Chapter 22
22
Anya
E very time I close my eyes, I find myself trapped beneath dead bodies, struggling to get out from that bloody hell. Leo’s face haunts me with his cruel smile, his eyes searching for me. But in my dreams, I don’t get away.
He finds me.
And every time he does, he puts a ring on my finger, thus staking his claim.
I wake up screaming until Chance or Booker or Nico or all three of them take me in their arms and comfort me back into a fully conscious state. It’s been a hard couple of days since we sent Leo and his goons away.
“Where are we going, now?” I ask Chance when we’re out hiking beyond the western mountain ridge.
“There’s something I want to show you,” he says.
The thick snow crunches under my heavy-duty boots with each step I take. We’re in the middle of the wilderness. It’s so beautiful here, so quiet and pristine. The clean air stings my lungs, but the freshness invigorates me and brings a bright pink to my cheeks.
“What do you want to show me?”
Chance glances back at me, and his radiant smile makes me want to follow him everywhere and anywhere. “On the other side of the mountain, there’s a place I used to come often. My brothers would join me, too,” he says. “It’s how we became friends with Sheriff Mills.”
“Oh? How so?”
“You’ll have to see for yourself.”
He stops and turns abruptly, so that I stumble into him. Before I can object or try to avoid a bump, Chance wraps his arms around me and we kiss smack in the middle of a small, luminous clearing, the blue sky stretching above us in all of its endless glory.
I wish this moment could last forever.
But it won’t. Nothing ever does.
“Anya, you still have some considerable memory gaps and some terrible ghosts coming out of your past,” Chance says. “It doesn’t mean we should stop living and getting to know each other on a different level.”
I sigh deeply. “You’re right.”
“That being said, I’m about to show you something I told you about years ago. You don’t remember it or you would’ve asked about it.”
I let him take the lead again, cautiously following him up the trail and over the stony ridge. It’s not a difficult hike, and I’m not too pregnant to make the trip. If anything, the movement will do me good.
“You know me better than I know myself,” I say.
“Just down there,” Chance says, pointing downward.
I stop for a moment, registering the trail as it gently descends westward between the thinning pines. To my surprise, a settlement rises about a hundred yards down, with small wooden cabins clustered together around a hot spring. I can see the steam rolling up from our vantage point. The cabins are quaint, with indigenous motifs, their roofs painted red, white, and yellow.
“Oh, wait, there’s a Cree reservation and a national park not far from here!” I gasp, remembering what the Hayes brothers told me about the mountain and Seeley Lake during the first days of my amnesia. “You mentioned something about a kids’ camp on the other side of the mountain.”
“This is the camp, yes,” Chance replies. “Granted, the kids are home, given the blizzard. It’s usually the grown-ups who venture up here in the winter. The camp is almost empty today, though.”
“It’s odd… the rooftops, I mean.”
He follows my gaze and smiles again. “Mills’s grandfather had them painted. If anyone gets lost on this mountain, they can use the rooftops as a compass of sorts. As soon as you’re at the top and you look around, you’ll have the campsite as a point of reference.”
As we descend, Chance tells me about the Cree people’s desire to keep the campsite as natural and as unintrusive as possible. I love listening to his stories about this place and its history.
“Even the pigments they used to paint the rooftops were processed naturally from herbs and minerals. They get a fresh coat every spring, too, just to keep the colors bright and fully visible,” he says.
“I like how you remember all these details, and how you carry them with you everywhere,” I reply.
“Knowledge is power. And stories make life more colorful, don’t you think?”
“I wholeheartedly agree.”
He takes my hand and helps me down the rest of the path, as the snow hides treacherous, sliding rocks. We reach the campsite in good time, just as the noonday sun hits it. It looks even brighter up close.
Each cabin has a bedroom and a small kitchenette. There’s an outhouse on the southern edge, along with a large pile of firewood covered with a heavy tarp. In the middle of the camp, the elders built a firepit surrounded by wood stumps carved into sturdy stools. Wrought iron pots lay next to it, bottoms up.
“As soon as the snow melts, you can smell the cornbread and fried meat all the way from the lodge,” Chance says.
“It’s so nice.”
“See this?” He points to one of the dressers as we step into a cabin. “They keep linens and blankets here for the weary travelers. There are jugs of fresh water under the kitchen counter.” He walks over to a cabinet and opens the door for me to see. “Coffee, coffee pot, all the basics for a decent night’s sleep and a morning cup of coffee before hitting the road again.”
“Wow, this is amazing.”
Mills’s voice sounds out. “I thought I heard voices.”
“Sheriff!” I exclaim, noticing he’s not in uniform today, having opted for jeans and a thick, khaki winter jacket instead. “If you’re here, who’s scouring Seeley Lake for Leo?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have opened with that, but it’s been a constant source of concern for me since I first saw Leo in town. He’s not the kind of man I can easily forget.
“I’ve got deputies working on it,” Mills replies. “I need a day off once in awhile. And besides, I’ll admit, I do find comfort in knowing you’ve got the Hayes brothers protecting you 24/7.”
“Me, too,” I politely concede.
“Nico and Booker have their own tasks for the day,” Chance tells the sheriff. “Booker’s following up with your techs on the USB drive, and Nico’s dropping a few incentives here and there for the townspeople to keep an eye out and let us know about any suspicious movements or people they might spot.”
“Good,” Mills says with a heavy sigh. “Seeley Lake and the surrounding districts owe you a debt of gratitude. It is about time you cashed that in.”
“We never planned on doing that, truth be told,” Chance says.
“Yes, but desperate times, brother…”
“A debt of gratitude?” I ask, curiously glancing at Mills.
The sheriff smiles. “The boys never told you about all the good they did for this place?”
“I know they bought up properties and failing businesses,” I reply, “rejuvenating the local economy and all of that.”
“Oh, they did a lot more,” Mills says. “In the past three years, they’ve done more to help develop the region than the local government has done in the last thirty.”
I can’t help but gaze at Chance with genuine admiration. “How so?”
“Well, we focused on turning every inch of land we bought into something that would, in turn, produce a decent revenue for the town,” he replies. “Just basic economics.”
“Chance is being humble, as always, downplaying their impact on Seeley Lake,” Sheriff Mills says. “Come, join me. I’ll take you to the mountain lookout. You’ll see what I mean.”
We follow him out of the cabin and down another path leading away from the campsite. About twenty yards to the left and through a dense patch of pine trees, we reach a steep stone ledge with a lookout tower made of river rocks and oakwood.
“Oh, wow,” I marvel as I take in the extraordinary view unraveling before my eyes. “It’s amazing. You can see the whole of Seeley Lake from here.”
“Half of what you see now wasn’t there before,” Mills tells me.
The lake glistens under the noon sun, and the rooftops of the surrounding town stretch out every which way. I see the road leading into town, the lumber mills rising to the east, the white-walled clinic, the farmers’ market, and the agricultural fields reaching toward the center of the valley.
From this vantage point, the picture includes a lot more detail.
“The entire eastern sector is new. The windmills produce enough power to keep the town afloat whenever there’s blackout caused by a blizzard or a storm. The lumber mills are big enough to process wood coming from across the entire district. The farms you see past the water tower north of the lake were set up and developed on Hayes land, each producing copious amounts of grain and vegetables to support the whole region,” Mills explains. “Our town has become remarkably self-sufficient and even capable of delivering a generous food output for our neighbors. Chance calls it basic economics, but it’s more than that.”
“It’s about making the most out of the land without destroying it,” I conclude.
“Part of the Hayes’s investment included a cleanup operation involving the lake and the surrounding forests. There’s also a recycling center about five miles to the south, on the other side of the mountain,” the sheriff adds. “Chance and his brothers aided my community with money, even volunteering to help renovate and refurbish the reservation’s school and clinic. New jobs in Seeley Lake meant my people could work and get paid. That brought money into the reservation, which we’re investing into upgrades as well.
“I expect Seeley Lake and its indigenous community to thrive over the next decade or so, purely thanks to Hayes’s investments,” he says, then turns to give Chance a half-smile. “Which is why, when they asked me to do whatever it takes to protect you, and despite my displeasure at having to cross certain legal lines to do it, I agreed.”
I shudder against Chance’s hard frame. “I’m honestly overwhelmed by the effort going into keeping me alive.”
“You’re worth it,” Chance gently tells me, arm stretched around my shoulders.
The more Mills shares about the Hayes brothers, however, the deeper I fall in love with them.
I’m pregnant with their child. It’s an unchangeable fact, something I’m still getting used to, along with the physical and emotional shifts it entails. Being one of the few Asimov survivors, however, adds a twist I‘m not sure how to handle.
Seeley Lake is a haven. And my mere presence is disruptive, to say the least, because of my baggage with the Sokolovs. It’s not fair to anyone, and it pains me deeply.