1
ROSS
The woman on the road wasn’t supposed to be there.
When I spotted her, I’d already been at the Alderman shed for twenty minutes. I was standing in the doorway counting throw bags and wondering why Wells had handed me the truck keys that morning like he was doing me a favor. He’d been too cheerful about it. So had Cade, who’d stared at his clipboard with what I now realized was suspicious focus.
The inventory needed doing. That part wasn’t a lie. But there were other inventories that needed doing, and I’d never once been the one sent to this shed.
They could have their fun. I’d be back at the dock by three.
Then I looked up and saw the woman.
She was on the main road, walking the shoulder past the gravel drive. Not jogging, not heading anywhere. A tank top, shorts, hair pulled back, a paperback held loose in one hand. Her walk said she wasn’t on the way to anything in particular.
I set the clipboard down.
I should have gone back inside. I’d noticed things my whole life and let them go. Notice and move on. That was the skill.
She turned her head and looked down the gravel drive. That was when she saw me.
She stopped.
I figured she’d turn around. She had the look of a woman who’d just realized she was on someone’s property and wasn’t going to ask about it. She was just going to walk back the way she’d come and pretend she hadn’t seen me.
“You staying at the cabin?” I called.
She thought about it longer than the question warranted, then said, “Yes.”
That was all I got. No question back, no apology for being on the gravel, no anything. Just the word.
I walked out of the shed and down the drive toward her. Slowly. I didn’t want her bolting.
I stopped about ten feet away.
Brown eyes. No makeup. Sunburned shoulders. The ponytail was pulled tight and a little crooked, like she’d done it without a mirror. She wasn’t smiling, but the corner of her mouth was doing something that wasn’t far from one.
She was even prettier up close. The kind of beauty you had to be looking at to see.
Something settled in my chest. Quiet, the way a paddle stroke shifts a boat. Not enough to think about. Just enough to know things had changed.
“You walked the wrong way,” I said. “Town’s the other direction. So’s the outfitter.”
“Did I?”
She didn’t apologize. Didn’t explain. Just took it in.
“You here with Suri?” I said.
Her head came up a fraction. “You know Suri?”
“I know who she’s been on the river with.”
The corner of her mouth did the thing again. “That’s discreet.”
“Kyron’s a partner. We notice.”
“And he’s not subtle.”
