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“Don’t rush off on my account.” He steps out fully past the tree line. “Are you out here alone?” He looks me up and down, again nothing overtly creepy, but my instincts are on high alert.
“No, I’m out here with my boyfriend and his friends.” I hope he can’t see through the lie.
“Oh?” He makes a show of looking up and down the banks of the creek. “Where are they at?”
“I just came to grab fresh water. They’re back at our camp.” I hold up my canteen as proof.
“That’s good.” He nods slowly, looking down at the rocks. I note the way his clothes look worn, and not in the way that normal hiking clothes look worn. It almost looks as though he could be homeless or something. “It’s dangerous for a pretty young lady to be out here all alone. All sorts of monsters in these woods.”
“Yeah.” I get the feeling he isn’t talking about monsters that haunt little kid dreams. “Have a good morning.”
“You too, honey. Gonna be a gorgeous day.”
I keep him in my line of sight as I move toward the direction I lied about the guys being in. I don’t know if I’m just on edge or if that guy is as sinister as he seems. The questions he asked, the predatory way he snuck up on me . . . All of it has me on edge. Once again I find myself wishing the guys were with me. Is it enough for me to give in?
I contemplate the answer to that for a few minutes before deciding that it’s not. I can’t give in. I can’t let them win.
ChapterEight
“Get up.” I nudge Cody with the toe of my boot. “We need to meet up with West.”
“Fuck,” he mumbles rolling into a sitting position on the floor of the cave we slept in. He groans as he pushes to his feet, stretching. I try not to notice the muscles of his abdomen as his shirt rises with the motion, but fail.
“I know. Worst night’s sleep of my life.” I spent the night worried about Violet and West finding each other or, conversely, killing each other. He’s brooded and bitched about her for years, but at the same time he’s been her fiercest protector.
“Yeah, I barely even slept.” He walks over to the opening of the cave and looks out for a minute before turning back to me. “Do you know where they are?”
“She’s already on the move. I don’t know if West is with her or not.” I finish rolling up my dirty clothes into a tidy bundle and set them at the bottom of my pack.
“Heads up,” Cody says as he tosses me a protein bar from his pack. “We need to get going if she’s already on the move. Even if West found her and they stuck together last night I’m betting she took off early. You know how he sleeps.”
“I know. I had the same thought.”
We eat quickly and pack everything away as the sun continues to rise, beginning to burn off the fog and mist. The forest is still wet, intensifying all the scents of pine and earth and granite that much more. Normally I’d take a moment to soak it in, but not now.
We need to find West. Hopefully Violet is with him and then we can just end this horrible plan and spend the rest of the summer with her at our side. Where she should have been all along, but Cody wants to play and West wants to torment.
Cody leads the way down the rocky slope. Of all of us, he’s the one with the most wilderness experience. Years of life on a mountain ranch, spending summers camped out in the higher elevations with the herd have honed him for this.
We’ve been hiking for about an hour when we come up on West. He stops when Cody yells his name, turning to walk back and meet us. I look around, but don’t see Violet with him.
“Did you find her?” I ask.
“Yes.” His jaw clenches like it does when he’s annoyed with her. “She took off early this morning while I was still asleep. One minute she’s tucked against me, the next she’s gone.”
“Tucked against you?” Cody’s eyebrows raise dramatically. “Gonna need a little more details on that.”
“We got caught in the rain before we found somewhere to spend the night. We were both soaking wet and she was so cold her lips were blue. We found an abandoned fire watch tower and slept there. Shared the bed.” He glares at us to let us know that’s all he’ll be sharing.
I can tell by the sideways grin on Cody’s face that he doesn’t want to let it go, but West isn’t going to give us any more. His protective instincts run too deep. I pull my phone out for what feels like the hundredth time to check her progress.West looks over my shoulder while Cody wanders off.
“Guys.” Cody motions us over to where he’s standing inside the tree line. “I think someone else is following Vi.” He points down at large footprints and broken twigs. “These are fresh marks and just far enough back that she probably can’t hear or see whoever it is.”
My stomach churns as I look down at the very obvious trail. We know she’s following the creek, she’d be so easy to spot and follow out in the open like that. She’s only a little over a mile ahead of us based on GPS. We should be able to catch up with her if we pick up our speed.
“I guess the game is going to end sooner than we thought it was going to,” Cody says quietly.
“Yeah, but we’ll still win regardless. She’s ours.” West takes a pull from the camelbak bottle that Cody thrusts toward him.
