by C. J. Miller
Before he could pull his hand away, Autumn laid her head on their joined fingers, her hair falling across his arm.
The fire crackled in the air, sparks dancing inside the hearth.
“I don’t feel like it’s over. The killer won’t stop,” Autumn said.
The Huntsman wouldn’t stop looking for victims until he was caught. All the more reason to focus and work as fast as possible before the body count rose.
His skin burned hotter with every instant she was pressed against his hand. She shifted closer, bringing their bodies within inches. He fisted the blanket against his body, keeping her from seeing how badly he burned for her.
“I need someone to hold me,” she said. “Just for a few minutes.”
Her words decimated the last thread of control Nathan had clamped over his libido. His arms slipped around her waist, pulling her to him, her chest pressed to his. Her robe opened farther, revealing he’d been right about the top’s thin straps. Longing, hot and intense, rocked him, mixing with the scorching need to taste her.
She licked her lips, bringing his attention from her eyes to her mouth. Her perfectly shaped mouth, lips slightly parted. He didn’t know who closed the space between them, but in the next instant his mouth was pressed to hers, her lips searing his.
The kiss was hungry, needy, her tongue outlining his lower lip, demanding a response. He returned the kiss with equal fervor, his tongue parrying with hers, his kisses slow and thorough, and his pulse kicking up a notch in response.
Her lips were soft and pliant, her hands planted on his shoulders, her nails digging in, holding him close.
The kiss was rooted in the need for comfort, the need to scrub away the horrible night with a few moments of closeness and warmth. He understood that need too well. But the kiss, gentle and soft, took on a life of its own. He tasted her hunger, her loneliness and her sadness.
He broke the kiss, studying her face. “Tell me what’s on your mind.” Because it was more than him and when they were kissing, he didn’t want to share her.
“I was thinking about what Ford said about your wife,” she said.
He jolted. “You want to talk about my ex now?” The mention of her was ice water on his libido.
“Ford mentioned you abandoned her.”
“He was right.”
Autumn drew away. “Why?”
“We weren’t right for each other. She was needy and I wasn’t ready to take a step back from my career. The more we fought about it, the more I drew away. I knew it wouldn’t work, so I left her.”
Autumn came to her feet and crossed her arms. “I see.”
Her voice reeked of censure. “Do you? Relationships have complexities we can’t fully explain.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Meaning what?”
“Tell me more about your brother and your uncle.”
She inhaled sharply. “Why are you asking about Blaine and my uncle?”
Now he felt guilty. He hadn’t meant to use what Daniel had told him against her, but he was feeling as if the gloves were off. “Is your brother involved in what’s happening on the trail?”
Her head jerked back. “Get out of my cabin.”
He didn’t want to start a war with her. He wasn’t the enemy. “Why are you avoiding the question?”
She fisted her hands at her sides. “Get out. Get out now.”
This raw anger on the heels of that kiss proved they had something between them, something big that neither of them was ready to explore. A fight extinguished the possibility of this ever being more.
* * *
Autumn’s legs moved slower as they neared the crime scene, her psyche wanting her to turn away, logic assuring her that the space had been cleaned and any trace of death removed.
Thor bounded ahead and when she heard Nathan’s voice, she considered going on a different path to avoid him. But he’d already spotted Thor.
“Good morning,” he said, breaking the ice.
“Hi.” She was angry he had dug into her personal life and implied Blaine was involved with the Huntsman, but after a night of terrible sleep mulling over what had happened, she was starting to think she’d overreacted. Why was she so defensive about her family? She could defend Blaine because he wasn’t involved and that didn’t mean she needed to get angry.
He spoke before she could. “I’m sorry. I crossed a line. I shouldn’t have implied Blaine was involved in the case.”
An unexpected peace offering. “Talking about my family regarding this case is off-limits, okay?” Autumn said.
“Okay,” he said in agreement.
She glanced at the oak tree, needing to look at the space, needing to see it in the light of day, to dim some of the memories.
The sight jolted her senses. After seeing that spot again and again in her mind, it was empty. No person and no animals were near the tree. Nothing hung from the branches. Besides the tree branches and trampled ground, the evidence of what had occurred was gone. In a few weeks, the area would again be littered with leaves, erasing the incident from the forest entirely.
Only her memories of that night would remain.
“I’m planning to look around on the trail today,” she said. She should have told him she was quitting, but that would make Blaine look guilty and it would leave her alone.
“I’ll tag along, if that’s okay,” Nathan said.
She nodded. At least he was wearing hiking boots and the right clothes. No suits today. The red flannel shirt and hiking pants looked too good on him. Most hikers she knew wore clothes that were a little frayed with worn knees and at least a grass stain or two. He brought a refined look to outdoor clothing.
The weather on the trail could be volatile, anything from hail the size of golf balls to fluttering snowflakes lightly falling from the clouds. The sky was darkening to the east and the morning was overcast, a low fog hanging on the ground, making it hard to see into the distance. “We’ll have a storm roll through by midday. The weather can be unpredictable. We need to be back to the campground before the weather turns rough.”
Autumn didn’t need a map. She knew the paths surrounding the Trail’s Edge. She considered bringing Thor with them, but he’d been behaving skittishly and she didn’t know if he’d follow her commands if something happened, such as tracking the shadowy figure to his hiding place.
After returning Thor to her cabin with a hefty sense of guilt for leaving him inside again, she set out from her cabin with Nathan.
The past forty-eight hours had contained two amazingly polar incidents, equally poignant, evoking completely different reactions. The violence and terror of finding a victim in the woods and the heated excitement of Nathan’s kiss.
She wouldn’t spend the day obsessing about the kiss, but hiking the trail had the disadvantage of giving her an abundance of time to think. Usually, it was something she liked best about the trail. Today, she wished for something to occupy her.
She had other things to consider. Her brother and his safety were first among them. Was her brother okay? Why hadn’t he called recently to let her know how he was doing? If he had decided to end his hike and return home another way, he could have called. Letting Nathan into her thoughts about Blaine made her feel as if she was betraying her brother.
“Are you always this quiet when leading a hike?” Nathan asked.
“I’m looking for tracks to follow.” She circled the scene, staying outside the crime tape wrapped around the surrounding trees and trying to determine which, if any, of the tracks belonged to the intruder.
If she could have looked at the ground before the FBI had arrived, it would have made her job that much easier.
Nathan walked alongside her, his long strides matching two of her own. “We saw the direction he ran. We could try to follow them, see if
that narrows down the number of footprints.”
“Let me see your shoes,” she said. Nathan had given chase.
He held out his foot and she looked at its size and the footprints he had made behind hers. She found a long stick and carefully moved aside the leaves to see the mud and compressed leaves beneath. She stepped up her pace and followed Nathan’s footprints. He hadn’t been wearing hiking boots, and the flat presses into the mud were easier to follow and track than the dozens of hiking boot prints that the FBI had left in the area. One of the boot prints might belong to the Huntsman.
They lapsed into thoughtful silence as she tried to judge the direction, searching for trampled ground cover and broken branches. It was twenty feet away from the crime scene before she could see distinguishable prints.
They reached the spot where the Trail’s Edge campground met the Appalachian Trail. The footprints intersected the main path and then stopped. Had the intruder turned onto the trail or continued into the backcountry? She guessed backcountry, but it was more of a sense than any facts guiding her. She made the decision to follow her instincts. “The white paint blazes mark the Appalachian Trail. We’re going off the main trail. I don’t recommend doing this unless you know this area well.”
Nathan held up his hands. “Wouldn’t dream of it without you.”
Why did it send a thrill down her spine to think about Nathan staying with her, hiking together through the trail? Her entire life had been centered on nature. With Daniel, part of their connection had been the bond they’d shared with the outdoors. They’d liked to hike, fish, gather berries and shoot arrows at practice targets.
But that was where their chemistry had ended. Their escapades in the bedroom had been lacking. She’d known it but she couldn’t determine how to bring it up to him. Whenever she’d made a suggestion, she’d ended up feeling like the clueless one. As Daniel was quick to point out, her other major relationship had been with a man who’d come out of the closet right before her senior prom. And since Daniel had no trouble finding other bedroom partners, she assumed the issue was her.
“You look like you bit into a sour berry. What’s the matter?” Nathan asked.
Autumn wasn’t aware he’d been watching her expression. “I was thinking about some things. Personal things.”
“Tell me,” he said.
As if it was easy to confide in someone she didn’t know well. It was one of her lesser cherished traits. It took her a long time to trust someone and every time she was burned, she trusted a little less easily. Could she tell Nathan about Daniel and Ben? “I was thinking about Daniel and how much fun we had exploring the outdoors.” That was easier to say without adding the part about their bedroom troubles.
“I’m sorry you lost your hiking buddy. With Blaine away, too, that has to be tough.”
Tough and lonely.
He sounded sincere. Autumn wouldn’t get emotional about it. Daniel had moved on and had moved on quickly. “Daniel and I weren’t a good fit.”
“Knowing that doesn’t always make it easier,” Nathan said. “I was married too young and I learned my lesson.”
“What lesson was that?” she asked. Never to get married again?
“That relationships that are exciting are not always workable,” Nathan said.
Exciting. It was a word she hadn’t used before to describe a boyfriend. She wanted to change that. She wanted the opposite of realistic. She wanted fireworks. Could she have those with Nathan? He was closed off, but maybe that was okay. He wouldn’t expect her to divulge her secrets to him and since he was around for only a short time, she could keep herself from getting emotionally involved. If the kiss they had shared was any indication, they had great chemistry.
Autumn concentrated on the path, the sights and smells. The path held an earthy scent, crisper when the leaves coated the ground. She couldn’t remember the last time the trail was this unpopulated. Except for the killer. He was out here. “My brother and I grew up running up and down these trails. My dad had only one rule, and that was to be back to the cabin by dark.” She pointed to some low-lying red berries. “Those are poisonous to eat. But those—” she pointed up the tree to small blue berries “—are not. Harder to get, but after Blaine and I learned to climb a tree, we were set.”
“I’d have liked to see that,” Nathan said.
She smiled at the memory of her and Blaine playing along the trail. “I ruined a lot of pants. My father had to learn to sew because new clothes were too expensive and the tailor charged too much for repairs.”
“Sounds like your father was a good man.”
Grief over her father hit her at strange times, and today, thinking about the late nights he would spend mending her pants, was one of those occasions. She blinked back the tears that burned behind her eyes and turned away, pretending to look around. “He was. He spoiled Blaine and me because he felt guilty about being a single parent.” They hadn’t had money, but they had long, wild summer days. It wasn’t until Blaine got into trouble with a tough group in high school that their father implemented rules and jobs for them. It was his way of preventing Blaine from spending his time loitering in town and starting problems with the law.
“My father lived his dream, running the Trail’s Edge and taking care of the trail.” For the longest time, it had been her dream, too. But she hadn’t expected to run the Trail’s Edge alone. She had thought she, Blaine, her father and her uncle would do it together. But those idyllic days she remembered as a child were long gone. Life had taken away the people she loved, and without them, the Trail’s Edge wasn’t the same.
“And now you run this place,” Nathan said.
It wasn’t the business she had remembered. Without many guests recently, she missed those connections. She missed sharing her love of the outdoors with others and teaching kids to hike, fish and climb. “I have been running it for a few years, even when my dad was still around. When he got older, it was harder for him to do physical labor. His back hurt more and he got tired faster. At some point, he started taking naps in the afternoon.”
That earned her a smile from Nathan. “My father used to fall asleep in front of the television. He said he was resting his eyes, but my mom and I knew better.”
Fathers and their pride. Her father didn’t like to appear weak or admit he was tired, especially in front of her and Blaine. For that reason, Autumn had always felt safe with her dad. She hadn’t allowed ghost stories Blaine told her or tales of bear attacks and wolf maulings keep her awake at night. In her young mind, her father was invincible and he’d protect her from those things.
Was that why she loved having Nathan near? Because he brought with him the same sense of protection, that same quiet strength she had been missing since her dad died? “Sounds familiar,” she said, not comfortable with how easily she was letting herself grow accustomed to having Nathan there and how easily she was opening up to him. He was around for only a few days.
She stopped and pointed to the rounded rock jutting from a copse of trees. “That’s a landmark we’ll use to know the path to return.”
Autumn took a side trail that ran perpendicular to the main one. She hadn’t cleared this path in some time and it was heavy with leaves and undergrowth. “Watch your step. Those leaves can hide slick mud and roots.” If she didn’t pick up the killer’s trail, she’d trace back and look for prints along another route.
“Last thing I need is a muddy backside,” Nathan said.
Autumn walked backward a few paces, looking again at the pants he was wearing. They were basic hiking apparel, probably from an outdoors store. They sat on the tilt of his hips and were fitted around the thighs without being tight. She hadn’t known a man to look that good in hiking pants. “You’ll be okay.” She tore her eyes away from Nathan. “They’re probably waterproof.”
She focused on the trail, glad
to have a place to put her attention other than Nathan. Keeping a steady pace, she scanned for signs of humans.
“Have you picked up the trail?” Nathan sounded winded and Autumn glanced over her shoulder to make sure he was keeping up. His cheeks were flushed and red, and he’d shed his jacket. Had she been moving fast?
“Not yet.” She made a mental note to slow down. Her legs were accustomed to hiking long distances. Nathan’s were not. “Do you need a break?” She handed him a bottle of water from her pack.
He took a drink. “No, I’m okay.”
Autumn stopped and scanned the area, giving Nathan time to collect himself. Maybe male pride wouldn’t allow him to admit he needed a break, but she could see it.
Birds moved from tree to tree, landing on branches and dropping leaves to the ground. Squirrels leaped across the forest floor, gathering the last of the nuts that remained. The wind whistled through the near-naked tree branches, brushing them together.
She scanned the ground and her eyes settled on something unusual. Excitement rocketed through her. “The leaves are depressed there.” Grooves the shape of a footprint lined the path.
Nathan moved closer to where she’d indicated. “Are you sure these aren’t from an animal?”
Too large and shaped wrong to belong to an animal. “I’m sure. Those aren’t hoofprints, paw prints or claw prints. Those are human.”
“How many sets?” Nathan asked.
She circled the tracks to get a look at them from a different angle. “One person. Two if they were walking in each other’s prints.”
“Which way are they going?” His voice was a whisper, catching and holding on the air.
She studied them, but she couldn’t conclusively decide. The prints were equally wide on each side, almost as if the person’s foot was square. Who had square feet? Unless... “Both directions. To and from.”
Had she found the intruder’s path to and from the Trail’s Edge? The same thought must have lit in their minds simultaneously.
