t rise up. Even though she wanted to. “Show me.”
“I’m sorry?” he asked in that low, lazy drawl. Texas, probably, Thea decided. Though she was shit at placing accents, always had been. Languages and accents were two of the few things that she truly had no talent in.
Something about the way he hesitated told Thea that he already knew what she was talking about. Well, she couldn’t pretend that she wouldn’t have evaded a bit at the beginning if she were him.
