Shabina couldn’t help laughing. Even Raine had to smile. The idea of Stella attempting to stab Rainier with a fork was hilarious, but then when Stella had a bit too much to drink on a backpacking trip, she came roaring out of her tent in lingerie ready to take on a bear with her karate moves.
Stella looked affronted. “I don’t know why you two would laugh. He might be a badass, but no one makes my friends cry and gets away with it. Hedeservesto be stabbed with a fork.”
“He probably did deserve it at the time,” Raine said. “But I think you missed your opportunity. You can’t just decide months later to attack the man willy-nilly.”
“ ‘Willy-nilly’?” Stella echoed. “No one says that, Raine. And the only way I’d have a chance of skewering him is a surprise attack.”
Shabina couldn’t believe she had gone from despair to laughter in such a short time. She really needed to spend more time around these women. They were good for her. She didn’t dwell on the worst-case scenario every minute.
“Stella Harrison-Rossi, it sounds as if you have been planning to skewer him since Vegas,” Raine accused, doing her best to look outraged, but succeeding in looking as if she might fall off her chair laughing.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I have been.” Stella’s nose went in the air. “Idreamabout retaliation. He’s so sure of himself.”
“Does Sam have any idea that you carry grudges forever?” Raine asked.
“Unfortunately, yes.” Stella heaved a sigh. “I try to keep him with illusions, but he sees all. He always has. He doesn’t seem to mind that I have these little flaws.”
Shabina couldn’t help laughing again at the sigh in her voice. “I think Sam loves what you call your ‘little flaws.’ In any case, you have the wrong impression of Rainier. I don’t want you to think he’s some terrible brute. The truth is, I totally ruined his life. I destroyed his career. I lost him the one woman he loved. He’s on a dozen hit lists because of me.”
“Shabina,” Raine said, her voice gentle. “Stop taking on the responsibility for Rainier’s choices. There was no gun pointed at Rainier’s head.”
“You weren’t there. You didn’t see me. He did. I gave him no real choice. I was barely sixteen and in a terrible state. You may have seen pictures they took of me when Rainier returned with me, but that was after he’d treated me for two weeks. My father was furious with him for not bringing me straight back and did everything he could to ruin Rainier’s career, even after Rainier risked his life to get me out of that hellhole. Rainier was the one to figure out where I was by watching the videos. He realized I was sending coordinates in each one when no one else did. Still, that didn’t matter to my father. It didn’t matter that I’d told Rainier that I would commit suicide before I would ever allow anyone else to see me in the condition I was in. He knew I’d meant it, and again, he risked everything to take me somewhere safe and treat me himself.”
There was silence while the two women did their best to comprehend what Shabina told them. She’d spared them the details—those were too grim to share.
“Rainier listened to me when no one else could hear me. Again, my parents didn’t want him near me, but no one else could make me feel safe, and he came to me when the nightmares wouldn’t stop. He was the one who taught me to use a gun. When I begged to learn self-defense and my father said it was not necessary, that I would have security day and night, Rainier taught me self-defense. When he wasn’t around, he provided me with good teachers. Even then, I didn’t feel safe if he wasn’t with me. I saw a handler working dogs and wanted to learn how to do that for myself. Rainier talked my father into it.”
“What you’re telling me is,” Stella said, “Rainier is a good guy despite the fact that he makes you cry.”
Shabina nodded. “I turn into such a baby when he’s around. I want him to see me as a woman, but that’s impossible when he only comes around when I’m in the middle of a crisis. I do my best to get strong and stand on my own feet, so one day he can either let go completely or view me in a completely different light.”
“Shabina,” Stella breathed her name out in a shocked whisper. “You’re in love with him.”
Shabina didn’t know if it was love. She knew there was no one else for her. There never would be. Others would always say she had developed feelings for him because of the extreme circumstances they’d met under. It was probably true. Whatever the reasons, her feelings ran deep, and she knew they weren’t going away. Rainier was everything to her. She didn’t even know when she became so utterly dependent on him. It had been a gradual realization that she couldn’t do without him.
She worried about him. A big part of the reason she had moved out of her parents’ home was because she felt they treated him so unfairly. Rainier didn’t seem bothered by the way herparents acted toward him, and their behavior never stopped him from coming to her when she needed him. Still, it bothered her so much she felt eventually it would drive a wedge between her and her parents. They worried that she was so close to him. Maybe it was because they knew she needed him, and they wanted her to need them.
“You should be very, very careful,” Stella murmured. “Really know what you’re getting into before you take that leap.”
Shabina gave her a fake smile as they all stood to leave. “He doesn’t look at me that way, Stella, so don’t worry about it.”
“I just want to caution you again, Shabina,” Raine said. “If Rafferty or either of those agents contact you with more questions, don’t answer without Decker present.”
“I’ll be heading up to Yosemite to camp for a couple of nights,” she pointed out. “I don’t think they’ll be so eager to talk to me that they’ll come looking to find where I’m camping.”
Chapter Six
Shabina got a very late start to make the drive to Yosemite. The dogs had been patient and needed their run. She wanted to go to the gun range and practice. Maybe she was putting off going home and checking to ensure no one had broken into her home and the feathers were still there. She’d already packed for her trip. She always had her backpack ready with supplies for the dogs, a first aid kit for them and everything she would need for survival should anything go wrong. She believed in being prepared for the worst-case scenario.
Once she’d assured herself her home had remained secure and the bag with the feathers was untouched, she decided she needed a better place to keep them. She should have given them to Raine. If Shabina’s house was searched or someone broke in, the feathers could be found easily, even though her home was enormous, and she had a safe room. Two of them. That had been at Rainier’s insistence.
Rainier. She’d finally admitted to two of her friends her feelings for the man. Sooner or later, they were going to give their honest opinion on what they thought about that. They’d most likely talk it over with Vienna, Zahra and Harlow. They were thatclose. She’d known when she’d disclosed how she felt that they’d talk it over, but it was time. She wanted the truth out in the open. She couldn’t give them everything, but she wanted to share more of herself with them, as much as she could. And she didn’t want them to continue to think of Rainier as an ogre.
Driving time from Knightly to Sunrise Lake was about an hour. From Sunrise to Yosemite was another hour. She didn’t stop at the resort as she normally would have. Stella would have tried to persuade her to stay in one of the cabins and go up in the early morning, but she wanted to have her campsite set up for the night and the dogs settled. She’d decided she needed to sort herself out. She hadn’t slept for more than an hour or two in a couple of nights, and she’d had nightmares. She hoped being outside under the stars would lull her into a peaceful sleep.
She loved the Sierra. On her days off, she took the dogs, rain or shine, and spent her time hiking every obscure trail she could find looking for birds. There the forest had its own music if one listened. The wind played through the needles and leaves of the varieties of trees and foliage creating various notes. Some sounded mournful, others joyful. There was always something new to discover.
For Shabina, the Sierra felt like a magical, uplifting place each time she walked through it. Light streamed through the canopy overhead if she was in thick forest. Birds flitted from tree branch to tree branch, calling out to one another and singing. Squirrels were busy gathering food to store for the winter. There was the ever-present skitter of lizards, deer mice, rodents and snakes through the leaves, mushrooms and debris on the forest floor.
