Page 42 of The Girl Who Cried Bigfoot

Heat creeps up my neck. I look at my boots, then back at her, and the pride I felt in the woods finally settles into something solid. Wren notices. She gives me a small, knowing smile—the kind that says she knows exactly how much this mattered to me, even if I’ll never say it out loud. She lets the moment hang there, quiet and heavy with everything we aren’t saying, before she turns back to the desk to finish the paperwork of the living.

Wren begins to type, her fingers flying over the keys to update the hotline log. I stand there, letting the silence of the lodge wrap around me. The adrenaline has left me feeling hollowed out and strangely light, as if the storm has scoured away the crust of several decades. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go back to the deep timber or the silence of my own house. I want to stay in the radius of her desk lamp, listening to the hum of her laptop and the steady rhythm of her breath.

“They’re going to talk, you know,” she says softly, not looking up from the screen. “Mark. The SAR guys. They saw things tonight that don’t fit into the official report. Even if they blame it on the shock or the snow, the story is out there now. You’re not just a blurry photo on a forum anymore.”

I move toward the small seating area by the window, sinking into a chair that was designed for someone half my mass. It groans, but it holds under my weight. “Let them talk. A man who nearly froze to death on a ridge is a poor witness, and a rescuer who finds footprints in the mud is just a man who found footprints. They have no proof of what I am, Wren. Only the memory of what I did.”

She stops typing and looks at me, resting her chin in her hand. The exhaustion is plain on her face now, the shadows under her eyes echoing the dark woods outside. “That’s the thing about memories, Rowan. They’re harder to debunk than photos. You gave that man a miracle. You can’t put a filter over that.” Her gaze drifts to the window, where the snow is still falling in silent, heavy flakes. “You’re not just a myth management problem anymore. You’re a person. To me, and now to Mark.”

The weight of her words settles in my chest, more substantial than the hiker I carried. For centuries, I’ve been an observer, a force of nature as impersonal as the wind. To be a person was a terrifying promotion. It implies a level of vulnerability I’m not sure I’m equipped for. But then I see the way Wren is watching me. Not with the clinical curiosity of a researcher or the frantic greed of a hunter, but with a quiet, fierce sort of pride. All the fear inside me recedes. If this was the price of being known by her, I would pay it.

“I suppose I should be more concerned about my reputation,” I say, the dry edge returning to my voice. “The title of Hide-and-Seek champion might be under threat if people realize I actually show up when called.”

Wren lets out a short, startled laugh, the sound bright enough to cut through the lingering tension in the lobby. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll make sure the official hotline response mentions you were wearing a very convincing ghillie suit. I’ll tell them you’re a local eccentric with a hero complex and a very intense gym regime.”

“An eccentric,” I repeat, tasting the word. “I’ve been called worse.”

She closes her laptop with a definitive click and stands. The blue light vanishes, leaving us in the warm, dim glow of the lobby’s evening lamps. Wren walks over to me and leans against the arm of the chair, her presence a steady heat beside me. She doesn’t say anything more about the rescue or the risks, but she does brush a stray hemlock needle from my shoulder, her touch lingering just a second longer than necessary.

I feel a strange, tight ache in my throat—not the growl of a Guardian, but the simple, painful longing of a man who has finally found home. I reach up, my large, scarred hand covering hers for a brief moment, before she pulls away with a tired, affectionate smile. We’re both exhausted, drained by the night’s stakes. But as I stand to walk her toward the stairs, I feel a quiet, embarrassed sort of satisfaction. I did the job. Not the ancient, lonely job of the mountain, but the new, complicated job of being someone who mattered to Wren Cassidy.

“Go to sleep, Rowan,” she says, her voice dropping to a whisper as we reach the bottom of the staircase. “I’ll handle the morning calls. We’ll figure out the fallout tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” I agree. I watch her climb the stairs, her shadow stretching long against the pine paneling. I wait until I hear the quiet click of her door before I step back out into the night, the cold air welcoming me. I’m not just a shadow in the trees anymore. I’m a Guardian on duty, and for the first time in my very long life, I know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

23

WREN

SOMEONE WANTS TO BUY THE JOKE

The blue light of my laptop is the only thing keeping the office from dissolving into the shadows. It’s three in the morning, and the steady hum of the processor is a poor substitute for the silence I should be sleeping in. I’m down here because I can’t sleep, and I’ve been staring at the same forum thread for twenty minutes, watching the ‘users browsing’ counter climb into the triple digits. People don’t sleep when there’s a mystery to dissect, and apparently, neither do I.

On the screen, a grainy video from the rescue site is looping. It’s mostly darkness and the frantic bounce of a flashlight beam against falling sleet, but for three seconds, a silhouette passes through the frame. It’s too tall, too broad, and it moves with a fluid grace that no human in a heavy parka could replicate. The comment section is a digital riot. One user, SkepticSam88, has circled the silhouette in neon red, highlighting the way the light doesn’t seem to bounce off the shoulders quite right. They’re calling him the Mountain Wraith now.

I rub my eyes, the skin feeling like parchment. I shouldn’t have let Rowan go back out there, but stopping him is like trying to fence in the wind. He belongs to the timber, and I belong to this desk, drowning in the aftermath of a miracle. My father’s old boots are tucked under the desk, still damp from the trailhead, a reminder that I’m playing a game where the stakes have stopped being financial and started being existential.

A new notification pings—a direct message on the hotline’s administrative portal. Usually, these are just weirdos asking for GPS coordinates or offering to sell me hair samples they found on their golden retriever. This one has a corporate header: Aethelgard Media Group. The subject line reads: Urgent: Option Inquiry - The Bigfoot Hotline.

I click it, expecting the usual predatory nonsense, but the numbers in the first paragraph make my breath hitch. They aren’t offering a few hundred dollars for a licensing fee. They’re talking about a multi-stage development deal. My fingers tremble as I scroll past the legalese, looking for the catch. I’ve spent months spinning lies to keep the lights on, and now, someone wants to buy the copyright to the joke.

The office door creaks, and I nearly jump out of my skin. It’s just the wind catching the loose latch I’ve been meaning to fix since July, but my heart is suddenly doing a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I look at the framed photo of my father, the one I usually avoid. He’d have told me to be careful. He’d have said that when the money looks that good, someone is usually hiding the bill under the table.

I open a fresh tab and search for Aethelgard. They’re legitimate—a massive umbrella company that produces those high-end nature documentaries that look like cinema. They aren’t the guys with the shaky cameras and the EMF meters. They’re the guys with the thermal drones and the four-million-dollar budgets. They want to turn the hotline into a flagship series about the intersection of digital folklore and wilderness preservation.

The terms are laid out in a PDF attachment. Step one is a production and access fee—fifty thousand dollars just for the right to film at Cassidy Lodge for three weeks. It’s enough to clear the back taxes, fix the roof, and give Marge and Walt a decent bonus for a change. It’s a lifeline thrown to a drowning woman, and I’m already reaching for it before I’ve even read the second page.

Step two is the real punch. A five-hundred-thousand-dollar development option, contingent on the delivery of verifiable evidence of unique biological or paranormal phenomena. It’s the kind of money that will save the lodge and build a legacy. It’s the kind of money that means I never have to worry about an electric bill again. And the best part? The contract explicitly states that I retain control over the hotline’s narrative.

I lean back, the swivel chair groaning. If I sign this, I’m not selling Rowan. I’m selling the phenomenon. I’ve spent months manufacturing fake footprints and blurry photos; I can keep doing that. This is different from the documentary Barnaby Jones wanted to bring here. This gives me some semblance of control. I’m a professional misdirector now. I can feed a film crew a diet of shadows and curated encounters that lead exactly nowhere. It’s just higher-stakes marketing. It’s what I’m good at.

My phone buzzes on the desk. A text from Rowan. The ridge is quiet. The hiker’s scent is fading. Go to sleep, Wren.

I stare at the words, a pang of something that isn’t quite guilt but feels just as heavy settling in my chest. He trusts me to manage the border. He thinks I’m the one keeping the world out. I pick up a pen, the cold plastic familiar in my hand. I’m doing this for him, I tell myself.

We talk first.

Those words echo through my mind, but I ignore them. If I have the lodge’s finances under control, I don’t have to keep the hotline viral. I can let it die down once the show is over. I can buy us the silence he craves.