Chapter Eight
Ren wasn’t sure exactly what sort of conduct he’d been expecting from Natalie as they walked. Based on last night’s behavior, more distress as they’d walked through the wilderness and snow.
It wasn’t easy hiking. Even his muscles were complaining, not to mention a couple of his wounds from his special forces days that tended to act up in the cold.
But he knew exactly where they were going and how long it would take to get to the hunter’s cabin that would be the crux of this entire mission.
If he was like Natalie and didn’t know how far they had to go—if they would be able to find shelter before the weather turned worse, and had some sort of snow phobia—he definitely wouldn’t be acting the way she had since they’d started walking.
Focused.
She hadn’t muttered a single complaint since they’d left this morning, even though they’d walked for miles. She’d only stopped to drink water and eat a nutrition bar. Every time he’d glanced at her, she was doggedly putting one foot in front of the other.
The weather had been getting steadily worse, and since he knew there was shelter at the end of this little excursion, he’d had her take out the sleeping bag and wrap it around herself.
If she insisted one more time that he take a turn with it, he was going to start feeling bad about leading her in circles in the icy wilderness.
“I can’t believe it,” he finally said as he led them exactly where he’d planned at exactly the time he’d planned it. He stopped staring at the small structure in front of them. Natalie peeked out from behind him and gasped.
“Is that a house?”
She made it sound like a ten-bedroom mansion. He chuckled. “I think house might be a bit too generous.”
She stepped around him, giving him a grin. “It’s got walls and a roof. That’s a house!”
She beelined to the door, but he caught up to her before she reached it. “Hang on a second, let me check it first.”
He grabbed the door and pushed it open. Inside was exactly like it had been when he’d seen it last week.
One large room with a small kitchen on one end and a full-size bed in the corner on the opposite side.
An old-fashioned metal wood-burning stove sat in the middle of the room with a couch in front of it.
Natalie was already pushing at his back. “Is it safe? What’s it like? Please tell me the roof isn’t leaking.”
He stepped all the way in so she could follow. He expected a bit of disdain for the small, almost barren space, especially given the size of her Santa Barbara beach house, but she surprised him again.
“Is this not the most amazing place you’ve ever seen?” Her grin was ear to ear.
He shook his head. “You must really be glad to get out of the snow to think this is the best place ever.”
She laughed. “Okay, it’s not the White House. But what about that stove, right? And it already feels warmer in here.”
“That’s because the wind is blocked. But yeah, let’s see about getting the stove to work.”
They checked the two other doors in the room. One led to a large shed, stacked with wood in the back of the cabin, the other to a detached outhouse. Within fifteen minutes, Ren had a fire blazing and the cabin was warm enough that they had to remove their jackets.
Natalie wandered into the kitchen, gasping as she found cans of soup and vegetables in the small pantry.
“What is this place? Obviously it gets used. Are we closer to civilization than we think?”
Ren shook his head. “Actually, probably the opposite. This is a hikers/hunters cabin. For use when people are going to be away on extended trips.” He pulled out his phone and made a show of checking it. “Still no signal.”
She didn’t look nearly as upset as he’d expected her to at the news.
“Well, at least we have shelter and a little food.” She began counting and organizing. “Enough for today at least. I’ll start dinner, I’m starving.”
They worked together in the kitchen, finding what they needed to open the can of vegetable soup and a pot to pour it in. Ren also brought in some snow to heat over the fire so they could have drinking water through her filtration bottle.
“Tomorrow I’ll go out and set some traps. See if I can catch us some food. Or there must be a river nearby since there are fishing poles in the corner.”
“Do you think a storm is still coming in?”
He nodded. “The heaviness in the air when it’s this cold? Definitely more snow. We might be trapped here for a few days.”
He was hoping the thought of being trapped would push her toward wanting to make a call. But he was beginning to believe her when she said she didn’t have anyone to call. Maybe she and Freihof had a no-contact pact in situations like this.
Tomorrow he would be checking in with Steve Drackett and needed to have a plan. The problem was, the more time he spent with Natalie, the less confident he was that she was conspiring with her ex.
But he couldn’t say for sure. That was the problem.
They ate, not nearly enough to be full, but enough to push away actual hunger pains.
Afterward they washed their meager dishes in the faucetless sink with the now-melted snow Ren had brought in.
Then Natalie searched the entire cabin and laid out everything that could be eaten, as well as anything that could be used to help them in other ways: tools, knives, the fishing poles.
She hadn’t stopped moving since they’d arrived, and that was after they’d already walked nearly ten miles today in the snow. As the sun went down, she’d just gotten more frantic in her activities.
“Hey, Peaches, you want to sit for a while? We’ve had a long day and you haven’t slowed down since the moment we got here.” He patted the couch cushion next to him.
She turned from rearranging the supplies—again—and gave him a sheepish grin. “Yeah, sorry, I like to have things in order. Know where stuff is.” She looked from the door to the cabin’s two windows. “Just in case.”
“Just in case what?”
She walked over to the door. “Just in case there’s no time to sort through stuff if there’s an emergency. Better to be prepared.”
“Okay, I think we’re suitably prepared. Why don’t you take a load off?”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “There’s no lock on this door.”
“No, there’s not supposed to be. This cabin is open for anyone who needs it. We have a number of similar ones throughout Montana. Just for people who maybe get stranded and, of course, people who plan to use it. So, no locks.”
“No locks,” she whispered. She walked to the windows, checked them also.
Ren stood. What exactly was happening here? “No locks on those, either.”
“Right.” She gave a little laugh that didn’t hold any humor. “Because why would you put locks on a window when you didn’t have one on the door?”
“Exactly.”
Her back was stiff again, and although she wasn’t jumping straight into the deep end of a panic attack like she had with the snow, she was definitely becoming more tense.
“Natalie.”
She didn’t respond, just kept looking at one window, then the other.
He walked over and put his hands gently on her shoulders. She didn’t even jump like he half expected her to. “Natalie. You’re tired. Come sit down, okay?”
“It’s dark out,” she whispered. “I always check the locks. And the sticky notes won’t help if there aren’t any locks on the doors or windows.”
He had no idea what the sticky notes comment was about. He pulled her over to the couch and sat down with her, her hands in his. “You’re tired, Peaches.”
“I shouldn’t be tired. It’s still pretty early.”
“Are you kidding? We walked for hours, then you made dinner, cleaned up and did your whole inventory of any useful items. You’re tired.”
She rolled her eyes, giving him the tiniest smile. “I work longer than this on any given day. I’m sure you do, too, on the farm.”
The work she did in Santa Barbara couldn’t be as hard as what her body had been through today. But it was a good time to press for details. “I do work hard on the farm when I’m there. What do you do?”
She glanced away. “I’m between jobs at the moment.”
“I’ll bet you were in business. At an office? I can totally see you as an executive.”
“Ha. I wish. No such luck.”
He smiled. “A secretary, then? No shame in that.”
She tried to slide her hands back from his, but he wouldn’t let her. He needed to get her to open up to him. He rubbed his fingers along her palms, trying to calm her, since she kept glancing back to the door and windows.
The texture of her hands didn’t register at first. The hardened bumps where her fingers met her palms. When he realized what they were, he stopped his rubbing and turned her hands over.
Her hands had noticeable calluses. Ren recognized them for what they were because he had similar ones on his own palms. They’d been even worse when he’d lived on the farm.
They came from holding a wooden handle of something in your hands all the time. In his case it had been shovels or brooms, or even the horses’ bridles. Days and years of hard work.
He wasn’t ashamed of his calluses, and would never think poorly of a woman who had them, either—the opposite, in fact.
But for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why Natalie Freihof’s hands would have them. He’d watched her for the last week go to office buildings and a bar. Business meetings and parties.
Nothing that should have her hands in this shape.
She looked down at her hand resting in his. “Not so pretty, huh?” Her eyes immediately flew back to the door.
He didn’t mention her hands again. He wasn’t going to get any info out of her when all she seemed to be able to focus on was the fact that the door wouldn’t lock.
It didn’t make any more sense than her snow phobia did last night. But he could see she was on the path toward another breakdown.
“Natalie, look at me.”
He could tell it cost her effort to look away from the door and meet his eyes, but she did.
“Can I tell you something I’ve realized about you in the short time I’ve known you?”
She nodded.
“You’re strong. When you thought I might need help at the train, you were coming to do it, even though you were hurt. Today when we had to walk, you did it without complaint. Once we got here, you got to work doing what needed to be done.”
“But now I’m freaking out,” she whispered. “Just like I did last night. You have to think I’m crazy.”
He pulled her closer. “No, I don’t. But I do think a body only has so much energy and it can only be utilized so many ways.
You’re completely exhausted right now, and because of that, your fears about the locks on the doors and windows are overwhelming you.
If you weren’t so exhausted you’d be able to handle it better, right? ”
“Not always, but usually.”
“How would you do that?”
She looked away. “I have a method of making sure I’ve locked the doors and windows. I use sticky notes. It’s stupid.”
“There’s nothing to be ashamed about. You had a problem and you figured out how to work it.”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t help me much now.”
“How about if we pull one of the kitchen chairs over and wedge it under the door handle? It doesn’t exactly lock it, but it will be damn loud if someone tries to open it.”
Her face was already looking more relaxed, so Ren continued. “We can’t lock the windows, but we can close the shutters and put a broom handle across the bars. Again, it’s not foolproof but it’s definitely more fortified.”
The relief that flooded her features was so pronounced it was difficult to look at.
After they’d made the cabin as safe as they could—he noticed she double-checked more than once—they washed and brushed their teeth as best they could and got into bed.
Ren tried to ignore the fact that he wished it was colder in the cabin so that they’d be forced to get closer for heat.
The bed wasn’t that big, but it was bigger than their sleeping arrangements last night.
As he heard Natalie’s breathing even out as exhaustion pulled her under, Ren lay for a long time trying to process what he had learned tonight about the woman lying next to him.
Unfortunately he had more questions than answers.
Questions that would affect every decision Ren made for the rest of this mission.
Why did she have calluses on her hands that suggested she’d been doing hard manual labor every day for years? Why was she fanatic about locking up and safety?
Because she knew that Freihof had a number of enemies who wouldn’t hesitate to attack her to get to him?
Or because she was afraid of Freihof himself?