Chapter 41
Steph
Sheriff Hepner’s questions were straightforward, and Steph answered them the same way.
When the rescue team had first arrived, there were many minutes of chaos. Snowmobiles approached from the road as a helicopter circled over them, its spotlight illuminating the area.
Steph had put the rifle down and her hands up. As expected, they’d come in full tactical gear, which explained the delay. She understood they had come in under an abundance of caution, but still would’ve liked to have seen them arrive sooner. Much sooner.
Now she sat on the seat of a snow machine, wrapped in a warm blanket and aching from head to toe while the sheriff asked basic questions.
The helicopter landed on the road, and a team, which included Steph’s friend Gina, was moving Graham to the heli to fly him out.
Steph’s gaze traveled to one of the other snowmobiles, where Jack was being checked by the medic. Gina, an RN and leading the on-site medical team, had already triaged both Steph and Jack. Steph insisted she was cold and tired, but otherwise fine.
Gina’s assessment produced a few things she noted with concern.
Steph’s cheekbone was bruised, possibly a hairline fracture, and she would need X-rays.
She had a black eye, which was a surprise since she had little pain, and her core temperature was low but not critically so.
Her hands were checked, her feet, the various places where the night had left its marks.
Steph had a wicked cut on her hand from the knife she’d used to stop Rick.
Steph hadn’t even realized she’d been cut and bruised until after the adrenaline wore off and she saw some of the blood was her own.
The short blade of her pocketknife had found its mark in Rick’s carotid as she’d stabbed over and over again.
She closed her eyes as she tried to force the memory of what she’d done down to a place where she could deal with it later.
Overall, Gina said she believed Steph would recover, but her friend seemed most concerned about shock, given Steph’s exhaustion and everything that had happened, especially the fact that she had killed Rick with a pocketknife.
Steph knew shock was a possibility, and she did what Gina instructed, which included staying wrapped in the blanket and riding in the sled back to Silver Mane’s Lodge.
Jack’s condition was more serious than Steph’s because of the frostbite on his feet and fingers, as well as the gunshot wound to his bicep. Gina agreed with Steph’s assessment that it was a clean wound and praised the bandaging she had done.
Steph appreciated that Gina said little about her and Jack being out there together or being chased by the poachers. Knowing Gina, the conversation would come later, but for now, she was the perfect medical professional.
Another group of rescuers went to the poachers’ camp. According to Sheriff Hepner, Graham was happy to detail its location, stating that his uncle Todd needed medical attention.
Steph was only slightly surprised that Graham was related to him. She’d learned enough about him to understand he was out there mainly due to family obligations. He also admitted that the promise of a big payday was a factor.
“You doing okay, Steph?” the sheriff asked, touching her arm.
“Yeah, uh, did you ask me something?”
“The kid there.” He lifted his chin in the direction of the stretcher Graham was on. “He said the guy still at camp took a beating.”
Steph shrugged. “They were going to kill Jack. I did what was needed. We both did.” She kept her eyes on Jack as she spoke.
His posture stayed straight despite everything the night had taken from him as he answered questions from sheriff’s deputy Adam Boverman. Boverman was too brash for Steph’s taste, but Jack seemed to be holding his own, though he looked awful.
A thermal blanket was draped around him, and his feet were still wrapped as she had done them, with the pink bandanna on one and the Wyoming logo neck gaiter on the other, now covered by an extra blanket.
Gina wanted to wait until they reached the hospital before unwrapping them. The strips of fabric around his fingers were now covered with proper gloves, heavy and insulated, loaned to him by someone on the rescue crew.
“You’re going to hear about this for a long time,” Sheriff Hepner said.
“I know.”
“People have talked about your training stuff before. About how you run off into the park alone in the dead of winter.”
“I wasn’t alone.”
“No, I guess not.” The sheriff looked at Jack. “I’m glad you weren’t alone this time.”
Steph smiled. “Me too.”
She’d hated Jack before and was convinced he was taking something important from her. The first time she’d spoken to him on the phone, she’d found him to be arrogant and annoying.
That day in front of the bank, his satisfied smirk had sent a wave of anger through her. Jocelyn had defended him, saying she hadn’t seen a smirk, more like a look of concern as he tried to make sure Steph was okay.
At the gear swap, he’d come off as conceited.
At the Jingle Run, too, though even at the time, she could begrudgingly admit she appreciated his help.
He’d proven that night he was worth more than simply bankrolling the event.
Of course, at the Jingle Run, she was under the assumption he had his own money and wasn’t completely financed by Liam Dixon and his family.
It wasn’t until out here, when they were hiding, that she discovered Jack was operating on margin and Liam’s money financed everything.
She also realized blaming Jack for her own inability to put on a race was not the truth.
Steph had the money to put on a major event.
She’d simply made a different decision. Things might not have worked out with Chris Hepner—or any other man, for that matter—but she would still have a child through adoption.
And, as Jocelyn had said, the running club and Steph’s true friends would be there to help.
But now Steph knew that wasn’t enough.
She wanted more.
“He seems like a decent sort of fella,” the sheriff said.
“Jack’s great,” Steph agreed with a smile. “I was wrong about him.”
“Still, though. He’s wrapped up with that Liam Dixon. Good to be cautious.”
She took her eyes off Jack to look at Sheriff Hepner. “Liam isn’t his dad or his grandpa.”
The sheriff snorted. “He’s a Dixon.”
Steph nodded, understanding that now wasn’t the time to defend Liam Dixon, not that she had a reason to anyway. Jack had shared his version of Liam, which may or may not be accurate.
Sheriff Hepner had a history with the Dixons, history he wasn’t likely to forget anytime soon. But that wasn’t Steph’s problem, and she wouldn’t let it affect how she felt about Jack.
“When will we leave?” she asked.
“Not long now. The other team reached the camp.”
“They did? How do you know?”
He reached up to his ear and touched the earbud.
“Got the report. The other man is injured but alive. His buddies put him in a tent, so the team is getting him out and on the sled. I’m going to leave a couple of people here to make sure they don’t need anything. The rest of us will go to the lodge.”
“Can I talk to Jack first?” she asked, standing.
The sheriff sighed. “I suppose you can. Keep that blanket around your shoulders.”
As she walked toward Jack, the sheriff called out, “Boverman, a word please.”
Boverman looked at the sheriff and then caught Steph’s gaze as she walked toward where he was questioning Jack. He gave her a nod as he moved toward the sheriff.
Jack smiled as she walked up. “You look warmer,” he said.
“So do you. How do you feel?”
He tilted his head. “Pretty rough.”
“Same.”
“Wanna sit?” He scooted over on the seat enough to allow her room.
“Gina said I have to ride back in the toboggan,” she said as she moved to the seat next to him.
“Yep. Me too. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it.”
For a moment, neither of them said anything. It was the good kind of silence, the kind they’d found somewhere during the training run and when the poachers tried to kill them and they were hiding out, the kind that didn’t require filling.
“I was wrong,” she said.
He turned his head to look at her.
“I realize now, when you were upset— ”
“Steph— ”
“No, wait. I’m trying to say, I understand why you were upset. After you told me about Celeste, it made sense. You had every right to be upset. I’ll admit, I wish you had handled it differently, but I get it. And with the way things were and how you were exhausted . . . ”
“It’s no excuse for yelling at you the way I did.” He reached for her hand, his touch sending a jolt of electricity through her, even through their gloves. “I’ll do better . . . if you’ll give me a chance.”
“I’d like that.” Her stomach did a little flip-flop.
He was quiet for a moment before saying, “I spent years building a life that didn’t require anything from anyone. Told myself it was simpler.” He looked straight ahead. “Simpler isn’t the same as better. I’ve understood that for a while. I just needed to say it.”
He turned toward her fully. Something had settled in his face, the look of a man who had made a decision and was living inside it now rather than approaching it. “I want to plan a race with you.”
She held his gaze, unsure of what to say.
“Something real. A proper event, the kind you’ve been trying to build, in whatever location you choose. I’m not going to ask Liam for the money. I’ll figure out another way. This one should be yours, the way it was supposed to be. I just want to help build it.”
She opened her mouth.
“Maybe our survival story gets out.” Something shifted on his face that was the closest thing to a grin she’d seen from him in the last several hours. “We might make a mint on a book deal.”
She laughed. The sound of it surprised her a little, loose and genuine, the kind of laugh that came from somewhere real. “I actually know just the person for that.”
“Yeah?”
“Joe Monroe. He’s a journalist and writes for several outlets.
He told the story when some of my running club members were held captive in Bearwater.
He told Brooke’s story, too, when she nearly died.
He’s good at telling the stories that matter.
Maybe not a book deal, but something. He’d know what to do with it. ”
“I know Monroe. He interviewed me.”
“Besides,” she said, and she could hear something in her own voice that she wasn’t quite ready to examine out loud but was done hiding from herself, “I have some money put aside for something else. Maybe I won’t need it for that after all.”
He looked at her with the attentive stillness she’d come to recognize, the quality of a man who heard more than the words and was waiting to understand what the more was.
She didn’t explain it. Not yet. There were things that needed to happen in the right order, and this wasn’t the moment for all of it. If this worked—and sitting here beside Jack, she let herself believe it might—then the clock she’d been listening to for years had somewhere real to go.
Not alone. Not the careful, single-handed version of the future she’d been planning.
With him.
She wasn’t giving anything up. That was the part she’d been wrong about for months .
. . years, even. Choosing Jack didn’t cost her the running club or the college or the races or the independent life she’d built and was proud of.
He was part of the same world. He understood it from the inside.
He’d match her pace and follow her line and trust her read and be there when the terrain got hard.
She’d been so certain that letting someone matter meant losing something, losing a part of herself.
She’d almost married Chris, but had called it off because that’s how it would’ve been with him.
Not because of who Chris was, he was a good guy and perfect in many ways, but because of who she was.
As good as Chris was, he wasn’t the right guy for Steph.
Jack, though . . . deep down, she knew Jack was the one. The one she could build a life with.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“That I was wrong about a lot of things.”
He looked at her steadily. “So was I.”
“We covered that.”
“We did.” The almost-grin was back. “I’m saying it again anyway.”
She shook her head and looked at the commotion around them as the rescue team got everything ready to go. She let herself feel the full weight of what she was choosing.
Not the careful, considered version. The actual thing. All of it, the complications and the history and the running club and Liam and the things still to figure out and the things that couldn’t be figured out in the wilderness after a night like this one.
She was choosing it anyway.
“When we get back, you should come to Wednesday running club.”
He looked at her.
“It’s how things work here. You show up on Wednesday. You run. You meet the people. Consider it a formal introduction to the Basin County Running Club.”
“You want to introduce me to your friends?” he asked hesitantly.
“They’ll want to meet you.” She glanced at his feet. “Maybe in a couple of weeks. Make sure you can walk first.”
He laughed and gave her hand a squeeze.
She was still smiling when he reached up and tucked a strand of hair back from her face. His fingers rested on her jaw for a moment, as her heart rate ticked up several notches.
He kissed her. Not carefully, not tentatively. She felt the breath go out of her and kissed him back with everything she had. His hand moved to the back of her neck, and she leaned into him. For a little while, the ache in her body didn’t exist, and neither did anything else.
When they broke apart, she didn’t look away. She’d been keeping a wall up where Jack Swisher was concerned. That wall was gone now, and she wasn’t sorry.