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ADI SUPPOSED NEITHER of them slept well that night. She tossed and casually turned, all too aware that Chase was only inches away from her. He didn’t seem to be doing any better than she. Occasionally, his breathing would slow and become more rhythmic, but then he was turning again. Every time he flipped toward her, she felt like she had to turn away. Every time he rolled away, she turned toward him, eager to give her other aching side a break. It’d been a long while since she had camped out.
And apparently these rangers hadn’t bothered to clear their reserved campground of rocks. Maybe it made them feel more macho to sleep on a bed of rocks, she thought. Or maybe they were just more used to sleeping in all sorts of conditions. Unlike Adi, who had been sleeping in luxurious hotels around the world of late. Even the guest bed back at Gramps’s cabin had a comfort-foam mattress, a remnant of her mother’s last visit. “Said she couldn’t sleep on that ratty old mattress any longer,” Gramps had said, when Adi remarked on it.
But she could hardly say anything to Chase. She didn’t want him to think she was all-princess-and-the-pea. No, a ranger wanted the person they loved to be able to tough it out with them, regardless of where they slept. She was certain of it. And hadn’t Hannah spent countless nights out in the backcountry with him? Adi doubted that she complained.
It was with some relief she saw dawn’s light warming the eastern wall of their tent, just as Chase was snoring softly. Carefully, she sat up, eased out of her sleeping bag and slipped on her boots. She was fully dressed—the nights were still cold and she hadn’t wanted Chase to get the wrong idea. Apparently, neither had he, since he’d kept on his thermal long-sleeve and jeans and socks.
“I don’t remember you being an early riser,” he said, startling her as she was trying to silently unzip the tent and failing miserably at it.
She glanced back at him. His short hair was adorably mussed, flat on one side, sticking up on the other. He ran his hands through it and rubbed his face, then closed one eye and squinted at her with the other. “You really ready to get up and at ‘em?”
She smiled. “Go ahead and sleep a bit longer, if you want to,” she said. “I’m just going to go and try and catch a cell signal near the lodge. Check in with Bea about Gramps.” She’d be up; they often rented metal fishing boats in the wee hours to fishermen.
He nodded and flopped back to his sleeping bag.
When she was halfway down the road between Swiftcurrent and Many Glacier, she caught her first bar. She turned and climbed down the bank, sitting on a rock beside the lake as messages rolled in.
BEFORE YOU EVEN ASK, Bea had texted, THE OLD MAN IS FINE. Sleeping like a log. I’ll make him eat all his eggs and two pancakes. QUIT WORRYING.
She smiled, and scrolled to the next, from Mary, back at Smith & Jessen. She was surprised—the office hadn’t reached out to her since she left. Call me as soon as you can.
Adi checked the time. Back in Chicago, the office had just opened. She took a chance at dialing, hoping her signal would hold, then clicked through to Mary’s extension.
“Adalyn!” Mary said, apparently recognizing her phone number. “How are you?”
“I’m well,” she said. “Really well.”
“You sound good. I’m glad. Listen, I hated to disturb you during your leave, but Mark was wondering where I might find the file for your logo ideas on the Terell account. We couldn’t seem to find them on your desktop.”
“Oh, I think they’re in a sub-folder,” Adi said. She waited while Mary went to her computer, then talked her through the tree of folders to find the right one.
“There it is,” Mary said, relief evident in her voice. “Thank you so much.”
“No problem. Everything else going okay?”
“Oh, yes, fine. We miss you, of course. But we’re hanging in.”
“I’m glad,” Adi said. “Well, don’t worry about disturbing me, Mary. Just give me a ring if you need anything else.”
“I will.” They were in the process of saying goodbye when Mary said, “Oh, hey. I got a weird call from a potential client a couple weeks ago,” she said. “A Mr. Balou?”
Adi frowned. “Balou?”
“Something like that. He really wanted to speak to you, and pressed me for your number.”
Mentally, she ran through her potential contacts. There was no one with a name close to that. “Probably just one of the paparazzi, looking for a clue to my trail,” she said. Or could it be the creep who had left her all those roses? Would he dare to call the office? Play the role of a potential client to figure out where she’d gone? He’d dared to enter her apartment...
Mary hesitated.
“You didn’t give him any information, right, Mary?”
“Well, umm...I’m really sorry. He sounded so legit, I think I let it slip that you were unavailable until September. But all I said was that you were somewhere in the mountains,” she added hurriedly.
Adi bit her lip. “That’s okay,” she said. “You didn’t mention Montana, right?”
“Oh no. Of course not.”
“Well, then, that’s okay,” she repeated, as much for herself as for Mary. Her heart was beating faster, even remembering that night in her apartment... “There are a ton of mountains out west. One look around and he’d give up,” she said with a laugh, looking at the ridge to her right. “I’m a needle in a haystack.”
“Good. See that you stay that way. Rest up and come back to us soon, all right?”
“I will. ‘Bye, Mary.”
They hung up and Adi stayed where she was, staring out at the lake. Talking to Mary, remembering that last, spooky evening in her apartment, made her real life come rushing back in frightful clarity.
“Everything all right?” Chase said, jumping down to a rock above her, then easing on to one beside her.
“Oh, hi. No more sleep, huh?”
“Nah. I’m excited for another day together.”
She thought about telling him. But why worry him? “What could be wrong on a day like this? Let’s grab some breakfast and then get to our float and hike? Maybe we can beat most of the tourists,” she said, gesturing to the empty lake before them.
“At this hour, Adi girl,” he said, rising to offer her his hand. “We’ll be alone with the griz and geese.”
*****
USING THE PASSWORD for guests—“LittleCabinGuests”—Kenneth logged on to the cabin complex wi-fi, which had a fairly decent signal, considering where they were. He lifted the small framed sign, which Adalyn had clearly designed and had printed. Yet another touch of her in this cabin.
He logged in to Facebook and navigated to the One Nation fan site, scrolling through mindless posts about the men on the show, pausing only on stories related to Adalyn. There were a fair number—most of the fans were curious to know if she was all right and where she had gone. Six had reposted her Instagram picture of her stack of rocks and message, dissecting what she might have meant and polling others to see if anyone recognized where that lake might be. Some had taken shots of pictures of women who looked like Adalyn—but weren’t—in places around the world. There was even a hashtag, #findAdi that was trending on Twitter.
He smiled in satisfaction. Wouldn’t they all be so jealous of him if they knew that he had found her? That he had discovered what she’d been up to these last weeks—refurbishing these cabins? That he had met her grandfather? He knew it was a scoop worth a couple thousand dollars from the news rags. Not that he would sell Adalyn out. No, this information was for him alone.
Only one thing disturbed him. Old Gene intimated she’d been gone a couple of days. Where had she gone? What was she doing? He began pacing, rubbing his hands. It was torture, to come so close to finding her here, only to discover she was absent. What did Gene mean, when he said he thought she’d be back sometime tonight? Why hadn’t he known the exact time? It had taken everything in him to avoid pressing for more details, but it seemed that the old man was negligent in watching out for his granddaughter’s welfare if he didn’t know that. Was she out hiking with a friend? Wasn’t that part of Survival 101? Conveying clear plans with someone back at home?
Feeling as if he might crawl out of his own skin if he stayed in the tiny cabin any longer, he grabbed his binoculars, slipped the battery and SD card into his new camera, then headed out. If nothing else, he could begin establishing the perimeter of the property. Become accustomed to the routines of others in the cabin complex, as well as her neighbors at the boat launch. He’d begin documenting everything with pictures and logging notes into a small, leather book he carried, just as he had with Adalyn’s apartment and office in Chicago. Had that not led him to Molly and the critical detail he needed to find her here?
One didn’t win a woman like Adalyn by being sloppy about his work. No, he needed to take meticulous care. The hour was soon upon them. And everything—absolutely everything—had to be in order.
*****
ADI WAS UNCOMMONLY quiet as they paddled down Swiftcurrent Lake, then climbed out, shouldered their crafts, and portaged over to Josephine. They had left their packs by the ranger station in Swiftcurrent, neither of them ready to commit to another night on this side of the park. Chase had wondered if concern over her grandfather was getting the best of her, despite Bea’s assurances via text.
“You all right?” he asked, turning back to wait for her. “Is it getting too heavy?”
“Nah,” she said, but switched the boat to her other side. “I’m all right.”
“You’re sure quiet this morning.”
“I guess I am.”
He turned and continued walking. “What?” he asked over his shoulder. “Did I keep you up snoring last night?”
“Something like that,” she said. He glanced back at her but saw she was teasing him.
He nodded. “It’s hard, if you haven’t camped in a while.” Unbidden, a scene from her season with Connor flashed in his mind. A “camp” on a private beach in Bali, complete with private chef and masseuses for them both on their day-date alone. Awesome, he thought. And all you have to offer her, Rollins, is a measly park-service-issue tent on hard ground. No private chef or masseuses in sight.
Chase shoved away the thought. He knew she wouldn’t like it...him, comparing himself to the others. That hadn’t been real life. This was real life. Really real life, he laughed to himself as mosquitoes swarmed about them. Here between the lakes, the mosquitoes were always thick. He stopped and set down his kayak and pulled off his small day pack. “Here,” he said, “I have some spray.”
She set down her own kayak and came over to him, even as she slapped at her neck and then an arm. “They’re nasty.”
“We’ll be clear of them in a bit,” he said. He uncapped the bottle and went around to spray her. Obediently, she lifted her arms and he sprayed her neck, shoulders, back and legs. Her legs—man, the girl had some fine legs. Lovely muscles and lines. Some new color on them from their hike yesterday to Iceberg, from the looks of it. He rose and handed her the bottle so she could spray her front, then took the bottle and did his own. Silently, she reached for the bottle and sprayed his back. What was it about such a silly task that felt oddly intimate? Why was it that everything he seemed to do with Adi felt that way? New? Oddly exciting?
You wouldn’t feel the same if Logan was spraying you down, he admitted to himself.
She handed him the bottle, but she clearly wasn’t thinking the same thoughts he was. Her brow was furrowed, her mouth in a thin line. “Hey,” he said, gently hooking his hand through her elbow. “What’s up, Adi? Something’s worrying you. I can see it on your face.”
She looked away and then back at him, sighing. Giving in, it appeared, to telling him. “It’s just that I had a call from the office.”
“Oh?”
“At the end, Mary told me that someone had called and tried to get details out of her about where I was.”
It was Chase’s turn to frown. But he held it in check, not wanting to add stress. “She kept it under wraps, though. Right?”
“Mostly. The guy was pretty convincing. She let it slip I was in the mountains somewhere.”
“Well, there are a lot of mountains. She could have meant in the US, or in Europe or New Zealand, for that matter. Right?”
She bit her lip. “It’s only that on the show...I talked about spending summers in the mountains. Most would assume that was someplace in the US.”
“Still,” he said, reaching out to run a reassuring hand down her shoulder to her forearm. “There are a heck of a lot of mountains in the States.”
She continued to work on her lip. “But I posted a pic on Instagram. Bea said everyone was so worried about me. There were conspiracies that I’d died...”
“Let me see it,” he said, putting out a hand.
She reached for her phone, scrolled through to her Instagram and then handed it to him. They had no service out here, but her history was visible. He clicked on her picture—the Ebenezer she’d built—with the blurred out image of Lake McDonald and the mountains behind it. To him, it was readily recognizable. But how many others would be able to do the same? They’d be few and far between.
“I didn’t really worry about posting that. Most people probably think I’m on the move, rather than being holed up somewhere.”
“But now you’re worried that call was from your stalker.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Easily solved,” he said, hauling his boat back to his shoulder. “We find a picture of some beach somewhere and you post that tomorrow. In a week or so, a picture of a desert. Make him think that you are on the move, regardless of what Mary said. You were in the mountains. Now you’re not.”
Relief washed over her face. “Now that’s a really good idea, Mr. Rollins.”
“Keep me around, Ms. Stalling. I’m full of them,” he said.
“I just may do that,” she said, shouldering her own boat. “Now tell me we’re almost there.”
“We’re almost there.”
“Honest?”
“Well, almost.”