I’m going to die. My sister’s going to die.
“Yell so I know where you are,” a boy—Luke—shouts.
“H—” My mouth has gone dry and no sound will come out. I swallow and try again. “Here!”
Hands roughly yank me forward into a dim room. Dust is falling like rain. I meet Luke’s eyes and dig my fingers into his arm. “My sister!”
Genevieve and I were close when we were little, but I’m in eighth grade and Gen’s in sixth, and she’s been annoying me the last few years by borrowing my stuff and coming into my room and talking too much. I haven’t been nice to her lately, and now I can’t stand that thought. Because we’re both going to die.
Chapter Three
His trespasser was back.
Sam recognized the white Volvo parked in front of his house and groaned. What did Genevieve want with him? He was just beginning to regain his equilibrium after their last meeting.
His old truck bumped along the familiar gravel-covered dirt road that led from the farm’s entrance gate, past the guesthouse, and eventually to his white two-story farmhouse. He parked and exited the cab. His gaze latched on to her as he approached.
Genevieve was sitting on one of his rocking chairs, once again looking like she’d come from a fashion shoot. She closed her laptop and set it on the side table next to a disposable coffee cup. “Good afternoon,” she said cheerfully, remaining on her—his—rocker.
He stopped with one foot on the porch and one on the step below. “Am I going to have to call the cops?”
She smiled as if there’d been no seriousness in the question at all. “Why in the world would you do that?”
“Because this is the second time in two days I’ve found you squatting on my land.”
“As you can see,” she waved toward herself, “I’m not squatting. I’m sitting on your land. Land that, by the way, I absolutely love.”
“Is there something I can help you with?”
“Yes.” Unlike a normal person, she didn’t say anything else.
He’d created a predictable, quiet life for himself. Genevieve Woodward wasn’t predictable. And even when she wasn’t talking,many things about her were loud. Her presence. The energy captured inside her small frame.
She wore an ivory short-sleeve shirt. The scarf that looped around her throat—oddly—had no ends. Her leather earrings, in the shape of feathers, reached almost to her shoulders. She must have purchased her jeans with holes in them, because there’s no way she’d ever worked enough manual labor to create those holes naturally.
“I’ve been doing research,” she told him. “You were one of a select group chosen to lease a historic farm on Chattahoochee National Forest land.”
“That’s right.”
“How long ago?”
“Four years. I don’t see what this has to do with—”
“How were you chosen?”
“I submitted an application.”
“From what I read, it was quite a coup to score one of the sixty-year leases. Why do you think they picked you?”
“Did you come here to ask me questions about leases on national park land?”
“In part, yes. I’m interested.”
He sized her up, trying to understand her motivation for being here. She sized him up in return, pleasantly and patiently. She wasn’t just a stranger to him. She was also just plain strange. A weird blend of charming, confident, and confusing.
“I think...” His forehead furrowed.
“Go on.”
