Chapter 20
Jack
Jack stopped breathing.
The sound was close, maybe twenty feet out. Not one of the machines. A branch, maybe. Stepped on or caught when passing by.
He was still staring at Steph, leaning close. He put his finger to his lips. She nodded, her eyes on him.
Slowly, he turned his head and then twisted his torso to look out into the dark beyond the crevice opening. Nothing moved. He held his breath as he watched the trees, watching for any shift in the shadows.
A low, rhythmic sound carried through the dark.
He felt Steph relax before he fully understood why, the tension going out of her shoulder against his in a single, gradual exhale.
Elk. The word formed in his mind at the same moment she moved her mouth next to his ear, her whisper grazing his ear and making his skin tingle.
“Maybe deer,” she added, and a fresh wave of heat ran through him.
He let his own breath out slowly. Whatever the temperature had dropped to since they’d been in the crevice, the animals didn’t seem to care. He reminded himself that not everything that moved in the dark was a threat.
The shapes shifted at the tree line and disappeared deeper into the timber, unhurried, unaware of the two humans pressed into a crack in the rock twenty feet away.
Jack listened.
The snowmobiles were gone, the sound having faded away sometime in the last few minutes. He didn’t trust the silence. Men like those from the camp were unlikely to give up. How could they when their entire operation hinged on not being caught?
Jack didn’t claim to understand the poaching operation or why they were even doing it.
Liam had told him about the task force but didn’t give the why behind such a thing.
He supposed the pelts or furs had value, and he remembered hearing things about grizzly bear parts being used in Eastern medicine.
“The herd out there might be a good thing. Create more tracks and confusion,” Steph said, not as close to his ear this time but he could still imagine the sensation. A sensation he could get used to.
He nodded as he looked out the crevice crack, through the forest to the sky beyond.
He checked his watch. They’d been in the crevice for coming up on two hours.
His legs had gone from aching to numb and back to aching again, and he was fairly sure the cold had worked its way through every layer he had on, even with the addition of the emergency blanket.
He was also keenly aware of Steph beside him.
Tonight had started off amazing. The way they worked together. How she gently coached him on what worked for the sled and what didn’t. The way she showed him how to ride the sled to get in a rest. Just the dark and the cold and the two of them moving through it together.
He could almost even forget about the circling snowmobiles and the men hunting them as they huddled here, close together. He’d glimpsed something in the last several hours that he had yet to take the time to explore. Not fully, anyway.
They could be together. He and Steph.
The thought landed with more impact than he was ready for.
He’d been telling himself for years that simpler was better. That making room for someone meant making room for the things that could go wrong, and he’d already learned what that cost.
He’d been careful. Deliberate. He’d built the kind of life that required nothing from anyone except himself and occasionally Liam, who was not the sentimental type and made everything easier by being completely incapable of it.
This wasn’t that. Whatever this was, it wasn’t simple, and he’d known it since the morning he pulled her out of the path of that car, when she looked up at him from the sidewalk.
He’d been struck by her beauty. Not just her beauty, but the look on her face.
She’d been grateful, that much was obvious.
But there was something more in the way she looked, something he hadn’t stopped thinking about since.
At least, that’s what he liked to think.
Then everything changed. Someone mentioned his name, and she knew who he was. The look on her face had turned to contempt. Now he knew why. Steph blamed him for ruining her dreams. Did it matter that crushing her dreams was never his intention? That in his mind, they could work together?
Basin County Running Club and Elkridge Endurance Group could form a coalition that could one day be a household name in running circles.
They could bring in people from around the world, as all the best races did.
This year was a trial, a way to make sure everything worked, to show the competitors an amazing course and treat them right.
The plans were in place for three different distances, offering something for newer runners, intermediate, and those with experience and wherewithal.
He’d insisted on that. Liam wanted to do only the ultramarathon, a hundred miler for only the most rugged competitors.
Jack knew better. He knew giving options would bring in more people, that it was the best choice.
But now he wondered if it really was the best choice. Maybe the best choice would be to back off, to tell Liam he was out and Liam should partner with Steph. Steph deserved it. She’d worked hard for years to achieve exactly what Liam’s money could offer.
Would she accept it?
Jack doubted it. He didn’t understand the situation between Liam’s family and Sheriff Hepner, but he knew there was something. He’d tried to ask Liam about it, but he’d waved him off, saying, “Old news with no resolution. I don’t let it bother me.”
Steph made no secret about her closeness to the Hepners. That right there told him no way would she take Liam’s money. And Jack had no money to give her. If he did, he would. He’d happily give her everything if it fulfilled her dreams.
Jack hadn’t felt this way in a long time. He hadn’t let himself.
“I think they’re gone,” Steph said.
“Maybe.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I can’t imagine they’d give up. But I think they might be considering their options. They’ve got product to move and a task force working the area. They might even assume we have a beacon on us. Staying out here looking for us starts costing more than it’s worth.”
She was quiet for a moment. “That’s what I think too. The tracks are the problem. Maybe they won’t be sure exactly what they’re looking at. In the dark, at least.”
“Maybe.” He thought about the flat-voiced man standing at the timber’s edge, about the methodical sweep of the spotlight. “But I doubt it.”
“Yeah. They know.”
He shifted, trying to find something in his legs that still responded the way legs were supposed to, and the emergency blanket crinkled faintly between them. Steph pulled it tighter across their shoulders without comment.
“How’d you know about this place?” he asked.
“During the summer months, I try to get up here a few times, either with friends or with students for a special class. The trails are excellent. We’ll sometimes camp outside the park and do day trips in.
I’ve explored this area more than once. A couple of years ago, I thought the meadow would make a good turnaround spot, the way we were supposed to use it tonight. ”
She paused and shook her head. “Where the poachers have their camp is another meadow. This rocky section makes a nice place to get a little sun and rest.”
“You spend a lot of time outdoors.”
“It’s my job. And my passion.”
The quiet stretched out, and he let it.
“Liam’s going to lose a lot of money if this doesn’t work,” he said.
He wasn’t sure why he said it. The words were out before he’d decided to say them, the kind of thing that surfaced when the defenses had been running too long and gotten tired.
“The event?”
“The whole thing. The running club, the event, all of it.” He looked at the dark beyond the crevice.
“Registration opens on the first of January. If the numbers aren’t there— ” He stopped.
“He put serious money into this. More than I knew when I agreed to it. The staff, the marketing, the infrastructure for an event that hasn’t happened yet. If it flops, that’s on me.”
“Why is it on you?”
“Because I’m the name behind it. That’s the whole model.
Liam funds it, and I draw the runners. Except I don’t really matter.
Maybe in Michigan, when I set high school and college records in cross-country skiing.
Maybe when it looked like I’d make the Olympics in biathlon and America could finally get a medal.
But who am I in the running world? Nobody.
I knew that, and I let him believe the name meant more than it does, because I needed it to mean something. ”
He heard how that sounded but didn’t take it back.
“You didn’t know that until you got here.”
“I should have.”
“You’re harder on yourself than the evidence supports,” she said simply, the way she said things that were simply true.
“I looked you up. You have a real following in the endurance community. Not just biathlon people. Elkridge Endurance has been getting attention in places I follow. Some big names are interested. The route looks challenging, and that’s a huge attraction. That’s not nothing.”
He turned his head slightly. “You were looking for reasons to be right about me.”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “I was, but I didn’t find as many as I wanted.”
He smiled at that. “I’m not as sure of myself as I look, in case you hadn’t figured that out.”
“I figured it out.”
“When?”
“Gear swap.” He heard the small amusement in her voice. “You were watching me the whole time, trying to look like you weren’t.”
He didn’t argue with that as he touched her arm. “I have a confession to make.”
“I know.”
“You know what?”
“Why you’re here. How we’re here . . . together.”
He chuckled softly. “You figured out I didn’t just happen to end up at Silver Mane’s Lodge at the exact time you did?”
“I’m smart that way.” She put her hand on his, her heat coming through her mitten and warming his arm. “When did you figure out I was coming here?”
“Wednesday. I stopped by Irma Brew and had a chat with a lovely woman named Becky.”
She made a sound that was not quite a laugh. “Becky.”
“She was very helpful.”
“I’ll bet she was.” Steph was quiet for a moment. “You could have just asked me.”
“Would you have told me your training plans?”
“Not a chance,” she laughed. “I’m glad you didn’t ask.”
He looked at her.
She was looking back at him, the same way she’d been looking at him before the sound in the dark had interrupted everything. Whatever she’d been about to do before the elk came through, he could still see it there in her face. Not gone. Just waiting, the way the light was waiting.
“Steph.”
“I know,” she said. “I know all the reasons this is complicated.”
“So do I.”
“The club. The race. The fact that we’ve spent months being each other’s problem.”
“You were never a problem. I never even knew how you felt until recently.”
She sighed. “And I’ve been telling myself for weeks that you were easier to deal with as an obstacle.”
“I know.”
She held his gaze. “You’re not easier as an obstacle.”
“No.” He exhaled slowly. “And you definitely aren’t an obstacle.”
For a long second, neither of them moved.
Then her hand lifted, somehow moving without crinkling the mylar blanket. Her mitten brushed his jaw—tentative, testing.
His hand came up and closed over hers where it rested against his face.
He leaned forward before he could think himself out of it.
Their lips met.
Soft. Careful.
Her mouth was cold at first—winter cold—and then it wasn’t. The kiss lasted only a moment, just long enough for him to feel the reality of it before he forced himself to stop.
He didn’t chase it further, didn’t ask for more. He just stayed there with his hand over hers, holding it against his jaw, staring into her eyes.
Jack was aware of his own heartbeat, steadier than he expected. He’d been bracing for the familiar reaction, the pull-back, the reassessment of costs and distances. It didn’t come.
What came instead was simpler—a flood of thoughts and realizations all at once that changed everything.
He wanted to tell her about the girlfriend he’d lost, and about the way he’d spent years living around the edges of that wound, careful never to touch the center of it.
Tonight had been different. Out here with her, pulling the sleds and working together in the dark and cold, it was the first time in a long time that he’d stopped calculating what something might cost him and simply lived inside the moment.
She impressed him more than anyone he’d met in years. That admiration was only partly because of the way she moved through the winter wilderness with a sled behind her.
What he wanted to say the most, though the words felt too risky to release, was that there was no one he’d rather be hiding from potential killers with than her.
He wasn’t going to say it all. No way. But maybe some. More than he usually said, which was zero. That had to be a start. A start toward something with Steph.
He didn’t know yet what it looked like on the other side of this night, in daylight, in the world where running clubs and endurance races and all the practical complications of his life with hers were still real.
But he was done calculating the distance.
“Maybe we get out of here in one piece,” he said.
“Maybe. I’m not sure if we should stay here. There hasn’t been a response from SARs. I think the rock might be messing with the GPS signal and could make it difficult for the rescuers to find us. We should probably move to another hiding place while we wait.”
He felt her lean slightly into him under the emergency blanket, her shoulder against his.
Leaving might be necessary, but not just yet. A few more minutes like this was what he wanted and needed.