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CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

ASHER

A sher had never had such a delicious breakfast.

Then again, it had been so long since he’d last eaten that even one of Gabe’s alleged ‘salads’ of lettuce, vinaigrette, and barely-seasoned grilled chicken would have probably tasted incredible. The McDonald’s Egg McMuffin he had just scarfed down was basically heaven.

The sky was beginning to lighten as he finished up the final dregs of his coffee and watched as Karlin did the same.

She’d gone quiet again on the drive over to the canyon. Every time he managed to get her laughing and opening up, she always shut down again soon after. On some level, he knew that he should probably be annoyed, but instead, he couldn’t help but to see it as a challenge.

And he loved a challenge.

Especially one that allowed him to indulge in outrageous flirting with a smart, gorgeous woman like Karlin.

For the moment, though, he decided to be a little more serious. They’d have to go back to the retreat site soon, and this might end up being the only time they had alone for a while. He couldn’t spend the entire time hoping for a kiss.

Not out loud, anyway.

He cleared his throat, gathering up their breakfast trash and tossing it into the largest paper bag.

“So. We haven’t really had much of a chance to talk about the real stuff, have we?”

Karlin glanced up at him, her face going decidedly pink. He smirked. Maybe she thought he was going to profess his undying love or something.

He wasn’t, of course.

At least, he didn’t think so. Probably.

“It feels like everyone and everything has been conspiring to keep us apart,” he explained. “It’s hard to investigate very well when I can’t actually talk to my point of contact.”

“I’m sorry,” Karlin said, looking way more chastened than he’d wanted her to feel. “It’s been so difficult. I should have found us walkie-talkies or something, though I think that might be risky when I’m in my staff cabin–”

“No, no, no, don’t be sorry,” he said quickly. “It’s no one’s fault. And you’ve done a good job, considering the circumstances. I mean, you didn’t accidentally dose me with DX8. Total win.”

Karlin didn’t return his smile.

“The doctor at the hospital threatened to report me,” she said. “That was after she chewed me out for putting my patient at risk. She wasn’t wrong, but it still hurt.”

Asher reached over and rested his hand on her shoulder. “This is the kind of thing that you need to let Bajwa handle,” he said firmly. “Don’t let it distract you.”

She nodded, and he let his arm fall away. He didn’t want to push her too much now. Not when she was clearly wrestling her own demons.

“I guess I’m still worried about my own reputation,” she admitted. “I don’t want to be shunned by the medical research community. I love what I do. I want to keep doing it, even after all of this is over.”

“Have you always been passionate about mental health research?”

She smiled softly. “I’ve always been a nerd.

I loved math and science in school. I thought I’d do something else with that interest, though.

Something nice and solitary, and preferably something that earned a lot more money than I’d had growing up.

But when my parents left, I realized that I had gifts that could help people.

Witnessing John’s struggle only solidified that plan for me. ”

“I admire that,” Asher said. “It’s not always easy to use the gifts that God has given you. Especially when there are easier paths you could follow instead.”

“Right,” she said after a brief pause. “It’s not an easy field to be in, that’s for sure.”

Karlin looked a little uncomfortable at the mention of God, and he decided to change the subject.

“So, did you see the thing about the cults that Destiny was watching?” he asked.

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I’ve definitely heard about it. It’s been in the news for months.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’m worried about the missing girls,” she clarified, “but the idea that they ran off to some crazy cult compound out in the desert somewhere? No. Not convinced.”

Asher shrugged. “I’ve seen stranger things in my business.”

“If there was anything to it, the authorities would have found something by now,” Karlin said firmly.

“For someone with such a skeptical streak, why do you so readily believe in what the authorities say?”

She paused for a moment, considering this.

“As an authority myself, I can tell you that ‘the authorities’ screw up all the time,” Asher joked.

“Oh, so you’re an authority now?” she asked, returning his playful tone. “The Forge Brothers Security website made it very clear that you guys aren’t actually law enforcement officers, at least legally speaking. So I’m pretty sure you’re not the boss of me.”

“Hmm. My brother Gabe thinks he’s basically the president, emperor, and king of the world,” Asher mused. “Maybe I should read that page to him. Knock him down a notch or two.”

Karlin laughed. “Your brothers sound like fun, honestly. Including Gabe. I wish I could meet them.”

“I’m sure they’d love you,” he said, blushing a little at even the indirect mention of the L-word. “And even better, all the flirty ones except Jacob are taken, and he’s across the world somewhere.”

“All the flirty ones aside from you, you mean,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Obviously. Speaking of flirting, the sun’s about to rise.”

“Speaking of raisins, that’s a non-sequitur,” she replied without missing a beat.

Goodness, she was pretty.

Even when she was teasing him.

“Come on. You’re going to miss it,” he said, hopping out of the Jeep and striding around to the passenger side. He yanked open her door.

“Let’s go.”

KARLIN

Karlin wrapped her arms around herself as Axel opened the door and sent a burst of freezing wind whipping into the Jeep.

“Are you insane?” she snapped. “It’s like forty degrees out! And I didn’t exactly think to grab my jacket while we were rushing Destiny to an ambulance.”

To her annoyance, Axel only smiled wider.

“Stop being a wimp,” he said, sliding out of his hoodie and holding it out to her.

For a moment, she considered slamming the door and turning the heat up to max, but decided against it. “If I die of frostbite, I’m blaming you.”

“Don’t be silly. It would have to be like eight degrees colder for you to get frostbite.”

“How reassuring.”

She allowed him to help her out of the Jeep and into the hoodie. She decided it was too cold to waste precious energy arguing as he led her over toward the railing of the lookout.

Despite her discomfort, she found herself stunned by the beauty of the scene that lay before her.

Axel was right–it was insane that she’d never been here, considering she lived so close.

The Palo Duro Canyon stretched out in front of her as far as she could see, and on the far end, she could see the sun slowly creeping up over the canyon’s red rim.

They watched in silence as the colors below began to shift from cool blues and purples to burning oranges, yellows, and reds. Innumerable shrubs and late flowering plants blanketed the canyon’s bottom, and needle-covered juniper trees clung to its steep cliffs.

Karlin wanted to comment, but the view had left her awestruck, stealing away any hope of finding the right words.

After a few more minutes, the sun had risen fully above the tallest stretch of cliff, and Axel broke the silence at last.

“It’s like…it’s like love, you know?” he said.

“What?”

The very mention of that word was enough to make her breath catch in her throat.

“I feel like we humans are always trying to quantify everything,” he explained. “We try so hard to explain everything, to break it down to the smallest parts in hopes of examining our way to the truth.”

Karlin stole a glance at him for a brief moment, but his eyes were still trained on the scene below. “I’m a scientist, so yeah. Trying to know things is what I do. It’s how I live my life.”

“There’s nothing wrong with knowing things,” Axel said. “But there are some things that the natural sciences can’t touch. Like the beauty of a sunrise. Or love.”

Long moments passed as she considered his words, turning them over and over in her mind.

“There was a time in my life when I would have considered that idea to be false. Maybe even stupid,” she admitted.

“But?”

She chewed on her bottom lip, trying to form the right words.

These questions were not entirely new to her. She’d pondered them before, many times, but somehow, she always felt like a traitor, as though acknowledging the inherent mystery of the universe meant she was ready to throw her lifelong love of scientific truth away.

But she couldn’t deny that her opinions had changed over the years, even if she hadn’t reached a full conclusion yet as to what she believed.

“I used to think about these questions in purely material terms,” she said, gesturing toward the sunrise, as though the glorious beauty could speak up and help her explain.

“I thought of love as taking place in the brain. Just hormones, chemicals, neurons, and the rest. I thought beauty was the same.”

Axel nodded. “There’s truth to that, obviously. I just don’t think that’s where it ends. I think that beauty and love exist not only outside of us, but outside of what we can measure. At the end of the day, I think that theistic faith makes sense of things that science can’t really touch.”

“I’ve– I’ve had the same thought,” she admitted.

“I’m so used to looking for rational explanations for everything, but sometimes, I think we need to take our own experiences of the world into account.

And my experience of the world tells me that there might be more to life than subatomic particles. ”

Her words hung in the air for what felt like a very long time.

It was the closest she’d ever come to admitting out loud that God could possibly be real. Actually, it was probably the closest she’d come to admitting as much even within the privacy of her own thoughts.

“Well,” Axel said at last, finally looking over at her with a smile as he broke the silence between them. “I’m glad you don’t think I’m stupid.”

She laughed. Once again, she found herself realizing just how safe she felt around him. He knew how to press every button she had, but on the other hand, he also knew when to simply listen. It was a rare gift, and one she found herself extremely thankful for.

“You’re shaking, you know,” he said.

At that moment, she realized he was right. She’d pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over her ponytail and the sleeves as far over her fingers as they would go, but she was still extremely cold.

“You must be freezing, too,” she retorted. Having given her his hoodie, he was now wearing only a long-sleeved t-shirt.

“Nah. Nice and warm. I’m a man,” he said. “We wear shorts in January.”

“Whatever you say,” she said, shaking her head as she tried to pull the hoodie more tightly around herself.

“Seriously, I’ll prove it,” he said. His teasing smile had reached the corners of his eyes. “Come here.”

Before she had the chance to get away from him or even to argue, he’d pulled her in close, wrapping his arms around her.

He was warm all right, warm enough for his body heat to mingle with what remained of her own, but she hardly noticed. Her heart was beating so loudly that she feared he would hear it.

He’d hugged her at the hospital, but this was different.

She forced herself to breathe in and out slowly, trying to let herself relax, but her mind was racing at a hundred miles an hour as she considered what this meant.

Axel made no jokes and offered no flirty comments.

There was a seriousness to the way he touched her now, holding on to her like she was a precious treasure for him to protect.

But then again, maybe she was reading too much into it. Perhaps he really was just trying to be a gentleman and keep her warm. He’d be flying home to San Antonio soon enough, and she’d probably never see him again.

She should be pulling away, not letting herself rest in his arms.

And yet, despite everything she knew and the kind of person she thought she was, she wanted to dream.

She wanted to believe so badly that this could be something real. That there might be objective beauty in sunrises, and true love, and a God who made both.

Just then, she felt her phone vibrating.

Who would be calling her this early in the morning? It had to be Bajwa.

For the first time ever, she found herself annoyed to have phone service.

She could have sworn that Axel actually let out an audible sigh as she extracted herself from his arms and pulled the phone from her back pocket.

But as soon as she read the name on the caller ID, she froze.

It wasn’t Bajwa.

It was John.

“Hello? What’s going on, are you okay?” she said as she picked up, not waiting for her brother to greet her.

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line.

“Hey, Karl. Don’t freak out, but I’m in the hospital.”