Page 107 of Mountain Man’s Mystic Touch

“I promise.”

He searches my face, then draws me against him. The embrace lasts only a second, but it contains everything he cannot allow himself to feel while Mercer remains free.

“Trust Grant,” he says near my ear.

“I do.”

Rocco releases me and walks toward the lodge with Carver. Neither man looks in the direction of the ticket office. Morales disappears between two vendor tents, approaching the western edge of the grounds from below.

Grant opens the rear door of Rocco’s truck. “Inside.”

I climb in and slide across the seat. Grant leaves the door open while he stands behind it, using the frame as cover. From a distance, we probably look as if we’re waiting for instructions.

The grounds become unnaturally still.

Wind lifts the edge of a canopy and drops it again. Somewhere near the food-vendor row, a loose metal sign taps against its support. The sound repeats at uneven intervals, keeping my nerves from settling around it.

I watch Rocco’s reflection in the lodge doors. He stands with Carver beside the bomb squad monitor, apparently absorbed in the device beneath the display.

He doesn’t look toward me.

He doesn’t look west.

A light flickers inside the ticket office.

It is so faint I almost convince myself I imagined it. Then darkness closes over the window again.

“Grant.”

“I saw it.”

His hand moves toward his radio but stops before touching it. Any transmission might warn Mercer that he has been noticed.

Rocco remains beside the lodge.

Seconds pass.

The ticket-office door opens.

A man in a brown vendor jacket steps outside carrying a dark bag. He pauses beneath the shallow overhang and looks toward the south lot. Even at this distance, I recognize the shape of him from the security footage—the same heavy shoulders, the same forward tilt of his head.

He believes the deputies have moved toward the county road.

He believes Rocco is still looking at the bomb.

Mercer descends the steps and turns toward the western service gate.

Grant presses a button on his radio once.

Rocco moves.

He and Carver separate at the lodge entrance, Carver taking the main path while Rocco cuts between the covered booths. Morales emerges from the shadows behind the ticket office.

Mercer sees him.

The dark bag drops. His hand disappears beneath the vendor jacket.

“Gun,” Grant says.