Page 62 of Where You're Planted

Two minutes later, she wason her way up the incline to the lookout over the creek, when a distinct rattling sound stopped her dead in her tracks. Movement flitted in the leaves and pine needles at her feet. And then she saw it, the diamond pattern, the flickering tongue, the beady eyes trained on her as the snake lifted its head to strike.

18

Jack

Thirty minutes had passed, and Jack was getting antsy. Out here in the gated garden, where no visitors besides squirrels and birds ventured, it should have been impossible to miss Tansy returning from the creek. But either hehadmissed her, or she hadn’t come back yet.

“Ian,” he barked into his radio.

“Look whose radio suddenly works again. What’s up?”

“I need you to see if Tansy’s at the library.”

“I’m in the formal garden right now.”

Jack growled. “I need you togoto the library and tell me if she’s there.”

There was a delay, and Jack was about to charge back to the shed himself when Ian said, “Sure, boss.”

A few minutes later, Ian reported that she wasn’t there and, actually, the librarians were worried that she hadn’t come back from her break yet and wasn’t answering her phone.

Jack didn’t respond, just shoved his radio back into its clip and marched into the trees. She’d said she was going to the creek, so he went to the overlook. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t on the staircase or down by the water either. A sick feeling churned in his gut. He bellowed her name into the ravine, and it echoed back faintly.

For what felt like an hour but was, according to his watch, barely ten minutes, he stomped deeper and deeper into the dense woods, shouting her name, equally convinced that he’d missed her body in the ravine and that she’d snuck past him and was sitting on a bench somewhere in the park, oblivious to everyone’s concern. Either way, he’d give her a piece of his mind for the stress she was putting him through.

When he reached the bridge to cross to the expansion property, he turned back, winding through the trees a different way than he’d come, his breathing heavy with worry. And finally, suddenly, there she was, sitting on a log, holding her ankle and panning her phone back and forth overheard for a signal.

“Where thehellhave you been?” he demanded, reaching her in four quick strides.

She fumbled her phone onto the leaf-strewn ground in surprise. “You scared me.” She reached for it, but he beat her to snatch it up.

“Iscaredyou?” he bit out. Part of him wanted to hurl her phone into the trees, his muscles itching with tension.

She cleared her throat and held out her hand, and he slapped the phone into it, immediately turning his attention to the ankle she was clutching, the bloody scrape on her knee, and the vine caught on her skirt.

“What happened to you?” he demanded.

Tansy sighed and made no attempt to explain, slipping her phone into her pocket.

“Tansy,” he barked, bending to get a better look at the bloody knee.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I fell.”

“Why? How?”

“Well, it wasn’t on purpose,” she said, huffing a humorless laugh. “There was a snake—”

He shoved her hand free from her ankle, expecting a bite wound, already gathering the breath to say she neededbootsif she was going to hike around out here.

She hissed as he jostled her, and although the lack of puncture marks was a relief, her swollen, purple-bruised skin jolted fresh alarm through him. “Christ, Tansy. When did this happen? It’s already swollen.”

“About forty-five minutes ago. I tried to go back to the path, but I got turned around.”

“You shouldn’t have been out here in the first place,” he muttered. “Especially not in fucking sandals.”

“Hey,” she snapped. “I realize that concern translates into this whole stomping, barking production for you, but don’t make me feel worse about this.”

He swallowed. He didn’t want her to feel bad. But what was he supposed to do with the sheer force of energy burning through him? “I’ve been yelling your name for ten minutes.”