by Rachel Lee
Craig turned a little toward her, sitting cross-legged. “Well, it turns out he was right. He saw evidence that there were at least four men there beyond Buddy and his family, and it bothered him that he didn’t see them. As if they were trying to stay out of sight. And he didn’t like that guy called Cap either.”
“Sounds unanimous.”
“Apparently. Anyway, when I was out riding along one of the streams looking for obstructions, I saw something I didn’t like—a watchtower under construction.”
She stiffened a bit, turning her head to look right at him. “What does he need a watchtower for?”
“Exactly what I was wondering. You know, Sky, I admit I’ve only known the guy for three years, but he never struck me as the sort who’d want to build an armed camp. At least not without some reason. Being out in the middle of nowhere like this mostly obviates the reasons. You tell me how many people are likely to show up at his place if a meteor drops out of the sky. And if Yellowstone erupts, there aren’t going to be any of us around anyway.”
“What a thought!”
“It’s true. Not likely in our lifetimes, but true anyway. Regardless, this is a pretty thinly populated place. Most of the ranchers are fairly self-sufficient to begin with. You take the townspeople, and I think this would be the last place they’d come. Besides, Buddy, being a prepper, isn’t exactly advertising what he’s doing. His family has been here forever, they’ve never been really sociable from what I hear and I doubt anyone thinks of him very often if at all. The sheriff and I know he’s a prepper only because we see him so often and he’s let a few things slip.”
“So?”
“So I don’t think he’d cross a single soul’s mind if a catastrophe happened. People in town would pull together, the ranchers would hunker down and help who they could. But nobody would be on the way to Buddy’s place. I’d bet on it.”
Sky nodded and tipped her head back so she could see the stars and avoid looking at Craig. It seemed hazier tonight. She wished that haziness would encompass the man beside her, because every dang time she looked at him, the yearning blossomed anew. “I wonder if he’s considered the downside to that.”
“What do you mean?”
“If something bad happens and he needs help, nobody’s going to think of him then, either.”
Craig’s laugh echoed off some nearby tree trunks and rocks. “That’s a good point.” He reached out, clasped her hand and squeezed, then released her. She regretted the loss of his touch nearly as much as she would have regretted the loss of air to breathe. She envied him suddenly, because if he felt the same attraction, he was doing a far better job of handling it. She tried to stiffen her own spine.
She forced her thoughts back to the subject at hand. “Maybe it was just brainwashing, but the army taught me we can all do a lot more and be a lot safer in a unit. Solo actors just got into trouble or caused trouble.”
“I don’t think that’s brainwashing. I think it’s true. Humans need community to survive.”
“Says the guy who lives like a lone wolf.”
He laughed, but shook his head, hard to see in the dim starshine. “Not entirely a lone wolf. I need my compadres in the service. In fact, they’re coming in closer to help me keep an eye on this situation. Given that this is our busiest time of year, I can’t get them all, but we won’t be alone indefinitely.”
“For busy this seems awfully quiet.”
“We’ve got maybe seventy or eighty hikers out here now. I can’t be exactly sure because not everyone checks in. Regardless, there’s a whole forest to watch, not just this place, but we’ll get some help.”
She nodded, actually glad to hear that. “If we’re going to play hide-and-seek in the woods, more people will help.” Then she looked up at the heavens. “The stars seem dimmer tonight. Almost as if there’s a haze. Is it going to rain?”
“There’s none in the forecast but it’s always possible since we’re in the mountains. Weather can change fast.”
“I wish I could capture how that sky makes me feel on canvas. But for once my imagination fails me. Every mental image I get would be blah, and no way would it do justice to what I feel looking up. That sky, even with the haze, seems so deep, so big. A canvas would confine it and flatten it.”
“Maybe that’s why there are so few paintings of moonless nights.”
“Maybe so.” She shivered a little, and hugged her knees closer. It was getting a lot colder out here.
“Want to go in?”
“Not yet,” she answered. Not yet. The beauty out here was worth shivering a bit. Besides, once inside the temptation to give in to desire would simply grow.
Surprising her, he scooted over and drew her close to his side. “Maybe this will help.”
Well, of course it helped. He might as well have struck a match to her. The chill vanished in a sudden wave of internal heat. Not good, she groaned inwardly. What the hell was happening to her? She couldn’t remember having this much trouble corralling herself, even with Hector.
That thought brought her up short. Really? Really? She cast her mind backward, trying to remember what her initial days with Hector were like. She had certainly believed she loved him, she had found him attractive, but she honestly couldn’t remember having felt like this. That attraction had been quieter, more under her control.
It hadn’t struck her then, but it struck her now, that maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.
Think about something else. Anything. Buddy provided an immediate source of distraction.
“This militia thing,” she said. “What could they hope to accomplish? It’s not like they could take over anything. Those things never end well.”
“I guess it depends on what they want. Attention? Creating terror? I agree they won’t get very far if they try something, but how far do you have to get to create an impact?”
“True. God, I hope they’re not planning something.” Such horrors were no longer abstract for her and it was beyond the scope of her comprehension that someone would willingly choose to cause such things except with extreme provocation. What provocation did Buddy have? Of course, there was still that guy called Cap. Who knew what motives he might have?
Come to think of it, she was getting awfully sick of Buddy and she didn’t even know the guy. She had come out here for peace, quiet and the restorative benefits of painting and solitude. Instead a total stranger had walked her into something that inevitably harkened back to Iraq. She really ought to just pack up and go somewhere else.
But she knew she couldn’t, wouldn’t, do that. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she had said she would never abandon a fellow soldier, and she meant it. She couldn’t leave now. She got the feeling Craig didn’t have a whole lot of help, so unless they found a reason to call in the Feds or ATF or something, she would do what she could to help. She was going to have his back.
No escaping that. It was a kind of loyalty that was rooted deeply in her, and it didn’t require a personal relationship to validate it.
So here she was, sick of thinking about Buddy and company, not wanting to think about her attraction to Craig and just clean wiped out of conversation and other thoughts.
Lovely.
She heard Craig draw a breath, as if he were about to say something, when she suddenly realized that the edginess running along her nerve endings no longer solely had to do with him.
“Sh,” she whispered almost inaudibly. “We’re being watched.”
He grew so still he might have been stone. He murmured, “I was just going to say that.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know. Sh. Eyes and ears.”
She imagined that with Craig’s arm around her, they must look like an ordinary couple just enjoying a starry night. On the other hand, they’d been talking about Buddy. Had they been overheard?
The thought stretched her nerves even tighter. A mistake so basic even a newbie should have known better. But who thought one of them would come to
the cabin?
On the other hand, it should have occurred to them.
She tried to think back to when the sense of being watched had struck her, and how long before that they had fallen silent. She didn’t know because she hadn’t been paying attention.
Which made her mad, because she knew better than that. As long as there was any possibility that they needed to be cautious, she should never have dropped her guard. Never.
Worse, she had been the one to use exactly the wrong topic as a distraction. They had moved on to other things long before she started to feel watched, but no, she’d had to divert the subject back to Buddy.
She wanted to pound her head on something.
The feeling didn’t last long. After a minute or two, the sense of being watched vanished.
“It could have been a bear or some other animal,” Craig said quietly.
“Maybe. I wish I believed it. Me and my big mouth.”
“Let’s go inside,” he said firmly.
This time she didn’t argue. The night had lost its charm, and she was fairly angry with herself.
“I’ll pick things up,” he said as he pulled her to her feet. Then, tugging her close, he said quietly in her ear, “You keep watch.”
At once she felt better. At least he trusted her that much. Right now she wasn’t feeling all that trustworthy.
He folded her tarp as if he were in no hurry, and picked up the coffee mugs he had brought out for them.
Then he lead the way inside, taking his time about it, and let her open the door since his hands were full. Only when they were inside did she say another word.
“I can’t believe I was stupid enough to talk about that outside.”
“We both talked about it. Don’t beat yourself up.”
“But I brought it up a second time.” Annoyed, she kicked her foot at the floor. “Operational security. I can’t believe I forgot it so fast.”
“You’re out in a national forest, for heaven’s sake,” he said mildly. “Not a war zone. Why should you even be thinking of things like that? I know I’m having trouble with it.”
“I felt like I was being watched this afternoon. I shouldn’t have forgotten that possibility so quickly.”
“Consider where you are. There are lots of things with eyes out here that could watch you.”
“Well, that’s a creepy thought.” Still, it settled her a bit. He was right. She had no reason to think Buddy’s militia was watching them this closely. Why would they? Anyway, they hadn’t been talking all that loudly, and the latter part of the conversation had been more generalized, about militias. “Okay,” she said finally. “But I won’t be so careless again.”
“Fair enough. I won’t either.”
She looked at him from beneath her eyebrows, smiling faintly. “So the woods have eyes, huh? Sounds like a sci-fi film.”
“So don’t go out alone,” he joshed back. “It’s always the girl who goes out alone who meets the monster.”
“Good point. Isolated cabin, nobody around, dark woods, yeah, I wouldn’t last very long. I’d be lucky to be listed in the credits as ‘girl number three.’”
“Which means you lasted longer than one and two.”
The last of the tension seeped out of her and she laughed. “Sorry, I just got mad at myself for being careless.”
“I was careless, too, like I said. So, okay, we’ll follow reasonable OPSEC rules and REDCON procedures, but right now there isn’t a whole lot of reason to be frightened of anything. I think Buddy and Cap would be happy if they thought we’d forgotten all about them, and that’s the impression I intend to create.”
“What about the sheriff?”
“I doubt he wants to stir the pot without some additional proof that something’s going on. Mostly we’re just going to have to keep an eye out and see what develops.”
Then he pulled the zipper up on his jacket. “I’m going out to look around, check on Dusty.”
A thought struck her. “Wouldn’t Dusty have made some kind of ruckus if something was out there?”
He shook his head. “Dusty doesn’t react to much except bears, wolves and snakes.”
“I guess we know what wasn’t out there, then. I’ll come with?”
He shook his head. “We don’t want to appear too alert if someone is out there. Let me just take an ordinary look-see, the kind I often do. I won’t be long.”
Of course he didn’t find anything. She suspected that neither of them had expected him to, not in the dark. Probably an animal. It had to be an animal.
Because surely they were making too much of this Buddy character?
But then she remembered how he had accused her of spying, and warned herself not to go into a state of denial. Spying was something that worried a person only if they had something to conceal. Especially spying from so far away.
She was glad, though, that Craig didn’t decide to sleep outside. He spread his sleeping blanket on the floor near hers and that simple choice meant more than it probably should have.
Oh, to hell with it, she thought. Just let it go. Nothing would come of this, and thus she had nothing to be worried about. In a few weeks, or sooner if she got the urge, she’d move on. The way she’d been moving on for a long time now.
Chapter 7
Three days later, Sky was convinced the problem, whatever it had been, was over. Craig patrolled but didn’t find anything untoward. She went out and painted and no one bothered her. She wandered in the woods sometimes, enjoying the way light and shadow danced beneath the trees. She even found an absolutely perfect ravine, narrow and deep, full of large boulders, some of them still sharp in comparison to those worn by the water that raced through it almost but not quite like a waterfall.
The place was so full of power, the power of rocks, water and trees, that she fell in love with it. Ideas for paintings buzzed around in her mind, demanding expression.
This was what she had come all the way out here for, to find the essential creativity, to feel again the energy trying to burst out through her paintbrushes.
Enthralled, she snapped photos even though the light was dim in this tree-sheltered space, filtered and green for the most part although here and there the sun broke through to sparkle almost blindingly on water.
Moss covered a lot of the rocks, but the ones that interested her most were the ones that were bare. Rocks had always appealed to her in some way, the larger the better, and she thought these were gorgeous.
She was definitely bringing her gear back here.
She sat for a while on a flat-top rock with water rushing along one side of it, feeling as if she had fallen into a magical world. Well, these mountains seemed magical everywhere she went, but this place heightened that sense.
It was the kind of place that made her think a faerie could pop out from behind a tree, or even that a tree could slowly stir and talk to her. Fanciful thoughts, but they added to her pleasure. If humans had ever passed by here before, they had left no trace at all. It would have been easy to believe that she was the first person who had ever set foot here.
Part of the charm, she supposed, was that everything in the larger world seemed so far away. As if it were all the stuff of dreams, and the only reality surrounded her right now. Her thirsty soul reached for the beauty and soaked it up until she felt filled with it.
Hypnotized by the rushing water, she lost track of time. She didn’t even notice that the light seemed to be lessening, deepening the secrets of the ravine and woods until that snaking, icy, breath-freezing sense of being watched crept up her spine to the base of her skull.
Damn, she was getting sick of that. It destroyed her mood as surely as if someone had fired a gun, and it made her mad. But mad at what? An owl? A raccoon? A mountain lion?
She muttered a cuss word under her breath, not that anything could have heard it over the crashing, rushing water. Hell, she couldn’t even hear it herself.
But long training and honed instincts wouldn’t let
her ignore it. Grabbing her camera, she rose and started climbing out of the gorge. She half hoped she’d meet some idiot human so she would have someone to yell at.
But of course she didn’t. Even if there was a person out here, there were too many places to provide concealment, even unintentional concealment. She’d forgotten her most basic training about keeping open sight lines, and she didn’t care.
She was just mad, and dang it, she would come back here tomorrow to paint.
Near the top of the gorge wall, she caught a flicker of movement from the corner of her eye. At once she froze and slowly turned her head. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Maybe a leaf had fluttered.
Except that the movement had left her with an impression of something considerably bigger. She resumed climbing again, but her senses were on heightened alert now. Anger had been forgotten in the possibility that whatever was watching her didn’t want to be seen. There were predators out here, not all of them human, although she feared the human ones the most.
She needed her hands to climb this wall, and right now she didn’t like not having them free. She quickened her pace to the top, and finally reached a point where she could stand without hanging on to rocks. Turning, she looked back.
The trees seemed to have closed in over the gorge, hiding it from sight once more. She could tell it was there only by the muffled sound of the racing, tumbling water. It was as if an invisible door had sealed behind her.
But standing there and looking back at the canopy of trees gave her the opportunity to look around. Nothing moved except gently swaying tree branches as the afternoon cooled and the evening breeze began to pick up.
But she was still in the woods, though they weren’t as thick here, above the life-giving water. She began to trudge back to where she had left her painting supplies, sweeping the ground with her eyes, seeking any obvious disturbance among the carpet of pine needles and leaves. Nothing.
Maybe she was beginning to lose her mind in a whole new way.
Twenty minutes later she emerged onto the sunny hilltop where she usually painted in time to see the sun sink below the western peaks. Still so early, but she loved the way this premature twilight settled in. It would last a long time, but from her artist’s perspective the light had lost its magic, growing flat, diminishing perspective.
