“I have a real bad feeling about this,” Nadia whispered, wrapping her arms around her as though in a hug.
“Majority rules,” Mac said. “We hike out of here in the morning. Until then, I suggest we hunt up some food.” He regarded Robert. “Rob, from what I’ve heard, you know your way around a bird hunt. Care to come along?”
“What the hell.” Robert grabbed his rifle and followed Mac.
“I’ll gather some more water,” Gage said, heading toward the lake after a quick stop for the bucket they’d found yesterday in one of the cabins.
Good, that would keep them all out of Tern’s hair for a bit so she could think.
“I’m going to lie back down,” Nadia said, holding her head. “I’ve got a killer headache.”
“Want some company?” Lucky asked with concern in his voice.
“No.” Nadia wobbled to her feet. Tern rushed to help along with Lucky, but Nadia pulled her arm from his grasp.
“Nadia, I’m really sorry,” Lucky said, the need to help warred in his expression.
“Lucky, let her be for now.” Tern shared a look with him. He nodded, and turned his attention to building up the fire.
Tern and Nadia didn’t speak until they were inside their cabin. Tern helped her lay down on the cot. “You were a little rough on him, weren’t you?”
“He left me for dead, Tern.”
“He left to get help.” Tern sat on the edge of her bunk. “I can understand how you are hurt and angry, but he did the right thing. Can’t you tell how upset and worried about you he is?”
Something passed over Nadia’s expression, but she put up a hand to cover her eyes. “Tern, I’m sorry. I’m not handling this well. I know he’s worried, I just hurt too bad to care about what he is going through. Do you mind? I just want to rest?”
“Sure, hon.” Tern stood and patted Nadia’s shoulder. “You’re right. Rest, I’ll talk to Lucky.”
“Thanks.” Nadia sighed and shut her eyes in obvious relief.
Tern headed back to the campfire to find Lucky gone and Gage returning with a bucket of water.
“Have you seen Lucky?” she asked him.
“I passed him on the way up here. He said something about picking wildflowers by the lake.” Gage set down the bucket, whipping his hands on his jeans, and seemed like he needed to find something else to do. He glanced around the campsite. “Where’s Nadia?”
“Lying down.”
He swallowed, and she recognized the hunger in his gaze. Oh, no. She didn’t know if she was ready to revisit their earlier stupidity or what she’d learned afterward.
“Tern—”
“I’ve got things I need to gather for dinner.” She swiveled and started walking toward the cover of the trees. Gage followed her. She swiveled on her heel. “What are you doing?”
“Going with you,” Gage said. “It’s not a good idea for you to be alone.”
“I have a gun with me. I don’t need you.” A flicker of pain crossed his face, but it was gone so fast she thought she’d imagined it.
“Whether you need me or not, you’ve got me.”
For how long? He’d left her before. Granted, he was in jail. Oh God. Jail.
“We need to talk. I understand that you don’t want to right now. I never wanted you to find out what happened, why I’d left.”
But he was okay with letting her think he didn’t care enough about her to call, trusting her to be there for him?
“Tern, I can’t ignore what happened between us earlier. For six months, I’ve tried to forget you. It didn’t work.”
“So what? You’re saying you want to pick up where we left off?”
“Maybe. No. I’m not sure. Hell, I don’t know what I want. You confuse the hell out of me, Tern.”
She was too raw dealing with what had happened between them earlier to take a stab at helping him. Hell, she was confused too. And angry. Really angry, the kind of anger fueled by hurt. “Let me make it easy for you. No. No picking up where we left off. There.”
“I wasn’t the only one who lost it out there. You were just as into me as I was you.”
“So I fell off the wagon. Doesn’t mean I’m staying off.” She moved to leave him.
He grabbed her arm, bringing her to a halt. “There is still something between us.”
“Actually, I think we got that ‘something’ out of our system.” She glanced down at her arm. “It’s getting old telling you to let go of me. I’m not your property and one fast—whatever that was—against a tree doesn’t make up for being ignored for six months.”
He let her go.
She took a few steps and suddenly turned back to face him. “Did you really go to Iceland this spring?” Had he lied to her on their hike earlier, as well as keeping that he’d been in jail from her?
“Yes. I went. I was released in time to fulfill my commitment to the University.”
Oh, so he could fill those commitments but not any that he’d made to her. Actually he hadn’t made her any commitments. Was she nothing more to him than a woman he’d hooked up with for a while? “Why did you come on this competition anyway?”
“I don’t know.” He glanced away into the forest.
“Don’t know or don’t want to tell me?”
“Both.” This time he met her stare.
What was she supposed to do with that? She turned to gather more plants and tried to gather her emotions at the same time. He’d stirred up a beehive’s worth of hurt feelings and rejection. She’d done her best to ignore him as he watched her scour the forest floor for edible plants. Too many things had happened today.
After collecting enough greens to supplement their meal, she headed back toward the clearing and Gage.
He looked skeptical at what she’d picked from nature’s pantry, but the wild puffball mushrooms would be delicious sautéed with butter and some of the leftover wine.
“Don’t be so cynical,” she said. “If we don’t find more food, you’ll be thankful for what I can pick in the forest.”
“Any of this going to kill us?” He motioned to the puffball mushrooms, which when dried out and stepped on made a puff of dust that seemed anything but appetizing. Young kids had fun hunting them out and stomping on them since they were like a nature fart. But these were picked while they were still moist and young.
“I could poison you with my knowledge,” she couldn’t help interjecting. Let him be a little worried. “I guess you’ll just have to trust that I won’t.”
He let the trust comment go. “How’d you learn all this? I thought you studied marketing and business in college?”
“Not everything is learned in school. My grandmother taught me. She, in turn, was taught by her mother, who was taught by her mother. The knowledge has been passed down through the women in my family for thousands of years,” she said with pride. Pride of her heritage, her race, and the long line of strong women she’d come from.
“I had no idea.”
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know.” He would have had to stick around in order to find out.
“We’re getting low on firewood. I’m going to go and find some more.” Without a sound, he was gone.
He was good at leaving, she’d give him that.
CHAPTER NINE
Mac and Robert had found a covey of ptarmigans and brought back two plump birds for her to cook. Tern butchered the already dressed-out birds and coated them in flour and set them to fry in oil. The grate over the fire had a pan of rice, the ptarmigan, and more willow tea for Nadia boiling away. It was a balancing act finding the hotspots and the not-so-hot ones over the banked coals.
Her optimism began to return as she cut up the puffball mushrooms and added them to the skillet with the ptarmigan. Pouring the remainder of the wine over the top, she covered the pan, and let the ingredients simmer. The rich savory smells started her stomach to rumbling.
Mac sat studying a map on his GPS, most likely figuring out the safest way down t
he mountain. His bifocals looked very distinguished on his chiseled and weathered face. Kind of Indiana Jonesish. Robert lay in the soft grasses, by all accounts napping the late afternoon away, but he wasn’t sleeping. She’d seen him do this before. He seemed unimposing, but in truth, he was cataloging everything around him. People said and did things in front of those who they deemed were asleep.
She’d learned this about him the hard way.
He’d overheard a private conversation between her and her sister Raven, and found out things she’d wished he didn’t know about her family. She’d invited him over for a family dinner, and he’d pretended to ‘rest’ later on the couch. The man was sneaky as a wolverine. She hadn’t been able to trust that his attentions toward her were honest now that he knew she and her family had millions in gold.
Lucky had returned to camp clutching a fistful of wildflowers and went into the cabin to watch over Nadia who was still down for the count. Gage continued to gather firewood. If he kept it up, they’d soon have enough to make it through the winter.
“Tern?” Mac stood, stretching out the kinks.
“Hmm?”
He glanced at Robert and then tilted his head in the direction of the lake. She wasn’t the only one who knew Robert pretended to sleep.
She glanced down at the dinner she was cooking and moved all the pans to the outside of the heat where they would to be kept warm but not too hot. She wiped her hands and followed Mac. Gage stopped and watched them leave, his arms loaded down with wood.
“Gage, keep an eye on the food, would you?” Tern didn’t wait for his answer. His scowl was answer enough. He didn’t like seeing her with Mac.
“Sweetcakes, you’re tearing that man up.” Mac chuckled, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Wanta give him something to stew over?”
“Aren’t you too old for games?” Tern liked the feel of his arm across her shoulders, though. She leaned her head into the crook of his arm, feeling safe and protected.
“One thing you need to learn about men, we’re never too old for games. Especially when they involve a beautiful woman.”
“Are you flirting with me?” She leaned back to look into his eyes. They twinkled down at her.
“Would I do that?”
“Yes.”
He threw his head back on a booming laugh that would be heard back at the campsite. No doubt both Robert and Gage heard it.
“Just what are you up to?”
He smiled at her. “That’s one thing I loved about you. Nobody pulls the wool over your eyes.” He guided her farther away along the lake’s edge to an outcropping of spruce dipping their roots into the rich, glacial-fed water. “Gage is being an idiot.”
“What? You playing matchmaker now?”
“Hell, no. But pointing out when a man is being particularly stupid is just too much fun to pass up. Now, I need information on everyone here.” His teasing manner dropped like a stage curtain. He guided her to a boulder and motioned for her to take a seat. He remained standing, propping his booted-foot on a log, and leaned forward. “Keep your voice low in case one of them decides to lurk. I think I’ll hear anyone who comes up, but you never know.” He glanced around the area.
“Mac, you’re worrying me with all this cloak and dagger stuff.” Indeed her heart was skipping a few beats faster like they had jogged to this place rather than the leisurely stroll they’d taken.
“Good. I want you to stay on your toes. Anything out of the ordinary—right, what’s not out of the ordinary here,” he said at her sardonic expression. “Does anything concern or worry you about our players back there?”
“Everything about the big reveal we just had.”
“What else?”
“Does there have to be more? Please, don’t let there be more.”
He flicked the end of her nose. “Damn, but you’re fetching.”
She placed a hand on his leg and leaned toward him. “Not fetching enough for some.”
“We’ve been over that.”
“You’re the one who broke off our relationship. You know I didn’t want it to end.” In fact, she’d cried and begged him not to leave her. Now that she knew what happened to his wife, she wanted to talk about the things they hadn’t.
“Love, I’m not the man for you.” He gave a deep sigh. “I was filling a role for you, one that I will continue too as long as you need me.”
“Not that father figure crap again.” She went to stand.
He pushed her back onto the boulder. “I’m twenty years older than you. I’m not hero material or,” he continued when she went to interrupt, “willing to father more children. You know deep down you would’ve resented me for making you give up being a mother. You’ll make a great mother someday. Probably reproduce with that idiot back at camp.”
“Hey, we aren’t together.”
“Like you weren’t this afternoon?” He cocked a brow in question and then chuckled at the blush that heated her face.
Tern looked down at the pebbled ground and tried not to squirm. “What gave us away?”
“Not important. What I need to know is what kind of dirt you can give me on our campmates.”
Mac took a seat on the log kitty-corner from her boulder. Legs spread, he rested his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped loosely in front.
“Are you serious?” Tern asked. “Do you suspect one of them?”
“Help me rule them out.”
“Okay.” She swallowed. “Who do you want to start with?”
“Lucky Leroy Morgan. And none of that shit that he’s a Buddhist and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Like Gage already mentioned, any man, or woman, could kill given the right motivation.”
“You want to know what could motivate Lucky to kill?” She had trouble wrapping her brain around this.
“Or be passionate enough about something that he would go through these lengths to put into motion this geocache competition.”
She thought long and hard. “I don’t see how he could. He just returned from climbing the Andes. Whoever did this would have to have means and opportunity. Lucky is always broke, and when would he have had the time?”
“We both know that you aren’t a poor woman. Could he be after your money?”
“No. The reason Lucky is always broke is because he has no need of money. He seriously doesn’t care about things like that. And you’ve seen him. People love him. He’s taken in all over the world. No matter where he is, what mountain he feels he needs to climb, people cheer him on. I don’t see anyone holding a grudge against him or vice versa.”
“Why did you break up with him?”
“Because I needed more stability in my life, but there is still a big part of me that loves him. While he has these faults, he’d die for all of us here. He wouldn’t even think twice about it.”
Mac nodded, taking in the information. “Nadia. Tell me about her. How long have you known her? What type of relationship do you have?”
“Mac, I don’t like this. I don’t want to think of my best friend, or the men I’ve been with, in the way you’re asking me to.”
“Humor me. It might end this without anyone getting hurt.”
“You really think we’re in danger?”
“Yes.”
She sucked in a breath and stared into his unwavering eyes. “Okay. I met Nadia in college, did all the stupid stuff that college kids do. She got serious with an old professor of mine, got really wrapped up with him, and we kind of lost touch. Years later, she came into the shop, and we got to reminiscing. We’ve been friends ever since.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. A few years ago.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Well, you already know about the sister who died. She was an only child originally. Her mother died when she was young, and her dad remarried and had her little sister. The marriage didn’t last after the girl’s death. It’s just been her and her father since then. She works at the University in the math department. Sh
e’s got tenure and is a professor. What else do you want to know?”
“Relationships?”
“Nothing serious. She has trouble in that department, but then don’t we all,” Tern added under her breath, but Mac caught it.
“Don’t sell yourself short. Your time will come. Back to Nadia. Any trouble?”
“No, not really. We have fun together. We laugh, hang out, talk on the phone, shop, do each other’s hair. What do you want?”
“I’m not sure. Tell me about Robert.”
“Single parent, and yes, he’s a good parent. He’s great with his little girl, Chloe. His wife died of cancer when Chloe was two. He owns his own business, is involved in the community. Likes to hunt, fish, all the things most men in Alaska like.”
“Why didn’t you marry him?”
“Dang it, Mac. Why do we need to go into that?”
“Motivation, love. Now give it up.”
She huffed out a breath. “He’s too clingy, I guess you could say. I couldn’t go anywhere without him needing to know where and why and with whom. It got old. Plus, the chemistry while in the beginning was okay, by the end it was forced.”
“You stuck it out for his kid.”
She nodded. “I fell in love with her, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t love Robert. He’s too controlling, and—” She broke off the rest of what she was going to say because she didn’t like where her thought process took her.
“And?”
Of course, Mac wasn’t going to let it go. “He knows about the gold.”
“Ahh.” Mac stood. “Does Nadia?”
“No.”
“Gage?”
“No. You know I don’t like people to know since they treat me differently.”
“Does Gage know the story behind your father’s death?”
“We never got that far.” Tern looked down at her hands. She really needed a manicure. It was easier to concentrate on that than the past and all she and her family had lost at the hands of a killer.
“How far did you and Gage get?”
“I thought I loved him. He didn’t feel the same.”
“What happened?”
“No. No, I’m not getting into it. All you need to know is that he left, and I haven’t seen him in six months.”
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