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“Hey, sorry to bother you. Have you seen a guy with a dog up here?”
No answer.
“Hello?”
The hairs stood straight up on Sawyer’s arms as an eerie silence fell. The birds had stopped singing. Even the rustling leaves and whispering wind seemed to have stilled. It was as if the forest was holding its breath with him.
“Hello?” he repeated.
Zelda growled at something right before her barks echoed through the hollow silence. Sawyer stiffened, his hand going to the bear spray.
“Who’s there?” he challenged, angling himself in the direction Zelda was facing. He heard a gasp like someone who had been holding their breath for too long had finally let it out.
“Whoa! Easy, guy,” a male voice finally responded, sounding shocked and a bit wary. “Just out here hiking.”
Sawyer didn’t let his guard down. “Have you seen a man with a dog?”
“Other than you?” someone else said. There were two of them.
“Dog... you mean that black mop on legs?” the first guy said. “Yeah, we passed them on the trail yesterday.”
“Which direction were they headed?”
“Oh, that way.”
The guy had to be pointing in the right direction.
Sawyer reigned in his frustration. “Can you please tell me in words?”
“Wait, are… are you blind?” the second guy asked. He sounded younger, maybe a teenager, which was the only reason Sawyer didn’t snap at him.
“Holy shit,” the first guy said. “He is. What the hell are you doing up here by yourself? Ranger Harper!” he called, his voice fading as he turned away. “There’s a blind man up here. I think he’s lost.”
“I’m not—” Sawyer started, but then a female voice floated up the mountain on the wind and every cell in his being sparked to uncomfortable life.
“Mr. Grassley, I told you to stay—” She broke off and gasped. “Sawyer?”
Lucy Harper.
The strong, feisty park ranger he’d helped rescue from a serial killer last year and hadn’t been able to stop thinking about ever since. It was completely inappropriate given the way they’d met, and he’d never act on his attraction, but knowing that didn’t stop her from dominating his fantasies for the last year.
“Lucy.” Jesus, why was his voice so strangled? He cleared his throat and tried again. “Uh, hi.”
“Sawyer.” Lucy sounded just as surprised to see him as he was to hear her. “What are you doing here? Are you hiking alone?”
“Uh, yeah. Just Zelda and me. We’re looking for my friend Pierce. I don’t think you ever met him, but he’s… quiet and intense. Can stare an oil stain off a driveway. Uses sign language. He travels with a little black dog with dreadlocks.”
“We saw him,” the older man—Mr. Grassley—said. “Yesterday, going down the trail when we were coming up.”
“He looked pissed,” the younger man added.
“Joel, language,” Mr. Grassley snapped.
“Sorry, Dad.”
More voices floated up from further down the mountain, and Lucy said, “Over here.”
Two more people joined them—a woman and a man. The woman’s voice was low and gravelly, the kind of voice that could carry over a crowd without straining. The man, on the other hand, talked in hushed whispers like he thought he was on an undercover mission.
