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Truly, they couldn’t have ordered a better day for a winter hike in the Olympics. There were only a few clouds drifting across the sky and the temperature had almost reached the fifties before noon. Not too hot and not too cold. Even better, there didn’t seem to be anyone else with the idea that New Year’s Day was a great day to hike.
Since he’d been back in Cooper Springs, Nick hadn’t visited the forest more than once or twice, and he hadn’t hiked Crook’s Trail at all. He’d always loved this particular trail but—if he was going to be honest with himself—he’d been hesitant to trek into the woods after his injury. He didn’t completely trust his leg, and he hated the feeling that something, someone, might appear out of nowhere and attack him, which was what had happened in Sri Lanka.
Crook’s Trail was not a vibrant city market. There would be no random attack, he reassured himself. There were no stalls festooned with colorful fabrics and displays of fruits, vegetables, and spices. And there were also no crowds of people milling about and pushing past each other, intent on doing their daily errands, looking for what they needed to make dinner that night.
Still, Nick felt… safer with Martin plodding along beside him, not talking too much but occasionally pointing at various rocks and boulders along the way and easily naming what they were made of. The one that looked like a rabbit was basalt.
“This is beautiful, Nick. Great idea,” Martin said when they were about a mile along the trail. They had been slowly gaining elevation, but Nick thought he remembered that soon the path turned into a long stretch of what seemed like vertical switchbacks.
“I feel like this was your idea. I’m not really sure how I ended up here,” Nick groused.
“Admit it, you love it.”
“It’s alright,” Nick conceded just as a large crow swooped directly over their heads. He stared after it, watching as the bird abruptly changed direction and headed toward an open area where the trees had grown in a sort of circle. “That’s a raven, isn’t it?”
Nick stopped walking. They weren’t in a hurry after all.
“Think so,” Martin said, also watching the bird.
“I read somewhere that ravens live all over Washington, just not in any of the big cities.”
“That makes sense,” Martin agreed. “They’d have a hard time competing with all the crows for food and nest space, in Seattle anyway. At my old house, I used to watch the crows come home at dusk. Always an intense experience, witnessing hundreds of crows flying together, intent on returning to their rookery. A big, long line of them all heading in the same direction—very Edgar Allan Poe-ish.”
Martin started walking again. Nick stared after him for ten seconds before jogging to catch up. Martin Purdy was full of surprises. Who would have expected a geology professor to have a poetic side?
They continued walking in silence for another mile or so, the only sounds coming from the forest itself—the drip of moisture off leaves and pine needles, the huff of a breeze that disturbed the canopy above them, sending random showers down on their heads.
“Why did you move to Cooper Springs?” This was something Nick had been curious about since Martin first arrived. Since the minute Nick had recognized him standing beside Xavier in the parking lot.
Martin glanced over at him before answering Nick’s question. “I had a heart attack.”
“A heart attack?” Nick sputtered, almost tripping on a tree root. Martin grabbed his shoulder to keep him from face-planting. That was not the answer Nick had expected. He’d thought it would be something like Martin wanting to commune with nature. Not that he’d nearly died.
“Yep.” Martin seemed to pick up the pace.
“A heart attack?” he repeated. “I mean—how? You’re like the fittest person I know.”
“Well, I wasn’t before, but I work hard at keeping fit now. I just let myself get entrenched in academic life and it took its toll. This,” he said as he waved a hand that encompassed the whole forest and everything inhabiting it, “is so much better.”
His fitness was evident by the way Martin relentlessly kept moving, taking the switchbacks with ease. Nick was beginning to suspect that was Martin’s approach to life in general. Nick’s thigh muscles were burning, and he was trying not to pant. Lucky for him, he had a great view of Martin’s ass.
“How did you get shot?” Martin asked out of the blue. The question seemed intrusive, even if Nick had just been prying into Martin’s private life. He figured Martin had heard about it from someone in town. Magnus was Nick’s bet, but it could have been Forrest. And there’d been a few times in the past month that Martin could have spotted the knotty scar on his upper thigh.
“A bad case of wrong place, right time,” Nick replied. Fuck, he might as well tell Martin the whole story. “I was doing some freelance work for a travel site and ended up in the middle of a gunfight in Colombo.”
“I didn’t realize Sri Lanka was that dangerous.”
“Neither did I,” Nick agreed. “And apparently, it normally isn’t.Iwas just lucky enough to get caught in the middle of a business disagreement.”
“And then you came back here?”
They turned up another switchback, passing by an enormous and ancient nurse tree. Three younger trees had grown from it and were already fifty feet tall. Tiny delicate ferns dotted the nurse trunk where jade-green moss had left space for them to take hold.
Nick considered what else he would share with Martin about the shooting. “I was held hostage for a day—at least that’s what they tell me. I don’t actually remember much after, not until I woke up in the hospital. Even then, it took me a while to get stateside.”
Mostly, he remembered when he dreamed. The pain, the fear, his heart beating too loudly. The woman who owned the fruit stall leaning over him, trying to stop the flow of blood.
“What about your family, your parents? Did they help you get home?”
