“Already worked it all through, huh?”
“Yep.” He pauses. “No, I should reassess. Not twenty-five percent legit. More like ten percent, fifteen tops. The rest would be that they’re looking for something other than Haven’s Rock.”
“Lilith or the mining camp.” I shift my weight and Dalton immediately reaches for Rory, who is awake and quiet. I hand her over and stretch my shoulders. “I might put those odds a bit above that. If they’re here for Haven’s Rock, wouldn’t they ask to come back with us?”
“Don’t want to overplay their hand. That could be why she insists they’ll be fine without an airlift.”
“Waiting until we examine her husband, and then they’ll agree that maybe he does need actual medical care. Back at our so-called camp.”
Dalton only grunts, and when Rory fusses, he gives her his knuckle to chew. “I agree you should go on with Storm, and I should hang back with Rory. But I’ll follow along, stay close enough to listen in.”
“That would have been my suggestion.”
“Can you help get Rory strapped to my back? I’d like both my hands free.”
“Good idea.”
If the woman—Gretchen—is surprised that I’ll be coming alone with Storm, she gives no sign of it. I also watch for her to signal to anyone nearby. She doesn’t. Yes, there’s part of me that feels guilty suspecting her, and if it turns out that she’s just a hiker with an injured spouse, I’m going to feel like a cold bitch for begrudgingly offering to help. But that doesn’t mean I’d be less suspicious next time.
We have earned our paranoia, and I’ll continue to embrace it, no matter how it might make me feel. Our residents deserve that paranoia. It’s what they came for—to be someplace where those in charge are hypervigilant, putting their safety above all else.
Even above the safety of their own daughter? No. That’s never going to happen, and Dalton and I have accepted that while our residents are our priority, we are not martyrs. No one who works in Haven’s Rock is.
Dalton and I have our little family, and we have our wider family in Haven’s Rock, from literal family—my sister—to friends who comprise our family of choice. They come first, along with our daughter.
As I walk, I try to relax as if I’ve lowered my guard. Gretchen is friendly and chatty—verychatty, and if her story is true, that would be the chattiness of relief at having found help. My responses land somewhere between polite and friendly, which is the territory where I live.
I act like someone who is happy enough to help but isn’t tripping over herself to be sociable. Again, that’s me.
I don’t look back for Dalton, even surreptitiously. He’ll have left the game trail to slip closer. Of course, with a teething baby, stealth might not be an option. He knows that. If Rory wails, he’ll need to join me and say he changed his mind.
We go pretty much exactly as far as Gretchen said before I spot a man sitting on the ground. He’s about her age, which fits the “college sweethearts” part of her story. He has brown skin, dark hair salted with silver and a beard. He’s holding a hat between his hands, kneading it as if in boredom. Then he sees us and starts vaulting to his feet before stumbling a bit and wincing. An exaggerated stumble? An exaggerated wince? I can’t be sure.
“Hello, there,” he calls. “That must be the dog we heard. Wow. He’s a big one. Newfoundland?”
I nod.
He gives a soft laugh. “Don’t see many of those in the Yukon. Mostly husky crosses up here.”
“True,” I say. The northisfull of various sled dogs and crosses, which could support their story of living in Whitehorse.
“This is my husband, Blake. Blake, this is—” Gretchen stops. “Oh, I didn’t even get your name.”
“Katie.”
Blake thrusts out a hand. “Very happy to see you, Katie. I’m, uh, guessing you aren’t out here alone? I thought I heard a baby.”
“My husband took her back to camp. I have the first-aid kit, and I’m more experienced using it.”
“Oh, you should have seen the baby,” Gretchen says. “So cute. All that black hair. How old is she?”
“Almost six months.”
Is my tone a little cool? I struggle to warm it, to respond like a normal proud mom, but every enthusiastic comment—the dog! the baby!—only has my hackles rising. It feels like being lured into a van with candy. What dog-and-baby mom can resist someone who flatters their darlings?
On the other hand, the problem might be the vibes I’m giving off. Coolly polite, maybe seeming as if they’ve interrupted my day with their emergency. The begrudging Samaritan. Faced with that, they might trip over themselves to be friendly. They’re lost and injured, their navigation and communication gone. They need me, and if talking about my dog and baby helps, that’s what they’ll do.
“Katie’s husband gave us a compass, too.” Gretchen holds out the one Dalton handed her before he left with Rory. She pulls a notebook from her pocket. “And he fixed our trail map. Showed us where we are and pointed out a few errors, plus a shortcut. I told you we shouldn’t have relied on Matt’s memory.”
