He crosses his arms over his chest. “I assume she’s wherever you’ve been running off to the last couple months?”
I grit my teeth and nod. “Yeah. It would take anyone at least another six hours to hike from here to her, and there’s no trail, which means it would have to be dumb luck that they stumble upon her. No one else knows it’s even up there.”
Killian narrows his gaze on me. “Knows what’s up there?”
Shit.
I’ve already said too much. And I know my brother. He isn’t going to let this go.
I glance down at the axe in my hand, my fingers instinctively tightening around it. “I don’t want anyone to know where she is. Having that information could make you a target.”
Barrett nods. “From what I’ve learned about these people, they wouldn’t be above torture to get that kind of information out of someone.”
“Exactly.”
“There’s only one problem…” Killian’s voice wavers slightly, and the way his gaze has returned to that icy blue again, I can already anticipate what he’s about to say. “I know where she is.”
Fuck.
Even though he’s never been up there and I only stumbled upon it by accident on a solo hunting trip once, years ago, he likely heard Mom mention it at least once. Potentially even heard his father talk about it before he died.
“She’s at the old hunting cabin, isn’t she?”
Cringing, I nod. “Yes, but no one else can go up there. I don’t want to lead anyone to her inadvertently. She’s safe there. We have supplies, and I can always come back down if we need more.”
Killian releases a long sigh. “The real problem is, I’m not the only one who knows about the cabin.”
My blood instantly runs cold. “What do you mean?”
He grits his teeth, glancing at Tony. “When Willow was missing, when we were starting our search up here for any clues after finding her in the river, before we knew she had gone through the gorge and was on the other side of the mountain, I listed my dad’s old hunting cabin as a potential location to check.” The apology in his gaze hurts almost as much as the realization that I’ve been wrong all along. “We never did go up there once we knew about the gorge from Willow’s fragmented memories, but the general location of it is on a list prepared for the search party.”
Tony nods, offering an apologetic tight non-smile. “Which means thirty or forty people know it exists, even if they don’t have an exact location.”
All the air rushes from my lungs as panic sets in.
Killian steps closer to me, grabbing my arm. “I only knew it was much farther up this side of the mountain, somewhere nearer the summit where the bears and bobcats could be hunted more easily. That’s still a huge area.”
His placation doesn’t do anything to release the vise tightening around my chest. “I found it without even that information, which means Raven might be a sitting duck.”
RAVEN
All the blood in my veins runs as icy as the river water I was just standing in and goosebumps break out over my skin as I whirl toward the sound I just heard in the forest.
With the bright afternoon sun overhead, light trickles through the canopy, partially illuminating the trees to the left of me, but they’re so thick, with countless massive trunks everywhere, there are any number of spots something—or someone—could be hiding.
Waiting and watching.
No one knows you’re up here.
I keep trying to remind myself of Connor’s words, of his assurances that this is the safest place on the mountain, that there isn’t a single person who could find me here, but it doesn’t stop my heart from thundering against my rib cage.
That sound was real.
It wasn’t my imagination playing tricks on me.
Nor was the fact that the mountain went silent.
I stand frozen in place, listening now for another noise, for anything else that doesn’t seem to fit with the typical sounds.
