NASH
She's been avoidingme for the better part of an hour, which shouldn't be possible when the whole main floor is one open room, but Dr. Aris Thorne has managed it with the determination of a wounded animal searching for cover.
She's up in the loft with her equipment, accompanied by the soft click of dials being adjusted, the rustle of papers, and the occasional frustrated sigh. Her satellite communicator has chimed every few minutes since we arrived.
The university is keeping a tight leash on its investment, I'd guess, and I can't blame them for wanting updates when they're paying for weeks of wilderness time. Judging by the way she tenses every time the thing makes a sound, someone back home is demanding answers.
Whoever it is doesn't seem to trust her judgment any more than she trusts mine, and that makes me want to defend her to people I've never met.
Which is ridiculous.
She hasn't spoken to me since we arrived, aside from a clipped thank-you when I carried her equipment inside. Before that, she looked at the animals mounted on my wall like I'dpersonally marched into the forest and executed every living thing I found.
Professional distance should not be difficult under these circumstances.
I've guided plenty of challenging clients over the years. The ones who think they know more than someone with twenty years of wilderness experience. The ones who pack three times what they need and complain about the weight. The ones who want to debate every safety decision until a storm rolls in and suddenly my opinion becomes fascinating.
But I've never guided anyone who spent her first hour hiding from me like I might contaminate her.
The rich smell of venison stew drifts through the cabin. Mags sent a jar up with me from the lodge, along with the rest of the perishables I'll burn through this week. She made it from my recipe using meat from a buck I took last fall with one clean shot.
He lived free and wild and had a better death than most creatures get in nature.
There's nothing fancy about the stew, but the smell is apparently strong enough to reach the loft because I hear Aris's movements pause before resuming with renewed urgency.
I check the fire and add another log, then turn down the heat beneath the pot. The cabin is warming nicely, but there's a chill between us that has nothing to do with the temperature outside.
She hasn't said a word to me since climbing into that loft, and her silence tells me everything I need to know about her opinion of my profession.
The university told her she was getting a wilderness logistics expert. They conveniently failed to mention that logistics around here means reading weather patterns, understanding animal behavior, repairing engines with frozen fingers, and knowing how to take game when survival depends on it.
Just another way people sugarcoat reality so they can benefit from skills they'd rather not examine too closely.
There's something intent about the sounds coming from above. Focused. Driven.
Whatever she's tracking matters to her beyond academic curiosity. I saw it in her eyes when she talked about Waldo, the way her entire face changed when she mentioned the three years she's spent studying him.
That kind of dedication comes from passion, obsession, or a particularly dangerous mixture of both.
She's clearly not built for this environment. Her hands look more familiar with books than tools, her skin carries the pale cast of someone who spends most of her time indoors, and every movement belongs in a lecture hall rather than a snowdrift.
But she came north.
That says something.
Most academics would have demanded immediate extraction the second Reid pointed toward the snowmobile and explained that it was the only way to reach the cabin.
The stew has been ready for twenty minutes, but I've learned patience from years of working with wild things. They come around when they're ready, or they don't, and getting pushy rarely helps.
Still, she needs to eat.
I test the stew with a wooden spoon. The meat falls apart at the touch, and the vegetables are tender without turning to mush. I clear the small wooden table and set out two bowls, cloth napkins, and proper spoons because something about Dr. Aris Thorne suggests she appreciates things being done correctly, even in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
"Dinner," I call toward the loft.
The sounds stop.
A moment later, I hear her moving around, packing things away before she climbs down the ladder one careful rung at a time.
