But after everything that had happened . . . this—training, searching, following a trail until it led somewhere—had given Wyatt something solid to hold on to.
They followed Thunder down the slippery trail. Wyatt kept an eye on Kori’s footing, remembering how close she’d come to going over earlier. That could have turned out much worse.
He didn’t say that.
Right now, she just needed to keep moving.
Kori trailed behind him. Her breathing had evened out, which meant she’d found her rhythm. He’d watched her make the adjustment without saying anything about it.
She recalibrated and kept going.
He respected that.
As they continued, his thoughts drifted back to Flint Gentry.
Kori had given him the outline of the situation—Virginia Tech, old relationship, Mackenzie falling in love with Blue Ridge Hollow on a visit. Everything she’d said was clean and factual and carefully edited.
Kori had given him the shape of her story, but she’d purposely withheld the weight of the situation.
But the weight was there. Wyatt had seen it on her face every time Flint’s name came up. And he’d seen it on Flint’s face on that sidewalk outside Ember & Oak—that fraction of a second before the man’s easy smile came back.
Flint had always been . . . hard to pin down.
The man was good at his job. He was smart. He knew the forest inside and out. But he didn’t always have much patience for the rules that came with it. Wyatt had seen him push back on regulations more than once—permits, access restrictions, the layers of approval the Forest Service required for even the simplest things.
Flint had called them inefficient and had claimed the system cared more about paperwork than people. Sometimes Wyatt wondered if the man was in the wrong line of work with those thoughts.
He filed the thought away and focused on Thunder. He couldn’t let himself get distracted—not by Flint, and not by the woman walking behind him. She was here to find her sister. Then she’d go back to her life—her job, her city, everything waiting for her beyond these mountains.
He’d learned long ago that he couldn’t get attached to people whose life goals were different than his. That only ended in heartache.
Thunder slowed, still locked on the trail. But he now picked his way more carefully through the forest.
The terrain had changed. There was now less open forest, more deadfall and rock, and the slope steepened to their right.
Whoever had come through here had known where they were going. This wasn’t the route a casual hiker would take.
The realization wasn’t particularly comforting.
He was working through the implications of that when Thunder stopped.
His nose came up, scenting the air. He took three careful steps then stopped again.
Wyatt moved beside him.
His gaze stopped on what Thunder had found.
Something was half buried in a drift at the base of a fallen pine.
He crouched and brushed away the top layer of snow with his gloved hand.
A backpack with hunter green fabric appeared. It also had a yellow sun patch. Cheerful flowers that looked completely wrong in this frozen, dark forest.
Kori stopped behind him and gasped, “That’s hers. Mackenzie’s.”
His muscles went taut.
Mackenzie had been through here. But why would she have left her backpack? The tent and her sleeping bag were still attached.
