“No!” Luke said sharply. He made eye contact with Inga and gave his head a little shake, trying desperately to convey what he was thinking: that letting them see her would make things worse. The last thing he or Inga needed was the owners of the black helicopter connecting this cabin to the mysterious “hiking couple” with the dog. They were already looking for a man and a dog, and if they amended that to a man, a woman, and a dog, hiding would become exponentially more difficult.
There was no way most of that could possibly have come across unless it was by pure telepathy, but Inga picked up the spatula again. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said, having to speak up to be heard over the helicopter’s noise. It sounded like it was directly over the house now. Luke felt like his skin was going to crawl right off his body. “They’ll go away any minute now, I bet.”
“If they don’t, someone should go out and take a picture of those dumbasses and send it to the military’s public relations department,” Inga said, looking up at the ceiling. Rogue growledsoftly. “This absolutely cannot be legal. I think there’s a minimum height they’re supposed to operate above.”
Just as Luke was halfway preparing for commandos on zip lines to burst through the roof, the thunder of the helicopter began to fade. It was clearly moving away, growing softer with distance.
“Do you think they’re studying the griffins?” Nita asked. “They’re certainly unusual enough. It looked like a military helicopter, but it could be wildlife biologists.”
Inga and Luke shared a look.
“That sure could be,” Luke said. “It makes sense.”
It made no sense, really, but it was an explanation that Nita seemed to buy. Luke tried to unkink the giant knot of tension that his body had turned into.
Inga laid down the spatula again. “I can’t say if that’s it or not, but I’m gonna run out and check that the griffins didn’t get blown off the hillside by those idiots.”
“I’ll help,” Luke said, and followed swiftly.
He found Inga a little ways away on the path to the spring, looking at the cabin with her hand over her mouth. The helicopter could still be heard very distantly, and he felt his knees tense with the urge to spring back into the cabin. However, it didn’t return, and he went to Inga instead.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
“I’m fine.” Inga ran her hands across her face. “That was so tense. Scary tense. I thought they were going to come down likeMission Impossiblestyle. Does that happen in real life?”
“I thought they might too, but now I think they might have been using an infrared detector,” Luke said slowly. “That would explain the reason for all the low passes. If so, having Nita here is the biggest stroke of luck we could’ve asked for. The cabin would show up as occupied by several people. If they’re expecting a lone guy with a dog, there’s no way they would think I was here.”
He put a cautious hand on her shoulder. Inga leaned into it.
“Luke, when Nita leaves, I think we should go back to Westerly Cove with her,” she said very softly.
“I don’t think?—”
“Hear me out. I know this sounds crazy to you, and it does to me, a little bit. But I’ve told you that I believe Westerly Cove is uniquely protected. And I really do believe that. There’s no better place to hide out for a while.”
“I don’t want to bring danger to everyone there.”
“You won’t. Think about it. Even if you don’t believe that Westerly Cove is necessarily safer than anywhere else, you’ll have so many more resources than you do here. So many more options. We can look stuff up on the internet, for one thing. If you need to leave, there’s a road, and lots of boats.”
“Inga, you don’t know what these people are capable of. They will absolutely go through other people to get to me. I shouldn’t have stayed here as long as I?—”
“Hey!” Nita called from the door of the cabin. “Are you guys gonna come in and eat, or what?”
Inga turned to look at him hopefully.
“I’ll think about it,” Luke told her. He didn’t have it in him to just say no to those hopeful eyes.
INGA
The day drewinto a fresh spring evening, and the first tint of sunset began to paint the sky. While Luke was out getting a bucket of water from the spring, Nita took Inga aside.
“Okay, tell me seriously, what’s going on with you two?” she whispered, glancing wildly at the door every two seconds as if she thought Luke was about to burst through it like the Kool-Aid Man.
“What are you talking about?”
“You justhappenedto meet this handsome hiker wandering the coast? Come on, spill.” Nita waggled her brows. “Have you been keeping a secret outport boyfriend? Am I crashing your romantic tryst?”
“What? No!”
