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“So they would’ve been behind us when we returned to the car?”
Logan shrugged his strong shoulders and peeked over at me. “Yeah.”
Then a frown deepened across his face.
“They didn’t pass us on the way back,” I said the words slowly, watching his face as his eyes darkened a shade.
I crossed my arms over my chest. The warmth from the truck was gone, along with Logan’s warm stare.
“Is there a camping site further up that I didn’t make it to?” Maybe there was another explanation for the missing men I hadn’t thought of.
“No. The mountainside gets steeper, and the boulders are more difficult to traverse. It’s not conducive to sleeping on, or doing much else,” he said confidently before checking the rearview mirror and then switching lanes.
I avidly tried not to chew on the inside of my lip. Logan didn’t have the radio playing in the background when I hopped in, and now the silence was palpable between us.
“Why are you so concerned about two hikers?”
Crap, here’s the moment. I knew my questions would lead to more questions, but what should I tell him? A little of the truth. Some of what I knew, sprinkled with lies. All lies, with a hint of truth.
“I think I’m being paranoid. Two guys were hiking the same trail we were on and didn’t show up for work.”
“Do you think something happened to them?”
“No,” I said, avoiding his gaze. “I just thought maybe you had seen some guys getting drunk and camping.”
I slipped on my sunglasses and laid my head partially against the window, faking a sense of calm I hadn’t felt in three years.
“Did you know the guys?”
“No,” I said softly, shaking my head.
“Then how do you know they didn’t show up for work?” He narrowed his increasingly dark eyes on me.
“I overheard some people talking this morning while getting coffee.”
Logan nodded, appearing to rethink my questions. “No, they were hiking with nothing but a water bottle. I guess it could’ve been filled with liquor.”
“Yeah, maybe. And you didn’t see any other big animals in the area?” I asked.
“No big animals. No rabid mountain lions. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t out there. Obviously, something wanted you for a snack.”
Yeah, something. I rubbed my hands over the backs of my arms. If those guys were attacked by the same thing that I was, then they were most likely hurt after me. That was, if Logan really saw them twenty minutes before me.
Shit.
Was I supposed to have been there to protect those men, and I missed them by twenty minutes? It’s not like these damn dreams gave GPS coordinates and a time stamp. That would be way too helpful.
A bead of sweat dripped between my shoulder blades. I looked over at Logan. I couldn’t mess this one up.
“Was that the main question you had for me?” He raked his eyes over my face.
“Um, one more, I guess.”
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Do you think things happen for a reason? Like you were supposed to find me hanging off the side of a mountain?” I asked, pretending to be half-joking.
Logan’s hand tensed on the wheel, whitening his knuckles. But in a blink, his hand was lightly tapping on the wheel as he flicked his blinker to switch lanes.
