7
PETE’S BREATH CONGEALED IN THE MORNING AIR, a fog of frustration and all-out horror as he stepped back from the overturned truck. It lay half-in, half-out of the dirt-brown and angry Mercy River. The glass from the windshield had shattered and littered the mud and grass like pale-red tears as it reflected the dawn.
Pete had clambered down to the crash, slipping on the dew-slicked grasses uprooted and torn from the vehicle’s descent, his entire body coiled with the fear of what he’d find.
Empty. He had braced himself on the frame, breathing hard, keenly aware of the chill in the air. And he couldn’t take his gaze off the blood splattered on a twisted mangle of metal door that was sharpened like a spear. They had to have taken a header off the highway at an alarming rate of speed to incur this much damage.
They’d rolled, and the roof dented in as if the Almighty had put his fist into it.
Please, let God have also pulled them out, rescued them.
“You need to sit down and put your head between your knees.” Gage had come down, a little less quickly, not falling on his backside and wetting his jeans through in a full-out, sweat-slicked panic.
Behind him, Felipe had also picked his way down, and now, grim faced, searched the truck.
“I’m fine,” Pete said, but he crouched anyway, braced his hand onto the ground just to keep himself from going over. “Are we sure this is the truck they left the wedding in?”
The skid marks on the pavement had alerted a morning driver who’d spotted the truck down the embankment on its side and called Mercy Falls 911. Ian had confirmed that Ned had picked up Shae in a late-model Ford F-150, and when patrol read off the Minnesota plates, Pete followed Sam’s lights out to the accident location.
“Yeah, this is the same truck,” Ian said, his jaw tight. He’d dropped Pete off at Willow’s house to retrieve his truck, had presided over the terse apology Pete offered Felipe, who waited for him at PEAK HQ. Felipe had shaken Pete’s hand and glared at him like he wanted to have another go-round.
Pete shook off the urge to offer up a time and place.
It wouldn’t help find Jess. And no doubt, wouldn’t help Pete win her back.
At the moment, he just wanted her alive. He’d figure out who got the happily-ever-after later.
“They must have rolled, at least twice,” Gage said. “I hope they were belted in.”
“Except they’re not here, are they?” Pete rose, still woozy.
“Maybe they got out, tried to find help?” Felipe suggested.
Sam treaded down the hill toward them. On the highway, a convention of patrol cars churned bright red lights into the sky, and criminal investigators examined the scene. “It looks like they might have been forced off the road.”
Pete pressed a hand to his gut.
“There is another set of tracks, and it looks like whoever ran them off also stopped to check on them. There’s a set of tire prints in the ditch, with a few sets of footsteps leading down the embankment.”
“And back up.” Pete found them now, imprinted deep into the mud. “Although they look like the same person.” He crouched, pointed to an overlapping set. “And they’re deep. As if he might be carrying someone.”
“Or all three, one after the other?” Felipe asked, coming over to stand by Pete.
Pete stood up. “Yeah. Maybe.” He turned to Sam. “Show me.”
Sam led him up the hill, and Pete stood for a long moment staring at the indentation of truck tires, wide-set wheels. Older tires, given the smooth grooves between the raised seams in the mud. He followed them along the ditch, then stopped, stared at the other side of the road. “The driver turned around.”
He crossed the highway and found the curved, muddy path that led away from the ditch. “He took them away from Mercy Falls.”
Sam came up, stood beside him. Silent.
And really, what could he say? We’ll find them? Yeah, well, that was a given.
Jess will be fine? Pete couldn’t hear that right now.
Sam put his hand on Pete’s shoulder and squeezed. “Let my CSI guys do their job. You get back to the ranch, set up a search grid, and get Kacey and Ben in the air.”
Pete wanted to weep at the comfort of a to-do list. He nodded and nearly sprinted to his truck.
Gage slid onto the seat beside him, while Felipe got in beside Ian. Ian followed Pete back to the ranch.
Sierra had coffee brewing. Ty, Chet, Ben, and Kacey were leaning over a giant map in the kitchen of the old ranch-house-turned-search-and-rescue HQ. Even Willow was on-site, helping Sierra stir up breakfast. Breakfast burritos in tinfoil piled on a plate.
Ian, Felipe, and Gage came in behind them. The sun had cleared the mountains to the east, fingers of light peeling back the shadows, lighting the grasses afire. Dark indigo clouds cluttered the sky, and Pete suspected Kacey had already downloaded the weather report, one that included winds, if not a storm front. He braced himself for the worst.
Instead, “The clouds are headed east, over the mountains, and we already know the vehicle carrying them headed south on Highway 2, so we can start there.” She met Pete’s eyes. “I’ll fly as long as I can see, Pete. I promise.”
He noticed she didn’t look at Felipe.
Selene might belong to Felipe, but Jess was his.
Except, no she wasn’t. And that thought still had the power to put fingers around his throat, squeeze. Still, he knew Jess Tagg.
Jess Tagg was a survivor.
Pete nodded and moved over to the map. “We have a number of side roads to search too. I have no idea what we might be looking for, although from the tire bed, it looks like an older model pickup with worn tires, so my guess is that the body might be a match. And we probably should check any of the local clinics, including Kalispell Regional, just in case we’re reading this wrong and what we have here is a do-gooder who brought them to the hospital.” Please, please.
“I’ve already put in a call to the local hospitals,” Sierra said, walking over with the plate of food. “No one matching Jess, Ned, or Shae’s description came into the ER last night.”
The silence pitched about the room.
Who would run Jess—and Ned and Shae—off the road and steal their bodies?
No, not bodies. Because they were alive.
They had to be.
“This is a kidnapping,” Pete said finally. “We’ll break into teams and search the back roads. Ian and Felipe, you take Pioneer Road and Helene Flats Road and the surrounding areas. Ty, you and Sam take the roads on the other side of the highway—Rose Crossing and Trumble Creek. Gage and I will head down to 35 and work our way north on the other side of the river.”
“We’ll do a scan of the entire area,” Kacey said, taking a burrito and heading out to the barn that only the night before had been filled with tables, twinkly lights, happiness, and forever-afters. Pete followed her out, along with Ben.
Ty had already checked the batteries on their two-ways in the equipment room, and handed them out, along with emergency medical bags.
“I’ll touch base with dispatch and see if they’ve gotten any 911 calls.” Sam had come in behind them. He glanced at Pete.
We’ll find her. He saw the words in Sam’s eyes and didn’t want them sitting inside him, churning up hope to intermix with the fear, to make him crazy.
“Don’t say it,” Pete said with a shake of his head. Because he didn’t need hope.
Not when he had resolve. Yes, he would find her. And if God was merciful, she’d be alive.
Pete climbed into his truck, and Gage slid in beside him. Handed him a foil-wrapped burrito and a travel mug of coffee.
The clouds rolled over the horizon as he drove south, along Highway 2. The Rockies edged them to the east, a hazy, razor-edged blue. Green pasture rippled out from the pavement, cordoned off by barbed wire. Bungalows, ranch houses, and lodges sat back from the road, on the bank of the Mercy River. The air smelled of wood fires, evidence of last night’s cold snap.
“It’s supposed to get below freezing tonight,” Pete said, setting his coffee back into the cup holder.
The burrito sat unwrapped. The last thing his gut could handle at the moment was food, especially with his brain flirting with horrendous what-ifs. He’d seen enough tragedy over the past few years to have a too-honest idea of what might have happened.
Or be happening, right now, to Jess. And Shae. And okay, even Ned.
Kidnapped.
No, no food for him.
He might even lose the coffee.
Gage said nothing, bringing his binoculars to his eyes occasionally. But really, they hadn’t a clue what they might be looking for. Not until they got an ID on that mysterious truck.
They needed a lead, and desperately.
The morning waxed long and quiet as they drove, cutting east on Highway 35, then north up 206, searching the dirt byroads and paved crossroads, working their way back to Mercy Falls.
Around ten o’clock, they gassed up, and Sam checked in with a no-go report.
At noon, Kacey and Ben returned for fuel. They picked up Brette, Ty’s girlfriend, and set back out, with her snapping aerial photos for them to examine later.
By two, Ian and Felipe had finished their grid and returned to the ranch house. Ian grabbed lunch, and they hit the highway north, just in case Pete read the tracks wrong.
Pete made his way to Mercy Falls, turned around, and backtracked. Gage ate his burrito.
Sam called in around 3:00 p.m. with a report of the tracks. “The tire cast showed cracks at the edges. Something that can happen when a vehicle hits a pothole or debris.”
“On any number of the undermaintained dirt roads around here.” Pete had pulled over onto the side of the road, watching as a V of Canada geese flew south, the pattern interrupted by a few stragglers.
“Could be a hunter. There was also evidence of cupping or scuffing. It’s a diagonal pattern of curves that occurs when you carry heavy loads in the trunk or cargo area. The weight changes the geometry of the suspension and it shows in the tire pattern. But it often happens in lighter vehicles.”
“So, an older model, off-road truck, not one of the heavy F-150s, but a lighter model. Like Dad’s old Ford Ranger.”
“And the weight—could be a topper.”
A topper.
“There’s more. The CSIs found specks of light blue paint on the pavement near the skid marks. They think it’s from the truck. They’re putting it through an analysis to determine the paint type, maybe get a make and model.”
“Thanks, Sam.”
A beat. “Breathe, Pete. We’ll—”
“Yeah.” Pete hung up and put his truck into gear. “Blue truck, maybe a topper. Older model.”
Gage nodded and lifted his glasses.
The setting sun poured out despair as Pete headed north, back to PEAK. Back to nothing. The sky turned eerily orange, the mountains aflame with the debris of autumn. The wind littered shorn maple and oak leaves across the road.
Pete pulled up to the house and parked next to Ian’s truck. Gage got out. Closed the door.
Pete didn’t have the heart to follow him inside. Instead he found himself walking over to the chopper. A new one, courtesy of donors after the crash that had nearly killed Jess over a year ago.
She’d been lost in the forest, a fire consuming the world around her, the team unable to get to her.
Not on his watch. Pete had gotten out his map, ignored the closing of the forest service roads, and found a back way on his four-wheeler into Dawson’s Creek, where she’d been hiding out at a forest service cabin.
If he closed his eyes, he could still see her standing at the edge of a cliff, about to jump into blackness, the flames around her.
He’d been ready to burn with her, if it came to that, because he wasn’t going to leave her to roast to death. Instead, he’d reached her in the nick of time.
And the look on her face—yeah, he could have died a happy man seeing her sheer, amazed disbelief. The way she clung to him, her body pressed to his as they careened off the cliff into the dry creek bed below.
Not unlike how she’d held on to him as he’d rappelled them away from a grizzly only a year earlier.
But it wasn’t just the fact that, inadvertently, she made him feel like her hero; it was the way she took him seriously. Believed in him.
“Pete. How you doin’, bro?”
Pete wiped a hand across his cheek before he turned to his brother. Sam stood in the driveway, his hands in his pockets. “Sierra made some chili.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Of course not. But eat anyway.”
Pete’s mouth tightened, and he walked over to the bench near the door of the hangar and sat down, his head against the cool metal siding. “It’s going to freeze tonight.”
Sam came over, sank down next to him.
“She called me.” He looked at Sam. “When she was going off the road, she called me.”
Sam nodded, understanding in his eyes.
Pete looked at the sky, now streaked with fire. “It’s the waiting. It’s the not knowing. It’s the helplessness. It’s the fact that right now, she needs me and I’m not there.”
“It’s Dad, all over again,” Sam said softly.
Dad. Who had gotten lost on a ski hill following Pete off trail. He’d fallen in a tree well and frozen to death while a blizzard closed in on the mountain. And Pete hadn’t even noticed. Had skied all the way to the bottom without a backward glance, just one, that would have saved his dad’s life.
Sam had forgiven him, finally, two years ago.
Pete hadn’t found it quite so easy to do the same. And that had led him down a path that . . . well, he could easily put the blame for his behavior on not a little self-hate.
But that behavior insulated him, made him focus on the immediate shame and not the deeper, embedded inability to face himself in the mirror.
The old Pete had saved him. Until, of course, it nearly destroyed him.
Pete closed his eyes, the burn in them turning his jaw tight. “I royally screwed up, Sam.”
He let the words sit there in the shadows.
Because Sam had no idea what he was talking about. Couldn’t know. Because Pete barely could face it himself.
He didn’t deserve Jess, even if he found her, even if she wanted him back.
Sam didn’t retort, just sat in silence.
And the rest of it burned in his chest, aching for air, for release.
“I told you I proposed in Paris.”
“Mmmhmm.”
“She said she loved me and promised to follow me back to Montana. So I got on a plane.” He shook his head. “I should have never gotten on that plane.”
Sam leaned forward, his arms on his knees.
“After a couple days, when she didn’t call, I called her. My call went to voice mail. And the next one, and the next one. And then a couple weeks had gone by and I started to get mad. I stopped calling . . . and she never called back. I realize she was overseas, but . . . two months, Sam,” Pete said. “I didn’t hear from her for two whole months. It was like . . . like I’d been deleted.”
The smell of smoke curled out into the night.
“Nothing?”
“Not until New Year’s Eve. Late. I was out with friends and I got a call. I stared at the number, recognized it as Jess’s and . . . I . . . I was just so angry. And trying to figure out if I was supposed to live without her. And . . .”
“What did you do, Pete?” Sam had glanced over, his jaw hard, and Pete winced.
Because shoot, his brother knew him.
“I declined the call. And the next one. And then I . . . I blocked her number.”
He wanted to wince at his own words, and even what he was omitting. But he had been hurting. Needy. And the old Pete had revived, trying to save him.
Thankfully, Sam said nothing to probe deeper, unearth the rest.
“I unblocked it a month later, but . . . she never called back.”
Sam leaned back. “Why didn’t you call her?”
“Because I was hurt. And I thought . . . okay, I don’t know what I thought. Maybe that she should want me a little too. That maybe if she didn’t hear from me, she would hop on a plane and track me down too.” He leaned forward, his hands over his face. “And then last night . . .”
He got up, strode away. Stood staring at the sky. “If she’s dead, Sam, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Sam didn’t move. “This isn’t your fault, Pete.”
He rounded on Sam. “She was in that truck because I pushed her away. Because I let my pride get in the way. Just like it did with Dad. And now she’s missing, probably hurt, and I’m not there to save her.”
He wanted—needed—to hit something. So when Sam got up, Pete held up his hands in surrender, backing away. “I’m not in a good place, here, Sam.”
“Take a breath, Pete. I get it. But I repeat. This is not your fault. And neither was Dad’s death.”
Pete shook his head.
“Maybe it feels easier to blame yourself than to simply admit that stuff happens and you have no control over it.”
The truth just spilled out, fast, harsh. “I might be less apt to blame myself if I actually believed that God was on my side, that I wasn’t a screw-up that had it coming. That somehow the people I love aren’t going to pay for my mistakes.”
Shoot, he didn’t know why he’d decided to strip it all away and stand practically naked in the cold in front of his brother. But Sam didn’t flinch. Just looked at him and shook his head. “So that’s why you spent the last ten years driving me crazy.”
Pete frowned.
“Because you thought if you acted like a jerk, like you didn’t care about the world or anybody else, then when bad things happened to you, you deserved them.”
Pete swallowed. Yeah, well . . .
“Guess what, pal? God doesn’t create a blizzard because he’s trying to punish you. Or cause a crazy man to force your girlfriend off the road because you slept with some girl—”
“If you’re referring to Aimee, I didn’t sleep with her.” Not that the clarification really mattered, but . . . okay, maybe it did.
Sam raised an eyebrow.
Pete looked away. “I couldn’t.”
Sam cocked his head.
“I mean, I could. Of course I could.” Now he might be going overboard because a smile ran up one side of Sam’s face. “But I didn’t. Because I chose not to. Because . . . I don’t know. I . . .” Pete ran the back of his hand across his mouth. “I’m broken, Sam. I . . . I lost the old me.” He gave a burst of laughter that had him cringing. “Oh, you have no idea. I’m clearly a mess.”
“No, bro.” Sam grinned at him. “You love Jess. And that changes everything, doesn’t it? When you meet real love for the first time? You want to be worthy of it. Want to pursue it with everything inside you. And that means leaving behind the guy who ran after the cheap. You want to be the guy who deserves it.”
“But I don’t deserve it.” Pete turned away, the words, the truth again pulsing, fighting for air.
Sam, perfect, honorable Sam couldn’t possibly understand the impulses that made Pete . . . well, undeserving.
“Probably not,” Sam said quietly. “But love says it doesn’t matter. True love—unconditional love—declares you worthy just because it chooses you. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
The words settled in Pete’s gut, made a fist.
He didn’t know that kind of love.
So, he forced out something easy, anything to change the subject. “Since when did you turn into a romantic?”
Sam said nothing, as if debating his answer. Then he shrugged, letting Pete off the hook. “Engaged, bro. Or did you forget that part?”
Jerk. “Right.”
“I am right. And oddly, suddenly, for the first time in your life, so are you. Taking the chance to be a different guy. To lean into love. Because that’s the right direction. And the next step is to start trusting that love. To believe in it and truly let it change you.”
Oh, no problem. Except . . . “You’ve been hanging around Willow too much. Because I have this feeling we’re no longer talking about . . .”
“Yeah. I’m talking about God’s love, Pete. You gotta start trusting in God’s love for you. For Jess. Lean into it. Let it change you. Let it set you free.”
Pete held up his hand. “Listen, how about we revisit this after God hears my prayer and saves Jess’s life.”
Sam considered him. “He’ll find her, Pete.”
Pete just blinked at that. “No. I’ll find her.” He had to. Because he knew the truth.
God might love Jess—of course he did—but Pete knew himself.
Knew the darkness that resided inside.
He turned and walked toward the house.
Ned had never, not once, jumped fire into the Bob Marshall Wilderness. If this was the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Frankly, it could be any of the millions of acres of protected wildland areas of Montana. But they must be deep into some untamed forest, judging by the narrow deer trails, the cluttered, old growth of Douglas fir, larch, and shaggy black spruce. A looming escarpment, over 1,000 feet high, that walled the east as far as he could see suggested that they had driven at least ten, maybe twenty miles into the wilderness.
Still, he knew enough about the rugged Montana landscape to know that if he headed west, he’d find a road.
But first, he found a river—a fast-flowing, waist-high river that spanned twenty or more feet in places—and he realized that he could either cross the river and head southeast, along the ridge of whatever jagged peak shadowed the valley, slicking it with a late afternoon chill, or walk due west, along the creek, and hopefully to civilization.
Problem was, in order to get a cell phone signal, he also had to get to high ground. And, if he got higher, he’d also get the lay of the land.
He muscled his ache into a hard ball, crossed the river, and headed up the ridge. It led him out into the open, through a meadow filled with purple crow garlic. He picked the heads and ate them. As he ascended, he walked through fireweed, and white, gold-nectared pearly everlasting. He spotted evidence of wildfire—maybe two or three years old, a vast acreage of barren, blackened trees—that brought to mind the hours and years trekking through burning forests, just a Pulaski and a chainsaw to stop the wave of destruction.
He missed that—the gritty, dirty battle against nature. And he missed his boys—the Jude County hotshots, and later smokejumpers. The crew that worked with him. The camaraderie.
Another reason for his decision to join the navy.
No, if he were honest, the navy sign-up had to do with the fact that he simply couldn’t sit around the farm one more minute.
Ned reached the ridge, sweat slicking down his spine, and stood for a moment, trying to find his bearings.
The sun had sailed past the apex of the sky, heading west, and sighting it, he turned and examined the valley behind him, divided by the river.
Beyond that, miles in the distance, he made out what could be a road winding through the trees.
But first, he pulled out his cell phone. Got a flicker of a bar. Dialed 911.
Please.
The connection struggled, and he pulled it away from his ear, watching the icon spin. Connecting . . .
Then, abruptly, he got a hit. “911 . . . will . . . hold?”
“Are you kidding me? No!” But the call clicked off, and when he looked, the connection had died.
Seriously.
He held up his phone, and not only did the bar flicker, but his battery beeped down to three percent. Nice, just perfect.
He dialed the only number he could think of. Please, someone be home.
The voice that answered rocked him back. “Yo. Bro. ’Sup?”
Fraser? But he didn’t have time to ask his SEAL brother what he was doing home, or where he’d been this summer when they’d really needed him. “Fraser,” he said. “I was run off the road last night and someone is trying to kill us and—” No, no, make it easier. Quicker. “I’m in Montana. In the middle of a forest, and Shae and Jess are hurt—”
He attributed Fraser’s cut-to-the-chase response to his military training. “Where in Montana?”
“I think I’m south of Glacier National Park, but I could be wrong. Maybe the Bob Marshall Wilderness, but it could be anywhere.”
His phone beeped, another bar down.
“Landmarks, bro.”
Right. “I see a lake to the southwest. And . . . there’s a big peak to my east.”
“That’s all of western Montana!”
“Okay, there’s—wait. A bunch of switchbacks in the valley below, dirt roads. And to my northwest, about eleven o’clock, there’s a crow’s nest. A lookout tower.”
The phone beeped again.
“I’m losing you—call Shae’s friends. The PEAK guys, see if—”
“Stay warm and find shelter. Stay alive. We’ll—”
The phone died.
Find you.
That’s what he imagined Fraser was about to say. But really, what echoed in Ned’s brain was Fraser’s previous words. “That’s all of western Montana.”
Oh, he’d done a stellar job of pinpointing their location.
But the crow’s nest—that might still be an active fire lookout, with a working radio.
And if he could get back to the river, he could follow it west . . .
Or, he could keep hiking along the river, toward the clearing he’d spotted in the trees, maybe a trail, or even one of those forest service switchbacks.
But the ridge on the other side offered a path to the lookout tower.
The sun chased him down the ridge, and by the time he reached the river, the sweat was threatening to turn to chill. With no resources save his leather jacket—which he probably should have left with Shae and Jess, come to think of it—and his body achy, he needed to find shelter before it got dark.
He crossed the river and found hoofprints indenting the spongy grasses. And farther down, in the dusky light, he spotted the remains of a campfire, the ash dry and white but recent enough for him to conjure up a crew of hunters.
Deer season in the backwoods. He’d spent one autumn in Ember, Montana, after hotshot season and had gone out hunting with Reuben Marshall, a Montana cousin.
Deer season meant hunters. And maybe walkies. Or cell phones with transponders. He followed the trail up along the ridge, squinting in the wan dusk of light. The path arched above the river, back into the trees. He guessed himself maybe four miles from where he’d left Shae and Jess—his route memorized by the lay of the land, the peaks and ridges.
Maybe he should go back, stay safe and warm, like Fraser said.
But he’d never been very good at staying put. Something his brothers had taught him. Both of them, but especially Fraser, the hotshot, the football star, the golden child.
And shoot, Ned did want to follow in his footsteps. Prove that he was every bit the man Fraser was. More perhaps, because Fraser had never jumped out of a plane from 3,000 feet into an inferno, armed with only a Pulaski and a chainsaw.
Hooyah.
Ned’s body had started to work out the ache and he’d found his rhythm, the forest speaking to him as he listened to the rush of water to his right, the creak and moan of the trees arching over him. The sun simmered in the west, turning the sky a tufted orange and lavender, the valley below a deep, burning umber, the trees nearly black in relief against the flame.
And ahead, just an outline, the crow’s nest rose from some unnamed peak, a dark sentinel. He guessed it six miles away, maybe more.
Maybe he’d find the hunters first.
He stopped, looking back along his route, just another moment to memorize the dent of forest, and . . .
Through the trees, back along his route, on the other side of the river, a light flickered on.
A porch light, or maybe a front light.
A cabin. Peeking through the woods, maybe two miles downhill.
Thank you, thank you. He turned, and his footfalls sent rocks tumbling down the slope.
A wolf howled in the distance, the echo lonely and dissipating into the breeze.
Ned picked up his pace to nearly a jog.
When the shot rang out, he jerked at the report. The explosion echoed down the river valley, ricocheted against the cliff wall, and slowed him.
Hunters.
Or . . . worse.
Ned took off in a run.
The second explosion spun him around, flashed fire through his body. He gasped, the pain blinding, crumpling him to his knees.
His momentum sent him over the edge of the ridge. He skidded down the cliff, his body aflame as he jerked and howled, scrabbling for purchase. Writhing, he tumbled and slid and burned and landed, a hard jolt at the bottom that emptied his lungs.
Sucking wind hard, he fought for breath like a drowning man.
His vision finally cleared, and the world returned to him in hard, brutal planes.
Someone had shot him.
Maybe in the back. Maybe the leg. He couldn’t tell. But his heartbeat whooshed in his ears as he lay there, gathering himself. Assessing, trying to locate the source of his injury.
But for the moment, he could do nothing but lie in the darkness, whimpering.
Jess would surrender her entire trust fund for a fire. It didn’t even have to be big. Just a trickle of flame from a tiny mound of twigs, enough to heat her fingers back to life, maybe touch her core with a lick of warmth.
And mostly to keep Shae from shivering herself into hypothermia. Jess sat against the cave wall, Shae’s back to her chest, Jess’s arms and legs wrapped around her to keep her from losing too much body heat. The temperature during the day hadn’t exactly been frigid, but being half-exposed to the elements and sitting on a hard rock enclave had done nothing to add precious heat to Shae’s body.
Jess had left long enough to find pine boughs and drag them back to the cave in an effort to create a sort of bed off the floor. Although the spines of the boughs dug into her backside, left indentations and bruises, it got them off the damp rock. And with the sun setting, they needed any advantage as the chilly air crept in through their flimsy clothes.
Shae wore a pair of leggings and a dress, her jean jacket more decoration than outerwear. And Jess rued the thought—the one that had her wanting to attract Pete’s attention should he be at the reception—that made her don her black dress.
So, they needed each other. Jess periodically reached down to check Shae’s pulse. It had slowed, dangerously so, Jess thought, and a touch to Shae’s forehead suggested she didn’t shiver from cold but from the temperature she ran.
“Shae, how are you doing?”
Shae groaned, and Jess jostled her awake. “Tell me about Ned. Where did you meet him?”
Outside, the sunlight had shrunk back into the forest, leaving the night to seep into their enclave. Please, let Ned have found help. Because if he hadn’t made it back yet, she hadn’t a clue how he’d find his way back now. Only with flashlights and SAR equipment and guys like Pete who—
No.
“C’mon, Shae, wake up. Tell me about Ned.”
Shae moaned, but she opened her eyes.
“You met this summer, in Minnesota?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“How?”
“He was . . . at the country music festival when the tornado hit. We hid together.”
Oh. The tornado that destroyed the tiny town of Duck Lake, Minnesota, where Ben King had been playing. His father, Chet, had gone missing, and the PEAK team deployed to hunt him down.
“His brother was lost in the tornado.”
“Oh no.”
Shae drew in a breath. “He lived. Because PEAK found him.”
Right. True to form, Chet had managed to save the lives of five teenagers on the local track team. “Was his brother on the track team?”
“No. He was trapped with the other half of the team. I helped with the search.”
And apparently, hit it off with Ned. “Are you two dating?”
“I . . . I don’t know. We got . . . close. During the search.”
Yeah, well, high trauma and stress did that to people. Brought out their worst. Or best.
When it came to Pete, definitely his best. His heroic, I-will-show-up aura that made a girl believe that he might, at any moment, poke his head into the cave and tell her that everything would be okay. That she didn’t have to be afraid. That no one was getting hurt today, not on his watch.
“I don’t know why he came to Montana,” Shae said softly. “Not that I’m complaining. He’s . . .”
“Cute.”
“Yeah. And kind. And patient. He used to be a smokejumper. He knows Pete from a few summers ago when they jumped fire together.”
That information sent a sliver of hope through Jess. It meant that maybe Ned was cut from the same cloth. The never-give-up fabric.
“Except, after this, he’ll probably run back to Minnesota as fast as he can.” Shae shook her head.
“What are you talking about? I saw the way he carried you, the way he talked to you. He’s not running away.”
“He should. I just cause trouble, everywhere I go. And someday he’s going to get hurt—he already is.” She shook her head. “I should have never come back to Montana.”
Yeah, well, Jess understood that sentiment. All the same, “Give the guy a chance to prove you wrong. He might do something . . . well, amazing.” Like show up in Paris.
Like propose at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
Like become Mister Romantic when she least expected it.
“And if he does, don’t second-guess it. Just believe it. Hold on to it. Because a man giving his heart away is a rare and beautiful thing.”
“Is that what you meant in the car? When you said that what you did to him wasn’t fair?” Shae asked. “What did you do to him?”
Oh. Jess closed her eyes. “I broke his heart.”
“How?”
The last thing Jess wanted to do was take a trek down the most painful year of her life. Well, not exactly the most painful, but watching your mother be diagnosed with a terminal illness, watching her deteriorate, it was right up there with having cops show up at your door and drag your father to prison.
Or maybe, walking through hordes of haters, listening to them call you and your family names, dodging epithets and sometimes even worse.
“It’s a long story.”
“I have a date later, but I could pencil you in for now,” Shae said.
Jess gave a sad smile. “I don’t know where to start.”
“You said you went home to New York City.”
“Yes. Right. Well, I returned home to more than I imagined. Between visiting my father in prison, packing the house to move, and her social calendar, my mother needed help. So I started filling in, going to events with Felipe, and that included a trip to Paris. Problem was, with everything that was going on, and Pete’s callouts, we kept missing each other. Pete finally came to New York City for a fund-raiser and found me. But I was on my way to Paris. The last thing I ever imagined was that Pete would follow me.”
“To Paris?”
“I know. I couldn’t believe it when Pete showed up at the country estate where Felipe’s family was holding a party. I mean, Pete Brooks, Montana cowboy, dressed in a silk suit, showing up at a horse race, drinking champagne . . . it was surreal.”
“Pete did that? He’s so romantic.”
Huh. Funny. She’d never thought about that, but maybe, in his own way, Pete was devastatingly romantic. “We drove back to Paris and eventually ended up at the Eiffel Tower. Where he proposed.”
And for a moment, she was there, sinking into his arms. “Of course I will marry you.”
“What did you say?”
“I said yes. And I intended to follow him stateside . . .”
“Don’t break my heart.” Oh Pete, I’m sorry.
“And then . . . then, well, let’s just say that everything crashed around me. And Felipe was there to help pick up the pieces.”
“Your former fiancé.”
“Yeah.”
“If you had Felipe, why did you choose Mercy Falls to escape to?”
“Because . . . I was afraid I would destroy Felipe’s life with the scandal. I knew Ty Remington. We skied together as kids, and he was Felipe’s roommate.”
“So he hid you.”
“He helped me get a job. Start over.” And live the lie.
“Did he introduce you to Pete?”
“Pete joined PEAK, and we started out as friends. But, well . . .”
“It’s Pete. He’s hard to ignore.”
“I fell hard. I had changed my name, wanting to leave that life behind. I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt because of me. But Pete is a true hero. He rescued a group of kids, and the press was all over him. He wanted to give me the credit and I just . . . well, I freaked out. I didn’t want anyone to find me.” And because she’d been desperate, she’d turned to Ty.
Ty, who stepped between her and Pete.
Ty, who pretended to be her boyfriend, until he fell hard for his own true love.
“I hurt Pete and he left town.” All because she feared telling him the truth about her past.
Because who would love a woman who betrayed her family?
Apparently, Pete.
“He came back about a year later, told me he couldn’t forget me. That he loved me. And he proposed for the first time.”
“He’s proposed to you twice?”
The words hit her exactly as they should. Because yes, Pete had proposed twice, and frankly, she didn’t deserve a third chance. Which she’d never get anyway.
“It was bad timing. My dad had a heart attack in prison, and suddenly I feared losing him and the life I’d had, although I had walked away from it. Pete figured out that I wasn’t ready, and right about then Ian and Sierra went missing—”
“Wait. I remember this. I came to your house, and Pete answered the door . . .”
That’s right. Shae had walked back into their lives, and suddenly Jess had realized she was tired of running, of hiding. So she’d told Pete she chose him. Wanted him.
“You were there for the rest. When we found Ian and his shipmates, I knew one of them. She called Felipe, and he showed up at the hospital.”
“And you left for New York City.”
And she left for New York City. “My mother was . . . well, I had read it all wrong. She was thrilled to see me. My brother had moved to England, so she was alone. We visited my father often as he recovered, and then . . . well, I started to notice that something wasn’t quite right. She kept forgetting things, and her hands shook. I took her to the doctor for tests, but they couldn’t find anything. And then . . . then Pete showed up at a fund-raising gala in New York City. I couldn’t believe it. I was so . . . shocked. And thrilled to see him. Because although Felipe wanted to get back together, I . . .”
“You still loved Pete.”
Jess leaned her cheek against Shae’s head. “I’ve never stopped.”
“What happened in Paris when everything fell apart?”
“I went back to Felipe’s chateau prepared to tell him that I was ready to move back to Montana. And discovered that he’d been trying to get ahold of me.” She closed her eyes. “My mother had a seizure.”
“Where have you been, Selene?”
She opened her eyes. “Felipe met me at the door, and he was panicked and angry. He told me that my mother had collapsed at the reception. He was crazy with worry. I’d texted him, but he’d never gotten it—I found out later that my phone plan wouldn’t work overseas. Felipe took me to the hospital, and I was there for over a week as the doctors tried to figure out what was wrong. And Felipe—he was so sweet the entire time.
“I was upset about Pete—of course Felipe knew I’d been with him. He let me use his phone to call Pete, but he didn’t pick up. I called twice, then again, a couple days later. My life was consumed by doctors and tests and . . . pretty soon a couple weeks had gone by. I thought we’d head home, so I decided to talk to Pete when we got stateside.
“But a couple weeks stretched out to after Christmas, and by the time we got home, well, nearly two months had gone by since Pete had left. I know it was selfish . . . I guess I thought he’d understand. And he probably would have, if I’d tried harder and actually got ahold of him.”
Shae had reached out, taken her hand. Squeezed. “I get it. I should have told Uncle Ian I was alive. The longer I waited, the harder it was to face the hurt I’d caused him.”
“Yeah. And I was also trying to figure out how to tell my father that my mother was—is—dying.”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah. We found out that she has a disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob. It’s a fast-acting, degenerative brain disorder.”
“Yeah. I’m so thankful Pete told me to go home.” The words just spilled out, a realization she hadn’t quite formed before. Because of Pete she got to say good-bye.
“When Mother got out of the hospital, she had one request—that Felipe and I get married before she died.”
Shae leaned over and looked up at her. In the barest of fading light, Jess met her eyes. “I wanted to tell her no, but . . . she was hurting and scared and I thought I’d eventually find a way to tell her that I didn’t love Felipe that way anymore. But, at the moment I didn’t know what to do.”
“What did you do?”
“It was Felipe’s idea to tell my mother we were engaged. He . . . well, he had his reasons. Namely, a woman he was desperately in love with who he couldn’t be with. At first, I thought he was trying to make her jealous. But it’s more complicated than that. And now . . . he seems to really want to marry me.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know . . . I don’t want to hurt Felipe. He’s a good man. When he suggested the engagement, I thought we’d simply go through the motions, make my mother happy until we returned to America and she was more stable, maybe even a little stronger and I could tell her that . . . I don’t know. That I didn’t want the life she longed for me to have? She’d mapped out a happy ending for me, and it felt so cruel to shatter those dreams. But I also knew I couldn’t break Pete’s heart.” She sighed. “I know it sounds devious and morbid, but after everything, I just wanted her to get better. I thought maybe it would help if we said we were engaged.”
She shook her head. “My mother announced our engagement. I think my mother’s secretary wrote up the announcement, but that’s when everything got out of control. I tried to call Pete on New Year’s Eve, right after we returned, to explain, but he didn’t pick up. And after the media got ahold of the news, I feared he’d find out, so I tried again. But he never took my calls. I even texted, but all my texts said ‘sent,’ not ‘delivered’ and I figured it out . . . he’d blocked me.”
“He blocked you? Oh boy.”
“Of course he was angry. I didn’t blame him, but I was devastated. Felipe found me crying and told me everything would work out. I didn’t realize he meant that he truly intended to marry me.”
If she hadn’t been quite so heartbroken, she might have understood his plan. She heard her voice, plaintive, broken. “I know he’s with someone else, Felipe. I just . . . I just know.”
Pete hadn’t deserved that. But in her aching heart, her worst fears found daylight. “Truth is, I feared that Pete was with someone else.” Of course he was, and the memory of Pete kissing the blonde burned through her. “I know it wasn’t fair, but I remembered the Pete I knew, the one who filled up his loneliness and hurt with company, and I couldn’t blame him, but it hurt too much to call him. So, I didn’t.”
“Then why did you come back this weekend?”
Desperation? Hope?
“I don’t know.”
Except she did, didn’t she? She’d even said it earlier. “I never stopped loving him, I guess.” Jess drew in a breath. “Which I suppose is why I freaked out when I saw him with someone else. Kissing someone else.”
Because she’d been right.
Shae nodded. “Her name is Aimee. She works on his Red Cross team.”
Of course she did. Jess blinked back the burn in her eyes. “He deserves someone who won’t hurt him.”
“He deserves to be with someone who loves him,” Shae said quietly.
Jess would love him until the day she died. “Pete is . . . the most amazing man I’ve ever known. And he deserves to be happy. To be loved by someone who won’t break his heart.”
“So, stop breaking his heart,” Shae said.
Jess stilled.
“You’ve told me twice that you have made decisions because you don’t want to hurt someone. Pete, your mother. Even Felipe. And especially you. Someone is going to get hurt here, Jess. And right now, it’s everyone. Make a choice.”
She drew in a breath. “You’re right. I made this mess. I need to fix it.”