Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“AHH!” I screamed, jumping about ten feet in the air.
Ruggedly. I screamed and jumped in a very manly and rugged way.
I certainly didn’t yelp.
“Hey! It’s just me! Just me!” I turned to find Dad staring at me like I was a spooked horse, with his hands up as though to calm me.
Fair. I wasn’t certain I hadn’t knocked a few screws loose, myself.
His light brown hair was wet like he’d just showered, and he smelled like Irish Spring soap and beard oil. “Sorry I didn’t answer right away. I was in the shower and forgot to unlock the front door for you.”
I clapped a hand over my heart. “S’fine,” I said, catching my breath. “Just couldn’t find you. I came to check if you were back here and thought I heard something,” I said, gesturing vaguely toward the trees.
His gaze found the shed over my shoulder. “C’mon, let’s get inside.”
I glanced back one more time, scanning the tree line. It was fully dark now. Even if something had been there, I wouldn’t be able to see it anymore.
“Something wrong?” Dad asked, clapping me on the shoulder to lead us back around the house and up the porch stairs.
I snagged my backpack on the way inside. “All good. Gave myself the willies, that’s all.” I threw the bag down by the couch—my bed for the night—and turned to give Dad a proper hug.
He was my height, but narrow-shouldered and wiry. Where he looked like he could pick up and run a marathon next Tuesday, I looked like one of those European men who threw logs around for entertainment. Mom always said I got my brawny-man build from her side of the family.
My blue eyes were all his, though.
“So good to see you,” he said gruffly, patting my back before releasing me. “How was the drive?”
I settled into the couch while he flipped the lock on the front door again—odd, he never locks up like that—and sat in the armchair across from me.
The living room was cramped, with only the two items of furniture crowded around a coffee table that sat in front of a small wood stove, longer than it was wide.
A breakfast bar countertop separated the living area from the kitchen, and a tiny mudroom led out back.
The stairs built off the left wall led to a loft area where he slept, and a stand-up shower bathroom tucked under the stairs.
One-man cabin, indeed.
“The drive was fine. There was a whole group of people up on the highway just before the turn-off. Oh, and I had to move a limb that blocked the road. I was on the phone with Mom at the time, it nearly gave her a fit,” I said.
If anyone understood how suffocating her anxiety could be, it was him. Dad had clearly yearned for a smaller life, but her stress and worry over his job fighting fires in a helicopter was probably the biggest reason for their divorce.
Still, he’d never, not once, spoken ill of Mom in front of me.
“Be kind to your mother,” Dad said gently. “It’s not been easy on her being so far away from you with everything that’s happened.”
I sighed. “I know.”
She’d flown in the morning after I kicked Josh out, and was a godsend in the hectic days that followed.
I’d been so exhausted from the flare-up and steroid withdrawal that I barely stumbled from the couch into bed before passing out without even pulling the sheet over myself first. She’d kept me fed, ran errands with me when I was still hesitant to drive, and kept me sane—all of which was no easy feat.
When Josh’s hired help came to wipe the house of his existence, she’d stood in my living room wearing white ankle pants and a maroon University of Montana Grizzlies sweatshirt. Hands on her hips with her nose in the air, she’d surveyed the last of Josh’s things as they disappeared out the door.
“I’m glad you’re done with him,” she’d sniffed. “There was always something about you he wanted to change. He never stopped picking.”
She’d reached up and patted me on the cheek. “You deserve someone who wants you, Reece. You’re not an HGTV special.”
In hindsight, that was actually hilarious, given I was on day four of those joggers and could barely stand.
“Right, we should take off,” Dad said after a few moments of silence. It wasn’t easy for him to talk about my health, either. “We’re meeting Leonard and Bobby at seven thirty. I’ll drive.” He stood and grabbed his keys off the counter.
I heaved a sigh. “Alright. Let me pee first, and I’ll meet you out there.”
“Did you lock the door on your way out?” Dad asked when I stepped up into the passenger seat of his truck a few minutes later.
I pulled the door shut and buckled in. “Yes. Why are you being weird about that?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, glancing at me before he pulled out, headed back up the road I’d come down just a few minutes earlier.
“The garage door to your shed was locked—I don’t ever remember you locking that. And you checked the front door about fourteen times in the five minutes we were inside. What’s going on?”
He heaved a sigh and ran a hand down his face. The headlight beams bounced along the encroaching tree line. “Someone broke into the shed a few weeks ago.”
I whipped my head around to look at him. “What? Did you see who it was? Did they take anything?”
“No, I didn’t see anyone. They must’ve come while I was on a shift. And…” He shot me a look I couldn’t place, knuckles white where he gripped the steering wheel. “Do you remember those old bear traps I kept hanging up in there?”
A shiver ran down my spine. “Yeah.”
Of course, I did. They’d freaked me out for my entire life.
“They’re all gone. Every single one,” Dad said quietly, almost disturbed. He turned onto the highway toward town. The pavement was smooth compared to the dirt road we’d just come from.
A beat of silence passed between us.
“Did you report the theft?”
He shook his head. “No. They were illegal and never really mine to begin with. I didn’t turn them in because… well. They’re gone now.”
“Is that all that was stolen?” I asked, tiptoeing across the decades-old eggshells of this conversation.
“Yeah. Nothing else was disturbed. It’s like that was all they were looking for, and knew where to find them.
” He gave a nervous shake of his head. “It’s got me a bit shaken up, is all.
I don’t like thinking about someone snooping through my things when I’m not there.
Plus, everyone in town’s all worked up over those missing hikers, and—”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Missing hikers?”
He nodded. “Three solo hikers have disappeared this month. The last one was reported just a few days ago. That was probably a search party meet-up you saw on your way into town.”
My pulse picked up, brow furrowed. “People go missing all the time in the national parks, though,” I replied cautiously, leaving the rest unsaid.
So why do people think these three are different?
I didn’t ask, because I was afraid I already knew.
While most outdoor enthusiasts were responsible and entered the wilderness well-prepared to fend for themselves for several days or weeks at a time, it was difficult to comprehend the sheer scale and remoteness of the area, even for those born and raised there.
If something happened—an unexpected storm, a fall, a slight miscalculation in mapping a route—it could very easily turn into a life-or-death situation in which a helicopter was the only way out alive.
Dad knew that all too well.
So it was fairly common for worried family members to report hikers missing, only for them to turn up tired but otherwise unharmed a few days later. Most of the time, there was nothing to worry about.
Except in Ponderosa.
The whole town collectively held its breath every time someone went missing, waiting to see if there’d be another—and another. Especially when they were solo hikers.
He’d preferred those.
“I think it’s way too soon to be worried about anything,” Dad said. “It’s not even June yet. We’re still early in the season; people get ahead of themselves and aren’t prepared for the weather to turn or how rugged the terrain is. The rest is just fear and gossip.”
“So, it’s not like…the others?” I asked.
Dad slowed as we came into town. Off to the right, we passed a wooden sign carved in vintage lettering, lit up so it could be read even in the dark.
Welcome to Ponderosa—Gateway to Nowhere!
“No,” he said resolutely. “It’s not like the others.”