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BEN
He alternates between swearing at the fire, worrying about Ash, scanning the area for signs of Kate’s return, then swearing some more.
“I think this shirt is finally dry.” Eric moves around the fire and drapes it over Ash and Caleb.
“More wood,” Ben says. “We need more wood.”
Eric turns without a word, leaving their makeshift shelter to search for more logs. With the help of the sap-filled bark, they have a decent fire going. They can feed it regular logs now so long as they aren’t too sodden.
“Come on, girl,” Caleb murmurs, rocking Ash in his arms. “You’re too strong to give up now. You didn’t make it through hell to die like a deer in the woods.”
Ben feeds another log to the fire. It’s wet. Not soaking, but wet enough that it sizzles and sends up a gush of steam as soon as it hits the flames.
The interior of the fire is burning steadily. What he needs now is a poker to break apart the logs and expose the coals within. That’s the best place to put the new logs.
He casts about the dark shelter of the trees, searching for a branch that can be used as a poker.
There’s nothing. Everything serviceable has already been fed to the fire.
He spots a Douglas fir tree twenty yards east. Eric crouches beneath the boughs, picking up pieces of wood.
“Be right back,” Ben says.
Reed and Susan glance at him. Caleb never looks up, continuing to rock Ash back and forth.
“I need a long branch,” Ben tells Eric as he arrives at the Douglas fir. “Something that can be used as a poker.”
“Like this?” Eric extracts a branch from the stack in his arms. It’s a sturdy piece of wood two inches thick and three feet long, the length covered with green lichen.
“That’ll work. Give me what you’ve collected so far.”
“It’s kind of dry,” Eric says, passing the bundle of wood to Ben.
“Good work. Find more.”
Back at the fire, he uses the branch to stoke the fire. The larger logs break apart, exposing orange-yellow coals. The newest log catches fire, long tongues of flame licking upward.
Perfect. Ben moves around the fire, adding more logs to all sides. Within fifteen minutes, the fire has doubled in size. Heat roils off it in steaming puffs.
“Nice work.” Reed fans steam and smoke out of his eyes. He fiddles with the bowl, attempting to tie a fresh sapling around it to create a holder.
It’ll never work, but Ben doesn’t say this. From the look of anguish on Reed’s face, it’s better if the kid has something to preoccupy his thoughts.
At least Susan is doing something productive. She stands next to the fire, a shirt in each hand as she dries them over the flames. It’s slow work, but Ash already has two other shirts draped over her.
Where the hell is Kate? He peers into the drizzly gloom. There’s no sign of her anywhere.
He does his best to ignore the knot of anxiety forming in his chest. Kate is more than capable of taking care of herself. Hell, she made it all the way to Arcata without his help and she’d been alone for much of the time.
None of this makes him feel any better. He should have gone with her. How long has it been? At least thirty minutes, probably more. How long does it take to get water?
The wait is killing him. He straightens, intending to go search for her. There’s nothing else he can do with the fire right now. Besides, maybe he can find some more dry wood while he’s looking for Kate. Anything is better than standing around watching Ash struggle. It’s more than he can take.
Just as he turns to exit the shelter, Kate bursts into view. She runs hard through the brush, juggling five hydration bladders in her arms.
“Take off your shirt,” she yells as soon as she sees him.
“What?”
“The shirt. Your shirt. Take it off,” she orders.
He doesn’t ask questions. He would have added it to the blanket efforts if it wasn’t so thick and would take too long to dry. From the urgency in Kate’s face, he knows she has a plan. Hell if he’s going to get in the way of that.
He peels off his damp fatigue shirt as Kate dashes into the shelter. She sees the blazing fire and nods in approval.
“Where’s Eric?” she asks.
“I’m here.” Eric hurries into the shelter, cradling an armload of wood.
“You three.” She points a finger at Ben, Reed, and Eric. “I want you each to grab a corner of Ben’s shirt. Hold it over the fire.” She sets her pile of bladders on the ground, pausing only long enough to press a hand to Ash’s forehead. “Hang on, girl,” she murmurs.
Caleb lifts anguished eyes to her. Kate gives his shoulder a squeeze. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”
As she grabs one water bladder and approaches the fire, Ben suddenly understands what her plan is.
Kate empties the full bladder of water onto the shirt. The camouflage fabric bows downward, creating a bowl above the flames. A few droplets sizzle down into the flames, but the majority of the liquid remains trapped in the tight weave of the shirt.
“Fucking brilliant.” Admiration washes through him.
Kate flashes him a quick smile before turning a worried frown back in Ash’s direction. “It hasn’t worked yet.”
No one says anything. They all stare at the water in the center of Ben’s shirt.
“A watched pot never boils,” Eric says, breaking the silence.
“This isn’t a pot,” Ben says, right as Kate says, “We don’t want it to boil. We just need to warm it up enough so we can fill the bladders back up and put them next to Ash’s skin.”
“The fire is helping,” Caleb says. “Her stomach is finally starting to warm up.” He runs a hand up one of her arms. “Her arms too.”
Twenty minutes later, Kate holds the first bladder of warm water out to Caleb. He sandwiches it between his chest and Ash’s back, never loosening his desperate grip on the young woman in his arms.
Kate grabs the next bladder and empties it into the shirt. “One down,” she murmurs.
“How did you think of this?” Reed asks.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Oh, now you have to tell us,” Eric says. “You can’t get cryptic on us.”
Kate stares into the flames, not answering.
“Mama,” Reed wheedles.
She gives him a small smile. “My imaginary friend helped me out.”
Ben can’t keep his mouth shut any longer. “Your what?”
“My imaginary friend. He visited me while I was filling the water bladders and told me how I could heat the water.”
If her face wasn’t dead serious, and if Ben didn’t know her as well as he did, he would say she was full of shit. But Kate doesn’t spin fancy stories. She doesn’t lie, either.
“Do you guys know what a jackalope is?”
Ben listens in astonishment as she tells them about a rabbit with antlers that appears to her in times of great physical stress. She tells them about the time she ran some crazy race in Death Valley in the middle of the summer. That was the first time the jackalope appeared.
Then she tells them about her thirty-mile journey through the Avenue of the Giants. It’s the first time Ben has ever heard her share details of her two-hundred-mile trek from her hometown to Arcata. Johnny would be out of his fucking mind right now if he was here.
She shares a story of ripping off the antlers of her imaginary jackalope and drop-kicking the little beast into the woods. Eric’s eyes bug behind his glasses when she tells this part. Ben is pretty sure his eyes might be bugging a little, too.
At some point on her trek through the Avenue of the Giants, she and the little creature had made up. The jackalope helped Kate say goodbye her to husband and her best friend. She stares into the fire as she speaks, not bothering to wipe away the few tears that leak down her cheeks.
Ben feels fissures crack open inside him as Kate talks. He feels her pain. It echoes so much of what he carries around.
“That,” Reed proclaims when Kate finishes talking, “is the weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”
Kate shrugs. “I hate that little fucker. But he’s been there when I needed him. He’s helping us save Ash.”
“Is he still here?” Ben frowns out into the darkness, as though he might find a horned rabbit staring back at him.
“No. He left right after he delivered his message.”
“Does he have a name?” Eric asks.
“No. He’s just the jackalope. That was Frederico’s nickname for me for years.”
No one says anything. They all know about Frederico. She’s talked about him more in the last ten minutes than she has in all the months Ben has known her.
“Eric is right,” Caleb says. “We need to name him. I think he may have saved Ash’s life. Her skin is really warming up now.”
Kate sticks her finger into the water balancing over the fire. “This batch is almost ready. We can keep rotating the bladders and make sure they stay warm.”
“We’re naming the jackalope,” Reed declares. “How about Randy?”
“Randy?” Ben furrows his brow.
“I don’t know. It just came into my head.
“That’s a stupid-ass name,” Eric says. “How about Hopper?”
“Hopper?” Ben scowls across the fire. He hadn’t realized it could get any worse than Randy, but it just did.
“Creekside?”
Every head in the clearing jerks around. Ash’s eyes are slits as she blinks blearily.
“You’re awake.” Kate kneels next to her, running a hand over the younger woman’s forehead and arm. “You’re warmer.”
“I want to name your jackalope,” Ash murmurs, voice slurred. “He saved my life.”
As Kate gazes down at Ash, every line of her body says just how much she cares about her people. The curve of her cheek as she smiles. The gentle hand on Ash’s forearm. The line of her back as she leans in to kiss Ash’s forehead.
Ben can’t take his eyes off her. He never knew it was possible for one person to care so much about others. It radiates off Kate in waves. It’s the most beautiful fucking thing he’s ever seen.
Kate sits back, smiling at Ash. “I’ll give you the privilege of naming my imaginary friend.”
“Creekside,” Ash whispers. “His name is Creekside. He got you to us in Arcata. He’s our guardian spirit.”
“Creekside,” Caleb echoes. “That’s a great name.”
Kate stiffens, her eyes traveling past Ash and Caleb. Ben’s hand flies to the gun holstered at his side. He flips up the safety strap and slides it out.
He stares past Kate, trying to see whatever it is that she sees. He scans the clump of lupine bushes that sag in the rain, purple flowers bowed under the unending barrage. He scans the knee-high brush and the tight knot of trees that shelters them.
Then Kate does something unusual. Mouth twisting into a grimace, she extends one middle finger into the air.
Everyone stares at her in shock.
Then Reed bursts out laughing. “He’s here, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” Kate turns her back on the empty space of air she just flipped off.
“Creekside?” Eric says. “Really?” He squints at the empty space behind Ash and Caleb.
“Yep.” Kate’s expression is a mixture of a grimace and a chagrined smile. “He wants you all to know he likes his name. Oh, and he wants me to make sure you all know how awesome he is. He may have even thumped his chest. Two times.”
The bizarre conversation finally catches up with Ben.
A jackalope. A horned bunny, for Christ’s sake. It talks to Kate, and she tells him to fuck off with her middle finger.
He feels something rise in his chest, a pressure worming its way upward.
Before he realizes what’s happening, a chuckle slips past his lips. Five sets of eyes turn to him in surprise.
Another chuckle bubbles up. Then another, until he’s bent over roaring with laughter.
“I’m sorry,” he wheezes between guffaws. “It’s just nice to know I’m not the only one out of my goddamn mind.”
Kate bursts out laughing. It’s the first genuine smile she’s given him since that disastrous birthday kiss. Their eyes lock.
And even though he’s soaking wet in the middle of the woods with nothing on but a pair of pants, Ben is suddenly warm from head to toe.