by Edie Claire
“I can’t believe he could have paddled even this far,” Mei Lin said miserably as the search dragged on. “People can do crazy things by running on sheer adrenaline, I know. But there’s always a limit. Having a serious infection is more debilitating than people realize. The body uses tremendous stores of energy, even if the person is doing nothing but lying in bed. People start to feel better when their pain lessens and their fever comes down, and they think they can just get up and go… but they can’t.”
She struggled to keep her voice steady. “His arms would take him farther than his legs, particularly since he’d already walked so far. But he couldn’t paddle in these currents for hours! He just couldn’t. Maybe we should—”
“Hold up,” Thane shouted suddenly, gesturing to the female ranger driving the boat. The motor quieted and their progress slowed. “Look there,” he told Mei Lin, pointing.
She didn’t need binoculars to see the blue kayak perched on the sand of a beachhead well ahead of them. It wasn’t hidden in the brush. It wasn’t hidden by anything. It was sitting out in plain view, swaying slightly as its tail end was lapped by the rising tide.
Thane spoke to the ranger again, and their boat made its way toward shore. Mei Lin stood and stared at the empty, untethered kayak as her heart dropped into her boots. “This is a good spot,” Thane said calmly. “Jen should be able to get us in close enough to where we can walk to shore. She’ll radio the others, and we can track him from here.” He gave Mei Lin’s shoulders another reassuring squeeze. “You must have given the man pretty good directions. By water, this is about as close as you could get to the point on the trail that the German couple described.”
Mei Lin nodded dumbly as their boat drifted toward the sand, then stopped a few paces short of it. Thane slipped over and into the shallow water without hesitation, then held out his hands to her. The rubber boots that covered his giant calves were well above the water line, but Mei Lin’s ankle-high duck boots would not be. Wishing, once again, that she could enjoy this experience under different circumstances, she climbed down into his arms and let him carry her — as if she and her pack together weighed nothing — to dry ground. She heard him have further words with the ranger before the boat pulled away, but she found herself unable to move. She merely stood, staring, at the abandoned kayak.
Stanley’s jacket lay over the seat.
She felt Thane’s presence behind her. “He left his coat,” she said flatly. “He must have been warm from all the paddling.” Or else his fever is back, she left unsaid. A relapse of infection was unlikely, but possible. Stanley could have skipped two more doses since the last time she saw him. “He knew enough to pull out at this exact spot,” she said grimly. “But he didn’t secure the kayak. So either he thought he wouldn’t be gone long…” she fought against the choking feeling in her throat. “Or he didn’t plan to come back at all.”
Thane’s strong arms pulled her back against his chest, then wrapped around her. “I know,” he said softly. “I’ve passed the information along. Now, you and I need to get going.”
She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut against the ever-threatening flow. He released her, then pulled the kayak up off of the beach and tied it. He removed Stanley’s jacket and stuffed it in his own pack. “You’ll need to stay behind me,” he told her as he studied the ground. Uphill from the kayak, Stanley’s boots had made obvious impressions in the sand. But as the terrain changed and the vegetation became more dense, Mei Lin lost sight of them. “Tracking and trailing people isn’t my specialty,” Thane continued as he picked his way slowly through the brush ahead of her. “But you could do worse.”
Mei Lin was having trouble speaking again, which was just as well. She could not begin to explain to him how important his presence here really was — over and above the comfort he provided her.
“You should call out to him,” Thane advised.
Mei Lin considered. She could not rule out the possibility that Stanley, if he could still move at all, would respond to her voice by moving the opposite direction. At a minimum, he was frustrated with her because she’d refused to give him the assurance of confidentiality he wanted. More likely he was both angry and scared, convinced that she had already betrayed him. Still, calling out to him was worth a shot. If he had collapsed somewhere, either from exhaustion or delirium, he might lack the presence of mind not to answer.
“Stanley!” she called out hopefully. “It’s Mei Lin. Can you hear me?”
Both she and Thane went quiet, listening. But the only sounds to be heard were the whistling of the wind in the trees and the distant drum of a woodpecker. “Keep trying,” Thane advised, his tone optimistic. “We’re not that far from the trail. So far he seems to have been following the path of least resistance.”
They continued moving slowly, with Mei Lin calling out every few moments, until seemingly out of nowhere they emerged onto a well traveled footpath running parallel to the shore. She did not need Thane to tell her that they had reached the Bartlett River Trail. She looked up and down the narrow lane, but saw no other people. “Is this where you and Dave came looking for the bear yesterday?” she asked.
He nodded. “Stay here a second.” He walked away from her, carefully studying the brush on either edge of the trail. As he moved, he spoke into his radio. Mei Lin couldn’t understand the garbled response, but she thought the speaker sounded like Jason. After what seemed like an eternity, Thane returned to her and put the radio away. “Do you remember exactly what you told Stanley? About the location of the bear?”
“I just passed along what you texted to me,” she explained. “About the nearest mile marker post.”
Thane lifted a hand and pointed to a red-painted stake planted on a bend in the trail a few yards south of them. “That’s it.”
Mei Lin sucked in a breath and hastened to the mile marker. Then she turned toward the dense woods opposite the beach and peered through the gloom of the tightly spaced tree trunks. Stanley had to be in there somewhere! She called out again, but heard nothing. “He must have been right here!” she exclaimed. “And not all that long ago, given how far he would have had to paddle. Can you track him into the woods from this point? Or do you think he stayed on the trail?”
Thane’s striking blue eyes studied her with a disturbing hint of pity. He shook his head. “I don’t think he stayed on the trail. Jason and Ri started at the south trailhead, and they’ve passed this point already. They’ve also met two groups of hikers coming from the opposite direction, and no one has seen him.”
Mei Lin knew that Thane was trying to tell her something. Something she wouldn’t want to hear. “You think he left the trail, then? Probably from a point right around here? ”
Thane nodded. “There’s no way to know for sure. But if this mile marker was his goal — and the location of the kayak makes pretty clear that it was — he’d have no motivation to push much farther either up or down the trail. He’d do exactly what Dave and I did yesterday. He’d hunt around this area for signs of an animal trail. Wildlife do use the human trails — the path of least resistance always appeals — but they have other, less obvious highways as well. If seeing bears is his priority, he’d look for a likely trail and follow it into a less trafficked area. Then he’d hunt for a comfortable sit spot with a good view of any bears that might happen by.”
Mei Lin looked again, but the sheer density of the rainforest confounded her. These woods were different from those in Maine, where one could wander beneath the trees with relative ease, crunching through a carpet of dead leaves and pine needles with little concern aside from poison ivy. Here, the clumps of bushes, maze of fallen tree trunks, and plethora of ferns, vines, and underbrush made it difficult to walk, period — and ridiculously easy to hide. “And would he find such a path?”
“He could find one of several. And he could spend hours following different ones and staking them out.” Thane’s voice dropped, and he eyed her with uneasiness. “But… unless the man is partia
lly deaf, he’d most likely still be within earshot.”
Mei Lin nodded with bleak understanding. “He isn’t deaf as far as I know. Which must mean that either he’s deliberating ignoring me” — her voice quavered — “or that he’s unconscious.”
“Those aren’t the only possibilities,” Thane answered. “But I’d say they’re the two most likely.”
“So what do we do now?” The words were choked. This was all her fault! She shouldn’t have left things between her and Stanley as she had. She should have stayed with him, she should have promised… Or at least she should have tried harder and longer to reason with him!
Thane’s arms reached out to her again, and she buried her face in his chest. His touch felt divine, and yet… she felt like she was cheating him. Would he be so eager to comfort her if he knew everything that she was thinking? Everything that she was keeping from him?
That cheery thought was the last straw. Her composure broke. She sobbed against the slick fabric of Thane’s waterproof jacket while he stood silently, holding her. She had wanted so badly to fix this mess. For Stanley and for Thane. Yet all she had done was make things worse! She’d lost Stanley’s trust, with potentially dire consequences, even though she hadn’t said a word. And the longer she dared keep Thane in the dark, the more she involved him, unwitting, in the search for his own father, the more deeply her deception would hurt him, too!
She wanted very much to let out a bloodcurdling, frustrated scream. But she managed to let her sniffles and gasps for breath suffice. After a few more moments of self-indulgent venting, she pulled herself together and stepped away from him.
She had no plan of action. When did she ever? “What do you think we should do?” she asked again, her voice stronger.
“Talk to him,” Thane suggested gently. “Keep calling out, whatever you think might sway him. If Stanley doesn’t want us to find him, we’re in for a challenge. I’ll try my best to pick out his trail, but with Dave and me tromping all over this area yesterday, the chance of that is pretty slim. The others are on their way back here now, and they can help us search bush to bush if we need to. Our best bet will be the rescue dogs. It just may take a while to get them out here.”
Mei Lin got the picture. The hairs on her arms prickled at the thought of Stanley’s being close enough, right now, to overhear every word they were saying. It seemed incredible, but at the same time, she knew he couldn’t have the endurance to walk far. What was he thinking? Why had he left his jacket in the kayak, when it was almost certain to rain? Was he off his meds? Had he packed any food? Had he wanted to find the glacier bear, no matter what it cost him… or was giving himself this one last chance just a perk on the road to his ultimate goal?
She feared she already knew those answers.
“When you and Dave looked around here before,” she asked, trying hard to focus, “did you find any particular place that might appeal to another bear hunter as a good spot for a stakeout?”
Thane lifted his gaze to the wall of tightly packed spruce and hemlock trunks that edged the trail. He shook his head. “The only clearings I remember were a good distance from here, and they were boggy. If he were very lame, he couldn’t make it even if he did know how to find them. Right around here it’s all flat, so one fallen tree trunk near an existing path makes just as good a sit spot as another.”
Mei Lin’s hopes drifted lower. As if acting on cue, the gray skies that had been holding their peace all morning chose that moment to let loose. Large, pelting raindrops fell from above to make a loud pattering sound on the surrounding foliage. Thane reached out to pull the hood of Mei Lin’s jacket up over her head, then did the same with his own. He put a hand under her chin and tilted her face up to his. “What are you thinking, exactly?”
Mei Lin jerked her chin down again and leaned into his chest. She couldn’t bear to look at him. She had been stalling this moment as long as possible, hoping for a miracle. But the time had come to take action. Never mind whether that action felt entirely right. She no longer had a choice.
“I know him, Thane,” she began. “He thinks his life isn’t worth living anymore. And I can picture him so clearly… lying out there in this rain without a jacket, shivering from cold or fever or both, with his leg aching terribly. He’s breathing heavy, so exhausted he can barely move, and he couldn’t get up again if he tried. He figures he’ll die of exposure eventually, and that’s just fine by him. If he’s heard me calling, he doesn’t care. We argued yesterday, all day long. I said absolutely everything I could think of to change his mind. But I couldn’t do it.”
She summoned her strength and lifted her chin. She needed to look Thane in the eyes… his father’s eyes. She wanted to savor the tenderness in them before both men came to hate her. “I can’t change his mind,” she repeated with conviction. “But you can.”
Chapter 27
Thane looked down at the bedraggled bundle of femininity in his arms and felt a disquieting mix of pity, lust, and confusion. He was trying his best to help her. He could see that her feelings for this cantankerous hermit of a patient went deep, and he admired that even as it baffled him. Did she not nurse the dying for a living? Such personal involvement must come at a huge emotional price. But perhaps her beautiful, giant heart could do nothing else.
If he could spare her the pain of losing this man, he would move mountains to do so. He’d been pleased that his particular set of talents had come in handy thus far. But with no dogs and no clear trail, there was little else that Thane or anyone could do now besides set up parameters and then painstakingly search each designated area. He would personally poke under every bush within a five-mile radius if it would make Mei Lin happy… except that now she had started talking nonsense.
“What do you mean?” he asked. He couldn’t imagine why she thought he could talk a patient of hers into anything.
She remained in his arms even as the rain fell steadily all around them, dripping off the brims of their hoods and oozing between their jackets. “Thane,” she answered, her voice suddenly steely. “You told me that your father was kidnapped by criminals who needed a surgeon, and that ultimately he was shot and killed.”
He lifted a wary eyebrow. Mei Lin didn’t seem hysterical, but her change of topic was bizarre. “Um… yeah,” he replied uncertainly.
Her fingers tightened on the back of his rain jacket. “Your father didn’t die,” she plowed on. “He survived the shooting. But he was still a dead man, because the criminals knew that he had critical information about their operation. The authorities got to him in the hospital that night and tried to convince him to go into the witness protection program so he could testify. But he wouldn’t do it. He had a wife and children and he didn’t want to disrupt their lives or put them in any kind of danger. So they made a compromise.”
Thane was speechless. He could think of no sane reason why Mei Lin would be spinning some bizarro version of his family history, particularly not right now. Yet on she plunged, talking more and more crazy.
“Your father wouldn’t testify in court, but he did tell the authorities everything he knew. In exchange, they protected him by falsifying a death certificate, hiding him out while he recuperated, and then giving him a new ID. When he recovered he took a job overseas, performing surgery in third-world countries and in war zones. He did that work for nearly twenty years, until an injury forced him to retire. He—”
“Mei Lin!” Thane interrupted finally, setting her away from him. He didn’t want to be gruff with her, but this was too much. She was scaring him. How the hell, in the space of a few short minutes, had she gone from being his dream woman to being insane? Why was she so fixated on his father? This wasn’t only crazy, it was creepy.
“He retired and went back to his home, Thane. He came back here, to Alaska, where he grew up. He bought a cabin off the grid and he got ready to die…” Her voice broke and her eyes filled with tears.
Thane stood motionless. He couldn’t decide whether to
pull her close and comfort her or turn and run. What she was saying about his father wasn’t true. But neither was it so implausible that no sane person could believe it. She clearly did believe it. But why? “What makes you think you know all this?” he demanded, his voice louder than intended.
“Because he told me!” she answered with equal volume.
The birds stopped chirping then. The rain stopped falling. The earth stopped moving. In the whole world there was only her face, her eyes. He could feel heavy breaths moving his rib cage, but everything else he ever knew, ever felt, was suspended.
Very slowly, Mei Lin moved closer. She wrapped her tiny arms around his waist, pressed her face against his sopping raincoat, and squeezed. “I’m so sorry,” she soothed. “So sorry to do this to you, this way. Please don’t be angry. Please try to see the good part. Because there is a good part. A very good part, I promise you.”
Thane still couldn’t move. With her touch, the birds had started chirping again, and his body had returned to the forest. But his brain was turning somersaults. He told me. Your father. He came back here… he bought a cabin. He didn’t die… Didn’t die…
“Stanley,” he heard his own lips mutter. “You said your patient’s name was Stanley.”
“Yes!” Mei Lin agreed, tightening her hold still further. “Yes, Thane. It’s him, and it’s all true, I swear.”
He felt raw inside. Ripped open. Disemboweled. He shook his head involuntarily. “It can’t be.”
“But it is,” she insisted.
