“Hey, you two, we’ve got to head back,” a deep voice whispered.
Alex jerked alert, panicked for a moment. Had Lyle found her? Where was she?
It all came rushing back. Spenser was in a backpack in front of her and a heavy arm was over her. Quinn. She felt him shift his weight, roll a bit away. He must have held her all night.
“It’s about five thirty,” he said through a big yawn as he pulled away. “Sun’s almost up, and we need to head back. Take Spenser behind a tree, but be aware of devil’s club or animal intruders. And keep that leash on your wandering friend.”
“Aye-aye, captain,” she said, trying to sound more awake than she felt.
The two of them went different ways, then met to finish up the bottled water and one granola bar apiece. Spenser had eaten all his meat, so he just lapped water from her hands again. The sun was not up, but the sky was light as Quinn deconstructed their little camp, scuffing the ashes and even taking their bark shelter down.
He set a good pace toward the road, claiming it would be quicker to walk it back to his property rather than retracing their steps from last night. But not far on, they came to a scattering of bushes, laden with huge, wild strawberries.
“I can’t believe it!” she cried. “I’m starving.”
“Pick and eat fast, and we’ll put some in my backpack. Fast because bears know and love spots like this. We’ll take some to Mary. She craves them lately.”
“Yesterday we passed other bushes with ripe, red berries, but they were small and round,” she said as they quickly picked the bounty.
“Those are bearberries. They’re mealy, nothing like this,” he said with his own mouth full. Their lips were red and sticky.
“I can see how someone could survive in the wilds, if they knew what they were doing,” she said, still eating the luscious berries, and that wasn’t just because she was starved. She hated to admit that she would have liked to stay here longer to grab more—and be with him.
“You won’t need to take my survival class, though,” Quinn called back over his shoulder as they headed on. “I’ll give you private lessons. There are lots of things to eat in these woods, maybe things you could use in your beauty products, too.”
“My products are not just for beauty. Many of them are medicinal, for dry skin, things like that.”
“Don’t I know? That’s perfect. You can adapt to this area instead of the warmer climates with your lavenders and long-blooming roses. Get some ingredients from the wild, some from a greenhouse if you can find a spot to have one built. I wouldn’t mind having one, too. I think we have a lot to teach each other.”
The things he was saying seemed seductive, but maybe weren’t meant that way. He appeared to be so open, so up front, compared to guys she’d known, especially Lyle. She still didn’t know this man very well, but she wanted to. She owed him a lot, and he hadn’t taken advantage of her, hadn’t pushed her. The only time he’d ordered her around was to help her to find Spenser and to keep her safe in these woods. How different that was from what she was used to.
“I see the road up ahead,” he told her as the sun slanted its golden rays through the treetops and brightened the sky even more. He finally stopped leading her and came back to take her sticky, red hand and walk with her. “And beyond that, maybe a new road for both of us,” he added.
“A long road perhaps, one that takes time and effort to get to.”
“Compared to where we’ve been, we’re back to so-called civilization,” he said, sounding almost brusque, all business now. “Let’s trade backpacks since Spenser’s heavier than a week’s supply of berries. I see where we are, and it’s at least four miles to the camp. When we get closer, my phone will work, and I’ll call someone to come get us. Ready for a trek?”
“You bet!”
Josh came to get them in his truck, an old one rusting out in spots. The open truck bed was filled with extra tires and burlap sacks of something.
“An adventure, huh?” he greeted them as they climbed in. “You should have taken a camera and filmed it for your show,” he said with a quick, narrow-eyed glance at Alex in the rearview mirror.
Back at the camp, Quinn jogged to his cabin to get ready for a morning lecture to his students, and she lingered outside the dining hall while Spenser hit a tree trunk for his needs again. She could hear the low buzz of voices inside where breakfast was being served. Something smelled delicious, and her stomach growled. To think she’d never really cared for breakfast, back in so-called civilization as Quinn had called it.
A window was propped open, and she could hear Mary’s voice inside. He’d said not to mention to Mary that they had heard the strange voice at night not because it scared her. Rather, he’d said, it reminded her of loved ones lost. Alex could surely sympathize with that.
Then she remembered Quinn had left the backpack full of strawberries, so she’d better take them inside. He’d said Mary loved them, and she’d been so helpful.
Once again checking that Spenser was securely on his leash, she led him through the door, the backpack in her hands. She was in the area where Josh had been handing food out into the main eating area last night. He was doing that again, preoccupied so he didn’t see her enter.
No one saw her. Mary was saying to the men, “So she needs to be watched. He doesn’t need a big-city fly-by-night in his life.”
Alex froze, holding the backpack, wishing she hadn’t come in so quietly. Mary must mean Val distracting Ryker. Or were they were talking about her?
She backed up, opened the door again and called out, “Can I come in? We picked some strawberries for you on our way back.”
Sam turned to her. Mary smiled and Sam nodded, but they were blocking her view of Josh. It was awkward, and she hated that. Strange vibes, curiosity but maybe hostility, too. She held out the backpack with the berries, feeling it was a peace offering. But there was no war, was there?
“Oh, Quinn knows I love berries, and these Spruce men don’t so much,” Mary said, and moved to take the pack and open it. “Guess you like them, too—juice on your chin. So where’s Quinn?”
“He went to get ready for a lecture. As you can see, he found my dog, and I’m so grateful.”
“Sure he’d find him,” Mary said as Sam turned back to the big porcelain stove and Josh kept lifting plates of pancakes onto the pass-through. “Anyone taught by Trapper Jake—he was a good tracker, too—can find anything in the dark.” She tipped the backpack into a large bowl, and the red avalanche of berries tumbled out.
Alex thanked them and was almost out the door when Quinn bounded in. He’d evidently washed hastily because his face looked wet. He wore fresh jeans and a red and black plaid shirt.
“So, you like the berries?” he asked Mary. “You said lately you were craving them.”
“Probably going to be craving all kinds of things now,” she said with a shy smile and a glance at Sam.
Sam broke into a big grin. “Gonna need an extra room on our cabin, Quinn.”
“Hey, that’s great!” Quinn exploded. He hugged Mary and high-fived Sam.
Maybe Josh didn’t really want to be an uncle, because he just headed out the kitchen door back into the main room—or maybe he had a job to do and had celebrated with them earlier. But here Alex stood, tears in her eyes because people she hardly knew were going to have a baby. This was a moment for these friends to celebrate, so she backed out of the room and quietly opened the door and went out.
As she hurried to her truck, she saw Josh striding through the area with the sample tracks protected in raised beds. She watched, frowning, as he scuffed through two of them.
Jealous that his brother would have a child? Tired of doing the menial work around here and at the lodge? She had the strangest sense that Josh wanted to really contribute in a big way but did not know how.
She put Spenser in her truck and got in beside him before she saw Quinn had come out. He strode toward her.
“They’ve been trying for a long time,” he said, leaning down with his arms on the top of her truck cab. “She wishes she had more family members to tell. She still misses her grandparents who died in the Falls Lake flood. She’s always been so protective of this area, of Sam—even of me. Well, gotta get back inside. Busy week.”
“Which I will try not to mess up again. Thank you so, so much,” she said, and extended her hand up to him, which he took and held for a long minute, then stepped back.
“And hold that thought,” he said.
She nodded and he gave her a quick wave as she drove away. She’d certainly hold other thoughts of their time together. He’d held her all night, and she’d never felt safer, wild animals, weird voices or her own fears be damned. She had decided, if possible, to hold on to this man—as a friend. For now, that’s what they had to be.
Alex’s cousins and Chip were ecstatic to see her with Spenser. Even Buffy seemed glad to see her. They sat her down to a breakfast while she told them what had happened, including that Mary Spruce was pregnant.
“Glad to hear that,” Suze said as she perched across the table from her. “I think it may help her. She has moments when she seems so depressed.”
“Have you ever heard the scary Falls Lake night voice here at the lodge?” Alex asked. “I—we—heard it last night.”
“Guests have asked that before. Truth is, we’ve always wanted to, but I think we keep the place pretty closed up at night—and its sounds are supposedly out more toward the lake. What did you think about it?”
“That must be something real—or someone. Can’t say I believe in hauntings, even with the tragedy of lost lives so close there. But it was really eerie.”
“To be here such a short time and hear it—wow. Wait till I tell Meg. But we won’t mention it to Chip. That’s all he needs to hear is a spirit ghost when he thinks his father’s a ghost flying planes.”
Alex devoured the scrambled eggs and toast Suze fixed, while Chip and Meg washed Spenser in the tub in the back room. Ready for a shower herself, she took Spenser to their room, then decided she’d better email her parents first. A message from Ginger Baldwin came up right on top of her inbox.
She skimmed the message. More good news! Ginger had included the email address of a man she knew in New York who could switch Alex’s website to a different address with perhaps a different name and links. She would have to change her private email and Facebook pages, then contact her customers separately to tell them of the new site, or they might not find it. And he would charge her nothing because Ginger was a friend and had said she was going to help sell her products.
“Whew. What luck!” she told Spenser.
She was thrilled she could do all that even though she’d never considered herself really knowledgeable on social media. Even now she scolded herself for not immediately changing her web address, but when Lyle hadn’t used it during her cross-country trek, she’d let it go for now. She was worried about her Facebook page, too, because it had pictures of them together on it, and wouldn’t those just hang around like—like a ghost? Maybe this contact of Ginger’s could help her erase all that, too, wipe her personal footprint off the web. She hoped that Lyle would just avoid her in his no-doubt-wounded pride.
She skimmed the long list of emails that had come in. Still nothing directly from him, thank heavens. She was starting to feel even safer here in the arms of the Falls Lake forest and mountains, though not as safe as she’d felt in Quinn’s embrace.
She sighed and took a fast shower. As exhausted as she was, a rush of adrenaline kept her going. She didn’t want to let Meg and Suze down by not opening the shop today. She’d go out, take Spenser, but be sure he was always, always, securely leashed and that the handle end of the leash was tied to something if she opened the door for fresh air.
Someone knocked hard on her bedroom door. Tucking her shirt in her jeans, she opened it to find Suze standing there.
“Before you go out to the store, I want to show you something,” she said. She looked and sounded shaken. Her face was pale. “Chip—he just found something outside we thought you should see. Just so you know.”
She grabbed a jacket she threw around her shoulders. Not willing to leave Spenser alone now, even in their room, she scooped up him and his leash before following Suze out the back door.
“Tell me. What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Better just look. I mean, since you had trouble with your ex-fiancé and all.”
“Did he send something?” She gasped. “He—he’s not here?”
“No, weirder than that. Maybe not related at all—just weird.”
Suze led Alex around the back of the lodge, to the north wall, outside her big bedroom window. She could tell it was her window, front corner. She could also see the curtains she’d partially opened just now over the window seat.
Chip and Meg stood there, staring at the window. Not looking in but at something on the outside.
“Maybe it was a bear, a big one,” Chip said, sounding awed, before Alex realized what they were looking at. It was hard to see from the side, but unmistakable closer up. The boy went on. “I think it’s a sign Dad’s spirit came back, only he got the wrong window, ’cause this room used to be mine when we visited and he was alive.”
Alex gasped, but so did Meg at what he’d said. Meg put in, “Don’t say things like that, honey. I told you that is not true that he comes back.”
Alex saw huge cuts—no, something like claw marks—incised vertically, deep into the log wall on both sides of her window. Spenser growled just the way he used to when Lyle was near. Her head started to pound, and her heartbeat picked up.
When Meg said nothing else, Suze told the boy, “We don’t agree with that, Chip. I mean, we don’t know what did this, but not your father’s spirit—or ghost.”
“Do you see any footprints?” Alex asked, realizing that’s what Quinn would have said.
“When Chip brought us out to see this,” Suze said, “well, he’d already kind of stepped all over here. I cleaned these windows outside to help Josh’s workload the other day, so my prints are here, too—a mess.”
Tearing her gaze from the massive claw marks, Alex looked down. Yes, unfortunately, Chip’s distinctive sneaker prints were here. Also she saw a woman’s prints, smaller, narrower.
So was this even from last night when she wasn’t here, or before when she was inside? Why hadn’t she or Spenser heard something, or had she when she thought the wind made branches scrape along the walls and roof?
Although she was a rank amateur at this, she also saw two blurred animal prints she thought she could recognize. A large triangular-shaped central pad and five toes with claws—big claws. Surely a bear’s, like that print Quinn had showed her in the forest. She thought of the little sandbox-type squares of wild-animal prints over at his camp and how Josh had angrily scuffed through them.
She studied again the huge scratch marks raked along both sides of the window as if the animal had been trying to get in. It seemed as if the animal had looked in her window and wanted to tear something or someone apart—even as a bear had done to Quinn’s dad and dog.
Should she dare to ask Quinn to take a look at this?