Quinn was grateful it wasn’t dark yet, but the light level and temperature were falling fast. Darn little dog with that much spunk and energy, but his paw prints seemed to be flagging. He might have a thorn in or have hurt his right back paw, too, because he’d developed a little limp, though he didn’t share that with Alex.
What irony: he’d eaten alone in town last night, though several people had come up to his table to talk. He’d wished she’d come to him at the camp to change her mind about the date. Would she have come at all if she hadn’t been desperate for his help? He prayed they’d find her dog, but he didn’t want her to need him just for that. This whole thing hurt so much because it just reopened the wound of his causing his Scottie’s death—and his dad’s.
“Let’s go,” he said when she rejoined him quickly after relieving herself. “I’ve found both sets of tracks again going out the other side of this rabbit warren toward the lake. Keep close.”
She did. They were making their own path now, through low brush beneath trees. He kept his head down, squinting at the ground, using his flashlight if he needed to bring the tracks into sharper relief. They startled a pair of moose who seemed to frown at them, then shuffled off.
“The setting sun and leaf litter on the ground aren’t helping,” he muttered. “I’m going to have to make a guess that the snowshoe would not go out into the open toward the lake, but try to find a hole again, some tundra ground. But I can tell Spenser is finally flagging.”
He stopped and heaved a huge sigh.
“Quinn, what is it? You haven’t lost their trail?” She peered around him. “What are those big five-toed tracks?”
“Bear,” he said, his voice breaking for a moment. “But not tracks laid down at the same time, I think.”
“You think?” she said, reaching forward to grip his arm.
“They veer off a different way, see? We’ll go on this way.”
He could see the slash of distant lake through the foliage. It was getting dark since the sun had dropped below the distant mountain. And despite the mid-August date and the fact he’d been sweating with exertion and nerves, the air was noticeably chilly as if the quickening breeze was breathing on them. He sensed Alex looking to the side now that they’d seen bear tracks.
“Quinn, what if the snowshoe eluded him, or Spenser gave up and was thirsty and headed for the lake? With his little legs, I’m not sure he could have run a lot farther. But I’m afraid he’s come far enough that he might not know his way back. Cats are much better at directional memory, but they can get lost, too, in strange surroundings, especially when everything looks alike.”
Quinn rose to his full height, for once not staring at the ground. He reached for the binoculars he had attached to his backpack but had not touched so far. “You sound like a veterinarian again.”
“Vet tech, kind of like an assistant only more.” She paused for a moment, then said quietly, “He was a vet. I worked for him.”
“But didn’t marry him.” This was the man she left behind, he thought.
“But I didn’t marry him. I was going to before I wised up—before he wised me up.”
He still didn’t look at her but put the binoculars up to his eyes and pointed them toward Falls Lake.
“Did he rough you up?” he asked.
“I thought he was just...ardent before, a little controlling. He roughed me up mentally, emotionally, I guess, and I didn’t realize it. Yes, he got—got physical, over the line, I mean, and I ran. I can’t believe I’m telling you this now.”
“I just want to say again I’m not like that.” He waited a moment, then went back to the binoculars. “I have some good and some bad news. Bad, it’s going to be dark soon but for the stars, so we’ll make camp and spend the night out by the lake. The sun will be up early, and we’ll get back at a decent time.”
She gasped. “Without Spenser?”
“The good news—I think there will be three of us so we’ll have a watchdog tonight. I see a little blur of black across the end of the lake that may be—”
“Oh, Quinn!” she cried, drawing in a big breath and pressing her hands over her mouth before reaching for his binoculars. “Not some other animal or a piece of drift log? Chip said there are beaver dams farther down the lake.”
“Not inky black ones,” he said as she changed the focus to fit her eyes. “Though if your Spenser takes to chasing them before we get there, he’ll get himself in even more trouble.”
“It’s him! I think it’s him!”
“Don’t call to him when we get closer. Pretty sure he’s got a cut or thorn in his back right paw, and we don’t need him running across that shingle shore. Come on,” he said, taking the binoculars back. “Let’s save your little Scottie.”
He was really happy for her, even for himself. There had once been a little black Scottie he couldn’t save, but maybe this partly made up for it. And her obvious relief and joy helped, too.
Even Quinn blinked back tears at Alex’s reunion with the tattered-looking dog. Yet, for a moment he saw again what he had tried to forget for years: the remnants of his Scottie’s bloody body where he had evidently died trying to protect his father, who lay sprawled on the ground amid bloodstained leaves and grass. If only he hadn’t disobeyed to run off ahead to hide, if he’d...if...
“Thank you, thank you!” she said, cuddling the dirty dog in her arms, kissing his muddy, mussed head while Spenser went crazy licking at her chin and neck. “Oh, Quinn, I can’t thank you enough!”
He bit back the too-obvious—and crude—remark that “We’ll find a way,” and said instead, “I’m glad you came to me, trusted me. Listen, before it gets too dark for me to make a quick camp, bring him over to the water. We don’t want to get him chilled, so we’ll let him stay dirty for now, but, like I said, I’ll bet he’s got an injury to that paw he’s been favoring.”
He moved closer, and they both looked. A thorn and some blood.
“I’m in awe you could spot that from his tracks. That isn’t devil’s club in him, is it?”
“No, those are more like big, thick hairs.”
“If you’ll help hold him, I’ll pull it out and wash it, wrap it with something.”
“We can carry him or put him in your backpack,” he told her as together, kneeling by the clear, cold water, they washed the bloody paw. Amazingly, the little guy let her pull the embedded thorn out with no fuss but a few whines and whimpers. She was good at it, assured and adept, but then she was obviously skilled with animals, at least domesticated ones.
With Alex carrying the dog like a baby, they moved back from the lake toward the forest but did not enter it.
“Stay put,” he told her. “I’ll get some firewood and a big piece of bark from a downed tree I saw for a cover. Our sleeping bags will be those plastic garbage bags, if you want to dig those out with the water and food. See, we are dining together.”
“Water and granola bars never sounded better,” she said, so obviously happy now.
He moved away, found what he needed and came right back. She had taken out the plastic bag of hamburger for Spenser and was feeding him with her fingers. He put down the large hunk of curved cedar bark and arranged twigs and a few small logs for a crude fire.
“Amazing,” was all she said when he made sparks to catch the kindling by twirling a friction stick amid the twigs. He blew on that to feed it and soon had a fire going. They drank bottled water, and she let Spenser lap from her cupped hands. The dog almost instantly fell asleep in her arms.
Alex looked so beautiful in the flicker of the fire with the stars popping out overhead like diamonds. He drank in her closeness, relishing the fact she needed and trusted him.
“I’m grateful for Mary’s jacket,” she said. “Even in a rush, you thought of everything. It was kind of her to lend it.”
“She’s a really good person. She gets depressed at times, partly, I think, over how much trouble they’ve had with having children. And—I really understand this—she mourns the loss of her grandparents in that flash flood when the waterfall let loose. She was really attached to her grandmother.”
“I can surely understand that.” She put the exhausted dog in her backpack with only his head protruding. She and Quinn bumped the tops of their plastic bottles in a celebratory toast as they drank again, and their eyes met and held.
“Again, thank you,” she whispered as they tore into their second round of granola bars. “I will certainly pay you for your time.”
“You can pay me with some of your time—not necessarily under the stars in the Alaskan wilderness.”
She nodded. Her lips curved in a little smile. Damn, but he couldn’t believe this had happened so fast, so hard. He was thinking this was his idea of the perfect first date, but he wasn’t crazy enough to say so. Yet how to keep her from bolting again, just as the snowshoe must have done from the dog. He loved just looking at her.
Alex was amazed at how quickly Quinn had made not only a camp but a protective shelter for her and Spenser. With tree limbs, he’d propped up a large, curved piece of cedar bark so it came down behind her back and gave her a little roof overhead while he hunkered down in his garbage bag on her open side like another protective wall against the world.
But when they were getting settled, exhausted just like Spenser, she heard it begin to sprinkle.
“Darn,” he said. “Cloud coming in to hide the stars.”
“I’m amazed at how clear they are—so many of them. Suburban Chicago lights don’t allow for this fabulous view, only other city lights—and garish neon, the worst.”
“I’ve seen New York City a lot, so I can imagine,” he said, pulling his jacket hood up over his head.
“Quinn, don’t get wet. I can scoot over, and there’s room for two—or three. You got a pretty big piece of bark.”
“So I did,” he said, and she wondered if he had done that on purpose. Well, they were encased separately in plastic garbage bags from their armpits to bent legs, she told herself as he scooted over, adeptly missing the propped branches that held the whole thing up. Behind him the fire had sputtered out so all was darkness in their little shelter.
Carefully, she scooted toward the curve of bark behind her while Spenser snored lightly and slept on. And to think that he used to growl like crazy if Lyle came in the front door.
The rain pattered down but not hard. Garbage bag or not, Alex could feel Quinn’s body heat, his breath. Every exhausted nerve in her body leaped alive. It was as if this was all planned somehow, orchestrated by someone, but of course she knew better.
“Do you—do you sleep outside a lot?” she asked.
“Not as much as I used to. When I have an advanced class in, we do a three-day survival trek, so then I do.”
“It’s good you love the outdoors, the wilds—after everything.”
“That’s what my father would have wanted. It’s partly why I feel close to Chip, having lost his dad and sometimes blaming himself. Chip wants to fly someday, and Meg has a fit over that.”
“I could tell. You know, he even hides his airplane toys. She explained Chip’s guilt about his dad rushing home for his birthday. I understand.”
“Is your father alive?”
“He and my mother live in England right now. He’s an international broker for a US company. I miss them both. Oh, sorry, that was insensitive.”
“I appreciate your telling me the truth, not avoiding it. Don’t coddle me. I know what it’s like to feel guilty for something.”
The silence hung between them. Should she tell him about the loss of Allie? How she could not help but blame herself, even after early counseling? No, that type of in-the-womb loss sounded too far out right now. Besides, he had his own problems.
“I understand but I can’t talk about it right now—not yet,” she finally added.
“That ‘yet’ makes me think we have something to look forward to. So, you think we can build a friendship—that much at least?”
“Yes. And at the very least, I’m buying you dinner in town at your favorite place when you can get away from your latest campers.”
“The restaurant’s a little wild and crazy, but then so am I.”
She laughed. “I don’t see you that way, just rock steady. I need to get my bearings here. Learn to read the signs and follow the right trail.”
“If I can help—other than today—let me know. And we’re going to have to set out at the crack of dawn tomorrow, so my newbie students don’t think I’ve deserted them and run away like Spenser.”
The dog stirred from hearing his name but did not wake. Was this a dream she could wake from? And run away—is that what she had done instead of staying to fight at home? Run away from her old life, from a man so bad for her?
“Quinn!” she whispered. Hadn’t she just heard a scream? “What’s that sound?”
She reached out to grasp his wrist, bumping Spenser so he came awake.
It was a strange wail, a rhythmic, repetitive singing, neither male nor female but somehow both. He’d told her about the ghosts here, but she’d only half believed him and...
“I’ve heard it before,” he told her, not budging. “It will stop.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts haunting this place, do you?”
“Something or someone’s out there, but no one has ever been harmed.”
“But—but you mean, we just stay here?”
“I could get us back, but it’s a long way, especially in the dark. I’ve tried to find tracks in daylight from where the sounds seem to come from. Nothing.”
“I’m scared.”
He didn’t even ask her but picked up the backpack with Spenser in it, lifted it over to her other side, then turned her so she had her back to him and pulled her close. Now she held Spenser next to the curved bark of their wall-roof. Quinn moved closer, spooning her. It was as if she sat in his lap, but they were both on their sides.
She felt his warm breath move her hair as his free arm came up and over her, not threatening, just making her feel safe and secure in the Alaskan wilds while possible ghosts sang them a lullaby.
Crazy, so crazy. Yet she felt content, even calm.
As the chanting faded away, Spenser yawned, still asleep. Hadn’t he heard the singing? Lying in the embrace of a man she had not known a few days ago, she thought the night had never seemed more safe.