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Chapter One
Lake Olympus Lodge, Olympic National Park
November
The lodge was perfect. The building, the terrain—even the fact that it was situated in a temperate rainforest—was a closer match than Xavier Rivera had dared to hope for. The best part, however, was that the entire historic hotel complex shut down for four months every winter, before the narrow and twisty mountain road turned treacherous with black ice. The final guests of the season would check out the Sunday after Thanksgiving and wouldn’t return until late March.
The team would need access in January—the earlier the better—so they’d have to fast-track the approval process.
He leaned back in his seat and scanned the great room of the stately old building. It was full at five p.m. A family-friendly promotion combined with unseasonably warm weather just weeks before closure had filled the hotel to capacity. Small children were gathered for story time in front of the grand fireplace that dominated the center of the lakeside wall. A park employee dressed as Smokey the Bear read from a children’s picture book.
His gaze wandered from the children to the line at the check-in desk, which zigzagged to accommodate more than a dozen people in the small area beneath the curved grand staircase. A woman at the end of the queue caught his eye. Her dark hair was pulled back in a disheveled braid, and it appeared her clothes and skin were streaked with dirt. If she’d been hiking, she must’ve run into trouble to be so filthy, but thankfully for her, he didn’t spot any noticeable injuries.
She was attractive in an earthy sort of way—but then, she was covered in dirt, so it was no mystery why that descriptor came to mind. Still, he found her striking. He forced himself to pull his gaze away. He wasn’t here for a hookup. He was here to scout Lake Olympus Lodge as a location for a team of SEALs to prepare for a mission, and it was damn near perfect.
As he looked through the high windows to the forest behind the nearly hundred-year-old structure, he could envision cold, dark rain and a team infiltrating the woods, leaving no trace.
His blood pumped at the thought of the potential exercise. For the initial run, he’d have the team arrive as if it were the real op. If they could get a waiver from the state, they’d do a HALO jump into the lake. The lake would be about thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit in January, a brutal start for a mission, but necessary for what the team needed to practice. They’d have only one shot when the actual mission was a go.
He rolled his shoulder to loosen the ache that surged just at the thought of jumping from a plane. No HALO for him, ever again. He was still coming to grips with that.
Law enforcement park ranger Jae-jin Son—not in uniform because this was his day off—returned from the bar and set a beer in front of Xavier before dropping into a seat next to him.
Xavier thanked his friend and picked up the cold beer, a welcome treat after hiking the grounds for hours on the unseasonably warm day. It was hard to imagine the lodge would close in a month due to icy roads, but temperatures could change suddenly around the lake, nestled as it was in foothills about thirty miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. The rain came in from the ocean, then slammed into Mt. Olympus, the west peak of which was the wettest place in the mainland United States. All that rain placed the lodge deep in the heart of a moss-filled temperate rainforest.
He had almost a month before the lodge would close. If they could get the permit process going right away, they might be able to start training here in early January. To Jae, he said, “We’ll need to start the thirty-day comment period asap.”
Jae nodded. “A few of the inholding landowners will object, but most don’t visit their cabins once the lodge, store, gas station, and restaurant close. Too isolated and too much work.”
“I’m counting on that,” Xavier said. Inholding landowners could be a problem. The two dozen families with cabins on the lake were the lucky owners of property that had been private land before ONP was designated a national park. They had easements with the park that would allow the Navy access should Xavier’s plan be approved, and they’d be compensated because the Navy would require all inholding families to vacate their cabins while the SEALs ran practice ops in the forest around the lodge and lake.
Xavier glanced around the busy great room. “Any inholding landowners here tonight?”
Jae gave a slow nod and ever-so-slightly cocked his head to the right. “Male, early seventies, thinning gray hair, green shirt, playing checkers with a tribal elder. His name is Jeb McCutcheon. He’ll be a problem. He’s vocal about every proposal ONP makes and tries to use environmental regs to stop all new trails. Tourists set one foot on his property and he calls law enforcement. He hates the park, but loves having us police his property.”
“If he hates the park, why’s he in the lodge?”
Jae shrugged. “The lodge predates the park, I guess. But also, the elder he’s playing checkers with is George Shaw. They’ve been friends for decades. Both served in Vietnam a few years apart. George has an inholding cabin up in the woods—we’re talking rustic in the extreme, and it’s not even close to a road—and for the last three years, he’s lived there year-round. He’s a master carver and does demonstrations for tourists in exchange for having full-time access to the woodshop that’s next to the blacksmith shop on the north end of the lodge complex.”
Xavier frowned and kept his voice low. “He wouldn’t be able to use the shop during the trainings.”
“I hear George’s family convinced him to winter on the reservation this year, so he’ll be moving out when the lodge closes after Thanksgiving. And even if he changes his mind, the payout for vacating for a few weeks will probably sway him. January can see some nasty weather, and it’s a long, cold walk between cabin and woodshop. That’s why his family convinced him to move back to the reservation in the first place.”
Jae nodded toward the other side of the room. “Elderly Black couple sitting on the sofa. Harriet and Daniel Jamison own a cabin a few doors down from the yurt. They won’t object. Given their ages, they never visit once the weather turns. This is probably their last weekend here until next June.”
The Jamisons looked to be only slightly younger than the lodge, and Xavier was impressed they were here at all. Life goal: live to be ninety and still weekend at cabins on lakes in national parks.
He rolled his shoulder again, the dull ache from his injury making itself known. After nearly dying eighteen months ago, he should probably just stick to the first part of the goal: live to be ninety.
He watched the couple, noting how Harriet touched Daniel’s hand and smiled, her expression soft and warm. “How long have they been together?” he asked.
“Sixty-seven, maybe sixty-eight years?” Jae waved toward the restaurant. “A few years ago, they had a big party here to celebrate their sixty-fifth.”
Xavier watched the couple, wondering at what they’d been through in that many years. What would it be like to have someone stand by you? For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. Xavier had thought a lot about those words after being dumped while in the hospital.
He was lousy when it came to relationships. Forty years old and only a few long-term relationships under his belt. It had been foolish of him to believe he and Lynn had something different. But still, part of him envied couples like the Jamisons or SEALs like Chris Flyte, married to the love of his life for eight years. Somehow, Chris made the team lifestyle and marriage work. Paul Cohen and his wife, Carly, were another example of a couple who’d navigated military life with ease.
Xavier rolled his shoulder yet again. If he lived to be ninety, he still had fifty years left. Plenty of time to find someone if that’s what he really wanted. Or he could just get laid and leave his heart out of it.
