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“She can’t have gotten far,” I decide as we step outside and into a bitterly cold day. The storm might have cleared out, but it brought along with it frigid temperatures and the sort of wind that can tear its way straight through a man’s clothes and seemingly into his very marrow. Oh, I would like to make her pay for putting us through this.
Once that flash of irritation passes, I remind myself she must have a reason for all of this. I doubt she feels like being out here in this frozen hellscape any more than I do.
“What makes you say that?” Griffin asks as he searches for prints to give us a sense of the direction she started out in.
“Because I barely slept all night. The light outside the window was starting to turn gray when I finally dropped off for good, and she was there then.”
“That’s still, what? An hour or so?” He looks up at the sky, studying the angle of the sun.
“Something like that.” But in surroundings like this, I doubt she’s moving very fast. No matter how desperate she is to get away.
Dammit, if I only knew why. I might have been able to get through to her and avoid this bullshit.
“Here.” Griffin’s excited grunt snaps me out of my pointless self-questioning, and I look to find a pair of small boot prints in the earth a handful of yards from the cabin. It’s cold as fuck, but the ground hasn’t frozen yet. All that rain last night left a lot of mud.
Griffin is already moving before I have a chance to speak, following the prints, while part of me wonders if this isn’t a trap or a means of leading us in the wrong direction. Would she go to that trouble? Would she do it if her mother told her to?
“Colder than a witch’s tit,” Griffin observes, leaving a fog of vapor hanging around him with every word. “What a shame she couldn’t do this in the summer.”
“Who knows? Maybe we lost her and this will drag on until summer.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” he warns in a dark voice. “I’d rather jump in the river.” Now that he mentions it, I hear it somewhere nearby.
“I’m sure you meant no offense by that,” I mutter, following him while scanning the area for any signs of her blue coat.
“For once, no. I didn’t have you in mind when I said that. But now you mention it…” He smirks over his shoulder, but doesn’t say another word.
A question that’s been on my mind for days bubbles to the surface, and while I’ve managed to leave it unspoken until now, I saw the way he looked at her last night. I heard the intimacy in his voice. He must have hid it pretty well before—I suppose being at the hotel around Mason was motivation to hide how he felt. There’s no such motivation now.
“What’s going on with you two?” I ask.
He stumbles slightly, a gesture which would have gone unnoticed if I wasn’t watching him closely. “What do you mean?”
Pretty pitiful. “Can we not play games? I’m too fucking cold and I’ve gone too long without a full night’s sleep in a decent bed to play games. I asked you a question, and I would appreciate an answer.”
“I’m just wondering. Whoever said there was anything going on between us?”
“Nobody had to. No judgment here, either,” I insist. “But if you have a personal relationship, it might benefit our mission if I knew about it.”
“Fair enough.” Still, he hesitates before answering my question. “We sort of had a fling a while back. Nothing serious.”
“And I’m assuming Mason never found out, since your balls are still attached to your body.”
He stifles a burst of laughter. “Correct, and I would prefer they stay that way, if it’s all the same to you.”
I’m glad he can’t see the irritation I’m sure is written across my face. I would hardly consider myself burning with jealousy, though. They’re both young, attractive people who work closely together and find themselves in close proximity all the time. It’s chemistry, pure and simple.
Not everybody can have something deeper than that. Something based on thought and feeling. Trust. Respect.
“The details are none of my business,” I assure him as we continue our hike. Her prints fade from time to time, but always reappear. The terrain is getting rough, and the rushing river is closer and louder with every step we take. “Though if you ask me, you’re a fucking idiot for ending it. She’s a quality girl.”
“She ended it, not me.”
I’m happier than ever his back is to me, since I doubt I could conceal my broad grin if I tried. “Smart girl. He walked right into that one.”
He snorts, throwing a smirk over his shoulder. “How about you?”
“Excuse me?” I challenge. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
