No one should be out in this. No one could survive in this.
She's in town. She has to be.
But the bear is pacing again, agitated in a way it hasn't been since last night. Since she appeared in my clearing with her camera and her smile and her complete lack of self-preservation instinct.
"She's fine," I tell the empty garage. Tell the bear. Tell myself.
It doesn't help.
I should go inside. Wait out the storm in the cabin like I always do, with a bottle, the silence and the weight of isolation. Instead,I find myself walking to the edge of the clearing, staring into the forest like I'll be able to see anything through the downpour.
Her scent is still here. Faint now, diluted by rain and time, but present. Leading back toward town like it should.
Except.
I breathe in deeper, letting the bear rise enough to sharpen my senses. The scent trail splits. Most of it goes toward town, yes. But there's another thread, fainter, heading in the opposite direction.
Toward the Ridgeline Trail.
"No," I say out loud. "She wouldn't."
But even as I say it, I know she would. She absolutely would. She's the kind of person who goes off-trail just to see what's there, who hikes twelve miles and then decides to do three more, who brings chocolate to a hostile stranger because he gave her directions.
Of course she didn't go straight back to town. Of course she decided to explore.
The bear snarls, urgent and insistent. *Find her. Protect her. Now.*
"She's not my responsibility," I argue with myself, with it. "She made her choice. If she's stupid enough to be out in this—"
Thunder drowns out the rest of my words. The temperature is dropping fast. In another hour, this will be more than just dangerous. It'll be deadly.
Hypothermia doesn't care how young you are, how fit, how experienced. Get wet enough, cold enough, and your body shuts down. I stand there for a full minute, rain soaking through my clothes, warring with myself.
I can't go after her. I can't. That means shifting, or at least partially shifting, using the bear's senses to track her in this mess. And I swore I'd never let it out again, never give it that much control, never risk—
Lightning strikes a tree a hundred yards away. It explodes in a shower of sparks and burning wood, the crack so loud I feel it in my bones.
"Fuck!" The word is ripped from my throat.
I'm moving before I consciously make the decision, running back to the cabin, grabbing my pack. Emergency supplies—blanket, first aid kit, fire starter, rope. My knife. The satellite phone I bought years ago and never used, because who would I call?
I shove it all into the pack and head back out into the storm.
The scent trail is already fading, washed away by the rain. I follow what's left of it to where it diverges, where she made the catastrophically stupid decision to take the Ridgeline Trail instead of going home.
"I'm going to kill her," I mutter, starting up the trail at a pace that would be reckless for anyone else. "If she's not already dead, I'm going to kill her myself."
Empty threat. The bear knows it even if I don't want to admit it.
The trail is a river. Water pours down the mountain, turning everything to mud and chaos. I can barely see five feet ahead, but I don't need to see. I know these mountains better than I know anything else in the world.
And I have her scent.
Faint, almost gone, but there. Wildflowers and sunshine, cut through with fear-sweat and blood.
Blood.
The bear roars inside my head, demanding to be let out, demanding to hunt.
