by Jill Shalvis
“We’ll find her,” Lily said, touching his arm. “We will.”
Because not finding her wasn’t an option.
Rock’s tent unzipped, but it was Rose’s head that stuck out of it. Her hair was wild, her makeup a little smeared, but she was wearing a broad grin that pretty much said exactly what she’d been doing. “Oh my,” she said at the sight of Jack, Lily and Jared staring at her. She laughed. “Well, it is a vacation, right?”
Jack wished Michelle was still in his tent, that she looked as rumpled and sated as Rose did right now. And safe.
“Michelle’s gone,” Lily told her. “She went to the bathroom and didn’t come back.”
Rose gasped in shock.
“I checked everywhere,” Jack told her. “The bathroom stop, the lake, the trail…”
“Ohmigod,” Rose whispered. “She’s cracked. Probably went looking for the closest mall, poor baby.”
“Everyone just stay here, okay?” Lily said. “I’m going to look around, but please, you must stay here.” She was looking right at Jack. “Don’t make it harder by going off and possibly getting lost yourselves.”
Rock stuck his head out of his tent, right next to Rose. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Because we could all fan out—”
“Not yet,” Lily said. “I’m going to check all the close places first before we panic. I’ll be right back—”
“I’m coming with you,” Jack said.
She took one look at his face and didn’t argue. “The rest of you stay here,” Lily said.
Rose and Rock nodded, looking unhappy about the command, but not making trouble.
Lily turned to Jared, who stood slightly away from them all, looking down at the PDA unit in his hand, which was equipped with that amazing heat-seeking GPS system. “Jared?”
“A minute.” He was working the controls with his thumb, his brow furrowed in concentration.
Lily turned to Jack. “You’re sure she said she was going to the bathroom? She didn’t say anything else, like maybe she’d had enough and was going to try to get out of here?”
“We all know she’d had enough, but no.” He shook his head. “She didn’t say anything like that.” Not even good-bye. “But…”
“But?”
“But I was really asleep, you know?” Dread filled his gut. “And I sleep like the living dead. I wasn’t paying her much attention…Oh, God.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, then dropped them as he remembered. “Hang on.” He dove back into his tent and began going through her bag.
“Jack?” he heard Lily say, speaking through the still flapping tent door. “What are you doing?”
Hitting pay dirt, he found Michelle’s makeup bag. Relief flooding him, he stuck his head back out. “If she’d given up and decided to go back on her own, she’d have never left this.” But then the truth sank in and his relief abruptly deserted him, because if Michelle hadn’t left on purpose, then the situation was even worse.
She was lost.
LILY MOVED CLOSE to Jared to look at his small screen. “What do you have?”
“Two possibilities,” he said, and everyone moved closer to huddle around him so that Lily had to get on her tiptoes to see the digital display of a satellite map of their area.
Jared pointed to a heat spot. “Us,” he said, then widened the screen. A small dot of red appeared to the east, right next to a body of water.
A lake, Lily knew. Not the one right here at camp, but the next alpine lake over, nearly three quarters of a mile away.
Then Jared pointed westward, to the only other heat spot, which if Lily was reading the satellite correctly, was behind and above them. High above them on the rocks.
Michelle wasn’t a climber. Hell, she was barely a hiker. “Jack and I’ll check out here,” she said, tapping the first red dot. “I think Michelle is more likely to be this one.”
Jared nodded. “Okay, but I’ll check the other while you’re doing that, just to be sure.”
“That’s pretty much straight up,” Lily said. She looked at Jared. “It could be anything, right? A deer, or raccoon?”
He shrugged. “Or a bear, or a mountain cat—” At the collective shocked gasp from Rose, Rock and Jack, he trailed off. “Just saying.”
“So basically, anything alive and breathing,” Rock said with an exaggerated gulp that under different circumstances, would have been funny on a guy built like he was.
“Anything alive and breathing,” Jared agreed. “And emitting body heat, which is to say, not necessarily something we want to run into.”
Lily met his gaze as her thoughts whirled. “Okay, so we’ve got two possibilities. One on a flat, easy-to-walk-to area, the other high up. It’s an easy decision, really.”
“Oh my God, we have a bear or a mountain cat watching us,” Rose said. “Probably just figuring out which of us to eat first.” She slipped her hand into Rock’s and swallowed hard. “You know he’s going to want me.” She sucked her lower lip into her mouth. “My body fat ratio is the highest.”
Rock slipped an arm around her and pulled her close. “Your body is perfect, and not going to be wild-animal bait, not today.”
“No one’s going to be animal bait,” Lily said firmly. “Because you’re all going to stay here and wait while I run to the lake, to that first heat spot. Jack?”
“Right with you. You know, maybe she headed there to wash her face. She loves to wash her face first thing in the morning.”
“Why not go to the closer lake, the one that’s right here?” Rose asked, and gestured to the lake only several hundred yards away.
“I don’t know. But it was dark, really dark, when she got up.” Looking exhausted, Jack rubbed his jaw. “And she has a lousy sense of direction. Last night, she asked me how to get to the water, if it was to the right or the left, and when I told her left, I could tell she wasn’t listening to me. Maybe she went right on the trail.” He looked at Lily. “It could have happened.”
Lily agreed. “Let’s go right, all the way to the farther lake. If Michelle had kept at it long enough, she’d have indeed ended up there.”
“Thing is,” Rose said. “She’s not one to keep at anything for long.”
“Well, she’s somewhere,” Lily said, determinedly. “And wherever that is, we’ll find her.” She looked at everyone else. “Wait here. That’s the most important part, okay? Wait here. Just yell really loudly if she shows up.”
Their camp was a rather secluded, woodsy site, and from the moment Lily and Jack took the trail, they could no longer see the others. The trail to the right was wide, but because they’d not had rain for weeks, the ground was dry and brittle. No noticeable footprints.
“Michelle!” Jack called out from her side every few yards. “Michelle!”
The trail climbed a bit, and Jack began to pant for breath. “Gotta tell ya, this one feels too hard. She’d have turned back.”
“She’s tougher than you think,” Lily said. “Michelle! Michelle, can you hear us?”
Nothing.
They came to a small creek in a shady aspen grove. The water meandered slowly past them on the left, summer-shallow, and filled with sediment. They both looked at it. “No,” Lily said. “She’d not have stopped here to wash her face.”
“Oh, no,” Jack agreed. “Too dirty. How much farther until the lake?”
“Another quarter of a mile.”
They sped up. Jack was panting pretty good at their near-running pace. It was the altitude and nerves, she knew, but he was holding her back. “I’m going ahead,” she told him. “Stay on the trail.”
Without waiting for a response, she took off, making much better time, and soon enough the trail opened to a clearing, with tawny, undulating wild grass leading directly to a gorgeous beach.
A deserted beach.
The land was vast and rambling, open but not flat, beautiful in its emptiness. The morning light coated the ground with just enough dew to give depth to each i
ndividual feature.
Lily scanned the water. Smooth as glass.
And utterly devoid of one spoiled married princess.
But across the lake, there was a single lone deer, sipping from the water, causing the lake to ripple outward in mesmerizing circles.
“A deer,” Jack said, coming up behind her, bending at the knees to gasp for breath.
The deer lifted its head, wriggled its nose, then bounded into the woods without a backwards glance.
“And heat spot gone,” Jack said, sounding despondent.
Lily looked around, not ready to concede defeat. “Michelle?”
No answer, just her own voice echoing back to her. She turned in a slow circle, shoving her sunglasses to the top of her head, scanning every rock, every tree, every inch of the horizon with careful precision.
And it was halfway around, when she was facing dead east, which was the way back to camp, that she saw it. There. High on the craggy rock behind where their camp lay.
A splotch of bright yellow.
What the hell?
Shading her eyes from the morning sun, she squinted and tried to focus in. She recognized the area. Rocky growth, above a dense wooded area.
Above their camp.
Just behind where their camp lay was the makeshift bathroom. They’d set it up against the base of a sharp hill. Which is where she was looking right now. As unbelievable as it seemed, the splash of yellow was halfway up that hill and moving.
As unbelievable as it seemed, Michelle had apparently taken herself on a little climbing expedition. “Uh-oh.”
“What? Where is she?” Jack followed her gaze and his jaw dropped. “Is that—My God.” He let out a long breath and stared at the moving dot of yellow. “What the hell is she doing?” He brought his hands up to his mouth, cupping them around his lips. “Michelle!”
“Don’t,” Lily breathed, grabbing his arm. “Don’t startle her.”
Regardless, they were too far away to see if Michelle had reacted to Jack’s voice. Dropping his hands, he whirled back the way they’d come.
Together they raced through the woods and back into camp, where a startled Rose and Rock, standing by the fire, looked up.
“Did you find her?” Rose asked.
“Is she okay?” Rock rushed to ask.
“We found her, we just haven’t gotten to her yet.” Lily kept moving through camp toward the yellow spot that she could no longer see, not from here. “Where’s Jared?”
“He went after the other heat spot,” Rose said.
The one that had turned out to be Michelle after all. Lily skidded to a halt and stared at her. “I told him to stay.”
“Honey, most men don’t know how to take directions, you know?”
No. No, she didn’t know but she was coming to. It didn’t matter now. She was going to get him, and Michelle, and then she was going to put her hands around their necks and squeeze.
And then…
And then, if Jared was up for it, she was going to hug him to death, just to finish him off. “Come on,” she said to Jack, and headed east. Soon they stood in the low valley, with sharp, jagged, sheer rock on either side, climbing up hundreds of feet. She’d been here earlier, and hadn’t seen Michelle, but then again, she wouldn’t have if Michelle had gone climbing. The shrubbery and lodgepole pines and scrub blocked most of the rock so that seeing any distance upward became all but impossible.
There was the fallen log, the group of three trees that they all had used for shelter when going to the bathroom in the woods without four walls and a lock.
“What do you think?” Jack asked, his eyes a little wild with worry and fear. “She start climbing from here?”
Hard to tell. The dirt here was dry and brittle as well. There were no defined or clear footprints, but lots of dust disturbed from all of them from the night before, and, Lily hoped Michelle from this morning. All the comingled trampling led back to camp.
Except…
Cocking her head, she studied the narrow path that led straight up. Not exactly a path, but it was definitely a route she would have chosen if she was alone, and especially if she wanted to remain alone.
From up there on the rock precipice, she’d be able to see far and wide. But better yet, no one would be able to see her. Maybe just what she’d have wanted on a day like this, if she was a woman not sure about where she and her husband were going to go with their marriage.
Jared had thought of that, too. And he’d gone after her.
Damn it.
Her heart started to pound. He was no more equipped than Michelle to make that climb. God. If he got hurt, she was going to kill him.
14
“JACK,” Lily called out, head still tilted up, still trying to see.
“Yeah?” he asked from behind her.
She gestured up. “I’m going to climb it.”
Jack eyed the rock wall and the outcropping that was cut out and so overgrown with bushes that they couldn’t see above it. “Where?”
“Here.” Lily began to climb the rock using questionable foot and hand holds.
“Lily, I don’t think Michelle could have…”
She didn’t waste the breath to respond, and a minute later heard him scrambling behind her to keep up, his breath rasping in and out of his lungs.
“This is all my fault,” he said, panting. “I was so frustrated that she really believed I loved her for her daddy’s money. I kept taking that out on her. God, I’ve been such an ass.”
“It’s not all your fault.” Lily glanced up, but could still see nothing. “Michelle! Michelle, can you hear me?”
She wanted to lay her eyes on Jared, too, right now, right this minute. Honestly, what had he been thinking, going off to play hero?
Finally, she got to the top and crawled over. Normally the view would take her breath. She could see everything in a captivating, panoramic circle: the sharp jagged mountains lined with blankets and blankets of green, the dips and valleys of rock, the myriads of small alpine lakes like ribbons of blue.
It was staggeringly gorgeous.
Then she saw something even more gorgeous. Jared stepping out from behind a tree, hair tousled, jaw streaked with dirt, shirt torn, a knee bleeding…
Yeah. Staggeringly gorgeous.
And her heart simply turned over and exposed its belly. Oh, God. No. No, not this man. She was not going to fall for this man.
Too late, whispered a little voice inside her head. Far too late.
It had already been a monumentally bad morning, the worst, and after being on the edge for close to an hour, and now teetering on a different edge altogether, she didn’t feel steady, so when he lifted his hand, in which he held his PDA, with a sheepish smile on his face, she nearly lost it right then, but somehow she kept it together.
Then Jack was there beside her yelling, “Michelle! Michelle, where are you?”
“Here.” Michelle came out from behind a second tree, a spot of bright yellow in her jacket, her hair loose and tumbling around her shoulders, a cut along her jaw, but otherwise whole and healthy.
Jack rushed to her and hauled her in for a tight hug, fisting his hands at her back as if he was never going to let her go. “What was that? Where were you going? What were you doing?”
“Just trying to get a good view,” she said, sounding shaken. “I wanted to do something for myself, and prove I could. So I got up here, and then I was afraid to go back down.”
“Oh, baby—”
“I’m so sorry, Jack, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He pulled back to stare at her. He let out a low laugh, then hauled her close again. “It’s okay. I love you, Michelle. Love you so damn much.”
Lily’s eyes had locked on Jared and didn’t let go as she moved toward him.
“She’s okay,” Jared said, gesturing to Michelle.
“Yes, but how about you?” It was hard to breathe, but that didn’t matter. “Looking a little worse for wear there, chief.”
<
br /> He lifted a shoulder. “I’m fine.”
“You helped her get up here, to the top.”
“A little.”
A lot, she suspected.
“She wanted a taste of freedom,” he said. “Wanted to be in charge of her own destiny. Not because of her father, or because of her husband, but because of herself.”
A feeling Lily knew all too well. As, she suspected, did Jared. Being in charge of one’s destiny had to mean a lot to a man who hadn’t always gotten to be in charge of his. She’d meant to strangle him, possibly kill him, but now…but now she wanted something else entirely.
He smiled. “What?”
“What what?”
“You’re looking at me funny. Like…”
Like I want to spread you on a cracker? Because I do…
“Like maybe…” He stepped even closer, so that they were toe to toe and eye to eye. Or they would have been eye to eye if she’d been just over six feet tall as he was, instead she was more like nose to chest, but he dipped his head down a little so that their jaws nearly brushed. She could feel his warm breath on her temple, his gaze running over her face, and it was the oddest thing.
She felt naked in front of a crowd.
“You were worried about me,” he said softly, sounding a little surprised, even awed and a lot amused.
“Hell yeah, I was worried.”
He grinned, and the sight of it caused a flood of emotions: fear, relief—giddy relief…anger. “You think it’s funny?” she demanded. “That I was so worried I could barely breathe?”
“Are you kidding? I—”
But she didn’t want to hear it, and whirled away, leaving him talking to air.
