Stone clatters into my head, and the sky wins.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jax
The ground shudders. Mother Nature is pissed, but thankfully not with us.
I’ve lived through earthquakes in California. Tectonic shifts that anger the ocean and sway buildings like branches in the wind. Rockfall is something else. It’s energy that grows and swells and surges, crushing anything that gets in its way. Unpredictable. Changeable. I knew the second I set foot on Black Claw yesterday that the routes I’d planned to Lynx Point and back were already unsafe.
I plotted new ones as we went, marking them on the map, avoiding loose, sketchy rock and soft ground, stuck in the cycle of constant evaluation. And now our final descent stretches out before us, and I can’t wait for it to be over. As much as I’ve come to love this wild land, there’s an urgency in my bones I can’t explain. I need to get home.
The earth finally stills. I straighten from the crouch I dropped into when the rumbling struck, and look out over the horizon. At first glance, the landscape seems the same. Nothing has changed. Then it solidifies, and I see the clumps of rock and boulder that have shifted downhill, taking trees and one of my static cameras with it.
My heart mourns the lost footage, but I know better than to traverse the unstable ground to retrieve it. If more landslip doesn’t kill me, Tanner will.
Tanner. My heart flips from disappointment to longing. Old me wants to be nervous about the text I sent him and his response. But the man I’ve become on these trails, the same man who shares Tanner’s bed, dinner, breakfast, and more bottles of cider than I can count, feels nothing but peace. He might love me back; he might not. It doesn’t matter. I’m gonna tell him anyway.
You already did, idiot. You blew your load too soon.
Guilty as charged, but I have no regrets. Only a yearning in my soul that won’t quit until this long-arse day comes to an end.
We tiptoe down the trail, dodging suspect ground. Perhaps we’re overcautious, but if Tanner and Jerry have taught me anything, it’s that there’s no such thing. I force myself to move far slower than my heart wants, my companions at my back as silent and obedient as they’ve been since they got into the Wildfoot truck yesterday. In the distance, I spot what I now know to be Tanner’s cabin, and hope surges, bright and free, then movement on the lower ground distracts me.
I stop and zero in on the lone figure in a heap at the bottom of the trail. At least, it looks like the bottom of the trail, then I realize it’s not. The landscape has altered even more than I first thought. The trail as I know it no longer exists, and worse, it’s taken someone down with it. “Fuck. We need to get down there.”
“That way.” The conservationist closest to me points over my shoulder. “The other guy looks worse off.”
“What?”
Gloved hands grip my shoulders and turn me. My gaze swivels from the body at the bottom of the hill to one I haven’t noticed further up. It’s half hidden by rocks and rubble, only the red of the man’s coat stands out against the unruly earth. “Shit. Okay. I’ll go to him. You two head for the other guy and try and catch some cell service. And Jesus-fucking-Christ remind me next time we do this to bring a satellite phone.”
I part ways with my companions. They’re capable outdoorsmen and I don’t worry about them picking their way across the unstable ground any more than I worry about myself. I focus on the flash of red in the distance and on not dying before I get there. The red consumes me. For long minutes I forget it’s attached to a broken body. I move like the lynx we’ve been watching on camera, wide-footed and light, but I’m not a fucking wildcat. Eventually, the ground wins, and I tumble the last few feet to the injured walker.
Dazed, I land in a heap, searching for the red fabric that’s guided me this far. But I can’t find it. Red surrounds me, but it’s not solid, it’s soft and wet and viscous.
It’sblood, and it’s seeping from the arm impaled on the daggered branch of an unrooted tree.
Fuckfuckfuck. I lurch forward, searching for the source. Icy rock buries the body attached to the arm. I dig through it, keeping a sharp ear out for further rockfall as I sling debris over my shoulder. Blood stains my gloves. I feel sick, but I keep digging, revealing the body of a man who’s tall and strong. His legs are long and well-muscled, and clad in waterproof trousers that are the same as mine, except mine are blue and his are black.
He moans. The sound is quiet, but it rattles my bones. Urgency turns to panic. I fight to uncover the man’s face, brushing earth, dirt, and crushed rubble away. His features reveal themselves, one by one. His dark beard, cut cheekbones, and inky hair.
No. My heart drops like the stone that’s buried him. The man is conscious. Barely. And the coal eyes flecked with gold staring back at me aren’t those of a stranger.
It’s Tanner.
* * *
No.This can’t be real. I shake my head to clear it. It’s not Tanner. It can’t be. I left him in Burlington, tending bar in the safest, nicest drinking establishment in the entire fucking world. There’s no logical reason for him to be out on Black Claw. Hetold mehimself he’d never come out here again. More than once.It’s not him. You’re seeing things.
But as hard as I fight to regain my sanity, every instinct I have fights back. The man moans again, jerking the arm that’s caught on the tree. His dark eyes flash, then flutter closed. And I fucking miss him enough to know it’s true. It’s him, and the what-the-actual-fuck-is-happening-right-now ceases to matter.
“Tanner.Tanner.” I shake his chest with one hand and grip his shoulder with the other, keeping his injured arm still. “Wake up. It’s Jax.”
There’s no response. I shake him harder, raw fear building in my gut. I’m covered in his blood. He’sstillbleeding and his face is deathly pale. I’m no fucking doctor, but I don’t need to be to know he’s badly hurt. That whatever’s happened to him is going to kill him if I can’t keep him awake and get help to him fast.
I shake him again, harder, still gripping his injured arm.
He doesn’t answer me, and his eyes stay closed.
