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Carly nodded, her face still beet red. “Indeed I am. Josh bent me over that table there and took his belt to my ass.” She shuddered, obviously remembering. “It was not pleasant.”
Catherine’s grin disappeared, and she grimaced in sympathy. “I bet it wasn’t,” she said.
They sat there quietly for a moment, neither saying anything, nor making eye contact. The silence stretched awkwardly between them. Catherine half expected Carly to retreat back to the sanctuary of the kitchen and finish whatever it was she’d started making, but she didn’t move. It looked like she was lost in thought.
“So who actually found me?” Catherine asked. “I know it was a man, but I don’t know who. Two other men live here, right?”
Carly looked puzzled, and shook her head.
“Ifound you,” she said. “In the helicopter.”
“But…” Catherine let her voice trail off.
“Mike and Davo were looking on foot,” Carly said, but she sounded doubtful. “We could see for a pretty long way in the helicopter though, and they were nowhere to be seen. They went in different directions.” She shrugged. “But maybe it was one of them. They’ll be here soon, we can ask then.”
“Which one has a beard?” Catherine asked. “Because the man looking over the side of the ravine had a big, bushy beard.”
Carly’s face went white, like she’d seen a ghost.
“A beard? Are you sure?”
Catherine nodded.
“Neither of them have a beard,” Carly said. But her voice was shaking and Catherine noticed her hands trembling ever so slightly.
“A hunter, maybe?”
Carly nodded. “Maybe.” But she didn’t sound very convinced. In fact, Catherine thought, she sounded decidedly doubtful.
Heavy footsteps outside alerted the women to the men’s arrival and Carly visibly tensed. What was going on? Was it something to do with the man she’d seen in the ravine? Catherine wondered.
Catherine looked closely at the men as they walked into the little hut. What had Carly said their names were? One was unmistakeably a Ryan—he bore an uncanny resemblance to Josh. And the other one—had Carly called him the stepbrother?—was a big, tall Maori man. Just as Carly had said, neither Davo nor Mike had beards. Both had dark shadows dusting their jaws, but were essentially clean-shaven. Certainly nothing like the outline of the man she’d seen peering over the side of the ravine. Neither of them were wearing coats, either.
“It must have been a hunter who found me, then,” Catherine announced as soon as all the men were inside the hut. “None of you have beards or coats.”
She didn’t really want the sole focus of their attention on her, because she felt a bit bad that they’d all had to search for her, but she had questions. One question, anyway. But it was an important one.
“What do you mean?” Jason asked. “It was Carly who found you. In the helicopter.”
“No.” Catherine shook her head. “There was someone standing at the side of the ravine, looking down on me.”
“There wasn’t!” Jason insisted. “We were flying around for a while, we would have seen someone. There was nobody there, Catherine.”
“Yes. There was. I saw him!” She hated the pleading tone in her voice. She hated the helpless way she looked at Carly, needing reassurance.
You’re crazy. A psycho. You’re insane, Catherine. You need help.Steve’s words echoed in her head. Over and over. An accusation.
“I’m not crazy!” she cried, sounding completely crazy.
“Hey, hey. Relax.” Jason sat down on the bed beside her, rested his hand on her thigh. “Of course you’re not crazy. No one is suggesting you are.”
“But…” She closed her mouth. Jason was right. Nobody here had suggested she was crazy. That had been Steve’s thing. But Steve wasn’t here. None of the men crammed into the little hut now were Steve. He had no power over her any more… Except that he did. He was still in her head, even when she didn’t want him to be.
“It could have been a trick of the light,” one of the men suggested. He reached forward and thrust his hand at her. “Mike,” he said by way of introduction. “The shadows do weird things, in the mountains.”
She leaned forward and took his hand, squeezed it. His hand was so huge it completely engulfed hers, but his grip was gentle.
Catherine shook her head. She didn’t want to be rude, but she knew what she saw. “No. It wasn’t a trick of the light,” she insisted. “It wasn’t a shadow. It was a man.”
