“Well, if one of the people who took a boat tour yesterday knows something, then we need to figure out which one, and what they know. We could start following up on these names one by one—what are there, six, seven? Or we could do the obvious thing. Go down by the river and see what that group left under the cairn.”
He lowered his head, shaking it slowly. “Come on, Camellia. What are the chances that out of all the parties who booked river tours yesterday, the group we noticed is the one with a connection?”
“What are the chances they’renot? That woman was Native, Wolf.” She held up her hands, like she was balancing platters on each palm. “YouknowI do this for a living, right? You’re not doing me a favor by justpretendingto let me help you, are you Wolf? This is myjob. And I’m damn good at it.”
He stared at her and said nothing. Then he lowered his head and said, “I don’t know what I did that has you so pissed at me.”
“It’s what you didn’t do,” she said. Then she bit her lip so she wouldn’t say more. “And I guess I shouldn’t have expected it. Neither of us wanted this.”
“Camellia, you’re going too fast. I can’t keep up.”
She couldn’t look at him. If she did, she’d cry. “We’re breaking camp and getting out of here, but before we head back to the pickup, I’m going down to that spot and looking at what that group left behind. You can do what you want. I was prepaidby my client—your mother—and I’m damn well going to finish the job.”
He said, “Okay,” and then he turned toward the supplies and started packing them up. After a moment, he asked, “Are you all right, Camellia?”
Just like a man to blame her anger with him on something being wrong with her. She looked him right in the eyes. “Yes. I’m fine. I’m scared, because my stalker is here, and crushingly disappointed that you don’t believe me about that.”
“Oh,” he said, and his face was the human equivalent of a lightbulb turning on.
“Yeah.Oh.” She knelt and rolled up the sleeping bags as if she were angry with them, resulting in nice, tight bundles that fit easily into the bag of supplies. Wolf went outside, returning in several trips with the cookstove, its gas tank disconnected, the coffeepot, their folded-up chairs. By the time he’d made the final trip, she had everything else packed in the big canvas bag. She was the only one who knew how to jigsaw puzzle all the parts to fit. Her dad had taught her.
She really missed her dad.
Wolf touched her arm. “I believe you, Camellia. If you say Earl is here, he’s here. I’m sorry it took me a minute.”
“Or are you just saying that to placate the crazy lady, and make for a peaceful ride home?” She shrugged, shaking her head, hauled the large duffel bag’s strap over her shoulder and took it out. Then she set it down and started pulling tent stakes while he was still inside.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Wolf
The sun rose as they walked, and a tense silence settled over them. Wolf hated it, and he hated feeling so awful, and he missed her being kind of crazy about him.
He said, “Did you know my mom was bipolar?”
He was working things out in his own mind and talking to her about it fresh from there. He had to do something, and telling her how he felt about her wasn’t an option—not when he was still figuring that out himself.
Camellia slowed her pace. She’d been speeding along the trail four paces ahead of him, walking off her anger, he hoped. She slowed though and let him catch up. He fell into step beside her. “No. She never told me that.”
“I was in middle school when she was diagnosed. I learned what to watch for, you know.” They were close to the river, which hummed deep and splashed in the background. “Whenever Mastarted saying things that sounded…unlikely, it always meant she was off her meds. It was one of her first signs.”
“I’m not bipolar, though.”
“I know that. It was just a…” He held up a palm, searching for the word. “Reflex.”
Camellia sighed. And then she said, “We’re here.”
They were. They’d hiked the short distance to where the refuse—what his mom had called river-treasures in her journal—piled up along the riverbank. They walked several yards further upstream, to the finger of ground that made the river bend around it. The little stone cairn the group of paddlers had left stood there still.
It felt like a sacrilege to tamper with the cairn, but Wolf had decided to put absolute faith in Camellia from now on. She’d got him this far, after all. He’d been watching the area around them, especially behind, but there’d been no sign of Earl.
As he knelt at the cairn, he hesitated.
She came and knelt beside him, sliding off her backpack. She said, “I’m super sensitive about not being believed. I think because it was so hard to get anyone to take me seriously about Earl when the stalking started. Even people who knew me got that skeptical look in their eyes. Now that I’m self-analyzing, I realize that’s why I had such a rivalry with the second-best student in that PI course I took over the summer. She doubted me. Repeatedly.”
Wolf listened to her, really listened and took her words to heart, even though he felt a little sorry for her PI-school nemesis, whoever she was. “I’m not gonna doubt you again, Camellia. That’s a promise. Soon as we get a signal, I think we should notify the local police about Earl.”
“Yeah, I was gonna do that anyway,” she said. But then she smiled at him. “Thank you for believing me. Now let’s see what they left here.”
