Page 29

TWENTY-NINE

Meredith had never been as cold as she was in this moment. Never. She’d also never spent so long convinced she was going to die.

And she had thoughts.

Zero stars. Would not recommend. Would give a negative rating if possible.

But they pressed on. SSW. She knew what Mo had been reminding her of, but it had been fifteen years since they’d pulled that stunt. The forest wasn’t like a subdivision. It changed. Trees grew. Trees fell. And the season mattered too. They’d come up here in the fall before the leaves fell.

It was winter now. While there were plenty of evergreens, the forest looked like someone had filled the land with drawings of stick figures. Gray. Slim. Barren.

Lord, help me see.

She kept that prayer on loop as they pushed through the woods.

What felt like hours, but according to her watch was only forty-five minutes later, she heard it.

But she shouldn’t have been able to. She stopped moving.

Gray froze beside her. “Is that a river?” She mostly had to read his lips, because neither of them wanted to yell but speaking in a normal voice barely carried.

Realization hit her. Oh, God was really, really good. So good. She pressed her lips to his ear. “Not normally. But I think today, yes. Come on.” She followed the sound until they came to the edge of the angry, roiling water. She’d never seen anything more beautiful. “Hello, old friend.”

This was her river. At least, it would become her river as it flowed toward her property. In this area, it wasn’t much more than a creek except for days like today, when it was swollen from the rain. She studied the area. Nothing looked familiar, but it didn’t matter. Now that she’d found the river, she could find her way home.

Unfortunately, home was miles away and she was losing feeling in her fingers.

The good news was that Mo and Cal would know where to look. Wandering around in a forest was never a good idea. Even experienced hikers could get lost. But someone would find them now.

She prayed it would be the good guys who found them first. She had no doubt that Gray would die before he’d let anyone take her, and that was unacceptable.

She pointed downstream and again spoke into Gray’s ear. “Home is that way.”

He twisted his head so he could speak to her. “Please tell me you aren’t planning to hike all the way home.”

She leaned in again, and despite the circumstances, couldn’t quite ignore the little thrill that zinged through her at the contact. Mercy, but she had it bad for this man. “There’s a cabin. Old. Won’t do more than give us a chance to catch our breath. But Mo and Cal will head toward it and then come upstream.”

Gray gave her a look that sent another, darker zing through her.

“What?”

“You are incredible.” Before she could respond to that random remark, he took her hand again. “But we have to keep moving.”

They kept the river on their right and headed downstream. Sometimes they had to move a good bit away from it, but she wasn’t worried. As long as it was nearby, she could make it home.

Meredith never would have dreamed that long-ago, ill-advised adventure would have ever paid off.

They were fifteen and sixteen years old. Bronwyn had taken off. Meredith and Cal were in shock. Mo vacillated between fiery anger and terrifying despondency. He never lashed out at her or Cal, but he beat the stuffing out of several punching bags and chopped so much firewood that he kept the whole family in split logs that entire winter.

Meredith and Cal hadn’t known how to help. As an adult, she understood that they were grieving in their own way, Mo was grieving in his. And none of them had the emotional capacity to help anyone.

Their compromised state probably helped explain why they decided to hike the river. Meredith had grown up traipsing all over the forests with Mo, Cal, and Bronwyn. But they’d always stayed on Quinn land. There was plenty of it, and she’d never been tempted to venture beyond it.

But they were feeling some weird mix of reckless and brave, and they started out early on a Saturday morning and hiked up the river. They knew when they’d left Quinn land. There were markers all over the place if you knew what to look for. Some of them marked one person’s personal property from another. Some marked the boundary between Quinn land and non-Quinn land. The ones to be most wary of were the ones that marked the line between the Quinns and Pierces, but there were others.

That day, they’d ventured on past the boundary that marked their home territory. And on. And on. Mo hiked like a man on a mission. Cal and Meredith followed him. She still didn’t know why they’d done it, but she did know that she’d been terrified to leave him. In hindsight? She suspected that God had been protecting all of them, but Mo especially, from doing something rash.

Not that hiking into Neeson County hadn’t been rash.

Although to be fair to their teenage selves, they hadn’t done it on purpose.

It wasn’t like the county lines were marked through the forest the way they were on the road. They hadn’t realized they were out of the county until they came to a ramshackle hut. Cabin was too fancy a word to describe it. And because they were young, stupid, and emotionally compromised, they went inside.

Ten seconds later, they were back outside and moving back toward home as fast as they could manage it. They didn’t stop or talk until they were back on Quinn land.

“Should we tell someone?” Meredith asked as they stood by the river.

“What are we going to tell them?” Mo’s voice was low, his anger simmering just below his fear. “So, Mom and Dad, we decided to hike up the river and we saw a hut and when we went inside there was a sign that said ‘Get out,’ and we’re pretty sure it was written in blood. We got out.”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what we tell them.”

“We were way off our own land. Probably trespassing.” Cal ran a hand over his hair. “Private property and all that.”

“So?”

“There’s nothing illegal about putting up a sign that tells people to get off your property, Meredith.”

Mo nodded. “While there is something illegal about trespassing.”

“You aren’t going to tell?” Meredith looked at them.

“Not a chance.” Cal shook his head.

Mo agreed. “My lips are sealed.”

Later, they’d asked random, innocent questions and learned there were small hunting huts all over the mountains. Spots where people could hole up if they needed to for reasons that had nothing to do with criminal activity.

But they also learned that sometimes those huts were hideouts for people with nefarious ideas. Uncle John had said, “If you see one, stay away from it unless it’s on our land.”

She shared the story with Gray as they walked. “I haven’t thought about that hut for years. We have three that I know of on Quinn property. I can confirm that as of three years ago, none of them had signs written in blood.”

“Are you sure it was blood?”

“Until recently I would have told you it was some old geezer’s idea of a good way to keep kids out of his hunting hut. That it was red paint and that it was an effective, albeit horrific, method of protecting his space.”

“And now?”

“Now? Now I wonder if we should have said something.”

He bumped her elbow with his. “Well, see, now you have. You’ve reported it to law enforcement. And it looks like we’re going to have the opportunity to check it out for ourselves.”

“Yeah.” She couldn’t drum up any real enthusiasm. She was so cold. When they reached the hut, she was going inside. She didn’t care if there were signs all over that thing.

“You okay?” Gray asked.

She nodded.

“We’re going to get home tonight, baby. It will be warm. We’ll sit by the fire.”

“I’m not sitting outside tonight.” She rubbed her hands together. “I may never sit outside again.”

“Sure you will but not tonight. Tonight, you’re coming to my place. We’ll have the fire roaring. We’ll snuggle under a blanket. We’ll put a movie on, and you’ll fall asleep in the big chair. And I’ll have to explain myself to your dad and your brother and your cousin tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not letting you out of my sight.”