I dozed on the couch in the aftermath of the cleaning frenzy when the crunch of tires on gravel alerted me to his approach. My heart jumped with adrenaline and I shot awake. I’d meant to do more than just a ponytail with my hair or powder my face to make the bruises less startling, but somehow that felt like too much once I surrendered to the couch’s gravity.
Each step echoed as he made his way to the door and I waited, holding my breath. Just one set of footsteps — no camera crew following. At least he kept his word on that.
I opened the door and nearly cursed him right to Hades. He wore dark jeans and a flannel shirt over a Henley, all of it fitted enough to hint at his physique without being obvious. The scars on his neck and face didn’t seem quite as noticeable, although that could have been the shadows on the porch. He’d brushed his damp hair back into something a Boy Scout would appreciate, and smiled when he saw me. His blue eyes sparked as he gave me the once over without being obvious, and my breath caught. I hoped my burning cheeks weren’t noticeable as I swallowed the urge to preen in my worn-out jeans and stretched sweater.
Archer held up two bulging plastic bags filled with takeaway containers. “I hope you’re hungry.”
I stepped back to let him in, and almost got drunk on his cologne and a general scent that seemed to be just Archer. That time it was linen and talcum, with clean, manly soap mixed in. “Not that hungry.”
He laughed and ambled into the kitchen to put the bags on the counter. “Well, it all looked good so I figured you wouldn’t mind leftovers.”
I stretched to retrieve plates and silverware, trying not to linger too close to him so I wouldn’t be caught pressing my nose against his shoulder to sniff him more. How did some men just smell good? “It would be rude to refuse leftovers, so I won’t say it to your face.”
“Then thank you for that.” His smile curled up higher on the left side, the right side tugging against the scars and losing. “Table?”
I indicated the kitchen table, still covered in boxes and bags of clothes from my earlier organizational optimism. “I can clear a spot. I’m in the middle of — cleaning. Even if it doesn’t look that way.”
“Didn’t notice a thing.”
He hummed as he opened containers, doing some kind of addition as he checked the food against the receipt. I shook my head and eyed him in my peripheral vision as I cleared a spot on the table for two people. Which meant I sat at the head of the table and he took the chair to my left. Right next to me. Close and intimate.
Archer carried over a bunch of the food, setting it out between the plates, then retrieved the rice. “I meant to tell you yesterday, this is a cool cabin. Has it been in the family long?”
“My parents bought it as a vacation spot when they got jobs in Oak Ridge,” I said. I pretended I told him the plot of a movie instead of my history; it didn’t hurt as much to talk about that way. “After my brother disappeared, Dad retreated out here in case Jamie found his way back from the mountains. Mom and I stayed in Oak Ridge for a while but after a couple of years, she needed to – move on. I came out here to stay with Dad, and she got a job at Princeton up north.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. And unlike most folks, he looked like he meant it. “You didn’t want to go with her? If I remember correctly, your brother has been — missing for a while.”
I heard the hiccup in his words as he almost said “dead” instead of “missing,” and concentrated on spooning some rice onto my plate. “Ten years last month.”
“That’s a long time,” Archer said quietly. The real question remained unasked.
Normally I would have made him fish for a way to ask that didn’t make him sound like an asshole, but there was something about him... I didn’t mind sharing Jamie with him, showing some of that vulnerability and hope that I could still find my big brother alive. Which made Archer — and asking for his help — very dangerous. It had to be a business relationship first, obviously, or I stood no chance of getting the money necessary for new lab equipment, but it would be nice to have someone else to lean against when the road got too rocky. “It is. My dad put everything into finding him, and so did I. Dad got sick — pancreatic cancer — and was gone almost before we knew the diagnosis.”
My voice hitched and the rice blurred in front of me. It still hurt, even after so long. Losing Dad remained too raw. He left a gaping hole in my life and my heart; his boots still waited in the mud room around back. I stepped over them every time I did the laundry. I kept paying his cell phone bill, even when other bills should have taken precedence, so I could call it some nights and listen to his voice. It didn’t matter how much time passed. Logic and rationality didn’t matter. I missed my dad, and I didn’t think I’d ever feel whole again.
I cleared my throat a couple of times and tried to find a smile so I didn’t freak Archer out too much by crying at a business dinner within a day and a half of meeting him. Of course, maybe he wanted that for the TV show. “Anyway. I stayed in Chilhowee to look for Jamie and to search for cryptids. Seven or so years passed and here we are.”
Archer passed me the curry, a slight frown wrinkling his forehead in an adorable little boy way. “That’s — really... I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry for your loss. Your losses.”
I shrugged one shoulder. “It is what it is.”
“But — I’ve got to ask, Ada.” He took a deep breath and his hand rested on the table, dangerously close to my arm. He almost touched me. Could brush my arm with just the slightest stretch of his fingers. I braced for both the ecstatic spiraling excitement if he did and for him asking something awful at the same time. Those dark eyelashes distracted me as Archer studied my face. “Why do you hunt cryptids? Surely you could continue the search for your brother without the… negative attention for searching for cryptids. I think you’re brilliant and filling a research niche that no one else has ever filled, but it’s obvious you were on track to be a ground-breaking quantum chemist. Which I didn’t even know was a thing that existed… I read about it and I still have no idea what it is, but it sounds damn impressive. Plus there was a lot of math that looked like it was mostly numbers.”
“Well. That’s something no one ever asked me. I still dabble in quantum chemistry, some in physical chemistry, some in biomedical engineers, other fields. I just didn’t make it a career.” I fished a spring roll out of the thin wax paper bag. “Most people assume it’s because Dad and I went crazy after Jamie disappeared and started grasping at straws to explain why he didn’t come back. That we abandoned everything else in our lives to focus on searching for him, and that all the pressure finally broke my brain. The first and easiest explanation people come up with is I’m one of those mad geniuses who can’t function in the real world.”
“Can you?”
I smiled and chewed the spring roll slowly as I debated what to tell him. Maybe a crazy genius played better on TV. No one liked to watch “normal.” They just wanted dramatic, crazy, dangerous, a hot mess in a crashing car. My efforts to appear normal and logical hadn’t been enough to seal the first TV deal without needing that extra footage, so maybe going to the other end of the crazy spectrum would be useful with Archer. Not too crazy, though, just in case he was single and looking for a girlfriend who lived in the woods and chased after werewolves and relic hominids.
I ran the last bite of the spring roll through the curry on my plate, watching the spices around the rice. “Eh. I haven’t tried in a while. The real world is so boring, isn’t it?”
His eyes crinkled around the edges as he smiled. “Yeah. You said that’s the first and most obvious explanation, but I guess that’s not the correct one, hm?”
A man with focus. I could appreciate that, particularly when he wasn’t trying to convince me to take off my shirt and crawl into bed with him. Although I wouldn’t have minded that kind of determination on such a cold night. “Well, we started looking for cryptids as kids. Jamie and I were both pretty indoorsy as kids, and my parents used mysterious beasties as a way to get us outside. It reinforced the scientific method and encouraged skepticism, and eventually it became a habit. I don’t think Mom ever expected it to really stick, though, you know? Dad and Jamie and I found enough physical anomalies and marks that we believed it feasible, and things kind of went from there. We’d spend every vacation out there tracking or setting up motion-capture cameras or searching the lakes for bones. Mom wasn’t a believer, no matter what kind of evidence we stacked up in front of her, and I think… Maybe she blamed all the cryptid hunting for taking Jamie away, making him overconfident when he went out on his own.”
And I knew for a fact she thought the cryptid hunting took Dad and me away from her, too.
I cleared my throat and peered into one of the containers to find the sticky rice and mango. “Anyway. After Jamie disappeared, part of me thought the best and fastest way to find him again was to get a ton of people moving through the park searching for something. They could search for a sasquatch or Mothman or the Ozark Howler, and if they happened to find a hint of where Jamie had been… More the better. The only way to tempt enough people out here to look was to find a Bigfoot or something equally juicy, so I put myself all the way into cryptozoology to make that happen.”
He nodded, rubbing his jaw, and scooped Pad Thai onto his plate for a second serving. The man could eat. No wonder he needed six entrees and four appetizers for two people. Maybe there wouldn’t be any leftovers after all. “That’s not a bad plan, but it’s been ten years and you haven’t found anything on the cryptids or your brother.”
I let the silence stretch, since part of me wanted to impress him by showing him the samples and tracks I’d found. The rest of me knew better.
Archer’s eyebrow quirked and his smile spread. “Have you found anything?”
“If I have, that’s my secret and not something I’m going to let anyone else steal,” I said. “Just so you know.”
Archer held his hands up and laughed. “Got it.” He put more rice on my plate and nudged the half-full containers toward me. “Eat more, Ada. You’ve got to keep up your strength.”
“I’m working on it. You just eat four times what a normal person does, so my plate looks tiny by comparison.” But I had to work to keep from giggling and batting my eyes at him.
That easy smile didn’t slip, even with the scars on his cheek. “Maybe.”
I held up my fork and waved a piece of chicken at him. “Reason number two for hunting cryptids. With all the evidence stacked up, I really believe they’re out there, and someone is eventually going to find one. There are a lot of things we can’t explain in the mountains, in the jungle, in the sea... There are some familiar species that everyone thought were extinct but remained alive deep within their habitat. I want to find the unfindable. I want to discover what no one else has discovered. I want to be...” I trailed off, searching for the right word.
And Archer found it for me. “Vindicated.”
“Yes,” I said, and slapped the table near his hand. “After years and years — a decade, maybe — of people acting like I’m crazier than a shithouse rat, it would be so satisfying to show them they were wrong. To prove I wasn’t making it up, that there are cryptids out there.”
His lips twitched. “And just how crazy are shithouse rats?”
“Very,” I said. My mouth dried out with the full force of that smile and his warm gaze, the close proximity of his hand next to mine, the random bump of his knee against mine. I realized suddenly neither of us had anything to drink and managed to stand. “I’ve gotta apologize for my manners, I should have offered you a drink. I don’t have anything but water, so —”
“Water’s great, and I can get it.” He stood next to me, a sudden furnace of body heat, and closed his fingers around mine after I hobbled to retrieve a glass. The spark that crackled between us was the complete opposite of feeling Dragomir near me, having him touch me. Archer’s voice rumbled deep in his chest, suddenly huskier and somehow more intimate. “You shouldn’t keep getting up. It can’t be good for your injuries.”
“I’ve survived worse.” And then I choked, because it was true and yet I almost hadn’t survived it. Twice. I wouldn’t have survived those injuries without Dragomir, and that was something I couldn’t afford to forget. It made me want to blurt out that I should have died and only something out of a nightmare saved me. I could have confessed and gotten us both in a world of trouble, and the words balanced on the tip of my tongue.
Archer set the glass down and gently caught my shoulders, a ghost of a touch that sent shivers through me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. Are you okay? I’ve kept you up jaw-jacking when you should be resting.”
“It’s fine.” I wanted to lean into his chest and let someone else hold me up for a while, but I’d known him less than a day, even if it felt like a whole lot longer. The typical defensiveness I slipped into naturally wasn’t even on the horizon when I looked at him. I didn’t believe in love at first sight, unless a surge in hormones counted, but I could see how the heady rush of anticipation and desire felt like love.
I leaned against the counter and stared at the neat line of pill bottles I’d left out. No alarm bells rang in my head over the intense feelings. I didn’t trust anyone except Betsy and my mom, maybe a couple of my old professors. I didn’t talk about Jamie with anyone, not even Betsy or Mom. Why was it so easy with Archer? Why did it feel like I knew him, that I could trust him? Uneasiness settled next to the butterflies in my guts, and I left the competing emotions to battle it out as I dragged myself back to the table.
He’d gotten his water by the time I made it.
Archer concentrated on the food instead of me. “Is there a third reason?”
I debated not telling him, since the big reason — the real reason — had stayed between me and Jamie and Dad for all those years. But maybe... Something felt right about telling Archer. With his job… he’d understand. He might have the last clue I needed, or know someone who did. Archer could bring answers instead of just questions, or a plan for how to do things differently. New theories could make the difference between the possible and the impossible. “Jamie was tracking an Ozark Howler when he disappeared. He was close. Real close. He’d even sent us some photos, a few coordinates, that confirmed it. He found the Howler, and he wanted to find its den.”
Archer’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t laugh and he didn’t stop me.
The words rushed out, like they’d been waiting to be spoken for ten long years. “I always thought... if I found the Howler, I’d find Jamie. Maybe he found the Howler or maybe he didn’t but found something else that didn’t want to be found. Maybe someone else found it first and they took Jamie. I don’t know. But I always felt that it all had to be connected. Somehow. Something out there knows what happened to him and I need to know who.”
His forearms rested on the table and the flannel shirt moved enough that I could see the trailing ends of the wicked scars that marked all the way to the back of his hand. It was starting to look like maybe he shouldn’t have survived that encounter, either. “It might be connected. You won’t know until you find him.”
At least he didn’t tell me I was stupid and in denial, or insist that I get over it and move on to something more appropriate for someone with my ‘talents.’ It shouldn’t have felt like a gift that he took me seriously, though it did.
“Thank you for sharing that, Ada. Really. It means a lot.” Archer studied me for a long moment, then slowly leaned back in his chair. “Now that I’ve asked you a lot of uncomfortable questions, how about we get down to why you called me. What can I do for you, Ada?”
“I thought about your offer. For a walk in the woods.” My cheeks warmed; I tried to blame it on the spicy curry. It didn’t help that a slow smile drizzled across his face like fresh honey. “The, uh, interviews on camera. I would consider it, but it’ll depend on — how much it pays.”
“In need of some extra cash?”
“Something like that.” He could look around the cabin and tell I needed money. And the medical bills from my stay in the hospital hadn’t even caught up with me. “I want to know the variables before I make a decision.”
Archer drummed his fingers on the table. “Well, that depends on how much time you spend on camera, how much personal history you’re willing to share, how many days we spend in the mountains, things like that. We can wait a couple of days to go hiking while you get your strength back, but we’d want to get some interviews taped while... well, while you’re still a little beat up.” He winced as he said it. “I know that sounds terrible, but —”
“Car crashes sell,” I finished. “I get it. Everyone stops to look when there’s a disaster.”
My fork stirred through the last pieces of rice on my plate as I pondered how much I was willing to debase myself for money. Money and maybe my brother. Protecting my moral compass by getting me out of helping Dragomir. Throwing away what remained of my academic reputation through reality TV.
Archer tapped the table near my hand until I looked up. “You don’t have to, Ada. Really. I know I’m supposed to push you toward being on camera and sharing your sad story and the horrors of what happened when you disappeared, but I don’t want to put you through that just because you need money.”
I sat back. “Why are you so nice?”
“Because I believe in karma,” he said. “Why are you so suspicious?”
“Because I don’t.” I could have moved my fingers a few millimeters to touch his. The urge gripped me until all I could see was his broad, blunt fingers with close-cropped nails and small white scars from nicks and cuts. “I appreciate that you’re trying to be nice. But I’ve considered this for a while. I even sent footage to another company in LA before I got – you know. Maybe you guys are the do-over I need.”
His head tilted. “Why don’t I put away the food, you can gather your thoughts, and then I’ll start a fire? It’s kind of chilly in here.”
“I’m not an invalid,” I said, trying not to laugh. “I can put away —”
“I insist.” Archer carried the food back to the kitchen, and I’d just stood up to stop him when he opened the fridge. He went still, then cleared his throat. “Uh, Ada?”
I gathered the plates from the table. “Yeah?”
“Why do you have bags of blood in your fridge?”
I froze. Dragomir’s blood. I’d tossed it in there as I was putting everything else away, and four bags of unlabeled blood sat on the empty lower shelf. Shit.
“Uh...” I trailed off and he didn’t speak, though he straightened to look over at me. I cleared my throat. Heat surged to my cheeks until I went lightheaded, and my back turned clammy with panic. “Yeah. About that... It’s, um, evidence.”
“Evidence? Of what?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
Archer’s expression turned from neutral to guarded. He stopped looking like a TV producer and started looking like a different kind of professional, and suddenly the hair cut looked less boyish and more military. The friendliness faded from his voice and eyes, and the sudden distance yawned between us like a ravine. “Give it a shot.”
I stared at the fridge and tried to think fast. For once my brilliant mind didn’t produce a single useful idea.