IDIOT. IDIOT. IDIOT. I GLARED AT MY REFLECTION IN the hotel mirror, which was shaking from the force of the storm pounding the wooden walls. Or maybe I was the one who was shaking. Idiot.

Admittedly, it hadn’t started out as my fault. I hadn’t, ah, initiated anything, or given any signs that could’ve been interpreted as such. However, it had become my fault when I’d kissed Hera Wilson right back. Now, I couldn’t even rationalize it. But in the moment . . .

I shook my head and went to close the window, realizing my papers were starting to be blown around the room. It jammed halfway, so I left it.

So much for not getting involved, the logical part of me hissed. Congratulations on successfully burning that bridge. Was it worth it? No.

Yes.

“Crake? Crake, you in there?”

I jumped, crossing the room in two strides and throwing open the door. Sergio was standing there, his shirt semi-transparent from a combination of rain and food grease. He raised his eyebrows.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I snapped. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and said, calmer, “Yes. What’s wrong?”

“What are the chances of staying here another day? The weather’s only going to get worse, apparently.”

“No! Of course we can’t! You know we can’t do that.” I made to shut the door. “Nice try, though.”

“I’m not messing with you, kid.” A beefy hand slid out and blocked me from locking up.

“Scared of a little rain?” I said, mimicking his own words.

“Listen—”

“We can’t change the plan any more than it’s already been changed. Please, stop making this so bloody difficult.”

The hand disappeared, and the lock clicked into place. After a few seconds, the telltale creak of floorboards announced he’d walked away.

Adults these days. I shuddered and resumed the pacing of my room.

Of all the possible hitches I’d prepared myself for, this was so completely unexpected I almost didn’t know what to feel or do. Poor road conditions, nattering guests, medical emergencies, logistics fiascos . . . all things I’d made sure I was ready to handle. Falling for a girl who was a “person of interest” for some mysterious crime—oh, and who also happened to have psychic-like abilities regarding obscure personal details—was, without a doubt, the last thing that’d crossed my mind.

Admitting it to myself didn’t make me feel any better. There were only three days left, barely a blink in the grand scheme of things. What was I expecting to happen when those days were up? What was I expecting to happen during that time?

Well, obviously you’re incapable of just keeping your distance.

A headache beginning to pound the inside of my skull, I collapsed on my bed, wincing as the springs shrieked, and stared at the discoloration on the ceiling. The cracks formed something that resembled a massive spider or the skeleton of a snowflake. I tried to focus on them, but . . .

Stubbornly, my mind replayed the kiss again and again and again like some stupid scratched record. The relief behind Hera’s burning eyes when I didn’t push her away. My own surprise, replaced with something bright and alive that I’d never felt before. The awkward bulkiness of her costume, the biting of the rain, then a flushed grin before she was gone again, heading to the hotel to get changed.

Now, I’d had girlfriends before. A date to middle school graduation that had lingered into high school, a best friend who had later evolved into something more. But those had been slow relationships, picking up traction after months of hesitation and uncertainty, fizzling out in the same steady decline. There had been time to think, to consider, to decide, to fall in and out of love in a regular fashion. This wasn’t even like those moments of fleeting attraction between strangers, something inconsequential and insubstantial; this was real enough to have me truly scared. I think it’d always been there from day one—it had just needed one of us to drag it out into the open, kicking and screaming, to make me admit it.

But I had a road trip to run, with two dozen other people who weren’t Hera Wilson on board. And that meant, as my dad would cheerily say, I had to stuff my crap in a sock and keep going as normal.

Wonderful.

I was awoken by the sound of distant thunder and my phone ringing. By the time I’d registered the latter, the line had already gone dead.

“I reckon you’ll be all right,” the bed-and-breakfast owner said, serving myself and eight other guests pancakes in the kitchen. She was still wearing her 1860s getup. “With the storm, I mean. The Weather Network said it shouldn’t hit in full force until the afternoon.”

“You have a TV in here?” I asked, amused.

She winked. “And five channels.”

So I spread the word that we needed to hustle and leave Barkerville as early as possible, then returned to my room, collected my things, and went out to check the coach was being loaded. On the way over, my phone rang again.

“Hello?” I said, the caller ID registering the number as unknown.

“Where are you, Lewis?” The voice on the other line was quiet, unsteady. Almost angry. It took me a minute to place where I recognized it from.

“Mr. Swierenga.” I set down my backpack and took a deep breath. “We’re about to leave Barkerville, sir.”

“That’s not where you’re supposed to be.”

“Ah, no, sir. But I was advised by the driver that this would be a safer option, given the current weather conditions. He told me you wouldn’t mind.”

There was a pause, and for a moment, I thought I’d lost the connection.

“Drivers do not have the authority to alter set itineraries, Lewis. Neither do you, for that matter. Unreliability is not a reputation a tour company wants to have.”

“I thought—”

“Now, I do trust your judgement, Lewis. Really I do. But the fact that I’m phoning you at all should disclose how out of control you’ve let this situation become.”

I frowned. “Out of control? Everything is in hand, sir.”

Swierenga gave a sardonic laugh. “Tell that to the RCMP.”

My throat went dry. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were Canada’s famous Mounties, but aside from their iconic red-uniformed touristy personas, they were the active national police force of the country. Whatever they were involved in was bigger than some localized misdemeanor.

“I’m not following you.”

“They were waiting for you in Quesnel.” Swierenga sounded weary. “They’re after one of our customers, apparently. Unfortunately, now we’re the ones who look bad, since I told them you’d be in Quesnel today and you quite clearly weren’t. It looks like you’re avoiding them.” Before I could protest, he went on, “I’m not saying that was your intention. At least, I hope to God it wasn’t. Just make sure you get yourself to town today and do all the sucking up you have to do, all right? And for the love of Pete, don’t improvise again. Severing contracts isn’t pleasant for either of us.”

“I understand.”

I held my phone in a clenched fist long after Swierenga hung up, heart hammering and emotion after emotion pulsing through my body. Irritation, fear, resignation, anger, and—more than ever—a burning curiosity. I had to tell her. I had to give her one last chance to explain herself.

The air was thick with humidity and the promise of rain, and running back to town was doubly as draining as it should’ve been. I avoided the tour group as much as possible, directing a few people to the coach and answering a few rushed questions, searching all the while for that distinctive blue ponytail. I found her with one of the town’s employees, a man dressed as a stagecoach driver, stroking his horse and cooing to it softly.

“Hera?”

She glanced upward, her smile fading at my expression. “What’s the matter?”

“I need to talk to you. Alone.”

We slipped down an alleyway between the saloon and the old blacksmith’s, avoiding the gigantic puddles that had materialized overnight. There was barely enough room to stand facing each other, my shoulders scraping the timber walls of both buildings.

“I had a call from my boss,” I said, diving right into it. “The RCMP are waiting for us in Quesnel.”

“Us?” She paled.

“Well, presumably just you. No names were mentioned, but taking a wild guess . . . ” I trailed off, gaging her reaction.

“Oh,” she whispered. “Shoot.”

“Yeah.”

Hera chewed on her lower lip, dark eyes glassed over. Wearing denim cutoffs and a simple white tank top, she seemed much . . . smaller, somehow, than she had yesterday in that oversized gown. “I was hoping we threw them off earlier.”

“So you admit it is you they’re after?”

She gave a tight bob of the head. “I think at this point, it’d be useless denying it.”

“What did you do?”

“Ah.” Hera finally met my gaze. “That, I’m afraid, is classified.” Her lips twitched into a sideways grin. “It’s far too much fun keeping you on the hook. I have a feeling the only reason you’re keeping me around is out of nosiness.”

“This isn’t funny!” I exclaimed, despite fighting back an exasperated grin of my own.

“No.” The smile was gone again. “I don’t suppose it is. Are you in much trouble?”

“I mean, they haven’t revoked my visa yet.”

She nodded for a second time. “Good. How long can you delay leaving without getting in hot water again?”

“Technically we don’t have to be in Quesnel until two o’clock, but if we leave it much longer we’ll be stuck in the storm. Why?”

“Well, first and foremost, I need to change your guest roster. If I’m on it when you arrive in Quesnel, then it’s game over for both of us. Then I need to disappear.”

Disappear. Out here, surrounded by nothing but mountains and dense wilderness, anyone could vanish in a matter of minutes. However, given that running into the woods was practically a death sentence, I imagined Hera had something far more intricate in mind.

“But how would you do either of those things?”

Too deep in thought to hear me, she began moving out of the alleyway toward the edge of the village, where the coach was parked. I followed, but right when I caught up with her again, she stopped so suddenly I nearly slammed right into her back.

“Jess?” we said in unison.

Jess Cartwright, hyper-visible in a yellow rain jacket, was staring at us through her glasses with an unnervingly sly expression. Emily was nowhere to be seen.

“You were eavesdropping,” Hera accused.

Jess clicked her tongue. “I’m deaf as a . . . well, I’m deaf, my dear. I barely heard anything. Except that you need time to make a getaway, that is.”

We exchanged a glance of alarm.

“Mrs. Cartwright—” I began.

She silenced me with a wave of her hand. “I’m offended you didn’t come to me in the first place. You know I was a Bond girl? I’m an expert in all these things.”

“Right. Of course.”

Ignoring our sarcasm, she continued, “How much time do you need?”

Hera shrugged. “Maybe three hours. But Jess—”

“One hour of us seniors being bothersome. Easy-peasy two hours after we get stuck when the storm hits. And voilà, your one-hour journey is quadrupled.” Jess winked. “I bet you’re wondering how I know all this! I used to be an actress in James Bond.”

Hera turned to me, eyes gleaming. “Would that work?”

I thought about it. There was no way I’d be able to stall for three hours. However, if we ended up getting stuck in the mountains while the storm hit . . . Yet, doing so would be incredibly dangerous. It wasn’t like the majority of the guests had cell phones, and if the road conditions deteriorated, the chances of an accident was exponentially multiplied.

“Lewis?” Concern crept into her tone.

“It would work,” I said slowly, “but you have to tell me what’s going on, Hera. I can’t risk all this not knowing why.”

She waited until Jess had sauntered away toward the bus, then said, desperate, “Look, you could already be charged with obstruction or accessory for helping me. At least this way, you can honestly claim you had no idea what I’ve done. You have to trust me when I say I’ve never done anything bad.”

“The RCMP might disagree with that.”

“Do you trust me or not?”

That, of course, depended on whether I decided to listen to my head or my heart. I’d never been much good at the former.

I shook my head and gave a short, humorless laugh. “God help me, I think I do.”

She visibly relaxed. “Can I borrow your phone?”

I handed it to her. What else could possibly go wrong, anyway?

I watched her dial a number, grit her teeth when the line went straight to an answering machine. “You’ve got to be kidding me, that little—oh! Hey! Listen, it’s . . . yeah, yeah. Shut up and let me speak. No, I . . . I need a favor. Pronto.”