Page 47 of North

Her phone died. She stared at it. Dead. How⁠—

She wiggled the cord. No life. “I think there’s a reason why this phone charger was left behind.”

“Oh dear,” said Josephine. “Leave the phone with me. I’ll find a charger that works. You go get a bath.”

Selah’s room glowed softly from a bedside lamp Josephine must have turned on. The brass bed looked impossibly inviting, its quilts turned down, a chocolate on the pillow as if this was a normal B&B stay. Like she wasn’t running from whatever had happened on that mountain.

The bathroom door stood ajar, steam curling from the claw-foot tub. Josephine had added lavender bath salts, their scent soft in the air.

She turned to the bathroom and stopped. A Bible sat on the nightstand, opened to Isaiah. A verse jumped out, underlined. You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

Peace. When had she last felt that?

The bathroom tile was cool under her feet as she peeled off mud-stiff jeans and the sweatshirt that James had given her. Purple bruises bloomed along her shoulder from the accident. Her ribs ached from holding on during their wild ride down the mountain.

The mirror showed a stranger—grimy and tangled blonde hair, shadows under her eyes, a smudge of dirt across her cheek. She looked like someone who needed saving.

She stirred her hand in the water, the lavender bath salts turning it milky. A basket on the edge of the tub held small luxuries—handmade soap, a loofah in a plastic bag, bath oil that smelled like vanilla.

Selah sank into the water, heat seeping into tired muscles. Night had fallen, and the window above the tub gave her a slice of sky—stars emerging as clouds parted.

The same stars she and North had watched from his deck back when she’d wanted to tell herself that he wasn’t, well, what she imagined him to be.

A mercenary.

She remembered that night with sudden clarity. How the spring air had carried the scent of his neighbor’s lilacs. He’d talked about how he’d gotten into the military⁠—

growing up as a pastor’s kid, wanting to be a warrior for God.

The warrior part had been literal, not figurative, apparently.

He’d told her about his first deployment as a SEAL—not the classified parts, but the human moments. The children who’d followed the convoy, begging for candy. The old woman who’d offered him tea in a blown-out building.

“Sometimes,” he’d said, “doing the right thing means breaking the rules.”

She’d kissed him then, tasting the noble warrior in him, denying anything else.

And then…

She closed her eyes. Maybe she hadn’t been fair. The world was a dangerous place, and…

And all it took for evil to prosper was for good men to do nothing. She certainly couldn’t accuse North of that.

Except…was he a good man?

She was just tired. Too tired. And now her water had turned tepid.

She washed her hair with a coconut shampoo that made her think of Mariposa, so maybe she was being haunted, and then got out, toweled off, and pulled on the bathrobe.

The mirror had steamed over, hiding her reflection. She tied her hair up in a towel, then gathered her dirty clothes and, cinching the robe tight, headed down the hallway and dumped her clothing into the washing machine.

When she returned to her room, she headed to her backpack to find her toiletries kit.

The canister was gone. What?

Maybe she’d taken it out. She searched the room. Not on the table, not on the bedside stand or the bureau.

Huh. The floor creaked outside her door. She froze.