I stayed in my position, keeping two cars behind during heavy traffic and three when it flowed more freely. As the carahead went around bends and disappeared from view, I didn’t rush to close the gap. Rushing led to mistakes, and I desperately wanted to figure out what the fuck was going on.
We drove for a long time.
Hours.
The trees thickened. Pines crowded the road. Cell towers dropped away.
When Ben finally slowed near a county road cutting through the forest, I pulled over farther back and cut my engine.
Ben got out. He said something I couldn’t hear, but his body language was straight up drill sergeant.
Taryn got out and nodded at his words. Her expression was that of a soldier going on assignment.
He said something else, shook his head in satisfaction, then got back in his truck and drove away.
She didn’t cry or try to follow him.
I watched as she sat in the grass and traded her shoes for the boots tied to her pack. Her outfit should have looked ridiculous. A cheer uniform and hiking boots, but on her, it looked badass.
Taryn adjusted the straps on her bag and started walking like she’d done this a hundred times
I suspected she had.
Something in my chest tightened.
What had my Fox’s life been like to get her to this point?
I stayed where I was, watching her disappear between the trees, then rushed to my bike and grabbed my saddle bags, slinging them over my shoulder.
None of this made sense. Ben Calder made no sense—and Taryn Calder made even less.
Girls didn’t get dropped in the middle of nowhere and treat it like homework unless someone had made sure they could survive it.
And men didn’t raise their kids like that unless they believed the world was coming for them.
I didn’t know what game Ben was playing.
But I knew this?—
I wasn’t done watching.
I didn’t follow her into the trees.
Not right away.
I stayed where I was, listening until the forest swallowed the sound of her steps.
Only then did I move.
She hadn’t taken the road as most people would have. Instead, she cut in at an angle, skirting the obvious trail and choosing cover over speed. That told me more than anything else I’d seen tonight.
Taryn wasn’t trying to get home fast.
I followed wide, reading the ground the way my dad taught me—broken twigs, compressed leaves, the faint scuff where a heel corrected mid-step. She traveled light but smart.
This was a girl who knew what she was doing.
I kept my distance, enough that if she stopped suddenly, I wouldn’t be in her peripheral vision. Enough that if she doubled back, I’d hear it before I saw it.
