Olympic National Park, Washington
January
Adrenaline flooded Audrey Kendrick’s system as the SUV slid toward the edge of the road. Black ice. The invisible, treacherous patches were the reason this winding road through the Olympic foothills was closed to park visitors in winter. For long stretches of roadway, there was no shoulder, just a steep drop dotted with evergreens that clung to the slope. If she went over the edge, thick, old-growth trunks would break her fall, but the damage could still be deadly.
She turned into the skid. Tires gripped pavement, and the vehicle veered back into the center of the road, saving her from slipping off the side.
She tapped the brakes as shaking hands held the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip. Her heart pounded at a rate that couldn’t be healthy. The SUV slowed, and she took a deep breath to calm herself. She needed to focus on the pavement ahead and not what she’d find at the end of it.
At least with the road closed to all but park employees and inholding landowners, she didn’t have to worry about other cars. She could take this calming break without fear she’d cause an accident if a vehicle careened around the curves in either direction.
A roadside mile marker sank her already dark mood even deeper. She was only eight miles from the gate that closed the road in winter months. She had ten more slick and twisty miles to go before she would reach Lake Olympus Lodge.
She wished she could have waited at the gate for law enforcement park ranger Jae-jin Son, but according to the dispatcher, Jae was stuck at Mora Campground, dealing with visitors who thought park rules were for other people. She didn’t have time to wait. As it was, she’d be lucky to have thirty minutes of daylight to inspect the site before nightfall and the predicted storm rolled in.
Her belly was cramped tight with fear, an unpleasant accompaniment to her racing heart. Had the site been looted again? Why hadn’t George called her back?
A little more than an hour ago, she’d been at the Forks Ranger Station, planning a spring break archaeology camp for tweens and teens with an interpretation park ranger, when she got a call from headquarters informing her the cameras she’d set up to protect the archaeological site had stopped transmitting.
She’d installed the cameras herself in November, after the site had been looted and tribal elder George Shaw had looked at her with such disappointment. The memory of his words still cut straight to her heart. “I recommended you as Roy’s replacement when he retired as park archaeologist. I trusted you to protect our sacred sites. Maybe this time the looting isn’t your fault, but if it happens again, it will be.”
George took the desecration personally, and she, as the person entrusted to protect all cultural resources within Olympic National Park, had failed him and the tribe. She’d installed the cameras within days. They couldn’t stop looting, but they could alert her department when it happened.
And now the cameras weren’t working.
According to headquarters, the lodge had electricity. This wasn’t a simple power outage. Meaning this could be her worst-case scenario: looters had cut the line before digging up the site.
Her first call had been to George, who had an inholding cabin near the ancestral village. George was one of the few people who wintered near the lodge, and with the forecasted storm, he’d be settled in for the next few days, ready to ride out the wind and rain, the worst of which would hit this evening. But the elder hadn’t answered her call or responded to her messages.
From the moment she couldn’t reach George, her fear had shifted from the archaeological site to George himself. What if he’d seen the looters and confronted them? Looters sometimes turned violent when caught in the act. She couldn’t simply wait by the gate for Jae as the dispatcher had instructed. She had to check on the site and George.
She picked up her phone from the center console to check for messages. No bars. Expected, but no less frustrating. This was one of the park’s many dead zones for cellular coverage. She wouldn’t be in call range until she reached the lodge complex, which, in addition to having cellular antennas for two providers, also had the latest, greatest satellite Wi-Fi.
Jae might be angry when he learned she hadn’t waited for him to make this trek, but with a winter storm rolling in tonight, the heavy rain would freeze on the pavement. Tomorrow, this road would be an endless slick of black ice, far worse than it was today. It would be days before she made it back out here, and by the time she did, the storm could have washed away evidence that might identify the looters. If she found anything at the site, she had all the tools she needed to photograph, map, record, and collect it like a forensic investigator. CSI and archaeologists shared a lot of the same methodology.
She put the SUV in Drive again and inched forward, skittish about finding more black ice. The headlights cut through the dark curves, but ice remained impossible to see. She touched her hand to her belly, then returned it to the wheel. She dropped her speed by five miles per hour. Slow and cautious.
Her fingers ached from their tight grip on the steering wheel, but the SUV remained steady on the shadowed, winding road. In the summer, this road would be dappled with sunshine and flowers. She touched her belly again, thinking about what the road would look like in late July. The wind would ease in from the ocean, keeping the air fresh and cool even on the hottest of days.
In July, the days would be long. The sun would shine. And everything about her life would change.
At last, thirty minutes after nearly sliding off the road, she rounded the bend and the magnificent old Lake Olympus Lodge spread out before her. Built in the 1920s, the hotel embraced the lake with wide arms. In the summer, it would be full of guests, all enjoying the most magnificent of US National Parks. Today, however, the entire complex—store, museum, gas station, maintenance shops, annex guest cabins, and of course, the massive main lodge—was cold and silent. Abandoned and forlorn.
Even after the stressful drive, Audrey couldn’t look at the lodge without thinking of Xavier. It was a mixed bag of emotions. Part of her was glad she would never forget the surprising, intense, hot night spent in this very lodge. There’d been a magic she wanted to hold on to. But now that perfect night was tainted with betrayal.
Xavier had been an old friend of Jae’s, which should have made him trustworthy. Attraction had flared, hot and bright, probably blinding her.
He’d been handsome, sure, but it was his energy that spoke to her. Like her, he was an avid outdoor enthusiast. Plus, he’d been charming and funny and made her feel desirable after a breakup a year before that had left her questioning her choices.
Still, she’d accepted the no-strings fling for what it was, even if she did want more. There was no real future for them. She lived on the Olympic Peninsula and was only a year into her tenure at the job she’d wanted since she was eleven, and he lived…she didn’t even know where he lived. At the time, she’d assumed he was still in the Bay Area, near where he’d grown up with Jae.
They hadn’t exchanged phone numbers. He’d made it clear from the start that one night was all they’d have. As they said goodbye, it had stung, but she’d accepted it.
But then the home test stick indicated she was pregnant.
She’d been shocked. And elated. At thirty-eight, she was all too aware her biological clock was winding down. She hadn’t planned this pregnancy, and they’d used condoms to prevent it—apparently, expiration dates mattered—but she was glad neither of them had bothered to check the wrapper in the heat of the moment. She was thankful for the wild, impulsive night with Xavier.
She wanted this baby with every fiber of her being.
In December, she’d been nervously excited to tell him the news. She’d planned what to say. She was having his baby, but she wouldn’t force him to be a father. He could make his own decisions about what role he wanted to have in their child’s life. She didn’t want her child to be fatherless, but neither did she want her baby to have a dad who resented the responsibility.
She’d called Jae and left him a message, asking him to tell Xavier to call her. It was the only way she had to get ahold of him. She then spent the rest of the day waiting with her cell phone in hand.
Nothing could have prepared her for the shock she felt the following morning when she stepped into park headquarters and came face-to-face with Xavier. For a moment, she’d thought he was there because he’d guessed why she needed to speak with him and wanted to hear the news in person.
She’d felt a rush of wild joy.
The feeling lasted less than sixty seconds. Her happy fantasy flamed out when he opened his mouth and told her what he’d just done: he’d filed a complaint with the park superintendent. The subject of the complaint was none other than Audrey herself for refusing to sign off on a Navy SEAL training slated for Lake Olympus Lodge and the surrounding forest.
A proposal for the training had crossed her desk just days after the site was looted. Upset by the damage to the site, she would admit she’d viewed the proposed exercise with a jaundiced eye. What if she approved it, and then the SEALs harmed the historic or prehistoric sites that dotted the lakeshore? Sites were everywhere around the lake. For thousands of years, Lake Olympus had been an important gathering place for Indigenous people. If SEALs playing war games hurt those sites after she’d given them the green light, it would be her fault.
She’d never be able to look George in the eye again.
She sent the proposal back, asking the Navy to resubmit in the spring after they did a proper assessment of potential impacts to cultural and historical resources. Perhaps with more information and after extensive consultation with local tribes, they’d be approved for the following year.
It was standard procedure for a substandard—and clearly rushed—proposal.
It turned out Xavier didn’t take rejection well, so he turned to the park superintendent to override Audrey’s finding. When Jim refused to ignore the finding of his subject matter expert, Xavier insisted on bringing it before the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation—the ultimate governing body for her profession—to put pressure on the superintendent. But Xavier’s complaint wasn’t a simple objection to her findings. No. That she could understand and even forgive. He had his job; she had hers.
But that wasn’t what he did.
When he couldn’t win with the facts, he smeared her, claiming she wouldn’t agree to sign the Finding of No Significant Impact because of their personal involvement. Because he’d slept with her and then rejected her.
The accusation was ridiculous—she hadn’t even known Xavier was in the Navy until she saw him in uniform at park headquarters—and she certainly hadn’t known he had anything to do with the proposed training. But the truth hadn’t mattered to ACHP. They’d believed him.
His accusations nearly got her fired. She was still a little surprised she hadn’t been. Her boss, at least, had believed her, which was why Xavier had to turn to ACHP in the first place. But that didn’t mean her job wasn’t hanging by a thread in the fallout of the success of his ploy. And that this had all happened on the heels of the looting? Not a great month for ONP’s park archaeologist. A month later, her job remained on shaky ground.
That day at park headquarters, she’d been too angry to tell Xavier their big news, and she still hadn’t told him. She wanted to. And she would. Soon. But every time she reached for the phone, anger would rise and steal her ability to speak. This was joyful news. For the rest of her life, she would remember telling the father of her child about her pregnancy. Did she really want that memory tainted by anger?
She imagined telling him dozens of different ways, but they always ended up tinged with bitterness. “Hey, funny thing, remember how you tried to get me fired two weeks before Christmas? Yeah, well, I’m pregnant with your child. Good thing I kept my job and didn’t lose my health insurance.”
Or sometimes she went a different route. “Guess what? I’m having your baby, so you might want to recant what you said so I don’t lose my job and the maternity leave I’ve accrued.”
She didn’t want to be bitter. She wanted to share the joy in her heart. But she didn’t know how to get into that mental space with Xavier.
Now she stopped in the circular drive that fronted the lodge and stared at the façade as memories of that night flooded her. His touch. His smile. His warm laugh and deep, husky voice as he told her exactly what he wanted to do to her. The heat in his gaze during the intense stare down before that first incredible kiss.
Facing the lodge, she realized this was the first time she’d been able to think of Xavier without anger since mid-December. Maybe she should call him right now. She shook her head, irritated with the distraction of it all. She had work to do. She needed to check on the site. Check on George. Then head home before the storm hit.
She parked in the spot next to the blue-painted accessible spaces at the far end of the loop. Even in the middle of winter when the lodge was closed, she couldn’t bring herself to park in a blue spot. She hit the lock button on the SUV as she walked away, knowing that too was unnecessary. Some habits were too ingrained.
Before hiking to the site, she would check the fuse boxes to see if the outbuildings had power. This might not be about looting. A surge could have caused an outage at the blacksmith shop. She’d braced herself for the worst-case scenario, but there was a whole continuum of possibilities. This could be nothing.
She rounded the lodge, heading for the exterior basement door on the lake side of the building. Wind swept along the roof, whipping water from the gutter and dropping it straight down the back of her neck.
She squealed at the frigid shower and pulled the hood of her raincoat up, protecting her neck too late to do any good. The temperature hovered at forty degrees, and the wind had a cold bite. She wished she’d grabbed her gloves from her pack in the back of the SUV.
She reached the basement door, which was at the base of a set of stone steps cut into the earth. She inserted her key into the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. She checked the key. Gray plastic ring around the top. It was the right key.
She inserted it again. It refused to budge.
Frustration won over, and like a petulant child, she kicked the thick door. “Dammit! I do not have time for this.”
A chill ran down her neck, but it wasn’t raindrops that triggered it. Someone was behind her. She didn’t know how she knew this, because she hadn’t heard a sound except for the incessant wind. Before she could turn, she heard the distinctive clicks of a slide being racked to chamber a bullet.
“Do you have time for this?” The words were a soft, malevolent whisper.
Cold fear swamped her, as if a cascade of icy rain had drenched her neck and slid under her clothes down her back.
Her breath left her in a whoosh. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t draw in air. Couldn’t scream.
Was this a looter? But why would they be here and not up at the site? Plus, looters only turned violent when confronted—yet this person was confronting her, not the other way around.
A hand snaked around her side, pulling her back against a hard body. From the size and feel, she guessed it was a man. He dragged her backward, up the stone steps. She released her muscles, becoming an instant deadweight, but the man didn’t falter. His grip merely tightened. When he reached the top, he swung her around and tripped her. She landed face-first in the wet peat that capped the lawn. She finally regained breath and voice and screamed in pain and panic.
Instinct told her to protect her belly, but her arms were yanked behind her. Her stomach was still flat, at least, the fetus too small to be harmed by this violence. She bucked as he grappled with her hands and pinned her down with a knee on her back. She screamed for help, but it was useless. There was no one around for miles.
Metal cuffs even colder than her chilled skin cinched her wrists together. The man couldn’t be a law enforcement ranger. She knew them all and knew which ones were on duty right now. Jae was closest. Anyone not in law enforcement who carried around handcuffs must’ve planned this.
Am I being abducted?
Since when do looters abduct people?
Panic swamped her. She needed to escape. She tried to get leverage with her knees, to throw him off, but he was too strong. Too heavy. “Why are you doing this?” she choked out.
Hands ran down her body, checking pockets.
She could barely breathe. “Are you a looter?” she rasped in a low, breathless voice.
The man above her froze, hands stopping mid-pat down. “What?”
“Why are you doing this?” she repeated.
The man placed a hand on her shoulder and flipped her to her back. She lay there, her arms trapped beneath her, digging into her spine.
He straddled her with his gun pointed to the clouds. He wore a military combat uniform, which included a tactical vest and helmet with night vision goggles mounted to the crown. His face was coated in forest-colored paint. But his eyes weren’t hidden or disguised.
Tears and panic ceased, replaced by shock. It was like the wind had been knocked out of her. Again, she couldn’t speak or breathe.
She was staring into the eyes of Xavier Rivera, the father of her unborn child.
Want to read more?