Dammit.I didn’t even spare a second to curse out loud before jogging back across, making it to her just in time to catch her as she swayed.
“I didn’t realize that was so heavy.” She stared at me, wide-eyed with the realization I’d been hiking with it all this time.
“What are you doing?” I growled.
“I did what you said. I ate and drank, and then I saw you were done, so I thought I should come to you.”
I gritted my teeth and grunted, making a mental note to be more specific when I needed her to stay in one spot.
“I’ll take that.” Sinking my hand to her waist, I used the other to grab the top handle of my pack, taking the weight from her shoulders. “Follow me. You can hold on to the pack if you need for balance.”
Two minutes later, we were across the stream and on the western edge of the valley. Two and a half relatively easy miles later, we hit the hardest part of our hike—twelve-hundred feet of elevation gain across a mile-long boulder field. I mapped out the most stable path through the granite chaos and told Lara to follow my every step.
Once we’d cleared the boulder field, there was a small leveling of the terrain and an area shielded by a cluster of jack pines that provided both a windbreak and some canopy. An ideal campsite.
“Sit and finish the water.” I guided Lara toward a stray boulder underneath a tree.
“That was ... intense,” Lara said after a beat, and I heard her cap the water bottle as I removed my shelter system from my pack. “How far is the compound from here?”
“Not far. About a ten-minute hike up the ridge.” I pointed in the direction. “The trees should give us enough cover down here.”
“Do you want help setting up the tent?”
“Not a tent.” I flapped open the ten-by-eight sheet of military-grade silnylon, the top printed with a muted camouflage pattern. The material weighed less than a pound, yet had a hydrostatic head rating of 3,000mm—enough to handle anything short of a Wyoming deluge. “Tents are visual targets, make noise in wind, and restrict peripheral awareness.”
“Oh” was all she replied, watching me unravel next the seventy-five-foot 550 paracord; stakes or poles left distinct marks in the soil and recognizable geometric patterns from a distance.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, approaching the tree she sat under to use as my first anchor.
“Exhausted, but fine.” She moved her feet out of the way when I got close and winced. “For the most part, fine. I think Colby’s shoes are breaking my feet in rather than the other way around.”
“I’ve got a first aid kit in my bag with some bandages and salve for blisters. Give me one sec,” I said and reached over her, tying the paracord around the trunk in a modified tension-less hitch—a knot that applied no direct pressure to the bark, leaving both no damage and no visible marks.
“My body isn’t used to mountains,” she offered as I pulled the first aid supplies from my pack, adding, when I handed them to her, “It’s not used to much of anything up here.”
Our eyes connected for a second before I turned away and secured the cover to two more trees around the clearing. But even that couldn’t keep the questions that gnawed at me at bay.
“When does the hospital want you to come back?” I asked gruffly, masking my agitation at the thought of her leaving by setting up the groundsheet with a layer of pine boughs; the recent storms had left more than enough already sacrificed on the ground.
“I don’t know.” I caught her heavy sigh. “They said ... Just because I was cleared of any wrongdoing doesn’t mean they want me back. It’s all politics—perception. Because Ian’s father is a senator, it might be a bigger boon in the long run to let me go so there’s no bad blood between him and the organization.”
“That’s bullshit,” I muttered. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You tried to save him.”
“Is that Tyvek?”
I nodded, giving the sheet of house wrap a few good shakes until it laid flat over the pine boughs. “It’s virtually silent when weighted, breathable enough to prevent condensation, and reflective enough to preserve body heat.”A perfect base.
“Wow.”
“Survival is different than recreational camping. Especially in situations when you don’t necessarily want to be found.” Returning to my pack, I pulled out my sleeping pad, a specially treated closed-cell foam mat rolled into a ball roughly the size of a cantaloupe and laid it out.
“To be honest, the longer I sit with the possibility, the more I have to wonder if I even want to go back.”
“Because of what happened?” I probed gently, and when she didn’t answer, I added, “No one would blame you if you didn’t.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s ... everything else. Or the lack of it.” She swiped her tongue across her bottom lip, her downcast eyes lifting to mine. “The longer I’m away, the harder it feels to explain even to myself why I stayed there. I mean, I loved Sunrise. Ilove the people I work with, but that’s all I have there. Work. And even when I had the opportunity to create more, I didn’t.”
My throat went tight, crowded with all the things I wanted to say and all the reasons I shouldn’t. I wanted to be let into her life—I didn’t want to be responsible for changing the course of it.
