Something slammed, metal against metal. I dragged my head up to look around blearily. Archer parked in front of my cabin and cut the engine, then walked around to open my door.
A hint of relief crossed his expression. “Good, you’re back. How are you feeling?”
“Like nine miles of bad road.” I exhaled and tilted my head back against the seat as everything else swam and dipped. “Just need a second.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a wheelchair inside that cabin?” He stood next to the truck, close enough to keep me from toppling into the dirt. He held my crutches but eyed me dubiously. “I’m going to call the ambulance, Ada. You shouldn’t be out of the hospital.”
“Are you a doctor?” I asked. “Because I am. I’m fine. I just need to gather my thoughts.”
Archer’s dark eyebrow arched. “Your thoughts aren’t going to keep you from passing out, hotshot.”
His face looked less and less enchanting the more he argued with me. Even if he could probably crack walnuts with his bare hands.
“Then be a gentleman and help me to the porch.”
The corner of his mouth twitched in what could have been a smile, though he took my arm to help me out of the truck after setting my crutches aside. And it was a good thing he didn’t give me a full smile, since I got the feeling it would have knocked me on my ass even if I were healthy and prepared. Instead of letting me walk, he dragged my arm over his shoulder and abruptly caught behind my knees to hoist me up like a baby.
Which left me staring at him from only a few inches away. “Uh...”
“I’m being a gentleman,” he said. Those blue eyes sparked a little, and I got a close-up of the wicked scars that ran from his shoulder up his neck and across his cheek: deep slices healed into slick, smooth paths, shorter claw marks and punctures, what might have been a gunshot. Interesting.
He carried me up to the porch and sat me down in one of the rickety, weathered Adirondack chairs, then peered at the door. “Is it locked?”
His voice rumbled in his chest and against my side, distracting me from the shooting pain in my knee and hip. My discombobulation definitely came from the adrenaline, blood loss, and pain rather than his proximity. Even though he smelled fantastic – like fresh well-loved t-shirts with a hint of bergamot, maybe some mint. I could have buried my face in his shoulder for hours. “Key under the mat,” I said.
“Kind of an obvious place for someone who’s supposed to be a genius.”
He got the key and walked through the door while I fumbled for words. Who the hell was this guy?
I still spluttered as he reappeared with Gatorade, a damp cloth, and the tall stool from the kitchen. He propped my legs up, draped the damp cloth across the back of my neck, and ordered me to sip so I could get some electrolytes. It was a testament to how shitty I felt that I actually did as he said; Mom would have fallen over in shock that her perpetually defiant youngest child followed directions.
As I grudgingly sipped the Gatorade, I muttered, “You were going to tell me how we’re alike, but clearly you’re not a genius if you’re making fun of the fact that I am.”
Archer chuckled and leaned back against the porch railing to study me, and the smile made a dimple in one cheek and made him look boyish. “I’m just a dumb kid from a small town, Ada. No one’s ever called me a genius.”
At least he admitted it.
When I just kept sipping, he folded his arms until his shoulders tested the stretch capacity of the fabric. “Like I said, we both believe in things that are possible but not likely, and I think we both know that something dangerous is out in those mountains.”
Something dangerous. He didn’t know the half of it. I concentrated on the Gatorade and not his earnest expression. If I looked at those beguiling blue eyes, eventually I’d tell him everything. “All I’m looking for are cryptids, whether they’re dangerous or not. None of them have attacked humans, at least that we’ve documented, and I don’t plan to get close enough to test that theory.”
“And yet you ended up in the hospital,” he said quietly. Archer took a deep breath and caught the hem of his sweater. “Let me show you something, Ada.”
He peeled it off in one smooth motion. I blinked, certain I hallucinated. There was no way a man that handsome stripped on my porch.
He wore a white sleeveless undershirt and left that on, thank the stars, otherwise I would have been a speechless, possibly drooling, mess until he got dressed again. The sweater had concealed masses of brutal, buckled scars down his left arm and across his chest. The ridged tissue continued down his abs, visible under the thin cotton undershirt, and disappeared into his jeans. Any hint of joking faded from his suddenly solemn gaze. “I was attacked by something in a swamp south of here, near Florida. It left me for dead, but I survived, just like you. I know where you’re coming from, Ada. I know what it’s like to experience something like that and try to come back to a normal life, particularly when no one believes you about what really happened.”
Instead of reassuring me, his little speech just made me suspicious. Yes, his gnarly scars impressed me and underscored the fact that he’d probably faced something really fucking scary — a bear, maybe, or something else with wicked claws. But that didn’t mean he’d faced down a sasquatch or Snarly Yow or a swamp monster, nor that he’d somehow figured out what really happened with me and Dragomir. It felt like a fishing expedition, even with Archer’s steady gaze.
“You sure it wasn’t an alligator?” I adjusted how my leg was propped up, still not looking at him too closely, as my bones started aching enough it radiated up to the back of my skull. “I don’t know what you’re after, friend, but you’d best just out with it. Some of these painkillers make it awful hard to figure out subtext and inference.” Even if my painkillers had worn off ages earlier.
“Agreeing to give us a couple of interviews and walk through the woods will be a lot of money.” He drew his sweater back on and I mourned the disappearance of those lovely shoulders. “Enough that you wouldn’t have to worry about going back to work for a while. We can stretch it out so you get a bigger paycheck, maybe film some follow-up episodes as you recover and get back on the hunt.”
“I think my cryptid hunting days are over,” I said slowly. Particularly since I’d found a monster and he offered to do the hunting for me. Then I could keep my happy ass in the lab, safe and sound, instead of bumbling around in the dark mountains in the middle of winter.
Still, though. A fat check to fund the rest of my research would be difficult to turn down, particularly if he proved to be a sympathetic partner in the endeavor. He didn’t treat me like a lunatic or a toothless yokel, and I didn’t get the sense, like with Giselle, that he would drive over me if it meant getting a better story.
“I respect that,” he said, rubbing his jaw. The stubble rasped against his palm, making me shiver. “But there’s something else to consider, Ada. Something or someone attacked you out there. What if it happens again to someone else, someone who isn’t as prepared or strong as you are, and they die? Or just disappear?”
He hit at my exact fear, that the mad man who attacked me had perhaps done the same to Jamie so many years ago. Or that Betsy’s husband would be out hunting or tracking and the mad man would sneak up on him. “I’ve wondered the same, but I don’t know if I’m the right person to take that on. I put a lot of years into cryptozoology and look what it gave me back.” I gestured down at myself and all the injuries still visible.
Archer nodded and rubbed his jaw. The beard rasped against his palm, sending shivers through me. “I understand. It took me a while to get back on my feet and go looking again. I think the need to search will come back, Ada, and I’d hate for you to miss an opportunity. This documentary can be a baby step for you — although one with a hefty paycheck attached to it.”
He tried too hard to sell me on it. My spidey sense told me not to trust him, with that easy smile and casual charm. No one just showed up at the perfect moment and offered a ton of money for little or no work. It just didn’t happen that way in real life.
He must have sensed my hesitation, because Archer held his hands up. “Just think about it, is all I’m saying. You’ve got my contact information. We’ll be around for a few more days at least. We’re meeting with the park rangers tomorrow at their headquarters to get background on the wild animals in the park, any other similar attacks or disappearances, and to see a map of where you went. We’re filming the documentary about Appalachian monsters whether you star in it or not, so I’m sure we’ll see you around.”
Similar attacks and disappearances. My throat dried. No doubt they’d already heard about Jamie’s disappearance; the rangers and the detectives would connect the rest of the dots for them. It made a better story, no doubt, that I almost met the same fate as my brother. Goosebumps rose on my arms as I stared past him at the shed and the trees beyond it. What if Jamie ended up in Dragomir’s clutches but made a different choice about helping him? “I’ll think about it, but you won’t like my answer.”
“Then I hope you’re back on your feet soon,” he said.
“Lord willing and the creek don’t rise,” I said under my breath.
Archer smiled, shaking his head as he straightened from his lean against the railing.
“What?”
He didn’t try to hide his amusement even a little bit. “It’s just funny to hear someone with your education use those... homespun idioms.”
“Says the big city movie producer.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Sometimes the vernacular is more adept at expressing a particular sentiment than proper English. Besides, it’s funnier than saying ‘I hope so.’”
“And ‘kiss my grits’?” His smile widened and his teeth flashed white. “What’s the proper English translation for that?”
“I’m sure you can imagine,” I said. My heart sped up and not because pain spiked through my ribs and leg. Something about that man’s smile... He was a serious threat to my dignity. “I would have told her to give her heart to Jesus because her ass belongs to me, but my mama raised me better than that.”
Archer laughed and ran his hand over his hair. “I definitely haven’t heard that one.”
I gazed at him, feeling a little adrift, and wondered what he expected me to say or do. Invite him in for tea? It wasn’t like I could just storm into the cabin and lock the door if he didn’t take the hint to move along.
He studied the toes of his boots for a long moment, then glanced back over his shoulder at where his truck was parked. “I should probably get on my way, but I’ve got to ask...”
He paused until I made a ‘get on with it’ gesture, then Archer took a deep breath. “Did you run into a vampire or a werewolf out there?”
I laughed so loud I startled myself and near peed my pants from the sudden, sharp pain in my ribs and knee. Hopefully he took it as an amused, ‘what is this guy talking about’ kind of laugh, instead of the nervous ‘holy shit does he know and is Dragomir going to murder him’ kind. Sure, I brought up vampires and werewolves first, but everyone else would have recognized it as hyperbole.
But he didn’t laugh it off. He didn’t even smile.
What if he actually believed in vampires?
I coughed as I held my side, trying not to groan. “What kind of a question is that?”
“You don’t seem like the kind of person to make a comment like that lightly, particularly given your experience hunting cryptids.” Archer shrugged, though his gaze grew shrewd and a bit too similar to Giselle’s for my peace of mind. “If anyone else said it, I could ignore it, but you... Folks say you’ve gotten closer than anyone to proving sasquatches exist. If you say you’ve seen a werewolf or a vampire, I’m inclined to believe you. Especially if that explains how you came by your injuries.”
It took me a second to string together the right words to convince him to leave the topic alone. “Look. I’m used to people not taking me seriously, so I just say shit. I don’t mean anything by it.”
“See, I think you’re too smart for that. I think you weigh every word before you say it, and you know exactly what kind of reaction you’re looking for. Even if you pretend not to care whether people take you seriously, I think you do. You’re a scientist and reputation still means something,” he said, smiling once more. “But I’ll take your word for it.”
“For now” remained unspoken, though I saw it in his eyes.
Archer spun his car keys around his finger and tilted his head at the vehicle. “I’ll be on my way, unless there’s something else I can do for you?”
I briefly considered asking him for a foot rub or help getting into the bathtub, but chalked that up to the lack of painkillers and maybe a lingering concussion. I held up my half-empty glass of Gatorade and patted my face with the still-damp cloth. “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful. I appreciate the ride.”
He made one of those flourishing bows and grinned like a little kid who’d gotten away with ditching school. “Then have a good night, Ada. I look forward to hearing from you, and taking a nice long walk in the woods.”
“See now, that sounds creepy.”
Archer chuckled and hopped in his truck. He even waved out the window as he drove away. I frowned at where he disappeared up the rutted track from the cabin to the road, and was still frowning even after the dust settled and night drifted down with it.