Masters 02 Master of the Abyss (18 page)

I don’t want to leave
. But she didn’t want to disappoint them either. And if she made them unhappy enough, they’d push her away completely.

But
Jake
. Thinking of him made her long to fling herself in his arms—however, he considered her just a short-term lover. Sure, he’d kissed her today, but she knew men, and he’d simply reacted to the red-shirted guy coming on to her. Could seeing Jake only another time or two make up for losing her family?

Her stomach coiled into knots, and she swallowed, tasting bile. Arms hugging her waist, she inhaled slowly, then again, forcing herself to be calm—to enter the quiet, white space for keeping silent when she needed to scream or fight or cry—when what she wanted had to take second place to not causing trouble and being a burden. Her stomach gradually settled.

The children milled in the yard, happily shouting “hurry ups” to Wyatt. They knew what to expect next.

Usually she helped. Today she perched on the far railing as Wyatt pulled open the big box. He looked around for her, realized she didn’t plan to join him, and just looked unhappy. Unhappy, not his usual of blustering and raging. Pain lanced through her; she’d hurt him.

He turned back to the children and yelled, “Red.” Several hands went up.

“What’s he giving them?” Logan asked. He leaned a hip on the table, motioning with his beer to the excited boys and girls. “Looks like a pack of sharks in a feeding frenzy.”

Grateful for the diversion, she said, “Those are glow sticks. Since fireworks are prohibited and dangerous in a dry forest, we light up the night in other ways.”

Just then the children started bending the sticks, letting the chemicals mix inside, and a myriad of colors went streaming through the darkness as they broke into little groups, dancing and waving the fluorescent sticks in the air.

“That is brilliant. Look at them move.” He shook his head in disbelief. “You go all out, don’t you?”

“We’re too far out of town to bother decorating the yard for Halloween or Christmas, so we splurge on this party. We’ve had quite a few years to accumulate everything.” He seemed so much like Jake. A little rougher, perhaps, but friendly in a quieter way. She’d noticed he had fewer lines of care worn into his face, and she had to wonder why. Setting the question aside, she smiled at Logan. “Did I mention we’re glad you came?”

His grin flashed. “I’m beginning to regret that we missed so many years. My Rebecca”—the way his voice softened squeezed Kallie’s heart—“is showing us how isolated we’ve become. There’re always people at the lodge, but that’s not the same as belonging to a community. We’ll work on changing that.”

As they watched the children play, she thought how much he seemed like Virgil too. A comfortable companion if you didn’t mind silence.

“What’s doing?” Jake sauntered across the deck with his easygoing walk, and somehow his sociable nature barely hid the dominance shimmering right underneath the surface. Logan took after a wolf—she tilted her head—and Jake was like Gary’s Great Pyrenees, greeting visitors with a waving tail, but bother the lambs and the giant dog would rip your throat out.

Her smile disappeared when Jake put his arm around her.

Acutely conscious of her cousins nearby, she sidled away. Jake dropped his arm, and narrowed his eyes.

She swallowed, glanced at Logan, and received the same focused look. It felt like being stripped bare. “I—”

“Shove off, bro,” Jake said, never taking his gaze from her.

As Logan silently walked away, Jake set his foot on the table seat and leaned his forearms on his thigh. “What’s wrong, sprite?”

When she averted her eyes, she spotted Morgan and Wyatt staring at her from across the deck. She winced.

Jake turned, following her gaze. “Ah,” he said in a hard voice, straightening. Just like Gary’s guard dog, ready to rip and tear. “Are they giving you grief?”

“No!” She grabbed his forearm, and his muscles were taut, ready for action. “I don’t want trouble, Jake.”

“My touching you would cause trouble?”

“I… Yes.” And yet, she wanted him to hold her, to touch her, to be with her so badly that her voice shook.

“Enough to tell me to stay away?”

The ache in her chest must be ignored. “I don’t cause trouble. This isn’t my home or…or my family. I don’t rock the boat.”

He studied her for a long moment. “Don’t you live here?”

“Yes, but…”

He watched her with no expression on his face, and she felt a surge of anger. How dare he judge her?

“Listen, Hunt, you haven’t wanted to be with me except for sex, and you’ve made that perfectly clear. In fact, I’ve heard your ‘one night only’ rule so often, it’s coming out my ears.” She hauled in a breath. “Well, it’s my turn. This isn’t the night.” There might never be a night, but she could explain that…later. Not now, when every word seemed to slash into her throat.

“I see.” His eyes never left hers. “I’m not sure your perception of your cousins is accurate, Kalinda, but I know you believe what you’re saying.” He nodded politely. “Enjoy your night.”

As he walked across the deck, her throat tightened, and she spun around, staring past the flickering lights, out to the dark pastures. Dammit, she couldn’t feel abandoned—she’d told him to go away.

And he had.

Chapter Eight

As his Search and Rescue group hiked up the trail, Jake tuned out the low chatter about the young woman who had disappeared from a campground before the Fourth.

The conversation with Kallie two days ago still clung to him like a pit bull with a good grip. He couldn’t call the sprite a coward. She was competent in what she did, brave enough to defend friends from a roomful of drunks, smart enough to have a college degree. She knew herself enough to know she enjoyed submitting and was confident enough to do it. But the disapproval of her family had somehow pulled the ground from under her feet. He’d seen the pain in her face when she’d pushed him away, but she’d still done what her cousins wanted.

As the trail branched, two SAR members veered off to follow the smaller path. The others continued on, eyes constantly moving, watching for any signs of the missing person.

Kallie had the right to end their relationship—if that’s what they had—although he’d felt surprisingly disappointed, not just at the lost evening but in not seeing her at all. He frowned. Perhaps he should be grateful for this clean break. One she’d requested.

But seeing such a strong woman go belly-up bothered him. Did she really think her cousins wouldn’t love her if she—
how did she put it
?—rocked the boat? Considering Virgil’s concern over Kallie, Jake figured she could probably tip the entire boat over without causing a ruckus.

The little sub definitely had a problem with trust, didn’t she?

As he stepped over a downed log, he wondered if her phrasing of “
this isn’t the night
” implied she wanted to see him on other nights, when her family didn’t surround her. And the thought raised his spirits.
Pitiful, Hunt.

When the trail branched again, Jake held up a hand to indicate he’d take it. As he veered onto the side path, his partner, Eric, fell in behind. The forest was silent except for the regular shouting of the SAR team: “Abigail!”

The uneasy feeling in the pit of Jake’s stomach grew. No one had seen this hiker for three days.

Abigail Summers had stormed out of a campground after a fight with her boyfriend. Leaving the car for her, the guy had hitchhiked to town and caught a bus home. Due to the holiday, no one had missed Abigail until a family reunion. Eventually they’d discovered her car still parked at the campground. Going by the disarray in the tent, she’d never returned from her hike.

The boyfriend had shown SAR the trail that Abigail had taken. While Jake and Eric and the other teams conducted a hasty search in the most likely areas, others would round up dogs and helicopters. Unfortunately the main trail branched off several times, vastly increasing the search area.

When Eric paused to catch his breath, Jake gave him a careful look. “Doing okay?”

“I’m good.” After a minute, the college student straightened, settled his daypack, and moved out. The dry pine needles didn’t leave much sign behind, and so far they’d found no evidence that Abigail had chosen this trail. Jake kept his eyes moving, looking up, looking back. No tracks leading off, no threads or cloth from the purple top or jeans she’d last been seen wearing. Each time the alarm on his watch sounded, he stopped to shout and listen. “Abigail! Abigail, are you here?”

No response other than the high call of an eagle and the faint wind in the pines. Hell. His gut cramped until the muscles hurt. Logan thought Jake should quit SAR, said it brought back too many memories. And it did, dammit. People had searched for Mimi for days before finding her broken at the bottom of a deep ravine. He’d seen her when they carried her body out of the forest.

But unlike this hiker, Mimi hadn’t gotten lost, and she hadn’t fallen. She’d set her pack neatly to one side. No marks on the steep trail’s edge indicated that she’d slipped. In fact, her body had fallen so far out that she would have had to deliberately run off the cliff.

Suicide. Because of him.

He shook his head.
Let it go
. Right now, someone needed his full attention. He hadn’t found a way to help Mimi, and the thought of her dying alone, that she might have suffered, still cut sharply. But maybe he could save someone else.

They left the forest, climbing to where the narrow trail had been carved out of the cliffside and required careful attention to the footing. Falls were a leading cause of death in the Yosemite area. Using binoculars, Jake checked over the side every few feet.

A long way down, a stream at the bottom turned the tiny gorge green with vegetation. He pressed the binoculars closer to his eyes. A long brown mark showed on the verdant slope—possibly exposed dirt from plants being ripped away. An ominous feeling bowed his shoulders.

“Eric. Look over the side. Can you spot anything below that brown patch?”

As the kid dropped to hands and knees, Jake moved another few feet, searching for any other sign. He spotted a splash of color between two trees.

“Hey, I see something. Purple, I think.” Eric pointed.

“Good eye.” Jake tied red and white flagging to a sturdy pine growing out of a crack in the rock, and noted the GPS point in the log. When Eric joined him, he pointed out visual references to the young man. “Do you remember how to radio it in?”

Eric nodded. The freckles stood out on his face as he swallowed. “Do you think…?”

“Don’t think, Eric. We follow procedure.” Jake paused, his gut aching as he added, “Yes, it’s probably her.”

“Oh.”

“I’m going to try to climb down. Radio and then stay up here on the trail and direct me in.”

The hike to the bottom of the cliff seemed interminable. He forced his way through the vegetation as Eric shouted directions from above: “More north. To your left.”

And there she lay.

His shoulders tightened when he reached the crumpled remains of the young woman. She’d probably fallen to her death on the same day she’d fought with her boyfriend. He shoved his hands into his pockets to keep from touching, from trying to make it better.
She needs help, dammit
. But the blank, open eyes said rescue had arrived too late.

He still watched, wanting with everything in him for her to take a breath.

Too small. Tangled brown hair. Pale skin. So battered. He swallowed hard. Mimi had probably looked like this when the searchers found her. Sweat trickled down his back, the sun slicing through the thin air with unholy glee. A tree and shade waited only a few feet away, but he couldn’t move—as if standing over her would somehow make up to her that her life had been cut short. That someone should have protected her.

As he tried to do.

And hadn’t succeeded, had he? Mimi, his sweet, quiet submissive, who’d depended on him for everything and had cried when he’d uncollared her—she’d ended up just like this.

“God, I’m sorry, sweetheart,” and he wasn’t sure who he was talking to. Mimi or this poor young woman. Too young. They were too young to have died.

Legs braced, throat clamped shut, he stood vigil for them both.

* * *

Kallie took a long, slow breath. Like deep water, the air had a warm layer with the fragrance of dusty pine needles, and a cool, tangy layer from off the snowpack. The late afternoon sun scorched her shoulders as she led her group through a green mountain meadow. On the far side, a gurgling stream curved snakelike through the grass and then flowed across granite outcroppings in a series of miniwaterfalls. The fine spray moistened the air.

She turned to watch the Lowerys, a family from Serenity Lodge, so apparently the Lodge also booked
normal
people. The wife, Laura—a bouncy brunette in real estate sales—led the small pack, then her blond, gangly husband, Mark, a software engineer who specialized in gaming.

Their children followed. Ten-year-old Cody, who stopped to investigate something in the grass. A budding scientist.

Like a big-footed puppy, Tamara ran across the meadow to the stream and started to climb down to the lower falls.

Bringing up the rear with the packhorse came Ryan. At twelve, he was the image of his father and horse mad. Kallie sympathized. After she’d been dumped on Uncle Harvey, she’d practically lived in the stables for months.

As the horse and boy approached, Kallie took the lead. “Go play. Coco will still be here when you’re done.”

Ryan gave her a shy, sweet smile before darting away. With a forlorn look, Coco turned his head to watch. The Missouri Fox Trotter doted on children.

Kallie laughed and slapped his neck. “C’mon, old boy. Let’s get this stuff off you. He’ll be back soon enough.”

An hour later, Kallie had the tents set up near the edge of the forest: one for the parents, one for the children, and hers, located a little distance away. While the kids gathered firewood, arguing over who’d found the most, she set up the stone-lined cook area. Steak and biscuits for supper. Much nicer than the freeze-dried foods needed if there wasn’t a packhorse.