CHAPTER 4
ROWAN
Idon’t know what I expected to see when I opened the back door, but it wasn’t the woman before me.
Her blond hair — which looks like it was, at some point, styled — sticks to her head, and there’s mascara smudged around her wide green eyes. She’s wearing little brown shorts and a cropped green jacket, plus hiking boots that look like they just came out of the box.
And when I open the door, causing her to look up at me, she screams.
And screams.
“Hey!” I don’t mean to shout, but it barks out of me, startled and confused. Why the fuck is she screaming? She’s the intruder in a heap onmyporch.
Theheystartles her, too, stopping the screaming, thank God. Cheese barks inside, trapped in one of the spare rooms. I was worried a deer or, God forbid, a bear cub might have fallen onto the porch, and the last thing I needed was Cheese trying to edge her way out the door.
“Please don’t kill me!” the woman says, throwing her arms up in front of her face and reeling away from me, so her back presses up against the railing. There’s nothing behind her but open air, but I doubt she has the presence of mind right now to think about that. Good thing the railing is stable. “I— I can pay you. At some point. Maybe next week when I get paid. Do you have Venmo?”
“I’m not going to kill you,” I grunt, not letting the ridiculous circumstances of this situation — and what she just said — amuse me. I am not amused. I should just tell her to get lost, but there’s something about her that makes me ask, “What the hell are you doing on my property?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone lived here,” she says, staring up at me from her place on the porch, though she repositions herself, wincing a bit as she does. Her arms are shaking.
“Were theKeep Outsigns not clear enough?”
I’m doing my best to temper my anger. What are the chances that she really is just a random camper — wearing hiking boots right out of the box — who got lost? Regardless of who she is, she’s clearly terrified right now. That, or an amazing actress.
As a six-foot man with a pretty good right hook, I’d be spooked if I were in her situation, too.
I’m just starting to soften towards her, to feel bad for coming out and making her scream, when she goes on, clearing her throat and glancing above my head toward the roof of the cabin, “I just came to get my drone.”
“Drone?” I growl, all good will toward her disappearing. I step forward and let the door slam shut behind me, which, in hindsight, doesn’t help me with the allegations of seeming like amurderer, especially when it causes the porch to go dark again. But it’s hard for me to care.
What the hell would a random camper or hiker be doing up here with adrone? After dusk, no less.
This is exactly what happened last time.
“I’m camping here,” she says, raising her hands up. “I was just— I didn’t mean for it to fly over your place.”
As if I believe that. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t fly it on national forest land without a license. And I would have known if you got a license.”
She blinks up at me, and for a brief moment, I catch a wave of curiosity move over her face. Then she seems to remember her predicament and buries it. I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t be giving her any clues. Even if she isn’t actually part of the press and doesn’t already have a lead on who I am, she could still figure it out.
There’s a certain sense of recognition in her gaze, and it doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve seen that expression on other people’s faces before.
Back when I was living with my sister and journalists would find me when I was out for coffee, pretending they didn’t know who I was. Then, later, the guy who showed up at my cabin, sticking the lens of his camera up against the windows, trying to catch me on film like fucking Bigfoot.
“Just get out of here,” I say when she doesn’t respond, because I don’t want to give her the chance to ask questions. That never ends well for me.
“I—” She casts a glance upward, toward the ceiling. “What about my drone?”
I wave my hand, knowing the reason it came down — the defenses I set up around my place for that very reason. You can’t fly a drone too close to my perimeter without the system recognizing it and sending out electromagnetic pulses to bring it down.
Her drone is, most likely, fine, but I’m not going to tell her that. Not before I get the chance to access it and delete the files from its internal storage. A thought occurs to me.
“Give me your phone.”
“What?” she shakes her head. “No way.”
I hold my hand out to her. “I need to delete the footage of my place.”
