“We need to go,” he said once he was finished. “All of them need to go back in that drawer.”
I nodded, but the only thing I could think was that I needed to keep my sister’s file.What if there was something else inside it? More information on what happened to her?
Realistically, I knew there wasn’t. I also knew we had to put everything back the way he’d found it, otherwise Dr. Julia might notice. Yet none of those very real cautions stopped me from sliding the papers from Rachel’s file, folding them, and sticking them in the waistband of my scrubs at my back.
Within minutes, Calder had led us back out of the RV.
He moved swiftly with me to the edge of the trees, stopping suddenly, listening, and then facing me.
“Hold the back of my shirt and stay silent,” he murmured and waited for me to follow his instruction.
I gripped the fabric, feeling the heat of his body ebb like a tide to my fingertips. And then he guided us into the trees.
At first, I wondered how he knew where to go. How he could see. How he could move in almost complete silence. But the answer to all those questions was the same: He’d grown up a Stone. This was what his upbringing had prepared him for.
Just like this was what Rachel’s upbringing ... our upbringing ... had caused: her lack of caution in caustic relationships and my overabundance of it, practically resigning myself to celibacy.
But what had she found here? What happened after she’d gone through therapy with Dr. Julia?What was EC?
Questions marched like an army of anxious ants through my mind, providing a distraction so dizzying, I hadn’t been worried about getting caught sneaking around the campsite until Calder halted suddenly and I went crashing into him.
He left arm snaked back and held me close behind him.Something wasn’t right.
Calder looked over his shoulder and mouthed,Ben.
My breath caught, air pinching the center of my chest as I heard what he did. The footsteps and the low whistle of what I now considered his theme song.
Heartbeats hurtled into my veins. We were near the bathrooms; the white structure was maybe a dozen or so feet away. If we could just get there, we would have an excuse, a reason to be out of our tents. But even a few feet was a few too far.
Ben’s flashlight zigzagged like a bullet of light around us. He wasn’t guarding—he was hunting.
Slowly, Calder shifted us a single step to the right, putting us between two tall pine trees, their low branches destroyed, probably by bears.
The light chewed closer and the whistling stopped. Everything stopped. And then the footsteps propelled in our direction.
He’d heard us.
Calder spun around, his body completely shielding me against the tree at my back.
I tried to focus on the smooth metronome of Calder’s breathing. In and out. Warm and slow. Rise and fall. But Ben’s footsteps got louder. Closer. Fear drilled into my bones, incessant and terrifying.
He was going to find us.
I felt the panic start to seep in. The paralysis. The response triggered by my trauma.
“Lara.”
My gaze snapped up, finding Calder’s in the dark and holding on to it for dear life.
“Do you trust me?” The question was hardly more than a wisp of air against my nose, over my cheeks, along the shell of my ear.
Calder drew his face closer, the friction of his short beard warming the side of my cheek, waiting for my answer.
Trust him?I didn’t have much of a choice. I’d asked for his help. I’d maneuvered us here. I’d gone out searching in the middle of the night when this was the exact reason why he’d decided to go alone.
I didn’t have much of a choice in trusting him.
But neither did I need one.
