Page 24 of Her Mountain Man Protector

"That's the boot. Same lean. Could be a man who bought the same pair. Could be the man who taught me how to lace them."

She doesn't fill the silence with a joke. For once. The absence of her mouth is almost worse than the presence of it.

I take a picture with the burner, send it to Nash and Banks, and stand. Farther down, the path splits. Public rail one way. A thinner cut toward the lower pool the other, no signage, the kind of track locals use and tourists miss.

"Picnic first," I say. "Then the cut. If he's watching the water, I want us looking ordinary."

There's a flat rock above the pool with enough trees at our backs. I put her where I can see the path and the lot and the drop. She unwraps muffins. I pour coffee from the thermos I didn't admit I packed. For a few minutes we do the ridiculous thing I sold Nash. We eat. Water crashes. A kid laughs somewhere up the rail. Oakley's knee rests against mine and she doesn't move it.

"You can ask," she says.

"Ask what?"

"You've got that look again. The file-with-a-hole look."

I watch the thinner cut. "If he's here, he's been here while I was tearing up every other county. Sitting on my mountain. Letting me burn months. I want to know why the photos in your bag matter more to Helix than a son on the ground."

"Maybe he couldn't reach you without bringing them with him."

"Maybe."

"You hate that word."

"I hate waiting. Maybe is the same damn thing."

She huffs, almost a laugh, and the sound hits my ribs. I stare at her longer than the picnic requires. Innocence isn't the word. She's too sharp for that. What she is, sitting on a rock with muffin crumbs on her hoodie and a drive full of Helix in her bag, is a problem I keep choosing.

"Stay here," I say. "I'm going ten yards down the cut. You can see me the whole time. If I drop a hand, you go to the truck."

"Ten yards. I'm counting."

I take the thinner path. Brush pulls at my sleeves. The roar of the water changes pitch as the pool opens. Another print. Fresher. The heel lean again. Then the prints stop at a rock. Stone takes the next step and the trail goes blank.

No coat. No gray beard. No father.

A scrap of paper is wedged in a cleft of the rock, dry on one side. I pull it free.

A receipt. Northline Bonded. Date from last week. Same shell Marin named an hour ago. Someone wanted this found, or someone got sloppy on my mountain, and I don't get to pick which.

I fold the receipt into my pocket and look back. Oakley is on her feet on the rock, camera bag hugged to her chest, watching me with that fierce, blistering attention she thinks I don't notice.

I lift my chin. She doesn't run. She waits, which is new, and I walk back to her because the prints are gone and the receipt is burning a hole through my shirt and the picnic is over whether the muffins are or not.

"Well?" she asks.

"He was here. He isn't now. He left Northline paper in the rock for a Hawthorne to find. We're done being tourists."

"Back to the house?"

"Back to the house. Then Alden. Then we find out if Eli Cade's landing sits on the same road as Northline's last invoice."

She searches my face the way she searches a frame, looking for the part I didn't say. I let her look. I don't give her the part where I wanted it to be him standing there. Wanting it doesn't make a print into a reunion.

"You ate three muffins," she says, because of course that's where she puts the pressure. "Don't think I didn't count."

"I was hungry."

"You were stalling. There's a difference."