Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Sheriff Cartwright’s voice rumbled in her ear through the phone line. “Things like this don’t just happen out of the blue, Tessa. You missed something.”
She blinked away tears, picking her away down the slender path through the trees. “I guess I did.”
She ended the call and tucked the phone in her pocket, grateful she had changed earlier at home. Otherwise she would have been out here hiking through the woods unexpectedly and wearing her oversized cleaning clothes.
“Everything okay?”
She wasn’t going to bother pretending she was fine. “Let’s just find my father.”
What the sheriff had said to her didn’t mean anything to him. There was no point in rehashing it all just to desperately try and disassociate from what was happening. Her father was in danger, and it might have something to do with Caleb.
By all rights, she shouldn’t be helping him—or letting him help her. Not when he might be the whole reason why her father was in danger in the first place.
Maybe she was just too used to her boring, normal life. She lived every day wrapped up in herself and hadn’t even noticed that her father was keeping secrets from her.
What else could she have missed? Her dad might be connected to something serious. As the pastor of a small town in Montana, people would flip a lid when they found out. But then, considering he could be dead right now maybe it didn’t matter that much. Her father was all she had. Maybe to a fault.
Meg was always telling her to get out more, that she should leave and spread her wings. See the world outside her town.
If something had happened to him she was going to be glad she had stayed. Right?
“Why don’t you tell me what he said?” Caleb glanced back at her from a few feet up the trail. Close enough she could reach out and grab him if she had to. Or if he had to suddenly protect her from someone dangerous.
It was only the idea that he might be out here actively protecting her that inclined her to actually answer the question. “You’re only going to agree with him.”
“Sheriff Cartwright? Unlikely.”
Because Caleb Rourke was some kind of renegade. That only made her think that he was far too different from her for them to ever understand each other. “He thinks I should have noticed something was wrong with my dad and that he was hiding things for me.”
Caleb said nothing.
“Fine, I get it. I live a small life in a nice town. I don’t see why everyone thinks it such a bad thing for me to take care my father and serve people in different ways.
That’s what God asked me to do.” She shrugged, stumbling over an exposed root.
He held out his hand, but she didn’t take it.
“So I’m not some kind of influencer, or a high-powered anything.
I don’t run a business or rush around all day making money.
That doesn’t make me some sad pathetic loser. ”
Caleb turned and faced her.
She had to stop on the trail or she would have bumped into him. “What?”
“No one thinks that about you.” He tipped his head to the side.
“But maybe you wonder that about yourself? If this is the choice you made, and it’s the life you want, taking care of your father and ministering to people, then what’s the issue?
It’s normal to wonder what your life might be if you’d made different choices.
But if you want to change things…then change them. ”
She looked to the side, not wanting to meet that dark gaze anymore. “Who doesn’t want to change things every once in a while? But I haven’t come across an opportunity in a long time.” She shrugged and looked back at him. “Maybe I missed it.”
“Or maybe you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, and a lot of people would envy a life of service and prioritizing taking care of a solo parent.” He held out his hand. “Come on, let’s go find him.”
Tessa slid her hand into Caleb’s and walked slightly behind him because there was no room to walk side by side on this path. It made things a little awkward, but she liked the feel of his strong fingers wrapped in hers. “I guess I need to find a book on contentment so I can figure out my feelings.”
His fingers squeezed her gently. “Anytime you want to go anywhere, you just let me know.”
He didn’t look at her. Tessa raised her brows, wondering what had inspired him to say that. It was a pretty bold statement for someone to make that she had only reconnected with today.
She didn’t know anything about who Caleb Rourke had been for the last twenty years—or however long it was since they’d seen each other last. But what he told her about becoming a believer again in the last few weeks, since his injury, seemed to have settled him down from the boy she knew years ago.
He said, “Did the sheriff tell you to stay at the car? They usually do that.”
“That’s when I told him I was out looking with you.” She had referred to him as being one of Ian Rourke’s friends and seen the grateful look on Caleb’s face at keeping his name out of it. “Thank you for being out here with me. Even if it’s only because Pops stranded you.”
She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to cover for him without question. But he was here helping her without a comment about it—making her know that he thought she should be grateful. The way a lot of guys might have done.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, picking their way along the trail and going up the side of the hill. At the top, they would probably have a decent view of the valley and be able to see if someone was down there chasing her father.
The idea of running into dangerous people made her shiver.
But they had to figure this out.
She said, “If they wanted the information from the safe and that’s why they broke in, and why they took my dad, then maybe all of this is about those papers.”
He nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that, and I think you’re right. They probably didn’t want the information to get out. But I still have no idea who sent it, which means I have no idea who these people are and how on earth all this connects from Guatemala all the way back to your house.”
She was as confused as him. “This is a superly wild guess. But, what if it was your parents who sent that envelope?”
He glanced at her, and she saw in his eyes a look that was a whole lot like that little kid at church whose daddy hadn’t picked him up from nursery.
The guy had been five minutes late, talking to someone in the sanctuary.
But to a little kid it was an eternity when you were the last one to get collected after church service ended.
“You miss them.”
He snapped his head side to side. “No, I don’t.”
Okay, so she needed to leave that conversation alone.
Kind of like her relationship with her father and calling it codependency, or enabling.
Whatever people on the internet wanted to say it was just because they thought using psychology terms made everything acceptable because it all had a label.
Maybe she just loved her father and didn’t want him to be alone.
He slowed to a stop at the top of the ridge.
Tessa wiggled her fingers from his, not wanting it to get awkward if they held hands for too long. She also didn’t want to get used to him. A man like Caleb wouldn’t actually choose her.
Things like that didn’t happen in real life.
“That’s a steep cliff.” He motioned to the terrain in front of them.
“The whole valley is a mess of drop-offs in this area.”
“You know the terrain?”
She pointed to the east. “I mostly hike over there, on the side where there are marked trails and steps to climb. Places where the path is taken care of.”
“And over here?”
“This part has a waterfall about a quarter mile from here. And a pretty steep cliff, thanks to a landslide in the spring. There was a big wildfire out here last year and it left the terrain all burn scarred, which makes it more susceptible to heavy rain moving the ground downhill.”
Caleb scanned the trees below them, and the way the ground dipped into a valley. She could see the edge of town on the right side, past the ridges she usually hiked when she needed some peace and quiet.
All summer those trails had been busy with locals and tourists, but lately it hadn’t been so bad. Pretty soon the weather would make it so that hiking wasn’t advisable. Trails would be closed for the winter so that people didn’t chunk up the dirt, or change the terrain with use.
“I don’t see anyone.”
His comment jogged her from her thoughts. She’d been thinking about this place in terms of her quiet, normal life and not in a way that had anything to do with her father possibly being injured and dangerous people chasing him.
She liked her life. Caleb’s wasn’t one she necessarily wanted to get used to. But right now, thinking the way a fed did might be what kept her alive in a deadly situation.
She turned around, scanning the trees behind them. Watching for something out of place. She came out here enough that she would surely spot something that didn’t belong, right?
She hoped she would anyway.
“What now?”
Caleb wandered away from her, glancing at the bushes and trees around them. Looking at shoe prints ahead of them in the dirt. “I think he went that way. The trail continues down, and he might have just raced along blindly fleeing for his life.”
“Making a bad choice about which way to go?”
“It’s not for us to analyze.”
Ah. That was good, at least. She didn’t want to be judgy about it if her dad was on the run, fleeing from criminals.
“He’s running on instinct.” Caleb turned to her. “Any idea which way he would instinctively go if he was out here?”
She tried to think. “He doesn’t hike with me. He goes hunting, but I have no idea what area that is. Maybe it’s nowhere near here.”
She was rambling, but when she had no idea how to fix this what was she supposed to do? She didn’t know what to say.
Caleb seemed to think she should have answers, kind of like Sheriff Cartwright. One day all of them had to realize that she didn’t baby her father or keep tabs on him everywhere he went.
Caleb’s head snapped around. Whatever he had spotted, probably some kind of animal, he could take care of it. She wanted to get a look at the footprints so she could see if they were her father’s shoes. Maybe it wasn’t even him that had come out here.
Wishful thinking didn’t make it so that he would be safe. But God could do anything He wanted—including save people.
She bent and looked at the footprints, seeing another two up the trail. Tessa moved toward them.
A gunshot cracked like a firework behind her, sending her off balance.
She tried to gain her footing and also turn around at the same time to find out what was happening. Instead, she slid down the embankment toward the drop-off and the steep slope below her.
Tessa kept falling.
As she slipped down the dark she screamed, “Caleb!”